Trinitarian Intertextuality?

The inherently inter-textual character of textual meaning appears to be a reflex of Trinitarian relations. To wit:

Each person of the Triune God is God Himself. As the Athanasian creed said, The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; yet there are not three gods but one God. The Father Almighty, the Son Almighty, the Spirit Almighty; and yet there are not three almighties but one Almighty. And so on.

Each person has attributes, features, a character that is His own. And each holds these attributes differently. The Father’s Almightiness is the Almightiness of a Father; the Son’s is a filial Almightiness, and the Spirit’s is appropriate to the Spirit. Each person has integrity, we might say, in Himself. If each did not have integrity in Himself we would not be talking about a Trinity anymore.

Yet, at the same time, the identity of each person, the character of each person, are dependent on the relations they have with the others. The Father is Father, and has all the attributes of God as Father, because He has a Son and breathes forth the Spirit. He is a Father only in-relation-to-a-Son. The Son is Son, and has all the attributes of God as Son, because He is begotten by the Father through the Spirit. The Spirit is Spirit, and has all the attributes of God as Spirit, because of His relation to the Father and Son. Each Person depends for His specific “meaning” on His relations with the other two.

Textual meaning is analogous. Each linguistic unit has its own meaning; meaning is not simply difference. As I heard Vern Poythress say a few years ago, “When we say ‘green’ we know that we mean something more than ‘not purple.’” So much for Saussure. Yet, the meaning of each linguistic unit is also dependent upon its place in a system of language, and upon its (linguistic, cultural, existential) context in a particular utterance, whether oral or written. “Slab” means slab; but when the worker cries out “Slab!” the meaning is more than is conveyed by the word. Its meaning depends on something that is not contained in the word itself. “Egg” has a unique meaning; but its particular meaning depends on whether you are ordering breakfast, recounting an embarrassing episode, or speaking about a smart but disoriented professor.

What is true of words and other small linguistic units is also true of texts. Textual meaning is particular to the text. The Aeneid does not convey the same meaning as the Iliad, nor does Dante mean what Virgil meant. One can read the Aeneid without any knowledge of previous or later readings, and the text means something. Even for a reader who has read nothing else and knows nothing else, the Aeneid means something. But one cannot read the Aeneid with much intelligence without recognizing that it fills a slot within the Western canon; its meaning is constituted at many points by its relation with the Homeric epics. Nor can one read Dante with much depth without knowing his complex relations to preceding texts, including the Aeneid.

And so: As the Father is not the Son and yet is not the Father without the Son, so the Aeneid is not the Iliad, and yet the Aeneid is not the Aeneid without the Iliad.