A differentiated unity

To the extent Cornelius Van Til is known, it is for his work in Christian apologetics, where he is perhaps the greatest architect of presuppositional argumentation. However, the scope of his work was far broader, giving John M. Frame good grounds to consider him the greatest theologian since John Calvin. Some of his most interesting thinking was on the doctrine of the Trinity. (Lane Tipton, pride of Westminster Theological Seminary in California's Class of 1999, has done some admirable work on Van Til in this area.) 

Van Til argued that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the sole means by which to resolve the philosopher's inability to reconcile the one and the many. In the midst of an otherwise middling "God of the Philosophers" in the June/July 2007 issue of First Things, Wolfhart Pannenberg has a paragraph which I think Van Til might have liked. (Emphases are original.)

...The Christian insistence is that God as such is to be understood as a differentiated unity. An undifferentiated unity means unity opposed to the many. Unity that is opposed to the many presupposes and therefore is conditioned by that opposition. Precisely because that is a conditioned unity, it cannot be the absolute unity that is before and above the many. Only

the triune God, as differentiated unity, is absolutely and unconditionally the one God. It follows that true monotheism is trinitarian.