That’s fine; I hope you’ve re-posted your comments over there!
That thread, for those who need a refresh (it has been linked to a couple of times already) is: Is God More Than One Person?
As my Dad is having the cath this afternoon I probably won’t be able to do much on site for a little while. (Maybe tomorrow maybe not.) I think most of the issues after the point I reached are either addressed in my replies already, or are primarily about trin vs. non-trin theology (not the relation between trin and UR with or without comparison to other theologies), which would be better discussed in a thread like the one Aaron made.
Thanks for the thoughtful and challenging response.
I wrote:
You wrote:
I would say all of God’s actions are an expression of his eternal nature, and that the love that God has always (from “all eternity”) had for all finite persons (whom he has always purposed to bring into existence) is what God essentially is. God’s nature is to love all the finite personal beings whom God has always known everything about and who have always been certain to come into existence since God, in love, has always purposed to bring them into existence.
But “love” is not a “loving personal relationship.” This is not, I don’t think, an appropriate definition of “love.” Love is still love without its being reciprocated. In fact, in the very context in which God is said to be love, it is implied that God’s love for humanity is not yet being universally reciprocated, for most people in John’s day (as in our own) do not know God. To love is to will the good or best interests of another, regardless of whether or not they love you in return (as far as the comment about the unitarian position not being “sufficiently on par” with a multi-personal view of God, I’m assuming you’ll be backing up this assertion later on with argumentation so I’ll let it slide! ).
I don’t think this is the case, either. I think a God can be intrinsically and ontologically singular in person and still possess such a nature that he would cease to be who and what he essentially is (and thus cease to exist) if he failed to always love every finite being that he has always purposed to bring into existence.
But once again, “love” is not a “substantial single interpersonal unity of persons.” Also, I thought I was being at least somewhat specific when I appealed to the essential rationality of God’s nature. Because God is essentially rational, he must, I believe, promote the happiness of all persons since happiness is intrinsically valuable and it would be irrational (and thus a violation of God’s nature) to hate or be indifferent toward any person he has always purposed to bring into existence.
But even a multi-personal God who isn’t essentially rational and committed to promoting the happiness of being could (and for all we know would) choose to bring into existence persons to hate and make eternally miserable (or annihilate), or simply persons to whom he would be indifferent. So I’m not sure my appeal to God’s essentially rational nature is any weaker than your appeal to God’s essentially multi-personal nature.
I’m not quite so sure you do, though. The mere existence of a multi-personal God who loves itself (themselves) does not, I don’t think, guarantee that this love will be extended to every (or any) not-God entity, or that such a God would poof itself out of existence if it chose not to do this.
However, if God’s nature is essentially rational and God has always purposed to bring into existence every person who ever will exist in order to promote their happiness to the fullest extent possible, then this God is clearly superior to a multi-personal God who is not essentially rational and for whom the creation of finite beings was a mere after-thought rather than the necessary expression of his nature. You would have to argue that your multi-personal God has the same essentially rational (and thus benevolent) nature in order for it to even be “on par” with the God for which I am arguing. If a multi-personal God lacks the essential rationality of the unipersonal God for which I’m arguing, then it is necessarily inferior. But neither would a multi-personal God who is essentially rational (and thus essentially benevolent) be superior to a unipersonal God (at least insofar as guaranteeing UR goes - one could still consider a multi-personal God superior in other ways, as Lefein clearly does!). Simply adding more persons to God doesn’t make him/them more powerful or wise or competent to accomplish his/their purpose.
But I think there is a reason for a unipersonal God to continue loving those he has always purposed to exist: the essential rationality of his nature, which requires that he promote the happiness of all the persons he has or ever will bring into existence. A failure to do this would be a violation of his essentially rational nature. He would cease to be what he is and has always been.
Again though, if all three members of the Trinity were united in their desire and purpose to bring into existence a certain number of non-elect “reprobate” beings whom they wanted to be eternally miserable, then I think they would be fulfilling “fair-togetherness” between themselves. In fact, if any member of this multi-personal God suddenly became as benevolent as the unipersonal God in whom I believe (or perhaps I should say, “became benevolent,” period) and decided he wanted to spare the reprobate persons from their fate and promote their happiness, then he would not be fulfilling fair-togetherness with the other two persons! He would be violating the unity of the group in trying (or simply desiring) to thwart the purpose in which they were once united so that what they desired would go unrealized. If the reprobation and eternal misery of some finite persons is what each member of this triune God wanted, then for one of them to choose to cease to work towards this goal or try/desire to thwart it would be to act toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between them. But if they remained in perfect unity they would each be acting to fulfill fair-togetherness with the other, and the self-consistency of God would be fully preserved.
Of course, I don’t think a God like this is revealed in Scripture, but this fact does not, I don’t think, weaken my argument (that the mere fact that a God is multi-personal and that each divine person always acts to fulfill fair-togetherness with each other does not make UR more certain than if God were unipersonal and essentially benevolent).
But he would be a liar - and God wouldn’t be in him - only if this God was essentially benevolent. If God was not essentially benevolent but was instead united in the purpose to damn some or all finite persons, then for any of these divine persons to say he loved God but did not love those whom God had purposed to damn would be to act in perfect harmony with the other two divine persons. Only if one of the divine persons said he loved God but loved those whom God hated would he be a liar.
“Mono-unitarian” seems kinda redundant. Like “trio-trinitarian.”
But even here the Son could be understood as fulfilling his role as one who sacrifices himself on behalf of those whom God loves because not doing so would be a failure to fulfill fair-togetherness with the other two divine persons and would lead to God - and thus himself - ceasing to exist. He would be acting sacrificially to ultimately preserve his own divine existence and to avoid God’s being “poofed” out of existence.
You seem to be arguing that the reason why the persons of God always act to fulfill fair-togetherness between themselves is because they must act in a self-consistent fashion, which is to love each other. But this sounds almost like you’re saying that the persons of God always act to fulfill fair-togetherness between themselves because it is self-consistent for them to love. But if that’s the case, aren’t you basically saying that the persons of God always act to fulfill fair-togetherness between themselves because it is their nature to love?
Are you saying that the ground of the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High is God’s giving himself in love to all not-God creatures, or God’s giving himself to himself? If the former, I would agree. I don’t think anything less than this would fundamentally and intrinsically guarantee God’s persistently giving himself in love to all not-God creatures. That is, I would say that God’s giving himself to all not-God creatures is fundamentally and intrinsically guaranteed by the active self-generation of God being just that gift of himself in love to the not-God persons he has always purposed to bring into existence, and that this act of selfless love is the ground of all reality including the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High. If God is truly love and has always been love, then I think it would have to mean that he has always purposed to promote the happiness of not-God.
But love is not an “active fulfillment of the happiness” of a person or persons; it is willing the happiness of someone other than oneself. Unless it is the trinitarian theist’s position that the ground of all reality is God’s willing the best interests of not-God, I don’t see how it is superior to my position. God’s actively fulfilling the happiness of God does not in itself guarantee UR; God’s nature must also be such that he is also (by virtue of his nature) actively willing the best interests of all that is not-God. But simply to be multi-personal and actively fulfilling the happiness of himself (or themselves) does not mean God is actively willing the best interests of not-God.
But this wouldn’t be a rational action to take. It would be fundamentally irrational. As Talbott has argued, God cannot love anyone without loving everyone. And reason would lead a rational being to conclude that happiness is intrinsically valuable and thus ought to be promoted for its own sake. God’s being essentially rational would thus make such an action an impossibility.
But again, if each of the persons of God were united in their (irrational) desire and will to do such a thing, they would be fulfilling fair-togetherness between each other by each doing his part and fulfilling his role to bring it about.
If “love” means to will the good/happiness of someone other than oneself - someone who is not-you and does not share your existence - then God’s willing the good/happiness of God would not be love. If God is a single entity comprised of three persons, or three persons sharing one divine substance or essence, then these three persons (who are together the one God) willing the good or happiness of each other is not love. That’s simply God Most High willing the happiness of God Most High. It’s YHWH loving YHWH. It’s the Supreme Being loving the Supreme Being. In order for God to be love God must will the happiness of not-God. So if God is and always has been love then it means God loves and always has loved not-God, irrespective of how many persons God is. And this is precisely what I believe; God has always willed the best interests of every human person who will ever live, both before and after they have been brought into existence by him. From all eternity I believe God has known each and every human person perfectly and purposed to bring each and every human person into existence to make them as happy as a finite being can be.
To “do love” is simply to love. To love is to will the good of someone not-you. Thus “love” is “willing-the-good-of-not-you.” So to say that “God is love” is to say that “God is ‘willing-the-good-of-not-God.’” That is, willing the good of not-God is so essential to who God is that he can be said to actually be “willing-the-good-of-not-God.” So I do believe that for God, “the doing of love is intrinsically equivalent to being.” Willing the good of not-God (every finite person who will ever live) is an activity that defines God’s being in a way that no other activity can. It is who God is by virtue of his eternal, unchanging nature.
I realize you were trying to point out the inconsistency in Oxy’s position as a Trinitarian on the other thread (Is salvation a by-product of God’s grace?), but in doing so you spoke as if Trinitarianism guarantees UR, whereas Unitarianism does not. And while this may be true, I’m not sure anything you’ve said so far on this or the other thread bears this out. Perhaps I’m just misunderstanding your argument (and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time!), but if I’m not then I can’t help but find it unpersuasive. I’m not sure if you’re still planning on responding to my last post on this thread, but the following is just a response to some of your comments on the other thread that I thought were relevant to this thread, and which I thought would contribute to our discussion.
You wrote:
I’m not sure the above is true. Even if God were multi-personal, God’s glory would not necessarily have anything to do with “the grace of fair-togetherness” between God and not-God, and so may only be about the exercise of God’s power instead. If each member of this multi-personal God desired to bring some human beings into existence to make them eternally miserable, there would be perfect relational harmony within God, with each divine person acting to promote or maintain what they perceive to be the happiness of the other (which, in this case, would mean saving some human beings and damning the rest). Sure, this would be fundamentally selfish and irrational of God, but so what, according to your view? This God would still be acting to fulfill “fair-togetherness” between itself. It would only be a violation of God’s intrinsic nature if one of the divine persons decided he wanted to save everyone rather than make some eternally miserable. And this multi-personal God could still command human beings to love God and each other without itself loving all people (for we wouldn’t know which ones God loved and had chosen for salvation, and which ones he didn’t love and hadn’t chosen for salvation). And even if such a command was thought by us to be irrational (as I think it would be), so what? If that’s what each member of this multi-personal God wanted and was an expression of their united will, then there’s nothing we could do about it; such an irrational God as this would simply be defining human morality by divine fiat, and making up the “rules” by which their human creatures would have to “play.” Nightmarish stuff, I know. But the only thing to prevent a multi-personal God from being like this is if each divine person had the same essentially rational (and thus benevolent) nature that the unipersonal God in whom I believe possesses.
So here’s how I see it, in a nutshell: If God isn’t essentially and necessarily rational (and thus isn’t necessarily benevolent toward all not-God persons), it doesn’t matter whether God is unipersonal or multi-personal insofar as UR is concerned. The final happiness of not-God would be no more likely either way. But if God is essentially and necessarily rational (and thus benevolent toward all not-God persons), then his/its being multi-personal wouldn’t make the final happiness of not-God any more (or any less) of a guarantee than would be the case if God were unipersonal. A unipersonal God with the same rational, benevolent nature that each member of a multi-personal God would (I think) have to have in order for the salvation of all not-God persons to be guaranteed would be just as certain to save all people as the multi-personal God. So when it comes to guaranteeing UR, I don’t think there is any advantage to ascribing a multi-personal nature to God rather than a unipersonal nature to God. You seem to be arguing that a multi-personal God who perfectly loves itself could not fail to save all not-God persons without ceasing to exist. But what kind of multi-personal God who loves itself could not fail to do this without ceasing to exist? Not just any multi-personal God, but a multi-personal God who is fully and essentially rational.
But I don’t think a multi-personal God “needs” to act graciously toward not-God just because this God is multi-personal and acts to fulfill “fair-togetherness” (as each divine person perceives it) within/among itself. Such a God would only “need” to act graciously toward not-God if this God was essentially rational and thus essentially benevolent toward all not-God persons. But this would be equally true of a unipersonal God.
But only, I think, if this multi-personal God possessed the same essential rational and benevolent nature as the unipersonal God in whom I believe. If not, “who knows what results may follow.” God could love itself (or at least think or feel that it’s loving itself!) for all eternity and still need not act toward fulfilling fair-togetherness among all (or any) not-God persons.
This God would, I think, be irrational, and such irrationality could be just as true of a multi-personal God who loved itself/themselves as a unipersonal God who loved himself.
I was in fact entirely hoping you would pick up there and run with it here!
And yes, I’m still planning to reply to this. Just have been busy elsewhere. My reply to your comment previous to the above is about half-done; and I intend to continue on in replying to this one, too.
Incidentally, Nathan, I joked at the beginning that trying to explain how the Trinity leads to Universalism to a 10yo would involve first explaining the Trinity to a 10yo–which I doubted could be done. The egg analogy doesn’t explain the Trinity to a 10yo, it (at most) explains cosmological tri-theism to a 10yo, and involves just the sort of compartmentalism that Paidion was complaining about earlier. The Trinity doesn’t involve a union where this part is the Father and that part is the Son and that part is the Holy Spirit, jointly connected to one another like a shamrock or the parts of an egg.
Your analogy doesn’t cover the interactive union of self-existence of the Trinity either; nor how the Trinity relates to creation and to morality. Much less does it involve leading to universal salvation of sinners from sin.
This is why my 4 part explanation had to be longer than 15 lines, and more than picking a natural analogy to work with. (In fact I don’t recall appealing to natural analogies much if at all. Or using the term “triune” for that matter. Or even “Trinity” until the very last, and shortest, sentence. If you followed the thread afterward, then of course it’s going to dive quickly beyond any 10yo’s level, although I expected the first part would be, too.)
Anyway, this is mainly a reminder that I am still working on composing a reply to Aaron (which I’ve been distracted from doing due to other things). But I thought I would take a moment to reply, as I hadn’t before, that I am entirely aware that trying to explain the Trinity to a 10-year-old isn’t going to be at all easy or simple; nor did I think I was actually doing so even in my initial entries (much less later!); nor do I believe any natural analogies are going to hold up to any technical rigor, as the Trinity must be a one-of-a-kind reality with only partial analogies available in Nature; but Luke’s request via Alex required a technical discussion.
Well I’m glad it’s because you’ve been distracted and not for other reasons! As you’ve posted a good bit since my 7/27/11 response, I was getting a little nervous that you’ve been working on an overwhelming 50+ page rebuttal that would leave me with no choice but to let you have the last word. (Although I may have to do that anyway, as life seems to be getting more and more “distracting” these days! )
Finally attempting to catch up on this thread! (It’s only four pages longer than Aaron’s previous post. )
I’ll have to backpost some things for contextual reminders. Your comments from this post ported over from remarks I made to Oxymoron in another thread, cover the same territory as below, so for (relative!) brevity’s sake I’m skipping them as being topically included below (even though I am not directly quoting them for reference).
Only if ‘unity’ only means a union of one single person and cannot mean a union of multiple persons instead.
If you reply to the entirely true observation that AeCHaD can mean a single unity of multiple persons, that it can also mean a single non-union unit (which is also admittedly and demonstrably true); then I am allowed by the same principle to distinguish between a unity of persons and a non-unity unit of one person: either of which might be described as unitarian, just like AeCHaD can mean either sort of thing.
Normally I wouldn’t bother making the distinction; but in a discussion about the importance of the union of persons for God’s love where the crucial difference is how central that union of persons is to all reality, then I choose to emphasize that monopersonal unitarianism centrally involves only a unit of one person and not a unity, and so cannot put that relationship as centrally as the Unity of the Trinity.
(I’ve quoted and replied to that out of order, as it leads topically into a long section beginning here.)
While I agree with every clause of that paragraph, I will reiterate what I wrote in the above portion you quoted: unless God’s own intrinsic active self-existence is expressly equivalent to His love of persons, this paragraph cannot be true.
Trinitarian or even binitarian theism fulfills that criteria. But for monopersonal unitarian theism to fulfill that criteria, God’s own active self-existence would have to involve loving not-God persons, which would put them on an ontological parallel with God.
To say that God is essentially love is to say that God is essentially a coherent supporting interpersonal relationship. Who are the persons of that relationship of what God is? There are no multiple persons of the single God if monopersonal unitarianism is true. The other persons have to be not-God persons, or at least one such. But that would mean God, as God, essentially is the love of God and at least one not-God person for each other. But the not-God person is, by tautology, not God and can not therefore essentially be God!
The result is that the claim “the love that God has always had for all finite persons is what God essentially is” must mean that what God essentially is, is a person of God and a person of not-God (who is not God) loving one another, if God has only one person.
But that’s a claim that God essentially is and is not God.
That’s a claim I doubt you mean. But if you don’t mean that, you aren’t actually making a claim on ontological par with trinitarian theists when you try to say that God is essentially love, instead of only that God does love.
You either don’t mean something regarding God’s intrinsic self-existence by the expression (although a trinitarian theist can, and should, mean that by the expression), or you have to mean something intrinsically self-contradictory by the expression to try to keep on par with us.
If we’re wrong, we’re wrong because we actually mean “God is essentially love” at the level of God’s own ontological level of existence distinct from not-God reality (but upon which not-God reality depends for existence). We’re wrong by going too far in claiming something about God’s love. We make God’s love too central to God’s own reality to be true.
But that would still mean that the truth of monopersonal unitarianism (instead of tri-personal unitarianism, so to speak–a single substantial unity of multiple persons) is something less than what we believe to be true about God’s love.
Even if less is true, it’s still less. It may be correct in being less, but it isn’t more, even if more is wrong by claiming more.
(Similarly, if God acts persistently to save fewer than all sinners from sin, or acts less than persistently to save all sinners from sin: even if one of those is true it’s still less than a claim of more.)
This all depends, of course, on the question of what love is. If love does not mean a loving personal relationship, then God does not have to be essentially a loving personal relationship to be essentially love. But then neither is there any point trying to claim “the love that God has always (from “all eternity”) had for all finite persons (whom he has always purposed to bring into existence) is what God essentially is”. Um, no, this love that God has for persons (not-God persons if monopersonal unitarianism is true) isn’t what God is, if God is love and if love does not mean a loving personal relationship.
I have been arguing this all along, and your own claims make this point for me, too: we cannot be meaning the same thing by fundamental love, nor the same thing by God being love. After all (and I hear this from confused trinitarians, too!) if fundamental love does not involve an interpersonal relationship, then all that is required for love is for one person to love that person alone without any intrinsic necessity to love other persons. Once again, there would be no point to your bringing in the love of God in an admittedly eternal fashion (from God’s standpoint) for non-eternal not-God creatures to try to present your position as being on par with a multi-personal view of God.
It may now also be noticed that in my preceding critique of an attempt to claim “God is love” for a mono-personal God to be on par with the same claim for a multi-personal God, I only once required that the not-God person (or persons) must be returning that love. I critiqued the claim entirely from the perspective of God loving the creatures, except in one regard: that of ontological unity, where to be essentially love God must be the love between God and not-God persons if God is only one person.
Why? Because if the not-God person (or persons) helping constitute the single ontological essential reality of God (as a substitute proposal for multiple persons of God in a single ontological essential reality) does not love the person of God in that ontological essential unity (or vice versa!), then the single ontological essential reality of God would be schismed, incoherent, self-contradictive and therefore unreal.
But even if the two persons loved one another in an interpersonal relationship, that wouldn’t solve the other ontological self-contradiction of God being essentially God and also utterly not-God in God’s own action of self-existence. (A claim subtly but crucially distinct from God Incarnating as fully God and fully Man, taking up the not-God nature of humanity into the life of the Deity. But not into the self-existent life of the Deity: the orthodox two natures doctrine does not require that the human not-God nature is a necessary factor of God’s own essential existence as God.)
Which, as I said, I doubt you would even try to claim anyway. But the alternative is that God’s love for not-God persons is not (despite what you tried to claim) what God actually essentially is. It is only what God does. Whereas a proposal of a multi-personal single substantial reality of God is talking (even if wrongly so) about what God essentially is as God (distinct from not-God reality).
That would only be true if God’s own independent self-existence, which cannot depend on not-God entities (unless supernaturalistic theism is false, whether a monopersonal or multi-personal unity of Deity), involved the active fulfillment of love between persons. Otherwise love might as well be something like wrath: something God can stop doing toward a person and still continue to exist as God.
Even if that’s true (which as stated is merely an assertion against multi-personal monotheism combined with an observation that if this isn’t true then love cannot be this either) it hardly helps your case to assert it as an answer to the conceptual point raised above. “X must be conceptually weaker than Y as a proposal.” “But Y isn’t true!” Too bad? X is still conceptually weaker: that’s the claim to be answering here.
The next portion has some relation to a later portion, so I’ll be porting it back up here:
I think I am on record somewhere complaining that Tom argues this without logical reference to the fundamental unity of the Trinity, and why that’s a serious problem. But to synch this back to your earlier comment before continuing:
First, you haven’t indicated (here, or later as quoted above) what you mean by being essentially rational: do you mean God’s core self-existence involves thinking validly? Or that God core self-existence involves willfully intentional action?
These are somewhat different although related claims; and I would agree both are true–although if God’s core self-existence involves willfully intentional action (which would be a chief distinction between claims of theism vs. atheism anyway), then God must be both self-begetting and self-begotten.
But even if that was true without thus also involving at least two persons in one unity of substance (God self-begetting and God self-begotten–and for reasons I won’t expound upon here I don’t believe it’s possible for God to be self-begetting/begotten without such a distinction of persons), that would only mean God cares first and foremost about His own self-existence in an ultimately selfish fashion that has nothing intrinsically to do with fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons. Promoting the happiness of persons (plural) is not what God essentially is, if God is not essentially a single unity of plural persons. God would at bottom only be interested (if at all) in promoting the happiness of one person, namely God Himself.
If the happiness of created persons promotes the happiness of God, then He would do so. If the permanent and utter unhappiness of created persons promotes the happiness of God just as well or better than the happiness of created persons, then so much for an expectation He would act to fulfill their happiness! Far from guaranteeing this, the rational action of a merely single-person God would, if anything, involve (no doubt logically valid) sheer power exertion for the selfish happiness of one person: which would tend to lead us to expect that any exertion of power by that person would be just as equal as any other in value by that person. And forcing other persons to be unhappy, or to blink out of existence altogether, would be only another mode of that power exertion for the self-important glory of that single person. (Although blinking them back out of existence would limit the opportunities to exert power over them, so that would be less expected. )
This leads to the second observation: that you haven’t detailed what you mean by happiness being intrinsically valuable. If foundational reality is in itself essentially the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons (which you deny), then there is a definite meaning (even if wrong) to saying that happiness of persons (plural) is intrinsically valuable; a value that would obtain for created persons, too, as God’s (multi-personal) relationship with created persons would be a subsidiary variation of God’s multi-personal inherent self-existent relationship.
Otherwise, the only happiness of a person (singular) that counts as valuable would be the happiness of the single person of God, the end, period. If He is happy in the happiness of other persons, great for them; if not, then it sucks to be them but too bad–that’s how God is happy. Fair-togetherness between persons may be something God does but since it isn’t something God is (if multi-personal self-begetting self-begotten monotheism isn’t true) there can only be less inherent assurance of God acting to fulfill fair-togetherness between persons (whether between created persons and Himself or between created persons and each other.)
That’s a huge and unwarranted conceptual jump. It would be irrational to hate or be indifferent toward any person God has always purposed to bring into existence for the purpose of loving. But rationality, merely in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily involve the existence and fulfillment of love between persons (unless at least binitarian theism is true.)
If God has always purposed to bring into existence persons He intended to hate, or to be indifferent to except as a means to some other goal, then it would not be irrational for God to hate or be indifferent toward that person. It might even be necessarily irrational for God to love such persons instead! A rationality that is not intrinsically concerned with such things can provide (nor have) no expectations about how that rationality will operate in regard to such things; and rationality merely of itself is not intrinsically concerned with such things–and “of itself” might well instead be intrinsically concerned against such things!
If the Sun was a rational single-person entity intrinsically concerned with perpetuating itself, its primary purpose would be self-perpetuation without any necessary regard for creatures it happened to create as a side effect of that (whether they happened to live or to be burned up in a solar flare exuded by the Sun to regulate its internal processes). And even if it intended to create other persons, it might do so with the purpose (though always a subsidiary purpose unrelated intrinsically to its self-perpetuating purpose, like a side hobby) of helping them be happy, or with the purpose of creating little flaming balls of screaming carbon. Any of those would be perfectly rational goals and operations, because the Sun’s rationality would not have anything intrinsically to do with the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons.
True!–but you’ve left out some details. A God Whose own intrinsic self-existence (and so also the derivative existence of anything He created) involves fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons would obviously and necessarily be committed to fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons.
For such a God to intend to bring into existence persons to hate and make eternally miserable or annihilate (i.e. to fulfill ultimate non-fair-togetherness toward), or simply persons to whom He would be indifferent (i.e. indifferent to acting toward fulfilling fair-togetherness with), would not only be for such a God to act in a fashion not rationally self-consistent (i.e. irrationally) but also for such a God to act in a fashion contrary to the active principles of God’s own continuing self-existence.
That is the kind of God I have been constantly talking about; not about a God Who is only (even in a single substantial unity) incidentally multi-personal. And certainly I am not talking about a God Who is not essentially rational.
So your counter-example, while very helpfully illustrative in some ways, is not actually a countervailing point to my argument that the kind of God a fully orthodox trinitarian theism is talking about (which is not the kind of God you were talking about in your counter-example) would uniquely guarantee and assure the salvation of all sinners from sin if such a God existed (compared to any other theistic proposal, much less a non-theistic one).
Which is not in itself an argument that such a God exists, as I have often qualified. It is (only!) an argument about what is at stake in affirming or denying various concepts to be true.
Well, no, if you leave out the key distinction I have been constantly discussing and talking about, it probably isn’t! But neither then is it of any weight against my claim about the unique salvific importance of a God with that key distinction: which is that the essential nature of God, as God, involves active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons, not merely that God is at bottom multi-personal in some otherwise unimportant way unrelated to the existence of God or of anything else in reality (i.e. if a statically existent Trinity was true. Which I don’t think is even possible, so it’s not much use bringing up such a thing as an example. But I have said elsewhere that the existence of such a God, even if possible, would not involve a uniquely solid assurance of God’s persistent action to save all sinners from sin, compared to an actively self-existent Trinity.)
Which is because you’re talking about the mere existence of such a multi-personal God; not about a multi-personal God Who actively self-exists (and thus derivatively creates) in an actively self-begetting and self-begotten unity of Persons.
We may test the difference by substituting the kind of God I have always been very constantly (even monotonously ) talking about, for the concept of God you used in your reply:
I don’t think it does not guarantee such a result either. (i.e. I think it does guarantee such a result.)
At any rate, in order to address what I’m actually talking about, you’d have to make a claim of that sort instead of the one you made–where, not-incidentally, I would agree with you (on the single negative though not the double ). The mere existence of a multi-personal God is no more guarantee of God’s action to save all sinners from sin than the existence (mere or otherwise) of a single-personal God.
But I am not, and never once (here or elsewhere) have been talking about a merely (statically) existent multi-personal God, where the multi-personalness of God has nothing actually to do with God’s self-existence but is only a characteristic fact about God. I have never once been talking about such a God.
(I can quote myself extensively in this thread alone, starting from my first entry, if I am required (or provoked) to do so. My claims in all other preceding threads will be very demonstrably just the same.)
Which such a God may or may not do, but has no essentially intrinsic guarantee of doing–even though (as I have constantly acknowledged) such a God might do so. Rationality, merely of itself, is no guarantee that God will intend to promote the happiness of every created person to the fullest extent possible.
Which is not the kind of God I have been talking about at all. So I have no problem agreeing here.
The multi-personal God I am talking about, unlike the sort you’re describing, has no problem being not only on par but exceeding in assurance of intrinsic necessary benevolence a single-personal God of any kind, even one who intends beyond mere rationality to assure the fulfilled happiness of every created being (although the end-result comparison between those Gods would amount to the same thing from our perspective. Perhaps. That’s a whole other discussion.)
Your own denial that love is ultimately and centrally an action toward fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons, is itself entirely enough evidence to settle the point: your position must necessarily not be on the same ontological par as mine, since your concept of love is necessarily not on the same ontological par as mine. You cannot deny that love is a substantial single interpersonal unity of persons as the ground of all reality, and still logically succeed in putting the fulfillment of love between persons at the same ontological par as my claim.
If I’m wrong, it’s because I wrongly believe love to be too central as the ground of all reality (even of God’s actively self-existent reality). If you’re right, then love is not that central. Comparing my position to a multi-personal monotheism where love has nothing at all to do with being the ground of any (much less all) reality (including God’s actively self-existent reality) is nothing to the point, except as a helpful contrast to what I actually believe and am talking about and claiming to be true.
So again, when you write “Simply adding more persons to God doesn’t make him/them more powerful or wise or competent to accomplish his/their purpose,” you have missed (or stopped paying attention to) what I’m actually talking about.
This essentially ignores (not addresses in answer) the precepts I already mentioned above. Which I have bolded, underlined and itaclicized in requote.
Some number of Nazis (if I may appeal to an argumentum ad Nazium ) were united in their desire and purpose to make as eternally miserable as they could a certain number of beings whom they regarded as, in effect, non-elect. They could not act that way, toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness among created persons, without also acting in contravention to the ground of their own existence which (if ortho-trin is true) is an action always toward (and eternally consummating) fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons.
It may be possible or at least somewhat cogent for God to act fundamentally against God’s own fundamental morality (which would be sin if a created entity did so) if orthodox trinitarianism isn’t true, but such a proposition must be theologically incoherent if ortho-trin is true. God would be acting against the ground of God’s own reality (which is nothing other or more or less than Godself) if He did so, just like a created sinner. The only salient difference would be that unlike the created sinner God (in the single unity of interpersonal deity) would have nothing to save Himself. The Father could not save the Son if the Son rebelled because the Son, although a distinct Person, is not a distinct entity; the Son could not save the Father (much moreso Himself!) if the Father abandoned Him. Nor could the Holy Spirit reconcile the two (nor either of the two begetting/begotten Persons save a rebellious proceeding Third Person). God would poof out of existence if God sinned against Godself, which would happen even if all Three Persons agreed to act in contravention to their own reality by acting against the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons: in an un-righteous manner.
Consequently, the example of all three Persons acting in fair-togetherness with each other toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons created by the fair-togetherness between the Persons of God, and then one or more of the Three deciding to become benevolent toward those created persons instead, is a non-problem. The orthodox Trinity would have already acted in contravention to their single substantial ultimate reality, and so poofed out of existence irretrievably, along with all past, present and future created realities (if any); meaning we wouldn’t be here to debate it.
That’s true; active self-existence is going to actively self-exist. But you had asked “is it SIMPLY a matter of self-preservation, OR IS THERE SOME OTHER REASON?” My answer was that it cannot be, by the proposal of the concept, SIMPLY a matter of self-preservation. Someone SIMPLY preserving themselves would not sacrifice themselves for the sake of other persons.
Which you seem to understand by your reply, as your account now correctly goes beyond SIMPLE self-preservation. I am not going to, and could not, deny that God the Self-Existent is going to act to Self-Exist. But if you think giving one’s own life to save one’s own life is only simply selfish, then you will have to contend (even on a monopersonal unitarian theology!) with Christ’s own words to us about giving up our souls to save our souls. I do not know of any Christians anywhere, trinitarian or otherwise, who consider that to be a call to selfishness, or who would consider that to be effective, or acceptable by God and/or Christ if the intention was simply self-preservation.
If you think the losing of your own soul to save your soul is only simply self-preservation, then perhaps you have some ground to suspect that the Son’s self-sacrifice (and the self-giving of the Father etc.) would only be simply selfish self-preservation, too (instead of also self-preserving self-existence), and so would not be truly ethical. But then you would be testifying that you are only interested in salvation from your sin for selfish (i.e. sinful) reasons. Which could hardly be a proposition of a religion even on ethical par with trinitarian Christianity.
I strenuously doubt that is true about you! But if not, then there is even less ethical problem with the self-sacrifice of God’s action leading first and primarily to the self-existence of God (then also to the existence of created reality in God’s sacrificial graciousness).
Tautologically (which has to be the case at the level of fundamental reality we’re talking about) the persons of God’s self-existence always act to love because the action of love between persons is how God self-exists. Fundamental Independent self-existence always acts to self-exist, otherwise there would be no existence at all, whether an Independent Fact (i.e. God, in however many persons) or dependent facts (i.e. created not-God reality).
Trinitarianism (or even binitarianism), rightly or wrongly, claims that love between persons is essentially the fundamental self-existent ground of all reality.
Which is why I went on to write:
No, I’m saying the latter. But if the latter is true, then to breach the former would be to breach the latter. (Unless if created persons were not created by the sacrificial self-existent multi-personal love of God; but that would be to say that created persons were not created by God but rather by something or someone independently existent of God: beside or above God, using spatial metaphor for speaking ontologically.)
Meanwhile, I VERY strenuously doubt you actually believe that God’s own eternal self-existence is grounded in God giving Himself in love to not-God creatures. What not-God creation is intrinsically and essentially God self-existent at the level of God’s own self-existence!?
Obviously you cannot be talking about the orthodox two natures of Christ in one person. And even I would not claim that the human nature of the Son is ontologically necessary for the self-existent love of the Persons of God. God doesn’t have to create to exist, and (if ortho-trin is true) would still be essentially love even if He didn’t create; but if He does create He must be essentially love in creating and toward His creation (and maybe with His creation, i.e. if God creates God may necessarily have to Incarnate within that creation sooner or later, just as God must necessarily act immanently in creation for creation to continue exist if God creates.)
At the same time, you seem to see that, if God is not a single unity of divine Persons as God’s own self-existence, still “[nothing] less than this * would fundamentally and intrinsically guarantee God’s persistently giving himself in love to all not-God creatures.”
But then you are stuck with the ontological concept of God’s own self-grounding self-existing reality including not-God creatures (all of them? one of them?) being God self-existent. That’s a multi-personal God where some of the persons are absolutely not-God yet still must be God Most High.
Or, you’re not really thinking yet about God actively self-existing as God.
So for example when you clarify yourself:
But the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High is (tautologically) God Most High, not not-God. (Unless it is possible for God to be fully man and fully God, but then you’re moving into a non-docetic modalism if not into the orthodox two-natures of the Son Incarnate.)
The generation of God by God can coherently be the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High. But the generation of not-God by God cannot coherently be the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High.
God cannot essentially be God and not God. Even in the orthodox two-natures doctrine of the Incarnation, the humanity of the Son is not essentially God but is graciously taken up into union with the primary reality of God self-begotten. The human nature of the Son is not essentially God; although if created nature is generated by the essential unity of God self-begetting, self-begotten, and proceeding in a gift of God from God to God, then such a multi-personal God is intimately as well as transcendently related to all created not-God reality in a union of dependence to independence. The Incarnation would be a unique expression of that principle; but that doesn’t mean the creation would itself be essentially God even in that unique instance.
(Even the so-called “one nature” Oriental Orthodox trinitarians don’t really believe that, although they have been propagandized as such, and are often tempted into going that far to distinguish themselves from Eastern or Western Roman Orthodoxy. And admittedly the Eastern Orthodox push that concept as far as they can in the relative deification of all humanity in the two natures of Christ. The Church of the East Trinitarians, on the other hand, press hard on the distinction of the human and divine natures of Christ, coming close to falling off the horse on the other side into proposing two persons of Christ not only two natures.)
The discussion of Lewis’ quote would follow lines previously discussed above (regarding God’s self-existence of multiple real persons loving one another being categorically different from a merely selfish self-love; and regarding what God essentially being love for not-God persons is supposed to mean). So I’ll recuse back there and conclude.
And now I need to work on material for a radio debate for a while. *
Thanks for the response, Jason! I think this is a really interesting and worthwhile topic of discussion, and one that I have never really thought much about until joining the forum. I’ll try to read through your reply as soon as I can, but it may be a while before I post anything in response (as I’m sure you won’t mind, considering the other stuff that you obviously “have on your plate” right now!).
Just out of curiousity, what is the radio debate about?
The “trinitarian” position affirms that God is three persons; the “unitarian” position affirms that God is one person. So when it is clear to most people (especially those involved in a discussion like this!) that the established and common theological word “unitarian” refers to a unipersonal God and not to multiple persons unified by a divine “something” (e.g., a divine nature), “mono-unitarian” just seems redundant.
As far as AeCHad goes (and as we’ve discussed elsewhere: https://eu.ltcmp.net/t/the-ot-and-the-trinity/758/1) it means numerically and mathematically one. Whether it refers to “one grape” or “one cluster of grapes” it still means numerically “one” of whatever is in view. But that AeCHad doesn’t mean “a single unity of multiple persons” when God is in view is, I think, evident from the following (which I wrote in response to some comments you made concerning the AeCHad, the Shema, and the expression “and they shall become one flesh”):
I don’t see how it would be the case that not-God persons would be ontologically parallel with God if God’s active self-existence involved loving not-God persons. If God has always foreknown and loved every not-God person he has ever purposed to bring into existence (and they have thus always been certain to exist for as long as God has existed), then his active self-existence would involve loving not-God persons without their being, at the same time, “ontologically parallel to God.”
I deny that “love” should be defined as “a coherent supporting interpersonal relationship.” Not only is this not the definition of love, love does not even need for its existence a relationship between two persons who both have an awareness of the other. While this assumption seems to be pretty essential to your position, repeatedly asserting it not does not make it true. Yes, love implies that one person is being loved by another, but the relationship itself is not what love is.
To “love” is to will the good/happiness of one who is not you. Love need not be reciprocated in order for it to exist. The person who is loved does not have to love in return in order for them to be loved. To be the object of God’s love I don’t think one has to be aware of anything or even exist yet in an actualized state. A not-God person is just as loved by God before they begin to exist as they are after they begin to exist. For example, when God created the world he was willing and purposing the good of Adam and all of his descendents before Adam and his descendents actually came into existence. Everything God does (whether it be a thought or a word) before a person’s existence is actualized is done in love, with their best interests at heart. I deny that God has done anything that he didn’t think would somehow and in some way contribute to the final happiness of every not-God person who will ever be brought into existence. God has always been willing your good and my good, even before the time came for us to be brought into existence. True, we aren’t aware of God’s love for us until we come into existence and our capacity to understand love has fully developed, but this doesn’t mean there was ever a moment in God’s existence when he didn’t love us perfectly (either as beings who are, to God, certain to exist, or beings who already exist).
No, I don’t mean to claim this; I don’t believe any not-God being has always existed. Although it may be that God has always been bringing finite beings into existence, I don’t believe any single finite being has existed co-eternally with God. But I think I am making a claim that is “on ontological par with trinitarian theists” because I’m saying that love is willing the good of someone who is not you, and that God is love in the sense that he has always, by virtue of his rational nature, willed the good of every not-God person who exists and ever will exist.
I don’t believe God has ever experienced (or could ever experience) a moment when he has not loved every not-God person he has always planned to create, so I think I do “mean something regarding God’s intrinsic self-existence.” Whatever has always been the case and necessarily is the case for God has, I think, at least something to do with “God’s intrinsic self-existence!” And I’m not sure how this would be “intrinsically self-contradictory.”
I don’t think you go far enough, actually. Whereas I believe God’s loving not-God persons is essential to God’s intrinsic self-existence, your position seems to be merely that God loves God. It doesn’t matter to me how many persons one thinks “God” is - two, three, or a billion - if “God is love” merely because God loves God, then this position is, I think, inferior to mine. The beauty and wonder and majesty of the statement “God is love” is not in the mere fact that God loves God (for as Paul says, “no one ever hated his own flesh”) but rather that God loves - and has always loved - not-God. God’s eternal and unchanging love for God wouldn’t mean anything if God didn’t also eternally and unchangingly love not-God.
No, I don’t think so. A unipersonal God who has always, by virtue of his nature, loved every not-God person who will ever exist is superior to a multi-personal God who is said to be “love” merely because it has always loved itself or themselves. The only way such a multi-personal God could be on par with the unipersonal God in whom I believe is if each divine person has always loved and always will love every not-God person who will ever exist.
Only if by your words “love means a loving personal relationship” you simply mean that love cannot exist without one person loving another person, then I agree that “love means a loving personal relationship.” But by “loving personal relationship” I’ve been understanding you to mean a relationship between two or more persons who are aware of each other and are capable of reciprocating love (and perhaps are reciprocating love) while they are being loved. That is, we only speak of people being in an “interpersonal relationship” when they are each aware of the other’s existence and are purposefully and deliberately involved in the other’s life. What I’m arguing is that this need not be the case in order for God to be love if God has always planned to bring certain persons into existence and God has always loved the persons he has always planned to bring into existence.
I don’t think it’s true that “if fundamental love does not involve an interpersonal relationship *, then all that is required for love is for one person to love that person alone without any intrinsic necessity to love other persons.” For God, I believe what is required for “fundamental love” is that God love all not-God persons. This is the only consistent expression of his perfectly and essentially rational nature. So it’s not either “God is love” because God is a multi-personal being who loves itself/themselves (which, again, would simply mean that one being loves itself), or “God is love” because God loves one person without necessarily loving other persons. There is, I believe, an alternative that is superior to both: God is love because God’s nature is such that he has always loved every not-God person he has always purposed to bring into existence.
I’m not sure I’m following you above. How would the fact that God’s ontological essential reality involves the loving (and thus inevitable bringing into existence) of not-God persons mean that the “single ontological essential reality of God” was “schismed, incoherent, self-contradictive and therefore unreal?”
I believe God’s love for not-God is what God actually essentially is in that his love for not-God is the necessary expression of his nature, and that he would cease to be God if he ever ceased to love all not-God persons. You’re asserting that this cannot be the case, although I still don’t see why it couldn’t. Besides, even if “fundamental love” requires that two or more people be in an interpersonal relationship in which they are aware of each other and able to give and receive love, love is not this relationship. While such a relationship could be called a “loving interpersonal relationship,” the interpersonal relationship itself is not “love.” A more accurate understanding of “love” is that it is willing the good/happiness of another (i.e., someone who does not share your existence), not a “loving interpersonal relationship.” To have love for someone is simply to have a benevolent disposition toward them. So while I’m arguing that God is said to be “love” because he wills and has always willed the happiness of all not-God persons, your position seems to boil down to this: God is love because God wills the happiness of God.
Again, this is not true. I don’t believe God’s own independent self-existence depends on not-God entities in the sense that not-God entities must eternally co-exist with God in order for God to exist. That’s not my position. I believe every not-God person who will ever exist has always been certain to exist because God has always wanted them to exist, and that God necessarily loves every not-God person he has always planned to bring into existence. And no, what I say wouldn’t only be true if God’s own independent self-existence involved the fulfillment of love between persons (wait, if love is something that is “between persons,” then is God literally something that is “between persons?” ). It’s not my view that God defines what love is by some arbitrary act of his will; rather, “love” is defined by God’s own eternal reason, and can never be anything other than it is. To cease to love would not be loving; to cease to will the good of another would not be willing their good. Thus, for love to ever cease would mean it was never actually love to begin with.
Besides, isn’t it your view that “wrath” is simply an expression of God’s love? If that’s the case, then the particular expression may cease but the love of which the wrath is an expression will never cease, right?
And I think I’ve answered your claim (which I still think is conceptually weaker than mine). A God whose self-existence is defined by love for not-God is superior (as far as leading to UR goes) than a God whose self-existence is defined by love for Godself. The only way a multi-personal God could be on par with the unipersonal God in whom I believe is if each divine person of which this multi-personal God consists has always loved and always will love every not-God person who will ever exist. If that’s not the case, then this God is necessarily inferior to the unipersonal God in whom I believe. And even if you were to argue that God’s self-existence is defined by both love for God and not-God, the love that God has for God would be irrelevant insofar as guaranteeing UR goes, for (as I’ve argued previously), the love that God has for God could (if not accompanied by an equally essential love for not-God beings) equate to a united hatred for - or indifference toward - some or all not-God beings. That is, the love that God has for God could be wholly exclusive and limited to God, and have as its goal the reprobation of some or all not-God persons. Unless accompanied by an equally essential love for not-God persons, God’s love for God need not be understood as being consistent with the salvation of all not-God persons. You may believe (e.g., because you believe Scripture teaches) that God’s love for God does not have as its goal the reprobation of any not-God persons, and that God’s love for God is consistent with UR. And that’s cool. But even then, this view of God (a God whose love for himself is consistent with guaranteed UR) would still only be “on par” with the view for which I’m arguing, and not superior to it.
God is essentially rational in that God’s core self-existence involves thinking and acting rationally. That happiness is an intrinsic good or intrinsically valuable is a “first truth of reason,” and I’ve yet to see a compelling argument in which this fundamental and intuitively-known truth is denied. To deny that happiness is intrinsically valuable in thought or action is, I believe, to think or act irrationally (which is something I deny that God can do by virtue of his “core self-existence”).
But why couldn’t a multi-personal God “care first and foremost about his own self-existence in an ultimately selfish fashion that has nothing intrinsically to do with fulfilling fair-togetherness” between God and not-God persons? As I’ve argued, God’s being “a single unity of plural persons” and fulfilling fair-togetherness between the persons of which God consists need not be understood as being at all consistent with the happiness of some (or even all) not-God persons. God’s loving God has nothing necessarily to do with God’s loving not-God. Promoting the happiness of not-God persons is not what a multi-personal God “essentially is” unless this multi-personal God (i.e., each individual person of which this multi-personal God consists) has always sought to promote the happiness of not-God persons. Neither God’s being a “single unity of plural persons” nor God’s fulfilling fair-togetherness between the persons of which God consists is, by itself, any guarantee of UR. A multi-personal God who is fulfilling fair-togetherness between itself does not mean this God is necessarily willing the happiness of all or any not-God persons. This is something that a multi-personal God must be doing in addition to loving itself if there is to be any guarantee of UR. But a unipersonal God can do this (love not-God persons necessarily, as an expression of God’s nature) just as well and just as efficaciously as a multi-personal God can.
If God eternally thinks and acts in a way that is consistent with his nature, then I have no doubt that God is perfectly and eternally happy. And because God’s core self-existence involves thinking and acting rationally, then I think it does promote God’s happiness to promote the happiness of created persons.
But because the intrinsic value of happiness is a first truth of reason (and God is an essentially and perfectly rational being) then it would be impossible for the permanent and utter unhappiness of created persons to promote the happiness of God.
I’m not sure how any of this follows from God’s being a unipersonal and essentially rational being.
Why “would” this value “obtain for created persons, too?” How does this necessarily follow from the fact that God loves God? When you say “foundational reality is in itself the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons” (emphasis mine) you can only mean the infinite divine persons of whom God consists. And the “subsidiary variation” that is God’s relationship with created persons (not the uncreated persons of whom God consists) could just as well be inconsistent with their salvation as consistent with it, if God’s nature is not essentially and perfectly rational (or is perhaps “rational” in the sense that you apparently think would be rational). But if God’s nature is essentially and perfectly rational (in the sense for which I’m arguing), UR would be just as likely the outcome if God were unipersonal than if he were multi-personal.
Don’t you mean “fair-togetherness between infinite, divine persons” is “something God is” if “multi-personal self-begetting self-begotten monotheism” is true? Surely you don’t think God is “fair-togetherness between finite persons” or “fair-togetherness between infinite and finite persons,” do you? But this is one reason why I find your argument less than compelling. If God is “fair-togetherness between persons” but the persons between whom God “is fair-togetherness” are the infinite, divine persons which together exist as a multi-personal God, then there is not just “less” but really no inherent assurance of God acting to fulfill fair-togetherness between God and not-God persons (i.e., those who are not the persons between which God is “fair-togetherness”). The only way there could be any inherent assurance of God’s saving all people is if the love that God “is” is a love for all not-God persons (my position).
Actually, if God were essentially and perfectly rational and being rational involves affirming and seeking to promote the intrinsic value or good of happiness it would involve God’s promoting the happiness of all not-God persons that God has always intended to create. Even if God didn’t “have” to create anything at all (although I think this is arguable, since I see God as being a Creator necessarily, by virtue of his nature), it would still mean that the happiness of those beings God did intend to create would have to be promoted.
If God has always purposed to bring into existence persons He intended to hate, or to be indifferent to except as a means to some other goal, then God would be irrational. He would be thinking and acting in a way that was completely contrary to reason.
No, these would not be “perfectly rational goals and operations.” Such goals and operations would be inconsistent with what every rational being know intuitively as a “first truth” by virtue of being a rational being (i.e., that happiness is intrinsically valuable).
Actually, according to your view, God’s “intrinsic self-existence” involves fulfilling fair-togetherness between infinite, divine persons (the persons of whom God exists as a “self”) only - not between God and created persons. Since this is the case, such a God wouldn’t “obviously and necessarily be committed to fulfilling fair-togetherness” between himself and not-God persons.
That’s good to know! If the God you’ve been constantly talking about is essentially rational, then this God is on par with the God I’ve been constantly talking about. But his being “on par” with the God I’ve been talking about is not due to his multi-personal nature but rather his essentially rational nature.
You said “…the essential nature of God, as God, involves active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons…” but I think what you meant to say was, “…the essential nature of God, as God, involves active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between the persons of whom God consists…” Isn’t it your position that God’s intrinsic self-existence does not involve active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between any persons other than the persons of whom God consists as a multi-personal being? If so, your position necessarily excludes not-God persons from the equation. According to your position, if God loves any not-God persons, it’s not because God’s intrinsic self-existence involves an eternal love for all not-God persons (as is my position). But neither can it be because God’s intrinsic self-existence involves an active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between any persons other than the infinite, uncreated persons of whom God consists as a multi-personal being. So how does a “uniquely solid assurance of God’s persistent action to save all sinners from sin” follow from your position? Why must a God whose intrinsic self-existence involves an active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between no other persons except the infinite, uncreated persons of whom God consists as a multi-personal being act persistently to save all sinful not-God persons from sin?
But really, what difference does it make? The intrinsic self-existence of a God “who actively self-exists in an actively self-begetting and self-begotten unity of Persons” doesn’t involve the active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between any persons except than the persons of whom God consists as a multi-personal being. If such a God chose to create not-God persons, the mere fact that he actively self-existed in the way that you think God does would, in itself, be no guarantee that this God would choose to promote the happiness of any or all not-God persons. Unless this God were essentially and perfectly rational as I believe God is, there would be no guarantee that this multi-personal God would not deceive every not-God person he created and ultimately turn every one of them into “little flaming balls of screaming carbon” for his/their own irrational enjoyment. But if this God is essentially and perfectly rational (and by virtue of this fact would never do such an irrational thing as create personal beings just to torment them), then it is really irrelevant whether he is unipersonal or multi-personal in nature.
How does it guarantee such a result? The “action by which such a God supposedly continues existing” (and has always existed, according to your view) is not that of actively fulfilling fair-togetherness between himself and not-God persons, but rather between himself (and no one else). And such a God’s creating not-God persons for the purpose of turning them into “little flaming balls of screaming carbon” would not be inconsistent with this God’s actively fulfilling fair-togetherness between themselves if such treatment of non-God persons was something they all took pleasure in doing. You may argue that this is not something such a God would delight in, but why not?
Well in one sense I do think love can be thought of as “ultimately and centrally an action toward fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons,” if by “between persons” one means “between God and every created person who exists and ever will exist” or “between one existing finite person and another existing finite person.” Since I believe God has always intended to create every not-God person who will ever exist, and that he has always loved every not-God person he has always intended to create, then God has always been “acting toward fulfillment of fair-togetherness” between himself and all not-God persons. But if by “fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons” you mean that the persons are each involved in acting toward fulfillment of fair-togetherness between themselves, then yes, I deny that this is what love is. But I think both Scripture and experience is against such a view of love, and are in agreement with my view, since both Scripture and experience affirm that love is something that need not be reciprocated in order to be love. If God loved me and has always loved me, but this love wasn’t being (and never will be) reciprocated, God’s love for me would still be love, and I think the expression “God is love” would still remain true in the sense that I understand it. Similarly, if one finite person loves another finite person but this love isn’t being reciprocated, the love that the former has for the latter is still love. So if you consider this view of love to be “ontologically inferior” to your view of love, then ok; we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Also, do you understood the expression “God is love” in a literal or a figurative sense? Because I thought the ortho-trin position was that God is one divine Being consisting of three co-eternal and co-equal Persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), not literally “an action toward fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons.”
But don’t you mean, “If I’m wrong, it’s because I wrongly believe God’s love for God to be too central as the ground of all reality (even of God’s actively self-existent reality)?” Because I believe love (i.e., God’s love for not-God persons) is central to God’s actively self-existence reality, and that God would cease to be God (and thus cease to exist) if he ever ceased to love all not-God persons as he’s always done. So if I’m wrong, it’s because I wrongly believe God’s love for not-God to be too central as the ground of all reality.
There’s no need to resort to “Trinitarian morality” to avoid the horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma. Morality is ultimately derived from God’s rationality, and is not “higher than” himself (since there can be no Reason without a rational being in existence; Reason is dependent on God for its existence). God’s reason informs him that happiness is intrinsically valuable and should be promoted for its own sake; for God to fail to promote the happiness of persons (including himself) would be wrong. If God were to fail to do this he wouldn’t be violating a standard “higher than” himself and imposed upon him from without, but rather would be thinking and acting contrary to his own rational nature.
Also, I thought the “very ground of our reality” is, according to your view, three divine, co-eternal and co-equal Persons, not the literal abstraction that is “the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons.” And even if the “very ground of our reality” was “the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons,” the persons in view are the persons of the triune God, not created persons. So if “the very ground of our reality” is in fact “the fulfillment of fair-togetherness” between the persons of a triune God, then how does this guarantee the salvation of not-God persons? The fulfillment of fair-togetherness between the persons of the triune God could involve commanding all not-God persons to love God and each other, and then tormenting some forever for not perfectly doing what they were commanded to do. Heck, it could include tormenting all of them forever regardless of whether or not they did what they were commanded to do. It certainly need not lead to UR (unless, of course, each person of this triune God was essentially and perfectly rational - but again, if that were the case, they’d be no more likely to save all people than an essentially and perfectly rational unipersonal God).
If the intrinsic self-existence of a multi-personal God (whom you say “actively self-exists in an actively self-begetting and self-begotten unity of Persons”) doesn’t involve the active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between any persons except the persons of whom God consists as a multi-personal being, then no, God’s acting toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between not-God persons wouldn’t necessarily be sinning (at least, not to God!). God would not be sinning by failing to act toward not-God in a way that God need (in the sense of its involving his intrinsic self-existence) only act toward God in order to continue existing. Only if God was essentially and perfectly rational (and thus understood that happiness, when it can be promoted, ought to be promoted because of its intrinsic value) would it be a sin for him/them to fail to act to fulfil fair-togetherness between God and not-God. Otherwise, a multi-personal God who actively self-exists in an actively self-begetting and self-begotten unity of Persons could be self-consistently “love” in the sense that the divine persons are acting to fulfil fair-togetherness between themselves, without necessarily being “love” in the sense of acting to fulfil fair-togetherness between themselves and not-God.
But the multi-personal God of which you speak could, in fact, act this way toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness among created persons without acting in contravention to his/their own intrinsic self-existence (which is the active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between themselves, not between them and not-God persons).
I could pretty much say the same thing, Jason. It would be theologically incoherent to say that God could act fundamentally against his own fundamental morality if my understanding of God is true, for in failing to promote the happiness of not-God persons he would be acting against his own reality as an essentially and perfectly rational being who has always loved the not-God persons he has always intended to create. He would be acting in contravention to who and what he is as a being who understands the intrinsic value and good of happiness, and for whom acting to promote the happiness of all personal beings is perfectly natural and thus conducive to his own continued happiness. And for an essentially and perfectly rational being to do anything that is in contravention to who and what he is and inconsistent with his own happiness would be irrational and contrary to his own existence. So I have no problem saying that God’s acting in such an irrational way would entail his being irretrievably “poofed out of existence” along with “all past, present and future created realities (if any).”
Ok, but couldn’t I say that the person of God’s self-existence always acts to love because the action of loving not-God persons is how God self-exists? If God is a being who necessarily loves and has always loved every not-God person who will ever come into existence, then couldn’t it be said that loving not-God persons is not something God could ever cease to do (or to not ever have done) without ceasing to self-exist?
By God’s own eternal self-existence being grounded in the act of his giving himself to not-God creatures, I meant that God’s continued existence is dependent on his loving not-God creatures. I believe God must love not-God because it is his very nature to do so; his being who and what he is depends on it. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is any not-God creation that “is intrinsically and essentially God self-existent at the level of God’s own self-existence.” But it does mean that God can’t be God without loving not-God, and that God has always loved and planned to bring not-God persons into existence. I don’t believe there was ever a moment in God’s existence when he didn’t love every not-God person who will ever exist.
God, I believe, actively self-exists as a being who must (by virtue of his nature) love not-God, and this love involves intending and then actually bringing into existence not-God personal beings who, like God, are capable of happiness.
By “ground” I understood you to mean something like “basis” (defined as, “something that underlies, supports, or is essential to something else”). So by “the ground of the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High” I simply meant one of the essential actions on which the very self-existent eternal reality of God depends (i.e., God must love not-God persons if God is to continue to exist as who and what God is).*
[tag]JasonPratt[/tag] I’m considering adding this very simplified diagram (I realise this doesn’t cover fairtogetherness, existence & lots of other things but need to keep it very simple for someone who’s probably never considered this before) as part of an appendix to my letter to Dickson - but thought I’d pass it by you first…
While I agree with both those drawings, the first one doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the Trinity per se. I’m pretty sure our unitarian advocate AaronR would agree the Father gives everything to the Son and the Son gives everything back to the Father, for example. If the Father or the Son chose not to do that or failed to do that, there would be a breakdown in their trustworthiness with one another.
The difference is that a Calvinistic unitarian could propose that they both agree on not doing that (or to give one another permanently broken personal relationships because that’s what they agreed among themselves to do, to honor each other by giving each other permanently or finally rebellious creatures); and an Arminian unitarian could propose that they might both agree to settle for less for various reasons; without either of them violating the specific tenets of their theology that distinguish (this or that form of) unitarian Christianity from any other theism. We trinitarians can’t propose such things without at least tacitly violating what makes trinitarian theism categorically different from unitarian Christianity or from cosmological tri-theism or from Mormon polytheism or for that matter from modalistic Christianity.
The second diagram is closer because in trinitarian theism the ground of all existence itself is a perfect harmony between persons. The self-existent Trinity is an active relationship of personal harmony, so when not-God persons created by the Trinity rebel, the Trinity must act toward restoring that personal harmony so that creation, even though not God, flowers and matures into a proper image of the Trinity. A unitarian could still get to that though by proposing that the Son, though not substantially the one and only God Most High, ground of all reality, still always exists as God’s eternal primary creation. God and the demiurge (unlike some other notions of the demiurge in antiquity, but rather like in Platonism or neo-Platonism) exist in eternal perfect harmony, and the demiurge creates everything in harmony with God. But again a Calvinistic unitarian could propose that they both agree that something of the rest of creation should not mirror the relationship of the demiurge to God, so that the demiurge may be distinctively honored; or an Arminian universalist might agree to settle for less for various reasons even though they’d prefer otherwise to have everything properly reflect them if they could manage it – they just can’t figure out how to bring that about.
Neither one of those are, in such theologies, choices or results which run against the ground of God’s own self-existence.
So how could the diagrams be adjusted to be more specifically trinitarian? {pondering…}
Maybe the solution is not to illustrate it quite so cyclically?
1.) Eternal Personal Harmony is absolute ground of everything.
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2.) Some persons created by EPH act against EPH.
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–>Option 3.1) EPH chooses to bring all rebel persons back into personal harmony with EPH and succeeds. (Hard Kath)
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–>Option 3.2.) EPH chooses not to bring all rebel persons back into personal harmony with EPH. (Calv originally, or hard Arm eventually.)
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–>Option 3.3.) EPH chooses to bring all rebel persons back into personal harmony with EPH and fails. (Soft Arm, soft Kath, EPH does or does not stop trying.)
That’s still quite a bit detailed. Will ponder how to trim down more.
Diagram 1:
1.) Father and Son giving everything to each other (each Person giving first and foremost giving the Persons of God) is the absolute ground of everything.
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2.) Some creatures choose not to receive and give the Persons of God, acting against the absolute ground of everything.
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–> Option 3.1.) Persons of God choose to give all persons to each other who also give and receive the Persons of God, and succeed. The absolute ground of everything gives to the absolute ground of everything that which acts *with *not against the absolute ground of everything; that which acts against the absolute ground of everything fails.
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–> Option 3.2.) Persons of God choose to give some persons to each other who do not give and receive the Persons of God (with the Persons annihilating this gift or keeping this gift around forever). The absolute ground of everything succeeds in giving to the absolute ground of everything that which acts against the absolute ground of everything, regarding this as a proper gift from the absolute ground of everything.
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–> Option 3.3.) Persons of God choose to give all persons to each other who also give and receive the Persons of God, but fail (with the Persons annihilating or keeping around forever this failed gift to each other). The absolute ground of everything fails to give the absolute ground of everything a gift proper to the absolute ground of everything; that which acts against the absolute ground of everything succeeds.
Again it’s more complicated, but the special ontology of trinitarianism has to be accounted in somehow. That’s the driving weight of the whole argument. Without it, the logic of rebellion against God could still coherently allow for compromises, at least in theory.
As I know they are convinced Trinitarians, as am I, for this discussion I going to assume it’s the best explanatory model we have for God (no offense to non-Trinitarians, it’s just I don’t have time right now to go over pro/cons of Trinitarianism).
Likewise, I realise they could respond with excuses as to why perfect harmony won’t or can’t be met but what I’m presenting is based on the assumption that perfect harmony is the Ideal (thankfully I get a strong impression they think it is - I’ll post draft of essay soon, with the quotes I think support that. I did first print out today so my wife can do the first proof read).
So main thing would be incorporating “Eternal Personal Harmony is absolute ground of everything”…
True. I spent a couple of hours last night not sleeping while working out a simpler version.
I’m going to borrow, ironically, from a radically sceptical atheist opponent of mine (although we personally get long fairly well), Richard Carrier. A few years ago he worked up (or tried to work up) a deductive anti-theistic argument from evil, which was based on God failing to follow the Golden Rule; after I plugged in some elements he was overlooking or oversimplifying, I ended up with a deductive anti-theistic argument on the same ground if the theism wasn’t orthodox Christianity. The argument was about and against “Basic Theism”, but ortho-trin Christianity is more than Basic theism, so the argument showed what the special strengths and details of Christianity contribute. (Richard had absolutely no idea what to make of the revised version of his argument. But I did go far in stressing in that his argument could be improved and corrected and work even better thereby against BT than it originally did.)
Anyway, let’s call it the Golden Rule argument: which soteriology fits the idea that God, in God’s own eternal and ultimate self-existence, doesn’t only command the GR, and doesn’t only do the GR, but essentially is the GR in action?
1.) The GR continues to self-exist by keeping the GR (each Person doing to other Persons as He would be done by).
2.) Some persons created by the GR don’t follow the GR.
3.1.) The GR succeeds in finally bringing all persons to keep the GR, thus the GR also succeeds in keeping the GR toward all persons.
3.2.) The GR succeeds in finally bringing some persons to not keep the GR, thus the GR also succeeds in not keeping the GR toward all persons.
3.3.) The GR fails in finally bringing all persons to keep the GR, thus the GR also fails in keeping the GR toward all persons.
Which soteriology involves the GR keeping the GR toward all persons, thus continuing to self-exist by keeping the GR?
In other words, three cyclical diagrams, two of which break at the final step instead of leading back to #1.
I think the family is the best image of the trinity, which is why we talk about Father and Son. As for why the trinity implies universalism, again we can refer to a dysfunctional family whose wise Father brings everything into harmony given time. The prodigal son becomes the general template.
).
Or even “Trinity” until the very last, and shortest, sentence. 
If you followed the thread afterward, then of course it’s going to dive quickly beyond any 10yo’s level, although I expected the first part would be, too.)
(Although I may have to do that anyway, as life seems to be getting more and more “distracting” these days! 
)
). It’s not my view that God defines what love is by some arbitrary act of his will; rather, “love” is defined by God’s own eternal reason, and can never be anything other than it is. To cease to love would not be loving; to cease to will the good of another would not be willing their good. Thus, for love to ever cease would mean it was never actually love to begin with.
