The Father is self-aware too, right? Is he multi-personal as well? What about the Son and the Holy Spirit? Are they each multi-personal? This is getting really confusing…
And then when you add to this all of the multiple persons that each human person apparently is…well, that’s a lot of human persons.
Seriously though: what do you think the word “Lord” (singular) refers to? Does it refer to a person (i.e., a being possessing a unique first person perspective/mind/will), or to an “existential substance” that multiple persons share, and by which they are united and in some sense “the same?”
That sounds as if God is a compound being with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as components. I’ve heard JWs crudely refer to the Trinity as “a 3-headed monster”.
Okay, but the “one single final ground of all reality” need not be a “trinity”. I believe it to be “deity”, just as in the case of human beings, the common ground which permits us to relate to one another in the way we do is our “humanity.” But that doesn’t imply that there is one big corporate compound entity comprising all human beings.
As I explained above, that need not be the case.
In my view the Father doesn’t depend on anyone or anything for His existence. He is the self-existing One! But the generated Son does depend upon His Father (also called His “God” in several scriptures).
Since the Son is the exact image of the essence of the Father it is not a “lesser” relationship. I have no idea what you mean by “fair-togetherness”.
I deny that the Son is “the past-action creation of a super-angel” nor have I even hinted at such. Have you been talking to a JW lately who was telling you that Jesus is the archangel Michael?
I stated that the Father generated (or “begat”) His Son and this act MARKED the beginning of time (“natural” is redundant since there is no such thing as “unnatural time”). Surely the difference between creation and begetting is obvious. You beget a son, and he is human and sentient like you. He also resembles you physically in that he has two eyes two, ears, a nose, two arms, two legs, etc. You create a painting and it is non-human and non-sentient, and doesn’t have your physical characteristics.
The Son is NOT less. He is identical; you might say he is a clone of the Father. Both have the common ground of being deity.
I’m sure you mean the Son here, since the Father was neither created nor begotten. But the Son was “the only begotten God” (John 1:18 in the earliest manuscripts). The Son is not different from the Father who begat Him; He is another just like Him.
The Father is the independent ground of all reality.
I continue to affirm that the Son is just a divine as the Father, and I strongly declare that He is no less in the sense of deity. But He is less is some way. He Himself said, “The Father is greater than I.”
I do not hold that the Father and the Son are two different Gods.
In brief, the historic Christian position of the early church to which I subscribe is that God begat a Son “before all ages” (I say “at the beginning of time”). It was a single act. Dogs beget dogs and ther offspring are canine. People beget people and their offspring are human. God begets God and His Offspring is divine. But only God has begotten an Offspring which is exactly the same as He. As Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Hebrews 1:3 states that the Son is the exact imprint of the essence of the Father. We read in Colossians 2:9
For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily…
A rock cannot understand rocks. A frog cannot understand frogs. A person cannot understand persons. One thing I know: the moment I cease to be self-aware, I am nothing but meat.
This only covers Aaron’s first comment to me in the thread. I don’t have time yet to address subsequent comments (from him or anyone else), due to Dad health issues and related extreme busy-ness back here at the office. But I hope to get to those soon. (Probably some of the issues are addressed in this mega-comment anyway. Just keep in mind I’m still waaaaay behind catching up on the thread altogether! This doesn’t even count trying to catch up on the thread from Luke which inspired Alex to start this thread in the first place. Nor Aaron’s new thread on the question of a multi-personal God. Nor several related old threads which have cropped up recently. AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! {braindrip})
I think this is actually what I was hoping you’d bring up from a different prior thread, so yay.
The first thing to notice is that unless it is a consequence of God’s nature, we’re only talking about God’s action of loving, which could be as ‘accidental’ (in the philosophical sense of that term to mean non-essential) as God’s act to hate anyone.
The top-down action of God at all points in regard to all finite beings is certainly an important doctrine to recognize–we can’t have supernaturalistic theism, strictly speaking, without it, but only some kind of natural ‘god’ who exists in a linear progression ontologically dependent on the evident system of Nature in which this god exists. So relatedly the proposition of God acting at right angles (so to speak, borrowing a physical analogy) to the natural system to love all finite beings, would certainly mean that God loves eternally in relation to natural creation.
On the other hand–and this is important (and you may not deny it perhaps)–God would still ‘eternally love’ in that fashion if He loved only one creature out of all His creation; and God would still ‘eternally love’ in that fashion even if that creature was annihilated out of existence after even the shortest spatio-temporal existence imaginable.
The kind of love being described would certainly be an action of the eternal from the eternal–of God the foundation of reality from His standpoint as the Eternal. But it would only be an action of God; in principle it would still only be an action of God even if God loves all finite beings that way.
It would be God only doing love, not being essentially and intrinsically love. The personal relationship of God with any creature, no matter how universal in scope and persistence, is not what God (Who is no created entity) essentially is.
This leads to your important and necessary qualification, that God acts in such a way due to His nature. I totally agree with that; but unless His nature is to be an inherently self-existent loving personal relationship, then you aren’t talking about something sufficiently on par with even binitarian theism. But, as I think you realize, if God’s nature is to be an inherently self-existent loving personal relationship, then you would in fact be talking about at least binitarian theism and not any longer talking about (for example) monopersonal theism.
The difference is different. And the difference makes a conceptual difference. Even if (as I think you’ve been arguing, and as I would agree and have argued myself at length elsewhere) creation exists in a conditional immortality relation to God, such that there was no ‘time’ when ‘creation’ did not exist (the various expressions along that line being actually attempts at expressing the ontological relationship of a non-self-existent reality in dependence on a substantially different self-existent reality)–that relationship between them is still not what God essentially is.
Put more shortly: God may be always in eternal ‘unity’ with created persons, and so you could say that such a theism is ‘unitarian’ (not merely ‘monotarian’) in that regard. But that unitarianism is ontologically secondary to God’s actual monotarian existence. To be really ‘unitarian’, singular and plural, God must be intrinsically singular and plural.
The reason this has a unique bearing on universalism is that a vague appeal to God’s nature for a grounding assurance that God won’t create one thing to love and then annihilate it out of existence (since He can eternally love it from His vantage point regardless of whether it continues to exist) while hating or being neutral to every other created thing, or any other possibility short of persistently loving all created things in a way where they stay in existence to love Him in return (since He could love all things eternally during their briefly assigned existences, too)–such a vague appeal to God’s nature for assurance that God’s love is nothing short of that, must necessarily be conceptually weaker than a specific appeal to God’s nature based on the proposal of God’s own continuing self-existence as love: as a substantial single interpersonal unity of persons in ultimate deity.
That isn’t an argument for such a God to exist (as at least a binitarian God). But for people who understand the issues at stake in the conception of God being essentially love, a vague appeal to God’s nature as ground for God’s persistent love of all creatures unto and in communion with Himself, isn’t going to cut it. We trinitarians (or even binitarians) have a stronger assurance than that, because we have a stronger (even if wrong) concept of God’s fundamental existence as love than that.
Admittedly, trinitarians have historically managed to usually ignore this conceptual strength of our theology. But we’re being inconsistent and, to that degree, not very competent to do so. Relatedly, trinitarians have historically managed to usually deny, one way or another, that God persistently acts to save all sinners from sin, too: and my complaints to trinitarians about this are based on what amounts to their ignorance or rejection of this conceptual strength of our theology.
But there’s still no reason for a unipersonal God to continue loving them, either. If such a God stopped doing so, He just would. No biggie. (Except for the entity He stopped loving maybe. ) As noted above, such a God could even (in the top-down sense of eternal action) eternally love a creation for three seconds of its existence and eternally hate it for every other moment of its existence (however long that happened to be). Come to think of it, this is exactly the explanation a mere monotheist would be able to give for God’s rejection of Christ on the cross, if penal substitutionary theory is also held to be true! (Except of course temporally in reverse: the Father eternally loves the Son for all the Son’s existence except for some amount of time during the Passion during which the Father eternally hates the Son instead so that the Son may bear all the punishment coming to sinners whom God also hates.)
I will however grant that such a God could theoretically continually act to love all creatures (even the Son ); and might reveal this as a fact. While that still wouldn’t answer the conceptual strength of even binitarian theism on this topic, it would be a sufficiently practical answer I suppose.
The result would be the claim that such a sheerly monopersonal God could have loved to this lesser extent (without utterly voiding all existence), but has done, does do, and will do something else instead. Surely there are plenty of other things we could agree to be true about God that would fit this circumstance; universal salvation would just be another one of those truths.
The question however was about the principle strength of trinitarian theism to universalism; not about whether God might do universal salvation anyway of which we could theoretically be sure on other grounds. An exegetical argument to that result would get around any conceptual difference of strength between the assurance in one theology and the potential question in another theology. But the conceptual strengths of the relationships between those theologies and universalism, still wouldn’t be shown thereby to be on par.
Similarly, I have no idea how to prove from trinitarian theism that God certainly will succeed in saving all sinners from sin, even though I think God’s persistence to do so for all sinners follows as a corollary from ortho-trin. I have to go to revelation, if any, to find out the answer to that. If there was a theology even stronger than ortho-trin concerning the importance of fulfilling righteousness, i.e. fair-togetherness, between persons, I might or might not believe such a theology was true, but I might have to acknowledge that such an assurance of victory follows more strongly than from ortho-trin.
This, by the way, is exactly what an extreme modalist might attempt, by arguing that since all persons are really only modes of one person then we can be sure all persons will be saved from sin, not only that God will persistently act toward that. My response to this has routinely been that the modalist solves the problem by denying not only the distinction of persons in the deity but by denying the real existence of multiple persons, including ourselves, at all. No real persons, plural, no real sins between persons, no real need for salvation, so no problems of that sort. I would dispute whether this is actually a stronger theology of salvation of persons from sin than ortho-trin–is it really a stronger theory of salvation to say that salvation doesn’t have to exist because persons don’t exist?–but I can acknowledge the inherent completeness of the attempt in this regard. I can even acknowledge it while denying the central precept of the attempt, namely that only one person (God) exists at all (everyone apparently ‘else’ being only play-acting by God). But that would get into a technical discussion over whether this kind of extreme modalism is true compared to ortho-trin; not necessarily a discussion over the relative merits of either theology branch in regard to salvation of sinners from sin.
(We’ve had at least one extreme modalist Christian universalist as a member here on the forum in the past; so I also happen to know such modalists don’t only theoretically exist. Even if they think persons other than themselves as God don’t even theoretically exist. But such modalists are usually non-Christian pantheists of one or another kind.)
I think the further comments from this particular post are already addressed by content above; but I thought I should remark on this, too…
…since a Calvinist is in fact who (sort of) started this thread with the request.
I routinely receive this rebuttal attempt (including from Luke at least once, if I recall)–and Arms can try it, too. But notice it proceeds without regard to something else I discussed in conjunction with this idea: the Trinity as the uniquely successful ethical grounding proposal among theologies and philosophies.
That may not mean much to you (although I think it should ), but it ought to mean a lot to any Calv or Arm trinitarian Christian. The behavior of the Trinity as the ground of all existence functions as the ultimate possible ground of morality. When we sin, it’s because we are acting against the very ground of our reality which is a fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons. We aren’t only rebelling against a command of mere authority; and we aren’t voiding a standard higher than God. Trinitarian morality field-goals smack center between the goalposts of the horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma.
This is why I emphasized that if God acted toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons, regardless of who those persons are, He would be doing exactly what any of us do when we act toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons: sinning. We cannot act that way toward other created persons without acting that way toward God; neither can God act that way toward created persons without acting that way toward God. The same principle can be expressed (if necessary) by reference to the Incarnation: if the fully human Son says He loves God but does not love His brothers, then He is a liar and God is not in him (along with several other scriptural witnesses of that sort which we are supposed to accept as ethically true.) But if the Son is fully God as well as fully Man (whether in a trinitarian or a non-extreme modalist fashion perhaps), then the same holds true for God. Otherwise there is a serious schism in the (orthodox) one will of the two natures of Christ.
Monotarian Christianity can sort-of approach that; but can never go the full distance with it, because for monotarian unitarianism (and for modalism, too) fundamental reality is not itself essentially an active interpersonal relationship. God only does love (maybe); God is not love.
And here, by the way, is the connection between Calvinistic application of this rebuttal attempt, and mono-unitarian Christianity: both involve denying God is essentially love. Calvs have to do this because they realize what the implications of that will be for their soteriology; but unitarians are being more theologically consistent by attempting it because, unlike Calvinists, they aren’t at other times trying to claim that God is a self-begetting, self-begotten multi-personal unity. Only a one-person (non-union ) ‘unity’.
If I don’t accept that rebuttal as providing an on-par alternative from you, I sure as heck am not going to accept it as an on-par alternative from them. Because at least you’re being theologically consistent to try that rebuttal. They aren’t.
But the alternative still isn’t on par either way. Less is always less.
If it was simply a matter of self-preservation, it wouldn’t work. And in fact (per the theology detailed above anyway ) the Son does not act to preserve Himself but to sacrifice Himself for the sake of other persons; first for the Father and then relatedly (yet differently) for all creation including all created persons.
And while the Father doesn’t exactly sacrifice Himself for the Son, the Father does eternally act in giving everything to the Son. The Father isn’t selfishly acting in doing so.
(The Spirit meanwhile acts in submission to both the Father and the Son, which is hardly a selfish act either, even though the Spirit doesn’t sacrifice Himself in the same way as the Son for the sake of all existence.)
At any rate the gist of such a theology is that fundamental reality will act in an eternally self-consistent fashion (which turns out to be necessary for any coherent worldview proposal; unitarian Christianity is no different in that regard, although the expression of self-consistency is quite different in ontological character.) For trinitarian theism this self-consistent action is love for other persons. Ultimate independent existence has to be self-existent in any case; but this kind of theology does at least coherently propose that the acts of self-existence are not personally selfish despite self-existence being (ontologically) the ‘first’ result.
The key word there is guarantee. My answer to the first question is, yes, I believe that, so long as the situation is of the sort you describe in the second question and not the kind of situation I describe in the portion quoted.
Typically, though, I prefer to think of the success as prophetically revealed ahead of time (so to speak) rather than intrinsically guaranteed. What I do think is intrinsically guaranteed is God’s omnicompetence (including persistence) to get the job done.
Unitarians and I can agree on that. We’ll only be disagreeing on (some of) the technicals of what that involves.
Um . . . no offense, but 10 year olds have a “really” short attention span . . . I’ve read and skimmed and read some more on this thread on the subject and I do believe I’m in the same room as you on a doctrinal scale, but from a 10-year-old’s perspective . . .I think you lost me at the very word “Trinity” or even “triune”
If I were trying to explain this to a ten-year old . . .I’d get me a chicken egg. Every kid can relate to a chicken egg. And I’d tell the kid "this is “God”. Pretending of course . . .but tell them the egg in it’s entirety is the title as “God”. But the egg consists of three major componants . . .the shell, the egg white and the yolk. You can’t separate any of of them from the other two without ruining the egg. God is the same way, you can’t remove Jesus from the Father and the Spirit, you can’t remove the Spirit from Jesus and the Father . . .it takes all three of them “together” to make up “God”.
And we’re just like God cuz he created us from his own image. Our body is the shell of the egg. Our soul would be the egg white and our spirit would be where the yolk is. You can’t remove your soul without ruining your body and spirit . . .what makes us “us” is when all three major componants are put together in one lump.
So when we do cross over into God’s world, we’re not going to see Jesus . . .then talk to the Spirit while Jesus is standing next to him . . .then go to God on a throne . . .God manifests through those three major avenues as Father, Son and Spirit, but any one of them alone is not God . . .God is “them”. Pretend the shell is invisible and you can see what’s inside . . .if you see the yolk you’re seeing the egg. If you see the eggwhite . .you’re seeing the egg. If you’ve seen the Son, then you’ve seen the Father. As the Father and Son are one in the Spirit.
Yup . . .God is a chicken egg . . .they’ll get that one for sure!!
I think it’s interesting that anytime we try to bring trinity down to a simple understandable level, whether it be with eggs or shamrocks , that the illustration ends up being a form of modalism.
I’d try to explain it using the Attributarian method; Love and Justice are synonymous, but they are also unique and interact with one another.
“When I discipline you for doing something wrong, it is Justice. But it is also Love. When I pick you up and hug you and tell you how much I love you and adore you, it is Love. But it is also Justice, because I am doing the right thing. And Justice is doing the right thing, and so is love.”
Slowly working my way down the list; apologies if my replies overlap subsequent discussion already!
That’s one way to put it; although “according to the above”, the way you put it should be qualified by the detail of both persons being a single substantial entity. That makes a difference.
This is why, when I was writing the portion you quoted, I wrote “One of those Persons is God always causing Himself to exist; we call that Person the Father. And another Person is God always caused by God to exist; we call that Person the Son.”
You kept the phrasesology I used in regard to the Father (“is God always causing Himself to exist”), but significantly changed the phraseology I used in regard to the Son. Me: “is God always caused by God to exist”, which would also be God self-existent. You: “not self-existent but rather always been and is always being caused by the Father to exist.”
Instead you took the description I gave of the God in regard to the Person of the Son, and put that description with the Father.
If God is always causing God to exist then God is always caused by God to exist, too. We agree on that I think (or you wouldn’t have put both in regard to the person of the Father.)
But in the portion you quoted from me above, I phrased things specifically in terms of God always causing God to exist, and God always caused by God to exist–and then distinguished those two truths about God as two Persons in one single union of the self-begetting, self-begotten God.
Possibly I confused things by using a single personal pronoun for the single reality of (the personal) God while also talking about two distinct Persons of this single personal reality. But technically that’s still grammatically proper. If I talk about the single reality, even as a multipersonal whole, a single personal pronoun is appropriate; and also if I talk about one of the persons of that multipersonal whole. When I talk about multiple distinct persons at once, however, in regard to something or someone distinct, then I use plural grammar; so for example within the context of the entire Deity I may say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from ‘them’ meaning the Persons of the Father and the Son.
Anyway, my point is that you haven’t accurately and equivalently rephrased what I wrote that you quoted. Otherwise you would have written: “According to the above, the Father is God always causing himself to exist. But the Son is also God self-existent. IOW, God is self-caused and self-existent, with the Son always being caused by the Father to exist.”
The Holy Spirit, in the theology I described, is also God self-existent but in a way distinctly different from the Son. The Spirit is the gift of God as God, first and foremost between God self-begetting and God self-begotten. It’s a subtly different kind of action from the action of fundamental existence generation, as it requires two persons to exist for the gift to actively proceed (as well as be given) between.
Put more simply, even if not-God reality didn’t exist, God (fully God) would always be giving God (fully God) to God (fully God) as an infinitely expressive action of God’s self-existence: and that relationship is one of love.
And this love would always be happening at-and-as the most fundamental level of reality (or rather the only level of reality if not-God reality never existed). It wouldn’t be happening among ontologically distinct entities within an overarching reality; we wouldn’t be talking about fundamental reality yet if we were talking about that kind of situation. We would need to turn our religious attention away from those created persons to the fundamental reality–but then all the issues leading to a trinitarian concept of God (few of which I’ve spoken about here… I haven’t presented an argument arriving at trinitarianism) would apply again in regard to that real Independent Fact.
It should be obvious, though, that a theology where God intrinsically gives God personally to persons, will always (even if wrong!) necessarily put that concept at a level more fundamentally than a theology where God only gives God personally to not-God persons (even if we may say that this ‘always’ happens when considering the relationship of the One Who is ‘always’ to created reality.)
The relationship of such a fundamental gift of God as love, to the concept of God’s universal salvation of sinners from sin, ought to be obvious, too–even by comparison to the relation of the gift of God as love only to not-God creatures (not also to God, since multiple persons of God do not exist if mono-personal unitarianism is true), to the concept of God’s universal salvation of sinners from sin.
Universal salvation can only happen, even if such a unitarianism is true, if God persistently gives God in love to all not-God creatures (thus including all sinners). But if trinitarianism is true, then such an action is fundamentally and intrinsically guaranteed by the active self-generation of God being just that gift of God in love to persons as the ground of all reality including the very self-existent eternal reality of God Most High: something that simply cannot be true if any lesser theistic proposal is true.
(I think your other questions in this comment were topically addressed above as well.)
Yeaaahhhh… Ontological Argument proponents have a tendency to try to argue that to be foundational existence itself means by tautology that God is metaphysically required to exist as God instead of existing as not-God.
I don’t actually agree with that logic; what I wrote in the portion you quoted was not an ontological argument to theism, but only a statement about what must be true about God if ultimate reality is God: for God to be foundational existence itself, it follows (in a tautological way of saying the same thing differently) that God is metaphysically required (by God, so to speak! ) to exist as God instead of existing as not-God.
I have yet to see an ontological argument arrive at theism without jumping a few conceptual gaps. In my experience OntArgs (arrrrgghhh! ) are helpful and important for arriving at the existence of a single Independent Fact of reality compared to the options of an infinite regression or of multiple Independent Facts (such as a God/Nature or a God/Anti-God cosmological dualism, or a cosmological tri-theism of the sort trinitarians are sometimes accused of promoting–and sometimes rightly accused depending on the aptitude of the trinitarian theologian! )
But the existence of a single IF does not thereby solve in favor of theism vs. atheism (or even vs. some kind of combinational attempt such as was popular among the Stoics), nor in favor of supernaturalism vs. naturalism. Other arguments have to be marshaled in order to discover which among the many proposable IF options are true (or even possible!)
I have a friend at the Cadre who is much enamoured with theistic arguments from direct ontology, such that if anything at all exists then God (per se) must exist; but the weakness of his approach manifests in his difficulty in acknowledging from this argument (or at all?) that God is personal, active, etc. ‘God’ is only a handy term for talking about the Independent Fact, by such a method; the meaning of the term is otherwise empty. But then atheists could talk about the IF as God, too.
Anyway, I would have to go back over Anselm’s approach (it’s been many years since I saw it); I’m pretty sure he’s either jumping to his target conclusion after approaching it substantially (so to speak), or including somewhat different arguments to arrive at an actively rational Independent Fact distinct from the non-rational field of evident Nature which depends on that IF (i.e. at supernaturalistic theism, instead of naturalistic theism or any kind of atheism.)
I’ve already replied to the following comment in principle above:
To recap from my previous comments, my reply would be that even if this is true, trinitarian (or even binitarian) theism would put this same concept more strongly: an active fulfillment of the happiness/best-interests of persons (and not only a disposition although of course that too) is, in that case, itself the ground of all reality. Whereas in the system you’re describing, it is an ontologically secondary result of reality at best.
A Calvinistic unitarian (so to speak) might reply however that God’s happiness and best interests trump those of everyone else’s put together; and that if this involves God’s glory (to put it another way) needing the sacrificial misery of created persons to maximize itself then God would have every rational reason to create expendable creatures specifically ‘elected’ to sin and to be hopelessly punished. God might decide to create other creatures specifically ‘elected’ not to sin, or to sin and be saved, so that the full spectrum of response to His ultimate power and authority may be experienced and ever-always stated, among themselves to each other and to Him, and even in regard to each other and to Him. So for example the hopelessly non-elect would see the ones God chose to save and acknowledge God’s power and authority in doing so even while wailing and gnashing their teeth at the acknowledgement of God’s authority and power not only in always maximally punishing them for their sins but even in omnipotently electing them for that position!
If you reply that this is nightmarishly selfish, so what? It would still be a rational action to take, and it isn’t as though God would cease to exist if He did so, feh! God can do whatever He wants that makes the most rational sense (as the most rational entity possible).
If you reply that Calvinists can and do take exactly such a theological position even when they are trinitarians, I will note that I have critiqued them on exactly this ground, too: they aren’t being coherently trinitarian when they do this! (Which is also clearly exemplified when, in response to such arguments from me, Calv proponents try to disassociate or deny the Trinity has anything inherently to do with ethics much less with salvation, and otherwise never treat the Trinity per se as having any connection with such things. Leading, not incidentally, to the main topic of this thread. )
Lewis can be critiqued on this statement by appeal to another principle he accepts (which you sort-of do in your own critique): God eternally exists in regard to the world, and so can eternally do love to the world. God is not constrained by temporal process. (You could strengthen your critique against Lewis if you rephrased along this line, although you could also present your critique as an even-if comparison: even if God was constrained by time so that there was a linear progression of first God existing without us, then God creating us to exist with Him, God could still be said to eternally love whichever of those persons He chose to eternally love. Or hate for that matter. More on that in a minute.)
Even if this was pointed out, though, Lewis would accept the correction and reply that this does not address his central point which is that a single-person God is not love in His own self-existence. He may do love in relation to creation, and He may do that eternally (from God’s own perspective to creation), but a single-person God is not love in Himself.
The same concept may be noted another way by its deployment for non-universalism!–God may eternally love some persons and eternally hate other persons, including loving temporarily and then hating eternally or hating temporarily and then loving eternally or even hating and loving eternally the same person. God can do all that, including changing His action in regard to the same person, because God is not intrinsically love any more than God is intrinsically wrath.
God can stop doing wrath, or do wrath forever in regard to some persons while not in regard to others, because God is not intrinsically wrath: God’s self-existent reality does not inherently involve fulfilling non-fair-togetherness among persons, or hate among persons. The Father does not inherently hate the Son, the Son does not inherently rebel from the Father: if mono-personal theism is true there are no such persons in the intrinsic reality of God for that even to be an option. But if there are no such persons in the intrinsic reality of God, then God is not intrinsically love either. Which means the same variations in God’s love can apply as can apply in the actions of God’s wrath.
An entity’s doing love is not an entity’s being love unless the doing of love is intrinsically equivalent to being. Lewis understood this, even though he never quite put it together. (If he had, he would probably have come to understand that his teacher MacDonald was right about universal salvation. But he got far enough to be tacitly appealing to this as his ground for believing that even in hopeless damnation God was not ceasing to fully love the damned.)
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.
) As noted above, such a God could even (in the top-down sense of eternal action) eternally love a creation for three seconds of its existence and eternally hate it for every other moment of its existence (however long that happened to be). Come to think of it, this is exactly the explanation a mere monotheist would be able to give for God’s rejection of Christ on the cross, if penal substitutionary theory is also held to be true! (Except of course temporally in reverse: the Father eternally loves the Son for all the Son’s existence except for some amount of time during the Passion during which the Father eternally hates the Son instead so that the Son may bear all the punishment coming to sinners whom God also hates.)
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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.)