The Trinity: Letters to Eric (Part 2)

Dear Eric,
Thanks for your response, and your brief critique of my article. You state that certain of my arguments were weak, particularly about how God being love means that He needs a beloved, and thus cannot be solitary from all eternity.

In my last letter, I wrote,

The point of my article was that God, who does not change, is Love. Yet, if that's the case, the love requires a beloved. If God is solitary, then there is no one to love, and thus, God cannot be love. Either, then, God created us to fill His eternal need for love (which makes God dependent on us, which is impossible), or God did not become love until He created us (which means He changed, which is impossible).

You reply that you don't understand why love needs someone to love, and thus dismissed this argument altogether, trying to make a comparison by asking whether a single person is therefore incapable of love. Hopefully I can elaborate on why Love requires a Beloved.

Love by definition is the act of seeking the Good of the other. A single person can love because even if he is not in a romantic relationship with another person, there are other people whose good he can seek.

The difference, when it comes to God, is that before He created the heavens and the earth, there was no one else. He could not seek the good of another, before there was another whose good He could seek. That is, if God was a solitary being. God, however, is Trinity--three consubstantial Persons together as One God. The Father can love and seek the good of the Son, and vice versa, and both can love and seek the good of the Spirit, and vice versa.

I just wanted to comment on one more thing you said. "[Y]ou did not develop this much...you claim it but don't explain it, that's why I dismissed it."

I didn't develop it more in the article, because honestly, I thought it was self-explanatory. In the same way I suppose you thought your questions [in previous conversations that we've had] were self-explanatory, and couldn't understand why I needed them explained. However, rather than dismissing your questions, I asked for clarification. I think that much of our conversations up to this point could have been better resolved if you had asked for clarification rather than simply dismissing points that I'd left "undeveloped". I don't develop all my points in one post because doing so would require a book-length of writing. As it is, people say my posts are too long to bother reading through as it is. But what I say is important to my points, and so I ask that if you're tempted to dismiss something as irrelevant, please don't, because it's often, to my mind, the crux upon which my argument hangs--as in the case of God being unchanging Love.

God bless
Gregory


(Category: Theology Proper: The Holy Trinity.)