Trinity Sunday is coming up. You might also be interested in scholarly understandings of Trinity. I would note how Richard of St.Victor explained Trinity in terms of love.

1. As a perfect being, God is all good. His goodness includes all love.

2. Love is inherently relational.

3. The meaningful relationships of love are I-self, I-thou, I-them.

4. The I-self relationship requires one person (self-love); the I-thou relationship, two persons (mutual love) and the I-them relationship, three persons (communal love).

5. Since God is the fullness of love, there must exist three persons in the Godhead.

6. Since God is a necessary being, a fourth person in the Godhead is not necessary for the fullness of love. Ockham’s razor indicates you cannot multiply entities beyond necessity.

For Richard of St.Victor, three persons in one being God are necessary to understand how and why God is love; four are not. In God, all knowledge and all love is instanteous, involving no time at all.

You might profitably benefit from looking at Richard Swinburne’s “The Christian God” (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994)

Robert Sutherland http://www.bookofjob.org

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