No, the above is not a typo. Typically, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is target number one for other monotheists seeking to refute Christianity. They accuse us of tri-theism or, at best, equivocation / ambiguous terms.
Simply put, tri-theism is a strawman (we don't teach that). Incidently, that creates an argument against Islam since the Koran makes this a cornerstone of its disagreement with Christianity. Since it seems logical to assume that God understands Christianity better than me, and I understand that Christians are monotheists, but the Koran does not grasp this fact, then the Koran is not from God (and Islam would be, correspondingly, false).
The accusation of equivocation or ambiguity is, from a philosophical point of view, stronger, but it is refutable through a strict rejection of pure philosophy in favor of the Orthodox apophatic approach (and indeed, the Cappadocian theologians who articulated the doctrine of the Trinity made a point to state it apophatically - that God is beyond number, beyond arithmatic, such that concepts like 3 and 1 can't fully apply).
Yet the doctrine of the Trinity can indeed form a core argument FOR Christianity. More after the jump:
The syllogism works in several parts:
First:
P1: God is beyond time
P2: Change requires time
C: God is beyond change (unchanging)
Second: assert that God is love. If forming this argument in a conversation, I like to ask it in the form of a rhetorical question (do you think "God is love"?). If your conversation partner disagrees, then ask them if they want more hate in the world. They'll say, no - of course not. We all want more LOVE in the world. Well, if love is an absolute value (no one wants more hate) then God must have perfect love in order for He Himself to be perfect. That means God possesses love the same way He possesses existence / life (as an absolute - as an ontological condition). God is, then, ontologically love.
Third: IF God is love, and God is beyond change, then God must be love even before creation. Since creation is not (cannot be) co-eternal with God, God must be love even before creation.
Yet how can a monad be love? A monad would be selfish love - not self-emptying love. This would mean that, with creation, the FORM of God's love changed RADICALLY (and this would introduce change into the very essence of God's ontology). A switch from self-centered love to self-emptying love is just as much a change as a switch from not-love to love.
In other words, the non-trinitarian monotheist is in a double bind. This is step four. They either have to say that God went from not-love to love, OR that the FORM of God's love changed.
Not so for the trinitarian. Because we assert both one-ness and three-ness, we have the ONE monotheistic deity as "love in community" even before creation. In His very essence, God is love. God is self-emptying love as Father loves Son loves Spirit and each in kind. Indeed, it is this very communion of love which allows Christians to assert that God IS love.
If, at this point, the other monotheist tries to back away from the assertion that God is love, remind them that love is an absolute value. So now it is a triple bind: either deny that God is perfect, accept that God changed, or accept the Trinity. Since no Jew or Muslim can or would accept options one or two, they HAVE to accept the Trinity as the only answer to the problem of love.
In Christ,
Macarius
No comments:
Post a Comment