Turning the Incarnation and Trinity from "Defense" into "Offense"

This post is meant to re-enforce (re-explain) and add-on to the arguments I began to develop in the post about using the Trinity as an argument against Judaism and Islam.  Some of the following material is a re-hashing of those points with additional rigor.  Some is meant to simplify that post.  The truly new material comes near the bottom of the post where I go into the Incarnation as an argument against other monotheistic faiths based on a double-bind present in God's approach to evil.

Frequently, in discussing the faith with members of other monotheistic religions (Judaism and Islam, in particular) the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation are treated as embarassments for the Christian.  These two teachings - the two most distinct teachings of Orthodox Christianity - are viewed as compromising both the singularity of God (God's one-ness) and God's transcendence (God's un-changing-ness).

This need not be the case, though.  Far from being something on which Christians should play "defense," we should critique other theists for denying them.  How?  Take a look after the jump.


It all goes back to God as love.  Christianity teaches that God IS love.  Most monotheists want to teach that God is supreme in all goods - indeed, IS the supreme good.  If love is good, then it follows that God must not only have love, but BE love.  This is the same as how God IS life (existence in and of Himself) and is therefore able to give life to other things.  Similarly, the goodness of love and its presence in the world means God must BE love in order to give love to others.

Put differently: no one I know wants more hate in the world.  Love is, then, a self-evident good.  Either God has this love, then, in an absolute sense (being love ontologically) OR God is less than perfect.  Since theists do not want to consider God as less-than-perfect most theists want to say that God is love (omnibenevolent, to use the technical term). 

So premise one is that "God is love."

Premise two is that "God is above change."  Now, this is derived in part from God being above time, but God also is above change because He is the source of all change.  Change demands something from outside the thing changing to cause the change (there's a long argument for this, but just go with it).  Virtually every monotheist agrees that God is transcendent - above and beyond change. 

So:
1) God is above change
2) God is love
Conclusion: God has always been love

Here's the rub: creation does not pre-exist God. 

So:
1) God has always been love
2) Creation does not pre-exist God
Conclusion: God was love before creation

So far we're dealing with syllogism - there isn't really a way around this.  IF God is love, then God is love before creation since creation is not co-eternal with God.  God is love, therefore God is love before creation.

And what is love?  Love is, definitionally, self-denial for the sake of the other.  Love is self-emptying (at least within monotheistic traditions).  Think of it this way: if you claim to love someone, but are only with them because they own a really cool car, you don't really love them.  If you are with someone only for something they GIVE you (even if that gift is a 'really fulfilling life' or a 'great feeling') that isn't LOVE.  Love is entirely about the OTHER, not the self.  A self-centered love is a contradiction; its a not-love love.  Literally impossible.

So if God is love before creation, God must be self-less love (love of the "other") before creation.

Yet nothing is before creation except God. 

This creates a double-bind.  EITHER...
1) God was not love before creation, then created creation and BEGAN to love.  This introduces change into God and fundamentally undermines God's transcendece, omnibenevolence, and perfection.  No monotheist would want to say this.

2) God is self-centered love (being the only possible object of love before creation).  This is a literal contradiction, and so it is impossible to assert.

The "monad" monotheist (non-Trinitarian monotheist) is stuck in this double-bind.  The Trinitarian monotheist is not.  Why?  Because the Trinitarian monotheist knows that God, even in His pre-existence, is ONE GOD but THREE HYPOSTASES (three persons).  So the Trinity defends that God, before creation, is SELF-LESS love.  To us, God is Father loving Son loving Spirit. 

The communion of love present in the Trinity solves the double-bind of God's omnibenevolence and transcendence.  Jews and Muslims cannot solve this double bind, and so they must deny either God's love, or God's transcendence, or the fact of a finite past for creation.  All of these undermine their monotheism, and so Jews and Muslims cannot really uphold the pure, transcendent, all-loving monotheism of the Christian.

Furthermore, on God's transcendence, we know that God transcends arithmatic (numberings like 1 and 3).  By LIMITING God to monadism, Jews and Muslims attempt to apply the logic of human mathmatics to the God who is above human mathmatics.  The very argument used against the Incarnation (God's transcendence) itself undermines the only real argument used by Jews and Muslims against the Trinity.

And what of the Incarnation?

I've not yet posted much on the Problem of Evil, but go back and listen to the podcast posted earlier on this blog, "The Word of the Cross."  God faces a double-bind on what to do about human evil:
1) End it by omnipotent fiat.  God can, by His all-powerfulness (omnipotence) merely command (fiat) the evil to end and it will.  This would, however, be horribly oppressive and tyrannical (and not at all consistent with the God of love) as it would, functionally, obliterate free will and, thereby, obliterate the PERSONHOOD of the people God created.  If, every time someone did the slightest evil, God simply made them cease to be a person (ended their very existence) He would be an uncompassionate, unmerciful tyrant.  To respond to evil WITH EVIL (and this would be nothing short of evil) is to let the evil win.

Option one isn't acceptable because it is God responding to evil with evil.

2) Tolerate the evil.  This is just as bad, because now God is passively letting harm come to His creation (and this is unloving).  Here we have God not responding to evil at all.  That ALSO lets the evil win, and an all-good God cannot do that.

In a non-Incarnate theistic system (Judaism, Islam), God's love or God's justice is compromised.  Either God ends His love by responding to evil with tyranny OR God fails to show justice by doing nothing in the face of evil.  The best that Judaism and Islam can offer is that God sent messages to us about our evil.  That's it.  God sends the Law, or the Koran, to tell us what our evil is and God begs really hard for us to stop, but ultimately does nothing.

Eventually, God will (in both systems) judge the world.  In other words, God will (eventually) choose option one - the tyrannical option. 

The Incarnation does a better job of perserving God's love.  It presents a third response: to transform evil from within.  God doesn't do NOTHING - God says, in effect, "Fine - you want to go roll around in the mud?  I'll roll in it WITH YOU."  God doesn't sit, perfect on His throne, tolerating an evil He is above experiencing.  God experiences it with us - becomes the victim - and because He is God, this transforms victimhood into victory.

Indeed, we DESERVE the consequences of our actions, but God (as victim) is the only truly innocent one.  The only one who deserved not to die - the only one born TO die (to paraphrase a saint whose name I can't remember right now).

And in this, even death is transformed.  This is how we avoid option one.  EVERYONE will be raised on the last day.  Our deaths are not final - God is not a tyrant.  Hell is the minimal existence God can give to someone while respecting their right to reject His presence.  But it is not because God tolerates Hell.  Far from it - God, in Christ, has filled even death and hell with His presence.  But the person in hell must continuously reject God's presence - in effect blinding him or herself to the presence of God around them.  God continuously DOES SOMETHING (reaches out to them) but never ENDS them nor TOLERATES their self-imposed evil.  No one but an Incarnate God could do this.  Why?  Because no one but an Incarnate God could embody the innocent victim, undergo death, and overcome both.

Think of it this way:  God cannot change.  So when God becomes the victim in the Incarnation it is not GOD that changes but VICTIMHOOD that changes.  God IS glory - nothing can compromise that.  So victimhood, if we have the eyes to see it, is now glorious.  The innocent - the victims of evil - are no longer victims.  The evil is still real, but its sting is gone.  God has removed it and, miracles of miralces, without ending the personhood of the one committing the evil.  Similarly for death, even for material existence.  To the Muslim and Jew, the idea that God would have a mom and dad, would sleep, drool, eat, poop, and do all these vulgar things is just unthinkable.  They think this would compromise the transcendent glory of God.

But God cannot change.  So when God does these things, He transforms them.  Now, EVERYTHING we do can glorify God (or rather, participate in the glory God already possesses by nature). 

Which God demonstrates omnibenevolence?  Is it the tyrant on the throne?  The bleeding-heart who lacks justice?  Or the Incarnate God who transforms the universe?

The lack of Incarnation in Jewish and Muslim systems fundamentally compromises their ability to view God as love AND compromises their ability to articulate a response to the problem of evil.

So there it is.  Because God is love, and because of God's changeless transcendence, the Incarnation and Trinity are NECESSARY.  Any backing away from those doctrines fundamentally LIMITS God by mere human arithmatic and ends up (inevitably) denying God's transcendence and love.

In Christ,
Macarius