Our sympathies go out to that old Valentinian writer — possibly it was Valentinus himself — who reasoned — perhaps he was the first so to reason — that “God is all love,” “but love is not love unless there be an object of love.” And they go out more richly still to Augustine, when, seeking a basis, not for a theory of emanations, but for the doctrine of the Trinity, he analyzes this love which God is into the triple implication of “the lover,” “the loved” and “the love itself,” and sees in this trinary of love an analogue of the Triune God. It requires, however, only that the argument thus broadly suggested should be developed into its details for its artificiality to become apparent. Richard of Victor works it out as follows: It belongs to the nature of amor that it should turn to another as caritas. This other, in God’s case, cannot be the world; since such love of the world would be inordinate. It can only be a person; and a person who is God’s equal in eternity, power and wisdom. Since, however, there cannot be two divine substances, these two divine persons must form one and the same substance. The best love cannot, however, confine itself to these two persons; it must become condilectio by the desire that a third should be equally loved as they love one another. Thus love, when perfectly conceived, leads necessarily to the Trinity, and since God is all He can be, this Trinity must be real. Modern writers (Sartorius, Schoberlein, J. Muller, Liebner, most lately R. H. Grutzmacher) do not seem to have essentially improved upon such a statement as this. And after all is said, it does not appear clear that God’s own all-perfect Being could not supply a satisfying object of His all-perfect love. To say that in its very nature love is self-communicative, and therefore implies an object other than self, seems an abuse of figurative language.
See https://bbwarfield.com/works/trinity/
4 comments:
So a Gnostic Valentinian writer, who may be Valentinus, reasoned from 1 John 4:8 that “God is all love,” and then wrote further that “but love is not love unless there be an object of love.” And this Gnostic Valentinian exegesis forms a basis for the Trinitarian “love” reasoning? And yet the next verse of 1 John 4:9 provides the scriptural exegesis: “By this the love of God was revealed in our case, that God sent his only-begotten Son.” Thus, God is love in that He has the potential for expressing the greatest love there is and that all the things he does are motivated by love. The Trinitarian and Gnostic reasoning unduly restricts God, and needs to be rejected as rank absurdity.
Warfield was not impressed by the argument although he was a staunch Trinitarian--he seemed to have at least a measure of scholastic integrity and rejected a number of weak arguments for the Trinity.
1 John 4:8-9 seems so clear that the Father is the God who is love. I've researched this verse (v. 8) in numerous commentaries and journal articles: to say hardly anyone catches this point would be an overstatement. Hard to believe that dogma affects their spiritual vision that badly.
The criticism you seemed to bring up doesn’t work. Iirc, Sijuwade addresses the criticism that God’s love is a passive property that is not exemplified. @Jimspace @Edgarfoster
JLM, I've read Sijuwade and am not impressed in terms oof his ability to prove the Trinity or Incarnation. Yes, he's intelligent and good at logic, but he does not substantiate either doctrine.
My objection to the God is love argument is more exegetical than philosophical/theological. Warfield offered the criticism above although he was a Trinitarian; Wolfhart Pannenberg (another Trinitarian) launched other objections against this line of reasoning. Maybe that is what Sijuwade addresses. But it does not necessarily follow that because God is love, he must be more than one person. That is not a necessary logical inference, which even Augustine recognized.
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