Absolute Personality and the Trinity
Well let’s get back to the subject of "Absolute Personality". When thinking about reality one can not get away from an absolute. This meaning that either reality has a cause or that it is eternal. If it has a cause then it must have an absolute cause for it’s existence and if it is not caused, then it t is eternal and is the absolute cause for everything else.
When I use the word absolute I mean a changeless, eternal source. This either being personal or impersonal. As we have seen for the world to be rational there must be an absolute personality behind it to infuse meaning to the universe. To try and deny God’s existence rationally is to prove God’s existence.
If God creates and governs all things, then he interprets all things. His plan is the ultimate source of the events of nature and history.
So if God must exist as an absolute, eternal personality, what kind of God must he be? Well we know he is eternal, all powerful, all good, and all knowing. This comes with the nature of being eternal. But what kind of eternal God is he?
The great Apologist Cornelius Vantil came to the reflection that this being had to be a Trinity as the biblical scriptures describes. The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is one being with three persons. This may seem strange but in fact is very true. If God was just one blank unity this would be impersonal. Consider Love , as an attribute of God. If God is a mere unity without Trinity then what is the object of Gods eternal love? Himself? But love in the fullest biblical sense by its very nature reaches out to another, not merely to the self. The world? Then God eternal attributes of love depend on the world; it needs the world to be love. If this was true then God before he had created anything was not a God of love, as he had no one to love. Only when he had created could he be bound to love, by being dependent on the world. This is what Islam’s god is like because he is a single being. There is no eternal personal community.
This is not the case, the biblical God is both interpersonal and self contained; God’s love is the love among Father, Son, and Spirit for one another, and it is not dependent on the world. God is eternal love in himself, dependent on nothing.
John Frame in his book "Apologetics to the Glory of God" says of the absolute,
The major religions of the world in their most typical forms are either pantheistic (Hinduism, Taoism) or Polytheistic (animism), Pantheism has an absolute, but not a personal absolute. Polytheism has personal gods, but none of these is absolute. In Greek polytheism the gods are personal but nonabsolute. However, this polytheism is supplemented by a doctrine of fate, which is a kind of impersonal absolute. Similarly, behind the gods of animism is Mana, the impersonal reality.
Frame, makes it clear that you can’t get way from an absolute, either it is personal or impersonal. As we have seen to have a rational world God must be an absolute Personality with Trinity.
When I use the word absolute I mean a changeless, eternal source. This either being personal or impersonal. As we have seen for the world to be rational there must be an absolute personality behind it to infuse meaning to the universe. To try and deny God’s existence rationally is to prove God’s existence.
If God creates and governs all things, then he interprets all things. His plan is the ultimate source of the events of nature and history.
So if God must exist as an absolute, eternal personality, what kind of God must he be? Well we know he is eternal, all powerful, all good, and all knowing. This comes with the nature of being eternal. But what kind of eternal God is he?
The great Apologist Cornelius Vantil came to the reflection that this being had to be a Trinity as the biblical scriptures describes. The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is one being with three persons. This may seem strange but in fact is very true. If God was just one blank unity this would be impersonal. Consider Love , as an attribute of God. If God is a mere unity without Trinity then what is the object of Gods eternal love? Himself? But love in the fullest biblical sense by its very nature reaches out to another, not merely to the self. The world? Then God eternal attributes of love depend on the world; it needs the world to be love. If this was true then God before he had created anything was not a God of love, as he had no one to love. Only when he had created could he be bound to love, by being dependent on the world. This is what Islam’s god is like because he is a single being. There is no eternal personal community.
This is not the case, the biblical God is both interpersonal and self contained; God’s love is the love among Father, Son, and Spirit for one another, and it is not dependent on the world. God is eternal love in himself, dependent on nothing.
John Frame in his book "Apologetics to the Glory of God" says of the absolute,
The major religions of the world in their most typical forms are either pantheistic (Hinduism, Taoism) or Polytheistic (animism), Pantheism has an absolute, but not a personal absolute. Polytheism has personal gods, but none of these is absolute. In Greek polytheism the gods are personal but nonabsolute. However, this polytheism is supplemented by a doctrine of fate, which is a kind of impersonal absolute. Similarly, behind the gods of animism is Mana, the impersonal reality.
Frame, makes it clear that you can’t get way from an absolute, either it is personal or impersonal. As we have seen to have a rational world God must be an absolute Personality with Trinity.
posted by Rich7 at 1:28 AM
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