God is infinite but is also omniscient. God is both the object and subject, and God's knowledge of Himself is so complete and unified that it is a kind of a copy of Himself. And what is that copy but the second Person of the Trinity, the Image, God the Son, Who is the fullness of the Father's self-knowledge? Now just as metaphysics is prior to epistemology, because there has to be something out there before it can be known, so the Father's essence is, properly understood, prior to the Son's knowledge of that essence. We say that the Father "begot" the Son. And indeed there is no reason why their relationship cannot be called somewhat metaphorically "paternity and filiation." Paternity, because although there "was" no actual begetting – God is one in His eternal present, the logical priorness is still distinguishable. The begetting of the Son is not by will but by nature. Filiation, because God's knowledge is both true and is "true to His essence" as in, conforms to it, never falters from reality, never errs, never sins.

Just as the Son is the Father's self-knowledge, the Holy Spirit is God's self-love. The relationship is said to be of "procession" or "spiration." Why? Because love implies a movement. When you love something, either you seek to attain it if it is the love of concupiscence or you seek your beloved's good if it is the love of friendship. In either case, you are moved to action. In God there is no action, of course; He is the unmoved mover in every sense of that term. So with respect to God's essence the Holy Spirit's proceeding is a metaphorical expression for our sake. With respect to the world it is more literal, as it implies God's creative outpouring of love. Again, this love is so potent, so stupendously life-giving, that it is literally God Himself, the third Person. It takes infinite love to unite the Father and the Son perfectly.

This raises the question: does the Father love His essence or does He love His pure act of self-contemplation? We recognize this as a variant of the Filioque controversy. If the former, then the Holy Spirit proceeds "from" the Father "through" the Son back into the Father. The Son is merely a means through which the Father's happiness is made possible. (Again, God is a simple unity, but we are trying to make these rather subtle distinctions to aid our own understanding.) Therefore it has been argued from this that the Son is lesser in dignity than the Father, which cannot be, therefore not "through." If the latter, then the objection is that there are two sources of the divinity. These two, in my opinion, can be reconciled as follows: We say that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from" the Father "into" the Son and also "through" the Son, again, back into the Father. Here there is on the one hand, equality between the Father and the Son, because the Father delights in the Son as much as He delights in Himself, and, because the Father's pleasure is the ultimate standard of goodness and dignity, the Father and Son are of the same greatness; and on the other hand, the essence of God is acknowledged to be logically prior to both God's knowledge of it and God's happiness in it. (A potentially misleading analogy would be that the Father's omnipotence was such as to allow Him to beget a perfect Son. But be careful here, because the real test of omnipotence is the ability to create something ex nihilo. Here we deal with God's eternal and immutable nature not with His actions vis-a-vis the world.)

What of the Son? Does He not love? Yes, but only because God loves. We can say: "Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit," but it is the Holy Spirit Who proceeds as love.

It could alternatively be argued that the Holy Spirit must proceed from the Father and the Son because otherwise there would not be any distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Father does not proceed at all, the Son proceeds from a single origin, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from two. Knowledge follows upon essence, and love, upon both. And that is also why the Father is the "first" Person, the Son, "second," and the Holy Spirit, "third." The Holy Spirit further proceeds "through" the Son in the sense that the Son has received the Holy Spirit from the Father. But why can we not say that the key is not the number of processions, but their type? The Son proceeds differently than the Holy Spirit. You can decide which view is more reasonable.

If these seem like fair solutions, then the theological aspect of the filioque is not an issue.

It may be asked how the Father, say, can be the essence and at the same time fully God when the "whole" God and therefore the essence of God is the unity of all three Persons. This is indeed the key mystery of the Trinity, of infinitude, of simplicity, and of perfection. The three Persons are of one essence, and yet you need all three to "make up" the essence. Meaningless? No, just beyond our understanding. A similarly difficult problem is how God can know Himself fully. In humans if "I" know, "that which knows" is forever distinct from the "that which is known." This is not so in God. But we can't imagine it. We should further say that the Persons are the relations by which they are defined. The Father is paternity, the Spirit is filiation, etc. Why is that? Because, since God is simple, the abstract in Him is the same as the concrete. In particular, God (concrete) is His own nature (abstract). For the same reason we can say that the Father (concrete) is identical with paternity (abstract), though the meaning of each is different for us. What of my earlier idea that the Father's love is conditional, while the Son's is unconditional? Here my claim would be that the distinctions of Persons also include the differences in their personalities. Put this way, it certainly sounds controversial. And one could rebuke me by saying that there is only one kind of love in God: unconditional. But if we say that the Father rewards us according to merit (or that happiness is proportioned to virtue, achievement, etc.) and that He loves more the better things, while Jesus died on the cross for us and is the good shepherd who would not abandon any sheep, this, it seems to me, starts to make some sense.

Given that knowledge is predicated of the Son, and love of the Holy Spirit, what is predicated of the Father? Power. I mentioned before the three conditions for attaining a goal: love of the end, knowledge of the means, and the strength of overcome the obstacles on the way to the end. And so also it should be clear how all three Persons "were" active in the creation.

With this understanding of the Trinity we arrive at a surprising and non-trivial corollary. It is that it is impossible (false in every possible world) that there exists a being which has at least one but no more than two of the "omni" properties of God. In other words, either there exists a being who is omnipotent (p), omniscient (s), and all-loving (l) at the same "time" – the Christian God – or there are only "us" – beings who are not omnipotent and not omniscient and not all-loving. Thus, there cannot be, for example, a being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and yet not all-loving. The proof is as follows: (1) Suppose ~p, s, l. Then God's generative power is defective. Therefore the Son cannot be equal to the Father, the object ≠ the subject, and ~s. (2) Suppose p, ~s, l. Then God does not know himself completely. Since what is not known cannot be loved, ~l. (3) Suppose p, s, ~l. If God does not love something within himself, then he must not be perfectly happy. But given p and s, he can remove the imperfection "instantly." Therefore l. Alternatively, if God does not love what he knows to be perfect, then he is not really perfect after all. Therefore either ~p or ~s or both. What if there is no love in God at all and the Father and the Son are indifferent to each other? Then, since love is a unitive force and the Holy Spirit unites the two into one simple being, there would have to be two gods, not one. But that is impossible (for other reasons). Same conclusion follows. (4) ~p, ~s, l. There is, we suppose, a being whose essence is incomplete (in fact, finite) and with limited knowledge who nonetheless loves perfectly. But one can only love what one has or hopes to attain. Since here is no way for our finite God to "become" the infinite Christian God by any finite or even potentially infinite process, such love would be an overkill and an absurdity. Such a God could still be compassionate, but he would be aware of his limitations, have needs, and therefore could not love unconditionally 100%. He would be like a good angel or a human saint. Therefore, l is false. The disproof of the remaining two propositions is left as an exercise for the reader.

I have already dealt with the two senses of omnipotence above. Now given that God is omniscient about Himself, what is it that He knows? What do the blessed in heaven see "in" God? The answer is, of course, I don't know. "But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives." (Ex 33:20) So theologians have dealt with omniscience for the most part as it pertains to what God knows about our world. Does it follow from God's nature so far described that He is omniscient about the world, as well? It surely does. For God created the world and loves it, and in order to accomplish His aims with regard to it, He must know it completely. "And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." (Mt 10:30) Similarly, God loves all that exists, though unequally. "For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made." (Wis 11:24) This is because God is His own existence, His own life, and, because even in simple existing things imitate God, however imperfectly, He cannot help but love what is like Him.

In practice, the foregoing, I think, may be able to provide some consolation to those who are on their way to faith and who are still contemplating ideas such as: Could God be an all-powerful tyrant? Could God be unaware of my troubles? Could He be too weak to help? The answer is, none of the above are even logically possible. (The last question is hugely important and, despite my dismissal of it, deserves a separate treatment, because of its bearing on the issue of salvation. E.g., are there limitations on God's power such that He cannot save everyone?) In addition, it can stop short the practices of atheists of putting up idols, knocking them down, and thereby claiming to have proved that our conception of God is unsatisfactory.

To end on a relaxed note, we can even connect all this with politics. There's the doctrine of the separation of powers. The branches of government correspond to the Trinity as follows: the Father is the lawgiver ("He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Mt 5:45)), the Son is the judge ("Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son." (Jn 5:22)), the Holy Spirit is the enforcer of the law ("Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me." (Ps 51:11)). So separation of powers is not merely a useful tool of limiting government if we are to have government at all; the fact that political powers can be separated by the intellect (though not, of course, the question of whether they ought to be separated or how) is grounded in the nature of God Himself.

September 27, 2006