I was speaking to a ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ and he told me that
from eternity past God had been entirely on His own and was completely happy
and content. Now, please think carefully about this.
If God had been on His own
as a single person, and was completely happy and content then it must mean that
love is not an essential part of His nature, because if it were then He could
not have been content without someone to love.
‘Love is something that one
person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the
world was made, He was not love’.[1]
Imagine another couple of scenarios: if love were an
essential part of God’s nature, and He created creatures in order to love them
then that would make God a contingent being, that is, He would be dependent on
His creation, and need His creation in order for Him to be fulfilled, but that
would mean He isn’t God.
‘The attributes of God were
active prior to creation and, if so, there must have been both agent and object
then as now. To restrict the divine object to creation is to deprive God of the
exercise of His qualities and characteristics during that period preceding
creation. It also follows that, since creation was a matter of divine choice
and thus contingent, it is to restrict the exercise of God’s attributes to that
which is contingent. In such a case the divine attributes might as easily have
never been exercised at all. All this suggests the absurdity that the divine
attributes were not exercised in eternity past, that they might not under
certain circumstances be exercised now and that they might never be exercised
at all’.[2]
Or, if love were not a part of this God’s nature, and He
created freely, but then found Himself loving His creation, then it would mean
that He is not immutable, He is a being that has a nature that can change and
be improved, and thus He wouldn’t be the greatest possible being, and therefore
wouldn’t be God at all. Only in the scriptural revelation of the Trinity do we
see that God is essentially and eternally loving, and not at all dependent on
His creation to express and enjoy love.
So the God of Unitarian religions cannot be essentially
loving or relational. If then we are creatures that are loving and relational
it points to a God who has this as part of His own nature and being, the only
candidate is the trinitarian God of scripture. Is it not remarkable that there is only one book out of all the
so-called holy books of religions that presents a God who can provide the basis
for the most fundamental aspect of being human – sharing love and forming
relationships?
(This is largely taken from Prove It, How you can know and show that the Bible is God's word, Decapolis Press, 2017.)
