Perfect Love and the Trinity

There's an interesting discussion on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity going on at Prosblogion. I figure this is as good a time as any to dust off some speculations of my own on the subject.

The doctrine Trinity, a cornerstone of Christian orthodoxy, may be summed up in the following two propositions:

1. There is only one God.
2. There are three mutually distinct persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), each fully divine.

Now, while (1) and (2) are not blatantly contradictory--they aren't saying that there's one God who is three Gods, or three persons who are one person--their conjunction is not obviously coherent. How can you have three distinct divine persons without having three distinct Gods?

There are several popular models for thinking about the Trinity (e.g., the egg, the triple-point of water, etc.) but all distort the doctrine in one way or another and so fail to make clear how (1) and (2) can be compossible.

I want to propose a different sort of model, one that takes "perfect love" as its starting point (1 John 4:7). Note: What follows is highly speculative.

First, what is perfect love? I suggest the following definition:

Perfect love =def. A cognitive, affective, and volitional state of desiring and actively pursuing the true good of its object grounded in an understanding that it is the true good of it's object.

So understood, perfect love is a 3-term relation (X knows, desires, and pursues the true good Y of object Z), not merely a 2-term relation (X loves Y). Moreover, it is a relation with a threefold nature:

(a) Affective: Perfect love desires the good of its object.
(b) Volitional: Perfect love wills and pursues the good of its object.
(c) Cognitive: Perfect love knows the good of its object.

What constraints does the nature of perfect love place on the X, Y, and Z terms of the relation?

Well, for starters, it seems clear that X must be a person, for the possibility of having affective, volitional, and cognitive states is definitive of personhood.

What about Z? Well, it seems that the fullest expression of perfect love would consist in love of the highest or best type of object. And it seems that persons are categorically better sorts of things than, say, inanimate objects, mere animals, plants, mathematical abstractions, or what have you. Aristotle, for example, argues that persons as such do not essentially lack any of the capacities of inanimate objects, mere animals, or plants, whereas all of those types of things do essentially lack at least some of the capacities of persons (like cognition). Abstractions can be understood by persons, but they cannot understand persons in turn. Finally, some persons are better than others (contrast Hitler with Mother Teresa). So the highest example of perfect love would be perfect love for a perfect person, that is, for a perfectly loving person.

So the highest example of perfect love would seem to be the love of a person by a person. But what about Y? What is in the highest sense the true good of a person? Well, I would propose that the highest good for any person Z is itself another person Y that perfectly loves Z. Think about it. What is the single best thing in life? Isn't it the loving personal relationships we have with others, where love is understood in the fullest sense to have affective, volitional, and cognitive dimensions? And what would be the single worst thing that could even happen to a person? Wouldn't it be to be completely isolated, completely ignored by others? At any rate, this seems plausible.

So what I propose is that if God is, by nature, Perfect Love, then God must be tri-personal, for the highest possible kind of perfect love is the giving by a perfectly loving person of a perfectly loving person to a perfectly loving person. Hence, the one divine nature (Perfect Love) is necessarily tri-personal.

What's more, the other divine perfections may plausibly be argued to flow from God's nature as Perfect Lover. A Perfect Lover perfectly desires and wills the true good of its object (omnibenevolence). A Perfect Lover is able to perfectly pursue the true good of the object (omnipotence). And a Perfect Lover perfectly knows the true good of its object (omniscience).

Now, here's an objection: How can we be sure that the distinction between X and Y is real or metaphysical and not merely conceptual? Why can't X himself be the true good of Z, in which case X=Y, and the phrases "lover of Z" and "the true good of Z" are merely conceptually distinct ways of picking out the same referent (like the "Evening Star" and the "Morning Star", both of which refer to Venus)? In short, why is a third person necessary? I'm not sure how to answer that. Ideas anyone?