No Trinity, No Love?

A common argument heard among evangelicals today is, “If God isn’t Triune, then he can’t be loving.” That is, since love requires someone else to love, there must logically be a plurality of persons within God. This argument is central to the popular book Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves (IVP, 2012). And it’s found in earlier Christian apologists like C.S. Lewis, who wrote:

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. 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. (Mere Christianity, p. 174)

We can go back even further in time to Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), who is generally credited with first formulating this argument. Richard went as far as claiming that reason alone could prove the Trinity (On the Trinity, 3.2-19). Others, such as Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), admitted that the Trinity must first be accepted by faith via special revelation, but then reason could demonstrate the logical necessity of the Triune relations in God.

Admittedly, it’s quite an attractive argument, because it gives us Christians ammunition against non-Trinitarian theists like Muslims and Jews.

However, I want to point out that many of the leading Thomist Trinitarian scholars today insist that such an argument is invalid. Thomas Aquinas himself critiqued Richard’s reasoning, stating instead that there is, strictly speaking, no rational proof for the Trinity. Thomas wrote:

It is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason. . . . Therefore, by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons. (Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, corp.)

Thomas goes on to clarify that, although reason can prove the essence and perfections of God on the one hand, reason can only at best demonstrate the fittingness or congruency of the Trinity with the divine perfections on the other (not that the persons themselves are merely fitting, but rather that we must distinguish between their metaphysical necessity and rational necessity):

In the first way, we can prove that God is one; and the like. In the second way, reasons avail to prove the Trinity; as, when assumed to be true, such reasons confirm it. We must not, however, think that the trinity of persons is adequately proved by such reasons. This becomes evident when we consider each point; for the infinite goodness of God is manifested also in creation, because to produce from nothing is an act of infinite power. For if God communicates Himself by His infinite goodness, it is not necessary that an infinite effect should proceed from God: but that according to its own mode and capacity it should receive the divine goodness. Likewise, when it is said that joyous possession of good requires partnership, this holds in the case of one not having perfect goodness: hence it needs to share some other’s good, in order to have the goodness of complete happiness. (Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2)

Here I simply want to cite three of the top Thomist Trinitarian scholars today, without any commentary of my own.

First is Matthew Levering, from his essay “Trinity and Love,” in On Classical Trinitarianism, edited by Matthew Barrett (IVP, 2024), page 373:

Does it make sense to say that God is “love,” if the lover and the beloved are one identical God loving his own infinite goodness? Aquinas thinks so. Divine love means God’s joyous embrace of and possession of his goodness, in which nothing is lacking, because it is a truly infinite goodness. God’s goodness is infinite, and so God’s love—embracing this infinite goodness—is infinitely full and cannot be improved. . . . God has infinite goodness and therefore needs nothing to enjoy, in his love of his goodness, the fullness of beatitude. Aquinas states, “Beatitude belongs to God in the highest degree,” in his “simplicity” or infinite actuality. Thus the Father is fully beatitude, the Son is fully beatitude, the Spirit is fully beatitude, and all three persons together are fully this very same beatitude.

To be perfect love, therefore, God does not need to be Trinity. This can be difficult for us to grasp, since we tend to think that it is the trinitarian communion that makes God perfect. We imagine that God, if he were not Trinity, would be lonely. We suppose that it is the communion between the three persons that makes God happy, or at least that improves God’s quality of life beyond the happiness that could ever belong to God in his unity. We also suppose that the best part of being God is the loving relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and both love the Spirit, and the Spirit loves them both, then surely this is what love truly means! On this view, the revelation of the one God of Israel is not yet the revelation of the true God who is supreme love. In fact, however, the one God of Israel is unsurpassable, infinite love in his sheer unity as “I am” (Exodus 3:14). When the people of Israel learn that “The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4) and when God tells them, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6), the people of Israel have surely encountered the true God who is infinite love and infinite goodness, one God.

Levering then concludes on page 381:

In short, the attempt to make triunity necessary for the perfection of divine love is mistaken. Infinite divine love, the divine unity, is perfect. We should not minimize the great glad tidings that the Trinity, as the one simple God, is infinite love.

Another leading Thomist Trinitarian, Thomas Joseph White, summarizes Richard of St. Victor’s argument for the rational necessity of the Trinity in 5 premises, in The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (CUA, 2022), pages 356-357:

1. By previous argument, God can be understood to be the supreme and most perfect good. “We have learned from our previous discussions that the fullness and perfection of all goodness lies in the supreme and universally perfect good [i.e., God].”
2. However, this goodness in God, Richard notes, implies the presence of personal love, or charity. “Moreover, where the fullness of all goodness is, truth and supreme charity cannot be lacking. Indeed, nothing is better than charity, and nothing is more perfect than charity.”
3. In order to be perfect, charity cannot be directed toward one’s own person alone but must be directed to another person. If there is perfect love in God, then, it must be directed from one person to another. “No one is properly said to have love on account of a private and exclusive love of one’s self. And so it is necessary that love be directed toward another, so that it can be charity. Therefore, charity absolutely cannot exist where a plurality of persons is lacking.” In other words, if God is truly the highest good and most perfect love, there must be an “other” toward whom God’s love is directed, through the medium of a communion of persons.
4. God’s love would not be perfect if he did not love one who is supremely worthy of divine love. “But a divine person would surely not have someone whom he could love as worthily as himself, if he absolutely were not having a person of equal dignity. However, a person who was not God would not be of equal dignity to a divine person. Therefore, so that the fullness of charity can occur in true divinity, it is necessary for a divine person not to lack the fellowship with a person of equal dignity and, for that reason, a divine person.”
5. Perfect love entails the selfless concern for another. For this we need not only two but at least three persons in God. Why should it be so? The fullness of power and wisdom could exist in only one person. The fullness of happiness could exist in a communion of love between two persons alone. However, “the supreme degree of goodness seems to occur when a person bestows supreme love to someone and gains nothing from it toward the fullness of his own happiness.” When there are only two persons, however, love risks becoming closed off in itself, and egoistic, rather then [sic] genuinely self-giving. Therefore, there must exist a love in God that transcends the mere love of mutual happiness, and this can transpire only if there are three persons in God, where the first two persons share in a self-less love of the third person. Richard seems to imply here that in any love held between only two persons, there must be an imperfect quality of selflessness, due to the closed-off nature of the relationship. This will be the case unless the two persons share a mutual love for a third. If God is perfect in love, then, God must be a shared life of three persons in communion.

White then presents Thomas’s critique of Richard’s argument on page 363:

What are the problems with these arguments? First, as Aquinas notes, creation is finite in goodness but does manifest to us that God is infinite goodness. This can be inferred from the finite creation because God’s production of being from nothing requires an infinite power, and God’s communication of being to the creation stems from his divine goodness. God, then, is both good and infinite. We cannot infer from this, however, that God must produce an infinite effect, as if God were to need to communicate his nature to another person in order to be infinitely good. We can only conclude that when God by his divine infinity does communicate being and goodness, each recipient must receive a share in being and goodness according to its own particular mode and capacity. In effect, the “mere fact” of the creation shows us philosophically that the infinite God can communicate himself in finite ways, not that he must communicate himself in infinite ways.

Second, as Richard rightly notes, God is characterized by perfect goodness and love. As Aquinas notes, however, in loving himself, God by nature loves what is supremely good in an infinitely loving way. If this is the case, however, no matter how many persons are in God, they will each possess a perfect love by nature, just insofar as they are each truly God (having the divine essence, which is infinite love). Richard’s third and fifth premises attempt in two distinct ways to show that God can be perfect in love only if his love is shared between persons. As Aquinas notes, however, “joyous possession of good requires partnership [only] in the case of one not having perfect goodness.” In finite human persons, who are imperfect in nature, love can become more perfect over time through relationships of communion. Indeed, it is true that for a human being to be perfected in nature, according to love, there must be a communion of human persons who share love. God, by contrast, possesses an infinite and perfect love in virtue of his nature. Therefore, whether God is only one person, a communion of only two persons, or three persons, the person/s who is/are God must (each) possess an infinite love in virtue of the unity of the divine nature. We cannot infer, then, just because God is love by nature that God must be a loving communion of multiple persons.

And lastly, in his book The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas (OUP, 2007), Gilles Emery surveys some of the leading rationalist approaches to the Trinity among medieval scholastics such as Anselm, Richard, Bonaventure, and Henry of Ghent. On pages 25-26, Emery summarizes Thomas’s critique of these rationalist approaches:

St Thomas was vigorously opposed to this apologetic project in Trinitarian theology. Neither the goodness nor the happiness of God, nor his intelligence, are arguments capable of proving that the existence of a plurality of divine persons imposes itself by rational necessity. Only the ‘truth of faith’, to the exclusion of any other reason, leads us to acknowledge God’s tripersonality. This thesis is a fundamental and characteristic feature of his Trinitarian theology. For Thomas, Bonaventure’s reasons could be probable arguments, but they do not have the force of necessity. And, in Thomas’ judgement, the attempt to give necessary reasons in Trinitarian theology jeopardizes the faith: ‘this undermines the faith’. Such a project ignores the dignity of faith—because faith deals with realities that are beyond reason—and it makes the faith liable to ridicule by non-believers, by indicating to them that Christians profess the Trinity on very shaky grounds. St Thomas’ stance implies a clear-cut divide between the domain of faith and that of natural reason: this straightforward distinction is one of Thomas’ most outstanding features, particularly by comparison with Bonaventure. This means that the reasons which theology uses to exhibit the Trinitarian mystery will never be demonstrative proofs. Rather they will be one of two things: either ‘approximations’ or ‘probable arguments’ that is, arguments which show that what the faith proposes is not impossible, or arguments drawn only from faith.

So what do you think? Is it time for Christians to give up the “no Trinity, no love” argument?