The Good God

by Michael Reeves

Now, because the Father, Son and Spirit are persons who have real relationships with each other (the Father loving the Son and so on), Christian theologians have happily and unabashedly spoken of the fellowship of the Trinity. The eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards could write about ‘the society or family of the three’, even going so far as to say that the very ‘happiness of the Deity, as all other true happiness, consists in love and society’.7 But (and this is a big but) that is not to say that the Trinity is like a club that the Father, Son and Spirit have decided to join. They are not three persons who simply manage to get along well – even very well – with each other. What then? Well, let us go back to the beginning, and to the Father. Before creation, before all things, we saw, the Father was loving and begetting his Son. For eternity, that was what the Father was doing. He did not become Father at some point; rather, his very identity is to be the one who begets the Son. That is who he is. Thus it is not as if the Father and the Son bumped into each other at some point and found to their surprise how remarkably well they got on. The Father is who he is by virtue of his relationship with the Son. Think again of the image of the fountain: a fountain is not a fountain if it does not pour forth water. Just so, the Father would not be the Father without his Son (who he loves through the Spirit). And the Son would not be the Son without his Father. He has his ...