Islam is the greatest TM intellectual tradition in history, and to it will be interesting to inquire as to whether and how it dealt with the problems we have been describing. (fn-the only other extant TM traditions are Judaism and some modern versions of Hinduism. Judaic theology today has developed into mystical kabbalistic thought which we cannot really engage in a logical argument, and Hindu theology is notoriously difficult to pin down, so we shall avoid discussion of both those here).
Headings
“Attribute” is the First Question of Theology
Let us first attempt to see for ourselves how theological language might evolve from an initial simple God- concept. The first thing we might ask is how do we describe God. That is after all, the central aim of all theology. We describe him by his attributes, of course, after all that is literally what it means to describe something. So if we were not to presume any theological position in our inquiry, we would attribute things like life, love, goodness, beauty, truth, wisdom, mercy, kindness, strength and power, and would seem to cover most of the essentials for a reasonably satisfactory picture of a powerful being. What next, are we done? Well, either there is nothing else to say, or if we do want to write a second sentence in our theology book, it needs to address the first sentence- that dose it mean for God to have attributes. We started with one thing- God, and our first sentence introduced another thing- “attribute”. We’ve nothing else to discuss except those two concepts, and we’ve nothing to discuss about those two concepts apart from their relation to each other. So what could the possible relation be between God and his attributes? We’ve only a few possibilities, either they are abstract and unreal? If real then are they within him or without him as though in orbit, or the balls of a juggler. If they they are within God then are they the same thing with God, or different from him? Finally are they the same with one another or different from each other.
Summarizing Islam’s Tawhid Models
Most modern Muslims I have tried questioning regarding this seem say that the attributes of God are unreal or abstract, which then obviates all the other questions: “They’re just what Allah is like, you are not your attributes are you?” Well, are you? The first centuries of Islam were actually filled with intense theological effort, debate and controversy regarding this very issue of the attributes of God and their relation to him. The greatest Muslim thinkers fell into various camps regarding this issue, resulting in the main schools of Islamic thought (madhab). That modern position I just describe, that of the denial of the relevance of the question, would fall into one of the lines of thought that we will shortly describe. My contention here, as we examine these differing views is that every one of the schools, with the exception of the Mu’tazalis that make positive assertions about this relation are left with the problem of multiple eternal entities. The Mu’tazalis, one the other hand, held that the attributes are one and the same with God. This position has since been largely abandoned, quite likely because, as we shall see, its resemblance to Christianity is too close for comfort. This is a list of all the versions of how Islam understands monotheism:
- The Mu’tazalis characteristically held that the attributes of God are identical with his essence. There are some variations of this which we shall see later in the discussion.
- Others grouped God’s attribtues into those of the Essence, and those that were not (or attributes of action). God’s Essence is God, so what is not his Essence is not God. Since it is also eternal, this posed the problem of arriving at a minimum of two eternal entities, likely more.
- There are different versions of which attributes belong to which group. Major controversy over the categorization of word, speech, will, and also “eternity”. Some thinkers take the latter group to be created (including speech) and some accord two wills to God, one in each category.
- Others made a distinction between the essence of God and the attributes themselves.
- Others consider the reality of the body parts that the Qur’an assigns to God like hand, feet, face, fingers, eyes literally and as part of God’s essence.
- Finally some (predominantly Shi’a but also others) adopted a Neo-Platonic model and posit that God does not have any attributes at all. His attributes are in a different entity altogether (called the “First Intellect).
Examining the Primary Muslim Sources
We now look at the primary Muslim sources themselves and we shall see how the controversies in early Islamic history paralleled the controversies in early Christianity. For example, those schools that hold that the attributes are “neither God nor apart from him” are parallel to Christian Modalism in making the distinctions lack reality, those that hold that the attributes are separate from the essence or that the attributes of action are separate from those of essence, and even more literally in Shi’i neo- Platonism can be seen to parallel Christian Emanationism or Subordinationism and so on.
The earliest scholars of Islam acknowledge the difficulty in explaining the reality of God’s attributes without introducing a notion of multiplicity in the deity, and multiple alternatives are proposed to avoid this problem, either that they are that they are the same as God’s essence, or the same as each other, or that they are only applicable to God in a manner of negation or even in a metaphorical manner, and some say that these questions should not even be asked.
Later thinkers from other schools begin to make a distinction between the attributes that relate to the divine essence and those that relate merely to his relation to creatures. The question is raised as to the reality of these attributes which only arise in interaction and not in essence: nothing is contingent in God, so can we really say that he has contingent attributes at all, or is this mere words with not referent in reality, rather only meant to denote perceived effects of God in creation. This is important, because in this some of the prime virtues of God risk being relegated to non-being, which would mean that he hasn’t got them.
Significantly, even the Will of God is called into question because after all God wills interaction with creatures and creation itself, so some place this aspect of willing in the second category, the attributes of action rather than of essence. Others held that there are two types of will in God and still others held that willing is not one of God’s attributes at all. The controversy over the speech of God is part of this and led to a bitter controversy as to whether the Qur’an itself, which is in some sense the word of Allah is created or eternal. “Knowledge” is taken to be an attribute of the essence of God by Ghazali who comes much later. Al-Kindi takes a similar view to the Mu’tazalites, he is taken to be the first genuine systematic philosopher in Islam.
Mu’tazalites: Similarity with Trinitarian Christianity
First we look at how the Mu’tazalis identify the attributes of God with his essence itself:
“According to the traditional account, the founder of the Mu’tazilite school was Wasil b. ‘Ata’ (d.748), originally a pupil of al-Hasan al-Bari, who was a central figure in the history of Islamic jurisprudence, asceticism, and theological dogma (45)…Jahm b.Safwan (d.745), a contemporary of Wasil, and founder of the rival Jahmite school, appears to have held the view that God’s attributes are identical with His essence, another cornerstone of Mu’tazilite doctrine and the key to their claim to be the only true Muwah-hidun, (confessors of divine unity, a name also applied to Jahm and his followers)…. Jahm and Wasil, the founders of the two earliest schools of systematic theology, dealt with roughly the same cluster of theological problems that split the Muslim community asunder as early as the beginning of the eighth century.” (Fakhry, 47)
The more abstract theological assumptions of the Mu’tazilah revolved round their second major thesis, the unqualified unity of God (tauhid), which was aimed primarily at the Manichaeans on the one hand and the anthropomorphists and other Attributists (Sifatiyah) on the other (…) Thus the references in Koran (75:22) to the possibility of seeing God, or His face (55:27), as well as His “sitting upon the throne” (7:54,20:5), are either taken at their face value, without much ado, or the logical inference is made that God is possessed of corporeal and other characteristics which He shares with man. (Fakhry, 57)
The less extreme literalists and Traditionists were content to assert that God was endowed with a series of attributes, distinct from His essence, which were essential reduced in time to the seven attributes of power, knowledge, life, will, hearing, sight, and speech, stated to subsist eternally in God. To these, other active attributes such as creation, justice, munificence, etc., were added.
The Mu’tazilah, despite the allegation of their adversaries that they were out to strip God of all positive characteristics, appear to have simply sought to safeguard the unity and simplicity of God. The thesis of a series of positive attributes distinct from His essence and inhering eternally in Him tended to jeopardize this in so far as it involved, according to them, a plurality of eternal entities other than He.” (Fakhry, 58 quoting Al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 30.)
Fakhry quotes Ash’ari writing about the Mu’tazalis. This is because there are few extant writings of the Mu’tazalis themselves and the evidence for their thought comes from these secondary sources, often their contemporary opponents like Ash’ari and Shahrastani:
“Even the chief antagonists of the Mu’tazilah, al-Ash’ari; brings out vividly, in his account of their view of the unity of God, their preoccupation with safeguarding His otherness and His transcendence above everything else:
“The Mu’tazilites are unanimous that God is unlike anything else and that He hears and sees and is neither body, ghost, corpse, form, flesh, blood, substance, nor accident and that He is devoid of color, taste, smell, tactual traits, heat, cold, moistness, dryness, height, width, or depth…,and that He is indivisible…and is not circumscribed by place or subject to time…and that none of the attributes of the creature which involve contingency can be applied to Him…,and that He cannot be perceived by the senses or assimilated to mankind at all…,and that He has always been the First, prior to all contingent things…and has always been knowing, powerful, and living and will always be so. Sight cannot perceive Him…and the imagination cannot encompass Him…the only eternal Being, beside whom there is no other eternal being, and no God or associate to share His realm with Him.” (Fakhry, 58,59, quoting Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 156-57)
Fakhry describes how the Mu’tazalis found it useful to incorporate classical Greek thought into their theological pursuit:
In rationalizing their view of the unity of God, the Mu’tazilite doctors were apparently influenced by the Aristotelian concept of God as the pure actuality of thought, in whom essence and attribute, thought and the object of thought, are identified, as well as by the Plotinian view that God, who transcends thought and being altogether, can only be known negatively. Curiously enough, however, this view is attributed in the Arabic sources to a more ancient Greek authority than either Aristotle or Plotinus, namely, Empedocles, generally credited by Muslim authors with the doctrine of the unity of essence and attribute in God.” (59, Fakhry quoting Sa’id, Tabaqat al-Umam, p. 6; al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 317)
Peter Adamson describes how the thought of al-Kindi (800-870CE), an early scholar and theologian of Islam aligned closely with the Mu’tazalites:
“Generalizations about Mu‘tazilite doctrines must be made with caution, since even restricting our attention to those who worked before or during al-Kindi’s time, there is a wide array of various views held by thinkers associated with the Mu‘tazilite tradition. Still, the rough outlines of a shared theory of language emerge from later reports of their doctrines. This theory was put forward primarily in the service of a negative theology that originated with the putative founder of Mu‘tazilism, Wasil ibn Ata. According to al-Shahrastani, Wasil argued that to posit an eternal divine attribute would be to assert the existence of a second God. (Adamson, 50: ref- Al-Shahrastani, Kitab al-Milal wa al-nihal, edited by ‘A. al-Wakil in two volumes (Cairo, 1968), p. 46.12-13. See further Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu‘tazila, pp. 49-50.)
“ Ab‚ al-Hudhayl affirms both that God’s attributes are the same as Him (al-sifat… hiya al-bari’) (ref: al-Ash’ari Maqalat, 177.14-15 [VE XXI.62] and, that His attributes are not distinct from one another (Al-Ash‘ari 177.15-16 [VE XXI.62]: “If someone asked (Abu Hudhayl): ‘is [God’s] knowledge [God’s] power?’ He said, ‘it is false to say that it is [His] power, and false to say that it is other than [His] power.’” See also 484.15-485.6 [VE XXI.64].) Ab‚ al-Hudhayl and other Mu‘tazilites also suggest that, unlike created things, God may have attributes by virtue of His “essence”(dhat) (ref: For this position in al-Nazzam see al-Ash‘ari, Maqalat 486.10-14 [VE XXII.173]. For Abbad ibn Sulayman, see 165.14ff [VE XXV.27], and also Daiber, Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mu‘ammar, pp. 203ff. Similarly Dirar says that God is “knowing” and so on “through Himself” (li-nafsihi): al-Ash‘ari Maqalat, 281.14.) (Adamson, 53)
“Usually al-Kindi defines essential properties as follows: a thing is essentially F if it would be destroyed by becoming not-F” (…) Mu‘ammar ibn ‘Abbad al-Sulami is said to have held that God has a word “not in truth (fi al-haqiyya) but only metaphorically (‘ala al-majaz),” and the same contrast was used by the early theologian Jahm ibn Safwan. In part al-Kindi’s solution to the problem of divine attributes agrees with the Mu‘tazila, by associating the attributes with God’s “self” or “essence” (dhat). (Adamson 55, see fn.34,35)
“This treatment of divine attributes shows al-Kindi responding to the Mu‘tazila and even agreeing with them in spirit. Yet it also shows him giving arguments based on the tradition of falsafa rather than kalam, and expanding on that tradition with a theory of his own devising.” (p57)
Note that in addition to these sources and Ash’ari’s Maqalat, we can see Mut’azali teaching also quoted by al-Ghazali in the section to follow a bit later on.
Non-Reality of Attributes
However they also felt the need to explain just what the attributes meant, and they offered four possible explanations:
In rejecting the thesis of a series of eternal attributes inherent in God, the Mu’tazilah hoped to vindicate His absolute unity. The Koranic view of a personal Deity of such overwhelming concreteness, however, made it virtually impossible to give up altogether the positive attributes of God, especially that of power. Recognizing this difficulty, many Mu’tazilite scholars sought earnestly to rationalize the divine attributes in a manner which, while it safeguarded God’s unity, did not at the same time jeopardize the fullness of His Godhead. Four different attempts to wrestle with this problem are distinguished by al-Ash’ari in his account of Mu’tazilite doctrine:
- Some held, he states, that in saying that God has knowledge, power, or life, etc., we simply assert that He is knowing, powerful, living, etc. and that consequently He is not ignorant, impotent, or dead, etc., since this would not become Him. This is reported as the view of al-Nazzam (ref: Al-Baghdadi, Usul al-Din, p. 91, and Maqalat, p. 486.) and the majority of the Mu’tazilah of both the Schools of Baghdad and Basra.
- Others are said to have interpreted the statements that God has knowledge or power as referring not to the two attributes of knowledge or power as applied to God, but to the objects thereof.
- Some, who included the famous Abu’l-Hudhail and his followers, conceded the fact that God has power, knowledge, life, etc., but only in the sense that His knowledge, power, etc. are identical with Him (ref: Usul, p.91; al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 34; and al-Khayyat, Kitab al-Intisar, p. 59)
- Finally, some contested the very legitimacy of stating the question in these terms and held that it is equally wrong to say that God has power, knowledge, life, etc., or that He does not. This appears to have been the view of another leading doctor, ‘Abbad b. Sulayman, and his followers.
(Fakhry, 59, quoting Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 177 f.; also pp. 483 ff.; and Wensinck, Muslim Creed, pp. 75 f.)
At the same time, other theologians were attempting to offer further clarifications and perspectives on the problem:
Other theologians, prompted by the desire to overcome the difficulty of predicating positive attributes of God, resorted to other dialectical devices. Thus Ibn al-Ayadi, a contemporary of al-Ash’ari, argued that attributes are to be predicated of God only figuratively or metaphorically. (ref: al-Ash’ari Maqalat p.184) Another notorious but subtle dialectician, Abu’I-Husain al-Salihr (ninth century), maintained that there is nothing more to the statement that God is knowing, powerful, living, etc. than the recognition that He is distinct from other beings so qualified or the confirmation of the substance of the koranic verse that “He is unlike anything else” (Koran 42:11), a thesis which reduced the attributes of God to empty verbal utterances (Fakhry, 60)
Later Mu‘tazilites agreed, often providing additional arguments for the point, that God’s oneness prevents our positing real and distinct divine attributes. So far, this seems not unlike what we find in al-Kindi. But what do the Mu‘tazila mean when they say that there are no such divine attributes? Later, hostile authors like al- Shahrastani are quick to accuse the Mu‘tazila of ta‘til, the rejection of the attributes authorized by the Qur’an (p51 Adamson)
Priority, Distinction, Createdness of Attributes- late Mu’tazali, Ash’ari, Hanafi
Some theologians begin to teach that the attributes as not something in God but rather mere “effects” (of God) in creatures. This begins to corrode the reality of the attributes altogether, since it implies they inhere in contingent things only, and are thereby contingent themselves. This is the reason we will often hear Muslims ask about the attribute of creation, the first of such attributes, when challenged about the possibility of love in TM “well God was eternally creator, was he not, although he did not create? So why could he also not have the ability to love although there was no one to love?” Well not according to these thinkers, creation for them is a contingent attribute, which is how a Christian would reply anyway, though not with regards to love:
Later doctors, such as al-Juba’i (d. 915), the famous teacher of al-Ash’ari, while asserting the attributes of God, simply reduced them to corollaries or, if our authorities are correct, effects of the essence of God, and denied that some of those attributes (such as hearing and seeing) could be predicated of God unless they are in an active relationship with their object or subject matter (i.e., the thing heard or seen) (ref: al-Ash’arT, Maqalat 175 f. 492, 522; also al-Baghdadr, Usul al-Din, p.92)
This original view would have rendered the attributes of God purely contingent accidents of His essence, dependent as they were held to be on their contingent object…(Fakhry, 60)
“A leading Mu’tazilite doctor, Abu Hashim (d.933), son of al-Juba’i, refined his father’s view by declaring the attributes of God to be states or conditions (singular: hal) of His essence, which are neither existent nor non-existent, or even knowable except through the entity to which they belong, but are nevertheless that which sets one entity apart from another. However, unlike other exponents of this view, Abu Hashim appears to have assigned a certain priority to some attributes, such as life, over others, such as knowledge, power or will, which were stated to be concomitant conditions or effects of life (ref. al- Shahrastani either Nihayat or Usul al-Din (I couldn’t follow which ibid. it referred to, p132)
It is not clear what Abu Hashim and others such as the Ash’arite al-Baqillani might have gained from this peculiar thesis, except possibly the recognition of the priority of essence over attribute in God, in the first instance, and the priority of certain essential attributes over others, in the second instance …
…Even when applied to God, the concept of eternity (qidam) was viewed with suspicion by some Mu’tazilite scholars, who were anxious to remove the barest hint of plurality in God. Thus Abu’l-Hudhail retained the concept and subsumed it under the same category as the other attributes, which he identified, as we have seen, with the essence of God. Mu’ammar made its application to God conditional upon the inception of contingent entities (huduth), whereas others challenged the validity of this approach to the problem and even denied that God could in any way be described as eternal (Ref: Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, p. 18o.)
However, with regard to the other attributes of God, the Mu’tazilites made a distinction between essential and active attributes (…) Active attributes, on the other hand, such as love, will, munificence, speech (p.61) mercy, justice, and creation, could be affirmed or denied of God (Maqalat 187,508f.) This amounted to the admission that the latter class of attributes, which are in some relation to their object, are not essential to our conception of God, nor do they belong eternally to Him, as the former class does, but are merely accidental or contingent.
The two attributes over which the fiercest controversy raged in theological and philosophical circles were will and speech. In view of the logical correlation between the divine will and its contingent or created object, a number of Mu’tazilites, particularly the Basrah section of the school, with Abu’l-Hudhail at its head, declared the divine will to be a contingent accident (hadith), and as such to inhere in no substratum, since it could not without logical inconsistency be said to inhere in God Himself (ref: Al-Baghdadi, Usuul al-Din, pp. 90 f., 1o3; al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 189 f., 510). The head of the Baghdad section, Bishr b. al-Mu’tamir, and his followers, however, distinguished between an essential and an active will in God (Al-Ash’ari, Maqiilat, p. 190.), thereby emphasizing the bipolarity of this elusive concept in its double relation to God on the one hand and to the creature on the other. Others, such as al-Nazzam and al-Ka’bi, went one step further and denied altogether that this attribute could apply to God (Fakhry 61,62).
From the Ash’ari school, represented by thinkers like Juwayni and Ghazali are less literalist and so leaves out the body parts of the former school. Further the attributes are “not the essence”, rather “additional to it”. Ghazali mentions the Mu’tazalite teaching regarding the attributes including knowledge being no different from the essence with the exception of the will and the speech which are actually created attributes. Although the attributes are not the essence, yet they are said to subsist in the essence “whether in a receptacle or not”. Ghazali states all God’s attributes are eternal while expressing there being some “disagreement” in this respect with regards to the attributes related to action like creating, providing, misguiding:
“The seven attributes (earlier he has enumerated these as knowing, powerful, living, willing, hearing, seeing and speaking- my addition), which we established are not the essence. Rather, they are additional to the essence. According to us, the maker of the world (Exalted is he) is a knower with knowledge, living with life, powerful with power, and so on with respect to all the attributes. The Muʿtazilites and the philosophers deny this. They say: “The Eternal is one essence, and it is not possible to posit several eternal essences. The proof for these attributes establishes only that He is a knower, powerful, and living, and not [that there are attributes of] knowledge, life, and power.
Let us focus on the attribute of knowledge, so that we do not have to repeat the discussion for all the attributes. They maintain that being a knower is a state of the essence and is not an attribute. The Muʿtazilites, however, make an exception for two attributes. They say that God is a willer with will that is additional to the essence, and He is a sayer with speech that is additional to the essence, that He creates will not in any receptacle, and that He creates speech in a corporeal body, and hence He is considered a sayer through this speech. The philosophers, on the other hand, extend their inference to the case of the will. As for speech, they say He is a sayer in the sense that He creates in the soul of the prophet a hearing of arranged sounds, either while he is asleep or while he is awake. These sounds have no existence outside the soul, but only in the hearing of the prophet.” (Ghazali,184,185)
“we claim that all of these attributes subsist in God’s essence, that none of them could subsist in something other than his essence, whether the attribute is in a receptacle or not…all the divine attributes are eternal” (Ghazali, 194)
“the names that are derived for God from these attributes are true of him eternally- pre-eternally and post-eternally. He is eternally living, knowing, powerful, hearing, seeing and speaking. As for the names that are derived for him from acts such as “the provider”, “the creator”, “the exalter”, and “the debaser”, there is disagreement whether they are true of him eternally or not” (Ghazali, 213)
Literalism- Body Parts as Attributes
Of the Sunni schools, the Hanbalis, prominent among whom are Ahman b.Hanbal & Abu Ya’la place attributes like living, knowing, power, willing, perceiving (sight), speaking, hearing, willing, hands, face, feet and shin within the attributes of Essence, while those of judging, providing, forgiving, punishing, fashioning rewarding, honoring, creating are placed among the attributes of action. Here’s the only quote I can find at the moment, although its admittedly not very specific on the matter:
“God hears and does not doubt, sees and does not doubt, knows and is not ignorant, is generous and not stingy, Clement and not rushed, preserving and not for getting, near and not inobservant. He moves, speaks, looks, laughs, joys, and loves. He loves and hates, detests and is pleased. He is angered and displaced, has mercy and forgives. He makes destitute, gives, and withholds. He descends every night to the lowest heaven however he wills. He is the Hearing and the Observing (Q 42:11) The servants hearts are between two of the most Merciful’s fingers. He turns them over as he wills and fills them with whatever he desires. He created Adam with his Hand in his Image. The heavens and the earth and on the day of resurrection in his Hand. He will put his Foot in the Fire, causing it to recoil. He will remove a number from the fire with his Hand. The people of Paraside will look at his Face, see Him, and honour him” (Ahman b. Hanbal (d.855) Creed no.1, tr. Christopher Melchert).
Agnosticians: Hanafi-Maturidis, Ash’aris?
The Hanafi-Maturidi thinkers al Nasafi are again similar in their distribution of attributes. They are non-comittal as to whether the attributes are God or not and make the classic agnostic assertion “they are not he and not other than he”. They hold that the attributes of action are eternal:
“The names and attributes of God are not He and not other than He…the attributes of God’ actions (…) – are all eternal and everlasting. They are not He and not other than He.” (Abu Mu’in al-Nasafi, Bahr al-kalam (1995), 90-91)
The Neo-Platonists- Shi’as
Not only are the Shi’as non insignificant numbers in the Islamic world today, in early Islam their numbers were much higher. Significantly, Shi’as adopt a Neo-Platonic model
Summarizing the Difficulties of Islamic TM
The harmonization we found in Christianity is simply not possible in TM models like Islam, where the attributes of essence cannot be harmonized with those of action, nor can attributes of essence like the Word, Knowledge (or love, which is not of the essence in Islam) be harmonized with each other or with the Divine essence itself. Thus there remain not just one but three levels of distinctions in the Nature of God in this form of TM: The distinction between the attributes of action and essence, the distinction between the individual attributes themselves, and also a distinction between the attributes and the essence. In summary, TM theology leaves open the question of distinctions that are attributable to the divine essence, because in the absence of plurality of Persons, there is simply no harmonization tool available to it, as we will describe in the section on Christianity which follows. What Christianity does is that it makes it possible that distinctions in God are made possible by relations between the persons rather than divisions within the substance. Those distinctions are not to do with anthropomorphic qualities, rather with the qualities that make God Eternal.
Trinitarian thinking does not Encounter these Issues
How does this relate to the Trinitarian distinctions? Because there is love between the persons and love is the basis for the personal relations, the actions which require interactions do not require to be external to God, because interaction is the essence of God himself. So already we can see that the necessity of the distinction between attributes of essence and action are being obviated. Attributes like mercy, forgiveness and the ability to create pose specific problems, however with love what we have been able to do it to ascribe at least one essential attribute to God and that one attribute is an interaction, or an interactive attribute. If we were to make the simple assumption that in God every attribute is the same as itself, that would mean that every attribute in God is the same as the power of the personal interaction which we have referred to as “love”. Because each of the persons are equal and consubstantial, they all possess that attribute in an identical manner without dividing or differentiating it “between” themselves”. Thus we have a God whose essence is an interaction and we have no need to make a substantial distinction between the two in order for God to have the capacity to interact. This itself is an incredible situation- if we do not presume the necessity of creation, we have just described a fully independent and active deity, simple in form with no complexity and therefore seemingly a perfect model for monotheism. The problems of describing the attributes related to created things, beginning with creation itself can be relegated to “non-essential” and are not a challenge or a defeater to the viability of the monotheistic model. God has one attribute, the attribute of Divinity itself, which is impossible for us to comprehend, leave alone divide. Trinitarianism obviates the need for any division in God, because distinction is provided for by the Persons.
Only Christianity truly says anything about God at all
Christianity requires the acceptance of only ONE fact about the Nature of God, and a further fact that relates to his interaction with Creation. With regards to the former, that one God can be tri-personal, and with regards to the latter, that God can become his creation. Every other belief of Christianity is an entailment of these two. And yet, out of all the world religions, only Christianity truly says something about God at all.
Some religions might appear simple when in fact they merely achieve an illusion of simplicity by providing no facts about the Nature of God. For example, the only positive assertion that Islam makes with regards to the Nature of God is that there is indeed a God. With regards to God’s interaction with Creation, all Islam says is that God forgives sin. There is no indication as to whether this requires a real personal interaction with Creation in order that this be brought about. There is quite a lot of disagreement among Muslims as to whether or not God can even enter creation in the first place. With regards to describing God, all the assertions are in the form of superlatives like mercy, strength and knowledge, all of which in turn, are necessitated by the absurdity of their absence- how could God possibly be weak, irate and “thick”? Elaborating on these superlatives is merely devotional writing, and and entailment of the felt-duty to say positive things about God. Agnosticism with regards to the Nature of God and his mode of interaction with us is perfectly understandable. However agnosticism cannot assert that it is “better” than any other position, the arguments can only be based upon personal incredulity.