Zeus Never Loved You.

Pastor Van Oosten has a new post at Theology for Dummies on the enduring importance of Trinitarian theology for the "Christian in the pews."

He writes:

Some people seem to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is irrelevant to how we live as Christians. I do not believe this is true. First of all, Christianity is fundamentally about a relationship with God. Consequently, it would seem vitally important for us to know the One we claim to worship and love.

In the very notion of the Trinity is built in the reality of a community of love. God is not a solitary King of the universe, reigning eternally alone. Rather, God is a communion of Persons, a family, so to speak. In the Trinity there is the Father and a Son bound together by an Eternal Love which is a Third Person, the Holy Spirit.

In my experience, most Christians have not heard that the Holy Spirit is theologically termed the Love of God. In fact, Love is the proper personal name of the Holy Spirit just as the Word is the proper personal name of the Son.

Here is Aquinas explaining the personal name of the Holy Spirit.

“The name Love in God can be taken essentially and personally. If taken personally it is the proper name of the Holy Ghost; as Word is the proper name of the Son…” (ST 1, Q. 37, A. 1)

One of the things that we must realize about God is that everything in Him is essential to His nature. His attributes and nature are identical. For instance, God doesn’t have goodness like I have it. Sometimes I am good, and then…well, you know where I am going with this. God, though, is goodness Itself. Therefore, God’s love is not something He just “kinda” has; He is Love. Love is an eternal, essential reality in God’s divine Self. In fact, it is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Now, in order for there to be love there needs to be three things. There needs to be a lover, a beloved, and the actual bond of love between them. In the Trinity, the Father is the divine Lover and His Beloved is the Son. The bond of love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.

Here, again, is Aquinas.

“The Holy Ghost is said to be the bond of the Father and Son, inasmuch as He is Love; because, since the Father loves Himself and the Son with one Love, and conversely, there is expressed in the Holy Ghost, as Love, the relation of the Father to the Son, and conversely, as that of the lover to the beloved. But from the fact that the Father and the Son mutually love one another, it necessarily follows that this mutual Love, the Holy Ghost, proceeds from both. As regards origin, therefore, the Holy Ghost is not the medium, but the third person in the Trinity; whereas as regards the aforesaid relation He is the bond between the two persons, as proceeding from both.” (ST 1, Q. 37, A. 1)

Here is a thought for you. If God were just a solitary King without a Trinitarian nature, there would not be love intrinsic to His essential being. As a self-existent Being, a non-Trinitarian God would have no Beloved to love. My point is, because God is a Trinity of divine Persons, love is an eternal reality.

My two cents follow:

I think this is spot on:"Some people seem to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is irrelevant to how we live as Christians. I do not believe this is true. First of all, Christianity is fundamentally about a relationship with God. Consequently, it would seem vitally important for us to know the One we claim to worship and love."

According to Robert Louis Wilken, if someone had asked an early Christian about the basis of his faith, he would have been told about the nature of God.

The idea that "God is love" was a unique thing in human history. The recent "The Clash of the Titans" anachronistically retrojected Christian notions about God's love back on to Zeus in a fashion that would have been unimaginable to pagans.

I wrote a review of Spiegel's "The Making of an Atheist." Needless to say, some atheist chucklehead had to offer some contentless sneer:

"sensus divinitatis" works equally well for Zeus. Zeus loves you. Why do you hate Zeus?

My response:

Before the 2010 release of the remade "Clash of the Titans", no one had ever claimed that "Zeus loves you." The best that the ancient Greeks could hope from Zeus was that he might send some extra rain their way or not punish them with storms. Failing that, their hope was that Zeus would ignore them if they performed their sacrifices properly. No one claimed that Zeus so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, or that Zeus desired that all men be saved, or that Zeus was love. These were unique claims to Christianity - not to the classical Greek gods - and were among the reasons - including with the fact that Christians practiced charity as part of their religious obligations (See Julian the Apostate's complaint against paganism) - that Christianity attracted followers and the worship of Zeus lost followers.

Rodney Stark puts it this way:

"There was nothing new in the idea that the supernatural makes behavioral demands upon humans," says Stark, for the prevailing gods had always required sacrifices and devotion. Nor was there anything new in the belief that the gods would sometimes pat a supplicant on the head in return for devotion, whether by curing a disease, dropping rain on a parched field, or routing an antagonist. "What was new was the notion that more than self-interested exchange relations were possible between humans and the supernatural. The Christian teaching that God loves those who love him was alien to pagan belief....Christians cannot please God unless they love one another. Indeed, as God demonstrates his love through sacrifice, humans must demonstrate their love through sacrifice on behalf of one another ....These were revolutionary ideas."

[As cited in Christianity on Trial, p. 142 - 143.]