Scriptorium Daily
....Aristotle supposes the world to have been eternal, that is, streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, as the light from the sun, and that there was no instant of duration assignable of God’s existence in which the world didn’t also actually coexist.
This error seems grounded on a true notion of the eternal infinite goodness of God, which he truly supposes must eternally be communicating good to something or other, and it was his want of the knowledge of revealed religion that probably led him into it.
Aristotle, other words, was half right. It’s true that God is infinitely good, and that his goodness is of a kind to be giving itself away to others. But that doesn’t mean that God always needed to have a world around to give his goodness to. Aristotle’s problem, Susanna argued, was that he had never heard of the Trinity.
For had he ever heard of that great article of our Christian faith concerning the Holy Trinity, he had then perceived the almighty Goodness eternally communicating being and all the fullness of the Godhead to the divine Logos, his uncreated Word, between whose existence and that of the Father there is not one moment assignable. As likewise the eternal Spirit, streaming from the Father and Son by connatural result and emanation as light from the sun…
The little old world doesn’t have to bear the burden of being God’s eternal recipient of self-giving goodness. The eternal Son has eternally existed alongside the Father, receiving eternally and fully the goodness of God the Father. Had Aristotle known this, he could have kept his correct notion of God as self-giving goodness, without being forced into the error of thinking the world was God’s eternal partner.
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Consider the infinite boundless goodness of the ever blessed Trinity, adore the stupendous mystery of divine love! That God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost should all concur in the work of man’s redemption! What but pure goodness could move or excite God, who is perfect essential blessedness! That cannot possibly receive any accession of perfection or happiness from his creatures. What, I say, but love, but goodness, but infinite incomprehensible love and goodness could move him to provide such a remedy for the fatal lapse of his sinful unworthy creatures? (Works p. 225)
Her starting point was a joyful certainty that God was not needy, but absolutely self-sufficing. He created the world not because he needed an outlet for his love, and certainly not because his blessedness was cramped and needed more objects in order to increase:
Then consider what that blessed Being is to us –A creator, he made us of nothing; we are the effect of infinite power, wisdom and goodness! He had no need of us, being perfectly happy in the contemplation of his own perfections; therefore not to increase but communicate his happiness and glory did he give us being. (Works p. 304, dated 1709)
The doctrine of the Trinity is a complex matter, and a variety of things might come to mind when you think of the doctrine. Most Christians, sadly, immediately think of the tension between the three and the one, and start casting about for analogies for it. For Susanna Wesley, apparently the first thought that leaped to mind when the subject of the Trinity came up was, instead, the absolute self-sufficiency of God as a triune fellowship of love. Closely linked to that divine aseity, however, was the unexacted, unaccountable freedom of his generosity in creating and redeeming us.
We know there is but one living and true God, though revealed to us under three characters –that of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In God the Father we live, move, and have our natural being; in God the Son, as Redeemer of mankind, we have our spiritual being since the fall; and by the operation of his Holy Spirit the work of grace is begun and carried on in the soul; and there is no other name given under heaven by which men can be saved, but that of the Lord Jesus. (more)
