by slimboyfat 57 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
A inflation event some 13:9 billion years ago.
And what was responsible for that event?
Above my pay grade
Astrophysicist can provide a explanation for the inflation event.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Professor Brian cox
Also Lawrence Krauss a theoretical physicist and cosmologist
Other physicists are available.
Astrophysicist can provide a explanation for the inflation event.
As I said, you and I and all of these extremely knowledgeable scientists would agree on each effect's cause until we got to first cause.
Scriptures state God is the alpha and the omega.
So, he is the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet?
The First and the Last of what and what?
The Beginning and the End of what and what?
That aside as it says nothing to what I said:
Apply the same explanation to how God is said to exist.
Explain how God came into existence. When you're done, then answer if that is what you claim about God existing, then maybe there is no God at all, but is the said explanation of how all things that do exist came to be?
Rowan Williams is an impressive thinker. He has thought deeply about the issues of God’s existence, suffering, and meaning, and is sincere in sharing his conclusions. He wrote a significant book on Arius and, while Williams is obviously a Trinitarian, he presents a fair account of Arianism. He acknowledges that in the fourth century Christological debate it was Arius who was the theological conservative standing up for the traditional teaching that Jesus is subordinate to God. And he was such a good Archbishop of Canterbury compared with the latest scumbag Welby who never had a significant thought for anything other than himself.
Halcon
No first cause ,a monk aquinas who used it to reason to point to the existence of a god.
Prof Brian cox was questioned about this when he was explaining what that the James Webb telescope was able to look back to about 300 million years after the inflation event and stars etc were starting to form, his reply to the question was "we don't know "" but they do have theories eg that theirs a multiverse, you can't disprove that theory, but you also can't admit that we just don't know, but experts in that field can admit that they don't know yet. So no evidence of a first cause.
Duran-Explain how God came into existence. When you're done, then answer if that is what you claim about God existing, then maybe there is no God at all, but is the said explanation of how all things that do exist came to be?
If I say God has always existed with no beginning, I am to also say that all things have always existed with no beginning as well (if I understand your question correctly)?
As a Christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.--Italics added.
This is also the fundamental flaw in most religious reasoning.
Things are what they are: energy is energy and love is love and God is God and what is natural is natural and what is supernatural is supernatural.
Yet once you start redefining things, such as saying energy is love and love is God and nature or what is natural is the same as the supernatural, you start to play word games that either please yourself and your audience or are designed to aid in keeping you from having to admit that your religion is not reasonable.
When Jewish people said "God," they did not imagine "energy" or the Christian human definition of "love." Switching definitions for "God" is simple, labeling YHWH as a human emotion one moment and then as power the next. Why not call God a "quarterback" or "dancer" or "sadness" or "AC/DC"? We are simply attributing whatever definitions seem appropriate to our belief system once we start to do that.
If God is "energy" then why not just attribute what you are saying to actual energy? If God is "love," then why not just say "love" instead of speaking of a deity that isn't there? If you mean nature, why not say "nature"?
Why hold onto the supernatural at all? Because these people who write these things are surrounded by people or come from systems that worship or attribute significance to the supernatural. They are stuck between the rational and voodoo and cannot let go.
So they make up definitions, switch words around. "God is science." Or "God created us by means of evolution." Why not attribute your faith to science or in evolution? They still fear being struck down by God if they do.
So they teach people to 'call it what you like.' It won't work on a rational level if you don't make new definitions for the old gods.
but experts in that field can admit that they don't know yet. So no evidence of a first cause.
Suddenly, at the absolute beginning of it all...there's no evidence of a cause for everything that came after.
I figured this is where we would differ.
Actually, the Trinity perfectly grounds the act of creation in love. Your objection misconstrues the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly its relation to love, will, and freedom. Rat her than undermining God's loving choice to create, the Trinity provides the metaphysical basis that makes the act of creation an expression of love in the first place. To claim that because God exists eternally as a Trinity, creation is not a free act of love, is to misunderstand the relationship between divine necessity and divine freedom.
God is absolutely simple and free (Summa Theologiae I, q.19, a.3). Nothing outside God necessitates His action. While the divine persons are eternally and necessarily who they are in relation to each other (Father, Son, Spirit), God’s act of creation is not necessary, but contingent and free. The Trinity does not impel God to create the world. God creates not out of compulsion but out of the fullness of His being. As Aquinas writes: “The love of God is the cause of the goodness of things” (ST I, q.20, a.2). God's triune being—eternal communion of love—is precisely why creation can be an act of love. In other words: God’s inner Trinitarian life is the eternal actuality of love, and creation is an overflow of that love—not a necessity imposed by it.
Rowan Williams says: “The world exists because God desires that there be an other.” This is profoundly true. But this truth is only possible in a God who already knows what “otherness in unity” means. And this is precisely what the Trinity offers. The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Spirit—yet they are one in essence. God is not monadic solitude, but unity-in-communion. If God were absolutely solitary (as in strict unitarianism), then love would not be essential to His nature, but something realized only after creating another. That would make love contingent. In contrast, the Trinity teaches that God is eternally love (1 John 4:8) because He is eternally relational in Himself. Augustine, echoing Scripture, says: “There is the Lover (Father), the Beloved (Son), and Love Itself (Spirit).” Thus, the Trinity does not hinder God's ability to create as an act of love—it is the very reason He is capable of loving at all.
The claim assumes that if God's love is eternal within the Trinity, then the act of sharing existence with creatures is not truly "loving." But this is a false dichotomy. Creation is a gratuitous participation in God’s goodness (ST I, q.44, a.4). God does not need to create in order to be loving. Rather, creation is a free expression of the eternal Love that already exists within God. The Son and the Spirit are not "creatures" brought into being out of loneliness. They are eternally generated, consubstantial persons of the Godhead. Creatures, unlike the Son, are created ex nihilo. That difference makes all the difference. God’s love in creating is not about fulfilling a lack, but about sharing the fullness of being, gratuitously.
Let us test your claim against its own logic. If God were unipersonal (as in strict unitarian theologies), then before creation, God could not love another in a real, personal sense. Thus, love would not be an eternal attribute of God, but something contingent—dependent on creation. This contradicts 1 John 4:8: “God is love.” A God who requires creation in order to be loving is a dependent being—not the God of classical theism. Only a Trinitarian God can be said to be essentially and eternally love, which is the very foundation upon which creation as an act of love makes sense.
Your response raises profound theological considerations about God’s self-sufficiency, creation, and love. However, your conclusion—that divine love and the Trinity are incompatible or unnecessary—overlooks a critical theological truth: God’s love is eternal and must therefore be interpersonal from all eternity, not something contingent upon creation. Let me respond in detail to the key points you raised.
Yes, “God is sufficient in himself”, Trinitarians wholeheartedly agree — and that’s precisely why the Trinity is necessary. If God is truly self-sufficient (aseity), and yet God is love (1 John 4:8), then love must be intrinsic to God’s being. But genuine love always implies a beloved and a loving relationship. If God is love and yet eternally alone (as in unitarian theology), then love becomes contingent, dependent on the creation of others. That would mean God changed — from a non-loving being into a loving being — which contradicts divine immutability (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17). Only a Triune God can be truly self-sufficient and eternally loving. In the Trinity:
Therefore, God's love does not begin with creation; it is eternal and internal to His very being. Love isn't just something God does — it's who He is.
You wrote: “God doesn’t require another, but chooses to create others as an expression of love.” Again, true. But if God were not tri-personal, then prior to creation, He would have no object of love. That means love would not be eternal — it would only come into expression after the creation of the first “other.” So, either God did not love until He created something else (denying 1 John 4:8), or love is not essential to God’s nature (denying God’s immutability and fullness), or God has always been a community of love — the Trinity. The third is the only consistent answer.
“Before” does not apply to God — He is outside of time, this is correct. But this further strengthens the Trinitarian view. If God is timeless, then everything essential to God exists eternally and simultaneously. That includes God's love. So unless God exists eternally in relationship, love is not eternally real — or else we are forced to say God was incomplete without creation. This is not just philosophical speculation. In John 17:5, Jesus says:
“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed.”
Here Jesus speaks of eternal communion with the Father. Not as a creature, but as the pre-existent Son.
Rowan Williams is indeed a thoughtful scholar, and his book Arius: Heresy and Tradition is widely respected. But it's important to note that Williams’ fairness toward Arius is not an endorsement of Arianism. In fact, Williams ultimately argues that Arianism failed because it could not explain the soteriological implications of the Incarnation. If Christ is not truly God, he cannot unite humanity with God (cf. Athanasius, De Incarnatione). Arius’ subordinationist Christ may be a noble creature, but he is not capable of saving. That’s why the Nicene Creed rejected Arianism and affirmed that Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” The early Church understood that a merely created Christ could not save us or mediate divine life. Only one who shares in the same essence with the Father can reconcile us to God.
If God is a solitary monad, then love and relationship are not essential to His being. If God is a Triune communion, then love, relationship, and mutual self-giving are eternal realities. We are made in God's image. We are personal, relational, loving beings. That is not a bug, but a feature — a reflection of our Creator. In the end, the Trinity is not a “complication.” It is the only explanation that preserves:
To deny the Trinity is not to make God simpler — it's to make Him less.
You’re right: “God is not an additional thing in the universe that requires explanation. He is the explanation.” And the clearest expression of who He is comes in the person of Jesus Christ — the eternal Word made flesh, who reveals the Father and sends the Spirit (John 14:26; John 15:26). That is the Triune God: not a philosophical abstraction, but the living God who loves eternally and acts in history to save. “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3) — not in opposition, but in perfect communion.
The claim that “God’s first act of love was to create his firstborn son” is a return to the old Arian heresy. But Scripture and tradition deny that the Son was created:
Thus, the Son is not created, but eternally begotten, and creation is not the beginning of God’s love—it is its overflow.
Rather than refuting the Trinity, the desire to understand creation as an act of love actually depends on a Trinitarian framework:
As C.S. Lewis once noted: “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.”
To affirm that creation is an act of love is to implicitly affirm the Trinity, even if unknowingly.
Ah ChatGPT enters the thread …
To respond to the earlier point about God’s attributes: early Christian writers expressed different views on this. Some early writers (I think Tertullian) said that there was a time when God wasn’t Father because he didn’t become Father until the only begotten son came into existence. Later Trinitarians would turn this on its head and argue that God must always have been Father and therefore in fact the Son didn’t come into existence. Intuition, common sense, and the language of scripture indicates (to me at least) that the first position advocated by Tertullian makes more sense. One of the fundamental attributes of fathers is that they are older than their sons, and scripture talks about Wisdom being begotten long ago as the first of God’s acts of creation (Prov 8.22), that the Word was “in the beginning” (John 1.1), that Jesus lives “because of the Father” (John 5.67), is “the firstborn of all creation” (Col 1.15), and is “the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev 3.14). If all those expressions are not meant to convey that Jesus is God’s first creation then it’s an odd choice of language. No wonder a majority of ordinary Christians when polled agree with JWs that Jesus is God’s first creation. It takes a lot of strained argumentation from Trinitarian apologists committed to Nicene orthodoxy to convince a person otherwise.
