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:
- The Father loves the Son (John 17:24),
- The Son reciprocates this love (John 14:31),
- The Spirit is often described by the Church Fathers as the bond of love (cf. Augustine, De Trinitate).
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:
- God’s self-sufficiency,
- God’s unchanging nature,
- God’s eternal love,
- God’s ability to truly save.
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:
- John 1:1 — “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God.”
- Colossians 1:15 — The “Firstborn of all creation” means “preeminent,” not first-created (cf. Psalm 89:27; Romans 8:29).
- The Nicene Creed: “Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
- Thomas Aquinas: “The generation of the Word is eternal… The Son is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father” (ST I, q.42, a.2).
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:
- Only if God is eternally a communion of persons can love be an eternal attribute of His nature.
- Only if creation is unnecessary can it be truly free and loving.
- Only in the Trinity do we find unity without solitude, and diversity without division—the very conditions for love and freedom.
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.