Directly dependent on the existential-personal dimension of Love, is the dogma of triunity. The term “Dogma” does not apply to something “inexplicable” (as we shall see further down), but to something “rudimentary”.  To be precise, it signifies the “rationalizing of something that cannot be expressed”; a rationalizing that founds the gnostic edifice.

If God –as an absolute essence– had only one person, then that person could not exist independently of the essence, and subsequently would not be able to be in communion with it existentially, through Love.

If the beyond-time and non-finite essence of God were expressed (existentially) through one person only, then that person would have been obliged to acknowledge it (the essence) out of necessity, otherwise it would be abolishing itself. Furthermore, the person would also be incapable of loving the essence, because it would - inevitably- be in an eternal co-existence with it, ontologically as well.

Therefore, on the basis of Aristotelian logic, what would the single person of the divine be contradistinguished with existentially (in order to define itself), if the essence alone were the “other reigning factor”?  We can see how this would have meant a compulsory relationship, and not a relationship of freedom, of Love.

The problem of a God subjugated to Fate, which was previously an ontological problem, is posed once again - but now as an existential problem - and cannot be solved.  Triunity (the co-existence of three persons) solves this problem of a servant God, because the three persons define themselves individually and each other, and they also freely choose to love, to exist in communion with each other, thus giving that same divine essence a hypostasis. At an ordinary ontological level, this issue appears impossible to solve.

Love, therefore, in Christian theology and life theory, is not a simple sentiment.  It is an existential category, which defines that very concept and experience of God, and even further, the very concept and experience of man.

If God exists in this manner because He loves, then man also is understood-fulfilled in this manner, and not in any other, because he loves.  When this does not occur, man is self-annulled.

 

Continuation, with topic: “Love and the human community”

 

Excerpt from the magazine “TREETO MAHTI”, December 2004 edition No.128, pages 22-26.  Article written by V. Bakouros, with the general title “Socialistic Social Solidarity and Christian Love”.