Who Was God Loving before He Created Us?

            One of my favorite questions to ask my students (and I borrowed this from one of my graduate school professors) is related to the claim that God is a community. I give my students this claim and question: “If we assume God is Love and if Love has both a Lover and a Beloved, then who was God Loving before He created us?” The question is a bit loaded. My sharper students remind me that we cannot use temporal vocabulary like “before” when we talk about God. I put my head in my hands and revise the question: “Since God exists independent of us, and if God is Love, then who does God Love and who Loves God independent of us?” Technically, it is a better question, although a bit complicated. Usually it is the same students who caught the temporal problem with the former question who can actually answer. They were really just showing off before. “God must be Loving Himself and God must be Loved by Himself,” they respond. I ask the class in return, “So God just Loves Himself? What does this say about God? What can we conclude about God based on this?” Occasionally I have to lead students to some of the deeper logical conclusions, but most of the time I get responses like: “God must be really into Himself” or “God really likes Himself.” They are not wrong, but they are not completely right. “But is this type of self-Love consistent with Agape as self-gift or humility, like we have discussed before?” St. John and the Church Fathers interpreted Agape in Scripture as a kind of Love that asks for nothing in return. That is, it is a Love that is not self-interested or egotistical. It is “self-donation” or submission of Will for the sake of the Truth of self and the other. It is the opposite of what we see in the Fall of Adam and Eve. It requires a distinct individual to acquiesce their Will, and their ego, out of concern for the Other. In order for God to be Love, as St. John wrote, then God must possess at least two distinct identities within God’s self. There must be an identity that is Love and another that is Beloved. This is, at least, how St. Augustine describes the persons in the Trinity. God is Lover and Beloved in two distinct persons (or more). My students can at least leave my class with a little bit of this theological language and understanding of the Trinity. It gets complicated when we talk about the third person of the Trinity and how this is not some form of polytheism.

The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland (photo P. Smith).