The First Cause is a Trinity: No More, No Less
Most of us have been exposed to an image of “God” as a stern old man with flowing white hair and beard, sitting in a flash chair in the clouds, presumably stone deaf because of all the naked babies blaring trumpets all around.
How terribly difficult it is to create a visual image to represent an incomprehensible Isness. Who can draw a picture of I AM WHO AM? Sure, there are pictures representing God the creator, God the Redeemer, God the Judge.... and all that still incomprehensible to the worldly-wise who assume that “God” is “becoming” according to their fancies.
But egos and fancies aside, ordinary people in their often gruesome and trying ordinary lives possess an intuitive understanding of what intellectuals and scholars have struggled to put into words. It's not pretentiously “high brow”; it can be simply described. (Ordinarily logic proceeds from “common sense” except in the ivory towers of academia).
I start from pure logic: the stuff that every Mum with a mind connected to feet on the ground and hands on household management intuitively knows for sure. “A thing that does not exist cannot cause itself to exist”: and its corollary “an effect cannot be greater than its cause(s)”. Things (like you and I) obviously exist and we cannot cause ourselves. The Sun and all the stars do not cause themselves; indeed, they would not be stars if they weren't dissipating themselves by pumping prodigious amounts of matter and energy into cold Space.
As we well know from bitter experience in the cruel physical world entropy runs the show. Every natural (for the purposes of this essay we'll regard interference by human ingenuity and application as “unnatural” according to the usual order of the Universe) physical “happening” dissipates energy and order. Anything that operates by dissipating energy and decaying order must have antecedents of greater order and potential (or consumable, dissipate-able) energy. Life on Earth cannot exist without consuming energy dissipated from the Sun.
Because energy must be dissipated in the establishment and maintenance, or sustaining, of an orderly system some con men with an ideology to sell will try to pretend that the energy consumed in the process creates the order. A sly mental trick.
For example: The best (most succinct and precise) definition (description) of entropy is as it occurs in the "Second Law of Thermodynamics"; "All ordered systems, left to themselves, tend toward maximum randomness and lowest energy (potential or differential)." That means that order naturally tends to degenerate into randomness (disorder) and energy potential tends to dissipate into a uniformity without potential.
Let's propose some practical examples to illustrate the process.
Most mothers like to have an orderly home. Order in Mum’s home requires:
- An intellect to conceive the order.
- The will to want the order.
- The capacity, or power, to implement, or bring about, the order.
Now, that poor Mum who has been toiling away for years to install and maintain the order suddenly finds herself confronted by a clever-dick progeny who's been to school and learned that energy spontaneously creates order. Smarty tries to convince Mum that letting off a bomb (great release of energy) in the middle of her expertly managed domain, will spontaneously create order and she'll never have to tidy up again. Good luck with that one, Smarty!
Or let's lift great weights to great heights. An intellect comes up with an idea of a crane to do the job. Skilled minds and hands divert energy and materials to make the machine using entropy in every step of the process. Smarty, with the benefit of his recently acquired great insights, comes along and proclaims that because the energy to build and operate the crane comes, ultimately, from the Sun then the Sun built the crane. Now, I just happen to know for sure that Central Australia gets lots and lots of solar energy but not one giant crane has ever spontaneously appeared in the desert.
Oh, well, counters Smarty, "that only applies to non-biological systems. Energy applied to biological systems creates an increase in order and complexity opposed to entropy." Smarty has never heard of the "Law of Genetic Entropy” (which is really only entropy applied to biological systems) which says, simply, that "the more complex an organism and the more often it is reproduced, the more likely it is that something will go wrong in the replication of its DNA and in its reproductive process."
So, the thousands of generations of drosophila (fruit flies) that have been subjected to every imaginable radiation "stimulus" to produce "sped up" "evolution" have only ever produced some wreckage of their DNA or genome... not one super-human spaceman.
Ultimately, untold thousands of generations of diligent and wise housekeeping Mums are in tune with reality... the Smarties are not.
Order is a product of Intellect, Will, and Life.
So whence come this Life, Intellect and Will? We all know from simple observation that all these metaphysical “things” or “stuff” exist because we all have them and they order dumb physics and chemistry into live bodies, magnificent corals and cathedrals... none of which can create itself out of randomness.
Everything that is changing or is changeable that exists must have an anterior cause that is greater than itself. Anything else is logically absurd and scientifically impossible according to all the relevant Laws of Nature.
Enter the Uncaused First Cause... that is, the ultimate cause of everything but Himself. He must be eternal because (by definition) He can have no cause. Let's illustrate this simply with the intuitive logic of common sense. One, almost ubiquitously tacitly assumed (but never actually stated by slick salesmen) is an infinite regression of causes. If we accept that a thing that does not exist cannot cause itself to exist and the corollary that an effect cannot be greater than its cause(s), then every cause is greater than its effect. An infinite regression of causes inevitably recedes to an infinite cause.
But an infinite cause would have no need for an infinite number of steps to produce anything.
He must be unchangeable because there's nothing to cause a change. He must be infinite because, outside, or beyond Him and His Work there is no more of anything.
This great Power (Life) must also be the great Intellect because, according to common sense observation, “things” are carefully crafted to “work” as they do, and systems are orderly processes that do not create themselves. He must also be the great Will because without the “I want it” there is no action, or result.
Most of us have some “idea” of who and what we are and, for most of us (diabolical narcissists excepted), our “idea” of ourselves bears some resemblance to the “fact” of self.
The infinite Being with the infinite Intellect, however, has an “idea” of Himself that is precisely what He is... no glitch or error. Everything the same. The Second Person; distinct but inseparably integral.
The First Person knows exactly Who He is and that knowledge of Himself is the Second Person, or “the Word” as sometimes called in Scripture.
So God “knows” the absolute perfection which is Himself... and He loves the perfection that is the very definition of “goodness”. The greatest act of love is the gift of self. We see it in very muted form here on Earth with the gift of self in spouses and parents, and patriots. A gift must have a receiver of the gift and the receiver must be able to accept the gift. An infinite gift must have an infinite receptacle. The First Person gifts Himself in love as does the Second Person because neither can do what the other does not and that gift of self to each other with no reservations or glitches or blips is precisely God in every sense. The Third Person.
There can be no more and there can be no less. One omnipotent, omniscient, omni magnanimous Being of three Persons, eternal and unchangeable.
Any “God” that is not a Trinity is a Satan pretending to be God. There is no possibility that a Supreme Being could not know and love the goodness of His Own perfection and act with it. Creation, Redemption, Justice, Mercy, Heaven, and Hell are that Act.
