What are the prerequisites of love, and what insight, if any, do they provide into God’s nature?
At least five elements must be present in order for friendship or relational love to be experienced:
(1) Two (or more) persons;
(2) Both of whom possess the power to affect one another through their decision-making;
(3) Each must voluntarily;
(4) Place faith in one another to treat each other in a beneficent manner; and
(5) Act selflessly toward one another. This final requirement includes affirmative acts of kindness, as well as abstention from the pursuit of self-centered ends which can only be obtained at the expense of the other person. Both of these forms of selflessness require at least some level of self-sacrifice.
The first item on this list states that love cannot occur without the existence of two or more persons. This self-evident fact of relational love can easily be verified through personal experience. Anyone who has ever experienced relational love knows that it is not something a person experiences by himself.
But what does this self-evident fact of love tell us about God’s being? 1 John 4:8 declares that “God is love.” If love cannot be experienced without two or more persons, this means that God himself must consist of more than one person. God could not be love itself if this were not the case.
So how many persons is God? According to the doctrine of the Trinity, God is a unity of three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Something analogous to a “society” exists between these three persons, with each one engaging in all of the reciprocities of faith and selflessness required for the experience of love. The love between them is so perfect, so total, that it forms a single unified being—the being called “God.” In other words, God’s very personhood is the ‘product’ of perfect love; God is, quite literally, the personification of love.
What does any of this have to do with the problem of evil? Just as the prerequisites of love provide us with insights into the nature of God’s being, the prerequisites of love provide the key to understanding the solution to the problem of evil. In order to solve the problem of evil and the problem of pain, one must first assume that the purpose of man’s existence is to experience love with God and with one another. Next, one must identify the prerequisites of love, and then understand why the existence of these prerequisites create the very conditions that allow for the possibility of evil and suffering.
Counterintuitively, love is the reason why evil exists. More specifically, the prerequisites of love are the reason why evil exists. The Advent of Time explains why.