Here I present a previous paper in my series of essays on divine love and plurality, but without the technical philosophical machinery. For me, it is helpful to see the core reasoning in everyday language. The argument itself remains exactly as rigorous—I’ve simply translated the concepts into more familiar terms. If one finds themselves comfortable with technical nomenclature and formal modal logic, see the version with all the technical machinery intact. Otherwise, the version below reaches the same conclusion through the same logical steps. I suppose they just speak different dialects.
God, perfection, and the claim “God is love”
Many people who believe in God affirm two things simultaneously: God is the greatest possible being, and God is love—not just loving sometimes, but love all the way down. This raises a question most don’t notice at first: Can a God who is totally alone—one single divine person—really be perfect love, even before creating anything?
Love seems different from attributes like power or intelligence. You can be all-powerful by yourself, but love doesn’t look like something you can have “all by yourself” in the fullest sense. Love reaches outward. It aims at someone. So if God is perfect love, does God have to be “more-than-solitary” in God’s own eternal life?
Essential terms
Aseity means God doesn’t depend on anything outside God to be God. God isn’t “completed” by the universe.
Contingent creation means God didn’t have to create. God could have chosen not to make anything at all.
Possible worlds are just “ways things could have been”—a tool for thinking clearly about what’s necessary versus what’s optional.
Essential means something God has in every possible situation where God exists. It’s not optional or temporary—it’s part of what makes God, God.
What i mean by “perfect love”
I’m not using “love” in a thin sense like “being nice” or “having good intentions.” By perfect love, I mean the highest kind of love we recognize as truly excellent: personal love, where one person knows, wills, delights in, and gives themselves for the good of another person who is genuinely distinct.
Self-respect and healthy self-love can be good things. But the kind of love we usually admire most—the kind that looks like an ultimate moral perfection—is love that genuinely reaches toward another.
The argument in plain language (without the technical machinery)
P1. If God exists, God is perfectly good—nothing is missing in God.
P2. Perfect love is part of that perfect goodness.
P3. Perfect love involves loving someone who is truly “other,” not just oneself.
P4. God didn’t have to create anyone. God could have existed alone, with no creatures.
P5. If God were only one person, then without creatures there would be no “other” to love—so God wouldn’t be perfect love.
Therefore: If God is perfect love, God cannot be a solitary, one-person God. There must be eternal relationship within God.
Why God can’t “borrow” love from creation
This is where aseity becomes crucial. If God only becomes “fully loving” after creating, then God’s perfection would depend on something outside God: a world, creatures, a choice to create. Love would be something God gets to express only once creation exists, not something God simply is in God’s own eternal life.
But if God is truly independent—if God doesn’t need anything external to be fully God—then God’s being perfect love can’t be something that “turns on” only after creatures exist.
The logic is straightforward: If love is essential to God, and creation is optional, then there must be someone for God to love who isn’t a created being.
Three important distinctions
Much confusion disappears once we separate these ideas:
Actual love versus merely being ready to love. It’s one thing to be “the kind of person who would love someone if they existed.” It’s another thing to actually live in love. If love is one of God’s essential perfections, then God’s love can’t be like a dormant capacity waiting for creation to activate it. Think of a handshake: you can be ready to shake hands while alone, but the handshake itself only exists when another hand is actually there. In the same way, if God is perfect love, that love isn’t merely readiness—it is actual, living communion with a genuine other.
Personal love versus impersonal goodwill. Perfect love isn’t just generosity toward things or abstract ideas. It’s not “I promote the good” in a vague way. It’s personal: knowing and willing the good of another person in a relationship.
Other-directed love versus only self-directed love. Healthy self-love can be appropriate. But the most impressive, richest form of love involves real otherness—another who is not just “me under a description,” but someone genuinely distinct.
What this argument shows (and does not show)
This argument doesn’t claim to prove Christianity. It doesn’t claim to establish the full doctrine of the Trinity by itself.
What it does show is more modest but philosophically significant: If God is essentially perfect love, and if creation is optional, then there’s strong reason to think God is not a lone, single-person deity. There’s logical pressure toward eternal relationality within God—some kind of “within-God” Lover-and-Beloved reality that doesn’t depend on the universe existing.
The question isn’t whether God can love. The question is whether a solitary God can be love—perfect, personal, other-directed love—in God’s very essence, even in possible worlds where nothing else exists. The argument suggests the answer is no: perfect love requires eternal communion within the divine life itself.