#933 Discord among the Trinitarian Persons Once More
March 30, 2025Dr. Craig,
I had a question about the Persons of the Trinity and the idea of possible worlds. I was recently reading your "Attributes of God" series to my daughter. In "God is Three Persons," Papa answers the objection, "But then what if [all the persons] disagreed with each other?" by responding, "Each is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. So God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always agree and act together in everything." I understand this statement to mean that God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence cause all members of the Trinity to choose to bring about what is best.
However, elsewhere in your published work, you have posited that there may be no such thing as a "best possible world." In your lecture, "Must God Choose the Best?" you say, "...there is no reason whatsoever to think that there is exactly one best possible decree that God might issue. There is very plausibly an indefinite range of decrees available to God which are equally good and unsurpassable. In other words, there could be many options tied for best."
If this is the case, what would stop the Persons of the Trinity from disagreeing? Say there are three "options tied for best." What is stopping the Father from choosing option A, the Son from choosing option B, and the Spirit choosing option C, if all are equally good and if all the members of the Trinity, in their omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, could plausibly bring about any one of them? The only reason I could think why they *wouldn't* disagree is if the Son and Holy Spirit voluntarily submit to the will of the Father (which seems to be in-line with what Scripture teaches), but even in this scenario, they theoretically *could* disagree. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this: Even if the Father, Son, and Spirit never *do* disagree, is there any reason why they *couldn't* disagree?
Reasonable Faith has had a tremendous impact on my faith and its relationship to my intellect. Thank you for all you and your ministry do!
Blessings,
Larry
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
What an insightful question! Actually, we needn’t entertain anything so exotic as an infinite range of ever better possible worlds in order to pose the question. Any sort of arbitrary choice will do. For example, al-Ghazālī held that it is the essence of free will to distinguish like from like, and he imagined God’s choosing the cosmic spheres to rotate in a counter-clockwise rather than a clockwise direction as an illustration.
It's important to keep in mind that Swinburne appeals to God’s omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in order to rule out the possibility of discord among the persons of the Trinity. Omniscience would serve to rule out any factual disagreements, since they all know the very same facts. In a case like yours, the disagreement is not factual, but preferential. Here it is plausibly God’s moral perfection that would prevent the members of the Trinity from being at odds with one another.
Notice that this does not require that they all choose the best, for as the example illustrates, there may be no best choice. Rather they would necessarily all make the same choice. The perfect goodness of each person would preclude his being in discord with the others. This is similar to your solution that “the Son and Holy Spirit voluntarily submit to the will of the Father,” except that rather than appeal to the Father’s authority I appeal to the Son and Spirit’s perfect goodness.
I don’t think you need to worry that on your solution “they theoretically *could* disagree,” for on the classic doctrine of the Trinity, the Son and Holy Spirit submit necessarily, if freely, to the Father’s will. Similarly, on my proposal, the perfect goodness of the Trinitarian persons would necessarily preclude their preferring discord over harmony. Add to the mix the fact that each of the persons is omnipotent, and I think we have powerful reasons for thinking that it is metaphysically impossible for them to be in conflict.
- William Lane Craig