I-Thou relationships

Recently I wrote a reply to apostate Dale Tuggy:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/10/unitarian-solipsism.html

He attempted to respond:

http://trinities.org/blog/hayss-nelson-muntz-objection-to-unitarian-theology/

Let's focus on a few key claims:

Steve, you’re the one trying to make a problem here; it is incumbent on you to show some impossibility. 

No, it's not incumbent on me to show some "impossibility". Rather, I only need to show that there are philosophical reasons to doubt unitarianism. There's no general principle that philosophical objections must show the "impossibility" of the alternative. Dale is rigging the game. 

Our understanding of God requires us to analogize from human experience. That’s our frame of reference.

Again, revelation, not just experience.

Misses the point. Divine self-revelation would be inapprehensible if there was nothing similar in human experience to compare it to. 

That is why the scriptural king-subjects and husband-wife metaphors are appropriate for the God-creatures relation.

Which proves my point. Theological metaphors presume that God and man are similar in some respects. Hence, theological arguments from analogy. 

But let’s not lose where we are in the argument. Suppose that divine-person to divine-person love would be qualitatively better than divine-person-human love. But, why must a divine person enjoy that better kind of love? Because he’s “perfectly loving.” That’s a clear non sequitur, though. One can be perfectly loving without actually loving another. To have the perfectly loving character trait does not imply engaging in the best kind of love. 

Dale is consistently unable or unwilling to adapt to the actual state of the argument. As I've repeatedly explained to him, my argument isn't dependent on "perfect" love. Dale keeps substituting an easier target to attack. His intellectual evasiveness is revealing. 

On the one hand, he denies that God has to make creatures to provide I-Thou relationships. On the other hand, he regards divine self-love as sufficient. So where is there room in God’s essential nature for this intrinsic capacity?  

Self-love is sufficient for what?

In my view, intrinsically and essentially, God is able to love another, and he is also essentially all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing. So necessarily, God possibly has someone to love, someone he makes.

From a unitarian perspective, why would God be less than “essentially absolutely perfect” if he didn’t have an innate capacity for interpersonal relationships?

Because then he wouldn’t be absolutely perfect. He’d be greater if he had such a capacity. To not have it would be a terrific disability.

Would God be incomplete if he lacked that capacity? But why would he be incomplete if he lacked a capacity for something that’s unnecessary to his being and well-being? If the unitarian God is complete without interpersonal relationships, and if self-love is sufficient, why is it necessary for him to have that capacity in the first place? Isn’t that superfluous rather than essential?  

I’ve just answered all of these questions above. Capacity for love of another is plausibly necessary to his being, as it seems essential. But here’s another compatible answer. If a god is supposed to be someone we can personally deal with, personally relate to, who can hear our prayers, intervene, forgive, help – then such a being must be capable of a kind of friendship with humans. So “God” would hardly be a god, in the above sense, if “God” were unable to love another. But the biblical “God” is supposed to be a god, a necessarily unique one. Of course, a unitarian Christian thinks that God is a loving, merciful, covenant-making god because of scripture, tradition, and Christian experience. But yeah, even a full-blooded concept of a deity seems to presuppose a capacity for some kind of interpersonal love.

Whether the unitarian God is self-sufficient is not a given. That’s the very question at issue. What’s the basis for presuming that a unitarian God who experiences the (physiological) passage of time is immune to loneliness? 

Perfect being theology. Self-sufficiency seems to be a perfection. It is implied, I think, by aseity – that God neither exists nor has his perfections because of any other.

i) Notice that Dale can never provide an actual explanation for why a unitarian God necessarily has a capacity for interpersonal relationships or loving another. All he does is to repeat the same circular appeal. But the appeal is groundless. 

Compare that to Trinitarian theism. That provides an underlying reason. God has an intrinsic capacity for interpersonal relationships because God is intrinsically interpersonal. God essentially has the potential to love creatures because that's an extension of the intra-Trinitarian fellowship. 

ii) Moreover, even granting the paradigm of perfect being theology, it doesn't follow that perfect being theology is consistent with open theism or a God who subsists and time and through time. That may add restrictive conditions which interfere with perfect being theology.