John famously begins his gospel by saying that the Word was in the beginning with God, and that the Word was God. We have two things associated here that we don’t normally associate — identity and togetherness. I am me, but I don’t normally think of myself as being with me. I am generally close by, but that is a strange way of putting it. And in the same way, I am with a friend, but I am not that friend. Of course the solution to the puzzles created by passages like this is the doctrine of the Trinity — eternal identity and togetherness . . . somehow together.
This identity is true of God as He is. This is the way it was “in the beginning.” John’s words here are en arche, which could be rendered at the ultimate place, or at the ultimate integration point. Before the first sun ever rose, this is the way it was. The Word was God, and that same Word was also with God. So not only was the Word to be identified with God, within the Godhead as He is, the Word was also together with God, in distinction from the Father. That also is characteristic of the nature of God, before the first sunrise.
We have grounds in Scripture, therefore, for saying that otherness is an aspect of God’s nature. At the same time, we must also say that this otherness is fully consistent with ontological identity. And if we are thinking biblically, we will want it to be stronger than “fully consistent with.” This consistency is not won after a long and difficult process of reconciliation, but we finally did it. Identity and togetherness, in their truest expression, depend on each other. The way God ultimately is must be taken as the standard — which means that human togetherness is not possible apart from unity, and human unity is not possible apart from distinction.
The Trinity is not three Persons who met one day, and who decided they were compatible, and that they should get along pretty well. Neither is the Trinity one God who one day decided to divide it up three ways. Neither unity nor distinction is privileged over the other. The One leads us to the Three, and the Three to the One.
Within the Godhead, there is a Lover, and a Beloved, and the Spirit of mutual Love between them. In order for this to be, there has to be an Other. So there an other, a distinct one, and yet every distinction is framed and contained within the Spirit of everlasting love, the Spirit of union and communion. There is an other, but there is no opposition.
There is no “opposedness” — but there is that which we in the created and fallen world experience as opposedness, just as there is that which we in the created and fallen world experience as conquest and assimilation. These ultimate realities cannot be bent or distorted within the Godhead. There are no potential rivals within the Trinity. But there is that which, when reflected in this creation, can be bent. And God created — reflecting the glory of His own nature in doing so — a world in which potential rivals did exist. And as a result of His sovereign decree, actual rivals to His glory came to be. In doing this, God was not filling a void, as though He had a need for rivals which His own perfections could not fulfill. Rather, His perfections overflowed in this particular way — we are trying to make sense of a superfluous surplus, not a necessary deficiency.
The uncreated triune God has no rival in the created order. Who is a God like our God? The triune God has no rival within His own being. The triune God has no potential rival within His own being. It is the classic misdirection of a master story teller. It is more exciting than that.