God is Not Bored

Just think of the many unworthy ideas and attitudes about God that the doctrine of the Trinity can help us name, reject, and even deride. The doctrine of the Trinity expels unworthy ideas about the perfection of God’s life. It is unworthy to think that God without us is lonely or bored. God is not looking something to do in the happy land of the Trinity. God did not create the world in order to fill the drafty mansion of heaven with the pitter-patter of little feet. God is not pining away for companionship in a lonesome heaven.

Good theological reflection, taking its lead from the Bible, would always reject the idea of divine loneliness or boredom. But as soon as you entertain the truth of the doctrine of the ontological Trinity, the unworthiness of the idea of a lonely or bored God becomes patently obvious. The triune God is one, but not solitary. Nothing that God does in creation or redemption is done because God lacked employment and occupation. The incarnation of the Son of God was not undertaken as an excellent adventure to provide diversion from the dullness of being the eternal Son. All these ideas are unworthy of God, as the doctrine of the Trinity makes obvious.

….God is not lonely, bored, or selfish. But if we turned it around and said it in a positive way, we would simply say that God is lvoe. Not by conincidence, this is also how the Bible puts it. This is what the Bible helps us learn with greater precision: that God is love. The triune God is a love that is infinitely high above you, eternally preceding you, and welcoming you in.

– Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, pp. 95-96

(HT:  Erik Raymond)