Warraq’s Critique of Christian Trinitarianism

Warraq offers a recitation and criticism of an innovative argument for the triunity of persons in one divine substance.  In order to be perfect, the argument runs, the divine substance must combine both sorts of number, even and odd. Any number which does not include both even and odd numbers falls short of “the perfection of number” and hence admits of deficiency.  The advantage of this argument seems to lie in its “offensive” payoff: by making unity alone a sign of deficiency, the Christian can claim that it is only Trinitarian monotheism which appropriately preserves the divine perfection. This argument, quite clearly, begins from the shared affirmation of Christians and Muslims that God is one, and proceeds from there to demonstrate the rational suitability of attributing threeness to the divinity.  

Despite these strengths, Warraq’s response reveals its weakness.  The Christian doctrine of the Trinity does not entirely transcend the number one: each of the three hypostases are one. Are they, then, imperfect and deficient?  If they are, how can they be divine? If they are not, then the argument from three as a perfect number seems to demand a division of the individual persons into three, as well.  In either case, Christians are forced to either rapidly multiply hypostases, or to exclude the persons from the divine substance on the grounds of their deficiency.

Warraq’s line of criticism raises two different sorts of questions.  The first concerns the Christian response: is there a way of affirming the perfection of the individual persons without dividing them into component parts?  That is, how can the tendency toward a kind of modalism which would make each hypostasis a “part” of the godhead be resisted without simply postponing the question?  Would there be a distinction made between the perfection of the divine substance and the perfection of a hypostasis?  

The second line of questions concerns the flaws of the Christian argument itself.  Does it, perhaps, assign too much value to the number of hypostases, as opposed to their relationship with each other?  Beginning with the rationality of relationships within a unity, for instance, might lay the groundwork for a more compelling apologetic argument.  A common Western argument of several centuries later, advanced by Richard of St. Victor, takes this approach: one person alone cannot love, and two alone are opposed to one another in their love, but if there are three there are both objects of love and and a communion in loving each person — Father and Son love the Spirit, et cetera.  Would such a front-loading of relationality — in Richard’s approach, or something similar — avoid Warraq’s critique of the numerological argument? Was such a line of argument, focused on relationships, ever advanced by Christian apologists against Islam?