Blessedness is “(1) the absence of all evil, (2) the possession and presence of all good in the highest good, and also (3) the enjoyment of it, that is, the sense of it and a repose and joy in it.”[1] However, in God these attributes exist perfectly. Divine blessedness, according to van Mastricht, involves:
the absence of all evil and imperfection, for he is the light in which there is no darkness (1 John 1:5), as well as the perfect enjoyment of his own self, from which there is said to be fullness of joys with his face (Ps. 16:11). In it is contained not only an exact knowledge of his own self, a knowledge proper to him alone (Rom. 11:34; 1 Cor. 2:11), but also a fullness, repose, and joy in himself, in the communion of the persons, and in all his works (Prov. 8:30; Matt. 17:5).[2]
This blessedness is the divine nature—it is not received from another. This blessedness is also unchanging—just as God is immutable (Js. 1:17), his perfect happiness is unchanging. This blessedness also requires the Triunity of God. Divine love must be shared and active. Since God is not dependent upon his creation for his happiness (otherwise he would not be eternally happy since his creation is not eternal), the Father, Son, and Spirit must exist eternally together so that the divine blessedness is perfected.
This perfect timeless blessedness is seen in the reality that “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). God doesn’t just “have love,” God “is love.” His nature is summarized as “love.” For God’s nature to be described as “love,” we should expect a perfect act of love and someone who worthy to be loved perfectly above all else by God himself. Augustine famously reasoned about love and God’s triune nature saying, “when I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love itself. For I do not love love, except I love a lover, for there is no love where nothing is loved. There are, therefore, three: the lover, the beloved, and the love.”[3] Augustine described God as the Father who loves his Son who is the perfect image of himself. We also find the Spirit who, proceeding from Father and Son, is the perfect act of love.
Since God, in himself, is joy without lack then we can understand why the Psalmist said, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11). Paul, likewise, described God as “blessed forever” (Rom. 1:25). No joy is absent in God’s presence because God is love and the perfection of love. Fred Sanders described it this way: “God’s way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all eternity, perfectly complete in a triune fellowship of love.”[4] Although there was nothing but God, God was not in solitude. God is perfect in his being. Sanders explained, “God is the only one who can love alone, for Trinitarian reasons: God the Father loves God the Son in the love of God the Holy Spirit.”[5] There was an overflowing of Trinitarian love. A perfect existence of no lack and no separation. There with Father, Son, and Spirit is divine blessedness—the fulness of joy.
Petrus van Mastricht described God’s blessedness as “one whereby he rejoices in and enjoys himself, his perfections, and all things, and communicates himself to his own that they might have fruition of joy.”[6] This perfect joy that God enjoys in himself reveals that God, though one, is not in solitude. Instead, the fulness of God’s joy helps us to see the overflowing love of the Father set on his beloved Son and shared in the Spirit. God’s blessedness is not received from others. People are blessed as they are in Christ (Eph. 2) and follow Christ (Matt. 5). God is blessed by his own nature not by reception (participation in something greater). God simply is blessed (1 Tim. 1:11, 6:15; 2 Cor. 11:31).
Mastricht demonstrated that this blessedness must be inherent to God’s being. With five questions, van Mastricht demonstrated the perfect blessedness of God. He asked:
(1) he who rejoices in so many and such great perfections, which we have spoken of individually so far, and who cannot either have or desire more and greater perfections—is he not surely blessed?
(2) He who from all these perfections is called, and is, all-sufficient for himself and for all his own would he not be blessed?
(3) He who exists as the cause of all blessedness for all things, such that they have nothing that they did not receive, and that they did not receive from him—would he himself not be blessed?
(4) He who alone lives from himself, exists from himself, and is good in himself,3 who alone is goodness and perfection itself—would he lack the perfection of blessedness?
(5) And he whose every perfection is always actualized, indeed, he who is one pure and unadulterated act—would this one not be blessed?[7]
Blessedness and perfect love are essential to the being of God. This perfect divine blessedness also requires the Triunity of God. Love could not be perfected without the triunity of God. Without the Father, Son, and Spirit eternally existing together, there would be an unrequited love, an aimless love, and a love without action. To be truly blessed, God must exist as Triune.
God’s blessedness impacts his creation every day. Every day creation enjoys the overflow of god’s love, fulness, and perfect blessedness. Fred Sanders describes the “ripple effect” radiating from God’s nature to our salvation.[8] It is because God is the fulness of life—infinite blessedness—his goodness flows out to redeem and glorify sinners. Death becomes life in the presence of the overflowing beatitude of God. “He who is most blessed” van Mastricht said, “offers this blessedness most freely, not moved by any hope of repayment (Rom. 11:36)”[9] Thomas Oden brings this thought to a beautiful close:
The gamut of divine attributes is therefore brought to a joyful culmination in Scripture’s witness to the beauty of God’s holiness. The grandeur and beauty of creation is ample evidence that God calls forth beauty and immanentally works within all natural creation to manifest that beauty. The awareness that God has redeemed what has fallen into distortion makes the beauty of God ever more wonderful. That God’s holiness is beautiful is recurrently celebrated by the faithful: “One thing I ask of the Lord, one thing I seek: that I may be constant in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (Ps. 27:4). “Might and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Ps. 96:6). The presence of God is described by Ezekiel as an “encircling radiance,” “like a rainbow in the clouds” (Ezek. 1:28).
The most stunning glimpse of the beauty of God is, ironically, in the Expected One who was despised and rejected, from whom beholders shrank at the sight of him, as something of “no account, a thing from which men turn away their eyes” because in his suffering his beauty had been disfigured (Isa. 53:2, 3), yet it is this very one who became recognized as “the Lily of the Valley,” “the fairest of ten thousand to my soul” (hymn adapted from Song of Songs 5:10).[10]
[1] Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester and Michael T. Spangler, vol. 2 of Theoretical-Practical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 488.
[2] Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, 489.
[3] Augustine, The Trinity, 9.2.2.
[4] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, 2nd Edition. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 68.
[5] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God, 69.
[6] Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, 485.
[7] Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester and Michael T. Spangler, vol. 2 of Theoretical-Practical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 487–488.
[8] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God, 78-80.
[9] Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, 492.
[10] Thomas C. Oden, The Living God: Systematic Theology, Vol. I (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 129.
This is wonderful. You helped to explain the nature of the Trinity in a way that I have not heard before. Thank you!