Imagine a Mind whose imagination is Mathematics, whose desire is Ethics, whose perception is Reality, whose will is Causality, whose empathy is Consciousness, whose selfhood is Love.
Since everything that exists depends in every way on this Being, the name God seems appropriate. Furthermore, since Math, Ethics, etc. are abstract realties that presumably still exist if anything at all exists, then God’s existence alone is sufficient to make all of these things exist. Thus, it seems that God could logically exist apart from anything physical existing. However, if anything physical does exist, it does so only by virtue of God’s will. Thus no being is completely separate from God, the way that two physical objects can be separate from each other.
However, since we are not necessarily ethical or loving, and do not ourselves have divine power over everything, it seems clear that we cannot speak of ourselves as being the same self as God, but rather should regard ourselves as a different self. This self must be loved by God because God is Love. It thus becomes clear that we are dealing with the God of Classical Theism, not Pantheism. Such a conception God has been stripped of all limiting Anthropomorphisms, but it can still be seen that human beings, in some limited way, reflect God’s own nature, since we ourselves have imagination, desire, perception, will, empathy, and selfhood.
Such a being is clearly completely distinct from the gods of Polytheism, who are born and die, have limited goodness and power, etc. There might well be beings in some other world who are higher and better than we are, but they themselves, if they had a more direct perception of this unlimited Being, would themselves worship and adore this holy source of all goodness. And any human who worships and adores a single God as the sole source of reality would be believing in the same Deity, however mistaken or inadequate their concept of God might be in other details.
Now, suppose a Naturalist denies the existence of any such God. He must nevertheless believe in at least Reality, Math, and Consciousness on pain of logical contradiction, and if he rejects Causality and Ethics he is at least denying his own basic human categories of thought. So let us suppose he accepts them all, if not in a Platonic sense, then at least as qualities of individual entities. Then the one additional step he needs to take to become a Monotheist is to accept that these features of reality are ultimately unified in one and the same entity. This is plausible for the same reason that unification hypotheses are more satisfying in physics, and because otherwise we would have to ask why these categories all exist separately–what causes them to cohere together into one universe?
After such an aridly intellectual conversion, it is quite possible that he or she will still not recognize that God is Love, until learning the further fact that this Being was Crucified under Pontius Pilate in the first century, for each person. This is an absurdity and a scandal, but now there is historical data and we need not rely on philosophy alone. It is the most vivid expression in history of the paradox that God’s will suffers events to occur, that are not in accordance with his own desire. It teaches us that Evil is God’s suffering. This includes, but is not limited to, the evil things which we humans choose to do to ourselves and each other. And if God allows himself to suffer, then that suffering must somehow be redemptive, capable of bringing good out of evil. Apparently God wills for the triumph of good over evil to involve a historical process, rather than simply making a static Just Cosmos in which everything is flawless and perfect from the beginning.
If God is Love, then God must love God, and thus even though God is singular, relationships are still at the core of his being somehow. The doctrine of the Trinity is congruent with this, even if it cannot be logically deduced from it. (This perhaps also explains the puzzle of why God would create something else, when his own Being was completely perfect already.) We can now understand why the Crucified Man could both say he was God, and also pray to God as his Father… which is lucky for us, since without submission to a God above him, he could not have become himself a complete Man. Nothing could be more repellant than a human with nothing higher than himself to look up to, but Jesus was not like that! Similarly, the Spirit who testifies to Jesus and personalizes his redemption to each believer, may itself be regarded as a loving relation in that same union.
Since we are separate from God, and do not always make choices in accordance with his will, it seems at least logically possible that some human beings will reject Redemption and will instead to be content with remaining wicked. Since such wickedness is not really in accordance with our highest nature, such a state of being is necessarily going to involve suffering, and if human beings live forever it will involve eternal suffering.
On the other hand, those who place God at the center can expect to be blessed by the contemplation of the holy Divine Love through eternity. Since human beings are social in nature, this bliss would necessarily also involve participation in a harmonious society will all of the other blessed beings. And since human beings are physical in Nature, their fulfilment requires not just this, but also the Resurrection of their bodies from the dead.
The rest is details.
