what does it mean when christians say "god is love"?

The knowledge and practice of love lies at the heart of Christian theology and ethics. Jesus illuminated this reality when he said the greatest commandment is to "love God" and the second is like it, "love your neighbor as yourself". This simple, and yet profound teaching is complicated by the plethora of expressions of love permeating contemporary culture (Badcock, 31). A source of clarity can be found in the Johannine, which states, “God is love". For a Christian, the definition of love is revealed in the nature, character and the activity of God. However, this Christian axiom does not hold the same meaning for all believers because of the widely divergent understandings of who they perceive God to be. At one end of the spectrum God is understood as an immovable first cause, and on the other pole there is a perception of a suffering and crucified God who shares in the affliction of his creation. These different understandings of who God is have profound implications upon the meaning of love, the reality and significance of God's relationship with the created, and ultimately upon the value of human life. When seeking to understand what Christians mean by the phrase, “God is love” is it necessary to for these views of God to be mutually exclusive? Or is there room within our understanding of this mystery for a fuller understanding of what is meant by the statement “God is love”?

The view of God as the “unmoved mover” grew out of the hugely influential stream of thought known today as Classical Theism (Macquarrie, 30). This philosophy was shaped in part by the Hellenistic conception of God as the transcendent ‘first mover’ who is subsequently uninvolved in the world and by the Church Father’s emphasis upon divine ineffability and incomprehensibility as one strategy in combating Gnostic heresies (Ramsey, 45-46). In an effort to assert the existence of God on purely rationalistic grounds Anselm and Aquinas provided arguments based upon reason and empiricism. Their specific ‘proofs’ are not relevant to this discussion but understanding the God who emerged as a result of all these influences is critical if we are to know what is meant by the statement ‘God is love’ from this Christian perspective.

For the Classical Theist God is completely and absolutely self-existent (Mascall, 11). The theologies of creation out of nothing and transcendence require a complete separation of God from the created world (Brown, 11), which means God remains unaffected by any possible human expression of faithfulness or wickedness and in no way does God share in the suffering of humanity (including the suffering of Jesus Christ). This belief necessitates God’s love to be uncaused. God’s love is wholly (and merely) an expression of his character; God’s love is unconditional and spontaneous. Any resemblance of a God who is moved within the scripture is seen as the communication of idioms or a ‘crude anthropomorphism’ (Badcock, 40).

The implications drawn from this view of God are indeed far reaching. God’s agape love is understood to be perfect and is defined by God’s character, whereas human eros love is the polar opposite. Human love is perceived to be flawed, hopelessly fallen and with no capacity to initiate any kind of a relationship with God (Badcock, 33). Within the framework of Classical Theism God acts upon the world, but the world does not act upon God (Macquarrie, 40). To say ‘God is love’ from this point of view is and expression an undialectical relationship in which God loves and offers salvation to human kind purely in response to his own character. This God is the example and definition of love that is all-powerful and unchanging, however this transcendent love takes no account of the ‘condition of its object’(Badcock, 46). It can be said that the God of Classical Theism loves perfectly but it could not be said that this “God so loved the world”, ultimately the ‘unmoved mover’ is nothing more than a “loveless beloved” (Moltmann, 220-221).

Many historical, cultural and theological forces have battered the concept of the ‘unmoved mover’. With the onset of the enlightenment God was replaced by science as the point of reference in understanding the universe. The death of millions in religious wars around this same period caused many to question God as he was commonly understood, and scores turned to protest atheism or agnosticism in order to deal with the problem of suffering. A God who is not involved and not affect by the reality of suffering became perceived as indifferent, apathetic, irrelevant or even worse… the devil himself (Moltmann, 220-221). Classical Theism was facing the frightening possibility of a complete deterioration into Deism or it could explore the prospect of a ‘passable’ God as an alternative theistic response.

Christians who believe in a suffering God who is affected by this world have a radically different understanding of the statement ‘God is love’. Love not just an expression of the reality of God’s character, love is God’s response to the deepest needs of humanity. The power of sin and death are conquered through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross. In this view Christ suffers as God and as man and through this act of love it can be said, “There is no suffering which in this history of God is not God’s suffering; no death which has not been God’s death in the history of Golgotha” (Moltmann, 246). God is identified with all the suffering of human reality in the death of the Son, in bearing the curse of the sin (Gal. 3:13) and in having experienced separation from the Father. This notion of a suffering God can be taken a step further is saying the Father also suffers an ‘infinite grief of love’ because of the death of the Son (Moltmann, 242-243). To say that ‘God is love’ is to recognize God’s answer to the problem of suffering, which is to suffer with us and for us. A covenant relationship without conditions or limits is made possible between God and man because God is crucified and within the context of this relationship human existence finds meaning beyond indifference for a God who suffers recognizes a deep and inherent value within human life (Moltmann, 276).

Again, the theological position of a suffering God does not stand without its challenges. Weinandy argues that a suffering God fails, “… to grasp the full significance of the Incarnation and the transforming affects of Christ’s redemptive suffering” (Weinandy, 172). The theology of the incarnation demands that the Son of God suffer – solely and exclusively as a man – in order to maintain the integrity of his divinity and the reality of the incarnation. Therefore, any conception of Jesus suffering “as God… exploits the communication of idioms” contained in the scripture, and it would empty his suffering of being a genuinely human experience (Weinandy, 175-176, 204).

An unmovable God seems to be incapable of love, and a suffering God seems unable to maintain his divinity without being mitigated to some lesser form. In light of this paradox it is possible to have a view of God who is not passively changeable, and yet at the same time he chooses to make himself vulnerable to the suffering of this world. What then does a Christian who holds this position mean with statement “God is love”?

God’s character is the perfect definition of love and not only is this love expressed in response to his own character but his love set in motion in the context of a dialectical relationship between God and humankind (Macquarrie, 41). In no way is God’s character changed in the midst of affliction. Rather God’s character would be more fully realized as love has been and continues to be expressed in its various manifestations including: creation, the cross and sanctification. The intrinsic value of human life and love is fully appreciated because redemption is viewed as a restoration of the image of God. Ultimately the meaning of “God is love” is made known when a Christian abides in the relationship created by God’s love and when he or she reciprocates this love back to God and to the world.

Reference List

Badcock, Gary D. “The Concept of Love: Divine and Human”, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better, Kevin J. Vanhoozer ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.

Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. University of California Press, 2000.

Macquarrie, J. In Search of Deity. London: SCM Press, 1984.

Mascall, E. L. Existence and Analogy. Longman, 1949.

Moltmann, Jurgen. The Crucified God. Translated by: John Bowden and R. A. Wilson Augsburg Fortress Pub, 1993.

Ramsey, Boniface. Beginning to Read the Fathers. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985.

Weinandy, Thomas G. Does God Suffer? University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.

a hurtin' unit

Exams are finally finished, so I can get back to posting on the blog.

This past week has been an interesting one for injuries. Last Wednesday, Wesla asked me if I wanted to rollerblading with her (you can see where this one is going) and I thought it would be a great break from being stuck in the basement of our townhouse studying. We had a great time blading through a park and around a lake; I was feeling great. We were coming back home, down the smoothest and flattest part of our trip, and I was doing slalom on my blades. I was turning hard to my left, my outer-right blade gripped more than what I anticipated and I went flying into the air over on my right side. As I was flying through the air I can remember thinking, "Man, this is just like flying through the air when I was skiing." But, when I hit the ground I changed my mind quickly about that comparison.

Even worse than the pain of the wipe out was the embarrassment of falling down. Wesla was behind me and she was slowing down, and I told her just to keep going. I didn't have the courage to look at my leg until I got home, then I was able to assess the damage. Wesla informed me that I "bounced" off the pavement when I landed, and that explains the multiple injuries on my right leg. I have a black bruise on my right hip that is about the diameter of an apple, it has been the most painful part of this whole experience, and I believe it was my first point of impact. A little further down my thigh is a much smaller bruise where my keys were positioned in my pocket. Finally, the most gruesome part of the injury was the scrape on the outside portion of my right calf, it covered about the same surface area of two banana's lying side-by-side.

I hope this isn't too graphic, but all this gave me a good reason to wear shorts to church on Sunday. There was no way I could wear long pants with my leg feeling the way it was, so it was a good point of discussion.

Anyway, I will post again soon...

my week to come

At long last... The papers are in. The classes are done. Bring on the exams.

my current dream car - 2005 ford escape hybrid

 

The price tag on this car puts it way out of our league, but if money was no option, this is definitely the one I would choose. It would be nice to have more hybrid models to choose from, but this is not going to happen until consumers demand it.

visit with the in-laws

"Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump"

Me and the in-laws (Richard & Wanda)


Wesla and I had a great time with her mother and her step-father this weekend. As a part of our adventure we checked out the Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump". It was definitely worth a look.

illusion or objectivity

I have been looking forward to working on the final project for my writing class all semester. We were assigned all kinds of simple writing assignments including a summary, an analysis, and an persuasive argument... and all of this has been building up to a research paper. It may seem a little strange to be looking forward working on a research paper, but in this instance it was true, because we were given the freedom to choose our own topic.

Just this week I submitted my proposal, and it shouldn't be a surprise that I chose a theological topic. After all, I have been writing history papers all semester and I felt the need to dust of some of my theology books. I suggested an exploration of the implications intrinsic within the Christian belief that "God is love" in light of the resurgence of Christological debate in the 20th century.

This three word biblical quotation from 1 John 4:8 may seem to be simple enough but it has vastly different meaning depending upon who God is understood to be. The "classical" view of God is one who is wholly other, completely sovereign, a God who loves strictly as an expression of his character - a love that is in no way a 'response' to the created. From this perspective God has been described as the "Un-moved Mover". In his book The Crucified God, published in the late 20th century, Jurgen Moltmann argued that having a conception of a 'loving' God understood in terms of classical theism is increasingly difficult in a "post-Auschwitz" world. How could a God who is unaffected by suffering be called loving? He argues that not only did Christ suffer as a man, but also as God.

In response to this issue Moltmann goes on to say, "There is no suffering which in this history of God is not God's suffering; no death which has not been God's death in the history on Golgotha." (pg 246).

We hear this kind of theology from the pulpit all the time today, but only a few hundred years ago this kind of a notion would have been considered unthinkable heresy. Thomas Weinandy addresses this issue from the other side in his book Does God Suffer? I won't go into the details of his argument at this time, but essentially he suggests that any understanding of the incarnation in which God suffers in any form but as a man mitigates the reality of the divine to a lesser form. In other words if God is "moved" in any way by the created, the divinity of God is threatened.

Now I must come back to the beginning of this post and explain why I am now speaking of this research topic in the past tense. My writing professor and I had, shall we say, philosophical differences regarding the legitimacy of the thesis I proposed. It was my desire to explore the following questions, "Is there room within this mystery for an understanding of a God who is both sovereign while at the same time capable of opening himself to the suffering world? Could this provide a fuller understanding of the statement 'God is love'?" My professor argues that this thesis falls too much into the realm of "faith" and not in the realm of arguable "fact", which is necessary for a scholarly research paper. Now I must say that I have nothing but respect for my writing prof and I have gotten a lot out of her class, but in this one respect I couldn't disagree with her more.

I must give her kudos for suggesting a modified paper topic that would allow me to compare the implications of Moltmann's and Weinandy's Christology, however she held to the position that in order for me to create research paper that is both scholarly and "removed" I could not suggest a synthesis of their theological positions. In my opinion line of thinking removes any legitimacy from a study of this kind altogether. For theology to be scholarly must it be dissected in the laboratory? For research on a topic such as this must the author be so far removed from his or her personal beliefs that no bridge remains between the subject and the real world?

Once again I must say that I truly respect my writing prof, and trust me, everything I have included in this post has been the subject of our discussion. However, in the end I felt as though I could not publish a paper on this subject with the kind of restrictions that I would have been forced to follow. (So fancy this, I am writing another history paper.)

Ultimately, I would suggest that the objectivity required for this project is nothing more than an illusion. Which writer can completely remove his or her own personal beliefs completely from their writing? How is an argument in a history or philosophy paper any different from a theology paper? Are they not all - at least on some level - a product of a faith based world view?

mother-in-law coming for a visit

My mother-in-law and my step-father-in-law will be coming for a visit this weekend (I think that might be a record number of hyphens for one sentence). Thankfully Wanda and Richard do not fit into the cliche "in-laws" mold, and we should have a really good time. Of course this means I have to clean up my office, but that is a story for another time and place.

I find this worthy of mention because in our four years of marriage this will be the first time they have paid a visit to Wesla and I. This is not the result of tenuous relationships or anything like that, its just that my wife and I happen to live close enough to our family that visits are now possible.

We are planning on checking out the "fort" at Fort McLeod and Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump for something to do.

a short lament

I realize that I have nothing to complain about, but I am going to take a few moments to do just that. This afternoon was my first opportunity to register for Summer 2005 and Fall 2005 classes. I had everything all picked out and there were three classes that I couldn't get into and I was really looking forward to taking them (one of them being "History of Rock & Roll").

On the flip side I am very excited about taking Ed 2500 this coming May and June. It will be my first education practicum, and I won't be taking any other courses during that period, so I should be able to kick some butt. Just thinking about registering for my first summer session makes me realize I am already almost finished my first year a the U of L, too crazy.