Geoff,
Thank you! That’s a satisfyingly illustrative little story, which, I think, captures the essence of what people have been trying to communicate.
Sonia
That’s right. I didn’t make it clear enough, thanks for that clarity. It DOES INDEED cause destruction to our neighbors when we act out of sin and continue to do it.
I’m not sure about the Institutes, but I do know Calvin went out of his way to deny that God really is love, in his commentary on 1 John.
What that has to do with him getting his predestination ideas from the Bible (or not), I’m not sure. But I thought I’d mention it. 
Speaking as an orthodox trinitarian theist, and also as a dedicated apologist for ortho-trin: I entirely disagree.
If God, in His own active self-existence (“I AM THAT I AM”), is an interpersonal communion acting to fulfill fair-togetherness between those Persons (i.e. if trinitarian theism is true), then God is essentially love. His own self-existence is intrinsically and fundamentally that love in action; and the existence of everything in reality depends upon that action of God.
If God is not essentially love, ortho-trin is false. To deny that God is essentially love, is to deny (in a tacit but technical fashion) that trinitarian theism is true.
A unitarian or any other monotheist, or any other theist who isn’t also (unlike the monotheist) a supernaturalistic theist, or a naturalistic theist (i.e. a pantheist), can deny that God is essentially love, and still be theologically consistent. On the other hand, it makes exactly no sense for any such theists to assert that God is love. They might be able to coherently express that God ‘loves’ (maybe), and so they might be able to say that love is an attribute of God. But they cannot claim God is love.
Only trinitarian theism (or at the very least binitarian theism) involves such a thing, that God is love. We have a unique position among all theologies and philosophies imaginable.
Throwing that away, denying that, is the same as going back to some other, lesser kind of theism.
(I am a trinitarian theist first, a universalist afterward as a corollary to that. Even aside from whether universalism of some kind is true, I am going to get very very fang-y when trinitarians deny that God is essentially love.http://www.wargamer.com/forums/upfiles/smiley/paladin.gif)
Me too.
The Father is the eternal Lover, the Son is the eternally Beloved, and the Spirit is the Love that forever flows between. Love binds them into perfect unity. This divine resonance is self-reinforcing and unbounded. God calls us to share in this Spirit. This is eternal life.(Remember the Great Dance, in Lewis’s Voyage to Venus?)
Love isn’t something God can do one day, but not the next. The moment he stops loving is the moment he ceases to exist. It defines his essential nature. (The temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness didn’t threaten him alone, but the Trinity itself. Had Jesus turned those stones into bread, the Spirit flowing between Father and Son would have faltered. The resonance would have died, and God along with it.)
Speaking of resonance, when you blow a trumpet, your lips make all sorts of random vibrations, but only the frequencies that resonate in the instrument’s air column are amplified. The other frequencies die. Is there a metaphor here? When God comes near, when he calls us by our true name, that which is born of God in each of us will resonate with his Spirit. The evil self will die in this divine encounter. (It may well be painful, like spiritual chemotherapy or amputation.) As Jesus said, “The sheep know my voice.” (They are in tune with God. On the same wavelength.)
The thread is heading in too many directions so I’ll concentrate on Alex’s phrase “God is love” and why I believe it’s misguided:
My position is best described by John Frame in The Doctrine of God. “Some theologians have tired to show that one attribute of God uniquely describes his essence and therefore is more fundamental than the others. … E.g Dun Scotus ‘infinity’ or Hegel ‘reason’ … For example it is certainly tempting to say that love is God’s fundamental attribute because 1 John 4:8, 16 says that “God is love,” and because a love that imitates God’s love is central in biblical ethics. … But does ‘God is love’ describe anything more fundamental to God than ‘God is light’ (1 John 1:5) or ‘God is spirit’ (John 4:24)? … What about ‘The Lord, whose name is Jealous’ in Exodus 34:14?” (page 392)
Frame then continues “But these theologians are wrong to think that the centrality for their favorite attribute excludes the centrality of others. These writers are right in what the assert, but wrong in what they deny. Ritschl is right to say that love is God’s essence, but wrong to deny that holiness is. That that kind of error is sometimes linked to other errors. Often when a theologian makes God’s love central, he intends to cast doubt on the reality or intensity of God’s wrath and judgement - contrary to Scripture. That was the case with Ritschl and is the case with some modern evangelicals.” (page 393)
The only way we can speak of God’s wrath (without making him a devil) is if we *first *insist on God’s love.
Anger is morally neutral. A loving father can be angry with his child, yet not sin. A hating father sins, whatever he does. In the same way, the anger of a hating God is nothing but evil.
I’d say a jealousy arising out of love is the only good type, any other would be ugly 
I know that’s probably not the strongest argument, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
could easily be turned around to a worse statement
It says “God is Love” twice in the one passage which is pretty impressive, I think he was trying to make a very strong point
It’s interesting we can imitate God’s love but not His wrath/judgement, or at least not if we hold ECT. Can we as EUs? wrath/judgement motivated by hate is different to wrath/judgement motivated by love. I reckon it would change the focus from achieving “pay-back”, to achieving reconciliation? It wouldn’t always initially be evident from the perspective of the person experiencing the wrath/judgement.
Being light is important but as far as I can tell, the bible speaks more often and much more strongly about love, than light? Also I think maybe his comparison should be something like
I notice your quote selection mentioned exactly nothing about the relationship between love and God’s self-existence as a trinity of persons. Which might have been considered relevant, considering my recent comment on the unique importance of this in theology compared to other types of theism.
If John Frame isn’t a trinitarian (although I recall, perhaps wrongly, that he is–maybe I’m thinking of someone else? [updated to add: possibly so, since I was reading that as John [u]Farmer 
]), then that would be understandable; we would just be disagreeing at a level of theology somewhat further back up the topical list than soteriology.
If he is a trinitarian, then he had better do a bang-up job somewhere explaining how God’s love is not an essential characteristic of His self-existence as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because I’m pretty sure God’s wrath (for example) is not such an essential characteristic of His self-existence. This is why everyone everywhere who acknowledges the wrath of God at all, regardless of what kind of theism we’re talking about, agrees that in at least some cases God can set aside doing wrath: it’s only an attribute, not an essential characteristic of His own self-existence.
For God to fundamentally set aside acting to fulfill fair-togetherness (i.e. ‘righteousness’) with a person, however (not just choose to delay fulfillment of this for whatever reasons), or never to act toward fulfilling fair-togetherness with a person at all, would be for God to act in contravention to His own principle action of self-existent and creational reality, if ortho-trin theism is true.
Which is practically the basic ground for sin when any other person (such as myself) does it.
At any rate, I don’t know whether Ritschl denies that holiness is essential to God’s nature, but I certainly affirm it. I am glad to see Frame actually affirms that love is essential to God’s nature, too!
The difference is that I don’t deny God always continues acting in love toward every person, even in punishment and wrath. There are universalists (Isaac the Syrian being one offhand) who pit God’s love against His justice as though God, the Trinitarian Father Son and Holy Spirit, could set aside doing one or the other (and so chooses to set aside doing justice rather than to set aside doing love). But there universalists (like myself) who absolutely refuse to do so. God does not set aside His justice, holiness or love; consequently, God does not cease acting, nor acts against, fulfilling love, justice and holiness in other persons.
If John Frame agrees with that, great!–but then, if he really agreed with that, he would be a universalist.
Whereas, it looks as if it is John Frame, not for example Jason Pratt, who ends up excluding the centrality of something he acknowledges to be an essential characteristic of God: namely love, under against holiness or justice or jealousy or whatever. (As if jealousy, of all things, is supposed to be an essential personal characteristic of the Trinity in relation to one another!) If God’s wrath (which all of us agree He can completely cease doing or never does at all, in regard to at least some persons) is supposed to trump God’s love, then it is John Frame who is casting doubt on the reality and/or intensity of something he himself acknowledges to be an essential characteristic of God.
Put another way: love may not describe anything more fundamental to God than light does, but it doesn’t describe anything less fundamental either. But for God to set aside acting to fulfill love toward and with a person (or never to act that way toward a person at all), love must not be fundamentally essential to the characteristics of God.
(Also, pretty much everything Alex said before I wrote this. 
)
When it says God is Light, that is an indication of His revelation to us (Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet). Thus begins relational aspects between God and His creation. As more revelation is reveal, so is His nature (and our nature, if fact, the first of which is the knowledge that every thing God made, including Man is very good). Thus His revelation to us reveals that God is love. We can not have a relationship with God apart from that revelation. We learn that God designed us to function according to His Ways, yet He has given us the ability to choose whether or not to obey God. Otherwise, any sense of love that we could offer Him back would be disingenuous. Despite our capacity to sin, it is that same capacity that enables us to love. God’s wrath is realized within that disparity, namely when we sin, or rather do not function according to His Ways. For God’s love to trump, there must be made known the consequences (either through the misery sin inflicted in us, to us, we to others (and the sense of guilt and shame that goes along with all that) or some punishment/discipline/warning inflicted by God designed to make us aware of our error). It is His Love for us and His desire for reconciliation that directs His wrath. The Consuming Fire is what we feel when His love for us is so great (because if the grievousness of our sin) that we cannot stand it as long as we are unrepentent to His call. If we remain unrepenant, we will find ourselves moving farther and father away the longer we we resist. It is only when we turn to Him is surrender that that fire turns to forgiveness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, which is free to dwell in us as temples.
Bob wrote:
Because hope (i.e., the expectation of a favorable outcome for oneself and for one’s loved ones) has a purifying effect on our hearts and is, I think, the motivating principle essential to godly living (1 Peter 1:3-4, 22-25; 3:15; 1 John 3:2-3; Col 1:4-6; Rom 8:20-24). Having hope frees us to live as God created us to live, which is in love. The greater our hope, the greater our capacity to live in love. And the hope that all humanity is destined for a glorious, immortal existence in heaven is the greatest hope that one can have!
Luke wrote:
How exactly does this parable illustrate “the option of repenting on your deathbed?” And where do you see it taught in Scripture that our going to heaven is determined by something we do (or by something that is done to us) before we die?
Why couldn’t such an “urgency” to share the gospel be accounted for by a fervent desire to glorify God and to promote people’s well-being in this life?
and
Where is it revealed or even implied that Adam and Eve were in “the best possible communion with God,” or that they enjoyed a “perfect loving relationship with God?”
Everyone who isn’t presently reconciled to God desires and experiences “estrangement from God.” But it does not at all follow from this that those who are presently estranged from God - or even those who die estranged from God - are doomed to be estranged from God forever.
Rather ironic I guess that I posted this topic under “Discussion Negative” – when in fact this thread has been, because of these fabulous replies – one of the more positive in memory!
Thanks all for that and blessings too!
(I guess I was so taken by the negativity of the argument – or non-argument as I in fact meant – that I just placed it here in a moment of despair… or something…)
But THIS quote by Aaron really gets to the heart of it all I think. Sums up so well for me what I think UR is ALL about; not a theory of salvation, but a theory of LIVING!
These short words by Aaron jogged my memory and I looked back at my own intro so long ago and that’s exactly what I was thinking back then!!
U R: THEOLOGY TO BE DEFENDED, or A LIFE TO BE LIVED
So UR is best argued by the life that it animates!
No more worry or fear; LIVE in the light that streams forth from the Son in the full knowledge that you ARE, already, safely in the arms of the Master…
TotalVictory
Bobx3
Luke: It’s probably a common reaction because it’s a valid argument against Universalism.
Tom: That’s not a valid conclusion in itself. Common responses (or arguments) are not by definition (or even probably) valid by virute of being common.
Luke: In traditional Christianity there remains the option of repenting on your deathbed as illustrated by the the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Luke 20:1-15). However both Talbot and Parry downplay the urgency felt in much of the New Testament for salvation this side of death. An urgency that would be rendered peculiar if a second chance existed after death.
Tom: It might not be the sort of ‘urgency’ some prefer, but universalists are not required to surrender all sense of urgency (or even all meaningful or motivating senses of urgency). UR by definition entails a denial of all ultimate urgency, viz., the urgency that follows upon the threat of an irrevocable loss one’s self. But since whether there is such an urgency taught in the Scriptures is the point under debate, chiding universalists for denying it isn’t an argument against UR. So there’s no urgency regarding the possibility of an irrevocable loss of one’s self–so what? I take that as good news–not good news for those who think it license to sin, but good news for those who believe God deserves all the praise and glory creation can sing.
The sense of urgency UR folk attribute to post-mortem suffering would have to be a peculiar (or specific) sense of urgency. That goes without saying. But you take its being “peculiar” as evidence against it. Why is that?
Luke: Adam and Eve in the best possible communion with God, choose the worst horror.
Tom: The ‘worst horror’ wasn’t the ‘object’ of their choice. They weren’t choosing the consequences of their disobedience per se. Eve saw that the fruit was “good for food, pleasing to the eye, and good for gaining wisdom.” THAT is what she was choosing, even if the conseqences were other than she believed.
Luke: Unthinkable that they would knowingly choose filth in the face of glory. And as the Apostle Paul points out people get what they want, they get their desired estrangement from God.
Tom: Nobody’s denying that they get/experience the full consequences of estrangement from God. The question is whether this is an irrevocable state. Another question is whether it’s meaningful to say that a fully informed person can reasonably make irrevocable torment an object of choice.
AllanS: I want to love God because I find him supremely beautiful, not because he scares me witless.
Tom: I’ll second that Allan, along with others. In fact, I think this (the worth and value of God) is where a conversation about motivation and urgency ought to focus its efforts.
Luke: But what does “God is love” mean? Love is a description but God is first a foremost a being…
Tom: All our God-talk is descriptive. Even in your “God is first a being,” the term “being” is not LESS than a “description” of God. Our language can’t cross the metaphysical divide between created and uncreated being (and ‘being’ isn’t univocal even here). So we’re all on THIS side of that divide describing God with our language.
Luke: This confusion has come up before, love does not describe the essential essence of God, it is an attribute.
Tom: But it doesn’t follow that what is an attribute of God does not describe God essentially. There are essential attributes after all. And when it comes to te belief that God is essentially loving or benevlnt, UR folk are pretty well grounded (philosophically, theologically, and historically as well). It could all be wrong, sure. But it would take arguments nobody’s put forward yet to make sense of denying the sort of essentially loving God that, say, Jason has summarized re: the Trinity (and which is solid patristic belief).
Luke: Frame then continues “But these theologians are wrong to think that the centrality for their favorite attribute excludes the centrality of others. These writers are right in what they assert, but wrong in what they deny. Ritschl is right to say that love is God’s essence, but wrong to deny that holiness is. That that kind of error is sometimes linked to other errors. Often when a theologian makes God’s love central, he intends to cast doubt on the reality or intensity of God’s wrath and judgement - contrary to Scripture. That was the case with Ritschl and is the case with some modern evangelicals.” (page 393)
Tom: I wrote up most of my response before I read the second page and wanted to make some comments about ‘love’ and ‘trinitarianism’. Then I saw Jason beat me to it! I can’t improve upon his comments, so I’ll just leave it there.
Frame’s comments entirely miss the point. Make God essentially BOTH loving AND holy. It remains the case that all God’s actions equally embody those attributes—love AND holiness. So how do UR proponents compromise either love or holiness? How is God less than holy if he continues to pursue the wicked in hell? Quite the contrary. One could make a good argument that a God who let finite cretures suffer irrevocably is unjust and therefore neither perfectly holy nor perfectly loving.
Tom
Alex and Jason:
Of course I’d agree that love is an important characteristic of God, perhaps even essential to his existence (along with a number of other attributes) but it’d be wrong to say “God” is reducibly to simply the statement “God = Love.”
Aaron:
Nice clear questions, furnished with quotes.
I’ve inferred it by the workers all getting paid on the same day and by the fact some were hired to work at the very last minute. I’ve also made that inference because it’s a parable about the Kingdom and I’ve equated being in the Kingdom with being saved.
I’m no Pelagian, so something done to us. Before we die, the first example that comes to mind is the theif on the cross who is promised salvation before he dies.
They are by themselves good reasons, but they do not account for the NT urgency to repent and believe this side of eternity.
Good question, I take the traditional interpretation that the world was created perfect by God and that before the Fall God was “very pleased” (Gen 1:31) with it and that after the fall it was “cursed” (Rom 8:18-21). This combined with the inferred ability of Adam and Eve to walk and talk (unlike Moses) with God means that their relationship with God was as good as it could of been. This is a good question to ask Aaron because if Adam and Eve choose evil over God under the best circumstances why would we under worse?
Super or Infra lapsarianism? Chicken or egg, may I dodge that one. Whether they choose evil and then God condemned them or God condemned them and then they choose evil.
Hi Luke,
From your answer it would seem that you see the “day” in the parable as representing a human lifetime. However, I’m not sure why this is a valid inference. I’m inclined to see the “day” as representing the period of time leading up to Christ’s coming in his kingdom (which Christ seemed to think was going to take place before that 1st century generation passed away, and before all of his disciples tasted death - Matt 16:27-28; 24:29-34). Also, in a similar parable about wicked, murderous servants (Matt 22:1-14), Christ describes their fate in the following words: “The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” Sounds a lot like what happened to the unbelieving Jews in 70 AD!
Also, do you think people can be “in the Kingdom” and (in some sense) “saved” prior to death?
Wouldn’t you agree that for Christ to personally promise post-mortem salvation to someone before they die does not mean he was denying the same post-mortem salvation to others?
But why don’t you think these reasons account for such urgency? Is not glorifying God and promoting our neighbour’s well-being in this life something important enough to be urgent about?
Why do you think that God’s being “very pleased” with his creation means that Adam and Eve were in “the best possible communion with God,” and that they enjoyed a “perfect loving relationship with God?” Couldn’t God be “very pleased” with his creative work if it was perfect for the purpose for which it was created? And since God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11) wouldn’t this include Adam and Eve’s fall from their state of innocence?
I should also add that the word translated as “creation” in Romans 8:18-21 is used only two other times in Scripture, and in both places it refers to those to whom Christ commanded the gospel to be proclaimed (see Mark 16:15; Col 1:23) – i.e., all people who are in need of salvation from “futility!”
Scripture seems to teach that Abraham walked and talked with God as well (see Gen 18, especially v. 22ff), but surely you don’t think that he was in “the best possible communion with God” or enjoyed a “perfect loving relationship with God!”
So…do you think that to be presently estranged from God means that one is doomed to be estranged from God forever?
Luke, I believe Adam and Eve’s relationship with God could’ve been “very good” or even perfect, however, it was almost certainly very naive, not having any understanding of the consequences of sin. So although they chose to be disobedient, I doubt they chose the full consequences. I’m sure Adam & Eve quickly regretted their decision and wanted to be reconciled. Likewise, I assume God, who was so close to them at the start, would want that relationship restored too. So if both parties want to be reconciled and God “works out” how to resurrect people, why wouldn’t they be reconciled in the end?
I really don’t see how anyone could think that I was saying “God” is reducible to simply the statement “God = Love”, after reading those complexly detailed comments I wrote. I rarely if ever do anything simple, and certainly wasn’t doing any simple theology back up there.
Which I’m sure I’ll be hashing over again in eye-bleeding detail, if we ever get started on comparing notes for why each of us thinks Calv or Kath soteriology follows from trinitarian theism. 