I am indeed an Anglican priest, but it doesn’t help me much.
Is it saying too little to say I agree that we need to walk a middle path between the two dangers of reading too much of our doctrine into God and not having enough of God in our doctrine?
Sorry Jason, I don’t understand your critique of my response to the “God=love” statement.
God is indeed personal, but I wouldn’t want to go much beyond Moses’ record in Exodus. I’d take “being” as a straight dictionary definition of presence and reality.
I’m still unclear if your defending the statement that God is essentially love and if you are how representative of universalism that is. I think what universalists mean, is that God’s primary characteristic is love, which is closer to the mark but still in error because God has several primary characteristics, so the real argument should be doesn’t reprobation go against one of God’s primary characteristics which is love. A good and valid question.
Clearly more needs to be said about God then that he is essentially being. God has characteristics and reveals himself to us in salvation as a Trinity. The Trinity as I understand it is a doctrine of unity and distinction. One God - three persons, although not persons in the exactly the same way we think of persons, but named divine distinctions of the Godhead with different roles, sharing nonetheless the unity of God. I am looking forward to reading how you think universalism is necessary because of the Trinity. If it is, which I don’t think it is, it would only be because of an argument from God’s revealed words and actions.
I wish I had more time to put into catching up on the conversations between you and Jason. I’ve only glanced from a distance and it all always looks good!
Let me offer a few quick thoughts about God and love, not particularly organized.
I’d want to argue that God is essentially love. I think this best expresses the Orthodox view and makes for the best fit for the various claims we want to make about God’s attributes. However, the claim that ‘God is Love’ can end up supporting somewhat contrary claims for the simple reason that there are different understandings of ‘love’ among us. So just saying “God is love” doesn’t end the conversation, it begins it.
As I understand it, God is essentially love in the sense that God’s being/existence is constituted in/by an act of love (as opposed to an act of forgiveness or judgment or wrath or revelation to the world, etc.). So the question becomes what does this act of love amount to? I don’t mind going with your definition and saying God is essentially ‘being’, but I define ‘being’ per se as ‘being as communion’ (as does Fr. Zizioulas following the Cappadocians), and that is what trinitarianism gets us. ‘Exisence’ (or ‘being’) is in its most fundamental-ontological truth an act of love. In the case of God we’re just positing an essentially relational ontology that views God’s ‘being’ as irreducibly hypostatic in which Father, Son, and Spirit have their being in the affirming and realization of one another’s identity in-relationship-to each other. What does this act of affirmation and personal realization mean? It means ‘love’, viz., an act that affirms the value and worth of another and achieves the enjoyment of its own well-being in the well-being of another (in interpersonal terms).
So for me, to affirm the personal nature of another is to love that other. I love when I act in ways that affirm and promote the personal worth and value of others. Hence, the enjoyment of one’s fullest well-being is the enjoyment of personal or hypostatic being. In God’s case this obtains necessarily (trinitarianly); it just is the divine aseity—the unsurpassable aesthetic pleasure of divine personal existence. This IS the beauty and goodness that is God. In our case it’s derived existence—we have to ‘become’ by grace what God is by nature—essentially loving.
If this (or something very close to it) is true, then it follows that this grounding of personal value and the will to affirm the personal well-being of others qualifies all God’s actions with respect to sentient creatures other than God. To say God is love (so far as the world is concerned) is just to say God always acts in relationship to other sentient beings in this manner. God’s acts relative to the world flow from the essential love that God is; hence, all other divine acts and attributes become the differentiated truth of love in relationship to the world. Thus, judgement and wrath are simply manifestations of divine love in relationship to particular attitudes adopted by the world. This is why I would argue in trinitarian terms that divine judgement is necessarily remedial (or loving), for ‘remedial’ betokens the well-being of another and the ultimate purpose of judgement. What other sort of judgment could love propose?
That’s all pretty choppy and thrown together, but it pretty much expresses the understanding of God = Love that I hold to.
I am so happy that you brought this topic up and look forward to reading more of your thoughts.
And Tom;
I just loved your thoughts and have long believed that our existence is intimately related to the very nature of God Himself and therefore to be “lost” would mean that God then must have ceased to exist.
I’ve been thinking about this these past few weeks as I prepared to teach a lesson in our church study time (what you all call “Sunday School”) about “relationships”. We believe that God is a personal being; and further, that God – in His essence and nature – is relational. At minimum, the idea of being a “person” includes self-consciousness and self-determinacy.
Anyway, the notion of Trinity is of course difficult (esp for Jews and Muslims) and can be shrouded in mystery and can bend ones mind big time. The best way then, in my opinion anyway, to begin to make sense of the Trinity is that it is relational in it’s foundations and essence. Each person acting for the mutual benefit of the other, in joy and completeness.
That we are also relational beings is, I’m convinced, what it means to have the image of God within us. We are, in ways undetectable to us now perhaps, the product, the offspring, the children, of this relational reality that is God. This relational love creates; and sustains. And we see this creative aspect of relationship in human marriage whose love creates more “relaters”. It’s the ultimate positive feedback system.
So God is the personal manifestation of this relational love which creates and sustains and no I have no idea exactly “how” that works. But it certainly fits the Christian ways of speaking about God and His power to create. A power which, I’m convinced, is necessarily relational.
Now I really do think that a huge barrier to accepting Universalism as God’s eventual accomplishment is our projection onto God of relational dynamics that are in truth our own dysfunctional ones. For example, even though I am relational, I find all kinds of reasons to NOT have relationships with various people. If someone is perceived to be against me, or has hurt me, or I am unable to trust them, I am not going to culture and foster relationship with them.
But that’s not God’s method or modus at all! He pursues and seeks relationship with even the worst of sinners; those most guilty of hurting Him. That’s the story of the bible as told through the eyes of God as relater. Why on earth does He do that? - unless it is in His very nature and essence. Further, why would He ever stop doing it? – which in essence is what being “lost” would entail. So the very same relational aspects of God that leads Him to create and sustain in the first place are the exact same aspects which make Universalism inevitable. Thus the “choice” to be lost (ECT or annihilation) is simply not a viable one at all given this relational (trinitarian) quality of God. Just as we didn’t chose to come into existence, so also we can’t chose to go out of existence. It simply does not cohere with God’s relational realities as the source of our existence in the first place.
Well I’m sure it can be said a lot better and I’m eager to read more of the thoughts you 2 gentlemen will bring!!!
I’m glad we’ve spent time on the “God is love” statement and would like to take a moment to recap my position, as the thread becomes complicated with multiple tangents and different lines of argument. (I’ll leave it to the moderators to untangle the discussion!)
I know I’m one of the few non-universalists on the forum and I while I firmly believe the position I’m rearticulating here, I’m not saying it to be belligerent or antagonistic!
Universalism may (although I personally don’t believe so) have legitimate arguments based on the revealed actions and words of God but it can’t remain within the circle of orthodox theology if “God is love” is taken as the fundamental ontological definition of God.
CS Lewis says in Mere Christianity that:
Turning a characteristic of God, in this case love, into his defining fundamental description, not only confuses a characteristic with an essential description it fundamentally changes Christianity’s central claim about God. The basic starting point is the Trinity, we can’t and shouldn’t attempt to be reductionist past that point. I felt I may have overstepped the mark earlier by talking about God as being before talking about God as Trinity. (Although given all that love is indeed one of God’s primary characteristics.) Gregory of Nazianzen is correct when he says:
There aren’t three monotheistic religions, Christianity’s first and central definition of God is a paradox, the Trinity. TGB Now briefly so I don’t overstep my own desire to have short posts, I’m only familiar with Zizioulas in the work of others, I like his emphasis on the persons of the Trinity but would be suspect of his subtle Monarchism, sometimes a trait of the Orthodox East.
Thank you for the comments and clarification, Luke. Great to be in conversation with you. I love your avatar by the way! As you can see, I’ve found your avatar’s brother! http://planetsmilies.net/smoking-smiley-5421.gif
Luke: Universalism may (although I personally don’t believe so) have legitimate arguments based on the revealed actions and words of God but it can’t remain within the circle of orthodox theology if “God is love” is taken as the fundamental ontological definition of God.
Tom: Help me understand why this is the case, because I don’t see the explanation in your post. It sounds like you’re saying the belief that God is love (in an essential sense) is more grievous to Orthodoxy than is the belief that all shall be saved. I’m having a hard time seeing that position entailed in any Orthodox Creed or position, especially in light of the explicit statement by John that God is love. One has to interpret John in context, yes, but where has Orthodoxy ruled out the ‘essential love’ interpretation?
Luke: CS Lewis says in Mere Christianity that: “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.”
Tom: I totally agree. This sounds more like an argument for seeing God as essentially loving because essentially tri-hypostatic than otherwise. Love DOES require personal relations (as does the perfection of personal relations entail love), and God is the perfection of personal relations. What Lewis is challenging is the naming of God as ‘love’ without conceding what such a thing implies about God (namely, that God is essentially a trinity of personal relations).
Luke: Turning a characteristic of God, in this case love, into his defining fundamental description, not only confuses a characteristic with an essential description…
Tom: IF (that is, if) love were only another characterisic of God along side other characteristics of God, then yes, you’d be right. We’d be making a mistake in elevating love over the other attributes. But the question is, Is love just another characteristic of God?
Luke: …it fundamentally changes Christianity’s central claim about God. The basic starting point is the Trinity, we can’t and shouldn’t attempt to be reductionist past that point.
Tom: Christianity’s central claim about God is a bare claim that God is triune with no further explication? That seems a bit over-restrictive. And is it even meaningful? Surely the Fathers did more to explicate the divine relations than anyone, and as far as I can tell did so in terms of mutual love. Indeed, some modern Eastern theologians (Yanneras) explicate those relations even in terms of ‘eros’ (viz., God’s being is essentially erotic or ecstatic in the sense that the divine persons constitute their identity in an unsurpassable longing for one another such that each is eternally fulfilling and fulfilled in this exchange). The consummate fullness of pleasure and beauty * is an unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction which is the divine being itself, though we can never say (and shouldn’g over-speculate as to) ‘how’ this occurs. So I want to heed the Fathers’ warning regarding the limitations of language when attributing anything to God. The divine essence is, strictly speaking, unknowable in any direct sense. No one can sit inside of God and observe his workings from the inside. We just don’t have that kind of access. And in spite of the fact that human being bears the image of divine being, the latter still transcends the former. So I’m all for a good dose of apophaticism. There’s always more to God than God reveals or which our true propositions can say. But though God is always ‘more’ than he reveals himself to be, he cannot be ‘other’ than he reveals himself to be, else no revelation exists.
And I don’t mind qualifying my own understanding of “God is love” (understood essentially). I do not mean to reduce God absolutely to the truth of this (or any) proposition or to suggest that in saying “God is essentially love” we have captured the divine essence in a bottle and said all there is to say about God essentially. But this qualification doesn’t forbid the sort of ‘fundamental’ understanding of God that we express when we say that the various attributes of God are just the differentiated truth of love, or that there is no higher concept by which we can conceive of the triune God than that of ‘loving relations’, all else being an explication of love.
So I agree, Christianity’s fundamental claim about God is that God is triune. But I don’t feel at all that I’m walking away from this fundamental claim (or reducing it to something more fundamental than thee relations themselves) when I say these triune relations are essentially loving and that all other descriptions of God which his actions and words may warrant are each in themselves nothing other than this same love at work under another name.
Luke: I felt I may have overstepped the mark earlier by talking about God as being before talking about God as Trinity.
Tom: You ask about Fr. Zizioulas below, but let me mention him here. For Zizioulas to speak about God as “triune” and to speak about God as “being” per se is the same thing, hence the title of his book Being as Communion. Pavel Florensky (Russian Orthodox) in his book A Metaphysics of Love makes the same claim: the existence of a solitary entity with no relations is a metaphysical impossibility. To exist at all is to be in some relation. That’s how one can speak of God’s ‘being’ and ‘relatedness’ (i.e., the Trinity) as one and the same. The question is how ‘love’ figures into this. Given apophaticism I have to admit that my claim that “God is love” isn’t a direct apprehension of the essence of God. I haven’t stood on the inside of God and observed this. Like everybody else, I’m limited to God’s words and actions. But given those words and actions, I think the conclusion that ‘God is love’ (i.e., that these triune personal relations are the instantiation of perfect benevolence) is as safe a claim as any I can make about God.
Luke: I’m only familiar with Zizioulas in the work of others, I like his emphasis on the persons of the Trinity but would be suspect of his subtle Monarchism, sometimes a trait of the Orthodox East.
Tom: I’m smiling because Zizy’s monarchism is anything but subtle! He’s openly passionate about it, and it’s a huge deal in the East. But I think the concern about it is warranted, and some Eastern Orthodox (like Aristotle Papanikolau in Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion, great book!) recognize the dangers of an unqualified monarchism and have smoothed it out a bit (which I think is good). But I do believe there’s a priority (as ‘cause’ or ‘fount’ of divinity, call it what you will) which is unique to the Father who grounds the unity of essence. Personally I really like the way Jonathan Edwards works this out, but that’s a whole other discussion!
Being both a unitarian and one who sees the Johannine declaration “God is love” as being theologically consistent with this position, I naturally take issue with the above expressed views that John’s statement presupposes a multi-personal God. So while it’s certainly not my intention to hijack this thread, I did want to say just a few things in response!
In the context in which God is declared to be “love” it would appear that John is using the title “God” not to refer to a plurality of persons but rather to the Father (which is exactly what one would expect if John was unitarian). Similarly, in John 4:21-24 and 1 John 1:5-7 God is said to be “spirit” and “light,” respectively, and in both contexts it would seem that the title “God” refers exclusively to the Father rather than to a plurality of persons. See, for example, 1 John 1:1-3, where John refers to “the Father” and “his Son Jesus Christ.” In v. 5, where God is said to be “light,” he goes on to speak of Jesus as “his Son.” Throughout this epistle (as well as in his gospel), whenever John refers to “God” he is almost certainly referring to the Father alone, and not to a plurality of persons who, together, share this singular divine title.
Moreover, in this context John is not even talking about the love between the Father and the Son; instead, John’s declaration is made in view of God’s gracious disposition toward his estranged human creatures, which was manifested most fully in history by his sending his Son “so that we might live through him” (v. 9). Nothing else seems to be meant by the expression “God is love” than that the disposition of the Father toward the human race is that of perfect benevolence. So even assuming God to be a plurality of persons, the statement “God is love” is relative to how the Father relates to us, not to how he relates to other supposed divine persons with whom he is in community. Even if God was a multi-personal being - and John believed this to be so (although, as a unitarian, I see no evidence that he did) - it is God’s disposition toward humanity that is in view, and which is the occasion for John’s initial declaration that “God is love.”
While it may be objected that the Father cannot be described as being “love” unless he has always been in a relationship with another self-existent person, I just don’t see why this should be assumed. Could not John have referred to the Father as “love” simply because he has a perfectly benevolent disposition toward the human race? Couldn’t the Father be “love” simply because his nature is such that he necessarily loves (and perfectly so) every personal being he creates? It’s simply not the case that the Father be eternally related to any personal being in order to be described in this way by John. Again, the context suggests that John is speaking of what God is by nature in relation to human beings, and not how God may be thought of or described apart from the world into which he sent his Son. But since the statement “God is love” is not to be understood literally anyway, I don’t see how it would be at all strange or incoherent to think of a unipersonal God as being “love” even before there were any entities in existence to whom he could manifest his perfectly benevolent disposition in a loving act (e.g., in sending his Son to die on our behalf so that we can “live through him”).
So based on these considerations I do not find the statement “God is love” as being at all theologically inconsistent with a unitarian position, or as requiring one to believe that God has eternally existed as a community of two or more persons. This is not to say, of course, that Trinitarian Christianity doesn’t “lead to universalism.” It very well may (and based on what Jason has said, it would seem that a pretty compelling case can be made for this). At the same time, I can sympathize with those who might argue that the love between the members of the Trinity should be understood as an exclusive expression of love which, like the love between a husband and a wife, would be inappropriate to share with those outside of this eternally-existent relationship. But this would not at all entail that God doesn’t love all created persons in such a way that would be appropriate for the Creator-creature relationship. The love that the Father has for the Son would not be expressed or shared in the same way as the Father’s love for sinful, estranged beings, but it would still be love nonetheless.
I guess I’m being slightly hard to pin down because I don’t want to deny that one of God’s primary characteristics is love. But yes although it’s hard to rank heresy, not affirming the Trinity places you outside Christianity. However you may say “God is love” and still believe the Trinity and simply be misguided. But one of the troubles with the assertion that ‘God is love’ is that wrongly elevates the unity of God over the distinctions of God. Besides which Augustine’s model from De Trinitate of the Father as the lover, the Son as the beloved and the Spirit as the love that exists between them is only a model (which he acknowledges) and one that starts to look to much like Sabellianism (one God, three masks) is used to often. Furthermore it’s also misleading to pull the statement “God is love” from Scripture but not “God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29) or “God is just” (2 Th 1:6) for example.
I agree that when speaking at the level of ousia (the level of being) when can talk about the primary characteristics of God, but where in systematic or historical theology is a single characteristic held up as the defining aspect of being? this seems to me to confuse physis (the level of attributes) with ousia. (For example an attribute of humans is humanity and an attribute of God is divinity, both of which are shared by the Son.)
A further general comment, I think DA Carson is right, we have to think about love in five categories because Scripture seems to use the word in four different ways:
I don’t see why all of the above cannot be understood as different expressions of a love that is the same in essence. God is “love,” not “different types of love.” This perfect divine love could be manifested and experienced in different ways depending on the circumstances and relationship without ceasing to be what it is in essence. God’s love is manifested differently toward believers than it is toward unbelievers, but this doesn’t mean he ascribes less worth and value to unbelievers, or has no intention of promoting their best interest.
With Aaron, I have to view the diverse divine loves that Carson separates as the differentiated truth of a single divine disposition to value and pursue the well-being of all things. Unless Carson wants to posit some ontological divide between these, I think we have to view them as all expressing a single fundamental disposition.
I appreciate Carson’s ingenuity though. As a monergist/Calvinist, he believes God did unconditionally and efficaciously decree the eternal conscious torment of (it’s safe to say) the vast majority of human beings. So he can’t concede that God is love in the essential sense that God equally and unconditionally loves all human beings and equally wills their well-being in union with himself (whatever he might mean by “trinitarian love”). So he’s got to divide things up to account for how one and the same God can love the elect and not love (or whatever one would call it) those who are not elect.
I find his whole division impossible. If we posit the essential intra-trinitarian love (that Carson begins with), a love that defines the very personal being of God, wouldn’t THIS be that which determines (or at least explains) God’s own decrees and choices? It would. But how do we then ground in this fundamental intra-trinitarian being a decree to only love some as Carson does? In other words, what IS God essentially (in Carson’s words “intra-trinitarianly”) that makes unconditionally damning the majority compatible with the love that defines God essentially/trinitarianly and which must be the ground and explanation of all God’s acts?
To me the answer is obvious for calvinists. God is hate - though not preached (any more than God not loving everyon), it’s part of the system and to me is unavoidable. I too agree with Aaron. Imagine if a father threw his 20 year old son into a furnace and told him, I know I’m loving but the love I had for you is not the love I have for you brother billy. Such philosophy begins to cripple the words of John “Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God”…well which one is it?
I see I should have gotten over my cold more quickly…
Although I appreciate the various extended discussions, I was trying not to run Luke too far too fast. Aside from small progressive steps being quite possibly more helpful at illustrating why I believe universalism to be a logical corollary of ortho-trin (after all I arrived there myself after an extensive series and consideration of small doctrinal steps to trinitarian theism), Luke did ask for smaller posts.
I’m not going to comment on most of what has been written since Luke’s original reply Thursday, consequently, even though I consider Aaron’s understandable and well-expressed opposition the most important to address aside from continuing the exchange with Luke. (I was actually hoping you would comment in order to help illustrate some important distinctions, Aaron. )
By the way, what is the proper honorific to use? There may be times when I have to refer to the author of GosLuke/Acts, and will have to distinguish; and I live in West Tennessee where there aren’t many Anglican priests. (Is it “Father” or “Brother” or “Reverend” etc.?)
I think later you eventually agreed with the principle my critique, so that isn’t as pertinent now. But just in case: my point was that I often find opponents to universalism inadvertently reducing their theology of God or otherwise treating it as being less than trinitarian theism in order to oppose universalism in various ways; and your comment which I had quoted was one such example–with the added bit of irony that you had presented an ontological statement of God’s essential existence reduced practically to the point of not even needing to be theism (since “being itself” could theoretically be atheism unless a personal quality is read into it, as you did), after claiming that I wasn’t including enough doctrine in the statement “God is essentially love”.
(Note that when you say “I’d take ‘being’ as a straight dictionary definition of presence and reality”, this straight dictionary definition also has exactly nothing to do with personhood per se, and so could just as well be atheism.)
But later you acknowledged that you thought you had reduced too far (including quickly in that reply itself “Clearly more needs to be said about God then that he is essentially being.”) And despite the complexity, that was basically my point. So, moving on…
So, we at least agree that God is essentially personal?–that this is important in distinguishing theism from atheism? I ask that as a question, because I am not entirely sure you meant to affirm God is essentially personal instead of essentially non-personal (but maybe accidentally personal anyway).
Be sure to mention when you think we’ve gone much beyond Moses’ record in Exodus. Keep in mind Aaron’s remarks, because I’m sure he would be glad to point out where unitarians think trinitarians have gone much beyond Moses’ record in Exodus! Such as on the next question I asked:
I am not sure I got an answer to this. (Except from Aaron who of course said that God is essentially only a single person. )
You do seem to briefly affirm “One God - three persons” in your reply to me, although you don’t talk about the multiple personhood much per se in your subsequent remarks and replies. But I can’t quite tell what this means.
So before continuing:
2.1.) Did you mean that you were agreeing to affirm that God is essentially multi-personal instead of essentially single-personal?
Or did you mean that although you affirm God is multi-personal you deny that God is essentially multi-personal (thus denying that God’s essential multi-personality is a proper doctrine of trinitarian theism)? Relatedly, were you agreeing that God is essentially personal but denying that God is essentially multi-personal? (Or did I misunderstand you and you were not in fact agreeing that God is essentially personal at all, even though you were willing to acknowledge that God is non-essentially personal instead? Or perhaps you are agnostic on the topic?)
Alternately, did you mean that although trinitarian doctrine (generally speaking) does involve God being essentially multi-personal, you don’t believe God’s essential multi-personality can be argued “from God’s revealed words and actions” and so this trinitarian doctrine goes much beyond scriptural revelation (whether taken altogether or restricted to Exodus)?
My next question, which obviously depends on whether you agree that God is at least multi-personal (though you seem to do so), would be:
3.) If you mean that “being itself” (fundamental reality and existence, which you at least agree is personal, i.e. God, if not essentially personal…?) is multi-personal (essentially so or otherwise?!) – then do you mean “being itself” is only multi-personal, or that “being itself” is inter-personal? The former would be cosmological bi-theism or tri-theism (or however many persons), multiple independent facts as “being itself”; the latter would involve one single substantial independent fact of multiple persons.
3.1) And if the latter, do you agree that “being itself” is essentially inter-personal, or would you deny that “being itself” is essentially inter-personal (even if you acknowledge that “being itself” is essentially personal and maybe even essentially multi-personal? On the other hand, if you deny that “being itself” is essentially multi-personal then of course you couldn’t coherently affirm it was essentially interpersonal; much moreso, if you denied that “being itself” was essentially personal, then of course you couldn’t coherently affirm it was essentially interpersonal.)
Please note that I intentionally built a discussion of what God essentially is, into my series of questions from the start; since after all this question is what becomes a source of disagreement between us eventually: is God really essentially love? And even if God is essentially love, then what does this mean?
Consequently, it is of no small importance to be clear about where we agree on God’s essential reality so that we can delineate where we begin to disagree about God’s essential reality. Also, it makes following out the various metaphysical options somewhat simpler to list.
I’ll have replies to some other remarks in my next comment, so as to keep the progression of theological agreement or disagreement more direct here. There is more progression of doctrinal detail to go regarding God’s essential reality, if you agree that God is essentially inter-personal; if you deny this (stopping short at some point previously listed), then we’ve found where the core theological disagreement between us is.
I did have some other replies to Luke not directly bearing on the main flow of discussion I initiated for purposes of helping try to explain why I believe Trinitarian Christianity leads to some version of Universalism (instead of to Arm or Calv soteriology).
But to keep the main flow distinct, I thought I should answer them here. So!
I’ll be getting to that eventually. I started with the much much much much doctrinally simpler statement you preferred instead of “God = love”, namely that God is “being itself”, which (in the sense I mentioned) I could certainly agree with; and I am proceeding from there, illustrating where various denials result in different theologies (or atheologies) less than ortho-trin.
I have consistently said that when I state “God is essentially love” I mean something that is very doctrinally detailed and complex, and that is in fact orthodox trinitarian theism distinct from any other kind of theism. So I’m trying to show how ortho-trin, distinct from other theological propositions, adds up to what I mean by the statement “God is essentially love”.
Aaron provides a helpful example of what a different version of that statement involves–namely something that at most might as well be something other than ortho-trin!
There aren’t many of us who go into this kind of detail, and so whose universalism is so theologically dependent on ortho-trin being true compared to any other theology. Usually I find universalists sort-of approaching it (Robin/Gregory and Thomas for example). We do have a few here on the boards who are as gung-ho as I am in this theological connection but not many. Not yet anyway.
That’s probably a factor of how any of us came to universalism originally. I got here originally from ortho-trin, the doctrinal precepts of which allowed me to resolve various scriptural issues concerning soteriology (such as the ground for reading X set of scriptures in light of Y set, or both in light of Z, etc.)
So that connection remains a vastly huge factor for me. If I decided universalism was false, I still would have an obligation to believe a soteriology that was doctrinally coherent with the ortho-trin set (not simply a doctrinal set I could affirm in one breath while affirming ortho-trin in another breath without logical, and so without theo-logical, connection between them.) On the other hand, as I noted in the thread to which I linked in my first post for this thread, if I decided something less than ortho-trin was true, I might still think there was some case I could make for universalism from scripture, even a very strong case, but I would be much less psychologically certain it was true–because those lesser theologies just don’t provide inherent assurance of God’s scope and persistence to act in salvation (including especially from sin) as ortho-trin does.
Similarly and the other way around: if I saw that someone provided a more coherently theological account of Arm or Calv soteriology from the precepts of ortho-trin, I would consider myself to be obligated to reject Kath soteriology for Arm or Calv instead, even if I thought the scriptural case for one or more Kath variants was very strong: because theologically the concepts have to fit together.
(If I thought the metaphysical logic for Calv or Arm from ortho-trin was ironclad but the scriptural case for one or another Kath variant was also ironclad, I really don’t know what I’d think, other than to be sure that someone somewhere, possibly including myself, was making at least one huge mistake! The same would be true the other way around, if I thought the metaphysical logic for Kath was ironclad but the scriptural testimony for Calv or Arm was ironclad. I would at least have an obligation to reassess various elements until I got a coherent answer.)
You should of course immediately note where you think a theological position is going contrary to revelation, or beyond it in some way or extent you consider improper.
But I have to note from long experience, that it is naive to discount the crucial importance of assessing metaphysical coherency (even if it isn’t recognized as such) in deciding what counts as testimony to what from scriptural revelation. This is why unitarian and trinitarian Christians differ from one another in regard to what revelation reveals, and why we agree with each other in rejecting polytheism or cosmological multi-IFs (tri-theism for example) over against Mormons despite their attempts at appealing to shared scriptural testimony (even where not doctored up or restored by Joseph Smith).
As Tom (TGB) has previously noted, Lewis in the place you quoted him basically says that “God is love” should and must be taken as the fundamental ontological definition of God, and gives some explanation for why this is so: because the statement is uniquely connected to trinitarian theology, with trinitarian relationship being fundamentally ontological.
Like Tom, I couldn’t tell if you quoted this supposing to refute us, or as an example of someone else not remaining within the circle of orthodoxy by making the same mistake we do (Lewis is notably Arm not Calv after all). But I will report that this along with a few other related statements was what initially pointed me toward universalism being true. (I’ve studied and extensively written on Lewis’ theology.)
Though obviously an essential description will also involve characteristic descriptions, even though the reverse isn’t necessarily true.
I will note however that in the quote you provided from Lewis, he is not turning a characteristic of God into a fundamental description, but rather showing that a fundamental description (God’s essential existence as a coherent interpersonal relationship) amounts to the statement that God is (essentially) love–in a way unique to what only trinitarians (or at least binitarians) can claim.
To say (as Lewis does) that “If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love” is entirely the reverse of turning one characteristic or activity of God into an essential reality. It is explicating what the essential reality entails, in a fashion unique to that theological system.
The claim that “God is love” == “God is ortho-trin” is not, however, reductionist. On the contrary, what is reductionist is to claim that love is only a characteristic of God, even if an important one. (Compare with Aaron’s remarks; his reduction in theology parallels his greatly reduced meaning for “God is love”!)
It only begs the question if someone hasn’t been continually (even tiresomely ) repeating the details of what “type of love” he is talking about.
Put another way, to claim that “God is (essentially) love” == “Orthodox trinitarian theism is true and not some other kind of theism”, may or may not be defensible; but it is absolutely not begging the question about which type of love is being talked about in that list! Obviously it’s talking about “(1) God’s intra-Trinitarian love”, upon which all those other four meanings in Carson’s list must ontologically depend if ortho-trin is true.
(I have to confess I’m curious about those “five categories” if “Scripture seems to use the word in four different ways”. Does Carson mean that he doesn’t think scripture testifies to love among the Trinitarian Persons??! Or does he think scripture doesn’t testify to love in God’s providential care? God’s “special” love to the elect? God’s “conditional” love toward covenant people in the language of discipline? I know some Calvs certainly don’t believe scripture ever uses the word in regard to some yearning of God toward all humans in command, much less in any real invitation to all human beings, to repent and believe!–though some Calvs certainly do, and I don’t recall if Carson is one of those. Aaron would doubtless say that scripture doesn’t seem to use the word in the first way! )
My mind is sort of boggling over how the claim that ‘love is an interpersonal relationship, God is essentially an interpersonal relationship, therefore God is essentially love’ (to put the argument perhaps oversimply) could even possibly count as elevating the unity over the distinctions. Except in the sense that trinitarian theism, as a type of monotheism, “elevates” the unity over the distinctions by being monotheism instead of tri-theism!
If anything I would have expected the complaint to be the other way around, that “God is love” elevates the distinction of the persons over the unity of the substance; since if anyone is stressing a notion of “God is love” that a unitarian Christian (or a non-Christian Jew or a Muslim or a nominal deist or even a pantheist) could just as easily approve, it isn’t me or other trinitarian universalists appealing to God essentially being love as ground for Kath theology being true!
Relatedly:
Well, it only starts to look too much like a modalism (such as Sabellianism) when the interaction of the Persons between each other starts being presented as only a MODEL! That would mean that the interrelation between the Persons isn’t real as such; that the Father doesn’t really love the Son or vice versa, and the Spirit isn’t the love existing between them.
At any rate, it isn’t trinitarian universalists such as myself who are trying to claim that this interpersonal relationship is only a model; just like it isn’t trinitarian universalists such as myself who are trying to present “God is love” in a reductive fashion that would be entirely acceptable to modalists (as well as to unitarians) .
Like many other universalists, I have less than no problem incorporating “God is a consuming fire” with “God is love” and even with “God is justice” (though I don’t personally recall any scriptures saying exactly that. I affirm it anyway, specifically as an ortho-trin theologian and apologist.)
2 Thess 1:6 doesn’t say “God is just”, by the way, but that would still only be on the same plane as saying as “God is loving”; it would not be parallel to saying things like “God is a consuming fire” or “God is love”. As it is, the Greek says {eiper dikaion para the(i)o}, “if it happens to be just of God” to repay such and such with this and that. (Doubtless St. Paul means that God is just, or he wouldn’t call that coming punishment and reward “the just judging of God” among many other statements of that sort. But this shows how unusual and important direct statements are such as “God is love” and “God is a consuming fire”.)
Anyway I go so far as to stress (once again as even a supernaturalistic theist, much moreso as a trinitarian theist) that there can be only one eonian fire, namely our God Who is a consuming fire; consequently I routinely and coherently identify things such as the lake of fire of RevJohn and the eonian fire of Mark 9 as God the Holy Spirit Himself. I also notice, not incidentally, that the Hebraist makes his statement about God being a consuming fire when speaking as a warning to other Christians in a chapter largely dedicated to THE LOVING REDEMPTIVE PURPOSES OF THE PUNISHMENT OF GOD!!–something to be avoided by being righteous instead, surely, but far from being hopeless, much less the wrath of God on a Calvinistic non-elect whom God never intended nor acted to save. (But I could write, and have written, very much more about punishment threats across EpistHebrews, including OT contexts of the same.)
I will be more concerned about not pulling “God is a consuming fire” from the scriptures when I haven’t routinely done so. Similarly, I will be more concerned about not pulling “God is just” from the scriptures when I haven’t routinely affirmed (specifically as an ortho-trin theist and not some lesser kind of theist) that God is essentially justice and righteousness: something I suspect you yourself would deny.
And I think that this catches me up on replying to Luke. (Replying to Aaron will need another comment.)
I suppose I should qualify all my previous posts as intending to show how trinitarian theism entails UR. I can’t say how a Unitarian would view God in essential terms. Without getting into 1John, I’ll just say that I don’t think John consciously and explicitly intends to say something about the ontology of trinitarian relations. But I do think trinitarianism is implicated in the notion that God is love, as I understand the logic behind John’s claim.
Let’s take your suggestion that ‘God is love’ means that “the disposition of the Father toward the human race is that of perfect benevolence.” Just that much suggests to me that the Father is defined ‘dispositionally’ in such a way as to necessitate (I don’t mean by force or coercion) his ‘loving’ human beings when they come along. I’d be very interested in what you think that ‘disposition’ is. I think we’d agree that it defines God essentially (it’s not a contingent feature of God’s being, as if God is as dispositionally likely to abuse and hate as he is to love humans) and that it accounts for or explains the actual benevolence of God’s actions relative to the world. The only difference may be that I call this disposition a ‘definitional’ disposition, a disposition that only exists at all as it is actually exercised and not one which is exercised contingently, which I think you’d want to say about God’s disposition to love. So in the end, just what is this disposition to love that defines God essentially?
My hunch is that a disposition that always ‘loves’ in situations where love is possible is just another name for ‘love’ (or ‘potential love’ on your account, or something like that), however inconsistent I think it is to posit this disposition in the absence of personal relations. Be that as it may, even though John may have in mind God’s love relative to how the Father relates to us, it’s only (as you show) because God is already dispositionally inclined to love that John says what he does. In other words, John believes this disposition motivates God’s actions toward us (the acts we call ‘loving’) and not the other way around. God’s loving acts toward us reveal the divine disposition to love as opposed to that divine disposition being determined by God’s loving acts toward us. I think you’ll agree with that much. And if a Unitarian can agree that God is ‘dispositionally inclined to love’, then that may be as close as you and trinitarians can get on this issue, and that’s not bad! But my question is, just what is this essential divine disposition to love when someone comes along to serve as an object of love? I think in the end you and I are actually agreeing that God is essentially ‘love’. You just don’t connect ‘love’ necessarily to the presence of relations. And if you DO connect them, you don’t think God is always in relation to other persons (since created presons haven’t always been around). But you DO posit a necessary divine disposition to love when relations are present. You think the disposition is God’s essentially but not the relations.
On a side note, I’m not sure how to convince you that the act of loving (exercising one’s disposition to love) entails personal relations, or why it’s best to suppose that the actual exercise of this divine disposition to love defines God necessarily. Deep waters indeed. I take it as a fundamental intuition (or maybe just a ‘given’ of experience) that to love involves a certain being-in-relation, a certain giving-and-receiving between one and another. I honestly don’t know what else love is.
Luke: But one of the troubles with the assertion that ‘God is love’ is that wrongly elevates the unity of God over the distinctions of God. Besides which Augustine’s model from De Trinitate of the Father as the lover, the Son as the beloved and the Spirit as the love that exists between them is only a model (which he acknowledges) and one that starts to look to much like Sabellianism (one God, three masks) is used to often. Furthermore it’s also misleading to pull the statement “God is love” from Scripture but not “God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29) or “God is just” (2 Th 1:6) for example.
Tom: I don’t think I’m pulling it the way you think I am. For example, were God to have a disposition necessarily to ‘consume with fire’ how might we imagine this disposition to be exercised eternally or essentially? Who would this fire be consumming? Similarly with ‘justice’. So what I want to say is that all the world-dependent attributes we talk about (forgiveness, justice, chastisement, etc.) are just the love of God relating now to this state of affairs, now to that one. But orthodox trinitarianism doesn’t make the triune relations world-dependent. They define God essentially. I don’t know what word other than ‘love’ we can use to better describe these relations.
In the end I don’t see justice and forgiveness and judgment as something ontologically other than love, so when I pull ‘love’ out I’m essentially pulling out all the attributes and just naming what is common and essential to them all—viz., the benevolent will to secure the highest possible well-being of a thing. Justice IS love-in-relation-to-______ (fill in the blank with an appropriate injustice) seeking to achieve the highest well-being in its appropriate circumstances. Similarly, judgment IS just love in-relation-to- _______ (fill in the blank with an appropriate evil) seeking to promote the highest well-being in its appropriate circumstances, and so forth. But those injustices and evils are world-dependent states. Divine love (or so I’m arguing on the basis of the divine relations) is not a world-dependent state, and that’s why love can embrace all the other attributes conceptually as the fount from which they spring.
Yes, but much of that length was predicated on answering things that came up in the meanwhile.
(Which I had said I wouldn’t mostly do, but then went ahead and did anyway… And I still haven’t replied to Aaron yet. WILL BE SHORTER!! WILLLLL BEEEEEEEE!!!)
Also, my first catch-up reply would have been about half that length if Luke had clarified to what extent, or not, he was accepting the essential personhood vs. essential non-personhood of God. Leaving that out leads to multiplication of various doctrinal options.
Auggy: Imagine if a father threw his 20 year old son into a furnace and told him, “I know I’m loving but the love I had for you is not the love I have for you brother billy.” Such philosophy begins to cripple the words of John “Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God.”
Aaron, while I don’t mean to disrespect you, and while it would be interesting to debate the Trinity versus Unitarianism. Unitarianism is outside orthodox Christianity and this thread assumes the Godhead exists.
TGB, so you found the ‘Mad Men’ app as well? (I wish smoking didn’t cause cancer.) I agree there a unity exisits, but the advantage of Carson’s description is that it accurately reflects differences in the revelation itself. Furthermore a universalist definition seems to unnecessarily blur the boundaries.
But it doesn’t, you haven’t shown that a) we should speak of God having a defining essence, b) characteristics/attributes can be used as defining the ousia of God and c) what love actually is.
You also need to explain why it’s theologically preferable to speak about God’s essence as a starting point as opposed to the Trinity.
Sometimes, I take total depravity seriously.
Jason,
We are being drawn into larger post territory, which may make the overall discussion break down a little as questions and arguments get left unanswered. I agree with your comments up to and including the point about God being a person. God is indeed a person and three persons, although I’m reluctant to use that language too often because when we say persons we tend to think individually and biologically. The phrase “multi-person” implies that the defining feature of the Trinity is “multi-person” and implies that the Trinity can be defined by a single feature. I’d also want to add that “persons in relation” is a more accurate biblical phrase.
I think the history of the Trinity has shown that settling on a model and saying this is the essence of the Trinity is ultimately flawed. For example the west favors unity and the East, distinctions. I’ve raised this a number of times in these related threads, the problems associated with coming up with an essential definition of God and making that a theological starting point for theology. Apart from confusing ousia with physis it goes against the grain of church history, which saw the starting point of our theology as the Trinity, not in coming up with a monotheistic starting point. In other words why can’t the starting point be the Trinity instead of trying to come up with an essential definition of God?
Luke: you found the ‘Mad Men’ app as well? (I wish smoking didn’t cause cancer.)
Tom: Yeah. Well, YOUR avatar looks a bit more scruffy than mine. Yours is greyer, and certainly cigarettes are less GQ than pipes. That makes my theology more accurate too—doesn’t it?
Tom: …a love that defines the very personal being of God,
Luke: But it doesn’t…
Tom: I honestly can’t conceive of the triune relations in terms other than mutually affirming and loving relations. I literally wouldn’t know how to give meaning to the orthodox formula “one essence, three persons” apart from identifying the interpenetration of the persons in terms of love—which for me just means the perceiving, valuing, and promoting of personal otherness.
Luke: …you haven’t shown that a) we should speak of God having a defining essence,
Tom: You know Orthodox better than this. God has no ‘defining essence’? Au contraire mon frere.
Luke: b) characteristics/attributes can be used as defining the ousia of God…
Tom: We get as close as our language and a healthy apophaticism will allow us. In light of the fact that in the East the ‘ousia’ of God is absolutely off limits to claims of having captured or contained it in any number of propositions, I only offer my understanding of “God is love” as the best that a qualified and fearful approach to the truth of God will allow. If God is essentially unloving, essentially something else, or essentially nothing at all, God will have to make it plain in the eschaton, for nothing in our present view (in my opinion) permits me a better conceptual approximation than does ‘love’.
I should say that I can’t and wouldn’t seek to ‘prove’ any of this conclusively. I would only attempt to show that it’s plausible and beautiful, and I never offer a defence of the beautiful. It’s seen self-evidently or not at all.
Luke: and c) what love actually is.
Tom: I’ve tried to distil it here and there. I’ll try to sum it up! I might need to fire up my pipe to say what love is though.
Luke: You also need to explain why it’s theologically preferable to speak about God’s essence as a starting point as opposed to the Trinity.
Tom: Oh, I definitely don’t start with the divine essence when discussing God. I start with the ‘one essence, three persons’ formula of the Creed. That’s the trick. One cannot start with one and find one’s way to three. Nor can one start with three and try to derive some unity from it… One starts with the entirety of the Creed’s claim—one essence/three persons.
True and understandable. I will however remind you of things I think are important to cover that haven’t been covered yet.
For example, last time I pointed out that despite this being a key element of the topic of the thread you hadn’t clearly stated whether you agreed that God was even essentially personal instead of non-personal.
Nor does it seem you have clearly done so yet, either…
Well for one thing, when I started off trying to point out how the doctrines of the Trinity add up to a corollary expectation that God will necessarily be acting persistently to save all sinners from sin (i.e. that some kind of universalism or in abbreviation “Kath” is true, compared to any variety of Calv or Arm soteriology), you kept saying that you were having a hard time seeing why that would follow.
For another thing, you yourself had reduced God’s essentiality down to “being itself”–a position that doesn’t even have to be theism but could be atheism instead! Okay, so let’s start there and work back up to ortho-trin.
Third, the history of even Christianity, but certainly also of Judeo-Christianity, doesn’t in fact start off with the Trinity as a doctrinal set. It starts with a few thousand years of revelatory statements which people have been doing their best (for thousands of years) to piece together the implications of. Once the knowledge of God is lost, prior to Abraham, God has to start over from scratch to cut through the miasma of theology (very roughly speaking) and mythology in order to reveal correct truths about Himself. This isn’t easy (partly because the truths about God are apparently quite numerous and complex!) and takes a long time (partly because it’s apparently hard to put it all together; and partly because each generation has to personally start over when they’re born learning what has been learned before; and few if any generations, our own broadly included, are very faithful anyway).
Relatedly, when Saint Paul witnesses to pagans who are in a better position than most people to suss out theology with philosophical clarity, he meets them where they are at (and says God does the same thing!), with a very simple theology that he slowly starts to add to in detail (and quickly loses them when he takes a step or two too far before they’ve grasped the first points sufficiently.)
Fourth: are you saying that God isn’t essentially an ortho-trin Trinity? (Note the phrases I bold-italicized above in your quote.)
If you’re denying God is essentially ortho-trin (while asserting that someone like Aaron who denies ortho-trin theology is not Christian!?), then speaking as a pretty hard-core ortho-trin theologian I’d have to oppose that–and I would say that this is probably our main theological disagreement (if not earlier)!
If you affirm (as an Anglican priest might be expected to do??) that God is essentially ortho-trin, then yay we agree on that anyway! But then we’ve “come up with an essential definition of God”. Which also means that God essentially is… whatever it is that the Trinity is, uniquely compared to any other proposal of God.
I can go the short route and start with the Trinity when talking to a professional trinitarian (God is essentially an eternally active interpersonal unity that, in and as God’s own independently Self-Begetting and Self-Begotten existence, eternally acts toward fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons; which means God in God’s own self-existence is essentially love, in a way far more fundamental and important than any other theology can claim God to be); or, if you complain about me going the short route, I can go the long route and start with a basically defined Independent Fact of existence (“being itself”) and work up from there.
But if you complain about me not going the long route if I go the short route, and about me not going the short route if I go the long route…?
Clearly I’m not thinking biologically, though (as the several hundred pages of theological discussion and analysis I’ve gone through over in the BSM series up to now would easily indicate ). And I’m just as clearly keeping the singularity of the substance in mind as well as the distinction of the Persons. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been complaining about me focusing too much on the “unity” of God and warning us about modalism etc.!
Again it starts to look like the problem is not how I’m getting there but where I’m getting, so that any stick is good enough to beat with. When it becomes obvious that the single substantial unity of God is important in how I get to universalism (which it is), then the complaint is that I’m focusing too much on the unity and not paying attention to the distinction of the Persons. When it becomes obvious that the distinction of the Persons is important in how I get to universalism (which it is), then the caution is on not thinking about the Persons too individually and maybe even biologically!
So let me reassure you: I am definitely not thinking of the Persons individually from each other (much less so biologically); and I am definitely not thinking of the Persons as (even if useful) modalistic fictions of a single personal entity. I am neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance.
If the problem is that I am treating God as essentially being multiple real Persons in a single unity of substance, then I really don’t know what to say to someone who (I would have thought?!?) is supposed to be professing the same thing. But I’m pretty sure I know what Aaron, who certainly has a problem with me claiming God to essentially be that (and who you consider to be outside Christianity!) would say.
Let’s go back to 1.): Are you at least willing to agree that God is essentially personal instead of essentially non-personal? (Keeping in mind that as “being itself” God’s person-ness will be categorically different than our derivative person-ness, at least by being independently self-existent? We derivative creatures are not, in other words, as essentially personal as God is?) Can we at least agree on that?
Of course if I was only defining the Trinity by a single feature, I wouldn’t even have gotten to multi-person! Nor would I be constantly refining and (in a sense even) adding characteristics to the list. (For example a single being itself, not multiple beings themselves; a supernatural being itself, not a natural being itself; a personal being itself, not a non-personal being itself; a multi-personal being itself, not a mono-personal being itself.)
If I am not defining the Trinity by a single feature, which very demonstrably I am not, then why are you worrying that I am defining the Trinity by a single feature?? Even when I state “God is love” I always go on to qualify that I mean A BUNCH OF DETAILS by that simple statement. (A bunch of details which non-trinitarians, such as Aaron, don’t altogether accept, though of course Aaron does agree on some of those details. But he quite reasonably doesn’t think those fewer details he accepts add up to God being essentially love; only at most that God loves.)
Moreover, I have gone on to refine and distinguish again with “multi-person”: not only multi-personal (which might be polytheistic or multi-theistic), but inter-personal (distinctively real Persons but a single substantial entity).
Which technically you seem to accept and agree about, on that distinction (versus being only multi-personal), which of course a trinitarian would and should do. Although once again the problem appears to be that you don’t want to agree that God is essentially inter-personal.
Really? I don’t recall that phrase showing up in the Bible as a description of God, but I have no objection if you’d rather use that–except that “persons in relation” could only be multi-personal (like you and I are persons in relation) instead of substantially inter-personal (as in the uniquely self-existent single-substance Trinity). I would prefer you use a phrase or term that distinguishes compared to polytheism or multi-theism (which even “inter-personal” doesn’t intrinsically do, but I have to use a phrase or term for sake of making the conceptual distinction, and “inter” connotes some closer connection than simply “multi” does…)
Certainly, use a Biblical term or phrase if you can recall one for this! May I suggest dikaiosune (“fair-togetherness”)? Even that doesn’t necessarily have to refer to a single-substantial unity of persons (which is why we, who are not a single substantial reality of multiple persons, can still do dikaiosune), but it’s certainly a popular Biblical term and quite important in the account of God’s war-waging, too! (Rev 19:11 famously comes to mind.)
)
Keep in mind Aaron’s remarks, because I’m sure he would be glad to point out where unitarians think trinitarians have gone much beyond Moses’ record in Exodus! Such as on the next question I asked:
) repeating the details of what “type of love” he is talking about.
And I still haven’t replied to Aaron yet. WILL BE SHORTER!! WILLLLL BEEEEEEEE!!!)