Punitive Love

While a number of theologians maintain that the motives resting behind God’s love and punitive wrath are often opposed to one another, Chapter 6 argues that God’s just wrath is a facet of His love and that God’s punishment of sinners is an expression of this relentless love. To make this case, it is first contended that God’s creation out of love as well as the ministry of Christ support the notion that God’s love and punitive wrath are fundamentally one. Next, the work of Gregory of Nyssa and the contemporary philosopher R.A. Duff are built upon to construct a communicative model of divine punishment. According to this model, God’s punishment intends to communicate to sinners the censure they deserve, with the aim of persuading these individuals to start down the path of spiritual transformation. In the final section, the communicative theory of divine punishment is applied to the doctrine of hell. There it is suggested that, given the communicative theory, hell is best seen as a place where God tries to reform sinners and enable them to exit hell and join the glorified saints. But, it is shown, this conception of hell does not by itself entail universal salvation.

Creation out of Love

There are two prominent and opposing Christian views about why God created, and consequently governs, the world. On the one hand, there is the view that God’s creative and providential activity is fundamentally motivated by God’s desire for self-glorification. God creates not ultimately for the creature, but for Himself, specifically for the enjoyment of the ad extra expression of His attributes. On the other hand, a rival theological group contends that God’s creative activity and care for the world is fundamentally motivated by love. God creates not primarily for Himself, but out of a self-giving love for the creature. Chapter 3 contains an exposition and defence of the second of these views as the more plausible of the two Christian views on why God created, and thereby governs, the world.

Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love

Chapter 1 is methodological and sets the stage for many of the modes of reasoning found within the remainder of the book. The central argument is that reflection upon ideal human love can be used as a reliable source for gaining significant insight into the nature of God’s love. More specifically, reasons are presented for believing that various New Testament authors presuppose that divine and human love (or species of each) are similar in such a way that scrutiny of how humans ideally should love can be used fruitfully to inform how Christian theologians and philosophers think of God’s perfect love. This methodological conclusion provides a foundation for the construction of a model of God’s love found in Chapter 2, and it offers the beginnings of a more general framework for considering certain kinds of actions relevant to this book that God might, or might not, be inclined to perform.

Introduction

This Introduction sets forth the structure of Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity and places this book within its wider academic context. An overview of the book’s chapters is provided and it is explained how these chapters constitute an attempt to trace certain foundational issues related to God’s love, specifically as that love concerns the creation, redemption, and deification of humans. In addition, two general features of the contemporary academic landscape are highlighted, one philosophical the other theological, in the effort to underscore ways in which the present book on God’s love for humans speaks to and potentially enhances current discussions in theology and the philosophy of religion.

Trinity, Deification, and Atonement

Chapter 7 proposes a manner of conceiving of God’s deifying love, whereby God shares His intra-trinitarian life of love with men and women through the life and death of Christ. The proposal, which builds upon the Eastern Orthodox distinction between God’s essence and energies, includes partial accounts of both the Atonement and deification, along with an explanation of how these two doctrines fit together. The offered account of God’s deifying love is also shown to fit nicely with the understanding of love’s union exposited and defended in Chapter 2, thereby highlighting a connection between the defended model of God’s love and a classical way of thinking about Christian salvation.

The Scope of God’s Love

Chapter 5 concerns the scope of God’s love, specifically the scope of what might be labelled God’s supreme love: a love that values and seeks an individual’s supreme or highest good. Contrary to a tradition that stretches back to the early Western Church, it is argued that God possesses supreme love for each and every human being, and is thereby not limited to a select few. The universal scope of God’s supreme love, it is maintained, flows naturally from the value account of divine love defended in Chapter 2, especially when that account is spelled out in terms of God’s maximal perfection.

God’s Affective Love

Much of the difference between advocates of divine impassibility and divine passibility centres upon the supposed value of suffering in compassion. Proponents of divine impassibility typically maintain that because suffering is not intrinsically valuable, compassionate suffering need not be predicated to God. Supporters of divine passibility are perhaps unanimous in the affirmation of an opposing conclusion. For them, suffering-compassion is a way in which God identifies with His creatures deeply, a manner of identification that is valuable in itself, notwithstanding the negativity of the suffering involved. In this chapter, a defence of this passibilist value claim is presented. Additionally, as a secondary aim, this chapter underscores one value-based reason for expanding the value account of God’s love defended in Chapter 2 to include a comprehensive set of divine emotions.

Conclusion

The various conclusions established in the earlier chapters are summarized and brought together in the Conclusion, resulting in an integrated Christian paradigm for thinking about God’s love for humanity.

The Value Account of God’s Love

A model of God’s love, called the ‘value account’, is defended in Chapter 2. According to this value account, God’s love is an appreciative response to intrinsic worth (dignity in the case of a human), wherein God values the existence and flourishing of the one loved as well as union with the loved individual. After this model of love is expounded, it is argued that conceiving of God’s love in this manner is independently plausible, compatible with important kinds of biblical data, and nourished by a traditional Christian stream of thinking about God’s love.