Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God's Love for Humanity (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology) 9780198852483, 0198852487

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction
1: Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love
I. The Argument and Aims
II. The Similarity Thesis
III. The Methodological Thesis
IV. Three Theological Objections
IV.a The Objection from Theological Tradition
IV.b Rea’s Divine Moral Saint Objection
IV.c Fear of Feuerbachian Projections
V. Conclusion
2: The Value Account of God’s Love
I. Some Groundwork
II. Love and the Perception of Intrinsic Value
III. The Value Account
III.a The Nature of Valuing
III.b Valuing the Beloved’s Existence and Flourishing
III.c Valuing Union
III.d Concluding Thoughts
IV. Evaluation of the Value Account
IV.a Independent Plausibility
IV.b The Christian Quintuplet
V. Conclusion
3: Creation out of Love
I. The Nature of Glorificationism
I.a Understanding Glorificationism
I.b God’s Love and God’s Self-Glorification
II. Evaluating Glorificationism
II.a Edwards’s Glorificationist Argument from Divine Perfection
II.b Self-Giving Love and Divine Perfection
II.c The Glorificationist Argument from Scripture
II.d Glorificationism and God’s Cruciform Love
III. Creatio ex Amore
III.a The View
III.b On the Affirmation of Amorism
IV. Conclusion
4: God’s Affective Love
I. Some Initial Clarifications
II. God’s Affective Love
III. The Value of Suffering Love
III.a Summary
IV. Objections
IV.a The Objection from Pure Perfections
IV.b The Objection from Selfless-Benevolence
IV.c The Objection from Maximal Divine Suffering
V. Conclusion
5: The Scope of God’s Love
I. Assumptions and Clarifications
II. The Argument from Maximal Love
III. Premise M1
III.a Grounds for Believing that God Possesses Maximal Love
III.b Characterizing Maximal Divine Love
IV. Premise M2
IV.a Understanding M2
IV.b Defence of M2
V. Premise M4 and the Argument from Maximal Love
V.a Defence of M4
V.b Summary of the Argument from Maximal Love
VI. Objections to the Argument from Maximal Love
VI.a Murphy’s Reasons-Based Objection
VI.b The Objection from Mystery
VI.c The Objection from the Freedom of Grace
VII. Conclusion
6: Punitive Love
I. Severe Retribution and the Divergent Account
II. A Case for the Unitary Account
II.a The Argument from God’s Purposes
II.b The Argument from the New Testament Ethic of Love
II.c Summary
III. God’s Communicative Punishment
IV. God’s Communicative Punishment and the Doctrine of Hell
V. Conclusion
7: Trinity, Deification, and Atonement
I. Participating in God’s Intra-Trinitarian Life
I.a On Participating in God’s Life
I.b The Problems of Participation
II. God’s Essence and Energies, and Human Deification
II.a The Essence–Energies Distinction
II.b Alston on the Indwelling of the Spirit
II.c Evaluations and Modifications of Alston’s Account
II.d Incarnation and the Spirit’s Indwelling
II.e Summary
III. Deification and the Cross
III.a Faith, Hope, Love, and Death
III.b The Life-Giving Crucifixion
IV. Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N A NA LY T IC T H E O L O G Y Series Editors

M IC HA E L C . R E A O L I V E R D. C R I SP

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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N A NA LY T I C T H E O L O G Y Analytic Theology utilizes the tools and methods of contemporary analytic philosophy for the purposes of constructive Christian theology, paying attention to the Christian tradition and development of doctrine. This innovative series of studies showcases high quality, cutting-edge research in this area, in monographs and symposia.   : Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God William Hasker The Theological Project of Modernism Faith and the Conditions of Mineness Kevin W. Hector The End of the Timeless God R. T. Mullins Ritualized Faith Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy Terence Cuneo In Defense of Conciliar Christology A Philosophical Essay Timothy Pawl Atonement Eleonore Stump Humility and Human Flourishing A Study in Analytic Moral Theology Michael W. Austin Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory Kent Dunnington

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Love Divine A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity J O R DA N W E S SL I N G

1

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jordan Wessling 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930608 ISBN 978–0–19–885248–3 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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To Amber, for her deep persistent love, indifferent to merit.

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Acknowledgements I completed this book while on a John Templeton Foundation funded research fellowship at Fuller Theological Seminary. During a good portion of that ­fellowship, many of the ideas and chapters of this book were scrutinized by my then colleagues at considerable length. Whatever the book’s shortcomings, it is certainly better than it would have otherwise been had it not been for the friendship, support, and criticisms of James Arcadi, Jessie Gentile, Steven Nemes, J.  T.  Turner, and Christopher Woznicki. James Crocker also unofficially joined our cohort at Fuller Seminary for the better part of a year, and he is to be warmly thanked for offering incisive criticisms of some of the drafts of chapters of this book. I am likewise grateful to David Cannon who, at the largesse of the John Templeton Foundation, was my research assistant during the preparation of this manuscript. Not only did David help with the research and typical editorial tedium, he also highlighted many of my argumentative weaknesses and oversights. During the revisions stage of this book project, I transitioned to work for the Office of Teaching and Learning at Fuller Seminary. I am appreciative of Tommy Lister, my boss at the time, for lending me extra flexibility in my schedule to complete these revisions beside other outstanding academic projects. An extra special thanks is due to Oliver Crisp, who hosted the fellowship at Fuller Seminary, invited me to be a part of that fellowship, and commented on two or more drafts of nearly every chapter of the book to follow. Beyond that, Oliver has been a constant source of personal encouragement and wisdom over the years alongside being a model theologian. This book would have never been completed had it not been for Oliver’s warm and patient support and guidance. In addition to the individuals just listed, I have received invaluable feedback from a number of gifted theologians and philosophers on portions of this book and/or the ideas contained within it. For this I thank Billy Abraham, Ben Arbour, Robert Audi, Jonathan Chan, Gavin D’Costa, Manuel Cota, Adam Green, Mark Hamilton, Robert Hartman, Joanna Leidenhag, Shaun McNaughton, Peter Martens, Ryan Mullins, Martine Oldhoff, Thomas Jay Oord, Tim and Faith Pawl, John Peckham, Rik Peels, Andrew Pitts, Jeff Jordan, Mike Rea, Joshua Rasmussen, Jeroen Ridder, Emanuel Rutten, Kevin Vallier, Gijsbert van den Brink, René van Woudenberg, Rico Vitz, Sara Wells,

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viii Acknowledgements Martin Westerholm, Matthew Wiley, Maarten Wisse, Sameer Yadav, and the two anonymous readers of this manuscript from Oxford University Press. Thomas McCall, in addition, is to be thanked for helping make the publication of this book in this press possible. Ideas from this book were also presented at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame (organized by Sam Newlands and Mike Rea), The Meaning of Love conference at the Center for Christian Thought at Biola University, and The New Theists Conference at Wake Forrest University (organized by Christian Miller and Joshua Rasmussen). I received insightful feedback from these venues, some of which caused me to rethink matters substantially. For this I am grateful to the hosting universities, the conference and center organizers, and scholars in attendance (some of whom I have listed) that interacted with my thinking at that stage. Finally, portions of Chapter  6 were taken from my article ‘How Does a Loving God Punish? On the Unification of Divine Love & Wrath’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19:4 (2017): 421–43. Many thanks to this journal for allowing me to use this material and to the anonymous reviewers who offered insightful theological comments on that article. I hope that they will find this version of that chapter’s argument much improved. Family, too, has contributed to the production of this book. Over and above the emotional support from family, the value of which is often difficult to overstate in the academic profession, Jeff Steig and Kendra, Pamela, Scott, and Amber Wessling have individually read and commented upon one or more drafts of the chapters of this book. My father, Scott, deserves special mention on this score. He has enthusiastically read many chapter drafts, offering both editorial assistance as well as theological criticisms. My wife, Amber, has also been especially encouraging. She has read a good portion of what I have written (in this book and elsewhere) and she is almost always willing to discuss theological ideas with me. On numerous occasions she has facilitated the sharpening of my viewpoints and arguments and kept me from going too far down the wrong path. Beyond that, she, perhaps more than anyone else, helps keep my heart and mind attentive to the primordial and omnipotent Love that invites all of creation to participate in eternal life. Last but certainly not least, I wrote this book while raising two young boys (aged 2 and 3 as I currently write this), Theodore and Malcolm. They infuse my life with love daily, which reminds me that there is a God who loves us more deeply than we can imagine, and they inspire me to do my best to articulate and defend a vision of God that is befitting of holy perfection and worthy of our highest love.

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Contents Introduction1 1. Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love I II III IV

The Argument and Aims The Similarity Thesis The Methodological Thesis Three Theological Objections

IVa The Objection from Theological Tradition IVb Rea’s Divine Moral Saint Objection IVc Fear of Feuerbachian Projections

V Conclusion

2. The Value Account of God’s Love

I Some Groundwork II Love and the Perception of Intrinsic Value III The Value Account IIIa I IIb IIIc IIId

The Nature of Valuing Valuing the Beloved’s Existence and Flourishing Valuing Union Concluding Thoughts

9

9 12 20 28 28 33 36

38

39 41 44 47 47 54 57 64

IV Evaluation of the Value Account

64

V Conclusion

75

IVa Independent Plausibility IVb The Christian Quintuplet

3. Creation out of Love

I The Nature of Glorificationism

Ia Understanding Glorificationism Ib God’s Love and God’s Self-Glorification

II Evaluating Glorificationism IIa IIb IIc IId

Edwards’s Glorificationist Argument from Divine Perfection Self-Giving Love and Divine Perfection The Glorificationist Argument from Scripture Glorificationism and God’s Cruciform Love

64 67

76 77 77 82

86

86 97 99 101

III Creatio ex Amore107 IIIa The View I IIb On the Affirmation of Amorism

IV Conclusion

107 111

112

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x Contents

4. God’s Affective Love

I Some Initial Clarifications II God’s Affective Love III The Value of Suffering Love IIIa Summary

114 116 121 128 139

IV Objections

140

V Conclusion

145

IVa The Objection from Pure Perfections IVb The Objection from Selfless-Benevolence IVc The Objection from Maximal Divine Suffering

5. The Scope of God’s Love

I Assumptions and Clarifications II The Argument from Maximal Love III Premise M1

IIIa Grounds for Believing that God Possesses Maximal Love I IIb Characterizing Maximal Divine Love

140 142 143

146 147 149 150 150 152

IV Premise M2

163

V Premise M4 and the Argument from Maximal Love

169

VI Objections to the Argument from Maximal Love

172

VII Conclusion

183

IVa Understanding M2 IVb Defence of M2

Va Defence of M4 Vb Summary of the Argument from Maximal Love

VIa Murphy’s Reasons-Based Objection VIb The Objection from Mystery VIc The Objection from the Freedom of Grace

6. Punitive Love

I Severe Retribution and the Divergent Account II A Case for the Unitary Account

IIa The Argument from God’s Purposes IIb The Argument from the New Testament Ethic of Love IIc Summary

I II God’s Communicative Punishment IV God’s Communicative Punishment and the Doctrine of Hell V Conclusion

7. Trinity, Deification, and Atonement

I Participating in God’s Intra-Trinitarian Life Ia On Participating in God’s Life Ib The Problems of Participation

II God’s Essence and Energies, and Human Deification IIa The Essence—Energies Distinction IIb Alston on the Indwelling of the Spirit

163 166 169 170

172 178 181

184 187 191 191 200 207

207 216 218

219 221 221 222

224 224 226

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Contents  xi IIc Evaluations and Modifications of Alston’s Account IId Incarnation and the Spirit’s Indwelling IIe Summary

229 235 238

III Deification and the Cross

239

IV Conclusion

245

I IIa Faith, Hope, Love, and Death IIIb The Life-Giving Crucifixion

239 240

Conclusion247 Bibliography Index

249 267

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Introduction In what is referred to as the ‘high priestly prayer’ (John 17:1–28), Jesus addresses the Father and describes a relationship of glory and love that was present between them ‘before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:24; cf. 17:5). In this prayer, Jesus expresses the desire to share the exchange of life and love between He and the Father with those who might believe in Him (e.g. 17:26), and He indicates that this sharing of the divine life transforms Christians and reveals that the Father loves them even as the Father loves Christ (17:23). The prayer’s emphasis concerns God’s love for those who are rightly related to Christ, but it could be argued that the author of this Gospel means to teach that the Father sent the Son to provide everyone with the opportunity to ­participate in their eternal life of love (e.g. John 3:16–18; 12:32). Whatever the case, the high priestly prayer points to a God with a profound love for humans. Read theologically, the Son petitions the Father to share their intratrinitarian life of love with those who will receive it, and Jesus compares the Father’s love for believers with the Father’s eternal love for the Son. It is difficult to imagine a God who could sensibly love humans more deeply. Of course, the high priestly prayer is not the only place in Scripture where God reveals an intense love for humans. In the book of Deuteronomy, God explains to Israel that, although ‘heaven and the heaven of heavens’ belong to Him, He has ‘set his heart in love’ on Israel and graciously chose her for His good purposes (Deut. 10:15; cf. Exod. 34:5–7). The prophet Jeremiah describes God’s love of Israel as an ‘everlasting love’ (Jer. 31:3), and other prophetic writers utilize evocative language—sometimes even the language of suffering—to describe the depth and faithfulness of God’s love for His people. Isaiah testifies to the various ways in which God, ‘in his love and in his pity’, has redeemed Israel (Isa. 63:9; cf. 54:8; 63:7; Mic. 7:18–19), and Hosea paints a picture of God who loves Israel like a groom loves a bride and whose compassion ‘grows warm and tender’ even when she is unfaithful (Hos. 11:8). Within the New Testament, Jesus teaches that the Heavenly Father loves both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5:43–48), and Christ manifests God’s love for those on the margins (Matt. 9:10–11; 21:31–32). St John twice says that ‘God is love’, and following each reference is the claim that God’s love Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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2  Love Divine is revealed among and for humans in Christ (1 John 4:7–20). The Apostles Peter and Paul both teach, or at least are often understood to teach, that God loves each and every human person such that He desires everyone’s salvation (e.g. 2 Pet. 3:9 and 1 Tim. 2:4; cf. Acts 17:28); and Paul speaks of Christ’s love as a rooting and grounding love that ‘surpasses knowledge’, excels in ‘breadth and length and height and depth’ (Eph. 3:18–19), and cannot be overcome (Rom. 8:31–37).1 If all of this were not enough, the immensity of God’s love for humanity is exemplified vividly within the central message of Christianity, whereby God became human and died a brutal criminal death so that all might participate in God’s eternal life. So far as I am aware, no other religion or enduring system of thought places greater emphasis on God’s love for humanity. In his often-cited historical exploration of the concept of love, Irving Singer forms a similar judgement. He concludes that ‘Only Christianity . . . defines itself as the religion of love’, since Christianity ‘alone has made love the dominant principle in all areas of dogma’.2 At bottom, the reason for this, in Singer’s estimation, is that Christians worship the God who is identified with, even as, love.3 This book provides a systematic account of the deep and rich love that God has for humans. While the associated theological territory is vast, the goal is to defend a unified account of central perennial issues pertaining to the God of love who deigns to share His life of love with any human willing to receive it. This task shall involve gaining clarity on what God’s love is, what role love plays in motivating God’s creation and redemption of humans, whom it is that God loves, and how it might be that God shares the intra-trinitarian life of love with human beings. The first chapter of this study is methodological and sets the stage for many of the modes of reasoning found within the remainder of the book. In it, I argue that it is permissible to utilize reflection upon ideal human love as a significant source for considering how we should conceive of God’s love (especially when this is conducted in concert with Scripture and Christian tradition). More specifically, I present reasons for believing that various New Testament authors presuppose that divine and human love (or a species of each) are similar in such a way that scrutiny of how humans ideally should 1  Throughout this manuscript, I write as if the biblical books were authored by the individuals that the Church has traditionally assumed. This is largely for ease of expression. Little-to-nothing within the present book turns upon the numerous issues related to biblical authorship, so long as we agree that the final canonical form of Scripture is authoritative for Christians. 2  Singer’s emphasis, The Nature of Love: Plato to Luther (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 159. 3 Singer, Nature of Love, 159, cf. 162–3.

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Introduction  3 love ought to inform how we think of God’s perfect love. This methodological conclusion provides a foundation for the construction of a model of God’s love that aims to represent features of the divine character in a manner that at least approximates the truth. The model, in turn, not only aids our understanding of what God’s love is, it also provides some measure of intellectual traction on certain kinds of actions that God might be inclined to perform. Chapter 2 is where I proffer this model of God’s love, ‘the value account’. According to the 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 beloved individual. After expounding this model of love, I argue that conceiving of God’s love in this manner is independently plausible, compatible with im­port­ ant kinds of biblical data, and nourished by a traditional Christian stream of thinking about God’s love. In Chapter  3, the value account of divine love is first put to work. Here, against Jonathan Edwards and others, I contend for the widely advocated but rarely rigorously defended doctrine that God created the world in general and humans in particular out of love. If adopted, this doctrine frames much of the Christian conception of God’s dealings with humanity. For if God created humans out of love, grounds are furnished for maintaining that all or much of God’s subsequent interaction with humans will be led by His initial creative motivation. If God created the world out of love, how do events in the world impact Him, if at all? Does He commiserate with human suffering, or is there something about the divine nature which renders it impossible for the world to alter the shape of God’s happiness? Against many contemporary proponents of divine impassibility who argue that there is nothing particularly valuable about divine commiseration, the contention of Chapter  4 is that God’s ­commiserative suffering is an intrinsically valuable manner of identifying with His rational creatures. Thus, we should interpret biblical depictions of a suffering God as providing a window into God’s inner life. Presupposed by this defence of divine passibility is the idea that God enjoys an ‘affective love’ for humans; that is to say, God is affectively open and responsive to those He loves dearly. The conclusion that God loves humans affectively, even though this introduces suffering into God’s life, fills out the value account of divine love defended in Chapter 2 and provides a foundation for the conception of deification presented in Chapter 7. Chapter 5 concerns the scope of God’s love, specifically the scope of what I  label God’s supreme love: a love that values and seeks an individual’s

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4  Love Divine supreme or highest good. Contrary to a tradition that stretches back to the writings of St Augustine, I argue that God possesses supreme love for each and every human, and is thereby not limited to a select few. The universal scope of God’s supreme love, I contend, flows naturally from the value account of divine love, especially when that account is spelled out in terms of God’s maximal perfection. Chapter 6 transitions from the scope of God’s love to God’s love of individuals whom He has just cause to punish. While a number of theologians describe a significant difference, even a ‘duality’, between God’s love and punitive wrath, I argue that God’s just wrath is a facet of His love, and that God’s punishment of sinners, even in hell, is an expression of this relentless love. To make the case, I first contend that God’s creation out of love, as well as the ministry of Christ, support the notion that God’s love and wrath are fundamentally one. Next, I build upon the work of Gregory of Nyssa and the contemporary philosopher R.A.  Duff 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. Whereas Chapter 6 follows God’s love into the pit of hell, Chapter 7 examines how God’s love lifts humans into heaven. For in the latter chapter I propose 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 requires partial accounts of both the Atonement and deification, along with an explanation of how these two doctrines fit together. Chapter  7 also provides a way of harmonizing various conclusions that emerge throughout the book. There we see how it might be that the God who loves within Himself, in accordance with the value account, creates out of love for the purpose of being united in an affective love with all of humanity. This way of harmonizing several conclusions within the book is touched upon in Chapter 7, and then this study wraps up with a brief and separate Conclusion. In these ways, then, the present book provides an integrated paradigm for thinking about God’s love for humanity as attested by the Christian faith. The project might be viewed as an attempt to trace foundational issues related to God’s love as it begins in Him and then overflows into the creation, redemption, and glorification of humanity—a kind of exitus-reditus structure driven by the unyielding love of God. In tracing these issues, it is not my goal to survey what great theologians of the past have said about the topics covered, nor is it to review all of the contemporary literature on God’s love. Instead, I present mostly new arguments for specific conclusions; historical and contemporary

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Introduction  5 figures are brought into the discussion only as they facilitate that end. I add that this book has been constructed by a theologian primarily for theologians, but I also hope that my mode of argumentation, and some of the debates in which I engage, will be of interest to philosophers who enjoy thinking about the Christian faith. I doubt I will fully satisfy either of these very different audiences, yet I would like to believe that I advance the discussion on God’s love for humanity in important respects that will be helpful to many ­readers— even if only to provide a target for counterarguments. Few would deny the importance of the subject matter before us. Nevertheless, I submit that two features of the current academic landscape make a book on God’s love for humans especially timely. One of these features comes from the philosophical academy, another from the theological guild. In contrasting the aims of the present work with that of others, I do not intend to set a polemical tone to this manuscript. The first relevant feature of the academic landscape has to do with a growing movement among contemporary Christian philosophers of religion to limit, or in certain ways moderate, the intensity of God’s love for humans.4 The motivation for doing so often comes from the desire to defend the coherence of the Christian faith against the problems of evil and divine hiddenness that are pressed against them by their non-believing philosophical colleagues. ‘If God loves us with a perfect love as Christians proclaim’, say these colleagues, ‘then God wouldn’t allow horrendous suffering, and God would make His presence obvious. But God doesn’t seem to be present to many, and the world is suffused with unspeakable suffering. So, it looks as if no God of perfect love resides in heaven.’ The response to which I now make reference proceeds by rejecting the understanding of God’s love that underwrites such objections. For a variety of reasons it is said, in effect, that God’s love is so radically different than ideal human love that His love can be perfect while remaining indifferent to much of human welfare. Yes, God loves humans in

4  See, e.g., Brian Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (London: Continuum, 2006), chs. 8–9; Mark  C.  Murphy, God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 2–6; N.N.  Trakakkis, ‘The Hidden Divinity and What It Reveals’, in Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives, ed. Adam Green and Eleonore Stump (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 192–209; and Michael C. Rea, The Hiddenness of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Compare with Sameer Yadav’s theological treatment as found in ‘The Hidden Love of God and the Imaging Defense’, in Love, Divine and Human: Contemporary Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology, ed. James Arcadi, Oliver Crisp, and Jordan Wessling (London: T&T Clark, 2019). Also relevant is Jeffery Jordan’s ‘The Topography of Divine Love: A Reply to Thomas Talbott’, Faith and Philosophy 32, no. 2 (2015): 182–7 (along with various other works by Jordan which are cited in Chapter 5), where Jordan argues that God loves some humans more than others.

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6  Love Divine some deeply mysterious sense, so the line of reasoning goes, but one should not exaggerate the depth and comprehensibility of that love. Without wishing to dismiss the reality that humans can exaggerate their own importance, I am of the opinion that we should tread carefully when we suggest ways in which God’s love for humanity might be less strong than we otherwise may have thought. Perhaps, on occasion, Christians have overstated the intensity of God’s love for His creatures, and maybe the Christian philosophers at issue help us discern some of the ways that this is the case. That said, the God found in the dying face of Christ reveals a love that far exceeds what we would independently imagine. I do not know what action God could perform to show that He is more serious about His love for humanity. Thus, while I recognize that opinions on these matters divide, it seems to me that however we choose to respond to the problems of evil and divine hiddenness, downplaying God’s love for humanity rarely will place us on a sure theological foundation. I treat neither of the noted challenges to theistic belief within the present book. But I will outline a particular way of thinking about God’s love that, if accurate, sets certain parameters on how Christians might address such challenges. In addition, at various places in this book, I argue against positions that I believe dilute God’s love for humans, and I fear, by consequence, threaten to weaken God’s message of love found on Calvary. It should also be mentioned that many Christian philosophers, perhaps still the clear majority, respond to the problems of evil and divine hiddenness while making use of conceptions of God’s love and goodness that are con­son­ ant with most or all of the major theological conclusions defended within this book.5 In such instances, our projects can be seen as mutually reinforcing. Plus, it might be said that the existence of such responses to these challenges to Christian theism alleviates me from the responsibility of diving into the relevant deep waters within this work. The second feature of the academic landscape that makes the topic of the present book timely comes from the current state of theological literature on God’s love. Just a short time ago, there was something of a consensus that the doctrine of divine love had been largely ignored by theologians, or treated in

5  To cite just a few representative examples: Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); William Hasker, The Triumph of God over Evil: Theodicy for a World of Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008); Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘The Argument from Divine Hiddenness’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26, no. 3 (1996): 433–53; and Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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Introduction  7 an ‘oblique, indistinct, or awkward’ manner.6 Now the tides have changed. Kevin Vanhoozer writes that ‘the love of God has become one of, if not the most, prominent themes in contemporary systematic theology’, especially when it is ‘paired with the theme of suffering and divine passibility’.7 Much of the work to which Vanhoozer refers is valuable and has impacted my own thinking in various respects. But contemporary theologians tend to erect farreaching paradigms for thinking about the divine nature based significantly and explicitly on God’s love (e.g. open theism, process theism, panentheism, and/or kenotical theism), without first pausing to discuss in systematic detail how we should approach the doctrine of divine love, what God’s love is, how it might relate to other attributes of God, and so on.8 Even arguments for or against divine impassibility centred upon love are often carried out without much prior theorizing about the nature of God’s love.9 A separate theological research trajectory that often exhibits a similar shortcoming is more biblically oriented. The goal of this trajectory is to treat the ‘dark’ portions of Scripture that ostensibly implicate God in all manner of cruelty and violence (e.g. the erecting of unjust Israelite laws and the commanding of genocide), and show how these passages might be jettisoned responsibly in light of God’s revelation of love found in Christ, or else be incorporated into a fuller Christian conception of God.10 This immensely 6  The quote comes from Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Introduction: The Love of God: Its Place, Meaning, and Function in Systematic Theology’, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 1. For further complaints about the paucity of theo­ logic­al reflection on divine love, see Brian Gaybba, ‘God as Love’, in God and Temporarity, ed. Bowman  L.  Clarke and Eugene  T.  Long (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1984), 15; Charles Hartshorne, ‘Ethics and the New Theology’, The International Journal of Ethics 45, no. 1 (1934): 90–101 (especially 97); G.M. Newlands, Theology of the Love of God (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1980), 37; Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2010), 4–14; S. J. Edward Collins Vacek, Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), xiii–xiv. 7  ‘Love without Measure? John Webster’s Unfinished Dogmatic Account of the Love of God, in Dialogue with Thomas Jay Oord’s Interdisciplinary Theological Account’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19, no. 4 (2017), 506. 8  For discussions of theological movements of this sort, see the following: Michael  W.  Brierley, ‘Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Panentheistic Turn in Modern Theology’, in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 1–15 (especially 9–11, 14); John C. Peckham, The Love of God: A Canonical Model (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), ch. 1; Vanhoozer, ‘Introduction’; Kevin  J.  Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chs 2–3. 9 The point is well made by Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1992), 80–2. 10  A comprehensive survey of such works can be found in Gregory A. Boyd’s two-volume book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), as well as in Eric A. Seibert’s “Recent Research on Divine Violence in the Old Testament (with Special Attention to Christian Theological Perspectives),” Currents in Biblical Research 15, no. 1 (2016): 8–40.

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8  Love Divine important body of literature regularly informs my own theological judgements about divine love. However, there is a tendency in this literature to leave assumptions unscrutinized about what is or is not compatible with God’s love, and how God’s love and wrath might or might not be able to coexist. There are, of course, solid exceptions to all this within both avenues of theo­logic­al research;11 and I do not mean to suggest that the positions offered by many of these theologians are false or unhelpful simply because a more detailed analysis of the doctrine of divine love is not carried out first. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that such an analysis will aid our thinking about the relevant theological issues and viewpoints. I will not speak to a number of the mentioned large-scale issues about the interrelation between the divine nature and divine love that garner the attention of many within the theological guild, nor will I address all the biblical verses and topics that might be deemed incompatible with the God of love revealed in Christ. All the same, my hope is that the following reflections on God’s love of humans can contribute in principle to some of the debates about these subjects. More fundamentally, arriving at a well-reasoned and intricate doctrine of divine love is tremendously valuable in its own right, and hence could use more attention from theologians. I hope this book plays some small role in furthering the project of thinking carefully and systematically about the Love that is truly divine.

11  Some examples of the noted exceptions: Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, especially 19–24, 67–9, 767–850; Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); John Peckham, The Concept of Divine Love in the Context of the God-World Relationship (New York: Peter Lang, 2015); and Thomas Jay Oord, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010).

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1 Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love This is a book about God’s love for humans. To examine this love, the theologian will need to reflect comprehensively on God’s self-revelation and be attuned to what the Church has said about the God she worships. In the pages that follow, I seek to abide by these parameters, taking Scripture as my most significant norm. There is, however, another source from which I will draw in my theological construction. Throughout this book I assume that reflection upon ideal human love can significantly inform how we ought to conceive of God’s love. In this chapter I explain to what this claim amounts, and I provide a scriptural defence of it.

I.  The Argument and Aims Ideal human love, in this context, refers to how humans ideally should love, or how the best of a certain kind of human love ideally should be expressed. The contention of this chapter is that reflection upon ideal human love ­significantly can inform how we ought to conceive of God’s love. This methodological ­proposal bears a resemblance to the method of perfect being theology as it pertains to God’s love, a method that also animates certain features of this manuscript (see Chapter 5 in particular). At the same time, the methodological proposal of this chapter falls short of a fully fledged perfect being the­ology of divine love. Before outlining the main argument of this chapter, it is thus worth contrasting the aims of this chapter with what would be a fairly standard way of approaching the doctrine of divine love by way of a fully orbed perfect being theology. Put (very) roughly, the practitioner of the method of perfect being the­ology assumes that God is maximally great (i.e. the greatest being that possibly could be) and she consults her intuitions about what is intrinsically valuable

Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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10  Love Divine to fill out her conception of God’s maximal greatness.1 This method can be pursued purely or mostly as an exercise in a priori reasoning, or natural ­the­ology, whereby the theologian relies exclusively or mostly on her valueintuitions to generate what attributes should be predicated to God and what shape these attributes ought to take. Alternatively, and to my mind more plausibly from a Christian perspective, the theologian may begin with the concept of God that is given to her, at least in its broad contours, by Scripture and/or tradition, and then use her intuitions about value and greatness to flesh out that conception in certain respects.2 On either species of this method its practitioner assumes that theologians often have enough insight into the realm of ultimate values to be able to form a reasonably reliable guide to understanding God—relative, that is, to the difficult task of thinking rightly about God. Moreover, when it comes to God’s ‘moral’ goodness, it is also often assumed that human and divine goodness are similar in such a way that comprehension of human goodness, or how humans should exemplify moral goodness, can produce accurate beliefs about God’s maximal goodness.3 Once these assumptions are granted, it is fairly easy to see how the method of perfect being theology might be taken to yield fruitful results regarding the nature of God’s love—at least when we count God’s love as something like a moral attribute. All that is required are the following two steps. Step one: Take the best of human love—e.g. the best of what one finds in common in parental love, romantic love, love between friends, and so on—and come up with a ­rigorous way of characterizing that love. This first step along the road to thinking about God’s love relies heavily on the aforementioned idea that human and divine goodness, in this case love, are similar in such a way that perception into the best of human goodness may foster right thinking about God’s goodness. Step two: Strip the account of love formulated in step one of any 1  For insightful overviews of this method, see the introduction of Brian Leftow’s God and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); ch. 1 of Mark Murphy’s God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); and the now classic, Thomas  V.  Morris, Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1991). 2 This basic distinction can be found in Brian Leftow, ‘Perfection and Possibility’, Faith and Philosophy 32, no. 4 (2015): 423–31. 3  As Laura Garcia notices, ‘Conceptions of divine goodness are generally modelled on conceptions of human goodness.’ See her ‘Moral Perfection’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 211. For a wider discussion of this point, see Murphy’s God’s Own Ethics, 23–9. For what it is worth, moreover, it is a longstanding assumption of the method of perfect being theology that humans possess attributes similar to God in a manner that allows humans to reason about God’s nature. This is what John Dun Scotus argues, for instance—see, Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chs. 2–3; as well as section 2.3 of Thomas Williams, ‘John Duns Scotus’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2016 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/duns-scotus/.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  11 creaturely limitations and amplify that idea of love to the highest possible degree of value. Behind this second step rests the conviction that God’s love must be absolutely perfect. So, it is not enough for God to be merely loving; He must possess the attribute of love in the absolute best possible or most intrinsically valuable way (see Chapter  5 for more details). The promised result of these two steps is a certain way of thinking about the nature and intensity of love that at least approximates the maximally perfect love of God. The present chapter can be seen as providing evidence for a perfect being theology of divine love, though it stops short of providing a full defence. Instead, the focus is on the idea that rests beneath the noted step one, namely, that human love resembles divine love such that insight into how humans ought to love may be said to engender reliable beliefs about God’s love. Here we find two assumptions at work. There is what might be labelled the ‘similarity thesis’, the notion that ideal human love is pertinently similar to God’s love (where, once again, ideal human love refers to how humans ideally should love, or how the best of a certain kind of love ideally should be expressed by humans). Then there is the closely related ‘methodological thesis’, according to which it is thought that the theologian is justified in adopting the practice of drawing conclusions about God’s love by examining ideal human love. Whatever the merits of perfect being theology as generally practised, or in relation to God’s love, there appear to be good biblical reasons for affirming both the similarity and the methodological theses. In the remainder of the chapter I defend this claim regarding these two theses. That biblically based argument is structured as follows. In Section II, I first attempt to show that the similarity thesis is true. Then, in Section III, I move to establish the primary thesis of this chapter: the methodological thesis. Before concluding, three objections to the methodological thesis are treated in Section IV. In keeping with the general approach to Scripture that is often thought to have its modern Christian roots in Brevard Childs, the argument in this chapter, as throughout the book, proceeds on the assumption that the received canonical form of Scripture is authoritative for Christians (however each book was assembled), and that Scripture can be read as a more or less coherent whole.4

4  See, e.g., the following works by Brevard S. Childs: ‘The Exegetical Significance of Canon for the Study of the Old Testament’, Vetus Testamentum Supplements 29 (1977): 66–80; Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); and Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993). Also helpful is Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), especially 135–288; and Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), especially 208–97.

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12  Love Divine In the end, the methodological approach advocated within this chapter is meant to provide a kind of backdrop that frames various assumptions and arguments deployed throughout the rest of the book. In particular, I construct a model or account of God’s love in the following chapter that aims to represent features of the divine character in a manner that approximates the truth.5 The intent is for the model to aid our understanding of what God’s love is, and to provide some intellectual traction on certain kinds of actions that God might be inclined to perform. I say that the present chapter provides something of a backdrop that frames later assumptions and arguments because the conclusions of this chapter alone do not entail that the project of providing a model of divine love is likely to be a successful, or even a worthwhile enterprise. Still, I submit that this chapter’s conclusions do make later arguments and assumptions more plausible, or at least more understandable. How these conclusions do this will become clearer, perhaps, after the main argument of this chapter has been presented.

II.  The Similarity Thesis Towards the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus turns His attention away from the world and focuses His ministry on His disciples. There, in what is often referred to as the Farewell Discourse, Christ instructs the disciples in what they will need to know when they are forced to confront the world without His physical presence.6 A significant portion of the teaching that Jesus leaves the disciples with is a message of love. They are to love as Christ loves. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you [. . .]. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:9, 12; cf. 13:34–35; 17:26)

Here, in the words of Christ, we find what the great Johannine scholar Raymond Brown refers to as ‘the chain of love’: ‘the Father loves Jesus; Jesus loves the disciples; they must love one another.’7 Notice that Jesus’ chain of love presupposes that divine love and human love ideally share a great deal of 5  For a discussion and defence of theological models patterned after scientific models, see William Wood, ‘Modeling Mystery’, Scientia et Fides 4, no. 1 (2016): 39–59. 6 Here I do not mean to exclude the idea that Christ remains physically present through the Eucharist. 7 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: XIII–XXI, Vol. 29A, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 682.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  13 similarity. For it is the Father’s love of Jesus that is the standard of Jesus’ love of His disciples, which in turn directs Jesus’ command that His disciples should love as He loves them. However Jesus is using the term ‘love’, it is highly unlikely that He is drastically changing the meaning of the term midstream.8 To suggest as much would be to break one or more of the links of the chain of love and render it utterly mysterious as to why Jesus constructs the chain as He does.9 This is not to say that Jesus is supposing that ‘love’ must be used of humans and God in a strict one-to-one correspondence (though He might be). It is rather to say that, far from seeing God’s love as wholly different from human love (or at least a manner of loving), Jesus’ chain of love encourages us to think that divine and ideal human love share a great degree of conceptual overlap. Furthermore, whatever the degree of conceptual overlap might be, it must be substantial enough to guide the behaviour of the disciples. The disciples are called to love as Jesus loves them, which is how the Father loves Jesus. But, obviously, Jesus’ love cannot function as the norm or standard for the dis­ciples’ love if the ways and nature of Jesus’ love belong to an order that is rad­ic­al­ly different. That would be to put into Jesus’ mouth the command to love as He loves only with a completely different kind of love! So, the words of Christ demand that there be rich conceptual correspondence between His example of love and the love that the disciples are called to exemplify. Given the chain of love, moreover, the correspondence between Christ’s love and the command He gives to the disciples indicates a great deal of conceptual overlap between the Father’s love and Christ’s love: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you’ (John 15:9). Hence, by moving from the last link of the chain to the first, we see that divine love and ideal human love must be considerably similar—minimally, select features of these loves must be considerably similar. It merits highlighting that the chain of love plausibly conceptually links ideal human love with a love that characterizes God’s inner-life sans creation, as opposed to that which is exclusively manifested ad extra (e.g. in the saving ministry of Christ). This is perhaps most clearly discerned when John 15:9–12 (and its chain of love) is situated within the wider literary context of the Farewell Discourse. While Johannine scholars debate the unity and structure of this discourse, especially given the presence of certain tensions and apparent contradictions, the received final form of the text (that which I take to be 8  Here I assume that the Gospel writer accurately depicts what Jesus said in the relevant respects and/or that the form of the Fourth Gospel is authoritative for Christians. 9  For a more detailed defence of this claim, see my, ‘Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication’, Journal of Reformed Theology 7, no. 1 (2013): 91–107.

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14  Love Divine authoritative) concerns Jesus’ last evening with the disciples before His death. In a book on love in the Fourth Gospel, Francis Moloney observes that the explicit theme of love acts as a transition into the discourse in 13:1–38, rests near the centre of the discourse in 15:9–17 (cf. 14:15–31), and concludes the discourse in 17:1–26.10 Each of these three units related to the Farewell Discourse merits comment. In the first unit, Jesus selflessly washes the disciples feet and gives the disciples the ‘new commandment’ to love one another just as He has loved them (more on this subsequently). By loving in this manner, they reveal that they are His disciples. Moloney adds that this manifestation of love by Jesus is so that His disciples ‘might see in him the revelation of God: “I tell you this now . . . so that . . . you may believe that I am he” (v.19).’11 In the second unit, immediately after telling His disciples to abide in Him in order to bear fruit (15:1–8), Jesus explains to the disciples that they must love as He loves them, which, as we have seen, is how the Father loves Jesus (15:9–12). Finally, in 17:1–26 Jesus prays for Himself, His immediate disciples, and all future recipients of His message that they might be unified in love so that the world will know that the Father has sent Him (e.g. vv. 3–4, 6–11, 20–25). ‘In terms of the literary structure of 13:1–17:26’, Moloney notices, ‘Jesus making known the love of God is a major focus of the first and the final episodes in John’s report of Jesus’ final evening with his disciples (13:1–38; 17:1–26).’ Moloney continues, ‘At the very center of the report of Jesus’ final evening with his disciples, he issues his love command: they are no longer his servants but his friends, and he has chosen them so that they might love one another as he has loved them (15:12–17).’12 It bears repeating that the centrepiece to which Moloney refers is where we find the chain of love. At each stage pertaining to the Farewell Discourse, then, Jesus is presented as revealing the love of God. Crucially, in the final stage of the discourse Jesus is said to reveal the love that existed between He and the Father ‘before the foundation of the world’ (17:4; cf. 17:5). Immediately following that claim about the ostensibly eternal source of the love that Christ reveals, Jesus restates and expands upon the chain of love found in 15:9–12.13 Addressing the Father Jesus says, ‘I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (17:26). Marianne Meye Thompson correctly notes that this passage indicates that ‘Love has 10 Francis  J.  Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John: An Exegetical, Theological, and Literary Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 99–104. 11 Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John, 102–3. 12 Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John, 103. 13  J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 882.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  15 always characterized the relationship of the Father and Son’ and that this ‘very love now resides in the disciples’. Her conclusion is that ‘Jesus’ mission to make God known is to make God’s love known’.14 When these three stages concerning the Farewell Discourse are taken altogether, especially when read in concert with the doctrine of the Trinity, it seems that Christ reveals a divine love that goes beyond a merely contingent love that God has for the world. On the contrary, the love that Christ reveals finds its foundation in the love that characterizes the inner life of God before the world began, specifically the mutual love between the Father and Son. If this is correct, and humans are called to imitate the kind of love enjoyed by the Father and Son, then human love must be similar in important respects to the love that characterizes God’s life in se. Relatedly, we will find in Chapter 7 of this book that there is cause to suppose that John understands the salvation of humans to involve a kind of deifying participation in the life of God, including participation in the love of the Father and Son. The Spirit, furthermore, is commonly thought to communicate that love to humans in a manner that somehow becomes their love (cf. John 15:26–16:15; 1 John 3:23–24; 4:13–16). The mechanics of how this might work aside, what is presently important are the implications for this view of salvation for the similarity thesis. If it is true that divine love, so to speak, flows through humans via the Spirit’s agency, then, assuming that this Spiritimparted love just is ideal human love, it follows that ideal human love and divine love (or some aspect of divine love) are remarkably similar, if not numerically or qualitatively identical (depending upon how one understands the manner in which the Spirit communicates divine love to humans). The upshot is that the Gospel of John, in conjunction with certain widely held Christian teachings, provides a sure foundation for the similarity thesis, including a similarity between ideal human love and the divine love enjoyed before the creation of the world. Importantly, the Fourth Gospel is not the only place in which one finds biblical support for the supposition that divine and ideal human love share a considerable degree of similarity. On the contrary, this supposed similarity is a theme that runs throughout the New Testament. Consider the following examples. (a) But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he 14  Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 357.

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16  Love Divine makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. [ . . . ] Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (Matt. 5:44–45, 48) (b) Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and ­sacrifice to God.  (Eph. 5:1–2) (c) If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  (Phil. 2:1–8) (d) We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  (1 John 3:16) (e) Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4:7–11) The passages found in (a) and (c) will be examined in subsequent chapters, and at present we cannot discuss the remaining passages in detail. Nevertheless, it takes only a surface reading to notice that (a)–(e) are predicated upon the assumption that divine and ideal human love are remarkably similar. For humans are urged to imitate God’s love, but this is impossible without the relevant similarity. Colin Gunton even goes so far as to use (e) in an argument for univocity. He says, Suppose that we were to define love—and it is not intended to be a full def­ in­ition, but enough to make the point—as being and doing for the other

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  17 what the other needs [. . .]. In that case, God’s love and ours are precisely the same kind of action, always given that God does not fail in love while we do. And is not that the message of the first letter of John [. . .]? Divine love is a pattern for human love, because it is precisely the same kind of attitude and action. ‘[S]ince God so loved us, we ought also to love one another’ (1 John 4.11). Indeed, there is a sense in which divine love becomes, in the Spirit, human love, in that the latter is, in one respect, identical with the former, because it is the former enabled to become God’s love in action: ‘if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us’. Is not that inescapably a form of univocity?15

I have developed and defended Gunton’s basic argument elsewhere.16 But even if Gunton’s argument fails to establish univocity, to my mind he shows that it is quite likely that the author of (e), and by extension (d), assumes that divine love and ideal human love share much in common. This conclusion can be reached by first noting that the author of (e) uses the claim ‘God is love’ (4:8, 16) to undergird the exhortation to love one another. Many, perhaps the majority, of commentators agree that this claim about love concerns that which is essential to God. Thus Rudolf Schnackenburg is not unusual when he says that the statement ‘God is love’ takes us ‘into the depths of the divine nature’.17 It is this primordial love, furthermore, which consequentially provides the motivation for the revelation of love in Christ. ‘God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him’ (4:9). Reflection upon this love that finds its origin in God and is revealed in Christ leads the author of (e) to exhort Christians to imitate God’s love in their love for each other: ‘Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another’ (4:11). Indeed, as was previously intimated by Gunton, the author of 1 John goes beyond the exhortation to imitate divine love and maintains that God’s love somehow inhabits believers: ‘if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is 15 Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 70. 16  See my ‘Colin Gunton, Divine Love, and Univocal Predication’. For what might be regarded as a criticism of that article’s argument (it could be intended merely as a contrast of viewpoints), see John C. Peckham, The Love of God: A Canonical Model (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 171–6. However, in my view, Peckham’s commentary on that argument does not defeat it since my argument is abductive, not deductive, as Peckham’s comments might suggest (when, e.g., he indicates that the conclusion I offer does not ‘follow’ from the kinds of evidence I present). But, in any case, I do not defend the (often misunderstood) doctrine of univocity within this chapter. 17  Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles: Introduction and Commentary, trans. Reginald Fuller and Isla Fuller (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 208, cf. 210–16.

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18  Love Divine perfected in us’ (4:12), and ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them’ (4:16). Obviously, these teachings have clear implications for the similarity thesis. Christians cannot imitate a love that is totally other, nor, it seems, can God’s love indwell believers if it is not significantly similar to ways in which humans can ideally love. To say that the authors of the passages within (a)–(e) presuppose that divine and ideal human love are similar is not to say that they teach that Christians should always behave as does God in love—plausibly, God performs certain actions of love that Christians cannot and should not do.18 Rather, the idea is that Christians can embody the same basic kind of love as their God, even while the expressions of this love may vary significantly in the divine and human cases. To see the point, suppose for the purposes of illustration that to love someone is to give of oneself for that person’s good. Given this agreed upon understanding of love, it is surely correct to say that a husband and son can love the same woman (the wife to the one and the mother to the other) in the specified sense of the term, yet do so in dramatically different ways—e.g. the husband’s love, unlike the son’s, might involve sexual intimacy, whereas the son’s love might involve a unique form of obedience. Analogously, the human can exemplify the same basic kind of love as God towards specific individuals, even while the expressions of this love vary considerably. Whereas God’s love leads to a humble and gruesome death for the sins of the world, the same kind of love might lead the human to work at a soup kitchen, or even run for public office. It is also worth noting that though Christians are often called to imitate specifically the love of God as expressed in the human career of Christ, this is not exclusively the case.19 In fact, direct appeals by biblical authors are made to imitate the Father’s love as well as the pre-incarnate love of the Word. For example, in the passage found in the aforementioned (a), Jesus is depicted as saying that His disciples must love their enemies as well as their friends so that they may be children of their Father in heaven, who ‘sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (Matt. 5:45). Jesus concludes with a plea for His followers to imitate the character of God the Father: ‘Be perfect, t­ herefore, 18  See Ernest Best, Ephesians: A Shorter Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 240–2. 19 In Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), Thomas G. Weinandy says, ‘Within the incarnation the Son of God never does anything as God. [. . .] All that Jesus did as Son of God was done as a man—whether it was eating carrots or raising someone from the dead’ (205). Someone who takes this line might suggest that Christians are called to imitate God’s love only in some very loose sense, specifically in the way in which the God-man qua human nature loves. My own view is closer to that of Alan Torrance: ‘There can be no dichotomy between the divine and human agape in Christ.’ See Torrance ‘Is Love the Essence of God?’, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin  J.  Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 135.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  19 as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48).20 In similar fashion, Paul, in (b), implores Christians to ‘be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love’ (Eph. 5:1–2). As the New Testament specialist Andrew  T.  Lincoln writes, while ‘a frequent feature in ancient paraenesis was the provision of models for imitation’, the ‘writer of Ephesians choses the highest model ­possible’ in that ‘explicit language of [the] imitation of God is employed’.21 Something analogous could be said of Paul’s encouragement to adopt the humble self-giving love of Christ Jesus as found in (c). Pace James D.G. Dunn,22 the passage within (c) exhorts Christians to imitate the character of Christ (v. 5) that began in pre-existent or pre-incarnate form (v. 6), and which spilt over into human history in self-sacrificial love (vv. 7–8). While Paul here is calling believers to follow Jesus Christ (v. 5), and not specifically God the Father, we must not overlook the fact that Paul is urging the faithful to imitate Christ as God the Son who ‘emptied himself ’ and was ‘born of human likeness’ (v. 7). Hence, Paul’s call is not merely to imitate the specifically human characteristics of the first-century God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, but the God who emptied himself out of love for humanity.23 Thus here, as in (a) and (b), and we might add (e) along with the discussed passages of the Gospel of John, the imperative is for Christians to imitate the kind of love that is anchored in the eternal life of God, not just the praiseworthy actions of the man Jesus (although to be concretely imitable, perhaps God’s love must be mediated through a human nature). The relevance of this last claim should be clear. If it is true that it is a recurring biblical theme that Christians are called to imitate God’s love, then it must be that divine and human love can in principle share much in common. Christians, after all, simply cannot imitate that which is wholly other. If the foregoing is on the right track, we have excellent biblical reason to suppose that the similarity thesis is true. Now we must consider whether the

20  See Chapter 6 for a more detailed defence of this claim. 21 Andrew  T.  Lincoln, Ephesians, Vol. 42, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982), 310. 22  See, e.g., James D.G. Dunn, ‘Christ, Adam, and Preexistence’, in Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Brian J. Dodd (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 74–83. For an overview of some reasons as to why Dunn’s interpretation is doubtful, see M. Sydney Park, Submission within the Godhead and the Church in the Epistle to the Philippians: An Exegetical and Theological Examination of the Concept of Submission in Philippians 2 and 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 17–19. 23  For an overview of the relevant exegetical issues, as well as a defence of the claim that Paul is calling us to imitate the character of God in Philippians 2:1–11, see Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 144–6; and Michael  J.  Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), ch. 1.

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20  Love Divine methodological thesis is true as well (i.e. the claim that we can draw conclusions about God’s love by reflecting upon ideal human love).

III.  The Methodological Thesis If the similarity thesis is true, then it is probably the case that the methodological thesis is true as well. For if A and B resemble one another, and someone has epistemic insight into A (i.e. the person has justified and relatively reliable beliefs about A), then, probably, the individual can use her insight into A to form accurate beliefs about B. More to the point, if some human has epistemic insight into what human love is or should be (i.e. she can describe love, identify clear cases that are loving or unloving, reason about how to love correctly in difficult circumstances, and so on), and human love resembles divine love, then it is probably the case that the human can use her insight into human love to form generally reliable beliefs about divine love. There is, of course, no entailment here. It might be that A and B are similar, for ex­ample, but that the person who has epistemic insight into A does not know in what respects A and B are similar and hence does not know how to reason about B from her knowledge of A.24 But there is cause to suppose that the case of divine and human love is not a case in which knowledge of human love will not aid knowledge of divine love. This is because the authors of various New Testament books appear to assume that humans can identify points of conceptual contact between divine and human love in a manner that guides their action. Within the chain of love, for instance, it is said that as the Father loves Christ, so Christ loves the disciples, which is how the disciples are to love. The model of love begins with the Father and travels to the disciples, and when it reaches the disciples it is intended to direct how they live. However, it is highly unlikely that the dis­ ciples can live in the manner to which they have been called without some epistemic insight into the relevant form of love. But once we agree that the disciples have some epistemic insight into this love, it seems that the points of 24  There are versions of analogical predication for which it is the case that, though humans in some sense resemble God, we are unable to identify these points of similarity with any level of precision. I.  M.  Crombie provides an especially clear example of this form of analogy in ‘Arising from the University Discussion’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM, 1955), 122. Also see William P. Alston’s insightful discussion of analogy within William P. Alston, ‘Religious Language’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, ed. William  J.  Wainwright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 239–41; and ‘Aquinas on Theological Predication: A Look Backward and a Look Forward’, in Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 145–78.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  21 conceptual contact within each link of the chain supports the idea that the disciples can draw true conclusions about the Father’s love. By reflecting upon their own ideas and experiences of love that might fulfil (in part or whole) Christ’s command to love as He loves, and by working their way up the chain of love to the Father, it seems that the disciples can arrive at justified beliefs about divine love. Similarly, Paul implores Christians to ‘be imitators of God . . . and live in love’ (Eph. 5:1–2) and to adopt the humble mindset of the God of love who chose to live and die among humans (Phil. 2:1–8). It is utterly mystifying how one could obey these commands, however, if there is not a conceptual link between divine and human love that can be grasped. Someone might object that the methodological thesis proceeds in the wrong direction. Whereas Scripture tells Christians to look to God, often God in Christ, to furnish information on how to love, the proponent of the methodological thesis proposes using information about love gleaned from human thoughts and experiences as a means of thinking rightly about God’s love. From this, it might be argued that Scripture only warrants ‘the top-down approach’ from God to humanity, not ‘the bottom-up approach’ from humanity to God as present within the methodological thesis. In response, the defender of the methodological thesis can agree that the top-down approach is the primary approach, while also contending that it is implausible that this is the only permissible direction for fruitful theologizing. On the contrary, Scripture invites bottom-up thinking of the relevant kind. A straightforward example of this can be found in the teaching of Jesus. Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt. 7:7–11; cf. 6:30, 10:25, and Luke 18:6–7)

Relevant to the present issue is Jesus’ comparison of the Father’s character to that of human parents. Jesus invites His audience to reason from the lesser to the greater, from human goodness to the divine.25 If human parents, who are 25  For a discussion of this way of reasoning placed within its ancient context, see Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 247.

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22  Love Divine far from perfect, are in the practice of giving good gifts to their children, then our Heavenly Father, whose goodness far surpasses that of any human parent, certainly would give even better gifts. Hence, Jesus assumes that reflection on human goodness sometimes provides insight into the content of God’s goodness. But if this is so, then, plausibly, something similar can be said about reflection on human love: we can draw conclusions about God’s love by reflecting upon the best of human love. In short, it looks as if the methodological thesis is true. For those who worry that we have reached too quickly the conclusion that the pertinent bottom-up thinking is permissible, there is a more circuitous path to this destination. The first step along this path is to notice that neither Christ nor any of the biblical authors tell Christians exactly how they are to love as Christ loves. Instead, they prod Christians into deep thinking about the nature of love to discern how they might be faithful to Christ’s call to love in their ever-changing circumstances.26 Almost certainly, however, such reflection will require sifting through one’s own specifically human ex­peri­ences and beliefs about love, rather than the de novo construction of a totally unique conception of love that they have been enjoined to enact. If this is right, then some bottom-up thinking is required for accurate beliefs about Christ’s love, which, by extension, can be applied to the Father’s love: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you’ (John 15:9). We shall stay in the Gospel of John to illustrate the point. Jesus’ command to love as He loves is intended to be action guiding in such a way that it indicates to the world that they are His followers (e.g. John 13:34–35). But, interestingly, Jesus never comes close to filling out the relevant concept of love in fine-grained detail, nor does He offer anything like an exhaustive list of rules or principles that specify how Christians should love in the various circumstances in which they might find themselves. Instead, Christ often offers His followers examples of what a loving person generally would do, and then He leaves it to the community of believers to work out the particulars of how to live the life of love to which they have been called (under the guidance of the Spirit, no doubt).27 We see this procedure plainly portrayed in Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. After this humble act of service, Jesus tells the disciples that they ‘also ought to wash one another’s feet’ (John 13:14). He later builds upon this and 26  See Kevin  J.  Vanhoozer, ‘Love’s Wisdom: The Authority of Scripture’s Form and Content for Faith’s Understanding and Theological Judgment’, Journal of Reformed Theology 5, no. 3 (2011): 272. 27 See, in particular, William  C.  Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Continuum, 1999), especially 50–71.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  23 gives them a ‘new commandment’ to love as He loves them (13:34), which will be an indication to the world that the disciples are His genuine followers (13:35). In the view of most, Jesus’ injunction to wash each other’s feet is not meant to be taken literally (or at least only literally). Instead, it is a call to live out Christ’s example of humble love in the manifold circumstances in which Christians find themselves. The North American theologian William Spohn explains: What does the [command to wash each other’s feet] mean? If the disciples had taken Jesus literally, Christians would be washing feet every Sunday. They knew better than to copy him. He had given them an example, a demonstration, that graphically pointed to a distinctive way of loving service. They had to figure out from this sign how they could become a corresponding sign to the world. In the new commandment Jesus tells Christians to use their imaginations, to think analogically in moving from “as I have loved you” to “so you ought to love one another.”28

It seems undeniable, however, that the use of imagination that Spohn rightly highlights requires drawing from one’s own ideas and experiences of ideal human love to discern the core of Jesus’ ‘as I have loved you’. This is because such discernment requires distinguishing the universal from the particular— i.e. discerning what belongs to the core of Jesus’ ‘as I have loved you’ and what is a contingent manifestation of it. But, since the text does not do this for us completely, it seems we must at least rely partially upon a careful examination of our own ideals concerning love. Consequently, the methodological thesis appears to be true. This procedure of teaching about love by example is also found in John 15. Immediately after commanding His disciples to love as He loves, Jesus explains that ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (15:13). The placement of the foreshadowing of the cross after Jesus’ love command surely implies that Christ is summoning the disciples to have an extraordinarily deep kind of love for one another, a love that disposes one to be willing to die for those loved. At the same time, we must not overlook the fact that the love to which Jesus is calling His followers to practice is a multifaceted kind of love that includes but is not exhausted by a willingness to die for others. On the heels of saying that love is self-sacrificial, Jesus explains that He views the disciples not as servants but as friends (15:14), in that He is 28 Spohn, Go and Do Likewise, 52.

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24  Love Divine willing to share ‘everything’ that He has heard from the Father with them (15:15). Although sometimes overlooked, the context makes it clear that befriending others is included in His love command.29 Yet Jesus never provides anything like jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for what it means to befriend someone in love. Richard Bauckham argues that the Johannine Jesus’ understanding of what it means to be a friend is found throughout the latter half of the Fourth Gospel.30 It is found, for example, in Jesus’ tears when He weeps at the tomb of Lazarus and the crowd cannot help but say, ‘See how he loved him!’ (11:36). The nature of friendship is also illustrated by Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet (13:1–11), an act normally reserved for servants (cf. 13:8, 16).31 Finally, and most dramatically, Jesus demonstrates, even while surpassing, what it means to be a friend in the ‘high priestly prayer’ of chapter 17. In language that harkens back to the description of friendship found in chapter 15,32 Jesus speaks of revealing ‘everything’ that the Father has given Him to the disciples (vv. 7–8), and Jesus requests that the Father make the disciples one as Jesus and the Father are one. Going further still, Jesus asks the Father to make His ‘name known to them [. . .] so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (v. 26). If Bauckham is right that the Johannine Jesus’ understanding of friendship is illuminated in these ways, and if it is correct to claim that befriending another is part of Jesus’ love command, then clearly the love that Jesus calls His followers to embody is multifaceted and intimate, and cannot be boiled down to self-giving benevolence alone.33 Yet it is unlikely that the human can live out such a multifaceted and in­tim­ate love without in some way drawing from her own ideals about human love. For, once again, what Jesus provides is not a complete description of the love to which His disciples are commanded to exemplify, but various ex­amples or signs. In doing this, Jesus leaves His disciples with the responsibility of discerning how they should love in the various circumstances they might face. However, the claim has been that the completion of this task will often require 29  For a more thorough examination of this theme, see Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John, 117–21. Also helpful is Victor Paul Furnish, The Love Command in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1973), 132–48. 30  See Richard Bauckham, Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 64–9. 31  See Richard Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 192–7; cf. Martin  M.  Culy, Echoes of Friendship in the Gospel of John (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited, 2010), 141–3. 32  Compare, e.g., John 17:6–8 with 15:15, and 17:20–23 with 15:1–11. 33  For a further defence of this claim, see my ‘Benevolent Billy: A Thought Experiment to Show That Benevolence Is Insufficient for Christian Love’, Philosophia Christi 19, no. 1 (2017): 181–91.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  25 the disciples to sift through their own specifically human ideas, experiences, and ideals concerning love to discern what love is and how to apply it. The implication of this procedure, we have seen, is that drawing from ideal human love can rightly inform how one conceives of God’s love. It might be objected that I have underestimated what reflection on the biblical material can accomplish. Although no one biblical passage or book cleanly defines the divine love to which Christians are called to imitate, someone might suggest that we can distil a clear conception of this love by examining the entire biblical canon, paying mind to how divine and human love is manifested in various literary genres as well as the overarching salvation narrative of Scripture.34 In this way, it might be said, extra-biblical bottom-up thinking is avoided. This objection is problematic, however. For one thing, unless we unwisely limit our biblical examination of divine and human love to Hebrew and Greek words for love, we will need some means of determining which texts should be privileged and examined. Plausibly, this means of determination will presuppose some understanding of love. But where are we to get this understanding? We could bring our extra-biblical understanding of love to the determination of which texts should be privileged and examined, but almost certainly this will require leaning on the kind of human ideals that the op­pon­ent of the methodological thesis is keen to avoid. As an alternative, perhaps we start with passages on divine and human love that are central to the overarching biblical narrative in order to derive an initial idea of love, and then we use that idea to identify other biblical teachings on love for the purpose of fleshing out the initial concept. Arguably, however, deriving the initial concept of love will demand the kind of imaginative thinking underscored by Spohn. As we have seen, though, this imaginative thinking is likely to require reliance upon human ideals of love as a way of distinguishing the universal concept of love from the particular. Thus, neither attempt at an exclusively top-down, biblically based approach is particularly helpful to the critic of the methodological ­thesis. I am unaware of a third alternative that will not have a similar result. Furthermore, it is quite plausible to think that any proposed conception of love by the opponent of the bottom-up approach will act as something like a 34  Though Peckham does not exactly make this recommendation, he does defend an approach of ‘first investigating the canonical depiction of divine love, while temporarily bracketing out [. . .] as much as possible, ontological presuppositions. This final-form canonical approach to systematic the­ ology affords epistemological primacy to the canon as a whole (tota Scriptura), which provides the content for a model of divine love that seeks internal coherence and rigorous correspondence to Scripture, and might illuminate the (implicit) biblical theo-ontology underlying the God-world relationship.’ See Peckham, The Love of God, 45–6.

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26  Love Divine hypothesis that is proffered to explain the collected and categorized biblical data. But, certainly, hypotheses must be evaluated by criteria other than whether or not they fit the data (whatever this ‘fit’ might be). Additional desiderata such as simplicity, internal coherence, and independent plausibility are also incredibly important.35 It seems inescapable, however, that employing these desiderata will require checking the hypothesis against one’s own (human) experiences and ideas of what love is or should be. If this is right, then it looks as if bottom-up thinking has re-emerged as vital for reason­ing about God’s love even when we are quite optimistic about what the sweep of Scripture can contribute to the discussion.36 The point of application can now be made. Recall that the present worry concerning the methodological thesis is that its proponents say that we can draw from our own ideals to form true beliefs about God’s love when Scripture only warrants reflecting on human love in light of that which is revealed about divine love (and perhaps, in addition, revealed by God about human love). We have seen, however, that it is plausible that Christians must draw from their own ideals of love to determine how to love as Christ loves, which is the love they have been enjoined to imitate. Presumably this process yields relatively accurate beliefs (relative, that is, to the tricky enterprise of theological and ethical thinking), otherwise Christ would not command as He does.37 But if Christian reflection upon ideal human love yields relatively accurate beliefs about Christ’s love (of the kind Christians are called to embody), and Christ’s love (of the relevant kind) is qualitatively or numerically identical to the Father’s love (or else quite similar to it), then accurate thinking about Christ’s love is likely to produce accurate beliefs about the Father’s love. Hence, it looks as if the methodological thesis is true. At this stage, one might protest that I have been all too conveniently focusing on biblical passages that support the similarity and methodological theses that I favour when there are passages that appear to push in the opposite direction as well, passages that stress the dissimilarity and incomprehensibility of the nature and ways of God.38 God is said to command genocide (or

35  This claim will be revisited, at least in part, in Chapter 2. 36 For further discussion of this point, see Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 30–3. 37  The assumption is that Jesus would not give an action-guiding command in a manner that is systematically ineffective (relative to other theological and ethical beliefs) in producing the beliefs required for right action. 38  Something close to this objection can be found in Brian Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (London: Continuum, 2006), 95–6; and Michael C. Rea, The Hiddenness of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ch. 4.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  27 something very close in, e.g., Deut. 20:16–17 and Josh. 6:21) and when God does things that look for all the world to be unfair, we are told not to question the divine ways (e.g. Rom. 9:19–21). Then there are passages that speak of God’s radical difference from anything that humans have encountered (e.g. Isa. 40:18–26). How is the proponent of the methodological thesis to account for such passages? One of the jobs of the systematic theologian is to do what she reasonably can to piece together apparently contradictory features of the faith. In this case, the task would be to explain how biblical references to the similarity between divine and human love relate to those passages which seem to indicate considerable dissimilarity. It is beyond the purposes of the present chapter to offer anything like a general theory about how this should be done, let alone to suggest specific conclusions that one should draw about the referenced complex theological issues—such concerns will be addressed as the book unfolds. Nevertheless, it must be noted that underscoring apparent dissimilarity between divine and human love does little to undercut the argument of this chapter. To begin with, I have not argued that divine and human love are similar in all respects. Rather, I have argued that there is an important point of conceptual contact between God’s love and the love that humans are directed to enact. More importantly (and as already intimated in Section II), even if we agree that divine and ideal human love are basically identical, by itself this does not mean that we can predict how God will always behave. Given divine omniscience, plus the fact that God is uniquely responsible for guiding the entire cosmos filled with free creatures (including, perhaps, angels and demons) toward praiseworthy ends, it is nearly obvious that God’s love would sometimes lead Him to act in ways that utterly baffle us, even if divine and human love share the same essential core. Among other things, God possesses reasons for acting from love (and other motives) that humans do not (since, for example, God is omniscient and responsible for the world). However, God’s transcendent reasons for acting need not engender a type of scepticism that would invalidate this chapter’s argument. While many of God’s ways perhaps will remain mysterious, humans can imitate God’s virtue or character quality of love in their peculiarly human ways, with their peculiarly human reasons for acting. Often being in the dark about how God will act in love does not entail being in the dark about the nature of God’s love. And, thankfully, God has not left us only to our imaginations about how we should imitate God’s character of love in our world. God became human and showed us how God loves in peculiarly human ways, with peculiarly human reasons for acting. In short, the mere fact that there are different mani­fest­ations of

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28  Love Divine divine and human love, sometimes even dramatic ones, should not defeat our confidence in the methodological thesis.

IV.  Three Theological Objections From my perspective, the foregoing case gives us good reason to affirm both the similarity and methodological theses. Before concluding, however, three objections to these theses shall be treated.

IV.a  The Objection from Theological Tradition In an often reprinted paper, ‘Theology and Falsification’, Antony Flew presents a version of the problem of evil that is generated by the claim that ‘God loves us as a father loves his children’.39 Flew wonders how the theist can take this claim seriously when children die of horrible conditions such as throat c­ ancer. Whereas the child’s ‘earthly father is driven frantic in his effort to help’, the child’s ‘Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern’.40 Flew recognizes that religious believers often qualify God’s love with statements to the effect that ‘God’s love is not a merely human love’ or even that this love is ‘an inscrutable love’;41 yet Flew worries that the result is that the proposition that ‘God loves us as a father love his children’ suffers at the hands of ‘death by a thousand qualifications’.42 There are a number of ways in which the Christian might respond to Flew’s thoughtful framing of the problem of evil. One such response comes from the Thomistic philosopher, Brian Davies. Unlike many theistic philosophers today who seek to overturn criticisms like that of Flew’s by suggesting ways in which God, contrary to appearances, might love humans with an immense fatherly love, Davies takes a different course. Following his reading of Thomas Aquinas at nearly every turn, Davies’s angle is to argue ‘that we are seriously in the dark when it comes to what it is for God [. . .] to be good, or to be

39  Antony Flew, ‘Theology and Falsification’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), 96–9; cf. William  L.  Rowe, ‘Friendly Atheism, Skeptical Theism, and the Problem of Evil’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59, no. 2 (April 2006): 79–92. 40  Flew, ‘Theology and Falsification’, 98–9. 41  Flew, ‘Theology and Falsification’, 99. 42  Flew, ‘Theology and Falsification’, 97.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  29 loving’. Yet this is to be expected, thinks Davies, given that the best philosophical reasoning points us to a God who is radically other.43 Though Davies approaches the topic of God’s love and His relation to evil primarily from a Thomas-inspired philosophical viewpoint, specifically theological concerns shape Davies’s approach as well. He reasons that the idea that humans can form reliable beliefs about God’s loving motives and ways is a recent in­nov­ ation within the  Christian tradition, and one that should be jettisoned.44 Davies also cites certain biblical passages that ostensibly support the idea that God’s love is much different than humans can imagine (which is an issue that we have dealt with already).45 Whatever one makes of Davies’s approach to the problem of evil, he ­presents us with a vision of God’s transcendence that entails that humans ­cannot reason reliably about God’s love. If Davies is correct about this, then the methodological thesis, and its undergirding similarity thesis, must be ­dispensed with. For those who do not share Davies’s Thomistic perspective, it is tempting to  address Davies’s vision of transcendence at the level of a competing ­theo­logic­al paradigm. Accordingly, one could launch a frontal assault on the Thomistic perspective offered by Davies, with the hope of demonstrating that the paradigm from which he operates is defective in the relevant respects.46 This would be a useful way of proceeding, though it would certainly take us much too far afield. Moreover, getting entangled within a debate about the truth of St Thomas’s vision of divine transcendence, or a particular interpretation of it, would be to miss a perhaps deeper, or at least more historically ­far-reaching, theological claim that Davies would like to make. As already indicated, this is the idea that it is a recent theological innovation to think (in my terminology) that the methodological thesis is true—i.e. an innovation in the sense that this way of thinking contradicts what the vast majority of the

43 Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 227. 44  See, e.g., Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 58–60, 89–105; as well as his ‘Letter from America’, New Blackfriars 84 (2003): 371–84. 45  See, e.g., Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 95–6. Compare Davies’s reasoning with Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Continuum, 1987), 16–22; and N.N.  Trakakkis, ‘The Hidden Divinity and What It Reveals’, in Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives, ed. Adam Green and Eleonore Stump (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 192–209. Also rele­ vant is Murphy, God’s Own Ethics; and Rea, The Hiddenness of God. 46  Notice that Brian Davies’s interpretation of Thomas on the present issue varies considerably from Eleonore Stump’s understanding—see her The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2016). So, to object to Davies on this issue is not necessarily to object to Thomas.

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30  Love Divine Church has explicitly and implicitly confessed.47 If Davies is correct about this claim, then the central thesis of this chapter is pitted against the bulk of the Christian theological tradition. Although not absolutely damning in and of itself,48 it is certainly uncomfortable to propose ways of thinking about God that are at odds with the Church’s theological history, especially if we think the Spirit guides the Church to help her worship God in truth. But is the methodological thesis, together with its accompanying similarity thesis, an innovation? I have my doubts. While I cannot defend the case in sufficient detail here, I shall survey one way in which many Christians have assumed something like the similarity and methodological theses to draw important conclusions about God’s love. My hope is that doing so will provide some reason to suppose that my doubts about the innovatory nature of the relevant theses are warranted. The issue that we shall examine is the conviction, perhaps more historically dominant in the Christian East than in the West, that God’s punishment is primarily educative and remedial, rather than merely retributive. This conviction can be found to different extents in theological luminaries such as Irenaeus of Lyons,49 Clement of Alexandria,50 Gregory of Nyssa,51 and Isaac the Syrian.52 For our purposes, what is particularly interesting about those who hold this remedial view of divine punishment are some of the reasons that are offered in support of it. Unlike what one would suspect if Davies’s reading of the Christian tradition is correct, these theologians often argue in a manner that appears to assume the truth of the similarity and methodological theses. We have space only briefly to touch upon the thinking of Clement and Isaac. Consider the following deployment of reason by Clement. Although he does not recoil from using the language of ‘eternal punishment by fire’ as awaiting the wrongdoer, he maintains that punishment within this life and

47  See, e.g., Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 58–60, 89–105; as well as his An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), ch. 1; and his ‘Letter from America’. 48  Indeed, I defend a non-traditional view of God’s emotional life in Chapter 5. 49 See Andrew  P.  Klager, ‘Retaining and Reclaiming the Divine: Identification and the Recapitulation of Peace in St. Irenaeus of Lyons’ Atonement Narrative’, in Stricken by God: Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ, ed. Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 422–81. 50  See John  R.  Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’, Theological Studies 54, no. 4 (1993): 617–40 (especially 618–20); Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 44–7. 51  See Chapter 6 of this book for a discussion of Gregory on this point. 52  See Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 269–97; and Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 758–67.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  31 the life to come is educative and purifying.53 Clement says that ‘as children are chastened by their teacher or their father, so are we by Providence’. ‘For’, Clement adds, ‘God does not take vengeance (for vengeance is a retaliation of evil), but he chastens with a view to the good [. . .] of those who are chastened.’54 Notice that the conception of parental goodness is doing significant work for Clement. On the assumption that God’s goodness is similar to human goodness, specifically that which is found in loving parents, Clement infers that God punishes in loving, purifying ways. Hence John Sachs is on target when he writes, According to Clement, God’s absolute goodness implies that punishment can only have a pedagogical, purifying, and healing function, not only in this life, but after death as well. God does not take vengeance, for that would be simply to return evil for evil. But in loving providence God ‘chastens with a view to the good’ of all, much as a father or teacher disciplines a child.55

Thus, Clement assumes that humans can form significant judgements about divine goodness and love by reflecting upon their conceptions of ideal human goodness and love. The point, of course, is not that Scripture plays a small role in Clement’s thinking about the relevant issues. On the contrary, Clement’s writings are suffused with biblical references, including when he writes about God’s love. Instead, the point is that Clement assumes the similarity thesis (e.g. God’s goodness is similar to a loving human father) and he supposes that something like the methodological thesis can be followed to fill out the Christian conception of God’s love. Whatever one’s verdict of Clement’s particular use of the similarity and methodological theses, it appears that Clement is no enemy to the central argument of the present chapter. An even more explicit reliance on what I am calling the methodological thesis comes from Isaac the Syrian. Isaac is convinced that God’s fundamental motivation for creating and overseeing the affairs of humans is that of love. In his view, ‘Among all [God’s] actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us.’56 Indeed, all of God’s actions concerning humans ‘are 53 Clement of Alexandria, ‘The Rich Man’s Salvation’, in Clement of Alexandria, trans. G.W. Butterworth (London: William Heinemann, 1909), sec. 33, pp. 340–1. 54  Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies Book VII, trans. Fenton Anthony Hort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 16.102 (p. 181). 55  Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’, 618. 56  Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), ‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV–XLI, trans. Sebastian P. Brock (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 39.2 (p. 172).

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32  Love Divine directed towards the single eternal good’ of union with Himself.57 As Isaac sees it, furthermore, a God who loves in this way is not one who would punish retributively: ‘God is not one who requites evil, but He sets aright evil: the former is the characteristic of evil people, while the latter is characteristic of a father.’58 Thus, for Isaac, viewing God as a loving father ought to inform how we conceive of the purpose of God’s punishment. Interestingly, Isaac recognizes that many biblical passage appear to teach that God sometimes punishes purely or mostly for retributivist reasons.59 But Isaac believes that this cannot be what these passages in fact teach. For a retributivist God is incompatible with the revelation of God found in Christ,60 and, more important for our purposes, perfect fatherly love. Isaac, for ex­ample, reasons as follows: So then, let us not attribute to God’s actions and His dealings with us any idea of requital. Rather, we should speak of fatherly provision, a wise dispensation, a perfect will which is concerned with our good, and complete love. If it is a case of love, then it is not one of requital; and if it is a case of requital, then it is not one of love. Love, when it operates, is not concerned with the requiting of former things by means of its own good deeds or correction; rather, it looks to what is most advantageous in the future: it examines what is to come, and not things that are past. If we think otherwise than this, then according to the resulting childish view the Creator will prove to be weak [. . .].61

It is important to Isaac that his views are supported by Scripture.62 But, in addition, it is clear that the methodological thesis is utilized, and the similarity thesis is presupposed, to furnish corroborating evidence that God is not a retributivist. Assuming that my reading of these Church Fathers is correct, then, pace Davies, neither the methodological thesis nor the similarity thesis is a recent theological innovation within the Christian tradition. Certainly, one can ­dis­agree with the strand of the tradition to which I refer, but the existence of this strand goes a long way towards showing that it is not incumbent upon the traditionally-minded theologian to follow the conceptualization of divine 57  My emphasis, Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 9.3 (p. 163). 58  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 39.15 (p. 170). 59  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 39.3–5, 15 (pp. 163–5, 169–70). 60  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 39.3–5, 16 (pp. 163–4, 170). 61  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 39.3–5, 17 (pp. 163–5, 170). 62  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 39.15 (pp. 169–70). Cf. Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, 41–3, 291.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  33 transcendence presented by Davies. This is all the more the case if my contention that Scripture supports the similarity and methodological theses is on target.

IV.b  Rea’s Divine Moral Saint Objection In this chapter, I have defended the claim that divine and human love are similar in such a way that human ideals about love provide a reasonably reliable guide to understanding God’s love. Recently, however, the philosopher of religion Michael Rea has argued that divine love ‘cannot plausibly be identified with idealized human love’, where idealized human love refers to ‘the best kinds of human love’.63 While slightly different in emphasis than what I have defended here (since I draw no such strict identification between divine love and idealized human love), Rea’s argument could be taken to pose a problem for the similarity thesis. There are details of Rea’s argument that will need to be set aside for now and addressed in Chapter 5, when the scope of God’s love is considered. I presently show why the defender of the similarity thesis need not be troubled by Rea’s argument for the conclusion that divine love is not identical to idealized human love. To make his case against the notion that divine love is idealized human love, Rea considers what it would mean to have an attribute in an idealized way. Typically,64 having an attribute in an idealized way includes (i) having this attribute in a manner that is free from any relevant limitations as well as (ii) having the defining features of that attribute to the maximal degree. With respect to love, suppose that the best kind of human love just is, or contains, the desire for the loved one’s good. If so, then a person who loves another in  an idealized way would have an unlimited desire for her loved one’s good, where an unlimited desire is one that ‘eclipses in priority and strength any desire focused on anyone or anything else’, including one’s own good. Rea explains: So, for example, imagine two parents, one of whom desires the good of her child to some particular degree, and the other of whom desires the good of her child ever so slightly more. Perhaps the second parent is slightly less focused on her own good; perhaps she is slightly less focused on the good of  others. Clearly, whatever else we might say about the virtues and vices 63 Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 67. 64  Rea discusses possible exceptions in The Hiddenness of God, 67.

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34  Love Divine of  these two parents, it is the second parent who (for better or worse) comes closer to the least limited, most idealized form of desire for the good of her child.65

Given this understanding of idealized love, Rea reasons that if God loves some human, say you, in an idealized way, God would be maximally oriented toward your good. He would desire your good with a strength that eclipses in priority and intensity any desire focused on anyone or anyone else, including Himself. There could not possibly be a being more devoted to you! While this level of devotion might initially sound comforting, Rea argues that such a view of God is beneath divine perfection. The main reason Rea offers for thinking this draws from Susan Wolf ’s conception of a (loving) moral saint: someone who is maximally committed to promoting the welfare of others, to the exclusion of the promotion of any other goods, including her own interests or welfare.66 Wolf contends that it would not be rational or good for a human to be a moral saint. Such a human person would miss out on a whole host of goods that are (or can be) constitutive of the good life, including the cultivation of a love for art, excellent food and drink, the joy of leisure, many kinds of relationships, and so on. It is plausibly the case, after all, that the good life involves a balance of other-centred and self-centred goods. Given this need for balance, sometimes it is perfectly respectable, even preferable, for a human to choose to promote her own interests rather than—even at the cost of—the interests of others. The moral saint overlooks this need for balance, and, as a result, she is without a genuine personality in the sense that she does not have her own interests and desires that are not exclusively orient­ed around others. Rea contends that what is true of the human moral saint is also true of God. If God is maximally fixated on you, He would not have His own personality in the described sense. And surely it would be beneath divine perfection to be without a personality. But once we grant that God has His own personality, His own interests and projects, it could well be that God must occasionally choose between His own interests and projects and yours.67 If such a clash were to occur, it would be perfectly reasonable to think that your interests and 65 Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 69. 66  See Wolf ’s famous article, ‘Moral Saints’, The Journal of Philosophy 79, no. 8 (1982): 419–39. 67  Whereas some theologians argue that God’s transcendence entails that there could not possibly be any competition between divine and human actions and goods, Rea supposes that the opposite is the case. For one highly regarded defence of the idea that divine and human goods and actions could never compete, see Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005). 

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  35 projects should give way to God’s—at least sometimes. Even though you might be pretty spectacular, your worth is far surpassed by God’s, and it only seems right for God to respect His own tremendous worth by at least sometimes choosing His ways over your welfare. But if this is so, God would not have an unlimited desire for your good. He would be aware of the potential clash between His personality and your good, and so in principle would be willing to choose His own interests over your good. However, a God who does not have unlimited desire for your good, does not love you in an idealized way, in Rea’s sense. The point can be generalized. For the reasons that God cannot love you in an idealized way, God cannot love any human in an idealized way. This is because, possibly, there could be a clash between any human’s good (any created person’s good, for that matter) and God’s personal goals. Even if it should turn out that such a clash never occurs, this would not mean that God loves humans in the relevant idealized way. For, as Rea explains, maximal devotion to something is not just a matter of pursuing it when it poses no conflicts with other things one values; it is, rather, a disposition to promote that thing regardless of whether it conflicts with other goods one might wish to promote. So a being who is disposed to promote human welfare only in the eventuality that doing so does not conflict with the promotion of his or her own good falls well short of moral sainthood. Such a being is, at best, what we might call an opportunistic saint. If God is a merely an opportunistic saint, then God is not ideally loving toward anyone.68

Thus, it looks as if God cannot love humans in the idealized way to which Rea refers. Much could be said about Rea’s argument. Relevant for the purposes of this chapter, however, it must be said that Rea’s argument, even if successful, does not succeed in showing that the similarity thesis is false. While Rea may have shown that God’s love is not idealized human love in Rea’s specific sense, where idealized human love is thought to entail the relevant kind of limitless love, he has not shown that God’s love is not significantly related or even identical to ‘the best kinds of human love’.69 Much to the contrary, Rea’s use of Wolf ’s moral saint example only underscores a perhaps unnoticed way in which human and divine love might be similar: it would not be good for either God or a human to be a moral saint. But, since Rea has not severed the similarity 68 Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 76.

69 Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 63.

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36  Love Divine between divine and human love, there is still cause for thinking that accounts of God’s love can be assessed by the canons of the best forms of human love— even if we must proceed with care. It might be thought that I have unfairly dragged Rea into the conversation since Rea’s target, idealized/limitless love, is a bit different than anything I defend at this stage within the book (or elsewhere, for that matter). Perhaps this is so. Yet Rea argues against the notion of divine love as an idealized/ limit­less version of human love as part of a wider project of aiming to demonstrate that ‘divine love is importantly different from human love’, and this for the purpose of responding to the challenge of divine hiddenness.70 As should be clear already, I have my doubts that divine love is fundamentally different from the best of human love. But even if I am mistaken about this, Rea has not given us reason to think otherwise by way of reflection upon moral sainthood. On the contrary, Rea’s use of moral sainthood for his theological purposes presupposes considerable similarity between divine and human love.

IV.c  Fear of Feuerbachian Projections In the book Remythologizing Theology, the influential North American evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer surveys various conceptions of God’s love and God’s relation to the cosmos. Channelling Karl Barth, a primary way in which Vanhoozer casts doubt on a theological paradigm he finds troublesome is by raising the fear that the conception in question could be little more than a projection of one’s hopes and ideals onto the clouds.71 In doing this, Vanhoozer explicitly warns against using abstract notions of perfection and human understandings of love to guide our theologizing about God’s perfect love and related notions.72 When we do so, Vanhoozer asserts, we ‘invite the charge that the attributes are merely a Feuerbachian projection of speculative reason’.73 Vanhoozer brings to our attention a real issue that must be dealt with. Theological methods can be more or less reliable, and it is unwise to adopt a method that encourages the theologian to deify pet values and convictions,

70 Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 58. 71  See, Karl Barth’s ‘Ludwig Feuerback’, in Theology and the Church: Shorter Writings, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 217–37. 72 Kevin  J.  Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 73 Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, 427.

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Approaching the Doctrine of Divine Love  37 especially when there is nothing in place to counterbalance this tendency. Along these lines, Vanhoozer’s warning about Feuerbachian projectionism can be seen as a challenge to the defender of the methodological thesis to explain why this method is not a considerably unreliable manner of proceeding that often leads to the idolatrous consequence of one worshipping that which is little more than one’s own projections. Worries of this kind are common among contemporary theologians.74 In very general terms, Vanhoozer’s own response to the noted Feuerbachian threat is to keep Scripture front and centre within the theological enterprise. In suggesting as much, Vanhoozer does not overlook the fact that theology as we know it is a human practice where ‘we have no choice but to project concepts drawn from human experience onto God’.75 The trick, thinks Vanhoozer, is to allow God’s self-revelation to lead the way in forming and transforming those concepts, and, for him, that means focusing on Scripture.76 In my judgement, Vanhoozer’s answer is basically correct. I would add, however, that God’s self-revelation abounds outside Scripture (e.g. in creeds, liturgies, and creation) and that the threat of projecting one’s values onto Scripture also remains an issue to which theologians must be mindful. Still, I assume that attention to Scripture provides considerable help in keeping the theologian from fashioning a God in her own image. Thus, in Chapter 3, I will propose a model of divine love that dovetails with notions of ideal human love and corresponds to important biblical data. My hope is that the latter, in particular, staves off projections that are radically out of focus. Additionally, the model of divine love I present aims to approximate the truth, and as such is open to certain kinds of tests that mere projections are not. For example, evidence of internal incoherence, undue complexity, and the like can be used as reason to suppose that my proposal is false or not as truth-apt as it could be. But, I submit, if the methodological thesis were a mere catalyst for projecting one’s wishes onto the heavens, it would not be integrated easily into an approach to the doctrine of divine love that generates 74  Besides Barth (‘Ludwig Feuerback’), versions of this concern are present in Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas  A.  Carlson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), and David  B.  Burrell, ‘Creator/Creatures Relation: “The Distinction” vs. “Onto-Theology” ’, Faith and Philosophy 25, no. 2 (2008): 177–89. For discussions and responses, see Richard Cross, ‘Idolatry and Religious Language’, Faith and Philosophy 25, no. 2 (2008): 190–6; William Hasker, ‘On Behalf of the Pagans and the Idolaters: A Response to Burrell’, Faith and Philosophy 25, no. 2 (2008): 197–204; and Michael C. Rea, ‘Introduction’, in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, ed. Michael  C.  Rea and Oliver  D.  Crisp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 22–5. Also relevant, though concerning a different issue, are pages 367–73 of Alvin Plantinga’s monumental Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 75 Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, 20. 76  See, e.g., Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, 475–86.

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38  Love Divine hypotheses that track in evidence and falsifiability. To suggest that the threat of mere projections remains just as severe with such tests in place would seem to imply an unduly sceptical view of human reason and the practice of the­ ology. So, although I do not believe that there is an easy way of avoiding the projection of our own prejudices onto God, I do think that there are pro­ced­ ures for mitigating the problem.

V. Conclusion In the next chapter I propose a model of divine love. The construction of this model builds upon the theses defended within the present chapter, in conjunction with additional philosophical and theological desiderata. This model will in turn inform many of the theological judgements within this book. Whether or not those judgements hit the mark, I hope I have demonstrated within this chapter that it is plausible to think that reflection upon ideal human love can significantly inform how we ought to conceive of God’s love.

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2 The Value Account of God’s Love The Christian gospel testifies to a God of love who is not content to keep that love to Himself but instead lavishes it upon His children. Motivated by this love, God became human, and lived, died, and rose for the salvation of women and men. Here we see a love that values humans, in that God deems it worthwhile to perform such extraordinary actions for them. How are we to make sense of this valuing love? Central to most models or accounts of God’s love is the idea that God’s love must include benevolence, understood as willing or desiring a person’s good for her own sake.1 This inclusion of benevolence within the conception of God’s love is to be expected. If nothing else, benevolence explains God’s ­self-sacrificial death in Christ. Thus, it seems, benevolence should play a vital role in a Christian model of divine love. Yet those theorizing about the nature of God’s love must take care to ­provide an account that sufficiently captures the biblical witness to God’s love as intimately personal as well. The limited glimpses we see of the love between the Father and Son, for example, reveal a life of glory (John 17:5), sharing (John 17:1–10), joy (John 15:1–11), communion (1 John 4:4–21), and unity (John 17:20–25); and the Gospel of John informs us that God desires to share this love with humanity (John 15:9–11; 17:20–26). It is doubtful, however, that the richness of this love is best captured exclusively by benevolence. Something similar could be said of God’s deification of humans (e.g. 2 Pet. 1:4; John 17:26), Christ’s preparation of the Church as His bride (Eph. 5:25–27), or Jesus’ calling His disciples ‘friends’ (John 15:15). Hence God’s love appears 1  Recent examples of those who maintain the centrality of benevolence include: Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 117–21; Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2008), ch. 4; Timothy P.  Jackson, Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15; Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Continuum, 1987), 29–51; Thomas Jay Oord, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 19–30; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 171–4; Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 160. For a rather long list of philosophers that affirm some version of a benevolence account of love, see J. David Velleman, ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’, Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999): 351–3. Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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40  Love Divine to contain some kind of intimate relational or interpersonal component alongside benevolence.2 Recognition of this intimate relational component has led many Christian theorists, of both the past and the present, to suppose that God’s love must include, in addition to benevolence, some kind of desire for union.3 Unfortunately, it is not always clear to what this desire for union amounts.4 Taken altogether, then, we have the idea that God’s love is a valuing love that seeks the good of those whom are loved as well as union with them. The challenge is to make sense of these parts and show how they can be integrated into a theologically fruitful conception of God’s love. This is precisely the aim of the present chapter. According to what I label ‘the value account’, God’s love, when directed at a person, is that which responds to the perception of a person’s intrinsic goodness by valuing (in a sense to be described) the existence and flourishing of that individual as well as union with her. In reference to human persons, which is the primary focus of this chapter and the chapters

2  For a defence of this claim, see Robert Merrihew Adams, ‘Pure Love’, The Journal of Religious Ethics 8, no. 1 (1980): 83–99; and my, ‘Benevolent Billy: A Thought Experiment to Show That Benevolence Is Insufficient for Christian Love’, Philosophia Christi 19, no. 1 (2017): 181–91. 3  Contemporary examples include Adams, ‘Pure Love’; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1: The Doctrine of God, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, trans. A.T. Mackay et al. (London: T&T Clark, 1957), 272–85; Alexander R. Pruss, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), ch. 2; Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1992), 80–91; Anastasia Philippa Scrutton, Thinking through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility (London: Continuum, 2011), ch. 6; Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chs. 5–6. Stump attributes the view she defends, which is that God’s love contains both benevolence plus a desire for union with the one loved, to Thomas Aquinas (Wandering in Darkness, ch. 5). It appears that Thomas was not alone, as the thought that love contains a unitive component is found in the writings of several medieval authors—see, e.g., Hugh Feiss, On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St. Victor, Vol. 2, Victorine Texts in Translation (Hyde Park, NY: New York City Press, 2012), 100–5; and Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), ch. 4. Certain Reformed scholastics also viewed God’s love for humans as possessing not only benevolence but also a kind of desire to be united to them; a survey of such theologians can be found in Richard A. Muller, The Divine Essences and Attributes, 2nd ed., Vol. 3, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 566–9. Finally, it should be mentioned that insofar as the doctrine of theosis/deification is thought to be motivated by love, this too may be seen as God’s love expressing itself in terms of a kind of union with the creature—as an example of this, see Andrew Louth’s reflections in ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, ed. Michael  J.  Christensen and Jeffrey  A.  Wittung (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 34–9. 4  On this note Eleonore Stump says, ‘[O]n Aquinas’s account, love for another person includes two desires: a desire for the good of the beloved and a desire for union with the beloved. [. . .] Aquinas himself makes considerable use of this [latter] notion, especially in his biblical commentaries; but he does not offer any extensive philosophical treatment of it’ (Wandering in Darkness, 109). Like Stump goes on to do, my goal is to propose an account of love that does not leave the nature of union undeveloped.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  41 to come, I maintain that God loves a human person when He responds to her dignity (a term to be spelled out in due course).

I.  Some Groundwork Within analytic philosophical theology, accounts or models are regularly used to organize and simplify complex data regarding some theological subject, which is difficult or impossible to comprehend fully, for the purpose of ­gaining intellectual traction on that subject and making progress on a range of affiliated issues.5 Such accounts often aim for the truth of the matter or some approximation thereof. University of Oxford theologian William Wood notes that to say that a model represents its target subject accurately, or in a manner that approximates the truth, is to say that ‘the salient features of the model are analogous to the salient features of the target’.6 The value account presented in this chapter is a model of this kind concerning God’s love for persons (both human persons and the persons of the Godhead).7 I will take it that the model succeeds to the degree that it seems reasonable to maintain that the primary features of the model, as spelt out by me, are analogous to God’s love, where the criteria of reasonableness largely concerns the desiderata to be discussed. Obviously, the success of the value account is not an all or nothing affair. It could be that the value account succeeds in representing its target subject accurately in certain respects, while dramatically failing in others, and the degree of reasonableness concerning the various aspects of the account may vary. In addition, since the goal of the value account is to arrive at an analogous representation of God’s love, there is room for disagreement over how closely and comprehensively the model represents its target subject. That is a secondary area of dispute. Likewise, and also because models are intended to be analogous representations, there is space for different understandings of the component parts of the value account, so long as there is some measure of common understanding on some or all of these parts. For instance, I subsequently propose that the love of persons includes the valuing of a kind of mental attention to persons when they are functioning in characteristically personal ways, and I describe some of the modes in which this mental attention takes place. I do not, however, discuss the precise details of the phenomenon 5  Particularly helpful here is William Wood, ‘Modeling Mystery’, Scientia et Fides 4, no. 1 (2016): 1–21. 6  Wood, ‘Modeling Mystery’, 7. 7  Throughout this chapter I use ‘model’ and ‘account’ as synonyms.

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42  Love Divine of mental attention per se. To provide just a rough description of when one human person mentally focuses on another, this phenomenon includes a temporal succession of events and various features of this other individual drifting in and out of the centre of the human’s perceptual consciousness who is exhibiting mental attention. How much of this phe­nom­enon, if any, applies to God may remain an area of dispute among those committed to the value account. What matters for the value account is that there is a significant sense in which God mentally attends to persons when they are functioning in characteristically personal ways, as later described. The precise details of divine cognition is a secondary issue on which adherents to the value accounts can disagree and develop in any number of ways. To arrive at the value account, we will need some desiderata to guide and measure the construction of our model of divine love. Unfortunately, there are very few desiderata of the relevant kind that are agreed upon amongst Christians. For instance, there is no explicit agreement about how Scripture and the Church’s tradition might inform our conception of God’s love, with the exception of very general principles such as compatibility with the crucifixion of Christ.8 Christians also do not agree upon a rigorous account of human love that might be refined and transformed into a model of divine love; nor is there agreement upon criteria about how such a transformation might take place. With so little agreement concerning desiderata, I am forced to propose my own. I propose that a model of God’s love should be in­de­pend­ent­ly plausible and should explain a wide scope of biblical teaching. Both of these criteria merit comment. To say that a model of God’s love should be independently plausible is to say, at minimum, that it should correspond to certain theoretical virtues such as simplicity and internal coherence. My hope is that the model I propose possesses the relevant virtues. But, when I focus on the criterion of independent plausibility, I am primarily thinking in terms of the similarity and methodological theses defended in Chapter  1, namely, that human love closely resembles God’s love and that reflection upon the best of human love can inform about the nature of God’s love. With these theses in the backdrop, I assume that a model of divine love is ‘independently plausible’ if it cor­res­ponds, in large part, to our deepest intuitions and ideals about love, spe­cif­ic­al­ly a kind

8  Long gone are the days where it is thought that a rich meaning of ‘love’ can be distilled by way of an examination of the ἀγαπάω word group. For a concise list of reasons why this is so, see Donald A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Cross, 2000), 25–30.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  43 of love that humans might embody. So, to meet this criterion, I will propose an account of human love that I believe helps us understand God’s love. Of course, theories of human love are controversial; my proposal will be no different.9 Given the limitations of space, I will not be able to defend my proposed account of human love to the satisfaction of those who have entrenched intuitions about love that run contrary to my own. Though this remains a challenge for my method of model-building, it might help to note that the account of love I propose is not radically new but emerges out of the tradition that says that love concerns both benevolence and the desire for union. This tradition has been present within Christian theology, even if only in nascent form, for quite some time, which is at least some reason (however slight) to think it is on the right track.10 To the reader that is sceptical about the account of human love that is proffered, I say that the goal is not to suggest that the proposed account of human love is the only plausible model, but to provide sufficient reason to think that it is worthy of further consideration, especially as a model of divine love. The second criterion for a candidate model of divine love concerns its ability to explain a wide scope of Scripture. Here I assume that it is a valuable feature of an account of divine love if it is compatible with what God through Scripture teaches about love, and if, in some instances, the model of love explains the truth of these teachings. By itself, this desideratum is uncontroversial from a traditional Christian perspective, but it is also too broad and vague to be of much use. What is needed are specific biblical teachings by which to measure a candidate account of love. One such measurement that will be used is compatibility with certain kinds of love relationships that occur within the New Testament. As we discovered in Chapter  1, various biblical authors appear to presuppose that there is a sense in which God’s love is directed towards humans and this kind of love is to be imitated by those that follow Christ. Building upon this, I would argue that the kind of imitative love that humans are called to embody can and should be directed towards God, their fellow humans, and themselves (e.g. John 15:9–17; 1 John 4:7–12; Matt. 5:43–48; Eph. 5:1–2). There is also good reason to believe that this very same kind of love finds its origin within God’s intra-trinitarian life, which existed ‘before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:24; also see, e.g., John 15:9–10, 12; 1 John 4:7–16). If all of this is right, 9  The best overview of philosophical theories of human love of which I am aware is Bennett Helm, ‘Love’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward  N.  Zalta, Fall 2017 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/love/. 10  See n. 3.

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44  Love Divine then the New Testament leads us to believe that there is a key kind of love that (ideally) has five manifestations: (i) God’s intra-trinitarian love, (ii) God’s love of humans, (iii) the human’s love of God, (iv) the human’s love of another human, and (v) the human’s love of self. I shall label these five expressions of this one kind of love the ‘Christian Quintuplet’, and for the sake of expediency, I will here simply presuppose, without any defence beyond that which can be inferred from Chapter 1, that the New Testament in fact does lead us to affirm it.11 The Christian Quintuplet will be used as a kind of network of important love relationships that acts as a criterion for measuring proposed accounts of Christian love. It will act as a measuring device in the sense that it will be assumed that any account of love that purports to be faithful to the central New Testament teaching on love must be reasonably thought to be compatible with the five love relationships represented with the quintuplet. This quintuplet will be employed near the end of the chapter to test the value account of love, and there it will be suggested that the value account is not only compatible with the Christian Quintuplet but that it explains certain features of it in natural ways. The desiderata of independent plausibility and the relevant explanatory scope are not the only important criteria for assessing a model of divine love from a Christian perspective. I submit, however, that these desiderata are considerably significant for the present task, and that a model of love that meets these desiderata merits further consideration. According to the value account of divine love that I shall defend, when God loves a person He responds to the perception of her intrinsic worth by valuing her existence, her flourishing, and union with her. To arrive at an account of God’s love that runs along these lines, I first build a value account of human love. After I have done that, I show how this basic model provides a compelling account of divine love that corresponds to the noted desiderata.

II.  Love and the Perception of Intrinsic Value The present value account begins with the reflections on love by the philosopher J. David Velleman.12 For Velleman, neither benevolence nor the desire 11  There is no denying that we use the word ‘love’ in a variety of different ways—to describe our enjoyment of food to our deep and abiding commitment to God and each other. In principle, Scripture could be similar in this respect: different authors use ‘love’ in radically different ways. The Christian Quintuplet helps fix our attention on a particular use of ‘love’ that shall guide our theorizing. 12  See Velleman, ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’, 338–74; and ‘Beyond Price’, Ethics 118, no. 2 (2008): 191–212.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  45 for union are essential features of love, even if they are regular consequences of it.13 Instead, love is said to be ‘an appreciative response to the perception of [a person’s] value’.14 The ‘essence of love’, says Velleman, includes a ‘sense of wonder at the vividly perceived reality of another person’.15 To unpack this understanding of love, Velleman relies on a broadly Kantian notion of respect. Like respect, those who love perceive an individual’s value and refuse to treat that individual in ways that are incompatible with that worth. But love’s appreciation, although it includes respect, must go beyond it.16 As Velleman observes, respect ‘tends toward restraint, abstinence, and noninterference’ whereas love ‘favors involvement and engagement’. In respecting someone, ‘we take care not to do various things to him or to let various things happen to him; [in] loving someone, we are open to caring about him in all sorts of ways’.17 The central difference is that ‘respect arrests our self-interested designs on a person’, whereas ‘love arrests our emotional defences against him, leaving us emotionally vulnerable to him’.18 Loving someone, in other words, ‘lays our heart open to him, leaving us emotionally disarmed and susceptible to all manner of other emotions toward him’.19 Velleman makes use of another Kantian notion to explain the way in which the one who loves appreciates value. This time he draws upon Immanuel Kant’s well-known distinction between dignity and price. Everything, we are told by Kant, has either a dignity or a price. ‘If it has a price, something else can be put in its place as an equivalent; if it is exalted above all price and so admits of no equivalent, then it has a dignity.’20 Applied to human persons, who each enjoy dignity, this means that they possess a high kind of value that makes them entirely irreplaceable. Unlike items that have a price, one cannot substitute the loss of one human person with anything else, including another human, to replace the value. With this Kantian distinction in hand, Velleman claims that when love and respect are directed at human persons both of these attitudes are responses to dignity. Thus, in both love and respect, the acute perception of the individual’s dignity leads one to see and treat the person as utterly irreplaceable. The salient difference between the two attitudes is that respect’s appreciation of this dignity leads one simply to check her mo­tiv­ations 13  Velleman, ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’, 349–54. 14  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 199. 15  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 199. 16  Velleman envisions love and respect as two responses to one and the same value that exist on a continuum. Respect functions as ‘the required minimum’ to the relevant value and love as ‘the optimal maximum’ (‘Love as a Moral Emotion’, 366.). 17  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 201. 18  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 201. 19  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 201. 20 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J.  Paton (New York: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1958), 77.

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46  Love Divine to use the person as a mere means to some end, whereas, with love, the ­perception of the individual’s dignity leads one to respond by making herself emotionally vulnerable to him.21 Though Velleman is not always entirely clear on how he understands the perception of value, I take him to be referring to a perceptual state that is ­distinct from belief.22 To believe that something is valuable is to regard the relevant proposition as true, to regard it as being the case. But to perceive someone as dignified is analogous to representing something as blue or cold—or perhaps a more complex representational state, for instance, recognizing someone as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Such a perception might be the basis of belief, but the two mental states are distinct in that one can believe that something is valuable without it seeming good, and vice versa, but one can hardly perceive something as valuable without it at least seeming good.23 This understanding of perception as distinct from belief is, in my view, critical for rendering the value account plausible. An important implication of this understanding of perception is that it concretizes the lover’s response to dignity. One responds not to some abstract or impersonal judgement (e.g. ‘all humans enjoy dignity’) but to a kind of experience of a particular individual (e.g. ‘Malcolm is utterly irreplaceable’).24 Thus, in love, one sensitively responds to this or that individual’s dignity by appreciating her. (I should add that if we maintain, as I do, that one’s perceptions are not limited to the concepts one possesses, then we need not hold that those without the concept of dignity cannot love.25) There is something deeply right about viewing love as a kind of appreciative response to a person’s dignity. For it is nearly inconceivable to suppose that someone can genuinely love another while also maintaining that the person he loves is not perceived (in the specified sense) as extraordinarily valu­able, worthy of rich appreciation, and utterly irreplaceable. Surely even the antirealist concerning human value will think that the human person he loves at least appears valuable and irreplaceable to him, and that there is something intrinsically repulsive about the thought of his beloved being treated in uncaring ways.

21  Velleman, ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’, 361. 22  I believe Velleman’s most extended treatment of the issue is in ‘Beyond Price’, 199. 23  See Graham Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Dennis W. Stampe, ‘The Authority of Desire’, The Philosophical Review 96, no. 3 (1987): 335–81. 24  On love as an attitude that responds to particular individuals, see Roger Scruton, ‘Emotion, Practical Knowledge and Common Culture’, in Explaining Emotions, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 525; cf. Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 151–2. 25  For a discussion, see York Gunther, ed., Essays on Nonconceptual Content (Cumberland, RI: MIT Press, 2003).

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  47 Nevertheless, Velleman’s particular manner of unpacking love’s appreciative response in terms of emotional openness and vulnerability does not seem to get to the heart of the issue.26 Presumably there is something deeper about a person’s love that explains why he is emotionally open and vulnerable to the one he loves in the ways that he is, as it is plausible that there are numerous ways in which someone can be emotionally open and vulnerable that do not spring from love.27 What, in other words, makes one pattern of emotional openness and vulnerability a better candidate for love’s appreciative response than, say, fear or awe, and what explains why this pattern is structured as it is? Velleman does not say, exactly. A promising suggestion for beginning to make sense of this question is that the lover cares about the beloved’s good and being united to her, and that it is the reality or promise of this concern being fulfilled, coupled with the threat of it being frustrated, that creates a structure in which the lover is left open and vulnerable in concrete ways. As already indicated, however, Velleman is explicit that neither benevolence nor the desire for union is essential to love. If no deeper explanation of the pertinent kind of emotional openness and vulnerability can be found after a thorough search, then perhaps we should be willing to embrace Velleman’s particular way of making sense of love’s appreciative response to the perception of dignity. But, to my mind, the explanation concerning benevolence and the desire union is considerably plausible. The challenge lies in articulating the details. In what follows, then, I adopt from Velleman the idea that love is a kind of appreciative response to the perception of an individual’s intrinsic worth (dignity, when the object of affection is a human), but I develop love’s appreciative response rather differently. I maintain that one responds in love by valuing the existence and flourishing of the one loved, alongside valuing union with her.

III.  The Value Account III.a  The Nature of Valuing Love, according to the value account, concerns three interconnected ways of valuing the beloved. But to understand what it means to value someone, we will need to compare valuing something to desiring something. 26  Here I leave aside concerns about what Velleman’s model might mean for divine impassibility. But I doubt that the impassibilist will find Velleman’s understanding of love fruitful for understanding God’s love. 27  See Neera K. Badhwar, ‘Love’, in The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, ed. Hugh Lafollette (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 47–8; and section 4.1 of Helm’s ‘Love’.

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48  Love Divine According to a standard characterization, a desire for P is something like the internal inclination intentionally to perform the actions required for P’s obtaining.28 On this construal, desires are ineluctably connected to action; hence we shall refer to it as the ‘action-based theory of desire’.29 Often presupposed by this action-based theory is the notion that desires are for the obtaining (or not) of certain states of affairs. Your desire for coffee, for example, is for the obtaining of a state of affairs including you enjoying the warm drink, and your desire to listen to ‘Dust in the Wind’ by Kansas is for a state of affairs that includes you hearing your favourite rock ballad. So, on the action-based theory that is of present interest, a desire is that which inclines someone to act to bring about, preserve, or perhaps even avoid a certain state of affairs. Some have objected to the action-based theory on account of the apparent fact that we sometimes desire states of affairs that we are not at all inclined to bring about, preserve, or avoid.30 For instance, it seems that one can desire states of affairs such as the existence of God or the truth of Platonism, yet these states of affairs necessarily obtain or not and thus fall outside of the category of that which an agent might attempt to influence. For a more mundane example, envision a scenario where a rather old-fashioned woman desires a romantic interest to ask her out on a date without her having to do anything to secure the invitation; or, for another such example, think of the couch potato’s desire for the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series, something over which he lacks control.31 One response to such apparent counterexamples to the action-based theory is to say that the noted attitudes are not desires at all but some related conative attitude or attitudes. Another response is to provide an alternative analysis of desire that does not require the same connection to action.32 One alternative analysis of desire that runs along the lines of the second response to the challenge to the action-based theory might be called ‘the good-based theory of desire’.33 According to it, to desire P is for P to be 28  Thorough articulations and defences of the action-based theory can be found in Michael Smith, ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation’, Mind 96, no. 381 (1987): 36–61; and Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), ch. 6. 29  I borrow the label from Timothy Schroeder, ‘Desire’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017), https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/desire/. 30  For forceful criticisms, see Galen Strawson, Mental Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); and Timothy Schroeder, Three Faces of Desire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 16–19. 31  For a response to some of these proposed counterexamples, see David Wall, ‘Are There Passive Desires?’, Dialectica 63, no. 2 (2009): 133–55. 32  It should be mentioned, however, that those who postulate alternative understandings of desire are not always doing so to break the connection between desire and action. 33  Again, I borrow the term from Schroeder, Three Faces of Desire.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  49 perceived or experienced as good.34 Here the perception or experience of P’s goodness is construed along non-doxastic lines in a manner similar to the  previous discussion concerning the perception of someone’s dignity. Accordingly, to perceive P as good is the not the same as believing that P is good, though the perception of P’s goodness might be the basis of the belief. Instead, to perceive P’s goodness is to represent P as good analogous to the way in which someone who sees that something is red represents it as such. There is, however, one crucial point where the analogy breaks down. We ­typ­ic­al­ly think of perception through the five senses as that which pertains to concrete objects and events, not the obtaining or not of certain states of affairs, which are often understood to be or include propositions. By contrast, leading advocates of the good-based theory see desires as representing certain states of affairs, the realization of which is or would be good.35 Altogether, then, to desire P, on the good-based theory, is to experience P as good, where P refers to the potential or actual realization of a certain state of affairs. What is the phenomenology of this perceptual experience of goodness? It is difficult to say, not the least because it is not clear that we should expect to be able to pinpoint some unique quale that emerges in all such perceptions.36 Consider, again, visual perception as an analogue. What it is like to see black is considerably different than seeing white, and the prospects of articulating a shared phenomenology behind these experiences that is informative are not particularly impressive. Or think of the sense of touch. Is it not immensely difficult to locate phenomenological commonality between perceptual sensations of hot and cold? But if other kinds of perception are difficult to cat­egor­ ize in this manner, arguably we should not expect the defender of the good-based theory to be able to provide a neat and tidy characterization of the phenomenology at issue. Perhaps the best that can be done is to offer ­various descriptions of the relevant perception of goodness in hopes that they will convince the reader that the good-based theory maps onto our everyday experience. Graham Oddie, a leading defender of the good-based theory, attempts to do this by claiming that the experience of goodness ‘has a certain magnetic appeal’. That which is desired ‘presents itself to me as something needing to be pursued, or promoted, or preserved, or embraced’.37 The magnetic appeal comes in many forms and ‘can be felt as more or less strong, mild as well as nagging’, or ‘cold or hot, weak or strong’.38 34  See, in particular, Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire, 42. 35  See Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire, 77–8; and Stampe, ‘The Authority of Desire’, 353–62. 36  See Stampe, ‘The Authority of Desire’, 358–62. 37 Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire, 55. 38 Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire, 55.

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50  Love Divine That desires have these features seems plausible enough. But if the good-based theory is not to be labelled a species of the action-based theory there must be some way of explicating Oddie’s ‘magnetic appeal’ in terms that do not require the propensity to act to secure that which is desired. As an entry point into this issue, it may prove helpful first to conceive of this magnetic appeal as that which precedes but often gives way to inclinations towards action. Consider the desire for a juicy cheeseburger. With considerable plausi­bil­ity it can be said that first one experiences how good it would be to sink one’s teeth into a buttery slab of beef, which only secondarily predisposes one to perform the requisite actions to bring about that which is represented as so deliciously good. Maybe the defender of the good-based theory can say that the experience of goodness is exemplified here in the representation of the cheeseburger as delectably good, which is not in itself any kind of inclination to go get a cheeseburger—that comes later, even if only a moment later. The cheeseburger has a magnetic appeal in that the individual senses or feels that a certain gustatory experience would be good or should be the case. An additional example might prove helpful. Recall that according to the good-based theory, to desire P is to experience the potentiality or actuality of P’s obtaining as good. Now suppose that you learn that a colleague receives some kind of official recognition for a lifetime of academic excellence. You experience this news—the state of affairs of your colleague being recognized officially—as good. Let it be agreed that the content of this news is P. Would you then be predisposed to act to bring about P? Hardly. And yet there does seem to be some kind of experience of goodness here of which we are all aware. It makes sense to speak of a kind of delight in or internal affirmation of that news. Plausibly, the phenomenon, in its manifold forms, picked out by the goodbased theory is ubiquitous. Whether visiting a fine art gallery, or hiking within beautifully forested mountains, or holding a new born baby, it is not uncommon to have profound experiences of that which is good. The goodness of the thing in question strikes you, and you respond by internally affirming that good in some way. It might be said that your affirmation is sometimes best characterized as a way of representing as good the realization of the states of affairs of that painting existing, or of your hiking those mountains, or you holding your newborn. If this is right, then the good-based theory does highlight a phenomenon central to human experience that is perhaps often overlooked. I have gestured towards the phenomenology of desire relevant to the ­good-based theory by distinguishing between two kinds of internal impulses.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  51 There is the internal impulse to bring about P, and there is the internal impulse (or disposition) to affirm P or represent P as good. These two impulses ­cor­res­pond to the action-based theory and the good-based theory of desire, respectively. The different internal impulses under consideration lead some to suppose that these two kinds of theories of desire ultimately concern not the same attitude but two distinct attitudes.39 Rather than dispute the issue, we shall agree on some terminology. Unless otherwise clear from the context, let us reserve the word ‘desire’ for that which aligns with the action-based theory: an internal inclination intentionally to perform the actions required for bringing about, maintaining, or avoiding some state of affairs. Understood in this way, desires are distinct from what we might label ‘values’, or instances of ‘valuing’, which refer to the perceptual experience of the goodness of the real­ iza­tion of a certain state of affairs, whether actual or potential. (Obviously, this use of ‘values’ differs slightly from one way in which the word is commonly used, namely, to refer to those fundamental principles and ideals that one attempts to live by.) In this sense, to value something is the same as the goodbased theory of desire, only the basic content of the good-based theory is taken to capture a phenomenon distinct from desire, in the action-based understanding of the term. Notice, though, that it is plausible to think that valuing something in the specified sense often (though not always) leads to desiring that thing in the action-based sense.40 For if P seems good to someone and P is the kind of  thing that one can act to bring about or preserve, then it is plausible to think that, all other things being equal, one will be inclined, or more inclined, to act to bring about or preserve P (which is to desire P according to the action-based theory). The desire for P can be seen as a species of valuing P, or, alternatively, valuing P can be viewed as something that causes or otherwise facilitates the desire for P. Here we need not decide on the matter so long as we agree that valuing P is intimately related to desiring P. It should also be mentioned that if one need not desire P in order to act to bring about or preserve P (sometimes called motivational externalism), then valuing P (conceived as distinct from desiring P) can still raise the probability that one will act to bring about or preserve P. This is because P’s seeming good gives one reason to pursue or maintain P, when P is the kind of thing that can be pursued

39  I take this to be the point of Julien A. Deonna and Fabrice Teroni, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2012), 33–8. 40  For discussions of the relevant experience of P and being disposed to act to bring about or preserve P, see Stampe, ‘The Authority of Desire’.

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52  Love Divine or maintained. No matter how the details are parsed, valuing P will often incline one to act in ways that are relevant to P’s realization or preservation. Moreover, it is reasonable to think that valuing something predisposes one to experience a range of emotions related to that which is valued. Bennett Helm’s recent work on emotions helps us see why this is the case. With what is perhaps the majority opinion of those who write about emotion, Helm agrees that emotions have what he labels both a target and a formal object. The former refers to that at which the emotion is directed and the latter to the kind of evaluation of the target that is unique to the emotion type under con­sid­er­ation. Accordingly, Helm writes, ‘when I am afraid of the dog, the dog is the target, and the formal object is, roughly, dangerousness [which leads to or is an essential feature of the emotion of fear]; by contrast, when I am angry at you, you are the target, and the formal object is, roughly, offensiveness, for my anger evaluates you as offensive.’41 In addition to these two widely affirmed components of emotions, Helm asserts that emotions also have a focus, ‘the background object having import to the subject, whose relation to the target makes intelligible the evaluation implicit in the emotion’. Helm explains with the following example: ‘what makes intelligible my evaluation of you as offensive is that you have just interrupted my talk, which is something that has import to me; thus, my talk is the focus of my anger.’42 Similarly, it could be said that I evaluate the dog as dangerous because my physical well-being is something that is important to me, something to which a large snarling dog poses a threat. Hence, on this scenario, my physical well-being is the focus of my emotion of fear. Helm claims that the idea of an emotion’s focus ‘makes intelligible the rational interconnectedness among emotions’. The reason for this is that what one cares about, what one has as a focus, creates a structure that gives rise to various evaluations which determine a spectrum of emotion types. Because I care about my talk going well, for example, other things being equal, there would be something rationally odd about my getting angry at you for interrupting my talk without my also feeling pleased if my talk goes well, fearful or worried if I suspect it might not, etc. That is (other things being equal), I can be accused of a kind of inconsistency for being afraid because I suspect it might go badly but subsequently being

41  Bennett W. Helm, ‘Love, Identification, and the Emotions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 46, no. 1 (2009): 43. 42  Helm, ‘Love, Identification, and the Emotions’, 43.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  53 pleased when it does go badly or even subsequently failing to be relieved when things turnout all right. In this way, these emotions are rationally interconnected [. . .].43

The thought is that an emotional focus acts as a kind of backdrop by which targets of emotions are given corresponding and interlocking evaluations which factor into certain emotion types. What kind of mental states can act as emotional foci? Plausibly, that which you value (in the present sense of the term) is sufficient, or often so.44 Because, for example, you represent your physical well-being as good, or at least not being mangled by a dog as good, you evaluate the large unfenced dog as dangerous. Or because you value that which you are trying to communicate, you evaluate as offensive the person that interrupts you mid-sentence. The more deeply integrated into one’s life the relevant form of valuing, the more that valuing is likely to play the role of determining the focus of various emotions, not to mention the depth of the emotions undergone. When an instance of valuing fills the role of an emotional focus, moreover, that instance of valuing may also be said to render certain ranges of emotions rationally connected in the manner proposed by Helm. Thus, valuing something can give rise to the nature and depth of emotions as well as interconnections among them. On a final note, it is worth mentioning that emotions regularly give rise to desires and provide reasons for action.45 Most are naturally predisposed to embrace happiness, for instance, and the emotion of happiness generates ­reason and desire, even if not an overriding reason or desire, to perform those actions that will lead to happiness and avoid those that threaten it. Or, for another example, my fear that my toddler will fall down the steps in my house will lead me to put up a protective gate and warn him about playing near steps. Once again, we see that valuing is interwoven with action. In this case, valuing is connected to emotions, which fosters desires and reasons to do ­certain things.

43  Helm, ‘Love, Identification, and the Emotions’, 43. 44  It is not clear to me that Helm would agree that valuing in-and-of itself can act as an emotion’s focus. Instead, Helm appears to think that one must be committed, in some way, to that which is represented as good. However, it may well be that Helm would agree that ways of valuing that are deeply ingrained within a person’s outlook are sufficient to act as an emotion’s focus. See ‘Love, Identification, and the Emotions’, 42–4. 45 Helpful here is Bennett Helm’s ‘Emotions and Motivation: Reconsidering Neo-Jamesian Accounts’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 303–24.

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54  Love Divine We see, then, that valuing something provides a foundation for a variety of intertwined actions and affections. Hence, characterizing love in terms of valuing the beloved and certain states related to her, as I shall subsequently do, should not lead us to view love so characterized as disconnected from action and emotion, but as intimately related to them. Return, now, to Velleman’s idea that the one who loves perceives a human’s dignity. One who perceives in this way represents the person as dignified. But such a representation is compatible with not appreciating that which is perceived to be dignified. On the contrary, it is quite easy to envision scenarios where the response to the perception of dignity is met with fear, jealously, or even hatred. So, to respond in appreciation to the perception of dignity, as Velleman believes is so important, one must in some way welcome or affirm that dignity. In what follows, I shall submit that to love someone is to value that person in certain ways and that this constitutes a form of appreciation. In particular, I shall propose that to love someone is to respond to the perception of that person’s intrinsic worth (dignity, when a human) by valuing her existence and flourishing, and by valuing union with her. This form of valuing is assumed to be intrinsic, whereby one values P for P’s own sake, rather than merely extrinsic or instrumental. Furthermore, the three ways of perceiving goodness within valuing differ from the initial perception of intrinsic value (or dignity) in that the latter, unlike the former trio, is a kind of perception of an object rather than of a state of affairs.46 Viewed as a whole, therefore, one appreciates someone in love by responding to the perception of (concrete) intrinsic value/goodness (dignity in the case of a human) by (intrinsically) valuing her existence, flourishing, and union with her (which are ways of ­representing states of affairs). We now examine these modes of valuing.

III.b  Valuing the Beloved’s Existence and Flourishing To respond in love to perceived dignity is to affirm that dignity. It is to say from deep within oneself ‘yes’ to the fact that the dignified person is, that he exists in all his wonderfulness. The one who loves, that is, values the existence of some dignified person. 46  On the distinction between desiring states of affairs and desiring objects, see Paul Thagard, ‘Desires Are Not Propositional Attitudes’, Dialogue 45, no. 1 (2006): 151–6. While I do not agree with Thagard’s rejection of desiring as concerning states of affairs, I assume that the distinction he discusses applies to perceptions of goodness. In particular, perceiving someone’s dignity concerns the perception of an object, whereas the trio of valuing concerns perceptual experience of various states of affairs.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  55 Initially, it may be thought strange to conceive of valuing someone’s ­existence as a significant part of love. A putative objector might claim that the beloved’s existence is but a precondition for love; valuing this existence is not enclosed within love. In response, we can repeat the point that it is plausible to think of valuing, as with desiring, as that which concerns the obtaining (or not) of certain states of affairs. If something like this analysis of valuing is right, then it is not prohibitively strange to think that the one who loves values the loved one’s existence. To do so is simply to value that the person is, to be glad that the state of affairs of that person being obtains. Presupposed by the idea that love is partially comprised by the valuing of someone’s existence is the thought that we can distinguish between three kinds of valuing of goodness. These are (i) the valuing of someone’s intrinsic goodness, (ii) valuing goodness for someone, and (iii) what we might refer to as valuing goodness with someone. The first of these concerns the intrinsic value of someone and perceiving the obtaining of that value as a good thing. The second refers to valuing that which constitutes the individual’s flourishing or well-being, and the last of these refers to the affirmation of the goodness of being in a certain kind of relationship with the person in question. According to the value account, all three forms of valuing are essential to love, but the present claim is that valuing someone’s existence, as captured in the aforementioned (i), is a feature of love that is distinct from the other two kinds of valuing. In the typical case, valuing someone’s good entails valuing her existence, since it is good for her to exist (slow and painful deaths might be an exception that proves the rule). But what is important for understanding the value account is that the one who loves does not value someone’s existence principally because it is good for the one loved. No, the lover values the beloved’s existence because the lover perceives the beloved’s intrinsic value and affirms the goodness of the obtaining of that value. If the lover were to face a horrible scenario where it is better for the beloved to cease to exist, then the lover might unhappily admit that it is best all things considered for that to be the case.47 But, if the value account is true, there would remain an independent valuing of the beloved’s existence, even if this form of valuing is overridden by other concerns.

47  There is a puzzle here. Perhaps it is incoherent to want S to cease to exist for S’s good since giving S some good presupposes S’s existence. I make no judgement on this issue.

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56  Love Divine I think we can see valuing the loved one’s existence at work with a father’s love of his children. Certainly, the loving father values his children’s flourishing as well as his relationship with them, but I submit that, alongside these forms of valuing, he is just thrilled that such valuable creatures exist. There are instances when he is gripped with love when his mind has not yet wandered to think about his relationship to his children (goodness with) or how much he values their good (goodness for). Rather, he is struck, overwhelmed perhaps, by how amazing his children are, and his response to this glimpse of their value/dignity is to affirm it. It might be said that the father desires relational union with his children and is willing to fight tooth and nail for their flourishing mainly because of his perception of the dignity that he is so glad exists. A number of philosophers have discerned that love includes something like valuing the beloved’s existence. Neera Badhwar locates the affirmation of the existence of the beloved’s value in what she terms ‘the look of love’ that is found in great works of art. In her view, ‘From Michaelangelo’s Madonna con Bambino to Jamini Roy’s Mother and Child, from Lucien Levy-Dhurmer’s Salome to Picasso’s and Chagall’s The Lovers and many of the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho, we see the same look of love on the faces of the lovers.’48 Badhwar claims that the ‘look is a perceptive look, a look that seems to really see the loved object, not a falsifying look of projection and fantasy, or a selfcentred look of appropriation. And in seeing the loved object as it is, the look of love seems to affirm the object’s value in its own right.’49 Based upon such considerations, Badhwar concludes that love is a kind of pleasurable af­fi rm­ ation of ‘the existence and well-being of the loved individual’.50 Similarity, José Ortega y Gasset says that love is an ongoing ‘affirmation of its object’, whereby love recognizes and insists ‘at each moment’ that the beloved is ‘worthy of existence’. This analysis of love, Ortega submits, allows for a natural analysis of hatred: ‘To hate someone is to feel irritated by his mere existence. The only thing that would bring satisfaction would be his total disappearance.’51 The influential philosopher Harry Frankfurt provides a final example. In a book treatment on love, Frankfurt draws a distinction between loving something and caring about something. Whereas with caring about something we may regard it as having importance to us only as a means to some additional thing, when we love something ‘we go further’. In love we ‘care about it not as merely a means, but as an end’. Indeed, ‘It is in the nature of loving that we

48  Badhwar, ‘Love’, 42. 49  Badhwar, ‘Love’, 43. 50  Badhwar, ‘Love’, 44. 51  José Ortega y Gasset, On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957), 17.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  57 consider its objects to be valuable in themselves and to be important to us for their own sakes.’ This reality drives Frankfurt to submit that ‘Love is, most centrally, a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it.’52 Some of us, then, find something very much like the valuing of the beloved’s existence to be a significant feature of love. More widely held to be a significant feature of love, however, is the desire for the beloved’s good. In fact, it is difficult to find a Christian account of love that does not see desiring and/or willing the beloved’s good as essential to love. I assume that this consensus is as it should be, only I recast benevolence in terms of valuing the beloved’s good. In addition, and in keeping with the previous discussion about the connection between valuing something and being predisposed to act to bring about that thing, I assume that one values someone’s good, in the sense relevant for the value account of love, only if one is prone to act to bring about that good, provided that such circumstances emerge and, minimally, when all other things are equal. There remains the difficult task of specifying exactly what the good of the beloved is that should be valued by the one who loves. To list a few prominent options, does this good have to do with actualizing the beloved’s capacities, or with fulfilling certain kinds of desires, or with the acquisition of intense pleasures, or some combination thereof, or with something else entirely? Here I will not decide upon this issue, except to say that I assume that there is some objective standard of goodness that informs what is good for an individual, and that union with God is in some significant sense the summum bonum for every human being (perhaps every being simpliciter). Beyond that, I leave it to the reader to conceive of what is good for an individual in a manner that she or he sees fit, and, if need be, to modify the value account I propose to cor­res­pond to that conception. In this chapter and others I will alternate between ‘good’, ‘flourishing’, ‘well-being’ and like terms to refer to the same principle (i.e. what is good for someone or something) without requiring too much repetition. I also will frequently use the term ‘benevolence’ as shorthand for valuing the beloved’s good.

III.c  Valuing Union I turn, finally, to valuing union. What is the relevant form of union at issue? A fairly common way of making sense of love’s union is in terms of a kind of 52  Frankfurt’s emphasis, The Reasons of Love (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 42.

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58  Love Divine friendship where there is mutual affection and concern for one another as well as a sharing of purposes. Something like this notion appears to animate philosophers who speak of love’s union as that which essentially involves the formation of a kind of ‘we’,53 a ‘federation’ of selves,54 a ‘joint pool’ of interests and well-being,55 or a ‘ “fusion” of two souls’.56 A similar intuition can be detected in theologians such as Karl Barth who claims that love ‘is concerned with a seeking and creation of fellowship for its own sake’.57 My own way of spelling out love’s union grows out of this sense that those who love want to form and nurture friendships (broadly construed) with the persons they love. Yet, given the ostensible legitimacy of at least a certain kind of self-love (e.g. ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, Mark 12:31), it is important to explicate the valuing of union in a manner that can be intelligibly self-directed (though, admittedly, we do not normally speak in terms of valuing union with oneself). Moreover, the way in which the valuing of union is exposited should explain why the various attitudes and actions that are affiliated with union/friendship— e.g. mutual affection, reciprocal concern, and a sharing of purposes—belong to this one form of valuing. Merely listing and grouping together various ­features that we find in love relationships hardly seems sufficient. In this subsection I unpack an account of valuing union that meets these conditions. I label my account of valuing union ‘UT’, short for ‘the union thesis’. Here is the account in schematic form. UT. X values union with Y only if X values (i) mentally attending to  Y, (ii) intimately knowing Y, and (iii) Y’s loving X.

Notice that the three conditions within UT are stated as only necessary conditions, not necessary conditions that are also jointly sufficient. Nevertheless, (i)–(iii) are understood to be central to valuing union. Note, additionally, that UT concerns union with a person or personal being—call it ‘personal union’—but, plausibly, there is also a sense in which one can value union with that which is not personal (e.g. a painting or a beautiful landscape). In Chapter 3, 53  See, e.g., Robert Nozick, ‘Love’s Bond’, in The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 72; Neil Delaney, ‘Romantic Love and Loving Commitment: Articulating a Modern Ideal’, American Philosophical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (1996): 346. 54  Marilyn Friedman, ‘Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 22, no. 1 (1998): 165. 55  Nozick, ‘Love’s Bond’. 56  Robert Solomon, About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 24. 57 Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, 276.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  59 I describe an important sense in which God values union with that which is sub-personal, and I suspect that much of what is said there can be predicated aptly to human love of the sub-personal as well, although I will not explore the issue. Finally, I assume that the person who displays the manner of valuing referred to within UT’s (i)–(iii) does so to such a strength that, at least ceteris paribus and as the relevant circumstance emerge, he desires (in the action-based sense) those states of affairs relevant to the instantiation of (i)–(iii). Often, a removed and inactive form of valuing the content of (i)–(iii) is not sufficient to count as love’s valuing of union. With these three provisos out of the way, we now examine UT. Behind the first condition of UT, (i), rests the idea that there is something special about mentally attending to a person as a person. To get a better grasp of the phenomenon, it will help to turn to Eleonore Stump’s recent work on personal presence—which, incidentally, she uses to make sense of the concept of love’s union. There are two components of personal presence that are particularly important for our purposes, second-person experience and shared attention. Stump understands second-person experience as ‘a matter of one person’s attending to another person and being aware of him as a person when that other person is conscious and functioning, however minimally, as a person’.58 The form of attention presupposed here is ‘direct and immediate’ in the sense that it is not essentially dependent upon the intermediate agency of an additional person besides the one attending and the one being attended to.59 To this we might add that the kind of attention valued within (i) is not, ceteris paribus, mediated by any device that occludes one’s ability to encounter the fine-grained features of the other and his activities—his communications, expressions, and the like. Accordingly, standard eyeglasses would not be an obstacle to the realization of (i), but email or Skype often would be, in part. That said, the realization of (i) comes in degrees, as can the strength of the manner of valuing (so too with (ii) and (iii)). And given that the realization of (i) can come in degrees, as can the depth of second-person experience, perhaps it best not to insist that the instantiation of second-person experience absolutely requires the absence of mediating agents, as Stump seems to. Better, instead, to maintain that unmediated attention to another’s personal functions is the ideal for second-person experience, but that mediated access to these functions may in principle still count as genuine second-person ex­peri­ ences, even if suboptimal. In any case, second-person experience constitutes a

58 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 112.

59 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 75–6; cf. 536, n. 8.

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60  Love Divine kind of presence that is markedly more significant than, say, mere physical presence. For it is possible for another to be in a room with me, and thus physically close, while nevertheless remaining outside the purview of my awareness (perhaps he is hiding). On the other hand, I can attend to someone, in the manner described by Stump, in a life-changing way over the phone. Presupposed by the notion of second-person experience is the idea that there is a unique way in which persons function as persons. The assumption is innocent enough, but there remains the question as to what it amounts. Generally and incompletely, it can be said that persons are the kind of entities that have a rich set of capacities to think, feel, care, plan, and act. Persons can also present themselves to the world and impress themselves upon it through the intentional and unintentional revelation of mental states and through the plans they enact. Persons also come with peculiarities, what we sometimes refer to as personalities, that structure the ways in which individuals’ capacities tend to be exercised. I submit that part of what is at issue within (i) is attending to the ways in which persons via their personalities impress themselves onto the world and present themselves to it. The second feature of personal presence is shared attention. Very roughly, Stump believes that shared attention is exhibited when two or more in­di­vid­ uals have second-person awareness of each other and they are simultaneously aware of their mutual awareness. When Paula and Jerome are experiencing shared attention, ‘the object of awareness for Paula is simultaneously Jerome and their mutual awareness—Jerome’s awareness of her awareness of his awareness and so on—and the object of awareness for Jerome is sim­ul­tan­eous­ly Paula and their mutual awareness’.60 When romantic lovers gaze at each other or when two friends are deep in conversation, they often exhibit shared attention. Presumably, Stump’s motivation for including shared attention within love’s union is the idea that any relationship that is completely devoid of it (carried out, for example, entirely by email) would fall significantly short of the ideal. There would remain a lack of connection and a desire unfulfilled—a desire, we might say, based upon the valuing of shared attention. Stump’s account of personal presence is compelling. It does, however, require modification if it is going to make room for self-love.61 This is because second-person experience, according to Stump, is ‘a matter of one person’s attending to another person’,62 and one can rarely, if ever, have (non-equivocal) 60 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 116. 61 See my ‘Loving Yourself as Your Neighbor: A Critique and Some Friendly Suggestions for Eleonore Stump’s Neo-Thomistic Account of Love’, Sophia 57, no. 1 (2018): 1–17. 62  My emphasis, Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 112.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  61 shared attention with oneself. Thus, if Stump’s account of personal presence is taken on board without alteration, it looks as if one will need to say that self-love is impossible, or else that valuing union is not necessary for love. Both options are to be avoided. Fortunately, only a bit of refinement of Stump’s account of personal presence is required for the use of UT’s (i). What is pivotal for UT’s (i) is not Stump’s second-person experience and shared attention per se but the notion that one can engage in direct mental attention to persons when they are functioning in characteristically conscious and personal ways. Understood in this more minimalistic manner, UT can account for shared attention and second-person experience in the love of the other, without precluding self-love. When the object of affection is another person, the form of attention referred to within (i) will include attending to the other as other, which can be said to entail valuing second-person experience of that person. Moreover, UT’s (i), in conjunction with (iii)—i.e. the clause that specifies that X values Y’s loving X—naturally leads one to value shared attention. This is because (iii), in other-directed instances of love, entails, given the value account of love, valuing the other’s mentally attending to oneself, when oneself is functioning in characteristically personal ways— i.e. X values Y’s attention. But if one responds to another’s dignity by both (intrinsically) valuing mentally attending to that person and having that person mentally attend to oneself, then (leaving aside quite bizarre circumstances where one values mutual attention but never simultaneous mutual attention) one will naturally value shared attention with the other person that is loved. Yet, as mentioned, the kind of mental attention referred to in (i) does not require two or more individuals. One can certainly attend to oneself as a person when one is functioning in the relevant personal ways. This is most clearly seen in the case of introspection, where one attends to the functions of one’s own personhood. To anticipate the discussion of UT’s (ii), moreover, there is also a sense in which introspective knowledge can be described as intimate and direct, since it may be the only way of gaining a type of knowledge that is closed off from all but one person.63 Hence, it seems that, appropriately refined, Stump’s conception of personal presence can be used to fulfil UT’s (i) when X and Y are understood to be either numerically distinct or identical. However, love’s union must go further than merely attending to the beloved. As we are reminded by St Thomas Aquinas, the one who loves ‘is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to the beloved, so as to penetrate 63  See, for example, Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, 6–15, 17–20.

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62  Love Divine into his very soul’.64 Said differently, those who love each other want to know one another, deeply. They want to know each other’s preferences, values, motivations, emotions, and so on, and they want to know how these attitudes hang together within the soul of the one loved. In the love of another, the lover tries to enter or understand the perspective of the one loved. In self-love, one values a deep understanding of oneself. UT’s (ii)—i.e. X values knowing Y intimately—is to be understood along such lines. Both (i) and (ii) require qualification. Regarding (ii), there are certain parameters on what knowledge should be valued and sought within human relationships, quite apart from limitations of resources. A daughter that has a healthy and intimate relationship with her father, for example, does not and should not want to know about all the intimate details of her father’s relationship with her mother. Similarly with (i), there are certain kinds of mental attention that are only appropriate within the context of certain kinds of relationships. Once again Stump proves helpful. As an advocate of the idea that love includes a type of unitive desire, she maintains that particular kinds of ­person-to-person relations determine the way in which love’s desire for union should be expressed. These relations, which Stump calls ‘offices of love’, shape ‘the sort of sharing and closeness suitable in that relationship’ and thereby govern ‘the kind of union appropriate to desire in love’.65 For example, the same person can be related to a spouse, a child, and a friend (to name but a few such relations), and each of these persons fills a particular office for the lover that in turn delimits the kind of union appropriate. Because a young girl fills the office of daughter to her father, he can discipline her, hold her, and largely dictate her schedule. It would be inappropriate, however, for this father to try to engage in similar activities with a largely unknown neighbour’s daughter. Because it is difficult to delineate the precise nature of the offices of love, Stump prefers to ‘rely on our intuitive understanding of the nature of particular relationships’ rather than attempt a neat characterization of these offices.66 Even left without an exact description, however, the concept of the offices of love helps ward off objections to UT that spring from the idea that it is not always appropriate for X to value every kind of mental attention and intimate knowledge of Y.  The appropriate expressions of both (i) and (ii) 64 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia–IIae, 28.3, in New Advent, online edn, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Copyright 2017 by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2028.htm. 65 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 97–8. For a similar analysis of the ways in which individuals should love, see Pruss, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics, 35–46. 66 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 97.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  63 cor­res­pond to specific offices, which determine how mental attention and in­tim­ate knowledge within love should be valued.67 The final component of UT is (iii), X values Y’s loving of X. When X and Y are distinct persons, X values the reciprocation of the love she has for Y. This, I take it, resonates with our experience. When X and Y are identical, clause (iii) implies that X values love of herself. So understood, in self-love (iii) can be seen to be constituted by a certain way of ‘standing behind’ one’s love of oneself instead of dismissing self-concern as unworthy of acknowledgement as the human doormat is prone to do. Thus, UT’s (iii) has a place in both selflove as well as in other-love. UT is a fairly cognitive account of love’s union in the sense that the one who loves wants to know the beloved and mentally attend to her. This might appear odd given my stated objective of proposing an account of union that harmonizes with our common intuitions about friendship, intuitions which incline us to think that mutual affection and shared endeavours belong within manifestations of love’s union. With only a bit of reflection, however, we realize that UT, couched within the larger value account, engenders these prized features of friendship. Start with shared endeavours. Suppose that I respond to your dignity by valuing attending to you and knowing you intimately, as conditioned by the office of love of friendship. Given this, I characteristically will want to know what you care about and, as appropriate, share attention with you as you engage in that which you care about. As our concerns overlap, this will provide each of us with reason to decide to engage together in those activities we mutually enjoy—discussing films, drinking scotch, and forming reading groups. I trust that it takes little imagination to see how examples such as these can be multiplied, and how knowledge of mutual interests can lead two persons to move from one kind of office of love (say, friends) to another (say, married). Now consider shared affection. Recall the point made earlier in discussion with Helm that what an individual values often acts as an emotion’s focus, which in turn creates an interlocking pattern of emotions. If this is right, then two persons who love each other as dictated by the value account will each possess a love that creates a structure in which the existence, flourishing, and union of the two generates various kinds of affection. Consider some achievement of yours as the target of my joy. I evaluate your achievement as worthwhile (the formal object), it can be said, because your flourishing is the focus 67 In my view, the offices of love also shape how valuing the beloved’s flourishing should be ­governed. But we shall leave that issue aside.

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64  Love Divine of the evaluation, your flourishing is something that I value—hence my joy. Conversely, if you needlessly suffer, my valuing of your flourishing may act as a focus of my emotion of compassion. Or suppose you say to me, ‘I think you are wonderful.’ If I love you, I might respond to this kind statement (the ­target) with happiness since I value union with you and being loved by you (the focus)—see, in particular, UT’s (iii). Once again, I trust that examples such as these are fairly easy to duplicate. If the foregoing is correct, then UT, and the value account more generally, will engender both shared endeavours and mutual affection. These are the regular products of two or more people who love one another.

III.d  Concluding Thoughts This, then, is the proposed value account of human love which will act as a model of divine love: for a human to love someone is to perceive that individual’s intrinsic worth (specifically dignity) and to respond to that individual by valuing her existence, her flourishing, and union with her as presented within UT. On this account, love can be described as a passion, not in the sense of an emotional disturbance, but in the sense that it is something that is not under one’s immediate control and thus something that a person is subject to. At the same time, to perceive and value another’s dignity in the described ways often requires careful attentiveness, and thus a great deal of activity and habituation on the part of the human who wants to become a person with a loving character. To count as genuine love rather than a passing fancy, furthermore, perhaps the described perception and forms of valuing need to be deeply rooted in the human soul akin to something like a moral virtue. But since our ultimate concern is with building a model that is suitable for applying to God, who does not suffer from whims or shifts of character, we need not discuss the details of that at present. For our purposes, what is important is the basic value account that has been offered, as a proposed model of divine love.

IV.  Evaluation of the Value Account IV.a  Independent Plausibility Previously I stated that a model of divine love must be independently plaus­ible and should explain a bevy of biblical data. It was said that a model of divine

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  65 love can be deemed independently plausible if it meets two conditions: it ­possesses certain theoretical virtues such as simplicity and internal coherence, and it corresponds to our deepest intuitions and ideals about love, spe­cif­ic­al­ly a kind of love that humans might embody. I largely leave it to the reader to assess these matters, but a brief word about each condition might help the reader form a positive evaluation. I begin with the theoretical virtues. So far as I can see, the value account is internally coherent, and at various points I have attempted to show how this is the case. The value account is also remarkably simple—or, more modestly, reasonably simple given the complexity of the subject matter. The conception of love specified by the value account requires only two distinct but similar forms of perception (i.e. perceiving dignity and valuing certain states of affairs), and certain members of the trio of valuing often entail one another. This second claim is most easily seen in the case of God’s love of a human person.68 If God values a human’s highest good, then (plausibly, given omniscience) God also values union with that human, since the highest good of all humans is union with God (or, if you like, a union with God that God values). Conversely, if God values union with a human, God (given omniscience) also values that human’s highest good, since, again, the highest good of all humans is union with God. Moreover, it is plausible that God cannot value someone’s highest good and union with her unless God also values her existence. Thus, the trio of valuing forms a tightly integrated, appreciative response to the intrinsic value of the one loved. It might be thought that the fact that certain members of the trio entail one another in the noted ways means that the value account is too complex. Would not it be simpler to pick only one form of valuing—say, benevolence— that entails the others? It would be, but, as I show elsewhere, the three forms of valuing do not always entail one another.69 Besides, it is reasonable to assume that each of love’s forms of valuing constitutes an important response to the worth of the beloved, and are not always adequately explained, even when entailed, by another form of valuing. For example, even though God’s valuing union with a human is entailed by His benevolence for her, plausibly God values this union for its own sake, not merely because it stands in relation to the fulfilling of the human’s good. If this is correct, then perhaps it may be 68  I borrow this reasoning from Eleonore Stump, only Stump speaks in terms of desires, not forms of valuing, and she does not including valuing/desiring the beloved’s existence within love. Unlike me, however, Stump also insightfully describes ways in which the constituents of love are integrated within human love. See her Wandering in Darkness, 91, 101. 69  See my ‘Benevolent Billy’.

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66  Love Divine said that the value account presents us with a model of love that is appropriately simple, not overly simple. What about the idea that the value account corresponds to our intuitions about human love? Opinions are bound to divide. Nevertheless, I submit that the value account provides one plausible way of making sense of the Christian tradition that love contains benevolence plus some kind of desire for union. Furthermore, the defender of the value account can agree with Velleman’s insight that love of the human is a kind of response to a person’s dignity that includes, yet also surpasses, mere respect. The individual who responds to dignity by (intrinsically) valuing the existence of that dignified person will do what she can not to disrespect that value. At the same time, the one who ­values the good of and union with the beloved will be discontent merely not disrespecting the beloved; instead she will be ‘open to caring about him in all sorts of ways’, as Velleman rightly claims.70 But, unlike that which is found with Velleman, the value account explains why the one who loves might respond to the beloved in ways that can be described as open and emotionally vulnerable (as Velleman affirms as essential to love). The lover will be open because he values the beloved in various ways and wants to be loved by her. If we help ourselves to Helm’s theory of emotions, furthermore, it can be said that the lover’s threefold manner of valuing the beloved engenders various emotional foci which lays the soil for rationally interconnected patterns of emotions. Hence it looks as if the value account constitutes one considerably reasonable way of synthesizing and building upon Velleman’s insights as well as the noted tradition of love. Be that as it may, someone might worry that the value account does not do justice to the ways in which humans are permitted to love some more than others. For if love includes a response to the value of the beloved—dignity in the case of the beloved human—then it seems that it would follow that each human should equally love every other human with which she is acquainted, since every human enjoys equal dignity (or so I assume). But, certainly, it is permissible, if not obligatory, for a parent to love his children more than other children, for one to love her best friend more than she does some stranger, and so on. If the value account implies otherwise, someone might submit, so much the worse for that account of love. An expansion of Stump’s offices of love may be used to mitigate such a concern. While Stump utilizes these offices principally to inform how one should seek union with another, these offices can be employed just as well to explain 70  Velleman, ‘Beyond Price’, 201.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  67 how the other features of the value account should function. Because Theodore occupies the office child of in relation to Amber, Amber has normative reason not only to value and seek a certain kind of union with Theodore, she also has special normative reason to attend to Theodore’s dignity, and to value his existence and flourishing in privileging ways that would be absent if Theodore did not fill this office or one comparable thereto. So, while all humans have dignity and thereby should be loved to some degree by all who are sufficiently acquainted with them, some should be loved more than others on account of the offices of love in which they fill.71 Hence, if we are willing to make use of the rather sensible notion that there exist something like offices of love, the apparent fact that humans are justified in loving unequally should not undermine our confidence in the value account.

IV.b  The Christian Quintuplet Even if the value account receives exemplary marks when measured by the standards of ‘independent plausibility’, it will flounder if it cannot explain ­biblical data, in particular the Christian Quintuplet. Since we have already discussed how the value account applies to a human’s love of the other and the self, I need only comment on the human’s love of God, intra-trinitarian love, and God’s love of the human. We begin with a human’s love of God. Thus far I have suggested that love responds to dignity, but, certainly, the intrinsic value enjoyed by God far ­surpasses the dignity had by humans. Nonetheless, whatever label we want to give to God’s maximal worth (perhaps ‘supra-dignity’), human love of God can be seen as an appreciative response to that worth which is, no doubt, only partially perceived. So understood, the value account implies a close connection between the human’s love and worship of God. The value account sidesteps an often raised worry about God-directed benevolence. The worry is that the human cannot intelligibly will or desire God’s good since God necessarily does not lack any good that might enhance the divine life.72 Behind the worry rests the idea that one can only desire or

71  Alexander Pruss makes a case for a similar conclusion in One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics, 35–46. 72  See the following for discussions of this concern: Badhwar, ‘Love’, 46–7; Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in St. Augustine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 32–6; Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 319–21; and Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 100–1.

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68  Love Divine will something that one wants to bring about or preserve, or else that which only contingently obtains.73 On the value account, no such problem emerges. The human can value the perfect divine life for God (e.g. value God’s enjoyment of a perfect life of intra-trinitarian love as referred to by Christ in John 17, or value, for God’s sake, the goodness of being God), and valuing this life does not imply that it is contingent or that the human has control over it. All that is required, given the value account, is that the human (partially) ex­peri­ences or perceives the obtaining of God’s perfect life as a good thing, as something that should be the case. Acting to secure a loved one’s good is not absolutely necessary on the value account, as previously indicated. Apart from that analysis of valuing God’s good, one is free to agree with the essence of Stump’s treatment of God-directed benevolence. Following Aquinas, Stump explains that one can desire what is good for God by desiring what God desires within creation, presumably for God’s sake. In so doing, one ‘desires the good that God desires to have; to that extent, she also desires good for God.’74 Building upon this, one may opt for an ‘internalist account’ of God’s good as connected to creation, whereby the good and bad events that happen in creation genuinely affect the status of God’s good/happiness (see Chapter 4); or one may opt for an ‘externalist account’ of this kind according to which the promotion (or lack thereof) of God’s good in relation to creation entails no intrinsic change in God (analogous to the way in which honouring the dead arguably is good for them even when we suppose that they are not intrinsically affected by this).75 Whether one prefers the internalist or externalist account, or some combination thereof, the basic idea that Stump is driving at can be modified, just slightly, to the contours of the value account. When this is done, the idea would be that the human can value God’s good by valuing, and when appropriate seeking, God’s purposes within creation for God’s sake. The human would obtain access to these divine purposes primarily from special revelation, although other modes of discernment are perhaps available as well. On the value account, a human loves God only if she values union with God, where the mode of valuing is understood in terms of UT. That is to say, some human values union with God only if she values mentally attending to

73  This analysis of desire traces back at least as far as Plato, ‘he who desires something is lacking in that thing’: The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 4th edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 532. 74 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 100–1. 75  On an externalist account of an individual’s good/happiness, see Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1.1.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  69 God and knowing God intimately, and she values God’s love of her. In Chapter 7, much more will be said about a significant way in which union between God and a human can obtain along the lines of UT. Nonetheless, a few elucidating comments on how this union can take place might prove helpful in the interim. It is fairly clear how a human can value God’s love of her: she experientially perceives the state of affairs of being loved by God as a good thing. It is also fairly clear how the human can value knowing God intimately (i.e. value knowing God’s perspective, values, goals, etc.). The character and ways of God can be partially known and valued through revelation, tradition, reason, and experience, and many look forward to the day when they will know God more fully (cf. 1 Cor. 13:12). However, it is not immediately obvious how the human can mentally attend to God, where this is done only if the human has second-person experiences of God (i.e. attends to God as a personal being as God functions in ways that we recognize as characteristically conscious and personal) and engages in shared attention with God (i.e. God and the human have second-person awareness of each other and they are simultaneously aware of their mutual awareness). As much as faithful humans might want to attend to God in this manner (cf. Ps. 17:15; Exod. 33:18–23; 1 Cor. 13:12; 2 Cor. 4:6; 1 Pet. 1:8–9; 1 John 3:2), God is too removed, too hidden, for such engagement—at least for most people most of the time. Nevertheless, the Christian tradition has resources for overcoming this ­distance, and it promises that one day this distance will be no more. There is, first, the tradition of the beatific vision, which is built upon the notion that human fulfilment is found in finally seeing God ‘face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12).76 The details of this vision no doubt remain largely unknown; still, it is not implausible to assume that this vision will contain moments of second-person experience and shared attention with God. The Old Testament prophets, after all, are described as conversing with God in a manner that entails shared attention and second-person experience, and yet the beatific vision must surpass that relational dynamic. For while Moses was only permitted to catch a glimpse of God’s back (Exod. 33:18–20), the glorified saints are promised a face-to-face encounter with the living God.77 Second, beholding the face of God takes on literal form in the Incarnation, where God takes on a human face (cf. 2 Cor. 4:6), and thereby enables (mere) humans to engage in second-person experience and shared attention with 76  See Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018). 77  Relevant here is Adam Green’s ‘Reading the Mind of God (without Hebrew Lessons): Alston, Shared Attention, and Mystical Experience’, Religious Studies 45, no. 4 (2009): 455–70.

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70  Love Divine God in Christ. Furthermore, whether viewed as part of the beatific vision or distinct,78 if Christ is forever present within Redeemed Creation (cf. Rev. 22:3–4), presumably humans will have all of eternity to be able to engage in second-person experience and shared attention with the incarnate God.79 So, it is plausible that union between God and humans will eventually obtain along the lines of UT. This fulfilment of union need not be exclusively an eschatological reality, however. Instead, this union can be partially and incompletely fulfilled in the here and now through a variety of means. To begin with, consider the notion that one might encounter God through Scripture. If one is willing to make use of something like Karl Barth’s account of the Word of God, then God as it were freely takes up the words of the Bible to disclose Himself in Christ through a personal encounter with those hearing or reading those words.80 ‘Experience of God’s Word’, writes Barth, ‘must at least be also experience of His presence, and because this presence does not rest on man’s act of recollection but on God’s making Himself present in the life of man, it is acknowledgement of His presence.’81 When something like Barth’s understanding of such an encounter with God is combined with the assumption that biblical narratives leave a partial record of God’s personal inner workings,82 it is not too difficult to discern how it can be said that humans have second-person experiences with God via Scripture, and perhaps even shared attention on occasion. As the human reads or hears Scripture, God may choose to appropriate the biblical words and communicate a message to the human in a fashion where the human is aware that she is being addressed by God. I suspect that if such encounters are to be found via Scripture they are exceedingly rare. All the same, I hesitate to close the door on the possibility of such biblically conditioned encounters with God.

78  For differences among theologians as to whether the beatific vision is Christocentric or a more abstract vision of the divine essence, see Boersma, Seeing God, 155–61, 415–16. 79  For an argument for the claim that the incarnate God will be personally present to the redeemed forever in Christ, see Edwin Chr. Van Driel, Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), especially 145–70. 80  Perhaps sense can be made of God taking up the written word to encounter someone directly via Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s work on double agency discourse as found in Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 81 Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed. and trans. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (London: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 206. 82 The following are relevant here: Adam Green and Keith  A.  Quan, ‘More than Inspired Propositions: Shared Attention and the Religious Text’, Faith and Philosophy 29, no. 4 (2012): 416–30; Michael C. Rea, ‘Narrative, Liturgy, and the Hiddenness of God’, in Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump, ed. Kevin Timpe (New York: Routledge, 2009), 76–96; and Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 21–2, 39–82, 177–226.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  71 Icons of Christ have also been held to mediate the divine presence, where one has the sense that one is looking at God and He is looking back.83 If such experiences are veridical, then shared attention between God and the human can obtain in the here and now, from which it follows that second-person experiences of God obtain as well. Finally, apart from that which happens via icon or Scripture, some report powerful religious experiences with God that unmistakably include shared attention. Works by Catherine of Siena and Julian of Norwich provide just two examples of individuals who take themselves to have had dialogical ex­peri­ences with God, which imply shared attention.84 I see no reason to doubt that such experiences could in principle happen (or did happen); I consequently do not doubt that a human can be united with God in the here and now as laid out in UT, awaiting its consummation in the age to come. Turn, next, to another relationship within the Christian Quintuplet, intratrinitarian love. In intra-trinitarian love, the divine persons can perceive each other’s magnificent worth and value the existing and flourishing of one another as well as union with each other. It is not unreasonable to maintain that part of what makes God’s intra-trinitarian life truly blessed is the valuing of each other in this way by the divine persons, including the reception of joyous emotions which spring from the foci affiliated with valuing one another. That said, philosophers and theologians will surely disagree about how to make sense of divine emotions or whether is it wise to attribute emotions to God at all. This is an issue that will be taken up in Chapter 4. Regarding God’s love of humans, the defender of the value account can say that God sees the dignity of His image-bearers and responds by valuing their existence and flourishing alongside union with them. Initially, there seems to  be nothing objectionable about this way of understanding God’s love.85 83  Although the point is not put as sharply one might hope, see the following claims that run along such lines: John Baggley, Doors of Perception: Icons and Their Spiritual Significance (London: Mowbray, 1987), 80–1; Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, trans. Fr. Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1972), 178–9; Gennadios Limouris, ‘The Microcosm and Macrocosm of the Icon’, in Icons: Windows on Eternity, ed. Gennadios Limouris (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), 107–8; John Panteleimon Manoussakis, ‘The Vision of the Invisible: A Brief Statement of the Phenomenology of Icons’, in Seeing the Invisible: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Aesthetics of the Christian Image, ed. Neda Cvijetic and Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic (Los Angeles, CA: Sebastian Press, 2016), 11–25. 84  See Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press, 1980); and Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (London: Penguin Books, 1998). 85  Mark C. Murphy argues that nothing, other than God, enjoys intrinsic value, since, as the theist sees things, everything derives its value from God (God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 75–83). This is not a point with which I wish to take issue (though I do not mean to grant the point either). What is important is that humans possess a high kind of value that is analogous to something like Kantian dignity. (I would argue,

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72  Love Divine Of  course, the God that creates everything and knows the end from the beginning does not respond to worth in the same manner that humans often do; God is never surprised or overwhelmed by human dignity, for example, as humans can be when they fall in love. Nevertheless, presumably there is some sense to be made of the idea that God responds to human worth. Even on a Thomistic schema where God knows the world only by knowing Himself, one perhaps can conceive of God responding with affirmation to the value of humans analogous to the way in which a human person can respond affirmatively to an idea that she holds before her mind. Hence, it does not seem to be problematic to speak of God’s love in terms of a kind of appreciative response. What about the idea that God responds to human dignity in particular, rather than some other kind of value? It will be recalled that a human enjoys dignity only if he possesses a high kind of value that makes him entirely ­irreplaceable—one cannot substitute the loss of this human with anything else, including another human, to replace that value. Why maintain that God views humans as possessing dignity? Given divine transcendence, our thinking about such matters must remain largely provisional. Still, the fact that God became a human and died for humans provides considerable evidence that God sees humans as dignified. It does not seem particularly rational, after all, to go to such great lengths to redeem humans if God could simply replace the value of each human with a simple act of will. But God is supremely rational and He did go to these ­tremendous lengths to save women and men. In my view, then, God’s costly measures to procure human salvation furnishes fairly strong support for the notion that God sees humans as dignified, or something very close. So, the defender of the value account of divine love postulates that God loves humans in a deep, dignity-affirming way. Notice, though, that couching God’s love in terms of a response to value can be seen to set certain limits, even if very high ones, on God’s love of humans. Assuming that God calibrates or in some way matches the strength of His love to the intrinsic value of that which is loved, God will love the human more than tadpoles, mountain ranges, or anything that has less value than the dignified human, but God will love the human much less than He loves Himself—given the obvious value disparity. It follows that the individual who construes the value account in  this way will not agree with Thomas  F.  Torrance’s claim that the cross

furthermore, that this dignity must be a kind of value that is had necessarily by the existing human. But that might prejudice us against the Nygrenist, as shall be discussed subsequently.) It is of little consequence if that value is had because of the relation in which the creature stands to God.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  73 demonstrates ‘that God loves us more than he loves himself ’.86 No, the cross reveals that God deems humans as worth dying for; it would be perverse, on the present value account, to suppose that God loves anything as much as or more than He who is the fount of all truth, beauty, and goodness. The fact that the value account has such natural resources for explaining God’s deep yet sens­ ible love of humanity only renders the value account all the more plausible. However, some theologians will judge the value account a nonstarter, a notion that fundamentally misconstrues the relationship between God’s love and human value. With Anders Nygren such theologians will claim that ‘God does not love that which is already in itself worthy of love, but on the contrary, that which in itself has no worth acquires worth just by becoming the object of God’s love.’87 The claim consists of two parts. First, it is not only that human actions cannot merit God’s love, but that God ‘does not look for anything in man’, including his inherent intrinsic worth, ‘that could be adduced as motivation for’ God’s love.88 This is not something that God could do, furthermore, because, on Nygren’s value-framework, humans have no value apart from the divine affection: ‘The man who is loved by God has no value in himself; what gives him value is precisely the fact that God loves him.’89 This brings us to the second part of Nygren’s claim, which is the thought that God’s love is what makes humans valuable, as God somehow bestows a kind of worth upon beloved humans. Nygren’s two-part claim seems to run contrary to the value account, since the latter account appears to rest on the sup­pos­ ition that human worth is not only intrinsic but inherent and antecedent to the divine affection. For reasons that I have spelt out in more detail elsewhere, I do not find compelling the Nygrenist understanding of the relationship between God’s love and creaturely value.90 For one thing, it threatens to make God’s love of 86  Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The Christ Who Loves Us’, in A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry, ed. Thomas F. Torrance, James B. Torrance, and David W. Torrance (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 14; cf. Thomas  F.  Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 244. 87  Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros: The Christian Idea of Love, trans. Philip S. Watson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 78. Against the widely held Nygrenist position on love and value, see Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 318–20; Gary D. Badcock, ‘The Concept of Love: Divine and Human’, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 30–46. 88  See, Nygren, Agape and Eros, 75. On the idea that divine love is not even motivated by inherent and intrinsic human worth, see, in particular, pp. 76–9. 89 Nygren, Agape and Eros, 78. 90  See Jordan Wessling, ‘A Dilemma for Wolterstorff ’s Theistic Grounding of Human Dignity and Rights’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76, no. 3 (2014): 277–95.

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74  Love Divine humans and other creatures unacceptability arbitrary. If it is true, as Nygren claims, that, because God’s love is not explained by antecedent worth, ‘there are no extrinsic grounds for it’, then God could have just as well withheld the love from humans that He currently directs towards them and laid it on lobsters instead.91 This would mean, given Nygrenist convictions, that lobsters would be granted the worth and rights that we currently recognize in humans (provided that rights are correlated with the worth that God might bestow). But that appears prohibitively odd. In such a counterfactual scenario, it would seem that killing a lobster would be equivalent to murder and killing a human would in no way constitute an intrinsic moral failing, since absent God’s love, humans are without worth. Apart from the worries about arbitrariness, it does not pay God any favours to suppose that God is in the business of creating and loving inherently value-less creatures to the point of becoming one of them, even dying for them. In my view, this does not make God look great, but irrational. These two problems are avoided, however, if we postulate the rather commonsensical and traditional view that God loves humans and other creatures precisely because they possess an inherent intrinsic worth that qualifies them for God’s love. Suppose, though, that one remains committed to Nygren’s value-framework. What is such a theologian to make of the value account? Perhaps she can understand the value account as that which concerns God’s worth-bestowing love. Accordingly, God does not perceive antecedently existing dignity; rather God decides to treat the human as dignified as a way of valuing her, and perhaps God somehow bestows a worth on the creature. Thus, on this second way of thinking about things, God is not (initially anyway) responding to value but granting it. I leave it to the Nygrenist to adjust the content of the following chapters in ways that are more in line with this second conception of divine love and creaturely value. I, by contrast, will proceed on the assumption that God responds to intrinsic inherent creaturely value with love. Based upon all of the foregoing, the value account appears to be not only independently plausible but compatible with the Christian Quintuplet. What is more, the value account of divine love readily makes sense of God-directed benevolence, the joy of intra-trinitarian love, and God’s strong yet measured love of humanity. I therefore suggest that the value account constitutes a model for divine love that merits serious consideration.

91 Nygren, Agape and Eros, 75.

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The Value Account of God ’ s Love  75

V. Conclusion In Chapter 1, it was argued that there are good theological grounds for thinking that reflecting upon how humans ideally should love furnishes us with insight into God’s love. In this chapter I have put this claim to work. I have proposed that the value account is a plausible way of thinking about human love that may act as a model of divine love. To assess this proposal fully, we will need to see what theological fruit the value account bears. In what follows, I shall explore how the love attested to by the value account helps us see why God might create the world out of love (Chapter 3), why God might be thought of as passible (Chapter  4), why God desires to save each human (Chapter  5), why God’s wrath is best seen as a facet of His love (Chapter 6), and how it might be that God saves through a process of deifying humans with His love (Chapter  7). Independent arguments for each of the relevant theological propositions will be presented, but behind these arguments rests the conviction that God treats humans in particular ways because He finds humans ­valuable and so values them. Readers who are sympathetic to the conclusions within the following chapters can look to the value account as one way of holding together the various doctrinal conclusions that are contended for. Accordingly, though the subsequent chapters are not intended to act primarily as an elaborate defence of the value account, they might be deemed to provide indirect support for it. Whatever the case, the contention of this chapter has been that the value account provides a plausible model of God’s love. Among other things, it helps us begin to see why God judges humans as ­worthy of a tremendous, even cruciform, love.

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3 Creation out of Love There are two prominent and opposing Christian views about why God ­created, and consequently governs, the world.1 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 (although it benefits at least some of His creatures), but for Himself, specifically for the enjoyment of the ad extra expression of His attributes. Let us label this  first view divine self-glorificationism, or glorificationism for short. John Calvin,2 Jacob Arminius,3 and most notably Jonathan Edwards4 are just a few historically prominent advocates of glorificationism, a position that still has a

1  The first sentence of this chapter merits three comments. First, many believe, as Keith Ward does, that the specification of why God created the world ‘provides the rationale for all particular Divine actions which continually shape and direct the temporal process of the universe’: see Ward’s Divine Action (London: Collins, 1990), 269. The reason for such an assumption is basically this. Since God is omniscient, God chooses to create with all the facts before Him; and since God is perfectly rational, God will not act subsequently in systematic contradiction to His ultimate purpose for creating. In this chapter, I share this basic assumption. Second, there are, to be sure, more than two theories about why God creates. (For a helpful survey of such views, see Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 112–19.) In addition, there are those who deny that we can provide a genuine reason for divine creation other than the fact that God willed it; for example, Eric Mascall, He Who Is: A Study in Traditional Theism, repr. 1958 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1945), 109–14. In this chapter, I only discuss these two theories on the present matter because these are the two that I find most plausible. Also, I suspect that these theories are the two most widely held. Finally, throughout this chapter, I ascribe temporal language to God (e.g. God created the world). I do this for ease of expression; nothing of significance within this chapter turns on God’s relationship to time. 2  e.g. Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.24.14. 3  James Arminius, ‘Private Disputations’, in The Works of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols and William Nichols, Vol. 2 (Whitefish, MT: Kessenger Publishing, 2006), 321. Also see Richard A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), 206–7. 4  Jonathan Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, Vol. 8, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 403–536. Secondary literature on Edwards’s glorificationism includes the following: James Beilby, ‘Divine Aseity, Divine Freedom: A Conceptual Problem for Edwardsian-Calvinism’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 4 (2004): 647–58; Oliver Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), ch. 4; Stephen R. Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 77–272; Michael J. McClymond, ‘Sinners in the Hands of a Virtuous God: Ethics and Divinity in Jonathan Edwards’s End of Creation’, Zeitschrift Für Neuere Theologiegeschicte 2, no. 1 (1995): 1–22; Walter Schultz, ‘Jonathan Edwards’s End of Creation: An Exposition and Defense’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 2 (2006): 107–22. Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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Creation out of Love  77 number of adherents today.5 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 selfgiving love for the creature. Let us label this second view creatio ex amore, or amorism for short. Pseudo-Dionysius and Isaac the Syrian are two historically well-known advocates of amorism.6 Contemporary proponents of amorism include Sergius Bulgakov,7 Paul Fiddes,8 Jonathan Kvanvig,9 Jürgen Moltmann,10 Thomas  J.  Oord,11 Wolfhart Pannenberg,12 and others.13 In this chapter, I argue that amorism is the preferable view, especially when it comes to God’s creation of humans.

I.  The Nature of Glorificationism I.a  Understanding Glorificationism Glorificationism is the position that God creates, and thereby governs, for the ultimate purpose of glorifying Himself; all other divine purposes or aims regarding creation are subordinate to God’s self-glorification. The view can take different forms. To assess the view properly, therefore, it is important that we get clear on the relevant manifestations that it can and often does take. 5  To name just two, Daniel Strange, ‘A Calvinist Response to Talbott’s Universalism’, in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, ed. Robin Parry and Chris Partridge (London: Paternoster Press, 2003), 49–51; Jerry L. Walls, ‘Reply to Talbott’, in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. Vanarragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 287–8. 6  For Pseudo-Dionysius, see ‘The Divine Names’, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibhéid and Paul Rorem (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1987), chs 4.10–16 (pp. 78–83). For Isaac, see Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), ‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV–XLI, trans. Sebastian P. Brock (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 2.38–9. Cf. Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 35–60. 7  Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 119–30. 8 Paul  S.  Fiddes, ‘Creation out of Love’, in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 167–91. 9 Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, 112–19. 10  Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation: The Gifford Lectures 1984–1985 (London: SCM Press, 1985), 73–6; Jürgen Moltmann, ‘God’s Kenosis in the Creation and Consummation of the World’, in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 146–9. 11  Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2010), 122–58. 12 e.g. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, ed. Richard  J.  Neuhaus (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), 67; and Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 420–2. 13  e.g. Michael Lodahl, ‘Creatio Ex Amore!’, in Theologies of Creation, ed. Thomas Jay Oord (New York: Routledge, 2015), 99–108; Mark Ian Thomas Robson, Ontology and Providence in Creation: Taking Ex Nihilo Seriously (London: Continuum, 2008), 137–40, 177–82.

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78  Love Divine Jonathan Edwards describes glorificationism as follows: It seems a thing in itself fit, proper, and desirable that the glorious attributes of God, which consist in a sufficiency to certain acts and effects, should be exerted in the production of such effects as might manifest the infinite power, wisdom, righteousness, goodness, etc., which are in God. If the world had not been created, these attributes never would have had any exercise. The power of God, which is a sufficiency in him to produce great effects, must forever have been dormant and useless as to any effect. The divine ­wisdom and prudence would have had no exercise in any wise contrivance, any prudent proceeding or disposal of things; for there would have been no objects of contrivance or disposal. The same might be observed of God’s just­ice, goodness and truth. [. . .] As God therefore esteems these attributes themselves valuable, and delights in them, so ’tis natural to suppose that he delights in their proper exercise and expression.14

Later Edwards concludes that we may suppose  that a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world; and so that the emanation itself was aimed at by him as a last end of the creation.15 [. . .] So that in delighting in the expressions of his ­perfections, he manifests a delight in his own perfections themselves: or in other words, he manifests a delight in himself; and in making these expressions of his own perfections his end, he makes himself his end.16

According to Edwards, then, God creates as a way of delighting in the expression of aspects of the divine character that would otherwise remain dormant. These features of God’s character include power, wisdom, righteousness, and goodness. However, one need not follow Edwards in all the details and can instead look to other attributes, or just a single attribute, of the divine personality as that which God aims to manifest ad extra. An often expressed worry about this way of understanding glorificationism is that it diminishes God’s aseity. The fear is that it looks as if God needs to create in order to be fully who He is, since aspects of the divine character 14 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World (hereafter, simply A Dissertation Concerning the End), 429–31. 15 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 435 (all italics come from Edwards’s text). 16 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 437.

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Creation out of Love  79 would remain dormant absent creation. But no respectable doctrine of divine aseity can tolerate the idea that divine self-actualization requires anything outside of the divine nature—or so it is sometimes argued.17 There is, however, another way in which glorificationism might be understood. Rather than maintain, as Edwards does, that God creates to delight in aspects of Himself that would otherwise remain inactive, one might hold that God creates to enjoy novel manifestations of attributes that are already active within the divine nature. For example, there may be ways in which the persons of the Trinity do express and delight in their creativity ad intra, but perhaps God (freely) chooses to create the cosmos as a way of enjoying His creativity in yet new ways. On this second schema, God creates for the purpose of glorifying Himself in a particular manner (namely, for the purpose of enjoying the divine beauty ad extra), and yet no attribute of God remains dormant. Hence, no threat to divine aseity appears to emerge. For our purposes, we need not decide between these two ways of understanding glorificationism. It is nevertheless important to be aware of these different schemas in order to avoid thinking that an objection to Edwards’s particular way of understanding glorificationism applies to all forms. A more pressing distinction for the aims of the present chapter is between ‘pure’ and ‘impure glorificationism’. According to the former, God creates ­primarily to glorify Himself, and every action that God performs ad extra is  done, directly or indirectly, for the primary purpose of instantiating or ­preserving that glory.18 On this way of understanding things, if the unfolding of creation is compared to a film, God is a meticulous film director, where every scene, indeed every frame, is carefully crafted to forward the precise point of the film, in this case God’s glory. There are no equivalents to side gags or gratuitous actions scenes. Impure glorificationism, by contrast, allows for some subsidiary divine purposes that are not primarily aimed at self-glorification. The advocate of impure glorificationism can say that God sometimes performs acts that are not for the purpose of glorifying Himself at all (though presumably they are not incompatible with God’s overall aim of glorifying Himself), or that all acts are aimed at self-glorification, but not all acts are aimed primarily at 17  For a discussion, see the following resources: Beilby, ‘Divine Aseity, Divine Freedom’; Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation, ch. 4; McClymond, ‘Sinners in the Hands of a Virtuous God’, 12; Schultz, ‘Jonathan Edwards’s End of Creation’. 18  In using the language of God performing various actions, I do not mean to suggest that either the glorificationist or the amorist is committed to the view that God undergoes various discrete actions ad extra. It could instead be that God performs one eternal creative act that embodies a certain logical structure. I use the language of different divine actions merely for ease of expression.

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80  Love Divine self-glorification—sometimes self-glorification is only a secondary aim. But in order to be a genuine species of glorificationism, the advocate of impure glorificationism will need to maintain that God’s ultimate and guiding purpose for creating and running the world is self-glorification, and that all other aims are subordinate to that. On the impure glorificationist schema, then, God is like a director who is not so concerned about creating a film that never deviates from its central point. Instead, the director peppers the film with jokes that do not advance the plot, and the director is not afraid to indulge the audience in a lengthy car chase scene just for the thrill of it. At the same time, however, our director never loses sight of the film’s goal, and each of the major plot points do skilfully contribute to the final aim of the film. In what follows, I assume that impure glorificationism entails that the major events of salvation history—e.g. Creation, Incarnation, Atonement, Final Judgement, and the installation of Redeemed Creation—are done primarily for God’s glory, just as the second imagined director ensures that the major plot points advance the main point of her film. Regardless of whether one favours pure or impure glorificationism, it is tempting to explicate glorificationism in a way that serves to break down the wall between it and its rival, amorism. One might say, for example, that God glorifies Himself by expressing His love ad extra, and that the love of His creatures constitutes the divine glory. Thus God glorifies Himself by creating for the purpose of loving creatures. Alternatively, one might suggest that God has many motives for creating, one of which is self-glorification another of which is self-giving love, and no one motive takes priority over the other in God’s creative action. Hence there is no irreconcilable division between glorificationism and amorism. Although one could adhere to either of these ways of characterizing glorificationism, these ways of rendering glorification completely sever it from at least one of its classical motivations. Glorificationism, of the kind under consideration within the present chapter, springs from the conviction that God is above all else and that all of creation should thereby be directed towards God and used for God’s purposes. The love of creatures is subordinate to God’s self-focused creative aims. As an example of this, consider the claims of the glorificationist Louis Berkhof. Berkhof says, speaking specifically about the predestination of the elect unto salvation, ‘The purpose of [God’s] eternal election is twofold: (1) The proximate purpose is the salvation of the elect. [. . .] (2) The final aim is the glory of God. Even the salvation of men is subordinate to this.’19 Jonathan Edwards believes something similar. While he writes 19  Berkhof ’s emphasis, Systematic Theology, combined ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 115.

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Creation out of Love  81 ­ ovingly about the ways in which God communicates His ‘infinite fullness’ m to creatures, Edwards is clear that, strictly speaking, it is the ‘emanation of [God’s] own infinite fullness’ itself that ‘excited him to create the world’; the goodness of communicating that fullness to creatures is derived from the desire to delight in this emanation.20 Accordingly, Oliver Crisp writes about Edwards’s glorificationism, [Edwards] would most certainly have resisted any insinuation that on his view the creation ends up as a mere cipher for God’s self-glorification. But it does seem that [. . .] [Edwards must] deny that the creation is an end in itself. The ultimate end of creation is the instantiation of divine glory ad extra. Even God’s relationship to his creatures is subordinate to that.21

For a final, fairly extreme representative of the glorificationist tradition, ­consider the leading Protestant theologian in France during a considerable portion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Pierre Jurieu. He claims that even if glorificationism ‘shows us a cruel, unjust God punishing and chastising innocent creatures with eternal torments’, glorificationism remains unobjectionable since it raises the Divine to the highest degree of greatness and superiority that can be conceived. For it abases the creature before the Creator to such a point, that in this system the Creator is bound by no sort of law with regard to the creature, but can do with it as seems good to Him, and make it serve His glory in any way He pleases, without its having the right to gainsay Him.22

Thus, we see that on a certain classical understanding of glorificationism, God’s ultimate reason for creating is for Himself. That which God does in love for His creatures are acts of grace done in subordination to His self-focused glorifying purposes. So understood, though (some) creatures benefit from God’s self-glorification, a clean rapprochement between amorism and glorificationism is impossible. The central difference between the kinds of glorificationism and amorism of concern within this chapter can be seen by considering the creation of a

20 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 435; cf. 438–9. 21 Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation, 146. 22  Pierre Jurieu, Apologie Pour Les Réformateurs (Rotterdam: Reineer Leers, 1983). Quote taken from D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 199–200.

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82  Love Divine human named Kylie. The glorificationist maintains that God’s motivation for creating Kylie is primarily self-interested, viz. to delight in or somehow appreciate Himself in relation to Kylie (e.g. to enjoy His handiwork as His  handiwork, or to enjoy Himself as He loves Kylie). The proponent of amorism, by contrast, denies that divine self-interest is the primary reason why God creates Kylie. Instead, and as shall be explained in greater detail in a subsequent section, the advocate of amorism claims that God creates Kylie for the purpose of loving her. No self-interested motivation for creating Kylie rises above that aim. Note what the paradigms of glorificationism and amorism are not. These two viewpoints are not in competition about the telos or fulfilment of cre­ ation. Advocates of either position can hold that all of creation finds its ­completion in a right relationship to God. Nor are these viewpoints about what should motivate human behaviour. Proponents of glorificationism and amorism can agree in principle that all human actions should be done for the purpose of uplifting the name of God. These conceptualizations are also not about what God loves more, creation or Himself. Supporters of either understanding may claim that God loves Himself above all else. Instead, these two paradigms compete to explain why, ultimately, God creates and relates to creatures, specifically humans. The defender of amorism maintains that God creates humans for the ultimate purpose of relating to them in love, whereas the glorificationist looks to God’s self-interest or self-focus as that which God ultimately seeks to achieve in human creation.

I.b  God’s Love and God’s Self-Glorification With all of these distinctions in mind, we now turn our attention to a variety of ways of understanding the relationship between God’s love of creatures and His desire to glorify Himself.23 For clarity and ease of expression, I here focus on but one feature of love, benevolence (i.e. valuing the beloved’s good), and this when directed at another (i.e. other-directed benevolence). Much of what follows also applies, mutatis mutandis, to the other features of love discussed within Chapter 2, although I will not argue the point within this subsection. 23  My categorization of the different forms of benevolence is influenced deeply by Richard Kraut’s ‘Altruism’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2018 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/altruism/. But I do not follow Kraut at every turn, and I allow myself the freedom to adapt Kraut’s cat­egor­ies for my own theological purposes.

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Creation out of Love  83 Furthermore, in this subsection, I largely limit the discussion of God’s love to instances wherein God acts benevolently towards a single other human person. I trust that the reader is able to discern from Chapter 2 how the value account of divine love predisposes God to act to bring about a human’s good (as opposed to valuing it only), and I trust that the reader is able to extrapolate from the present discussion of God’s benevolence for a single person to discern how matters might be expanded to account for benevolence towards more than one other individual. The goal of this subsection, then, is to present several ways of understanding the relationship between God’s otherdirected benevolence and His desire to glorify Himself. This, in turn, will set the stage for the evaluation of glorificationism in the Section II. To get a better understanding of the nature of other-directed benevolence, I first draw a distinction between ‘pure motive benevolence’ and ‘mixed motive benevolence’. One acts in accordance with mixed motive benevolence towards another when the act in question is performed for reasons concerning the other as well as oneself. Suppose that you turn on the television and see a commercial for an agency that affords you the opportunity to feed a hungry child in a developing nation. If you decide to donate to this cause because it is good for the child and because you like the feeling of being a charitable person, you are instancing mixed motive benevolence. By contrast, you act in accordance with pure motive benevolence when the act in question is performed entirely for the other person’s good; the motive of gaining anything for yourself simply does not factor into your decision to give. It is worth noting that pure motive benevolence need not entail selfsacrifice.24 Self-sacrificing benevolence involves some kind of suspension of one’s own interests or diminishment of one’s own good, but one can act purely for another’s sake without any such loss. If my son asks me for some juice, I can hand him a cup at no cost to myself and without any goal of self-gain. The advocate of pure glorificationism is committed to the claim that all of God’s other-directed benevolent actions are instances of mixed motive ben­ evo­lence. This is because the pure glorificationist says that every action that God performs ad extra, including His other-directed benevolent actions, is done for the primary purpose of self-glorification. But, given that God cannot be benevolent towards another without at least partially acting for the other, it follows that God’s other-directed benevolent actions contain a mixture of divinely and creaturely directed motivations.

24  I owe this point to Richard Kraut; see his section 1.1 of ‘Altruism’.

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84  Love Divine Mixed motive benevolent actions are not necessarily suspect. We routinely act out of a mixture of self- and other-directed motivations and it is hardly sinful to do so. I believe that caring for my son benefits me in a variety of ways. It makes me a better person, fosters our relationship, brings me satisfaction, and the like. If all respectable benevolent acts must be pure benevolent acts, then, to act with respectable benevolence, I must somehow syphon off the various self-interested reasons I have for caring for my son, only taking into account the ways in which my caring for my son benefits him. But that would seem to be a strange and overly stringent requirement. So, by itself, claiming that the proponent of pure glorificationism is committed to the notion that all of God’s other-directed benevolent actions are instances of mixed motive benevolence is not reason for rejecting pure glorificationism. What is perhaps worrisome is that the advocate of pure glorificationism is committed to the idea that God’s other-directed benevolent actions are primarily done for Himself. We shall come back to this in Section II, however. Impure glorificationism does not entail mixed motive benevolence for each other-directed benevolent act that God performs. This is because impure glorificationism allows for some subsidiary divine purposes that are not primarily aimed at self-glorification. Ultimately, however, some deep kind of mixed motive benevolence seems inevitable. In keeping with the illustration regarding God as a film director, it remains true, on impure glorificationism, that all or most of the major scenes of ‘the film’ of creation will have to be done primarily for Godself—otherwise the position ceases to be a form of glorificationism. When this occurs, and other-directed benevolence is involved, these benevolent acts of God spring from mixed motives. As mentioned before, this mixed motive benevolence is not necessarily negative. Yet one might think that there is something theologically inadequate about the idea that all of God’s most significant other-directed benevolent acts (i.e. those otherdirected acts that are part of the major scenes within God’s ‘film’) are ul­tim­ ate­ly self-directed. We shall return to this at a later point. Richard Kraut notices that mixed motive benevolence is compatible with an individual ‘whose deliberations are always guided by this principle: “I shall never do anything unless doing so is best for me.” ’ Such an individual refuses ever to sacrifice his interests even to the slightest degree, unless he is convinced that doing so is what will ultimately benefit him more than any other available course of action. Nonetheless, Kraut observes, this individual could have other-directed benevolent motives for some, much, or even all that he does! ‘On any given occasion, he could have mixed motives: he is careful

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Creation out of Love  85 always to do what is best for himself, but that allows him also to be motivated by the perception that what he does is also good for others.’25 We would not normally think that the egoistic person just described is an adequately benevolent person. Intuitively, the benevolent person is one who sometimes acts primarily for the sake of others, and is even willing to give way to the interests of others on occasion. But the person just imagined ensures that his own interests drive everything he does. We need, then, another distinction. This time we distinguish between ‘free benevolent acts’ and ‘restricted benevolent acts’. An act is benevolent in the free sense if the primary reason for the action is that it is good for the (other) person at whom the action is aimed. Free benevolent acts come in two kinds. There are ‘strong free ben­evo­ lent acts’, which are free benevolent acts performed despite the awareness that they (plausibly) will include some kind of sacrifice of one’s own interests. There are also ‘weak free benevolent acts’: free benevolent acts undergone without any awareness that they (plausibly) will include some kind of sacrifice to one’s own interests. In juxtaposition to free benevolent acts, restricted benevolent acts are those benevolent acts where the interests of the ben­evo­ lent actor play a significant role in motivating the relevant actions, and the primary reason for them is not the interests or good of the other person at which the action is directed. As with free benevolent acts, restricted ben­evo­ lent acts come in two kinds, strong and weak. A ‘strong restricted benevolent act’ is a benevolent act undergone primarily because it is good for, or in the interests of, the one performing the benevolent action. A ‘weak restricted benevolent act’ is a benevolent act done for the benefit of both the other and the one performing the action, where the interests of each individual equally motivate the relevant action. With this last set of distinctions before us, recall that the pure glorificationist says that every action that God performs ad extra is done for the primary purpose of self-glorification. Put differently, every action that God performs ad extra He does so principally because it is in His own interest to do so—all other reasons God has for performing actions of this kind are always secondary within this motivational structure. From this understanding of pure glorificationism it follows that God never performs free benevolent acts for His creatures (where the primary reason for the action is that it is good for creatures), whether strong or weak. Nor can God, according to pure glorificationism, be said to perform weak restricted benevolent actions for His creatures. This is 25  These quotes are from section 1.2 of Kraut’s ‘Altruism’.

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86  Love Divine because God performs weak restricted benevolent actions only if God is equally motivated by the interests of Himself and His creature in His benevolent action. By contrast, the proponent of pure glorificationism says that the divine interests are the primary reason for every one of God’s actions ad extra. Of the kinds of benevolent actions sketched, the only kind of ben­evo­lent actions that God can perform for His creatures, given pure glorificationism, are strong restricted benevolent actions: those undergone primarily because they are in God’s interests (though, to be genuinely benevolent acts, they must also be done because they are good for the creature). We would not normally think that an individual who behaves this way is sufficiently ben­evo­lent. Whether God constitutes an exception to this rule is something we shall examine in Section II. Before we turn to that issue, however, consider the interrelation between impure glorificationism and free and restricted benevolent acts. It will be remembered that impure glorificationism allows for some divine actions that are not primarily aimed at self-glorification, though the major ‘plot points’ will need to be. Because impure glorification allows for more latitude in the motives that God might take up towards creation, the proponent of this perspective can say that God performs both free and restricted benevolent actions, so long as those actions concerning the major plot points (e.g. Creation, Incarnation, Atonement, Final Judgement, and installation of Redeemed Creation) are primarily motivated by God’s self-interest. A worry about this perspective is that it is incompatible with God’s self-giving love in Christ. We shall find that it is, along with pure glorificationism, within the next section. But, first, we must examine why some theologians believe that glorificationism is true.

II.  Evaluating Glorificationism Those who subscribe to glorificationism often do so because they believe that it represents the teaching of Scripture. As a complement to this, some glorificationists also believe that the view is reinforced by natural theology. We shall consider these two lines of support in reverse order.

II.a  Edwards’s Glorificationist Argument from Divine Perfection In A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, Jonathan Edwards presents what is perhaps to date the most thorough and impressive natural theological argument for glorificationism. His argument

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Creation out of Love  87 can be summarized as follows. God is the greatest being that is or ever could be, and, since divine perfection entails ‘his having the highest regard to that which is in itself i­n­fin­ite­ly highest and best’, God ‘must necessarily have the greatest respect to himself ’.26 Moreover, if ‘God should have a supreme regard to himself, then it is fitting that this supreme regard should appear in those things by which he makes himself known, or by his word and works, i.e., in what he says and in what he does’. God, in other words, ‘should act as having a chief regard to himself; or act in such a manner, as to show that he has such regard: that what is highest in God’s heart, may be highest in his actions and conduct’.27 If God must be self-regarding in this way, however, this ‘might incline us to suppose, that God has not forgot himself, in the ends which he proposed in the cre­ation of the world; but that he has so stated these ends, [. . .] as therein plainly to show a supreme regard to himself ’.28 For ‘Whatsoever is good, amiable, and valuable in itself, absolutely and originally [. . .] must be supposed to be regarded or aimed at by God ultimately, or as an ultimate end of creation.’29 That is to say, God’s ultimate aim (or in Edwards’s preferred language, ‘chief end’ or ‘last end’) in creation must be Himself—which, we learn from a bit more analysis, amounts to the claim that God creates for His own glory. The logic of Edwards’s argument is not immediately clear. Agree with Edwards that since God is infinitely perfect, He cannot have too high of an opinion of Himself. Agree also, for the sake of argument, that God should never disrespect Himself, but, on the contrary, that all of God’s works should in some way manifest God’s infinite self-regard. How, then, does Edwards infer that God creates for God’s own glory (or, that God creates for Himself as His highest end) from the claim that God’s works should manifest God’s infinite self-regard? What might justify the inference from the latter to the former is not altogether clear, since, without ostensibly violating the latter principle, God could make the manifestation of God’s infinite self-regard a subsidiary aim of creation (maybe because God’s glory is good for the creatures that He loves), or but one of the highest aims of creation. Yet Edwards is offering an argument for the stronger claim that God’s primary purpose in creation is the glorification of Himself. From what I gather, Edwards tacitly bases the inference on something like the principle that for every action that one performs, that action should primarily be done for the sake of that which is of ultimate or highest value (call this 26 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 421. 27 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 422. 28 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 425. 29 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 426.

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88  Love Divine ‘the action principle’). As Edwards explains in True Virtue, ‘a determination of mind to union and benevolence to a particular person or private system [whether one’s self, one’s family, one’s nation, or even humanity],30 which is but a small part of the universal system of being [. . .] is not of the nature of true virtue’ unless it is dependent on or ‘subordinate to, benevolence to Being in general’.31 When we dig a bit further, we learn that God either just is, or actively sustains, being in general: God ‘is the sum of all being, and there is no being without his being; all things are in him and he in all’.32 This association of God with ‘Being in general’ leads Edwards to say that true virtue ‘consists chiefly’ in ‘respect to God’ and that God must be in ‘every way the supreme object of our benevolence’.33 Taken altogether, the idea would be that when any agent acts (including God), that agent should act primarily for the sake of God, the highest value. From this it would follow, in keeping with the action principle, that if God creates, God must create for Himself—from which, we may suppose, we can infer that God creates for His glory. There is cause to be suspicious of the action principle. Imagine a world where the most valuable being is a man (God does not exist), and the only existing sentient beings are a man and his dog, Robert and Sam respectively. (I believe that such a world is impossible, given that God exists necessarily. Nevertheless, the following thought experiment may help focus our thinking in relevant ways.) In such a world, the action principle would dictate that every action that Robert performs primarily should be done for his own sake; Robert should do nothing primarily for Sam’s sake. But such a prohibition is too restrictive. Dog owners routinely do things primarily for their dogs’ sakes, and often there is nothing untoward about owners privileging their dogs’ interests above their own on certain occasions.34 The situation could be similar in the case of Robert and Sam. Robert could occasionally put Sam’s interest above his own, and there would be nothing untoward about so doing. Yet this would be a violation of the action principle. 30  This explanatory note comes from section 3.1 of William Wainwright, ‘Jonathan Edwards’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward  N.  Zalta, Winter 2016 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/edwards/. 31  Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, in Ethics Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, Vol. 8 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 554. This way of stringing together the quotes from Edwards comes from section 3.1 of Wainwright, ‘Jonathan Edwards’. 32  Jonathan Edwards, Being of a God, in The Miscellanies, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw, Vol. 20, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 122. 33 Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, 554. 34  For a thoughtful analysis of acting for a dog’s sake, see Bennett W. Helm, ‘Action for the Sake of Caring and the Rationality of (Social) Action’, Analyse & Kritik 24, no. 2 (2002): 189–208 (especially 198–200).

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Creation out of Love  89 It might be tempting for the glorificationist to reply by claiming that the action principle only applies to those worlds which contain a maximally great being: God. But it is not obvious why this would be the case. I take it that what undergirds the action principle is what Michael McClymond terms, in reference to Edwards, ‘the principle of proportionate regard’.35 Neither McClymond nor Edwards spells out this principle in detail, but the basic idea appears to be that one’s actions should appropriately honour the intrinsic value of those individuals who are relevantly affiliated with one’s actions (however we might understand the ‘relevant affiliation’ relation), and furthermore, one should proportion one’s honouring to the level of intrinsic value of the ­individuals in question (e.g. God should be honoured more than humans). An application of the principle of proportionate regard to God might run as follows: since every event within creation involves God in some sense (e.g. everything that is not God depends upon God for its existence at each moment), and since God is maximally great, the way in which a human appropriately honours God is by doing everything primarily for God. But if the action principle rests upon the more fundamental principle of proportionate regard, and if Robert and Sam are the only sentient beings in the world we have imagined, then, assuming that Robert always stands in the relevant affiliation relation with respect to his acts that concern Sam, it seems to follow from the combination of these two principles that Robert honours his own value appropriately only if he always refuses to put Sam’s interests before his own. But we know that this cannot be right. Perhaps, though, there is another motivation for the action principle. Maybe the idea behind the action principle is that since God is maximally great, perfect allegiance to God is what is due to Him in every action of every living agent, including God. Someone might think, furthermore, that one can have perfect allegiance to God only if one always acts primarily for God’s sake. But, unfortunately, it is not clear why it might be thought that this last claim follows from that which precedes it. Why not think, instead, that perfect allegiance requires acting exclusively for God’s sake? Or, instead, why not think that this allegiance requires not that one must always act primarily for God’s sake but only that one never acts in a manner that disrespects God? Of course, the first is implausible from a Christian perspective and the second does not support the action principle. To avoid begging the question in favour of the action principle, though, one needs to explain why perfect allegiance

35  McClymond, ‘Sinners in the Hands of a Virtuous God’, especially 6–8, 20.

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90  Love Divine to God entails the precise motivational structure captured within the action prin­ciple, and why even God Himself is bound by this principle when God chooses to create the cosmos. Another line of support for the action principle comes from eudaimonistic ethics. On this ethical system, happiness (or flourishing) is the ultimate rational or prudential justification of morality, and agents ought to structure their lives around that which promises to bring them the best, most happy life. As a  result, eudaimonists normally maintain that agents are neither rationally nor ethically justified in adopting a course of action that promises them less ­happiness than some available alternative. It would be unfair, however, to accuse most eudaimonists of embracing simplistic forms of egoism. This is because defenders of this ethical perspective often hold that the rational or prudential justification for morality is not a thesis about moral motivation; and furthermore, it is typically said that certain virtues which are constitutive of the happy life are dispositions to act primarily for the sake of others.36 So far as I am aware, Edwards never explicitly affirms a eudaimonistic framework as a way of supporting (something like) the action principle.37 But it is easy to discern how this can be done. The Christian eudaimonist might say, with some measure of plausibility, that every action that the human should perform is rationally justified by the human’s highest good, namely, union with God. This rational justification for morality might then be taken to imply a thesis about human moral motivation: every human action should be done primarily for the sake of bringing about one’s highest good. Based upon this motivational structure, one might hold that God’s actions should be arranged in a similar manner: God must act ultimately for His highest good, which is something like Self-love. Importantly, this appears to be tantamount to the action principle when it comes to divine behaviour. Each divine action should be done primarily for the sake of that which of highest value, that 36  For a discussion of egoism and eudaimonism, see the following: Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chs. 10–14; Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 153–63; Richard Kraut, ‘Aristotle on the Human Good: An Overview’, in Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays, ed. Nancy Sherman (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 79–104 (especially 92–6); Scott MacDonald, ‘Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas’s Basis for Christian Morality’, in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. M.D.  Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 329–32; Scott MacDonald, ‘Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas’s Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe’s Fallacy’, The Philosophical Review 100, no. 1 (1991): 31–66; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 208–12. 37  However, there are hints that Edwards’s A Dissertation Concerning the End is influenced by Aristotle’s eudaimonistic form of virtue ethics. On this topic, see McClymond, ‘Sinners in the Hands of a Virtuous God’, 17–18. For a brief discussion of the idea that Edwards is a eudaimonist, see Douglas A. Sweeney, ‘Expect Joy’, Christian History 22, no. 1 (2003): 42–3.

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Creation out of Love  91 which concerns Himself. The upshot is that one substantial and widespread form of the rational justification of morality supports the idea that God ­creates for Himself, the highest good, when this form of rational justification is applied to God’s motives for His external actions. I have no knock-down argument against this eudaimonistic defence of the action principle. All the same, I doubt that such a defence warrants confidence in the action principle, and, ultimately, glorificationism. To get a sense as to why this is so, notice two points of dis-analogy between human and divine motives within the eudaimonistic means of supporting the action principle. First, the eudaimonistic way of supporting the action principles presupposes a motivational structure for human action that we would condemn as inappropriately egoistic. As noted, the eudaimonist often avoids the charge of undue egoism by maintaining that just because the agent’s own happiness prudentially justifies how she should structure her life, this does not entail that the agent should always be motivated primarily by her own happiness. No such response can be utilized on the present eudaimonistic defence of the action principle, however. For here, as a way of lending credence to the action principle regarding divine behaviour, the prudential justification regarding human action is taken to imply the motivational thesis that every human action should be done primarily for the sake of bringing about one’s own highest good. So, a kind of egoism is embraced firmly. This, of course, does not show that it is inappropriate for God, unlike humans, to be motivated egoistically. My point is simply this. The eudaimonistic framework at issue looks to the justification and motivation of human action as a way supporting a certain perspective on what constitutes the right motivation for divine action. But the borrowed structure of human motivation for action is in­appro­pri­ate­ly egoistic.38 Consequently, this manner of supporting divine motivation for action builds upon a crucial dis-analogy between divine and human motivations, which, I submit, weakens the support sought. Second, the classical eudaimonistic approach is built upon a natural tele­ology, according to which each human (and natural substance more generally) seeks her own perfection or self-actualization.39 Assumed by this teleology is the obvious fact that humans do not yet possess their highest good. Given these features of human existence, it is reasonable, perhaps, to maintain that the 38  We learned this from Richard Kraut. He notes that mixed motive benevolence is compatible with an individual who is guided by the principle, ‘I shall never do anything unless doing so is best for me.’ But we agreed that such an egoistic person is not adequately benevolent. Wolterstorff defends essentially the same conclusion on biblical grounds. See his, Justice, 208–12. 39  A helpful explanation of this teleology can be found in MacDonald, ‘Egoistic Rationalism’.

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92  Love Divine human’s life should be centred around the acquisition of her own good. Built into the human design plan is the desire to achieve her highest good, and it is only right, so the reasoning goes, for her to seek to fulfil her design plan— especially when that design plan includes caring about others for their own sake. It is less clear, however, that anything analogous applies to God. For God possesses His highest good necessarily (at least sans the decision to generate a world that might negatively affect the divine happiness), and so does not need to strive to secure this good. But if no such striving is necessary, God might be free to perform actions that are not fundamentally self-interested. Totally fulfilled or self-actualized, in other words, God might be free to perform acts that are radically other-oriented in ways that mere unfulfilled creatures cannot. But if this is possibly so, then, once again, the appeal to eudaimonism provides a shaky foundation for the claim that all of God’s external actions must be done primarily for Himself. To repeat, neither of these considerations aims to demonstrate conclusively that God is not motivated in the relevant eudaimonistic manner. Rather, the suggestion is that it is not obvious that eudaimonistic ethics (which is controversial in its own right) shows us that something like the action principle is true, and represents how God acts. That form of reasoning would need to be developed in detail. Until that is done, we should not be confident that eudaimonistic ethics supports something akin to the divine instantiation of the action principle. Perhaps it is best, therefore, for defenders of the action principle to look elsewhere, to a final line of support for this principle. Consider a way of reason­ing that is inspired by Plato. Plato, in certain places, appears to endorse the view that the ideal object of love is not this or that concrete being per se. Rather, that which should be loved for its own sake is some form or abstract object, such as Beauty. In the Symposium, for instance, Plato suggests that humans begin loving by developing an attachment to a particular beautiful body. Ideally, however, the attachment will not end there. Those who love the beauty of a specific body will hopefully soon recognize that this attribute is shared by many individuals, and ultimately finds its source in the form, Beauty. Once recognized, the one who loves should transfer his affections from the beautiful particulars to Beauty itself. Individual persons and things that are beautiful should be loved only secondarily, if loved at all, and only because of the relation in which they stand to the form Beauty.40 40 Plato, Symposium (210a–212a). For commentary on this and related passages, see Gregory Vlastos, ‘The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato’, in Platonic Studies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 3–42.

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Creation out of Love  93 This interpretation of Plato’s views can be transposed neatly into a Christian framework which supports the glorificationist action principle. Begin with the metaphysical thesis that God is the supreme good and that the goodness of finite things consists in a sort of resemblance to God. According to this metaphysical thesis, God and God’s relationship to other goods plays roughly the same functional role as do forms and particulars in Plato’s metaphysics, especially the form of Beauty and its particulars.41 Next, consider a thesis that pertains to the distribution of love or the manner in which one should love: each being who loves should love God, the Good, above all else, and (most importantly for the present purposes) every finite good should be loved primarily as a means of loving God, who is resembled by all finite goods. It is an implication of this distributional thesis that God should love Himself above all else, and that even God’s love of creatures should principally be a form of self-love in that God loves Himself as finitely represented by creatures. Once this distributional thesis is accepted, something very much like the action principle follows in short order. All that needs to be added is the notion that every rational being, including God, should always act (and create) primarily for the sake of God, the One whom is rightly loved above all else, and indeed in all else. Focus on the distributional thesis regarding love. I take it that most Christians would agree that God warrants being loved more than everything else. What is particularly controversial is the claim that each finite person or thing should be loved primarily as a means of loving God in a manner that implies that the loving of finite persons is, in the final analysis, most centrally about loving God. Robert Adams notices two ways in which this ‘as a means of ’ locution can be understood. There is, first, the means–end causal relation of which we are all aware, where an individual cares about something merely for its ability to produce some distinct beloved object or state of affairs. Surely, to the degree to which one loves someone as a mere instrumental means to the loving of somebody else, this is not genuine love for the individual that acts as a mere means, whatever the quality of the love for the person who fills the role of the end for that which the other is loved.42 However, the ‘as a means

41  To date, Robert Merrihew Adams provides the most rigorous and comprehensive defence of the metaphysical thesis in Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 42 St Augustine can be read as affirming an instrumentalist form of love in, e.g. De Doctrina Christiana, 1.4.22–40. If that is what Augustine means to affirm, then he is, in my view, clearly mistaken. Those looking for an argument directed against this reading of Augustine can turn to Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 186–7, cf. 151–7. Also relevant here is Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 109–26.

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94  Love Divine of ’ clause should be understood differently in this context. The proximate end should be understood as an exemplification or instance of the ulterior end. As an example of this kind of relation, Adams considers a case in which one might desire the election of Jesse Jackson to public office because one desires the election of an African American and believes that Jackson is an African American. In the conceived scenario, the desire is not per se for the election of Jackson as a means of causally contributing to an increase in the number of African American politicians in the United States, although it might contribute to that. Rather, we may suppose that one wants Jackson to be elected as an instance or way in which a candidate of the desired ethnicity can be realized.43 Applying this latter understanding of the means of relation to the present concerns about love, to say that creatures should be loved primarily as a means of loving God is to say that these creatures should be loved primarily as instances of the more general and greater value that is found in God, and, in fact, the loving of creatures should be principally directed towards the love of God. As a leading advocate of the described Christianized Platonic metaphysical thesis (i.e. that God is the supreme good and that the goodness of finite things consists in a sort of resemblance to God), Adams expends a considerable amount of energy trying to demonstrate that commitment to the meta­phys­ic­al thesis does not imply the distributional thesis regarding love.44 In particular, Adams insists that commitment to the metaphysical thesis need not commit one to the notion that each finite being should be loved primarily as an instance or dim reflection of God, where God is supposed always to be the appropriate primary object of love. That on which Adams insists is quite plaus­ible. Almost certainly we can distinguish between the source of some creature’s value and the concrete or specific value of the creature that ought to be recognized and loved for its own sake. Analogous to the manner in which one can love the way a river beautifully reflects light without primarily loving the source of the light, the sun, one can respond to the specific dignity of an individual human and focus one’s love on her, even if it is the case that ul­tim­ ately the individual enjoys dignity because she reflects God. If this is right, then those who eschew the action principle need not reject the relevant meta­ phys­ic­al thesis, nor must they reject the notion that God should be loved more than all else in the world. What should be rejected by those who deny the action principle is the idea that creatures should be loved primarily as a means of loving God. 43 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 154. 44  See, especially, Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 151–7, 161–70, 187–92.

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Creation out of Love  95 One reason for rejecting this latter idea comes from the conviction that love casts its objects as particular and not to be competitively compared with others. Adams notices that because love by its very nature is attached to specific individuals in these ways, it is not the kind of attitude that focuses on loved ones principally in terms of the way in which they reflect higher and more general values. For example, ‘Romeo may want to have a date with Juliet both because he loves her and because he wants to have a date with a beautiful woman.’ However, ‘the love for Juliet and the more general desire for a beautiful date are competing or concurrent motives for the desire for a date with Juliet’. Indeed, it seems apparent that ‘Insofar as the latter, proximate desire is motivated by the general desire for a beautiful date, it is not a manifestation of love for Juliet.’45 This is not to deny that Romeo might be disposed generally to delight in beautiful women, nor it is to affirm that there would be something untoward about such a disposition. Instead, Adams’s point is that Romeo’s love for Juliet must be principally concerned with her, and perhaps her beauty, rather than with the belief that Juliet is a particularly fine representative of transcendent beauty—or worse, that Romeo should love Juliet because she is more attractive than the other women with which Romeo is acquainted. That Juliet impressively instantiates transcendent beauty, or is more beautiful than her peers, may causally contribute to Romeo’s love of her, but in standard healthy cases such considerations would not constitute a significant reason as to why Romeo loves Juliet, where a reason is that which specifically contributes to making Romeo’s love of Juliet internally justified or fitting.46 For understanding Romeo’s love of Juliet, Adams submits, ‘it is more relevant to know what he likes and celebrates that is intrinsic to her—her individual beauty and, perhaps, more precisely the shape of her nose. How beautiful other women are does not have the same relevance.’ To solidify the idea that love is particular and noncomparative, Adams offers a number of additional illustrations. Among these is the thought that ‘A baby’s smile is wonderful, and celebrated as such by a parent’s love. It does not matter that billions of babies have smiled as wonderfully before.’47 Adams even goes so far as to apply this noncomparative understanding of love to the human’s love of God: ‘to the extent that one can envisage or respond to the divine nature as it is in itself, I think one ought ideally to love it, not for its superiority as such, but simply for the goodness it has in itself independently

45 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 154. 46  See, in particular, Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 168–9. 47 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 169.

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96  Love Divine of any comparisons.’48 Adams’s insights are relevant because they highlight the apparent fact that love principally involves the appreciation of particular individuals, not specifically the consideration of how an individual falls within a more general category of value. Stated in theological terms, the degree to which you love someone only because and insofar as she is made in the image of God, the less it looks as if you love her—even if it is the case that recognition of the fact that she is made in the divine image gives you reason to want to love her or sustain your love for her. That someone is made in the divine image or otherwise reflects God’s value might be a necessary condition for the kind of love you are rightly willing to direct towards her, but it is hardly an impressive love for the creature at issue to love her exclusively or primarily as a means of loving God. Nothing I have said about the particularity and noncomparative nature of love is meant to deny that love for God and creature can be mutually informing and that love for God can in some way be the organizing principle behind all loves. As intimated already, that someone you love reflects God can give you reason to endeavour to love God, since He is the source of that which you prize. Conversely, if you love God, the fact that someone reflects God can give you reason to attempt to love her for her own sake, or a (kind of secondorder) reason to affirm your love of her. Furthermore, God can be said to rest at the centre of an individual’s network of love relationships in that the individual who deeply loves God might be generally disposed to love whatever reflects God, not merely as a means to loving God but as a recognition that whatever reflects God is worth loving, and this individual’s love for creatures might only increase his love for God as the source of all the good things that he loves. Adams discusses at length these and other ways of understanding the interrelation between the love of God and the love of creature, and he demonstrates that they are compatible with the particularity and noncomparative nature of love.49 So far we have seen reason to doubt that humans should distribute their love in the manner required for the Plato-inspired argument on behalf of the glorificationist action principle—human love ought to be more particular and non-comparative than that which is required for the success of that argument. Notice, though, that the Plato-inspired argument at issue, which draws from the metaphysical and distributional theses, is a more general argument about how love should ideally function. Because every creaturely thing of value reflects God, love of the creature (including God’s love of the creature) should 48 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 170.

49 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 177–98.

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Creation out of Love  97 primarily be about God and only secondarily about the creature. However, as we have discovered, this manner of loving seems to collide with the fact that love should be directly appreciative of those whom are loved and should be slow to draw comparisons. Thus, ideal love seems to function much differently than the Plato-inspired argument for the action principle requires, rendering it fairly dubious that such an argument is likely to succeed as support for the notion that God behaves according to the action principle. To bring this subsection to a close, there does not of yet seem to be ad­equate reason to assume that the action principle is true. But Edwards needs something like this principle for his argument to succeed. So, unless and until someone repairs Edwards’s argument, the argument does not provide sufficient grounds for supposing that glorificationism is true.

II.b  Self-Giving Love and Divine Perfection Before turning to the next argument for glorificationism, it is worth pausing to consider whether there might be extra-biblical reason to presume that glorificationism is false. I believe that there is some reason of this kind, provided that one thinks that a significant form of selfless benevolence is an excellence that a perfect God should possess. Recall the person proposed by Richard Kraut who is always guided by the principle, ‘I shall never do anything unless doing so is best for me.’ Suppose that this individual promises himself that the only kind of benevolent acts he is willing to perform are strong restricted benevolent acts, even when the actions concern his dearest friends and family. (Remember: strong restricted benevolent acts are those benevolent acts undergone primarily because they are in the interest of the one performing the benevolent actions at issue.) As we learned from Kraut, given mixed motive benevolence, such an individual could have other-directed benevolent motives for some, much, or even all that he does. He could be careful always to do what is best for himself, primarily for himself, while also allowing himself to have the ancillary mo­tiv­ ation to do what is good for others. Nevertheless, most of us have the intuition that this person is insufficiently benevolent. I submit that at least part of what rests behind this intuition is the sense that the perfectly benevolent person should be predisposed to perform benevolent acts for others simply because such acts are good for others. All other things being equal, in other words, the perfectly benevolent person should be predisposed to see the needs and ­preferences of others as sufficient reason to will them good. But this is not

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98  Love Divine how the man envisioned by Kraut behaves or is predisposed. Instead, every action that this man might perform must pass through the filter of unrelenting self-interest. Most of us find a man with such a character morally immature, if not downright despicable. If glorificationism is true, God has a motivational structure that is relevantly analogous to the man just described. Given pure glorificationism, every action that God performs concerning creation is primarily a self-interested action. The needs and interests of God’s creatures are never, by themselves, seen as sufficient reason to act on behalf of the creatures; nor does God ever act primarily for the sake of His creatures, even when there would be no cost to God. Things are sufficiently similar if impure glorificationism is true. When it matters most—that is, when it comes to the major plot points of God’s ‘film’—God is only charitable to others when it is in God’s interest to be charitable, for the primary reason that it is in God’s interest to behave in the relevant charitable manner. Because God is quite different from a human, we might hesitate to conclude that God is morally immature or despicable were He to act only out of complete self-interest. God, after all, is the centre of the cosmos. Still, on either conception of glorificationism, the doctrine of divine benevolence looks to be substantially weakened. A weakened doctrine of divine benevolence for humans might be deemed acceptable if we only allow ourselves to conceive of God’s relation to the world in terms of how God is obligated (or some rough equivalent) to treat creatures. The situation changes, however, when we ask ourselves if it is consistent with God’s perfect love to adopt the glorificationist motivational structure. Viewed through the lens of what a God of perfect love might be like, many will find themselves inclined to agree with Jonathan Kvanvig when he says, Part of being the highest good involves the self-giving nature of God to love that which he has created. Yet, to bestow benefits on an individual for the sake of one’s own glorification surely does not count as love. To truly love someone requires being motivated fundamentally by the welfare of the one loved. Hence, [. . .] the theological tradition [of glorificationism] is [. . .] plagued with the problem of making God out to be unduly egocentric.50

Since God is the most perfect being, He is not only the God of perfect power and self-regard. He is also the God of perfect love. Because of this, many

50 Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, 116.

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Creation out of Love  99 c­ ontemporary theologians have assumed that God gives to creatures for their own sake. For example, Thomas G. Weinandy claims that God’s benevolent love is ‘freely expressed entirely for the sake of those who he loves’,51 and Michael Dodds says that God’s benevolence must be ‘wholly gratuitous’, done ‘simply for the good of his creatures’.52 If it is too much to expect on natural theological grounds alone that the God of love would exercise strong free benevolent acts towards His beloved creatures (i.e. self-sacrificing acts), this would not exclude God from undertaking at least weak restricted benevolent actions (i.e. where God is equally motivated by His interests and those of His creatures), if not weak free benevolent endeavours (i.e. non-sacrificial acts done primarily for the sake of the other). None of these forms of benevolence, however, is permitted upon pure glorificationism, and when it matters most on impure glorificationism. Those who judge that a perfectly loving God would engage in the relevant kinds of benevolent acts thereby have reason to doubt glorificationism. So, it appears that we have a decent natural theological argument against glorificationism. It must be granted, however, that it is difficult to discern on a priori grounds alone how God’s creative motives relate to His self-interest. Perhaps greater insight can be found in Scripture. As Edwards says, ‘it would be relying too much on reason, to determine the affair of God’s last end in the creation of the world, without being herein principally guided by divine revelation.’53

II.c  The Glorificationist Argument from Scripture Several biblical texts speak of God acting for His name or His glory.54 For instance, within the book of Isaiah we read that God says there is a people group ‘whom I created for my glory’ (Isa. 43:7), and in Romans 11:36 we find Paul saying that ‘from him [i.e. God] and through him and to him are all things. To [God] be the glory forever!’ Though neither these nor any other 51  Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 160–1. 52 Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of the Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Criticism of This Doctrine (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1986), 300–1. 53 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 419. 54  Several of these passages are listed and marshalled in support of glorificationism in Jonathan Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End. A thorough contemporary discussion of these passages can be found in K.  Erik Thoennes, Godly Jealousy: A Theology of Intolerant Love (Dublin: Mentor Press, 2005).

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100  Love Divine biblical passage unambiguously teaches glorificationism, it might be thought that the overall trajectory of Scripture is glorificationist. I have my doubts. To begin with, we must acknowledge that common ­discourse regarding reasons for action can be quite limited, if not outright misleading. Suppose that Herbert says, ‘I am headed out to go to the store’, and that in uttering this Herbert reveals a purpose for collecting his keys and walking out to his car. From this utterance it would be mistaken to assume that there is not more to be said about why Herbert is motivated to go to the store. It could be that Herbert is going to the store to buy some wine for the purpose of entertaining guests, which is being done so that Herbert might schmooze one of his guests in the hopes of securing a promotion at work. And it might be that Herbert wants the promotion so that he can have the required income to expand his family comfortably. This artificial example illustrates that reasons for action are often considerably complex, and rarely, in common discourse, do we delineate all the reasons we have for performing any given action, nor do we explain how the reasons relate one to another. What we often do is provide a reason that is sufficiently explanatory given the context. When you ask Herbert why he is heading towards his car, the answer ‘I am going to the store’ is often enough. Unless you are a close friend, you would probably be confused if Herbert answered the question ‘why are you heading out?’ with ‘so that Jane and I can have more kids’. The elusive nature of ultimate reasons for acting is significant since glorificationism is a thesis that pertains to God’s ultimate reason for creating the world. So, unless there are clues that the biblical passages under consideration concern God’s ul­tim­ ate reason for creating, it is probably hasty to conclude from verses that speak of God glorifying Himself in various ways that this is evidence for glorificationism. For it could be that God performs some self-glorifying action not for its own sake, but as a means to something else. Or it could be that God performs a self-glorifying action for its own sake, but that this does not represent God’s primary manner of dealing with creation. Return to Isaiah 43:7, where God says there is a people group ‘whom I created for my glory’. We could very well understand this to mean that God has claimed a people for Himself (in this case Israel), so that God might be glorified among them for their good (Isa. 43:1–4), and ultimately for the good of the entire world (e.g. Isa. 42:1–7; Luke 1:18–20; John 12:32). Read in this way (and I think it is a responsible reading), God’s self-glorification is subordinate to the goal of promoting the good of others. Similarly, Romans 11:36 can be read responsibly in a non-glorificationist manner. On the heels of the question, ‘Who has given to God, that God should repay him?’ (11:35), it is said that ‘from him and through him and to

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Creation out of Love  101 him are all things’; in other words, God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and all things find their fulfilment or purpose in their right relation to God. Thus, in answer to the question posed, the idea would be that there is nothing that anyone can do to repay God; it is the creature who is dependent upon God from beginning to end. Because of this, Paul breaks out in praise, ‘To him be the glory for ever! Amen!’ Yet it is still a fair question to ask, ‘Why did God set up a system where He is the source, sustainer, and goal of all things? Did God do this to glorify Himself, or was it more fundamentally an act of gracious love?’ The legitimacy of this question reveals that this passage does not settle the question in favour of glorificationism. Of course, merely pointing out that it would be challenging to read glorificationism off the biblical texts does not show that glorificationism is not the best read of Scripture overall. That would take a detailed discussion of the relevant biblical passages, which is something we cannot undertake at the moment. Nevertheless, there is at least one good theological reason to be sceptical that glorificationism represents the panoply of Scripture, namely, the cruciform love of Christ.

II.d  Glorificationism and God’s Cruciform Love Jesus is the culmination of God’s self-disclosure, and because of this, many theologians agree that an important hermeneutical principle is that the ­person and ministry of Jesus should inform how we read Scripture.55 This hermeneutical principle renders glorificationism implausible, however, as we see in Christ a God who is willing to take on human flesh and die a shameful criminal death, for the purpose of making us sons and daughters. While it is possible to read the self-giving crucifixion in terms of glorificationism, I propose that this runs contrary to the grain. We are routinely told that Christ gave himself for us (e.g. Rom. 5:1–8; 2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:4–8; 1 John 4:7–11), and it is unlikely that this is merely a strong restricted benevolent action, as advocates of pure and impure glorification are obliged to maintain. Consider this often-quoted passage from Philippians: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but

55  For profound, even if overstated, reflections on the way in which Christ reveals God and informs the Christian hermeneutic, see Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 1–72.

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102  Love Divine to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was  in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  (2:3–8)

According to readings of this passage that assume a high Christology, though the Word shares the majesty and splendour of the Father (cf. John 17:5; Heb. 1:3), the Word puts His privileged status aside to serve, even die for, hu­man­ity.56 Paul furthermore appeals to the humble and self-sacrificial God-man as a means of grounding and encouraging humble, self-giving love among Christians. It would seem that this passage assumes that God, in the Incarnation and Atonement, performs strong free benevolent acts—those that are performed primarily for another and done despite the awareness that they will include some kind of sacrifice of one’s own interests. This is because Paul encourages Christian unity by urging those within the Philippian church to look not to their ‘own interests but to the interests of others’ (2:4), by having ‘the same mind [. . .] that was in Christ Jesus’ (2:5). And Christ, as God the Son, ‘emptied himself ’ to take on a human nature (v. 6), and ‘humbled himself ’ further by dying a shameful death for sinners (v. 8).57 As Richard Bauckham explains, Paul here teaches that the ‘identity of God—who God is—is revealed as much in self-abasement and service as it is in exaltation and rule. [. . .] God is God not in seeking his own advantage but in self-giving.’58 It thus seems unavoidable that this radical kind of sacrificial benevolence is best seen as strong free benevolence. If this is right, then neither pure nor impure glorificationism can be true. 56  As intimated in Chapter 1, I do not follow recent interpreters who deny that Phil. 2:3–8 assumes that the pre-existed and eternal Word is the one who empties himself. For a good overview of why this recent interpretation is implausible, see Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 227–8. 57  While some see ‘emptied himself ’ and ‘humbled himself ’ as mere repetition, O’Brien explains that the former refers to the Incarnation whereas the latter refers to the specific manner in which Christ humbled Himself as a man—a humbling unto death. See O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians, 227–8. 58  Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 61. Cf. John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 2004), 284–90; and C.F.D. Moule, ‘Further Reflections on Phil. 2: 5–11’, in Apostolic History and the Gospels: Biblical and Theological Essays Presented to FF Bruce, ed. W.  Ward Gasque and Ralph P. Martin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 273. For a more extended argument for this conclusion, see Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 9–39.

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Creation out of Love  103 The glorificationist might complain that I have only cited the humiliation portion of the passage, neglecting the exaltation that follows. There we find God exalting Christ’s name ‘above every name’ (2:9), ‘to the glory of God the Father’ (2:11). Might the glorificationist claim that the exaltation portion of this passage actually proves her point? God sacrifices in Christ ultimately and primarily because it is in God’s best long-term interests to do so? The accuracy of such a reading is unlikely. Paul is appealing to God’s Incarnation and Atonement as a way of encouraging self-sacrificial love among the Philippian Christians (‘let the same mind be in you that was  in Christ Jesus’). In so doing, Paul draws a link between God the Son’s mo­tiv­ ation­al structure and that which these Christians should exhibit. Against this backdrop, it would be incredible to suppose that Paul’s encouragement of the Philippians to ‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves’ is meant to teach something like the following: do not look to your immediate interests, but instead look to maximize your self-interest over the long haul by giving so that the Father might exalt you above others. That would be to encourage self-giving love merely or mostly as a form of enlightened self-interest. But a teaching of this kind is ethically suspect. To be of any use to the glorificationist, the enlightened ­self-interest at issue must be such that Christians humble themselves and give to others primarily for their own sakes. However, as previously discussed, such motives appear too self-centred. In addition, Paul elsewhere reminds Christians that they are called to love others as themselves, not for themselves (Gal. 5:14),59 and it is doubtful that Christians can fulfil this command by adopting the motivational structure required to ensure a glorificationist interpretation of Philippians 2:3–11. For such reasons, C.F.D.  Moule concludes about this latter passage that ‘No encouragement is offered, in Paul’s writings or anywhere else in the New Testament, to the pagan notion that Christ was temporarily forgoing honour and glory merely with a view to winning them back again. Whatever he did was in his divine love for men, not for gain. The glory that accrued was a revelation of the reality that was there already.’60 Hence, the exaltation portion of Philippians 2:3–11 functions much differently than would be required by glorificationism. It could be that Paul is providing a prudential supplement: those who cultivate the self-giving love of Christ will ultimately be exalted by the Father. If so, Paul is not appealing to

59  Helpful here is Victor Paul Furnish, The Love Command in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1973), 50; and Wolterstorff, Justice, 208–12. 60  Moule, ‘Further Reflections on Phil. 2’, 274.

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104  Love Divine self-interest as the driving or dominant motive—clearly, a person can remind another of the prudence of morality without suggesting that self-gain is the primary reason one should be moral. Instead, on this interpretation, Paul is explaining that those who become Christ-like self-sacrificers will be exalted in the end. At most we have weak restricted benevolence. This will not do the glorificationist any favours, however, for the reasons already discussed. But even the weak restricted benevolence reading is unlikely, since treating the interests of oneself and the other as equal hardly seems compatible with Paul’s claim that Christians should ‘in humility regard others as better than’ themselves, an attitude that is found in Christ, ‘who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross’.61 An alternative reading of the exultation passage is offered by Moule. On Moule’s understanding, the Father ‘has “exalted” Christ “after” his “hu­mili­ ation” precisely because, essentially, that humiliation was itself exaltation’ (Moule’s emphasis). Both the humiliation and exaltation are ‘identical’ in that ‘self-emptying was evidence of how Christ understood that equality with God which he possessed inalienably—indeed, that the self-emptying was an exhibition of that equality’.62 The implication is that ‘deity means not, as is popularly supposed, getting, but, paradoxically, giving is, indeed, the heart of the revelation in Christ Jesus’.63 Clearly, Moule’s interpretation will be of no help to the glorificationist. Before moving on, it bears repeating that Philippians 2:3–8 is not the only biblical passage that provides evidence against glorificationism. Consider this list of passages which seem to support the idea that Christ’s crucifixion was a free benevolent action. (a) As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. [. . .] This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  (John 15:9, 12–13) (b) For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But 61  Given the way in which Paul links ideal Christian motives with the motives of God-in-Christ, it seems that the most consistent glorificationist position would be to say that both humans and God should ideally function according to the strictures of restricted benevolence, often strong restricted benevolence. Yet I suspect that most theologians would not think that this is how Christians should ideally behave. 62  Moule, ‘Further Reflections on Phil. 2’, 274–5. 63  Moule, ‘Further Reflections on Phil. 2’, 276.

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Creation out of Love  105 God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  (Rom. 5:6–8) (c) For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.  (2 Cor. 8:9) (d) Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  (Eph. 5:1–2) (e) We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  (1 John 3:16) (f) Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4:7–11) Of course, there are a myriad of significant exegetical questions here. Note, however, that many of these passages, specifically those found in (a) and (d)–(f), indicate that Christians should imitate the self-giving love of God in Christ. Assuming that this includes the relevant imitation of God’s loving motives, it is then reasonable to believe that a consistent glorificationist hermeneutic would entail that Christians should only subordinate concern for others to their own self-interest, even in apparent cases of self-sacrifice. I doubt, however, that this is an implication that many would embrace. Whatever the case, suffice it to say that insofar as the passages within (a)–(f) provide evidence for the claim that God performs free benevolent acts, or even weak restricted benevolent acts, within the major plot points of the theodrama, these passages provide evidence against pure and impure glorificationism. Previously I suggested that one cannot read glorificationism off the surface of Scripture on account of the complexity of language regarding reasons for actions. Rarely are ultimate reasons for actions reported or described, I said. Instead, a common procedure is to provide proximate reasons that are sufficiently explanatory, given the context. Have I overlooked my own claims on this matter in my contention that God’s Incarnation and Atonement are incompatible with glorificationism? I have not. The kind of biblical case for glorificationism to which I object moves from various biblical descriptions of God doing this or that for His

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106  Love Divine own glory to the conclusion that glorificationism is true. But I am not doing anything relevantly analogous with my reading of Philippians 2:3–8, and the other passages listed. My claim is not that amorism is true simply because these passages depict God as one who performs free or weak restricted ben­ evo­lent acts. Rather, my claim is that inasmuch as Philippians 2:3–8 and (a)–(f) provide us with cause to think that God performs free or even weak restricted benevolent acts within the major ‘scenes’ of His ‘film’, we have cause to think that glorificationism is false. For glorificationism, it has been shown, does not permit God to perform such benevolent acts. Thus my contention is not that Philippians 2:3–8 and (a)–(f) demonstrate, by themselves, that God created the world out of love. The contention is that Scripture depicts God as performing benevolent acts of the kind that are incompatible with glorificationism. Building upon the prior illustration involving Herbert supports the present point. Assume that Herbert is keenly self-aware and honest, and thus that his reports about his own motivations are to be trusted. Given this, suppose that when Herbert returns from the store, he hands you an expensive bottle of wine as a gift. You respond by say, ‘Oh, thank you! But you really shouldn’t have. I know your budget is extremely tight right now.’ Herbert’s response is to say, ‘Yes, the purchase will set Jane and I back a bit, but we want to do this for you. We know that you’re going through a tough time, and we want to communicate that we are willing to give whatever we can to help you.’ Unless one has an independent commitment to some form of psychological egoism,64 it is clear that Herbert, and perhaps Jane as well, is performing a free ben­evo­ lent act, probably a strong free benevolent act. What the example shows is that these kinds of benevolent motives can be located within normal modes of communication, the complications of discerning reasons for actions notwithstanding. My claim is that we can recognize in Philippians 2:3–8 (et al.) divine benevolent motives that are relevantly similar, which are also incompatible with glorificationism. The upshot, then, is this. Glorificationists often contend that their position is taught or suggested by Scripture. This is implausible, however. Glorificationism, whether pure or impure, implies that the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ were undergone primarily for God’s sake; the benefit granted to humans is only secondary. Yet there is ample evidence that the climax of God’s ‘film’ or theodrama, the Incarnation and Atonement, contains divine acts done ­primarily for humans, or at least done equally for humans and God. If this is 64  I understand psychological egoism to be the descriptive thesis that every action the relevant agent performs is primarily self-interested.

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Creation out of Love  107 in fact the case—if in fact God’s acts of Incarnation and Atonement are free benevolent acts, or even weak restricted benevolent acts—then glorificationism, far from being supported by Scripture, is at odds with it.

III.  Creatio ex Amore III.a  The View According to creatio ex amore, God creates and guides the world out of love for it. The central claim of the present chapter is that this creative love applies to humans, in particular. In support of this latter claim, it might help to couch the creation of humans within a more general amorist theory, which explains how both persons and non-persons can be the product of divine love. According to the person-directed value account of love unpacked within Chapter 2, God loves someone when God responds to that person’s intrinsic worth by valuing her existence and flourishing, and by valuing union with her. To grasp the interrelation between the value account of love and amorism, we will need to distinguish between generic love and person-directed love. The latter is something like the species of the former, which is the genus. There are two relevant differences between generic and person-directed love as they pertain to the value account. The first concerns the nature of valuing union. In the person-directed value account presented in Chapter 2, ‘union’ was expounded in a manner that only can take place between two or more persons. That analysis, consequently, will not help us understand how God might be united to that which is sub-personal. At present, I can only gesture in the direction of a broader conception of union that might transpire between personal and non-personal beings. This new kind of union can be understood, in keeping with the generic value account, as the genus of valuing union, whereas valuing union within person-directed love is a species of it. For lack of a better term, call this new kind of union ‘engagement-union’. Engagement-union is a kind of causal contact with and cognitive access to something in a direct sort of way.65 The access or contact with the relevant thing is ‘direct’ if, roughly, it is not mediated through an intermediate step of another’s agency or that which occludes the relevant form of access. Both 65  Here I borrow and modify Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann’s account of divine presence as presented in ‘Eternity, Awareness, and Action’, Faith and Philosophy 9, no. 4 (1992): 463–82.

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108  Love Divine ‘causal contact’ and ‘cognitive access’ are to be understood fairly widely, ­ran­ging over emotional reactions to something, attentiveness to something, acquaintance knowledge of something, and more besides. The best I can do to elucidate this admittedly elusive conception of engagement-union is to present illustrations. Someone desires engagement-union with a painting when she wants to see it, study it, and delight in it. Or, someone desires the relevant kind of union with a musical score when she wants to hear it played well for the sake of enjoying its beauty. Or one desires this kind of union with a particular mountain range when she wants to see it, climb it, and just experience it for the wonderful thing that it is. Central to engagement-union, then, is the idea that one wants to interact with a given thing according to the kind of thing it is, for the purpose of delighting in it or appreciating it for what it is. Even though the notion is vague, I assume that engagement-union is something that is common to our experience of love. It is not entirely apparent, I grant, exactly how God might involve Himself in engagement-union with sub-personal things. But there is an ancient way of understanding God’s omnipresence that is of some help. God is present to a thing, on the relevant understanding, if God has direct knowledge of that thing and directly sustains that thing causally.66 God thereby has a kind of intimate knowledge of what any given thing is, and God is in some sense causally responsible for giving any specific thing ‘the shape’ that it has. Add to this the notion that God appreciates or enjoys much or all to which He is present, and we come close to supposing that God has engagement-union with much or all of creation. ‘God saw that it was good’ (Gen. 1:10, cf. vv. 4, 10, 18, 21, 31, Ps. 104:27–31). With something like this account of union in place, we can understand the generic value account of divine love as follows: for God to love some non-personal thing is for God to respond to the intrinsic value of that thing by valuing its existence and flourishing, and by valuing engagement-union with it. The second difference between generic and person-directed value accounts of love concerns valuing the beloved’s good or flourishing. The generic value account of love will require us to extend the term ‘flourishing’ or ‘the beloved’s good’ beyond its normal usage. Plausibly, we can love a painting by responding to its beauty and valuing its existence. It seems odd, however, to suppose that we value the painting’s flourishing or the painting’s good. Nevertheless, we are saddened when a painting we love is damaged or loses its colour. What this suggests is that we want the painting ‘to flourish’, or we want ‘its good’, in 66  See, e.g., Peter Lombard, Sentences, 1.37.1; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.8.3.

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Creation out of Love  109 the sense that we want it to be in its best form; we want its colours to retain their richness and the integrity of the painting to be preserved. Similarly, we want a beautiful mountain range ‘to flourish’ in the sense of it being in its best form if we want it to retain its character and natural beauty. We also might be said to want a musical score to be in its best form if we want it to be played, and played well. What it means to value something being in its best form will vary with the subject, depending upon the kind of thing it is. But if we are willing to allow for such flexibility in how we conceive of love’s valuing of the beloved’s good/flourishing, then we can understand the generic value account as the view that one loves when one responds to the worth of something by valuing its existence, valuing that it be in its best form, and valuing engagementunion with it. Accordingly, God loves some non-personal thing if He takes up these attitudes towards it. Much more can and perhaps should be said about the nature of the generic value account of love. My hope, however, is that enough has been said about this account to understand a viable version of amorism, to which we now turn. The proponent of amorism says that God created the world out of love. What does the locution ‘out of love’ mean here? The phrase can be taken to mean that God loves something and thereby acts to create it. The trouble with such a view, as Jonathan Edwards explains, is that ‘love in the most strict and proper sense presupposes the existence of the object beloved’.67 Based upon this existential requirement, Edwards argues that God cannot create creatures out of love for them.68 Perhaps it is better, then, to understand ‘creation out of love’ along the lines of ‘creation for the sake of love’. This latter conception, when paired with the value account, can be put like this: God creates someone/something so that this person/thing exists, might flourish, and might be united to God. On this way of thinking, God does not first love X and thereby create X from that love. Rather, God creates X so that He may love X, and when X is a person, so 67 Edwards, A Dissertation Concerning the End, 439. 68  The defender of amorism might respond to Edwards’s argument by pointing out that it is not entirely clear that God cannot love that which does not exist. Some philosophers, for example, argue that we have certain obligations to future generations (for a discussion, see Richard  I.  Sikora and Brian  M.  Barry, eds, Obligations to Future Generations (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1978)), while others hold that we can wrong the deceased (most famously, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.10). But if these positions can be rendered plausible on the assumption that either the deceased or future generations do not exist, then perhaps sense can also be made of God loving that which does not yet exist. This may not be implausible given that hope-to-be parents often behave in ways that appear to be loving towards their currently non-existent children. Before a couple conceives, for instance, they might read parenting books, work on their moral characters for the sake of their future children, and so on. Though this line may be tenable, it is not the response to Edwards that I wish to adopt.

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110  Love Divine that X might love God. This is an anticipatory love that does not flout Edwards’s existential requirement. As the proponent of amorism conceives of things, God does not create ­primarily for the purpose of enjoying the exercise of His creative agency, or even for the primary purpose of enjoying His love of humans. That would be an Edwardsian kind of glorificationism. Instead, the idea is that God freely exercises His creative agency primarily for the purpose of bringing about that which He deems worthy of loving. Amorism can be distinguished from (a certain kind of) glorificationism in that former, unlike the latter, means that God primarily creates to love creatures, not principally to delight in Himself loving creatures. When it comes to the creation of humans in particular, God graciously makes them so that they might enjoy the good of existing, flourishing, and being united to Him (in a richly personal way). We can envision the amorist method of creation as follows. Prior to the decision to create, God holds before the divine mind the beauty of creation. God sees the would-be value of the parts and the whole, the interrelation between them, as well as the immense value, the dignity, of rational creatures. God then creates out of a desire for the parts, wholes, and integrity of creation to exist and ultimately be in their best form, and because God wants engagementunion with them. This is done primarily because God sees the value of creation as something that is worth bringing about. God, furthermore, has a special creative purpose for humans. He creates them not only so that they might exist and flourish but also for a unique kind of person-to-person union with them.69 As a God fully involved in the enjoyment of the beauty of intratrinitarian love, where the divine persons eternally and joyfully give to and receive from one another, God graciously extends this life of love, as an act of love, to those rational creatures who are willing to receive it. God’s creation of humans out of love can be understood in two different ways. Someone might suppose that God creates humanity, the collection of all humans, out of love, but not that God creates each human for the purpose of loving him. Alternatively, one might maintain that God creates each and every human out of love, and that God’s love of humanity (i.e. the collection of all humans) is of secondary, or at least distinct, importance. I favour the second of these views. If God’s love is an appreciative response to human ­dignity, as I have proposed, God views each human as immensely valuable and irreplaceable (see Chapter 2). But if God views humans in this way, it is 69  Here I do not mean to suggest that God is (merely) ‘a person’. Rather, the proposition is that God, as a personal being, invites humans into a kind of personal union with Himself.

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Creation out of Love  111 doubtful that God would create humanity out of love at the exclusion of love for individual humans, or that God’s creative love of individuals merely would be derivative from His love of the whole.70 In addition, there is biblical reason to believe that God desires the salvation of each individual, which, given the backdrop of amorism, constitutes indirect support for the notion that God created each human for the purpose of loving her (e.g. Ezek. 33:11; cf. 18:23; Matt. 11:28, 18:14; Luke 15:3–7; 1 Tim. 2:3–6, 4:10; Titus 2:11; 2 Pet. 3:9).71 Amorism more generally, like glorificationism, comes in two forms. One form is ‘pure amorism’: every divine act ad extra is either a direct or indirect act of love done primarily for some creature. Another form is ‘impure amorism’, according to which God sometimes acts ad extra for reasons that do not primarily concern love for some creature, even though the overall trajectory of God’s creative and providential purposes is primarily for the sake of ­creature-directed love. My own preference is for the latter view. While I am inclined to suppose that everything that God does God does for reasons having to do with love, I have my doubts every divine action ad extra is done out of love for a creature. Rather I am inclined to think that God occasionally acts primarily or exclusively for His own sake, out of the abundance of His own legitimate self-love. Whatever the case, advocates of pure or impure amorism are united in affirming that God primarily creates the world for the purpose of loving it.

III.b  On the Affirmation of Amorism To apprehend the plausibility of amorism, return to glorificationism. Glorificationism begins with divine self-regard, which I understand to be a kind of self-love. God loves His maximally perfect nature and so creates to delight in new expressions of that nature. Initially, this view perhaps seems compelling. Love is a creative or productive force. The one who loves wants that which is loved, or potentially loved, to exist and flourish, and one wants to be united to that which is loved. So parents procreate out of a desire to give themselves to another, and, analogously, painters paint out of a love for the 70  The assumption here is that God in fact loves individual humans even if He loves the collective ‘humanity’ as well. 71  For an exegetical treatment of some of these passages that supports the idea that God desires the salvation of each human, see I.  Howard Marshall, ‘Universal Grace and Atonement in the Pastoral Epistles’, in The Grace of God, the Will of Man, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1989), 51–69. Several essays in the following volume are also relevant: Clark H. Pinnock, ed., Grace Unlimited (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999).

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112  Love Divine beauty that might be. Yet, upon further reflection, it is not entirely clear that God’s self-love is the kind of attitude that would move a fully self-sufficient being to create. On this point, Michael McClymond is insightful. He notes that ‘The reason for an external impulse in God [to create] is not obvious [on glorificationism], since a supremely self-regarding God might also be supremely self-preoccupied.’ Such a God brings to mind ‘Aristotle’s notion of God as “thought thinking itself ” ’; it does not suggest a God who looks outside Himself and graciously gives to another in love, even to the point of death on a cross.72 Once we shift the focus of love in God’s creative act, however, everything falls into place. If we envision God as creating out of love for the creature, God becomes like the painter who paints out of a kind of love for the beauty that might be. Or, given amorism, it may be said that God is relevantly similar to human parents who bring a child into the world so that they might give themselves to her in love, and who adopt a posture of being willing to sacrifice for the welfare of their child. Since the Triune God is one that gives to the other within Himself, it is fitting to think that God would, with joy, give to others in creative love. As Ian McFarland notes, ‘God is love’ and ‘the inherent productivity of this love makes it natural that it should expand beyond the bounds of God’s own being. The creation of the world is just such an expansion, through which God proves to be love not simply in and for God’s self, but also to and for that which is not God.’73 Moreover, lest the obvious be overlooked, amorism naturally accounts for Christ’s self-giving cross. If it is true, as Thomas  F.  Torrance says, that the cross is ‘a window into the innermost heart of God and the nature of his Love’,74 then we must conclude that God is not unsurpassably and eternally self-occupied, but surprisingly free and giving with His love. Though amorism does not, so to speak, predict the cross, it does provide a context in which the cross finds a natural home.

IV. Conclusion We have considered two prominent Christian views as to why God creates and guides the world. Glorificationism describes God as primarily self-focused. 72  McClymond, ‘Sinners in the Hands of a Virtuous God’, 12. 73 Ian A. McFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 57. 74  Thomas F. Torrance, James B. Torrance, and David W. Torrance, eds, A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 14.

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Creation out of Love  113 Amorism has a place for superlative divine self-regard, but predicates a robust, gracious and self-giving love to God. In this chapter I have tried to show that amorism has certain advantages over glorificationism. Whereas glorificationism appears to compromise the perfection of God’s free benevolent love for ­creation, even in Christ’s cross, amorism has no such problems. Quite the contrary, amorism explains why the God of perfect love might create and freely give to His creatures, and it naturally accounts for the redemptive story of Christianity. For these reasons, I believe it is best to affirm that God created the world out of love.

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4 God’s Affective Love In Chapter  2, I presented the value account of God’s love, a model that is intended as a simplified representation of the salient features of divine love. This model, I suggested, has a degree of flexibility built into it. There is room for debate about how precisely and comprehensively the value account represents God’s love, and there is space for variant understandings of the component parts of the model, so long as there is agreement on a common core of most or all of these parts. All the same, a fairly contentious issue surrounds what the value account possibly implies about the divine nature, in particular, what this account possibly implies about the kind and scope of divine emotions. For, building upon the conviction that human and divine love are considerably similar (see Chapter 1), I have suggested that those who love have a kind of experiential perception of the beloved individual’s worth, to which they respond with a threefold form of valuing. Drawing from Bennett Helm, I have furthermore proposed that valuing the one loved in this threefold manner creates a kind of backdrop by which a spectrum of interlocking emotions are generated, and I have indicated at least one way in which God’s valuing love may produce intra-trinitarian emotions. Obviously, this conception of love raises the issue as to how to understand divine emotions in relation to God’s love, specifically, given the focus of this book, when that love is directed towards humans. Scripture depicts God’s love as a passionate love, complete with joy in  human successes and suffering in compassion over human failures. Proponents of divine passibility regard this biblical depiction as communicating something literally true about the spectrum of emotions contained within God’s inner-life. Conversely, advocates of divine impassibility maintain that, while God loves profoundly, theologians should not assume that biblical portrayals of God’s passionate love for humans indicate that God genuinely suffers in compassion. Much of the difference between these two theological perspectives centres upon the following question: Must the God perfect in love suffer with those who suffer, or does the highest form of love transcend

Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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God ’ s Affective Love  115 all disturbances?1 Answers to this question draw from biblical sources, the Christian tradition, competing conceptions of the divine nature, recent psychological literature, and more besides.2 But what is often at work in the background of the assessment of this question are certain assumptions and intuitions about the value of suffering in compassion.3 Proponents of divine impassibility typically maintain that because suffering is not intrinsically valu­able, compassionate suffering need not be predicated to God. Advocates 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, I offer a defence of this passibilist value claim. The goal of this defence is twofold. The primary goal is to defend a divine passibilist conception of the interrelation between divine love and emotion. This I do by highlighting competing perspectives on the value of sufferingcompassion that have been mostly left implicit within the contemporary theological literature, and by providing reason for supposing that sufferingcompassion is worth ascribing to God. The secondary goal is to fill-out the value account of divine love in greater detail. While one can affirm the bare form of the value account without maintaining that God is passible, a purpose of this chapter is to underscore one value-based reason for expanding the value account to include a comprehensive set of divine emotions. This chapter thus builds upon the similarity thesis of Chapter 1, aiming to indicate a further respect in which divine and human love are similar. 1  To cite just a few examples: Richard  E.  Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1–3; Anselm  K.  Min, ‘Why Only an Immutable God Can Love, Relate, and Suffer’, in Christian Philosophy of Religion: Essays in Honor of Stephen  T.  Davis, ed. C.P.  Ruloff (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 202–9; Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), ch. 2; Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1992), 80–90; Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 323–33; Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), chs. 6–7; Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Suffering Love’, in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas  V.  Morris (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 196–237. 2  Excellent surveys of the history of divine passibility and the arguments that support it can be found in Richard Bauckham, ‘ “Only the Suffering God Can Help”: Divine Passibility in Modern Theology’, Themelios 9, no. 3 (1984): 6–12; Ronald Goetz, ‘The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy’, Christian Century 103, no. 16 (1986): 385–9; Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality; Anastasia Philippa Scrutton, Thinking through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility (London: Continuum, 2011). 3  Nicholas Wolterstorff does an excellent job of highlighting this fact in ‘Could God Not Sorrow If We Do?’, in The Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology, Vol. 5 (Pittsburgh, PA: The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, 2002), 139–63.

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116  Love Divine

I.  Some Initial Clarifications To maintain that God is passible, in my usage, is to maintain that God undergoes certain feelings or emotions in response to creation, including those that involve experiences of suffering. The suffering in question can take on various manifestations, but more often than not, what is in view by proponents of divine passibility is a kind suffering-compassion for the evil that befalls God’s rational creatures. In this chapter, I focus on the claim that God suffers in compassion to the exclusion of other kinds of emotions related to suffering. However, and for reasons that shall be briefly touched upon, I assume that those who share my judgement concerning the legitimacy of predicating ­suffering-compassion to God will agree that God undergoes an expansive variety of emotions. Rejection of divine passibilism comes in two basic forms of divine im­passi­ bil­ity.4 According to the first more general form, God’s perfectly happy life is immutable and not affected by anything outside of Himself. Consequently, the divine life is in no way altered by creation, and God cannot undergo any suffering that would hamper His perfectly happy life.5 Nevertheless, as shall become clear, some leading advocates of the general form of divine im­passi­ bil­ity maintain that God does take something analogous to joy and delight in creation, but that these psychological states do not include any change in God and are not the result of external cause. The second more specific form of divine impassibility is that God is perfectly happy and that He cannot undergo any ‘negative’ emotions or feelings, such as anger or suffering.6 This specific form of divine impassibility is in principle compatible with changes in God’s emotional life and creation causing God to experience rich pleasures. What this specific form excludes are feelings of suffering, or any other negative affections that are judged to be beneath divine perfection.7 While I agree that 4  Impassibility can refer to categories beyond God’s emotional life (e.g. God’s will or knowledge). For a survey of various understandings of divine impassibility, see Creel, Divine Impassibility, 3–12. In this chapter, however, I will reserve the terms ‘passibility’ and ‘impassibility’ for that which deals with God’s feelings or emotions. 5  For a discussion, see Creel, Divine Impassibility, 11; Van A. Harvey, A Handbook of Theological Terms (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 129; Brian Leftow, ‘Eternity and Immutability’, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, ed. William  E.  Mann (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005), 48–79 (especially 61). 6 For a discussion, see the following: Creel, Divine Impassibility, 11; Leftow, ‘Eternity and Immutability’, 61; Warren McWilliams, The Passion of God: Divine Suffering in Contemporary Protestant Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 3–6; John Kenneth Mozley, The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 1. 7  See, e.g., Richard A. Muller, The Divine Essences and Attributes, 2nd edn, Vol. 3, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 33, cf. 310.

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God ’ s Affective Love  117 God’s affective life is perfect in a significant sense, the argument of this chapter opposes both forms of divine impassibility, and, when relevant, I specify which version of the teaching is being addressed. In what follows, I argue that God’s suffering-compassion is intrinsically valuable. To say that an instance of divine suffering-compassion is ‘in­trin­sic­ al­ly valuable’ is to say that it is good in itself, not good merely in virtue of some relation it bears to the goodness of something else. On this understanding, value is intrinsic to the degree to which it depends or supervenes exclusively on the value bearer’s intrinsic attributes. In keeping with this conception of intrinsic value, I use the term ‘extrinsic value’ to refer to that which is good only because of the relation the good at issue stands in to something else’s goodness; it is a value which does not supervene exclusively upon the intrinsic attributes of the value bearer. The argument to come for the conclusion that divine suffering-compassion is intrinsically valuable relies upon appeals to certain rational intuitions about value—appeals which are used to support a kind of passibilist hermeneutic of Scripture. This intuition-based procedure is considerably different than that of many theologians who argue for divine impassibility (of either the general or specific variety) by resting on the authority of the Christian tradition,8 or who make their case by drawing on broader metaphysical concerns about the divine nature—for example, that God is pure act,9 immutable,10 eternal,11 simple,12 or incorporeal.13 I am well aware that, by comparison, my way of proceeding may initially appear a bit anaemic. Because of this, I offer the following considerations on behalf of the mode of argumentation within this chapter. 8  e.g. Paul  L.  Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Daniel Castelo, The Apathetic God: Exploring the Contemporary Relevance of Divine Impassibility (Eugene, OR: Paternoster, 2009), ch. 3. 9  e.g. Thomas  G.  Weinandy, ‘God and Human Suffering: His Act of Creation and His Acts in History’, in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 99–104, (especially 104). 10 For a discussion, see Paul Helm, ‘The Impossibility of Divine Passibility’, in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1990), 119–40; William J. Hill, ‘Does Divine Love Entail Suffering in God?’, in God and Temporality, ed. Bowman L. Clarke and Eugene T. Long (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1984), 64–65, 67. 11  For a discussion, see Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality, 57–9. 12  e.g. Paul Helm, ‘Divine Impassibility: Why is it Suffering?’, Reformation 21, reposted at http:// spirited-tech.com/COG/2017/05/18/divine-impassibility-by-paul-helm/, 18 May 2017 (last accessed 11 June 2019). 13 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 1.83.3. For a response to the argument that says that an incorporeal God cannot be passible, see Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, chs. 1–2, and 316–18; Scrutton, Thinking through Feeling, ch. 8.

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118  Love Divine First, both passibilists and impassibilists agree that the weight of the Christian tradition supports at least the specific form of divine impassibility.14 The traditionally-minded theologian must therefore make a judgement call. Is the (general or specific) doctrine of divine impassibility central to the faith, or does it rest sufficiently on the periphery to allow for revision? My own view is that neither the general nor the specific account of divine impassibility is required for a historically rooted Christian faith, and, furthermore, that either form of impassibility can be rejected so long as one is able to maintain that God is maximally perfect (unlike what is the case according to process theism, for example). Perhaps the most significant objection to such a view comes from various statements in the ecumenical councils which seem to preclude the teaching that God is passible. Most strikingly, at the Council of Chalcedon (ad 451) a condemnation is issued against those who say that the ‘divine nature of the Only-begotten is passible’,15 suggesting that it is out of bounds to ascribe suffering to God.16 In my perspective, if this council genuinely precludes divine passibility/suffering, this should make us deeply suspicious of the claim that God is passible. While I cannot examine this issue in detail here, there is cause to believe that it would be overly literalistic to maintain that the Council of Chalcedon condemns divine passibility. The relevant condemnation comes after the views of Eutyches are rejected, whose teachings are declared to introduce a ‘confusion and mixture’ into the doctrine of the Incarnation, according to which it is wrongly believed that ‘there is a single nature of the flesh and the divinity’.17 Importantly, it is this confusion and mixture of the divine and human which leads adherents of Eutychianism to the condemned teaching on divine passibility. It is also significant that suffering, in the council’s Definition of Faith, appears to be specifically tied to Christ’s passion, suggesting that the suffering in view is bodily.18 Read in this wider context, the condemnation is  not directed against those who affirm divine passibility apart from any 14  What, exactly, the early Church affirmed regarding divine impassibility is difficult to say. See, in particular, Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God. If Gavrilyuk is correct, some Church Fathers believed that certain kinds of ‘negative’ affections, such as anger, could be predicated to God (especially 58–60). 15  From Norman  P.  Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I–Lateran V, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 84, cf. 86. 16  Timothy Pawl draws this conclusion in, In Defense of Conciliar Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 16–18. 17 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:84. 18  See, e.g., Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:78–9, 80–1.

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God ’ s Affective Love  119 admixture of humanity and divinity, as that was not something that was up for debate. Rather, the condemnation is directed against those whose affirmation of divine passibility is predicated upon a compromise of the integrity of the divine and human natures in Christ. In particular, the condemnation excludes those conceptions of the Incarnation which fundamentally require (given the shape of Jesus’ life plus an insufficiently rich account of Christ’s human nature) the Word (qua God) to be the principle bearer of psychological states that are part and parcel to humans and not by nature that which belong to God (e.g. temptation to sin and bodily pain). But nothing for which I contend in this chapter entails such an understanding of the Incarnation. In any case, I proceed on the (contestable) assumption that divine passiblity is not excluded by the ecumenical councils. Moreover, if Paul Gavrilyuk is to be believed, it may turn out that the passibilist conception of God presented in this chapter is not radically far from patristic teaching on divine impassibility. This is because, according to Gavrilyuk, divine impassibility was not so much a positive doctrine about the character of the divine life in the minds of many Church Fathers as it was a way of stating that no emotional imperfections can be attributed to God (e.g. petty jealously or fits of rage).19 If Gavrilyuk is correct about this, then the conclusion of this chapter is compatible with the spirit of patristic teaching about divine impassibility, even if it is incompatible with what most of the Church’s earliest theologians in fact affirmed about God’s emotional life. Second, sometimes theologians opt for (general or specific) impassibility because it is believed to fall out of the classical view of God, according to which God is affirmed to be atemporal, strongly immutable, utterly simple, pure act, and the like. However, this classical view has been criticized roundly by some of the most gifted contemporary philosophical theologians, many of whom are otherwise theologically conservative.20 In their criticisms, these theologians do not aim to abandon the exalted conception of God handed down from the Fathers of the Church to the present day. On the contrary, the aim is to refine that conception, making adjustments here and there, to arrive at a more coherent, biblically faithful, and intellectually satisfying understanding of the mysterious God of the Christian faith. My purpose in 19  See Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, ch. 2. 20  The following is but a small sample of the relevant philosophical theologians: Daniel  J.  Hill, Divinity and Maximal Greatness (London: Routledge, 2005), ch. 7; Thomas  V.  Morris, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 217–30.

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120  Love Divine highlighting this academic movement is not to say that these criticisms of the classical view of God are on target (though I am persuaded by some) or that the classical view is indefensible (it has very capable defenders). Rather, my point is simply that the classical view of God is no longer a given in ­contemporary academic theology, even among theological traditionalists. Consequently, the theologian who wants to forward the discussion on the topic of the present chapter cannot dispense with objections to divine im­passi­bil­ity simply by appealing to the classical view. The point may seem painfully obvious, even patronizing. Unfortunately, though, it is not uncommon to find proponents of divine impassibility using, say, the idea that God is pure act (often without argument for it) as means of demonstrating the misguided nature of divine passibility.21 On a related note, it is worth mentioning that recent philosophical and theological work on the divine nature contains creative proposals whereby the inference from many of the classical attributes to divine impassibility is avoided. For example, Brian Leftow and R.T.  Mullins independently argue that neither divine immutability nor atemporality entails a general account of impassibility,22 and Katherine Rogers crafts a model of pure act theism (which she takes to be Anselmian) and divine simplicity that implies the same.23 Similarly, Charles Taliaferro claims that the reasoning that supports the idea that an immutable and atemporal God can know the temporal states within creation and act within it likewise suggests that ‘an eternal, immutable God [can] sorrow and delight over the world’s states’.24 If these Christian thinkers are correct, or if these proposals are even plausibly true, then this is yet another reason to think that the present dispute cannot be solved simply by recourse to the noted concepts contained within the classical view of God. Given the contemporary theological landscape, then, the appeal to one’s value-intuitions is a way to proceed that does not beg the question about the nature of God in crucial respects. In the remainder of this chapter, I consider the plausibility of divine passibility in relation to the intrinsic value/disvalue 21  To avoid causing offence, I would rather not cite anyone who does exactly this. But I am confident that those who are familiar with the relevant literature will agree with my assessment of the situation, wherever one stands on the issue. 22  Brian Leftow, ‘Immutability’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward  N.  Zalta, Winter 2016 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016), https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2016/entries/immutability/; R.  T.  Mullins, ‘Why Can’t the Impassible God Suffer? Analytic Reflections on Divine Blessedness’, TheoLogica 2, no. 1 (2018): 3–22. 23  Rogers details a position that includes both a kind of passibility (of the divine will) with pure act theism, divine simplicity, and atemporality. See her Perfect Being Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 30–8; as well as her article ‘The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity’, Religious Studies 32, no. 2 (1996): 165–86. Also relevant is Creel, Divine Impassibility, 11. 24 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 316.

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God ’ s Affective Love  121 of God’s compassionate suffering for humans who suffer. I argue that divine passibility is more plausible than its competing hypothesis in relation to this select value issue. Clearly, a more conclusive case for divine passibility would need to address several additional matters.

II.  God’s Affective Love The primary aim of this chapter is to defend the thesis that it is intrinsically valuable for God to experience certain kinds of suffering love, specifically that which is involved in compassion. This thesis regarding suffering love is most compelling when situated within a broader framework whereby it is supposed that God’s love must be maximally perfect, and this on account of the sup­pos­ ition that God is the greatest possible being who thereby enjoys the greatest possible degree and combination of intrinsically valuable attributes. The idea that God is maximally loving will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, but, briefly, to say that God is maximally loving is to say that He exemplifies love in the highest possible manner; in other words, it is simply impossible for a being to possess a more valuable form of love. With this conception of God in the backdrop, the thesis that God sometimes undergoes a suffering, compassionate love is best appreciated when it is thought to be an implication of the value of God enjoying a life characterized by what Taliaferro calls ‘affective love’.25 This is the type of love where one is affectively open and responsive to the beloved. Affective love can be understood to have both sunny and shadowy sides. The sunny side is that this love enables one to connect with another in a rich way that generates all manner of joy and delight. The shadowy side, as the passibilist sees it, is that affective love renders one vulnerable to suffering. A central contention of this chapter is that affective love is immensely valuable and worth predicating to God, despite the fact that affective love in its most valuable form renders God vulnerable to suffering. Tabling, for the moment, whether affective love actually has the noted shadowy implication, the value of affective love is easy to discern when the affections in view are positive. Think here of deep lasting spousal love, when a husband and wife know and are known, give and receive, and subtly delight in one another by a myriad of means. Or consider the manifold ways in which parents find joy in their children, their well-being, their accomplishments, their individuality, and the like. Such rich affective forms of love are in­cred­ibly 25 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 324.

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122  Love Divine valuable. Indeed, it seems it would be a substantially impoverished life and love which does not contain profound joy and enduring enjoyment. That this seems so provides prima facie support for supposing that God ex­peri­ences the joy and delight of affective love. For if God’s love is maximally perfect, and if it seems as if an entirely non-affective love would be impoverished, then, absent additional reason to think otherwise, it appears that it would be only right to suppose that God must have the goodness of affective love. This is not to say that humans have much insight into what divine affective love is like. It is only to affirm that, if God’s love is maximally perfect, there is prima facie reason to maintain that God’s life contains something analogous to the positive features of human affective love, notwithstanding whatever differences there might be. Reasoning of this kind, which I will not develop in detail presently, is especially plausible when set against the similarity thesis of Chapter 1. On a surface reading, moreover, Scripture indicates that God, in some sense, experiences the positive features of affective love.26 For example, the Father and Son are described as exemplifying a mutual love that is glorious (John 17:5), and which involves sharing (John 17:1–10), joy (John 15:1–11), communion (1 John 4:4–21), and unity (John 17:20–25). The natural assumption would be that the warmth of affective love is present within this relationship, especially when numerous biblical passages speak of the Father delighting in the Son (e.g. Matt. 12:18; Mark 1:11; John 8:29; 2 Pet. 1:17). Or consider the biblical testimony concerning God’s love for His people. In various places in Scripture we are told that God lovingly rejoices over Israel ‘with gladness’ (Zeph. 3:17), that He ‘takes pleasure in his people’ (Ps. 149:4; cf. Ezek. 18:23; Ps. 18:19; Ps. 147:11; Rom. 12:1), and that He lavishes His children with praise (e.g. Rom. 2:29; 1 Cor. 4:5; 1 Pet. 1:6–7). No doubt, opinions will vary about what this biblical language intends to communicate. My point here is just that the positive features of affective love seem to be greatly valu­ able, which is plausibly why God is depicted in various biblical genres as experiencing such love, and that a surface read of Scripture suggests that God enjoys the pleasant implications of an affective love. Noticing the described biblical language, even many impassibilists agree that God in some analogous sense has an affective love, so long as the affections attributed to God are not thought to introduce any passivity and vulnerability into the divine nature.27 26  For a helpful biblical defence of the claim that God loves creatures with what I am calling af­fect­ ive love, see John Peckham, The Concept of Divine Love in the Context of the God-World Relationship (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 256–300. 27  For discussions of this point, see, e.g., Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 89–90; Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, The Divine Attributes (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 107; Scrutton, Thinking through Feeling, ch. 2; Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 144–6, 160–8.

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God ’ s Affective Love  123 So, there are two interwoven reasons for affirming the idea that God ex­peri­ences the sunny side of affective love. First, there is a kind of evidence from Scripture. God is presented, across various biblical genres, as one who delights within Himself (given a trinitarian interpretation of Scripture) and enjoys His children. In addition, there is the kind of evidence that comes from reflecting upon the nature of perfect love. It seems that perfect love must dispose one towards joy and delight in those loved, and since God’s love is presumably perfect, this indicates that God probably enjoys the noted positive aspects of affective love. These two lines of reasoning thereby mutually reinforce one another and converge upon a conception of God whose love is affective, in that God possesses the enjoyable features of this kind of love. More generally, I would like to propose a principle regarding jointly sufficient conditions by which the Christian theologian is epistemically justified in believing that God possesses some feature or attribute. We shall call this principle ‘PTJ’, short for the principle of theological justification. After briefly explaining and defending PTJ, I will show the connection between PTJ and the claim that God possesses affective love. (In the following description of PTJ, ‘S’ refers to some Christian theologian who is justified in believing that Scripture reliability teaches about God, and ‘F’ refers to some feature or attribute.) PTJ: If, after due inquiry, it seems to S both (i) that Scripture, across a variety of biblical genres, indicates (i.e. teaches, entails, or renders highly probable) that God is F and (ii) that F possesses a high degree of intrinsic value that befits divine perfection, then, in the absence of defeaters for the claim that God is F, S is justified (to some degree or another) in believing that God is F on the basis of (i) and (ii). Behind PTJ resides the rather intuitive idea that, absent defeaters, the theologian, who has good epistemic grounds for trusting scriptural deliverances about God, may, after due inquiry (i.e. acquainting herself with the central literature and main arguments), reasonably believe what she takes Scripture widely to indicate about God, when she also has reasons for supposing that the teaching at issue is consonant with divine perfection. Nevertheless, PTJ requires some explanation. First, the sense of ‘seems to S’ in PTJ is intended to be epistemic, that is, it concerns what seems true or to be the case rather than what merely appeals to one. Within PTJ, this means that, provided the other conditions are fulfilled, the theologian is right to believe what she takes Scripture to be widely indicating about God, where she is the

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124  Love Divine one who judges what amounts to a sufficiently comprehensive biblical indication that God is F. Second, it may be said that F apparently ‘befits’ God’s perfection if it seems to the theologian that this perfection requires F, or that the value of F evidentially supports the notion that God is F. Finally, in the context of PTJ, a defeater is that which undermines or overturns one’s justification for the belief in the relevant proposition. Defeaters are typically thought to come in two kinds. Roughly, a rebutting defeater is that which gives one sufficient reason for denying belief in the proposition at issue (e.g. God is F), and an undercutting defeater is that which provides one with sufficient reason for affirming that the support one has for belief in the relevant proposition is unreliable or otherwise defective. Defeaters, I assume, are something of which the relevant individual must be aware, or at least that which one should be and could be in principle aware. Without a doubt, theologians will have conflicting ideas as to what constitutes a defeater for the claim that God is F (e.g. the epistemic weight of tradition). PTJ rests upon the plausible epistemic principle known as phenomenal conservativism. This latter epistemic principle can be stated in slightly different ways, but for the purposes of this chapter it will suffice to understand the principle as follows: if it seems to one that a proposition is true, then, in the absence of defeaters, one is justified (to some degree or another) in believing that proposition on the basis of that seeming. As with PTJ, the sense of ‘seems to one’ in phenomenal conservativism is epistemic, and what may aptly seem to be the case to one is meant to be fairly wide open, as it may include perceptual, intellectual, memorial, and introspective appearances.28 Phenomenal conservatism, like nearly all epistemological principles, is controversial; but it has able defenders. Phenomenal conservativism was originally proposed as an account of foundational or non-inferential justification. Almost certainly, however, the justification for the belief that God is F, as described in PTJ, is inferential (if the belief is justified at all). Fortunately, Michael Huemer has extended phenomenal conservativism to include interferential justification as well. In short, Huemer proposes that if it seems to an individual that a proposition, P, must be true or is probable in light of one or more additional propositions that this individual believes, P*, then, absent defeaters, the individual has inferential 28  An example of such a characterization of phenomenal conservatism can be found in Michael Huemer, ‘Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74, no. 1 (2007): 30–55. Cf. Richard Swinburne’s principle of credulity, as found, e.g., in his Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 42–4.

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God ’ s Affective Love  125 justification (to some degree or another) for believing P, provided that this individual is also justified in believing P*.29 (On this view of interferential justification, P, when considered in itself, need not seem true; it only needs to seem to follow or seem to be rendered sufficiently probable on the basis of P*.) Although such an account of justification remains contentious, even among those sympathetic to phenomenal conservatism, PTJ relies upon something like this view of inferential justification. If one is dubious of phenomenal conservatism and its accompanying rule of inference, perhaps PTJ can be reconfigured as a standard for procedural (rather than epistemic) justification for the theologian: if some proposition meets the conditions specified by PTJ, then the theologian is justified in reasoning as if God is F in his or her theological writings. In any case, many Christian theologians do appear to operate with a principle that is less demanding than PTJ, if only procedurally. Consider the following alternative to PTJ. PTJ*: If, after due inquiry, it seems to S that Scripture widely indicates that  God is F, then, in the absence of defeaters, S is justified (to  some degree or another) in believing (on the basis of these biblically-based seemings and that which can be derived therefrom) that God is F. Not every Christian will adhere to PTJ*. Among other things, some will worry that PTJ* serves to promote the kind of theological individualism that has precipitated the splintering of Protestantism. But perhaps the defender of PTJ* can maintain that the fact that some belief, held on the basis of Scripture, is likely to cause ecclesial division regularly constitutes a defeater for the belief at issue. Regardless, PTJ* can be supported by the conjunction of phenomenal conservativism (expanded to include inferential justification) and the notion that Scripture should regularly act as a source of testimonial knowledge about God. The notion that Scripture should regularly act as a source of knowledge about God, even if not always assumed to be the primary or most epi­stem­ic­ al­ly reliable source, seems to be consonant with traditional Christian thinking, most notably that which comes from the Protestant tradition. So, PTJ* finds support in a plausible epistemic principle (or so I say) as well as a widely held theological thesis concerning Scripture as a source of knowledge. 29  Huemer, ‘Phenomenal Conservatism Uber Alles’, in Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, ed. Chris Tucker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 338–41.

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126  Love Divine When PTJ* is compared with PTJ we notice that the latter is more stringent than the former. Whereas the adherent to PTJ* affirms, in effect, that certain kinds of biblical seemings are innocent until proven guilty and should be, or minimally can be, relied upon for belief formation, PTJ adds the additional desideratum that the theological belief in question must apparently befit divine perfection. Because of this addition, one can have reservations about PTJ*, and yet affirm PTJ. Thus, if it is the case that PTJ* is a plausible epi­ stem­ic (and/or procedural) principle from the Christian theological point of view, then PTJ should be deemed more plausible still. The upshot is that PTJ is a modest and reasonable epistemic (and/or procedural) principle that many theologians will, or should, accept. We are now in the position to apply PTJ to the idea that God enjoys the positive features of affective love (e.g. joy and delight). If we accept PTJ, the claim then would be that the informed theologian is justified in believing that God possesses the positive features of affective love if the following three conditions seem to be the case for this theologian, and the theologian bases the relevant belief upon them: (i) Scripture indicates that God experiences the positive features of affective love across a variety of biblical genres, (ii) the positive features of affective love possess a high degree of intrinsic value that befit divine perfection, and (iii) there are no defeaters to the claim that God enjoys the positive features of affective love. While I cannot be absolutely certain, I suspect that most theologians who have looked into the issue would grant that Scripture at least appears to indicate that God enjoys the benefits of affective love. Similarly, I imagine that most theologians would maintain that, considered in itself, an affective love that produces the noted positive features is tremendously valuable and worth ascribing to God. The condition that is most likely to be controversial in the present application of PTJ is the third, as some theologians will think that there are defeaters to the relevant kind of affective love. It may be thought, for example, that divine immutability precludes God from taking joy in His creatures, which thereby furnishes the theologian with a rebutting defeater for the notion that God has any kind of affective love. However, it is worth repeating that many leading impassibilists do not take the view that the claim that God enjoys the positive features of affective love faces insuperable defeaters. On the contrary, many of these impassibilists affirm that God possesses joy and delight on account of His love. To illustrate this, I turn to the premier impassibilist, St Thomas Aquinas. Despite his firm commitment to pure act theism and a general account of impassibility, Thomas affirms that God derives joy and pleasure in Himself and the good things found in creation. Thomas writes that ‘the principle of

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God ’ s Affective Love  127 every affection is love’,30 and that ‘Joy and delight . . . are properly in God.’31 The reason for the latter is that ‘joy and delight are a certain resting of the will in its object. But God, Who is His own principal object willed, is supremely at rest in Himself, as containing all abundance in Himself. God, therefore, through His will supremely rejoices in Himself.’32 Moreover, ‘God takes joy in every [created] good’ since ‘every good is a likeness of the divine good.’33 In addition, Thomas finds support for this conception of God’s inner life from special revelation: ‘That there are joy and delight in God is confirmed by the authority of Sacred Scripture.’34 It is clear, then, that Thomas believes that God enjoys the positive aspects of affective love. It is also true that Thomas is quick to qualify the manner in which joy and delight reside in God.35 God does not have passions as do humans which depend upon bodily or other kinds of change, nor does God undergo passivity in His experience of joy and delight. Instead, these psychological states are predicated to God as ‘intellectual appetites’, which are the result of the will.36 All the same, Thomas leaves little room for doubt that he believes that God possesses the sunny benefits of affective love, even if these benefits are only analogous to that which is found in humans. Importantly, many theologians writing before and after Thomas who affirm divine immutability and a general account of divine impassibility are likewise willing to predicate the positive features of affective love to God (or something analogous thereto).37 To provide just one example from our own day, a leading impassibilist such as Thomas Weinandy, who explicitly follows Thomas’s articulation of the doctrine of divine impassibility, gladly affirms that God possesses the positive features of affective love in the manner appropriate to the divine nature, as he envisions it. Weinandy writes, ‘While God is not passionate in the sense that there are passible passionate changes within him, he can be said [. . .] to be passionate in the sense that his will is fully and wholly fixed on the good as loved. Being fully in act his love is fully in act and therefore his passion is fully in act.’ Weinandy concludes, ‘God is supremely 30 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.91.7. 31 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.90.7. 32 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.90.4. 33 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.90.6. 34 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.91.13. 35  For commentary on the interrelation between divine love and affections according to Thomas, see the following: Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of the Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Criticism of This Doctrine (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1986), 277–312; Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality, 114–19; Scrutton, Thinking through Feeling, 34–52. 36 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, 20.1. 37  For a survey of ancient views on this matter, see Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 47–63.

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128  Love Divine passionate because he is supremely loving and he is both because both are fully in act’, and this fully enacted passionate love includes ‘rejoicing and delighting’ in that which is loved.38 I assume, therefore, that many, if not most, would agree that affective love, at least in its positive form, is immensely valuable and that God possesses it, or something like it, in some important sense. It is the view of the passibilist, however, that affective love often comes with a cost. By finding joy and delight in another, one opens up oneself to that individual, thereby risking suffering. This is certainly true of human love, and, it will be argued, there is good reason to think that it is true of God’s love of humans as well. Whether or not the reader is ultimately convinced by this chapter’s argument for divine passibility, it is important to see that the attractiveness of the suffering God is best appreciated against the backdrop of the value of affective love.

III.  The Value of Suffering Love It is one thing to suppose that God enjoys the good of affective love; it is quite another to suppose that this affective love exposes God to suffering. Notice, however, that the Bible does not shy away from predicating suffering to God. Consider this smattering of examples from various biblical genres. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  (Gen. 6:6) [God] remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again. How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert! They tested God again and again, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.  (Ps. 78:39–41) As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust. As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children. (Ps. 103: 14–17)

38 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 126–7.

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God ’ s Affective Love  129 It was no messenger or angel but [God’s] presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; [. . .] But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.  (Isa. 63:9–10) When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. [. . .] How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? [. . .] My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.  (Hos. 11:1–4, 8) And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God [. . .].  (Eph. 4:30)

Quite apart from such proof-texts, the Incarnation arguably provides a window into God’s heart, where we see a God who identifies with humans and suffers with them.39 Of course, advocates of divine impassiblity are not ignorant of the kinds of passages just listed, nor can they be accused of neglecting the Incarnation when theorizing about God. Instead, they maintain that there are independent reasons (biblical or extra-biblical) for thinking that God does not suffer, and thus biblical passages that suggest otherwise must be interpreted accordingly. Few are as clear about this hermeneutical strategy as John Calvin in his commentary on Genesis: Since we cannot comprehend [God] as he is, it is necessary that, for our sake, he should, in a certain sense, transform himself [. . .]. Certainly God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains forever like himself in his celestial and happy repose; yet because it could not otherwise be known how great is God’s hatred and detestation of sin, therefore the spirit accommodates himself to our capacity [. . .]. God was so offended by the atrocious wickedness of men, [God speaks] as if they had wounded his heart with mortal grief.40 39  For a balanced discussion of arguments from the Incarnation to divine passibility, see Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality, 91–6. 40 Jean Calvin, Genesis, trans. John Owen, Vol. 1, Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979). (Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia, 20–1 and Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, 6–7.) There is a case to be made that Calvin believes that he is interpreting Scripture with Scripture when he denies divine passibility. See, e.g., John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed.

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130  Love Divine The hermeneutical procedure is a reasonable one. If a biblical passage at­tri­butes to God something that one has good independent grounds for thinking is beneath the divine nature, often the most reasonable course of action is to find an alternative reading of the passage that is more becoming of God’s perfection. Contrary to what many divine impassibilists have historically assumed, however, there is extra-biblical (or natural theological) support for idea that God suffers—at least when we bracket this issue from the consideration of doctrines such as pure act theism. Consider a fairly simple argument based upon the good of affective love. As we have seen already, ideal love plausibly must be an affective love. If this is right, then, assuming that God loves in an ideal way, God loves affectively. He opens up His inner life to those loved by, for example, finding joy in their existence and flourishing, and by inviting them into a union of mutual affection (see Chapter 2). With this in the backdrop, it is natural to assume that, if God loves humans affectively, God is pass­ ible. For, all other things being equal, the one who loves affectively undergoes various kinds of compassionate suffering when those loved are victims of tremendous suffering and evil. But if this is how affective love ideally functions, then, assuming that all things are in fact equal and that God loves humans in an ideal affective manner, God suffers when beloved humans are victims of horrendous evil and suffering. On natural theological grounds alone, we might not have the confidence to declare that God loves humans affectively, and suffers as a result. But, as we have seen, Scripture is not shy about ascribing an affective, suffering love to God.41 So neither should we be, given that affective love appears to be greatly valuable and plausibly would expose God to experiences of compassionate suffering if this love is possessed by God. A standard impassibilist response to arguments of this kind is to contend that, whether or not God possesses certain benefits of affective love (e.g. delight in the beloved), the negative value of suffering entails that it should not be attributed to God. For example, in a widely cited essay from the early twentieth century, ‘Suffering and God’, Friedrich von Hügel argues that suffering is ‘intrinsically evil’ and therefore has no place in God’s perfect life.42 More recently, Michael Dodds says that ‘Because sadness and suffering are John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 1.17.12–13, pp. 205–9. 41  Abraham. J. Heschel’s The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) provides one particularly influential biblical case for divine passibility. 42  Friedrich Von Hügel, ‘Suffering and God’, in Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion: Second Series (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1926), 199, cf. 205–9.

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God ’ s Affective Love  131 evils in themselves, they cannot properly be predicated to God.’43 As if on the same script, Thomas Weinandy claims that, unlike love, ‘Suffering is not a good in itself, but rather an evil.’ From this Weinandy draws the same conclusion as von Hügel and Dodds: the fullness of divine perfection must remain unalloyed by suffering.44 Other impassibilists argue in like manner.45 Obviously, proponents of divine passibility evaluate the idea of God’s suffering differently. Although the language of intrinsic value is rarely used, many passibilists make it clear that they deem divine compassionate sorrow an intrinsically valuable way of responding to those who suffer and identifying with them. For instance, Charles Hartshorne observes that we certainly do not admire the person who says, ‘I can be equally happy and serene and joyous regardless of how men and women suffer around me.’ So, Hartshorne rhetorically asks, ‘Why should we admire it when it is alleged of God?’46 The force of the rhetorical question assumes that divine commiseration is good, presumably intrinsically good. Similarly, Jürgen Moltmann claims that ‘A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. [. . .] But one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being.’47 The overstatement aside, the presumption is that there is something intrinsically or otherwise valuable about identifying with someone in love through compassionate suffering. Contemporary philosophers of religion who defend divine passibility often make their similar value commitments a bit more explicit.48 To get a better understanding of where it is that passibilists and impassibilists disagree in their assessment of the value of divine suffering, I turn to G.E.  Moore. In Principia Ethica, Moore famously proposes an isolation test for identifying that which is intrinsically valuable. If something (an object, a relation, a state of affairs, or what have you) considered in absolute isolation from all else is judged good, then this is reason to suppose that the thing in question is intrinsically valuable. By contrast, we have evidence that a thing is 43 Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love, 294. 44 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 160. 45  See the following: Gerald Hanratty, ‘Divine Immutability and Impassibility Revisited’, in At the Heart of the Real, ed. F. O’Rourke (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), 157–9; and Mary F. Rousseau, ‘Process Thought and Traditional Theism: A Critique’, The Modern Schoolman 63, no. 1 (1985): 45–64 (especially 53). 46  Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), 44. 47  Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1974), 222. 48  Examples of these value commitments include the following: Laura Waddell Ekstrom, ‘Suffering as Religious Experience’, in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, ed. Peter Van Inwagen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 95–110; Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 315–33; Wolterstorff, ‘Suffering Love’, 196–237.

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132  Love Divine not intrinsically valuable when it fails to seem good when isolated, whatever extrinsic value it might have. When taken literally, Noah Lemos has shown that Moore’s isolation test is problematic since there are plausible bearers of intrinsic value that are in­cap­ able of existing alone. Take Smith’s being happy as an example. Being happy is commonly judged to be intrinsically good, and yet ‘it is necessarily false that Smith’s being happy could be the only existing thing.’ So, Moore’s test of ‘ontological isolationism is not very clear or very helpful’.49 The limitations of Moore’s isolation test have led to various refinements of it. Common to these refinements is the idea that we should reflect upon a candidate of intrinsic value by setting aside the candidate’s consequences and the contingent circumstances in which we might find that candidate. If this manner of reflection leads you to believe that the candidate in question is valuable or good, this provides evidence that you have found something which possesses intrinsic value. Lemos refers to this form of mental isolationalism as the ‘intentional isolation test’, which he sets in contrast to Moore’s ontological isolationalism.50 The intentional isolation test avoids the worries about the incoherency of Moore’s form of the test. For the remainder of this chapter, therefore, all references to the isolation test, even when affiliated with Moore, are to be understood in terms of the intentional isolation test, which is perhaps what Moore had in mind in the first place. Many find the isolation test helpful for determining what is intrinsically valuable. Nevertheless, the test generates a puzzle. Sometimes a thing is thought good when considered in isolation, but downright bad when con­ sidered in certain contexts. A favourite example is pleasure. Nearly everyone agrees that pleasure is good when considered by itself, and yet pleasure in the undeserved suffering of another, Schadenfreude, is often thought to be bad. How, then, are we to make sense of the idea that the very same thing (in this case a mental state) can appear to be valuable in itself in certain instances, while apparently part of that which is intrinsically bad in others? Moore offers a compelling answer. He suggests that we think in terms of ‘the principle of organic unities’, whereby ‘The [intrinsic] value of a whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the [intrinsic] values of its parts.’51 That is to say, to calculate the value of an organic whole with various 49  Noah Marcelino Lemos, Intrinsic Value: Concept and Warrant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 37. 50  See Lemos, Intrinsic Value, 10. 51  My emphasis, G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 28. Here I insert ‘intrinsic’ into the quote. For a discussion that illuminates why this is justified, see

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God ’ s Affective Love  133 parts, we cannot assume that the value of the whole equals the sum of its parts any more than we can assume that a person’s height is the same as the total measurement of each part of his body extended, limbs and organs included. Return to the example concerning pleasure. Plausibly, pleasure is always intrinsically good, but, given the principle of organic unities, pleasure in undeserved suffering might be judged to be part of a complex whole, pleasurein-underserved-suffering, which is intrinsically bad. The value of the complex whole is not equal to the sum of its parts. Moore’s principle of organic unities is a principle about intrinsic value. In keeping with the way in which I have defined intrinsic value, Moore understands this value to be that which supervenes solely on the intrinsic properties of its bearers. Consequently, when the isolation test is applied, there is cause to believe that an organic unity is intrinsically valuable when we judge that the relevant complex whole is good when considered in insolation, notwithstanding parts of the whole that might be neutral or even intrinsically bad. Conversely, a complex whole is intrinsically bad when judged bad in isolation, whatever the value of its individual proper parts. There is, Moore grants, something paradoxical about organic unities.52 It is strange to think that various organic combinations of good, neutral, and bad things can possess a value that is not equal to, or even far outweighs, the value of the very same things when not placed within an organic unity. All the same, Moore is convinced that organic unities exist and should play a central role in the way in which we think about intrinsic value. In my view, furthermore, there is a compelling case to be made for the existence of organic unities.53 Unfortunately, this case cannot be presented here. The reality of organic unities must be simply assumed. But whatever one’s beliefs on this matter, thinking in terms of organic unities helps us locate a crucial difference between passibilists and impassibilists. To begin to see this, return to the value of pleasure. Pleasure, as noted already, is something that looks for all the world to be intrinsically good, and yet it can be part of a complex whole, Schadenfreude or taking-pleasure-in-themisfortunes-of-another, whose negative value outweighs or swamps the positive value of pleasure considered in isolation. Interestingly, the more pleasure and Michael  J.  Zimmerman, ‘On the Nature, Existence and Significance of Organic Unities’, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8, no. 3 (2015): 1–3. 52 Moore, Principia Ethica, 27–8. 53  See, in particular, Noah Lemos, ‘A Defense of Organic Unities’, The Journal of Ethics 19, no. 2 (2015): 125–41.

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134  Love Divine hence the more good found in the complex whole of Schadenfreude, the worse the whole becomes. Because of such considerations, Schadenfreude is often thought to be a paradigm example of an intrinsically bad organic unity. Importantly, it appears as if values run in the opposite direction as well. Think of conscious episodes of suffering. In isolation from all else, suffering is often believed to be intrinsically bad. But when suffering is part of a complex whole, such as suffering-compassion, or sympathetically-suffering-in-responseto-the-plights-of-others, the whole strikes many as a worthwhile character trait (cf. John 11:35; Rom. 12:15; 1 Cor. 12:26; Heb. 13:3). For those who share this judgement, suffering can be understood to be part of an organic unity that is intrinsically good. There are, furthermore, two reasons to maintain that suffering-compassion is a suitable candidate for being deemed an organic unity. First, sufferingcompassion is structurally similar to Schadenfreude, a paradigm example of an organic unity, in that both concern attitudes taken towards those perceived to be unfairly suffering. At root, all that differs is the attitude taken—pleasure in the one case and displeasure in the other. Additionally, whereas an increase in the good (i.e. the pleasure) found in Schadenfreude increases the badness of the relevant manifestation of Schadenfreude, an increase of the bad (i.e. the displeasure) found in suffering-compassion can, at least to a certain point, contribute to the goodness of suffering-compassion. Thus, if there are organic unities, suffering-compassion at least appears to be a plausible candidate for an intrinsically good organic unity. With these considerations about organic unities before us, we can now identify a significant point of division between passibilists and impassibilists. The former can be said to believe that suffering by itself is always intrinsically bad, but that sympathetically-suffering-in-response-to-the-plights-of-others forms an organic unity that is intrinsically valuable and can be predicated to God. Being predisposed to respond in such ways are excellences of character grounded in God’s perfect affective love, as God’s loving and painful compassion for a world shattered by suffering and evil is a good and fitting response. When appraised in isolation, that is, organic unities such as suffering­compassion are judged good and worth ascribing to God. In contradistinction to this, those who run a value-based objection to passibilism evince a commitment to the view that there is no organic unity of which suffering is a part that is an intrinsically valuable character quality of the kind worth predicating to God. (This is so, at any rate, if we assume that the ascription of impassibility to God means that it is impossible for God to  suffer, and hence that divine suffering cannot, in any circumstance, be

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God ’ s Affective Love  135 in­trin­sic­al­ly valuable.) The defender of divine impassibility might add that all of the extrinsic value related to suffering responses to others in the case of humans (e.g. the encouragement of virtuous action) is unnecessary in the case of God.54 God, therefore, does not suffer. Which judgement about the value of divine suffering-compassion is correct? Might divine suffering possibly be part of an organic unity that is in­trin­sic­al­ly valuable, or does the disvalue of divine suffering always preclude such a unity? To arrive at an answer to this question, consider human suffering first. When it comes to assessing the value of human emotions, I suspect that most would agree that suffering can be a part of an emotion that constitutes something like an intrinsically valuable organic unity.55 Even a paradigmatic impassibilist such as St Thomas Aquinas agrees that there is something profoundly right about humans grieving the presence of evil: [S]upposing the presence of something saddening or painful, it is a sign of goodness if a man is in sorrow or pain on account of this present evil. For if he were not to be in sorrow or pain, this could only be either because he feels it not, or because he does not reckon it as something unbecoming, both of which are manifest evils. Consequently it is a condition of goodness, that, supposing an evil to be present, sorrow or pain should ensue. [. . .] Sorrow is a good inasmuch as it denotes perception and rejection of evil.56

Furthermore, Thomas maintains that being disposed to experience sorrow in the correct circumstances is a virtue, which provides some evidence that he believes that suffering can be a component part of something like an organic unity that is intrinsically good.57 Dodds, himself a gifted defender of divine impassibility, agrees with Thomas. Dodds claims that ‘The sadness or suffering of human compassion, [. . .] though recognized as an evil insofar as it is itself a form of suffering, may be reckoned as good insofar as it is a response to the suffering of another.’ He even goes so far as to say that ‘when something saddening is presupposed, it would be an evil for a human being not to feel some sort of pain or sorrow.’58 Similarly, Weinandy, another leading impassibilist, writes that human love ‘in the present world of sin and evil entails the willingness to suffer’, and he grants 54  Creel articulates this basic value-based objection to passibilism in his Divine Impassibility, ch. 7. 55  For a different perspective, see Creel’s Divine Impassibility, 117. 56  Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, 39.1. resp and Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, 39.2, respectively. All quotes taken from the Dominican translation. 57  Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae., 39.2. 58  Dodds’s emphasis, The Unchanging God of Love, 295.

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136  Love Divine that ‘suffering entailed in love is [rightly] seen as good’, even if the suffering is not good in itself.59 Anselm Min appears to concur with Thomas, Weinandy, and Dodds in one of the most recent defences of divine impassibility. After describing a scenario where a father commiserates with his injured son, Min observes that deep human love must include the ‘capacity to suffer with the beloved’.60 The implication seems to be that there would be something deficient, something lacking in value, about a human love that was not ac­com­pan­ied by this capacity. For those who do not share the intuition that instances of sufferingcompassion can form organic unities that are intrinsically good, consider the following pair of thought experiments proposed by Charles Taliaferro. Here is the first: Imagine that Miriam and Eric both work with indigents in a soup kitchen. Each works with the same diligence and resilience. Both are attentive to those around them, outgoing, humorous, and successful at getting people clothed and housed. Imagine that each disapproves of the ills that have befallen the homeless, the result, say, of malignant social forces set in motion by a growing affluent business. Each approves of the good of each person they see, approving the preciousness of being alive and the courage of their fellow workers. Now imagine that there is only this one difference. Miriam affectively sorrows over the ills that have befallen the innocent, but Eric does not. Miriam feels sorrow in the course of her caring disapprobation of the wrongs that have been done to some individual. Eric disapproves just as strongly and acts just as carefully as Miriam in assisting the person, but he feels no sorrow.61

Based on this thought experiment Taliaferro concludes that Miriam em­bodies an excellent character quality that Eric lacks, ‘the good of affective love’.62 Notice that Miriam’s affective love does not benefit others, nor, we may suppose, does it help her work with greater diligence than she otherwise would. We may also assume that Miriam’s sorrowful-compassion affords her no practical advantages over Eric whatsoever. Nevertheless, even though there is no utility in Miriam’s sorrowful-compassion, it appears to be valuable all the same. This supports the idea that Miriam’s sorrowful-compassion is intrinsically good, plausibly a kind of organic unity. 59 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 160. 60  Min, ‘Why Only an Immutable God Can Love, Relate, and Suffer’, 210. 61 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 324. 62 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 324.

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God ’ s Affective Love  137 Taliaferro offers an accompanying thought experiment for those unsure about what to make of the intrinsic value of affections such as sorrowfulcompassion. This one proceeds not from the notion of moral goodness but of moral evil: Lucifer X and Lucifer Y are fiendish agents in the world. Each approves of torturous killings of innocent persons, the destruction of wildlife, and so on. Each disapproves of compassion and justice. At the sight of Hitler both nod in approval, whereas the sight of Mother Teresa makes them shake their heads in disapprobation. Imagine now that Lucifer X not only approves of Hitler but feels a great pleasure in thinking of Hitler’s “great work.” Lucifer X enjoys Hitler’s work and is always glad when the innocent are destroyed, and saddened when they escape. Lucifer Y is the very same as Lucifer X but without these additional affective responses. He does his work no more or less effectively, but without any accompanying pleasure or sorrow. When Lucifer X spies an innocent person in pain he approves of this and feels great pleasure that it is occurring. Lucifer Y spies the same thing but only approves of it.

From this, Taliaferro draws the following conclusion: I believe that our judgment of this case should be parallel with the earlier one. Lucifer X and Y are profoundly evil, but Lucifer X has managed to achieve a distinctive, additional evil Lucifer Y lacks. Lucifer X has an odious affective hate and love which the other devil lacks.63

On the second scenario, Lucifer X’s horrendous affective states are used to illustrate the intrinsic badness of certain responses to the world. Lucifer X is more morally vicious than the other fiendish agent precisely because of his abhorrent affections. But if being predisposed towards despicable affections factors into a negative evaluation of Lucifer X’s character, does not this also suggest that Miriam’s being predisposed towards sorrowful-compassion over other’s plights should factor into a positive evaluation of Miriam’s character? Consistency seems to demand an affirmative answer. Both of Taliaferro’s thought experiments are designed to show that affective responses to the world can be intrinsically good or intrinsically bad character qualities, and that the manner in which one is inclined towards such responses should factor into the evaluation of an individual’s character. As the second 63 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, 325.

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138  Love Divine thought experiment illustrates, joy in suffering and hatred of good seem to be intrinsically evil, whatever affiliated extrinsic evils there might be in addition. Hence, being disposed to respond affectively in this manner contributes to a vicious character. Conversely, sorrow over ills of the world is what we expect of a perfectly loving agent; being disposed to suffer in this manner is an excellence of character that does not extract its value merely from its utility or from some other good. From the foregoing it seems that the quality of one’s character is determined in part by one’s dispositions to respond affectively to the states of the world in the right sorts of ways. Miriam’s sorrowful-compassion, in particular, appears to be intrinsically good, and her disposition to feel this sorrow in the right circumstances is an excellence of character. However, it is one thing to provide evidence that suffering-compassionate is intrinsically valuable, quite another to explain why this is the case. Richard Swinburne is helpful in this regard. He notes that when a person merely judges that a given state of affairs is bad, it is only her mind that is attuned to certain values. By contrast, when a person also has an affective response to that same state of affairs, she gives more of herself to the values of the world. She comprehends the values of the world in both head and heart. Swinburne explains: [T]he world is better if agents pay proper tribute to losses and failures, if they are sad at the failure of endeavours, mourn for the death of a child, are angry at the seduction of a wife, and so on. Such emotions involve suffering and anguish, but in having such proper feelings a person shows his respect for himself and others. A man who feels no grief at the death of his child or the seduction of his wife is rightly branded as insensitive, for he has failed to pay the proper tribute of feeling to others, to show in his feeling how much he values them, and thereby failed to value them properly—for valuing them properly involves having proper reactions of feeling to their loss. And only a world in which people feel sympathy for losses experienced by their friends is a world in which love has full meaning.64

In Swinburne’s estimation, then, possessing love in an ideal way entails responding to the world affectively, by paying proper tribute to it with both mind and feeling. This deep way of identifying with the world is intrinsically valuable. Hence, Miriam’s sorrowful-compassion is intrinsically valuable, as she gives more of herself to those for whom she cares. 64  Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 227.

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God ’ s Affective Love  139 So, affective love of the kind that includes the capacity to suffer in compassion looks to be an intrinsically valuable character quality. At least this appears to be the case when a human subject is in view. Do matters change when God is the subject of consideration? I do not see why they would, unless one is independently committed to a conception of the divine nature that precludes God from suffering. For, as repeatedly mentioned, the ability to engage in instances of suffering-compassion of the kind that constitute intrinsically valu­ able organic unities seems to be an excellence of love, something that should be had by those who possess the great good of affective love. The God of perfect love, it seems, should have a rich love of this kind. But here we are not left to our own inferences. Scripture presents God as one who suffers in love for His children. Insofar as we have cause to maintain that the capacity to commiserate is an excellence of love, I suggest that we should not shy away from affirming this biblical depiction of God as representing a genuine facet of God’s emotional life. The case I have been making for divine passibility is helped when we return to PTJ. Recall that PTJ states that the theologian who is sufficiently informed on the issue is justified in believing that God is F if the following three conditions seem to be the case for this theologian (and the theologian relevantly bases his beliefs on these seemings): (i) Scripture indicates that God is F across a variety of biblical genres, (ii) F possess a high degree of intrinsic value that befits divine perfection, and (iii) there are no defeaters to the claim that God is F. When I reflect upon the claim that God experiences affective love of the kind which may produce suffering-compassion as well as intense pleasure and joy, it seems to me that conditions (i) and (ii) of PTJ are satisfied, and I am not aware of any defeaters which should prevent me from ascribing this form of affective love to God. (Recall my assumptions stated in Section I about the divine nature and the compatibility of divine passibility with the ecumenical councils.) Thus, supposing that PTJ is true and that I in fact fulfil the parameters found in PTJ, it follows that I am justified in believing that God has an affective love which includes susceptibility to suffering-compassion. If this is right, then those who find themselves in a similar position are likewise permitted to ascribe a suffering, compassionate love to God.

III.a Summary We have seen that Scripture portrays God as one who has an affective love, complete with the capacity to suffer in compassion for His children. My proposal is that we take this passibilist depiction as revelation concerning God’s

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140  Love Divine inner life, unless there are good independent grounds for thinking that suffering is beneath divine perfection. We have not found such grounds. On the contrary, affective love appears to be tremendously valuable, even in cases where suffering occurs. For suffering-compassion is a way in which the one who loves esteems the beloved in both mind and feeling. So, on the admittedly substantial assumption that the rest of the evidence for impassibility is not sufficient to neutralize or outweigh the apparent value of predicating a suffering love to God, we should hold that God is passible. In my defence of divine passibility I have focused on compassion as the central negative or unpleasant emotion that theologians might consider attributing to God. But PTJ provides very general criteria for believing that some emotion or state of feeling can be ascribed to God. When PTJ is used for these means, I suspect that many will agree that a rich variety of emotions and states of feeling related to love can be predicated to God, including but perhaps not limited to joy, satisfaction, compassion, anger, and various shades of suffering. This is not the place to discuss the range of such divine mental states; for our purposes it suffices to have found grounds for predicating the sunny and shadowy sides of affective love to God.

IV. Objections I now consider three objections to the preceding argument for divine passibility.

IV.a  The Objection from Pure Perfections John Duns Scotus drew a distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘impure perfections’.65 Very roughly, a pure perfection is a good that does not presuppose a limitation, whereas an impure perfection is a good that does. Being bipedal is an example of an impure perfection. It is good for a human to be bipedal since it is part of her design plan. But being bipedal comes with certain restrictions. It is easy to trip, for example, and humans are not as fast as many quadrupedal animals. Being omnipotent is accompanied by a different story. The lucky individual who is omnipotent suffers from no genuine limitations on account of that perfection.

65  See, John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio 1.3.1.

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God ’ s Affective Love  141 The distinction between pure and impure perfections can be developed in a way that speaks to the value of divine suffering. Suppose we understand an impure perfection as that which refers to an attribute that is genuinely good but has one or more parts that is intrinsically bad. An example of this kind of perfection is suffering-compassion: it is a good character trait, but it is an impure perfection insofar as it is accompanied by sympathetic suffering. By contrast, let us agree that a pure perfection is a good that contains no admixture of goods and bads, but is intrinsically good ‘all the way down’ (save, ­perhaps, a bit of neutrality between intrinsically good and bad). When these two kinds of perfections are understood in the manner just listed, one might think that only pure perfections are applicable to God. This is because God is maximally great. He thereby has ‘no room’ for perfections that contain in­trin­ sic­ al­ ly bad elements, which, it might be held, diminish that greatness. Something like this basic argument is defended by contemporary advocates of divine impassibility.66 This argument from pure perfections has considerable force when we begin thinking about God’s perfect nature sans creation. There we call to mind a God that enjoys not only omniscience, omnipotence, and all the rest, but the fullness of intra-trinitarian life, and who is completely unconditioned by anything outside Himself. Add to this picture the doctrine that God’s emotional life is immutable. Taken together, we have a God who enjoys only pure perfections and cannot change emotionally to experience anything otherwise, even when, subsequent the divine decision to create, suffering befalls God’s beloved creatures. Our perspective of God shifts, though, if we do not suppose that God is emotionally immutable. Without this doctrine, a God that begins with an emotional life that possesses only pure perfections could, perhaps, take on impure perfections in response to creation. Add to this the claim that part of God’s perfect love (subsequent the free decision to create) is caring about His creatures and being open to them in a manner that allows Himself to be affected by them. Consider, in other words, the idea that God enjoys the good of affective love. From this vantage, it appears that it would not be beneath divine perfection to acquire impure perfections such as suffering-compassion, should the occasion for doing so arise. This would not amount to an increase in divine greatness, but rather an adaptation to different circumstances that is brought about because of the perfection of God’s love. We have seen reason to 66 Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love, 294–8; Hoffman and Rosenkrantz, The Divine Attributes, 107–8; Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 160.

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142  Love Divine affirm the goodness of God’s affective love. I thus submit that, unless we suppose that God is emotionally immutable, we should not let the objection from pure perfections deter us from affirming the value of divine passibility.

IV.b  The Objection from Selfless-Benevolence I have argued that suffering-compassion is an excellence of divine love. Recent impassibilists contend that this is not only false but that divine passibility actually makes God’s love deficient. Here is such an argument from Weinandy: [S]ince God does not suffer, his love becomes absolutely free in its expression and supremely pure in its purpose. If God did suffer, it would mean that God would need not only to alleviate the suffering of others, but also his own suffering, and thus there would be an inbuilt self-interest in God’s love and consolation. However, since God does not suffer, his care for those who do suffer is freely given and not evoked by some need on his part. His love is freely expressed entirely for the sake of those he loves. [. . .] what God does to alleviate suffering is done solely for the good and benefit of those suffering and not his own.67

So, divine impassibility, unlike passibility, furnishes God with the ability to exercise a truly excellent form of love, a love of self-less benevolence. Weinandy is not alone in presenting this kind of argument. Several years before him, Dodds made the case that ‘Were we to attribute suffering to God, we would in fact diminish the abundance of his love.’ This is because perfect love must be ‘wholly gratuitous’. But a God who is ‘subject to the evil of suffering’ would be ‘in need of redemption’ and thus would not act ‘simply for the good of his creatures, but to increase his own good and diminish his own pain’.68 In short, a passible God is not a perfectly loving God. Behind both Weinandy and Dodds’ argument is the idea that a passible God has something to gain from alleviating human suffering—namely the diminishment of His own distress—which renders God’s love self-interested in a way that decreases the value of God’s love for humans. The trouble is that neither Weinandy nor Dodds explicates the relevant notion of inappropriate self-interest, nor do they explain why a passible God is necessarily implicated

67 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 160–1.

68 Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love, 300–1.

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God ’ s Affective Love  143 by it. Their point cannot be that perfect love precludes just any kind of selfinterest. For surely Weinandy and Dodds would grant that the individual who loves must care in some sense about the beloved’s good, and thereby has some kind of vested interest in the beloved obtaining her good.69 Yet it is hardly inappropriate to have that kind of self-interest. Nor is it clear that the passibilist cannot say that God cares about alleviating human suffering principally because He cares about humans, and in fact God only suffers because He cares about humans in the first place. Such a focus on humans hardly appears unduly self-concerned, however. As we discovered in Chapter 3, the relationship between God’s interests and human welfare is a complicated affair, an issue that neither Weinandy nor Dodds even begins to unravel. I thus conclude that Weinandy and Dodds must develop their argument in greater detail if it is to succeed against divine passibility.

IV.c  The Objection from Maximal Divine Suffering It is not unusual for proponents of divine passibility to speak of the tremendous capacity of God to suffer. To provide just two examples, Hartshorne describes God as ‘the cosmic sufferer, who endures infinitely more evil than we can imagine’,70 and Alvin Plantinga declares that God’s ‘capacity for suffering exceeds ours in the same measure that his knowledge exceeds ours’.71 But stressing God’s tremendous capacity to suffer can evoke an image of a pitiable God, whose experience is more coloured by pain and suffering than it is by resoluteness, joy and blessedness. Richard Creel explains: [I]f it were suffering that made love admirable, then the more suffering the better. And since God is infinite love, he must suffer infinitely, or if that be impossible because there is no maximal degree of suffering, he must be trapped in an endless vortex of ever increasing pain. But clearly the appropriate sentiment toward such a being should be pity not worship.72

69  For sophisticated and theologically sensitive discussions of the relation between self-interest and ethical motives, see Robert Merrihew Adams, ‘Pure Love’, The Journal of Religious Ethics 8, no. 1 (1980): 83–99; as well as his, ‘Self-Love and the Vices of Self-Preference’, Faith and Philosophy 15, no. 4 (1998): 500–13; and Gary D. Badcock, ‘The Concept of Love: Divine and Human’, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin  J.  Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 30–46. 70  Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), 331. 71  Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 319. 72 Creel, Divine Impassibility, 123.

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144  Love Divine If Creel is right about this, then it is impossible to judge divine passibility a worthwhile character quality. The mistake in Creel’s reasoning, while understandable, is easy to spot. I have argued that God suffers because He pays proper emotional tribute to the sufferings of His creatures. From this it does not follow, as Creel assumes, that ‘the more suffering the better’. What follows is that God must have a fitting emotional response to the ills of the world. But if God were to allow Himself to become emotionally crippled by the sorrows of human history, this would be to overestimate the disvalue of human suffering, and would therefore be an inappropriate response. This conclusion is supported by two additional considerations.73 First, human history is not filled with tragedy and evil only. Rather there is much that merits rejoicing, and the God who knows the beginning from the end is guiding human history towards a glorious consummation. Assuming that God’s suffering is offset by that which is good, including the goods that God knows will be achieved within the future, there is no reason to think that a passible God is an emotionally broken God. Secondly, and more importantly, the value account of divine love guards against a pitiable God. For on this account, God’s love is explained by the value of the one loved. But if this is so, then, given that God possesses a value that far outruns the value of humans, it is plausible to suppose God loves Himself, and the persons within the Godhead love one another,74 exceedingly more than God loves anything or anyone else, including humans. But if the strength of God’s love is distributed in this way, then, plausibly, God’s primary source of happiness is found within Himself. If this is right, then it is certainly reasonable to think that though God may be ‘touched’ by human suffering, He is not ‘crushed’.75

73  On these considerations, see Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality, 64–5. 74  I, of course, do not mean to suggest something of a quaternity here: the three persons of the Godhead love each other, and some fourth entity, ‘Godself ’, loves Himself. Instead, I mean to affirm (i) that there is a sense in which God loves Godself, and (ii) that there is a sense in which the persons of the Godhead love one another. Presumably, there is more than one way in which this can be worked out, but we need not do so here. 75  On the distinction between being touched and crushed by suffering, see Creel, ‘Immutability and Impassibility’, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 318.

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God ’ s Affective Love  145

V. Conclusion God responds in joy to human joy and sorrow to human sorrow because, in love, God values humans, and consequently responds affectively to the events in human life. The capacity to respond in these ways are perfections, in­trin­ sic­al­ly valuable attributes for a being to have. Thus to predicate an affective love to God, even one that occasions suffering, is to ascribe a perfection to Him. God commiserates with us because His love is perfect.

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5 The Scope of God’s Love In this chapter I consider the extent or scope of God’s love for humans. Does God love all existing human persons, or is God’s love limited to a subset of those persons? In what follows I argue for the conclusion that God’s love is universal and extends to all, rather than exclusive and limited to a select few. In particular, I argue that God loves every human person with what might be termed supreme love: a love that values and seeks the beloved individual’s supreme or highest good. Couched within the Christian narrative containing the Fall, a necessary feature of God’s supreme love for all human persons is that He seeks their salvation and union with Himself.1 At first blush, the reader might be puzzled by the supposed relevance of this thesis. Nowadays it is widely assumed among Christian theologians and philosophers that God unqualifiedly loves all humans by earnestly desiring that which is best for them, a love-relationship with Himself. This is an assumption that the Christian tradition has not held uniformly,2 however, nor is it one that is shared by all theologians today.3 On the contrary, while many Christians of the both the past and present are happy to state that God loves everyone in some sense, many of these same theologians maintain that God’s love is not universal in the sense of wanting a love-relationship with all. Indeed, it seems fair to claim that anyone who affirms the doctrine of unconditional election, whilst also denying universal salvation, holds views which together imply that God does not love a certain class of humans with supreme love. For given the doctrine of unconditional election, it is considerably plaus­ ible that God finds no external impediment that limits to whom God can 1  In keeping with the theme of this book, my focus in this chapter is on God’s love of human persons (often simply ‘humans’). Nevertheless, much of what I argue here perhaps could be applied to other created persons as well (e.g. angels), though a discussion of that issue will need to be reserved for another occasion. 2  e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, 23.3 (cf. Ia, 23.5), and Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, Vol. 8, Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 369. 3 This is particularly true among evangelical theologians—e.g. Daniel Strange, ‘A Calvinist Response to Talbott’s Universalism’, in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, ed. Robin Parry and Chris Partridge (London: Paternoster Press, 2003), 154; J.I. Packer, ‘The Love of God: Universal and Particular’, in Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, ed. Thomas Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 277–93. Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  147 grant eternal life. Yet, given the falsity of universalism, God simply chooses to withhold eternal life from some. On such reasoning, therefore, it appears evident that God does not truly desire the supreme good for all. If I am right about what these theological convictions entail, then it is clear that countless theologians from the later Augustine to the present time limit the extent of God’s supreme love, even if such a limitation is often only implicit. So, while the affirmation of the universal scope of God’s supreme love might be theologically de rigueur today in many theological communities, it is not so in all circles, nor is it clear that the all expansive breadth of this love is the assumed position of the historic Christian Church in the West. (The Christian East tells a different story.4) Many sophisticated thinkers, both past and present, deny what some of us are so eager to affirm. Arguments are therefore necessary to convince those with whom we disagree—or at least to clarify why it is we disagree—and to explain why we part ways with a significant portion of theological tradition in the West. Such arguments can also act as instances of faith seeking understanding, and they might illumine how we should conceive of God’s love more generally. For all of these reasons, it is worth considering an argument on behalf of the universality of God’s supreme love. In what follows, I present an argument for the conclusion that God has supreme love for every human. Specifically, I argue from the conviction that God is maximally loving to the conclusion that the scope of God’s supreme love is universal, in that God values and seeks the salvation of all humans—indeed, that God values and seeks human salvation as much as He properly can.

I.  Assumptions and Clarifications Before I develop that argument, however, I must first list a few relevant assumptions and add some clarifications. There will be four in total. First, in Chapter 2, I argued that when God loves a human, He responds to the human’s dignity by valuing her existence and her good and by valuing union with her (the value account). In focusing on the universality of God’s supreme love in the present chapter, I will not argue, in any detail, that God loves everyone in this precise sense. At the same time, it is worth reiterating something I (adapting a line of reasoning proposed by Eleonore Stump) point 4  See e.g. J.J. Overbeck, ed., The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehelm Holden under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1962, trans. J.N.W.B. Robertson (South Yarra, Australia: Leopold Publishing, 2016), Decree III.

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148  Love Divine out in the second chapter. This is that valuing a human’s good (in this case a human’s highest good) and valuing union with that human imply one another when it is God that loves the human in question. For if God values a human’s highest good, then (given omniscience) God also values union with that human, since the highest good of all humans is union with God (a union that God values). Conversely, if God values union with a human, God values that human’s highest good, since, again, the highest good of all humans is union with God. Moreover, it is plausible to assume that God cannot value someone’s highest good and union with her unless God also values her existence. What all of this means is that we can establish that God values the existence, the flourishing, and union with each human if we can establish that God has supreme love for each human, since God has supreme love for an individual only if He values the individual’s highest good. Of course, the resulting conception of love still stops short of the full-blown value account, according to which God loves a human only if He responds to the human’s dignity. But, as I argued briefly in Chapter 2, there are independent reasons to hold that God’s love of a human is explained by dignity. In any case, given all that appears to be implied by God’s supreme love of a human, I will take it that I have completed my task for this chapter if I can provide good reason to suppose that God supremely loves every human. Second, the conclusion of this chapter is in the present tense: God now supremely loves each human. But this is controversial, even if we grant that God supremely loves all humans at one time or another. For even if it is true that God supremely loves each human at some point within her life, one might think that it is mistaken to suppose that God supremely loves each existing human at this moment. Maybe, for instance, there are currently ­people who have so hardened themselves against God that there is no longer any chance of their salvation, and so maybe God ceases to seek the highest good of such inveterate sinners. Or maybe God ceases to direct supreme love at the glorified saints, since God no longer needs to seek the highest good for those who have found it. I shall leave these issues aside. In order to guard against the need to qualify the times or stages at which God supremely loves each individual, I will speak as if it is the case that if God supremely loves a human, He has always and always will supremely love that human—i.e. for any individual S that God supremely loves, and for any time t at which S exists, God supremely loves S at t. The reader is invited to modify the relevant locutions as she or he sees fit. That said, I shall assume that God’s supreme love is not earned by good behaviour, and that God’s supreme love is stable in the sense that God does

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  149 not supremely love a human at one moment, forego loving her at a later moment, and then return to loving her supremely once again. Rather, I will suppose that when God’s supreme love is granted, it is prior to any human merit (or demerit) and stays with a person forever—or, perhaps, until rendered unnecessary in one of the ways previously suggested. This network of assumptions concerning the gracious and faithful nature of God’s love is substantive, but, I would guess, not terribly controversial among Christians. The network of assumptions will, however, play a moderately important role within the argument to come. Finally, in the argument that follows, little direct appeal is made to biblical passages in support of my case—although the Christian narrative concerning sin, salvation, and the life to come will feature prominently. This might strike one as odd, given that certain biblical passages seem to teach plainly that God has something like supreme love for all (e.g. John 3:16; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9).5 I avoid such appeals because biblical debates about the scope of God’s supreme love are well-worn, often wrapped up in quarrels about the nature of divine election, providence, and the like (cf. Acts 13:48; Rom. 9:6–29; Eph. 1:3–14). My hope is that the focus within the present chapter on God’s perfection, as it bears upon the nature and scope of divine love, serves as a fresh way of approaching such debates, perhaps even providing us with a new lens by which to read Scripture.

II.  The Argument from Maximal Love Elsewhere I have shown how the argument from maximal love is inspired by the writings of the philosopher Thomas Talbott.6 Due to limitations of space, however, I skip the exposition of Talbott’s work and proceed directly to my version of the argument. My version of this argument runs as follows: M1. God is a maximally loving being. M2. Every maximally loving being supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for this being’s supreme love.7 5 For an excellent and comprehensive biblical case for the claim that God has something like supreme love for all, see Gerald O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 6  Jordan Wessling, ‘The Scope of God’s Supreme Love: A Defense of Talbott’s Contention That God Truly Loves Us All’, Philosophia Christi 14, no. 2 (2012): 335–51. (I should say, however, that I am unhappy with my article as it contains a number of problems.) 7  Stated differently, M1 reads as follows: For any x, if x is maximally loving, then, for any y, if y is an appropriate candidate for x to love supremely, x supremely loves y.

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150  Love Divine Therefore, M3. God supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for His supreme love. [From M1 & M2] M4. Every human is an appropriate candidate for God’s supreme love.

Therefore, M5. God loves every human with supreme love. [From M3 & M4]

Premise M3 follows from M1 and M2, and M5 follows from M3 and M4. That leaves us with premises M1, M2, and M4. I shall treat these in order.

III.  Premise M1 III.a  Grounds for Believing that God Possesses Maximal Love According to M1, God is a maximally loving being. That is to say, God is not simply the most loving being that exists; rather, God has the greatest possible love that any being could possibly have.8 Supporting this premise is the idea that God is maximally perfect, and that to be perfect in this way, God must exemplify being loving in the highest and best possible manner. It is fairly easy to see why one might hold that God, as a maximally perfect being, must realize the attribute of love in the best possible way. To suggest that God’s love falls somewhere beneath the best would seem to imply that God is not as great as He could be—at least when we grant that love is a greatmaking property and that the highest quality of love is compossible with all other great-making properties that a maximally perfect being possesses.9 But, clearly, it contradicts the idea that God is maximally perfect to suppose that He is not as great as He could be. So, provided that we agree that being loving is part of what constitutes the divine perfection, it looks to be a non-negotiable 8  Perfection in love can be indexed to a kind of being (e.g. perfect human love or perfect Klingon love) or understood in relative terms (e.g. to claim that God is perfect in love is to suppose that He is greater in love than any other existing being). By contrast, maximally perfect love refers to the greatest possible love that any being could possibly have. Maximal love is, without qualification, the very best kind of love. 9  By ‘great-making property’ I mean to refer to those intrinsic attributes of God that factor into making God maximally great. A great-making property is ‘compossible’ with other attributes only if it is possible for that property to be realized along with the other attributes at issue.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  151 feature of the idea that God is a maximally perfect being that God must exemplify the attribute of love in the very best and highest form. I suspect that most that utilize the method of perfect being theology assume that God is maximally loving, and so would affirm M1 (see Chapter 1 for a brief description of perfect being theology). Apart from the intuitions one might have about being maximally loving as necessary to qualify as the greatest possible being, the New Testament places a premium on God’s love in a way that provides grounds for thinking that M1 is true.10 Among other things, God is identified with love in a special manner (e.g. 1 John 4:7–20), love is said to play a vital role in the eternal relationship between the Father and Son (e.g. John 17:24), and love fundamentally characterizes the way in which God deals with His creatures (e.g. John 3:16, 17:26; Phil. 2:1–15). While we must be careful not to assume that Scripture intends to teach abstract lessons about the nature of divine perfection, I submit that the New Testament emphasis on love as a key feature of the divine nature provides us with prima facie reason to suppose that M1 is true—at least when we are convinced on independent grounds that it is fruitful to think about God in terms of max­ imal perfection. I am therefore inclined to assume the truth of M1. Recently, however, Michael Rea has raised a significant concern with the utility of thinking about God as maximally loving. Though Rea is clear that he regards God’s love as perfect, he worries that conceiving of God’s love as max­ imal inevitably leads to unwelcomed theological consequences. Most centrally, Rea worries that thinking of God as maximally loving entails that God is the most benevolent being that ever could be, which ends in the implausible conclusion that God has an unlimited desire for some or each human’s good. As I explained in Chapter 1 of this book, Rea understands the relevant unlimited benevolent desire to be a desire which ‘eclipses in priority and strength any desire focused on anyone or anything else’, including God’s own good.11 I share Rea’s dissatisfaction with understandings of M1 that would imply an unlimited divine desire for some human’s good. Among other reasons, it would be inappropriate for God to prioritize or systematically value the good of any human above God’s own good, given the value disparity between God and humans (see Chapter 2), and thus beneath maximal love. Therefore, in what follows, I aim to exposit M1 in manner that does not imply that God has an unlimited desire for the good of humans. 10 In The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 7, J.L. Schellenberg presents a fairly persuasive case for the conclusion that a maximally perfect being must be maximally loving. 11 Michael C. Rea, The Hiddenness of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 69.

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152  Love Divine

III.b  Characterizing Maximal Divine Love There are several ways that the highest exemplification of love by God might be understood. I here consider two mutually exclusive understandings that are particularly relevant for the argument from maximal love.12 In discussing these two views, I will spell them out in terms that are specifically pertinent to the argument from maximal love, including the consideration of how God’s maximal love might be seen to apply to creaturely candidates of God’s love, most notably humans. Further implications shall be teased out and evaluated when additional premises from the argument from maximal love are examined. First, M1 might be understood as equivalent to the claim that God exemplifies love to the ultimate degree. Stressing the idea that God’s love can never be surpassed, the proponent of this understanding of God’s maximal love submits that God’s love must be of the greatest possible scope and depth: God must love every lovable person and thing, and, for each person or thing that God loves, God must love that person or thing to a degree that could not possibly be exceeded. Suppose that my Boston Terrier, Hugo, constitutes an appropriate creature for God to love. According to the ultimate degree view of God’s maximal love, God must then love Hugo as much as any being could possibly be loved. Thus, if God loves some human, or even Himself, more than He does Hugo, God fails to exemplify love to the ultimate degree, and hence, ex hypothesi, fails to qualify as a maximally loving being. This way of characterizing God’s maximal love bears a resemblance to Rea’s previously mentioned ‘unlimited love’.13 If we were to agree upon the ultimate degree view of God’s love, the defence of the argument from maximal love would come easy. Given the assumption that humans are lovable, this view implies that God must love each human with equal maximum force, from which it would presumably follow that God supremely loves each human. Unfortunately, the idea that maximal love requires the instantiation of love to the ultimate degree is implausible.14 In my judgement, the degree to which 12  More precisely, these options are mutually exclusive given certain assumptions about the value of various objects in the created world. These assumptions shall be made clear enough in due course. 13  See Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 63–89; cf. the ‘supreme degree’ view of love to which Murphy objects in his God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 34–42. One also finds hints of the affirmation of something like the ultimate degree view of God’s love in Harry  G.  Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 62–3. 14  See Murphy’s God’s Own Ethics, 34–42; and Rea’s The Hiddenness of God, 63–89.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  153 God loves someone or something should in some way track with the inherent intrinsic value of that which is loved. Indeed, it seems plain enough that to love everyone and everything at the same unsurpassably deep level, ir­re­spect­ ive of its intrinsic value, would be a defect not a great-making feature of love, and hence beneath maximally perfect love. I submit that this explains the apparent fact that it would be perverse for me to love Hugo (my dog) more than my wife, and that it would be idolatry to love my wife more than God (at least when this love is something I intentionally cultivate and ‘stand behind’). No, the degree of love should in some way fit or be calibrated to the value of the one loved, as was underscored near the end of Chapter 2. Of course, there are complications here. It is plausible that one is sometimes obligated to love some human persons more than others despite the fact that all humans are equal in worth. I should love my children more than my neighbour’s children, for instance, even though my children do not enjoy more dignity than do they. It might even be that I am justified in loving my dog more than the neighbour kids I have only briefly interacted with on a handful of occasions. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that, absent the most unusual extenuating circumstances, I ought to love my two sons equally, and I ought to love them more than my dog; and, crucially, I ought to love in this way on account of the value of the individuals at issue. What explains why I ought to love my children more than the children in the house next door is captured well with Eleonore Stump’s ‘offices of love’.15 In Chapter 2 we saw that the offices of love are relationships between persons (and, I would add, relations between humans and other creatures, e.g., dogs) that shape the ways in which individuals ought to love. Since I occupy the office of being the parent of Malcolm and Theodore, I ought to value the good of my sons and union with them in a way that entails that I love them more than the neighbouring kid, Micah, even though all three children are equal in value. Perhaps something similar should be said of the office being the owner of the dog Hugo: because I have the responsibility of tending to the interests of Hugo, I should love him more deeply than I do some child whom I barely know. In any case, and complications aside about the norms of loving one’s pet, I assume that the offices of love could not determine that I should love Hugo more than my sons (again, leaving aside the most bizarre of circumstances). This assumption is based upon the plausible notion that, all other things being equal, the depth of one’s love should correspond to the 15  Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 97–8.

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154  Love Divine inherent intrinsic value of that which is loved, even while allowing that the offices of love can determine that one ought to love one individual within a class of value more than other members within that same class. The fundamental problem with the ultimate degree view of maximal love is that it al­together bypasses the interrelation between inherent intrinsic value, the offices of love, and how one should love by supposing that the individual with unsurpassably valuable love indiscriminately loves all entities with equal strength. The one who loves in this indiscriminate manner would be insensitive to value and one’s relationship to that value, and so, contrary to the intent behind the proposal of the ultimate degree view, would not enjoy a kind of love that is unsurpassably good. A more promising understanding of M1 is the supposition that God’s max­ imal love entails that He loves every being that ought to be loved to the optimal level.16 Unlike the ultimate degree view, which conceives of God’s love as insensitive to gradations of value, on the optimal level view God’s maximal love is cashed out by way of the best and highest fit between the divine affection and value of the object loved. That which is loved sets parameters, in some way, on the manner and strength by which it should be loved. The optimal level understanding of maximal love meshes nicely with the value account of divine love, whereby God’s love is a kind of appreciation of someone or something’s intrinsic worth, and where the worth determines how the object of affection should be loved. Still, characterizing God’s maximal love in terms of the optimal level is not without its challenges. Perhaps the most severe challenge is that it is in­cred­ ibly difficult to specify what the appropriate fit between God’s love and that which is loved might be. My own approach to this matter is to think of God loving each thing He loves to the highest possible degree that matches the intrinsic inherent worth of that which is loved. It is not unreasonable to assume that, for any entity that might be loved, there is a discrete cor­res­pond­ ing range of strength between NA and NΩ by which that entity can be properly or aptly loved. (Accordingly, it could be said that plants have a distinct cor­re­ spond­ing range of NA–NΩ (say, NpA–NpΩ) by which they can be aptly loved, as do humans (say, NhA–NhΩ) and so on.) To have an attitude of affection for some entity at any node below NA would be too weak to count as love, though it might superficially look like love. To love some entity at any level above NΩ would be to love that entity too much or perversely, or perhaps not true love 16  I borrow this term from Murphy (God’s Own Ethics, 42–3), but I exposit it in ways that Murphy does not.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  155 at all.17 Any levels between NA and NΩ would be genuine instances of love, even though there might be room for improvement. The God of max­imal love, I maintain, loves each entity at strength NΩ, the highest appropriate strength given the inherent intrinsic worth of the kind of entity under consideration (where the relevant kind of strength might be NpΩ, or NhΩ, etc.). For if it is true that it is a non-negotiable feature of God’s maximal perfection that He must possess love in the very best and highest form (i.e. God must be maximally loving), and if it is true that there exists the relevant kinds of NA–NΩ ranges (which seems reasonable given that there exists the phenomena of loving certain kinds of beings too much or too little), then something like the claim that God must love each appropriate entity with the relevant kind of optimal strength (or strength NΩ) appears well founded. In a number of essays, however, Jeff Jordan objects to the idea that God loves certain kinds of creatures with equal depth. In particular, he rejects the notion that it would be a perfection of God to love each human with equal intensity.18 The central thrust of Jordan’s principle argument for this conclusion is based upon the idea that for God to love someone, God must identify with that person’s interests, and the more deeply or comprehensively God identifies with a person’s interests the more deeply or intensely God loves that individual.19 By a person’s interests Jordan has in mind ‘something the person cares about, or something the person should care about’, and Jordan understands identifying with another’s interests ‘as, roughly, caring about what one’s beloved should care about because one’s beloved should care about it’.20 Crucially, on Jordan’s analysis, one identifies with another’s interest only if one seeks to advance or promote the other’s interest, at least when it is feasible to do so.21 From these descriptions of love, Jordan contends that not even 17  In the case of God-directed love, it is plausible to maintain that one could never surpass an upper limit that would make love of God perverse or too strong, since God is maximally perfect. 18  See the following essays by Jordan: ‘The Topography of Divine Love’, Faith and Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2012): 53–69; ‘The Topography of Divine Love: A Reply to Thomas Talbott’, Faith and Philosophy 32, no. 2 (2015): 182–7; ‘The “Loving Parent” Analogy’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 82, no. 1 (2017): 15–28; ‘Divine Hiddenness and Perfect Love’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, no. 1 (2017): 187–202; and ‘The Limits of Divine Love’, in Love, Divine and Human: Contemporary Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology, ed. James Arcadi, Oliver Crisp, and Jordan Wessling (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2019), ch. 5. 19  In Jordan’s words: ‘the more interests one identifies with, and the greater the concern for one’s beloved, the deeper one loves the beloved. Identification and concern provide a kind of proportional matrix for measuring the depth or intensity of love, as an increase in identification and concern generates a deeper love. A deep love implies a great concern for the beloved and an extensive identification with the beloved’s interests’ (‘Divine Hiddenness and Perfect Love’, 192). Cf. Jordan, ‘The Topography of Divine Love’, 62. 20  Jordan, ‘The “Loving Parent” Analogy’, 19. 21  See e.g. Jordan, ‘The Topography of Divine Love’, 65; ‘The “Loving Parent” Analogy’, 18; ‘Divine Hiddenness and Perfect Love’, 192.

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156  Love Divine God Almighty can love each human to the same high degree, since there are so many humans with so many incompatible interests. Consequently, unless God wants to love each human in a generic manner that does not involve deep identification with the interests of beloved humans (which Jordan takes to be an imperfection),22 God must distribute the intensity of His love for humans unequally. I have responded to Jordan’s basic argument elsewhere,23 although curious readers will find more sophisticated objections from Ross Parker and Thomas Talbott.24 Suffice it to say that Jordan’s argument succeeds only if we affirm two of Jordan’s interrelated ideas concerning love: (i) that a necessary condition of identifying with another’s interests in love is seeking to promote those interests when doing so is feasible, and (ii) that systematically promoting one person’s interests over another (in an interests-identifying way) implies a greater depth of love. This characterization of the nature and strength of love is controversial though, and should be rejected.25 Even granting much of the bare form of Jordan’s understanding of love (which differs markedly from the value account), it seems that a person can intrinsically and equally care about the interests of two distinct persons and, ceteris paribus, be equally disposed to promote the interests of these two individuals, and yet be confronted with circumstances that imply that one must choose to promote one set of interests over another without this implying anything about the depth of one’s love. Suppose that my two sons, Malcolm and Theodore, both have an interest in me reading them different books at precisely the same time. Although I care about each of their interests and would like to fulfil both, I cannot. So I simply choose (or perhaps choose and then create some method of compensation for the other child): I will read Theodore’s book choice. Is my book selection any indication that I love Theodore more than Malcolm? It need not be. Almost certainly, this choice can be made without reference to whom I love more (assuming, as I do, that I love my children equally, even if differently). It is manifestly the case, after all, that I can care deeply about the book-related interests of both of my sons (and in that sense identify with these interests) without trying to promote one of these interests because of practical 22  Jordan, ‘The “Loving Parent” Analogy’, 23–6. 23  Wessling, ‘The Scope of God’s Supreme Love’. 24  See Parker’s ‘Deep and Wide: A Response to Jeff Jordan on Divine Love’, Faith and Philosophy 30, no. 4 (2013): 444–61, as well as the following two essays by Talbott: ‘The Topography of Divine Love: A Response to Jeff Jordan’, Faith and Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2013): 53–69; and ‘In Defense of the Loving Parent Analogy’, in Arcadi, Crisp, and Wessling, Love, Divine and Human, ch. 6. 25  See, e.g., Bennett Helm’s rich and arguably preferable description of identifying with another’s interests which does not require seeking those interests: ‘Love, Identification, and the Emotions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 46, no. 1 (2009): 39–59.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  157 limitations. Moreover, it is easy to envision circumstances wherein I must sys­ tem­ic­al­ly choose the promotion of Theodore’s interests over Malcolm’s without this prioritization implying anything relevant about the depth of my love for my sons. Perhaps, for example, Theodore is a special needs child who requires additional attention. Or maybe I have grounds for supposing that extra investment in Theodore is warranted for extrinsically related consequences (e.g. a model T-800 Terminator from the future tells me that Theodore will play an important role in the human resistance movement against Skynet).26 Due solely to these perceived consequences, I sys­tem­at­ic­ al­ly choose the fulfilment of Theodore’s interests over those of Malcolm, hating that I must act in this privileging fashion. Examples like these are easy to generate, and, in my view, they reveal that we should not adhere to Jordan’s idea that the depth of one’s love for a person must (when feasible) positively correlate with the extent to which one endeavours to fulfil the interests of that individual. What matters for the determination of the depth of one’s love of two or more individuals, I have suggested, is that one should equally care and be equally disposed to promote the interests of those loved when all other things are equal. What one must do based on the circumstances that confronts one often matters considerably less. But if this is the case, then Jordan’s argument for the unequal intensity of God’s love for humans fails. God can love each human equally by, in part, intrinsically caring about their interests equally, and yet practical limitations may force God to promote certain interests at the costs of others. Therefore Jordan’s argument should not convince us that maximal love would lead God to love some humans beneath the strength of NΩ (or strength NhΩ). Apart from Jordan’s argument, one might wonder if my reliance on the offices of love opens the door to a maximal love that loves humans unequally. After all, if most or all humans are justified in loving some humans more than others on account of the offices of love in which the relevant individuals stand, should not we suppose that God in principle could fill certain offices of love which determine that He may or should love some humans more than others? In addition, is it not implausible to suppose that God’s relationships to Israel (e.g. Deut. 10:14–15; Hos. 11:1–11; Mal. 1:2–3) and individuals within 26 This farfetched example obviously comes from the 1991 blockbuster film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Notice, however, that it illustrates a point that is not so farfetched in the divine case. God might foreknow, for instance, that He has reason to seek the fulfilment of the interests of Abraham or Israelite leaders over the interests of others for the sake of His redemptive plan cul­min­ated in Christ. Yet this sort of favouritism does not by itself clearly entail a greater intensity of divine love.

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158  Love Divine the Church (e.g. John 17:6–10; Rom. 9:6–29; Eph. 5:25–27) constitute two instances of such offices? Bracket, for the moment, the referenced biblical considerations on behalf of the thesis that God has a greater intensity of love for certain people. Notice that it is difficult to square the idea that God enjoys maximal love with the idea that God occupies an office of love that makes it such that God is justified or obliged to love some humans more than others. Minimally, this difficulty emerges when God simply chooses to leave some humans outside of His more intimate circle which He could have just as well included (i.e. when God chooses to occupy the relevant kind of office). For, given such a choice, God ostensibly loves some humans less than that which is the highest, most appropriate way; He loves them less than He could, given the available option to include all within His inner-circle of love. But loving someone less than one could (that is, loving beneath the highest appropriate fit) does not appear to be the product of maximal love. If this is right, then the divine choice to love some more than others seems to be diametrically opposed to M1, which we have already agreed is true. To circumvent the implication that unequal divine love of humans implies a denial of M1, one might propose that it is a great-making property for God to be able to choose (freely) which of His existing creatures He loves, and to what strength. Call this the volitional view of God’s maximal love. There is a sense in which many Christians would agree that God’s love is a matter of free choice. For any given human/creature that might come to be, God has the power to prevent that human/creature from ever existing. So, even if God necessarily loves each human/creature that comes to exist, God may be said to retain the freedom to love no human/creature at all should He choose not to create them, or only love the humans/creatures that He selects by directly or indirectly creating them. This is not the volitional view I have in mind. The proponent of the volitional view of concern says that a mass of creatures may exist before God, some of which are human, and God is free to pick and choose among these creatures, including humans, and love as He sees fit. Obviously, the adherent to the volitional view will be deeply suspicious of the argument from maximal love. The volitional view is not a plausible understanding of God’s maximal love, however. The first thing to note is that it does not look to be a view of God’s maximal love per se as much as it is a view of God’s sovereignty. This is because, considered in itself, it seems to be a more exalted view of God’s love to suppose that God loves all qualified candidates at the optimal level, much similar to the way in which, considered in itself, it looks to be a more exalted

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  159 view of God’s perfect knowledge to suppose that He knows all true propositions.27 The claim that God’s love functions as the proponent of the volitional view maintains seems reasonable only if we assume that loving all qualified candidates is not compatible with God’s sovereignty, that is, with God’s ability to bring about and control various states of affairs. But the assumption is dubious. Though some theological voluntarists might disagree, it is not a great-making feature of God’s sovereignty to be able to realize just any state of affairs (e.g. that which is logically impossible or intrinsically evil) but only those states of affairs that are somehow worth bringing about. But God refraining from loving some qualified candidate at the optimal level does not appear to be a worthwhile state of affairs. For whatever value there is in God possessing the freedom to love creatures or not, much or all of it can be had independent of the volitional view. As already highlighted, one can reject the volitional view and yet maintain that God is free not to love any particular creature by not creating any creature that He would rather not love. Moreover, when the manner of divine love of concern is supreme love, it seems to be a defect, not a perfection, of God to withhold supreme love from creatures who are both immensely valuable (e.g. enjoy dignity) and need God’s love to obtain their highest good. Why this is so will become clear in Section VI; I thus put aside further treatment of the volitional view until then. Independent of the volitional view, someone might nevertheless maintain that it is more valuable than not for God to love some humans more than ­others on account of the degree of human sanctity.28 The basic thought might be that the level of one’s spiritual formation makes one a better candidate for God’s love, and so, as a consequence, the more spiritually formed one is the more one is loved by God. This is an intriguing option that merits greater examination than it has been given within the contemporary theological literature. Nevertheless, I leave this sanctity option aside for the reason that it is not a challenge to the optimal level view as such. On the contrary, the sanctity option is compatible with the optimal level view so long as it is held that God loves each human to the highest appropriate degree that their level of spiritual formation allows. (So, if there are ascending levels of spiritual formation—L1, L2, L3, etc.—God loves each human at each level to the highest appropriate degree—say, NhL1Ω, 27  Similar to the volitional view of God’s maximal love, some have suggested that God is free to limit the extent of His own knowledge. For a discussion of this matter, see Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (London: Macmillan, 1983), 125–6. 28  See Shawn Floyd, ‘Preferential Divine Love Or, Why God Loves Some People More Than Others’, Philosophia Christi 11, no. 2 (2009): 359–79.

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160  Love Divine NhL2Ω, NhL3Ω, etc.) Instead, this sanctity option is a challenge to a certain way of understanding the optimal strength of God’s love, the examination of which rests outside the focus of the present chapter. In addition, and as stated at the outset of the chapter, I am assuming that God’s supreme love is not contingent upon the level of moral/spiritual transformation of any given human, and, ultimately, it is God’s supreme love which is the concern of this chapter. However, there is nothing in the supposition that God’s love for humans grows as they increase in sanctity which precludes the idea that God has supreme love for all humans. Thus, the proposal that the degree to which God loves correspondingly increases with the degree of human sanctity poses no threat to the primary thesis I here defend. For these reasons, I judge that it is best to discuss this sanctity proposal on another occasion. In what follows, I often express myself in ways that might be taken to preclude the truth of the sanctity proposal false. This is largely for ease of expression; readers are invited to make the qualifications that are deemed most appropriate. Consider, then, yet another reason to maintain that maximal love is compatible with loving humans at different degrees of intensity. Someone might argue that God must love humans unequally if He is to achieve the most comprehensive display of the richness of the divine character ad extra. Loving some with supreme love and passing over others ensures that two aspects of the divine personality are mirrored in creation: love and mercy on the one hand, and holiness and justice on the other. Provided that the value of the display of the divine character in this manner is relevantly outside God’s control, this glorificationist picture is distinct from the volitional view. All the same, we have already discovered reason to reject glorificationism in Chapter 3, and in Chapter 6 it will be argued that God’s holiness and justice are not opposed to His love, thereby undermining the idea that there are competing facets of the divine nature that require the unequal love of humans to be expressed adequately. We will also find cause to show that glorificationism should not be used to undercut the conclusion of the argument from maximal in Section VI of the present chapter. For now, I conclude that there are considerably plausible resources for refusing to accept this glorificationist strategy for maintaining that maximal love need not be understood in terms of the optimal level view. Thus far we have found no conceptual barrier to the supposition that max­ imal love would lead God to love each human at the optimal level (strength NΩ or strength NhΩ). What, then, of the previously mentioned biblical con­sid­ er­ations, concerning Israel and the Church, that might incline one to think that God loves some humans more than others? As it often is with Scripture,

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  161 matters on this issue are complex. While there are biblical passages that suggest that God’s love is stronger for some (as previously noted with respect to Israel and the Church), there are also passages that provide evidence for the opposite conclusion (e.g. Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 15:1–32; Acts 10:34–35; Rom. 2:1–11). Unfortunately, Scripture itself provides no obvious way of alleviating the tension, and this is not the place for a detailed assessment of the relevant biblical data. Instead, I simply gesture towards a few basic strategies that the defender of the notion that God loves each human at the optimal level might want to pursue. Begin with the biblical depictions of God’s special love for the people of Israel. Read in light of the New Testament understanding of the fulfilment of Israel in Christ, it is sensible to suppose that biblical language concerning God’s deep love for Israel is not meant to communicate that God intrinsically loves, or ever did love, Israelites above others. Instead, this language may be thought to be hyperbolic, intending to point to God’s commitment to Israel as the vehicle for the salvation of all peoples. As St Paul assures us, there is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ, but all are equally ‘heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:28–29). Moreover, as we learned from our discussion of Jeff Jordan’s views on love, the fact that God may have been led to favour the interests of the people of Israel over other peoples should not be taken to imply that God must love Israelites more. No, God could have chosen to favour Israelite interests primarily for the sake of the fulfilment of His salvation plan, which includes the redemption of people ‘from every nation, from all tribes, peoples, and languages’ (Rev. 7:9). Biblical intimations that God loves those within the Church more than He does those outside of it are similarly inconclusive—provided, perhaps, that one is not already convinced that God unconditionally predestined some to glory while passing over others. Such exceptional language, for instance, can be read as pointing to the reality that the Church is where God’s desire for union with His beloved humans is most fulfilled, without this implying anything about the degrees of His love for different individuals. After all, while the Church is described as Christ’s bride, Christ also says that there is ‘more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance’ (Luke 15:7).29

29  Alternatively, one could understand God loving those within the Church more than He does many persons outside of the Church in light of the supposed fact that those inside the Church are generally at a higher level of sanctity (although this is something I would hesitate to affirm). However, allowing for this variance in the strength of God’s love poses no essential problems for the universal

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162  Love Divine In sum, there does not appear to be sufficient reason, biblical or otherwise, to reject the idea that God loves humans equally. On the contrary, for those committed to M1 plus the idea that there is some intrinsic maximum at which individual humans can be properly loved, there is cause to suppose that God loves each human at the strongest, most fitting strength, NΩ (or strength NhΩ). Given these commitments, therefore, the optimal level interpretation of M1 appears considerably plausible. The implications of the idea that God loves each human at the highest fitting strength will be worked out in relation to the argument from maximal love in due course. At present, there remains the matter of providing an analysis of what it means to love some entity at the highest relevant strength. Should we, for instance, cash out this strength of love in terms of some kind of intensity of feeling, disposition towards certain actions, or something else? Since the main topic of this chapter is God’s supreme love, I deem it permissible to forego a general discussion of the degrees of love on the value account and instead to limit the focus to the application of strength NΩ to a maximal lover’s supreme love of an appropriate candidate of this love. And given that supreme love concerns seeking the beloved’s highest good, I propose that we understand a maximally loving being’s supreme love of an appropriate candidate of this love at strength NΩ in terms of a disposition or inclination to perform actions to bring about that candidate’s highest good, given the candidate’s worth. What this disposition comes to will need to be negotiated on a case by case basis, depending upon the kind of being that is proposed as a candidate for supreme love. But, generally, something like the following rough and ready characterization of the matter seems right, at least when the entity in question is immensely valuable: for any given appropriate subject that a maximally loving being supremely loves, that maximal lover does all that can be done to bring about the subject’s highest good (as the circumstances emerge), provided that there is neither (i) a competing greater good (or, if you prefer, competing and more weighty reason) that renders this course of action inappropriate, nor (ii) a competing equal good (or, if you prefer, competing and equally weighty reason) that renders it permissible not to engage in this course of action. Add to this, as a kind of side-constraint, that a maximally loving being would never intentionally act in a manner that makes impossible the fulfilment of a supremely loved subject’s highest good (at least when the

optimal strength of God’s love, or the argument from maximal love, for the reasons previously explained in reference to the sanctity option.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  163 subject enjoys dignity or some other high level of value).30 To do so would be intrinsically unloving and thus beneath maximal love. Applied to God, this understanding of the optimal strength of God’s love would ensure that God does whatever He properly can to secure the highest good of each immensely valuable candidate of supreme love. Of course, it might turn out that God has the noted competing greater or equal goods much more than we would expect, which thereby often makes it permissible for God not to seek the highest good of some appropriate candidate of supreme love for a time. Nevertheless, this way of conceiving of the optimal strength of God’s supreme love ensures us that God never entirely precludes an immensely valuable candidate of supreme love from reaching her highest good. This rendering of the optimal strength of God’s supreme love, as an implication of God’s optimal love more generally, strikes me as plausible. It makes sense of the idea that God, on account of His maximal perfection, must respond to each existing candidate for love by loving it as much as it possibly or properly could be loved, given its worth. At the same time, this rendering of the optimal strength of God’s supreme love does not absurdly imply that God loves each entity as much as He could possibly love any being (it does not imply, for instance, that God loves Himself and humans equally). If this conception of God’s optimal love holds up, then it is not difficult to discern why one might judge the additional premises of the argument from maximal love as concomitants of M1: God loves each qualified candidate with optimal supreme love, and provided that we agree that humans are the right kind of candidate, God has optimal supreme love for each human. To the evaluation of such matters we now turn.

IV.  Premise M2 IV.a  Understanding M2 According to premise M2, every maximally loving being supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for this being to love in this way. Lurking beneath the surface is the assumption that all maximally loving beings have some significant capability to give supreme love to all appropriate candidates of such love. So understood, the kind wish that one could offer 30  By side-constraint, I have in mind an inviolable moral principle that determines or ‘constrains’ how good outcomes should be sought.

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164  Love Divine supreme love to all—similar to the way one wishes one could end world ­hunger—is not enough. Rather, maximal lovers must have some capacity to seek and bring about the good of each appropriate candidate for supreme love. Also behind M2 rests the idea that maximal lovers fulfil certain knowledge conditions. In particular, they have the requisite insight into whom (and perhaps what) should be loved with supreme love, along with knowledge of what is the highest good for those loved and how, generally, this good might be brought about. Assuming for the moment that all humans are appropriate candidates for supreme love for each maximally loving being, maximal lovers would recognize that humans should be loved with supreme love, and, when couched within the Christian framework, maximal lovers would know that the highest good for each human is union with God. In addition, maximal lovers would have some idea as to how each human obtains union with God. With these remarks before us, let us turn our attention to what makes something an appropriate candidate for supreme love. I shall pick out two features of this kind that I understand to be jointly sufficient. The first of these features might be called ‘the value condition’. According to it, that which has tremendous value (e.g. dignity) plays a vital role in rendering something an appropriate candidate for supreme love. The thought is that the intrinsic value of something warrants (sometimes even demands) a particular love-response, and that the more impressive the degree of value, the greater the response that is merited. Plausibly, this is why it makes sense for Christians to teach that God should be loved above all else and worshiped, and why, ceteris paribus, humans should be loved more than dogs: God enjoys a kind of worth that merits the most exuberant response of love that the creature can muster, and humans possess dignity whereas dogs do not. I assume that there are certain kinds of entities (e.g. humans) that are immensely valuable and have a highest good, and that it is right or fitting for one to seek that good. I will not attempt to delineate all the kinds and depths of values that contribute to something being an appropriate candidate of supreme love. Rather, as the defence of the argument from maximal love unfolds, I shall assume that our intuitions provide a reliable guide into what kinds of entities might have sufficient value to qualify them for the value condition of supreme love’s candidacy. A second feature that factors into making something an appropriate candidate for supreme love might be called ‘the neediness condition’. The idea here is that the relevant candidate requires the supreme love of some specific individual not only to flourish in the most meaningful sense, but that the absence of this supreme love from this specific individual comes with calamitous

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  165 implications for the candidate. Essential to the neediness condition, then, is a relation of dependency between some candidate for supreme love and some specific individual, such that the former requires the supreme love of the latter to flourish richly and escape a life that is in some way tragic. (Drawing from Stump’s offices of love, we might say that those who fulfil the neediness condition occupy the office of dependent for some being just in case these in­di­vid­ uals need that being to value and seek their highest good to flourish and to avoid tragedy.) Consider the human as an example of that which satisfies the neediness condition in relation to God. As the Christian sees things, no human can reach her summum bonum without the love of others, particularly the love of God. Indeed, as St Augustine famously put it in a prayer to God, ‘Our heart is restless until it rests in you.’31 Worse than that, on the Christian framework, if a human is not supremely loved by God, hell is in­ev­it­able—a severe and horrid implication if ever there was one. According to the Christian faith, therefore, humans fulfil the neediness condition in relation to God. We shall return to the interrelation between the human satisfaction of the neediness condition and the Christian worldview when we consider M4. At present I note that I will not attempt to say what precise degree of neediness is vital for making something an appropriate candidate for supreme love. As before, I will assume instead that we have insight into certain clear cases. Taking the two conditions together, someone/something is an appropriate candidate for supreme love for some being if that person/thing fulfils both the neediness and value conditions. Plugged into M2, the proposition is that all maximally loving beings would supremely love each individual that meets these conditions (in relation to the maximally loving being at issue). To avoid confusion, it is worth clarifying that it is no part of M2 to claim that maximally loving beings attain this status by supremely loving the highest possible number of appropriate objects. Affirmation of that might be an affirmation of the impossible. For suppose that being maximally loving would require the relevant being to love supremely as many people as could possibly be loved. Add to this the plausible assumption that no matter how many persons that are supremely loved, God could always create yet another person to love supremely. The consequence of these two suppositions is that it is impossible for anyone to be a maximal lover, since no one can reach her full potential of supremely loving as many candidates as is intrinsically possible.32 31 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1.1 (p. 3). 32  Bruce Ware exhibits this misunderstanding of maximal love in his response to Thomas Talbott’s claim that God’s loving nature requires Him to love everyone supremely. See Ware’s ‘Responses to

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166  Love Divine By contrast, the idea behind M2 is that maximally loving beings possess a character quality (perhaps something like a moral virtue) such that those graced with this perfection extend their supreme love to all appropriate lovecandidates. And, plausibly, only existing beings can be appropriate candidates of supreme love. Given this, it might be said that maximal lovers experience an extensive but not an intensive increase in their love when it rests upon a newcomer. To say that loving another makes an extensive but not an intensive increase in maximal love is to say that the new object of love contributes to the way the maximal lover expresses her love, even though the quality, intensity and purity of this love does not increase with the expansion of its intentional objects.33

IV.b  Defence of M2 What might be said in support of M2? (It will be remembered that M2 is the premise that every maximally loving being supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for the being in question to love supremely.) If we accept the previously defended optimal level understanding of max­ imal love, M2 seems to follow nearly immediately. For if maximally loving beings love every appropriate being to the optimal level on account of their maximal love, then it seems it would be blatantly suboptimal to withhold supreme love from those that meet the neediness and value conditions. Thomas Talbott provides additional grounds for accepting M2.34 Although he does not exactly put it like this, Talbott reasons that maximal love, like other great-making properties we attribute to maximally perfect beings, must be of universal scope and of uppermost quality. The clearest example comes from a comparison with cognitive perfection or omniscience. If a being is cognitively perfect, then that being knows all that is an appropriate candidate for knowledge. With respect to propositional knowledge, this being knows all true propositions and believes no false ones, since (arguably) all and only true propositions are appropriate candidates for perfect propositional knowledge. Not only that, the being who is cognitively perfect necessarily grasps Thomas  B.  Talbott’, in Perspectives on Election: Five Views, ed. Chad Owen Brand (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 268. 33  For a contemporary discussion of intensive and extensive contributions to God’s happiness, see Richard Creel’s Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 144–5. 34  Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God (Parkland, FL: Universal, 1999), 113.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  167 propositions in a particularly valuable way—immediately and infallibly, for ex­ample.35 Similar thinking applies to maximal love. A being’s maximal love entails that this being loves all that are appropriate candidates for love, and it plaus­ible that those who fulfil the value and neediness conditions are such candidates. Also analogous to the case of cognitive perfection, possessing maximal love ensures not only that this being loves all, but that she does so in a manner befitting of that perfection. Now, since it is patently true that one cannot love an individual without valuing and (when necessary and when the lover’s circumstances permit) seeking at least some good for the beloved, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the maximal lover does everything she properly can to seek the highest good of the loved individual (again, as necessary and as circumstances permit). It is difficult to resist the conclusion, in other words, that one cannot be a maximal lover unless one has (optimal) supreme love for all candidates of such love. In short, just as being cognitively perfect entails having the best possible grasp of all of reality, having maximal love entails loving all appropriate candidates in the best most fitting way, including loving these candidates with (optimal) supreme love. In an independent article, I offered the following thought experiment in further support of M2.36 Suppose that all of the world’s humans are appropriate candidates for supreme love for two gods, Thor and Zeus. Thor supremely loves the entire human population minus the Athenians, whereas Zeus supremely loves all and treats them accordingly. Given this, who is a more perfect lover, Thor or Zeus? Certainly it is Zeus, and the reason for this is that Zeus supremely loves more of the appropriate candidates of such love than does Thor. M2 thus appears true. The thought experiment has drawn fire from Michael Rea. As I understand it, Rea’s criticism is that this thought experiment is funded by the idea that maximal love entails a kind of ultimate degree view of supreme love.37 (Recall 35  For discussions of the immediate and non-discursive nature of divine knowledge, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, 14.7; George  I.  Mavrodes, ‘How Does God Know the Things He Knows?’, in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, ed. Thomas  V.  Morris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 345–61; Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 144. For a brief discussion of the infallible nature of divine knowledge, see Peter Van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in 2003 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 26. 36  See my, ‘The Scope of God’s Supreme Love’. For an alternative thought experiment, we could replace Zeus and Thor with two parents and their supreme love for their children. I leave it to the reader to work out the details. 37  More specifically, Rea’s concern seems to be that this thought experiment is funded by the idea that maximal love entails unlimited desire for some human’s highest good, where, as mentioned in Section III.a, an unlimited desire is one that ‘eclipses in priority and strength any desire focused on anyone or anything else’, including any interests that the one who loves might have (The Hiddenness of God, 67).

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168  Love Divine from Section III.b, the proponent of the ultimate degree view of divine love maintains that God must love every appropriate candidate for love to a degree that could not possibly be surpassed.) When we compare Thor’s love to that of Zeus’s, we see that Thor’s love is limited in ways that Zeus’s is not. Thus, supposing that maximal love entails a kind of ultimate degree of supreme love, we see that Zeus’s love is closer to maximal love. But Rea (in effect) argues that the ultimate degree view of God’s supreme love is false. Once we realize that this is the case, we see that adjudicating between the quality of Zeus’s and Thor’s love by examining the degree to which their loves are limited is mistaken. It is doubtful, however, that the thought experiment requires an ultimate degree conception of supreme love. What it requires is that one cannot be both maximally loving and yet fail to love in the most valuable way. But there is more than one characterization of maximal love that would lead someone to suppose that Thor cannot be maximally loving. Aside from the ultimate degree view (which I have already rejected), there is the optimal level view. If we opt for this latter view, then, plausibly, maximal lovers would supremely love each candidate at strength NΩ, which was spelt out in terms of doing all one can to bring about each candidate’s highest good, provided that there is not an equal or greater good that renders not doing this permissible. Measured against this conception of supreme love, Thor’s status as a maximally loving being is impugned if he is not disposed to act in the relevant manner towards all humans. There is an obvious complication here that threatens to undermine the intuitions that initially support M2. It is easy to judge Zeus as more loving than Thor when we think of the human population as well-behaved and willing to give Zeus and Thor their proper due. Our intuitions might shift, however, when we are told that the humans regularly curse Zeus and Thor. Now we might think that Thor can be forgiven for refusing to love the Athenians, especially if they are particularly corrupt as a people group. More to the point for the purposes of the ultimate conclusion of the argument from maximal love, when we bracket the thought that humans are in rebellion against God, we might find ourselves drawn towards the idea that God, as maximally loving, must supremely love all humans. Once we turn our attention to human sinfulness, however, some of us might think that there is nothing about max­ imal love that requires God to love all humans supremely. Recall, though, that we are assuming that God’s supreme love is not principally conditioned by the good behaviour of the candidate of love (see Section I); and this plausibly can be held as a feature of maximally loving beings more

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  169 generally. While it may be the case that an individual can become so wicked that she is no longer an appropriate candidate for supreme love (although I have my doubts), the maximal lover is one whose ‘starting point’ is an attitude of love. Plus, it is eminently reasonable to believe that the one who loves maximally overlooks faults—if not all faults than very many of them. It will not do, furthermore, to claim that humans (or certain other candidates for supreme love) are born into sin in a way that makes it such that they need not be loved supremely by God (or other maximally loving beings). But to discern why this is the case, I first need to discuss M4. After we do that, we will see, in Section VI (where I respond to outstanding objections to the argument from maximal love), that it is especially doubtful that God can be judged a maximal lover if He does not supremely love every human by at least ensuring that each human has the genuine opportunity to reach her highest good.

V.  Premise M4 and the Argument from Maximal Love V.a  Defence of M4 Christians have historically thought that God is praiseworthy in part because of His supremely loving and gracious ways towards His rational creatures. What this suggests is that there is something right or fitting about loving such creatures. If it were not right or fitting for humans to be loved supremely by God, then God would love no humans with supreme love. But Christians are united in affirming that God supremely loves at least some humans (although, granted, many will not understand this in terms of the optimal level of supreme love). Premise M4—the claim that every human is an appropriate candidate for God’s supreme love—seeks to capture the notion that it is good for humans to be loved supremely by God. The premise is particularly compelling when read in light of the value and neediness conditions discussed in relation to M2. Plausibly, humans enjoy a tremendous degree of value (e.g. dignity) thereby fulfilling the value condition. It is also undeniable from a Christian perspective that humans fulfil the neediness condition in relation to God.38 This is because, according to the Christian perspective, humans require loving-union with God (their highest

38  Recall that the neediness condition presupposes that a certain relation obtains between a candidate maximal lover and a candidate for supreme love, namely, the relation of the latter candidate needing the supreme love of the candidate maximal lover to flourish richly and avoid genuine misery.

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170  Love Divine good) to flourish, and if God does not supremely love them, hell follows. Given that humans fulfil the value and neediness conditions, surely they are appropriate candidates for the kind of love that values and seeks their union with God. It therefore seems that M4 is more plausible than its denial. To buttress M4, and the argument from maximal love more generally, let us reflect upon human neediness in relation to God when couched within the Christian narrative. Suppose that God decides not to love some human supremely. This would mean that God knowingly established a milieu wherein the unloved individual can never truly or deeply flourish. (The assumption is that God’s supreme love occurs or not prior to human action, and that if God does not supremely love someone, it is impossible for that person to obtain her highest good.) Worse than that, if God does not supremely love a given human right from the start, God decides not to make the escape of considerable misery possible for the individual not so loved. (Recall that one of our assumptions is that God’s supreme love cannot be earned by good behaviour.) For, leaving aside the limbus infantium, classic Christian eschatology dictates that human existence will ultimately lead to either heaven or hell.39 There is no eternally existing via media. Heaven is a place of bliss, and hell is terribly miserable. If hell is eternal, it is fair to say that the lives of those who are sent to hell will be on the whole miserable, given that the overwhelming majority of their lives will be in hell. If, by contrast, the duration of hell is finite due to annihilation, then the lives of those who are damned will end in bitter disappointment, assuming that there is a period of stern punishment or selfimposed misery prior to annihilation. Hence, if God does not have supreme love for a human, then He does not, in an important sense, care about that human avoiding a life which will be on the whole miserable, or else will end in bitter disappointment. But this appears plainly wrong, certainly beneath maximal love. Consequently, it is more plausible than not that humans are appropriate candidates of God’s supreme love, and that God, as a maximally perfect and loving being, loves each human supremely.

V.b  Summary of the Argument from Maximal Love We may now recap the defence of the argument from maximal love. The argument, it will be remembered, runs as follows. 39  I take it that universalism is not an option if one denies that God supremely loves some.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  171 M1. God is a maximally loving being. M2. Every maximally loving being supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for this being’s supreme love.

Therefore, M3. God supremely loves all entities that are appropriate candidates for His supreme love. [From M1 & M2] M4. Every human is an appropriate candidate for God’s supreme love.

Therefore, M5. God loves every human with supreme love. [From M3 & M4]

We agreed that M1 is true—though, admittedly, work remains to be done on the concept of maximal love. M2 is the claim that every maximally loving being supremely loves each candidate that is immensely valuable and needs the relevant maximal lover’s supreme love (i.e. stands in the office of love, dependent, to the relevant maximally loving being). I tried to motivate acceptance of M2 by way of the optimal level analysis of maximal love as well as by following the parallel that Talbott draws between maximal love and other great-making properties, such as cognitive perfection. Similar to the manner in which cognitive perfection entails immediate and infallible knowledge of all true propositions, maximal love entails (optimal) supreme love of all appropriate candidates of such love. Next, on the assumption that all humans are candidates of the relevant kind, I offered a thought experiment concerning two deities, Thor and Zeus, and I asked the reader to consider who is closer to maximal love: Zeus, who supremely loves every human, or Thor who only loves some humans. While I hoped that the reader would agree that it is Zeus, I noted that Rea offers an objection to the thought experiment. The thought experiment, intimates Rea, is based upon the problematic idea that maximal love entails absolutely limitless supreme love. In response I suggested that maximal love can be understood in terms of loving at the optimal level, and that this understanding does not have the kind of implication that Rea criticizes. This brought me to an examination of M4. There I submitted that humans fulfil the neediness and value conditions for God, and thus that M4 is more plausible than its denial. But if M4 is true, and if M1 and M2 are likewise deemed true, M5 follows: God loves every human with supreme love.

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172  Love Divine

VI.  Objections to the Argument from Maximal Love With the argument from maximal love before us, I now treat outstanding objections to the argument. I shall rebut three objections, each of which is directed against M2 when God is held up as the maximally loving being of concern and humans are assumed to be the appropriate candidates of God’s supreme love, as found in M4. In other words, each objection is directed against the idea that God, because He is maximally loving, supremely loves every human. In responding to these objections, we shall come across add­ ition­al support for the premises of the argument from maximal love.

VI.a  Murphy’s Reasons-Based Objection In a recent book, Mark  C.  Murphy challenges conventional thinking about God’s love. While Murphy maintains that intra-trinitarian love is best conceived of as maximal, he denies that this maximal love entails that God must love creatures in the highest possible way, should He choose to create them.40 I here outline Murphy’s argument, show the implications of Murphy’s argument for M2, and then offer reasons to doubt Murphy’s argument. Most Christians would agree that the value of a human flourishing and the disvalue of that human suffering provides God (‘the Anselmian being’,41 in Murphy’s language) with reason to promote that human’s flourishing on the one hand and prevent her suffering on the other. (To bolster the claim, Murphy points to common formulations and responses to the problem of evil.42) What kind of reason is this? Borrowing from Joshua Gert, Murphy draws a distinction between justifying reasons and requiring reasons for action: Roughly, a requiring reason is a reason that is such that if an agent who has that reason fails to act on it, then either that agent is not practically rational or that agent has some superior, incompatible reason that the agent was acting on. A justifying reason is a reason that is such that an agent that acts on that reason acts practically rationally, unless there are some incompatible reasons that render acting on it practically irrational. You might think of requiring reasons as imposing rational constraints; you might think of 40 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, 44, n. 28. 41 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics. 42 See, for example, Mark  C.  Murphy, ‘Toward God’s Own Ethics’, in Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution, ed. Michael Bergmann and Patrick Kain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 154–8; God’s Own Ethics, 104–6.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  173 justifying reasons as providing rational opportunities. One of Gert’s key theses is that a reason can be purely justifying, that is, justifying without requiring: it can give an agent a rational opportunity without placing that agent under a rational constraint. A purely justifying reason would be a reason that is such that an agent that acts on that reason acts practically rationally, though that agent may fail to act on that reason without irrationality even in the absence of some other reason that precludes acting on it.43

Murphy is prepared to grant that God may have purely justifying reasons for promoting human flourishing and preventing human suffering, but, against the mainstream opinion, Murphy denies that God has requiring reasons for performing the relevant actions. Hence, there is nothing about the divine character that means that God necessarily acts to promote the human’s good or prevent her suffering even when God has no reason of equal or greater weight for not acting in this promotive or preventative manner. God enjoys complete freedom in these matters. If God has only justifying reason for promoting human flourishing and preventing hindrances to it, M2 is called into question. According to M2, every maximally loving being, including God, values and seeks the highest good of all appropriate candidates of supreme love. If Murphy is right, and if it is the case that humans are the relevant kind of entities (see the defence of M4 in Section V.a), then a maximally loving being may or may not choose to act in a manner that would promote the highest good of some appropriate candidates of supreme love. Indeed, Murphy contends that God has only justifying reason to promote the highest good of any creature. So, contrary to M2, it is an implication of Murphy’s views that maximally loving beings need not seek the highest good of any appropriate (creaturely) candidate for supreme love. Murphy’s sophisticated argument for the conclusion that God has only justifying reason to promote a human’s highest good and prevent her suffering spans nearly one hundred pages. Unfortunately, I cannot treat all of the details of this argument within the present chapter. But I believe that the main contours of the argument, as it is relevant to the purposes of this chapter, can be boiled down into two steps. Murphy first argues that ‘in whatever sense it is true that the Anselmian being [i.e. God] is loving, the sense in which it is loving does not go beyond that which is appropriate to ascribe to it simply in

43  See Murphy’s ‘Toward God’s Own Ethics’, 162.

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174  Love Divine virtue of its having to be morally perfect.’44 Here morality is understood in terms of ‘appropriate responsiveness to value, or to particular sorts of value’.45 To this formal characterization of morality, Murphy adds the substantive constraint that an agent can be morally good ‘only if that being treats setbacks to the well-being of rational and other sentient beings as to-be-prevented and so fails to prevent them only when there are other values that bear on the choice that make it appropriate to fail to act for the sake of well-being on that occasion’.46 The second step is argue that God, the Anselmian being, faces no demands of moral perfection of the kind that would mean that God has requiring reason to promote the welfare of any human (and other sentient beings) and stave off threats to it. Both stages of the argument are open to challenge; I shall raise doubts only about the second step. Let us grant, then, that being maximally loving does not give God reasons to act that go beyond moral perfection. Might moral perfection nonetheless provide God with requiring reasons to promote and defend human welfare? No, says Murphy, and he presents both a defensive and offensive argument for this negative judgement. The defensive argument begins with the observation that there is an explanatory gap between the following two propositions (where ‘X’ refers to something like the obtaining of a state of affairs, and where ‘A’ refers to some human or sentient creature): 1. X is fundamentally good (bad) for A. 2. X [provides] a reason for anyone to promote (prevent) X.47

Though it might turn out that it is ‘metaphysically necessary that should (1) hold true, then corresponding propositions of the form (2) hold true’, this is not an analytic truth. However, Murphy believes that if the suggested connection between (1) and (2) is metaphysically necessary, then some explanation should be available. And, importantly, ‘Philosophers have acknowledged the need to provide explanations here, and have tried to provide them. But these explanations have typically proceeded on the basis of considerations that are specific to human beings.’48 Such explanations include Hobbesian theories, Humean theories, Aristotelian theories, and Kantian theories, and Murphy contends that none of these apply to God, the Anselmian being.49

44 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, 22. 45  Murphy’s emphasis, God’s Own Ethics, 23. 46 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, 24. 47 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, 49. 48 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, 49. 49  Murphy’s treatment of these issues can be found in God’s Own Ethics, 48–58.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  175 Murphy highlights the explanatory gap concerning the supposed necessary connection between (1) and (2) with the following motivation. As noted, we tend to think that the good of a human flourishing and the bad of that human suffering gives God reasons to promote that flourishing or prevent that suffering, as the case may be. By underscoring the gap between (1) and (2), Murphy hopes to engender doubt that the fact that human flourishing is fundamentally good and human suffering is fundamentally bad—essentially, (1)—gives God requiring reasons to promote human flourishing and prevent human suffering when opportunities to do so emerge—essentially, (2). This spells ­trouble for M2, as was indicated, when God is thought be a maximally loving being and when humans are thought to be appropriate candidates of supreme love. I have two complaints about Murphy’s argument as presented so far. First, I  do not believe that those committed to the idea that God has requiring ­reasons of the kind that Murphy rejects should be particularly concerned about the inability to explain the necessary connection between (1) and (2). Plausibly, one should take the inability to explain this connection between (1) and (2) as strong evidence that there is no such connection in the divine case only if we should expect to be able to discern the connection, should there be one. However, as Murphy indirectly illustrates through his survey of attempts to explain the connection between (1) and (2), it is extremely difficult and controversial to figure out the necessary connection between (1) and (2) as it pertains to human agents, although most agree that there is such a connection in the human case. But if the grounds for why (1) entails (2) is difficult to locate in the human case, why believe that the failure to discern this connection in the divine case provides much evidence that there is no such necessary connection? My suggestion is that it does not, especially if we have independent reason to suppose that a necessary connection between (1) and (2) rele­ vantly applies to God, as Murphy reports that most assume. I shall return to this notion of having independent reason to suppose that there is a necessary connection between (1) and (2) in the divine case in the course of presenting my second complaint. Second, so far as I can discern, Murphy does not establish that being max­ imal­ly loving is not an essential feature of, or even identical with, being (max­ imal­ly) morally perfect—and this remains the case even if we grant Murphy the conclusion that being maximally loving would not give God reasons to act that go beyond moral perfection. The claim that God’s goodness is essentially constituted by love is plausible, moreover, given the New Testament emphasis on love as the fundamental moral norm that is grounded in the character of God (see Chapter  6). But if it is the case that being maximally loving is

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176  Love Divine essential to, or even identical with, being morally perfect, then we cannot leave aside notions of maximal love when we assess how a morally perfect being would consider treating a human that might suffer or flourish. On the contrary, it seems permissible to use our intuitions about the reasons that human flourishing and suffering might give to God to act, as a maximally loving being, when He loves a human that might flourish or suffer. Importantly, the implication of using our intuitions in this way gives rise to a plausible claim: to love someone without defect entails having requiring ­reasons to promote that person’s good and to prevent that person’s suffering (at least when the good or suffering in view is significant); and since every max­imally loving being loves no person with defect, every being of this sort has requiring r­ easons to promote the good of those loved and to prevent their suffering. If this claim is true, and I take it as obvious that it is, then, if God is a maximally loving being, God has requiring reasons to promote a loved person’s flourishing and prevent that person’s suffering. The second complaint, then, is this. Murphy considers God’s moral goodness when it is characterized almost entirely in a formal manner, including when he proceeds to chop at the roots of widespread conceptions of divine goodness. When examined formally, Murphy cannot locate adequate grounds for the supposition that God has requiring reasons either to promote human flourishing or prevent human suffering. Surely, this not the best way to proceed, however. If we are likely to get to the truth of the matter, we need to consider what God is essentially like, and how the divine nature might inform God’s agency. But if God is maximally and therefore essentially loving, then it would come as no surprise to learn that God is attentive and responsive to all existing values in a way that entails that He has the kind of requiring reasons that Murphy rejects. Recall, Murphy grants (for considerations having to do with special revelation) that God is maximally loving, that such love characterizes the beauty of God’s intra-trinitarian life. My contention is that this commitment should not be set aside when inquiring into the foundations of divine goodness and agency, and when we refuse to set this knowledge aside, we find it difficult to shake the notion that a maximally loving God would have the very requiring reasons at issue. (It might help to remember the similarity thesis of Chapter 1, that divine and human love are considerably similar. It is therefore unlikely to be an adequate response, all by itself, to claim that God, as a maximally loving being, might love in a manner radically different from humans which allows Him to ‘escape’ the demands of requiring reasons of the relevant kind.)

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  177 So, Murphy’s first, defensive argument for the claim that God, and Anselmian beings more generally, are without requiring reasons to promote and defend human welfare (and the welfare of other beings) is unsuccessful. I call this first argument ‘defensive’ because it is geared towards undercutting our confidence in the claim that God has requiring reasons to promote human welfare and prevent human suffering; the intent of the argument is not to demonstrate that God does not have requiring reasons of the noted kind. Murphy’s second argument is offensive in the sense that it is supposed to provide positive evidence for the notion that God does not have these requiring reasons. With some level of unfairness to the complexity and thoroughness of Murphy’s offensive argument, it can be summarized as follows. God is free to create creatures or not, which is good for those created. If God is free in this way, however, it must be that creatures only provide God with justifying reasons to promote that which is good for them, not requiring reasons, since God needs no reasons of equal or greater weight to choose not to create.50 My response is that there is a marked difference between the reasons generated by potential beings versus actual beings, to which the literature on the production of children attests.51 Suppose that a couple is planning on trying to have a child in the near future. Plausibly, this now only gives them justifying reason to collect household items for the potential child, baby-proof their home, and develop a philosophy about select parenting issues (e.g. dis­cip­line, the use of technology, and which parent should do what and when). In most circumstances it would be perfectly rational for the potential parents to make such preparations, but it would be a rare case where these potential parents would have requiring reasons to do these things. Matters change, however, after the child arrives (or arrives and grows a bit). Then, it will often be the case that they have requiring reasons to collect the relevant baby items, babyproof the home to a reasonable degree, and to establish more detailed prin­ ciples about how they will raise their child. Mutatis mutandis, I submit that something similar holds true of maximal lovers. When a candidate for love actually exists, and does not simply potentially exist, maximal lovers have requiring reasons to promote the loved one’s good and alleviate her suffering.

50 Murphy, God’s Own Ethics, ch. 4. It should be noted that the idea that God needs no reasons of equal or greater weight to choose not to create is controversial (see Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 112–13, for only one prominent example), and yet Murphy does little to defend it. 51  See e.g. David DeGrazia, Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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178  Love Divine I therefore remain unconvinced by Murphy’s way of casting doubt on M2. Murphy has not given us sufficient reason to deny that God, or any maximally loving being, would have requiring reasons of the discussed kind concerning those individuals that are loved. The central issue, then, is whether every maximally loving being supremely loves all appropriate candidates of this love. If they do, they will have requiring reasons of the type objected to by Murphy.

VI.b  The Objection from Mystery A putative objector to the argument from maximal love might concede that, from a human perspective, it certainly looks as if every maximal loving being must supremely love those who fulfil the neediness and value conditions. Nevertheless, the objector might contend that we simply are not well positioned, epistemically speaking, to know what God’s maximal love requires (the paradigmatic, if not the only, maximally loving being); and the objector might draw from recent literature promoting the response of sceptical theism to the problem of evil to make his case. The basic idea behind this response to theism’s greatest challenge is to claim that we should be sceptical about our ability to determine whether God could have a morally sufficient reason for the kinds of evils we observe. We are simply not well situated to make the rele­vant pronouncements. In application to the present issue, our imagined objector might grant that though it might initially seem beneath God not to love supremely appropriate candidates such as humans, we should be scep­ tic­al about our ability to judge rightly about what God can do with His creatures. Thus, for all we know, M2 is false. This sceptical objection is not without its problems. Even if we embrace a healthy dose of scepticism about our ability to determine whether or not God might have reasons to allow the kinds of evils we observe, it is plausible to suppose that the sceptical theist should affirm that there are inflexible moral principles that we can discern, principles that cannot be overridden and thereby place parameters on the kinds of actions a perfectly good God might perform.52 Consider the insights of the late philosopher of religion, William Rowe. Rowe points out that if theists are not willing to lay down moral parameters on what God might do, then theists would always be able to claim, no matter the amount and duration of evil, that the plausibility of theistic belief remains 52  This much is underscored by one of the finest defenders of sceptical theism, Michael Bergmann. See his ‘Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 390–4.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  179 unscathed. But, Rowe protests, this is clearly unreasonable. Referring to scep­ tic­al theists who refuse all constraints on divine action, Rowe writes: [. . .] if human life were nothing more than a series of agonizing moments from birth to death, their position would still require them to say that we cannot reasonably infer that it is even likely that God does not exist. But surely such a view is unreasonable, if not absurd. Surely there must be some point at which the appalling agony of human and animal existence as we know it would render it unlikely that God exists. And this must be so even though we all agree that God’s knowledge would far exceed our own.53

Assuming we feel the strength of these remarks, we should be open to the idea that we can in principle point to some moral limits on what the God of perfect goodness and love would do. By and large, Christians have been comfortable with there being some moral boundaries on divine action. Gregory of Nyssa’s version of the ransom theory of the atonement provides one such example. Gregory’s theory involves the deception of the devil, but as even the great methodological sceptic René Descartes thought obvious, God is no deceiver. Many have therefore claimed that any theory of the atonement suggesting otherwise is certainly mis­taken.54 In a similar vein, many reject the claims of certain ‘young earth creationists’ who maintain that though the world looks old, this is only because God created the world with the appearance of age.55 The retort is that God would not so deceive us. Behind both of these objections is the idea that God’s perfect goodness implies that God does not deceive, at least not in the ways proposed by Gregory and the creationists. With all of this in mind, consider the following as a plausible moral boundary on divine action: (MB) God would not create a human without the intent of making ­available for that human that which is sufficient for her to avoid a life/existence that is on the whole miserable, or else would end in bitter disappointment.

53  William Rowe, ‘Skeptical Theism: A Response to Bergmann’, Noûs 35, no. 2 (2001): 298. 54  In fact, Nyssa seems to have similar intuitions, as he tries to explain why deception was, in this instance, justified. See, ‘An Address on Religious Instruction’, in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Hardy, trans. Cyril C. Richardson (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 26. Also, see Chapter 6 of the present book for more details on Gregory’s thought here. 55  For example, Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds, ‘Young Earth Creationism’, in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, ed. J.P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 39–75 (especially 51–2).

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180  Love Divine I propose that (MB) is an eminently plausible moral constraint on divine action, considerably more plausible, I would think, than the constraint that God would not deceive. Yet, as we have seen in our discussion of M4, the denial of the claim that God loves each human supremely entails something very much like the denial of (MB) when read in light of the Christian framework. It thus appears that the Christian should be sceptical about relying on sceptical theism as a way of denying M2 (at least when it comes to God’s supreme love of humans). It is worth drawing out two applications of (MB). First, many who are inclined to reject M2 will want to do so on the grounds that it does not take into consideration that God’s creative activity is fundamentally motivated by self-glorification. For God, it is often said by those who are inclined to reject M2, creates not ultimately for the creature but for Himself, specifically for the enjoyment of the exercise of His attributes. Some who hold this understanding of God’s creative purposes reason that one way God can glorify Himself is by exercising His holy wrath upon those who sin by sending some of His creatures to hell. And to secure this outcome, it is sometimes thought that God must unconditionally predestine some humans to hell.56 Doing this is clearly incompatible with M2, however, if M4 is true. As I argue in Chapter  3, theologians should reject the position that God creates to glorify Himself. Apart from that argument, notice that the appeal to God’s self-glorifying purposes as a way of denying M2 is tantamount to a denial of (MB). This, of course, is an implication that some theologians would be happy to accept. To engage such theologians would take us too far afield, requiring us to dive deeply into a discussion about the nature of divine goodness. Rather than do that, I shall simply submit that it is at the very least reasonable to reject any denial of M2 that flouts (MB). I leave it to the reader to judge this issue for herself. Second, (MB) provides reason to maintain that the volitional view of God’s maximal love is mistaken, the view according to which God’s perfect love is thought to include the freedom to choose not to love fit candidates for love, including humans. In response to this outlook, I suggested that this view only looks to be plausible when we assume that supreme love for all relevant candidates is not compossible with God’s sovereignty. I added that the volitional 56 For an excellent discussion of this way of thinking, see the following two articles by Oliver D. Crisp (who, incidentally, does not subscribe to the described view of unconditional pre­des­ tin­ation): ‘Augustinian Universalism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 53, no. 3 (2003): 127–45; and ‘Is Universalism a Problem for Particularists?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 63, no. 1 (2010): 1–23.

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  181 view seems unmotivated since all or much of the value that there is in affirming that God is free not to love can be had independent from the volitional view (e.g. God could choose not to create any human that He would rather not love). Insofar as (MB) collides with the volitional view of God’s maximal love, affirmation of (MB) provides us with yet another reason to eschew the volitional view. So, (MB) not only answers the sceptical challenge to M2, it also supports a conception of God’s goodness and love that undergirds the argument from maximal love.

VI.c  The Objection from the Freedom of Grace One might present a theological objection to the argument from maximal love that runs along the following lines. If M2 and M4 are true, and God thereby must love each human supremely, then God must make union with Himself available to every human, since the highest good of each human is union with God. But the thesis that God must make union with Himself available to every human entails, given the Christian narrative containing The Fall, that God must offer His saving grace to all. Yet, it is often argued, this would be a theologically disastrous conclusion. Thus the Reformed evan­gel­ ic­al theologian John Frame states, ‘the very idea of grace is that God is not required to give it. If God is required [. . .] to give grace to us, then we have a certain claim on him. But grace excludes such claims.’57 Similarly, Paul Jensen, another Reformed thinker, says: Is it the case that I do not deserve salvation? Unless it is then I am not saved by grace [. . .] human ill-desert requires salvation to be the product of divine supererogatory goodness. But the very notion of supererogatory goodness, i.e., good acts which God can justly leave undone, makes the claim that God is required to perform them incoherent. Thus, if humans are ill-deserving of divine salvation, then God can justly not save them.58

57 John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 234, cited in James  B.  Gould, ‘The Grace We Are Owed: Human Rights and Divine Duties’, Faith and Philosophy 25, no. 3 (2008): 264. 58  Paul  T.  Jensen, ‘Intolerable But Moral?: Thinking About Hell’, Faith and Philosophy 10, no. 2 (1993): 238. In ‘The Logic of Limited Atonement’, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 3 (1985): 50, Paul Helm agrees, ‘if God has to exercise mercy [. . .] then such “mercy” would not be mercy. For the character of mercy is such that each person who receives it is bound to say “I have no right to what I have received [. . .]” .’ See also Gould, ‘The Grace We Are Owed’, 273, n. 5, for additional theologians who think in this manner.

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182  Love Divine Both of these authors make it clear that they believe that if God must provide the genuine offer of salvation to all, grace is no longer grace. The error in Jensen and Frame’s reasoning is effectively pointed out by James B. Gould. Gould notes: The term ‘deserve’ can be used in two ways that correspond to the distinction between earned respect and basic respect. In one sense, to deserve means to merit or to earn (as in ‘she deserves to win the gold medal because of her brilliant skating’). Merit-desert (or m-desert) is based on human action, on what we do. In another sense, however, to deserve means to be worthy of (as in ‘she deserves not to be mistreated by her husband’). Worthdesert (or w-desert) is based on human constitution, on what we are. [. . .] To say that salvation is by grace simply means that it is unearned—not that it is undeserved. This is why St. Paul consistently contrasts grace with works, gift salvation with earned salvation. There is nothing we can do to merit God’s friendship; forgiveness is given to us only through the merit of Christ. But even though human beings do not m-deserve the opportunity to be saved, we do w-deserve it.59

That is, the Christian can hold that God’s grace, or the opportunity to receive one’s highest good, is not merited by what humans do (‘m-desert’), but must be granted to them in virtue of their intrinsic worth (‘w-desert’). The idea need not be that God feels the pinch of an obligation to dispense grace. Rather, one can maintain that it is part of God’s loving nature to enjoy offering and granting saving grace to humans and thus God would not think about doing otherwise (at least in worlds when the cost of not doing this is so severe for humans). As St Athanasius argues, it would be ‘out of the question’ for God to leave humans in their ‘current corruption’; indeed, it would be ‘un­worthy of God’s goodness’.60 Moreover, it is not the case that the theologian who follows Gould must deny that granting/offering saving grace is an act of supererogation, as Jensen in effect asserts. After all, the theologian who agrees with Gould can claim that the following conjunction is supererogatory for God: freely creating and being willing to offer/grant saving grace to any human who might subsequently need it. That is to say, God goes above and beyond any requirement when

59  Gould, ‘The Grace We Are Owed’, 270. 60  Athanasius, ‘On the Incarnation’, in Christology of the Later Fathers, trans. Archibald Robertson (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 1.6 (p. 61).

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The Scope of God ’ s Love  183 He creates (which God need not do) and intends to offer/grant saving grace to humans, even if God’s character is such that for any cosmos that God might create where humans need saving grace, God necessarily offers/grants it. Provided that one finds something like these conclusions theologically acceptable (and I understand that some will not), the problem discussed by Frame and Jensen dissolves.

VII. Conclusion In my view, the argument from maximal love is fairly strong. While questions no doubt remain, M1, M2, and M4 appear more plausible than their denials. Supposing, then, that we agree in the affirmation of these premises, we can join the Apostle John in proclaiming that God loves the world (John 3:16).

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6 Punitive Love In a sermon based upon an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, Bernard of Clairvaux describes God’s loving mercy and punitive wrath as the two feet of God. He warns the Church not to ignore either foot, lest they fall into an imbalanced perception of God’s character and actions.1 Bernard’s counsel to keep in mind these apparently opposed divine attributes emerges out of respect for a tension found within Scripture, where God is depicted as abounding in love, yet nevertheless exercises vengeance on those who sin.2 Consideration of this biblical tension has led to a number of different understandings of the relationship between God’s love and punitive wrath.3 At present we shall consider just two broad, influential, and opposing paradigms. According to the first paradigm, the apparently different goals of the relevant divine attributes are starkly preserved. Theologians operating within this framework opt for what might be called the divergent account, and they maintain that God punishes persons in a manner that is contrary to the demands of love. This account has a tradition that stretches at least as far back as St Augustine of Hippo. His writings teach that the exercise of God’s punishment is not always compatible with the offending creature’s good, as God’s love for that individual would have it. Instead, God dispenses eternal postmortem punishment for the wrongs committed in this life, where the damned are burned with literal fire and ‘tormented by fruitless repentance’.4 Theologians who adhere to the second paradigm, however, see any observed conflict between the relevant attributes as merely apparent. Such theologians prefer what might be labelled the unitary account of God’s love and wrath, wherein divine punishment is motivated by love for the wrongdoer (as well by 1 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermons 6.6–9’, in Songs of Songs I, trans. Kilian  J.  Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 35–7. 2  To label ‘wrath’ an ‘attribute of God’ is not to suggest that wrath is an essential divine attribute or that God experiences literal anger. Instead the label is merely a placeholder for something like that feature of the divine character that motivates God to place hard-treatment on humans in response to sin. 3  A recent overview of a number of paradigms can be found in Tony Lane, ‘The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God’, in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 138–67. 4 Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 20.9 (p. 1065); cf. 21.15, 22.21–4; and Enchiridion 23.92. Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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Punitive Love  185 love for the victim). Gregory of Nyssa is a clear representative of the unitary account. While he is comfortable comparing God’s punishment to ‘knifes, cauteries, and bitter medicines’,5 he insists that this punishment, even that which takes place in hell, is a ‘healing remedy provided by God’6 that must not be divorced ‘from the noble end of the love of man’.7 It might be thought that the unitary account is clearly the one that is most compatible with the God of love revealed in Christ. Yet many eminent theologians make it clear that they prefer the divergent account.8 To move the debate forward, then, a case for the unitary account must be presented, and a plaus­ ible way of understanding God’s punishment therein must be established. To that end, this chapter is structured as follows. In Section I, the divergent account is explained in greater detail, and a dominant motivation for this account is distilled through a brief examination of the writings of Emil Brunner and St Augustine. This motivation is then rejected in Section II on the basis of two arguments for the unitary account. Next, in Section III, the work of Gregory of Nyssa and the contemporary philosopher R.A.  Duff is util­ized to develop a communicative theory of God’s punishment. According to this theory, God’s punishment aims to communicate to offenders the censure they deserve, with the purpose of trying to persuade these individuals to start down the path of spiritual transformation. It is argued that this communicative theory not only provides a plausible way of conceiving of the unitary account, but also that it illuminates how God can engage in some of the more harsh punishments described in Scripture while being fully motivated by love. In Section IV, the unitary account, together with the communicative theory of divine punishment, is applied to the doctrine of hell. There it will be suggested that, given the communicative theory, hell is best seen as a place where God tries to reform sinners and empower them to ‘escape’ hell and join

5  Gregory of Nyssa, An Address on Religious Instruction, in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Hardy, trans. Cyril C. Richardson (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 26 (p. 284). Henceforth this work will be abbreviated as ARI. 6  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (p. 284). 7  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (p. 303). Compare with 8 and 40 (pp. 282–5 and 324–5) of the same work, as well as with Gregory’s Soul and Resurrection, trans. Catharine  P.  Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 83–8. 8  See e.g. the following representatives of the divergent account: Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1947); Lane, ‘The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God’, 163; Martin Luther, ‘Lectures on Galatians’, in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Walter  A.  Hansen, Vol. 26 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1963), 281; Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God (London: S.C.M.  Press, 1966); Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Politics, Vol. 2, trans. William  H.  Lazareth (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1969), 575.

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186  Love Divine the glorified saints. But, it will be shown, this conception of hell, by itself, does not entail universal salvation. Before we proceed, two initial clarifications are required. First, there are at least two ways in which the noted biblical tension between divine love and wrath surfaces. There are, on the one hand, biblical passages that suggest that God visits calamity on entire people groups (e.g. the killing of the firstborn children of Egypt or the Israelite conquest of Canaan). On the other hand, Scripture describes God as one who severely punishes individuals for their transgressions, with, for example, death or consignment to hell (e.g. Num. 15:32–36; Lev. 10:1–2; Acts 12:19–23; Matt. 25:46; and 2 Thess. 1:5–11). The former corporate expression of divine wrath is extremely difficult to reconcile with God’s love (not to mention justice) because it often involves bringing suffering and even death to those who did no wrong of the relevant sort. By contrast, the punishment of individuals for personal wrongdoing has no such implication. Nevertheless, punishment via death and damnation does appear to contradict the motives of divine love insofar as these forms of punishment are thought to prevent any redemptive possibilities (that is, preclude the creature’s good or union with God) or to be incompatible with the respect due to the creature’s worth (since God’s love, as we have seen, concerns an appreciative response to the beloved’s worth). The present chapter focuses exclusively on the apparent tension between God’s love of individuals and His punishment of these individuals for their misdeeds. Consequently, all subsequent references to ‘wrath’, ‘retribution’, and like notions refer to God’s punishment of guilty individuals, not the ostensible biblical record concerning God’s indiscriminate penalization of entire people groups. By extension, both the divergent and unitary accounts shall be understood in this light. Second, in what follows I assume that God never finds Himself in a circumstance wherein His love for certain people requires Him to punish others in instrumental ways that are ultimately and irredeemably incompatible with God’s love for those punished. Though we can imagine such scenarios, I very much doubt that God’s love for one human can ultimately be at odds with love for another human when it comes to the implementation of punishment (at least when eternal matters hang into balance); and, if it can be, I doubt that the sovereign and loving Lord would ever allow Himself to be placed in such a dilemma.9 The assumption is a substantive one that can surely be denied. 9  Relevant here are a collection of essays by Thomas Talbott: ‘The Typography of Divine Love: A Response to Jeff Jordan’, Faith and Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2013): 302–16; ‘Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice’, Religious Studies 29, no. 2 (1993): 151–68; and ‘The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment’, Faith and Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1990): 19–42.

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Punitive Love  187 Those who disagree with it are therefore invited to refine the unitary and divergent accounts in a manner they see fit.10

I.  Severe Retribution and the Divergent Account The case for the unitary account is best assessed when compared with its rival. It will be helpful, therefore, to obtain a better understanding of the nature of the divergent account and why one might suppose it to be true. In discussing these issues we will also get a sense of the ubiquity of the divergent account and how it might be shown false. The divergent account comes in two basic forms, the implicit and the explicit. Emil Brunner is a good example of an advocate of the latter form of  the divergent account. He freely speaks of a ‘dualism’ between God’s holy wrath and love,11 and he warns against those who would allow God’s holy wrath to be ‘swallowed up in that of the Divine love’, which would deny the ‘two-fold nature of holiness and love’ and replace it with a ‘unilateral, monistic Idea of God’.12 It is Brunner’s conception of divine punishment, grounded in his understanding of God’s holiness, that moves Brunner to affirm the divergent account.13 For Brunner, human sin erects ‘an obstacle’ between God and humans. ‘This obstacle is sin, or rather, guilt’, and it cannot be pushed aside by human effort. No, guilt ‘belongs unalterably to the past’ and ‘determines the present destiny of each soul’.14 God, furthermore, does not ignore sin, since it 10  For example, the modified unitary account could be understood as something like the view that God never punishes an individual in a manner contrary to love for that individual unless doing so will bring about a significantly greater good for one or more other creatures, whereas the divergent account does not require this italicized condition. 11 Brunner, The Mediator, 519. 12 Brunner, The Mediator, 467. 13  Ultimately, Brunner’s commitment to the divergent account is fuelled by his wider theological commitments, specifically the law-gospel dialectic and the Lutheran distinction between the hidden and revealed God (Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus). What is particularly important at present, however, is Brunner’s more immediate reason for adhering to the divergent account, namely, the conception of divine punishment that results from his understanding God’s holiness. On the wider theological commitments that feed into Brunner’s divergent account, see e.g. The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon, Vol. 1, Dogmatics (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955), 129–31, 168–74, 233, 234, 295–302, 343–53; Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns and T.H.L.  Parker, Vol. 3, Dogmatics (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 422; Brunner, The Mediator, 518–22. For recent analyses of Brunner’s dialectical theology, see Cynthia Bennett Brown, Believing Thinking, Bounded Theology: The Theological Methodology of Emil Brunner (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015), 37–44, 160–8; David Andrew Gilland, Law and Gospel in Emil Brunner’s Earlier Dialectical Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); Alister  E.  McGrath, Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Blackwell, 2014), 35–50, 74–6, 127–44. 14 Brunner, The Mediator, 443, cf. 444–8.

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188  Love Divine is ‘an attack on God’s honour’, and there is a sense in which ‘God would cease to be God if He could permit His honour to be attacked.’15 God’s holiness, therefore, requires punitive action that ‘corresponds to our guilt and sin’.16 Brunner explains: Divine punishment [. . .] issues, necessarily, from the Holiness of God [. . .]. It is not an educative, paternal punishment, but the punishment meted out by a master, the punishment of a sovereign inflicted on a rebellious subject. [. . .] In every part of the Bible, in the classic Christian message as a whole, the possibility is taken into account that the holy God will punish disobedient humanity with final and absolute ruin.17

In Brunner’s understanding, then, God’s holiness disposes Him to punish an individual primarily because she deserves it, not principally because this punishment is a means to her flourishing, and not chiefly because this punishment is somehow good for another creature. Although Brunner never offers a detailed theory of divine punishment, he makes it clear that he believes that God’s punishment, at least some of the time, is comprised of two components. The first of these components concerns the justification or morally sufficient reason for punishment. On this issue, Brunner is a standard retributivist. He holds that God’s punishment is an intrinsically fitting response to human guilt.18 As such, punishment need not aim to procure the good of the one punished as a father would his son, nor need it seek the good of others by educating them, deterring from future wrongdoing, or what have you. Rather, in accordance with retributivism, God punishes (or can rightfully punish) those who deserve it simply because their guilt merits it. The second component of Brunner’s understanding of punishment concerns severity. For Brunner, God can punish an individual ‘with final and absolute ruin’. Or as he says elsewhere, Christians learn in faith that human guilt before God is so horrendous that ‘no suffering would be too 15 Brunner, The Mediator, 444, cf. 442–4. 16 Brunner, The Mediator, 445, 446–58. Cf. The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, 3:418, where Brunner speaks of God’s judgement/punishment of ‘eternal death’ as ‘a necessary interference from the knowledge of the holiness of God’. 17 Brunner, The Mediator, 464, cf. 468. Cf. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, Vol. 1, chs 3–4. Here Brunner channels Anselm (see The Mediator, 438–510, passim); in particular Anselm’s thought that sin against the infinite and holy God accrues an infinite demerit, which in turn demands everlasting punishment (e.g. Cur Deus Homo 1.11–15, 20, 25). Such Anselmian reasoning shall be examined in due course. 18  Brunner connects punishment to desert and guilt throughout The Mediator, 443–58, 468–71; cf. Emil Brunner, Eternal Hope, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox, 1954), 48, 103–8, 172–3.

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Punitive Love  189 great a punishment’.19 To translate these claims into more precise conceptual terms, Brunner maintains that God is sometimes justified in punishing a person with such severity that it is subsequently impossible for the one punished to ever obtain her summum bonum, or flourish again in any meaningful sense. From this examination of Brunner’s thought, that which shall be labelled the severe retribution thesis emerges. According to this thesis, divine punishment is an intrinsically fitting and morally justified response to wrongdoing, and God is (sometimes) justified in punishing evildoers in a manner that makes it subsequently impossible for those punished to enjoy anything akin to flourishing lives. Once it is affirmed that God punishes with severe retribution (i.e. punishes in accordance with the severe retribution thesis), the divergent account is inescapable. In love, Brunner proclaims that God ‘does not seek anything for Himself ’; instead, ‘all He desires is to benefit the one He loves. And the benefit He wants to impart is not ‘something’, but His very Self, for this Love is selfsurrender, self-giving to the other, to whom love is directed.’20 But such a love is surely opposed to the kind of punishment referred to within the severe retribution thesis, the kind of punitive wrath ‘which annihilates resistance, and finally crushes those who resist Him’.21 Thus Brunner claims that the contrast between holy wrath and self-giving love ‘must not be glossed over or weakened, for if we do either we make it impossible to understand either Holiness or Love’.22 19  Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans. Olive Wyon, Vol. 2, Dogmatics (London: Lutterworth Press, 1952), 184. 20 Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:186–7. 21 Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:189. 22 Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:189. It should be mentioned that one might read Brunner as in fact maintaining the unitary account (e.g. J. Edward Humphrey, Emil Brunner (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1976), 58–9). For, in certain places, Brunner seems to say as much (see, in particular, The Mediator, 519; The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:189–91). On the other hand, Brunner also claims that ‘there is a sharp and essential contrast’ between love and holiness, specifically between love and ‘Holiness in its negative form: as the wrath of God’ (The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:188–9). To be all too brief in reconciling these seemingly contradictory elements, Brunner would have his readers believe that God in Godself is a holy-love that is entirely one (e.g. 1:184–5, 188–91, 199); but at the same time, there is a ‘two-fold movement’ of this unified God. There is the ‘movement away from God, for He is Holy’; but in the second movement there is ‘attraction to Him, for He is Love’ (1:190, cf. 162–5, 184–9). Brunner acknowledges that ‘For us human beings this is a combination of two op­pos­ ite elements which is quite beyond our understanding’ (1:190). But despite human inability to apprehend how the unified God can be both holy and full of love, the ‘the dualism of holiness and love [. . .], of mercy and wrath cannot be dissolved, changed into one synthetic conception, without at the same time destroying the seriousness of the Biblical knowledge of God [. . .].’ On the contrary, ‘Here arises the “dialectic” of all genuine Christian theology, which simply aims at expressing in terms of thought the indissoluble nature of this dualism’ (The Mediator, 519, n. 1; cf. The Christian Doctrine of God, 1:117). (For a helpful discussion, see Paul  G.  Schrotenboer, A New Apologetics: An Analysis and Appraisal of the Eristic Theology of Emil Brunner. (Kampen: J.H.  Kok, 1955), 32–9). So, Brunner is indeed a proponent of the divergent account, since the ‘twofold movement’ of love and holy wrath are

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190  Love Divine Not everyone is as forthright as Brunner in his or her adherence to the divergent account. Consider, once again, St Augustine. So far as I am aware, nowhere does Augustine say that the aims of God’s love and punitive wrath are opposed. (In fact, given what he says about divine simplicity, one might assume that he believes just the opposite.23) But, plausibly, what Augustine does say about God’s love and His wrath entails the divergent account. When Augustine speaks of God’s love, he waxes eloquent about the ways in which God promotes the good of His rational creatures and wills a kind of union with them.24 All such talk is left behind, however, when Augustine writes about God’s punishment of the damned. There, as we have seen, Augustine envisions a God who physically and psychologically torments the damned for all eternity.25 One might think such punishment is justified, but, almost certainly, its implementation is not an act motivated by love for the damned. Assuming this is in fact so, Augustine does hold to the divergent account, even if only in an implicit fashion. Augustine’s implicit reliance on the divergent account reveals how pervasive adherence to this account is. If punishment in hell is not meant to be redemptive, or is not simply God allowing the creature to go her own way (à  la C.S.  Lewis’s ‘the gates of hell are locked from the inside’),26 but the punishment is in fact positively and permanently bad for the person punished, then, clearly, the aims of God’s wrath here depart from the ways of love. But this is precisely the conception of hell that is held by many traditionallyminded theologians in the West: hell is an inescapable state of eternal conscious (and perhaps physical) torment that is externally imposed by God.27 Notice, in addition, that this conception of hell presupposes the severe fundamentally opposed, even if the God behind this movement is unified in a manner that surpasses human understanding. 23 e.g. De Trinitate, 6.7. On the relation between the unitary account and divine simplicity, see Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6–7, 175–224. 24  e.g. Augustine, The City of God, 21.15; 22.21–21, 30. 25  For a systematic yet concise account of Augustine’s view of divine wrath, see Stephen Butler Murray, Reclaiming Divine Wrath: A History of a Christian Doctrine and Its Interpretation (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), 66–72. Compare Augustine’s view with Saint Bonaventure, Breviloquium 7.6. 26 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 166. Another largely similar option can be found in Eleonore Stump, ‘Dante’s Hell, Aquinas’s Moral Theory, and the Love of God’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16, no. 2 (1986): 181–98. (For philosophical criticisms of the view defended by Stump, see Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); C.P.  Ragland, ‘Love and Damnation’, in Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump, ed. Kevin Timpe (New York: Routledge Press, 2009), 206–24.) 27  See e.g. these two surveys: Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Hell and the God of Justice’, Religious Studies 11, no. 4 (1975): 433–47; and Kelly James Clark, ‘God Is Great, God Is Good: Medieval Conceptions of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Hell’, Religious Studies 37, no. 1 (2001): 15–31.

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Punitive Love  191 retribution thesis. For what else could be a better candidate for severe retribution than the external imposition of eternal conscious torment from which there is no hope of redemption? Thus we see that the severe retribution thesis provides one significant mo­tiv­ation for the divergent account, whether the account is of the implicit or explicit variety. Of course, one can in principle be an advocate of the divergent account without believing this thesis. All the divergent account requires is the notion that divine punishment is (or, perhaps, can be) incompatible with God’s love for the one punished. Presumably, however, God could implement such punishment without entirely precluding the future flourishing of the relevant individual, as the severe retribution thesis states. Nevertheless, my focus in this chapter is on those versions of the divergent account that depend upon the severe retribution thesis, since it is this thesis that is so influential. Arguing against this thesis, moreover, will provide considerable evidence for the unitary account, even though there is no strict entailment between the denial of this thesis and the truth of the unitary account preferred here.

II.  A Case for the Unitary Account Now that we have before us a primary motivation for the divergent account, we may consider two arguments against the severe retribution thesis and the kind of divergent account that rests upon it. The first argument develops a line of thought found in Isaac the Syrian, who contends that God’s loving purposes for creation preclude God from punishing in ways that are incompatible with love. The second argument comes the New Testament ethic of love, which, I contend, strongly suggests that God eschews severe retribution. These arguments shall be examined in turn.

II.a  The Argument from God’s Purposes Like many contemporary theologians (see Chapter  3), Isaac maintains that God’s fundamental motivation for creating and guiding the affairs of humans is that of love.28 In his view, ‘Among all [God’s] actions there is none which is

28 On Isaac’s views on creation, see Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 35–60.

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192  Love Divine not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us.’29 Isaac elaborates: With what purpose and with what love did He create this world and bring it into existence! What a mystery does the coming into being of this creation look towards! To what state is (our) common nature invited! What love served to initiate the creation of the world! [. . .] In love did [God] bring the world into existence; in love is he going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of governance of creation be finally comprised.30

Isaac is clear. God creates, guides, and redeems humanity—indeed the whole world—out of love. Isaac further contends that this understanding of God’s loving purposes is incompatible with the notion that divine punishment is retributive in nature. This is because the omniscient God knows the depth of human sinfulness prior to the choice to create, and yet God decides once and for all to create and guide the world in love. But, in Isaac’s view, it is absurd to maintain that the God who decides to create and govern the world in love, even while foreseeing human sinfulness logically prior to this decision, would ever punish in a manner that is incompatible with that creative and guiding plan of love—as Isaac assumes retributive punishment is.31 Such a conflict of purposes ‘characterizes people who do not know or who are unaware of what they are doing’, for example, those who can be surprised or overcome by events that transpire. But the conflict is beneath ‘the Creator who, even before the cycle of the depiction of the universe has been portrayed, knew of all that was before and all that was after in connection with the actions and intentions of rational beings.’32 The conviction seems to be that God creates not only the world or humanity as a whole out of love but that God creates each and every human 29  Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), ‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV–XLI, trans. Sebastian  P.  Brock (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 2.39.22 (pp. 163–5, 170). This line from Isaac also is quoted in Chapter 1 of this volume. 30  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 2.38.1–2. Cf. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 2:13–14. 31  Isaac writes: ‘We cannot [. . .] believe [. . .] of God that he has done something out of retribution for anticipated evil acts in connection with those whose nature he has brought into being with honour and great love. Knowing them and all their conduct, the flow of his grace did not dry up for them: not even after they started living amid many evil deeds did he withhold his care for them, even for a moment’: Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 2.39.2. Cf. 1.48 (p. 230) = PR 45 (323) 2.38–40, passim; Homily 45(48). 32  Isaac the Syrian, ‘The Second Part’, 2.39 (p. 6).

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Punitive Love  193 out of love and therefore intends to treat each human in accordance with that love (see Chapter  3 for the distinction between the creation of the mass of humanity out of love versus the creation of each human out of love). From this conviction Isaac infers that God would not punish in a manner that is incompatible with His initial creative and providential motivation. Isaac ostensibly assumes that just any kind of divine retributive punishment is at odds with God’s love. This is an assumption that will be questioned when the writings of Gregory of Nyssa and R.A.  Duff are examined. That complication aside, Isaac’s basic argument can be reconfigured to meet the concerns of the present chapter. So configured, the argument is this: (1) Despite foreknowing the depth of human sin logically prior to the choice to create (whether foreknown with certainty or merely as a set live pos­si­bil­ities and probabilities),33 God’s primary motivation for creating and guiding each human is love. (2) If, despite foreknowing the depth of human sin logically prior to the choice to create, God’s primary motivation for creating and guiding each human is love, then God never acts to render the future flourishing of any human impossible on account of that human’s sinfulness. (3) If God never acts to render the future flourishing of any human im­pos­sible on account of that human’s sinfulness, then God does not punish with severe retribution. Therefore, (4) God does not punish with severe retribution. Each of these premises is more plausible than its denial. Embedded within (1) is the idea that God’s primary motivation for creating and superintending each human is love. When understood in terms of the value account, this notion means that God’s primary goal regarding humans is, among other things, to promote their flourishing and union with Himself.

33  The qualification within the parenthesis is made to accommodate viewpoints wherein God does not know exactly how a free creature will behave logically prior to His decision to create. For discussions of two such viewpoints (i.e. simple foreknowledge and open theism), see John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, 2nd edn (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 205–17; and Dean Zimmerman, ‘The Providential Usefulness of “Simple Foreknowledge” ’, in Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind: New Essays on the Philosophy of Alvin Plantinga, ed. Kelly James Clark and Michael Rea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 174–96.

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194  Love Divine The burden of Chapter 3 is to establish reason to affirm this teaching concerning God’s creative and providential purposes. Chapter  5, moreover, cor­rob­­ orates the conclusion of Chapter  3. For contained within Chapter  5 is an argument for the view that God loves each human supremely (i.e. God values and seeks the highest good of each human), which I take to provide indirect support for the claim that God creates, or at least providentially guides, every human out of love. On behalf of (1), all that needs to be added to the conclusions of these two chapters is a claim about foreknowledge, namely, that God foreknows the depth of human sinfulness (whether foreknown in the details or as possibilities/probabilities) prior to His decision to create and guide humans motivated principally by His love. This addition to the doctrine that God creates and guides humans out of love seems undeniable given God’s omniscience, however, and thus requires no defence. So, if the arguments in the cited chapters succeed, then (1) should be accepted. Suppose, however, that one rejects the teaching that God’s primary mo­tiv­ ation for creating and guiding humans is love.34 Does the Isaac-inspired argument then fall flat? No, it does not. Premise (1) could be refined along the following lines: (1*) Despite foreknowing the depth of human sin logically prior to the choice to create, God’s primary motivation for creating the world entails the intention never to treat a human in a manner that is ­substantially and permanently inconsistent with love for the human (i.e. never act in order to preclude permanently a human’s ability to flourish in a rich and meaningful way).35 In a key respect, (1*) constitutes a more moderate theological claim than (1). For (1*) is compatible with the supposition that God created for (congruent) purposes besides love of the creature/world, or even a fair bit of agnosticism

34 See Jonathan Edwards, ‘Concerning the End for Which God Created the World’, in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, Vol. 8, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 403–536. 35  Premise (1*) merits two clarifying comments. First, the claim in (1*) is not that God intends never to act in ways that are not principally concerned with love for humans. It is compatible with (1*), for example, to claim that God sometimes acts purely out of self-love and for reasons that have nothing to do with humans. Second, there is nothing about (1*) that says that God would prevent a rational creature from choosing to make her own future flourishing impossible, provided that it can be shown that granting humans the capacity to ruin themselves in this way is (paradoxically) consistent with God’s love for them. (On the idea that God, out of love, allows humans to destroy themselves, see Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, ch. 4.)

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Punitive Love  195 about why God created at all. Nevertheless, (1*) can be plugged into the antecedent of (2) to generate the following plausible premise: (2*) If, despite foreknowing the depth of human sin logically prior to the choice to create, God’s primary motivation for creating the world entails the intention never to treat a human in a manner that is substantially and permanently inconsistent with love for the human, then God never acts to render the future flourishing of any human im­pos­sible on account of that human’s sinfulness. Premise (2*) shall be examined in due course. Presently the point is that (1*) and (2*) are theses that do not require commitment to the kind of amorism found in (1) and (2), and that this former set of theses can be substituted for (1) and (2) and used within a valid argument against the idea that God punishes with severe retribution. Of course, some theologians are willing to deny even the more moderate (1*). Some, in particular, claim that God’s ultimate purpose for creating is to glorify Himself and that the shadow side of this self-glorification includes the antecedent decision to damn some humans (a decision that is explanatorily prior to foreknown misdeeds). By implication, God’s purposes for creating do not include the intention to avoid acting inconsistently with love for each human in substantial and permanent ways.36 Cause to suppose that this mode of denying (1*) is mistaken appears in Chapters 3 and 5. That aside, I suspect that most contemporary theologians would affirm (1) or (1*), or both. Because of this, the truth of one or both these premises is assumed within the present chapter. Both (2) and (2*) are quite plausible, once the relevant antecedent is granted. Begin with (2). The antecedent of (2), namely (1), is the thesis that God, with eyes wide open to the depth of human sinfulness that would (or plausibly would) transpire, creates humans for the primary purpose of loving them, and guiding them in accordance with that love. Such a divine mo­tiv­ation for creating humans, I assume, entails that God sets as His primary purpose concerning humans the aim of bringing about the highest good of each human. If this is so, it seems that it would be manifestly irrational of God to 36 See e.g. Jonathan Edwards, ‘The Torments of Hell Are Exceeding Great’, in Sermons and Discourses 1723–1729, ed. Harry Stout, Vol. 14, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 306–20. For a discussion of Edwards, see Stephen R. Holmes, ‘The Justice of Hell and the Display of God’s Glory in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards’, Pro Ecclesia 9, no. 4 (2000): 389–403.

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196  Love Divine act to make impossible the future flourishing of any human when that human misbehaves as God foresaw prior to His decision to adopt His loving creative purposes (i.e. the denial of the consequent of (2)). Viewed against the backdrop of God’s creative purposes, to maintain that God would be willing to render impossible some human’s flourishing on account of wrongdoing would be to suppose, given the truth of (1), that God’s creative intentions for humans contain subsidiary goals that are diametrically opposed to His primary goal, even though God ostensibly possesses all facts in a way that allows Him to avoid conflicting goals. Given the supposition that God has the requisite knowledge and ability to avoid conflicting primary and subsidiary goals, the situation would seem to be relevantly analogous to the man who sets as his primary goal the plan of completing a marathon, while also adopting the subsidiary objective of quitting the race and having a pint if he passes a particular pub that he knows rests halfway alongside the marathon’s course. The perfectly intelligent God simply cannot be at cross-purposes with Himself in such a manner. So, given the relevant supposition, (2) appears to be true. Similar reasoning supports (2*). Suppose that God, with full awareness of the depth of human sinfulness that would (or plausibly could) emerge, creates humans with the intention of never acting inconsistently with love for them in substantial and permanent ways—i.e. (1*) or the antecedent of (2*). If so, then God simultaneously would not take up the contradictory plan of acting to render impossible a human’s flourishing in response to the misdeeds that God foreknows will be committed (or plausibly will be committed). So, (2*), like (2), looks to be true. Perhaps the most significant objection to (2) or (2*) comes from reliance on St Anselm of Canterbury’s reasoning about divine retributive justice. According to Anselm, sin against the infinite and holy God accrues an infinite demerit, which in turn demands everlasting punishment. God, furthermore, cannot overlook offences to His honour. He simply must punish as sins deserve, or else be compensated by some other means.37 Provided that this everlasting punishment is seen to exclude permanently the future flourishing of the one punished, this form of Anselmian reasoning contradicts the consequent of (2) and (2*), namely, that God never acts to render the future flourishing of any human impossible because of that human’s sinfulness. 37 e.g. Cur Deus Homo I, chs 11–5, 20, 25. Cf. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John  T.  McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 2.16.1; and Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, ed. Clyde A. Holbrook, vol. 3, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), pt. I, ch. II, sect. iii, 130. For the influence of Anselm on Brunner, see Brunner, The Mediator, 438–510, passim.

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Punitive Love  197 Suppose that one accepts Anselm’s reasoning. Suppose, in particular, that one accepts that God, unless He is otherwise compensated, must punish humans for (significant) wrongdoing in a manner that precludes their future flourishing. This Anselmian understanding of the divine nature when paired with something akin to (1) or (1*) yields the following: God creates humans out of love, or with the provisional intention of acting consistently with love for them, yet He knows that He must punish those humans who step out of line with severe retribution. Since creation is generated from a place of love, God, so to speak, wants to be good to all, and wishes He could be, but He knows that justice requires ruining the flourishing of certain humans. On this Anselminspired schema, then, the antecedents of (2) or (2*) are accepted (or something very close to them), yet the consequents of these premises are denied. The Anselmian reasoning that undergirds this denial of (2) and (2*) has been powerfully criticized—so much so, that its soundness cannot simply be assumed.38 This is not the place to survey the relevant literature. What is important in this context is to notice that even if it can be shown that sin against God accrues an infinite demerit that gives God the right to punish sinners with severe retribution, this is a far cry from demonstrating that God would ever have any interest in punishing in this way.39 But the appeal to Anselmian reasoning against the present reconstruction of Isaac’s argument requires the idea that God must, unless otherwise compensated, place severe retribution on sinners. For if God can lay aside such retribution without any recompense, then He is free to carry on in conformity to His overriding purposes of love. So, why maintain that God is required to punish wrongdoing with severe retribution?40 Once again taking cues from Anselm, one might answer this question as follows. Since God is maximally perfect, humans owe God a great deal of respect. Unfortunately, humans sin repeatedly, and this profoundly dis­re­ spects God. It would be wrong, however, for God simply to allow Himself to be disrespected. That would be for God to disrespect His own tremendous 38  For a representative sample of the key issues, see Adams, ‘Hell and the God of Justice’; Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, ‘For God so Loved the World?’, in Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1990), 7–11; Oliver D. Crisp, ‘Divine Retribution: A Defence’, Sophia 42, no. 2 (2003): 35–52; Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, ch. 1; Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist: The Biblical Hope That God’s Love Will Save Us All (London: SPCK, 2008), 11–15; and Michael Winter, The Atonement (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 66. 39  On this point, see Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, 27. 40  Louis Berkhof presents various biblical arguments for the idea that God must punish sinners as they deserve—see his Systematic Theology, combined ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 368–70. These arguments are not compelling. Yes, Scripture teaches that God punishes sinners. But it does not teach, so far as I am aware, that God must punish sinners.

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198  Love Divine worth, which is impossible. Thus, if humans do not come to respect God freely and do what they can to repay God (principally by availing themselves of Christ’s work), God must take that respect from humans via punitive force.41 In Brunner’s words, ‘The holiness of God requires the annihilation of the will which resists God. God is not mocked.’42 Furthermore, since dis­re­ spect of God (of at least a certain kind, perhaps) generates an infinite demerit, God’s punishment of the disrespectful never ceases. Any finite measure of punishment would be beneath divine self-respect and it would fail to demonstrate to the sinner the respect that is owed to God. This way of defending the necessity of divine vengeance is supported by contemporary work on punishment. Nowadays, many philosophers and legal theorists agree that punishment is essentially expressivist in nature,43 in that punishment is meant to express or communicate to the criminal the condemnation he deserves for his crimes.44 When this expressivist framework is applied to God, the idea would be that God’s punishment of the hardened sinner is necessary in order to make him understand the depth of his evil against God. As C.S. Lewis puts it, divine punishment ensures for the sinner that ‘the laugh is [not] on his side’;45 instead, it ‘removes the veil’ and ‘plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul’.46 Grant, for the sake of argument, that this expressivist manner of justifying the necessity of God’s punishment is true. Even still, there is nothing here that warrants the claim that God’s necessary punishment must render the creature’s future flourishing impossible. Quite the contrary, this way of supporting the necessity of punishment furnishes grounds for affirming that divine punishment is directed, in some way, towards the sinner’s repentance. For if punishment is about ‘putting the sinner in her place’, i.e. communicating to her the depth of her evil and demonstrating to her that she should respect God, would not this end be served better by the sinner’s repentance? A repentant sinner, after all, is more fully attuned (subservient, even) to the ways of God 41  For the Anselmic roots of this mode of reasoning, see Cur Deus Homo 1.12–15, 20–1. Cf. David Brown, ‘Anselm on Atonement’, in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 286–95. See also Jonathan Edwards, ‘The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners’, in Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738, vol. 19, ed. M. X. Lesser (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 337–77. 42 Brunner, The Mediator, 444. 43  Most influential here is Joel Feinberg, ‘The Expressive Function of Punishment’, in Doing and Deserving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 95–118. Also helpful is Igor Primoratz, ‘Punishment as Language’, Philosophy 64, no. 248 (1989): 187–205. 44  At least this is the expressive purpose when it comes to retributive theories of punishment, which shall be discussed. 45 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 123. 46 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 94. I add that, so far as I can tell, Lewis is no denier of (2) or (2*).

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Punitive Love  199 than is the impenitent sinner.47 And if repentance is what God seeks, then surely God, as described by (1) and (1*), would grant the repentant sinner the opportunity to be reconciled back to Himself. This appears especially plaus­ ible when it is assumed that God has already provided the means for the sinner’s repayment to God in Christ. Punishment that allows for reconciliation, however, is hardly a denial of (2) or (2*). The putative Anselmic objector to (2) or (2*) might retort that humans may reach a point where repentance is no longer possible, and if so God must continue punishing them all the same. However, it is not clear that this constitutes a denial of either (2) or (2*). The consequents of each of these premises state that God never acts to make impossible the future flourishing of any human on account of his or her sins. But if humans harden themselves to such a degree that repentance is no longer possible, it is not apparent that it is God who is acting (in any immediate or intentional sense) to preclude any possibility of human flourishing. If so, then neither (2) nor (2*) is contravened. Perhaps more significantly, several contemporary philosophers of religion persuasively argue that it is unlikely that the God of love would create humans with the capacity to ruin themselves irredeemably.48 Their contention is all the more plausible if either (1) or (1*) is true. Hence, this way of denying (2) and (2*) does not appear promising. Of course, the Anselmic denier of (2) or (2*) need not subscribe to the notion that punishment is expressive in the way described. But he will need to provide grounds for supposing that God’s nature requires Him to punish in a way that is incompatible with (2) or (2*). So far as I am aware, however, no contemporary theologian or philosopher has done this. J.  Angelo Corlett comes closest in a recent article entitled, ‘Divine Justice and Human Sin’.49 But even Corlett does not furnish grounds for supposing that God must punish certain individuals with something like severe retribution. Instead, the clarion call is for non-question begging reasons to suppose that God prioritizes forgiveness, reconciliation, and ultimately love over just retribution. My response is to point to (1) or (1*), both of which garner support from the defence of amorism in Chapter 3. In addition, the fact the God is essentially loving, from 47  Insightful on this matter is Talbott, ‘Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice’. 48  See Andrei A. Buckareff and Allen Plug, ‘Escaping Hell: Divine Motivation and the Problem of Hell’, Religious Studies 41, no. 1 (March 2005): 39–54; as well as their ‘Escaping Hell but Not Heaven’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 77, no. 3 (2015): 247–53. In addition, see Ragland, ‘Love and Damnation’, 206–24; Thomas Talbott, ‘Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny’, Religious Studies 26, no. 2 (June 1990): 227–45. 49  J.  Angelo Corlett, ‘Divine Justice and Human Sin’, Philosophy and Theology 29, no. 1 (2017): 133–45.

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200  Love Divine a classical Christian perspective, and willing to die for humans to redeem them counts favourably for the supposition that God prioritizes love, forgiveness, and reconciliation over retribution, especially given the plausible assumption that God is only contingently retributively just. For such reasons, the Anselm-inspired way of denying (2) and (2*) fails to convince. There is, in addition, biblical evidence against the claim that God must punish humans in a way that ruins future flourishing. Some of this evidence is presented in Section II.b. For now we may conclude that (2) or (2*), or both, are plausibly true. The final premise of the argument from God’s purposes is (3). This is the claim that if God never responds to human sin by rendering the future flourishing of any human impossible, then God does not punish with severe retribution. Since punishing with severe retribution entails making it subsequently impossible for those punished to flourish, (3) requires no defence. But if (3) is granted, along with the other premises, then it follows that God does not punish with severe retribution. Drawing from Isaac, then, we have solid reason to suppose that the God who creates, guides, and redeems in accordance with love would be in conflict with His own goals if He were to punish with severe retribution. The obvious way around the conflict, and apparent irrationality that follows from it, is to jettison the severe retribution thesis. But once this is done, there is little that keeps one from the unitary account.

II.b  The Argument from the New Testament Ethic of Love The Isaac-inspired argument from divine purposes is not the only argument for the unitary account. Indeed, the New Testament ethic of love gives us cause to reject the claim that God punishes with severe retribution. Recall that part of the severe retribution thesis states that God punishes in a manner that makes it subsequently impossible for an individual to flourish in any meaningful sense. With this thesis in mind, consider Christ’s teaching on love within the Sermon on the Mount: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. [. . .] Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (Matt 5:43–48)

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Punitive Love  201 Here we find the last of six antitheses (i.e. ‘You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you . . . ’). According to Matthew’s arrangement, Jesus transitions into the antitheses by explaining that He has come to fulfil the law not abolish it (5:17), and that one’s righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees if they are to enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20; cf. Matt. 23:2–26 in light of 22:34–40). The six antitheses, then, become ways in which Jesus is offering a penetrating interpretation of the law and calling His followers to a higher righteousness than that of the scribes and Pharisees.50 Jesus’ audience had heard it said that they should not swear falsely (v. 33), they should not commit adultery (v. 27), they should not murder (v. 21), and so on; but Jesus responds by claiming they must go beyond this minimalistic ethic. Not only should they repudiate false oaths, they should eschew all untruth and stand behind their word (vv. 34–37). Not only should they refrain from adultery, they must refuse to make persons objects of lust (vv. 28–30). Not only should they never murder, they should be persons who avoid needless insults and seek reconciliation with those from whom they are estranged (vv. 22–24). A number of New Testament scholars have argued that it is an ethic of love that stands behind and unifies Jesus’ various commands within the an­tith­ eses.51 The truth of this claim becomes apparent in the way in which the six antitheses are concluded. There Jesus refers back to Leviticus 19 by quoting a verse from it (Matt. 5:43 includes a citation of Lev. 19:18) and by juxtaposing Leviticus’s ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’ (v. 2) with His injunction,52 ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (5:48). But, whereas divine holiness is the reason provided for why Israel should fulfil God’s commands in Leviticus 19, Jesus appeals to God’s love in the Sermon on the Mount. Immediately preceding the injunction to be perfect as the Father is perfect, Jesus’ disciples are called to love both neighbour and enemy

50  Helpful here is Charles H. Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5–7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006), 21–26, 59–72. As shall become clear, the present argument is not affected if, as some argue, Jesus not only provides an intensified interpretation of the law, but also abrogates it in certain respects (e.g. the lex talionis as an acceptable moral principle). 51  See the following: Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 296–325; Christoph Burchard, ‘The Theme of the Sermon on the Mount’, in Essays on the Love Commandment, trans. Reginald  H.  and Ilse Fuller (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1978), 57–92; Richard  A.  Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 216–17, 219–20; Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, a Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 328–9; and Victor Paul Furnish, The Love Command in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1973), 45–48, 53–4. 52  The argument is not affected by whether ἔσεσθε is meant to be an imperative, a prediction, or a promise, since, whichever is correct, God is the standard by which Christians should or shall love. On the significance, see Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, 323.

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202  Love Divine in reflection of their Heavenly Father, who ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good’ (5:45, cf. 5:43–44).53 It is particularly important not to miss the grounds or explanation of Jesus’ ethic of love, as presented in this passage. Christians are to love both friends and foes so that they might reflect their Father in heaven who does the same (Matt. 5:45). Marcus Borg states the matter correctly, ‘Jesus’ ethic, in short, was based on an imitatio dei, just as the quest for holiness [in e.g. Lev. 19] was based upon an imitatio dei.’54 This is not to say, of course, that Jesus is calling His disciples always to behave as does God (see Chapter 1). Rather, the claim is that Jesus believes that Christians should reflect (in their specifically human ways) God’s attitude or virtue of love for all.55 In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, it is this call to imitation that animates and unifies Jesus’ in­ter­ pret­ation of the law found within the six antitheses. If this is right, then each of Jesus’ commands within the antitheses should express something of God’s loving character. Consider, then, the verses immediately preceding Matthew 5:43–48, which concern retaliation. There Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (5:38–39). In this often discussed antithesis, Jesus addresses the lex talionis (‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’) that is found three times in the law (Exod. 21:20–25; Lev. 24:19–22; and Deut. 19:18–21), each of which concerns punishment.56 Here we cannot do justice to the considerable controversy regarding the purpose of Jesus’ contrast of the lex talionis with His admonition not to resist the evildoer.57 But, whether one thinks that Jesus is advocating complete non-retaliation or something less totalizing, it is evident, given that it is Jesus’ ethic of love that 53  Detailed arguments along these lines can be found in Adams, ‘Hell and the God of Justice’, 320–5; Gerald  L.  Borchert, ‘Matthew 5:48—Perfection and the Sermon’, Review and Expositor 89 (1992): 265–9; Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 328–9. 54 Marcus J. Borg, Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 137, cf. 139. Also see Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 162–3; Burridge, Imitating Jesus, 73–9; Douglas R.A. Hare, Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 60–1; Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 203–4; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007), 342; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel of Matthew, trans. Robert R. Barr (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 62–3; and Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 95–8. 55 Borg, Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus, 135–46. 56  See Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, 275–6, for a discussion for the legal background of the lex talionis. 57  The central theological controversy concerns whether Jesus prohibits the Christian use of violence/lethal force. For a survey of interpretative issues, see James F. Davis, Lex Talionis in Early Judaism and the Exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 5.38–42 (London: T&T Clark, 2005).

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Punitive Love  203 unifies each of His commands within the antitheses, that Jesus is promoting a radical, self-sacrificial love for one’s oppressive enemies. Even if Jesus allows His followers occasionally to seek punishment, He requires that this be sought in love.58 Now consider a point of application. We have seen that Christians are called to love both friends and enemies so that they might be like their Heavenly Father. Viewed within the wider context of the love that Christians are called to have in Matthew 5, it is clear that they are to transcend a simplistic tit-for-tat understanding of the lex talionis. Instead, Jesus’ disciples should love and seek the good of those who wrong them, either to the point of complete non-retaliation, or, if punishment is sometimes allowed, in their pursuit of punishment. But if the disciples are to love enemies in this way, and this represents the Father’s heart, then God’s punishment will not inhibit a person’s flourishing in the manner suggested by the severe retribution thesis. Were God to exercise severe retribution, He would be treating His ‘enemies’ in a substantially unloving way, despite the teaching that Christians should represent their Father in their extraordinary love for their enemies. The idea, it should be clear, is not that God and Christians should always treat persons in precisely the same ways when it comes to the administration of punishment (e.g. maybe Christians, unlike God, should not punish). Rather, the idea is that, given the manner in which Jesus models human love of enemies after the Father, God must consistently treat those who oppose Him with love, even in punishment (and we know, from other biblical passages, that God in fact punishes). If this is right, then the grounds for the divergent account have been swept away. In its place, Jesus in effect establishes that which has been labelled the unitary account. This argument for the unitary account relies upon a small, albeit significant, portion of the Matthean account of Jesus’ ethical teaching. However, evidence for the same conclusion is also found in widely supported New Testament themes. First, more than one New Testament author teaches that love fulfils the law (e.g. Matt. 22:34–40; Rom. 13:8–10; Gal. 5:14; perhaps Luke 10:25–37, 18:18–23; perhaps Mark 12:29–33; perhaps John 13:34–35; and maybe 1 John 4: 16–21).59 Certainly, there is debate about what love as the fulfilment of the law might mean (and there may be differences among the authors); but many commentators would agree that it means at least this

58  Insightful here is Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 91–3. 59  On love’s centrality for New Testament ethics, see Burridge, Imitating Jesus, 50, 55, 107–15, 169–72, 209–12, 258–60, 325–30, 343–5.

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204  Love Divine much: a person fulfils all of her moral obligations towards God and humans if she always intentionally acts consistently with what love for God and each human requires.60 If at least this much is correct, then love and punitive just­ ice should not be viewed as opposing moral realities for the human (min­im­ al­ly, the human should not implement anything like severe retribution when doing so is avoidable). To suggest as much would be to suggest that always acting in accordance with love towards the relevant individuals is not enough to fulfil a human’s moral obligations towards God and humans. Second, Jesus (as we have seen) as well as certain biblical authors ground this ethic of love within God’s nature (e.g. Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:28–36; John 13:31–35, 15:9–12; Eph. 5:1–2; 1 John 4:7–21). That is to say, according to these persons, the love to which Christians are called reflects God’s character of love.61 As St John puts it, ‘let us love one another, because love is from God’ (1 John 4:7). Taken together, these teachings support the unitary account. For if the love to which Christians are called does not permit opposition between love and punishment, and this mirrors the very character of God, then it must be that there is no division between God’s love and punishment. Should doubts remain about this conclusion, recall that Jesus did not merely teach about God’s love, He displayed God’s love in His incarnate ministry and death.62 There we find a God who relinquishes His place of h ­ onour to identify with sinners, and shows what it means to love by dying for His enemies—even crying ‘Father, forgive them’ while being crucified as a crim­ inal (Luke 23:34). Surely the cruciform God exemplifies a character that is entirely uninterested in enacting severe retribution on His beloved children. Someone might worry that the argument from the New Testament ethic of love fails to consider the full range of scriptures that favour the alternative

60 See e.g. Ambrosiaster, ‘Commentary on Romans’, in Commentaries on Romans and 1–2 Corinthians, ed. and trans. Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 102; Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns, 6th edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 494; W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. III (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 245–6; Furnish, The Love Command in the New Testament, 33–4; Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 5–10, trans. Thomas Scheck (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2002), 228–9; Roger Mohrlang, Matthew and Paul: A Comparison of Ethical Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 95–96, 106–8; C.F.D. Moule, ‘Fulfilment-Words in the New Testament: Use and Abuse’, New Testament Studies 14, no. 03 (1968): 293–320; and David L. Turner, Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 537. 61  On this, see Borg, Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus, 125–43; Burridge, Imitating Jesus, 73–8, 144–8, 343–5; Andrew  D.  Clarke, ‘ “Be Imitators of Me”: Paul’s Model of Leadership’, Tyndale Bulletin 49, no. 2 (1998): 329–60; Frank  J.  Matera, New Testament Ethics: The Legacies of Jesus and Paul (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 221–2. 62 On the importance of examining Jesus’ ethical example in addition to His teachings, see Burridge, Imitating Jesus, ch. 2.

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Punitive Love  205 understanding of God’s character. There are, for example, biblical passages that suggest that God can administer a kind of just vengeance that humans cannot (e.g. Rom. 12:19; cf. 2 Thess. 1:5–11), which could be taken to imply that God does not always punish in love. Additionally, one might highlight the colourful language that Jesus uses to describe hell as an indicator that Jesus believes the severe retribution thesis (e.g. Matt. 13:41–50). Finally, one might call to mind various biblical passages that describe God’s punishment in the most demanding terms, and view these as evidence for the divergent account (e.g. Rev. 21:8; 2 Pet. 2:4–9). What can be said to assuage such concerns? Consider the first worry. Though it is undoubtedly true that God has the unparalleled authority to punish wrongdoers in ways that humans cannot, this is a far cry from showing that divine punishment might ever be unloving. After all, a parent, because of her distinctive insight and authority, can treat her child in punitive ways that the child’s sibling cannot—even stern ways that seem much too harsh to be loving from the perspective of the children— yet, by itself, this does nothing to show that the parent would ever punish in opposition to love. The point applies, mutatis mutandis, to God. The mere fact that God can administer a kind of punishment that humans cannot does not undercut the conclusion that God punishes exclusively in love. Turn, next, to the claim that Jesus’ depictions of hell indicate that God punishes with severe retribution. Such depictions are often thought to include an ‘outer darkness’ (e.g. Matt. 22:13), a ‘furnace of fire’ (e.g. Matt. 13:41–50), and a place where there will be ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (e.g. Luke 13:28).63 A surface reading of these metaphors can engender the impression that God’s punishment is not always wedded to love. However, because of the highly cryptic and metaphorical nature of Jesus’ references to hell, it is difficult to say, on the basis of these references alone, how exactly Jesus envisages post-mortem punishment. As David Powys notes at the end of his four-hundred page exegetical study of hell, ‘No positive doctrine of the fate of the unrighteous can be proclaimed with confidence: such proclamation lacks clear biblical warrant.’64 If Powys’s assessment is correct, then Jesus’ references to hell hardly can be used as clear evidence for the severe retribution thesis. Contrast this with what has been discussed about 63  Which of Jesus’ sayings actually apply to hell is disputed. For overviews of contemporary literature on Jesus’ view of hell, see David J. Powys, ‘Hell’: A Hard Look at a Hard Question (Waynesboro, VA: Paternoster Press, 1997); and Anthony C. Thiselton, Life after Death: A New Approach to the Last Things (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 151–9. 64 Powys, ‘Hell’, 417.

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206  Love Divine Jesus’ teachings, example, and influence. In His teachings, Jesus links God’s character of love with the rejection of unloving vengeance; in His example, the God-man exemplifies a character that seems wholly at odds with severe retribution; and in His influence, He leaves His disciples with an ethic of love, based upon an imitatio dei, that excludes severe retribution.65 It would appear rather backwards, therefore, to interpret Jesus’ message, embodiment, and legacy of love in light of Jesus’ evocative and elusive images concerning God’s future judgement. But even if one believes that Powys is mistaken, and agrees instead with Scot McKnight’s conclusion that ‘We must admit that Jesus taught the possibility and reality of an eternal, conscious punishment’,66 this does not offer conclusive evidence that Jesus was not a proponent of what we recognize as the unitary account. As will be discussed in Section III, there is a sense in which the unitary account is consonant with eternal conscious punishment. Of course, Jesus is not the only biblical personality to speak of hell; nor does the language about hell exhaust the biblical literature that might be understood to contradict the unitary account.67 As we have seen, though, in Jesus’ teaching, actions, and influence we find excellent reason to reject the severe retribution thesis, even directly to affirm the unitary account. But given that Christ, the God-man, perfectly represents the moral character of God (e.g. John 14:9; Heb. 1:1–3), it is difficult to imagine better biblical grounds to suppose that the unitary account is true. I submit, therefore, that the present argument from the New Testament ethic of love provides at least prima facie reason to interpret apparently contradictory data in a way that harmonizes with the unitary account—including, pace Brunner, data on divine holiness. In that case, we should proceed on the assumption that the unitary account is true, unless and until sufficiently weighty counterevidence is presented. 65  On the influence of Jesus’ ethic of love on the New Testament authors, see Davies and Allison, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. III, 246–7; Burridge, Imitating Jesus, 89–90, 107–12; Eduard Lohse, ‘The Church in Everyday Life: Considerations of the Theological Basis of Ethics in the New Testament’, in Understanding Paul’s Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches, ed. Brian Rosner (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 251–65; D.  Moody Smith, ‘The Love Command: John and Paul?’, in Theology and Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters, ed. Eugene  H.  Lovering, Jr. and Jerry L. Sumney (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), 207–17. 66 Scot McKnight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 38. 67  For helpful discussions of the relevant biblical data, see Timothy Gorringe, God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence, and the Rhetoric of Salvation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chs. 2–3; Christopher  D.  Marshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001); C.F.D.  Moule, ‘Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought’, Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 30 (1965): 21–36; and Stephen  H.  Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought, 2nd edn (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008).

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Punitive Love  207

II.c Summary We now have seen two arguments that support the unitary account. It would be a mistake, however, to view these arguments as entirely independent. Instead, it seems that the God who reveals Himself in Christ is the kind of being who would ensure that, for any human He creates, He surrounds the creature with love in a manner that has no place for severe retribution. Conversely, the doctrine that God creates and guides humans primarily mo­tiv­ated by love furnishes a lens for interpreting the teaching, example, and ethical legacy of Christ as manifesting a God that refuses to destroy human flourishing but rather uses punishment for His loving purposes. In short, these two arguments provide mutually supporting reasons for affirming that God punishes not in opposition to His love but as an expression of it.

III.  God’s Communicative Punishment What we have, then, are good grounds for affirming that God punishes in love. However, we have not yet seen what shape punishment in love might take. The goal of this section is to propose a theory of how God punishes in love, a theory that does not overlook the sometimes harsh biblical language concerning divine punishment. The way forward requires us to look to the past, to a view of divine punishment found within the early Church. Here I shall focus exclusively on Gregory of Nyssa, though, if space permitted, I would argue that Gregory provides just one exemplary representative of a certain portion of the Eastern wing of the early Church.68 To begin, it will be recalled that Gregory is comfortable using the language of hellfire to describe the execution of God’s wrath. Yet he is equally convinced that wrath is a facet of God’s love, in that it is good for the one punished. While Gregory never spells out a detailed theory of divine punishment, his basic view will prove fruitful. To appreciate the genius of Gregory’s view, a standard distinction between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts of the justification of punishment must first be introduced. According to the former, punishment is 68  Concerning this tradition, see Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 85–6; Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013); John R. Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’, Theological Studies 54, no. 4 (1993): 636.

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208  Love Divine justified or rendered appropriate because of the guilt accrued by the past ­misconduct of an individual. The view that punishment is justified purely in terms of backward-looking considerations is often labelled ‘retributivism’, and (as discussed in relation to Brunner) those who hold to retributivism maintain that there is something intrinsically good about punishing, with the fitting level of severity, those who deserve it. By contrast, those who affirm that the justification of punishment rests on forward-looking principles point to some future good that punishment is likely to produce—such as deterrence of wrongdoing, reformation of the transgressor, and the like. Here punishment is not typically understood to be good in itself, but for the consequences it can potentially yield. Many legal theorists and ethicists integrate both backward- and forwardlooking elements into their favoured understanding of how the state should punish.69 A little reflection reveals why the theologian might want to do the same with her account of God’s punishment. If, on the one hand, God punishes simply because it is deserved, without taking into consideration how this might be used to benefit His creatures, then in principle God’s love and punitive wrath can come apart. Consequently, there would be little-tonothing in place that enables the theologian to resist the beckoning call of the divergent account. On the other hand, should the theologian contend that divine punishment is entirely based upon the production of some future good, then, as many legal theorists have stressed, punishment becomes disconnected from desert in a manner that opens the door to apparent in­just­ices.70 For example, if deterrence from wrongdoing is sufficient for divine punishment, as Friedrich Schleiermacher arguably claims,71 God could deter by sternly punishing those who have not yet committed wrongs, or by imposing incredibly burdensome sanctions for the smallest peccadilloes. Yet both kinds of punishment seem unjust. What is needed is a means of avoiding the traps of exclusively backward- or forward-looking conceptions of punishment. Perhaps a delicate combination 69  See R.A.  Duff, ‘Punishment’, in The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFollette (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 337–40. 70  For a clear overview of many of the relevant issues, see C.S. Lewis, ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’, in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 287–94. For more rigorous contemporary treatments of such issues, see David Boonin, The Problem of Punishment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), ch. 2; H.L.A.  Hart, Punishment and Responsibility, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), chs. 1–2; H.J.  McCloskey, ‘An Examination of Restricted Utilitarianism’, The Philosophical Review 66, no. 4 (1957): 466–85 (especially 468–69); Igor Primoratz, Justifying Legal Punishment (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1997), chs. 2–3. 71 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H.  R.  Mackintosh and James  S.  Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1968), 350.

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Punitive Love  209 of both backward- and forward-looking components will best explain why God punishes and how this relates to His love. The challenge is to integrate these components in a natural and theologically fruitful way. This is where Gregory is particularly helpful. One of the most interesting places in which Gregory discusses the nature of divine punishment is An Address on Religious Instruction (also known as The Great Catechism). What is specifically noteworthy is the section of this essay that concerns the legitimacy of God’s deceit of the devil.72 According to Gregory, God offers Christ to Satan in exchange for human souls. This exchange involves deception on God’s part, though, whereby God deliberately hides Christ’s divinity from Satan so that the devil accepts Christ as a ransom. In Gregory’s words, ‘God, in order to make himself easily accessible [to Satan] who sought the ransom for us, veiled himself in our nature. In that way, as it is with greedy fish, he might swallow the Godhead like a fishhook along with the flesh, which was the bait.’73 How might such divine deception be justified? Gregory’s answer contains a compelling mixture of backward- and forwardlooking elements. First, he states ‘it is the character of justice to render to each his due’ and to return ‘like for like’.74 Within the context, it is apparent that Gregory has in mind a justice that leads to punishment, one that contains a backward-looking, retributivist component, wherein the wrongdoer deserves hard-treatment for his past misdeeds.75 Since Satan is the father of lies, he deserves to feel the pain of being deceived about that which he holds dear. This is not say, however, that Gregory subscribes to the fully fledged severe retribution thesis. Quite the contrary, Gregory is clear that punishment must not exclude the ‘higher aim’ of love.76 Therefore, in deceiving Satan, God must deceive Satan in a way that has the potential to be good for Satan. Part of Gregory’s framework as to how this good can be procured involves the idea that any contact with God-in-Christ, including Satan’s contact, has salubrious effects.77 But more important for the present purposes, Gregory holds that God’s punishment of Satan is communicative, and thus potentially remedial. In other words, Gregory believes that the deception of the master of

72  Note that divine punishment, not Gregory’s theory of atonement, is the focus of the present chapter. 73  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 24 (p. 301). 74  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 24 (p. 303). 75  Gregory says, for example, ‘By justice due recompense is given’ (ARI, 26, p. 303). 76  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (p. 303). 77  See Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (p. 303). On this, see Stephen D. Emerson, ‘The Work of Christ According to Gregory of Nyssa’ (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998); Morwenna Ludlow, Gregory of Nyssa: Ancient and (Post)Modern (Oxford: University Press, 2007), ch. 6; Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 416–24.

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210  Love Divine deception is a form of punishment that powerfully communicates to Satan the nature of his wrongdoing, so that Satan might repent of his sins and ul­tim­ ate­ly be restored to God. Gregory writes: [T]he deceiver was in turn deceived. [. . .] By the principle of justice the deceiver reaps the harvest of the seeds he sowed with his own free will. For he who first deceived man by the bait of pleasure is himself deceived by the camouflage of human nature. But the purpose of the action changes it into something good. For the one practiced deceit to ruin our nature; but the other [i.e. God], being at once just and good and wise, made use of a deceitful device to save the one who had been ruined. And by so doing he benefited, not only the one who had perished, but also the very one who had brought us ruin. [. . .] Hence not even the adversary himself can question that what occurred was just and salutary—if, that is, he comes to recognize its benefit.78

Nicholas Constas contends that Gregory echoes a theme in classical antiquity, whereby ‘the use of deception was sanctioned as an acceptable pedagogical, strategic, and therapeutic device’.79 Embedded within this cultural milieu, Constas observes that in Gregory’s mind ‘it was only right that an act of deception should be undone by an act of deception’, but that ‘God’s deceit, unlike the devil’s, was enacted for therapeutic purposes’, ultimately to ‘redeem the [evil] desire of the other’.80 So, here one finds a forward-looking component to Gregory’s understanding of punishment. Yes, Satan deserves to be deceived for his deceptions. But, importantly, God’s use of deception is intended to communicate holistically to Satan the error of his ways, so that he might repent and benefit from the saving work of Christ.81 As such, God’s punitive wrath is a facet of God’s love.82 Gregory makes it plain that he does not think that this communicative form of punishment only applies to God’s treatment of Satan. Rather, Gregory explicitly associates the form of punishment given to Satan with that which

78  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (pp. 303–4). 79 Nicholas  P.  Constas, ‘The Last Temptation of Satan: Divine Deception in Greek Patristic Interpretations of the Passion Narrative’, Harvard Theological Review 97, no. 2 (2004): 142. 80  Constas, ‘The Last Temptation of Satan’, 145. 81  See Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco, ‘Devil’, in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, trans. Seth Cherney (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 225–6. 82  For discussions of those who held a pedagogical understanding of punishment and likely influenced Gregory, see Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 85–6; Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 373–440; Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’, 617–40.

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Punitive Love  211 will be administered to those humans who require it.83 Given the presence of pedagogy in God’s punitive treatment of Satan, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Gregory believes that God’s punishment of humans involves a pedagogical element as well.84 Gregory’s view of punishment is provocative, although a bit underdeveloped. It can, however, be assimilated into a more rigorous theory by drawing from contemporary communicative or expressivist theories of punishment. Most helpful along these lines is the work of the philosopher and legal the­or­ ist R.A.  Duff. Although Duff ’s concern is with the state’s punishment of humans, not with the theology of divine punishment, the basic theory he propounds can be transformed into a theory of divine punishment with very little alteration. My proposal is that Duff ’s theory is worth considering as a model of how God punishes, whatever one makes of the theory as a model of how the state should punish.According to Duff, punishment ‘should communicate to offenders the censure they deserve for their crimes and should aim through the communicative process to persuade them to repent [of] those crimes, to try to reform themselves, and thus to reconcile themselves with those whom they wronged’.85 Duff maintains that this means that punishment should direct wrongdoers’ attentions to the values they have flouted, while condemning the perversion of these values. Done correctly, punishment forms a context in which wrongdoers can discern, and palpably experience, the error of their ways. In the typical case, such a context is painful, as it involves the aim of getting transgressors to understand in heart and mind why their actions are not acceptable. Yet the punishment points beyond itself as well. It is meant to persuade transgressors to change. As a non-criminal example of how communicative punishment might work, consider a case where a child arbitrarily forbids one of his peers from playing with him and his friends. In such a scenario, the child’s mother might put her son on an excluded ‘timeout’ in an attempt to communicate to him the detrimental nature of his behaviour. After the timeout period is complete, the mother might furthermore demand that her son apologize to the one he has alienated and offer an invitation to return to the group of children at play. Moreover, as a kind of penitential act oriented towards demonstrating to the

83  Gregory of Nyssa, ARI, 26 (pp. 303–4). 84  Further evidence for this claim can be found in Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 88–9; Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’, 636–7; Morwenna Ludlow, Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 86, 99–104. 85 R.A. Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), xvii.

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212  Love Divine excluded child the seriousness of the apology and repentance, the mother might direct her son to give something of his, such as a toy or a piece of candy, to the excluded child. In accordance with communicative punishment, the mother’s hope might be that by causing her son to suffer the pain of exclusion from his peers, he will experience the badness of this exclusion and will come to see that he should not be the cause of similar sorts of suffering in others. Alongside this goal, the mother’s demand that her son apologize, perform an act of penance, and invite the excluded child into the group might be for the purpose of showing her son how to repent, how to begin to change his ways, and how to take steps towards reconciliation with the one he alienated. It should be apparent that Duff ’s theory includes both backward- and forward-looking components. It contains a backward-looking, retributivist component in that wrongdoing is met with stern communicative treatment that is justified by an individual’s past failings. However, unlike standard retributive theories, Duff maintains that punishment aims to persuade the wrongdoer to repentant and reform, which will hopefully engender reconciliation between the wrongdoer and his victim, and everyone else affected by the wrongdoer’s actions.86 The idea is that communicative punishment creates a structure in which the wrongdoer can focus on ‘the nature and implications of his crime, face up to it more adequately than he might otherwise (being human) do, and so arrive at a more authentic repentance’.87 Authentic repentance will in turn lead to reform and, and when possible, reconciliation.88 Importantly, Duff ’s use of a forward-looking constituent differs from the characteristic understanding of this component.89 Those who stress forwardlooking punishment often claim that it is the contingently related output of punishment (deterrence, remediation, etc.) that justifies the means. By contrast, Duff maintains that it is the holistic communication of punishment that is intrinsically appropriate. Punishment is internally directed towards putting the transgressor’s heart and mind in contact with the values he has flouted, while also directing his gaze towards the way of change and restoration. The communicative content by itself, and not so much the outcomes, is a worthwhile endeavour that warrants punishment. Certainly, one should not be surprised if communicative punishment often achieves the aims of repentance, reform, and reconciliation. But, for Duff, these outcomes are not what make punishment essentially fitting, or even successful. Rather, punishment is 86 Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, 107–8. 87 Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, 108. 88 Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, 107–8. 89  See Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, 121–5; cf. Duff, ‘Punishment’, 347.

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Punitive Love  213 successful if it has the intrinsic potential to communicate rightly: the message of punishment is that which, if embraced and internalized, will bring a deep understanding of the appropriate values and will illumine the path to change. As free moral agents, wrongdoers may refuse to accept or even consider the message of punishment. Yet the punishment remains justified since it treats transgressors as rational and moral individuals who are worth engaging through communicative treatment, even if stern and unpleasant. With the basic contours of Duff ’s theory in view, it is easy to discern how the theory can be transformed into a general account of divine punishment that borrows from Gregory’s insights. Accordingly, divine punishment is that which aims to communicate to offenders the censure they deserve for their sins. The purpose of this communicative process is to persuade them to admit their evil, to try to reform themselves with God’s help, and thus (when pos­ sible) to reconcile themselves with those whom they have wronged. However, punitive success is not essentially dependent upon the change of sinners, but on the punishment’s intrinsic communicative effectiveness—i.e. it is the kind of punishment that provides a context in which transgressors can, if they allow it, sufficiently discern their sins and understand how they should respond to the fact that they have committed these evils.90 This understanding of divine punishment avoids significant problems that hamper entirely backward- and forward-looking theories. Assuming that the advocate of the communicative theory holds that the stringency and kind of punishment is determined by the type and degree of the transgression,91 the advocate can avoid the worry, mentioned in connection to views of punishment that are completely forward-looking, that in principle God could punish beyond what is deserved. Equally important, the present communicative account does not amount to severe retribution. On the contrary, God’s communicative punishment aims at highlighting the road to spiritual trans­ for­ma­tion and restoration. Thus, with the communicative theory of divine punishment the preservation of the unity account is straightforward. Divine punishment aims to communicate to offenders the censure they deserve for their sins, but this 90  While the primary aim of penal communication is the moral transgressor, others, including the victim, might be indirectly communicated to as well. God can communicate to the victim through His punishment of the victimizer that her victimization will not be tolerated. This cannot be explored here, unfortunately. 91  To suggest that the severity and kind of communicative punishment is not typically determined by the type and degree of wrongdoing is problematic. Capital punishment for stealing a piece of candy, for instance, would substantially miscommunicate something about the depth of the wrong in question.

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214  Love Divine punishment is an expression of God’s severe mercy, internally directed towards bringing repentance, reform and reconciliation for those who are willing to internalize the message of punishment. Despite the initial attractiveness of the communicative theory, one might worry that the theory renders punishment unnecessary since God can appropriately communicate without punishment. God might simply tell the wrongdoer that a particular action is sinful, for example, and it might be held that this would provide sufficient revelation. In that case, punishment is a needless addendum, on the communicative view. In response it may be claimed that punishment is unnecessary when all one needs is to learn a proposition. Sometimes, however, when one commits a wrong, she identifies with or deeply invests herself in the act in question, such that mere information is insufficient for the deep discernment of evil. It is, after all, one thing to give mental assent that some act or way of life is wrong; it is quite another for the understanding of that wrongness to dwell deep within one’s heart. Moreover, it is plausible to suppose that the pangs of punishment enable the evildoer to experience palpably the badness of her actions.92 For example, the vandal who is forced to compensate shop owners financially, and spend long hours restoring storefronts because he was caught defacing them, may learn to respect the financial and emotional resources that are involved in shop ownership. This experience may furthermore evoke empathy, which, hopefully, will lead to a changed person who offers his service as an act of penance to those whom he has wronged. Even so, one might still wonder if divine communicative punishment makes sense of the sometimes harsh biblical descriptions of God’s punishment. For, as has been observed, the biblical God is depicted as one who will strike dead the defiant and send the wicked to hell. Because the latter kind of punishment will be addressed in Section IV, the immediate focus is on the former. An important thing to note is that capital punishment, although no doubt harsh, can be powerfully communicative. In fact, certain past Christian so­ci­ eties have practised capital punishment at least partially as a means of reforming its inhabitants and preparing them for heaven. The thought was that by forcing wrongdoers to face impending death, the stage is set for them to grapple with the evil of their behaviour, so that they might repent and take some of the first steps towards reform. While the transgressors may not have

92  See Duff ’s Trials and Punishments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), ch. 2; and Punishment, Communication, and Community, 107–9.

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Punitive Love  215 been able to make everything right in this terrestrial life, the hope was that they might be reconciled with their Maker, and perhaps their victims, in the life to come.93 Certainly, one might have moral qualms with this form of human punishment—the intention here is not to affirm the validity of executions within human societies. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny the communicative power of this use of capital punishment: by turning the wrongdoer’s actions back on himself, he experiences, from within, the horror of his behaviour. But if punishment via death is powerfully communicative and thereby potentially redemptive, then, as paradoxical as it may initially seem, there is no conceptual barrier to supposing that in principle God could utilize even this harsh form of punishment for loving purposes. That this is so should provide us with confidence that communicative punishment can account for a kind of biblical data that might appear, at first blush, too severe to be compatible with it.94 Thus far the illustrations of communicative punishment mostly have been examples of humans punishing other humans (the example from Gregory is an exception). The operative assumption has been that if humans enjoy the requisite creativity to conceive of ways in which punishment might speak to its subjects, then certainly God can use punishment to communicate—even if theologians cannot always precisely delineate how this is so. The assumption is a safe one given the majesty of the divine nature. Consequently, the central issue concerning the viability of divine communicative punishment is not whether God can use punishment in this way but whether God wants to. Part of the burden of this chapter has been to suggest that there is good reason for thinking that God does. The communicative model of divine punishment can be viewed as a kind of hypothesis that finds general support from the truth of the unitary account, its ability to integrate backward- and forward-looking components, and from the fact that it is found in nascent form in the writings of the theological luminary Gregory of Nyssa.95 Additional evidence comes from the model’s ostensible ability to explain harsh forms of punishment found in Scripture, as well as recent literature by biblical scholars who argue that Scripture presents ideal forms of divine and human punishment as re­med­ial and restorative.96 Finally, the communicative account captures the 93 See e.g. Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 16–22. 94  For more on the compatibility of divine communicative punishment with divine capital punishment, see my ‘A Love That Speaks in Harsh Tones: On the Superiority of Divine Communicative Punishment’, in Love, Divine and Human: Contemporary Theological Essays, ed. James Arcadi, Oliver Crisp, and Jordan Wessling (London: T&T Clark, 2019). 95  See note 82 for works on other great theologians who share Gregory’s basic view. 96  See note 67 for resources.

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216  Love Divine deep-seated sense that the God of parental and cruciform love, who is zealous to save, would punish in a redemptive manner.

IV.  God’s Communicative Punishment and the Doctrine of Hell At various places within this chapter it has been suggested that the doctrine of hell provides a paradigmatic motivation for the divergent account. For it at least appears that it would not be love that sentences someone to ‘eternal punishment’ (Matt. 25:46).97 However, given the importance of hell for traditional Christian theology, the defender of the unitary account cannot simply ignore this doctrine. She must rather show how the unitary account might re­spon­ sibly inform Christian reflection on this issue. Certainly this vast doctrinal project extends beyond the boundaries of the present work; here the application of the communicative theory of punishment to the doctrine of hell can be no more than an initial and partial sketch. According to the version of the unitary account defended within this chapter, complete with the communicative theory, God’s punishment attempts to persuade sinners to repent, reform, and seek reconciliation. If God punishes in this way, He would make it possible for the damned to repent and enter heaven. Given this eschatological picture, it might be that all eventually join the blessed; but, notice, there is nothing about the communicative view itself that entails universal salvation. This is because punitive success is not ­dependent upon the changed behaviour of the one punished, but on punishment’s intrinsic, communicative effectiveness. Consequently, if it is agreed that God, in love, has granted creatures a measure of (libertarian) freedom that He will not override, then it is possible that some will simply choose to cling to their sins, and never cross the chasm between hell and heaven. Even for the persistently rebellious, however, communicative punishment may be deemed respectful and loving because it attempts to clarify to sinners the nature of their moral choices. Such punishment thereby engages wrongdoers as moral agents and refuses to give up on them entirely.98 97  Appearances here might be deceiving, however. See Stump, ‘Dante’s Hell, Aquinas’s Moral Theory, and the Love of God’. (For a trenchant philosophical criticism of Stump’s view, see Ragland, ‘Love and Damnation’.) But even if Stump succeeds in showing that certain versions of a traditional and unescapable hell are consonant with the unitary account, other conceptions of hell that stress God’s active nonredemptive torments of the damned certainly are not (e.g. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 2.6). 98  A thorny issue we cannot tackle presently concerns the interrelation between God’s fore­know­ ledge and His punishment (e.g. does God continually punish those whom He knows will never repent, and if so, how is this loving?).

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Punitive Love  217 The numerous potential pros and cons of this revised conception of hell cannot currently be explored. Doing so would require an examination of Scripture,99 specific ecclesial traditions,100 and more besides.101 Nevertheless, a few benefits of the present understanding of hell should be briefly noted. First, this view may preserve biblical language regarding hell as a place of eternal, even everlasting, punishment. This is because one can hold that hell is at least potentially everlasting for everyone that enters its gates. Second, the revised understanding of hell emerges out of a respected Eastern Church trad­ition where hell is understood along remedial lines.102 In contrast to much of classic Western Christian theology, which often supposes that divine punishment in hell does nothing to assist the damned along the path of salvation,103 the communicative understanding of hell traces back to early theologians, such as Gregory, who maintain that God’s punishment in both this life and the next grants creatures the opportunity for spiritual change, providing even the damned the opportunity for salvation.104 Unlike many within the early Church, though, that held that a remedial view of hell ensures the salvation of all, the present communicative view is tempered by the Church’s scepticism towards universalism that would later develop. In keeping with this, the present communicative view may be equipped with better conceptual apparatus for respecting human freedom than is classical universalism. Yet, importantly, the modified conception of hell does not preclude a ‘hopeful universalism’. On the contrary, the communicative account of hell furnishes the resources for affirming the widely held perspective that Christians have rational grounds to hope that all will eventually be saved, even if universalism

99 For a discussion of the biblical merits of this open-door position, see MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 150–8. 100  See e.g. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000). 101  For a discussion of just some of the additional issues, see Buckareff and Plug, ‘Escaping Hell’; Brian Hebblethwaite, The Christian Hope (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 170–4; Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, ch. 4; and MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 5. 102  Concerning this tradition, see Daley, The Hope of the Early Church; Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis; Sachs, ‘Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology’. 103  See e.g. Augustine, The City of God, 21.9, and Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 7.6. Such theologians often draw a sharp line between punishment in this life, which may be remedial, and punishment in hell, which is non-remedial. 104 Gregory, like many great Eastern theologians before and after him, assumes that creatures retain freedom of will in hell. See Giulio Maspero, ‘Apocatastasis’, in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, trans. Seth Cherney (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 55–64; and Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, passim. Contemporary surveys of free will and hell include Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, trans. Theodore Berkeley (London: New City Press, 1993), 296–307; Zachary Hayes, Visions of a Future: A Study of Christian Eschatology (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1989), ch. 7; and John  R.  Sachs, ‘Current Eschatology: Universal Salvation and the Problem of Hell’, Theological Studies 52, no. 2 (1991): 233–4.

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218  Love Divine cannot be proclaimed as dogma.105 For on the communicative view of hell, together with the perspective of God defended within this book, there is nothing within God’s character that opposes His saving love. Because of this, one may have confidence that God’s love could very well win the hearts of all, even it takes many ages. However, it might be thought that this confidence, or at least the inclination to proclaim that all shall be saved, should be moderated by the (contested) teaching that God has not revealed the final scope of salvation as well as the notion that humans are forever free to rebel against their loving Father. Finally, lest it be overlooked, if the unitary account is true, it is likely that God would opt for something like this ‘open-door policy’ towards those in hell. For God’s character would be such that He would continue to stretch out His arms to His disobedient and obstinate people.

V. Conclusion This chapter began with Bernard of Clairvaux’s advice not to lose sight of either God’s love or wrath, so as to maintain a more complete picture of God. Then readers were presented with a framework where they can take Bernard’s advice to heart, without seeing God’s love and wrath as at root distinct. If Christians are willing to embrace a communicative theory of divine punishment, they can hold to a robust account of divine wrath that does not incur the cost of taming divine love. Because God loves His wayward children, He refuses merely to stand by when they hurt themselves and others. He therefore punishes sinners as an expression of His love, to communicate to His children that they have chosen poorly and must move down the path of reform and reconciliation. Certainly, God’s punishment can be terrifyingly severe, but this is only because God’s love is relentless. Christians may therefore move one step beyond the counsel of Bernard and embrace the advice of Karl Barth, who encourages us to ‘see, feel and appreciate His love to us even in His anger, condemnation and punishment’.106

105  Perhaps the most influential proponent of ‘hopeful universalism’ is Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope ‘That All Men Be Saved’?, trans. David Kipp and Lothar Krauth (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2014). 106  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1: The Doctrine of God, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, trans. A.T. Mackay et al. (London: T&T Clark, 1957), 394.

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7 Trinity, Deification, and Atonement In Chapter 2 of this book, I argued that God loves a human only if God values union with her. This claim connects with classical Christian teaching about human salvation in two especially significant respects. First, the Christian trad­ition affirms that God desires to be united to humans through a process of deification or theosis.1 While definitions of deification are controversial, it suffices for the purposes of this chapter to agree that the doctrine of deification refers to the process whereby humans grow to resemble the moral goodness of God’s character (or something analogous to moral goodness) and participate in (or are infused with) the divine life.2 Second, this same trad­ition concerning deification also teaches that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ play a vital role, perhaps even an indispensable one, in achieving this deified union. These two theological commitments are often wed together through the happy exchange proclaimed by St Athanasius, ‘He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.’3 The root idea behind the happy exchange is that the Word’s assumption of a human nature—together with the incarnate God’s perfect life, genuine death, and glorious resurrection—somehow enables Christ, in cooperation with the Spirit, to sanctify the assumed human nature and transfer the now sanctified human properties to other humans in a manner that saves and vivifies them, and even allows them to participate in the very life of God.4 Though this is a biblically faithful and historically grounded way of thinking, it is also deeply mysterious. For what might it mean to participate in God’s life? And how might the work of Christ,

1  In keeping with standard usage, I use ‘deification’ and ‘theosis’ as synonyms. 2  For a survey of understandings of deification, see Daniel A. Keating, ‘Typologies of Deification’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 17, no. 3 (2015): 267–83. 3  Athanasius, ‘On the Incarnation’, in Christology of the Later Fathers: On the Incarnation, trans. Penelope Lawson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 54.3, 93. For the centrality of the exchange formula for the ancient doctrine of theosis, especially in Eastern Christian thought, see Kenneth Paul Wesche, ‘Eastern Orthodox Spirituality: Union with God in Theosis’, Theology Today 56, no. 1 (1999): 29; and Norman Russell, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), 38. 4 For a contemporary discussion, see Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ch. 6. Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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220  Love Divine especially His dreadfully violent execution, be the kind of thing that helps Christians enter God’s life of peace, joy, and love? In this chapter, I offer a way of understanding deification via the noted happy exchange. In so doing, there is no attempt to provide a complete account of either deification or the reconciling ministry of Christ. Instead, the model of deification is limited to that which pertains to a kind of Spiritempowered moral transformation and participation in the Trinity’s love, spe­ cif­ic­al­ly the mutual love between the Father and Son. Regarding Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, the focus is on Christ’s life and death, and little is said about the transforming power of the Resurrection. Moreover, what is said about Christ’s life and death is not meant to constitute a complete atonement theory, nor is the proposal meant necessarily to replace other ways of making sense of the Atonement—the proposal may exist alongside certain prevailing atonement theories. Despite these qualifications, I am convinced that the proffered model of deification and its relation to Christ’s life and death is considerably fruitful, certainly worthy of further exploration. The model of deification also fits nicely with UT, the account of union that is present within Chapter 2. This chapter is structured as follows. In Section I, the doctrine of deification is framed in terms of God’s desire to share the mutual love between the Father and Son with humans. Three conceptual challenges to understanding this divine action of sharing are then raised. In Section II, I turn to the Eastern Orthodox essence-energies distinction as a means of setting the stage for understanding participation in God’s life, though I allow myself considerable freedom in the way in which this rich and mysterious distinction is unpacked.5 Furthermore, to aid our understanding of what it might mean to participate in the energies but not the essence of God (which is the purpose of the distinction), the late William Alston’s account of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is developed and defended. After this is done, in Section III, I apply the model of deification to the crucifixion, explaining how the horrendous death of the innocent God-man might generate within humans the virtues of faith, hope, and love, which are required for transformation and ultimately full participation in God’s life. I conclude by returning to God’s desire to share the mutual 5  The distinction between God’s essence and energies has been met with substantial criticism by contemporary theologians. For an overview of many of these criticisms, see David Bradshaw, ‘In Defense of the Essence/Energies Distinction: A Reply to Critics’, in Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy, ed. Constantinos Athanasopoulos and Cristoph Schneider (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), 256–73; Glenn  D.  Butner, ‘Communion with God: An Energetic Defense of Gregory Palamas’, Modern Theology 32, no. 1 (2016): 20–44.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  221 love between the Father and Son with humans, and I offer a way of making sense of this given the model of deification defended. It is at this stage that I also show how the way in which deification is conceived fits rather nicely with UT.

I.  Participating in God’s Intra-Trinitarian Life I.a  On Participating in God’s Life The Triune God wants to share the divine life of love with women and men. As far as the biblical witness goes, we see this picture of a sharing God most clearly in the Gospel of John. Towards the end of this Gospel, Jesus prays to the Father as He faces an impending death. There Christ recalls the love and glory that He shared with the Father ‘before the world existed’ (John 17:5, cf. vv. 24, 26), and He asks the Father to make His followers one ‘as we are one’ (17:11), even requesting a kind of mutual indwelling between the Father and Son and the disciples: ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us’ (17:21). Jesus furthermore makes it evident that a significant way in which humans participate in the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son is by participating in their mutual love. Still addressing the Father, Jesus says, ‘I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (John 17:26, cf. 17:23–24; 14:20–21; 15:9–17). As David Crump explains in an insightful article on the interrelation between the Trinity and soteriology within the fourth gospel, the believer’s ‘indwelling [within] the life of God is the heart and soul of John’s understanding of salvation’, in the sense that ‘every believer’s inclusion within the exchange of divine life and love between the Father and Son is the essence [. . .] of [John’s] message about eternal life’.6 Crump is not afraid to draw the obvious theological conclusion, John’s ‘distinctively perichoretic soteriology [is] reminiscent of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of deification’.7 Though not quite as clear as it is within John’s gospel, a similar soteriology is present within the Pauline literature. In fact, there is now widespread agreement that participation in Christ is central to Paul’s soteriology and

6 David Crump, ‘Re-Examining the Johannine Trinity: Perichoresis or Deification?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 59, no. 4 (2006): 410. 7  Crump, ‘Re-Examining the Johannine Trinity’, 409.

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222  Love Divine spirituality.8 About this emphasis on participation found in Paul, Richard Hays says that ‘ultimately, being united with Christ is salvific because to share his life is to share in the life of God’, and Hays suggests that clarity to Paul’s thought might be brought by a ‘careful study of participation motifs in patristic theology, particularly the thought of the Eastern Fathers’.9 Similarly, Michael J. Gorman argues in a recent book that Paul’s soteriology consists in a kind of ‘theosis’ and that Paul’s language about participating ‘in Christ’ is ‘his shorthand for “in God/in Christ/in the Spirit” ’.10 In other words, Paul’s language of being ‘in Christ’ is an implicit way of expressing participation within the life of the Triune God, or, at least, a conception of God that is proto-trinitarian. Gorman stops short of saying that Paul envisions deification as a kind of participation in the mutual love between the Father and Son; nevertheless, Gorman argues that Paul sees salvation principally in terms of participating in Christ’s self-giving, cruciform love, which is enabled by the power of the Spirit.11 With approval, furthermore, Gorman quotes Francis Watson’s claim that for Paul ‘the role of the Spirit is to enable participation in the life that the crucified and risen Jesus shares with the God he addresses as “Abba, Father” ’.12 If Gorman and Watson are correct about this, then clearly the notions of participation in the life of God found in Paul and John are remarkably similar. In any case, I assume that we have sufficient reason to suppose that God invites humans to participate in God’s life of love, spe­cif­ic­ al­ly that which takes place between the Father and the Son.

I.b  The Problems of Participation There is something profoundly beautiful about the Holy God desiring to share the life of intra-trinitarian love with mere mortals fashioned from dust. Nevertheless, it is not abundantly clear what it could mean for a human to participate in the love between two persons distinct from herself. Many of us 8 The following provides a representative sample: Douglas  A.  Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy (London: T&T Clark International, 2005); James  D.G.  Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 390–441; Richard  B.  Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), xxix–xxxiii; Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). 9 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, xxxiii.   10 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 4. 11 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, chs. 1–2. 12 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 3, n. 6. The quote from Francis Watson can be found in Watson, ‘The Triune Divine Identity: Reflections on Pauline God-Language, in Disagreement With J.D.G. Dunn’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 23, no. 80 (2002): 121–2.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  223 have experiences of observing and enjoying another love relationship from a distance, as it were, and we know what it is like to join a pre-existing love relationship (e.g. the love of your parents). Still, it is odd to think that the love between two (or three) divine persons could indwell us, except in some metaphorical or extended sense. Yet some kind of real indwelling or literal participation seems to be taught by the biblical and patristic literature. Call the challenge of trying to spell out the nature of human participation in the intratrinitarian life of love, ‘the participation problem’. Related to the participation problem is what shall be labelled ‘the finitude problem’. However the immensity of God’s love might be measured, it does not seem to be the kind of thing that humans can take in, given the vast difference between Creator and creature. As traditionally conceived, God is immutable, impassible, atemporal, invulnerable, omniscient, and all the rest. But it seems highly unlikely that a God like that can share His love with creatures who are mutable, passible, temporal, vulnerable, and with limited knowledge. Plausibly, even the theologian who opts for a slightly modified conception of God—where, for example, God is maximally great, but pass­ ible, temporal, and weakly mutable (see Chapter  4)—still should maintain that God’s manner and experience of love is radically different than that of humans. It takes only a most modest doctrine of divine transcendence to grant as much. So even when the conception of God is modified, it is not obvious that God’s love is the kind of thing that can be shared with humans in a manner that would be appreciated and made sense of by them. Finally, there is the ‘the human sinfulness problem’. Presumably, participation in God’s love requires the right kind of receptive attitude. The being who is spiteful, self-absorbed, and otherwise morally defective does not seem to be a good candidate to receive and enjoy God’s life of love any more than the philistine is a good candidate for receiving and appreciating the gift of an authentic painting by Rembrandt. There is no denying human sinfulness, however. Hence, if God wants humans to participate in His love, He must transform them. As already insinuated, the traditional Christian way around such problems is through the happy exchange. To aid our understanding of this exchange, I shall first build a model of deification that draws from Eastern Orthodox theology as well as William Alston’s account of the indwelling of the Spirit. After this is done, we can connect this model of deification to the work of Christ in a manner that overcomes the three noted problems. We will then return, finally, to the idea that humans enjoy the privileged opportunity of participating in the love between the Father and Son.

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224  Love Divine

II.  God’s Essence and Energies, and Human Deification II.a  The Essence–Energies Distinction The Eastern Orthodox tradition draws a distinction between God’s essence and energies. The distinction is regularly thought to contain both an epi­ stem­ic as well as an ontic component, the latter being the ground of the former.13 Here my focus is exclusively on the ontic portion of this doctrine and its relation to deification. The essence–energies distinction distinguishes between what God is and the innate activities of that which God is. Among those who deploy this distinction, it is often difficult to know what they have in mind when they speak of the divine essence. Do they refer to a ‘natural-kind/Aristotelian essence’ (that which specifies the kind of entity a thing is), a ‘personal/Leibnizian essence’ (that which makes an individual that particular individual), some combination thereof, or something else entirely?14 I would like to ignore this complexity at present, however, and simply speak as if the relevant use of ‘essence’ concerns something like a natural-kind essence—though, of course, I do not mean to suggest that God can be categorized according to a natural kind as creatures can be. The reader is invited to make amendments as deemed necessary. It is important for Orthodox theologians that the energies are not viewed as creations of God, but rather something like God’s very being-in-action. We can better grasp the idea by considering a human person, say Chachi. Let us agree that Chachi is a rational animal, equipped with capacities that enable him to think, feel, act, and so on. We can then say that Chachi’s essence, his nature, is that he is a rational animal. His energies, on the other hand, would be Chachi’s capacities (features of his rational animal nature) in-action, his being-in-action as it pertains to his thinking, feeling, and choosing, to name

13  This epistemic component emerges at various places within Christoph Schneider, ‘Introduction: Beyond Agnosticism and Pantheism’, in Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy, ed. Constantinos Athanasopoulos and Christoph Schneider (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), 9–26. 14  Rico Vitz understands the divine essence in terms of a personal essence—see his ‘A Road from Rome through Antioch’, in Turning East: Contemporary Philosophers and the Ancient Christian Faith, ed. Rico Vitz (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012), 92, n. 11. By contrast, David Bradshaw (probably the leading contemporary proponent of the distinction), in keeping with Orthodox piety, expresses agnosticism about any categorization of the divine essence—’the divine ousia (whatever that might be!)’. See Bradshaw’s ‘The Concept of Divine Energies’, in Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy, ed. Constantinos Athanasopoulos and Christoph Schneider (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), 44.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  225 but a few examples.15 The particular manifestations of the energies may be contingent—Chachi does not always think or feel—but they are not entirely separate from Chachi’s essence, as would be many of the effects of Chachi’s energies.16 For example, Chachi’s free act of painting a picture is a contingent manifestation of Chachi’s energies, but the picture itself is not an energy but an energy’s effect. Something similar to this way of understanding Chachi’s essence and energies can be said of God: God enjoys a divine nature, an essence, that is equipped with an impressive list of capacities, and God’s capacities in-action (i.e. any of God’s capacities in-action) are His energies. More specifically, if God enjoys the capacity to love, which is possessed by each of the divine persons, then the divine energies are exhibited in the mutual love between the Father and Son, for example. Of course, if God’s simplicity precludes God from having capacities of any sort, then the analogy is radically defective. Nevertheless, thinking in terms of God’s nature and that nature’s capacities in-action may help us understand the distinction between God’s essence and energies, even if this way of thinking merely is a useful fiction.17 For the Orthodox, the distinction between God’s essence and energies is not an esoteric doctrine, disconnected from daily life. On the contrary, it is believed to undergird the dynamic of deification, as believers participate not in the essence but in the energies of God. Importantly, the notion that the creature participates in God’s uncreated energies but not His essence enables the Orthodox to maintain a very intimate union between Creator and creature while simultaneously avoiding the pantheistic absorption and ob­lit­er­ ation of the creature. The distinction between God’s essence and energies thereby promises to be a fruitful and historically grounded way of characterizing the intimate, loving union between God and the creature, if only we can make some sense of what it might mean to participate in the divine energies. One way of getting intellectual traction on this notion is found in the work of William Alston. Though Alston does not explicitly deploy an understanding of deification that is built upon the essence–energies distinction, he does

15  John of Damascus, for instance, in reference to the energies affiliated with any being, created or not, says that an ‘energy is the natural force and activity of each essence: or again, natural energy is the activity innate in every essence’, and he speaks of acts of knowing and thought as the energies of an essence (see On the Orthodox Faith, 2.23). 16  On the contingent expressions of the energies of God, see David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 171–2, 247–50. 17  On the essence–energies distinction and divine simplicity, see Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 222–9.

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226  Love Divine provide a model of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which might help us understand how one participates in the divine energies. Moreover, turning to the work of the Spirit in one’s account of deification is particularly appropriate given the biblical emphasis on the Spirit as ‘the agent’ of ‘soteriological deification’, as some biblical scholars stress.18 I will first outline and defend Alston’s account; then I shall expand it so as to capture a more fully orbed doctrine of deification that is built on the energies of God. From there, we can discuss the interrelation between deification and the work of Christ.

II.b  Alston on the Indwelling of the Spirit In his essay, ‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit’, Alston considers what sense can be made of ‘a creature’s sharing in the divine life’, and, furthermore, how this sharing might pertain to the transformation of a believer into the kind of person that God intends for him or her to be.19 In the examination of these issues, Alston wishes to ‘set aside any mystical idea of a wholesale identification of the human person with God. The terms “share in”, “partake in”, and “participate in” are to be distinguished from “is” or “is identical with”.’20 At the same time, Alston does not want an account of sharing in the divine life that conceives of the lives of the Creator and creature as entirely separate either. For Alston is impressed with the biblical language of being filled with the Spirit, something that is apparently internal to the believer. So, Alston seeks an account of participating in the divine life that is internal to the creature, where ‘the barriers that normally separate one life from another’ are broken down.21 To help us see how the barrier between one person’s conscious experience and another’s might be breached, Alston (in effect) asks us to imagine a case where yours and my numerically same psychological states are partially shared, perhaps via some kind of neural wiring hook-up system. The result of this hook-up is that ‘your reactions, feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, or some of them, are as immediately available to me as my own, [. . .] so that they influence my further thinking and feeling and behaviour in just the same way that 18 Crump, ‘Re-Examining the Johannine Trinity’, 409; cf. David Vincent Meconi, S.J.  and Carl  E.  Olson, ‘The Scriptural Roots of Christian Deification’, in Called to Be the Children of God: The  Catholic Theology of Human Deification, ed. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. and Carl E. Olson (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016), 28–29, 30–5; Watson, ‘The Triune Divine Identity’, 119–23. 19  William Alston, ‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit’, in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), 139. 20  Alston, ‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit’, 139. 21  Alston, ‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit’, 139.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  227 my own do.’ In such a case, ‘there would have occurred a partial merging of our hitherto insulated lives.’22 Accordingly, when you are filled with feelings of nostalgia when listening to The Temptations, these feelings and ac­com­ pany­ing thoughts are immediately present to me. Or if you are angered by a colleague’s unjust remark, your anger runs through me. Or if you find yourself valuing your daughter’s education, I will experience what you do. And so on. Yet, on Alston’s envisioned model, it would incorrect to say that your psychological life has entirely replaced mine. Rather, some of your psy­cho­logic­al life would be caught up with mine, but only in a manner that is intermixed or streams alongside my normal psychological life that would have been present otherwise. The situation is analogous to one who wears the optical head-mounted display, Google Glass. With this device, an individual sees and hears what she normally would, only she may also receive transparent images in the top right-hand corner of her visual sphere, accompanied by sounds that are heard in her right ear. She may, for example, be driving a car, looking over the road as she normally would while listening to her radio. Yet via Google Glass a streaming GPS map may hang in the outer edge of her vision, and she may occasionally receive audio traffic updates and driving instructions that can be heard alongside her radio. Alston envisions a scenario that is comparable to me wearing a Google Glass, only considerably more complex: my own psych­ ology and moment-by-moment experiences would remain intact, yet some of your psychological states (your beliefs, thoughts, desires, emotions, valueframeworks, etc.) would be immediately present or available to me alongside my own. Unlike anything that can be accomplished by Google Glass, however, Alston conceives of the breakdown between your and my subjectivities in a manner that allows me to experience the numerically same psychological states as do you; mere duplicates of your psychological states are not what Alston imagines. In keeping with the Google Glass illustration, the situation would be analogous to you and I both wearing a Google Glass that enables me to see and hear the very same images and sounds that you do, rather than experience sights and sounds that are merely qualitatively identical. Another illustration might prove helpful. Let us agree, as often thought, that multiple, simultaneous incarnations are possible. Let us further suppose, as often not thought, that the Word has become incarnate in two human natures at the same time, which has resulted in two individuals, Jackie and Joni, who each have a distinct role to play in saving humanity. Since Jackie 22  Alston, ‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit’, 141–2.

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228  Love Divine and Joni share the same divine mind, it is plausible to suppose that it is pos­sible for both Jackie and Joni to experience the same divine psychological states at the same time. Yet, qua human, it seems that it is also possible that Jackie’s ex­peri­ence of a given divine psychological state differs from Joni’s since these two individuals have different human lives and particular missions. Consider, as an example, the divine belief, my mission is to save humanity from its sins, which is immediately present to both Jackie and Joni’s human minds. This belief can be present to both Jackie and Joni at the same time, though experienced in different ways. If Jackie is in prayer contemplating her mission and Joni is debating the politicians of her day, it may be that the belief is central to Jackie’s waking human consciousness but rests more on the periphery of Jackie’s human consciousness at the moment, given that she is entangled in a passionate debate. The point is that it is reasonable to suppose, as Alston contends, that two distinct human minds can share a same consciousness, or aspects thereof, and yet receive the relevant psychological states in different ways. Alston utilizes the described model as a way of apprehending what it might mean to share in the life of God in a quite literal fashion. Suppose that you are somehow hooked up to the life of the Spirit, such that some of the Spirit’s instances of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, and kindness are fed into you—not copies of these instances, but the actual instances. You then participate in the life of God through the reception of these psychological states; you quite literally share in the Spirit’s lived experience. Alston also applies this model of participation to the believer’s sanctification. The basic idea is that as the believer takes ownership over the Spirit’s psychological states that are available to her, she is transformed. To see how this might work, consider a situation where you are in the presence of another human, say your spouse, just after a particularly heated argument. There you stand, looking at your spouse with contempt. But then, you inwardly ex­peri­ ence something of a small voice naming your spouse as valuable. Alongside feelings of animosity, you find a bit of warmth and delight beginning to stir. You now have a choice. Which mind-set and package of feelings are you going to give way to, those that value and delight in your spouse, or those that boil in contempt? We may postulate that if you give into and cultivate the former, you are freely appropriating the life of God and moving down the path of sanctification; the latter option is a way of squelching the Spirit’s work, which leads to spiritual death.23 Nothing about these alternatives, I stress, entails 23  Steven Porter and Brandon Rickabaugh complain that Alston’s model does not ‘explain, in the end, how the internality of the Holy Spirit brings about on-going characterological change’ (‘The

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  229 that you are at all aware that you are either receiving or shunning the psy­cho­ logic­al states of the Spirit.24 The psychological states of the Spirit that are shared may be understood as particular manifestations of the energies of God, though Alston does not give them this label. They are various ways that the Spirit’s essence is in-action, as the Spirit is the kind of being that loves, delights, desires, understands, and so on. In sharing in these states, therefore, the believer participates in the divine energies—not all the energies, but a certain psychological facet of the energies. To the degree that the believer does this, she is deified. We thus have the beginnings of a model of deification. The model will require further fleshing out, but, before we turn to this, we first must treat objections to Alston’s account of the Spirit’s indwelling.

II.c  Evaluations and Modifications of Alston’s Account Ray Yeo raises two types of objections to the coherence of Alston’s account, two of which are philosophical another of which is theological. If Yeo’s objections succeed, then, obviously, Alston’s account will be of little help in formulating a model of human participation in God’s deifying love. First, Yeo argues that some psychological states are not the kinds of things that one person can share with another, and he offers two considerations on behalf of this conclusion. Here is the first consideration: [P]sychological states, such as desires, beliefs and attitudes, are complex states constituted by representational content, relationships with other mental states, subjectivity and other psychological elements, some of which Sanctifying Work of the Holy Spirit: Revisiting Alston’s Interpersonal Model’, Journal of Analytic Theology 6, no. 1 (2018): 121). Since the purpose of this chapter is not to provide anything like a detailed account of sanctification, I do not address Porter and Rickabaugh’s objection directly. Still, from the paragraph above as well as what is said elsewhere, it should be clear that the defender of Alston’s account can understand ongoing characterological change analogous to the acquisition of virtues. Something unique to Alston’s account, however, might be that the human develops various virtues related to endorsing and acting in accordance with the motivational structures provided by the Spirit’s indwelling. 24  Marilyn McCord Adams submits that the fact that many Christians rarely if ever experience a vivid influx of the divine life into their own provides counterevidence against Alston’s model of the Spirit’s indwelling (‘The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit: Some Alternative Models’, in The Philosophy of Human Nature in Christian Perspective, ed. Peter J. Weigel and Joseph G. Prud’homme (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 92–3). But, as I note, Alston need not postulate that those indwelled by the Spirit’s psychological states always experience them as divine psychological states, or really anything that might be detectably foreign.

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230  Love Divine cannot be shared among two distinct individuals. For instance, the prop­os­ ition­al content of a belief such as “the person next to me is my wife” is constituted by indexical content (content whose references are determined only relative to their context of occurrence) that cannot be shared in a straightforward manner.25

Despite the qualifier ‘in a straightforward manner’, the worry seems to be that some psychological states contain indexical content that simply cannot be shared, at all. He calls Alston’s view ‘philosophically untenable’.26 Yeo’s first criticism can be interpreted in one of two ways. He could be saying that it is necessarily the case that certain kinds of psychological states with indexical content cannot be shared in the right sort of way (e.g. in a way that is truth-preserving), or he could be saying that it is only the case that the rele­ vant states cannot be shared in the right sort of way given the presence of certain contingent circumstances. Suppose that Yeo intends to affirm the latter. If so, then Yeo’s example of the belief that ‘the person next to me is my wife’ is something that cannot be shared rightly with another simply when the conditions are not appropriate, namely when the person who would receive the shared belief is not near his wife. For this would involve the transference of a false belief, which would rarely be a helpful thing to share with another. But, so the argument goes, the conditions are often not set up for the Spirit to share psychological states with us in the right way, viz. in a truth-preserving way. Understood in this manner, Yeo’s first criticism is not particularly impressive. Let us grant that there are a myriad of psychological states containing indexical propositional content that the Spirit cannot share with humans in a truth-preserving manner. From this it does not follow that there are not also countless psychological states that can be shared by the Spirit in a way that transforms and spiritually strengthens humans. Here is a short list of ex­amples: ‘I love you’, ‘you are valued’, ‘I am loved by God’, and, to get more specific, ‘I desire union with Carol’. (Recall, the interpretation at issue is not that certain kinds of psychological states are necessarily embedded with a kind of content that makes them intrinsically impossible to share with another in the right sort of way, but that select psychological states cannot be shared in the correct ways only because of the presence of certain contingent circumstances.) Hence, when interpreted in this way, it appears that Yeo’s argument

25  Ray S. Yeo, ‘Towards a Model of Indwelling: A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards and William Alston’, Journal of Analytic Theology 2, no. 1 (2014): 217. 26  Yeo, ‘Towards a Model of Indwelling’, 217.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  231 from indexicals will need to be developed considerably if it is to pose a ser­ious challenge to Alston’s account. Perhaps, though, Yeo means to make a stronger claim about the inability to share certain kinds of propositions with others. Maybe Yeo is gesturing towards the idea that certain psychological states pick out a haecceity in a way that makes them impossible to share faithfully. Along these lines, Yeo’s ex­amples of ‘the person next to me is my wife’ refers essentially and nonsubstitutability to Yeo’s wife; ‘my wife’ picks out the haecceity of Yeo’s wife (let us say), and so the same sentence cannot be used in principle to refer to another’s wife.27 This kind of critique of Alston’s model initially appears more effective. For now it looks to be impossible for the Spirit to share faithfully a host of beliefs important for sanctification and deification, such as ‘I love you’, ‘you are valued’, and ‘I desire union with Carol’, since, on this way of thinking, the ‘I’ and ‘you’ in each of these sentences refers irreducibly to a single subject, often which does not have the right referent to be something that can be shared with another in a truth-preserving manner. Still, it is not clear how damaging this second construal of Yeo’s criticism is to Alston’s model. Grant for the sake of argument that a variety of psy­cho­ logic­al states refer to haecceities in a manner that makes sharing these states in a truth-preserving way impossible. In order for this to be shown a dam­ aging implication for Alston’s model, Yeo needs to provide reason to think that many of the psychological states relevant to human transformation and in­tim­acy with God are impossible for the Spirit to share fruitfully with humans. But Yeo does not attempt this. Moreover, there is reason to suppose that the presence of the relevant kind of haecceities within psychological states do not install an impenetrable barrier to the Spirit’s ability to share with humans fruitfully. This is because granting the point about haecceities does not preclude the idea that the Spirit can share the phenomenal content, the what it is like, to undergo certain psy­ cho­logic­al states. As a first step towards seeing this, let us agree that the phenomenal content that accompanies a belief often can be distinguished from the belief at issue. Take an instance of being gripped by love for your newborn child, where you form the belief, ‘I love my child’. Plausibly, the powerful experience you undergo is distinguishable from this belief/prop­os­ition, and 27  Similarly, Yeo may be hinting towards the problem of de se knowledge. For a discussion, see Patrick Grim, ‘Against Omniscience: The Case from Essential Indexicals’, Noûs 19, no. 2 (1985): 151–80; Norman Kretzmann, ‘Omniscience and Immutability’, The Journal of Philosophy 63, no. 14 (1966): 409–21; and Stephan Torre, ‘De Se Knowledge and the Possibility of an Omniscient Being’, Faith and Philosophy 23, no. 2 (2006): 191–200.

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232  Love Divine you can undergo the experience of love for your child without (occurrently) believing ‘I love my child’. (Often times, such a belief is formed via some second-order activity where you reflect upon your experience of your love for your child. In such cases, the experience precedes the belief.) Assuming that this distinction is right, consider a circumstance where you are in need of the Spirit’s transforming psychological states. Suppose that a colleague, Jones, makes some snide comment that causes your blood to begin to boil. Just when you are about to go on the offensive, the Spirit pours His loving warmth for Jones into your heart—i.e. the Spirit shares the phenomenal content of His love for Jones with you. Rather than squelch that, you give way to the warmth beginning to stir from deep within. As the warmth grows you say to yourself, ‘You know Jones means well, and you’ve had good times with him in the past. He is not that bad. Regardless, Christ calls me to love him, and so I shall.’ In this scenario, the Spirit communicates His loving warmth for Jones—not the belief ‘I, the Spirit, love Jones’, which you then choose to appropriate. If there is a haecceity involved in the Spirit’s sharing of loving warmth with you, it refers to Jones, whether had by the Spirit or by you. So there is no obstacle to the Spirit’s sharing of loving warmth in a manner that transforms. Furthermore, the Spirit’s sharing of phenomenal content can furnish grounds for the formation of certain haecceity-containing beliefs that are rele­ vant to human transformation. Suppose that sometime after you begin to appropriate the Spirit’s loving warmth for Jones you reflect on this warmth and conclude ‘I love Jones’. The belief is yours, not the Spirit’s (we are here assuming). Yet it still looks as if the Spirit shared a psychological state with you in an intimate and transforming way that provided new ground or an occasion for a belief that was also helpful for your spiritual development. I see no reason to maintain that the Spirit’s sharing of psychological states could not routinely function in an analogous manner. Hence, I do not find worrisome this second interpretation of Yeo’s first reason to suppose that psy­cho­logic­al states are not the kinds of things that one person can share with another. In any case, Yeo certainly needs to do more to establish the criticism. But Yeo offers a second philosophical reason to affirm that psychological states are not the kinds of things that one person can share with another. Yeo asserts that ‘subjectivity, unlike capacities or properties, is absolutely unique and cannot be shared by multiple individuals.’ He explains: [M]any conscious psychological states such as thoughts, experiences, occurrent desires and attitudes are all partially constituted by a subject’s subjectivity, and it seems that the same subjectivity cannot be shared among distinct

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  233 conscious subjects. [. . .] When I am consciously experiencing a desire, it is me who is experiencing it. Another person may have a very similar conscious episode of desire, but his desire would not be exactly the same as mine. This is because his unique subjectivity would shape the phenomenological content of the conscious desire in a way that differs from my unique subjectivity (my unique first-person point of view). It would also seem impossible for me to have an exhaustive cognitive grasp of his conscious experience of the desire because I can never assume his unique subjective point of view.28

Yeo then quotes Linda Zagzebksi with approval: ‘it is impossible that two distinct persons could have had even one experience in common.’29 Although the details of the argument are not crystal clear, here is my reconstruction of what I take to be the argument. Each specific psychological state is always experienced within the context of an individual’s unique outlook (i.e. a qualitatively unique network of beliefs, drives, values, and so forth), which in turn leads each person to experience each psychological state in a qualitatively distinct way. But, in principle, two persons cannot have qualitatively distinct experiences of the same (occurrent?) psychological state, since a (occurrent?) psychological state just is the way in which something is ex­peri­enced by a subject. The argument rests upon at least two controversial assumptions. First, why think that each psychological state is nested in a particular outlook (in the sense just described) in a manner that determines the experience of each psy­ cho­logic­al state? Second, why maintain that a psychological state is identical to the way in which something is experienced by a subject? Both assumptions merit brief consideration. Begin with the second assumption. It must be granted that it is exceedingly difficult to provide an analysis of what exactly a psychological state is and how it might differ from the raw experience of the world.30 But whatever we commonsensically pick out as a psychological state (the thoughts, beliefs, desires, perceptions, etc. that subjects undergo), Yeo seems mistaken to suppose that much of what might be considered a psychological state is reducible to a kind 28  Yeo, ‘Towards a Model of Indwelling’, 217. 29  Yeo, ‘Towards a Model of Indwelling’, 218. The quote of Zagzebski is from her ‘The Uniqueness of Persons’, The Journal of Religious Ethics 29, no. 3 (2001): 401–23, here 417. 30  We have been using the term in a broad pre-theoretical way to refer to the kinds of states that conscious beings undergo—thoughts, beliefs, desires, attitudes, perceptions, value-frameworks, virtues, etc.—and it has been supposed that we are familiar enough with these states to understand Alston’s model of the Spirit’s indwelling.

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234  Love Divine of felt experience such that any difference in the texture of the experience entails a difference of psychological state. For example, psychologists and philo­sophers often speak of desires, beliefs, and the like moving from the subconscious to the conscious, from the dispositional to the occurrent, or from the periphery to the centre of one’s consciousness. Yet, if Yeo is right about what makes a psychological state what it is, then no one psychological state could genuinely move from one place in the mind to another, at least when such movement involves a change of experience. It seems more plausible that Yeo is incorrect in his diagnosis of things, however, than it does that the noted ways of speaking are really just useful fictions. Let that pass, however. Even if it is the case that each psychological state is individuated by its felt experience, Yeo needs to provide reason to maintain that psychological states, when had by a subject, are integrated and ex­peri­ enced in such a way that specific psychological states cannot be isolated and lifted from the network of accompanying psychological states in which they are nested and shared with another. This moves us to Yeo’s first assumption, namely, that each psychological state always arises within a particular outlook that determines the experience of each psychological state. So far as I can tell, the only way in which Yeo supports this claim is by appealing to an article written by Zagzebski.31 But when one turns to the referenced Zagzebski piece, one finds not an argument for the conclusion that Yeo needs, but a confession that the relevant thesis is exceedingly difficult to defend. After acknowledging that most Anglo-American philosophers would disagree with her proposal that ‘it is impossible that two distinct persons could have had even one ex­peri­ ence [or psychological state] in common’,32 Zagzebski confesses, I have no idea how this position can be defended. How can we ever tell for sure whether our own mental states are really different from those of others? We can never be another person for a while to find out how different it is, so I doubt that we can ever know the answer to that question. Nonetheless, that is my proposal.33

We are thereby left without reason to believe that differences in outlook entail a difference in the experiences of specific psychological states. Thus, until

31  Yeo says, ‘It has been argued by Linda Zagzebski that subjectivity, unlike capacities or properties, is absolutely unique and cannot be shared by multiple individuals’ (‘Towards a Model of Indwelling’, 217). 32  Zagzebski, ‘The Uniqueness of Persons’, 417. 33  Zagzebski, ‘The Uniqueness of Persons’, 418.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  235 such a reason is provided, I shall continue to utilize Alston’s model in the manner that I do. Yeo offers an entirely different kind of objection to Alston’s model that is more on point, however. In this instance, the objection is theological in that it is based upon God’s transcendence. Here Yeo argues not that it is impossible for one person to share a psychological state with another but that it is implausible for a ‘finite human being’ to share in ‘the psychological elements of a transcendent and infinite deity’, since ‘God’s psychological life is so utterly and radically distinct’ from the psychological life of humans.34 This is essentially the ‘finitude problem’ mentioned in Section I of this chapter. The problem cannot be brushed aside. Even if it is possible for God to share certain aspects of the divine life with humans (e.g. certain beliefs), it is doubtful that the transcendent God can share His values, drives, and emotions with humans in a way that can be comprehended and enjoyed by them. If the finitude problem cannot be overcome, however, there will be no use in relying upon Alston’s account of the Spirit’s indwelling in our model of deification. As we have seen with the idea of the happy exchange, the classic Christian way of overcoming the Creator–creature divide in the process of deification is by appealing to the Incarnation.35 Through the Incarnation, God takes on the situatedness, frailty, and struggles of the human life. God the Son’s identification with humans in this way somehow enables the Son, through the work of the Spirit, to share the divine life with humans in a manner that saves them. The challenge is to work out the details of how this might be so. The following constitutes one way of doing this.

II.d  Incarnation and the Spirit’s Indwelling In the incarnate life, the Word participates in the full spectrum of basic human experiences (or at least those essential for human transformation).36 34  Yeo, ‘Towards a Model of Indwelling’, 218. 35  See Daniel A. Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, in Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification, ed. David Vincent Meconi and Carl E. Olson (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016), 40–58. However, to say that the happy exchange is the classic way of overcoming the Creator/creature divide is not necessarily to say that it is the only possible way that the divide can be overcome. 36  As one anonymous reviewer pointed out, although a standard Christian view, it is not obvious that Jesus participated in the full spectrum of basic human experiences. For example, Jesus was never sexually involved with anyone, nor was he a parent. However, it is not part of Christian teaching to claim that sexual intimacy and child-rearing are essential to spiritual transformation, even if they are often correlated with it. Furthermore, it is plausible that those who are perfect in moral/spiritual

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236  Love Divine He experiences human temptations, fears, struggles, joys, physical pleasure and toil, and more besides. Furthermore, since the Word and the Spirit share the same concrete essence, it may be assumed that the subjectivities and lives of the Spirit and Word are linked in a manner analogous to Alston’s literal life-sharing model, if they do not in fact share the numerically same mind.37 Thus, when the incarnate Word experiences human temptations, fears, or joys, the Spirit experiences the same—though the distinct psychologies (if they are distinct) of the Word and Spirit are kept intact. Likewise, I assume that as the Word-incarnate lives a perfect human life, the Spirit, by way of His connection with the Word, inherits a certain normative human subjectivity. That is to say, the Spirit gains an internal, first-person perspective (or something very close) of perfect human life. Hence, the Incarnation of the Word in effect incarnates the lived experience of the Spirit, or an aspect thereof, even though the Spirit never becomes incarnate strictly speaking (i.e. as does the Son). If this happens, the Spirit can bring His ‘incarnated-life’ to those He indwells. The idea here is that the Spirit takes the experiences and normative human subjectivity that He gained (and gains) from the Word-incarnate’s life, and brings them to bear on the experiences and outlooks of those He indwells in a manner that enables the Spirit to share His life with them. On this conception, it is not as if the Spirit merely ‘recalls’ and applies copies of the Word-incarnate’s experiences to the lives of believers. Rather I suggest that the Spirit continues to live something like an incarnate life in those He indwells, tailor-made for each individual within each situation. For example, when you ex­peri­ence anger at your boss, the Spirit experiences the Christ-inspired warmth and insight you need and ideally should embody in that particular situation. The Spirit furthermore shares (in part or whole) this radically particularized warmth and insight with you—the degree to which you receive it, we may assume, is up to you. Or suppose that you are in a situation where righteous anger is called for. The Spirit can relive Jesus’ experiences of righteous anger in that moment, only relive that anger in a way that perfectly matches the rele­vant situation. In so doing, the Spirit can also open up the possibility for you to share in His righteous anger, that is, share the nu­mer­ic­ al­ly same psy­cho­logic­al state. The basic pattern should be clear enough. Whatever the situation is and whatever the appropriate subjective state should virtue, who likewise have the relevant background knowledge and/or know-how, would possess the required abilities to excel in that which is spiritually related to sexual intimacy and child-rearing. 37  I here assume no particular model of the Trinity, so long as mutual intra-trinitarian love between the divine persons is permitted.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  237 be, the Spirit, by way of His connection with the Son’s incarnate life, can live the relevant subjective state for you so that you might participate in the transforming life of God. Understood in the manner mapped out, the Spirit can share the divine life with humans, notwithstanding the differences between God and humans. This framework concerning the transforming work of the Spirit can be approached in another way. Suppose that you and Adrian are connected by Alston’s imagined neural wiring hook-up system. Suppose, further, that Adrian is a living saint. Through being connected to Adrian in this way, the virtues that animate Adrian’s outlook, emotions, desires, and the like are made available to you. As time goes on, you take ownership of Adrian’s virtuous states in a way that transforms you. Rather than being a mere passive recipient of Adrian’s virtues, you begin to exercise the virtues as your own. Because you have now taken ownership of Adrian’s communicated virtues, you can apply the virtues you have gleaned to a variety of new circumstances. Discerning your advancement in character, Adrian advises you to disconnect the current neural wiring hook-up setup and connect to another, Jamie, as a way of mentoring Jamie. When you do this, you occasionally shadow Jamie and intentionally communicate the virtues that you know (perhaps through empathy) Jamie needs in particular circumstances. When Jamie is demeaned by an overbearing boss at work, you step into Jamie’s shoes and embody the patience that Jamie requires. Or when Jamie is feeling bored with work and family, you make the mind-set of joy available to Jamie. The pattern continues as you and Jamie together do your best to practice the virtues required in each circumstance. The present model of Spirit’s indwelling, and by extension deification, bears a resemblance to the scenario involving you, Jamie, and Adrian. Through His connection with the incarnate-Son, the Spirit gains a perfectly virtuous human life as part of His own (similar to the manner in which you obtained virtues via connection with Adrian). Of course, the Spirit does not learn any new facts or insights, nor is the Spirit’s character improved morally or otherwise. Instead, as an act of accommodation to the human situation, the Spirit, in connection to Christ, draws a perfect human life into His own life. In so doing, the Spirit is then able to apply and live out characteristically human virtues in every conceivable human situation (analogous to the way in which the virtues you have learned from Adrian enable you to apply them to various circumstances). Through His connection to or indwelling of believers, furthermore, the Spirit, by living these virtues for humans in each relevant human situation, is able to share a perfect human life to the degree that the

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238  Love Divine human is willing to receive it (as you intentionally did with Jamie, in the imagined illustration). So understood, it looks as if the finitude problem can be overcome.

II.e Summary We may summarize our way of thinking about deification as follows. God wants humans to participate in certain psychological divine energies as a means of transforming them, and, ultimately, as a way of being intimately united with them in love. But given God’s radical difference from humans, God cannot simply share His psychological energies with humans in a way that fosters unity and brings transformation. So, God the Son becomes incarnate. In so doing, the Son takes on human life and the associated experiences and assimilates them into His divine life. Through this assimilation, more­over, the Spirit, who shares the divine life of God the Son, receives a perfect human life into His own. From this, the Spirit is able to apply a perfect human life, particularly a perfect human subjectivity or nexus of psychological states, to each human in each situation relevant to deification. As humans receive this Christ-inspired human life given by the Spirit, they are deified—at least with respect to a particular facet of the divine energies, i.e. psychological states. This model of deification alleviates the problems that were previously raised. Thanks to Alston, the participation problem is mitigated because we now have some insight into how humans can participate in God’s life. The Incarnation in conjunction with the work of the Spirit fills out the picture and aids our apprehension of how the Infinite One can share life with mere creatures in a manner that transforms. It thus seems that the finitude and human sinfulness problems have been sufficiently dealt with as well (though more will need to be said about the place of the cross). At this juncture, it is worth addressing an additional worry that is generated by the particulars of the present model of deification. This is the worry that the present model of deification requires the abandonment of the doctrine of divine impassibility. As we discovered in Chapter  4, this doctrine comes in two forms. According to the first more general form, God’s perfectly happy life is immutable and not subject to external alteration. The present model of deification looks to be incompatible with this form of the doctrine of divine impassibility since, according to the former, God through the human nature of Christ modifies the divine life so that it can be shared with

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  239 women and men. According to the second, specific form of divine impassibility, God is perfectly happy and cannot undergo any ‘negative’ feelings, such as anger or suffering. This rendition of the doctrine also appears to be incompatible with the present model of deification. For on the present model of deification, God assimilates human virtues into the divine life that likely include negative feelings—e.g. righteous anger and compassionate suffering. Perhaps there is a way of articulating this chapter’s model of deification that does not require the abandonment of either the general or specific form of divine impassibility. But if this is not possible, we should not be alarmed. In Chapter 4 we saw that affective love, complete with joy and the potential to undergo suffering, is an intrinsically valuable excellence of love that plaus­ ibly applies to God’s love of humans. So, that chapter furnishes grounds for rejecting forms of divine impassibility that appear to erect an obstacle to  the present model of deification. More positively, the notion that God possesses affective love provides a natural home for the articulated model of deification. Of course, details of that model still need to be worked out. In Section I of this chapter it was shown that a significant component of deification concerns participation in the mutual love between the Father and Son. We shall return to that love relationship in the conclusion of this chapter. In the meantime, it should be easy to see how our model of deification makes possible a robust kind of participation in God’s love. Through the Incarnation, the Son integrates perfect human love into God’s life, and the Spirit can share the nu­mer­ ic­ al­ ly same love, and other associated psychological states (e.g. joy and rapture), with the (mere) human. To enjoy that love fully, however, the human will need to be transformed. This, we know, is something that God achieves through the cross, a subject to which we now turn.

III.  Deification and the Cross III.a  Faith, Hope, Love, and Death At a very general level, we have seen how the life of Christ is central to reconciling humans to God and paving the way for their deification. However, a number of New Testament scholars have noticed that St Paul in particular connects the deification of humans not only with Christ’s life but with His death on the cross. This emphasis can be discerned in the letter to the

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240  Love Divine Galatians, where Paul expresses the idea that the believer is mysteriously united to Christ in His death, which in turn generates a new source of life: I have been crucified with Christ;  and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God [or by the faithfulness of the Son of God],38 who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Gal. 2:19–20)

Commenting on this passage, Robert Tannehill notes that ‘Christ’s death is proclaimed as a freeing and transforming event that is effective because Paul is pulled into it and shares in it, resulting in a continuing participation in Christ, who is the new life-power in Paul.’39 We find a similar motif in Romans 6:1–7:6, where Paul speaks of being ‘baptized into [Christ’s] death’ (6:3), even ‘united with him in a death like this’ (6:5, cf. vv. 6, 8), the result of which brings ‘the new life of the Spirit’ (7:6).40 In Paul’s mind, moreover, this new life of the Spirit is causally connected to, or constituted by, a life that is infused with the virtues of faith, hope, and love (e.g. 1 Thess. 1:3, 5:8; 2 Thess. 1:3–4; 1 Cor. 13:7, 13).41 Accordingly, Michael Gorman explains that Jesus’ life of faithfulness to God unto death, coupled with His self-giving love poured out for us on the cross, is what ‘generates our fidelity, love, and hope’.42 If Gorman is right about what Scripture teaches, the challenge for the theologian engaged in the project of faith seeking understanding is to provide some kind of explanation as to how the horrible crucifixion of the God-man is the kind of thing that can engender faith, hope, and love.

III.b  The Life-Giving Crucifixion On this score, the North American philosophical theologian Robin Collins is particularly helpful. He proposes that it is only through something like the horrible crucifixion that Christ can enact the virtues of faith, hope, and love 38  For an influential case for interpreting pistis Christou in terms of the subjective genitive, ‘the faith[fullness] of Christ’, see Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, 272–97. For the connection of that interpretation and theosis, see Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 58–85. 39  Robert  C.  Tannehill, ‘Participation in Christ: A Central Theme in Pauline Soteriology’, in The Shape of the Gospel: New Testament Essays, ed. Robert C. Tannehill (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007), 229. 40  For a helpful discussion of this passage see Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 73–9. 41  See Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 86–90, 99–101. 42 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 101.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  241 in a way that is needed for our transformation. For given ‘our life-situation’ we ‘must be able to continue to act in [. . .] faith, hope, and love despite severe uncertainly, doubt, fear, unjust persecution, and alienation from God and others’. We must, in other words, ‘be able to act in faith, hope, and love in spite of every type of temptation that arises out of our life-situation’. As a consequence, ‘if Christ is going to be the perfect [. . .] source of the kind of faith, hope, and love we need, he must also experience every general type of temptation common to human beings.’ Moreover, ‘in the face of those temptations’ Christ ‘must continue to act in love, hope, and trust instead of succumbing to the attempt to “secure the self ” through violence, injustice, or Stoicism, as is characteristic of fallen humanity’.43 All of this Christ does principally through the cross. Collins explains: During his life and death, Jesus fully enacted the sort of spiritual and moral virtues of faith, hope, and love that we need as human beings in our life situation. In particular, on the cross, Jesus acted in full faith, hope, and love despite experiencing the full force of unjust victimization and the alienation from God and others that is the result of sin. Without the cross or something like it, God the Son could not have enacted these virtues—it is impos­ sible to enact courage or self-sacrificial love unless you experience your wellbeing as being in danger. And these virtues would not be perfected unless he fully entered into the worst aspects of our life situation—in particular, unless he experienced the greatest temptations to doubt and hate.44

Christ’s enacted virtues of faith, hope, and love over and against extreme challenges are precisely what we need. Thus, ‘Through participation in the virtues that Jesus enacted, we are saved from sin and reconciled to God, for sin is incompatible with participating in these virtues.’45 In brief, Collins’s idea is that Christ faces an unjust and brutal death with the perfect human virtues of faith, hope, and love, virtues in which we may somehow participate in a manner that saves. Elsewhere Collins explains that through the Incarnation and the crucifixion the noted virtues and affiliated experiences are taken up into the divine life in such a way that God is then able

43  Robin Collins, ‘Girard and Atonement: An Incarnational Theory of Mimetic Participation’, in Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, ed. Willard Swartley (Telford, PA: Pandora Press, 2000), 144. 44  Robin Collins, ‘A Defense of Nonviolent Atonement’, Brethren in Christ History and Life Journal 35, no. 1 (2012): 196. 45  Collins, ‘A Defense of Nonviolent Atonement’, 196.

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242  Love Divine to share transformative aspects of the ‘augmented’ divine life with us. Collins even goes so far as to suggest that we participate in Christ’s virtues through the energies of God, though he does not develop the idea in any detail.46 Taken altogether, Collins provides a compelling way of understanding the connection between deification, Christ’s death, and the Pauline emphasis that Christ’s cross somehow engenders faith, hope, and love. The primary weakness is that it is not entirely clear how participation in the divine life and Christ’s virtues takes place. However, this shortcoming is easily amended on our account of sharing in God’s life through the Spirit’s psy­cho­logic­al energies. Building upon Collins’s insights, then, we can understand the transformative and deifying role of the cross along the following lines. Within the divine nature there is a community of persons who exist in perfect self-giving love. In order to participate fully and freely in the loving life of God, one needs to embrace a character that is the right kind of receptacle for God’s energies. One needs to be able to maintain faith in God and others when doubt ­threatens to overcome, hope when obstacles all but force one to give way to pessimism, and, above all, love in the face of the strongest temptation to hate. To be able to receive completely what God has for one, one must fully give oneself to that which is true, good, and beautiful, even when one’s instincts and fragile humanity threaten to obscure that which one knows, deep down, is right and good. But where might these virtues come from? It is doubtful that they can spring up from within the human soul, given human brokenness. Humans therefore need help. God’s participation in the deepest forms of human virtue in the face of the most intense challenges enables God in­tim­ ate­ly to share His life with humans in a way that leads them to give themselves fully to God and others. This God does by becoming incarnate, wholly participating in human life, and by meeting extreme shame, hatred, alienation, and brutality on the cross with the purest faith, hope, and love. These virtues, and the accompanying psychological states, are thereby taken up into the divine life, and become ways in which the energies of God are expressed. The Spirit then shares this perfect human life (in the manner discussed) with any human that is willing to receive it. Participation in these virtues transforms humans over time, until humans are able to appropriate robustly the very love of Christ, which is the ideal human manifestation of the divine life of love that existed ‘before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:24).

46  See Robin Collins, ‘The Incarnation Theory of the Atonement’ (unpublished manuscript), 2. Also see, ‘A Defense of Nonviolent Atonement’, 199, n. 24.

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  243 In response to this picture, someone might question whether something like the cross is genuinely necessary for the suggested manner of human ­salvation. Compare, on the one hand, the perfect human psychological states of faith, hope, and love with, on the other hand, the perfect human psy­cho­ logic­ al states of faith-in-the-face-of-the-extreme-temptation-to-doubt, hope-in-the-face-of-the-extreme-temptation-to-turn-towards-pessimism, and love-in-the-face-of-the-extreme-temptation-to-hate. Call the latter group of psychological states ‘oppositional virtues’, since each contains a kind of virtuous response in opposition to a significant challenge. Part of the proposal of this chapter is that the current human situation requires something like op­pos­ition­al virtues for spiritual transformation. But one could submit that all that is really required are the ‘non-oppositional virtues’ of faith, hope, and love. The possession of these virtues is the end game of the Christian life, and these non-oppositional virtues are all that are needed for human trans­for­ma­ tion. If it is true that only non-oppositional virtues are required, Christ would not need to undergo a horrendous crucifixion, or anything like it, to procure and share a transformative life with humans. Hence the defender of the present vision for Christ’s cross is obliged to provide some reason to suppose that the oppositional virtues are required, or at least helpful, for human sanctification. I do not have a proof that shows that oppositional virtues are absolutely required. But I think we can see that they facilitate human transformation when we consider organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). As part of the recovery process within AA, a new member to the organization is encouraged to partner with a fellow alcoholic, called a sponsor, who has completed AA’s twelve-step programme. The role of the sponsor is multi­­ facet­ed, but it includes communicating to the individual who is being sponsored that she is not alone in her struggles as well as the sponsor drawing from her experiences to share advice and insights.47 Many would agree that the support and advice provided by the sponsor is critical for the recovery process.48 Imagine, however, that the sponsor is not only able to engage with her mentee via the normal channels of communication but also is able to share her ex­peri­ences of overcoming alcohol with the individual she sponsors via Alston’s neural wiring hook-up system. Given this connection, the sponsor could share with  the mentee the motivations and values that she 47  P.J.  Whelan et al., ‘The Role of AA Sponsors: A Pilot Study’, Alcohol and Alcoholism 44, no. 4 (2009): 416–22. 48  J. Scott Tonigan and Samara L. Rice, ‘Is It Beneficial to Have an Alcoholics Anonymous Sponsor?’, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 24, no. 3 (2010): 397–403.

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244  Love Divine adopted in response to concrete temptations to drink, at various stages of recovery. Ideally, the mode of support would be tailor-made to meet the mentee at her station in life, a kind of scaffolding of moral support where the mentee is given the mind-set that is in principle helpful at each stage of recovery. It seems that this kind of accommodated support to the mentee’s situation has greater resources for empowerment than the communication of the mere non-oppositional virtue to avoid strong drink. For suppose that the mentee is fed psychological states, not by her sponsor, but by some morally virtuous third individual who has never struggled with over drinking or alcohol dependency a day in her life. The virtuous psychological states provided by this third individual might be somewhat helpful, but it could very well be that the virtue to avoid too much drink without the accompanying phe­nom­en­ ology that responds to an intense pull to overconsume simply sets the bar too high for the mentee. The mentee might experience the pristine virtues of the third individual as too foreign from her experience to find a point of connection and possible assimilation into her own life. The claim is not that the mentee requires psychological states from someone who has fallen into alcoholism. Rather, the claim is that it would be good for the mentee to receive op­pos­ ition­al virtues from someone who can identify with her situation in finegrained detail. Insofar as Christ faced human temptation (e.g. Heb. 4:15), He, with the Spirit, can communicate psychological states to humans that are tailor-made to their situation of life and level of moral development. For Christ lived a perfect human life at each basic stage of development, whereby ‘he learned obedience’ and was ‘made perfect’ (Heb. 5:8). This, in turn, enables God to share helpful and accommodated psychological states with humans at various stages in their lives. What is more, Christ faced a shameful death with perfect virtue, and thereby appropriated into the divine life the described op­pos­ ition­al human virtues of faith, hope, and love. These oppositional human virtues are complete with the phenomenology of what it is like to maintain faith in God and others when waves of doubt are crashing, to choose hope when the pull towards cynicism feels overwhelming, and, most of all, to live in love when the impulse to hate is nearly insurmountable. Through the assimilation of such virtues, God, in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, can communicate to humans the custom-made virtues required for their moral and spiritual development. It is perhaps in this way that Christ ‘became the source of eternal salvation for all’ (Heb. 5:9).

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Trinity, Deification, and Atonement  245

IV. Conclusion The goal of this chapter has been to examine a way in which God’s love for humans moves God to seek a particular kind of union with them, specifically a deified union. This goal has been implemented by first placing the doctrine of deification in its appropriate dogmatic location, the Trinity. There we saw that Christ expresses the desire for believers to participate in the mutual love between He and the Father. We then explored how God might achieve the aim of allowing humans to enter the divine life of love. It was proposed that the Incarnation and crucifixion enables God to integrate human virtues into the divine life that can be shared with humans by the Spirit. As humans appropriate these virtues, furthermore, they are not only transformed, they quite literally share in the divine life, as these virtues are enacted in them as manifestations of the (psychological) energies of the Spirit. Allow me now to speculate as to how the process of participating in God’s intra-trinitarian life of love might be completed. When humans reach a glorified state, they enter a perfected moral and spiritual plane of reality, where they are willing and able to participate in God’s love in a perfect human manner. So Christ, the perfect human, shares His love for the Father through the Spirit’s energies with glorified humans to the full measure that can be received. The Father in turn loves God the Son in Christ with the most perfect and forceful love that a divine person can love a human. As Christ receives the experience of the Father’s love to the full measure that the human constitution allows, Christ, through the Spirit’s energies, shares this experience with the glorified saints to the highest level they can bear. In this quite literal way, Jesus can pray to the Father and ask that ‘the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (John 17:26). Before concluding, it is worth considering how the proposed account of deification links up with the value account of God’s love. In Chapter 2 it was claimed that an essential feature of God’s love for a human is valuing union with that human. This valuing of union was furthermore unpacked in terms of UT, which was stated as follows: UT.  X values union with Y only if X values (i) mentally attending to Y, (ii) intimately knowing Y, and (iii) Y’s loving X.

It will be recalled that UT’s (i) refers to a kind of direct access to a personal being when that being is functioning in characteristically personal ways. It

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246  Love Divine will also be remembered that UT’s (ii), when X and Y are distinct, refers to a kind of deep knowledge of the one loved whereby the lover tries to enter or understand the perspective of the one loved. While UT certainly does not entail or ‘predict’ the account of deification that is defended in this chapter, there is a sense in which the present account of deification is unsurprising given UT. To apprehend this, substitute ‘God’ for ‘X’ and a human named ‘Smith’ for ‘Y’, such that God values union with Smith by fulfilling conditions (i)–(iii). Among other things, this substitution means that God values being loved by Smith, which, given the nature of love on the value account, entails that God values Smith valuing union with Him as spelt out by UT. Accordingly, God values Smith’s wanting to attend directly to God as God functions in characteristically personal ways, and God values Smith’s wanting to have a deep kind of knowledge of Him, whereby Smith understands important features of God’s mental life as well as His perspective on reality.49 There are, of course, severe limitations on what a finite being possibly could understand about God. But the account of deification offered within this chapter suggests a way in which the human is blessed by a wonderful and intimate knowledge of God’s inner life. Indeed, the account specifies a way in which the human graciously is granted a kind of internal encounter with the greatest love the world could possibly contain, the mutual love between the Father and the Son.

49  In a similar vein, Julian of Norwich writes, ‘God wishes to be known, and is pleased that we should rest in him’. See Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 47.

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Conclusion For the Christian, no answer to the question ‘Who is God?’ is complete without the Johannine statement, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16). It is love that characterizes God’s inner life, and it is love that shapes God’s dealings with humanity. In this study, I have traced certain central aspects of this love as it begins in God and then is freely and abundantly given in the creation, redemption, and deification of humans. We have found that the nature of God’s love bears much in common with our highest ideals about love (or with what our ideals about love should be). Hence, we are not totally in the dark about what God’s love is. On the contrary, we can reason about God’s love with some measure of accuracy precisely because God has created us to imitate His love, and even participate in it. When we reflected upon the nature of God’s love for us in this book, we found that God responds to our dignity by valuing our existence and flourishing as well union with us. This love is an affective love that rests upon each and every one of us. Indeed, we were created for the purpose of being loved, and God never strays from this initial creative purpose, even in His most hellish punishments. More than this, God invites us into His eternal love, the holy life of peace, joy, and rapture that is truly divine. For the Christian, then, it is as Love that we are to obey, praise, and love God.

Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. Jordan Wessling, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jordan Wessling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852483.001.0001

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Index On digital editions of this book, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Adams, Robert Merrihew  93–6 Affective love, see Emotions Alston, William P.  220–1, 223, 225–35, 238 Anselm of Canterbury  196–8 Aquinas, Thomas  28–9, 61–2, 68, 126–8, 135–6 Arminius, Jacob  76–7 Athanasius of Alexandria  182, 219–20 Atonement  219–20, 235, see Crucifixion. Augustine of Hippo  3–4, 146–7, 164–5, 184–6, 190–1 Badhwar, Neera  56–7 Barth, Karl  36, 57–8, 70, 218 Bauckham, Richard  24, 102 Beatific vision, see Vision of God Berkhof, Louis  80–1 Bernard of Clairvaux  184, 218 Borg, Marcus  202 Brown, Raymond  12–13 Brunner, Emil  185–90, 197–8, 206–8 Bulgakov, Sergius  76–7 Calvin, John  76–7, 129–30 Childs, Brevard  11 Clement of Alexandria  30–1 Collins, Robin  240–2 Corlett, J. Angelo  199–200 Creel, Richard  143–4 Crisp, Oliver D.  80–1 Crucifixion  72–3, 101–7, 240–4 Crump, David  221 Creatio ex amore (amorism) Nature of  76–7, 107–11 Affirmation of  111–13, 247 Davies, Brian  28–30, 32–3 Deification/theosis  1–2, 39–40, 110, 219–47 Desire 48–53

Divergent account (of divine love and punitive wrath)  184–91, see Unitary account; see Severe Retribution Thesis Divine self-glorificationism (glorificationism) Nature of  76–82, 110 Benevolence (in relation to)  82–6, 195 unequal love of humans (in relation to)  160, 180 Evaluation of  86–107 Dodds, Michael J.  98–9, 130–1, 135–6, 142–3 Duff, R.A.  4, 185–6, 193, 211–13 Dunn, James D.G.  18–19 Edwards, Jonathan  3, 76–81, 86–97, 99, 109–10 Election/predestination  80–1, 146–7, 149, 180 Essence–energies of God  220–1, 224–6, 229, 238, 241–2, 245 Eudaimonism 90–2 Exitus-reditus  4–5, 247 Fiddes, Paul  76–7 Flew, Anthony  28–9 Frankfurt, Harry  56–7 Gavrilyuk, Paul  119 Gorman, Michael J.  222, 240 Gould, James B.  182–3 Grace of God  181–3 Gregory of Nyssa  4, 30, 179, 184–6, 193, 207–11, 213, 215–18 Gunton, Colin  16–18 Hartshorne, Charles  131, 143 Hays, Richard  221–2 Hiddenness of God  5–6

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268 Index Hell  4, 164–5, 169–70, 180, 184–6, 190–1, 204–6, 216–18 Helm, Bennett W.  52–3, 63–4, 66, 114 Heumer, Michael  124–5 Human value, see Dignity Immutability  120, 126–8 Impassibility/passibility (characterization of)  116–17, 238–9, see Emotion Incarnation  69–70, 102–3, 105–7, 118–19, 129, 235–9, 241–2, 245 Intra-trinitarian, see Trinity Intrinsic vs. extrinsic value  117 Isaac the Syrian (Isaac of Nineveh)  30–2, 76–7, 191–200 Isolation test (of G.E. Moore)  131–4 Jensen, Paul  181–3 Jordan, Jeffery  155–7, 161 Jurieu, Pierre  81 Kant, Immanuel  45–6 Kraut, Richard  84–5, 97–8 Kvanvig, Jonathan  76–7, 98 Leftow, Brian  120 Lemos, Noah  132 Lewis, C.S.  190–1, 198 Lincoln, Andrew  18–19 Maximally perfect divine love Ultimate degree view  152–4, 167–8 Optimal level view  154–63, 166–9, 171 Volitional view  158–60, 180–1 McClymond, Michael J.  89, 111–12 McFarland, Ian  112 McKnight, Scot  205–6 Methodological thesis  11, 20–8, 42–3, 247 Objections to the methodological thesis 26–38 Min, Anselm  135–6 Models (theological)  2–3, 37–8, 220, 223–39, see Value account Moloney, Francis  13–14 Moltmann, Jürgen  76–7, 131 Moore, G.E.  131–3 Moule, C.F.D.  103–4 Mullins, R.T.  120

Murphy, Mark C.  172–8 Mystery of God, see Transcendence of God Nygren, Anders  73–4 Oddie, Graham  49–50 Offices of love  62–3, 66–7, 153–4, 157–8, 164–5 Oord, Thomas Jay  76–7 Ortega y Gasset, José  56–7 Organic unities  134–9, also see Isolation test Pannenberg, Wolfhart  76–7 Parker, Ross  156 Participating in God’s life, see Deification/ theosis Perfect being theology  9–11, 36–8, 86–99, 116–21, 123–6, 139–45, 147, 149–63, 172–7 Phenomenal conservativism  123–6 Plantinga, Alvin  143 Plato 92–3 Powys, David  205–6 Problem of evil  5–6, 28–9, 178 Projectionism, Feuerbachian  36–8 Pseudo-Dionysius 76–7 Rea, Michael C.  33–6, 151, 167–8, 171 Reasons for action (and love)  18, 39n.1, 51–4, 57–9, 73–4, 162–3, 175–6, 182–3, 191–200 Rogers, Katherine  120 Rowe, William  178–9 Sachs, John R.  30–1 Severe retribution thesis  187–200, 203–7, see Divergent Account Sceptical theism  178–80 Schleiermacher, Friedrich  208 Schnackenburg, Rudolf  17–18 Scotus, John Duns  140 Similarity thesis  11–20, 42–3, 115, 121–2, 144, 247 Objections to the similarity thesis  26–38 Singer, Irving  1–2 Spohn, William C.  22–3, 25 Stump, Eleonore  59–63, 66–8, 147–8, 153, 164–5

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Index  269 Supreme love (definition of)  12, 146, 162–3 Swinburne, Richard  138 Talbott, Thomas  149, 156, 166–7, 171 Taliaferro, Charles  120–1, 136–8 Tannehill, Robert  240 Thompson, Marianne Meye  14–15 Torrance, Thomas F.  72–3, 112 Tradition (theological/church)  28–33, 43, 66, 69, 118–21, 146–7, 217–20 Transcendence of God  26–36, 72, 178–81, 223, 235 Trinity  1–2, 4, 14–15, 43–4, 71, 74, 110, 114, 141, 221–3, 245 Unitary account (of divine love and punitive wrath)  4, 160, 175–6, 184–7, 191–218, 247, see Divergent account Universal salvation  146–7, 216–18 Value account of love Definition of  3, 40–1, 64 As a theological model  2–3, 37–8, 41–3, 64, 114 Generic vs. person-directed  58–9, 107–9 Perception of value  44–6, 48–51

Dignity  45–6, 54, 56, 66–7, 71–4, 94, 110–11, 153–4, Nature of valuing  47–54 Valuing one’s existence and flourishing  54–7, 67–8 Valuing union  57–64, 68–71, 245–6 Interconnection between forms of valuing  56, 65–6, 147–8 Assessment of  42–4, 64–75 Deification (relation to)  4, 245–6 Divine maximal perfection (relation to)  3–4, see Maximally perfect divine love Emotion and feeling (relation to)  3, 52–4, 63–4, 66, 71, 114–45, 238–9, 247 Vanhoozer, Kevin J.  6–7, 36–8 Velleman, J. David  44–7, 54, 66 Vision of God  69–71 von Hügel, Friedrich  130–1 Watson, Francis  222 Weinandy, Thomas G.  98–9, 127–8, 130–1, 135–6, 142–3 Wolf, Susan  34–6 Wood, William  41 Yeo, Ray S.  229–35 Zagzebski, Linda  234–5