a deeper love

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

A couple of times recently I’ve been reminded of the distinction made between God’s love and God’s justice; typically emphasised in some theories of the atonement. These are often presented as if they are two almost-contradictory parts of God’s character. It struck me today that perhaps the reason for this presentation is that our concept of love is really too shallow to cope. We tend to think of justice as a strong unequivocal thing and love as wishy-washy and ‘nice’. Love simply being somthing that comes in and softens the blow of justice. But is love really like that? Despite our attempts to go beyond love-as-fuzzy-feeling, perhaps we don’t get far enough in a deep robust picture of what love is.

Maybe as a first step, we need to start by think in less individualistic & abstract terms. How about this picture: if I find one of my children attacking another and I take action, is my motivation love or justice? Surely it is both? Or perhaps, even, the ‘justice’ side is simply an expression of love.

If mankind continually harms creation and one another, does God act out of love or justice? Or are the two different aspects of the same thing? If Jesus acts to solve the problem, is that love-overcoming-justice? Or a wider & deeper expression of the love that was motivating all along?

Maybe what we need to do is take the Bible seriously when it says ‘God is love’ and allow that to deepen, enrich and refine our picture of love, rather than attempt to ‘balance’ it by emphasising justice as a contradictory characteristic? (Or even to attempt to make love some secondary characteristic after justice.)

For me this connects to the critique of neo-Calvanism that Jeremy Begbie makes in Voicing Creation’s Praise (referred to in an earlier post):

… the tendency is for God’s love to be treated as little more than a potential quality or attitude which operates only among the chosen and fortunate few. This is thrown into sharp relief in the Calivinists’ adoption of the … distinction between the covenant of works … and the covenant of grace … The covenant of works … [guaranteed] eternal life for all humanity on condition that he obeyed the laws of nature (the laws of God). When this covenant was broken, a new covenant of grace was rendered necessary. This manifests in the love of God and is restricted to the elect. It finds its climax in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. … [This] seriously undermines the unity of God’s purposes, the oneness of the divine covenant of grace. … The net effect … is to construe God’s essential attribute as justice, and his love towards creation (and humankind) as something that he exercises only if he so wills.

[Credits: Some of this post goes back to an old half-conversation with Mark.]

Permalink | March 18th, 2007

One Response to “a deeper love”

  1. jonnyjpg Says:
    jonnyjpg March 21st, 2007 at 8:25 pm

    great thought…. and made me think not only do we to make sure we understand God’s love correctly – but also Gods justice… which is tended to be seen as a dangerous thing. Like I need God’s love to balance his justice – other wise I’m going to get fried.

    But I God’s justice is “putting the world to rights” [NT Wright] – then surely it is an incredibly positive thing, where the captives are freed, the lame are healed, the lowly are rasied up, and the oppressors are delt with … ah maybe it could be dangous for us then! But I the cries of the Isrealites in Egypt and later in exile was a cry to God to administer justice… to the oppressed God’s justice and judgement is longed for.

Leave a Reply