Christians really mean this. When they say ‘God is love’ they don’t just mean that God is a being who loves. They aren’t just saying that God is nice, or that he is compassionate and forgiving. They mean that love is the core of his nature, the key to his being.
Love isn’t something outside God; love is the nature of God. And love is community. Life isn’t life if it isn’t shared; to be God is to love — and to love is to be in community and relationship. God was love before there was a creation for him to be in love with, but to be solitary is not in the nature of God. Ultimately I think, what Christians mean by the doctrine of the Trinity is just this: because God is love, community and relationship are rooted in the depths of his being. Community is intrinsic to God. His unity is communal.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
On the Trinity ...
... Yule Blog 2010: Meaning in Three Dimensions.
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Your comment reminds me of the Charles Williams quotation - I suspect, in fact, I copied it down off this blog: "The famous saying that 'God is Love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgences, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God."
ReplyDeleteMot exactly where you were going with your comment, but it's a quotation I nevertheless admire.
Happy New Year, Frank!
Damned typos!
ReplyDeleteHi Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to you as well.
I think that Williams quote was one of those thoughts for the day that I post. It does drain the sentimentality out of "God is Love."