D.v. I'm preaching on 1 Jn 4 on Sunday AM.
I remember thinking about this once but I can't remember what I thought!
Is God's love more essential to him than his other attributes (virtues or dispositions)?
John also tells us that "God is light", of course.
Could we say "God is holiness", "God is justice", "God is wisdom", "God is wrath" etc.?
I guess we need to dig out our notes on the essence and attributes of God, eternality and divine simplicity and so on.
God's love is clearly fundamental to his Trinitarian life in a way that wrath is not.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Love is fundamental to his trinitarian life in a way wrath is not, but that needs to fit with simplicity and immutability.
I suspect that God's wrath is a description of what the love of the Triune God looks like when it meets rebellion and sin (how can a loving God not send people to hell? etc.)
Because of simplicity God is always all of his attributes, and each of his attributes contain and are contained by all the other attributes. But there's still something to be said here about the tenor, tone, balance, weight, frequency of biblical language about God.
I suspect Frame, what with his perspectivalism, is pretty good on this?
Frame is good on this.
From what I understand from him, wrath is not a first order divine attribute, but holiness (or 'light') is.
Wrath cannot be core to who God is because that would compromise creature/creator distinction by making God dependent on his world for who he is.
But it doesn't compromise simplicity because it's a simple consequence of God's other attributes when he meets sin.
I'm just regurgitating from memory here - if you look it up I'd be interested to know if I remembered it right!
Hi Samuel. Thanks.
Yep, Frame is pretty good on just about everything, in my view!
Yes, I think what you say is probably right. Although we need to put eternality and "change in relations" into the mix. Yes, I agree of course that God mustn't be made dependant on his world, but I think maybe I am less concerned about that than some of the Reformed might be. They could be over voluntristic, I think? E.g. I am inclined to think that in a way God had no make exactly this world - although not against his will or due to any "lack" in him, of course.
What I said in my sermon is that God's wrath is what happens when his holy love meets sin. Far from being in conflict with his love, God's wrath is in some ways a function of his love.
Post a Comment