God is love - dangerous talk

Someone who I don't think I've ever met commented on Twitter to someone else that some other people I've probably never met had said to him on his blog that it is dangerous to say that God is love because if you do you'll end up as some kind of dreadful liberal inclusivist universalist like Rob Bell.

Although the idea is refuted by its own absurdity, I thought I'd dignify it with a response here:

(1) You know you are in danger of losing the plot if Biblical language gives you the willies. 1 John 4:8. Enough said. Incidentally, this argument ought to make us realise that Baptism is a big deal too and much more than getting wet.

(2) Any statement is open to misunderstanding. Sure, if you are going to say God is love you must know who / what God you are talking about, what real love is (that it is jealous, for example) and indeed the nature of being and predication, along with everything else in the universe. Of course. What is is is a jolly good question. It is dangerous to say anything. We only know something completely if we know everything so we cannot totalise the statement "God is love". Or rather, if we said that properly we would say everything. We get in to deep waters whenever we say anything. Our speaking is always different from that of God the Word who spoke and created the world. For us, there is always more to be said. We always lisp. At our best we merely echo God's perfect speech. It is perfectly true that in some circumstances, God's love properly understood implies his wrath since the loving response to sin is holy anger.

(3) Yet, whilst we must not pit God's love againts his wrath and so on, God is love is a statement more proper to God than God is wrath. God's wrath is what we might call his strange, alien work. From all eternity, in His Very Self, the Father has loved the Son and the Son has loved the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Where and when there was no sin there was no wrath. But there has always been love since The Triune God is Love in Himself. And that love overflows to the world. And, yes, love wins.