Book Review - The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson

Introduction

1. “The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God” was written by D A Carson, Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. First published in 2000, the book was adapted from a series of four lectures, first delivered in 1998 at the Dallas Theological Seminary to seminary students. It takes on an informal tone, although the language can be somewhat technical due, perhaps, to the original intended audience.

2. Carson begins by explaining why the doctrine of God’s love is ‘difficult’. He observes that the prevailing culture (post-modernity) often considers the benevolence of God outside of the Biblical framework, and abstracted from complimentary truths about God such as His sovereignty, holiness, wrath, providence, and personhood. Even within Christian circles, God’s love is often portrayed as more obvious than it really is, failing to recognize real difficulties in integrating the Biblical data on God’s love with His sovereignty, impassibility, justice and wrath.

The five strands of God’s Love

3. Addressing these concerns, Carson takes the full range of Biblical data, and posits that there are five related but distinguishable ways in which God’s love is portrayed. These are not five independent ‘loves of God’, but rather nuances or strands of the one ‘love of God’. None should be absolutised and made the controlling grid by which the others are referenced, but rather, all five must be held together in biblical proportion and balance. These are:

i. God’s intra-Trinitarian love (John 3:35; 5:20; and 14:31) which is the peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father;

ii. God’s providential love (Genesis 1-2; Matthew 6:26; and 10:29) over all that He has made;

iii. God’s yearning and salvific love (Ezekiel 33:11; John 3:16; 15:19; and 1 John 2:2) that pleads with sinners;

iv. God’s elective love (Deutronomy 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:14-15; Malachi 1:2-3; and Ephesians 5:25) that is the particular, effective, selecting love towards the elect; and

v. God’s conditional love towards His people (Exodus 20:6; Psalm 103:8-11, 13, 17-18; John 15:9-10; and Jude 21;) i.e. God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way – conditional, that is, on obedience.

4. Looking at this comprehensive take on the ‘love of God’, one is struck by common dangers, and controversies that have arisen out of ignorance, overemphasis or neglect of any one strand. Ignorance of the God’s intra-Trinitarian love (and the Trinity itself) could lead to accession that the Christian God is the same or similar with those of other monotheistic faiths. Overemphasizing God’s yearning and salvific love, while neglecting His elective love could lead to denial of God’s election of individuals to salvation. The reverse could lead to a denial of the validity of the free-offer of the Gospel to unbelievers. Neglecting God’s conditional love towards His people, in discipline, could lead to antinomianism, while overemphasizing it could lead to a loss of assurance.

God is Love

5. The first strand, God’s intra-Trinitarian love is how God relates within Himself, while the other four categories are how God relates to His creatures and creation. In discussing this first strand, Carson draws out useful implications, and insights resulting from this love. Firstly, there has always been other-orientation in the being of God (as Trinity). Here, one is struck by the utter uniqueness of God as compared to other (so called) deities. Christianity alone claims, that God is Trinity, and that as such love is bound up in the very nature of God. Secondly, our relationship to Jesus mirrors the relation of Jesus to his heavenly Father (John 17). Jesus mediates the Father’s love to us, i.e. receiving love, so has He loved us. Jesus in turn demonstrates His love for the Father through perfect obedience. In the same way, having received love, we are to love others, and we in turn demonstrate our love for Jesus, by our obedience. While Carson does a good job of describing the intra-Trinitarian love between Father and Son, the analysis would have been more complete if he had included a discussion on the role of the Holy Spirit as the 3rd person of the Trinity.

God’s Sovereignty and Impassibility

6. With regard to God’s love as it relates to His creatures, Carson addresses God’s sovereignty and wrath. Thorny issues such as God’s emotional life in light of His impassibility, man’s responsibility in light of God’s sovereignty, the relationship between God’s wrath and God’s love, and the extent of the atonement are discussed. On issues of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, Carson argues for compatibilism[1], as a necessary component of a “mature and orthodox view of God”. Carson uses the cross as a poignant example. If the cross, were thought of primarily in human terms, as a conspiracy by the local political authorities of the time, it implies that the cross was an accident of history, and not God’s pre-ordained plan of salvation. Vice-versa, if it were thought of purely as a function of God’s sovereignty, human transgressors are not culpable and immune to charges of transgression. Either way, without compatibilism, the cross is nullified.

7. Reflecting on the affective element in the love of God Carson addresses the issue of divine impassibility and argues that it is incorrect to espouse a form of impassibility that denies God’s emotional life. Rather, impassibility and affections can be held together by noting that God, unlike humans, is in full control of His affections, and He displays them simply because He chooses to. He sustains no ‘passion’, no emotion that makes Him vulnerable from the outside, over which He has no control, or which He has not foreseen. God’s love is thus not generated by the loveliness of the loved, but rather it is generated, in spite of the un-loveliness of the loved, purely by the will of God – He has chosen to love.

8. Carson admits that in these discussions, one has to inevitably retreat to the realm of mystery. This is a somewhat frustrating conclusion to such weighty discussions. Carson’s contribution is helpful in that he posits the mystery primarily in the being of God, rather than in the logical incoherence of concepts. Carson asserts that the deepest mystery is that God has disclosed Himself as simultaneously sovereign/transcendent and yet personal. In effect, it is not merely that the human mind cannot reconcile concepts, but rather that the human mind cannot fully fathom the being of God. Indeed, we are moved then not to resignation, but to doxology, exclaiming with Paul “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33)

God’s Wrath

9. In discussing God’s wrath, Carson notes that like love, wrath includes emotion as a necessary component. However, unlike love, wrath is not an intrinsic perfection of God but rather a function of God’s holiness against sin i.e. where there is no sin, there is no wrath. In contrast there will always be love in God. The price if diluting the wrath of God is thus to diminish God’s holiness and justice, His very character. It is here helpful to note that God is in full control of His affections, including His wrath.

10. Carson also helpfully points out that there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at the same time. In His perfections, God must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him. God in His perfections must also be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for that is His foundational character – God is love. Carson points out that these two themes of wrath and love “barrel along” through redemptive history until they find their climax and resolution in the cross, where wrath and mercy meet.

The Cross

11. At the cross, God’s love is displayed at its most affirming, while His wrath is displayed at its most condemning. Truly, only at the cross can justice and mercy meet, and God can be, “…just and the one who justifies…” (Romans 3:26).

12. Also, it is only at the cross, and its central place in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that the five strands of God’s love can be drawn together. Firstly, God’s intra-Trinitarian love ensures the plan of redemption. The Father loves the Son, and decrees that all will honour Him. The way to honour is the obedience of the cross. The Son loves the Father and obeys all that He commands. Secondly, God’s providential love gives clear evidence of God in natural revelation, and calls us to faith in Christ. Thirdly, God’s yearning, inviting, commanding love, supremely displayed on the cross, compels us to come to Him. Fourthly, God’s effective, elective love enables us to see the glory and power of Christ on the cross. Finally, God’s Fatherly love, conditioned upon our obedience as His children disciplines us, changes us and conforms us to the Christ of the cross.

Conclusion

13. Carson’s comprehensive survey and synthesis of the Biblical data is very helpful in giving a comprehensive, Biblically balanced view of God’s love. He deals persuasively and piously with the theological issues that arise, and discusses the very practical implications – popular evangelical clichés, such as “God’s love is unconditional”, “God loves everyone exactly the same way”, and “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” are brought under scrutiny and found wanting. Most of all, this book exalts God by emplacing the deepest of mysteries in His very being; and it exalts Christ, by demonstrating how God’s redemption purposes through the cross, draws together all five strands of God’s love.

[1] Compatibilism does not claim to show how God’s unconditioned sovereignty and human responsibility are compatible. Instead it claims that we can get far enough in the evidence to show that the two are not necessarily incompatible, and that it is reasonable to think of them as compatible. It inevitably raises important and difficult questions that cannot be easily explained.