Toward an Analysis of “God is Love”

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EmToRs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. ~0017 VoL. XXXVIII OCTOBER, 1973 No.4 TOWARD AN ANALYSIS OF" GOD IS LOVE" I. Problem and Method OUR CONTEMPORARIES discuss statements about God. Our problem might be expressed in this way: Nouns in common language are derived from within this spatia-temporal cosmos, "x ". The really transcendent God is not enclosed within that cosmos, " non-x." Consequently affirmations about God seem contradictory: " non-x is x." Such sentences have been called non-cognitive and literal nonsense.1 At other times they are considered literally cognitive though analogous. Many, however, object that the meaning of analogy is not clear; and it admittedly is complex.2 Rather than adding another plea for analogy in general, we 1 Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London, 1950). 2 Eleven different kinds of analogy are presented just in an Introduction to the Philosophy of Being, by George P. Klubertanz, S. J. (New York: AppletonCentury -Crofts, Inc., 1955), p. 290. 638 634 WILLIAM ROSSNER might try the currently fashionable analysis of one statement.3 "Every statement has its own logic" enables today's mind to ask its meaning before indulging in the fun of hurling about epithets like truth and falsity.4 "God is Love" has been thought to express literally an ultimate name of Supreme Being and by that very fact to provide a distinctive orientation for both speculative and practical thinking. In spite of modern philosophy's long preoccupation with problems of knowledge, the fact of love's central position has been acknowledged in recent years by diverse writers. They use " Love," though, in varying meanings. When a Divine Narne detached from God falls on earth, it shows a strange ambiguous face to men, and faces itself a strange, ambiguous destiny." To discover the first essentials of love, and thereby some principle for evaluating these varying concepts, there is nothing better than to look at the First Lover. But can we? Can philosophy discover in experience a notion of love which can be purified to such a degree that when it is analogously affirmed of God the statement is literally meaningful? Or must natural human reason be now content with at best a symbolic meaning ? The difficulties are well expressed by Walter Stace: ... let us consider how the statement that God is love will fare at the hands of the philosophic sceptic. . . . We are, of course, taking the proposition that God is love in its literal meaning, and not merely as symbolic.... Love is some kind of emotion or feeling or attitude or desire or at least a purpose-perhaps the purpose to act in a certain way, for instance, to achieve the happiness and good of created beings. But can any of this be literally true of God? Only, apparently, if God be thought of as a finite centre of con3 This has even been called The Age of Analysis, by Morton White, A Mentor Book (New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1956). • J. 0. Urmson, Philosophical Analysis, Its Development Between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), pp. 179 ff. 5 Jacques Maritain proposes his meaning particularly in Carnet de Notes (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1965), pp. 301-354. Cf. "Love in the Thought of Jacques Maritain" in Jacques Maritain, the Man and His Achievement (ed. Joseph Evans) by William Rossner, S. J. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), pp. ~37-~58. TOWARD AN ANALYSIS OF "GOD IS LOVE" 685 sciousness, one mind among other minds. This mind, God, loves that mind, a human soul. But apart from this, to attribute emotions to God conflicts with the very definite religious intuition that God is unchanging.... For it is of the essence of a mind to move, to change, to be active.... And if we say that this is not true of God's mind, that we are only using analogies from human consciousness and experience to help us understand something which is in fact quite different, if we say this, we may be saying what is true, but...