From God’s holiness and those attributes that can be clustered around holiness and the “bridge” attribute of righteousness we turn now to that other focal attribute, God’s love. Love has been said to be the most communicable of all the communicable attributes of God.

I. THE OLD TESTAMENT#

Some seemingly have assumed that there is no doctrine of God’s love in the Old Testament, but the evidence against such an assumption should be convincing to any serious student of the Old Testament.

A. PRINCIPAL TERMS FOR DIVINE LOVE#

1. The Verb ʾāhēḇ and the Noun ʾahăḇāh

a. This verb-noun family is the most comprehensive term for love in the Old Testament. It was “used of any and every kind oflove,” both “secular” and “religious.” The root idea of the stem, found also in other Semitic languages, seems to have been “to burn, kindle, or set on fire.”

Among the secular usages in the Old Testament some few pertain to “inanimate things” such as food, sleep, and wisdom, but the majority apply to persons. Most frequently these personal usages involve the attitude of a superior to an inferior, but, when rarely used of the attitude of an inferior to a superior, it is a “humble, dutiful love.” Among the religious usages of the term, both verb and noun, 27 involve God’s loving man and 24 man’s loving God.

b. When used of God, ʾahăḇāh signified “election-love,” or “an unconditioned sovereign love,” according to Norman Snaith.

Israel’s election was, therefore, due to the ʾahăḇāh of Yahweh, not to any merit or inherent worth among the Israelites.

“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you” (Deut. 7:7, RSV). Rather, it was “because he loved your fathers and chose their descendants after them, and brought you out of Egypt … " (Deut. 4:37; see also Deut. 10:15).

Because of Yahweh’s love Balaam’s curse was turned into blessing (Deut. 23:5). “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos. 11:1). Covenant-making love was expressed in Ezekiel’s allegory of unfaithful Jerusalem (16:8).

The meaning of electing love is partly to be seen through the contrast between ʾāhēḇ, “to love,” and śānēʾ, “to hate,” as in “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Mal. 1:3). Against the charge that Yahweh’s electing love is “irrational,” Snaith contended that such a term should mean that “man cannot find a reason” and not “contrary to reason.”

In bestowing his electing love Yahweh provided an “over-plus” beyond his “general love for mankind.”

2. The Noun ḥeseḏ

a. This word is derived from a Semitic root which presumably means “eagerness,” “keenness,” or “ardent desire.” Its etymology is complicated by the fact that a few times in the Old Testament it means “shame, reproach, defilement.”

In most of the older English translations of the Old Testament, probably beginning with that of Miles Coverdale (1488-1568), ḥeseḏ was rendered by “mercy” or “loving-kindness.” This choice was likely due to the facts that the Septuagint had translated it with eleos, meaning “pity” or “mercy,” and that the Latin Vulgate had rendered it by misericordia, also meaning “pity” or “mercy.”

Present-day Old Testament scholars, however, tend to hold that the correct meaning of this Hebrew noun, when applied to God, is “covenant-love,” loyalty-love,” “troth,” “bond-affection,” or, as the RSV translators determined, “steadfast love.”

b. ḥeseḏ had in the Old Testament what Snaith called a “double development.”

When applied to God, the term had the connotations just specified by possible English translations. But, when used of human beings, the term developed into the concept of “piety” or “godliness,” as the name of the later Jewish party, the Chasidim, would indicate.

This “double development” was possible because originally ḥeseḏ denoted “that attitude ofloyalty and faithfulness which both parties to a covenant should observe towards each other.” That Yahweh expected the covenant people to have ḥeseḏ toward him is clear in the prophets.

  • Hosea lamented the absence of ḥeseḏ in the land (4:1); indeed the people’s ḥeseḏ was like the disappearing morning mist (6:4), for Yahweh desired “ḥeseḏ, not sacrifice” (6:6).

  • True religion, for Micah, included loving ḥeseḏ (6:8).

The adjective ḥāsîḏ was used in the Psalms and the postexilic writings of the pious, devoted, or loyal ones. The people’s ḥeseḏ should be the knowledge of Yahweh that issues in loyalty in worship and faithfulness in duty.

c. When used of Yahweh, ḥeseḏ meant his determined faithfulness to his covenant. It was the means whereby the covenant was sustained, and it stood in contrast to the unfaithfulness of Israe/Judah.

“ʾAhăḇāh is the cause of the covenant; chesed is the means of its continuance. Thus ʾahăḇāh is God’s Election-Love, whilst chesed is His Covenant-Love.”

In this sense ḥeseḏ is used in Exodus, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms. The covenant-making God of the Decalogue showed his ḥeseḏ to a thousand generations of those loving him and keeping his commands (Exod. 20:6). Yahweh’s betrothal of Israel to himself was to be “in ḥeseḏ,” (Hos. 2:19), even as he had showed his ḥeseḏ to Abraham (Mic. 7:20).

Yahweh’s ḥeseḏ “endures for ever” (Jer. 33:1 lb; Ps. 100:5, RSV) or all the days of one’s life (Ps. 23:6a).

The intimate connection between Yahweh’s covenant with Israel and his love for Israel has been made clear through the study of the two principal terms. Furthermore, the husband-wife analogy was also applied to divine love.

  • Hosea represented Israel as the “wayward wife” of Yahweh; Yahweh commanded him to love wayward Gomer even as Yahweh loved wayward Israel (3:1-3).

  • Jeremiah saw Judah as “a woman unfaithful to her husband” (3:20a, NIV).

Moreover, God’s ḥeseḏ was coupled with the father-son relationship. The divine promise to David was that his son Solomon would have a filial relationship with Yahweh:

When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love [ḥeseḏ] will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul… (2 Sam. 7:14b, 15a, b, NIV).

C. EXTENT OF DIVINE LOVE#

The texts related to divine love do not specifically deny that God’s love was extended to non-Israelites or non-Jews, but the implications of election-love and covenant-love clearly limited Yahweh’s love to the people of the covenant. Moreover, the major universalistic texts in the Old Testament do not employ the two major terms for divine love.

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT#

A. PRINCIPAL TERMS FOR DIVINE LOVE#

The New Testament uses two verbs for divine loving, agapao, and phileo, but only one noun for love, agape. The verb phileo, which connotes the love of friendship, is used a few times in the Gospel of John. It refers to God the Father’s love for the Son of God (5:20a), the Father’s love of Jesus’ disciples (16:27a),Jesus’ love of Lazarus (11:3, 36), and Jesus’ love of the Apostle John (20:2). The New Testament does not use the noun philia or the noun eros.

The New Testament usage of agapao and agape to express divine love and whatever nuances they have that phileo does not have can hardly be determined by strictly philological inquiry, but rather they need to be explicated through exegetical and doctrinal study. Exegetes and theologians have not agreed about the relationship between these two words.

William Evans found agapao to be “the highest, most perfect kind of love” and phileo to be “natural” and sentimental love, especially in John 21:15-19, but James Moffatt (1870-1944) warned against “forced and fanciful” distinctions between these words since they had been synonyns in classical Greek.

Ethelbert Stauffer (1902-1979) found that agapao and agape had acquired a “new” meaning by being the preferred translation for ʾāhēḇ and ʾahăḇāh in the Septuagint, and Gustav Stahlin (1900-1985) wrote of the restricted usage of phileo in the New Testament.

Anders Nygren was even more specific in identifying and elaborating upon the meaning of agapao-agape. Nygren, in the words of Philip Saville Watson (1909-), taught that God’s agape is “entirely independent of external stimulus and motivation”, “neither kindled by the attractiveness nor quenched by the unattractiveness of its object,” and “opposed to all forms of selfishness.”

In Nygren’s terms agape is “spontaneous and ‘unmotivated’”, “‘indifferent to value’”, “creative,” and “the initiator of fellowship with God.”

B. MEANING OF DIVINE LOVE#

The teaching about divine love in the New Testament is mostly to be found in the Gospel and First Epistle of John and in the epistles of Paul.

  1. Divine love in the New Testament includes the love that belongs to and is expressed by God the Father.

Repeatedly the love of God the Father is said to be for the Son of God (John 3:35; 10:17; 15:9; 17:24, 26). The Father also loves humankind, and that love is expressed in the giving of his Son unto death (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:10).

Historically that fatherly love has been an electing love toward Jacob (Rom. 9: 13), and presently it is the Father’s love for Jesus’ disciples (John 14:21, 23; 2 Thess. 2:16). The Father’s love is directed to both the Son of God and “the world” (John 17:23c). His love is likewise expressed in believers’ becoming his children ( 1 John 3: 1) and in God’s chastening of his children (Heb. 12:6).

  1. Divine love in the New Testament embraces the love that belongs to and is expressed by the Son of God.

The Son loves God the Father (John 14:31), and his love for humankind is manifested in his cross (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2; 1 John 3:16). Jesus’ love for his disciples is both a continuing love (John 13: 1, 34) and a constraining love (2 Cor. 5: 14 ), and there will be no ultimate separation of believers from the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:38-39).

  1. The New Testament does not so specifically express the love belonging to and expressed by the Holy Spirit, but God’s love is said to have been poured into the hearts of believers through the given Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

In a more general sense, initiative in loving comes from God (2 Cor. 13:14; 1 John 4:7, 10), and the very nature of God is love (1 John 4:8).

In view of all that has been said about divine love and in the light of the preceding comment about love’s being the most communicable of the communicable attributes of God, it is proper to conclude that the love of God is both a divine attribute and a divine gift to human beings.

III. THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION#

A. DIVINE LOVE AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS#

The biblical doctrine of God’s agape is unique among the world’s religions and philosophies. Neither Zeus (Jupiter), nor Brahma, nor Ahura Mazda, nor Vishnu, nor Allah is said to be a God of self-giving love. For Plato the divine was good but not loving.

The “nearest analogy to Christian love” is to be found in the bhakti form of Hinduism, which originated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries A. D. In its nobler forms one finds in bhakti “some approximation to a synthesis of the divine love for man, man’s love for God in return, and man’s love for his fellow man as in some sense the outcome of both.” But bhakti assumes that there must be “successive incarnations” of avatars, and its monotheism was compromised by a subordinate polytheism.

B. DIVINE LOVE AND THE TRINITY#

God’s agape is basic to the inner Trinitarian relationships of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  • Augustine of Hippo taught that the Holy Spirit is especially called “love,” is the “communion,” and conveys the common love between the Father and the Son.

  • Claude Welch has written of “an eternal communion or ‘communityness’ of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” “The love of Father and Son is… an inner procession of self-giving love, which is the ground of God’s outward agape and therefore of creation and redemption.”

C. DIVINE LOVE AND THE ANTHROPIC APPROACH#

Anders Nygren developed the hypothesis that agape, from the New Testament, and eros, from Plato and other Greeks, being fundamentally distinct and opposed, were in a three-way competition with nomos, or law, during the early patristic age and that these three came to be embodied in a synthesis in Augustine’s concept of acquisitive love. According to Nygren, after medieval writers continued to build on the Augustinian synthesis, a renewal of the agape motif came with Martin Luther.

The Augustinian synthesis consisted of caritas, or the upward love of God and the eternal, and cupiditos, or the downward love of the world and the temporal.

An important expression of the medieval concept of love was the four “degrees” or stages of Bernard of Clairvaux:

  1. Man’s love of himself for his own sake

  2. Man’s love of God for his own benefit

  3. Man’s love of God for God’s sake

  4. Man’s love of himself for God’s sake

Bernard’s anthropocentric approach stands in marked contrast to the theocentrism of the First Epistle of John.

D. LOVE AS THE DOMINANT ATTRIBUTE#

Love as an attribute of God has been elevated to a dominant and all-possessing role in the nature of God by Nels Ferre. Holiness is subordinate to love, for Ferre, and from this dominance of agape he has rejected eternal hell and posited universal eschatological salvation.

On the other hand, Hugh Ross Mackintosh clearly sought the correlation of holiness and love. He discerningly declared that “to assert unflinchingly that love and holiness are one in God, despite their seeming antagonism, is as much the business of a true theology as to assert that deity and manhood are one in Christ.”