Actually, this SHOULD solve your problem...right?

Exousia-

Let’s step back and take a second look here. No harm in starting over.

OK, remember our long discussion about divine aseity and the relative meaninglessness of creation? We said then that God is defined by a necessarily unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction of trinitarian personal relations. And now we can fill out the picture a bit more in dispositional terms. Cool. But the point with necessary divine existence was that nothing in creation—no good, no evil—could touch or penetrate God’s inner world. No beauty or right-relatedness in the world could increase the already unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction God gets from Godself, and likewise no privation or evil could decrease it. In terms of God’s experience of loving relationality, we are meaningless.

But we also said that in creating us, God in grace freely decides to allow us to matter to him. This doesn’t mean God admits us into that necessary existence that defines God. That’s impossible. But God can, we said, enter into genuinely reciprocal, mutually interdependent personal relations in the contingent expressions of God, in his subjective aims for the world. Here God can and does experience the world in ways which matter to him.

Stepping back from this and looking at it again, it seems to me that all the changing emotional states God freely embraces as an act of grace which grounds our worth and value to God occur in the contingent expressions of God’s energies. But it seems to me that we CAN say several things about this experience that you’ve been very uncomfortable with. For example, the very notion of “threat.” You want  to rule out God’s “feeling threatened” in any sense of the world in any possible circumstance. But it seems to me that there is room for God to feel threatened, not with respect that which constitutes necessary divine existence (aseity), but with respect to that which constitutes his contingent experience of the world. Consider, D. God, in grace and freedom, genuinely purposes us for personal, loving, relationships with Godself and others. But he endows us with the freedom to say “no” to the fulfillment of these subjective aims (setting aside the whole question of UR, okay?). We can ‘now’ frustrate, oppose, reject, and otherwise—yes—threaten the fulfillment of God’s purposes for ourselves and the world. (Don't read more into the word "threat" than need be there.) If we can do this, it follows that we frustrate, oppose, reject, and threaten whatever pleasure or enjoyment God in grace freely decided to allow us to provided him. And we DO provide God this enjoyment. But if God opens himself up to our being meaningful to him in positively pleasing ways, God opens himself up to our being meaningful to him in negative, unpleasing ways. I don’t see any problem in using the word “threaten” to describe the God-given potential we possess to affect God in negative ways. This pleasure and enjoyment of us is something God truly wants and enjoys in meaningful ways. It must also be the case that we “endanger” or “threaten” this enjoyment. All that means is that God’s enjoyment of the world as a contingent expression of God is contingent upon our freely right-relating or freely misrelating.

Once we grant that God (in contingent expression visa-a-vie the world) has freely opened Godself up to being “affected” by us in positive and negative ways, we have the grounds we need for then understanding the various emotional responses God gives to the world.

I’m sure you’re agreeing with all this, and that you’ll want to admit “disgust” and “revulsion” and perhaps “hurt” or even “disappointment” as those negative emotional responses God has. But I’m not sure these emotions adequately map all the possible emotional terrain that we have to account for. Now that we’re clearly saying we really can and do endanger or threaten the enjoyment God wants to receive from the fulfillment of his subjective aims, we need a more precise emotional response to THIS. I don’t see that revulsion and disgust quite do it. Yes, these emotions will be involved. But one can feel disgust and not act. One can feel revulsion and not act. At best, if these emotions do actually motivate behavior, they’re perfectly consistent with withdrawing or just distancing one’s self from the source of disgust.

But we need something different. We need an emotion that properly motivates movement toward the source. Disgust and revulsion may characterize movement toward a source of displeasure, but they don’t HAVE to. We need an emotion that by definition has to be present as a motivational basis upon which God moves toward some threat that endangers his enjoyment of creation.

There’s more to add to this but I have to run. Gotta a class to teach. But I just want to say that I’m not going to suggest that God is vindictive, retaliatory, gets pissed off, or experiences road-rage. But I am going to suggest that God is genuinely “emotionally opposed” to that which threatens or endangers the enjoyment he seeks from the beauty and value of creation’s right-relating to him. But I want to do so in a way that maintains God’s unconditional love for and recognition of the value that persons misrelating to him possess. If God opposes the behavior or misrelating, it must be an opposition that simultaneously intends to mediate healing and redemption so that threats to God’s enjoyment of creation become sources of pleasure.

I think that can be done pretty easily. I’m not sure that whatever “term” we attach to the emotional response that motivates God’s opposition to such threats ought to be called “anger.” Personally, I think too many people have rejected faith because they believe God is angry (i.e., pissed off) at them or that God “doesn’t like THEM.” That’s harmful, and if continuing to use the word “anger” fuels this lie then I believe we ought to abandon the term, regardless of however healthy we and our theology might be.

I was reading that book, eh, Destructive Emotions: A Conversation with the Dalai Lama, and remember his pointing out that in his language there are several words to describe what we in English would otherwise call “anger.” They fine tune it because they value the distinction between valid and invalid forms of negative emotions, some that permit flight, but others that demand engagement. Disgust and revulsion don’t by definition “demand” engaging in opposing behavior. But the Dalai Lama said they had words that did express this sort of negative emotional motivation. Whatever the word was, it got translated as “conflictive compassion.” Hmmm.

Anyhow, gotta run.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/11/2007 9:29:36 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/11/2007 9:50:43 AM (GMT-6)

Exousia: It seems to me that you are talking about God's emotional response to FRUSTRATION of God's aims and/or intentions. God doesn't have to interpret the frustration of his goals as a "threat".

Tom: What’s wrong with “threaten”? It’s not inaccurate, and it better specifies the personal nature of the source that endangers God’s enjoyment. Don’t let the word “threaten” mean more than it needs to. All it need mean is that there is some potential personal loss to God inherent in a person’s behavior. It doesn’t mean God is scared or frightened or incapable of recovering even if there ends up being real loss. It’s just a description of the potential impact that our misrelating has upon God.

Why does the word “threaten” bother you?

Exousia: Meaning there doesn't have to be "emotionally oppositional" feeling towards something at all. But as for what you are looking for...How about ZEAL for right-relatedness grounded in LOVE?

Tom: I honestly think you’re bringing something to the phrase “emotionally opposed to” that doesn’t necessarily follow from any of the words involved. Let’s talk about “opposition.” Minimally, all it describes is a contrary relation. It’s not until you fill that out with other things that it becomes incompatible with perfect love. But the mere idea of “standing in a contrary relation” to something isn’t problematic. If we can say God works at “cross purposes” with misrelating agents, all we’re essentially saying is that God’s actions are designed and intended to negate the effects of some other agent’s actions. There’s no problem in calling this “oppositional.”

But if we say God can act in ways that oppose the plans, intentions, and effects of privation, why can’t we say God can feel in ways that oppose the plans, intentions and effects of privation. In fact, I think we HAVE to say this if we also suppose that God’s actions are appropriately emotionally motivated.

Here’s the distinction that we need to make—the distinction between ends and means. God’s actions (and everything that motivates his actions—his emotions, plans, purposes, perceptions) are invariably designed to affirm the value of creation and maximize our potential for loving relationality. God loves persons, values persons, is invariably FOR us. That’s the end. So whatever God opposes or works at cross-purposes with, it cannot be our ‘personhood’ or our potential for right-relating that God opposes. On the contrary, whatever God opposes, he does so in an attempt to actualize right-relatedness. Thus, ends and means are kept separate.

This is important, D. God can never “oppose” (in affection or act) as an “end.” THAT is what is so destructive and harmful to think about God, that he opposes “me,” (my future, my essence, my meaning, my potential, my becoming, my ends). But God may oppose as a “means” to an end IF there are really genuine threats to the fulfillment of his subjective aims. He would HAVE to oppose them.

Personally, I think we need a rich enough vocabulary to express the “oppositional” nature of God’s engaging those behaviors that threaten the fulfillment of his subjective aims. It’s not ‘persons’ God opposes. It’s ‘behavior’ that he opposes.

I’m not suggesting WHAT we call this particular emotion. But I am suggesting that there’s nothing about God’s being lovingly for the healing of persons who willful misrelate that precludes our saying God is really (in thought, affection, and deed) “opposed” to those plans and behaviors that threaten the enjoyment he seeks from and for the very same persons whose ‘behavior’ he opposes.

It’s not enough to say you indirectly oppose abortion by opening an orphanage so unwed teenage girls don’t have to abort their babies. That IS a zealous and loving thing to do. But not all evils are always addressed indirectly. Sometimes we “confront” the concrete behavior of abortionists. For example, opening  counseling centers for children abused by adults is a good and loving response to abuse. But it’s not the appropriate response if I personally happen upon a janitor who’s pulled a youngster into his closet, has her tied up, and is in the act. No, what’s appropriate is a fully “oppositional” response that involved grabbing him, stopping him, restraining him; in a word “opposing” his behavior. It’s real opposition (in affection and deed) but it is in fact an affirmation of HIS worth as well as HERS. I oppose him because I love him.

I really think you’re failing to adequately treat this dimension of God’s and our engagement with the fallen structures of our world.

Exousia: Just like a good parent has for their child whenever they discipline them. This fits all your issues.

Tom: The words “zeal” and “love” do not adequate map all the affective and behavioral responses we give to concrete, privated, behavior.

Exousia: Because all we are trying to say is that God has SOME emotional response that in it's essential activity motivates God towards bringing right-relatedness into misrelating situations. Zeal does that.

Tom: Think of waves and particles. Some emotions are live waves. They cover several different possible situations. They’re general. But when the wave actually is observed in concrete terms engaging another reality, it takes on a more nuanced form. We can get MORE specific, and sometimes ought to.

I’m not arguing FOR “anger.” Haven’t’ even gotten to what to call it yet. I’m just saying that however we map in linguistic terms the emotion that motivates God at this point, I’m comfortable in saying (a) God’s actions may legitimately be described as “oppositional” with respect to the “behavior” that poses a real threat to God’s enjoyment of creation, and (b) that if God may “act” in opposition to certain behavior, there’s no reason for refusing to say God “feels” in opposition to certain behavior. Saying just this much is a more detailed way of understanding God’s actions in the world and it doesn’t in turn threaten all you want to affirm about God’s being invariably “for” persons. God may love “us” but “oppose” our actions. I’m sure God is emotionally complex enough to feel on BOTH these levels.

Just thinking out loud,

Tom

I don't have my cell phone!

Looks like it’s just you and me E!

A comment and a question of yours are what stood out. First the question.

Exousia: Will you agree with me that feeling emotionally oppositional to misrelating behavior is NOT NECESSARY for internal motivation for working for right-relatedness in the context of misrelatedness?

Tom: It’s funny how we’re putting our views into our questions. I mean, you say “for working for right-relatedness in the context of misrelatedness.” You won’t say  “for opposing misrelatedness.” No biggie. It’s just that whether God really “opposes” anything is what we’re debating.

But I don’t think I’d agree that God’s being emotionally opposed to evil is not in some sense necessary for motivating God’s actions. I mean, I’m not settled on whether God is ever emotionally opposed to anything. But if it is the case that God is ever emotionally opposed to anything, it cannot also be the case that this has nothing to do with motivating his actions. At the very least that would mean that God has entirely gratuitous emotional states. At the worst it would mean (if you’re right that feeling emotionally opposed to something is incompatible with being perfectly loving) that God is not perfectly loving. Surely a perfectly loving being emotes in perfectly loving ways. So either ANY sense of “emotional opposition” is incompatible with God’s being love, in which case God cannot be emotionally opposed to anything and I’ll have to make some adjustments in my view of God, or there is a sense in which a perfectly loving God can be emotionally opposed to some states or behaviors, in which case you’ll have to make some adjustments. But I don’t see how it can be a mixture of the two.

I’m not sure we’re using “opposed to” in the same way. When on the phone you describe the “oppositional” view you oppose (no pun intended), you introduce other descriptions like God’s feeling “offended” or “adversarial.” I wouldn’t add these to my understanding of God’s feeling “opposed” to something. Maybe I can get at what I mean by “opposition” by noting that for me, two of the emotions you’re willing to ascribe to God—revulsion and disgust—both seem obviously “oppositional” in a minimal sense to me. I mean, we oppose what we’re disgusted by. All that means is that disgust motivates actions that in some sense oppose the source of disgust by either putting lots of distance between us and the source or moving us to engage the source. I don’t think God can put distance between himself and some source of disgust, and a perfectly loving being wouldn’t do so (if the source is misrelating). God would instead engage it.

You produce analogies that favor an interpretation of God’s actions in the world that depict God as only doing positive actions that are then indirectly viewed as opposing willful misrelation. God loves light. So where there is darkness, God just turns the light on and indirectly that addresses the problem of darkenss. And one can dispel the darkness without cursing it. All one need do is love the light and turn the light switch on. But surely, D, you don’t think the ONLY option to your view is my standing and cursing the light but doing nothing positive. This polarizes things. But it’s not at all clear to me that God’s engagement with evil or filth in the world is so cut and dry. Remember complicity? Remember God getting dirty in a fallen world? To me it seems as though for you God’s opposing willful misrelating is just an abstraction we formalize in our minds when describing the effects of God’s actions in the world, but that this abstraction corresponds to nothing in the real world, certainly nothing “in” God.

But your revulsion anf disgust, to my mind at least, make no sense if they don’t motivate actions that are at least minimally “oppositional.” That is, we’re not going to encourage the behavior that disgusts us. We’re going to adopt a course of action that opposses a continuance of that which disgusts us. This is "a" perspective on the motivations that move us to action. It isn't the only one, or even the fundamental purpose. But it's there.

Furthermore, D, I don’t see that dumping the word “anger” and using “disgust” and “revulsion” instead will automatically warm people to the Christian faith. Take all the sermons of God’s being angry with us that turn us off and substitute “God’s disgusted with you” and “God feels revulsion when he thinks about you” and see how people react. My guess is they’ll feel the same way. No one word will fix it. But a conversation, even if it employs some less than useful “words,” will fix things IF we qualify ourselves and explain ourselves sufficiently. A “map” is a conversation, not a point. A map with just the “point” or word “Chicago” on it doesn’t say anything.

So yes, if I was limited to saying one thing to a person, either “God is angry with you” or “God is not angry with you.” I’d say the latter. But I’d do the same if I used “disgust” or “revulsion.” I would leave people with those words without a larger conversation.

Exousia: In other words, it seems to me, the active "cross-purposes" work is an EXPRESSION of the emotional opposition to the behavior.

Tom: I think God’s emotions are more complex and layered than you seem willing to concede. You come across as believing that at any given point in time feels either one thing or another with respect to us and our behavior without making any distinction between the person and potential that he loves and the growing privation that he opposes. But surely God is capable of more complexity than that. Surely God can genuinely LOVE us, value us, work FOR us and our potential, and at the same time be grieved by, disgusted by, opposed to our willful misrelating. I just don’t see why you think this mixture is impossible. We confirm every day in our experience that love can and ought to oppose things. And I don’t think it’s fair to just respond by saying, “Well, there’s obviously a measure of despair in our love. It doesn’t HAVE to be that way.” There may be a measure of despair in our loving. That seems obvious enough. But that ANY sense of feeling “opposed” to ANYTHING is by definition an act of despair? That seems to be a stretch. I mean, I’m saying that a notion of love, actively engaging a fallen and privated cosmos, will be appropriately emotional with respect to reality. This seems to me to entail God’s being FOR some things and NOT-for other things. But a divine “not for” isn’t merely passive. God is actively “not for” some things, and that’s all I mean by “opposed.”

We’ve said that all things are related. God’s designed us to be incapable of total and irrevocable privation into non-existence. God everywhere supervenes all occasions and works to maximize good and minimize evil and privation. God can never feel opposed to that which is really related to him, the ‘persons’ which he values and loves. But it seems obvious to me, and I’m sure the same people who have been wounded by hateful sermons about God being angry with them would agree, that God is opposed to willfully non-loving, privated states and behavior. So the idea that we need to jettison the notion of God’s every feeling opposed to anything in order to heal people doesn’t come across to me as correct.

Lastly, I don’t want to offer a simplistic appeal to authority by suggesting that the Bible describes God as “opposed to the proud” (James). But eventually we’ll have to sort through the biblical evidence. I can make sense of a perfectly loving God loving the proud but also opposing them in a certain sense, not their “persons” (they are loved and valued). I think you will have to write these off as expressions of despairing minds. Is there some error in the Bible? I think so. But are errors of ANY sort likely to be found in a story as transformative as the Bible? My hunch is no. So we have to take supposed errors on a verse by verse case. That there are some errors of certain kinds found in the Bible can’t become a hermeneutical rule that allows us to wipe vast swaths of the story away as irrelevant. If God cannot in any possible sense feel or be “oppositional,” then what do you do with James’ claim that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”? Looks to me like “oppose” here is antithetically understood as the opposite of “giving grace.” Where God gives grace and enablement to the humble. God does not so support and enable the proud. But D, that’s all people mean by “oppose.” I don’t imagine God saying to himself, “Well, you offended me and I’m hurt. I feel offended and pained and so I’m going to restore my emotional equilibrium by opposing YOU! There! Take THAT!” Is this really the ONLY other alternative you see to you “no possible opposition” view of God?

Gotta run to school,

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/12/2007 4:20:49 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/12/2007 9:57:08 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/12/2007 10:16:42 AM (GMT-6)

E-

(Just saw your last two posts; I'll try to get back to ya.)

Something came up in my last post that now seems like it might be pretty important. You feel God can experience non-motivating emotions. I on the other hand think that’s an incorrect view of emotions. Emotions, by their very nature, motivate behavior.

You agree God feels disgust, hurt, and revulsion, but you don’t want to add that these negative emotions motivate God. All your analogies argue that God is only motivated by positive emotions, e.g., zeal. God feels negative emotions, but his actions are only motivated by positive feelings of zeal for good, pleasure and enjoyment of right-relatedness, etc.

This is problematic for me, because in my view non-motivating emotions are meaningless. I honestly don’t know what they mean and I certainly have no analogy in my own experience to explain such a thing. The relationship between emotion and behavior is, in my understanding (which is pretty shallow) definitional. Without emotions we wouldn’t be able to properly behave. I think we agree on this. But you want to divine emotions between those that motivate and those that do not motivate. But emotions that don’t motivate? That’s unintelligible to me.

Then to emphasis another point, I don’t think actions can’t be motivated by a complex web of emotions, some positive and some negative. God may love and value us, and this has to, I think, be the defining, overarching motivation for his pursuing us at all. But it’s not inconsistent with, and I think a lot of people would argue requires, a complimentary negative set of emotions as well for all that endangers and threatens the fulfillment of God’s subjective aims. Does God HAVE to feel the negative emotions with respect to actions that oppose such threats? I think so, yes; definitionally speaking. If not, then I think we’re just saying God is emotionally indifferent to privation and evil. You might say “No, God’s not emotionally indifferent to these; he really does feel disgust and revulsion.” But I’d reply “What real ‘difference’ do such emotions make if they contribute nothing to God’s motivation for acting?” What’s the “difference” in “indifference” for if one may “feel” without being motivated to act? In my mind, to be emotionally indifferent is just to have no emotional motivation to act. You’re separating emotion from its necessary motivating effect just makes no sense to me. To my mind, whatever God feels must figure into God’s motivation to action.

Tom

Don: If I am disgusted by something, it is not my disgust that motivates me to a positive action. More than likely the disgust provides a negative response that causes me to flee.

Tom: But it does “motivate” you. In our case we flee. But God never flees reality. If he feels something analogous to our sense of disgust or revulsion, it (a) figures in motivationally and (b) moves him to engage creation, not flee from it.

Part of the problem is this idea that we can’t be motivated by a complex web of emotions, that we have to be motivated ENTIRELY EITHER by love or ENTIRELY by disgust; ENTIRELY POSITIVELY or ENTIRELY NEGATIVELY. But why believe that? It’s not analogous to our experience nor is it obviously dysfunctional.

Exousia: Is God WITHHOLDING grace and support from the proud...or is it the PRIDE of the proud that keeps them from RECEIVING all of the grace that God WANTS to spill all over them?

Tom: I honestly think it’s both. I think God can intentionally complicate our lives (and I don’t mean by just leaving us to the experience the natural effects of rejecting him) in an effort to sober us up. Something like this has to be possible IF petitionary prayer is ever efficacious. How much God engages us in such ways depends, I’m sure, upon a lot of factors. In other words, it doesn’t run on auto pilot given a fixed equation.

Exousia: I've just been saying that God can respond fully and appropriately to misrelation (of all variations) WITHOUT EVER having the source of God's motivation being some emotional "opposing" feeling about the misrelation.

Tom: But who’s saying the emotional opposition has to be THE source of God’s motivation? See, it’s this either/or approach that I'm not seeing. Personally, I think it’s impossible to posit negative feelings as primary motivations. In other words, there's nothing about, say, "disgust" that would determine whether a course of action is good or bad. It's a real emotion, and it's motivational, but it doesn't have to be primary does it? Love can be a primary motivation because it defines the loving one essentially without respect to the object loved. But all negative feelings, including the disgust and revulsion you agree God feels, are by definition secondary. That is, they can never define a loving being essentially. They only define a loving person relative to despairing, sinful behavior. They’re what love feels in such and such a situation. But they don’t have to be ALL that love feels in such and such a state. Think emotionally complex and layered.

I would honestly shake my head at a person who intervenes to save a child who is being abused by wrestling the adult to the ground if the person doing the saving were to later say “Oh, the disgust and revulsion I feel about child abuse played absolutely no role in my acting; I'm emotionally indifferent to child abuse.” But that’s where D’s view gets us so far as I can tell. Of course, I’d equally shake my head at somebody who said, “I acted purely out of a disgust for such things and without any concern for maximizing loving relationality.” That's an incomplete explanation as well. It makes more sense to me to see it as BOTH/AND.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/12/2007 3:27:11 PM (GMT-6)

I’m so far behind, I’ll never catch up. I’m just going to write how I think human emotional experiences work and apply that to God to show why I’m not seeing Exousia’s concern about perfect love.

An emotional state has, to my mind, at least the following elements:

1) a pure feeling - This feeling can be positive or negative. Feelings can differ in kind. Burn feels different than disgust, for example, though both are negative. Feelings vary in intensity. I can be somewhat disgusted or mind-bogglingly disgusted.

2) an impulse - Associated with the feeling is an impulse that impels the self experiencing the emotion to the ceasing/diminishing of negative feelings and the increasing of positive feelings.

3) intellectual apprehension - The intellect is involved in an emotional state in different ways. First, the self/ego is conscious of its own feelings. Otherwise, the self would not even be sentient. Second, since feelings are evoked under certain conditions, the intellect must attend to the objects/conditions that evoke the pure feeling or it won't even occur. Third, since sentient beings can re-present (by memory, association, etc.) these objects/conditions to their own consciousness, they can sometimes re-evoke these feelings independent of an objective experience. I.e., the experience can be subjective. E.g., when my dog dreams sometimes, she seems to be scared or angry. Humans, on the other hand, can re-present these objects/conditions to their mind volitionally. Fourth, intelligent beings typically know what needs to be done to cease/diminish negative feelings or originate/increase positive feelings. It is ony this latter kind of knowledge from which any idea of opposition can arise, to my mind. But this applies to disgust as well as anger. The former tends towards avoidance while the latter tends towards resistance. But resistance, per se, need not be malevolent, at all. Otherwise, we would have to be absolute pacifists, even with respect to children hurting each other.

So as I understand it, the proposed argument about “internalizing” anger is something that occurs when a sentient being re-presents the objects/conditions to one’s consciousness volitionally for the purpose of re-exciting the emotion. But this, to my mind, has nothing to do with the experience of emotion, per se. Nor do I know that God even does this with negative feelings. I assume that anything God contemplates for the sake of evoking a feeling will be for pleasing contemplation only. Why would he volitionally contemplate what will produce negative feelings in Himself except, possibly, for contingency planning?

If I’m missing something in my account of emotional experience, someone help me out.

Sentient beings dispose because they have the ability to feel and intelligently direct the associated impulses to attain ends that entail cessation/decreasing of displeasure and/or origination/increasing of pleasure. But I see feelings conditioned by personal and social conditions as being distinct from aesthetic feelings. I don’t see how feelings of gratitude, compassion, affection, sadness, etc. have anything to do with aesthetics. Aesthetic feelings can be conditioned by SofA’s that have nothing to do with personal/social relations. And, for me, what I feel when I see a beautiful landscape is not the same feeling as deep gratitude—nor does the latter seem like only a difference in degree of the former. They are different kinds of feelings, to my mind.

So I don’t know why I would assume the mere feeling of anger could not exist as a negative social  feeling in God. It’s just a negative feeling which occurs non-volitionally like disgust—and which has a unique quality and is conditioned by social SofA’s. Nothing about that, to my mind, has anything to do with love, per se.