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borg
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 324
| Posted 8/27/2003 10:01 AM (GMT -6) |   | Just curious what your people's opinions are on why love involves risk. I haven't read much on the topic, I've only been into theology for a year, but I do know that there are books out there, but I'm not looking for their answers. So if you could explain why true love involves risk, I would appreciate it.
Grace and Peace,
Borg
Phil 1:21
"So it is a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, than it would have been to have kept manfrom falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man." Edwards | | Back to Top | | |
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borg
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| Posted 8/27/2003 2:57 PM (GMT -6) | | Meph, I appreciate it. Though I still feel as though there is a problem with the love means one takes a risk. You're thought about the Trinity is mint and I'll have to use it sometime. But, my only problem with that is that God has an agape love for us. The way I was brought to think agape love as, is that it's unconditional love for us. Whether we love Him or not, He still loves us. Plus when you set it up in a frame like that, I get the impression that in some way we are saying that God is in need of our love. The very fact that God doesn't need our love, in my mind, resolves the issue that perhaps true love to God doesn't require that we love Him back, because God is in need of nothing, Acts 17:24,25. I don't think that our fallible, finite minds can grasp what this is, because we as human beings tend to love, only when love is returned. God doesn't depend on us for anything. If He in some way loved us in hope for us loving Him back, wouldn't that in a way make God at mercy to us?
Just some thoughts but i'd like to hear from more people.
grace and peace,
borg
rom 2:4
"So it is a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, than it would have been to have kept manfrom falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man." Edwards | | Back to Top | | |
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Empiress
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| Posted 8/27/2003 3:00 PM (GMT -6) | | Meph said: quote:
PS: But ask yourself the question. If God is three persons, and those three persons TRULY LOVE each other, does this mean that there was a potential for NOT RETURNING LOVE in the Trinity? If not, then how could it be "TRUE LOVE" according to the "Love involves risk" thought??
I suppose the argument would fall somewhere along the lines of the Trinity having its "own" rules that don't apply anywhere outside the context of the Trinity. That plus the whole "incomprehensibility of the Trinty" thing.
However..
If there is NO potential that God will NOT reciprocate OUR love, then is our loving God not "true love" because it involves no true risk?
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borg
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| Posted 8/27/2003 3:19 PM (GMT -6) | | e, let me get this straight. What you're saying is that if we love God and we know that He is going to love us for sure, as long as we with our "freewill" love Him, that's no risk on our part; so how is that true love? Does that sound like that is what you are saying. If it is, good question. I just don't get why, especially in the recent years, people have been pressing that real love requires risk. Is this a 21st century thought about love?
g n p
borg
gal 1:8,9
"So it is a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, than it would have been to have kept manfrom falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man." Edwards | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 8/27/2003 5:45 PM (GMT -6) | |
Borg:
quote:
Meph, I appreciate it. Though I still feel as though there is a problem with the love means one takes a risk. You're thought about the Trinity is mint and I'll have to use it sometime. But, my only problem with that is that God has an agape love for us. The way I was brought to think agape love as, is that it's unconditional love for us. Whether we love Him or not, He still loves us. Plus when you set it up in a frame like that, I get the impression that in some way we are saying that God is in need of our love. The very fact that God doesn't need our love, in my mind, resolves the issue that perhaps true love to God doesn't require that we love Him back, because God is in need of nothing, Acts 17:24,25. I don't think that our fallible, finite minds can grasp what this is, because we as human beings tend to love, only when love is returned. God doesn't depend on us for anything. If He in some way loved us in hope for us loving Him back, wouldn't that in a way make God at mercy to us?
Surely, unconditional love is unilateral, meaning that it doesn’t NEED to be loved back. But love STILL has a hope. And that HOPE is that love will be reciprocated and expanded. Love has a HOPE! This hope relates to the VULNERABILITY that occurs from love. Love involve making oneself vulnerable to another. To the extent that love is not reciprocated, the vulnerability is experienced negatively by the lover.
Saying what we are saying doesn’t mean that God NEEDS our love. But it’s clear that it IS a hope that God receives love from us! Remember. What we’re saying, if you take the idea, is that TRUE LOVE is risky because vulnerability to pain and rejection is a genuine possibility…because of the HOPE that love has.
See what I mean?
*******************************
Miss E:
quote:
If there is NO potential that God will NOT reciprocate OUR love, then is our loving God not "true love" because it involves no true risk?
EXCELLENT POINT. That’s why, if you ask me, this whole “love involves risk” thing, it’s problematic. Forget that. It’s TOTALLY INADEQUATE. Reason? Because we are dealing with an triune entity whose essential existence is love. A tri-being that could BY NATURE could NOT be anything else BUT LOVING.
Any loving relationship dealing with a being like that would NOT INVOLVE RISK going in at least one direction. But that messes up the whole thing.
There was absolutely NO risk in:
--the Father loving the Son
--the Father loving the Spirit
--The Son loving the Father
--the Son loving the Spirit
--The Spirit loving the Son
--The Spirit loving the Father
And…
As you have stated, there would be absolutely NO RISK for us loving God as God could NEVER refuse to love us.
Now, Doc tries to get out of this by saying…
“Well, the ‘love requires freedom/love involves risk/love must be chosen’ ideas ONLY HOLD for contingent beings. God is a NECESSARY being, so God’s off the hook.”
But that’s just a copout. We are dealing with a PRINCIPLE and if the PRINCIPLE doesn’t hold for all beings that can LOVE, then the principle’s no good. The line is NOT drawn at the contingent/necessary divide. It is drawn at WHO CAN LOVE.
Good stuff, Miss E. 
***************************
I’ll say it plain. The statement should be “Love MAY entail risk/Love MAY presuppose freedom” …NOT “Love MUST entail risk/Love MUST presuppose freedom” The old contingent vs necessary thing just doesn’t do it.
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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Iconoclast
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| Posted 8/27/2003 6:20 PM (GMT -6) | | It is not my understanding that love requires risk. My understanding is that love entails risk. It seems to me that love entailing risk could be a unidirectional phenomenon in that God has reduced the risk on His side of the equation to zero because He has already chosen. Now, this is only an ontological certainty of zero risk (we would abstractly argue) because we know that once God chooses He is not like a man and will not change His mind. However, it is clearly an epistemological risk for us humans because we just have a hard time really believing it.
Thus the risk from God to us is that we will turn Him down.
The risk from us to God is that we have to actually die and we don't REALLY know what is on the other side of that. When I say that we have to die, I don't mean physically. We must die to live. We must allow our self to die. And this is real risk from our point of view because we know that this WILL entail suffering. Now, we believe that it also results in Eternal Life, but we KNOW that it is to take a leap of faith - and this we experience as risk.
But even if we said it truly entailed zero risk I still don't see the problem. My understading is that the whole point of saying that love entails risk (from God to us) is used to explain why there is evil. There is evil because we often choose NOT to love God or each other and thus we cause evil.
Perhaps the issue is that we are entangling "love must be chosen" with "love entails risk". Love must be chosen. But because God has already chosen and we know His choice will not waver, ontologically, there is no risk of God NOT choosing to love us.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
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| Posted 8/28/2003 6:16 AM (GMT -6) | | I see no reason to conclude the God has no free will (that is, the ability to do good OR evil). In other words, God is not some "holy machine," that automatically acts virtuously. There would be neither praise nor blame that could be ascribed to the Trinity if His actions were not voluntary and the result of deliberation and choice on His part.
Indeed, His very personhood would be destroyed were He not a moral agent. God holds himself to the same standard as He does all his moral creatures; that is, "love one another, as I have loved you," and "be holy, for I am holy." As Abraham said, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The very fact that we find Moses interceding with God and using moral arguments to persuade God to change His mind and to NOT mete out judgment in Exod. 32 (as but one example among many in the Bible), is clear evidence that God is a moral agent (whose moral actions are by definition voluntary). How praiseworthy it is to know that He always chooses righteously, lovingly and unblameably.
That said, I also must conclude that God's character has been solidified, so to speak, since the beginning; i.e., He has never chosen other than benevolently. Further, as the Bible clearly depicts God as always doing right, choosing the good, and so forth, I see no reason to fear that all of the sudden His character will change. His lovingkindness endureth forever. When the Bible says "I am the Lord, I change not," it is referring to the enduring stability of his character (holy love). This is the same as the NT statement, "Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today, and forever."
Some of us discussed this a while back:
http://www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2264
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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One Love
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| Posted 8/28/2003 6:29 AM (GMT -6) | | WHHOOOOOWEEEE! 
John said:
quote:
I see no reason to conclude the God has no free will (that is, the ability to do good OR evil). In other words, God is not some "holy machine," that automatically acts virtuously. There would be neither praise nor blame that could be ascribed to the Trinity if His actions were not voluntary and the result of deliberation and choice on His part.
That said, I also must conclude that God's character has been solidified, so to speak, since before He created anything. Further, as the Bible clearly depicts God as always doing right, choosing the good, and so forth, I see no reason to fear that all of the sudden His character will change. His lovingkindness endureth forever. When the Bible says "I am the Lord, I change not," it is referring to the enduring stability of his character (holy love). This is the same as the NT statement, "Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today, and forever."
Two things:
1) Your statement implies that at some logical point in the absence of Creation, God was NOT solidified in a loving manner. The implications of this are immense! This means that it is actually possible for the persons of the NECESSARY, TRIUNE BEING to NOT LOVE each other. There was some logical point in the absence of Creation where the Father MAY HAVE NOT loved the Son, or the Son MAY HAVE NOT loved the Spirit…and so on and so forth. It must have been the case that the possibility was genuinely open that God might NOT reciprocate love to Godself! Does anyone see a BIG problem with this???
2) Let’s stick with your idea that, sometime BEFORE CREATION, God solidified himself in love…and is NOW solidified in love. He’s STILL a “holy machine” who doesn’t CHOOSE to act virtuously. ALL of your points are still valid! If God is TRULY SOLIDIFIED now, then all of your argumentation stands. God is NOT worthy of praise or blame because he's a solidified "holy machine." Uh, oh…
Heh.
Bringing some dilemma horns,
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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John Earp
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| Posted 8/28/2003 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi Meph,
quote:
Originally posted by MephEternal
Two things:
1) Your statement implies that at some logical point in the absence of Creation, God was NOT solidified in a loving manner. The implications of this are immense! This means that it is actually possible for the persons of the NECESSARY, TRIUNE BEING to NOT LOVE each other. There was some logical point in the absence of Creation where the Father MAY HAVE NOT loved the Son, or the Son MAY HAVE NOT loved the Spirit…and so on and so forth. It must have been the case that the possibility was genuinely open that God might NOT reciprocate love to Godself! Does anyone see a BIG problem with this???
I only have a second or two to respond right now (on my lunch break), but I think my position would be further clarified if you look at my comments in the thread I linked in my edited post above. In short, I do not believe God has ever chosen to not love (which would be sin), and that therefore He is truly worthy of all praise. I also do not see the Holy Trinity as ever not choosing rightly and lovingly. I am simply and only saying that they indeed have chosen righteousness over sin always, and shall forever continue to do so.
quote:
2) Let’s stick with your idea that, sometime BEFORE CREATION, God solidified himself in love…and is NOW solidified in love. He’s STILL a “holy machine” who doesn’t CHOOSE to act virtuously. ALL of your points are still valid! If God is TRULY SOLIDIFIED now, then all of your argumentation stands. God is NOT worthy of praise or blame because he's a solidified "holy machine." Uh, oh…
There never has been an instance in which God has not chosen holiness/righteousness/love, and there never will be. This is the uniform testimony of Scripture, that "I am the Lord, I change not." However, if his choices are not voluntary, then it seems to me we must concede that all descriptions of God repenting or responding to prayer, etc., are merely anthropomorphisms.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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GregBoyd
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| Posted 8/28/2003 7:03 AM (GMT -6) | | [Meph: Now, Doc tries to get out of this by saying…
"Well, the ‘love requires freedom/love involves risk/love must be chosen’ ideas ONLY HOLD for contingent beings. God is a NECESSARY being, so God’s off the hook."
But that’s just a copout. We are dealing with a PRINCIPLE and if the PRINCIPLE doesn’t hold for all beings that can LOVE, then the principle’s no good. The line is NOT drawn at the contingent/necessary divide. It is drawn at WHO CAN LOVE.
Doc: You assert but do not demonstrate that the line is drawn on who can love, not one whether the one loving is necessary or contingent. But might have thought that since a necessary being is necessary, they love necessarily. And since a contingent being is contingent, they love contingently. If you think that God loves contingently, do you also hold that he is good contingently, that he is wise contingently, that he is powerful contingently? Are you a MORMON? If not, if he hold that God’s nature is necessary and that love is part of God’s nature, then why do you think drawing the line between necessity and contingency is… how did you eloquently put it?… a "cop out"?
Meph: I’ll say it plain. The statement should be "Love MAY entail risk/Love MAY presuppose freedom" …NOT "Love MUST entail risk/Love MUST presuppose freedom" The old contingent vs necessary thing just doesn’t do it.
Doc: Tatian in the second century had the insight that there is a contradiction in supposing that a contingent being could be created with the NATURE of being perfectly loving and perfectly good. Such a supposition, he argued, makes moral responsibility unintelligible. I think he was right. The possibility of genuine love among contingent creatures entails (thank you Icon) risk. They must be capable of doing otherwise. If I put a mircochip in my wifes brain that controls every neuron without her knowing it, ensuring that she will always think, feel and act perfectly loving to me, SHE IS NOT LOVING ME. She is simply a complex puppet on my hand (hand = mircochip I programmed).
Icon. My understading is that the whole point of saying that love entails risk (from God to us) is used to explain why there is evil. There is evil because we often choose NOT to love God or each other and thus we cause evil.
Doc: That’s certain one of its chief benefits. If love can be "wired into" contingent beings, then God could have created a creation free of the risk of evil. Which would then raise the thorny problem of why he did not do so.
JE: I am simply and only saying that they (the Trinity) indeed have chosen righteousness over sin always, and shall forever continue to do so.
Doc: Did we – and they – just get lucky? Might our good fortunes change in the future? Are we wrong in praising God "just because he’s God"? Is it rather the case that we are praising God for his incredible ACHIEVEMENT, his perfect track record (so far) in choosing against sin? And what do we make of the inspired testimony that God CANNOT sin, CANNOT lie, and CANNOT deny himself?
Doc
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One Love
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| Posted 8/28/2003 7:32 AM (GMT -6) | | My logic is simple, Ross.
God loves UNCONDITIONALLY and he does so from his BEING, not from choice. God cannot, for whatever reason, choose NOT to be loving.
But we still believe that God's love is REAL and has MORAL content.
So, how can we say that love REQUIRES freedom not to love?
The principle "love requires freedom" doesn't work on all levels. To posit the whole "necessary vs contingent being" thing is just to say this:
If a contingent being is created such that it ONLY has the capacity to love, it's a robot and it's love has no moral consequence.
If a necessary being only has the capacity to love, it's NOT a robot and it's love has no moral consequence.
But press the question. WHY??? Just because one is created and another one isn't? That doesn't make sense.
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rossfadeinout
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| Posted 8/28/2003 8:47 AM (GMT -6) | | Mephi,
Like I said earlier, this a big topic. I agree with you Mephi that God loves from his very being and that his love is unconditional. God is LOVE. But I think that it is problematic to think that God could have created a human being whose essence was to love, a contingent being whose nature was love.
Here are some scattered thoughts on the issue. First, God is the creator, he is the standard of what is good, what is beautiful, he is in his very being LOVE. Also, (this has been discussed many times before) God is not necessitated to any action because he is Love. He can act in many ways, all of which are loving (the doctrine of the Trinity allows us to not see creation of the world as necessary for God to express his love) Now, God decided to CREATE beings who he could enter into a loving relationship with- humanity. As such these beings must be distinct from God, even though they are held in existence by Him. So these beings have no purpose, no life, no beauty apart from their relationship with God. But because they have been created as distinct from God, their choices cannot be loving in the same way that God's are. I mean, if God had created humans who were love in their essence, then I don't see how they could be distinct from God-- it would entail a type of pantheism.
So I don't think that Doc's distinction is arbitrary, I think that it is true. (I hope you can kind of understand my ramblings above, I know what I'm thinking but it's difficult to write it down in a way that captures my thoughts on the subject)
Lets keep it going!
Ross
"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid | | Back to Top | | |
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borg
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| Posted 8/28/2003 9:20 AM (GMT -6) | | This seems to be going somewhere now.
John: Just curious why you would say that choosing not to love is a sin? I would tend to agree with you, but I'm just curious. And in this same question, does God love Satan, who is the essence of all evil? Also your comment on how if God didn't choose voulantirly, could you explain how paryer, relenting, etc., get classified than as anthropomorphic?
Doc: I guess my big question to you would still encompass the idea that I yet fail to see why love must involve risk. If you could hook me up with some Scripture as to when God ever seemed at the mercy of mere man to recieve love, I would appreciate it. My thinking is simply that 1 John 4:9, 10 "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this IS LOVE, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation of our sins." As I asked earlier, where does our part of love come into this. The following verses tell us to love one another. I have a hard time saying that the true love between man and God involves risk. I believe that God fully knew what He was getting Himself into. The truth is, is that we even as Christians suck at loving God. Luther had a good quote to this one, "Love God, most days I hate God." I would say that we can't truly love God here on earth. We can profess it with our mouths, but as the Pharisees tripped, so do we in that our hearts so often are far from Him. The way we live our lives, the things we say, the way we correspond with people, the things we think, so often disprove the idea that we can in some way have a real love for God. Was there the risk in us not loving God back?- Not really, because God knew we would never return the infinite love that He deserves.
I also had another question for you. Reading through your books and different comments, you seem set on the idea that God forces us to love Him. But that is nowhere seen in Scripture, and I don't believe that any true Calvinist would ever say that God "forces" us to love Him. As you know, we would say that God reveals Himself to us in such a way that we basically have no other choice but to love Him. It's like choosing dog poop or your favorite food after three weeks of not eating. Which one will you choose? (Yes that analogy seems to fall apart quite quickly, just don't analyze it too much). If God took a risk in loving us, and He is only happy when we choose of our own freewill to love Him back, how is God not at our mercy?
grace and peace,
borg
prov 27:17
"So it is a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, than it would have been to have kept manfrom falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man." Edwards | | Back to Top | | |
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Iconoclast
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| Posted 8/28/2003 2:16 PM (GMT -6) | | borg
If God took a risk in loving us, and He is only happy when we choose of our own freewill to love Him back, how is God not at our mercy?
Iconoclast
Instead of framing this in terms of "only happy" which seems to presuppose a timeless quality how about framing it in terms of disappointment?
Then we could say that God took a risk in loving us in that by doing so He chose to accept the risk, which is nothing more than saying the possibility, of being disappointed in His love not being returned.
The question then becomes, is God disappointed with us when we choose not to love Him back? It seems to me that the answer to this is yes.
Luke 13:34
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!
Another aspect of the risk that love must be chosen entails for God is that His beloved children might be brutally tortured by ... His beloved children.
As a parent one of the most difficult things is when one of your children is brutalizing another one of your children.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
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| Posted 8/28/2003 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd
JE: I am simply and only saying that they (the Trinity) indeed have chosen righteousness over sin always, and shall forever continue to do so.
Doc: Did we – and they – just get lucky? Might our good fortunes change in the future? Are we wrong in praising God "just because he’s God"?
What does "luck" have to do with choice? They are mutually exclusive categories. God has CHOSEN (not luckily but deliberately) to act righteously and lovingly in all cases, and will continue to do so. Yes, we might rightly praise God for his natural attributes (omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence), but we could not really LOVE God unless he is PERSONAL. Had God not revealed His character to us, we would at best be able to FEAR Him, but we could not love him unless he had revealed his love (character) to us. "We love Him, because he first loved us."
And I confess I don't know what "personal" could possibly mean if it does not involve true freedom of choice.
quote:
Is it rather the case that we are praising God for his incredible ACHIEVEMENT, his perfect track record (so far) in choosing against sin?
With regard to the Son of God, I think it's a pretty mainstream point of view to praise Jesus Christ (and Him alone among humanity) for his meritorious work (achievement) on our behalf, in his Incarnation, Miracles, Life, Death, Burial, Resurrection, and Effusion of the Spirit of Promise upon all flesh. All through Scripture we see examples of people and angels praising God for his mighty and righteous and merciful ACTS towards mankind. And these generally have most to do with His character of love, though of course it is fitting to praise Him for his natural attributes as well.
quote:
And what do we make of the inspired testimony that God CANNOT sin, CANNOT lie, and CANNOT deny himself?
I understand these things to be in the category of MORAL impossibilities, not metaphysical ones. That is, we are stating something about God's CHARACTER, not His "nature" when we say God cannot lie, cannot sin, etc.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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John Earp
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| Posted 8/28/2003 3:33 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by borg
This seems to be going somewhere now.
John: Just curious why you would say that choosing not to love is a sin? I would tend to agree with you, but I'm just curious.
He that loves another fulfills the law. This is the consistent teaching of the New Testament, that LOVE is the summation of all the commandments of God. It is also the consistent NT witness that "sin is a transgression of the law." Therefore, to not love is to sin.
quote:
And in this same question, does God love Satan, who is the essence of all evil?
In the discussion we had a couple of weeks ago, it was my conclusion (and still is) that God HATES Satan, and that no, God definitely does not love Satan anymore, though he no doubt did at one point.
quote:
Also your comment on how if God didn't choose voulantirly, could you explain how paryer, relenting, etc., get classified than as anthropomorphic?
If God has no actual present-tense freedom of choice (as in the ability to respond to prayer, to repent as He did so many times in the Old Testament, etc.), then it seems to me to follow without any other possibility at all that God is not truly free at all. "Voluntary" means "freely chosen." And if God is not truly free, then it necessarily follows that the scriptural depictions of Him as in various ways responsive to humans can be nothing other than anthropomorphisms.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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