Week 2: The Rule of Love

Recommended Reading:
Chapter 2 (17 pages)

Key Quotes:
Chapter 2
"One group of theologians will talk about God's love as universal, undiscriminating, and unconditional, but at the core we find man-centeredness. Another group will talk about God's love as God centered, and that's where the offense lies." (43)

On Defining and Displaying God's Love: "A God-centered view of love combines both desire and gift. We most desire God, and we give God…A God-centered love draws lines between whoever loves God and whoever does not. " (47, 48)

On Agape-only love: "Here's the problem: repentance, holiness, and right belief are eventually cast to the side with agape-only love. Such love softens or even dissolves doctrinal, ethical, and church boundaries…Think about it: what can I do if I want to call myself a Christian but also accommodate the culture's moral drift, particularly in matters of sexuality and family? Easy: I define God's love as a pure gift." (54)

Engagement Questions:
Chapter 2
  1. How can we discern if we have a love that is centered on other things? What can be done to re-center our love?
  2. This chapter makes a distinction between romantic love and unconditional love (best seen in Christ). Has Dr. Leeman's presentation of the two caused you to reevaluate your understanding of God's love?
Definitions
eros, mostly defined as a passionate love and in some cases a sexual love
agape, typically defined as self-sacrificing love, but it does not always mean this

Summary:
Chapter 2 
Generally each week's reading will be around 40 pages, but this week I wanted us to just read a single chapter and there are couple of reasons for this. The first being that chapters 3 and 4 really ought to be read together, but that would make for a longer reading. More importantly, the second reason is that, for many of us, this chapter will be a complete paradigm shift in our thinking, understanding, and approach to God's love. So, as you read this chapter you may want to take a little time between sections (or paragraphs as I did) to really reflect on what you read and consider where you stand and what sort of implications that brings to your own life. In this chapter, you will travel very quickly through church history and consider some of the major arguments that have been made about God's love from some of the most influential theologians. In the first chapter, we mainly focused on who is at the center of God's love, us or Him. However, in this chapter we consider who it is that God loves most. Similar to chapter one, we must be very careful in how we answer the question because it is not simply an "A" or "B" answer; but carries a lot of nuances with in it. In an ultimate sense, it really is a battle of God being who God loves most or humanity being who God loves most. And central to this argument is how we define God's love and that is where this chapter starts. 

Early on, the church taught and believed that God loved Himself with a love that is a combination of eros and agape love. To reconcile that statement, we should picture God's love like this: "God the Father bears a mighty affection (eros) for the Son through the Spirit, and gives himself to the Son entirely (agape)" (45). God has a similar affection for the Spirit in a different sense in that the Spirit enables us to passionately love Him. Very often we think of love as springing forth from ourselves, when in reality it is enabled within us, but proceeding from God. This is a very important distinction to make because in one picture God's love is like a "boomerang", coming from Him and returning to Him as it originates through Him because it is Him. An opposing position would say that God's love is directed towards us and for us and we then return a love to Him from within ourselves, we become the center of His love and also the giver of love. One is Biblical, the other is not. 

So, what is the big deal in whether or not God's love is towards Himself or towards us and we return it to him? Well, it all comes down to who gets the glory? If we are the initiator and giver of love, apart from Him, then we ought to receive the glory. Likewise, if we are the center or object of God's love, then we will have greater difficulty explaining why it is that God would not express an agape, unconditional sort of love, towards all of humanity which would result in everyone's salvation. Yes, you read that right. An agape-only position will, in a consistent sense, lead us to make repentance and faith unnecessary and church discipline becomes just downright mean. Because we are the object of God's love and He could, and would, never cast us away. Worse, it makes God an idolater since loving us becomes His chief end. Like I said before, this chapter gives us a lot to think about and so I encourage you to read and reread, if necessary, this chapter to better grasp what two "universes" are being compared and which one you may fall in. It is not just a matter of semantics, but of significance. 

Grace and Peace,
Alex Galvez

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