God is Love

The Foundational Doctrine of Christianity

A recent sketch of mine. 03.27.26

Preface

This talk is written with the intent of being delivered in a Church setting. Whether I will ever be permitted to deliver this lecture, or another above me to deliver it, is doubtful. There seems to be no room in popular culture or popular religion for these ideas, as they cut against both the reactionary and do-nothing thinking so prevalent in American Orthodox circles. The recent experience of the Church with the “orthobros” has led to a skepticism of laity teaching or having any theological voice within the Church--a doubling down on the hierarchical structure of the Church in order to combat extremism. And since the vast majority of American Orthodox priests with any following or influence seem to have been shaped by a narrow set of influences from seminary, I am not sure if these aspects of the tradition will ever emerge as a force in American Orthodoxy.

Introduction

I come to you today to teach something both infinite and simple, a doctrine able to be stated in a single sentence, and yet its meaning unraveled without end.

“God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

This is not hyperbole, nor is it mere analogy, but a robust doctrine containing the most foundational truths of Christian faith. It neatly summarizes and encapsulates all of Christian metaphysics, ethics and eschatology. It is an article of faith more fundamental and authoritative than all the ecumenical councils, for each of the councils appeal to the inner content of this statement in order to reach their conclusion.

So what does this mean?

It will forever be beyond any of us here to comprehend the fact that God is Love fully. And in a short lecture I can only hope to sketch for you, very roughly, the overall vision or form of its meaning. (Perhaps we can meet further to go deeper.) Let us begin by discussing its meaning as triune: as metaphysical, ethical and eschatological, by which I mean that the identification of God with Love is intended to shape the basic contours of our outlook on fundamental reality, the nature of normativity, and the proper ends/goals and hopes for creation. As Christ embodies, or incarnates, each of these three aspects, and displays them fully to us, I will begin each section with words of Christ and His apostles as revealing its meaning.

1. Metaphysics

Consider Christ’s words:

“I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5)

This teaching is taken very commonly to merely describe a functional union of Christ with man. We think of ourselves as “one” with Christ in that we love Him, are emotionally attached to Him, derive our core principles and goals from Him, and, hopefully, organize our lives around and towards Him. But this is clearly not all that is meant. A grape vine and its branches are not two distinct organisms, two individuals relating to each other merely through accidental and severable connections and activities. Rather, the branches grow from and take their being from the vine, the thick, meaty origin of all the finer growths. The branches are distinct offshoots of the vine, able to grow, wilt and be pruned off without harming the vine, but they are not fully or even truly distinct organisms on their own.

I have just summarized for you the basic understanding of existence universal to all the great theologians and fathers of the Church, and the scriptures themselves.

All of reality is a participation in Being, Existence, God. God is, and is what it is to “is,” to “be.” All supposedly individual beings are a manifestation of Being, of His Being. All of creation is a donation of God’s own inner activity (also called an energy)--of God Himself. There is nothing outside God, “in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

The Church does not begin its inquiry by assuming that there are many distinct, atomized individual beings who have external relations to some divinity “out there” beyond them. Rather, the Church begins, after receiving Christ’s revelation, from the realization that all things are One in God, that individuality emerges from a singular One that binds all together. The mystery Christ places before us is not how individuals can be unified with God without losing their individuality, or how the Three Persons of the Trinity can be truly Three individuals while still remaining One. Rather, the mystery is reversed: how can One God be many? How can Unity beget plurality? How can Being Itself produce infinitely many individual beings? What would it even mean to be an individual, of all individuals subsist in Oneness?

This is the great mystery the Fathers wrestle with, and which continues today in the work of many great philosophers and theologians in the Church.

Being Itself, self-subsisting, without any need of creation, freely gives Itself to creation for no reason other than that it is good to do so. But even this is misleading, for it indicates that there is some standard of “good” outside of Being Itself, which is non-sense, since Being Itself encompasses all things and is prior to all things, including whatever we might call “the good.” And so it must be that Being Itself, God, gives Himself to creation simply because that is what He is--He is the act of donating Himself, of unified relationality, of free giving. What is this, but the greatest expression of Love?

Thus, at the foundation of all reality, there is God, and an act of absolutely unselfish, disinterested love, a generous outpouring of care that all are not only caused by but constituted by. That is crucial: God is not merely CAUSE but SOURCE; as the cappadocian fathers say, an infinite ocean of Being that all beings constantly swim in.

All things are within God, and partake of God, and draw their existence from God, without exhausting or being identical to God. Whatever individual beings exist are individuals only because they draw being from a common source. And all of these are thereby connected with one another, their individuality and self-interest coming into being only as a result of a deeper, universal and irrevocable unity. Again, all individual self interest and self love is posterior to and arises from communal interest, unity, love. Hence we see the Fathers speak of creation as a single cosmic organism with God or Christ as its “soul.” To look out at the world, or in at yourself, is to apprehend an aspect of God. That is why Augustine and many fathers speak of finding God in our innermost depths.

Further, the traditional Christian view is that whatever “abstract” ideas exist, like “goodness,” “beauty,” or “truth,” are grounded in and one with God. Goodness, beauty, truth are all fundamentally one, with Being, and thus with Love Itself. And thus whatever exists must, to some degree and in some way, have goodness, beauty and truth just in virtue of being a manifestation of Being. And whatever exists must be loved by God, for the very act of existence is an act of God’s love. Love is what it is to be, to be something at all is to be an act of love and to be loved.

2. Ethics and Normative Thought

Now we are in a position to understand what Christ means in the following teaching:

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:40-45)

Obviously, all that has already been said directly implies what Christ has just told us: Christ, Himself God, is within each being, and in particular human beings. How we relate to others and ourselves is quite literally how we relate to God. To mistreat another--human or non-human--is to abuse and defile God. To shower another with love and mercy is to love God. Again, this is not merely a symbol, a nice way of thinking about abstract rules, but a genuine reality that we encounter daily. And so Christ says to us:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

and

“And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying him: Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.” (Matt. 22:35-40)

Here Christ tells us that the foundational source and ultimate goal of all revealed religion and divine law is love. Love for whom? God and neighbor. Who is God? He who is within all creation. And who is my neighbor? Perhaps only the man next door, and so I must love him, but who else? If God is within all, and is Himself love and loveability, then I must love all. And so my neighbor is not only the man next door, but all of creation. Thus there is no distinction between love of God and neighbor--they are one and the same act, the former subsuming the latter.

Christian metaphysics thus bears with it profound ethical implications, though the term “ethics” is, in common language, far too narrow. Our thinking about ethics, about what the pursuit of ethics and an ethical life even is, needs to change to reflect the Christian mindset. Whereas “ethics” and “morality” are commonly taken to refer to rules and principles governing human behavior, the Christian sees ethics in a new light. Ethics, or the “moral law,” is simply the attempt to understand how to love God and His creation. And given that we are part of this creation as a cell in a greater organism, the Christian must see ethics as a working out of how we, as individuals and as a species, relate to the cosmic organism in a functional unity of love.

Let us push farther into the obscure. In common language, we speak of moral properties like “good” “evil” “value” “right” “wrong” “duties” etc. We also have other seemingly normative concepts, like “beauty,” “happiness” or “truth.” The Christian, if she continues to use these terms, must always bear in mind that each of these normative realities stem from God Himself, a single source, and are all thus intertwined with one another. There is, thus, no beauty without goodness, no truth without beauty, no right living without beautiful living. All ethical concepts, rules, laws, principles must then be founded upon and be one with LOVE. This is not to reduce ethics away into an emotion, but rather each of these concepts is a way of wrapping our minds around a single underlying reality, Goodness Itself, God, who at other times we may conceive of as Beauty Itself, Truth Itself, or Existence Itself. To honor and live in relation and participation with that One in which all these realities dwell is the Christian goal and basis of the Christian ethical life.

And hence Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.” (1 Cor. 13) For to have love is to have God, and no one can know God without love.

3. Eschatology

If you’ve understood up to this point, then you should be able to infer what I’m about to say regarding eschatology. As Maximus the Confessor makes clear, eschatology is not merely about the end of the world of next age, but the goals, the telos or purpose creation is designed for and is striving towards. As we have said, the reason for creation was love; the regulative principle of human ethics and life is love; the end of all divine law is love; and so whatever future hope we have, whatever end the world is moving towards, must also be love. Whatever that future state is, whatever end the world will come to, whatever the new age will be like, it must be a state of love. Now we find ourselves in an age where we must strive towards the consummation of that love.

Thus Christ, quoting Isaiah, promises to gather up all people to Himself (Matt. 25:31-33) and laments that Jerusalem will not come under His motherly embrace (Matt. 23:37). And St. Paul says that “when all things are subjected to Christ, He shall be All in All.” (1 Corinthians 15:28) The Fathers dwell on this passage very often, seeing in it a neat encapsulation of both the beginning and end of all things, a teleological circle of being, the entire history of creation summarized. In short, the end of all creation is the same as its beginning: God, Love Itself, the union of all under and in God, and with one another. The ultimate hope of the Christian is for a new phase of creation where all are united in love with one another in God, where God will occupy our minds fully, and thereby, since God contains all creatures, all creatures will occupy our minds fully. It will be a time where the love of God will directly translate into the love of creature, and vice versa, in an unbreakable unity. It will be a time where all individuals cease to relate to each other only as individuals, but now have their individual identity subsumed, without destruction, into Oneness. This is the Kingdom of God.

Now, the Church is meant not to be a single institution, nor a rigid hierarchy, nor a set of doctrines or councils, but as a new creation, a new organism, a living being here and now that mirrors and anticipates that mode of existence we are looking forward to. The Church quite literally is the Kingdom of God here on earth. Wherever that Kingdom is realized, wherever love fully reigns, that is the Church. This is not to deny that the Church is institutional, nor that the Church is ritualistic, or bodily. Rather, a mere collection of individuals become the Church when they realize and participate in God’s way of life together. (The Orthodox Church teaches that a eucharistic communion, organized around a bishop, realizes this. (See Zizoulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church.) Christ is present when two or more gather not as some sort of magical summoning ritual, but because Christ is manifested when two people truly love one another and unite to strive to realize His mode of loving being (Yannaras, Against Religion). Christ is present in the eucharist not because He mechanically works through matter to grant us some quantity of magical grace, but because partaking of the eucharist in loving communion is a real manifestation of WHO CHRIST IS and enters us into a state of grace, a certain relationship with both God and creation. Thus, we Christians are called to be now what we hope the world will become in the future. And that is LOVE. (Hence Dostoyevsky’s Fr. Zosima’s saying that “all men will be as we are now.” The Brothers Karamazov.)

4. Applications

We live in very dark times, an age where love has been distorted and stifled, where the most we can hope for is to be left alone by others so we can feel our individualistic, material pleasures. Love and communion are secondary to survival and subsistence. We do not understand that love is capable of being our subsistence.

Are those sitting here truly Christians? Do we have love for God, for man, for nature, for ourselves? Do we come together in communion, genuine community, or do we merely participate individually in the same rituals? Do you depend on me and I on you for my being? Are we, as God gave to us, giving ourselves to others, materially, mentally, physically? Are we seeking out the annihilation of all war and violence, or promoting it? Do we think of ourselves as individual dots, or do we see ourselves as segments on an undivided line of being? Do we accuse ourselves and others of sin in the sense of breaking an arbitrary rule, or as a failure to love the self and all others?

Look at what we have done for your answer. I am no true Christian, though I would like to be. Let us all be One.

O Lord, open thou my lips;

And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

16 For thou delightest not in sacrifice; [d]else would I give it:

Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion:

Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

19 Then wilt thou delight in the sacrifices of righteousness,

In burnt-offering and whole burnt-offering:

Then will they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

-Psalm 51