'God is unconditional love'

[Catholic]

This doesn't seem correct to me - I heard this said recently - but then perhaps I am missing something. Can you help clarify why this statement is correct or incorrect - or even to properly define it? I can understand it when Saint Paul states, "God is Love," but what exactly is meant by "God is Unconditional Love" ? It somehow doesn't make sense to me, except in that God is always ready to receive one's repentance and renew one - but that's not unconditional, then. Any thoughts? (I was going to leave this message board, but decided to 'stick around' at least for a little while).

[Jurretta J. Heckscher]

Dear Catholic friend:

According to Orthodox teaching, God is indeed unconditional love. What changes is our condition, which depends on our choices--and, therefore, our capacity to recognize, receive, bear, respond to, and grow in His love.

God is changeless, and loves all absolutely, without limits or conditions. We, however, are free to reject that love, to turn from it, and to turn ourselves into something other than His likeness. When we do, we experience His love as something alien, for so it is. And if the Last Judgment finds us having chosen such a condition of alienation, we will permanently experience His love as alien to us, as pain. That is Hell.

But if we repent, if we change, if we turn again--then we begin again to be able to receive His love more completely, to open ourselves to it and to allow it to penetrate our inmost being and to transform us into His likeness so that we may enter into communion with Him, which is eternal joy.

Some of the Fathers have helpfully invoked the image of the sun to explain this truth. (I apologize for writing this from my office so that I do not have the precise citations ready to hand.) God's love, they teach us, is like the sun, shining on all alike, even on the blind. We may be among the blind and unable to see His love. Let us therefore use our time on this earth to open our eyes, to repent, so that we may be able to open ourselves to His unconditional love for all eternity.

Yours in Christ,

--Jurretta

[Richard Leigh]

Dear Elizabeth,

FWIW, Juretta presented what is also a Lutheran take on this (don't worry folks, that isn't supposed to make you "guilty by association", I would hope it points US out as "innocent by our association :-). Namely, that it isn't that God's love is not unconditional, it's that reciprocation, or returning that love is our own "condition" for receiving it (i.e., His unconditional Love).

My esteemed late professor taught by asking, "If a wife tells her husband she loves him, and he doesn't beleive her, is he loved by her?"

Richard

[Johanna]

How does a person who finds himself for whatever reason doubting God’s love for him, come to that place of repentance and in turn become enabled to receive His love more completely? Does one repent of his unbelief and ask for God’s help? This is an area of personal struggle for me. My head knowledge tells me that God does love me unconditionally, but my heart struggles to accept this truth. Somehow my lack of heartfelt belief and acceptance of God’s unconditional love for me personally keeps me alienated from experiencing His love. Just like the husband who does not believe his wife loves him. His unbelief doesn’t mean that his wife actually does not love him; it just prevents him from experiencing that love and in turn prevents him from loving her back.

Johanna

[Rebecca]

"My son, says Scripture, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for trial, set you heart straight, and patiently endure (Eccles. 2:1-2). And elsewhere it is said: Accept everything that comes as good, knowing that nothing occurs without God willing it. Thus the soul that wishes to do God's will must strive above all to acquire patient endurance and hope. For one of the tricks of the devil is to make us listless at times of affliction, so that we give up our hope in the Lord.* God never allows a soul that hopes in Him to be so oppressed by trials that it is put to utter confusion.* As St. Paul writes: God is to be trusted not to let us be tried beyond our strength, but with the trial He will provide a way out, so that we are able to bear it (I Cor. 10:13).* The devil harasses the soul not as much as he wants but as much as God allows him to.* Men know what burden may be placed on a mule, what on a donkey, and what on a camel, and load each beast accordingly; and the potter knows how long he must leave the pots in the fire, so that they are not cracked by staying in it too long or rendered useless by being taken out of it before they are properly fired. If human understanding extends this far, must not God be much more aware, infinitely more aware, of the degree of trial it is right to impose on each soul, so that it become tried and true, fit for the kingdom of heaven? "

- St. Macarius the Great of Egypt (+390)

[Catholic]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies; what a great quote that is, Rebecca.

[Johanna]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

God’s unconditional love is greater than our circumstances and is not defined by them. His love for each of us remains constant regardless of our acceptance of it or rejection. My vision has been so clouded lately and I have allowed doubt to enter in. But even in my doubt, God’s unconditional love has never ceased to exist for me. It has drawn me to a place of repentance and as I prostrate myself before the icon of the crucifixion of Christ, I am humbled. For this is the ultimate expression of God’s love for us. He bore the sin of the whole world, every sin I have committed or will commit, He took upon Himself. Every sin ever committed against me, He bore. He willingly took upon himself the sin of the whole world to make salvation available to all mankind. This is the ultimate expression of His unconditional love for us. How could I have let doubt enter in? Thank God for his mercy. Forgive me for my lack of faith and the next time I am tempted to doubt God’s great and incomprehensible love for me, I think I need to spend a good amount of time before the icon of the crucifixion. For it is at the foot of the cross that all doubt fades away. Please pray for me and forgive me.

the sinner,

Johanna

[Waldemar]

Do not call God just, for His justice is not manifest in the things concerning you. And if David calls Him just and upright (cf. Ps. 24:8, 144:17), His Son revealed to us that He is good and kind. 'He is good', He says, 'to the evil and to the impious' (cf. Luke 6:35). How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers? 'Friend, I do thee no wrong: I will give unto this last even as unto thee. Is thine eye evil because I am good?' (Matt. 20:12-15). How can a man call God just when he comes across the passage on the prodigal son who wasted his wealth with riotous living, how for the compunction alone which he showed, the father ran and fell upon his neck and gave him authority over all his wealth? (Luke 15:11). None other but His very Son said these things concerning Him, lest we doubt it; and thus He bare witness concerning Him. Where, then, is God's justice, for whilst we are sinners Christ died for us! (cf. Rom. 5:8).

St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 60.

[Jonathan Tallon]

Here is a comment on God's love from John Chrysostom. It does not directly say God's love is unconditional, but read for yourself...

"Hence this only revelation of God is enough for those who are well disposed, even before the proof through his deeds, not only to demonstrate his providence, but also his excessive love towards us. For not simply does he care for us, but also loves us and intensely loves; an irresistible love; a love which is without passions, yet love which is the warmest, most vehement, genuine, indestructible and unable to be extinguished."

From On the Providence of God, 6.1 (Sources Chretiennes 79).

Nothing can stop God loving us - including ourselves.

Yours in Christ,

Jonathan

[Cliff Shannon]

Catholic, the answers already given are probably sufficent on this subject, but I would like to share an article which helped me confront the incorrect perception I had of God inherited by my protestant upbringing. The following excerpts are from "The River of Fire," by Alexander Kalomiros. It can be found in full online at the web address listed below. I would also like to know how anyone else on this thread feels about this article. I found it helpful.

"But why do men hate God? They hate Him not only because their deeds are dark while God is light, but also because they consider Him as a menace, as an imminent and eternal danger, as an adversary in court, as an opponent at law, as a public prosecutor and an eternal persecutor. To them, God is no more the almighty physician who came to save them from illness and death, but rather a cruel judge and a vengeful inquisitor.

You see, the devil managed to make men believe that God does not really love us, that He really only loves Himself, and that He accepts us only if we behave as He wants us to behave; that He hates us if we do not behave as He ordered us to behave, and is offended by our insubordination to such a degree that we must pay for it by eternal tortures, created by Him for that purpose.

Who can love a torturer? Even those who try hard to save themselves from the wrath of God cannot really love Him. They love only themselves, trying to escape God’s vengeance and to achieve eternal bliss by managing to please this fearsome and extremely dangerous Creator."

"Origen, and all rationalists who are like him, was not able to understand that the acceptance or the rejection of God’s grace depends entirely on the rational creatures; that God, like the sun, never stops shining on good or wicked alike; that rational creatures are, however, entirely free to accept or reject this grace and love; and that God in His genuine love does not force His creatures to accept Him, but respects absolutely their free decision."

www.tuirgin.com/Orthodoxy/river_of_fire.html#endnote_32 (http://www.tuirgin.com/Orthodoxy/river_of_fire.html#endnote_32)

basil

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Basil,

Thank you for your recent post, partially quoting an article on the love of God vis-a-vis rational human acceptance. I've not gone to read the entire text, but I must admit to a certain curiosity as to the author's assertion that 'Origen, and all the rationalists who are like him' reject the notion of rational acceptance of God's love. Perhaps this was made in reference to Origen's speculations on the apokatastasis or universal salvation; but in any case it seems a bit of an overstatement.

It is the common witness of many, many a father of the Church that God's love is the sole motivation behind all His actions - including those which come across in our perceptions as 'heavy' or of a punishing sort.

INXC, Matthew