Does God love all men equally?

[Raymond Maxwell Spiotta]

With a view to relevant Scripture & Holy Tradition, and with a care for terminological exactitude as concerns anthropology & theology, can we say that God loves all men equally?

[Bratislav]

With a view to relevant Scripture & Holy Tradition, and with a care for terminological exactitude as concerns anthropology & theology, yes, God loves all men equally.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

With a view to relevant Scripture & Holy Tradition, and with a care for terminological exactitude as concerns anthropology & theology, yes, God loves all men equally.

I don't know if this is so since God always directs His love personally. So love for us as Orthodox Christians is always qualified as a personal relation between God and us.

To say it another way, if He loved me as Christ I'm sure I'd just burn up. If He loved me as St Seraphim or Joseph the Hesychast I also think I'd be destroyed in no time flat.

So He loves us according to our ability to love Him.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

I think God does love all people equally. But He does not bestow grace in equal measure. And He may withdraw grace altogether.

I have absolutely no authority for that!

There is an old Jewish tradition that when the Children of Israel passed safely through the parted Red Sea, and the Egyptians were then drowned, the angels saw that God was weeping. 'Your Children are saved - why do You weep?' And God replied, 'but My Children are drowning!'

In Christ,

Andreas.

[John Charmley]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I do not know what 'equally' has to do with God, it sounds like a human concept, and He is so far beyond such things. But what we know is all we need to know, and that is what St. Paul tells us in Romans 5:8

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

St. John tells us in 1 John 4:8-11:


7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 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.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

As St. John reminds us, the real question is not whether God loves us - of that we have the proof of the Incarnation and the Cross - the question is whether we love Him. In the words of 1 John 4:19-21:


19 We love Him because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also

That He should have sent His only-begotten Son to save such as we are tells of a love that goes beyond any human comprehension, and 'equally' will not, for me, work with that Ineffable will.

How do we manifest our love for Him - certainly not by hating our brother (or sister).

In Christ,

John

[Mourad Mankarios]

The sun shines equally on the good and the bad but only those who step out into the sun are able to experience the warmth of the sun...

[Owen Jones]

The only way to deal with questions like this is by analogy. Not that there is no experience of God's love that we can point to in our own lives, but to talk about it, we have to have an analogy. A couple of points. When we experience something, we universalize that experience. Sometimes the conclusion is valid. sometimes not. But since none of us is unique, that is the way in which we can say valid things even though there is no way to demonstrate it as being true. So Aristotle can say, "all men by their nature desire to know." He is universalizing from his own personal experience. There is no way to demonstrate that it is true. But if we are rational, we know it is true. If we are irrational (defiant) by temperament or training or whatever, we are going to complain that "you have no way of knowing that!"

So, does God love everyone equally? The question arises because it is possible to ask it, and it is possible to ask because many of us know the experience of having been unworthy of some reward that we attribute to God. Some feeling of Grace, whether it be forgiveness, a chance to start over, and so on. And so we ask the question, does He treat everyone like that? And it moves us to inquire as to the nature of this God who loves me even though unworthy.
It is really in the asking of the question that the Grace lies, and the truth lies, not in some demonstrable answer. The best we can do is tell a story, by way of analogy. A good father loves his children equally and does not play favorites, even though one is in prison having robbed a store under the influence....In fact, the other children will actually resent the time he spends trying to help his wayward child because they believe he loves the unjust sibling more than them, even though they behave!

[Father David Moser]

I do not know what 'equally' has to do with God, it sounds like a human concept, and He is so far beyond such things.

I think that perhaps rather than to say that God loves all men equally, a better word choice might be to say that God loves each person completely. There is no limit to God's love other than what we are able to contain. He fills each of us with as much of His love as we can hold and when there is more room, He fills that too.

Fr David Moser

[Raymond Maxwell Spiotta]

Does anyone know of any sayings of our Holy Fathers which might shed light on this question? I remember reading Fr. Michael Pomozansky's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology a little while ago where he made the assertion in question. I can't recall if he marshalled the Fathers in support of his saying it (though I suspect he did not), and I was only borrowing the book and have since returned it. Perhaps if someone wanted to do my homework for me....

[John Charmley]

Dear Raymond,

That's a lot of homework!

In his Tractatae 110 on John 17:21-23, St. Augustine writes:

For He who loveth the Only-begotten, certainly loveth also His
members which, through His instrumentality, He engrafted into Him by
adoption. But we are not on this account equal to the only-begotten Son,
by whom we have been created and re-created, that it is said, “Thou hast
loved them as [Thou hast] also [loved] me.” For one does not always
intimate equality when he says, As this, so also that other; but sometimes
only, Because this is, so also is the other; or, That the one is, in order that
the other may be also. For who could say that the apostles were sent by
Christ into the world in exactly the same way as He Himself was sent by
the Father? For, to say nothing of other differences, which it would be
tedious to mention, they at all events were sent when they were already
men; but He was sent in order that He might be man; and yet He said
above, “As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them
into the world ;” as if He had said, Because Thou hast sent me, I have sent
them. So also in the passage before us He says, “Thou hast loved them, as
Thou hast loved me ;” which is nothing else than this, Thou hast loved
them because that Thou hast also loved me. For He could not but love the
members of the Son, seeing that He loveth the Son Himself; nor is there
any other reason for loving His members, save that He loveth Himself. But
He loveth the Son as regards His Godhead, because He begat Him equal
with Himself; He loveth Him also in regard to what He is as man, because
the Only-begotten Word was Himself made flesh, and on account of the
Word is the flesh of the Word dear to Him; but He loveth us, inasmuch as
we are the members of Him whom He loveth; and in order that we might
be so, He loved us on this account before we existed.
6. The love, therefore, wherewith God loveth, is incomprehensible and
immutable

Origen in Contra Celsus Book 2, Chapter 71, writes:

And yet, if the name and the thing be properly examined, it will be found
an impossibility that man should be hated by God, seeing God loves all
existing things, and “hateth nothing of what He has made,” for He created
nothing in a spirit of hatred. And if certain expressions in the prophets
convey such an impression, they are to be interpreted in accordance with
the general principle by which Scripture employs such language with
regard to God as if He were subject to human affections.

This last is, as so often with Origen, particularly thought-provoking.

Hope these help a little.

In Christ,

John

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Does anyone know of any sayings of our Holy Fathers which might shed light on this question? I remember reading Fr. Michael Pomozansky's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology a little while ago where he made the assertion in question. I can't recall if he marshalled the Fathers in support of his saying it (though I suspect he did not), and I was only borrowing the book and have since returned it. Perhaps if someone wanted to do my homework for me....

I took a fast look through Fr Michael's Dogmatic Theology but wasn't able to find exactly what you refer to.

I did find a number of references though that are basically making Fr David's point above about the completeness of God's love.

Again I only had time to look through Fr Michael's book very briefly but he seems to make a similar point over and over.


The Providence of God embraces everything in the world. God provides not only for the great and immense, but also for the small and apparently insignificant; not only over the heaven and the earth, angels and men, but also over the smallest creatures, birds, grasses, flowers, trees. The whole Sacred Scripture is filled with the thought of God's unwearying providential activity.


God directs the steps of the man who does not know his own way. He makes poor and enriches, He brings down and raises up, He causes wounds and Himself binds them up, He strikes an heals. Loving the righteous, He spares sinners also: Not unto the end will He be angered, neither unto eternity will He be wroth (Ps. 102:8). He is long-suffering, in order by means of His goodness to lead sinners to repentance. This all embracing, ceaseless activity of God in the world is expressed in the Symbol of Faith when we call God "Almighty".


In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Raymond Maxwell Spiotta]

I found it!

In celebration of S. Maximos' feast today I was reading Louth's book "St. Maximus the Confessor", and came across this:


'But I say to you,' says the Lord, 'love your enemies...do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you' (Matt. 5:44). Why did he command this? To free you from hatred, grief, anger and resentment, and to make you worthy of the supreme gift of love. And you cannot attain such love if you do not imitate God and love all men equally. For God loves all men equally and wishes them 'to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (I Tim. 2:4)

[John Charmley]

Dear Raymond,

Excellent, it is good to have that itch scratched, so to speak.

We are God's children, and we are made in His image. In our own relationship with our own children we are given, perhaps, a type of God's love for us. Those of us who have the blessing to be fathers know that we love them all equally, and if we, who are sinners, do that, how much more does our Heavenly Father?

All we need to do to feel that love is to open ourselves to it; but whether we do or not, it is there for us. It is well that we heed the words of the Apostle in 1 John 4:11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

In Christ,

John

[M.C. Steenberg]

Regarding two comments earlier in this thread:


I found it!

In celebration of S. Maximos' feast today I was reading Louth's book "St. Maximus the Confessor", and came across this:


'But I say to you,' says the Lord, 'love your enemies...do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you' (Matt. 5:44). Why did he command this? To free you from hatred, grief, anger and resentment, and to make you worthy of the supreme gift of love. And you cannot attain such love if you do not imitate God and love all men equally. For God loves all men equally and wishes them 'to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (I Tim. 2:4)


Excellent, it is good to have that itch scratched, so to speak.

We are God's children, and we are made in His image. In our own relationship with our own children we are given, perhaps, a type of God's love for us. Those of us who have the blessing to be fathers know that we love them all equally, and if we, who are sinners, do that, how much more does our Heavenly Father?

All we need to do to feel that love is to open ourselves to it; but whether we do or not, it is there for us. It is well that we heed the words of the Apostle in 1 John 4:11

I think there is something of importance in being aware of the terminology. I.e., in just what one means by 'equally'. If it means that God's outpouring of love could not be more than it is for each person, then yes -- but this is probably better conveyed in English by Fr David's (and others') 'completely'. The English 'equally' is a little too close to the idea of a rubber stamp, one-and-the-same in every instance; and love can never be this way. If God's love is identical, in this manner, with reference to each person in creation, then it is 'equal' only inasmuch as it is not love at all. Love is intrinsically personal, and if each person is unique, so is the love between God and that person. Not more or less, but unrepeatable.

INXC, Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

Matthew, thank you for that elucidation - very helpful. I was struck, as we took our leave of Lydia's spiritual father at the Lavra, by the way he said, 'you cannot imagine how much God loves you!' It stays in my mind.

[Kusanagi]

With a view to relevant Scripture & Holy Tradition, and with a care for terminological exactitude as concerns anthropology & theology, can we say that God loves all men equally?

Yes otherwise he wouldnt tell the apostles to go and baptise all nations and teach them.