Customer Reviews

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Until I read this book I never would have considered that God's love was a difficult doctrine. The Trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand - impossible even. The eternal nature of God - that is another difficult or impossible one. But the love of God? I wouldn't have believed it. But having read this book I believe it now.

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson is just a short book (96 pages) that is drawn from four lectures Carson delivered in 1998. There was a small amount of editing performed, but the conversational nature of the speech carries through the text. It makes for an easy read, despite some deep theology.

Carson begins by outlining five reasons why this is a difficult doctrine. First, he suggests that while most people believe that God is a loving Being, this belief is set within a foundation other than Scripture. Second, many complementary truths about God are disbelieved by many within our culture (and our churches). Third, postmodernism reinforces a sentimental, syncretistic and pluralistic view of God. Fourth, the church has fallen into believing a sentimentalized version of God's love that is not consistent with God as presented in Scripture. And fifth, the church portrays this as a simple doctrine and overlooks certain important distinctions that prove this to be a difficult doctrine.

From this foundation, Carson builds the book around four themes: the distortion of the love of God; the fact that God is love; God's love and God's sovereignty; and God's love and God's wrath. As we would expect from Carson, he goes straight to the source - to God's revelation of Himself in Scripture - to correct false assumptions and provide a deep discussion of what God's love entails. He defends the compatibility of seemingly-opposite characteristics of God (that God can be perfectly loving and yet perfectly just in His wrath) and examines how God's love interacts with His sovereignty in human affairs.

The only caveat I would provide with this book is that it does assume some knowledge of Christian theology since it was initially targeted at seminary students. For example, Carson discusses distinctions between Calvinism and Arminianism without first defining his terms. A basic knowledge of Greek would not hurt either, though it certainly is not necessary.

It is rare to find so much depth in such a short book. At the same time it is also nice to be able to learn so much without having to wade through hundreds of pages of text - this book could as easily have been hundreds or thousands of pages long. Carson does a wonderful job of highlighting the most important issues while confining himself to a limited word count. I highly recommend this book.

A thin book examining the different ways that the bible describes the love of God, Carson discusses some difficult but worthwhile material. Don't be fooled by the brevity of this book which is theologically dense and probably worth reading more than once.

Do you believe in God's grace and salvation by faith and sometimes find yourself in conflict with those who would emphasise the Christian obligation to obey God's laws? Do you believe in the justice of God, his righteousness and wrath and sometimes find yourself in conflict with those who emphasise salvation by faith, not of works? Carson describes six different ways that the bible describes God's love and shows how these seemingly different concepts can be held in productive "tension" within the Christian life

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is adapted from a series of four lectures and only 78 pages long. Carson has kept an informal tone throughout the entire book. On the downsides, I think the book assumes at least some knowledge of Greek (which was fine for me, but may not be for everyone) and his discussion of theories of the atonement was rather limited--if you don't already know what Calvinism and Arminianism are, then his discussion of that issue will probably be somewhat cryptic. However, I think these drawbacks are minor and the book is excellent and definitely well worth reading. Do yourself a favor and purchase this book.

Also, this book is written by a Calvinist, and does carry Calvinistic presuppositions in places. I think this is fine (as I find Calvinism to be Biblical), but it is worth noting. The author's New Covenant Theology does not enter into the book at all, except maybe in the ABSENSE of discussion of covenants in any fashion (there is no concept of covenantal love, for example, in Carson's categorizations--really this is his fifth category, but he needed to expound on it), but this is forgiveable.

Fairly standard Calvinist perspective throughout, of course, but in a sense it makes a nice introduction to that viewpoint for those largely unfamiliar with it.

I'm in agreement with him that we have to understand the love of God in connection with God's other attributes, including his holiness, his sovereignty, his wrath, etc. Where I tend to differ is his privileging the question of what God's love looks like when considered in the light of such other qualities, while neglecting to ask what those other qualities look like in the light of divine love, given the utter centrality of God's love in his nature.

I definitely agree with him that the notion of love is too often degraded, watered down, sentimentalized, and all the rest. But I tend to disagree with his fairly consistent intimation that folks who don't buy into a Calvinist paradigm do this. Smuggling such a claim in repeatedly does nothing to strengthen the point. I'm more open to the thesis that Calvinists can too easily fail to come to terms with some of the powerful implications of divine love. Examples below.

His claim is interesting that believing in a God of love is easy, but not so much a God of wrath and justice, but it strikes me as a bit wrong. I think plenty of people harbor grave doubts about God's love for them. Including Christians. And plenty of people believe in something like hell, I suspect, while similarly entertaining deep doubts they can reconcile such doctrines with anything like recognizable love. And I think altogether too many Calvinists down deep don't really believe God loves everyone, taking the "hating Esau" think with wooden literalness.

Carson, it seems to me, too consistently privileges the "Calvin and Luther" grid too much in his reading of scripture, as if any other reading necessarily misses the mark. One might wonder what he'd say about Luther's suggestion we throw out the book of James.

His recurring rhetoric about the "sentimentalizing" of love potentially conceals the way I think he fails to come to terms with what genuine love entails.

That he can cite a bunch of left-leaning and practically heretical folks who use the "love of God" as an excuse for their lame theology does little to address intelligent, informed classical Arminians (or other nonCalvinist biblical expositors). I think he implicitly employs throughout a sort of "guilt by (loose) association" tactic.

Worst example of equivocation: to say God's love for the nonelect is manifested in God's "salvific stance" toward them seems worse than disingenuous. All he's in essence affirming is that God projects the impression of offering to them a genuine chance at salvation when in point of fact and in actuality he is not and they are without hope. Yet Jesus, he wants to affirm, in some real sense died for them and God genuinely loves them. He and I simply depart company on this point.

He cites various passages that involve God's electing, choosing, etc., but of course Arminians are well familiar with such passages. To cite a verse on election doesn't bolster the Calvinist case unless there's good enough reason to believe that a Calvinist interpretation of that verse is the best one. And I think that what such interpretations habitually neglect is God's consistent plan to choose some for the blessing of others, not to hoard those blessings to themselves. Calvinists are also ultra-individualistic in their exegesis, far too often, in patent contradiction with the reigning plausibility structures and modus operandi of first-century Jewish thought.

His comments on Malachi 1:2-3 amount to nothing substantively insightful, in my view.

The way he almost strategically lumps Arminians in with Pelagians and semi-Pelagians is sloppy and needlessly uncharitable.

His characterization of folks as "absolutizing" any aspect of divine love that entails any idea that doesn't accord with his consistently Calvinist interpretations of scripture seems more than a little self-serving.

I agree with him about the need to interpret passages contextually, and though I appreciate his writing a short book for accessibility purposes, so much is left unsaid about most every passage he cites it makes his work less a convincing and penetrating analysis than an obvious attempt at proselytizing for the Calvinist cause.

His characterization of folks who disagree with his perspective as involved in "sloganeering" seems self-serving, once more; as if his opponents are the only ones who do such a thing. This sort of thing recurs enough to make it seem he's less interested in the truth than winning an argument, or projecting the appearance of winning an argument.

His characterization of "God is love" as a predication is, I think, incomplete; I think the "is of identity" is also at play there. It doesn't say merely that God is loving. God IS love, so central love is to who he is. This is important, I think. (And at points Carson seems to grasp this; I wish he'd think about the implications more deeply.)

Given the pride of place he assigns to God's hating Esau at one point and verses in the Psalms that say God hates the sinner, one wonders why Carson doesn't bite the bullet and deny God loves the nonelect in some real sense.

The claim that God's love is fundamentally different from ours is perhaps true in a real sense, but based on other things elsewhere in the Bible and Carson's book, there's also a great deal of similarity. I suspect analogy is the best way to go here, rather than univocation or equivocation; Carson doesn't seem to have nearly the concern he ought about the dangers of equivocation.

That God doesn't love us in the same preeminent sense in which he loves Jesus doesn't mean he doesn't love all of us genuinely. Merely showing a "salvific stance" toward some doesn't cut it, in my estimation; I think Carson underestimates God's love. He can castigate such a view of love with any derogatory and condescending term he likes; he needs a better argument.

He embraces compatibilism as if it's clear scriptural teaching, which goes to show the extent to which he buys lock, stock and barrel into a Calvinist paradigm; I don't see why those compatibilist readings are forced on us or are even the best interpretations. So the cross was evil men doing it and God doing it; there's mystery here, but why basically deny it by saying, in essence, there's no mystery, compatibilism is true and that's the end of it? I'd rather embrace mystery, affirm what the Bible says, but refrain from dogmatically insisting it's a paradigmatic picture of compatibilism, especially in light of the big problems compatibilism faces. Likewise with Is. 10 and the other passages in question. When he tries to read philosophy straight out of the Bible, I think he's at his weakest.

His claims that we might as well rip out Hebrews unless we're compatibilists may be rhetorically effective for the already convinced, but makes me lose confidence in his objectivity (or at least judiciousness).

I think Carson conflates contingent with "accidental (colloquially construed)."

His claim that "compatibilism is a necessary component to any mature and orthodox view of God and the world" is perhaps the worst line in the book, to my thinking. If someone's not a compatibilist, then they're not orthodox? What does that mean? The implications are worse than troubling.

At numerous points Carson seems to pose false alternatives, such as: open theism or Calvinism. The majority Christian tradition is neither.

The "therapeutic" God or "souped-up human being" God of nonCalvinists is another way he attempts to make his point by derision and loaded assertion rather than principled argument.

He doesn't seem to see that a denial of univocation doesn't warrant equivocation and that his voluntarism ignores the power and requirement of analogy.

I think he overstates our fallenness by neglecting those aspects of us that are worthwhile because we were made in God's image, which wasn't entirely done away with despite the corruption from original sin.

He's right to point out that God's love, though, isn't just a function of our loveworthiness, but he seems somehow to think, quite mistakenly, that this bolsters his case for Calvinism. No right-thinking Arminian, though, would say God loves us just because we're worthy of his love; we can affirm our unloveliness and sin and affirm the grace of God's love that loves us despite those problems we have without in any way affirming a Calvinist approach.

The first half of his chapter on wrath has good stuff, but his claims that God loves the nonelect are confused and disingenuous. His assertion without argument that our capacity to resist God's overtures of love leads to boasting for the saved is a common refrain among Calvinists, but one not remotely convincing. If a drowning man without hope of saving himself simply stops resisting the efforts of another to save him and then brags later he got saved from the fate of drowning by his own merits, he probably sustained a brain injury. Honestly some of the arguments I hear the most are the least persuasive.

At any rate, I'm glad he wrote the book and I'm glad I read it. I have focused more on my disagreements, but despite all of those, investing the time reading this was worth it and I wish Carson and his teaching ministry the best.

What's so difficult about the love of God? Carson makes it clear that it is partly the way that `love' is expressed in modern society (where it has been devalued to the extent that it is either completely romanticised or becomes simply a synonym for sex). On the other hand, when we talk about the `love of God' we sometimes get caught using too narrow a definition (love seen as exclusively for the elect), or too broad (love for the world being so over-emphasised that there is no room left for judgement). Carson shows that God's love, as we should expect, is more complex than that. It is consequently more important and more wonderful. This is a great book because it deals with an important topic, in sufficient depth not to be simplistic, but not in such great detail that it becomes impossible to read. Well worth buying and reading (more than once).

Having read the title of this book and after reading several of Carson's other books, I was looking forward to reading this book and it did not disappoint. I read the whole thing in one sitting.

A word of caution: if you've never heard of Calvinism or Arminianism and don't know what phileo and agape are you may be lost at several points. But don't let this discourage you from reading this book.

Carson's book gave me an immense appreciation for God's love and just how difficult a doctrine it is. To learn about the different ways the Bible speaks about God's love was really amazing and caused me to marvel at the great God I serve. Do yourself a favor and read this book. And if you like it, be sure to check out his sequel: "Love in Hard Places."

Carson's work is outstanding. He begins with a demonstration that the typical view of God's love is improperly simplistic, and sentimental. He then carefully examines the Scriptural teaching on God's love. A couple of particularly helpful sections are where Carson reconciles Scripture's statements that God is the "same yesterday, today and forever," and the statements that God experiences emotion. He also examines how God can be perfectly loving and display wrath simultaneously and without contradiction.

The book is an adaptation of a lecture series, and therefore is quite readable and easy to follow, sometimes having a near conversational tone. He covers some very weighty topics, but explains things well enough that this book should be useful and beneficial to lay people as well as seminary students. At less than 100 pages, it does not take terribly long to read, but has lasting value in the life of the believer.

One reason the doctrine of the love of God is difficult is that the Bible talks about God's love in several different ways. The love the Father has for the Son, God's general love for his creation, God's "salvific stance towards his fallen world," his "particular, effectual, selecting love toward his elect," and love that is conditioned on obedience. Carson deals with all these aspects in a masterful way.

DA Carson has a gift from God for laying out incredibly complicated topics of the Bible in layman's terms. This book was extremely helpful for understanding the love of God as laid out in the Bible.

D. A. Carson is a knowledgeable man. I enjoy listening to what he has to say.

This is a much needed book that directs Christians to a holistic view of the love of God. On's theology is going to be stilted if all they know and can say is "God loves everyone." We need to know out God more than that!

Carson walks us(this is not a hard read at all) though a biblical view of the love of God, it's difference types and facets and functions.

Highly recommended.