Book Review: The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

For a man who has authored some of the thickest books I've ever read (The Gagging of God, his Commentary on John), Don Carson is a prolific and accomplished author. He is equally at home in popular and academic circles, and his writings often demonstrate a helpful blend of the two. The book I'm reviewing today is one of his 'popular' writings, but its based on some lectures he gave. "The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God" is a brilliant book, slim and eminently readable, and examines the tension between different aspects of God's character.

The back cover grabs you;

"But is it really that easy? What does the Bible teach about God's love? What does it have to say about the wrath of the loving God, or about the loving God who is also sovereign Lord?"

And in the first chapter, Carson challenges us that;

"Christian faithfulness entails our responsibility to grow in our grasp of what it means to confess that God is love"

Big Questions. Little book. Tough sell. But, fortunately, this is a very accessible introduction to some of the biggest issues around the character and nature of God. Carson has given us a short book with four chapters, based on four lectures. The first chapter deals with the issue of "Distorting the Love of God", and the subsequent three chapters go deeper into the statement "God is Love", the questions of "God's love and God's sovereignty", and finally "God's love and God's wrath". This is a rough overview, but without going into too much details, I hope to demonstrate to you that Carson is very helpful on each of these points.

The first chapter opens with the observation that most people today hold that God "is a loving being". This is a good and true thing, but Carson rightly identifies that "this widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology". This too, in my experience, is true. This, and other observations, in place, Carson moves into the biblical text to look at the different ways that God 'loves'. Whilst brief, this is a very useful survey of the issue, and a reminder of how wide, deep and powerful God's love is, biblically speaking. Carson is careful of the need to tread a balanced path avoiding extremes, noting that "we need all of what Scripture says on this subject, or the doctrinal and pastoral ramifications will prove disastrous". 

Next up is an analysis of God as being love that starts with the great affirmation of 1st John, and an a serious look at what that means. Carson's legendary and wise love of context over individual word studies is at play here, and helpfully so. The reader is lead through a whistle-stop tour of Jesus as expression of God's love, of a bit of Trinitarian theology, and the grand story of redemption. Carson's reflections on what it means to be a 'friend of God' are very helpful; "We are the friends of God by virtue of the intra-Trinitarian love of God that so worked out in the fullness of time that the plan of redemption, conceived in the mind of God in eternity past, has exploded into our space-time history at exactly the right moment... God is love, and we are the friends of God". Carson's vision of God here is beautiful, enticing, and bang on.

 We then move on to the tension and thorny issue of God's love and God's sovereignty. This chapter is full of affirmations of classic Christian language about God - for example his, omnipotence, omniscience, and transcendance. The graceful power of the biblical understand of God's sovereignty is demonstrated in terms of love. Carson writes "all that the Father has given to the Son will come to him, and the Son will lose none of them, we are told, because he came down from heaven to do the Father's will - and this is the Father's will, that he should lose none of those the Father has given him".  Carson also carefully discusses the challenges inherent in this, and the issues of God changing his mind, whilst also engaging with the tension that God "is simultaneously sovereign/transcendant and personal". Carson comes to close this chapter with a powerful statement of the effect and nature of God's love;

"Doubtless we do not do it very well, but aren't Christians supposed to love the unlovable - even our enemies? Because we have been transformed by the Gospel, our love is to be self-originating, not elicited by the loveliness of the loved. For that is the way it is with God. He loves because love is one of his perfections, in perfect harmony with all his other perfections. At our best, we know that that is the way God's image-bearers should love too"

The final chapter of this powerful book deals with the tension of God's love and God's wrath. Carson is known for his work on the 'Gospel', and his understanding of the atonement as being central to that Gospel. This chapter, then, is vintage (and heartwarming) Carson as he looks at this tension and the overwhelming power of God's holy love in the Gospel. The transforming power of God's love in appeasing his own wrath in perfect holiness is the core of the beauty of the Gospel. The closing words of this chapter, and the book, ground that perfectly; "there is no remedy, save what God himself has provided - in love".

I love this little book. It re-ignited some dormant bits of understanding, and helped me to appreciate that positive nature of God's wrath, and the fullness of his love. It is a very helpful book for understanding what difficulties there are in speaking of God's love - and seeing that these difficulties are resolved in the beauty of the Gospel, the Cross that leads to Resurrection and the transformation of everything. I can't recommend this little book highly enough!

______________

If you've read my blog for the first time, or are a regular reader, then I'd love you to find and 'like' my Facebook page. You can read about that, and the recent name change in this post.