Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being

Pluriform Love

An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being

Thomas Jay Oord

SacraSage Press

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Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being / Thomas Jay Oord

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Love Neglected

2 Love Defined

3 Agape and Anders Nygren

4 Doing Good, Essentially Loving, and In Spite of Love

5 Eros and Augustine

6 Classical Theism and Because of Love

7 Open and Relational, Essential Kenosis, and Amipotence

8 Essential Hesed and Alongside of Love

9 A Theology of Pluriform Love

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Preface

I’ve been writing this book since birth.

Books that explore love should probably start with a mother’s love…experienced in the womb, through infancy, in childhood, and thereafter. I’m grateful my mother loved me in a plurality of ways. I’m also thankful for the love shown by my fathers, wife, children, siblings, extended family, friends, and so on. But I dedicate this book to the one I call momma.

I experienced love growing up in Othello, Washington, and I’ve witnessed love in many communities since. Pastors, mentors, teachers, and elders have modeled love. The global heroes of love — people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and Mr. Rogers — influenced me too, albeit indirectly. It’s hard to measure the influence of loving exemplars and communities. We learn through experience.

The rock-n-roll of my youth and today proffers lyrics of love. What songwriters mean by love varies, as much as it varies in everyday conversation, literature, philosophy, and even scripture. Shakespeare is right: Love is a many splendored thing. But the lyrics and poetry of love move me immensely.

What the Bible says about love captured my attention as a young man, and scripture guides my reflection today. I cannot account fully for the Bible’s influence on how I think, both my direct interpretations of the text and the indirect ways it shaped those who loved me. But what scripture says about love is not as straightforward as many think. Biblical writers use love words in many ways, and we have good reason to be confused. I explore these ways in this book.

My thoughts here have taken a long time to gestate and have gone through many stages. While an undergraduate, I began to imagine love as theology’s guiding principle. As an avid evangelist, I preached the gospel as I understood it. After encountering sophisticated arguments against faith, I admitted my reasons for believing were weak. I became an atheist/agnostic for a time.

Love was crucial to my return to faith. The existence and activity of a loving God made sense of my intuition that I ought to love, others ought to love, and love was the purpose of existence. The ultimacy of love, I believe, provides plausible answers to my biggest questions. Love matters most.

While a student at Nazarene Theological Seminary, I became convinced love could function as the locus for theology. I began to understand John Wesley’s ideas of holiness and sanctification in light of love. A book I co-wrote with Michael Lodahl, Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love, expressed this conviction. I learned from Professor Rob Staples about Wesley’s focus on love, and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop’s classic book on Wesley, A Theology of Love, underscored this point.

My first course at Claremont Graduate University was on the religious significance of Alfred North Whitehead. The promise of process thought had lured me to Claremont.¹ David Ray Griffin taught that course, and he would become my doctoral advisor. My course paper explored love in Whitehead’s thought — especially persuasive love — and sparked many original ideas.

My doctoral thesis was the first written articulation of this book. I addressed major theologies of love and, to a greater or lesser degree, found each wanting. I argued that putting love first could transform both the Evangelical theology of my upbringing and the process theology I had discovered in the academy. Years later, I rewrote and published the dissertation as The Nature of Love: A Theology (Chalice Press, 2010).

As my thinking about love has continued to deepen and expand, I’ve had some aha moments, developed new theories, and strengthened earlier convictions. This deepening and expanding prompts me to write the book you now hold.

Of the 25+ books I’ve written or edited since graduate school, most have love in their title or subtitle. With each publication, my wife teases me, "Another love book? Haven’t you said all you can say?"

I shrug and reply, Apparently not.

To me, pondering love is like pondering God: my interest never tires. Words never capture love or God fully, but I hope to make progress. I want to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:18b-19a). A winsome vision of a loving God is central and motivates me to love God, others, myself, and all creation.

To say love is pluriform, as this book’s title does, is to say love has multiple dimensions and expressions. Love cannot be understood well nor experienced fully if confined to only one or a few forms. A holistic account of love includes, but goes beyond, the typical categories of sacrifice, sex, desire, friendship, generosity, compassion, and more. Pluriform love points to the diversity of this term.

Not only do creatures express pluriform love, but God does too. Divine love is not just sacrificial. Nor is love simply desire for what’s valuable; it’s not just communal relationship, and it’s not primarily aimed at God’s own glory. To put it positively, divine love is compassionate, involves forgiveness, repays evil with good, delights in beauty, rejoices in the good, and enjoys a good joke. God’s love is pluriform.

God’s love is not altogether different from ours, as some theologians have suggested. It’s not an exception to the fundamental principles of love that apply to all. In fact, the basic meaning of love — although having multifarious expressions — applies to both creatures and Creator. While a good definition of love should apply uniformly to God and others, the expressions of love are pluriform.

Conventional theologies cannot account well for love. Ours or God’s. Some theologians embrace agape, for instance, but reject eros and philia. In those theologies, God gives but can’t respond to, delight in, or befriend us. Others think of love as desire rather than acting to promote well-being. In some theologies, God only loves Godself.

In my book, Defining Love, I addressed in detail how we best define love. In it and The Science of Love, I explore the contributions science and philosophy make to understanding love. Theology takes center stage in the present book. I build from Christian scripture, because the Bible provides crucial resources for a Christian theology of love. But good theology requires more than scripture. This book also appeals to reason, experience, and aspects of the Christian tradition. Along the way, I will criticize theologians and biblical scholars who fail to follow the logic of love. I also criticize philosophical assumptions and biblical interpretations that undermine love’s supremacy.

When understood well, love illuminates. It answers our biggest questions about God and life. Perhaps the biggest questions for theists and atheists alike revolve around evil. If a loving and powerful God exists, why doesn’t this deity prevent unnecessary suffering, pointless pain, and genuine evils? I’ve answered that question in previous books, including The Uncontrolling Love of God and God Can’t. In this book, I point to what I call essential kenosis as crucial to solving the problem of evil.

If the Apostle John is correct that God is love, we need to ask about God’s nature. Can God choose not to love? I’ll answer this by claiming God is essentially loving. The essence-experience binate means God unchangingly loves but changingly experiences and expresses love moment by moment.

If God always loves creatures, we might wonder if there ever was a time God did not relate to creation. I argue that God’s steadfast love literally endures forever, and I call this essential hesed. In covenant with them, God everlastingly relates with and loves creatures and creation.

This book argues that for life to flourish, we need the light of love. We need it to blaze in all directions, not just one or a few. We should celebrate the diversity of love both God and creatures can express.

Creatures can imitate the Creator whose love is pluriform.

¹ I explore the promise of process theology in Al Truesdale, ed., God Reconsidered: The Promise and Peril of Process Theology (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 2010).

1

Love Neglected

The Primacy of Love

It’s not hard to make a scriptural case for the primacy of love.

And the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13:13),¹ says the Apostle Paul in what many call the New Testament’s love chapter. Love never ends, says Paul, and without love, we are nothing (13:2, 8). Even a person who gave away everything and chose death but did not love would gain nothing (13:3). Above all, we should pursue love (1 Cor. 14:1), because it is the more excellent way (1 Cor. 12:31).

The one whom Christians believe loved best — Jesus — says that the greatest commandments orient around love. We should love God and neighbor as ourselves (Mt. 22:34-40; Mk. 12:28-34; Lk. 10:25-28). His commands were not new; we find them in the Old Testament.² The law and prophets rest on them.

Our salvation is oriented around love. In a passage many Christians memorize, Jesus says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (Jn. 3:16). And By this will all know that you are my disciples, he tells his followers, if you love one another (Jn. 13:35). Even obedience is ultimately about love, says Jesus (Jn. 14:15).

The New Testament doctor of love, the Apostle John, puts the relationship between God and love simply: God is love (1 Jn. 4:8,16). For millennia, scholars have debated the meaning of this three-word sentence. At a minimum, it positions love as central to who God is and what God does. On a spectrum between literal and symbolic, God is love rests closer to literally true than perhaps any other biblical statement.³ The person who doesn’t love, says John, doesn’t understand God (1 Jn. 4:8).

Because God loves, we ought to love. Paul tells Ephesian readers to imitate God, as dearly beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loves us… (Eph. 5:1). We can love like God loves, and Jesus is our example of what this looks like. An adequate theology will make sense of divine love as a model to emulate.

Even before the special incarnation of God in Jesus, biblical authors considered love a, if not the, primary divine attribute. The phrase steadfast love is the most common Old Testament description of divine activities. The Psalmist often says, the earth is full of the steadfast love of God (Ps. 33:5). Such love is relentlessly loyal: Jeremiah records God declaring, I loved you with an everlasting love (31:3). The Chronicler says God loves the chosen people (2 Chr. 2:11) and the Deuteronomist says God loves aliens (Deut. 10:18). God loves all creation (Ps. 117:1).⁴ Old Testament writers witness powerfully to divine love.

A recurring description appears in full form like this: God is The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin… (Exod. 34:6-7). No description of God occurs more often in the Old Testament, although it takes various forms and abbreviations.⁵ Old Testament writers clearly describe God as loving. The major themes of the Old and New Testaments promote love’s primacy.

Not every biblical passage portrays God as loving, however. Scripture does not provide a consistent voice on love, creaturely or divine. Sometimes God is also portrayed as wanting or causing harm. God threatens to abandon or bring pain. I’ll address this issue later because it’s so important. For the moment, I simply say love is the main theme of scripture…even though contrary themes are also present.

Love Is Often Not Central in Contemporary Theology and Biblical Studies

Given that love is central to Jesus and arguably the focus of scripture, one might assume this theme would be central in all biblical studies and constructive theology. But leading theologians and Bible scholars often neglect love, relegate it to secondary status, or adopt theological beliefs that undermine love’s primacy.⁶ Christian intellectuals have often failed to recognize or promote love’s preeminence. To illustrate, I’ll identify two 21st century examples of this kind of theology. These thinkers are among many influential Christians who fail to make love a priority in theology.

Biblical Scholar Richard Hays

In his influential book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, biblical scholar Richard Hays does not regard love as the focus of Jesus or the New Testament.⁷ His relegation of love to the margins is explicit. Instead, Hays considers community, cross, and new creation as focal themes. According to him, they encapsulate the crucial elements of the New Testament narrative and focus our attention on the common ground shared by the various biblical witnesses.

Community, cross, and new creation are important. But why not make love the focus for understanding who God is and how we ought to live? And isn’t love central to these themes?

Hays expects these questions. Some readers will be surprised to find that I have not proposed love as a unifying theme for New Testament ethics, he says. The letters of Paul, the Gospel of John, and the Johannine Epistle explicitly highlight love as a (or the) distinctive element of Christian life, he admits. It is the ‘more excellent way’ (1 Cor. 12:31- 13:13), the fulfillment of the Law (Rom. 13:8), the new commandment of Jesus (John 13:34-35), and the revelation of the character of God that is to be reflected in the relationships within the community of believers (1 John 4:7-8).⁸

Hays then offers three reasons he does not consider love central, and I list each below. Because I find each reason inadequate, I will offer responses.

1. Hays says not all New Testament books emphasize love.

Jesus’ promulgation of the double love commandment [in Mark 12:28-34] stands as an isolated element [in Mark’s gospel], says Hays. In Hebrews and Revelation, we encounter only scattered incidental references to love, mostly with regard to God’s love of human beings. Furthermore, he says, where love is mentioned, it is closely identified with good works.… And nowhere in [the Acts of the Apostles] does the word ‘Love’ appear, either as a noun or a verb.⁹ Because not all New Testament books include or emphasize love, Hays chooses not to.

My response: Hays seems to use a brute word count approach to decide which themes should be central to New Testament ethics. A few biblical books do not mention love, he says, and a few only mention love occasionally. Let frequency of use determine one’s focal themes, he argues.

This reason to emphasize themes other than love simply does not withstand scrutiny. The word love appears more often in the New Testament than Hays’s preferred words cross, community, or new creation. It appears in more books overall than his preferred themes. If word counts are the criteria for choosing focal themes, we should choose love over the themes Hays picks.

Love is the focus of Jesus’ commands in all four gospels. Why not embrace this? Love is also the Apostle Paul’s focus for many New Testament arguments. Examples of love are present in other New Testament writings, even when the word is not used. Take the book of Acts as an example; surely acts of healing are expressions of love, despite the absence of Greek love words in these pages.

2. Hays says love is not an image; it’s an interpretation of an image.

The second reason Hays gives for not making the love central to New Testament ethics pertains to his theological method. We cannot observe love, he says, we only see it when expressed in actions.

"What the New Testament means by ‘love’ is embodied concretely in the cross, says Hays. The content of the word ‘love’ is given fully and exclusively in the death of Jesus on the cross; apart from this specific narrative image, the term has no meaning. Thus to add love as a fourth focal image would not only be superfluous, it would also move in the direction of conceptual abstraction, away from the specific image of the cross."¹⁰

My response: Here Hays seems to have chosen a method — ­images as focal themes — and neglected love because it isn’t an image. Love, as he sees it, might move us in the direction of conceptual abstraction.

My first response is to note that words like community and new creation are just as abstract. Like love, they make sense only when expressed concretely. So why not make love the central focus and then point to concrete expressions of it in the biblical witness?

Second, while we should emphasize Jesus’ death, it is not true, as Hays alleges, that the cross gives love’s meaning fully and exclusively. The New Testament writers speak of love in various ways, and many forms do not involve self-sacrifice or death. We find biblical writers identifying love with friendship, mutual giving and receiving, desire, family affection, self-love, passion, compassion, and so on.

The cross is one expression of love. It cannot be its exclusive meaning.

3. Hays says popular discourse has debased love.

The third reason Hays gives for why he does not consider love a focal theme may be his most important. The term love has lost its power of discrimination, he says, having become a cover for all manner of vapid self-indulgence.

Hays develops this claim. One often hears voices in the church urging that the radical demands of Christian discipleship should not be pressed upon church members because the ‘loving’ thing to do is to include everyone without imposing harsh demands, he says. Instead, the biblical story teaches us that God’s love cannot be reduced to ‘inclusiveness:’ authentic love calls us to repentance, discipline, sacrifice, and transformation (see, e.g., Luke 14:25-35; Heb. 12:5-13).

Hays concludes, In combination with the [first two] considerations, [popular discourse] suggests that love as a focal image might produce more distortion than clarity in our construal of the New Testament’s ethical witness.¹¹ Putting love first, he argues, perverts rather than elucidates Christian ethics.

My response: Hays is correct that love has been misunderstood and abused in popular discourse. I’d add that scholars have a poor history of using this term too! Some Christians appeal to love to shirk responsibility or avoid accountability. Some believe love justifies self-centeredness and extreme tolerance. I agree with Hays that love, at least sometimes, calls for repentance, discipline, and sacrifice.

But love remains the central word New Testament writers used to talk about ethics, God, and other issues of faith. Love is the heart of the New Testament, if not the entire canon. Christians should be concerned with how the language of love has been misused, but there are better ways to address problematic language than to neglect the word Jesus, Paul, and other New Testament writers considered central.

There are no perfect words. Hays’s choices — cross, community, new creation — are also misunderstood and abused. The word community, for instance, has been used in ways that oppose the concept of koinonia described in scripture. Crosses are more ­often fashion symbols in contemporary culture than references to self-­sacrifice. Even the phrase new creation is problematic; just ask an advocate of total depravity. Words are slippery and multi-meaningful.

So I believe theologians and biblical scholars would be wise to address the misuses of love language. And they should offer clear definitions that align with the broad biblical witness. Their claims about love should also make sense of common experience. And scholars should account for the diverse forms of love we find in scripture and everyday life.¹²

But Hays’s work is helpful in at least one respect. It prompts us to clarify what we mean by love and what it means to say love should be our primary theme. If the language of love is essential to the biblical witness, biblical scholars and theologians must make sense of love.

Systematic Theologian Millard Erickson

Millard Erickson is a Reformed theologian whose work coincides with ideas common in the tradition of John Calvin. He calls his theology a mild or moderate form of Calvinism.¹³ The connection with this tradition becomes evident when Erickson speaks about love. Unfortunately, his ideas about God’s omnipotence, independence, and predestination are at odds with the meaning of love in most scripture and everyday experience.

In his magnum opus, Christian Theology, Erickson chooses the magnificence of God, instead of love, as his overarching theme. By magnificence, he understands the greatness of God in terms of his power, knowledge and other traditional natural attributes, as well as the excellence and splendor of his moral nature.¹⁴ Power comes first in Erickson’s list and in the way he thinks.

Erickson affirms divine mercy, grace, and benevolence. He says we ought to love. But as the quotations below will show, Erickson’s views of divine power and independence make his love claims difficult to square with central themes in the Bible and the logic of love in everyday life. Consider these quotations:

God controls all. God’s power is evident in his control of the course of history, says Erickson. God’s will is never frustrated…God’s decisions and actions are not determined by consideration of factors outside himself, but are simply a matter of his own free choice.¹⁵ God is in control of all that happens as history moves to the fulfillment of his purpose.¹⁶ Erickson puts it simply: God is in control of all that occurs.¹⁷

All that happens is God’s plan. We may define the plan of God as his eternal decision rendering certain all things that will come to pass,¹⁸ argues Erickson. From all eternity, [God] has determined what he’s now doing. Thus, his actions are not reactions to unforeseen developments.¹⁹ God foreknows what…individuals will freely do, for he in effect made that decision by choosing them in particular to bring into existence.²⁰

Humans are free but not free. God has created in such a way, says Erickson, that the good of his world may be perverted into evil when we misuse it or something goes awry with the creation.²¹ And yet, he says, the evil actions of humans, contrary to God’s law and moral intentions, are…part of God’s plan, foreordained by him.²² Erickson puts it this way: human freedom exists and is compatible with God’s having rendered our decisions and actions certain.²³ In other words, humans freely sin and yet have been predestined to do so. We are free but not free. It is difficult to make sense of this claim.

God wills sin. God never says, ‘Commit this sin!’ says Erickson. But by his permitting the conditions that lead a person to commit a sin and by his not preventing the sin, God in effect wills the sin.²⁴ This means that even the sinful actions of humans are part of God’s providential working.²⁵ God can predetermine sin and even will sin, and yet, according to Erickson, humans sin freely.

God loves himself. God must choose his own glory ahead of all else, says Erickson. To do anything else would in fact be a case of idolatry.²⁶ "When we think of God’s