{"id":486,"date":"2008-05-12T21:48:42","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T01:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/2008\/05\/12\/god-is-love\/"},"modified":"2008-05-12T21:48:42","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T01:48:42","slug":"god-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=486","title":{"rendered":"God Is Love."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>God does not just <em>happen<\/em> to love, nor is it true that he <em>chooses<\/em> to be love to certain individuals, as if he could just as easily have chosen not to love them.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it is impossible for God to be God and to act in an unloving way towards anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 If God is love, then <em>all <\/em>God&#8217;s actions must be compatible with his love.\u00c2\u00a0 This means that his holiness is loving, his justice is loving, and his wrath is loving. . . .\u00c2\u00a0 Consequently, any account of hell must see hell as a manifestation of divine love and mercy even if it is a severe side of that mercy. . . .\u00c2\u00a0 How could God be love if he draws a line at death and says, &#8220;Beyond this point I will look for the lost sheep no more; and even if they try to return, I shall turn them away.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 It seems to me that such a God would not be behaving in a loving way.\u00c2\u00a0 In conclusion, I suggest that the problem is not that the universalist sentimentalizes God&#8217;s love and forgets his wrath but, rather, that the traditional theologians underestimate God&#8217;s love and unhelpfully disconnect it from his justice.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Gregory MacDonald, <em>The Evangelical Universalist, <\/em>p. 104<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God does not just happen to love, nor is it true that he chooses to be love to certain individuals, as if he could just as easily have chosen not to love them.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it is impossible for God to be God and to act in an unloving way towards anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 If God is love, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}