How is Love an Attribute of God's Perfect Nature?
We may have heard it said by some that God is Love. Such is the venacular for describing God in the modern Christian world. What does it mean to call God our Father and why does he love us?
As many have undoubtedly pondered these questions, many different philosophies have arisen in the communities of Christendom and other thought avenues. My personal viewpoint tells me that love begins with a relationship where creative powers come are considered. Where do we see the most influential and powerful demonstration of love? It is in our families. What drives and connects us in intimate ways that cause service and sacrifice to result from an inner desire to do them with selfish motives utterly absent. That is not to say in the normal course of developing a relationship we are not often selfish, so it goes to say that acknowledging our weakness and being in a place to overcome it results in perfecting our character. Marriage is the place to do this.
If God is love are we truly related to him as an Eternal Father as his offspring. How would his love manifest on our behalf. Old traditions of biblical thought have given way to ideas that we are merely creatures, thought into existence as a new form of life some 6000 years ago. Latter-day Saint theology affirms the first idea, we are God's sons and daughters with an eternal identity and gender in our eternal spiritual nature.
Whether a new thing or an eternal pattern, marriage and family are the means God chose to increase life in the earth among human beings. What other form of love would there be? While there is brotherly love and the other forms, when we observe the nature of the relationship between a man and a woman as husband and wife we see a physical aspect, a mental aspect, a spiritual aspect and possibly some other aspects as well that are deep and significant.
God has granted the power to create life very liberally, almost without exception to humans. It requires participation by two people who in the process become mothers and fathers. This power is connected to very powerful physical and emotional responses. These become wired in our brains and have a significant impact on us. Unfortunately, many people have undertaken to gratify their own selfish desires and ignored the responsibilities associated with it. This has resulted in many broken hearts, broken families, abortions, and in turn produced disruptive tendencies in society.
When two people who feel a desire to make a commitment through a covenant marriage to serve they are joining together in the way authorized by God. They begin a journey to increase their family and make sacrifices that others may not be willing to make. The bearing of children may be the result of their love if that is their intent. Their love is then extended to their children in the form of nurturing and protection, and a bonding process forms that is natural and powerful. This is the pattern we see in the earth. This pattern of family is ordained of God. Love grows out of the service and nurturing between husband and wife working together to give their children all that they need to grow and succeed in life. From teaching them to walk and talk and eat to forming values and attitudes that will affect their entire life.
As we look at differing philosophies regarding the love of God, there are two basic viewpoints I will compare. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and modern Christian and biblical theological teachings view the subject view the subject from very different perspectives.
There is only one truth, and thus one being who presides over the creation of this world. Whether we understand God as a person or multiple persons, the beings identified in the Bible constitute the focus of our worship. There is no other divine being that Christian believers worships other than our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ his son. Those who have engaged in worship of idols and so forth are outside of this consideration. As to the nature of our God and Christ we may vary in our descriptions but we do share a base of biblical teachings.
Latter-day Saints believe that as God is actually a father, even our Father in Heaven. The definition of Father is connected to the fact that he would be associated with a mother. Why wouldn't there be such an order as a celestial and holy union in the realms on high. That is where it originated in order to be given to mankind in the the earth.
Marriage is ordained by God and an eternal principle. No matter what your theology, such a principle would be eternal as it came from an eternal and all knowing God. From a holy union there would be offspring proceeding from the relationship. This would be our Heavenly Parents. Logic and the very definition dictates that to be a father one must be connected to a mother that bears children in some way representing the couple. In the earth that is a limited process and requires certain physical strain. In eternity we do not know what that entails. As the offspring of God we are in a position to learn from them and if we follow the path they give us, we prepare to be called the “children of God” or Christ. Because of his omnipotence and perfect love we will receive an inheritance that is not limited by temporal restraints. This is called exaltation and eternal increase.
Traditional or classical biblical theologians teach that God is a solitary one of a kind being comprised of three persons. As to the fatherhood in the Trinity, it is only metaphorical. We are merely creatures that It decided to form and not offspring connected to it in a literal way. The connection to the creator is only as creatures. Proclaimed by biblical theologians to be an omnipotent force or power, this triune being does not or cannot create after its likeness and image. It has no image.
Biblical apologists do often allege that when LDS claim we literally look like God that we are making God in our image, which is a fallacious claim based on theological opinion. The traditional narrative about God is designed to keep his nature a mystery which relies on a premise that humans cannot be like God in any way. Humans are creatures and our nature is simply to exist at the will of the Trinity creator. We, according to them are incapable of progressing past a certain level of salvation. The Trinity has no inheritance to extend to its creatures other than an eternity of nondescript heavenly bliss. The trinitarian heaven is comprised of static individuals with no capacity for increase.
The three beings considered to be one God by trinitarian theology, while stated to be represented as the male gender, are actually not corporeal, meaning they have no physical body or presence, and therefore are considered genderless entities by Biblical scholars.
The description of deity in mainstream trinitarian concepts is not about a male being, but of a spirit power of unknown nature other than what Christian scholars and philosophers have speculated. Their conclusion is that God is not really a father except metaphorically and does not produce any offspring.
According to the traditional Christian scholars, all references to a Father in Heaven or a male God are only metaphorical. Even though Jesus Christ was born as a male. He did not have a gender identity as a member of the Trinity before his incarnation. In the future eternity they suppose he will again become a genderless being, even though he lived as a man and was born of a woman and resurrected as a man.
This doctrinal idea is also carried into modern biblical teaching incorporating the idea that men and women are separated at death not to remain as married couples in eternity. They will exist as static individuals and have no capacity for increase as relationships go. The abundant life of family relationships are replaced by worshipping a metaphorical groom and they as the bride of Christ. These mainstream trinitarian scholars also establish that God becomes static, that is no further creation or salvation, after this world is saved. The extent of its “works” or creation is a single planet. All saved people and God go to heaven and that’s the end of it. Love does not increase, it is static as well.
The basic understanding is that somehow being in the presence of Jesus and God in heaven far exceeds any joy or association there may have as mortal beings from living in the God-ordained human intimacy they experienced whereby they may have had children and experienced the love and nurturing of family relationships. Everyone lives as a an individual or bachelor with relationships with another person. This heaven is presided over by the three genderless beings that are in essence eternal bachelors unconnected to a relationship of loving capacity that can increase love in an endless cosmos.
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