God’s Love Versus God’s Wrath? (2)

This post looks at Kevin Kinghorn’s recent book But What About God’s Wrath?: The Compelling Love Story of Divine Anger. Kevin Kinghorn with Stephen Travis. Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Writing as a Christian philosopher in the Wesleyan tradition he sets out to give an answer to the age-old question of how can a God of love also be a God of wrath.

This is no easy task of course and the title of Kinghorn’s book indicates the challenge of reconciling how divine love and wrath are to be understood.

His overall case is that God’s wrath arises in response to human sin and disobedience and is always an expression of divine love. Here’s a bullet point summary:

• Divine wrath is rational action undertaken by God in response to human oppression and self-destructive behaviour.
• It is purposeful – designed to achieve constructive desired outcomes (human flourishing).
• Divine anger is the flip side of God’s care and compassion. God acts to confront and overcome injustice that harms his good purposes for us. [What loving parent would not act to protect their child from harm – done by others or self-inflicted? Love means confronting evil].
• Love is an essential attribute (intrinsic to being) of the triune God. Wrath is not.
• There is a fundamental asymmetry between divine love and divine wrath.
• God, as a benevolent and loving heavenly father, always seeks the good for human beings.
• Other divine commitments – like justice, holiness and glory – can be subsumed under the fundamental benevolent goal of bringing life to all people (this is important – see final paragraphs below on love and glory).
• At specific times and in specific situations, God’s wrath is the most appropriate means of getting people to turn away from oppressive and/or self-destructive behaviour. Kinghorn calls this ‘God pressing the truth on us’ about ourselves.
• God is always willing to abandon wrath where repentance occurs.
• Sometimes divine wrath is experienced by God withdrawing his presence and protection (think God’s threat to withdraw his presence from Israel during the Golden Calf incident for example). At other times it involves God raising up an agent of wrath (like Assyria or Babylon).
• In this sense divine wrath is like a megaphone (my image). It shocks us into facing hard truths about ourselves with the aim of bringing us back to a flourishing life of love and obedience to God.
• This is no easy process – it will be painful and difficult. (This is, as I read it, a sort of psychologising of God’s wrath – it’s aim is to change human thinking and behaviour)
• When it comes to final judgment, experience of divine wrath is self-chosen separation from God. (This echoes C. S. Lewis’s image of the doors of hell being locked on the inside).
• Kinghorn does not believe any good moral case can be made for divine wrath taking the form of ‘active retribution’. For this to be moral, there would have to be some good purpose in God actively punishing those who have rejected his invitation to life. Kinghorn can see no such good.

Linking back to the first post, Kinghorn’s framework is ‘Wrath as loving warning’.

He rejects Calvin’s notion of double predestination (some predestined for eternal life, some predestined for eternal punishment). Similarly, the idea that God is glorified when his perfect will is fulfilled through people suffering eternal separation “is clearly not consistent with benevolent love’ (p. 67).

It is not that he is glorified as he wills for people to be separated. Rather he is glorifed as his benevolent desires for all people’s well-being are revealed. This revealed desire, of course, is so often expressed through Scripture in terms of God’s lament and sorrow when the people he loves turn from him and head toward the path of self-destruction … God could never be glorified at the expense of his essential attribute of benevolent love. (pp. 67-68)

I’m with the Wesleyan on this one. How about you?

Thinking about the colour of my skin

This is a reflection I wrote for the PS column of Contemporary Christianity

It is also published on Jesus Creed on Christianity Today’s website.

Galatians 3:28 is one of the better-known verses in the Bible: 

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Christians, rightly, rejoice at its liberating truth – all joined ‘in Christ’ through faith are ‘one’. This unity transcends the great religious, socio-economic and gender divisions of the ancient world. The implications are astounding – in God’s eyes all human beings are of equal value and dignity regardless of religion, ethnicity, net-worth, social standing, intelligence, physical disability, education, gender, age, or skin colour.

However, it’s one thing to affirm an inclusive principle, it’s quite another to put it into practice. From its earliest days, a challenge for the church has been to live up to its calling to be a radically inclusive community in contrast to systemic inequalities that define the world.

At this point Wilberforce is often referenced (rightly) as an inspiring example of Galatians 3:28 in action – taking on, and defeating, the economic and political might of the slave trade. His dogged determination, and eventual success, is a story worth telling. 

But I wonder if it also rather too conveniently air-brushes the darker history of Christian rejection of the radical social and political implications of Galatians 3:28. 

Perhaps if you are reading this you might be like me, a Christian with roots in Northern Ireland evangelical Protestantism. Over the years I’ve thought a lot about theology and the intersections between evangelical identity, faith and politics. I’ve also thought a lot about gender, particularly how innumerable gifted women have experienced marginalisation within the church and the inbuilt privilege and assumptions I have as a man. For centuries the dominant paradigm was that women were simply inferior to men. If we had space, we could quote Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and Hodge and many others. More recently, modern ‘complementarians’ shy away from the inferiority argument, instead making the historically novel, and logically questionable, claim that women are equal in status and gifting with men and yet selected leadership roles in church and family are open only to men.

But why is it, I ask myself, that it took the death of George Floyd for me, in my 50s, to even begin seriously to think about the colour of my skin?  

Over the last few weeks I’ve begun to read up on slavery and the bloody history of white colonialism in Africa (too many atrocities to name but we could start with Britain in multiple places, German genocide in Namibia and millions dying in the Congo under Belgian rule). And then there are the tens of millions more men, woman and children kidnapped and transported to lives of unimaginable brutality in a global slave trade designed to prop up the developing economies of the colonial powers. And this doesn’t even include the violent suppression, and local exterminations, of indigenous populations in places like Australia and the United States. To this you can add Apartheid in South Africa and the appalling more recent history of deliberate systematised racism in America post-Lincoln (summarised in this excellent video by Phil Vischer of Veggie Tales fame). 

And white Christianity has been, and is, deeply implicated in this toxic history. Yes, that’s a sweeping statement but one, I think, that is impossible to deny. White supremacism isn’t a delusion of the radical left, it’s a defining assumption of modern Western history. Underneath it is an ability of those claiming the name of Christ to detach political and economic activity from what they profess to believe. In other words, to read the words of Galatians 3:28 but leave their radical implications conveniently behind in favour of power and money.  

Edward Colston. Wikipedia

Take Edward Colston, so recently thrown into Bristol harbour (well his statue at any rate). A slave trader who made vast profit from human lives, but also a churchman and philanthropist, well known for his generosity to good causes (hence his statue). 

So is this PS just an exercise in ‘white guilt’? After all, you may be thinking, ‘What has all this got to do with me? I’m not responsible for the past. Nor do I live in the racially segregated USA.’ 

Well, let me suggest that recent events are challenging that sort of detachment, wherever you live. If you are a white follower of Jesus and haven’t thought about what that means as a Christian, then this is a good time to start. Indeed, the very problem with ‘whiteness’ is that it is taken to be the ‘norm’ – and we don’t think about what seems to be normal (which is why I’d never thought seriously about being white until now). 

One Christian scholar challenging these sorts of assumptions is Professor David Horrell who has studied how Galatians 3:28 has been applied by white Western Bible interpreters. He concludes that 

“… though it may be uncomfortable to acknowledge it, is not our racialised identity one significant part of that complex intersection of facets of identity to which we should – indeed must – pay attention? …  Assuming that our interpretation is uncontextualised – unmarked, unlocated, unraced – is, I would suggest, no longer a feasible option.” 

In other words, if you are a Christian, you are a Christian first and a white person second. It is as Christians we are called to reflect theologically and critically on the intersections of whiteness, power and injustice. This means beginning to appreciate that our reading of history, theology, the Bible and Christian identity is deeply shaped by our whiteness. And then to put those assumptions under the searchlight of texts like Galatians 3:28.

In doing so we will be better placed to begin to seek out, befriend and listen to non-white voices and perspectives. This is especially needed in such an ethnically monochrome society like Northern Ireland. Maybe, just maybe, as we do so we will begin to understand, and to feel, what it means in day-to-day experience to be non-white within a ‘default’ white culture. And once we begin to see things through non-white eyes, perhaps, just perhaps, we will find ourselves called to act against systemic inequality in the church and wider society.

God’s love vs God’s wrath? (1)

When’s the last time you heard a sermon really engaging with themes of divine wrath and judgment (rather than just a passing reference)?

How do you understand how the love and wrath of God relate to one another?

This is no abstract question. How you answer it will have profound implications for your view of God and of the ‘morality’ of Christianity for a start.

This post, and a couple more follow-ons, is prompted by reviewing for a journal two recent books on divine wrath and love. I’ll get to them later. I’m also engaging with Tony Lane’s (who taught me theology many years ago!) important book chapter ‘The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God’, in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), Nothing Greater Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 138–167.

For many, the idea of the wrath of God puts them off Christianity altogether – it’s primitive and repulsive.

Generally within the church, wrath is mentioned rarely if at all.

In many churches I’d wager you could go years without hearing teaching on the wrath of God. One writer wryly draws this parallel

Most preachers and most composers of prayers today treat the biblical doctrine of the wrath of God very much as the Victorians treated sex. It is there, but it must never be alluded to because it is in an undefined way shameful ..

R. P. C. Hanson, God: Creator, Saviour, Spirit (London: S.C.M., 1960), p. 37.

The Bible has a lot to say about the love of God. While there are major debates to be had about what it means that God is a God of love, few (if any?) Christians would question the idea that ‘God is love’ in principle. After all, John states ‘God is love’ categorically, twice.

And love is so deeply woven into the biblical narrative that to try to imagine Christianity (or Judaism) without love at the centre of ethics and worship is pretty well impossible. God’s love for his people and his world, human love for God in response, and human love for one another, form three great strands of the Bible story.

But Christians start to diverge widely when it comes to the wrath of God. A number of responses can be observed, and these are just sketches, not comprehensive descriptions.

i) Love and wrath opposed to one another

This is where God is disassociated from from the ‘lower’ attribute of wrath. Love is effectively opposed to wrath.  Wrath is not an admirable quality: it smacks too much of vengeance and is a destructive emotion, ‘unworthy’ of a God of infinite love.

To make a coherent serious case for this view would require significant reinterpretation and re-reading of a wealth of biblical texts that have no problem attributing both wrath and love to God. For example, portrayals of a God of wrath in Scripture are crude anthropomorphisms – human authors attributing all too human-emotions and actions to God. And we have now moved on from such limited perspectives.

Or you could go the full-on Marcion route and set up the wrathful God of the OT against the loving God of (parts of) the NT. The latter rescues us from the former.

As already mentioned, much more common, is an unspoken denial of the wrath of God. Quite simply it is never talked about and such a silence says a thousand words. Wrath has become a taboo subject.

But why is the church today so reticent about talking about wrath?

I think several factors are at play

– the belief that the attribute of wrath does not belong to a God whose defining attribute is love. Love and wrath do not mix.

– Christians being shaped and formed by a contemporary culture that prizes tolerance, inclusiveness, diversity and love, and which, as a result, has little place for the moral judgments associated with divine wrath

– An Enlightenment mentality (Tony Lane), in which humanity stands at the centre of reality, imagines a God (if he exists) who is like a cheerleader for human progress, not transcendent and holy God to whom everyone is accountable

– A sentimental view of God and love, emptied out of theological depth and detached from the biblical narrative, that has no capacity to integrate divine love and wrath. Instead, God is assumed to be a benevolent, kindly force, depersonalised to such an extent that ‘God is love’ becomes ‘love is God’.

ii) Love and wrath detached

A second response emphasizes wrath as an inevitable and impersonal consequence of human self-destructive behaviour. A cause-and-effect process that results in our human sin, selfishness, disobedience and injustice bringing judgment upon ourselves.

This view does not deny a connection between God and wrath. But it decouples wrath from God’s personal response to human rebellion. God is left somewhat ‘out of the picture’, allowing wrath to be experienced due to self-destructive human behaviour but not being personally wrathful. Indeed he has done everything imaginable (the cross) so that humans he has created and loves do not experience the inevitable consequences of their own actions.

The classic proponent of this view is C. H. Dodd (1959). God is detached from ‘the irrational passion of anger’.  The concern is to distance God from all-too-human destructive, angry and emotional reactions to displeasing behaviour.

There’s a lot to be said for this view.

– Great care is needed not to project human limitations on to God. God is not irrational, arbitrary or capricious, nor vindictive or petty, delighting in pouring out his wrath on his enemies. Especially in the past, there was no shortage of preaching and teaching which did portray God in exactly such terms – with horrible results.

– Dodd is right that much language of wrath in the NT does depersonalise it in terms of a process that culminates in inevitable judgment (a future day of wrath). In Paul, divine anger (thymos) appears alongside wrath (orgē) only once (Rom 2:8). Wrath is more like a condition everyone is under but can be redeemed from due to the loving initiative of the triune God revealed in incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

– Most theologians (and I’d put myself in this category) also affirm that there is a fundamental asymmetry between divine love and divine wrath. Love is God’s essential attribute, but wrath is not. By ‘essential attribute’ I mean that which is intrinsic to whom God is in himself. Wrath is ‘secondary’ in that it only exists as his response to something ‘outside’ of God (human sin, forces of evil). ‘God is love’ does not find a parallel in ‘God is wrath’ (thank God!). God is ‘slow to anger’ – the story of the Bible is about God acting to redeem, restore, forgive, heal and warn so that those he loves will not face judgment.

But, while true in what it affirms, Dodd’s view does not do full justice to how the Bible talks about the wrath of God

– Tony Lane notes the irony that while, on the one hand, there is a major move in theology away from divine impassibility (God is beyond emotion, not controlled or influenced by forces outside himself) to affirming that God does indeed feel love, on the other hand there is a simultaneous move away from God personally feeling angry (Dodd).

– It is difficult, in other words, to argue that God’s love is personal and his wrath is not!

– There is also a moral question. What picture does it give of God if he does not feel anger at human injustice? Let’s personalise that question. Does not God feel anger when an adult man sexually abuses a powerless child?

– To be loving is not to be indifferent to evil and suffering – quite the opposite.

– The overwhelming picture of God in Scripture, taking into account anthropocentric language, is of a God who is passionate about justice and personally committed to overcoming all powers that destroy and corrupt his good creation. We see this in the OT but also in the language and teaching of Jesus in the NT. Yes, Paul uses impersonal language to talk of divine wrath, but God is far from a detached observer – he is active in giving people over to wrath (see point 3 – wrath as loving warning).

– Divine wrath is the ‘other side’ of divine love. For God not to feel anger at the corroding and awful impact of human sin would mean he is not a God of love.

– While Dodd did not hold this theology, his view is too close to the ‘watchmaker God’ of Deism who winds up the universe and then in a detached way, watches events unfold.

iii) Wrath as loving warning

A third perspective is divine wrath as loving warning. Here, God is responsible and actively involved in wrath. His anger is directed against specific behaviours that are destructive of his good purposes in the world.

I’ll talk more of this perspective in a later post. It is argued, for example, by Kevin Kinghorn in his recent book But What About God’s Wrath?: The Compelling Love Story of Divine Anger. Kevin Kinghorn with Stephen Travis. Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2019

Divine wrath takes the form of actively co-ordinating events that bring judgment, especially on God’s disobedient people, Israel. For example, despite multiple prophetic forewarnings, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile become the climatic events of divine judgement in the OT.

As we’ll discuss, this is primarily wrath as a self-chosen experience as a consequence of self-destructive human behaviour. But it differs from Dodd in that God is wrathful (angry) at sin. He is actively responsible for human experience of wrath. But his motive is always for the good of those he loves. His goal is to change behaviour and avert an ultimate self-destructive experience of wrath.

iv) Wrath as foreordained active retribution

A fourth perspective in Christian theology is shaped by a particular understanding of divine sovereignty characteristic of Augustine, Calvin and much subsequent Reformed dogmatics. If God is the ultimate sovereign over every single event, then responsibility for divine wrath is taken ‘all the way’ to its logical end.

This results in Calvin’s self-confessedly ‘dreadful decree’ of double predestination.

(And let me add here this was not a big theme in Calvin. His writing is frequently pastoral and theologically enriching. He is a profound theologian of the Spirit and of union with Christ. Double predestination was one ‘logical’ outworking of his theology of divine sovereignty, not the core of his theology. But, having said this, it is also one of the most unfortunate aspects of his theological legacy).

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.

https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.v.xxii.html

Somehow, God’s good purposes are furthered by this scenario. Somehow, there is something good, something of value, in God foreordaining people to ‘eternal damnation’.

This is a long way beyond an experience of wrath as ‘self-chosen’ and even further from wrath as an impersonal ’cause and effect’ process. It also goes beyond wrath as God’s ‘warning shout’ to humanity. Rather, it is God actively fore-ordaining multitudes to an experience of divine wrath and judgment.

How this is reconciled with ‘God is love’ is hard to explain – to put it mildly.

Those following Calvin here have tried at great length of course, typically referring to themes of holiness, glory and mystery.

But, to my mind, it is attempting to defend the indefensible. Double predestination is incompatible with any coherent understanding of a loving heavenly Father. What loving father would create children for such a fate?

Comments, as ever welcome.