Are you saying that God is** Love, the essence of love, and not only the source of love? Is God the essence of Love to a degree that he is not equivalently the essence of holiness or wrath apart from love, but that love is primary and must inform all other attributes?
What I am saying is That God is Love and because God is the source of all things, then Love, which is God is the source of all things. It is God’s Love, which is God that created all things. We were created for love, in love and out of love.
Okay, we are going to be hitting some pretty heavy stuff here. This is taken from the Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Dr. Ludwig Ott. The following is a De Fide doctrine, this may help better to explain things better than I can do.
I am going to lay a bit of a foundation before laying down the De Fide doctrine.
The attributes or properties of God [which Love would be one] are perfections which, according to our analogical mode of thinking, proceed from the metaphysical substance of God and belong to it. Hence, we only know being of the absolutely simple Divine Substance “in part” [1 Cor 13:9], ie.e in a multiplicity of inadeqaute concepts, by which we know individual perfections of God truly but inadequately.
The Divine Attributes are really identical among themseves and with the Divine Essence. [De Fide]
The reason lies in the absolute simplicity of God. The acceptance of a real distinction would lead to acceptance of a compsition in God, and with that to a dissolution of the Godhead…
[skipping a few paragraphs]
Holy Scripture inidcates the idenity of the Essence and the attributes of God, when it says “God is Charity” [John 4:8] St. Augustine teaches Quod habet, hoc est - “What God has, that He is.”
Okay here’s another De Fide doctrine.
God is absolutely simple [De Fide]
Two things I mean here.
- God is pure spirit, that is GOd is neither a body nor a composition of body and spirit.
- [This one I am interested in this thread] God is an absolutely simple spirit, that is, in God there is no composition of any kind, of substance, or accidents, of essence and existence, of nature and person, of power and activity, of passivity and activity, of genus and specific difference.
God is absolute Benignity [De Fide]
God’s benignity reveals itself in that He bestows on created things countless gifts in the natrual and supernatural order, and thus permits them to particpate in His goodness [creation, preservation, providence, redemption, sanctification.]
I am asking mainly because of a (protestant) sermon whose keyphrase was, “Love is God in essence; God is not love in essence.” The emphasis seemed to be on the equality of all of God’s attributes, none being the ONE attribute that informed all others (except maybe Holiness). I think it was spoken mainly as a warning for people who might say, “God is love, so he won’t punish me”.
What is wrong with this is that it does away with some key passages in Scripture. For example the passages in 1 John where it says God is Love. Or God is Light. That is his essence and also what He is or does. I can understand where he is coming from, but it is not theologically correct.
You see if there was an attirbute that would inform or override the others it would go against His Divine Simplicity. All His Attritbutes are equal.
Here’s a De Fide that blew me away this morning, I want to share it with you.
God is actually infinite in every perfection. [De Fide]
I can’t wrap my mind around this. I am just floored.
I hope this helps.
God bless.
