Is the phrase “God is love” a metaphor?

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This is the explanation of 1 John 4:8 from Dr. Scott Hahn’s Ignatius Catholic Bible.

But my question is, is the phrase “God is love.” a metaphor or literal?

Enlighten me please. 🙂 thank you!
 
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God is literally Love. God’s love is a fundamental aspect of who He is.
 
I would use the word symbolic rather than metaphor. Love is symbolic of other things such as charity, family, mercy, etc.

So I’d say that statement is both symbolic and literal.
 
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I think it a safe bet that if you describe the ineffable in metaphor, you opperate out of necessity.
 
We being limited and imperfect cannot perfectly grasp God who is unlimited and perfect and ultimately beyond our understanding. Our language describing God will always be analagous to an extent. The analogy of being. It’s not as if any human conception of love exactly matches what we call love among the three persons of the Trinity or God’s love for us. But our term love is as close as it gets, especially considering its use in scripture including by Jesus himself, and it’s use in the magisterium of the Church. That is at least is my 2 cents FWIW.
 
Arnold1N2D said:
This is the explanation of 1 John 4:8 from Dr. Scott Hahn’s Ignatius Catholic Bible.

But my question is, is the phrase “God is love.” a metaphor or literal?

Enlighten me please. 🙂 thank you!
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CCC 221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that “God is love”:44 God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:45 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
 
Is the phrase “God is love” a metaphor?

The problem you pose is a good one, but it is hard to explain because of the way languages work.

In the English language, grammatically and secularly speaking, Love is an abstract noun, which is a noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object (concrete = physical object). Spiritual terms will often be abstract nouns, since they describe a condition or state of being, such as “good”, “bad”, etc…

Given that Jesus - in the flesh - is one in being with the Father and the Holy Spirit, however, we have a problem with the language; whereby a physical object (Christ’s body) becomes basically the same as the abstract, spiritual state of “God as Love”.

Additionally, in Catholic terminology, the Love between God the Father and Christ the Son is so strong it takes on a life of it’s own, which forms the third person of the Trinity, who we call the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Returning to the English language, we can “work around” the notion of Love being an abstract (slightly metaphoric or spiritual) concept by relating it to Jesus’ name, since a name is a personal pronoun. When God is given a name, as such, the noun takes on a more identifable, concrete state (in the English language).

That said, when we Catholically say “God is Love” in the English language, we relate the abstract noun “Love” to the personal pronoun “Jesus”, His Father and the Paraclete all at once; and, therefore, the meaning is altogether abstract, personal and concrete.
 
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God IS LOVE ITSELF…

In the New Testament … Agape is used to describe the love that is of and from God, whose very nature is love itself: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
 
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