2. Love.
By love we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God is eternally moved to self-communication.
1 John 4:8—“God is love”; 3:16—“hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us”; John 17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”; Rom. 15:30—“the love of the Spirit.”
In further explanation we remark:
A. Negatively:
(a) The immanent love of God is not to be confounded with mercy and goodness toward creatures. These are its manifestations, and are to be denominated transitive love.
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:138, 139—“God's regard for the happiness of his creatures flows from this self-communicating attribute of his nature. Love, in the true sense of the word, is living good-will, with impulses to impartation and union; self-communication (bonum communicativum sui); devotion, merging of the ego in another, in order to penetrate, fill, bless this other with itself, and in this other, as in another self, to possess itself, without giving up itself or losing itself. Love is therefore possible only between persons, and always presupposes personality. Only as Trinity has God love, absolute love; because as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he stands in perfect self-impartation, self-devotion, and communion with himself.” Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:136—“God has in himself the eternal and wholly adequate object of his love, independently of his relation to the world.”
In the Greek mythology, Eros was one of the oldest and yet one of the youngest of the gods. So Dante makes the oldest angel to be the youngest, because nearest to God the fountain of life. In 1 John 2:7, 8, “the old commandment” of love is evermore “a new commandment,”because it reflects this eternal attribute of God. “There is a love unstained by selfishness, Th' outpouring tide of self-abandonment, That loves to love, and deems its preciousness Repaid in loving, though no sentiment Of love returned reward its sacrament; Nor stays to question what the loved one will, But hymns its overture with blessings immanent; Rapt and sublimed by love's exalting thrill, Loves on, through frown or smile, divine, immortal still.” Clara Elizabeth Ward: “If I could gather every look of love, That ever any human creature wore, And all the looks that joy is mother of, All looks of grief that mortals ever bore, And mingle all with God-begotten grace, Methinks that I should see the Savior's face.”
(b) Love is not the all-inclusive ethical attribute of God. It does not include truth, nor does it include holiness.