Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 352, very properly denies that benevolence is the all-inclusive virtue. Justness and Truth, he remarks, are not reducible to benevolence. In a review of Ladd's work in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903:185, C. M. Mead adds: “He comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve all the virtues into the generic one of love or benevolence without either giving a definition of benevolence which is unwarranted and virtually nullifies the end aimed at, or failing to recognize certain virtues which are as genuinely virtues as benevolence itself. Particularly is it argued that the virtues of the will (courage, constancy, temperance), and the virtues of judgment (wisdom, justness, trueness), get no recognition in this attempt to subsume all virtues under the one virtue of love. 'The unity of the virtues is due to the unity of a personality, in active and varied relations with other persons' (361). If benevolence means wishing happiness to all men, then happiness is made the ultimate good, and eudæmonism is accepted as the true ethical philosophy. But if, on the other hand, in order to avoid this conclusion, benevolence is made to mean wishing the highest welfare to all men, and the highest welfare is conceived as a life of virtue, then we come to the rather inane conclusion that the essence of virtue is to wish that men may be virtuous.” See also art. by Vos, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-37.
(c) Nor is God's love a mere regard for being in general, irrespective of its moral quality.
Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise On the Nature of Virtue, defines virtue as regard for being in general. He considers that God's love is first of all directed toward himself as having the greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily directed toward [pg 264]his creatures whose quantity of being is infinitesimal as compared with his. But we reply that being in general is far too abstract a thing to elicit or justify love. Charles Hodge said truly that, if obligation is primarily due to being in general, then there is no more virtue in loving God than there is in loving Satan. Virtue, we hold, must consist, not in love for being in general, but in love for good being, that is, in love for God as holy. Love has no moral value except as it is placed upon a right object and is proportioned to the worth of that object. “Love of being in general” makes virtue an irrational thing, because it has no standard of conduct. Virtue is rather the love of God as right and as the source of right.
G. S. Lee, The Shadow-cross, 38—“God is love, and law is the way he loves us. But it is also true that God is law, and love is the way he rules us.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 88—“Love is God's desire to impart himself, and so all good, to other persons, and to possess them for his own spiritual fellowship.” The intent to communicate himself is the intent to communicate holiness, and this is the “terminus ad quem” of God's administration. Drummond, in his Ascent of Man, shows that Love began with the first cell of life. Evolution is not a tale of battle, but a love-story. We gradually pass from selfism to otherism. Evolution is the object of nature, and altruism is the object of evolution. Man = nutrition, looking to his own things; Woman = reproduction, looking to the things of others. But the greatest of these is love. The mammalia = the mothers, last and highest, care for others. As the mother gives love, so the father gives righteousness. Law, once a latent thing, now becomes active. The father makes a sort of conscience for those beneath him. Nature, like Raphael, is producing a Holy Family.
Jacob Boehme: “Throw open and throw out thy heart. For unless thou dost exercise thy heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man in the world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy envy, thy distaste, thy dislike, will still have dominion over thee.... In the name and in the strength of God, love all men. Love thy neighbor as thyself, and do to thy neighbor as thou doest to thyself. And do it now. For now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation.” These expressions are scriptural and valuable, if they are interpreted ethically, and are understood to inculcate the supreme duty of loving the Holy One, of being holy as he is holy, and of seeking to bring all intelligent beings into conformity with his holiness.
(d) God's love is not a merely emotional affection, proceeding from sense or impulse, nor is it prompted by utilitarian considerations.
Of the two words for love in the N. T., φιλέω designates an emotional affection, which is not and cannot be commanded (John 11:36—“Behold how he loved him!”), while ἀγαπάω expresses a rational and benevolent affection which springs from deliberate choice (John 3:16—“God so loved the world”; Mat. 19:19—“Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself”; 5:44—“Love your enemies”). Thayer, N. T. Lex., 653—Ἀγαπᾶν “properly denotes a love founded in admiration, veneration, esteem, like the Lat. diligere, to be kindly disposed to one, to wish one well; but φιλεîν denotes an inclination prompted by sense and emotion, Lat. amare.... Hence men are said ἀγαπᾶν God, not φιλεîν.” In this word ἀγάπη, when used of God, it is already implied that God loves, not for what he can get, but for what he can give. The rationality of his love involves moreover a subordination of the emotional element to a higher law than itself, namely, that of holiness. Even God's self-love must have a reason and norm in the perfections of his own being.
B. Positively:
(a) The immanent love of God is a rational and voluntary affection, grounded in perfect reason and deliberate choice.
Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:277—“Love is will, aiming either at the appropriation of an object, or at the enrichment of its existence, because moved by a feeling of its worth.... Love is to persons; it is a constant will; it aims at the promotion of the other's personal end, whether known or conjectured; it takes up the other's personal end and makes it part of his own. Will, as love, does not give itself up for the other's sake; it aims at closest fellowship with the other for a common end.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405—“Love is not rightfully independent of the other faculties, but is subject to regulation and control.... We sometimes say that religion consists in love.... It would be more strictly true to say that religion consists in a new direction of our love, a turning of the current toward God which once flowed [pg 265]toward self.... Christianity rectifies the affections, before excessive, impulsive, lawless,—gives them worthy and immortal objects, regulates their intensity in some due proportion to the value of the things they rest upon, and teaches the true methods of their manifestation. In true religion love forms a copartnership with reason.... God's love is no arbitrary, wild, passionate torrent of emotion ... and we become like God by bringing our emotions, sympathies, affections, under the dominion of reason and conscience.”