Frame on God’s Self-Love
In the coming days, I am going to post some excerpts of various readings I have done in light of the issue of God’s love and God’s glory. For starters, I am going to post a few by John Frame–one on intra-Trinitarian love, and another on intra-Trinitarian glory. And now for Frame on God’s “Self-Love” (emphasis mine).
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“Love is God’s nature, a fundamental characterization of his Trinitarian being (1 John 4:8, 16; Ex. 34:6-7). It binds the Father and the Son to one another; the Father loves the Son (Matt. 3:17; 17:5; John 3:36; 5:20; 10:17; 17:24, 26; Col. 1:13); the Son loves the Father (John 14:31). The love between the persons of the Trinity is eternal. And since God does not exist without his three persons, the love among those persons is necessary to his nature.
So God’s love is first of all directed toward himself, but even his self-love is self-giving. In divine self-love, each person of the Trinity embraces the others and glorifies the others.
God’s love for creatures, on the other hand, is free. He is not constrained to create the world in order to have someone to love. His love has fully interpersonal relationships apart from creation. In creating the world, therefore, he freely chose to direct his love outside his own triune being. He loves the creation voluntarily.
Scripture defines God’s love, therefore, by the relationships among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, not by his relationships with the world. Trinitarianism, therefore, guards God’s aseity, his independence from the world. God does not need the world in order to love. He is not relative to the world. Thus, his love is fully sovereign. He loves us as the Lord.”
- John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God: A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002), 416-17.
Tags: God's intra-Trinitarian love, Theology Proper, Trinity
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November 26, 2007 at 11:20 am
Thanks for this helpful post. In light of this, do you think that Dr. Witherington’s critique is latently (and probably inadvertantly) unitarian?
November 26, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Thanks for posting this quote Timmy.
November 26, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Larry,
I cannot speak on behalf of Dr. Witherington, so I will leave him to answer whether or not his view of God’s love is unitarian. However, it should be noted that one of the strengths of Reformed theology proper has been its Trinitarian emphasis. While Reformed theologians have discussed God’s full and free expression love in an intra-Trinitarian manner, you will find others, especially advocates of Arminian and Open Theist persuasion argue that God is incomplete and in need to share that love with the world. It is give and take love affair where men can significantly influence God’s overtures of love. In this regard, of course, there is the matter of aseity and impassibility (which Carson argues for a “restrained impassibility”).
November 27, 2007 at 6:14 am
[...] on Intra-Trinitarian Glory On the heels of yesterday’s post, here is an excerpt from John Frame on intra-Trinitarian glory to compliment the data on [...]