Explaining Away the Love of God: Part II
In Part I of this two part series, I pointed to some Calvinist theologians and philosophers who have explicitly denied that God loves every human being; some even insist that he actually hates or despises a large portion of the human race, namely, those included among the non-elect. I also noted that Jeff Jordan has recently challenged the whole idea, which he acknowledges to be widely accepted among theistic philosophers, that "God's love must be maximally extended and equally intense." His basic claim here seems to be that one person's best interest over the long run can sometimes be logically incompatible with that of others. But his argument for this claim, I suggested, rests upon a systematic confusion between a perceived best interest and a real best interest.
Now in a published reply to Jordan, I also argued that he has failed to appreciate the inclusive nature of love: how "love (as opposed to that grasping possessiveness so easily confused with love) . . . actually creates a common set of real interests . . ."[14] Accordingly, if a mother should love her child even as she loves herself, then any great evil that befalls her child is likewise a great evil that befalls the mother and any great good that befalls her child is likewise a great good that befalls the mother; or, as Jesus himself put it: "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt. 25:40---RSV). This "also helps to explain," I argued, "why genuine love---that is, willing the best for another---cannot remain fixated forever on a select few, such as one's own children, to the exclusion of others. . . . [For as] our own loved ones---our children, for example---acquire additional loved ones of their own; and as these in turn acquire still more loved ones, a common set of real interests continues to expand."[15] But of course these remarks do not apply to just anything one might call "love," a highly ambiguous term in everyday discourse. In an effort to avoid any such ambiguity, therefore, I identified the love I had in mind as a kind that includes, among other things perhaps, willing the best for another. And I then formulated the following principle: "for any two persons S and S, if S wills the best for S, then no one (including God) can will less than the best for S* without also willing less than the best for S."
As an illustration of this principle, I also gave the following example: "Suppose that, as might happen in a bad Hollywood movie plot, a woman's possessive attitudes with respect to her only son should induce her to hatch a murderous plot against his fiancée whom she fears has stolen his heart. It is simply obvious, surely, that this woman's murderous jealousy would be just as incompatible with any genuine love for her son as it would be with any genuine love for his fiancée. For if her son genuinely cares for his fiancée and thus wills the very best for her, then the common set of real interests thereby created carries the following implication: Anyone, including the man's own mother, who wills less than the best for his fiancée likewise wills less than the best for the man himself."[16]
So how does Jordan respond to such considerations as these? Remarkably, he ignores altogether the specific kind of love I specified and attributes to me the following principle:
P1: if S loves S, then, for any person P, if P loves S then P must also love S.[17]
But why, if he wanted to capture the argument I actually gave, would he replace my own expression, "S wills the best for S," with the more ambiguous expression, "S loves S"? Here is the explanation he offers in a footnote: "I have substituted 'loves' for 'wills the best' in my reconstruction of Talbott's argument, since our discussion is about love, and we have been given no reason to hold that love and willing the best are interchangeable."[18] But that, surely, gets the matter exactly backwards. If I thought these expressions were interchange-able, I would have less of an objection to someone replacing my own expression with one that seemed to me interchangeable with it (or equivalent to it). But since I do not regard these expressions as interchangeable, in part because the term "love" is so ambiguous in so many ordinary linguistic contexts, I see no justification for Jordan to twist my own words in an effort to set up an irrelevant objection, as I view it. After formulating P1, he thus writes: "suppose Jones loves Juliet and is a rival with Greene for her hand. In fact, Juliet loves Greene. Does it follow from loving Juliet, that Jones must also love Greene, his rival for her hand? This seems doubtful. Or suppose Juliet's love for Greene is pathological or harmful or imprudent. It surely cannot be that Jones too must love Greene, or will that Juliet love Greene."[17]
Do we not have here a clear illustration of the extent to which Jordan confuses different senses of the term "love," or, more specifically, identifies love with something, such as an intense romantic interest in someone, that may have little or nothing to do with willing the best for that person? Suppose we replace my original expression, "S wills the best for S," with the expression, "S has a romantic interest in S." More than a few identify such a romantic interest with being in love with someone, and this seems to be what Jordan has in mind when he asks us to imagine that "Jones loves Juliet and is a rival with Greene for her hand." Following Jordan's strategy, then, we might formulate an obviously absurd principle, namely this:
P2: if S has a romantic interest in S, then for any person P, if P has a romantic interest in S then P must also have a romantic interest in S.
Clearly, we can appreciate the absurdity of P2 without resorting to anything like Jordan's example of a romantic triangle. And similarly, if we identify love with an intense feeling of affection for someone, then P1 is obviously false as well. For it is at least possible that (a) S loves S, (b) some person P loves S, and (c) P is altogether unaware of S's existence. So the relevant cases are not those where someone fails to love (or to have an intense feeling of affection for) some unknown person; the relevant cases are those where someone hates, or harbors ill will towards, or seeks to harm some known person.
What Jordan's example of a romantic triangle finally illustrates, moreover, is the unique challenge that romantic love presents to anyone seeking to obey the two great commandments that Jesus delivered to us. As I recall from my own high school and college days, the experience of "falling in love" was probably closer to a kind of paranoia, rooted in self-centered desires of the flesh, than it was to any kind of self-giving love. And if it is truly possible, as Jordan implies it is, that Juliet's romantic interest in "Greene is pathological or harmful or imprudent," why regard this as an instance of genuine love at all? Jordan is certainly free to use the term "love" in any way he pleases, so long as he makes his own usage clear. But in no way can we automatically assume that a romantic interest in someone qualifies as a genuine instance of willing the best for that person. It may seem odd to Jordan that, despite Juliet's romantic interest in Jones's "rival for her hand," Jones is nonetheless obligated to will the best for his rival. But such an obligation in fact follows directly from Jesus' command that we are to love our neighbor, including any possible rival in a romantic triangle, even as we love ourselves. Even in a case where rivals in a romantic triangle become bitter enemies, as sometimes happens, there is no escaping the command that we are to love our enemies as well as our friends and even pray for those who persecute us (as romantic rivals sometimes do to each other).
Finally, I have no doubt that romantic love, despite the jealousies it so often engenders, can also mature into a genuine caring for the welfare of another. If this doesn't happen in a marriage, the marriage will likely end in divorce; and if, by way of contrast, it does happen in someone who loses out to a romantic rival, it can sometimes result in truly noble actions. In Charles Dickens' A tale of Two Cities, if I remember the plot correctly, a man sacrifices his own life in order to save from the guillotine the husband of the woman he loves. It is precisely Sydney Carton's abiding love for Lucie, the woman he had previously sought to marry, that provides his incentive to sacrifice his own life on behalf of her husband. Because he continues to will the best for Lucie, in other words, he also wills the best for her husband. And yes, according to some, such as English Professor Edgar Johnson, the end of this story "is drenched in overindulged sentiment."[19] But whatever one's literary judgment at this point---and I strongly disagree with the judgment just reported---Dickens clearly had in mind the New Testament ideal of a perfect self-sacrificing love.
[14] "Response to Jeff Jordan," p. 314 (see Part I for the full bibliographical reference).
[15] Ibid., p. 315.
[16] Ibid.
[17] "Reply to Thomas Talbott, p. 187 (see Part I for the full bibliographical reference).
[18] Ibid., p. 187, n. 11.
[19] From the Introduction to Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: The Pocket Library, 1957), p. xviii.