Peckham, John C. The Love of God: A Canonical Model. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015. 295 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0830840793.
Reviewed by Bradford L. McCall, Graduate Student in Philosophy, Holy Apostles College and Seminary, Cromwell, CT.
John C. Peckham (PhD, Andrews University) is Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Philosophy at Andrews University, which is a Seventh-day Adventist institution in Berrien Springs, MI. He is the author of The Concept of Divine Love in the Context of the God-World Relationship (Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2014) and has published multiple articles on systematic theology issues in various journals.
“God is love,” the apostle John tells us (1 John 4:8). How are we to understand this affirmation? Does God choose to love, or does God love necessarily? Is God’s love emotional? Does the love of God include desire or enjoyment? Is God’s love conditional? Can God receive love from human beings? Peckham contends that God’s character itself is love, and that God is therefore essentially loving in all that he does. Whereas most conceptions of love tend to move from divine ontology to love, the latter being constrained and shaped by the former, he herein to inverts the order by first investigating the canonical depiction of divine love, while bracketing out ontological presuppositions. In so doing, he displays a high regard for scripture, affirms the dual authorship of the canonical text (divine and human), and employs grammatical-historical procedures of exegesis.
Whereas conceptions of divine love vary wildly, the primary features of the contemporary debate can be characterized by an examination of two recent and prominent models, which are inherently irreconcilable. One widely held position is the transcendent-voluntarist model, which is descended from the classical theism of Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther; this model understands God as necessary, self-sufficient, perfect, simple, timeless, immutable and impassible. In this view, God is entirely unaffected by the world and his love is thus sovereignly willed, unmotivated, unmerited, unconditional, unilateral and arbitrary; it is exemplified by Christ’s self-giving love. In the twentieth century, an immanent-experientialist model, held for example by process panentheists, largely replaced classical theism with an understanding of God as bound up essentially with the world and partially therefore dependent on it. In this latter view God necessarily feels all feelings and loves all others, because they are included within himself; it is characterized by Hartshorne’s dipolar theism, in which God is partially determined and self-determined, the eminently moved mover of all, and the universal and supreme subject.
The conclusions arrived at in Peckham’s foreconditional-reciprocal model of divine love point toward significant tensions and sometimes contradictions with the underlying ontologies supposed by the transcendent-voluntarist as well as the immanent-experientialist models. According to his model, God’s love in relation to the world is: 1) volitional, 2) evaluative, 3) emotional or passible, 4) foreconditional, and 5) ideally reciprocal. Indeed, it is volitional but not merely volitional in that includes a free, volitional aspect that is neither essential nor necessary to God’s being yet also not arbitrary. It is also evaluative, which means that God is capable of being affected by, and even benefitting from, the disposition and/or actions of his creatures. Moreover, it is profoundly emotional, though not to the exclusion of volitional and evaluative aspects. Further, divine love is foreconditional, not altogether unconditional. Additionally, God’s love is ideally reciprocal in that he works toward a bilateral love relationship with creatures via his universal relational love, but does not unilaterally determine that anyone love him in response.
The above-mentioned five aspects of divine love in the foreconditional-reciprocal model are bound up with significant ontological issues, including: 1) the relationship of divine love to God’s essence or character, 2) the nature of divine perfection, 3) the sovereignty of God’s will, 4) the position one takes on divine immutability, and 5) the extent and use of divine power. According to Peckham’s model, the intra-trinitarian love relation does not extend to creatures or creation, which means that he differs with a large swath of Wesleyan-Arminian believers today who advocate such a notion. His model asserts that God is ontologically independent from the world as its Creator and is thereby self-sufficient. However, God nevertheless takes enjoyment in the goodness of the world and displeasure in evil. His model suggests that God possesses significant freedom and bestows it to creatures and creation toward the goal of a reciprocal love relationship. Accordingly, God is not omnicausal, but voluntarily limits his power instead in order to allow significant freedom such that creatures and creation in general impact history with their/its decisions. God is passible, in this view, being profoundly affected by and concerned with the world he has created, yet is not essentially bound to it nor passive.
In The Love of God, John Peckham offers a comprehensive canonical interpretation of divine love in dialogue with, and at times in contrast to, both classical and process theism. God’s love, he argues, is freely willed, evaluative, emotional and reciprocal, given to creatures and creation but not without conditions. According to his reading of Scripture, the God who loves the world is both perfect and passible, both self-sufficient and desirous of reciprocal relationships with each person, so that “whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Recommended to those who have interests in the study of systematic theology at an academic level, as this book is geared toward an academic audience.