My pastor, taking a cue from A.W. Tozer, always said how my view of God is of utmost importance. I held to his beliefs that all of God’s attributes were equally held as 100% concurrently (wrath, justice, mercy, love, etc.). It was forbidden to elevate one attribute above another. As I scratched my head, he added that it is a mystery our finite minds could not comprehend. The appeal to mystery hadn’t bothered me much being raised a Catholic (that I am much grateful for) because much of God’s ways were higher than ours and accepted as mystery.
When I read 1 John 4:8, and specifically reflected on the Parable of the Lost Son and viewing God through Jesus colored lenses- my doubts started. My doubts grew as I discovered this did not reflect an understanding of God, our Father, as the Ultimate Good. My thought process held to the tenet that God is, indeed, love. His essential characteristic is so evident in the Triune cosmic dance of self-giving Love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before creation, it is this perfect union that existed. Wrath and justice were logically absent in this circular flow of love in the Trinitarian kenosis. I bring this point up not to abolish the justice, wrath, and holiness attributes but rather to highlight God’s essential attribute of love as evidenced in the God-man. All other attributes flow out of His divine attribute of love.
I uphold a God of restoration, and in the end, the God of consuming fire, lovingly (for, however “eons” it takes) to burn away the dross in all His creation so as to be “All in All.” Our Father shall bring all through this refining fire to and through His Son. A time, indeterminate on the degree of refinement needed, so as all shall bow their knee joyfully to Jesus Christ.
Can an earthly father love his children more than a Father of Love? If God is the ultimate Good how could He let even one of His be lost forever?
It is through this great revelation of our Father through Jesus Christ that I came to understand my impartial understanding of free will. Is the grace of God stronger to usurp my free choice to reject God? I see through a dark glass without full knowledge of the Truth. Does anyone, logically, know ALL truth entirely? If we did wouldn’t that put us in the realm of the Ultimate? But I have come to see, even if incompletely, the Truth ever so incrementally clearer that I have been set, also in stages, free.
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