Deus Caritas Est

Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you: and I have preserved you, and given you to be a covenant of the people, that you might raise up the earth, and possess the inheritances that were destroyed: That you might say to them that are bound: Come forth: and to them that are in darkness: Show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in every plain. They shall not hunger, nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor the sun strike them: for he that is merciful to them, shall be their shepherd, and at the fountains of waters he shall give them drink. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my paths shall be exalted. Behold these shall come from afar, and behold these from the north and from the sea, and these from the south country. Give praise, O you heavens, and rejoice, O earth, you mountains, give praise with jubilation: because the Lord has comforted his people, and will have mercy on his poor ones. And Sion said: The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget you. [Isaiah 49:8-15]

The Lord delays not his promise, as some imagine, but deals patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance. [2 Peter 3:9; emphasis added]

I once knew of a man who had a sign on his car that said, “God is Wrath.” It perhaps comes as no surprise that this man was a Calvinist. Unfortunately there is nothing Christian about this sentiment. God is love (1 John 4:8). Contrary to Reformed rantings, God really does want all men to repent, just as St. Peter says. Contrary to dreadful Calvinist doctrine, He doesn’t consign anyone to hell just because it suits Him to do so.

God's impassibility and the atonement

God is impassible. Among other things, this means that he is not subject to emotional changes (and properly speaking it's anthropomorphic even to speak of him this way). His eternal beatitude does not vary, and this is all the more certain with respect to the question of whether created beings can affect that beatitude.

For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. [Mal. 3:6]

There are certain conclusions about the atonement that follow from this, and although I suspect that I'll have more to say about it later (this year? if I start reading Anselm before 2010?) Pelikan has a succinct summary about the matter.

Although it was customary in the language of the church to say that God 'has redeemed us from sins and from His wrath and from hell and from the power of the devil,' this needed to be understood in relation to the concept of 'rightness.' God did not require satisfaction as a means of appeasing his wrath, for he was impassible and therefore could not be wrathful as men are. Instead of speaking of the 'wrath' of God, therefore, Anselm spoke of his justice: the justice of God had been violated by the failure of man to render to God what he owed Him; the justice of God also made it impossible for God to forgive this sin by mere fiat, for this would have been a violation of the very order in the universe that God had to uphold to be consistent with himself and with his justice. Any scheme of human salvation, therefore, had to be one that would render 'satisfaction' to divine justice and leave the 'rightness' and moral order intact. [Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology, 140f.]

From this we may see something that I've discussed before: what we believe about God has consequences how we think about other things - in this case, the nature of the atonement. This dogma concerning God's nature also must necessarily inform how we read the Bible: if God is impassible - if he does not change - then we must conclude that passages that "literally" seem to say otherwise speak only anthropomorphically about him - describing God's actions in human terms. This reminds us again of why it is important to "read the Scripture within the living Tradition of the whole Church" (CCC §113).

Philosophy of St. Thomas - Faith and the Knowledge of God

We're not free to believe just anything about God that suits our fancy, as though one thing were as good as another.

[T]he divine law orders man for this purpose, that he may be entirely subject to God. But, just as man is subject to God as far as will is concerned, through loving, so is he subject to God as far as intellect is concerned, through believing; not, of course, by believing anything that is false, for no falsity can be proposed to man by God Who is truth. Consequently, he who believes something false does not believe in God [SCG III, 118, 3].

And more:

[4] Besides, whoever is in error regarding something that is of the essence of a thing does not know that thing. Thus, if someone understood irrational animal with the notion that it is a man, he would not know man. Now, it would be a different matter if he erred concerning one of man’s accidents. However, in the case of composite beings, the person who is in error concerning one of their essential principles does know the thing, in a relative way, though he does not know it in an unqualified sense. For instance, he who thinks that man is an irrational animal knows him according to his genus. But this cannot happen in reference to simple beings; instead, any error at all completely excludes knowledge of the being. Now, God is most simple. So, whoever is in error concerning God does not know God, just as the man who thinks that God is a body does not know God at all, but grasps something else in place of God. However, the way in which a thing is known determines the way in which it is loved and desired. Therefore, he who is in error about God can neither love God nor desire Him as an end. So, since the divine law intends this result, that man love and desire God, man must be bound by divine law to bold a right faith concerning God.
[5] Moreover, false opinion holds the same place in regard to objects of the intellect that vice opposed to virtue has in regard to moral matters, “for truth is the good of the intellect.” But it is the function of divine law to prohibit vices. Therefore, it also pertains to it to exclude false opinions about God and matters concerned with God.

Now this is not to say that one's knowledge of God must be perfect in the sense of lacking nothing. Abraham and Moses and David knew God, but they did not know him as fully as Christians may do so today. We are finite, after all.

It's pretty likely that part of what St. Thomas means here depends a lot upon technical definitions of knowledge and opinion. That which is known is that which is certain and could not be otherwise, while opinion has to do with that which could be otherwise. So I might suppose, for example, that I "know" my birthday falls on a given date, but in fact I don't know it (in the sense that Aquinas probably means in SCG above) at all. It's not possible for an infant to know his birthday, so he must be told. But those who tell him may be mistaken, or they may forget, or they may even lie. So really I have an opinion about my birthday, not knowledge.

Now there are things that we may know about God by way of reason - as St. Thomas attempts to demonstrate in SCG especially. And we may know still more by way of faith, which is even more certain. But it's not so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry Average must be a theologian on the order of an Aquinas or St. Augustine in order it to be said of him that he knows God. It seems to me that this means that we must acknowledge a distinction between what the Catholic knows formally, by virtue of being Catholic, and what he knows materially. He intends to know and believe those things that the Church teaches, so that formally it may be said that he knows God; but he then has the obligation, as he has ability and opportunity, to know God materially - to make this knowledge something subjectively true.

Philosophy of St. Thomas - God Hates Nothing He Has Made

Preliminary note: The only decent online source for the Summa Contra Gentiles appears to be a copyright violation. I've removed the reference to it from my previous post, and will be omitting links to SCG references in my posts from it until/unless I find a better site to use. Instead, I'll be referencing the 1950s Image 5-volume edition, which you can find (one volume at a time) at Amazon; here's a seller with the full set. It's worth pointing out that most editions I've seen are abridged, but the Image one is complete (and also excellent).

Aquinas begins SCG with God. Someday (waaaaay in the future) maybe I'll go over the full argument that he makes, but for now it's sufficient to say that after going through his proofs for the existence of God, he turns to an extended discussion of the things that we may know about God by means of reason.

In SCG I-96 (p. 292), St. Thomas demonstrates that God hates nothing. This follows from what he said in I-95 (p. 290f) about the fact that God cannot will evil:

For the virtue of a being is that by which he operates well. Now every operation of God is an operation of virtue, since His virtue is His essence, as was shown above. Therefore, God cannot will evil.

If God cannot will evil, then certain other conclusions follow.

[1] From this it appears that the hatred of something does not befit God.

[2] For as love is to the good, so hatred is to evil; for to those we love we will good, and to those we hate, evil. If, then, the will of God cannot be inclined to evil, as has been shown, it is impossible that He should hate anything.

But this is not all. Aquinas does not restrict himself to any single argument where he can help it (and he is rarely if ever limited to a single argument, thanks to his monumental intellectual powers):

[3] Again, the will of God is directed to things other than Himself, as has been shown, in so far as, by willing and loving His own being and His own goodness, God wills it to be diffused as much as possible through the communication of likeness. This, then, is what God wills in other things, that there be in them the likeness of His goodness. But this is the good of each thing, namely, to participate in the likeness of God; for every other goodness is nothing other than a certain likeness of the first goodness. Therefore, God wills good to each thing. Hence, He hates nothing.

This conclusion is consistent with Scripture: "For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made: for thou didst not appoint, or make any thing hating it" (Wis. 11:25); "The Lord is good to all, and compassionate toward all his works" (Ps. 144/145:9).

Well, then what about passages in the Bible that seem to contradict this?

[7] However, God is said by similitude to hate some things, and this in a twofold way. In the first way, because God, in loving things and by willing the existence of their good, wills the non-existence of the contrary evil. Hence, He is said to have a hatred of evils, for we are said to hate what we will not to exist. In the words of Zechariah (8:17): "And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his friend and love not a false oath. For all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord." These, however, are not effects in the manner of subsisting things, to which properly love and hate refer.

[8] The second way arises from the fact that God wills some greater good that cannot be without the loss of some lesser good. And thus He is said to hate, although this is rather to love. For thus, inasmuch as He wills the good of justice or of the order of the universe, which cannot exist without the punishment or corruption of some things, God is said to hate the things whose punishment or corruption He wills. In the words of Malachi (1:3): "I have hated Esau"; and the Psalms (5:7): "You hate all workers of iniquity: You destroy all who speak a lie. The bloody and the deceitful man the Lord will abhor."

So we see that the best that may be said for those Protestants who claim that God literally hates unbelievers is that they have misunderstood Scripture. The God who is love does not hate his creatures.