You have the imaging backwards. It is we who are in God’s image, not vice versa. There is no contingency about him.
It seems to me that you have the problem here. If God’s Goodness is based on God’s essence, then it seems to me that God’s character is determined by God’s nature. How can God be truly good if God has no choice as to whether God be good? Was God forced to create the universe because God is good? If God had chosen not to create the universe would that make God not Good?
It seems to me that the definition of love that theology should use is either the example of Jesus or Paul’s definition in 1 Cor 13 or both, which are not metaphysical. God is love because God is Trinity. This means that the focus of our understanding of Love must be on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. The way to stop focusing on anthropomorphism is to focus on God and not on philosophy which is how we understand what is real and human.
It is hard to see how God increased God’s joy by creating humans. It would seem to be the opposite since humans have made such a mess out of the universe. If God had stopped short of creating humans it would seem make more sense in this area, but, praise God, God did not.
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You seem to be arguing with the Bible. The Bible says God is love. The question is what does it mean. And I agree that God=love is incorrect – as bad as saying that God = Being or existence. But I think your talk of God’s love being derived of God’s essence obscures this even worst. First of all love which is not a choice isn’t love at all. Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence are things God has by nature much in the same way that we are mammals and have a race, sex, and nationality. These things do not define us. If you really want to know someone you need to look at his choices. God chooses love and that is why love describes Him better than these other things. Indeed you could say this is His essence in the existentialist sense of existence precedes essence because it is what we do with what we have been given that really defines us.
I must admit that this title doesn’t sit all that well with me either, but I think you go too far. I disagree with the way Dale describes God motivation, and agree with you that God has no needs whatsoever that He would seek to fulfill. But it is going too far to say that nothing done by us can give God pleasure for this contradicts the words of the Bible, which says numerous times that God is well pleased with particular people. I think the truth is that God is even MORE able to appreciate people and what they accomplish than we are.
Good point, and well put. 
He was actually quoting me, and I will stand by it. Our human families are really images, God ordained metaphors, of the original ‘Family’, the Trinity – God was joyful within himself. Family is joy is increased by adopting beloved children who can love in return, increasing familial love and joy. That is what the work of Jesus accomplished, redeeming delinquent children like you and me off the streets and out of the prison of sin so that we could be legitimately adopted into his family.
True. But he wants to share his joy and add to it as described just above because he is generous and loving.
Not so. Obedient children bring joy to fathers, and to Father.
This is not true. Quite a few times the Bible says God is pleased with someone.
Gen 6:8 “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”
1 Kings 3;10 “It pleased the Lord that Solomon asked this.”
Exodus 33:17 “For you have found favor in my sight.”
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David B. Hart mentioned to me in an email that he was “not religious.”
Your view reminds me of apophatic theologies.
There appear to be different kinds of faith (some much less clingy and defensive than others) when it comes to faith in something transcendent.
In other words there is not merely the either/or of no faith, or faith in the Christian God (or Jewish God, or Muslim God) who inspires certain sacrosanct writings. Those with the latter kind of faith have throughout history often become upset if their particular ideas about the transcendent or even about their exegesis of certain holy writings get questioned. In fact the greatest debunkers of the Bible are Christians debunking each other’s interpretations, or even each other’s spiritual experiences. And conservative Christians often can’t get along as well with each other as more inclusive members of completely different religious traditions get along with each other.
In comparison there is a wide range of more inclusive more universal yet also transcendental forms of trust like those of Thoreau, or like philosopher of religion John Hick in our own day (who left Evangelicalism for a more inclusive belief that different religions were connected by an underlying universal transcendence they each tried to demarcate).
Here is how Thoreau put it…
Let God alone if need be. Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him–I should keep myself, rather–at a more respectful distance. It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover that God is. I say, God. I am not sure that is the name. You will know whom I mean…
Doubt may have “some divinity” about it…
Atheism may be comparatively popular with God himself…
When a pious visitor inquired sweetly, “Henry, have you made your peace with God?” he replied, “We have never quarreled.”
as quoted in Henry David Thoreau: What Manner of Man? By Edward Wagenknecht
There is also the Alan Watts definition of the difference between having beliefs and having faith. Having beliefs is like clinging to something in the pool to keep one afloat, always being afraid of letting go and learning to swim. Also try googling “sea of faith.”
Robert Anton Wilson pointed out how many people cling to a single reality tunnel and don’t dare to seek all the ways their tunnel overlaps with that of others. Concerning western religions of the book, many of their adherents view only their holy book as being inspired and containing the lessons and stories above all other lessons and stories of all humankind, and grow defensive even when the most gruesome laws and tales of divine anger in their holy books are questioned.
And of course there are Christian conservatives, moderates and liberals who differ concerning what their holy writings really mean or what the most essential and necessary lessons really are.
And so it goes.
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We were misquoting each other. We agree: God does delight and find pleasure in his children.
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I am able to see the virtues of variety of religious traditions, not only Judaism and Christianity, but also Islam, Atenism, Middle Platonism and Zoroastrianism.
There are going to be virtues and vices in every religion. The problem I see with this comparison is, though, is that it puts the Judeo-Christian tradition on the same level as these other traditions when, in fact, I think there is no comparison. Out of Christianity came modern hospitals, the university (even Harvard was established as a clergy missionary school), natural rights, the eventual abolition of slavery, the notion of social welfare from the state, the preservation of literacy after the fall of the Roman Empire, the notion of the separation of church and state, peace movements, and much more that I’d gladly get into. What have all of those other traditions done for us, even all of them combined?
Yesterday, I finished reading Walter Scheidel’s Escape From Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (Princeton 2019). Scheidel’s thesis is that the best thing the Roman empire ever did for bringing about modernity is collapsing and never coming back. I’d say it’s a must read book for anyone interested in the development of modernity and global comparative history. Towards the end of the book, Scheidel evaluates what if anything Rome has ever done for us. In fact, he only gives a single answer: maybe, Christianity. On the final page, he summarizes the three factors that have lead to the development of the modern world, and suggests that Christianity may be one of them. (That was quite important to me as it verifies a lot of the study I’ve been doing for a while.)
So you can obviously take a look at Buddhism or something and say that it has valuable teachings on kindness and these other things. However, the crucial difference between Christianity and Buddhism and all these other religions is that Christianity gets things done for the individual, for humanity, and takes its values very seriously and especially on a social and societal level. It causes change. That’s a crucial difference.
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Counterfeits have pieces of truth, and our adversary excels in deceit, including the promoting the idea that there is no such thing as truth:
This echoes some of what you are saying, too:
This is a pretty good and accurate article. It doesn’t give specific references and citations, though, to how this all actually played out in history, which is perhaps the most convincing evidence that exists for exactly how important Christianity was for the rise of modern science. This is where you need to ready some of the literature on the subject to vastly expand the detail and factual grounds for the content of the article. Take a look at Edward Grant’s Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages and Amos Funkenstein’s Theology and the Scientific Imagination, which might be the two most important works in the field on this topic.
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How many think there is “no truth,” compared to those who simply doubt that you have cornered the truth market, or who admit they don’t know what lay behind the metaphysical curtain, or who have a hard enough time getting along in this world without the luxury of spending much time and effort pondering the next?
One might add that many exclusivist religions, denominations, sects, cults, have a built-in defense system; anything that questions one of their beliefs, no matter how logical the argument, is the work of the evil one (in their religion) by the very fact that it makes them question a belief.
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Quite a grab bag of quotes and ideas here. I’m also a fan of universalism, leastwise I assume there is a common cause for the broad prevalence of God belief as far back as we can trace. I take it you are as well.
This made me laugh and is new to me.
When a pious visitor inquired sweetly, "Henry, have you made your peace with God?” he replied, “We have never quarreled.”
One of the books I found influential at a young age was Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity. I find I’m a big fan of faith over belief in the way he draws the distinction. Really what attractive alternative do we have to faith? I’m not religious but I recognize I have no choice but to embrace what the world will show me and trust that something inborn in me will make some sense of it.
The idea of a supernatural adversary to an all powerful God never made any sense to me. If indeed it were true then how would one decide which one they have been raised to serve? Have we been born into the good ones camp or that of the evil one? Makes the head spin.
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Christianity best fits reality, that all of us are broken, that the universe had a beginning event and that we live on a dying planet. The Carpenter from Galilee even speaks to global warming, and fires and floods are in The Book as well. I expect we will see more megacryometeors, too.
I can buy that we are dependent beings but broken? How so?
Beginnings and endings are the way of things even while the show goes on. I don’t see how Christianity has any patent on that.
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Watch the evening news.
How it began and how it is ending are pretty particular.
You seem to have avoided the other details I mentioned.
@mitchellmckain, you are absolutely right. God’s essence, that is God’s Character, is not defined by God’s nature. God does not have to love, because love is a choice. God’s character of Love is defined by God’s freedom to choose, which means that the Christian God is NOT Absolute, because being Absolute means being Simple (rather than Triune,) unable to change, to make decisions, and to love.
The God of Islam, and the God of the Philosophers are Absolute. The God of Judaism is caught in between.
The character of God is to love order. Love creates order out of chaos. “Love covers up a multitude of sins.” God receives the “pleasure of renewed order” from love. God does not need it but God loves it because God is right relationship.
Pease see my essay God and Freedom on Academia.edu.
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I find those contradictory, sorry. I don’t think love is a choice within the Trinity.
@Dale, Happy New Year!
Thank you for the question.
Love is a relationship by which we share ourselves with others. That means we must have an interdependent, two-way connection with others, which means a complex one. If God were a simple Being, God could not have a complex interdependent with others. In fact some theologians said that God the Father could not love, but could only be loved because they said God the Father is Absolute.
God can love because God is Three as well as One, therefore God can love Godself. God is able to share with us and others.
God does not have to give Godself fully to others or to love others completely. God is able to love critically so we can be purged of our sin and grow in God’s love. S9implicity can be good in some ways, but complexity is needed to give flexibility and diversity.