fellowship with God. This faith, properly, is not to be called love, for God's love need not be returned to him. But through faith in God a 'valve' is opened by which the love of God which has filled the believer is able to flow outward to the neighbour. The believer's love for his neighbour becomes thus 'spontaneous' and 'unmotivated'
exactly like God's overflowing love. The love is not conditioned
by any quality in the neighbour, but rather creates value insofar as it is God's agape which fills the believer and which is directed outwards. Human self-love vanishes, and it is only in the background as a prior condition, as the believer realizes that he himself has nothing to give to the neighbour that is not already God's gift
to him. The agape shown to the neighbour is thus "the sacrificial,
self-giving majesty of love" which is bestowed on the believer by Christ.
The following deficiencies may now be listed as a summary critique of Nygren's notion of agape.
(1) Human freedom and responsibility are so essential to existence that they may never be dissolved in this world. God's love may inform human decisions, but some distinction between human will and divine love must be preserved. If God's love is equated with Christian love in such a way that there is a direct "tubular" connec tion, then Christians must be perfect in their love, or else God's love is conditioned by the tragic decisions of Christians. A better correlation of human loves with God's is required, but "God cannot ravish, he can only woo.
(2) There does not seem to be a manifestly evident need to assert that either God's love or the human's must be without motive and spontaneous. Some motives are certainly better than others; some loves may be spontaneous, but perhaps others must be willed. Such
ï
1 7 7 f
qualifiers are presumptious in attempting to describe or define
God's love, and they do not necessarily correlate with human exper
ience of loving. Love as it is known by humans may never resemble
(much less be equated with) the totally sacrificial and selfless love which Nygren calls agape. God may have motives and interests of which we may not be aware. Thus even to speak of God ' s agape as always spontaneous, unmotivated and sacrificial may indicate ignorance that God may actually enjoy his creatures. Perhaps there is an eros in God's own love which is missed in our talk about his selflessness and sacrifice.^
(3) Grace which occurs 'once for all' at the crucifixion, and which is activated by 'faith alone' appears to be an inadequate 'type' of grace. God's nurturing, covenanted love is preached by Jesus, and it is certainly a continuous theme in Judaeo-Christian thought. The human search for God cannot summarily be dismissed as egocentric, although it has often assumed egocentric forms. Eros and agape, if distinguished at all, must come together in the Atonement, a climax to the often frustrated search for God, consummated by God's revelation of himself. The Cross is not a denial of God's nurture but rather a confirmation of it. God's grace, the Cross proclaims, is not to be interrupted by human sin. Rather, through grace, we are led to the spot where God comes to meet us at the Cross. Faith cannot be the button we press to activate God's love.
(4) Given the proclamation of a God covenanted to his creation, who continuously creates and nurtures his creatures, the request for a choice between agape and eros is a wrongly stated question. Nygren has 'loaded the dice' in favour of a certain, limited idea of grace. Agape according to Nygren excludes the creative influence of God through most of the experiences which human beings call love. 1. cf. below, chapter six; and Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity, op. cit.
God's love conceived as always a "downward" movement militates against the possibility of a teleology through love's gradual perfection as humans come to understand more about love. Love's practice, in the terms Nygren has defined it, is not a human practice at all. It is directly the practice of God, set over against the practice of humanity. It is an ideal which is incredible, and because it is incredible it perpetuates alienation between possible human love and the love of God. An adequate view of grace based upon the love of God must see it as able to support and sustain humanity, enabling the practical improvement of inadequate loves. If love may be 'perfected' so that justice is constantly in progress, a strict division between human love (eros) and divine love (agape) prejudges every attempt to bring a slightly greater justice to a world steeped in frustration. Justice arises through persistent endeavour, and not through the 'magic' of faith, or an imaginary concept of divine love. Only if our imperfect loves are undergirded by God's nurturing, supportive love, and beckoned by the precept of Christ, may we avoid sinking into despair. If reconciliation between human beings with each other, and between humanity and God, is to be possible even on a minimal level, then eros and agape must not remain in conflict. The creation of justice depends not only on the love of God, but upon the human capacity to put inadequate loves to work with tools at hand. Through a creative and nurturing grace, enabling increasing justice in a frustrated world - a 'better' if not a 'perfect' love - the distinction between eros and agape essentially dissolves.
God's word to Cain is his word to an unjust world. "Sin couches at the door...but you may master it." The mark of Cain is our protec tion and our hope. Fallenness is no excuse. By the sweat of our brow we must learn to be our brother's keeper. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, but neither can God's love alone perform our task.
II. John Burnaby on St. Augustine's Concept of Caritas