59 - 1Jn 4:8
Ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν, οὐκ ἔγνω τὸν Θεὸν, ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν. As if it was impossible for the apostle with too much formality to draw out a contrast, he employs here also another antithesis which1Jn 4:8 presents to1Jn 4:7, in order to add an impressive enlargement to the thought. Before, he had taught thatἡἀγάπηἐκ Θεοῦἐστι [“love is from God”];now, he teaches thatὁΘεὸςἀγάπηἐστίν [“God is love”]. But what does this import? Love is primarily under all circumstances a reciprocal idea, or idea of relation: it necessarily requires a loving subject and an object loved. Even in self-love this maintains its truth; for that can exist only where the subject is conscious of itself as an object, and has differenced a self from the self. In love the subject goes out of itself; and this takes place more particularly in that it opens itself towards another, and communicates itself. Moreover, it lies in the nature of love that what it imparts is something good; is, in fact, a good: communication of what is evil as such is the opposite of love; it can only take place at all under the supposition that I regard the evil erroneously as something good. To wish to communicate what is known to be evil is Satanic, and therefore the precise opposite of loving. Accordingly, there are in the idea of love two things: one, the pre supposition that I have a good, or, more particularly, since good if ethically considered cannot be an accident, that I am good; another, that I refer this good not to myself, but to another, or am conscious of the tendency to impart it. If, now, it is said that God not only has love, but is love, that means His being altogether and only love, love and nothing but love; and in that again appears the second thing, that He not only has good in itself, but that He is altogether good, has all perfection, and absolutely refers nothing to Himself, but all to others. By means of this it is possible to determine the relation which exists between the definition of the divine nature given here and that of1Jn 1:5, God is light. That given in our passage presupposes, as we have seen, that goodness is the essential quality of God which in virtue of Hisἀγάπηεἶναι[“to be love”] He communicates. This essential quality is in1Jn 1:5 described by the termφῶς [“light”]. We foundφῶς [“light”]to be the compendium of all His perfections, theπλήρωμα[“fullness”] of His nature; it is, in fact, the definition of the metaphysical essence of God, asἀγάπη [“love”]is of that of His ethical nature; the former is the immanent side of the divine essence, the latter the transitive which presupposes the former; and the two together express nothing but this, that God at no moment and in no measure ever has, or ever can, or ever does refer the perfect fulness of His being to Himself. The unfathomable and inconceivable fulness of life which is named asφῶς [“light”]is from eternity to eternity existent under only the modality of love. Against the unlimited force of theΘεὸςἀγάπη [“God is love”]is dashed to pieces every notion which represents God as in any way or at any time living a life turned toward self or folded within self.
If we take the two definitions Θεὸς φῶς [“God is light”] and Θεὸςἀγάπη [“God is love”] together, we reach the result that no action of God is conceivable which has not for its aim the demonstration of love; and that there is no evidence of love which has not for its substance the communication of the divine nature of light, of the divine δόξα [“glory”]. If this self-communication of perfect love is conceived as in a literally absolute sense consummate, as a ray of light passing unbroken from one point to another, then we have the eternal ἀπαύγασμακαὶχαρακτὴρ τῆςδόξηςτοῦΘεοῦ [“radiance and exact representation of the golry of God” cf. Heb 1:3], the Son. If it is conceived as dispersing itself in all possible gradations of colour, which in their combination and sum, however, are again like the colourless indifference of pure light, without image,—consummate in time and space,—then we have the world, or, as it is called in its final reference to God, the divine kingdom. Thus it is plain how not only Christ, but the ἐκκλησία [“glory”], that is, the church, the perfected kingdom of God, with its body, the earthly creation, may be called the πλήρωμα [“fullness”] of God. If, then, light and love are as inseparably the nature divine as form and matter make up any material thing, then it follows that everyone who is born of God must be a partaker of this light and of this love. But as, according to 1Jn 4:7, the birth from God is the presupposition of the γινώσκειναὐτόν [“to know him”], the conclusion reached in our eighth verse is perfectly clear, that he who loves not cannot know God,—that is, because he is not born of Him.