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[Dominator]

Long time no post! Hope all is well

I think we only have two possibilities to start with: 1) God's love is unconditional or 2) God's love is not unconditional.

If number 1), then the demand for a blood sacrifice is clearly a condition.

We did a bad thing that leads to death. According to propitiation theories of atonement, God's response to this bad thing is to not forgive as we are commanded to in the NT (i.e., Matt 18:22), but to see the death once commanded in the OT through.
Not only does it demand sacrifice in the vein of the OT, it undoes the OT's rejection of human sacrifice, which can be most powerfully illustrated in the staying of Abraham's hand after the binding of Isaac (among other, less literarily colorful commands).

The OT also clearly moves away from human sacrifice, such as the demand for child sacrifice in Exodus 22:29-30 and then the later-dated (according to the documentary hypothesis) Exodus 13:11-16, or even the more shocking retcon the author of Ezekiel employs in 20:21-26, which states that YWYH used to demand it "in order that [God] might horrify [the Isrealites]".

This is a bit tangential to my argument, but propitiation offends me as a vestige of bronze age barbarism that is - in my opinion - the least interesting part of the crucifixion narrative. It's also retrograde in its trajectory, jumping back to a pre-OT time. But suffice it to say, requiring a sacrifice in order to receive and experience God's love, is clearly a condition, thus God's love is not unconditional.

If number 2), then I am better than God.

I may fail in living up to my ideal of unconditional love, but I clearly espouse it as the highest form of love. As such, my ideals transcend what God is capable of, and if this is who God is, then I don't want to follow or set God as my example.

Let's not get bogged down in relationships that come with certain expectations. I love my partner unconditionally, but I will not marry him without conditions. We need to function in the world, and there are a couple things that need to be in place for that to work. But this is not the same as my ideal for those from whom I remain detached in a monastic sense. I want to love all mankind unconditionally. Of course, I want to hope for their salvation (which I flesh out here) and want them to grow, but my love for them - on my best days - is unconditional.

If God's love is not unconditional, then I am better than God.

My thoughts outside the debate:

If I hang my agnosticism on the hook and accept the cosmology, my preferred narrative is that sacrifice was never demanded by God, but only perceived as such by God-chasers. As we seek God, we become painfully aware of our destruction, and the blood and death is our psycho-spiritual envisioning of the necessary death - or, as I prefer, integration - of our ego. There is a clear trajectory in the Bible not of God, but of man in search of God, that gets us to an elevated place of consciousness that is characterized by unity, oneness and unconditional love. Propitiation, then is simply part of that evolution, which blindly views cause and effect in terms of crime and punishment. My distaste is not for the individual who clings to the narrative of propitiation - I have pity on that person's vicious cycles. But it comes from its elevation to "Good News" status, when we are clearly supposed to be getting beyond this pretty early on. It is not Good News. It is a vestigial archetype of a lower consciousness.

[jimwalton]

Unconditional love is a misnomer, and while we use the term to explain what we think we see in the Bible, it's at times helpful and at times detrimental to our understanding. First of all, we should establish that love is an incredibly multi-faceted word, not easily defined, and undeniably contingent on context for accurate apprehension. Loving pizza, loving friends, loving a spouse, loving enemies, and loving life all mean different things, and we all recognize that. Secondly, "unconditional", in this context, is also multi-faceted. Putting the two together, then, is not a simple matter of linguistics, but is part of communication theory subject to contextual interpretation. Thirdly, the phrase doesn't appear in the Bible, but is an epithet we use to describe a characteristic. In other words, the Bible doesn't really teach that God's love is unconditional.

When the Bible says (John 3.16), "God so loved the world," it means that love is one of his attributes—part of his nature and inexorable character. His attitude towards the world is one of love: concerned for their well-being and willing to sacrifice to bring about goodness. Now look at John 13.1: "...Having loved his own who were in the world..." This is a different definition. This describes a personal love for those who follow him. It's undeniably a different sense than Jn. 3.16. But it's not just that he loved his friends. Matthew 9.36, describing the crowds who were not following him, says, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." He loved them, but we get a different feel than the word that was used in John 13.1. And of course we all know the text in Matt. 5.43-46 about love your enemies. "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?" This is obviously yet another definition of love, because we don't love our enemies as we love our spouses, or as we love God.

We are remiss to read the Bible as if it's uniplanar. It's multi-dimensionsal and contextual, and we have to read it with both intelligence and interpretation.

When Christians talk about God as "loving unconditionally," what they mean is that he is not a respecter of persons, with his favorites, and filled with prejudice and bias toward others. We mean love is inexorably a part of his nature, and he approaches all humans with compassion, a desire for a relationship with them, a willingness to forgive, an interest in their well-being, and with a will to join with them in a unified relationship. It doesn't mean that love becomes a flat plane of ambiguous definition, equality of expression, and, frankly, quite stupid. There is a world of difference between loving a terrorist and loving one's parents. Because love is multi-faceted doesn't mean it's either arbitrary or useless. Your love for your parents and your love for pizza aren't the same, and you can live with those distinct definitions without rendering them useless. We do the same thing with many words.

Therefore your premise is a bit murky. In one sense God's love is unconditional, in the sense that love is inexorably part of His nature and He cannot do other than love. On another hand, however, God's love is conditional in that it's not just a flat plane of ambiguous definition or equality of expression. Things aren't so simple.

In addition, though it's a much longer discussion. Genesis 22 is not about human sacrifice. There are many elements through the text that point is clearly in other directions about what's going on there—and human sacrifice ain't it.

Secondly, blood sacrifice is a condition for forgiveness, but not necessarily for love. You seem to be meshing and therefore confusing the two.

Third, Exodus 22.29 is not about human sacrifice. In Israelite religion human sacrifice is an abomination. Though the same verbs are used for humans and animals, the exact means by which the "giving" was to be done is not explained. Outside of this text there is no evidence for such an interpretation of this law or for such a practice. For that reason, to interpret Ex. 22.29 as human sacrifice is intrinsically impossible. There is no logic to the supposition that God would spare the firstborn of the children of Israel at the Passover (Ex. 12.13) only to turn around a short time later and demand they all be slaughtered. The idea is defined and elaborated on by Ex. 13.2, 12-13 and Lev. 27.26. It means that the firstborn were dedicated to the Lord as a sign of the continuance of the covenant.

Fourth, because of the nuances of the terminology, it's rash and incorrect to conclude you are better than God.

[Dominator]

Thanks for your thoughts.

I don't think love can be conditional and unconditional. And the word unconditional is not ambiguous. It means without condition. If belief in God is a requisite to experience God's love, then that belief is a condition.

[jimwalton]

First of all, love is a very varied and complex word. We just can't group everything about love into one pot.

Secondly, "unconditional" does not appear in the Bible as a descriptor, qualifier, or explainer of God's love. It's a label people put on it, but it's not in the Bible.

Third, belief is not a requisite condition to experience God's love.

* John 3.16: "For God o loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
* Romans 5.8: "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

[Dominator]

It doesn't matter how complex love is. We are talking about God's love. Particularly whether or not it is without condition.

As you say, most Christians put it on it. That's all that really matters here.

If God's love is the gift of his son, then it must first be received to be experienced. That's the very core definition of salvation.

[jimwalton]

Well, I think it does matter how complex love is, but since we're talking about God's love, we have some focal point where we're both talking about the same thing. But it really depends what you're talking about.

In one sense God's love is unconditional: He loves us all, as in the verses I quotes (Jn. 3.16; Rom. 5.8). In that sense belief is not a requisite condition to experience God's love.

God's love is not the gift of His Son, but one of the ways God shows His love is in the gift of His Son. (There are many other ways God shows His love.) And we do know for certain that God's Son must first be received to be experienced, as you say.

So there's a sense where God's love is general, universal, and unconditional. There's another aspect of God's love (salvation by the name of Jesus) that is conditioned on receiving it. We have to look at all the different facets and nuances and not just try to lump everything together under one term (love) that has at least dozens of nuances and meanings.

If we go back to your original post, because love has nuances, facets, and different meanings, I still don't agree with you that propitiation is mutually exclusive with unconditional love.