Who needs whom?
“Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (I Jn 4:15) We needn’t use many words: “Whoever shall confess”: not in word but in deed, not with one’s tongue but with one’s life. For many confess with their words but deny with their deeds.
“And we have known and have believed the love which God has for us.” And, again, how do you know this? “God is love” (I Jn 4:16). He already said this above, and now he repeats it. Love could not be more fully commended to you than by its being called God. You might be ready to despise God’s gift, but do you despise God himself?
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.” They mutually abide in one another, the one who holds and the one who is held. You abide in God, but so that you may be held. God abides in you, but so that he may hold you lest you fall. Don’t think of yourself as a house of God in the same way as the house that supports your flesh. If the house in which you are is withdrawn, you fall; but if you withdraw yourself, God does not fall. He is no less when you desert him; he is no greater when you return to him. When you are healed, you do not bestow anything on him, nor when you are cleansed, when you are refreshed, when you are set right. He is a medicine for the ill, a rule for the crooked, a light for the darkened, a dwelling for the abandoned.
All the benefit, then, is to you. Don’t think that you confer anything on God when you come to him, not even as a servant. Will God have no servants if you are unwilling, if all are unwilling? God does not need servants; it’s the servants who need God. That’s why the Psalm says, “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my God’”. He is the true Lord. And why? “Because you do not need my goods” (Ps 16:2). You, however, do need your servant. Your servant needs you to feed him, and you need your servant to help you. You can’t fetch water for yourself; you can’t cook for yourself; you can’t run before your horse for yourself; you can’t take care of your mule. You see that you need the good of your servant; you need his service. So you are not a true lord when you need an inferior.
But He is the true Lord who seeks nothing from us, while it is woe to us if we do not seek him. He seeks nothing from us; and he sought us even though we were not seeking him. A single sheep had strayed, he found it and rejoiced as he brought it back on his shoulders. Was that sheep needed by the shepherd; wasn’t it that the sheep needed the shepherd?
The gladder I am to speak about charity, the less willing am I to see this Epistle come to an end. None is more ardent in commending charity. Nothing sweeter is preached to you; nothing more healthy is drunk by you, but only if by living well you confirm the gift of God in you. Do not be ungrateful for so great a gift from him: although he had an Only Son, he did not wish him to be alone. So that he might have brothers he adopted unto him those who with him were to possess eternal life. (Augustine on I John, Hom. 8, 14; PL 35, 2044)
” He is a medicine for the ill, a rule for the crooked, a light for the darkened, a dwelling for the abandoned.”
Now there’s a great series of metaphors.
Does Augustine here anticipate Hegel on the master-slave dialectic? You are not a true lord as long as you need your servant, so only God be a [the] true Lord because he has no need of our service. “Vides quia indiges bono servi tui, obsequio illius indiges. Non es ergo verus dominus, quando indiges inferiore. Ille est verus Dominus qui nihil a nobis quaerit.”
The idea that God loves us but does not need us is difficult.
Isn’t such selfless love precisely what Jesus described: “No one has greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend” ? At the beginning of the “Confessions,” Augustine describes God as “quaerens cum nihil desit tibi–”in search though lacking nothing.” All the benefit accrues to those God loves. That we exist adds nothing to God–all the benefit is ours. That we have been given a share in God’s life adds nothing to God–all the benefit is ours.
Laying down one’s life for one’s friend adds something, of course: it would (I hope) make me happy to give my life for the people I care for the most, if I knew it was good for them; my happiness is my reward. It adds something to me. I get some benefit out of it, namely, the contentment of knowing that they’re better off.
I’m also thinking of, say, in the old lyrics of the song “Torn between two lovers”, the line: “There’s just this empty place inside of me that only he can fill“; or of a parent expressing happiness at a family reunion: “it is good that the children are here”. It is hard to conceive of a love such that the presence or absence of the loved one makes no difference.
“That we exist adds nothing to God” — in other words, that whether we’re there or not makes no difference — to me, that’s pretty close to saying that He doesn’t care, and it doesn’t jibe with love.
Claire – -
What you say is true of finite love, but infinite love is not the same. What ever might be it already is.
Ann, did Jesus not cry when Lazarus died? Did he not look at the man and love him when the young rich man told him how he tried to keep all the commandments? I don’t see indifference there.
I don’t understand how God can be unchanged regardless of our existence. “Infinite love” from some perfect being who is the same, whether we turn to Him or away from Him, no matter what we choose to do, and even whether we exist or not, well, that sounds indistinguishable from infinite indifference. And then, such an impersonal, cold, distant entity would send his Son to the world to be a man among us, to be close to us and offer us redemption?
I find it hard to believe that God does not rejoice in our existence. It is difficult.
Claire:
A person who gives his/her life for a friend loses her/his life, so where is the contentment? You’re dead. It is an utterly self-less act, the only beneficiary of which is the person for whom you were willing to die–except, of course, in the eyes of God. But it would be odd to think of the act as utterly selfless if you did it with an eye to the reward God will give you.
I would not at all say that whether we exist or not makes no difference. The difference is that we exist, and exist solely because God wishes us to exist and to share in his life. How is this not love, and utterly self-less love? If He didn’t care, we wouldn’t be.
If God is love–infinite, unsurpassable, ecstatic love–then that joyful ecstasy includes the fact that its creatures exist. But is not a god who becomes greater, more joyful, because his creatures exist a finite god? Because only the finite can grow, increase, become more joyful, etc.
I think that often–I do not say this of you, Claire–is that we imagine God, and since all images are of the finite, we get tricked into thinking of God within the limits of our image.
Claire —
Jesus wept because He was man. God both weeps and rejoices for us by the one simple Act of Being that He is. There is no either or in God. No oppositions. He’s the original both/and and is such by a simple Pure Act == His Being, Goodness, Infinity, Knowledge, Love – all of it is he one single simple reality, the “God Is”/ At least this is Thoms’ concept of Him. God is both present and infinitely distant — and His presence *is* His distance (His infinity). But note: in every case the meanings of the words used to describe Him are used analogously to the way we ordinarily use them. Their meanings as applied to Him are only *partly* like Him, largely because His perfection(s) extend infinitely beyond what we know of finite beings.
I think you might get a lot out of Edward Feser’s little book “Aquinas”, the chapter on natural theology. The best simple explanations of Aquinas that I know of.
Thanks.