The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (D.A. Carson)

Professor D.A. Carson argues that "the love of God [in our culture] has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized" in his book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. He then offers five different ways the Bible speaks of God's love:

1. The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father
2. God's providential love over all that he has made
3. God's salvific stance toward his fallen world
4. God's particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect.
5. God's love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way- conditioned, that is, on obedience.

And cautions that "if any one of these five biblical ways of talking about the love of God is absolutized and made exclusive, or made the controlling grid by which the other ways of talking about the love of God are relativized." In other words, "what the Bible says about the love of God is more complex and nuanced than what is allowed by mere sloganeering." He devotes the rest of the book to unpacking these different aspects.

It was good book and a fast read (just 84 pages). Hard for me to follow in places- I can't always track the scholarly background, vocabulary, or perspective that Carson brings- and based on a series of lectures, which isn't inherently bad but can make it seem . . . different than content prepared for the book format.

Rating: A-