God is love

The argument

The answer this position gives to the question of what love is begins by refusing to treat love as a single thing with variations. God is love, on this account — not a being who loves, but love itself — and that identification establishes a standard against which everything else must be measured. Love is bestowed on us by the divine while belonging in the mortal realm, which is what allows human beings to encounter it at all. Measured against that standard, most of what is ordinarily called love does not qualify. The only pure instance of true, everlasting love is the love that exists between God and humanity, because it alone is not subject to the conditions that limit everything mortal. All other love is human love, and human love is transient: it begins, it alters with circumstance, and it ends with the people who hold it. On this argument transience is disqualifying rather than merely regrettable, so human love cannot be classified as true love in the sense the divine case establishes. The final move concerns what can be known about it. God is unknowable, and the divine realm lies beyond mortal comprehension, so love — being identical with God rather than merely originating from him — is likewise beyond what can be known. Its effects are available to us: we recognise where love has been at work by what it does to people and between them. But recognising effects is not the same as grasping a cause, and we cannot hope to define love or to understand what it is in itself. What follows is that the question admits no single answer. Because divine love and human love differ in kind rather than in degree, this position holds, what love is depends on the type of love in question.

Context

"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love... Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." (1 John 4:8, 16)

Premises

Counter-arguments

Science has explained many aspects of love. It has explained why we love certain people and not others through its theory of evolution. It has explained why we remain committed to one person for a period of time. It has even explained universal perceptions of beauty and can separate familial love from romantic love. Love is inherently knowable and definable. We can detect love in the animal kingdom. Dating apps can effectively predict when love will occur. Love does not reside in the divine realm. It sits in our brains, is transported in our hormones and is expressed in our actions. It is a physical phenomenon explicable through scientific research.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] God is not love. Love is hormones, neurochemistry and evolution in action.