The love of God does not exclude for St. Paul the co-ordination of other attributes in God as jointly determinative of the Divine redemptive procedure. In the Cross of Christ is the great manifestation of love, but it is not the love of God alone that the Cross proclaims. It also demon- strates the diKaiocrvv-q = t\\Q justice of God (Ro Z'^^-). Thea.ttem-ptoiRitsch\{Bechffcrtigun(/undVersdh7i- ung-, ii. [1882-83], pp. 118, 218 flf.) and others to give to diKaLoavPTj in this context the sense of gracious righteousness, making it synonymous with the love of God, breaks down in view of the ' forbearance ' of v.^. If it was 'forbearance' which postponed under the Old Covenant the demonstration of God's righteousness, then this righteousness is conceived as retributive.
(b) The love of Christ.— The love of Christ St. Paul \-iews chiefly as manifested in His Death (2 Co 5"^-), or in His life as entered upon and lived with a view to and culminating in His Death (Ph 2°^-)- The Incarnation is an act of self- kenosis, not in the metaphysical, but in the meta- phorical sense (AV 'made himself of no reputa- tion '), hence is described in 2 Co 8" as a ' becoming poor.' It ought to be noticed that the love of Christ, as well as that of the believer, is in the first place a love for God, and after that a love for man. Christ lives unto God, even in the state of glory (Ro 6i"), and gave Himself in the Atonement a sacrifice unto God (Eph 5*).
(c) Love towards God. — The references to the believer's love for God are not numerous in the Pauline Epistles. Explicit mention of it is made in _Ro 8-8, 1 Co 2^ 8^ From his anti-pietistic stand- point Ritschl would interpret this scarcity of refer- ence in St. Paul and the XT generally (outside of St. Paul only Ja li^- 2') as due to the feeling that love to God is something hardly within the religious reach of man. He observes that in 1 Co 2" the phrase 'them that, love God' is a quotation, and surmises that the same quotation underlies all the other passages except 1 Co 8^ (op. cit. ii. 100). But this is a mere surmise, and St. Paul has at least in one passage appropriated the thought for himself. Besides this the analogy of the love of Christ for God favours the ascription of love for God to the believer. The same ' living for God ' which is predicated of Christ (Ro 6'*') is elsewhere attributed to the Christian (Gal 2^). As Christ sacrificed Himself to God (Eph 5^), so the believer's life is a spiritual sacrifice (Ro P 12i). The Father- hood of God and the sonship of the believer postu- late the idea of a mutual love (Ro 8i'). The idea is also implied in the fact that St. Paul places at the beginning of the Christian life a crucifixion and destruction of the love for self and the world (Ro 6«, Gal 2i» 6"), since under the Apostle's positive conception of the Christian life something else must take the place of the previous goals. The glorifying of God in all things has for its underlying motive the love of God (Ro 14^, 1 Co 1(P\ Eph 112).
ii. PastoealEpistles.— In the Pastoral Epistles the universality of the love of God is emphasized. In the earlier Epistles the Apostle's universalism
is not deduced from the love of God but from other principles, and is distinctly of an international type. The Pastoral Epistles make of the love of God a universalizing principle and extend it to all men, not merely to uaen of every nation (1 Ti 2*- ^ 41U gi3^ -pi^ oil 34) jn some of these passages the context clearly indicates that a reference of God's love to all classes of men is intended (cf. 1 Ti 2^ with vv.i-2; Tit 2" with w.^""). But the em- phasis and frequency with wiiich the principle is brought forward render it probable that some specific motive underlies its assertion. So far as the inclusion of magistrates is concerned, there may be a protest against a form of Jewish particularism which deemed it unlawful to pray for pagan magistrates. In the main the passages cited will have to be interpreted as a warning against the dualistic trend of Gnosticism. Gnosticism distin- guished between two classes of men, the wevfia,- TiKol and the vXikoI, the latter by their very nature being unsusceptible to, and excluded from, salvation, the former carrying the potency of salvation by nature in themselves. Over against this the Pastorals emphasize that the love of God saves all men, that no man is by his subjective condition either sunk beneath the possibility or raised above the necessity of salvation. Hence the ((nXavdpuiria of God in Tit 3* is love for man as man, not for any aristocracy of the rrvevfia. This philanthropy is not to be confounded with the classical concep- tion of the same (of. Ac 27* 28^), for the latter is not love towards man as such, but simply justice towards one's fellow-man in the several relations of life, and is conceived without regard to the internal disposition. Probably the choice of the word is in Tit 3* determined by the preceding description of the conduct required of believers for which the Divine ' philanthropy ' furnishes the model. But that its content goes far bej'ond general benevolence may be seen from this, that it communicates itself through the Christian redemp- tion in the widest sense (vv.^"''). In all this there is nothing either calculated or intended to weaken the Pauline doctrine of the specific elective love of God embracing believers. The Pastorals affirm this no less than the earlier Epistles.