The Human Capacity to Love
Can Those Who Do Not Know God Truly Love?
This essay is to explain my claim that human beings can love as God loves, outside of an explicit belief in God. This essay is part of presentation within a Facebook theology group in which a counter essay will be published. I will update this with a link to that essay once the conversation gets going. Because of the nature of this essay, it is open to all from first post. I base the claim of the possibility of love upon the Wesleyan-Holiness understanding of humanity as created in the image of God (imago Dei) and of God’s prevenient grace. But I will explain why this is both scriptural and consistent within a Wesleyan-Holiness ethic and within the broader Christian belief in new creation being in process, beginning with the Christ event.*
I would like to make some comments about assumptions that I will work with as I explain my understanding. I am working within the Wesleyan-Holiness view of God as relational rather than transactional. This assumption is based on the particular understanding of prevenient grace within Wesleyan thought. Wesleyan thought contains the understanding of prevenient grace which includes the concept of grace that goes before and enables humanity to do good and respond to God’s relational invitation, while also considering the doctrine of depravity (although it may be worth considering Diane Leclerc’s perspective on deprivity, which may not be widely known). For disclosure, I am an open and relational theologian, but this essay and the ideas within it are consistent with a broad relational theology with the classic Wesleyan understanding of a God as open as evidenced in free will. I will also use the definition of love that my friend Tom Oord puts forth in his book Pluriform Love.
“To love is to act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. Actors and factors that include God, others, creation, and oneself influence what we rightly call an act of love. We love when we respond by purposely doing something good, beautiful, or valuable. Well-being is love’s aim, and love always occurs in relationships.” (Oord 35–36)
I do not believe that the Christian scriptures claim that only believers in Christ can display true love as displayed and commanded by Christ. I will make a distinction here as to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit versus the capacity to love. I will explain that within the exegetical parts of this essay, dealing with the discussion of Jesus in the Gospel of John, as well as the discussion building on that in the book of 1 John. God promises the indwelling Spirit of God only to the person who has responded to Him, but there is a difference between God giving that gift to the faithful and God giving the capacity to love as a grace to all who are sensitive to the move of grace.
First John chapter four contains a passage about love. This is speaking of Christians specifically, but as a mark of the faithful disciple of Jesus.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
It is important to note that this passage and its larger context do not make the claim that only the believer can love. What it does say is that love comes from God and that God’s love is revealed in the Christ event. This passage says that the primary mark of faithful disciples is love. There is nothing in this scriptural context that excludes the unbeliever or nonbeliever from loving within this same context. The passage continues with a discussion of the indwelling Spirit for believers. This is where the action of love becomes the indwelling of Christ.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
This is an important passage for the believer, as it shows the work of God through the Spirit. In her work, the Spirit testifies and gives disciples the confidence to confess Jesus as the Son of God. The mark of the indwelling is a life of love, for God is love and is the source of love. The view of God may affect how we proceed from here. It may be obvious that a life turned toward God is one in which the love of God flows freely and easily, but that does not prevent the ability for someone who does not believe or has never heard of God from loving fully.
Before we move into the wider argument and deal with love itself, I believe it is helpful to establish a truth about God. This truth is that God knows us. Even when we do not know God, God is there in our midst. We may not recognize or even understand God’s presence, but God is there and God knows us. For those of us who “do theology” we might begin our work knowing that God knows us and thus that allows us to know God. Tim Gaines discusses this in his to be released book Walking the Theological Life in the chapter on Jeremiah. “The beginning of the theologian’s quest to know God is in being known by God, placing all of us in a posture of epistemic humility and prayerful wonder. For the theologian, this posture even gestures to the beginning of a method. We begin by acknowledging that God knows us.” (Gaines)
When we feel we are known, we are able to open ourselves to knowing God. Although we may have the capacity to love as God prior to knowing God, we cannot participate in the transformative relationship of God without being known and responding to that knowing. This ideas is expressed in the simple, yet profound statement in Jeremiah 1 which is specifically to Jeremiah, but contains the truth that God knows us, has always known us, and will always know us.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
The beginning of recognizing where the capacity to love emanates is the beginning of knowing God as that source. From there, we find the truth of God’s desire for us to know God and become rightly related to God.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of love a lot. This Gospel deals with the entire Christ event differently than the other three canonical Gospels because of the interest in the writer of explaining Jesus' divinity and the centrality of love to the ministry of Jesus. In the arc of Jesus speaking to his disciples about the way things will look when he is gone, we get several instances of Jesus referring to love as the mark of his disciples. In John 13, Jesus gives the new command to love one another.
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
This being a command to followers does not mean that others cannot love. Jesus is simply claiming that love must be evident in a disciple’s life if they are a true disciple of his. We also cannot add any qualifications to loving one another because Jesus does not do that in his command. Later in the gospel, Jesus reiterates the command to love one another, but he also radically shifts the relationship that the disciples understand they have with Jesus. He calls them friend, which is not what rabbis of that day would do with disciples. While disciples are given the ability to be called friend, they are also commanded to love as a mark of being disciples. Jesus is not saying that only his disciples can love one another with the greatest of loves.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
How can I know that humanity can love as God loves without being a believer? Where does that audacious claim originate? It begins in the idea that we are created in the image of God; that mysterious phrase imago Dei. As a Wesleyan, scripture is not the only means by which I understand my faith, theology, or doctrine. Wesleyans also consider tradition, reason, and experience within the understanding of scripture as a primary authority. I want to place a proposed addition to the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Nazarene here as an understanding of a possible doctrine of humanity. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop is correct in her claim that Wesley did not have a systematic doctrine of humanity, but Wesley’s choices and the choices of his descendants can tell us much about the nature of humanity. (Wynkoop)
We believe that in the beginning the Triune God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them out of nothing but love. Within God’s loving and covenantal intention for all creation, God has created humanity uniquely in the divine image so that human beings are engaged in a mutual relationship with God, each other, and all creation. Entrusting to humanity the responsibility to fill the earth and exercise protective custody over his creation, God has pronounced creation as very good.
In the explanatory notes on this proposed article, there is a wonderfully Wesleyan-Holiness understanding of humanity.
The biblical, theological, and historical understanding of humanity does not begin or end with sin but begins and ends with God’s creation/new creation and with humanity created in and restored to the image of God (just as the narrative of the biblical faith does not begin or end with sin but with creation and new creation; humanity created in the image of God and restored to the image of God)
So within the tradition of Wesleyan-Holiness, we have an example of understanding the imago Dei as something given and something which is restored in new creation. That new creation began working during the Christ event and is what Christians proclaim when they pray the line “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” within the Lord’s Prayer. This allows us to love fueled by the grace of God poured out onto all creation without prejudice.
This is one way Wesleyan-Holiness folk differ from our Reformed brothers and sisters. According to Wesleyans, God is immanently present to creation and humanity, whereas our Reformed family believe in a gulf between humanity and God that requires bridging. In the latter paradigm, I can understand the rejection of humans having the ability to love fully, but for Wesleyans, it seems a curious choice. But it could be a fear that if humans can love outside of belief, then why believe? The indwelling Spirit and the opportunity to experience pure love, which casts out fear, is why. Humans may be able to love as God does, but without the reconciled relationship with God, we cannot experience the Kindom (kingdom) fully.
The experience of our world also contains countless examples of human beings loving fully even if they do not believe. But I will give one very powerful example from the band U2.
During the Joshua Tree tour, U2 was taking part in the campaign to bring about Martin Luther King Jr. day. If you were alive in the 1980s you may remember this campaign and the states that were refusing to take part and were campaigning against the holiday. The band had booked a show in Phoenix prior to the campaign getting going and so they did not know that Arizona would be a dissenting state. As a choice of consistency, the band felt they could not cancel the show that had paid participants and so they chose to speak out against the incumbent governor’s campaign. For this action, there were credible death threats that specifically stated that if the band played Pride: In the Name of Love about MLK, Bono (the lead singer) would not survive to the end of the song. The band chose to play the show and the song. I will let Bono tell the story in his words.
I had pretended I was not that bothered by the intel and I trusted our security team would be extra diligent and put in additional measures. The venue was swept for firearms and explosives, and we made the decision to go ahead as planned. If we started “Pride” defiantly, by the third verse I was losing some of my nerve or at least losing concentration. It wasn’t just melodrama when I closed my eyes and sort of half kneeled to disguise the fact that I was fearful to sing the rest of the words.
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your prideI might have missed the messiah complex at work in my own anxiety, but it was only when I opened my eyes that I realized I couldn’t see the crowd. Adam Clayton was blocking the view, standing right in front of me. He’d stood in front of me for the length of the verse. (Bono)
The quartet known as U2 has three members who are Christians and one who is not a believer. The unbeliever in the band is bassist Adam Clayton. How can that not be the same as what Jesus describes in the Gospel of John as the greatest love? Adam Clayton, an unbeliever, stood in front of his friend, knowing that it could mean his life. This experience, and others, is why I look to the idea within scripture that while Christians are commanded to love one another, our neighbors, and our enemies; love is not exclusive to Christians. The love of God is prevenient grace flowing throughout creation in a beckoning and luring invitation to relationship. Can we drop the unloving selfishness of holding love as exclusive to faithful Christians? Can we live through the love commanded as it becomes second nature and drives our own choices and actions?
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
*I use the phrase “Christ event” as shorthand for the totality of the experience of the incarnation; from Bethlehem to Ascension.
deprivity : “Deprivity, on the other hand, affirms that the image of God remains (although distorted) and that we are sinful primarily because we have been deprived of the initially intended intimacy with God.” (Leclerc, Diane. Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Beacon Hill Press. Kindle Edition.)
Bono. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.
GAINES, TIMOTHY. WALKING THE THEOLOGICAL LIFE Discovering Method for Theology in the Lives of Biblical Characters. S.l.: INTERVARSITY PRESS, 2024.
Leclerc, Diane. Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Kansas City, Mo: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2010.
Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, Second Edition. Nazarene Publishing House, 2015.