God is Love – this is the essence of the Gospel, the Joyous Good News that the Church has been proclaiming for two thousand years. (The word ‘God’ and all divine names are icons pointing to the One who created everything, in whom everything exists, moves, and has its being, who is everywhere and fills everything…). God is not Love because He rose from the dead, but rather He rose from the dead because He is Love; God is not Love because He was crucified for us, but rather He was crucified because He is Love; God is not Love because He incarnated, became human, but rather He became one of us because He is Love…
What does it mean to Love? To Love (Love is a state in which the Person manifests; to love – (to be a Personality) – to be in a state characterized by a trinity: giving all, receiving all, and kenotically diminishing oneself (not ‘being’ for the sake of Others) – see Ch. I; now, for a better understanding of ‘God is Love’, let’s discuss one aspect – ‘giving all’, and below about Love in general) – is to wish for the well-being, fullness of being, joy, freedom, bliss (in a word – Happiness) for the one whom (or what) you love, and to do everything possible, depending on the lover, so that the loved one achieves, attains this Happiness!
In pagan myths (models of spiritual reality, which, of course, are built not on facts-revelations but on fantasies and natural intuition), one can hear about the ‘incarnation’ of gods (of middle and lower rank), ‘death’ for people… but for pagans to say that God (Who is above all gods, deities) is Love – is a terrible blasphemy. Because if God (the highest and only, as ‘believers’ and pagans think: ‘the Unknown God’) is Love, then He could not (cannot) help but incarnate, become human (solidary with His creation in everything except sin) and share in their grief, tragedy, suffering, and death with a descent into hell. And this, pagans cannot allow – it is for them madness and temptation (for the carnal mind, left alone with itself).
And the Church says not only ‘God loves’ or ‘God has love’ but insists (knowing God) that: God IS Love! You might ask: what’s the difference between ‘has Love’ and ‘is Love’? The fact that He has Love does not mean that He always Loves (now I speak somewhat coarsely, with a hint of pedagogy, but keeping in mind the subtle intuition of Orthodox theology, which finely distinguishes in the divine essence substance and energy, and which speaks of the creation of the world, contrasted with the birth of the Son: the birth of the Son is an essential act, and the creation of the world is an energetic act (since everything is created in Eternity, we can say nothing about the ‘when’ the Lord created the world: whether the world (necessarily created by God!) is eternal, as is God, or was created ‘later’ than ‘already’ there was God; therefore, the Church enlightens inquiring pagans about the difference between the birth of the Eternal Son and the creation of the ‘eternal’ World: birth is an essential process, hence the essence of the Son is Divinity, but creation is an energetic process-action, hence the essence of the world is ‘nothing’; Christians do not need this for spiritual life, but in order to answer everyone who asks you for an account of your hope – we, Christians, must drink water from the well dug by the Holy Fathers; no, no, not everyone has to understand those subtleties (not all are teachers, not all prophets, not all have the gift of tongues… – everyone has their own service), but everyone must know that the Church has answers to all questions posed by the carnal mind (because those who know God – no longer ask anything) and know to whom (who carries the service of a teacher: pastors-theologians, theologians or bearers: apostles, Holy Fathers, Mothers) in the Church to direct the inquisitive seeker – let them converse with him, if he sincerely seeks the truth, and not just wants to scoff (such untaught ones should be avoided); and the Church says that the world might not have been, it is not mandatory), that is, that each His action is an expression of Love, which He has. When we say that ‘has’ – we speak of energies, not of essence (energies are the result of the influence of hypostasis on essence; and by the result, nothing can be definitively said in absolute terms; for example, a derivative is taken from any function, but the antiderivative is not: that is, we cannot always know for sure what causes a certain phenomenon. – see Ch. I). Since He has Love, He can also have: wrath, jealousy, hatred, retribution, vengeance, mercy…, which, by the way, are repeatedly mentioned in Scripture (attributing human passions to God). (Of course – these are pedagogical expressions, which are always a temptation, due to anthropomorphism in expressions – consonance with the passionate human state, to understand dogmatically – that this is how it really is). Therefore, as long as God only has Love (as one of the emotions, energies, one of the feelings) – there can be no guarantees of Happiness: today He Loves, tomorrow He hates; might show mercy, might not; might punish, might have mercy; might get irritated and angry, ‘explode’, or might humbly endure… – you don’t know what to expect from such a god! Because love, which is possessed, is just one of the energies of the manifestation of essence, and how that essence will manifest itself in this or that situation – is unknown!