Corollary or contradiction? God's love and anger

Listening to: Radiohead: The Bends

[Rather hasty and unrefined thoughts that I was decided to put down prematurely because of a discussion in comments to a post of Dave Bish]

We can drift into a simplistic dualism when thinking of God's wrath and love. God's anger and God's love can be seen as implacable enemies never to be reconciled, and the cross can be seen as the place where God's love is shown to be stronger. People then seem to drift into either seeing either:

• God the Father as the angry one, and God the Son as the loving one;
• The devil as angry (god?), and God as love; or
• God as schizophrenic.

Against this we can say that God gets angry because he cares, not despite caring. He punishes us to bring us to repentance, as a father disciplines his children. Or, he hates all that is destructive and acts to protect his creation, as an artist won't stand by and see his painting be destroyed.

We remember that God is love from all eternity, but God's anger is a recent response of this love to the invasion of sin. Perhaps we could describe God's anger as an 'aspect' of his love.

But I think that perspective can lead to problems too. Anger and sadness with God's acts of punishment are disallowed, and God's love becomes distasteful.

I think the Bible offers a more complex and paradoxical picture of the relationship between God's anger and love than we often allow. We either subsume anger into love, losing both. Or oppose them so completely that God is robbed of his sovereignty and we are robbed of our hope of final victory. I think this paradoxical picture can be seen when considering three different ways in which God acts in anger at sin:

1. People

• Habakkuk complains to God about the sin of Israel, and cries to God for justice. God responds by explaining that he will use the Chaldeans as a tool to punish the people.
• Understandably this doesn't satisfy Habakkuk, but neither does it satisfy God. He promises to bring the agents of his punishment to an end too.

2. The devil

• The devil is depicted in chapter 1 of Job as if he is a servant of God, even if their relationship does not seem amicable. But the bible is clear that the power of the devil is derived from God. He is called 'Satan' ('the Accuser), because he accuses, appealing to God's justice. As Henri Blocher says "the weapon in the devil's hand is God's own law" (p. 139, cited in PFOT).
• At the same time Christ's victory over the devil is fundamental to the Gospel. From the Genesis 3:15 to Revelation 20 we are promised that he will be crushed, imprisoned, and thrown into the lake of fire.

3. Death

• In Genesis it is clear that death is God's active response of punishing human sin. In the NT there is hope that death is essential to our process of being freed from this body of sin, to new life. It is clearly from God, and for believers a 'good' thing.
• But despite all that "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:26).

Asymmetrical paradox

We should notice though that the paradox is not equally weighted. It remains a paradox, but God stands asymetrically behind the two sides. God's anger is always done through tools:

• God uses other people to punish, but when he loves he does himself in sending his only Son.
• God uses Satan as an agent of his wrath, but he restores us himself.
• In God there isn't death, but pulsating life (John 1:4)

Wrestling with God

This is not an impractical thing to wonder about. If we want to escape punishment we have to believe that it is under God's control, but we also have to believe that he has acted, and is acting, to save us from it.

We want to protect every part of the truth that "one appeals to God against God" (p. 213, Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology).