Wrath: The Fluid That Love Bleeds

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, by CS Lewis
progress: completed

In Chapter XVIII, Lewis challenges Malcolm's view of God's wrath, which denies that God experiences wrath as anything akin to an emotion (he uses the phrase "fit of temper"), rather it is an inevitable, impersonal response of holiness to unholiness. Malcolm compares it to what happens when one touches a live wire: "The live wire doesn't feel angry with us, but if we blunder against it we get a shock." (96)

"My dear Malcolm," writes Lewis in his typical winsome way, "what do you suppose you have gained by substituting the image of a live wire for that of angered majesty? You have shut us all up in despair; for the angry can forgive, and electricity can't." (96)

It's no secret that most believers are not entirely comfortable with the idea of God's wrath, especially as it relates to God's love. Those who are zealously at home with God's wrath tend to scare the rest of us off - the hellfire and brimstone may frighten us into repentance, but it does little to encourage us into relationship with God. Some would much rather ignore the fact of God's wrath completely, insinuating perhaps that God's love cancels it out. Still others, such as Malcolm, attempt to reimage wrath into something more tolerable and less terrifying.

Malcolm and Lewis both agree that God's wrath can only be understood in terms of analogy; as with all divine attributes, the human versions are too polluted and self-aggrandizing to do more than offer guesses as to what the perfected version of wrath (or love or jealousy or holiness) is truly like. Lewis reminds us of the danger of becoming overconfident in our attempts at defining God: "Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter." (82) Nor should we ever think that our finite minds can ever fully comprehend the character and ways of God, who is infinite - in the end we must accept as incomplete our attempts to define and systematize God's personality, and bow down before His divine Mystery, believing that what He has revealed of Himself is enough.

Malcolm mistakenly attempts to reduce God's wrath to a sort of predictable, scientific reaction of a divine Force instead of the personal, relational response of the Persons of the Trinity. What Lewis points out is that if we strip away the nuances of relationship, will, and emotion from our idea of wrath, we must also strip it away from our idea of love and all the rest of God's attributes. He cannot be a Force in one area and a Person in another. Wrath may be gone, as he says, but forgiveness, too.

Surely the attributes of love and wrath inform each other? No man could be said to truly love his wife if wrath was not a possiblity. Can you imagine a lover responding with indifference to the other's confession of unfaithfulness? Surely such "love" would be proven a fraud? Lewis writes,

"Anger - no peevish fit of temper, but just, generous, scalding indignation - passes (not necessarily at once) into embracing, exulting, re-welcoming love. That is how friends and lovers are truly reconciled. Hot wrath, hot love. Such anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it...Wrath and pardon are both, as applied to God, analogies; but they belong to the same circle of analogy - the circle of life, and love, and deeply personal relationships. All the liberalising and 'civilising' analogies only lead us astray. Turn God's wrath into mere enlightened disapproval, and you also turn His love into mere humanitarianism. The 'consuming fire' and the 'perfect beauty' both vanish. We have, instead, a judicious headmistress or a conscientious magistrate." (97)

I believe that God's love and wrath are intimately connected to each other; we need them both if we are to have any hope of understanding God and His ways. The problem arises when we draw too heavily from human examples of either: human love can be shallow, selfish, and temporary; human wrath can be unfair, unwarranted, and cruel. In humans, wrath and love can rarely if ever coexist. With God, they must, for He never contradicts Himself. He IS love (always and forever), and yet He is also revealed in Scripture as a God of wrath and vengeance. He loves us and yet - and so - He pours out the wrath we deserve on His beloved Son, on Himself. What can we make of this? It is mystery.

We dare not play favourites with His attributes lest we pollute them all. Without wrath, God's love would become sentimental and uninvolved. Without love, His wrath would be cruel and inescapable. God loves, God avenges, God judges, God forgives. He is love, He is just, He is holy. It's a tightrope act that we are called to walk, constantly holding these truths in balance. Only then can we have any hope of becoming wise.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom..." - Proverbs 9:10a

"The one who fears God will avoid all extremes." - Ecclesiastes 7:18b

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