How Does God Feel Love For His Creations?

Question

In Christianity and, more broadly, in other Abrahamic faiths, God is omnipotent and immeasurably perfect in every way. I feel that "human" or "human-like" emotions would detract quite a bit from divine perfection, but does God also love all his creations? Thinking about it from a philosophical perspective rather than a theological one, God cannot possibly be both love and everything else at once without creating a very strange paradox.

Romans 9:13 mentions God's hatred for evil, which he sees in Esau, who he also hates. I understand that God did not directly create evil and sin and was a consequence of free will. Even so, the Bible said that God hated not only his actions but he hated Esau himself.

God is supposedly love, but God is also the embodiment of everything, including hate and other antonyms of love. God is everything because God created everything, and everything he has created is an extension of him (Colossians 1:16).

We can also not answer the question well without defining perfect first. I have always thought of perfection not as the absence of imperfection but as the acceptance and inclusion of everything that makes it. But that isn't everyone's definition, especially not the scriptures (Deuteronomy 32:4). Assuming my opinion is true, there's a straightforward conclusion to God's perfection: God's perfection would include all of his "imperfections," making him perfect but also humane. But in Timothy 3:16, he is described as divine without human error. If God were a perfect divine being, how would he feel? Or have any emotions at all? If God is a divine being, I can't understand how he would feel, including his love.

Answer 1

Outstanding question — Kudos!

We moderns (tend to) mock the medieval thinkers as belonging to the dark ages, and (we) characterize them as pursuing pointless arguments like angels dancing on the head of a pin.

As it happens the doctrines of analogy from Thomas Aquinas and complementarily univocity of Duns Scotus are not just germane to this theological discussion but to much of today's life as well.
See Univocal vs Equivocal vs Analogical

Essentially Aquinas position is that any attribute claimed of God is only analogical to a corresponding human attribute because definitionally God is outside our reach.

Univocity claims the opposite — so if God loves it is an extension or infinite enlargement of our (human) love.

The important thing to understand is that your question presumes a univocal framing, which is only natural. Philosophy — at least Thomistic — invites toward the more sophisticated analogical outlook.

This is the standard Christian view.

The eastern — Taoist, Vedantic etc — flip this around in other ways crucially because in Christianity —at least Thomistic — God is pure actuality whereas in Taoism, Vedanta etc., the Tao, Brahman etc., are pure potentiality, unmanifest.

And if this seems glaringly contradictory go back to St. Thomas Aquinas! Since our understanding of the Supreme can only at most be analogical, the pure empty mother-of-all-things Tao may well be the fullness — plenum — of Christianity.

^{I vividly remember as a young boy having my mind blown by the math-fact that 1/0 is ∞ but also -∞!}

Answer 2

This might get better answers on Christianity SE, but here is an approach along mainstream Christian dogmatic lines:

1. To love is to will the good of the other person.

2. A created person is other than God.

3. When a part of creation is as God willed it to be, it is good (in both senses of the phrase). Sin and suffering are the corrupt use of good things and consequent corruption of good things. (This is the doctrine of the Fall.)

4. Therefore God necessarily wills the good of the created person. (And the created Nature, but Nature is not quite a person: persons are supernatural; Nature is natural.)

5. Therefore God loves people.

1 is a standard definition. 2 is common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 3 is central to Christianity, but peripheral in Judaism and Islam. Not coincidentally, the dogma of an all-loving God is central to Christianity and peripheral to Judaism and Islam.

Answer 3

In regard to God, you have nailed head on the fact that he is in accord with love and furthermore that he retains a disdain and hatred for evil. In fact, individuals that embody evil, as if it is something to be embodied, are to be hated, perhaps via something such as righteous indignation, which is pure virtue. The embodiment of evil is something that individuals must choose. When we suggest that the embodiment of evil is chosen, it is indeed measurable via a scale of: Positive(+), Neutral and Negative(-). Now, there is no such thing as a positive embodiment of evil. In fact, based upon reality, the measurement of evil is antithetical to the good, to goodness itself. Thusly, we cannot see a validity, in accord with God, when someone that is evil is arguing they are a force for good. The attempt at suggesting this is nothing but irrational, and furthermore could lead an individual down a narcissistic path, that is nothing but madness.

In regard to neutrality, we see that neutral evil is no evil, rather, a complacency within that which is evil. They could associate with evil; they could even try and do evil, but never actually embody the evil themselves. This dissociation is not necessary, nor is it good. Why? Because neutrality in regard to evil is simply one step closer to evil. If one is one step closer to evil, but one step away from positive expression, they are simply ignoring their capacity to be pure goodness. That which is pure must be a positive, thusly, there is no such thing as pure evil. Pure evil is a paradox, and truly unnecessary.

In regard to negativity, this is where evil resides. It is the furthest away within the quantification from goodness, that which is positive. Taking this into account, the evil one is the opposite of God, as God is representative of pure masculine goodness, on a maximum level, even numerically. If we are to search for the feminine expression that is equivalent to God, it would be Godess, as Godess is God's wife. While she is not mentioned in most texts that are available via Christianity, surely, it is rational to understand that God would indeed retain a wife just as all his children are capable of marriage, obviously the husband to the wife and the wife to the husband. Any other attempts at expressing this variation is nothing but a rejection of the word of God and even Godess. This is precisely why churches will cherry pick specific scriptures to try and get lost individuals to join their little religious cult. Surely, God is no fan of cults, as cults do evil. They bank on secrecy to perpetuate their actions and notions yet will cherry pick individuals to try and ensure that the secrecy will remain, while also perpetuating a specific agenda.

Now, in regard to God being the embodiment of everything, I would argue that we can turn towards capacity for this matter. In fact, God, via capacity, knows he is capable of evil, yet, because God retains capacity and all under God retain capacity, we do see that so long as God has done no evil, all under God who have done evil must be accountable for what they have done. If they try and blame God for their capacity to do evil, they are rejecting themselves and furthermore their conscience. The rejection of conscience is one that is a rejection of initials, implying before physicality. The rejection of that which is prior to physicality, is what leads individuals astray, as they will see all around as nothing but lacking meaning, thusly, they will try and create their own meaning. Unfortunately, the creation of meaning to the one that has rejected the initial creator(s), is nothing but a shallow and ineffective attempt at creating. Thusly, frustrations will arise that are nothing short of frivolous, as these frustrations are not rooted in accord with initials. If the initials were being taken into account, then righteous indignation could be exercised, which would allow for a reverence of God and even Godess to be understood and retained. Once this is retained, the disdain for all evil does not solely reside within God or even Godess, rather, it flows, just like the Holy Spirit, through all under God that do not reject themselves and even their brothers and sisters, family.