(August 30, 2018 at 1:34 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: To have any rhetorical force, a hypothetical must have some reasonable connection to reality. An analogy loses effectiveness the more it departs from the thing being analogized for, and likewise, if the hypothetical is not even plausible in some measure, it becomes less meaningful. If God were love, then the hypothetical might make sense. However, that seems like little more than redefining the word love in the same sense as pantheists sometimes redefine God as simply being synonymous with the universe. If I were a fruit, would I be tasty? If anger were green, would it be curved? There comes a point at which your hypothetical is little more than a polemic tool you are using to try and force your idea of reality onto the person answering the hypothetical. Maybe that's of some use to you, I don't know. If God were love, and all the other nonsensical things Christians suppose, then yes, I would probably change my mind about the deity. And if I were a tasty fruit, I probably wouldn't care.
I would characterize God as having the essential property of perfect love. It is 100% informed, 100% dependable, 100% sufficient (perhaps a couple of more adjectives preceded by 100%). "God is Love" is christian shorthand for saying this.
