Grotius ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem, 7.4) defines wrath as the desire to inflict punishment, and he insists that God is wrathful toward sin and sinners, and that this wrath must be satisfied by the infliction of punishment if sinners are to be saved.
Grotius also knows that the Father sent the Son out of love for the world.
Instead of choosing between these two, he argues that God is both wrathful and loving toward sinners. He is wrathful, but not wholly: “God is angry with the sinner, but not in such a way as to reject all possible methods of laying aside his wrath.” On the contrary, He is angry at the same time that He is designing a way to deliver sinners from the punishment that His anger demands (7.21).
God’s love is an angry love, his anger a loving anger.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
