GOD is LOVE, Part 1.
God is Divine Love.
Gregory of Nyssa (331?-394?), a Greek father of the church — On the Making of Man after identifying God as Mind wrote, “Again, God is love, and the fount of love.
John Cassian (4th-5th century), a reclusive religious writer — Conferences – First Conference of Abbot Joseph. The title of Chapter XIII reads, “How love does not only belong to God but is God.”
St. Augustine was also cited in the section considering God as Truth:
He that knows the Truth knows what that Light is; and he that knows It knows eternity. Love knoweth it. O Truth Who art Eternity! And Love Who art Truth! And Eternity Who art Love! Thou art my God, to Thee do I sigh night and day.
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, I John 4:16 “God is love,” identified Love as a name for God, and wrote that “the Holy Spirit is Love.”
Dante — The Divine Comedy, God referred to as Love three times. The Inferno, God addressed as “Love Divine.” Purgatory, God called “Eternal Love.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) — War and Peace, related the thoughts of Prince Andrew as he was dying:
“Love? What is love?” he thought.
“Love hinders death. Love is life.
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
Everything is united by it alone.
Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834), British romantic poet — “Religious Musings” perhaps summarized God as completely and yet succinctly as any in his poem:
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.