Article for the July Parish Publications: The Grammar of Love.

Is Love a Noun or a Verb?

Love can be both.

As a noun 'love' names a thing, such as an emotion, or an attitude, or a relationship.

As a verb 'love' describes an action, that is, something you do, such as an act of the will, or of selfless generosity, or of commitment.

Have you heard the popular wisdom “Love is a verb, not just a noun?” This expresses the truth that genuine love should be more than just a feeling; it must result in action. Equally, without the inner reality of love, our actions are empty.

True love is a reality (noun) that expresses itself in action (verb). We can apply this observation to God.

God is love. These three words come from 1 John 4:8.

Love is not merely something God has or does; it is who He is. Love is His eternal nature and being. Because God is love (noun), He necessarily loves (verb).

Love cannot be solitary or self-contained, love requires a relationship: a beloved, and the love that binds them. St Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Behold, there are three: I who love, what I love, and love itself.” Augustine perceived this “triad” to be in every act of love – three connected realities that cannot be separated. There is the lover (the one doing the loving). There is the beloved (the one being loved). And there is love itself – the powerful bond or relationship between them.

To put this in terms of grammar, love needs a subject (the person loving), a verb (the action of loving), and an object (the person loved).

Christians believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons, one God. Sometimes this is simplified to, for the sake of understanding, 'three who's, one what.'

To say God is love is to imply God is Trinity.

One might say that, just as any sentence is built around a subject, verb, and object, so for the sentence of love to be complete there must be a subject (the person loving), a verb (the action of loving), and an object (the person loved). Each person of the Trinity of love can be either subject, verb, or object, but all three must be present for love to be a reality.

However, the doctrine of the Trinity is not about grammar, or mathematics, it is about

a revelation of the nature of God - a revelation of divine love so great that it reaches out of eternity, is born into flesh and blood humanity, dwells with us for the span of a human life, endures a cruel death on a cross, and yet is a love so great that death cannot end it, and so we see that love raised to resurrection life. The impulse for God to create us, redeem us, and sustain us, is generated out of a community of eternal love.

I write this as it is now Trinity season in the calendar of the Church, and also because I was away on holiday for Trinity Sunday, which begins the season – so had no opportunity to preach, but instead heard a sermon in which the preacher said the Trinity was completely beyond our understanding. Well, it seems to me that love is within everyone's understanding, and the abstract God makes much more sense incarnate in the carpenter of Nazareth, and revealed by the Spirit of Truth.