By Schubert Ogden
...
Maurice speaks typically of God's being, or being motivated by, "perfect self-sacrificing love," oblivious of the implicit inappropriateness, not to say, meaninglessness, of such talk.
Perfect love neither would nor could be "self-sacrificing," for the very good reason that any love that would be properly self-sacrificing neither would nor could be "perfect,It " self-sacrifice being a possibility/responsibility of an imperfect agent only. Only where there would not be a complete coincidence between the good of the agent and the good of the others affected by the agent's action -– as there could not conceivably be in the case of the perfect agent -– could "selfsacrificeself-sacrifice" be a possibility/responsibility.
24 May 2001