On the Nature of God's Wrath

I have recently read Tony Lane's essay The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God.  It treats a difficult issue that has afflicted the post-modern sense of Christianity as it deals with totally secularized views of God.  The world has extreme difficulty in seeing a compatibility between a loving God and a God who allows evil, which is seen as a manifestation of God's wrath.  This is not a difficulty perceived just now.  It is a concept that has intrigued the best theological minds of the Church.  The earliest schisms of the second century can be traced to this matter.

Lane recognizes four incorrect notions dealing with God's anger:

1.  Simple denial of the ira Dei.
2.  A disassociation between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus the Son of God in the New.  This was the basis of Marcion's heretical sect in the second century, who culled away much of the New Testament proto-canon (favoring the Lucan and  Pauline portions over against the material submitted by apostles of Judean background).
3.  Viewing the ira Dei as an anthropomorphic (or, better, anthropopathic) expression.  God's wrath is not equivalent to raw human emotions.  While it may begin a correct understanding of divine anger (it is not to be seen as volatile or out-of-control), it often degenerates into a cause-effect response to violating natural law, an elevation of law having built-in consequences.  But this reduces divine indignation to something along the lines of karma.
4. Acknowledging the truth of divine wrath, but minimizing its expression in the teachings of Church.

In treating the wrath of God, Lane notes a long tradition of viewing God's wrath as an attribute to God's love.  A jealous God is what the Lord portrays Himself.  The secularist trend is to see this as a belittling emotional comparison.  Lane disagrees:   Failure to hate evil implies a deficiency in love. C. E. B. Cranfield illustrates this with a well-chosen modern example. He asks whether God could be the good and loving God if he did not react to human evil with wrath. “For indignation against wickedness is surely an essential element of human goodness in a world in which moral evil is always present. A man who knows, for example, about the injustice and cruelty of apartheid and is not angry at such wickedness cannot be a thoroughly good man; for his lack of wrath means a failure to care for his fellow man, a failure to love.”  Moreover, critics who disdain the jealousy of God work from a deficient notion of love that is centered in self-gratification which moves on to new centers of affection when the emotive power of eros wanes.  If you do not truly, deeply love, jealousy is impossible.

God's wrath is perfect in itself when it is viewed as transcendent above raw human sentimentality.  It becomes the proper response to evil and wickedness, in all forms they may assume.  This is the touchstone of the whole issue.  Once mankind recognizes that its main obsession is not so much love as a sense for debauchery, the issue of divine wrath is vindicated.  A soft sell is not the solution.  If a lion is ever seen in your backyard, it would never do to ignore it.