Is God more just than he is love? (Catholic perspective)
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St. Thomas Aquinas (Catholic perspecitve) tells us that within God, all His 'attributes' have to be, within Himself, identical. Due to divine simplicity.
Here are my personal thoughts, as a Catholic, in contemplating these two sides of God: the just and the merciful.
I think the issue of the relationship between love and justice.
Firstly, love is to want to do what is good. Justice is to ensure that evil is not done, and that goods are encouraged or supported. Anything which offends or diminishes the morally good state of something or someone is evil and against justice.
Love wants good to be done; and evil not to be done. This means that it wants justice to be done—because justice is that which upholds good and punishes or diminishes evil. Justice being done is love being excercised,in other words.
But justice being a good in itself, and caused by love, implies a certain 'concession' of itself in certain cases. That is, if doing justice would offend the main goals of love, or the greater priorities thereof, then the punishment of justice might serve a purpose contrary to love. In this case, God delays or moves His justice elsewhere, which is called mercy. The example reason mercy is given might be that to give immediate justice might not result in the same love being shown, whereas delaying justice might foster a sense of gratefulness etc,and ultimate conversion.
The sole reason God forgives and does not condemn us all to Hell for any sin ("the wages of sin is death"—to sow sin is to reap Hell), is purely on the basis of the merits of Jesus Christ, who freely took our punishment upon Himself. He satisfied justice due to sin perfectly, and since He did not Himself need any merit, He freely gave us it as a gift. The gift of redemption.
It's for this reason also that if you deny the Son, you cut yourself off from the only source of mercy God can or will offer you! The residents of Hell sent themselves there by losing the fight with justice, who will always win, because it's good that it does. God states Himself that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but would have them turn from their wicked ways and live. Calvinist nonsense notwithstanding.
SO love and justice are one and the same within God, we simply describe soemthing like a back and forth motion in God as 'mercy' and 'justice'. But love is what is being achieved overall, and always without exception.
Psalm 136:1
Praise the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
God's mercy endures forever, because He is love, and will always be love.
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