If love is self-giving, then it is inevitably vulnerable to pain, since it exposes itself to the possibility of rejection and insult. It is ‘the fundamental Christian assertion that God is love’, writes Jürgen Moltmann, ‘which in principle broke the spell of the Aristotelian doctrine of God’ (i.e. as ‘impassible’). ‘Were God incapable of suffering..., then he would also be incapable of love’, whereas ‘the one who is capable of love is also capable of suffering, for he also opens himself to the suffering which is involved in love’.39
