In his book, The Divine Romance Gene Edwards compels readers to consider God’s love; specifically he offers an intimate behind-the-scenes glimpse of it such that the reader can scarce keep from experiencing in real time God’s personal love for her. As Edwards tells the story of creation and onward until the resurrection of Christ, he pulls back layers implied in scripture but seldom pondered (the unseen realm who witnesses in wonder, for example). As the mystery of God’s love is revealed, the reader discovers this Love that made her to be His glorious counterpart, is itself her joyful purpose.
This message of love and purpose is critical in any time, but especially our postmodern era in which truth is obscured and its existence debated, in which love is a confusing term and so poorly demonstrated and experienced as to become nearly meaningless. When the meaning and purpose of human life are so absent in a national and personal sense, it is critical that we connect not only with a singularly unifying, dependable truth, but also discover that truth to be the one true God who is Love - whose deep and intimate Love gives us rich meaning and glorious purpose. It is a grounding in God’s love that gives us strength and empowers us and makes us complete, (Eph 3:17-19 NLT) and precisely the task which Edwards, in his book, sets out to accomplish. Here he endeavors to connect readers to God’s love and aid them toward living empowered and complete in Christ. (Eph 3:19)
This message of love and purpose is critical in any time, but especially our postmodern era in which truth is obscured and its existence debated, in which love is a confusing term and so poorly demonstrated and experienced as to become nearly meaningless. When the meaning and purpose of human life are so absent in a national and personal sense, it is critical that we connect not only with a singularly unifying, dependable truth, but also discover that truth to be the one true God who is Love - whose deep and intimate Love gives us rich meaning and glorious purpose. It is a grounding in God’s love that gives us strength and empowers us and makes us complete, (Eph 3:17-19 NLT) and precisely the task which Edwards, in his book, sets out to accomplish. Here he endeavors to connect readers to God’s love and aid them toward living empowered and complete in Christ. (Eph 3:19)
In five parts, Edwards unfolds the mystery of God’s love as it aligns with biblical chronology. Beginning with God’s aloneness and the tension of His being love without having a counterpart with whom to share that love, God creates the material and unseen worlds. Then the story of humanity, in particular his Bride, demonstrates her relentless wandering and inability to be an adequate counterpart for God. In Act 3, God divides Himself, sending Jesus who, in a sense, undoes Israel’s failings. Where Israel succumbed to temptation in the desert, Jesus prevailed, for example. In act 4, Jesus, resurrected, rises to reveal the secret - just as Adam’s counterpart came from inside himself, God’s counterpart comes from himself: the Holy Spirit indwells and enables his Bride to finally be holy and thus suitable. In the fifth and final act His bride is learning to love Him, and now she yearns for him to return, which He will.
The greatest strength of this book is its grounding in scripture. There may be liberties taken, but that can hardly be avoided when expounding on a text through fiction writing. Even so, the author was careful to base his imaginings squarely on the Word. As a result, the reader, when coming across these imaginative layers, will either recognize scripture and experience a richer perspective of it, or the reader will not recognize scripture but will nonetheless be exposed to a version of it. Both readers will doubtless be inspired to approach God’s word and explore the mystery for themselves, drawing one step closer to God.
A weakness of this book is its singular focus on Love as the main attribute of God. The danger to readers is their misunderstanding of God as a softie one needn’t take too seriously. This is a risk anyone takes who does not consider all of God’s attributes. He is a God of justice and does punish sin severely. He is a God of infinite love whose grace and mercy is relentless. He is many things, and no one attribute can completely express or contain Him.
Ironically, while Edwards’ focus on love as the main attribute of God may seem unbalanced in one sense, it may also be acting as a counterweight to the prevailing understanding of God who, if he does exist, must be a cosmic meany. This view has been influenced by many contributors but specifically, The Divine Romance, seems at once an echo of and a rebuttal to Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Aside from the contrast of titles and the echo of the cover art (which is nearly identical to Gustave Dore’s illustration for Dante’s Canto XXXI), the content itself contrasts in a much needed way. In Edwards’ account, God is not, as Dante would have us believe, ‘rigidly objective, mechanical, and impersonal” , rather quite the opposite. God, from the beginning, “was Love. Passionate, emotional, expressive … love.” Where The Divine Comedy spends two thirds of the writing focusing on the darkness of hell and purgatory The Divine Romance spends little time on such matters, seeming to compensate - or perhaps, to set right - the view of God as primarily a Lover of his creation, as one who aches not for punishment of but rather for relationship with his Bride.
Edwards’ perspective of God as an involved, accessible, and intimately loving being opposes common North American views of God as either distant and aloof or overbearing and punitive. For many, this punishing view of God acts as a barrier to relationship with Him. It is this barrier Edwards’ message of love and grace is meant to break through and which is critical to reviving the hearts of those who would come to God if they could believe in His kind invitation to approach. In short, Edwards’ view of a deeply adoring God, one who seeks, creates, empowers, and still awaits his counterpart, is a perspective that our love-starved culture desperately needs to hear, consider, and with God’s help, experience personally for themselves and then by that love be transformed and live well their joyful purpose.
Bibliography1. Dante Alighieri and Gustave Dore, The Divine Comedy, London, Ebeling Publishing Ltd, Omega Books, 1982
2. "Inferno Themes”, SparkNotes, 2020, accessed Oct 6, 2020, https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno/themes
3. Gene Edwards, The Divine Romance, Auburn, Maine, Christian Books Publishing House, 1984
