““With such questions as these, we perhaps approach a critical parting of the ways, a point at which our two pictures of God diverge dramatically. In part because they regard justice and mercy as distinct attributes of God, the Augustinians suppose that God could justly have refused to forgive sinners or to save them from their sin; as the Augustinians see it, this makes God’s forgiveness a free gift and his mercy all the more glorious because it is supererogatory. But if, according to our alternative picture, God’s moral nature is simple—if all of his moral attributes are identical with his love—then his justice will be altogether merciful even as his mercy is altogether just; he will punish sinners, in other words, only when it is merciful to do so, and he will always forgive them because that is the most loving, and therefore the just, thing to do.””
