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McGrath's Christian theology says:

As the Scottish theologian John McLeod Campbell (1800–72) pithily put it, “Atonement is to be regarded as that by which God has bridged over the gulf which separated between what sin had made us, and what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become.”

How is "what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become" parsed?

What does it mean?

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  • You sure you have transcribed that clause correctly, and haven't included an extra "that"? And that it says "separated between"?
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 6 at 13:34
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    I think it's more naturally phrased as "what divine love desires that we should become" or if a question "divine love desires that we should become what?" It's a rather awkward extraposition of the complement of "become" out of the subordinate clause; I've no idea if authorities would consider it grammatical.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Oct 6 at 13:36
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    @StuartF - I think it's absolutely fine, but very much of its time.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Oct 6 at 14:17
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    Pithily???!!! The OED defines pithily as With reference to language or style: so as to convey meaning with force and brevity; concisely, succinctly; in a condensed and powerful style. I think the phrasing is incredibly convoluted compared to something like ...the gulf between what divine love would have us be, and what sin has made of us.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 6 at 18:37
  • It's a theological statement, and (miracle of miracles) it is fully laid out in precisely one sentence. I can't think of a better example of pithily.
    – Peter Kirkpatrick
    Commented Oct 7 at 4:51

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The interrogative content clause

... what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become

seems to be a somewhat garbled version of

... what it was (that) the divine love desired that we should become

"what it was (that) the divine love desired" is replaced with " what it was the desire of the divine love".

I think that transformation from a relative clause "(that) the divine love desired" to a simple noun phrase "the desire of the divine love" renders the clause ungrammatical.

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This is a very tricky passage. I had to reread it a couple of times.

I believe this is a case of it-extraposition. Reformulating a bit:

  • It was the desire of the divine love that we should become something.
  • That we should become something was the desire of the divine love.

In other words, the divine love desires that we should become something.

In the original sentence something becomes what in a free relative construction, and goes at the beginning of the phrase:

  • what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become ___

So the sentence means, roughly, there is a bridging of a gulf between
(i) what sin made us
and
(ii) what the divine love desires us to become.

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