Claim. Love is the highest standard of value in the universe — higher than gold, diamonds, or any physical measure — because it is the one thing whose standard neither God nor humans can change.
Elaboration. SMM constructs the argument by analogy with measurement standards: the meter has its zero at Greenwich Observatory and cannot be changed by anyone; precious metals like gold and diamonds are valued precisely because their properties do not change. But these material standards are still things ‘God can make’ and control. Love is different: ‘we think that God can, of course, create love as well, but possessing this love is impossible alone. It takes two to possess love. As for love, even God cannot find it alone’ (Section 3. The Standard Measure of Truth A true heart does not change. With- out it, a standard cannot be set and things cannot be evaluated by saying, “It is this way” or “It is that way.” You will not have the root that makes it possible to receive official approval according to).
This is a striking divine-constraint claim: love requires an object, so even God cannot self-generate or unilaterally control it. The corollary is that love stands above God as the universal standard — ‘rather than measuring it, we are measured by it.’ Love transcends day and night, geography, distance, the earthly and heavenly worlds.
The philosophical move parallels Plato’s Form of the Good (above even the gods in some readings) but with a relational twist: love’s superiority is grounded in its irreducibly two-place structure. This connects to the four-position-foundation and give-and-take dynamics elsewhere in DP — love is constitutively relational, requiring subject and object partners.
The practical upshot: human and cosmic order both require this single absolute standard. Without it ‘an orderly world will not come about.’ Critics in classical theism will worry that this compromises divine aseity (God’s self-sufficiency); SMM’s framework instead embraces a relational ontology in which God’s own perfection requires the creation of partners. Worth a thread on whether ‘even God cannot find it alone’ is a metaphysical constraint or a self-imposed one.