Saturday, July 01, 2006
The Primacy of Love
Keenan asks, "Why begin with love?" He gives three reasons:
- Scriptures: The scriptures command it. We see that both the old and the new testaments show that love is the ground of our happiness:
- Jesus exhorts us to “love the Lord God, will all your might… neighbor as yourself”
- Ten commandments: love and honor your God: on it depends all our commandments
- 1 John 2, 7-11; 16-17; 19-21.
- Theology: The love of God precedes whatever else we discuss in theology: love is our understanding of God, creation, redemption, sanctification, and eschatological promise
- Our concept of God: God is love. Thus, love is how we understand God.
- Karl Rahner asserts that God has to be triune – God needs to be in God’s self more than one person in order to be love. The lover needs the beloved.
- Love explains creation. We should see the creation accounts in Genesis as not merely myths. The point of the creation stories is not the details of who and what happened in each day. The point of the creation stories is to show that creation is an overflowing of God's love.
- Love as the ground of our redemption. John 3:16 states “for God so loved the world he gave us His only Son…” and our justification.
- Love as our goal. When we speak of Eschatology, we speak of the Kingdom of God, or heaven. Heaven is a state of union with God—beholding God in His splendour, being constantly in love with God.
- Human Tradition: Human experience dictates that unlike freedom or truth, love drives, animates.
- Gerard Gilleman
- charity as the love of God dwelling within us
- love of God as no less than the Holy Spirit
- Charity animates us
- Conversions:
- St. Augustine: Late have I loved you...
- Conversion of
Michelangelo
Caravaggio
¶ 12:10 am 
Caravaggio
In the second painting by Caravaggio, we see a St. Paul who is erotically sprawled on the ground. The horse and the old companion seems to be oblivious to what is happening to St. Paul, yet we know that something is happening to St. Paul. Someone must be doing something to St. Paul for we actually see that St. Paul is attuned to the presence of God in his life
