What does ‘love’ really mean?
Dr Patrick Mitchel is Director of Learning at the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, and blogs at Religion in Ireland. He is the writer of a new volume in theBible Speaks Today: Bible Themes series onThe Message of Love.I asked him about the book, the theme, and its importance.
Tell u.s. almost the volume that y'all take written. Why were y'all fatigued to write it, and would do you hope information technology will contribute to the its readers?
The genre of the IVP Bible Speaks Today (BST) Themes series is designed to expound the biblical text and relate to contemporary life in an attainable way. I have done my best to do that through discussion of seventeen texts. Each chapter stands on its own only likewise makes a distinctive contribution to an overall biblical theology of dear.
In regard to why this book, it actually was a procedure of beingness drawn in to where I felt compelled to put pen to newspaper. There were twenty BST themes volumes published before this one on dearest – which is remarkable when you think about it given the importance of dear within the Bible. Information technology confirmed what others accept noticed earlier me, that at that place is a curious lack of biblical studies on dear, and then this volume attempts to assist fill that gap. My prayer is that it volition give individual readers, preachers and anyone interested in Christianity a fresh vision of the dearest of God and his agenda for his people to be communities of love within the world. At that place is a study guide which should be peculiarly useful for groups.
Why do yous think that the field of study of 'love' is an important one for Christians today?
Outset, a very good case tin can be made that love is the most important theme in Scripture. At the heart of the entire narrative is the covenant love of God for his called people, through whom the Abrahamic promise of approving will extend outwards. Repeatedly in the OT, crisis points test that love to the very limit, only it remains unbreakable (Moses' dialogue with Yahweh in Exodus 32-34 is an extraordinary early on example, closely followed by Hosea and its picture of God equally a betrayed lover). A primal claim of the NT is that story of divine beloved takes a dramatic and unexpected Christological twist in the Begetter's sending of his dearest Son. It culminates in the supreme sit-in of God'southward love at the cross (Rom. 5:8) and is why John (uniquely) says 'God is love' (i John 4: 8, xvi) – his love is revealed in the sending of his Son.
Love likewise describes the appropriate human response to the i truthful God equally summarised in the Shemaof Deuteronomy six:4-5 – no other loves are to stand in the style. While Jesus talks sparingly nigh dearest, when he does he stands in full continuity beloved in the Sometime Testament – beloved of God and neighbor fulfils the police force (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:27). What is amazing all the same, is how Jesus extends such wholehearted dearest to himself, demanding consummate allegiance from his disciples, above all other loves, even family (east.g., Matt ten:37). Such allegiance means loving as he loves – loving enemies and serving others self-sacrificially.
The loftier place of love is continued and adult by other NT writers, specially Paul and John. For Paul, God'south love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. v:5). The strap-line for the book is 'the only thing that counts' which comes from Galatians 5:half dozen where authentic faith is worked out in love. Add in 1 Corinthians 13 and xvi:14 ('Practise everything in love') and you lot quickly come across how love for Paul is the very purpose of being a Christian. Without information technology, everything Christians do is an utter waste of time. Love is too central for John, if using different language. Disciples remain in Jesus' love through obedience – and his command is to love one another (John 5:xiv, 17, cf. xiii:34). To put all this another way, while there are significant developments inside a biblical theology of dearest from Old to New Testament, we can say that honey is God'south consistent calendar for his people right through the Bible.
Second, studying love in the Bible inevitably raises big important theological and pastoral questions that all of us will face at some point or other. For example:
Divine love :Is God actually loving and utterly practiced? How can God love if he allows such suffering in the world? How is divine love uniform with divine judgement? Is God'southward honey unconditional? How does God evidence his dear for the poor and marginalised? How is God'due south dear revealed at the cross?
Human honey for God :Can love be dear if it is commanded? How do faith, love and the Spirit connect together? Why is love of money such a danger? If beloved for God requires humility and submission, is Christian love a deprival of life and our full humanity (Nietzsche)? How is love for God costly?
Man love for ane another :Why does the Bible overwhelmingly concentrate on love within the community of the people of God? Is loving enemies an impossible ideal? What does the Bible have to say virtually erotic sexual love? What is the relationship between knowing God and loving one another? What does a loving Christian wedlock look like? How is love God's most powerful 'weapon' in a conflict with powers opposed to his volition? What is the relationship betwixt love and future hope? Where are you lot and I being called to walk in the hard yet life-transforming path of beloved?
Third, now that the protective blanket of Christendom has been unceremoniously removed from the Church in the Due west, Christianity is under more critical scrutiny than information technology has experienced for a very long fourth dimension. In terms of witness and mission today, a key claiming for the Church building is to be an authentic customs in and through which the transforming love of God is made manifest within the world.
What exercise y'all think are the major issues in the way that love is (mis)understood in contemporary culture?
Today love has become virtually a religion in the West – an all-embracing belief arrangement that answers questions of ultimate purpose. The reasons behind love's exaltation are well described German sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim:
Beloved is glorified largely because it represents a sort of refuge in the chilly surroundings of our affluent, impersonal, uncertain society, stripped of its traditions and scarred past all kinds of risk . . . weighed down by expectations and frustrations, 'dearest' is the new center round which our detraditionalised life revolves.[one]
So love, in itself becomes what life is all about. The 'shape' of that love will tend to be universalist and inclusive, almost a type of liberation theology, freeing people to be themselves. The philosopher Simon May has an incisive analysis of the high expectations that honey now carries:
the more than individualistic we become the more than we wait love to exist a secular journeying for the soul, a terminal source of meaning and freedom, a supreme standard of value, a central to the problem of identity, a solace in the confront of rootlessness, a desire for the worldly and simultaneously a want to transcend it, a redemption from suffering, and, a promise of eternity. Or all of these at in one case.[2]
A cardinal idea here is the anthropological optimism at the heart of much modern love. Past this I mean how love is assumed to be within like shooting fish in a barrel reach of anyone with piffling cost to the self. Withal this is a recent development and is far removed from how dear is understood within Scripture and Christian tradition.
How well practice you think Christians today understand dear as it is expressed and explained in the Bible?
That's a tough one! I guess the answer is mixed. Hopefully most Christians take personal experience of the redemptive love of triune God. Also well-understood is how Christian spirituality revolves around the fake of Jesus – other-focused dearest is at the core of what it means to be a disciple. I'm sure we can all think of inspiring examples of such dear being worked out inside our own circles.
But I think it would exist naïve to think that we are not being shaped by powerful cultural pressures when it comes to love. We downplay the gulf betwixt divine and man honey. Some symptoms include when God's love is sentimentalized, sin and judgement are rarely talked virtually, nosotros are uncomfortable with sexual ideals, we sing cringe-worthy romantic worship songs, we live privatised lives with advisedly limited exposure to those in need and, echoing Marcion, nosotros ignore much of the OT. What is going on hither, I think, is that we are losing touch with the paradox at the heart of Christian beloved: information technology is by losing our lives that nosotros find them, it is by dying to the cocky that we are enabled to love. The Christian 'path' to dearest is humility, repentance and obedience, it is annihilation but easy and automatic. Love is a virtue adult over the long haul at pregnant toll.
You have posted about this Ian, but I wonder if this is linked to how the gospel is often recast equally 'God loves y'all'? While truthful (!) this is not the gospel of the NT. A fascinating fact is that Acts is the simply NT book in which love is not mentioned one time. Retrieve of all those gospel sermons – love is nowhere to be seen. The response to the gospel in the NT is typically religion, repentance and baptism – a radical alter of fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ. All too easily, 'God loves you' can be framed in a manner that fails to demand such a response but effectively just affirms usa where we are at.
What do you think readers might discover surprising in your study of dearest in the Scriptures?
1 is that dearest is the primary weapon in God's state of war. Within Paul'south eschatology love is far more than than a 'nice' idea, it is actually God'due south goal for his people and his 'weapon' in a spiritual war with forces opposed to his will. Christians are to fight with beloved in the power of the Spirit, non with the weapons of the world. (This ways that when it comes to loving enemies I debate that discipleship entails being non-violent).
For expert and ill, Augustine casts a long shadow when it comes to love. On one hand, his insight that nosotros are beginning and foremost lovers is bright and important. A consistent question in the Bible is not ifwe love, but whoor whatwe love. This shows who we truly are and what we really believe – much more than what we say we believe. This is why the OT, Jesus, Paul and John all have so much to say about the center. On the other hand, Augustine's neo-platonic attitude to the body and sex has had all sorts of unfortunate consequences. Biblical love is earthy and embodied, nowhere more than then than in the Song of Songs. It has been allegorised to death, I contend, because of deep ambiguity in Christian tradition towards its joyful celebration of erotic love.
There is surprisingly trivial in the Bible about God'due south people loving the world. The overwhelming emphasis all the way through is on honey for God and ane another inside the covenant community (the great majority of love language in the NT belongs here). This has profound implications, I recollect, for public theology. I am persuaded that the primary call of the church is to be the church, non to endeavor to set up the earth – and I recognise that is a much bigger word.
What did you learn about from writing this text?
A lot of things that will continue to accept time to procedure. Some at the summit of the list include:
I was left with the overwhelming impression of how Christianity is ultimately about God'south relentless commitment to human flourishing.
Theologically, inside the narrative of the Bible, information technology is the identity of Jesus as God's love Son who dies for us that marks a revolution in the understanding of divine dearest. Every bit Larry Hurtado says, Christianity'south love-ethic marked information technology out equally unique in the aboriginal earth.
It is an unnamed woman who utters non a word who is commended by Jesus more highly than anyone else in the NT for her 'bully love' (Luke 7:36-fifty). She taught me that love requires humility and gratitude and leads to joyful worship.
Beloved has deeply subversive social implications. For case, in Ephesians 5:21-33 husbands are four times commanded to love their wives, including fifty-fifty as their ain bodies. This ways treating them every bit equal in identity, status and worth – which was unheard of in the ancient world.
That love is ultimately about loyalty / fidelity means information technology is a profoundly relevant topic for Christian discipleship within a consumer culture that is relentlessly persuading us to love all sorts of temporary delights provided past the market.
In an age where it tends to be side-lined, we need a robust theology of divine wrath because God would not exist loving if he were not also a judge. God'south wrath is a consequence of his dear, he acts confronting all that seeks to destroy his loving purposes.
Finally, love is extremely inconvenient. When I am ranting about something or existence more often than not unloving, my married woman reminds me that I've written a book on dearest and should go read information technology!
[i]Ulrich Brook and Elisabeth Brook-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love, tr. Mark Ritter and Jane Wiebel (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), pp. 2–three.
[2]Simon May, Beloved: A History(London: Yale Academy Press, 2011), p. 239.
Commendations for the book:
No ane will ever offering the final give-and-take on what the Bible says about love, simply I know of no book that is equally thorough, sensitive to context and profile, every bit Patrick Mitchel's sparklingly clear and faithful exposition of how the Bible presents love, how in fact the God of love loves the world and the people of God in Christ. This will go a standard text for my classes on New Testament theology. (Scot McKnight)
There is a reason that Jesus said that the great commandment has to do with dearest, and Paul said love was greater than even organized religion and hope. It is because God himself is love, information technology is the essence of his graphic symbol, and Mitchel in this book lays out for us how that is a consistent theme throughout the Bible. Highly recommended. (Ben Witherington)
How can ane brainstorm to hope to do justice to a topic as broad and misunderstood as 'love'? Read this book for the answer. Mitchel has not only washed it justice merely has charted the manner Christian thinking on the topic should proceed in our troubled world for the foreseeable future. (Craig Blomberg)
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