The Truth of Love

The book concludes by arguing that love reveals the truth of being. The notion of truth to be applied is developed by reference to Habermas (truth as constative, normative, expressive), Heidegger (alētheia, as unconcealment), Bultmann (‘emeth), and Florensky (alētheia, as the struggle against forgetfulness). This discussion returns us to love’s cosmic dimension, which is discussed with particular reference to the challenges of the Anthropocene and the experience of beauty, as interpreted by Simone Weil. We also come back to the question of love and being, and it is argued that although love reveals the truth of being, it does so only in the play of being and nothingness, thereby affirming both the value and the freedom of lover and beloved. Following Tillich, the book concludes that a contemporary idea of providence means that there is no situation in which love is not possible.

Introduction

The Introduction sums up the outcomes of Parts 1 and 2 of the philosophy of Christian life in terms of the possibility of a mutual call to love that is evidenced both in the messianic invocation to ‘Come!’ and in the foundational naming ritual of baptism. The silent witness of feeling and the heart therefore requires the further testimony of language, understood as the medium of such a call. Reflecting on the meaning and implications of the call will involve engagement with philosophers (including Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Solovyov), a broad range of theologians, and poets and artists such as Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, and Edwin Muir. The overall approach is defined as phenomenological and conversational.

Moral Man, Immoral Society

Love is typically seen as a characteristic of intimate relationships, not of larger social units such as the state. But if Christianity aims at a Kingdom of Love, what social forms might enable such a kingdom to be formed? Christian teaching suggests two primary forms, the family and the Church. The family is approached in a dialogue between Hegel and recent magisterial Catholic teaching. Where Hegel subordinates the family to the state, Catholic teaching proposes that the state is subsidiary to the family. The family is also seen in Catholic teaching as modelling the life of the Church. However, social changes make Dostoevsky’s model of the ‘accidental family’ more appropriate than that of the conventional nuclear family, while Rosenzweig warns against extending the model of the family to the territorial nation-state. The chapter also develops the idea of human solidarity.

In the End, Love

Christian faith in love characteristically believes that love is not conquered by death. Yet modern philosophy (e.g. Heidegger) proposes death as a limit to human existence. Noting the proximity of love and death in human experience, the chapter explores how the idea of an afterlife has been replaced by that of an eternal now in modern thought, as in Hegel and Schleiermacher, but also in modern atheism. The challenge of developing an authentically modern view is sharpened by a discussion of the relationship between death and love in Heidegger. This leads back to further reflection on human solidarity, with reference to the doctrine of the community of saints and intercessory prayer. Under the conditions of historical existence this remains a messianic possibility that can best be spoken of in the mode of the poetic, bringing about hope in a return to ontological rootedness.

Love Came Down at Christmas

Even if we can envisage the social forms that a Kingdom of Love might require, is such a kingdom a pure ideal? Can love become a reality in a world such as ours, where even love itself is a source of human suffering and mutual affliction? Kant postulates an archetypal life of love that is humanly imaginable, but it seems it would take a near-miracle to realize the ideal. This is the miracle Christian theologians such as Karl Barth see in Christmas. The Christmas event, Barth argues is incomprehensible to human reason and we can only bear witness to it. Against this view, it is argued that the new beginning that Christians see in the Incarnation coheres with human experience, as in the ‘novelty’ of a new birth and the possibility of forgiveness. Yet, as the Christian Eucharist shows, this new beginning in history remains also a focus of eschatological hope.

Love and Time

Although both philosophical and theological traditions have taken a negative view of time, time is understood here as a condition of love that is able to endure. This is again especially clear in Kierkegaard, who understands God’s eternity as God’s power to give time. This makes love essentially hopeful. The chapter shows how ‘kairological’ time-experience is involved in the beginning of love, in its power of ‘abiding’, and in the gift of temporally extended attention that is given in love, attention that is human life’s closest analogy to divine creation. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the moment is fleshed out with help from Franz Rosenzweig, who highlights the importance of the hour, day, week, and year as forging the communal relationship between divine and human. Edwin Muir is used to further develop these insights and to show the role of eschatology in love.

The Call, the Concept, and the Metaphysics of Love

The chapter explains that the book does not seek to define love but to explore the conditions for how it shows itself in Christian life. It considers the post-Heideggerian critique of metaphysics before introducing Dante’s vision of the love that moves the sun and other stars. This commits a Christian account of love to seeking integration with cosmic life. However, we no longer inhabit Dante’s pre-Copernican and pre-Darwinian universe and a new model of integrating love and cosmic life is therefore needed. Vladimir Solovyov’s doctrine of love is used to sketch a preliminary approach to love that acknowledges the new cosmology, though it too requires revision in the light of subsequent developments. Dante’s vision also assumes the identity of love, being, and God in ways that have become problematic and the chapter therefore also addresses the relative priority of love and being.

Love and Language

It is widely believed that love cannot be limited to language and has a more natural affinity with silence than with speech. In this chapter it is argued that although there is no exact fit between love and language, love needs language (and not just ‘looks’) if it is to be humanly meaningful. Following Kierkegaard, it is proposed that love is a response to the love commandment, understood not as an abstract ought but as a concrete word of personal address in the mode of what has been called vocativity. In this perspective we see that love is grounded in the call and involves the kind of promise that language makes possible. The Christian marriage service is read phenomenologically as revealing what the word of love requires, abstracted from its doctrinal content. The interrelationship of love and language is further explored with reference again to Dante.