Love

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

In Orthodox theology love is understood as the ineffable energy that is at the heart of God’s very being, the power that causes God to make the entire cosmos in the first place, the motive behind the divine investment in its redemption, and the rationale for God’s continuing care to call forward all humanity into deepening communion, in love, with the God of Love. Human love for God mirrors the love God first has for creation. It is life-giving. Jesus elevates it as the human heart’s response to the good news of salvation (Mk. 12.29–31). The Apostle John expresses the way humanity can expe­rience the unapproachable love of God most eloquently when he says: “Whoever does not love does not know God; because God is love. And the love of God was made manifest among us especially in this, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” Shortly after this he adds memorably: “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in them” (1Jn. 4.8–9, 16). The medieval English author of the Cloud of Unknowing got it right when, paraphrasing St. Dionysius the Areopagite, he said of God: “By love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought, never.” True love overflows philanthropically: the lovers of God will also be the lovers of their fellows, as the Lord commanded them (Jn. 13.14; 15.12, 17).

SEE ALSO: Christ; Fatherhood of God; Soteriology

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Prat, F. (1953) “Charite,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualite, Vol. 2. Paris: Beauchesne, cols. 508–691.

Raven, C. E. (1931) Jesus and the Gospel of Love. Robertson Lectures for 1931. New York: Henry Holt.