Chapter 3: Love
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- - Contents
- - Preface
- - Introduction
- - 1) The Physical Universe
- - 2) The Human Mind:
Cognition and Conscience - - 3) Love
- - 4) Tackling Arguments
Against a Designing God - - 5) Jesus
- - 6) The Resurrection
- - 7) Suffering
- - 8) Christianity and Politics
- - 9) Other Religions
- - 10) Heaven and Hell
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In Chapter 3, Williams argues that the phenomenon of love may be
the best evidence of a loving God.
Love is such a grand phenomenon that any defence of Christianity, or any religion, must take account of it. Yet the subject is so gloriously multi-faceted as to be elusive. So much human creativity has been devoted to love - by philosophers and poets, by novelists and songwriters, by theologians and film-makers - that it is hard to know where to begin.
My chosen starting point is to advance this contention: love has a fundamental
place in the scheme of the Universe. For the reasons advanced in Chapter 2,
human beings have a genuinely special place in that Universe. But our
specialness is not entirely attributable to the faculties of cognition and
conscience. The capacity to give and receive love - in all its forms - is also
central to our conception of what it is to be human. Our lives are sustained and
made meaningful by love.
Now contemplate a remarkable thing. Almost everybody, whatever their circumstances, is able to find substantial comfort and joy (i.e. love) in something or someone. The Earth provides Man with an abundance of things upon which to bestow love (living and non-living, tangible and conceptual) and an abundance of living things (human and non-human) from which to receive love.
This seems to me an extraordinary state of affairs. And it gives rise to some critical theological questions. Might love have been different? Might Man - or the Universe itself - exist without it?
Atheists and other unbelievers tend to concentrate their attention on the most obvious features of the physical Universe. At the level of cosmology, they try to explain the existence of galaxies, stars and planets (and, in part, they succeed). At the level of earthly biology, they try to explain how species evolve (and again, in part, they succeed). But few even begin to try to explain (as opposed to describe) the existence of the phenomenon of love, in all its intricacy. Yet love is just as basic a feature of Man's Universe as light or oxygen or blood.
Love, then, requires explanation. But what, exactly, is meant by 'love'? The seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, Benedictus Spinoza, defined it as 'a pleasurable state, joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause' . As a general proposition, that seems to me prosaic but profound. But love comes in various forms, and it is instructive to consider some of them in a little detail.
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We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God', yet hates his
brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has
seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Love, love, love - that is the soul of genius.
Love, love, love - that is the soul of genius.
Love is such a grand phenomenon that any defence of Christianity, or any religion, must take account of it. Yet the subject is so gloriously multi-faceted as to be elusive. So much human creativity has been devoted to love - by philosophers and poets, by novelists and songwriters, by theologians and film-makers - that it is hard to know where to begin.
My chosen starting point is to advance this contention: love has a fundamental
place in the scheme of the Universe. For the reasons advanced in Chapter 2,
human beings have a genuinely special place in that Universe. But our
specialness is not entirely attributable to the faculties of cognition and
conscience. The capacity to give and receive love - in all its forms - is also
central to our conception of what it is to be human. Our lives are sustained and
made meaningful by love.
Now contemplate a remarkable thing. Almost everybody, whatever their circumstances, is able to find substantial comfort and joy (i.e. love) in something or someone. The Earth provides Man with an abundance of things upon which to bestow love (living and non-living, tangible and conceptual) and an abundance of living things (human and non-human) from which to receive love.
This seems to me an extraordinary state of affairs. And it gives rise to some critical theological questions. Might love have been different? Might Man - or the Universe itself - exist without it?
Atheists and other unbelievers tend to concentrate their attention on the most obvious features of the physical Universe. At the level of cosmology, they try to explain the existence of galaxies, stars and planets (and, in part, they succeed). At the level of earthly biology, they try to explain how species evolve (and again, in part, they succeed). But few even begin to try to explain (as opposed to describe) the existence of the phenomenon of love, in all its intricacy. Yet love is just as basic a feature of Man's Universe as light or oxygen or blood.
Love, then, requires explanation. But what, exactly, is meant by 'love'? The seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, Benedictus Spinoza, defined it as 'a pleasurable state, joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause' . As a general proposition, that seems to me prosaic but profound. But love comes in various forms, and it is instructive to consider some of them in a little detail.
Buy God, Actually and read more...
