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Augustine (Thought-Ideas and Faith) (02)
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Augustine (Thought-Ideas and Faith) (02).
(2) LOVE
A. The universality of love
(1) In human life, Augustine finds nothing in which there is no love.
(2) Love is a striving for something I have not (appetitus). As weight moves bodies, so love moves souls.
(3) Love is desire (cupiditas), where it strives for possession of the beloved.
(4) Everything a man does, even evil, is caused by love.
1) "Abominations, adulteries, crimes, murders, all offenses are they not brought about by love"
2) And to cease loving is no solution. For that is to "be inert, dead, contemptible, wretched."
(5) "Love, but take heed what you love." "Love what is worthy of love."
B. True love
(1) Worthy of love is that beyond which we can find nothing better. That is God.
(2) All true love is love of God. And to God we attain only through love.
(3) The love of God is unique, in this world and for all eternity.
(4) Faith and hope belong to this existence in time; but love remains: "For even if a man has attained to eternal life and the other two virtues have ceased, love [that is, the love of God] will still be present, in increased degree and with greater certainty."
C. Love determines the nature of man
(1) A man's essence is in his love.
(2) Where there is love of God, love has an object on which it can rely.
(3) The man who is filled with it will everywhere see the good and do what is right. Here it becomes impossible to sin. From this love man cannot backslide into self-complacency.
D. The modes of love
(1) The distinction lies therefore in the direction of movement, either toward God (cantos) or toward the world (cupiditas).
1) Caritas, the love of God (amor Dei), loves everything else for the sake of God.
2) Cupiditas, love of the world (amor mundi), strives for temporal things.
Without relation to God, this love is perverse, it is called libido; it is love of the flesh (earn alls cupiditas).
(2) But since only God is worthy to be loved for Himself and the only true love is the love of God, the frui is justified only in connection with God, while in connection with earthly things only an uti is in order.
In other words:
1) Love for people and things in the world is true only if they are loved for the sake of God, not for their own sake.
2) And the worst perversion of all would be to make use of God in order to enjoy people and things in the world.
E. The order of love (ordo amoris)
(1) If love of God and worldly love were entirely separate, they would exclude one another.
1) But worldly love is forbidden only when it is a frui rather than an uti, that is, when any being other than God is loved wholly for his or its own sake.
2) It is in such cases, says Augustine, that the soul is sullied (contaminated) by love of the world.
3) Thus the essential is an order of love (virtus et ordo amons) in which the love of God and worldly love are combined in the right way.
(2) Augustine even thought it permissible to love one's own body. "No one hates his body."
1) To love something more than the body does not mean to hate the body.
2) Augustine employs the parable of the wayfarer to indicate what love in the world means;
① The foot rests when the wayfarer lies down; this gives his will a respite (rest) and provides a certain well-being, but that is not what he is striving for.
② The resting place is a source, of true satisfaction only if it is looked upon as a night lodging, not as a home.
⑤ To rest among friends profits the wayfarer's movement toward the eternal. (pilgrimage)
F. The love of God, of self, of our fellow men
(1) Self-love and love of our fellow men have their place in worldly love ordered by the love of God.
1) Self-love is right and necessary. It is not possible that a man who loves God should not love himself. Moreover, one whom God loves himself,
2) but he who loves God more than himself loves himself in the right way.
(2) According to Augustine, love of our fellow men is next in importance after self-love.
1) For who is closer to man than man? We are all descended from Adam and are related by lineage.
2) Revelation speaks to us all through Christ, and we are one in faith.
3) But if love of our neighbors, our fellow men, is to be true iove, it must take the form of caritas, not of cupiditas.
① caritas is the bright, serene love of one soul for another {serenitas dilectionis);
② cupiditas is the tumultuous night of instinct (caligo libidinis).
(3) Love is reciprocal. (mutual)
1) The lover "burns the more ardently, the more he sees the other soul seized by the same fire."
2) There is "no stronger power to awaken and increase love than to see oneself loved."
(4) These are rare sentences in Augustine. Christian-Augustinian love is directed wholly toward one's neighbor, toward every neighbor as a man.
1) Man is not loved as an individual. God loves the man whose love is reflected in self-love.
2) Love of my fellow men spurs me and guides me to the love of God. I includes the sinner and my enemy.
G. Characterization
(1) In the history of the philosophy of love (Plato, Dante, Spinoza, Kierkegaard) Augustine's thinking takes an essentia place.
(2) In Augustine's caritas three elements converge (concentrate):
1) the perfection of an acosmistic feeling of love;
2) the having (furi) that no longer desires;
3) active help and succor. (saving love)
(3) All this is impersonal, it can be accomplished in the human community, the corpus mysticum of Christ.
(4) To love God implies: awareness of eternity.
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Introduction
Theology 