From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 02:32:39 GMT

From article <exukjb.119.715643911@exu.ericsson.se>, by exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell):
> In article <lafcf7INNhcm@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:
>>From: danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR])
>>Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
>>Date: 4 Sep 92 18:58:47 GMT
> 
>>(Randall Holmes) writes:
> 
>> [theistic mode ON]
>> 
>> Certainly God "loves" the world (and notice that this "love" is
>> disinterested and not an emotion; God does not have emotions!); He
>> "takes care of it" (not necessarily for _our_ sake).  But God is not
>> the attribute of "loving"; God is the attribute of "being".  If God is
>> to be identified with a relation rather than a predicate, I would
>> think that the appropriate one is the universal relation (the one
>> which everything has to everything else); this is not love.
>> 
>>If god "loves" the world, god must have an interest in the 
>>world, and so could not be disinterested.
> 
>>I agree with god = being, god != love
> 
>> [theistic mode OFF]
>> 
>> The notion of God introduced in the bracketed text should be
>> understood to be a philosophical notion.
> 
>>Dano 
> 
> MISCELLANY OF THOUGHTS - 
> 
> I wonder how the passionless [I think the technical word for it is
> "impassible"] god of orthodox christianity could truly love, since it 
> seems to be essential to our use of 'love' and its cognates that one have 
> the capacity to relate emotionally to other minds.  And what, come to 
> think of it, would it mean to ascribe love to God, much less to say that God 
> *is* love, before creation, before the existence of other personal minds?  
> Someone who talks like this surely owes us a word of explanation.

  Of course, some scholars argue that the advent of Christianity through
Jesus Christ as human was what gave the loving element to God.(See the
writings of Tillich and those of Cate.  You might also look to Eckhart
and other Christian mystics).
A case of a "loving" God using Trinitarian theology is easily built.
What is not so evident is the cause of this advent nor is it
obvious that the God of the Jewish is a "loving" god.  I think, however,
that one ought to turn to Abraham Heschel's _God in Search of Man_ for
a good explanation, and a cogent one at that, of the love of the Jewish
God.  Also, theologically speaking, "acceptance and forgivingness," 
whether policy oriented or a result of rapture, are considered to be
the best definitions of love whenever one wants to interpret the concept
on biblical grounds.  

> 
> Also, imagine your parents, girlfriend or just friend, saying that he/
> she loves you 'disinterestedly.' Not a very warm, personal thing, is it?  If 
> that is how god loves humanity, I would feel rather slighted and alienated, 
> instead of loved.

  I think you have a vauge understanding of the notion of a "loving 
God" from theological grounds.  In few instances would one find the
God of man to be "disinterestedly" loving regardless of what your 
personal conclusions on the matter may be.

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BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III  Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
Graduate Student in Religious Studies           onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu
University of Chicago
 
"N'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas trop"
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