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Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 5:54 PM (GMT -6) |   |
05/29/01 1:08 PM
Unconditional love: What is it?
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I have never understood unconditional love
We often talk about God’s unconditional love but what do we mean? We are using terms about God that He does not use about Himself. Could it be that His love is not what we call unconditional? After all I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone unconditionally. Everyone I’ve ever loved was loved for a reason. If there is no cause-initial (oh boy I’m using terms I don’t know what they mean. Where did that come from? Oh well I’ll leave it in and see if anyone notices) element in the beloved than love becomes arbitrary, and ultimately meaningless. What good is unconditional love if salvation is still conditional? If you’re a Calvinist salvation is conditioned by God’s sovereign choice, if you’re an Arminian/Open Theist it is conditioned by our response to God’s pre-existent all inclusive choice to save anyone who responds correctly. So what’s the deal with all this unconditional talk?
devolnu
Wilsawa
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
MrIndifference
05/30/01 11:26 AM
Unconditional love: What is it?
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When I look at the word love, I see two different meanings. First you have the gushy-feely warm and fuzzy type of love, and then you have the other type. What is the other type? I would define it as a love of choice. When you see a grimy old man with teeth half rotted out of his skull, not bathed in what looks like a year or two, standing on a street corner begging for food, most would not get the warm-fuzzies for him, but instead would help him out of choice. "Agape" is largely a love of choice. When you choose to love someone no matter what they look like, what they have done in the past, how they treat you, I believe you are exibiting what is refered to as unconditional love. As long as you choose to love that person no matter what, it is unconditional.
I think I am talking my way in circles, but I'm sure you get my drift.
MrIndifference
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
Wislawa
05/30/01 3:43 PM
RE: Unconditional love: What is it?
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When you choose to love this man do you have any reasons for doing so? Perhaps you loved him because we are told to love the poor and help them out. If so his poverty becomes the necessary condition for your choice. If you had no reasons for loving him than does love not become random and arbitrary?
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
ghost-dog-girl
05/31/01 10:09 AM
eros is underrated
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It is better to give than to receive, but receiving isn’t so bad either. The word “unconditional” is not in the Bible, but it has achieved sacred status in our discourse. I think the current bifurcation between sacrificial giving and egocentric taking is an unhelpful either/or. There is a healthy way to be a self that lies between self-negation and self-centeredness. Daniel Day Williams says that as opposed to our completely spontaneous and unmotivated ideal, love combines the good of the self with the good of the other. Eberhard Jüngel says that God’s self-having is God’s self-giving. Jesus says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is no relationship if there is no self-interest involved. Agape and eros are incomplete by themselves, but together…that’s where it’s at. GDG
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
Wislawa
05/31/01 1:35 PM
RE: eros is underrated
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Oh I’m with you 100%. I’ve been thinking a ton about altruism and the Western tradition and how altruism has been elevated as the purest example of love. If I get ambitious I might actually right an essay about it but since it would just be for myself I don’t know why I’d do it (--as in it would be self-centered? Hehe? I don’t even know if that was supposed to be funny) anyway in place of altruism, sacrifice, and martyrdom as the ideal form of love I’ve replaced it with power, life and resurrection. The Bible seems to portray two faces of love. On the one had we have stuff like ‘greater love have no more than this…’ and on the other hand we have Song 8:6. I think the former has be exalted at the expense of the latter.
devolnu
Wislawa
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Modes of Thought
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 10/16/2001 6:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Another great one from the archives....
Why think that God does not experience Eros?
Sorry if I am annoying people by digging this stuff up....
You'll cope
"to be neurotic is human, to be psychotic is sinful...."
Paul Tillich | | Back to Top | | |
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