Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether it is more meritorious to love an enemy than to love a friend?Objection 1: It would seem more meritorious to love an enemy than to love a friend. For it is written (Mat. 5:46): “If you love them that love you, what reward shall you have?” Therefore it is not deserving of reward to love one’s friend: whereas, as the same passage proves, to love one’s enemy is deserving of a reward. Therefore it is more meritorious to love one’s enemy than to love one’s friend. Objection 2: Further, an act is the more meritorious through proceeding from a greater charity. But it belongs to the perfect children of God to love their enemies, whereas those also who have imperfect charity love their friends. Therefore it is more meritorious to love one’s enemy than to love one’s friend. Objection 3: Further, where there is more effort for good, there seems to be more merit, since “every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor” (1 Cor. 3:8). Now a man has to make a greater effort to love his enemy than to love his friend, because it is more difficult. Therefore it seems more meritorious to love one’s enemy than to love one’s friend. On the contrary, The better an action is, the more meritorious it is. Now it is better to love one’s friend, since it is better to love a better man, and the friend who loves you is better than the enemy who hates you. Therefore it is more meritorious to love one’s friend than to love one’s enemy. I answer that, God is the reason for our loving our neighbor out of charity, as stated above ([2578]Q[25], A[1]). When therefore it is asked which is better or more meritorious, to love one’s friend or one’s enemy, these two loves may be compared in two ways, first, on the part of our neighbor whom we love, secondly, on the part of the reason for which we love him. In the first way, love of one’s friend surpasses love of one’s enemy, because a friend is both better and more closely united to us, so that he is a more suitable matter of love and consequently the act of love that passes over this matter, is better, and therefore its opposite is worse, for it is worse to hate a friend than an enemy.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  This is one of the starkest contrasts between Judaism and Graeco-Roman society. Jewish acceptance of polygyny needs little explaining, since it represents the norm in ancient west Asia. It is the insistence of the Greeks and the Romans on purely monogamous marriage that is the conundrum, not so far solved. The Odyssey may have helped to enshrine monogamy as standard among previous competing Greek models of marriage, since the whole point of the epic is Odysseus’ determined efforts to return to his wife Penelope in Ithaka, and her equally determined faithfulness to him during his long absence. After that, monogamy may have been one of the factors in the Greek decision for democracy, since the equality of citizens in a polis is compromised by the likelihood that polygyny is most easily sustainable by the powerful and wealthy. For whatever reason, monogamy became a cultural custom to distinguish Classical civilization. Christianity has sustained that through most of its expansion, though we will be repeatedly encountering exceptions to that rule. A notable stress in Roman monogamy is its emphasis on marital love. One might think this is at odds with the lack of formal ceremony to initiate Roman marriages and the relative ease with which either party might obtain a divorce (both were characteristics of Jewish marriages as well). It also sits untidily with the functional Graeco-Roman emphasis in sex on male penetrative privilege and initiative. The theme of marital love simply has to be seen as a different set of organizing beliefs about men and women; humans have always been capable of simultaneously holding together not wholly compatible beliefs about personal relationships.[39] Love was monumentalized (literally) in countless gravestones throughout the Roman Empire, expressing grief and deep mutual affection, children included: sculptural images or epitaphs for husband, wife and children are touchingly numerous. Many may have been formal expressions of what the monument-reading public expected, but it is significant that this is what was expected. The theme also springs out of what romantic novels survive from the Roman imperial period, starting in the first century CE; the pattern in these is for a pair of young lovers to go through all sorts of adventures, generally of a chaste nature, before arriving safely at the goal of marriage. They found an eager readership.[40]

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In the second way, however, it is better to love one’s enemy than one’s friend, and this for two reasons. First, because it is possible to love one’s friend for another reason than God, whereas God is the only reason for loving one’s enemy. Secondly, because if we suppose that both are loved for God, our love for God is proved to be all the stronger through carrying a man’s affections to things which are furthest from him, namely, to the love of his enemies, even as the power of a furnace is proved to be the stronger, according as it throws its heat to more distant objects. Hence our love for God is proved to be so much the stronger, as the more difficult are the things we accomplish for its sake, just as the power of fire is so much the stronger, as it is able to set fire to a less inflammable matter. Yet just as the same fire acts with greater force on what is near than on what is distant, so too, charity loves with greater fervor those who are united to us than those who are far removed; and in this respect the love of friends, considered in itself, is more ardent and better than the love of one’s enemy. Reply to Objection 1: The words of Our Lord must be taken in their strict sense: because the love of one’s friends is not meritorious in God’s sight when we love them merely because they are our friends: and this would seem to be the case when we love our friends in such a way that we love not our enemies. On the other hand the love of our friends is meritorious, if we love them for God’s sake, and not merely because they are our friends. The Reply to the other Objections is evident from what has been said in the article, because the two arguments that follow consider the reason for loving, while the last considers the question on the part of those who are loved. Whether it is more meritorious to love one’s neighbor than to love God?Objection 1: It would seem that it is more meritorious to love one’s neighbor than to love God. For the more meritorious thing would seem to be what the Apostle preferred. Now the Apostle preferred the love of our neighbor to the love of God, according to Rom. 9:3: “I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren.” Therefore it is more meritorious to love one’s neighbor than to love God. Objection 2: Further, in a certain sense it seems to be less meritorious to love one’s friend, as stated above [2579](A[7]). Now God is our chief friend, since “He hath first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:10). Therefore it seems less meritorious to love God.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Human life would, in fact, be intolerable if justice could be established in all relationships only by self-assertion and counter-assertion, or only by a shrewd calculation of claims and counter-claims. The fact is that love, disinterestedness and benevolence do have a strong social and utilitarian value, and the place they hold in the hierarchy of virtues is really established by that value, though religion may view them finally from an inner or transcendent perspective. “The social virtues,” declares David Hume, “are never regarded without their beneficial tendencies nor viewed as barren and unfruitful. The happiness of mankind, the order of society, the harmony of families, the mutual support of friends, are always considered as a result of their gentle dominion over the breasts of men.” {158} The utilitarian and social emphasis is a little too absolute in the words of Hume, but it is true within limits. Even the teachings of Jesus reveal a prudential strain in which the wholesome social consequences of generous attitudes are emphasised. “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” The paradox of the moral life consists in this: that the highest mutuality is achieved where mutual advantages are not consciously sought as the fruit of love. For love is purest where it desires no returns for itself; and it is most potent where it is purest. Complete mutuality, with its advantages to each party to the relationship, is therefore most perfectly realised where it is not intended, but love is poured out without seeking returns. That is how the madness of religious morality, with its trans-social ideal, becomes the wisdom which achieves wholesome social consequences. For the same reason a purely prudential morality must be satisfied with something less than the best. Where human relations are intimate (and love is fully effective only in intimate and personal relations), the way of love may be the only way to justice. Where rights and interests are closely interwoven, it is impossible to engage in a shrewd and prudent calculation of comparative rights. Where lives are closely intertwined, happiness is destroyed if it is not shared. Justice by assertion and counter-assertion therefore becomes impossible. The friction involved in the process destroys mutual happiness. Justice by a careful calculation of competing rights is equally difficult, if not impossible. Interests and rights are too mutual to allow for their precise definition in individual terms. The very effort to do so is a proof of the destruction of the spirit of mutuality by which alone intimate relations may be adjusted. The spirit of mutuality can be maintained only by a passion which does not estimate the personal advantages which are derived from mutuality too carefully. Love must strive for something purer than justice if it would attain justice. Egoistic impulses are so much more powerful than altruistic ones that if the latter are not given stronger than ordinary support, the justice which even good men design is partial to those who design it.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 3: Further, whatever is more difficult seems to be more virtuous and meritorious since “virtue is about that which is difficult and good” (Ethic. ii, 3). Now it is easier to love God than to love one’s neighbor, both because all things love God naturally, and because there is nothing unlovable in God, and this cannot be said of one’s neighbor. Therefore it is more meritorious to love one’s neighbor than to love God. On the contrary, That on account of which a thing is such, is yet more so. Now the love of one’s neighbor is not meritorious, except by reason of his being loved for God’s sake. Therefore the love of God is more meritorious than the love of our neighbor. I answer that, This comparison may be taken in two ways. First, by considering both loves separately: and then, without doubt, the love of God is the more meritorious, because a reward is due to it for its own sake, since the ultimate reward is the enjoyment of God, to Whom the movement of the Divine love tends: hence a reward is promised to him that loves God (Jn. 14:21): “He that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father, and I will . . . manifest Myself to him.” Secondly, the comparison may be understood to be between the love of God alone on the one side, and the love of one’s neighbor for God’s sake, on the other. In this way love of our neighbor includes love of God, while love of God does not include love of our neighbor. Hence the comparison will be between perfect love of God, extending also to our neighbor, and inadequate and imperfect love of God, for “this commandment we have from God, that he, who loveth God, love also his brother” (1 Jn. 4:21). Reply to Objection 1: According to one gloss, the Apostle did not desire this, viz. to be severed from Christ for his brethren, when he was in a state of grace, but had formerly desired it when he was in a state of unbelief, so that we should not imitate him in this respect. We may also reply, with Chrysostom (De Compunct. i, 8) [*Hom. xvi in Ep. ad Rom.] that this does not prove the Apostle to have loved his neighbor more than God, but that he loved God more than himself. For he wished to be deprived for a time of the Divine fruition which pertains to love of one self, in order that God might be honored in his neighbor, which pertains to the love of God. Reply to Objection 2: A man’s love for his friends is sometimes less meritorious in so far as he loves them for their sake, so as to fall short of the true reason for the friendship of charity, which is God. Hence that God be loved for His own sake does not diminish the merit, but is the entire reason for merit.

• From Between Us

  What does love do? A person who loves someone else fully engages in a close relationship with a particular other, or tries to build one. For the most part love is felt for people who offer something we want, need, or like; who are psychologically or physically attractive; and who need, love, or appreciate us back. In other words, loved ones are special to us, and we are special to them—so special, in fact, that we spend lots of time with them and share special moments. We feel love when the relationship is secure and trusting, and when we enjoy open communication. Love means giving attention to your loved one—sometimes at the expense of attention for other things—wanting to be close to them, expressing your positive feelings for them, to hug, hold, cuddle, touch, pet (if it is an animal), kiss, and, in case of a romantic relationship, have sex with them. Love, especially the reciprocal kind, gives you self-confidence and makes you positive about life; having love makes you more secure and relaxed. Love is the basis for, and core of, important relationships in Western culture. Love fits with a culture emphasizing the autonomy of individuals. As one U.S. American woman explained in an interview: “[Love] is a lot of sacrifice, a lot of work, a lot of giving, but it has to be something that is very free, freely given instead of you’re forced to it.” Love recognizes simultaneously that individuals are free to not connect, and yet have chosen to connect to this particular individual. Implicit in love is that the loved one’s unique qualities invite a connection. Love is “right” in WEIRD cultures, because it individuates and elevates the loved one. This is most obviously true for romantic love, but it can also be true for maternal love. I remember loving my firstborn so much that I pitied the other mothers in the pediatrician’s waiting room for not having been as lucky with their babies. In my eyes, my little Oliver was the brightest and the most beautiful baby. It was only years later that I considered the possibility that my perception was part of the great love I felt for him. Love singles out and elevates one particular individual. In a culture that so dearly values the individual, love achieves the ultimate goal for individuals: to be united in mutual admiration, attraction, or longing. In these ways, love as we know it fits the cultural ethos of individualism that prevails in many Western cultural contexts. Tenderness, empathy, and intimacy have always existed. But love as a private feeling for a unique person, love as a choice to be together, love as a source of self-esteem—that type of love may be a modern and Western invention.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  During the great Vanport, Oregon, disaster, when rising waters left thousands homeless, many people of Portland who, prior to that time were sure of their “white supremacy,” opened their homes to Negroes, Mexicans, and Japanese. The result was that they were all confronted with the experience of universality. They were no longer white, black, and brown. They were men, women, and children in the presence of the operation of impersonal Nature. Under the pressure they were the human family, and each stood in immediate candidacy for the profoundest fellowship, understanding, and love. In many experiences of the last war this primary discovery was made. Since an army is a part of the pretensions of the modern state, the state’s using it to perpetuate the system of segregation is mere stupidity. The multiplication of moments when citizens—in this instance soldiers—may be confronted with an experience of universality is simply staggering. Aside from all consideration of the issues of war and peace, here is a public activity of the state in which the raw material of democracy can be fashioned into an experience of that personality confirmation without which there can be no lasting health in the state. It is not merely coincidental that this same experience is that out of which the ethical premise of love can find fulfillment. The concept of reverence for personality, then, is applicable between persons from whom, in the initial instance, the heavy weight of status has been sloughed off. Then what? Each person meets the other where he is and there treats him as if he were where he ought to be. Here we emerge into an area where love operates, revealing a universal characteristic unbounded by special or limited circumstances. How did Jesus define it? One day a woman was brought to Jesus. She had been caught in the act of adultery. The spokesman for the group who brought her said she was caught red-handed and that according to the law she should be stoned to death. “What is your judgment?” was their searching question. To them the woman was not a woman, or even a person, but an adulteress, stripped of her essential dignity and worth. Said Jesus: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” After that, he implied, any person may throw. The quiet words exploded the situation, and in the piercing glare each man saw himself in his literal substance. In that moment each was not a judge of another’s deeds, but of his own. In the same glare the adulteress saw herself merely as a woman involved in the meshes of a struggle with her own elemental passion. Jesus, always the gentleman, did not look at the woman as she stood before him. Instead, he looked on the ground, busied himself with his thoughts. What a moment, reaching beyond time into eternity! Jesus waited.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  444 Lecture 65: Walt Whitman The photograph on which the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass is based suggests Christ. The light around the head of Whitman in the 1854 photo suggests a halo. The lightly bearded man with a sympathetic gaze looks like Christ. Suppressing the evocation of Christ, the open-shirted fi gure of the frontispiece projects a mood of careless assurance. Whitman’s careless stance in the frontispiece pre fi gures the freedom of his verse. Shunning rhyme and meter, Whitman made his verse as free as nature and democracy. As a radical democrat, he disdained any arti fi cial barriers that might separate the language of poetry from ordinary language. He thought poetry should have the free rhythm of the wind and the waves. Taking his cue from the raw cry of the spotted hawk, Whitman sounds his untamed “barbaric yawp.” But Whitman’s verse also evokes the parallel structure of the language of Hebrew poetry. The Old Testament often uses parallel phrasing to achieve freedom of expression in a fl exible framework. Whitman uses parallel structure to describe—among other things—his Christ-like sufferings. Though this may sound presumptuous, we must remember Whitman’s conviction that divinity animates all human beings. In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” he sees spokes of light around the refl ection of his head. Like Christ, who befriended outcasts, he invites everyone to his feast. While Whitman is unusually frank about sexual relations—homosexual as well as heterosexual—he ultimately aimed to preach a gospel of love in time of war. In “Song of Myself,” he describes a young woman gazing with desire on the young men bathing. In spite of Emerson’s objections, Whitman insisted on including sexually suggestive poems in the third edition of Leaves. Though the “Calamus” poems in particular have prompted readers to infer that Whitman himself was homosexual, what fi nally matters is that Whitman sought to celebrate brotherhood in the face of the Civil War. In the late 1850s, America was fratricidally divided, with war apparently imminent. Whitman In spite of Emerson’s objections, Whitman insisted on including sexually suggestive poems in the third edition of Leaves. 445 felt the country needed a new gospel of love. In the poem eventually called “Starting from Paumonok,” he envisions “a new ideal of manly friendship” to unite “these states.” During the Civil War, he tended wounded men in Washington hospitals. Out of his all-embracing love, he composed his great elegy for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.” ■ Loving, Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, edited by Justin Kaplan. Miller, Jr., Walt Whitman: Updated Edition. Thomas Jefferson Whitman, Dear Brother Walt: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman, edited by Dennis Berthold and Kenneth Price. 1. Addressing himself to a nation girding for war, how does Whitman express his pacifi sm? 2. Is Whitman a poet of the city, the country, or both? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  We met weekly for a few months in an irregular contractual arrangement. “Psychotherapy,” an observer might have said, for I entered her name in my professional appointment book and she sat in the patient’s chair for the ritual fifty minutes. Yet our roles were always blurred. The question of fees, for example, never arose. From the very beginning I knew this was no ordinary professional contract and found myself reluctant to mention money in her presence—it would have been vulgar. And not only money but other such tasteless issues as carnality, marital adjustment, or social relationships. Life, death, spirituality, peace, transcendence: those were the topics we discussed; those were Paula’s only concerns. Mostly we talked about death. Each week four of us, not two, met in my office—Paula and I, her death and my own. She became my courtesan of death: she introduced me to it, taught me how to think about it, even to befriend it. I came to understand that death has had a bad press. Though there is little joy to be found in it, still death is not a monstrous evil that drags us off to some unimaginably terrible place. I learned to demythologize death, to see it for what it is—an event, a part of life, the end of further possibilities. “It’s a neutral event,” Paula said, “which we’ve learned to color with fear.” Every week Paula entered my office, flashed the broad smile I adored, reached into her large straw bag, lifted her journal to her lap, and shared her reflections and dreams of the past week. I listened hard and tried to respond appropriately. Whenever I voiced doubts about whether I was being helpful, she seemed puzzled; then, after a moment’s pause, she smiled as if to reassure me and turned again to her journal. Together we relived her entire encounter with cancer: the initial shock and disbelief, the mutilation of her body, her gradual acceptance, her getting used to saying, “I have cancer.” She described her husband’s loving care and that of close friends. I could easily understand that: it was hard not to love Paula. (Of course I never declared my love until much later, at a time when she was not to believe me.)

• From Between Us

  19 ​recruit many body processes: Lisa Feldman Barrett Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); Gendron, Mesquita, and Barrett, “The Brain as a Cultural Artifact. Concepts, Actions, and Experiences within the Human Affective Niche,” 2020; Karen S. Quigley and Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Is There Consistency and Specificity of Autonomic Changes during Emotional Episodes? Guidance from the Conceptual Act Theory and Psychophysiology,” Biological Psychology 98, no. 1 (2014): 82–94. Among these bodily processes are cardiovascular, skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous system processes. 19 ​these bodily changes: In a series of studies, computer scientist Lauri Nummenmaa and colleagues suggest that “bodily maps” of emotions are culturally universal. (Lauri Nummenmaa et al., “Bodily Maps of Emotions.,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 2 [2014]). 20 ​meaningful in our relationships: E.g., Michael Boiger and Batja Mesquita, “The Construction of Emotion in Interactions, Relationships, and Cultures,” Emotion Review 4, no. 3 (2012): 221–29; Parkinson, Heart to Heart. 20 ​love: Examples taken from the prototype study by Shaver et al. (“Emotion Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach,” 1075). Chapter 2 Emotions: MINE or OURS? 23 ​portrayal of emotions themselves: Lisa F. Barrett has used the example in talks for very similar purposes (Lisa F. Barrett and Daniel J. Barrett, “Brain Scientist: How Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ Gets One Thing Deeply Wrong,” WBUR, July 5, 2015). 23 ​set of fixed properties: For similar characterizations of this model of emotions, see Barrett, How Emotions Are Made, 157; Lutz, Unnatural Emotions, 53–54. 25 ​associated emotional episodes: The people in my interview study told us why the event was meaningful to them, how they had acted during and after, who else had been involved and what they did or said, and what the current or lasting consequences of the event were. We compared the emotional experiences associated with a single theme (e.g., being successful because of an achievement) across different cultural groups. I did not interview the respondents myself, but had female interviewers matched on the ethnicity of the respondents, who conducted the interviews in the language(s) of the respondents. Interviews were fully transcribed (and translated in the Turkish sample). 26 ​shifts in relative status, honor, or power: Mesquita, “Emotions in Collectivist and Individualist Contexts.” 27 ​MINE and OURS features: MINE and OURS are acronyms that combine the initials of different dimensions. Emotions can be described as INside or OUtside the person, as Mental or Relational, and as Essences or Situated. Granted, the initials have to be scrambled a bit to get these meaningful acronyms.

• From Little Women (1868)

  Say 'thou', also, and I shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine." "Isn't 'thou' a little sentimental?" asked Jo, privately thinking it a lovely monosyllable. "Sentimental? Yes. Thank Gott, we Germans believe in sentiment, and keep ourselves young mit it. Your English 'you' is so cold, say 'thou', heart's dearest, it means so much to me," pleaded Mr. Bhaer, more like a romantic student than a grave professor. "Well, then, why didn't thou tell me all this sooner?" asked Jo bashfully. "Now I shall haf to show thee all my heart, and I so gladly will, because thou must take care of it hereafter. See, then, my Jo—ah, the dear, funny little name—I had a wish to tell something the day I said goodbye in New York, but I thought the handsome friend was betrothed to thee, and so I spoke not. Wouldst thou have said 'Yes', then, if I had spoken?" "I don't know. I'm afraid not, for I didn't have any heart just then." "Prut! That I do not believe. It was asleep till the fairy prince came through the wood, and waked it up. Ah, well, 'Die erste Liebe ist die beste', but that I should not expect." "Yes, the first love is the best, but be so contented, for I never had another. Teddy was only a boy, and soon got over his little fancy," said Jo, anxious to correct the Professor's mistake. "Good! Then I shall rest happy, and be sure that thou givest me all. I haf waited so long, I am grown selfish, as thou wilt find, Professorin." "I like that," cried Jo, delighted with her new name. "Now tell me what brought you, at last, just when I wanted you?" "This," and Mr. Bhaer took a little worn paper out of his waistcoat pocket. Jo unfolded it, and looked much abashed, for it was one of her own contributions to a paper that paid for poetry, which accounted for her sending it an occasional attempt. "How could that bring you?" she asked, wondering what he meant. "I found it by chance. I knew it by the names and the initials, and in it there was one little verse that seemed to call me. Read and find him. I will see that you go not in the wet." IN THE GARRET Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain. "Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  It provides the standard of the desira ble beyond the variation of de facto desi re. In the light of the Good, we can see that our good, the proper order in our souls, has this categoric worth, which it enjoys as a proper part of the whole order. Thu s the good life for us is to be ruled by reason not just as the vision of correct order in our souls but also and more funda mentall y as the visi on of the good order of the whole. And we cannot see one of these orders without the other. For the right order in us is to be ruled by reason, which cannot come about unless reason reaches its full realizat ion which is in the perception of the Good; and at the same time, the perception of the Good is what makes us truly virtuous. The love of the eternal, good order is the ultimate source and the true form of our love of good action and the good life. The surest bas is for virtue is the perception of this order, which one cannot see without loving . Tha t is why philosophy is the best safeguard of virtue. Philosophers love the eternal truth, as against ordinary men who are lovers of spectacles and the arts or are just men of action (476 B-C) . Instead of looking for beautiful sights and sounds, philosophers look for beauty itself, something that remains always the same, while beautiful objects vary and cha nge, and "wander between generation and destruction" ("plan omenes hupo geneseos kai phthoras", 4858 ). But people who thus love the eternal, Plato's Self-Mastery • r 23 Plato argues, cannot help but be morally good; they will necessaril y have all the virtues (486 - 487), because the love of order will itself bring order (cf. 4_. ,.E), Again later, he argues : For surely, Adeimantus, the man whose mind is truly fixed on eternal realities has no leisure to turn his eyes downward upon the petty affairs of men, and so engaging in strife with them to be filled with envy and hate, but fixes his gaze upon the things of the eternal and unchanging order, and seeing that they neither wrong nor are wronged by one another, but all abide in harmony as reason bids, he will endeavour to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their likeness and assimilate himself to them. Or do you think it possible not to imitate the things to which anyone attaches himself with admiration? (5008-C ) Reason reaches its fulness in the vision of the larger order, which is also the visio n of the Good. And this is why the language of inside/outside can in a sense be mislea ding as a formulatio n of Plato's position . In an important sense, the moral sou rces we accede to by reason are not within us .

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 70. 1.) So then they who with unfearing neck have submitted to the yoke of the Lord endure such hardships and dangers, that they seem to be called not from labour to rest, but from rest to labour. But the Holy Spirit was there who, as the outward man decayed, renewed the inward man day by day, and giving a foretaste of spiritual rest in the rich pleasures of God in the hope of blessedness to come, smoothed all that seemed rough, lightened all that was heavy. Men suffer amputations and burnings, that at the price of sharper pain they may be delivered from torments less but more lasting, as boils or swellings. What storms and dangers will not merchants undergo that they may acquire perishing riches? Even those who love not riches endure the same hardships; but those that love them endure the same, but to them they are not hardships. For love makes right easy, and almost nought all things however dreadful and monstrous. How much more easily then does love do that for true happiness, which avarice does for misery as far as it can? JEROME. And how is the Gospel lighter than the Law, seeing in the Law murder and adultery, but under the Gospel anger and concupiscence also, are punished? Because by the Law many things are commanded which the Apostle fully teaches us cannot be fulfilled; by the Law works are required, by the Gospel the will is sought for, which even if it goes not into act, yet does not lose its reward. The Gospel commands what we can do, as that we lust not; this is in our own power; the Law punishes not the will but the act, as adultery. Suppose a virgin to have been violated in time of persecution; as here was not the will she is held as a virgin under the Gospel; under the Law she is cast out as defiled. CHAPTER 12 12:1–81. At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. 2. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day. 3. But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; 4. How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the Priests? 5. Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the Priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? 6. But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  The key analogy behind his num ber and proportions seems to be not so muc h mathemat ical necess ity as the requirements of orderly wholes . The good life, the good char acter, was one in which everything took its right space and proportio n, no more, no less. The key concept was therefore some thing like the original Platonic or Stoic one of a whole of things, ordered for the good. One finds the stan dards by which to live, the firm crite ria in nature of the right, through a grasp of the whole order in whic h one is set. The good person loves the whole orde r of things. Here we have a rival to Lockean Deism , whic h embraces autonom ous reason and sideli nes grace but which has an utterly different view of moral sources. Instead of finding these in the dignity of a disengaged sub ject, obj ectifying a neutral nature, it seeks them in the inhe rent bent of our nature towards a love of the who le as good. Lockean self-d isengagement is not just an error, it is a sure way of maki ng these sou rces invisible, of losing contact with them and henc e with the good. That is why Shaftesbu ry has to com bat the extrinsic theory as an abomi nation. It stands in the way of a re engagement with our own love of the whol e. Moral Sentiments • .15 5 It sou nds as though this coun ter-Lockean Deism, at least as we see it in Shaftesbury, takes the form pu rely of a retu rn to ancient model s, to Plato and above all to the Stoics . We could see it as part of the recovery of "paganism", which some have seen as an essential stran d in the Enlight enm ent. 38 But this would be too quick. In fact Shaftesbur f s philo sophy, for all its Stoi c inspirat ion, is crucially shaped by a mode rn, one might say 'post-Chri stian ', mode of thought. This is what we have to examine in order to un derstand the impact of his theory in his centu ry and beyond . There are two important respects in whic h Shaftesbur y's language is modern which I would like to bring out here. This is not to say that there weren' t many other aspects of this thought wh ich bespo ke his time, but that these two were of special importance in the formation of the alternative to Lockean Deism. They are both reflected in one key term that Sh aftesbury uses. He speaks often of 'natur al affection' . The thesis that we by nature love the wh ole is expressed by saying that our natural affections would carry beyond our imme di ate family and entoura ge to a disi nterested love of all manki nd, if we rightly u nderstood ou r situation.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Title : How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian PART I Challenge CHAPTER 1EndingA HYMN TO A SAVAGE GOD ?We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS , “The Stare’s Nest by My Window” (1922) THIS BOOK ’S TITLE —How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian— imagines some serious tension within the Christian Bible, between being a faithful reader and being a faithful Christian. But how, when, and where I first saw this problem influences how, when, and where I first saw the solution. Here, then, to begin with, are some autobiographical details as full disclosure for what is at stake for me in the problem I propose for you and the solution I offer to you in this book. A disclosure is already implicit in my triple name on this book’s cover. “John Crossan” is the name on my driver’s license, passport, and TSA pre-check protocols. But in 1950, at the age of sixteen, I entered a thirteenth-century Roman Catholic monastery and became “Brother Dominic.” My new vocation was supposed to wipe out, as it were, my past identity and give me only a future destiny—as in the biblical, so in the monastic tradition. Nineteen years later, having finally realized that celibacy was vastly overrated, I left both monastery and priesthood to get married. But even if the rules had changed to allow a married priesthood, I still would have resigned in 1969. What was my problem? My monastic superiors had recognized that five years of Greek and Latin in an Irish boarding school could not be wasted so they decided I should become a professor of biblical studies after ordination in 1957. I was not, and did not expect to be, consulted on any of their plans. Under my vow of obedience I did what I was told, but to be honest, I loved their decision. In the Roman Catholic tradition it was required, and wisely so, that a degree in theology should precede any degree in biblical studies. First, therefore, I was sent back to Ireland for a doctorate in theology, then for two years to the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and finally for another two years to the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem. It was, quite frankly, a magnificent education.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  [79] The consequence of this love is that the government of good kings is stable, because their subjects do not refuse to expose themselves to any danger whatsoever on behalf of such kings. An example of this is to be seen in Julius Caesar who, as Suetonius relates [Divus Iulius 67], loved his soldiers to such an extent that when he heard that some of them were slaughtered, “he refused to cut either hair or beard until he had taken vengeance.” In this way, he made his soldiers most loyal to himself as well as most valiant, so that many, on being taken prisoner, refused to accept their lives when offered them on the condition that they serve against Caesar. Octavianus Augustus, also, who was most moderate in his use of power, was so loved by his subjects that some of them “on their deathbeds provided in their wills a thank-offering to be paid by the immolation of animals, so grateful were they that the emperor’s life outlasted their own” [Suetonius, Divus Augustus 59]. Therefore it is no easy task to shake the government of a prince whom the people so unanimously love. This is why Solomon says (Prov 29:14): “The king that judgeth the poor in justice, his throne shall be established forever.” [80] The government of tyrants, on the other hand, cannot last long because it is hateful to the multitude, and what is against the wishes of the multitude cannot be long preserved. For a man can hardly pass through this present life without suffering some adversities, and in the time of his adversity occasion cannot be lacking to rise against the tyrant; and when there is an opportunity there will not be lacking at least one of the multitude to use it. Then the people will fervently favour the insurgent, and what is attempted with the sympathy of the multitude will not easily fail of its effects. It can thus scarcely come to pass that the government of a tyrant will endure for a long time.

• From The City of God

  6. _Of the true and perfect sacrifice._ Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed.[385] And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it _sacrifice_[386] meant to indicate. Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God. For this is a part of that mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, "Have mercy on thy soul by pleasing God."[387] Our body, too, is a sacrifice when we chasten it by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not yield our members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but instruments of righteousness unto God.[388] Exhorting to this sacrifice, the apostle says, "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."[389] If, then, the body, which, being inferior, the soul uses as a servant or instrument, is a sacrifice when it is used rightly, and with reference to God, how much more does the soul itself become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being inflamed by the fire of His love, it may receive of His beauty and become pleasing to Him, losing the shape of earthly desire, and being remoulded in the image of permanent loveliness? And this, indeed, the apostle subjoins, saying, "And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed in the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God."[390] Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy to ourselves or others, done with a reference to God, and since works of mercy have no other object than the relief of distress or the conferring of happiness, and since there is no happiness apart from that good of which it is said, "It is good for me to be very near to God,"[391] it follows that the whole redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation or community of the saints, is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, who offered Himself to God in His passion for us, that we might be members of this glorious head, according to the form of a servant. For it was this form He offered, in this He was offered, because it is according to it He is Mediator, in this He is our Priest, in this the Sacrifice. Accordingly, when the apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is to say, the true sacrifice of ourselves, he says, "For I say, through the grace of God which is given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For, as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us."[392] This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  The owner of the shop was an old samurai, who had abandoned his career as a samurai when he was Still young. He lived on the money he had obtained by the sale of his former garments and his precious family heirlooms. He had only one intimate friend, who was of the same age as himself; and they very often played chess together. His only other companion was a little dog. He had no other visitors, except his few rare customers. Once, at the end of a hot summer day, he removed his clothes, which were soaked with sweat, and took a bath in his garden. His friend wept at the sight of his worn old body, and tenderly caressed the poor bent back. With his voice full of tears he said, as he washed his friend's wrinkled and bony shoulders: 'A certain great Chinese poet said in one of his poems: "A fine young man proudly sang the beauty of his body, admiring himself in a mirror. But that was yesterday. To-day, alas! he is no more than a poor old man worn out with wrinkles, and his head is covered with grey hair." That is exactly our own Story. We have sung together hand in hand without a care when we were young. But now it is only a distant memory and a dream.'Then the two old men joined hands and wept tears of regret for their past, while the hot water in the little tub grew cold. These two men were samurais who had been born in the Province of Tjikuzen. The younger's name was Mondo Tamashima, and he had been celebrated for the beauty of his face. Many people took him for a young Princess. The elder was called Hayemon Toyoda, and was a skilful marksman. He fell in love with Mondo, who returned his love sincerely. Mondo was sixteen years old and Hayemon nineteen when their love began. They were Strongly devoted to each other, and vowed an affection deeper than the sea.

• From The City of God

  This being so, if the Platonists, or those who think with them, knowing God, glorified Him as God and gave thanks, if they did not become vain in their own thoughts, if they did not originate or yield to the popular errors, they would certainly acknowledge that neither could the blessed immortals retain, nor we miserable mortals reach, a happy condition without worshipping the one God of gods, who is both theirs and ours. To Him we owe the service which is called in Greek λατρεία, whether we render it outwardly or inwardly; for we are all His temple, each of us severally and all of us together, because He condescends to inhabit each individually and the whole harmonious body, being no greater in all than in each, since He is neither expanded nor divided. Our heart when it rises to Him is His altar; the priest who intercedes for us is His Only-begotten; we sacrifice to Him bleeding victims when we contend for His truth even unto blood; to Him we offer the sweetest incense when we come before Him burning with holy and pious love; to Him we devote and surrender ourselves and His gifts in us; to Him, by solemn feasts and on appointed days, we consecrate the memory of His benefits, lest through the lapse of time ungrateful oblivion should steal upon us; to Him we offer on the altar of our heart the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of burning love. It is that we may see Him, so far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave to Him, that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil passions, and are consecrated in His name. For He is the fountain of our happiness, He the end of all our desires. Being attached to Him, or rather let me say, re-attached,--for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him,--being, I say, re-attached to Him,[373] we tend towards Him by love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end. For our good, about which philosophers have so keenly contended, is nothing else than to be united to God. It is, if I may say so, by spiritually embracing Him that the intellectual soul is filled and impregnated with true virtues. We are enjoined to love this good with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. To this good we ought to be led by those who love us, and to lead those we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul;" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."[374] For, that man might be intelligent in his self-love, there was appointed for him an end to which he might refer all his actions, that he might be blessed. For he who loves himself wishes nothing else than this. And the end set before him is "to draw near to God."[375] And so, when one who has this intelligent self-love is commanded to love his neighbour as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall do all in his power to commend to him the love of God? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this right piety, this the service due to God only. If any immortal power, then, no matter with what virtue endowed, loves us as himself, he must desire that we find our happiness by submitting ourselves to Him, in submission to whom he himself finds happiness. If he does not worship God, he is wretched, because deprived of God; if he worships God, he cannot wish to be worshipped in God's stead. On the contrary, these higher powers acquiesce heartily in the divine sentence in which it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[376]

• From The City of God

  The good angels, therefore, hold cheap all that knowledge of material and transitory things which the demons are so proud of possessing,--not that they are ignorant of these things, but because the love of God, whereby they are sanctified, is very dear to them, and because, in comparison of that not merely immaterial but also unchangeable and ineffable beauty, with the holy love of which they are inflamed, they despise all things which are beneath it, and all that is not it, that they may with every good thing that is in them enjoy that good which is the source of their goodness. And therefore they have a more certain knowledge even of those temporal and mutable things, because they contemplate their principles and causes in the word of God, by which the world was made,--those causes by which one thing is approved, another rejected, and all arranged. But the demons do not behold in the wisdom of God these eternal, and, as it were, cardinal causes of things temporal, but only foresee a larger part of the future than men do, by reason of their greater acquaintance with the signs which are hidden from us. Sometimes, too, it is their own intentions they predict. And, finally, the demons are frequently, the angels never, deceived. For it is one thing, by the aid of things temporal and changeable, to conjecture the changes that may occur in time, and to modify such things by one's own will and faculty,--and this is to a certain extent permitted to the demons,--it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God, the most infallible and powerful of all causes, by participating in His spirit; and this is granted to the holy angels by a just discretion. And thus they are not only eternal, but blessed And the good wherein they are blessed is God, by whom they were created. For without end they enjoy the contemplation and participation of Him. 23. _That the name of gods is falsely given to the gods of the Gentiles, though Scripture applies it both to the holy angels and just men._