Tag: love

Lovely Fear

For we do not fear them, seeing they cannot take away from us what we love (St. Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Bk. I, Chpt. 29).

Fear is the effect of love. What we love makes us afraid. Two loves make for two kinds of fear: a good one and a bad one.

In this post, we will unravel the relationship between love and fear, as well as the different kinds of them.

Love and Fear

There can be no doubt that there is no cause for fear save the loss of what we love, when we possess it, or the failure to obtain what we hope for. Therefore all fear is caused by our loving something: and consequently love is the cause of fear (St. Augustine, “83 Questions,” Q.33).

What am I afraid of? The question is worth asking. For, according to St. Augustine, where my fear is, there shall my heart be also.

But is this the case?

According to St. Thomas, all the emotions are based on love because they are based on some particular thing we take to be a “good.” He explains it this way:

Love is the source of all the emotions. For joy and desire are only of a good that is loved; fear and sorrow are only of evil that is contrary to the beloved good; and from these all the other emotions arise…(SCG, Chpt. 91) (emphasis added).

Drawing the connection between goods and emotions, we can say that the good which we see produces the feeling of love; the good as it draws us, produces desire; and, the good once possessed produces joy.

For example, the man who takes peanut butter to be a good, likes it when he sees it, desires it as it draws him, and enjoys it, if he tastes it.

On the other hand, someone allergic to peanut butter might see peanut butter as an evil, and therefore feel hatred at the sight of it, aversion as it repels him, and finally sorrow, if he is forced to eat it.

So, with all the emotions it is the lovely good that causes them. And therefore, fear is nothing but the emotion that comes from the possibility of losing that good which we love.

But not all fears are the same because not all loves are the same, and from two different kinds of love, comes two different kinds of fear.

A Tale of Two Cities

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self (St. Augustine, City of God, Bk. XIV, Chpt. XXVIII).

As philosophy teaches, contraries cannot exist in the same thing in the same way. For example, water cannot be both boiling hot and ice cold, for heat and cold are contraries. The principle also applies to the spiritual life, as St. John of the Cross says:

…two contraries (even as philosophy teaches us) cannot coexist in one person; and that darkness which is the affection for creatures, and light, which is God, are contrary to each other…(Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Chpt. IV., P.II).

So, just as water must be either hot or cold or some degree between, so too our love must be either directed toward the created, or the uncreated, or be in some degree between them. With this in mind, St. Augustine draws up for us a “love continuum.” He writes:

The decrease of cupidity, is the growth of charity, and its complete absence is the perfection of charity (83 Questions, Q.36).

For St. Augustine, cupidity is simply the love of the created things without reference to God.

Therefore, it is not so much the love of created things (in general) that is dangerous; for, after all, we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is the love of created goods as an end instead of a means which causes problems.

Herein lies worldly love, and the worldly fears which come from it.

Worldly Fear

Worldly fear, as the effect of worldly love, is illustrated well in this passage from Wisdom:

But miserable, with their hopes set on dead things, are the men who give the name “gods” to the works of men’s hands…So he takes thought for it, that it may not fall, because he knows that it cannot help itself, for it is only an image and has need of help (Wis. 13:16).

The passage depicts the fashioning of a material “god,” and the subsequent anxiety of having to take care of it.

Unfortunately, one can make an idol out of any number of things: work, the opinions of others, and finances. These rival loves make for rival gods, and just like idols made out of wood and metal, they cannot look after themselves; and therefore, force their worshiper to constantly “take thought for them.”

On the other hand, in the absence of a creaturely love, creaturely fear disappears. For, if one doesn’t love the things of the world, what is there for him to be afraid of? What does he have to lose? Nothing.

Except, his soul.

Godly Fear

“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?” Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go…(Song 3:2-4).

The woman who loves her husband does not want to let him go. She does not want to lose him; she fears his loss. This kind of fear is called “chaste fear,” according to St. Thomas: the fear of the lover.

Opposed to this, is the fear of the adultress, who instead of fearing her husband’s absence, fears his presence. She fears his presence because of the guilt and consequences that come with it. This fear is termed “servile fear,” which chaste fear drives away (Cf. 1 Jn. 4:18). Between these two fears, is a mixture of them, called “initial fear” (Cf. ST., I-II, Q. 19., A.5).

Therefore, growing in the love of God will inevitably mean growing in the fear of God. The journey passes from worldly fears to the fear of God; and within the fear of God, one passes from the fear of punishment to the fear of loss. And as charity increases, so too will one’s fear increase, as St. Thomas says:

Now filial fear must necessarily increase when charity increases, even as an effect increases with the increase of its cause. For the more one loves a man, the more one fears to offend him and to be separated from him (ST., I-II, Q. 19., A.10).

Examen

So, where exactly do I stand?

Let us question our fears. For, like the question of oneness, fear gives us that more honest glimpse into our hearts.

What am I routinely nervous about? Is it related to God? Does it worry me because it might impact my future with or without God?

The point here is not to live in fear, but to stop fearing the wrong things—by not loving the wrong things.

Then, after we have taken inventory of our fears, let us test their corresponding loves against that True Love. Then, let us strive to imitate that love of one of the great saints and teachers of love: Teresa of Avila.

We close with her words:

Perhaps we do not know what love is, nor does this greatly surprise me. Love does not consist in great sweetness of devotion, but in a fervent determination to strive to please God in all things, in avoiding, as far as possible, all that would offend Him, and in praying for the increase of the glory and honor of His Son and for the growth of the Catholic Church. These are the signs of love…(Interior Castle, The Fourth Mansion, Chpt. I).
Two Philosophies of Life

Differing notions of God make for differing notions of godlikeness (or perfection), and thereby the direction of those trying to become better. In other words, from one’s metaphysics arises his ethics, which together make for a philosophy of life.¹

And two contrary philosophies of life we have, based on two contrary notions of God: The Beloved or The Lover.

The Beloved

For the ancient philosophers, God was not a lover because love presupposed weakness. In the words of Max Scheler, a 20th-century German philosopher:

Already Plato says:“We would not love if we were gods” (Resentment, Ch. III).

Plato will explicitly present love as the effect of imperfection or lack. In his words:

Now we have agreed that Love is love with what he lacks and does not possess (Plato, Symposium, 200e).

And for Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle, God’s self-contemplation would prevent Him from even knowing us, let alone loving us.² Standing aloof, this Unmoved Mover would move the world by attraction, while remaining disinterested in all but himself. Aristotle writes:

The final cause, then, produces motion as being loved…On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and the world of nature (Metaphysics, Bk. VII, Ch. VII).

For these ancient thinkers, God was not a lover but the beloved, who did not love. The unconcerned center (causally) of everything.

Unmoved Disciples

And from this particular idea of God followed corresponding ideas on greatness. If God moves the world by attraction, such is the essence of godlikeness or perfection. From here, a path is traced for what it means to become better. Max Scheler describes this beloved philosophy of life:

…a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love.

Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity (Scheler, Ibid.).

Scheler’s description conveys the image of a society of people stepping over one another in the pursuit of being most loved—like their deity.

Fast-Forward to Today

Granted, that was 2,000 years ago, and of course, contemporary man is not likely to be striving to imitate some Unmoved Mover. Yet, even if the ancient god has vanished, the ancient pursuit has not. We need only translate the terms.

Today, what would we call someone universally loved, universally influential, and simply by his or her existence? A celebrity. Twenty or thirty years ago, if you asked a child (the Millennials) what he wanted to be when he grew up, you might have heard “doctor” or maybe “engineer,” today…kids want to be famous. Aeromagazine provides the stats:

According to a 2010 Pew poll, only 1% of millennials longed to be famous. A recent poll has found that 78% of Gen Z teens would be willing to share personally identifiable data in pursuit of online fame (Aeromagazine, The Fame Trap: Gen Z, TikTok and Influencer Culture).

Fame can make someone the universal object of thought and affection, without one needing to take notice of it—like an Unmoved Mover. Such is the metaphysics and the ethical summum bonum (greatest good) characteristic of the beloved philosophy of life.

Now, let us look at its opposite.

The Lover

We love because he first loved us…(1 Jn. 4:19).

The Judaeo-Christian God reveals Himself not as some disinterested, unmoved attractor, but as a father, as a lover. He says:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them (Hosea 11:1-4).

Here God reveals Himself, not as the allurer but the initiator of love, as it says in 1 John, “we love because He first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19), and in the Gospel of John, “it was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn. 15:16).

Instead of denoting lack, love is now considered a kind of perfection, even the Divine Essence, as it is written, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8).

Lovely Disciples

The true God, reveals true greatness to man which does not consist in fame or universal belovedness, but in loving. To be “perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48) means (as explained in the same passage):

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Mt. 5:44-45).

According to Jesus, to be like God means to be a perfect lover: to love unconditionally and especially to the most undeserving. He also gives us an example, who:

…emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-6).

Contrary to being universally acclaimed, Jesus died in infamy: abandoned, rejected, and condemned to a criminal’s death. Isaiah prophesied of Him:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed…(Is. 53:5).

And,

…he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not (Is. 53:2-3).

Here we found a completely opposite kind of God and consequently a completely opposite notion of perfection: not in being most beloved or adored, but in being most loving, most subservient. In Jesus’s words:

…whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:43-45).

Such is the life—in this life—which is most Godlike.

Setting our Aim

Let us question our philosophy of life, our notion of God, and our great pursuit. Is it to be loved, or is it to be a lover?

The Greeks sought to be loved; 80% of Gen-Z wants to be loved and famous. Jesus came to die, to become a slave, to give himself as an unyielding lover.

What do we want to be?

1. A philosophy of life is defined as having, at a minimum, two components: a metaphysics and an ethics. A metaphysics is an account of how the world hangs together. An ethics is an account of how we should live in the world (IAI News, How and why you choose your philosophy of life).

2…it thinks of that which is most divine and precious, and it does not change; for change would be change for the worse…Therefore it must be of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. VII, Ch. IX).
The One Thing Necessary

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her (Lk. 10:41-42).

The one thing necessary, according to St. Augustine¹, is just that: oneness.

It is the one thing necessary for eternal beatitude, for the journey towards it, as well as a sure test of our progress along the way.

The One

“Here, O Israel: the Lord your God is one” (Deut 6:4). God is, in fact, oneness itself, and it is he that awaits a life’s race well run. He is not only one, in that he is without ‘peers,’ but also in that he is without composition.

To be without ‘peers’, means God is the only god. And this must be the case because if there was, let’s imagine, some other god, then the two would have to be distinguished in some way. For without distinction, the two would not be different. Yet, at the same time, if there is a difference between them, then one of these ‘gods’ must possess something which the other does not. Which, would of itself, would prove that the ‘god’ without this ‘something’ is imperfect, and therefore not God.

But God is not only one, in the sense that he is the only God, but also in that he is perfectly undivided within himself; even if we factor-in, the certain and revealed truth, that God is Tri-personal, as explained by the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature” (CCC. #253).

If your head is spinning, it might not be a bad sign. After all, if God wasn’t mysterious, what kind of God would he be? A false one.

And since union with Him, who is perfect, bestows perfect beatitude, then oneness is truly the one thing necessary for our journey’s end, but what about the journey itself?

The Road

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one…(Jn. 17:20-21).

It’s curious to consider that in these last hours of Jesus’ life, as he prays for the wellbeing of his disciples, he does not ask the Father that, “they be good” or that, “they be holy” or that “they be safe” but interestingly enough, that ‘they be perfectly one’ (cf. Jn 17:23).

Jesus, what do you mean to tell us? I think, in part, that Jesus is saying that drawing close to God inevitably means drawing close to unity or oneness, both within and without us.

It means oneness within us because ‘the pure of heart shall see God,’ both as a heart purified of impurity as well as a heart pure through being thoroughly unmixed. A heart fixed on the one thing. The former makes for the latter, which is Christ’s primary concern, as we see in his mandate to one of the lawyers:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment (Mt. 22:35-38).

Simply put, Jesus’ commandment is to love undividedly. He then immediately follows this commandment with one more, as if to refer next to a unity without, as He enjoins:

And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt. 22:39).

The second commandment is like the first because it is included within it. Our love is not divided between God and neighbor, as the first commandment would prohibit. Instead, our love of neighbor is carried out for the love of God, as He says:

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me (Mt. 25:40).

Or in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas,

Now the aspect under which our neighbor is to be loved, is God, since what we ought to love in our neighbor is that he may be in God. Hence it is clear that it is specifically the same act whereby we love God, and whereby we love our neighbor (ST, II-II, Q.25, A.1).

It goes without saying, that all that the Catholic Church teaches on Faith and the Sacraments is, of course, also necessary to reach God. Yet, even here, we see a thorough oneness in faith and morals.

So if one is the goal, and oneness of heart is the means, what can we say about ourselves?

Looking in the Mirror

How one am I?

Are my thoughts, desires, and pursuits one?

Its commonplace to hope to be more or to be more good. But have we ever thought about being more one? For according to St. Thomas (affirming the findings of Plato) being, goodness, and oneness are actually a bundled deal. They are ‘convertible’ as he says:

And because good is convertible with being, as one is also; he (Plato) called God the absolute good, from whom all things are called good by way of participation (ST, I, Q.6, A.4).

Put bluntly, holiness and wholeness either exist together or not at all, which is not only substantiated by sound philosophy and scriptural analysis but even by majority vote, as another Dominican, Girolamo Savanarola argues,

Take any man, either of the faithful or even an infidel or barbarian, good or evil, great or of any disposition, if any of these hearing that there be a man of great holiness and goodness, and going to see him, finds someone dressed in fine clothing who eats extensively, who has a magnificent house and ornate room, who speaks in Ciceronian speech, and of the rest does not act or speak simply, immediately his soul is offended and in his heart and he says: “it does not seem to me that this man is as holy as men supposed” (On the Simplicity of Christian Life, Preface).

Simplicity, singleness, unity, or oneness both of heart and deed reveal to us something about ourselves: our likeness to God.

So how united is my interior life? How one am I with my family and colleagues? Do I count them as myself, as if of one body, all on one journey towards the One?

Let us take inventory. And instead of asking ourselves, “am I good?”, or “am I holy,” let us ask, possibly the more revealing concerning question: “am I one?’”

1. Sermon LIII on the NT

Tag: love

Lovely Fear

Two Philosophies of Life

The One Thing Necessary