1 - Models and metaphors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
Summary
My dear friends, let us love one another, because the source of love is God. Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, but the unloving know nothing of God, for God is love. This is how he showed his love among us: he sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him … Thus we have come to know and believe in the love which God has for us. God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in God, and God in him.
(1 John 4: 7–9, 16)This passage suggests that in the Christian faith, love is not merely an aspect of God's relation to us humans and to the world in which we live, but rather the very key to understanding what this relation is all about. Of course, our relation to God is very complex, involving as it does many other aspects, like God's power, authority, justice, wisdom, knowledge, goodness, steadfastness, presence, etc. However, God's love is in some sense central to our understanding of his relation to us and hence, presumably, to the way we are to understand all these other aspects of the relation as well.
In the context of systematic theology, this would suggest that ‘love’ is an obvious candidate for the role of key conceptual model for structuring the way we conceive of our relation to God.
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- The Model of LoveA Study in Philosophical Theology, pp. 3 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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