Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T11:56:39.313Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Conclusion: love's wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

David F. Ford
David F. Ford
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Song of Songs 8:6–7 6Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. 7Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned.

Colossians 2:2–3 2I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Love, the love of God inextricable from the love of people, is the summit of Jean Vanier's wisdom, shaped especially by scripture and L'Arche. This summit is the most appropriate place to conclude a book on Christian wisdom. It offers both a vantage point from which to look back on the previous chapters and also a site for the culminating scriptural meditation on the Song of Songs.

The descriptions applied to the theology of this book in the introduction included ‘scriptural-expressivist’; postcritical (drawing on the premodern, modern and late modern); a theology of desire and discernment; and a theology of learning in the Spirit.

Type
Chapter
Information
Christian Wisdom
Desiring God and Learning in Love
 , pp. 380 - 391
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×