爱

爱是恒久忍耐……爱是永不止息(林前13：4-8)。爱是基督徒所独有的启示,爱是圣灵所结的果子,爱不能被任何超然的恩赐所取代,但没有爱的恩赐是毫无价值的。爱是无私的,为他人着想的爱是出于顺服神的命令。“你要尽心、尽性、尽意、尽力爱主你的神。其次就是说：‘要爱人如己’”(可12：30-31)。这是上帝的旨意,你们爱神,也要爱人如己。“所以,无论何事,你们愿意人怎样待你们,你们也要怎样待人,因为这就是律法和先知的道理。”(太7：12)这是耶稣的话,为我们提供了一个爱人如己最简明的方法。你们如何爱自己,也用同样的心和方法去爱别人。立志去爱,就是要立下志向去爱别人,正如基督在十字架上显明的爱一样,用宝血赎回了我们这些干犯上帝的罪人,使我     

父之爱

路加福音15章11—32节的经文中，记载的这个家庭里有父亲和两个儿子，虽然没有母亲的出现，但从经文的内容来看。却让我们清楚地感受到，这位父亲对两个儿子既“慈”又“严”的爱。     

Love In-Between

In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the “I love to you” of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray’s account of love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation.

     

Recycled Love

After the author's husband, mother and daughter died, and her other children grew up and left home, she was left with a large, empty house and some empty rooms in her heart as well. Her work as a hospital volunteer led her to offer living space to medical students during their rotations at the hospital -a most rewarding experience.     

Love stories

This article presents a view of love as a story. The basic idea is that through the interaction of our personal attributes with the environment, the latter of which we in part create, we develop stories about love that we then seek to fulfill in our lives. Various potential partners fit these stories to greater and lesser degrees, and we are more likely to be attracted to and then to become intimate with partners who better fulfill the roles we have created in our stories. Each story has two complementary roles, and people tend to be satisfied in relationships when they can match persons to ideal stories and roles within those stones. A tentative taxonomy of some kinds of stories is presented, and the characteristics of the stones are described. The view is also related to contemporary theories of love, and it is argued that the current view is complementary with these theories, in that it answers different questions about the nature of love than do the other theories.     

Conflicted Love

Our stereotypes of maternity and paternity as manifest in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis interfere with the ability to imagine loving relationships. The associations of maternity with antisocial nature and paternity with disembodied culture are inadequate to set up primary love relationships. Analyzing the conflicts in these associations, I reformulate the maternal body as social and lawful, and I reformulate the paternal function as embodied, which enables imagining our primary relationships as loving.     

爱的变奏

在西方文化史中，爱是一个永恒的主题，但在不同的历史时期和文化形态中，对爱的观念的理解却存在着差异。在希腊神话中，爱是以欲爱的形式出现，这是一种以自我欲望为中心的爱，它的特征表现为对外在对象的占有。在希腊哲学中，爱主要以智爱和灵爱的形式出现，这是一种以人的理性为中心的爱，它表现为对外在世界的探求与自我灵魂的净化。在基督教中，爱是以圣爱的形式出现，它是一种以人的信仰为中心的爱，是一种超自然的爱，表现为爱上帝和爱众人。在文艺复兴时期，爱是以情爱的形式出现，它从人的自然情感出发，因对方的可喜性质而欣赏，是一种欣赏式的爱。     

Love and Eschatology

Abstract : This article reflects on the connection between Christian hope for salvation and Christian praxis today. Following a discussion of Christian approaches to hope, salvation, and reconciliation, the eschatological potential of love is explored in conversation with significant theologies of love in Western Christianity. It is argued that love, properly understood, offers the most adequate and dynamic horizon for approaching God's coming reign and for being transformed in the process.     

Against Unconditional Love

Abstract While unconditional love is frequently regarded as the best kind of romantic commitment, our commitments in general are not thought to be unconditional. In other contexts, we think conditional commitment (commitment which can in some sense be rendered intelligible by appeal to reasons) to be superior. This paper examines the peculiar status of unconditional love in the romantic context and argues that it is unwarranted; the best kind of romantic commitment should be viewed as conditional. The first part of the paper examines and criticises those arguments which attempt to defend conditional love by appeal to the idea that love is based upon the properties of the beloved. The second part of the paper examines Harry Frankfurt's narrowly subjective conception of unconditional love and highlights certain counterintuitive consequences of it. The final section of the paper argues that the best kind of love will prompt us to adopt two perspectives with regard to the beloved. While loving does involve the narrowly subjective perspective defended by Frankfurt, it also demands that we strive for a more objective perspective, which takes into consideration the reasons we might be able to offer to render our commitment intelligible to others.     

Love and Marriage

Summary

An analysis of the conditions and qualities necessary for maintaining a long term relationship is made based on the author's observations and inquiries. Conclusions are drawn from the analysis.     

Love and Liturgy

For two millennia Christians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the Christian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between an ethic of proximity, which enjoins us to attend to the needs of those near and dear, and an ethic of outwardness, which enjoins us to both attend to and open ourselves up to the needs of those who belong to various out‐groups. The Christian ethical vision enjoins an ethic of outwardness. A close look at the liturgies of the Eastern Christian tradition reveals the ways in which they express this ethic.