Getting to the Point

On the one hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but t...

We have seen that God's eros for man is also totally agape . This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manne...

Eros and agape —ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a ...

We began [this encyclical] by asking whether the different, or even opposed, meanings of the word “love” point to some profound underlying ...

Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” ( 1 Cor 10:17 ). Union w...

Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbour which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence...

Love of neighbour is [indeed] possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God,...

Can we love God without seeing him? And can love be commanded? Against the double commandment of love these questions raise a double objecti...

Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He anticipated his death a...

In the gradual unfolding of this encounter [with God], it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A...

True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible. God loved u...

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16 ). These words from the First Letter of John expr...

The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in t...

The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those c...

It is part of love's growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a tw...

Concretely, what does this path of ascent and purification [of eros] entail? How might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its ...

Two things emerge clearly from this rapid overview of the concept of eros past and present. First, there is a certain relationship between ...

Did Christianity really destroy eros ? Let us take a look at the pre- Christian world. The Greeks—not unlike other cultures—considered ero...

That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ...

The Prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God's passion for his people using boldly erotic images. God's relationship ...