Abstract

Love as a theological virtue raises difficult questions. How can love be a gift from God, and yet at the same time human beings can be praised for the love of others? How can love be infused by God, and also be an act of free will? An event-hermeneutical approach can help us to find answers to these questions. This article presents an event-hermeneutical reading of the parable of the prodigal son, and the phenomenological analysis of love by Harry Frankfurt. The fact that a person comes to love the object of his love implies a deep transformation of the will. But love is a risk: it may happen, but it need not. The (im)possibility of transformation is deepened by looking at the phenomenon of scarcity. At the end of the article, the author summarises five elements of a theological theory on the virtue of love in a time of scarcity

Highlights

  • Thank God, love happens! That is the shortest possible summary of this article

  • If love is a gift from God, does that mean that human beings can only wait for this gift to arrive? What is the relationship

  • We will argue along two complementary lines: we will interpret the event of love in the text of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32), and in the phenomenological analysis of the event of love as presented by the ethicist Harry Frankfurt

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Thank God, love happens! That is the shortest possible summary of this article. We don’t know when it may happen; but when it does, we are drawn beyond what we previously considered possible. In the step (section four), we will show that an event-hermeneutical interpretation of love helps us to understand the theological virtue of love. We will argue along two complementary lines: we will interpret the event of love in the text of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32), and in the phenomenological analysis of the event of love as presented by the ethicist Harry Frankfurt Based on this event-hermeneutical interpretation of love, we will answer the questions raised in the first section. From a practical theological perspective, it is not enough to know how (theologically) love happens; we need to understand the embodied human condition in which it happens. We summarise five basic ideas for a theological virtue of love which can bring deep and sustainable change in people’s social lives : how can love bring change in the lives of people who exist in scarcity? In section six, we summarise five basic ideas for a theological virtue of love which can bring deep and sustainable change in people’s social lives

LOVE AS A THEOLOGICAL VIRTUE
HERMENEUTICS OF EVENT
AN EVENT-HEMENEUTICAL INTERPRETATION OF LOVE
The event of human love
The perplexity of love
SCARCITY
Findings
LOVE IN A TIME OF SCARCITY
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