Love Of Self Research Articles

The Significance of the Aubades in 'Troilus and Criseyde'

The celebration of the joy of the lovers in the third book of Troilus and Criseyde has by an unintended irony become the battleground of the central controversy in the present criticism of medieval poetry. D. W. Robertson considers that the Troilus, in common with medieval love poetry as a whole, bears witness to the Augustinian doctrine of the two loves: love of self (cupidity) and love of God (charity). The love that is celebrated in the third book of the Troilus is a cupidinous love, and is accordingly reprehended by the poet: Chaucer's most famous love story, the tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde, is neither a tale of true love, ofwhatJehan le Bel called love 'par amours', nor of courteous love. It is, rather, a tale of passionate love set against a background of Boethian philosophy.... The Boethian elements in Troilus and their implications were ... easily recognizable to the members of Chaucer's audience. And no one reminded of the doctrines of Fortune and Providence, fate and free will, the love of God and the love of worldly goods, or the Herculean nobility and heroism of virtue, could possibly regard passionate love for a fickle woman with anything but disfavor.1

Loyalty and Law in New Testament Times

There have been innumerable attempts to classify and set 1 forth in order the multitudinous drives or motives which lead men to act as they do in society. Among Christians it is natural and proper to divide all human motives into those which are selfish and those which are unselfish; and further to say that all motives of the ‘natural man’ are fundamentally selfish, and only those of man under grace can really be unselfish. One thinks here of such analyses as that of Eros and Agape made by Anders Nygren in his work of that title; or of Augustine's famous distinction between earthly society (the civitas terrena) animated by love of self to the point of contempt for God, and divine society (the civitas caelestis) animated by love for God to the point of contempt for self. The danger, of course, of such vast generalisations is that they will be misunderstood by the disciples of the great men who originally made use of them—and even that they may mislead those great men themselves. It is obvious, for example, that Augustine is not here making the kind of distinction which is visible to direct empirical inspection. The two principles of which he speaks are principles of order which, he says, can be described mystically as two cities.1 Without attempting to go into the details of the interpretation of this great doctrine, it may be possible to make one point by way of introduction to our theme, a point which applies both to the distinction between Eros and Agape and to that between the two cities.

The Doctrine of the Trinity: Its Development, Difficulties and Value

“The most ancient of the philosophers,” wrote Clement of Alexandria, “were not carried away to disputing and doubting, and much less are we who are attached to the really true philosophy, and on whom the Scripture enjoins examination and investigation…. The point proposed for inquiry and answer knocks at the door of truth…. To those who thus ask questions in the Scriptures is granted that at which they aim, the gift of God-given knowledge, by way of comprehension, through the true illumination of their intellectual search…. It becomes him who is at once a lover and a disciple of truth to be pacific even in investigation, advancing by intellectual demonstration, without love of self but with love of truth, to the knowledge of comprehension.”