Love is God?

Last updated on: May 16, 2013 at 11:49 pm by Matthew Tan

Love is God? 2013-05-16T23:49:00+10:00 Matthew Tan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Campion College yesterday hosted its monthly Campion Cafe Conversations, which asked the question “Is Romantic Love the New Religion?” The conversation featured Christopher Hartney from the Department of Studies in Religion in the University of Sydney, and the Divine Wedgie’s blogger at large, Matthew Tan.

Hartney spoke of an insidious cult of the romantic, which was driving romantic love itself into greater degrees of blandness. Meanwhile, Tan cautioned the audience against being too hasty with awarding romantic love with the title of the new religion, though he said we should not be surprised that overlaps existed between the religious and the romantic. Romantic love has long provided many drivers for human existence present in many religions. On the other hand, revealed religion has often been articulated using the language of romantic love. Moreover, Tan argued that Christian theology affirmed romantic love precisely because it was a faint echo of the love of the Trinity. The danger thereby lay in jettisoning the Trinitarian archetype and making what should be an analogy, namely romantic love, as a self-sufficient ultimate reality. Not only does it amount to turning romantic love into an idol that turns those in love into victims. It also leads to a thinning out of love from a virtuous action to an ephemeral feeling of an hermetically sealed self.

The conversation intersected rather neatly with an article in Psychology Today by the University of Haifa’s Aaron Ben Ze’ev, who encapsulated the conversation with his usage of the term “Ideology of Love”. If the romantic were to be turned into an ideology to which everything is subordinate, it ended up ruining love itself, which is manifest most frequently in the emphasis on “faithfulness to one’s heart” rather than faithfulness to the object of one’s affections. As Tan said in the conclusion of his presentation, whilst romantic love still has competitors for the title of supreme religion, it nonetheless was showing the features of a thing of ultimate concern, and the extent to which it does is the extent to which it becomes a god demanding human sacrifice.

Campion College

Church and Culture

http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

postmodern city

postsecular

transcendance

Previous Post

May 9, 2013

Body and Will in Postmodernity

Next Post

May 25, 2013 When Coffee Gets Martyred

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category architecture art Augustine Belloc Benedict XVI bible blogs books bourgeois Christianity Campion College Chesterton Christianisation Church and Culture Church Fathers citizen conference conservative consumer culture cybernetics Desert Fathers discipleship distributism drinking ecclesiology economics education environment Evagrius of Pontus formation Foucault George Weigel Girard Graham Ward http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post interfaith Jacques Ellul John Chrysostom Julia Kristeva Latin liturgy mall marriage monasticism Music Narrative news philosophy polis politics pop culture postmodern city postsecular prayer prostestant quote Quotes Radical Orthodoxy resources Rome Rule of St. Benedict saint Saints secular sociology theological anthropology theology transcendance Uncategorized videos William Cavanaugh

Select a Month December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 October 2009 February 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

This Gospel alone records seven 'I am' statements from Jesus. Which of these is NOT one of them: the bread of life, the good shepherd, the way and the truth and the life, or the Alpha and Omega?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The good shepherd The Alpha and Omega The way and the truth and the life The bread of life