A brilliant thing Kierkegaard wrote about love

Last updated on: August 12, 2014 at 11:15 am by Morgan Guyton

A brilliant thing Kierkegaard wrote about love 2014-08-12T11:15:03-05:00 Morgan Guyton

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.

I discovered the Danish Christian existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard my first year in college. He made such an impression on me that I wanted to name my first son Soren, which I would have done if my wife hadn’t objected. I left Kierkegaard behind for a long time, but over the past few weeks, I’ve been flipping through is Works of Love, where he spins off essays riffing on 15 Bible passages about love. And his piece about 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Love builds up,” is brilliant.

Kierkegaard points out that “building up” is a unique phrase. It isn’t just “building onto” something. It’s building from the ground up. When we apply this phrase to love, we’re obviously using it metaphorically. For love to “build up” means that love inspires and creates new reality in the heart that encounters love. The metaphor also contains the sense of encouragement. To build people up means to give them confidence and an awareness of their gifts. It is the opposite of “tearing down.”

Kierkegaard contends that if love is to build up another person, “it must mean either that the lover implants love in the heart of another person or that the lover presupposes that love is in the other person’s heart and precisely with this presupposition builds up love in him” (Works of Love, 205). So in other words, can you love people who don’t have anything to build up within them? Can you supply the thing that love builds up so that you’re building them up from scratch?

Kierkegaard says no: “It is God, the creator, who must implant love in each person, he who himself is love. Therefore it is essentially unloving and not at all up-building for anyone presumptuously to conceive of himself as desiring and able to create love in another person” (205). I cannot truly build other people up with love if I have decided that they are unlovable in themselves and it is my job to plant love in them. To conceive of love in that way is to make myself God.

Instead if I am to recognize my humble place and God’s place as the source of all love, then my love for another person cannot be my great magnanimity in loving the unlovable. One of the cruelest forms of contempt that we can show to other people is to do good deeds for them while making it clear that we find them perfectly unlovable. I once dated a woman whose ex-husband would do all kinds of good deeds around her house at least partly to show what a worthless, unskilled human being I was. Everything he did was something that I was supposed to say thank you for, but it systematically disempowered me. Love is not doing good to people you hate in order to make them feel indebted to you.

For benevolence towards others to qualify as genuine love, it must involve sympathy for the objects of your benevolence and treating them as though they are truly lovable. Here’s how Kierkegaard puts it: “Love means to presuppose love; to have love means to presuppose love in others; to be loving means to presuppose that others are loving” (211). This is radical, and it really grates against any theology that talks too stridently about the utter wickedness of human nature. Many Christians do not truly love their neighbors even though they might do good for them contemptuously because they subscribe to the doctrine of the total depravity of everyone else.

It’s true that humans are helpless without God’s grace, and that everything good we do should be understood as God’s gracious intervention in our lives. But God’s grace is operating preveniently through other people who don’t acknowledge him all the time. To “presuppose love” in other people means that I recognize that God has already been at work in their lives long before I showed up. It’s only when I presume that others have been touched by God’s love and are capable of love that I can be genuinely loving to them. All other forms of supposed benevolence and good deeds are simply ways of playing God and justifying myself.

Previous Post

August 10, 2014

Is it okay to notice that Jesus can be a jerk sometimes?

Next Post

August 14, 2014 Our gated communities and the black bogeyman that haunts us

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Beauty Will Save the World Bible Big Picture: Ephesians Bloggers Book Christian salvation and the Beautitudes Culture Daily Office Danceable Homiletics Deadly Sins Deep Roots: Genesis Devotions Dominican Republic May 2011 El Principio Misericordia (The Mercy Principle) Five verses God tattooed on my heart Fundraising FutureGospel Good Biblical Words Henri Nouwen Interview Jennings' Christian Imagination Jesus inside the beltway Jesus Is My Candidate Jesus vs the Pharisees Jesus vs. Plato Journey to Eternity Looking Back on 2012 Love Actually Monday Merton Monday Merton Music Occupy the manger On Earth As It Is In Heaven Original Sin Podcast Poetry Politics Prayer Psalm 119 Radical Jesus 101 Reviews Sermon on the Mount Sermons Spanish Bible study Special Series Spiritual but not religious Synchroblog Theology Things that made me think Thomas a Kempis Ugliness Into Beauty Uncategorized Viaje Dominicano 2013 Walking in the Valley (Lent) Welcome: It's More than a Mat Wild Goose 2013 Wrestling

Select a Month March 2022 January 2022 December 2021 September 2021 April 2021 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 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 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 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE