Toward a Metaphysic of Love

The following selection appears in an essay by Hans Boersma titled A Metaphysic of Love. It was published this month in Vol. 3, No. 1 of The New Ressourcement.

After endorsing a paradigm approach to understanding Platonic forms – wherein only forms exist and particular objects are "appearances or manifestations of the forms in a different (sensible) mode" – over and above a model approach – wherein "individual appearances function like defective copies of an original model" thereby assuming a "gap" between models and particulars – Boersma engages this paradigm approach to defend the claim that creation is theophany (and theophany, he says, is the love of God).

Creation as theophany assumes a paradigm approach. On my understanding, the creator-creature relationship has two rather than three terms. Theophany does not require – indeed, it precludes – a journey bridging the distance between God and creature. Participation (the journey) is not a third term, in-between creator and creature, but is simply the mode in which creatures exist. Only God, we might say, is the 'really real,' but when he appears (takes on theophanic form), he assumes a creaturely shape or mode of being – shimmering forth an image, as it were.

The notion that God renders himself present in creaturely mode will be unnerving to some. It may seem to imply a monist or pantheist view of reality. It does not actually imply this, for the transcendence that I just highlighted emphatically precludes a pantheist metaphysic. The problem is that our modern Aristotelian proclivities make it difficult for us to truly embrace divine immanence. We see this already in Saint Thomas Aquinas who, though he appealed to Dionysius a great deal and often used the language of participation, needlessly separated nature and the supernatural, creator and creature. Aquinas's adoption of substance metaphysics made it difficult for him to freely adopt the kind of theophanic discourse that Dionysius and Maximus had liberally used before him.

My proposal, therefore, is that we replace an ontology of being with an ontology of love. The ultimate metaphysical principle is not Being (esse) but Love (caritas). To be sure, some will use the language of the Good rather than of Love, seeing as the former is pervasive both in Scripture and in the Platonic tradition. Plato and Plotinus, as well as Dionysius, all speak of the Good as the ultimate principle, beyond all other forms. If someone chooses the Good instead of Love for God's most appropriate name, I will not object, and at times I myself will also use these two interchangeably.

Still, then name of Love has distinct advantages. Most significantly, perhaps, love is central to Holy Scripture in a way that perhaps goodness is not. "God is love," John famously tells us (I John 4:8, 16). Jesus combines love of God and of neighbor (Deut 6:4, Lev 19:18) in response to the question as to what the great commandment of the Law is (Matt 22:37). And love is the greatest of the three theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – which Saint Paul repeatedly links together (I Cor 13:13). Love also has long played a role in the history of trinitarian theology, most famously through Augustine's appropriations of lover (Father), beloved (Son), and love (Spirit). A metaphysic of love may turn to love as the perichoretic relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, finally, it is the Spirit's presence – the presence of love – in creation that transfigures it on its deifying journey back to God. Love is what identifies, most deeply, both God and creation. Though I think we should speak of symbol (creature) and symbolized (creator) as the only two terms in the relation, it is the Spirit that does the symbolizing within rational creatures, modifying their mode of existence so that they participate more deeply in the life of the triune God. This is why God's most appropriate name is also creation's deepest ground: The love that is creation enters God more deeply as we do greater justice to the Love that is God.

Boersma continues with a defense of Love as the ultimate metaphysical principle over and against Being, advancing an explicitly Christian Platonist perspective against what he suggests is a more "kataphatic" approach of Aquinas – one that, Boersma argues, actually offers "less protection" against pantheism insofar as Aquinas offers the notion of being (his ultimate metaphysical principle) to both God and creatures.

The rest of the essay references Plotinus, Parmenides, Saint Maximus, and others. It's much deeper and richer than I'm conveying here – I highly recommend it.