Loving as God Loves
by Fr. Daniel Thomas
The EarlyChurch worked from a different paradigm than what is found in the modern WesternChurch. No where is this more evident than in the respective concepts of love. Love, for the modern West, is an attribute that God has that we must emulate. In the EarlyChurch model, love is the essence of the Divine in which we partake. The question of exactly what this love entails and how is it carried out concerns us here: how does one partake of this love, what does it mean for the life of the Christian, and how does one work out accomplishing this love?
When God first created humans, he created them to be in a relationship with himself. He also created humans to be in relation with other humans.[1] They existed in a communion of love with and for God and each other. It is this love that shows humans are created in the image of God; for God is love. This love was not directed toward the self, but towards God and other humans. This shows that humans have no being apart from a communion of love with God and with others. However, when Man fell into sin in the Garden, it was the destruction of that communion. Just as God has being within himself, that is the Trinity, humans have being when in communion with others. “Evil is non-being” according to St. Athanasius[2]. That “being” was destroyed in the Fall and what was left was the self-love of the individual and the resulting problems that arise from it. Indeed, most, if not all, of the problems facing humans today are the result of that self-love, that idea that a person may have being apart from others. This idea is often heard as “it doesn’t matter what I do as long as it doesn’t affect others” and such things. Humans are then open prey for the passions that must surely follow to fill the void left in their lives. This is individualism taken to its worst possible conclusion.
This self-love is, and is known to be, the first sin, the progeny of the devil and the mother of the passions that come after it. He to whom it is granted to be worthy of God through love does away with it, and together with it the whole host of wickedness, which has no other foundation or cause of existence than self-love.[3]
However, God did not leave his beloved humans to their self-imposed situation. The very One who created humans, the Word of God, has himself showed what true love is and became Incarnate, died, and rose again in order to restore that which was lost. “The renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.”[4]
Because of this, the Creator of nature himself-who has heard of anything so truly awesome!-has clothed himself with our nature, without change uniting it hypostatically to himself, in order to check what has been borne away, and gather it to himself, so that, gathered to himself, our nature may no longer have any difference from him in its inclination. In this way he clearly establishes the all glorious way of love, which is truly divine and deifying and leads to God. Indeed, love is said to be God himself which from the beginning the thorns of self-love have covered up…[5]
It was, therefore, not for himself that he came, but for humans. It was another’s welfare that he had in mind. This is the example that he himself gave in his coming, that we who live, should live for others, and that, we who love, should love others also. Therefore, this same Christ who came for others, gave the commandment that shows how love is to be accomplished. “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”[6] It is this capacity to love that alone, proves that man is created in the image of God.[7] It is this image which Christ came to restore with the corresponding renewal of loving the way that God loves. Christ shows us in the above passage what this love entails and the means by which this is accomplished in the teachings of the Early Fathers of the Church is the working out of this command.
Since God is love, to enter into this kind of love is to enter into the Divine. One must partake of Christ fully, in mind, actions, and sacrament to enter completely into this deification. This means that if a person is to be in Christ, he must act as Christ acted. “It is necessary, then, for those calling themselves after Christ, first of all, to become what the name implies, and then to adapt themselves to the title.”[8] A person must mentally give assent to being what God intends and must act in such a way also. For, to be perfect is not necessarily to be without any faults, but is to love as God loves. It means giving others the same considerations that one would want for himself. The command sums it up this way, “Do unto others has you would have them do unto you.”[9] Drawing toward God in love also draws humans closer together. Dorotheos of Gaza pictured a circle, with God at the center. Humans were on lines running from the perimeter through the center. Humans only come closer to each other as they progress closer to the center, which is God.[10] What a person does in relation to one affects the relation with the other. In other words, a person cannot claim to love God whom he has never seen, if he does not also love his neighbor whom he has seen.[11] The converse is true also.
As we have seen, however, the problem is that since the Fall, self-love has caused humans to be subject to all sorts of passions. “Whatever a man loves he will desire with all his might. What he desires he strives to lay hold of.”[12] What humans desire is self-love and from this comes tyranny towards others.[13] It is this that brings forth judging, greed, hatred, slander, adultery, and many other things such as these. However, the goal of Divine love is
love of mankind, brotherly and sisterly love, hospitality, compassion, mercy, humility, meekness, patience, freedom from anger, longsuffering, perseverance, kindness, forebearance, goodwill, peace, towards all. Out of these and through these the grace of love is fashioned, which leads one to God who deifies the human being that he himself fashioned.[14]
For this reason, Christians who would become perfect must give up these fruits of self-love in order to love as God loves. They must be ever mindful of their own condition. The Early Fathers used to say, “Oh Lord, he today, I tomorrow!”[15] to keep themselves from falling into the trap of judging others when seeing people caught in sins. After all, it was the tax collector who walked away justified when he asked for God’s mercy, recognizing his own sinfulness. The “righteous” Pharisee, who knew he was better than other men did not walk away justified from the presence of God.[16] His righteousness was a source of pride, which resulted in his being guilty of judging the Tax Collector, and all other humans as well. Judging others was specifically forbidden as all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.[17] Abba Theodore said, “Do not judge the fornicator, for you yourself would then transgress the law just as much yourself. He who said, ‘do not fornicate’ also said, ‘do not judge.’”[18] This of course, does not mean that sin is to be overlooked. A good illustration of how this works out is found in the following:
Abba Ammonas came one day to eat in a place where there was a monk of evil repute. Now it happened that a woman came and entered the cell of the brother of evil reputation. The dwellers of that place, having learned this, were troubled and gathered together to chase the brother from his cell. Knowing that Bishop Ammonas was in the place, they asked him to join them. When the brother in question learned this, he hid the woman in a large cask. The crowd of monks came to the place. Now Abba Ammonas saw the position clearly, but for the sake of God he kept the secret; he entered, seated himself on the cask, and when they had searched everywhere without finding the woman, Abba Ammonas said, “What is this? May God forgive you for this accusation!” After praying he made everyone go out, then taking the brother by the hand he said, “Brother, be on your guard.” With these words, he withdrew.[19]
There are two things here, one is that the Ammonas was not about to allow others to continue in the sin of judging the monk. A person may have had severe things happen in his or her life that leads to sin in certain areas. For example, in the American West during the 1800’s women were usually not allowed to work and there was no place for a single woman or child. A woman finding herself without a husband or a means of support may have turned to prostitution in order to have enough to eat. Or, a man who beats his wife may have had a childhood of such horror that is unimaginable. This person may have struggled valiantly to overcome this in his life and has yet to be able to do so. We cannot say what goes on inside of a person. Judging such a person is a sign of a lack of humility and of self-love. Dorotheos of Gaza says,
Truly it happens that a man may do a certain thing (which seems to be wrong) out of simplicity, and there may be something about it that makes more amends to God than your whole life; how are you going to sit in judgment and constrict you own soul? And it should happen that he has fallen away, how do you know how much and how well he fought, how much blood he sweated before he did it? Perhaps so little fault can be found in him that God can look on his action as if it were just, for God looks on his labor and all the struggle he had before he did it, and has pity on him…And how do you know what tears he has shed about it before God? You may well know the sin, but you do not know about the repentance.[20]
The second thing is that Ammonas did not ignore the sin. Rather, he admonished the brother about his sinful ways and then, in this manner, restored him as well. Christ restored many who came to him by saying he forgave them and to “go and sin no more.” Christ came into the world to restore fallen humanity to its original state. The first Man Adam fell and the second Man Christ restores. Christ is about restoring humanity to the communion lost in the Fall, then a Christian, acting with the love of God seeks the same end. For this is what we must be about, the restoration of those who fall. We must seek to watch ourselves in the process, but not neglect to reach out and love others as God has loved us. For, Christ himself commands that we are to forgive those who sin and repent as often as they do so. God cannot do any less and we follow his lead.[21] We have received freely and so are to give freely.
As has been stated earlier, love is the embodiment of Christian perfection. According to First Clement, (a.k.a. The Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians) those who are found to be perfect in love are those who will find themselves in the Resurrection at the end of the age.[22] These are those who have put away the passions cause by self-love. There is no factiousness nor, any deceit within these persons. These have laid these aside and have covered the sins of others and have had their own sins covered as a result. They seek to please the Lord above all else. To be a Christian in this manner may seem a little extreme to a modern world that thinks the Sermon on the Mount was not actually meant to be obeyed, but for the Early Church, it was a matter of life and death, of non-being or restoration.
For the Early Christians, learning to love as God loves is being Christian.[23] It means to reject self-love and overcoming the passions that result from it. Further, it means learning to be humble, not judging others in their own struggles, rather, understanding one’s own falleness. Loving as God loves, ultimately means to draw near to God in selfless love that has the good of the other (both God and fellow humans) in mind. For, humans must be transformed by the renewing power of being in communion with the Creator become Incarnate. It is allowing his life to overflow in our own lives. This is finally the goal of all human life, to love as God loves and be loved in return.
Bibliography
Bondi, Roberta C. To Love as God Loves. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.
Dorotheos of Gaza. Discourses and Sayings. On Refusal to Judge Our Neighbor.
Evagrius Ponticus. The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1972.
Lightfoot, J.B. and J.R. Harmer. The Apostolic Fathers. First Clement. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989.
Louth, Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. On Love. London: Routledge, 1996.
St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1996.
St. Gregory of Nyssa. Ascetical Works. On Perfection.
[1] Genesis 1:27; 2:1-25.
[2] St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. 30.
[3] Louth, Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. On Love. London: Routledge, 1996. 88.
[4] Athanasius, 26.
[5] Maximus, 91.
[6] Matthew 22:37-39.
[7] Maximus, 86.
[8] St. Gregory of Nyssa. Ascetical Works. On Perfection. 98.
[9] Luke 6:31
[10] Dorotheos of Gaza. Discourses and Sayings. On Refusal to Judge Our Neighbor. 138-139.
[11] 1 John 4:19-21.
[12] Evagrius Ponticus. The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1972. 16.
[13] Maximus, 87.
[14] Ibid, 92.
[15] Bondi, Roberta C. To Love as God Loves. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987. 22.
[16] Luke 18:9-14.
[17] Matthew 7:1-6 and Romans 3:23.
[18] Bondi, 52. Quoting from Apoth. , Theodore of Eleutheropolis 3, p. 80.
[19] Bondi, 54.
[20] Dorotheos, On Refusal to Judge Our Neighbor, 135.
[21] Matthew 18:21 ff.
[22] Lightfoot, J.B. and J.R. Harmer. The Apostolic Fathers. First Clement. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989. 56.
[23] Bondi, 107.
