Forell Revisited
[“Day by day / Day by day / Oh Dear Lord / Three things I pray / To see thee more clearly / Love thee more dearly / Follow thee more nearly / Day by day” (“Day by Day” [Godspell]).]
O Lover,
I am remembering my academic advisor, George Forell, making the case more than a half-century ago that “grace”—unmerited, undeserved favor—more than “love” is the central theme in the Christian faith. I understood him, not surprisingly a Lutheran, to be contending that “grace” better addresses the brokenness of the human situation. In contrast, the paramessage was that loving You was something sentimental and emotional which pietists drifted into. Interestingly, my spiritual needfulness at the time found me deeply, and permanently, moved by this sóla grátia emphasis.
In more recent decades I, now moving primarily in Roman Catholic circles, was encountering greater emphasis on the theme of Your Love, whether in the Great Commandment of the Synoptics, in I John 4, or in the ever-expanding vision of the subsequent mystics. Whereas the Lutheran take on “grace” seemed to focus on the person being “declared righteous,” a theological/juridical term both presupposing and reactive to the tragic human condition, one thus linked to the “satisfaction” agenda, the case for the primacy of “love” was an attempt to say something about who You are in Your essence and have ever been. Stated otherwise, while “grace” was more about “Plan B” (atonement), “love” was all about “Plan A” (Your timeless and ubiquitous penchant for unítas).
Speaking of which, it was during both the early and late Renaissance in particular that the unity thrust of Your Love was presented in unprecedented ways. Whether in Bernard’s homilies on The Song of Songs, Bonaventure’s reference to You as “Self-diffusing,” Angela of Foligno’s “The world is pregnant with [You],” Hadewijch’s all-encompassing “Totality,” Margaret of Porete’s “ravishing FarNigh,” Eckhart’s Ebullítio (the cosmos as Your “boiling over”), Catherine of Siena’s image of “being kneaded into [You],” and Juan’s amorous Spiritual Canticle, Your Love was repeatedly perceived as intrinsically fostering Oneing immeasurably beyond what tongue can tell. Some of these mystics present the relationship between You as Lover with the beloved creation with terms like indistinctiónis (“sans differentiation”). Such, I was learning, is the stunning disposition of Your Sacred Heart toward all of us of the creaturehood. In short, the “Totality” is a Love Story.
One of the implications of this depiction of You as Love Itself (I Jn 4) is that there is, finally, but one Love, and it is You. All of our efforts to love, whether involving inanimates or other animals, persons or communities, beauty or truth, are of the one cloth and sourced in You. Our loves, from the tawdry to the resplendent, reflect to one degree or another You Yourself. Our very capacity to love is itself the one Love who is You permeating the glorious reciprocity of all that is.
A second implication is that in contrast to the primacy of grace with its transactional and satisfaction overtones, the focus upon You as Love Itself epiphanizes the givenness of who You have always been and ever shall be. This emphasis on Love Itself better conveys that all is already completed, that only our awareness yet remains to be more fully actualized. You need to do nothing that You have not already done; all that is needed, all that is longed for, has forever been freely given. Once again, You are enough. In the words of Godspell, I have but to “Love You [and Your beloved] more dearly.”
