The Rigor of Love - Might there be a faith of the faithless?

Can the experience of faith be shared by those unable to believe in the existence of a transcendent God? Might there be a faith of the faithless?

For a non-Christian, such as myself, but one out of sympathy with the triumphal evangelical atheism of the age, the core commandment of Christian faith has always been a source of both fascinated intrigue and perplexity. What is the status and force of that deceptively simple five-word command: “you shall love your neighbor”? With Gary Gutting’s wise counsel on the relation between philosophy and faith still ringing in our ears, I’d like to explore the possible meaning of these words through a reflection on a hugely important and influential philosopher not yet even mentioned so far in The Stone: Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55).

In the conclusion to “Works of Love” (1847) — which some consider the central work in Kierkegaard’s extensive and often pseudonymous authorship — he ponders the nature of the commandment of love that he has been wrestling with throughout the book. He stresses the strenuousness and, in the word most repeated in these pages, the rigor of love. As such, Christian love is not, as many non-believers contend, some sort of “coddling love,” which spares believers any particular effort. Such love can be characterized as “pleasant days or delightful days without self-made cares.” This easy and fanciful idea of love reduces Christianity to “a second childhood” and renders faith infantile.

Kierkegaard then introduces the concept of “the Christian like-for-like,” which is the central and decisive category of “Works of Love.” The latter is introduced by distinguishing it from what Kierkegaard calls “the Jewish like-for-like,” by which he means “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”: namely a conception of obligation based on the equality and reciprocity of self and other. Although, as a cursory reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s “The Star of Redemption” — one of the great works of German-Jewish thought — could easily show, this is a stereotypical and limited picture of Judaism, Kierkegaard’s point is that Christian love cannot be reduced to what he calls the “worldly” conception of love where you do unto others what others do unto you and no more. The Christian like-for-like brackets out the question of what others may owe to me and instead, “makes every relationship to other human beings into a God-relationship.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/?th&emc=th

For example, those who attack science obviously lack faith in a God who transcend nature.

YECs don't have much faith in eternity, given that they can't think beyond a few thousand years.

And those who believe in a god of hate, or a two-year-old god who holds grudges, or a god who punishes those who happen to sincerely believe "the wrong thing" -- they all obviously lack faith in a God of love and reason.

As an agnostic, I don't know and don't expect to know -- but I still disbelieve that a transcendent being would be so narrow and stupid as the god they depict. In that I have faith. But in their attempts to shove their stupid idols on the rest of us, they clearly lack faith that their idols could win us over by reason and love.

...that you hear about it.

Giving credence to fact-based, logical and reasonable positions is now "evangelical". Got it.

First understand what faith is: believing things that you know aren't actually true. Anyone can do this, alcohol helps.

"Convention topic -
Atheistic Fundamentalism : the dangers of missionary zeal. Why we mustn't be like them."

http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/phillip-adams /

You seem to have an unhealthy obsession with atheists. At least the ones who don't grovel over your pedantic twaddle.

How long is a piece of string?

You have a problem with the 2010 Global Atheist Convention topic?

“You seem to have an unhealthy obsession with atheists.”

You seem to have an unidentified objection to the 2010 Global Atheist Convention topic and/or my having posted it (twice?/thrice?).
Am I to take your opinion/diagnosis ‘on faith’…or do you have something else?

“At least the ones who don't grovel over your pedantic twaddle”

Ah!...how novel…..you have ad hom...what a surprise!

Let me know when I’m supposed to say ‘ouch’. ;-)

And as such can be seen as the central common teaching of the worlds major living religious traditions.

“you shall love your neighbor” requires first that you know who your neighbour is and something about their culture, beliefs, needs, wants, hopes….and the location of their toes…so they don’t get trodden on.

My “neighbour” may not live next door….they might be a stranger on a buss or an encounter on the Net.
(Howdy neighbour…..I like your thread ;-)

The other aspect of “you shall love your neighbor” is an understanding/definition of ‘love’….I don’t believe that in regard neighbours/strangers some great gushing emotion is being called for.

I go along with the Christian Psychologist and Community Builder- M Scott Peck- “Love is a preparedness to do for others”
This can be in the absence of positive emotion or in the presence of negative emotion and enables “Love thine enemy”.

Enjoyed your OP.
You win a free link gift ;-)
http://www.community4me.com/rabbisgift.html

Abou ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
and saw, within the moonlight of his room,
making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
an angel, writing in a book of of gold.
Exceeding peace had made ben Adhem bold,
and to the Presence in the room he said:
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
and, with a look made of all sweet accord,
answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?"said Abou, "Nay, not so,"
replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
but cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then,
write me as one who loves his fellow men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
it came again, with a great awakening light,
and showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (c. 1834)

Hadn't seen that verse in years.

For me it goes along with the Inuit poem-

"I think over again my small adventures

My fears

Those small ones that seemed so big

For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.

And yet there is only one great thing.

The only thing.

To live to see the great day that dawns

And the light that fills the world."

I really don't follow Critchley's argument. His argument is based on Christ's praise for the Roman centurion. But the centurion, while he may be faithless from a creedal or denominational perspective, has faith.



Is he just equivocating on the meaning of "faith"?

... IIA You shall love
IIB You shall love your neighbor
IIC You shall love your neighbor
IIIA Love is the fulfilling of the law
IIIB Love is a matter of conscience ...

and so on, through ten chapters. But it is, after all, Kierkegaard's exhaustive take on "Christian love," and so there is quite a bit of "godtalk" in the book, which will give some people terrible toothaches; the book could be profitably read ignoring those portions, but I think a real effort may be required to do so

The unfortunate sentence in the conclusion (quoted in the OP), where Kierkegaard contrasts "Christian" with "Jewish" notions, suggests a certain ignorance of Judaism on Kierkegaard's part: Christianity originated as a Jewish sect, and a number of notions we Christians tend reflexively to associate with the name Jesus are not unknown from rabbis such as Hillel; and the "eye for an eye" texts were already long ago subject to careful humanistic argumentation by Jewish thinkers who analyzed them not as prescriptions but as limitations on retaliation