| Abstrakt: | The present thesis is the result of research over connection which exist between God
and love, more specifically connection between the primacy of God in the context of the
love’s leading role in human life, in the light of the doctrine of the Carmelite Doctor of the
Church, St. John of the Cross. Both these realities: God and love are standing in the center of
the Christian faith and hence also of theology.
The aim of this dissertation is to expose close relation between God and love, based on
the writings of St. John of the Cross. This connection is fundamental for proper image of both
- God and love. When writing about love, the 16th-century Mystic means always one reality,
although it appears in his work under different names - amor, dilectio, caridad, passion. For
the Spanish Saint, God is the measure of love, not the other way round. This approach
protects love from limited or incorrect understanding. Pope Benedict XVI says in his
Encyclical Caritas in veritate, in the face „of the ways in which charity has been and
continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being
misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued” (Caritas in
veritate 2).
Therefore, the basic question of the dissertation is - whether the choice of God is also
the choice of love. And vice versa - is the actual choice of love also the choice of God? And
if so, what makes this compatibility, what a common identity of these choices depends on? In
other words: how deep does the relation of God and love go (in God himself and in the
practical aspects of Christian life)? The thesis is composed of three chapters, the first two are
constructed on the basis of the known Sanjuanistic binomium todo/nada, while chapter three
is theirs extension and, as it were, their complement. According to St. John of the Cross, to
become full of God, or to fill oneself with God (Todo) and everything that comes from Him,
it’s necessary to become empty, get rid of everything what isn’t God (nada). A rich
topography of the writings of St. John of the Cross includes both - the valleys of the dark
night and the lofty peaks of the living flame of love. This allows us to look at the phenomenon
of love from different and complementary perspectives.
Based on these fragments of the writings of St. Jon of the Cross in which the subject of
God is related to that of love, the author is trying to provide that: 1) this is God, who reign in
the human heart only through love (in other words - love is the consequence of the reign of
God), 2) that the choice of love implies the choice of God - where love prevails, God is the
winner. Therefore, love is presented as the surest guide on the way to God, the only means to
unite with Him. A cry for the primacy of God is for St. John of the Cross a cry for the primacy
of love, as according to him will be judged on it, he says, „in the evening” (D 50), that is, at
the end of the day, work, other projects and whole life.
In the view of St. John, no man can understand oneself to the end other than in
a constitutive for him relation to God, his Creator and Savior. Without radical adherence to
God through love, the man remains incomplete, that is to say, one doesn’t reach one’s
perfection and full personal development. Love is the end of the soul, its fulfillment, „the aim
of the soul is love”. |