Sartori:
Ah, but this is the Church, not Christianity. Have you read perhaps the greatest existentialist of all? Soren Kierkegaard? He tried to reclaim Christianity from those who called themselves Christians…
But yes, sacrifice is indeed a central theme in Christian thinking, but it is not sacrifice for/to the church unless by “church” you mean all of creation… Love, in my usage of the term, could be described as “active sacrifice” to all of creation. You know you are in love when you’re giving all that you have (yes, even your life) to your beloved…
This is a serious misunderstanding… How can you possibly say this when Jesus explicitly and quite famously says that the only law is to love, and that we should “love our enemies” even? So no; Christian love is not only love of Christ/God. It is an all-encompassing love. Anyone who practices exclusion in regards to who they love is one of those so-called Christians Kierkegaard attacked…
I agree that the common sense of this idea does. But you’re being very Nietzschean here… i.e., Christians as despisers of life… I think you need to understand that like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche was attacking so-called Christians, not necessarily Christianity itself… Nietzsche in fact depicted his overman as what, Caesar with the soul of Christ? Something like that… Anyways; to me heaven is not some place you go to after you physically die. The eternal life Christianity speaks of is not everlasting physical life (just as its resurrections are not physical resuscitations). Heaven is something that obtains in this life, from the actions of this life. It’s when all of creation is encompassed by the supportive arms of love where love, as active sacrifice, as giving all that you have to creation, is hard work. Heaven is not the prize to be won after this life, which is when life really gets underway… No, no, no… Instead Heaven is the prize to be won during this life, and it is when everyone loves/serves all, even the least. (Note: God is greatest because God serves even the least.)
Yes, many so-called Christians think this. Many so-called Christians think God created from nothing and therefore, as Sartre says, has pre-defined the purpose of all creation. But to me God isn’t some super-being out there who created from nothing but simply a character in a story (or collection of stories) that shows us a way of life. It is up to each of us poor existing individuals to choose what life we live. God simply gives us an option: the life of love… So yes, God gives us purpose in a sense, but it is an invitation not a determination…
I assume you’ve read Existentialism is a Humanism? Sartre uses this idea (as does Dostoevsky) that from others we see how to be. In other words, we create/choose our own essence and in doing so we “choose” for the rest of humanity because our action is an affirmation and advocation of our choice… It’s basically an idea describing the spread of a way of life, where our choices in life further the multiplication of the way of life we chose… I think this is basically the idea in Genesis 1, where what we see happening is the multiplication of life, of God’s way of life, with the result being “everything is good”. God’s way of life doesn’t multiply because God says so, but because each of us takes it upon ourselves…
The point isn’t to recognize love but to live it. God shows us love - most especially through the stories of Jesus Christ - so if we want to recognize or live love then that is where we should look (we shouldn’t necessarily look to how we’ve been treated by others). But as should be clear from the foregoing there is often a lot lost in translation, for example in those so-called Christians who support war and gay-bash… So you are right, “through our reception of love we build an understanding of it”. This is something I’m battling right now: what it means to love. We are shown many concrete examples in Scripture, and it is through these that we need to develop our understanding of love (if we are to comment meaningfully on Christian teaching that is). You’ve already heard my best characterizations: love doesn’t hold back; it gives all that it has; love is total sacrifice to the beloved, serving their every need…
However, against “needing to receive love before understanding love”, ultimately someone had to love before being loved (this is what Sartre’s argument in Existenialism is a Humanism should have been; i.e., it’s not about an existence that precedes its essence but a lover that precedes being loved…). That event, the first issuance of love, is the beginning spoken of in Genesis 1… The beginning isn’t the start of being and time, but of love and life, of responsibility , unconditional service and self sacrifice… God is the one who loved before ever being loved or witnessing love… God is the one whose example we all should follow; i.e., we should all love even if we’ve never been loved. We should love our enemies even…
So as for existentialism you can see I’m more a proponent of the theistic variety like Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard. No matter how much I love Heidegger and Camus I’ll take The Brothers Karamazov over any of their texts any day… In the pages of that book Christian love burns white hot.