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Conclusion: love's wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

David F. Ford
David F. Ford
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Song of Songs 8:6–7 6Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. 7Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned.

Colossians 2:2–3 2I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Love, the love of God inextricable from the love of people, is the summit of Jean Vanier's wisdom, shaped especially by scripture and L'Arche. This summit is the most appropriate place to conclude a book on Christian wisdom. It offers both a vantage point from which to look back on the previous chapters and also a site for the culminating scriptural meditation on the Song of Songs.

The descriptions applied to the theology of this book in the introduction included ‘scriptural-expressivist’; postcritical (drawing on the premodern, modern and late modern); a theology of desire and discernment; and a theology of learning in the Spirit.

Type
Chapter
Information
Christian Wisdom
Desiring God and Learning in Love
 , pp. 380 - 391
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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