524 - The Nature of Love, Vol. 2: Courtly and Romantic

The Nature of Love, Vol. 2:
Courtly and Romantic
By Irving Singer
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984, 513 pp. $25.00.

Love is at the very center of Christianity, yet there is massive confusion in our society as to what is meant by love, both within and outside the churches. Theologians, who sometimes say that theology is written for the church, remain locked in a barren terminological discussion of agape and eros, and philosophers in this century, in contrast to those of the past, ignore it. Irving Singer is very much an exception. Although he does not believe in God, he is quite willing to examine Christianity, and as a philosopher he has not been afraid to devote most of his life to presenting a comprehensive treatment of love in the Western world. This book is the second volume of a projected three volumes. The first covers the nature of love from Plato to Luther (excluding medieval courtly love). It appeared nearly twenty years ago, but has just been reissued by Chicago University Press. The second covers the period from about 1100 to 1900, and the third projected volume is to be on the twentieth century. For any who wish to clarify their thinking about the nature of love, and who seek a historical perspective, this book is a splendid place to begin. It is well-written, not unduly recondite, and very provocative.

525 - The Nature of Love, Vol. 2: Courtly and Romantic

In his first volume, Singer followed the analysis of love given by Anders Nygren in his highly influential work Agape and Eros. An irreconcilable contrast is made between the love of God as agape and human love as eros. Singer claims that the Christian view of agape is such that it excludes love between persons. Agape is bestowed on us by God, and it is God's agape at work in us that loves others. Eros is a human love, and it is always a selfish love at bottom. In addition, Singer claims that in Christianity God is the only proper object of love and denies that human beings are worthy objects of love in themselves.

Certainly, Nygren's characterization of Christian agape is open to Singer's interpretation. One of the values of reading Singer is that he provokes one to reexamine the descriptions Nygren has given to both agape and eros, which are frequently perpetuated in a facile way, second and third hand, in theology and the pulpit. There is still a great need to determine the connections between the love God bestows on us and the love we are capable of expressing as human beings. Singer makes one aware of how great this need is and of its nature.

In the present volume, Singer continues to advocate his thesis that love between persons is the highest form of love, in contrast to both Platonic and neo-Platonic love of a transcendent realm and a Christian love of God. He now argues with a second important book of the previous generation, Love in the Western World, by Denis de Rougemont. De Rougemont claimed that romantic love in the modern world had its origin in medieval courtly love, and that romantic love cannot form a basis for Christian marriage. He sought to free natural human love from the theory of romantic love.

Singer makes some important corrections to de Rougemont. For example, he distinguishes courtly love from romantic love, and also shows the immense variety within each theory of love. But all his corrections aim to support his claim that love between men and women in a wholly secular fashion is the highest ideal.

Once again, the value of dealing with Singer is that he stimulates one to re-examine one's ideas. There is always enough soundness in his criticism of Christianity to make one take notice, yet also enough that is askew to keep one from accepting his thesis. For example, there is no doubt that the asceticism in the Hellenic world in which Christianity made its way was absorbed by Christianity. Love between man and woman in marriage, although honored, took a distant second place to celibacy. A genuine theology of marriage is only now being worked out, and it is not widely known even in churches. Instead, Christians are either guided by utterly inadequate theories of marriages, which at root are androcentric and premised on celibacy as the ideal, or by the cultural confusion that surrounds us. Singer is also right in stressing that both courtly love and romantic love for all their failings are on the right track in trying to show that natural sexual inclinations can be directed toward highly moral and aesthetic noble aspirations. On the other hand, to think that love between man and woman is the greatest fulfillment for human

526 - The Nature of Love, Vol. 2: Courtly and Romantic

beings is the result of atheism and ignores that craving which nothing finite can satisfy. If there is no God, we may have to reconcile ourselves to having nothing higher than the love between man and woman, but that is not because we cannot imagine and lack testimony to a greater love which includes the love we can know between human beings.

Diogenes Allen
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey