We are told that in the world where humanity exists that if we are to know anything we must either come to our conclusions by either reason or empiricism, or a varied combination of both. Conclusions based on faith, we are told, are not to be accepted as warranted because they did not spring forth from either of the two “legitimate” methodologies mentioned above. While it seems to me that faith is a legitimate form of knowledge, I’ll leave that aside for another day, and would like to propose another category for consideration. What about LOVE?
In the sixth century, Gregory the Great declared that “love is a form of knowledge.” Indeed, if one goes back to the biblical account of the first man and woman creating the first child, the author tells his reader that Adam “knew” his wife. One may say at this point that the “knowing” in the biblical phrasing is merely metaphorical language for lovemaking and has no relation to the epistemological reality of knowledge. But even here, metaphors or even poetic language are chosen to represent realities based on similarities and not obscure random choices of words.
We are told that in the world where humanity exists that if we are to know anything we must either come to our conclusions by either reason or empiricism, or a varied combination of both. Conclusions based on faith, we are told, are not to be accepted as warranted because they did not spring forth from either of the two “legitimate” methodologies mentioned above. While it seems to me that faith is a legitimate form of knowledge, I’ll leave that aside for another day, and would like to propose another category for consideration. What about LOVE?
In the end of the sixth century, Gregory the Great declared that, “love itself is a form of knowledge.” Indeed, if one goes back to the biblical account of the first man and woman creating the first child, the author tells his reader that Adam “knew” his wife. One may say at this point that the “knowing” in the biblical phrasing is merely metaphorical language for lovemaking and has no relation to the epistemological reality of knowledge. But even here, metaphors or even poetic language are chosen to represent realities based on similarities and not obscure or random choices of words.
Consider the degree or form of knowledge when love is extended to an infant or a toddler how they respond in a like manner. They in turn seem to love their parent or their caretaker. The child is hurt if the one who loved them and whom they loved gets injured, is sad, or does something evil like loosing their temper at the child. Infants and toddlers don’t necessarily cry if any person around them is hurt, sad, or acting evil, but they do respond in such ways as if they are personally affected if someone they know has these things happen to them. Why is that? Do they know something from a mere rational putting the intellectual pieces together sort of fashion? Maybe it is because they can relate to the feelings having experienced them for themselves? This too seems fairly absurd. Children too seem to “know” their father’s voice or their mother’s face and they “know” them in a way that comes across differently than the way they might “recognize” a friend of the family or frequent visitor of some kind.
In everyday life there appears to be a knowledge of love that is difficult to articulate. We believe that we “know” the people close to us and can judge whether they are acting in a way consistent with who they are. For example you may hear someone who loves you say, “You’re not yourself today.” Knowledge of this kind is more than a cognitive ability to articulate your character based on prior experience with you. At the same time, it is not as if you’ve started with a blank slate of recognizing that you are thinking and build up from there to the place where you look at your spouse and declare all the reasons for why you love them. Indeed, many of the times, it is hard to articulate the rational for why we care so deeply for the loved one. Is it because of their looks, their character expressed in deeds that you find attractive. It may be those and more. And yet it is none of those. If you remove any of one of the items listed, his looks have gone south along with his once muscular pecks, it is not as if you stop loving them. Love itself seems to be a sufficient reason.
“Eternal life is this, that they may know you, the only God, and Jesus Christ whom you’ve sent.” This knowledge we are told in other parts of Scripture is not a theological checklist, a formal memorization of all the proper catechism questions and answers, or merely a recognition of existence. Even the demons do those and shudder. No, this knowledge that IS eternal life is one of loving God. Said differently, the degree of knowledge that is eternal life is the love of God. And this loving God cannot be contained to having prophesied, cast out demons, or even doing miracles in the Lord God’s name. For there will be many of these folks to whom the Lord Jesus will turn to on the Day of Judgment and declare, “I never knew you; depart from me you workers of lawlessness.”
If you love God you’ll keep his commandments and his greatest commandments are to love Him with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. The knowledge that is love of God is expressed in deeds of service to others, clothes for the needy, visitations to the prisoners, food for the hungry, and a cup of cold water in His name. This is not to say that the hungry, naked, or prisoner can’t or don’t have love, but just as with other forms of knowledge, love too has degrees and expressions of itself contingent upon various factors including ability. The starving person may not have the opportunity to share food with another starving person and this fact of circumstance wouldn’t negate whether or not they love God. In like fashion, one could point out that a child loves their parent in a different manner than the parent loves the child.
In the end, those that claim that we can only know by reason or empiricism have not only ignored the realities of faith and hope, but the greatest of them all: love.
Thus spoke Gregory the Great, “AMOR IPSE NOTITIA EST”
(Love itself is a form of knowledge)!
