In her essays, she critiques humanism as the source of giving primacy to humanity in love rather than persons...

In her essays, she critiques humanism as the source of giving primacy to humanity in love rather than persons, and calls such a love unchristian and actually impossible (God loves us as individuals, knowing each intimately, and commands love for one's "neighbor" and "the least of these" and "one another", not love for humanity, which could never be truly sincere or intense). This ideological primacy, she feels, is why communists could so shamelessly butcher persons for the sake of humanity. This got me thinking about the Filioque: in Catholicism, God's essence produces (dual procession here is about the Spirit having one principle--Latin for origin or source--in the Father and the Son, according the RCC Catechism) the Spirit's existence (or person), and since the Father and Son have one essence, they produce the Spirit together (Saint Photius the Great, in Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, famously argued that if the Spirit's existence is produced by the Father's and Son's essence, that would mean the Spirit is produced by his own essence unless his essence is different from theirs). This established a very firm primacy of essence over person the west (in Orthodoxy, the Spirit's existence is produced by the Father's existence--"hypostasis" in Greek--not his essence), which unfortunately wasn't reversed until the advent of existentialism, which, unfortunately, being an outgrowth of humanism (which replaced God as locus with humanity as locus), replaces the locus of humanity with the locus of self.

Dude weed lmao

>(God loves us as individuals, knowing each intimately, and commands love for one's "neighbor" and "the least of these" and "one another", not love for humanity, which could never be truly sincere or intense).
Another example of how amazing and awesome the bible is

Yup!

This sounds cute but it's not really humanly possible. God is cool and all-knowing so he can do it probably but humans are not.
It's not humanly possible to know all people intimately so it's not humanly possible to love everyone equally. That means that if we have to choose we will value the lives of those we perceive we are like better than the lives of those we perceive we are less like.
The only way to love "the least of those" is to abstract the common elements in all people. Thus we will come to value that which is the lowest common denominator as "human".

You love those you encounter equally. To love those you aren't even aware of is, of course, impossible (hence why she is somewhat critical of giving to faceless needy). You love the person for being God's image.

But people can only function in a structured society because they can think abstractly of groups of people.
But if you couldn't feel "love" for all people then is it for example OK to steal strangers' food to feed your own familiy? The average person would be instinctively morally repulsed by the though. Is that wrong?
People would die to protect their home town or home country etc. Is it not because they "love" people they don't even know?
Is it not as good to give to the faceless as it is to give to people you know if you think it will actually benefit them? I mean really?

Youre beyond the shortsighted christian concept of compassion. Just wanted you to know that.

Go read Darkness at Noon by Koestler

>spirit, existence, essence

These words don't mean anything to me.

You don't steal because it is defying God.

Humanity is human essence.
Existence is a particular person.
Spirit is the invisible but real.

>reading women
Mistake 1

>you love the person for being God's image
Precisely. You know, it's kind of ironic because God is, as you pointed out, an abstraction of "human". Still
>abstract love can never be sincere or intense
she goes.

Read a book

this isnt going to help him understand.

These terms aren't exactly dictionary material, in my experience everyone has a different idea of what they "are" but there is enough cross-over between peoples definitions that you can work with them.

This order of abstraction isnt something you can toss into a logical equation to work out, its all ambiguous as fuck but that doesn't make it not real

Seriously?
>It's not humanly possible to know all people intimately so it's not humanly possible to love everyone equally.
How does A imply B here? Love requires no knowledge. We don't 'choose' to love based on any factors other than it being of Christ's nature to do so.

OP, this is similar to Tolstoy's thought in Kingdom of Heaven is Within You. Basically, love as defined by communists and even modern liberals is an abstraction of self-love: I love myself because life is cool, so I should love those around me as myself, and those around them, and so on, until it reaches the 'highest' tier, that of the political party, the state, or finally, 'all humanity'. Unfortunately, there's not enough self-love in us to stretch to that extent, so this will never work.

Tolstoy's own words:

>"A man loves himself (his animal personality), he loves his
>family, he even loves his native country. Why should he not love
>humanity? That would be such an excellent thing. And by the way,
>it is precisely what is taught by Christianity." So think the
>advocates of Positivist, Communistic, or Socialistic fraternity.

>It would indeed be an excellent thing. But it can never be, for
>the love that is based on a personal or social conception of life
>can never rise beyond love for the state.

>The fallacy of the argument lies in the fact that the social
>conception of life, on which love for family and nation is
>founded, rests itself on love of self, and that love grows weaker
>and weaker as it is extended from self to family, tribe,
>nationality, and slate; and in the state we reach the furthest
>limit beyond which it cannot go.

>The necessity of extending the sphere of love is beyond dispute.
>But in reality the possibility of this love is destroyed by the
>necessity of extending its object indefinitely. And thus the
>insufficiency of personal human love is made manifest.

>And here the advocates of Positivist, Communistic, Socialistic
>fraternity propose to draw upon Christian love to make up the
>default of this bankrupt human love; but Christian love only in
>its results, not in its foundations. They propose love for
>humanity alone, apart from love for God.

>But such a love cannot exist. There is no motive to produce it.
>Christian love is the result only of the Christian conception of
>life, in which the aim of life is to love and serve God.

DUDE MENTAL GYMNASTICS LMAO

>Love requires no knowledge.
Precisely. But OP claims it does.

>thinks that christian thought is mental gymnastics
>browsing Veeky Forums, a cesspool of pseuds in a perpetual circle jerk of mental gymnastic ideas

hmmm, what about OP claims that knowledge is requisite to love? loving each person as an individual doesn't imply that knowledge of the individual is needed. For instance, I could __know__ that the same-ol' panhandler at the corner is really just faking his misery to make money for drugs, or I could see a completely strange face begging for money in a strange city. In either case, I should love them as individuals; knowledge has nothing to do with it. More than that, external circumstance, I would argue, does not even get at what it means to 'know' someone.

>pseud calling other people pseuds

That's rich

>You love those you encounter equally. To love those you aren't even aware of is, of course, impossible (hence why she is somewhat critical of giving to faceless needy). You love the person for being God's image.
Here we assume knowledge to mean being "aware of" others' "humanness" i.e that they were "made in God's image". That is an abstract quality. Precisely because of that I can love the panhandler or a random beggar because I "know" that they were made in God's image even without "actually" knowing them i.e without having any "practical" "individual" knowledge about them like for example being aware of their physical existence.
If loved the panhandler despite of my "practical" "individual" knowledge that he is a shitty person wouldn't I be putting my abstract understanding of his "humanness" or that he is "in God's image" over my "practical" "individual" knowledge of him.
If I were to put my individual knowledge of him above my abstract knowledge of him I would think "Why should I care about this asshole?".
Of course God has "intimate" knowledge of everyone so he probably knows that the panhandler is not really a bad guy and just had a hard life so he can love him as an individual.
I am not God though and I have no way of having such intimate knowledge of a random guy on the street so if I want to fulfill my duty to God to be a kind and merciful person I'd have to go and prioritize the abstract qualities I randomly attributed to this guy to the factual knowledge I have of him.

Nice response. I appreciate your definition of 'knowledge,' and you basically fleshed out what I had in mind when saying
>More than that, external circumstance, I would argue, does not even get at what it means to 'know' someone.
I'd pretty much agree with your post, then. I think you've nicely (if implicitly) laid out the difference between love-as-love-of-Christ and love-as-abstraction-of-biological-self-love, thus reinforcing the view of St Maria, no?

But, can Adonai Elohim defeat Madara Uchiha?

The most compassionate thing to do would be to treat everyone equally. The easiest way to treat everyone equally is by non-egotistical amoral disregard for their own personal autonomy and will to live, subjugating potential judgement that might be made (e.g. a moral dilemma like 'I would rather save my mother than a stranger from a burning building', is now is not clouded by unfair judgement in the pursuit of pure self-interest, nor by arbitrary deontological moral standards, nor by utilitarian pursuits of doing the most beneficial thing).

Amorality without regard for self-interest is true love for humanity.

>you've laid out the difference between love-as-love-of-Christ and love-as-abstraction-of-biological-self-love
Are you talking about the distinction between "recognizing as human" vs. "knowing intimately".
I think they are both based on biological self love. It's just that the first is abstract and the second is not.
>reinforcing the view of St Maria
Have I? She would be the love-as-love-of-Christ type, right?
But I said I think that Christian love is inherently abstract because it requires us to love other people by virtue of being human and not because we "know them intimately" which is against the argument in OP that
>giving primacy to humanity in love rather than persons is unchristian and actually impossible
I mean, Jesus sacrificed himself for people he didn't actually know, because they were "human".
Not that I think she actually contradicts that.
After all she condemns communism because she feels sorry for the people it sacrificed, an abstract group of people she doesn't know "intimately". So I can't agree that you can't feel compassion or love for an abstract concept. But to what extent you can do that would depend on to what extent you can attribute to this abstract concept individual human qualities because the concept of humanity is a complex one.
As I said in the beginning of the post "recognizing as human" vs. "knowing intimately" are two sides of the same coin or our understanding of "human" is based on our experience of knowing humans intimately.
So her argument would become that communists didn't attribute to the concept of "humanity" human qualities i.e. didn't have enough knowledge of what "human" is.

If this is what she meant I can agree with her.

Isn't this just limiting compassion and love to everyday limits? I much prefer the buddhist view of universal compassion, which is something I've come to understand through reading and meditation. Her ideas are beautiful and I really appreciate them. They are good guidance for stopping oneself thinking that a collective is the only important thing. But there is another layer, that both the collective and individual are important, after all the collective is made of individuals. Love for everyone means love for every individual, not treating all of humanity as one person.

>Italian Catholic humanists create some of the most beautiful paintings of all time and immortalized certain women in iconic paintings with unprecedented technique
>this bitch only gets a meme-tier doodle
Really makes you think

Trinitarianism---interesting as it is---is a garbled mess, always tripping on itself, and having not once solved any of the philosophical issues that actually matter to people. The Jews and Muslims offer a FAR more honest theology that covers all the same bases concerning mysticism and union with the divine and without any of the weird pseudo-pagan appeasement. Christians don't even understand what it means.

>God commands love for one's "neighbor" and "the least of these" and "one another," unless it means not being cozy with the powers that be
>Implying linguistic hoodoo changes reality
>Implying communists have ever been interested in loving their bourgeois neighbors and their shills
>Christians, with their amnesiac-aided arrogance, talking at any given length about "butchers"

top kek

>she critiques humanism as the source of giving primacy to humanity in love rather than persons

Its a shame she didnt read Stirner because he is probably the only thinker who takes this line of thought to its conclusion without hypocrisy .

You see the points highlighted in which show that just like the humanists she is yet another in the long line of thinkers who can only see the spooks and reification in the ideologies of others but are blind to their own.

ignorant post

>You love man, therefore you torture the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men.

Yes, everything that is not here and now is not Divine. The Eschaton is not an emergent thing or place that will come into being if Phenomena roil hard enough. It is the state of Mind that turns away from the theater of the external world.

That's why you should love your neighbour and not that one guy riding on a horseback in Outer Mongolia. We are calles to be Christians in the midst of the world, not one world far away.

>the apocalypse is just a metaphor, bruh