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ix x preFaCe iam dedicating this book “to the teachers.” Likely, I am doing that in some sense because I am reflecting on nearly five decades in the classroom, now that I find myself there no longer. But more importantly, the reason for this dedication is the reason for my writing at all: I believe there is something of value to be taught. Teaching matters! That has been the conviction animating my previous books. I realize that when I write what I see to be true, both the writing and the seeing are launched from and located in the particularities of my personal existence. That humbling recognition has become increasingly clear to me. But I continue to believe that human beings do exist in a basic sense together and that truthful insights can be usefully shared even though none of us has Truth in his or her pocket. I believe this as a human being, and also as a Christian. I believe that despite/because of our differences, we can help each other as we try to get some sense of what life on this planet is about. Thus, it made sense for me to be one of the six perpetrators in a Christian Dogmatics, regarding which the editors said there were at least seven positions represented by the authors. Most recently, this cluster of convictions came to expression in Speaking of God, a sketch or broad summary of basic Christian teaching. The swath there was perhaps unseemly wide, as was the work in the Dogmatics. In any case, I sense now a need to pare things down in order to lift up the “one thing needful,” so I write here of Love. x preFaCe This writing is about God. I have long been dissatisfied with systematic theology textbooks that offer an almost endless parade of divine attributes. I have pressed my students to identify a “category proper,” a centering affirmation in terms of which other attributes are to be understood. Christians, pastors certainly, need to have a grasp of what is at the heart of things. The biblical witness does speak in such a way in asserting that “God is love” (1 John 4:16).1 Eberhard Jüngel has it right when he writes, “To think God as love is the task of theology.”2 Moreover, on the Christian reading of things, to speak of the love of God is to speak of a God who has created beings in God’s image. Thus, in these pages, I am seeking to understand how love “works” for the Creator and the creatures. What power does love have? How does it create effects? These questions are not the private property of people of faith. All of us humans, we who seek love and to love, will be glad for whatever light can be shone on this topic. Accordingly, I hope these pages may make a contribution for people inside and outside of the churches. Inside those churches I direct my writing not only at people with formal theological education. Indeed, I am heartened when Jonathan Strandjord, charged with supervising the work of theological education for a large Lutheran denomination , writes that “first of all, the church, its institutions, and teaching theologians need to shift from acting as if theological education is something primarily for pastors, church professionals, and academics to seeing it as for the whole people of God.”3 To get some purchase on the nature of love’s power, I seek help here from two major voices from the past two centuries: Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Alfred North Whitehead. They bring us distinctive insights. Kierkegaard will drive us to recognize the stark reality of personal responsibility in the living of a life. Whitehead will unearth the deep fabric of relationships in which the individual faces the chances and choices of life. Another statement my students tired of hearing from me was “Nobody has it all.” I have found it so, and in these pages, I make bold to argue that Kierkegaard and Whitehead need each other, and that we need them together. Love’s power can be understood only through an exploration of the reality of relational selfhood. I don’t want to leave that understanding up in the air of some abstraction. Love has a struggle, a battle, on its hands. Together these “guides” can help us address that challenge as well, so in later chapters, I write of what love must face: finitude and evil...

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