"Philautia" of course figures in Jonson and in emblems, too. This may be
quite irrelevant, but many many years ago I read a book on the question of
how love of God relates to love of self: *The Mind and the Heart of Love*
was, I think, the title--by the then famous Father Martin Darcy, who
talked on existentialism to a large audience at Harvard in the mid 1950s
wearing a clerical collar way too large for him and we thought it was on
purpose to give himself a more ascetic and gemlike flame look. We were all
very impressed, and not just by the collar and the British accent. His
book struck me at the time as quite beautiful. Anne.
> Dear all (and please forgive the cross-posting),
>
> The early English Protestants, William Tyndale in particular, frequently
> distinguished between self-love and love of God, with the former
> alienating
> one from God. Tyndale's point, repeated endlessly in his works, is that
> Catholicism is essentially one long act of self-love, since it involved
> worshipping the products of one's imagination, and, as Tyndale writes,
> "nothing bringeth the wrath of God so soon and so sore on a man, as the
> idolatry of his own imagination." Not coincidentally, Tyndale translated
> Luther, but the anti-imagination animus is mainly his own.
>
> Peter C. Herman
>
> At 11:41 AM 3/1/2005, you wrote:
>>for those of you on FICINO, a repeat. (with JS's blessing, per HB's
>>request)
>>
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 10:59:28 -0500
>>From: Julie Sutherland <[log in to unmask]>
>>Reply-To: "FICINO: FICINO Discussion - Renaissance and Reformation
>> Studies"
>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Luther on self-love
>>
>>Dear James,
>>
>>It's maybe a bit later than you were hoping for, but Thomas Wright
>>addresses the connection between self-love and obsessive love for
>> another,
>>in his publication, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (later edition,
>>1604). He links the transcendent and the physical when he states that
>> the
>>affections of our minds cause a modification of our bodily humours, which
>>in turn causes a physical alteration that affects human beings both
>>physically and mentally (cap.ii.p.7). In fact, he attributes such mental
>>'passions and affections' to self-love, which he calls 'the nurse,
>> mother,
>>or rather stepdame of all inordinate affections' (cap. iii. p.11). He
>>likens the war raging inside oneself, between God-directed love and
>>godless self-love, as a divide between the sublime place of Jerusalem and
>>the moral horrors of Babylon: 'the love of God buildeth the cittie of the
>>predistinate; selfe-love the cittie of the reprobate' (cap. iii. p.14).
>>
>>I hope that's a bit helpful.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Julie Sutherland
>>
>>
>>
>>"James W. Broaddus" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Valued Members of the
>>Lists,
>>
>>First, apologies for cross-listing,
>>
>>Next, were there discussions among sixteenth century English theologians
>>in which self-love was separated from Christian love in a way comparable
>>to the way Luther separated them? As Anders Nygren observes in his _Agape
>>and Eros_, for Augustine and even more for medieval theologians,
>> self-love
>>provides a way to Christian love of neighbor and to love of God. But
>>Luther "brands selfishness, self-love, as sin and as the essence of the
>>sinfulness of sin. . . . He knows no justifiable self-love" (p. 710).
>>
>>Again, from Nygren: Luther likened the Christian "to a tube, which by
>>faith is open upwards, and by love downwards. All that a Christian
>>possesses he passes on in love to his neighbour. He has nothing of his
>> own
>>to give. He is merely the tube, the channel, through which God's love
>>flows" (p. 735).
>>
>>I realize Luther was not a popular figure among the English, but
>>discussion in England of Luther's ideas began shortly after they were
>>published.
>>
>>My thanks in advance,
>>
>>Jim Broaddus
>>
>>James W. Broaddus Emeritus, Ind. State. Route 3 Box 1037 Brodhead, KY
>>40409
>
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