On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Teresa Rupp wrote:
> Are you sure your sources don't refer to God, self, and neighbor? These
> three, in that order, are the "order of charity" (ordo caritatis). There
> is indeed a long and interesting tradition (about which I hope to
> publish). The tradition developed in the context of commentary on Song of
> Songs 2:4, "ordinavit in me caritatem." One strand, beginning with
> Origen, took the proper order of the charity commanded by the gospel to be
> to love first God, then one's neighbors, beginning with those closest to
> you. Another strand, beginning with Augustine's De doctrina christiana,
> specified four objects of a correctly ordered love: God, self, neighbor,
> body.
>From my reading of Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx on this
subject, I would conclude that one cannot simply specify the order as God,
self and neighbor. Aelred explicitly says that one can't do anyone of
these without the other (_Mirror of Charity_) and Bernard, in _On Loving
God_) links all three together in the first step of love. Augustine also
underscores the interrelationship of the three in his homilies on First
John.
But, all of these authors would emphasize that one cannot love God,
neighbor or self without God first having loved us. The love of God is
prior to the other three.
"rectus" in the original quotation need not mean merely a right angle; it
means "righteous" or "just" and thus the original quotation, as Teresa
Rupp _rightly_ points out, could very well refer to a tradition antedating
the _Pelerinage_ with it's geometry imagery.
Dennis Martin
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