Love's Limits in Paul of Tarsus and Seneca the Younger

Bibliographic Data

ID3535579
AuthorsBrendan Case (0000-0003-4277-8075, Harvard University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume15
Issue10
Pages1169
Publication date2024-09-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel15101169
OpenAlexW4402841703
LanguageEN
References cited36

This paper argues that we can get a better grip on the divergences and convergences between Paul and Seneca on the ethics of love than those on offer in the large and growing literature comparing the two by distinguishing their attitudes to two broad and conceptually distinct families of love, which Tyler VanderWeele has described as "contributory love" (which desires that the good of the beloved be promoted for its own sake) and "unitive love" (which regards the beloved as a good to be enjoyed in one's own life). I argue that debates over whether Seneca and Paul had the more universal ethic of neighbor love are largely a distraction; the two are fundamentally in agreement about the scope of love, although Paul's thinking in this area is shaped in fundamental ways by his conviction that the whole cosmos is defined to be eventually and finally united and so conformed to the resurrected and glorified Christ. Rather, Paul's true difference from Seneca on the ethics of love lies instead in the importance he affords to unitive love; for Paul, the flourishing life does not consist simply in virtuous activity but also requires appropriate union with one's beloveds, paradigmatically with God in Christ and with Christ's body, the church. Seneca and Paul would each have accepted Sigmund Freud's observation that "we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love". Seneca, however, would have taken it as a caution against attachments to anything whose loss might cause us to suffer, while Paul, by contrast, would have taken it as a statement of our condemnation to suffering "in this present evil age" (Gal. 1:4), in which we must love what we will inevitably lose

Ancient history · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classical Philosophy and Thought · History · Medicine · Surgery

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