I wrote this article about eight years ago, and it first appeared in the May/June 2007 issue ofThis Rock magazine (now called Catholic Answers Magazine). It was one of three articles on the theological virtues and apologetics, the other two being "An Apologetic of Hope" (Oct. 2006) and "Why Believe? An Apologetic of Faith" (Dec. 2007). Consider it a Valentine for all those who believe and all those who are skeptical.
Love and the Skeptic | Carl E. Olson
"The greatest of these," wrote the Apostle Paul, "is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). Many centuries later, in a culture quite foreign to the Apostle to the Gentiles, the singer John Lennon earnestly insisted, "All we need is love."
Different men, different intents, different contexts. Even different types of "love." You hardly need to subscribe to People magazine or to frequent the cinema to know that love is the singularly insistent subject of movies, songs, novels, television dramas, sitcoms, and talk shows—the nearly monolithic entity known as "pop culture." We are obsessed with love. Or "love." With or without quotation marks, it’s obvious that this thing called love occupies the minds, hearts, emotions, lives, and wallets of homo sapiens.
Yet two questions are rarely asked, considered, contemplated: Why love? And, what is love? These aren’t just good questions for philosophical discussions—these are important, powerful questions to use in talking to atheists and skeptics, for the question of love will ultimately lead, if pursued far and hard enough, to the answer of God, who is Love.
What is This Thing Called Love?
One man who spent much time and thought considering the why and how of love was Pope John Paul II. "Man cannot live without love," he wrote in Redemptor Hominis, his first encyclical. "He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it" (10).
That is a statement both St. Paul and John Lennon could agree with, for it states something that is evident to the thoughtful person, whether Christian or otherwise: I need love. I want to love. I am made for love.
But what is love?
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