Agape and Personhood. David L. Goicoechea

      his duty to love the people we see

      (3) to love’s renewing repetition that is a duty to remain

      in love’s debt to one another for Job and to Regina

      (4) and from Plato to accepting truth’s paradox

      (5) and from Hegel to holding fast to objective uncertainty

      in a true love that believes all things and yet is never deceived

      (6) and from Adam and Eve’s anxiety to a love

      that hopes in all things and yet is never put to shame

      (7) to the Works of Love that do not seek their own

      in the wisdom of the logic of the like for like

      (8) and which delivers us from the Sickness Unto Death

      by leading us through the journey of self reconciliation

      which lets us live on all three floors of our house

      (9) and by the Training in Christianity that lets us abide

      in the love that never takes offence at any offence.

      Kierkegaard clarifies this with nine key definitions of (1) love,

      (2) person, (3) the stages on life’s way, (4) the double movement leap,

      (5) repetition, (6) truth, (7) sin, (8) despair, and (9) taking offence.

      St. Paul

      For Christ did not send me to baptize

      but to preach the Good News

      and not to preach that in terms of philosophy

      in which the crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed.

      The language of the Cross may be illogical

      to those who are not on the way to salvation

      but those of us who are on the way

      see it as God’s power to save . . .

      While the Jews demand miracles

      and the Greeks look for wisdom

      here we are preaching a crucified Christ;

      to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over

      to the pagans madness

      but to those who have been called

      whether they are Jews or Greeks

      a Christ who is the wisdom and power of God.

      For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom

      and god’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

      (1 Cor 1: 17–25)

      So the Good News of agapeic reconciliation is contrary

      to any human philosophy and works with the logic of the Cross

      which in order to reconcile with other logics is contrary to them.

      Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy in treating the absurd logic

      of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and pentecost

      goes beyond the old logics of the categorical syllogism,

      the disjunctive syllogism and the hypothetical syllogism

      to the modal logic of contingency and freedom that has been

      revealed by the Cross of Christ in the power of sacrificial love.

      Paul shows how the problem of evil can be the mystery of suffering

      for when we offer our suffering with the suffering of the God-man

      the evil of suffering paradoxically becomes God’s loving suffering.

      Logic for the Greeks is related to the verb legein which means

      to gather the parts into an orderly pattern and reasonable whole.

      Logos is translated into Latin as ratio and into English as reason.

      Logic in its basic meaning is related to theology because it is based

      upon the necessary law that something cannot come from nothing.

      What we call collecting in English is in Greek a syllogism.

      It is the gathering of the logos of legein together or into

      a collection of parts with each other into a coherent unit.

      Logicians arrange their reasoning into syllogistic forms

      based on three kinds of whole part meaning or relation.

      An example of a categorical syllogism is: (1) Whatever is

      caused is caused by another. (2) St. Paul is caused.

      (3) Therefore, he is caused by another. An example of

      a disjunctive syllogism is: (1) Either St. Paul is caused

      or not caused, but not both. (2) But St. Paul is caused.

      (3) Therefore, he is not not caused. An example of a conditional

      syllogism is: (1) If St. Paul is caused, then he is caused by another.

      (2) But he is caused. (3) Therefore, he is caused by another.

      The Greeks thought that everything is held together in necessary

      relationships based on whole part relations and logic makes

      clear the necessary order of Being (ontology), of the world

      (cosmology), of God (theology), of the living thing (psychology),

      and of knowledge (epistemology). The faith of the Hebrew people

      believed in a God that defied this logic of necessity by

      deifying the Divine Will that could freely bring something

      into existence out of the nothingness of a formless void.

      But, when that omnipotent creator absurdly became a creature

      and was both all powerful and all weak at once, that defied

      both Greek logic and the Hebrew faith and when Paul experienced

      the weakness of God that is more powerful than the power of men

      he had to make sense of both the Greek and the Hebrew irrational.

      The basic miracle in which the Hebrews believed had to do with

      The Mosaic Covenant and The Davidic Promise by which

      they were delivered from slavery in Egypt and as God’s

      chosen people given a law that continued to save them, and

      by which they were promised a land flowing with milk and honey

      and that they would be a nation more numerous than the stars of the sky

      and that they would be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

      The Mosaic Covenant gave them their meaning from the past

      and The Davidic Promise gave them their meaning for the future.

      Abraham, their father, kept his faith as he was tried over

      and over again with threats to all three parts of the promise.

      But then came the worst when God seemed to contradict himself

      and demand that he sacrifice Isaac in an absurd move which

      would keep God from keeping his promise if Isaac through whom

      the promise was to be fulfilled would be cruelly taken away.

      But Abraham had faith and God came