Faith and Critical Reason on Love

Faith and Critical Reason Paper Love is an essential element for existence in the world. There are many different ways to love, but as C.S. Lewis described in his book, The Four Loves, “ To love at all is to be vulnerable.” In order to love, one must take a chance. In order to make a change in the world, one must also take a chance. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did exactly that: his reliance on love aided him in his mission to “change” the world. King’s understanding of love aided him to believe in non-violence resistance. In this paper, I will discuss the influence love had on King. It seems simple to say that love can solve any problem. However, King found many impediments while trying to get people to understand the impact of the love for God as well as the love for one another. “King 's concept of the person’s image of God takes on much deeper resonance when we recall King, the personal philosopher, as well as King, the Baptist minister, had worked out for himself a philosophical position in which personality, finite and infinite, was regarded as the ultimate reality of the Universe. So that the God was not to be viewed as merely impersonal force, but as a volitional consciousness, a person concerned about human beings and involved in human history.” Love in God is a different type of love that King described as his influence for change. Love in God was not disregarded in the least bit, but the key theme for King’s philosophy of a person was agape.
King defined agape, as “distinct from Eros and Philia — romantic love and friendly affection — as an understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. Agape is disinterested love.” King described agape as an overspill of God’s love within humans. God’s love stands as the supreme unifying principle of life. King believed that when we love in the sense of

Bibliography: Clive Staples Lewis, The Four Loves, Reprint. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1991) Albert J Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., (Harper Collins, 1991) Plato, and Christopher Gill, The Symposium [ 3 ]. Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., (Harper Collins, 1991), 19. [ 16 ]. Plato, and Christopher Gill, The Symposium. London: Penguin, 1999. Print, 13.