| | So I was reading Christianity Today and came across something that I've never heard before despite taking an entire class on St. Augustine: in the Confessions and the City of God he refers to lust [and sin] as "disordered love."
Interesting and fascinating idea. Why is it disordered? Isn't love the virtue of all virtues? How can it be disordered?
There is an idea of a natural created [metaphysical] order. Things have their proper place and value in the metaphysical order. Ordered love is virtue; disordered love is vice. For Auggie, love that seeks its ultimate happiness on something lower in the order -- like any finite, created thing is automatically disordered. And out of this disorder comes a wealth of human pathologies.
On the highest end of the order scale is what he called the "Summum Bonnum," Latin for the "highest good." And it is out of that backdrop that Auggie says "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."
I like this. The language of disorder and restlessness. Isn't that so true? The idea of a natural design to things -- that God has set as Creator. Of linking human happiness -- not to three-legged chairs but, instead, to something it was always meant for. Even created for. The Highest Good. What would it look like for the world to really see God as the Highest Good? Of course, he's more than just that, but what a fantastic descriptor of Scriptural realities like Rom.8:28.
Now for the tough part.
Application question --> can my love for my wife be disordered love? How about for my children? For ministry? For an experience of God? None of these things -- good as they are -- are metaphysically capable of providing lasting joy. And it is a fair warning to us that our attempts to do so will lead to a restlessness that can take us to dark sides of human existence.
I think the bible calls this idolatry -- setting something finite in the place of the infinite. (This takes us to Tim Keller's idea of sin). Auggie is saying all this pre-Jon Edwards, pre-C.S. Lewis, pre-John Piper.
God, bring us back to you as the Highest Good in the world and the Highest Good FOR US. You are love; bring your bride back to an ordered love, and the satisfaction that comes through obedience to your order.
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| | Posted 3/30/2009 11:16 PM - 38 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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