Love

Authors

Nancy M. Martin, Chapman UniversityFollow
Joseph Runzo, Chapman University

Files

ISBN

9780195170214

Publication Date

1-2-2008

Publisher

Oxford University Press

City

New York, NY

Keywords

love, religion, emotion

Disciplines

Buddhist Studies | Christianity | Comparative Methodologies and Theories | Ethics in Religion | Hindu Studies | Islamic Studies | Jewish Studies | Other Religion | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Comments

"Religious iconography is replete with paradigmatic images of love: Krishna playing his flute to entice the love of devotees, the passion of Jesus dying on the cross out of love for humankind, and the benevolently extended hand of the bodhisattva of compassion, who is the male Avalokiteshvara in Indian tradition, becoming the female figures of Kuan-yin in China and Kannon in Japan. Love lies at the heart of the religious life, as a principle mode of relationship between the human and the transcendent, as a guiding motivation for the moral life, and, for many, as a defining attribute of the transcendent. The Latin root of 'religion,' the verb religare, means to re-bind or bind together, and for those who follow the 'way of love' rather than the 'way of the intellect,' bhakti yoga rather than jnana yoga, that relational bond is love. For those following the 'way of love,' shared understandings of the way the world is ( world views) and shared views of the way the world ought to be (normative moral principles) may form the cognitive structure of this bond, but it is love that secures, animates, and empowers this bond."

Recommended Citation

Martin, Nancy M., and Joseph Runzo. “Love,” in Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion, edited by John Corrigan (310-332). New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Copyright

Oxford University Press