amor fati or Kierkegaardian works of love,
does make the God of love more manifest.
But Levinas and Derrida remain Jewish
and do not make the leap of love that
would let them love Jesus as the Messiah.
Derrida argues for a messianicity
without a Messiah and Levinas does not
see any fulfillment of hesed and ahava
in an agape that would take them further.
Levinas and Derrida can greatly help us
to understand hesed and ahava and how
far they can go in the direction of agape.
Derrida could be seen as developing a
preparation for the gospel, which makes clear
how far he will and will not go in loving.
He does develop a psychology of loving ours
without loving all and of rescuing his cats
but not of loving all flesh as eternal.
Levinas thinks carefully and often about
the difference between Jewish and Christian love.
He does develop the idea of a third but
without thinking of God as a Trinity of Persons.
Derrida and Levinas both think deeply
about glory and the glory of love and at Brock
we had a conference on Derrida’s Glorious Glas.
As Kenneth Itzkowitz says in his article
in the proceedings of that conference Glas
might be thought of as The Tolling Knell,
The Mournful Knell and the Tolling-Mournful Knell.
It has to do with the mourning process
and with turning sorrow into joy through glory.
If one goes through the mourning process
in a successful way one can be healed of
one’s grief and even get in touch with
the spirit world as did the Shamans.
So the question that Derrida and Levinas
raise is about the difference between
Jewish love and glory and Christian love and glory.
We can now consider love in the Hebrew Bible
and love in Matthew and see how Jewish
love prepared the way for the good news of agape.
Hesed and Ahava
Nelson Glueck’s wonderful book, Hesed in the Bible,
which was published in 1927, is so helpful
in clarifying the kinds of love in the Bible.
In the 1967 edition there is an introductory essay
by Gerald A. Larue that treats eighteen responses
to Glueck and that are very enriching.
Glueck shows how there are three basic kinds
of hesed in the Hebrew Bible for as loving conduct
it can have secular, religious, or divine meanings.
Its main importance as a forerunner of agape
is the divine meaning that begins with God’s
promise of an everlasting love to David and
his house, which appears in 2 Sam 7:14–16:
I will be his father and he shall be my son.
When he commits iniquity, I will chasten
him with the rod of men, with the stripes
of the sons of men; but I will not take away
my hesed from him, as I took it from Saul,
whom I put away from before you. And
your house and your kingdom shall be made
sure forever before me; your throne shall
be established forever.
In the New Testament Jesus is seen as the son
of David and his kingdom of love or agape
is seen as the fulfillment of this kingdom of hesed.
Matthew sees Jesus’ altruistic agape as extending
this hesed to the entire human family and
the followers of Jesus are to be missionaries
who bring the Good News of God’s love to everyone.
This promise makes sense of suffering, which
can be seen as punishment bringing us to God.
Ahava is quite different from hesed
as we see in Deuteronomy 6:5
Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one,
the only Yahweh. You must love Yahweh
your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your strength.
Ahava is very different from hesed in that
hesed is a duty to do good to the other whereas
ahava is a felt desire to be with and is
what we mean by the various kinds of love
such as affection, friendship, eros, and agape.
The root ahava is used well over 200 times
in the Hebrew Bible and is an emotional feeling
that is contrasted with any sort of hatred.
Ahava has to do with our love for God
