Herein is Love / A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Love in Its Bearing on Personality, Parenthood, Teaching, and All Other Human Relationships.
DiscoverReligion & SpiritualityHerein is Love / A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Love in Its Bearing on Personality, Parenthood, Teaching, and All Other Human Relationships.
“God created man to live in relation with the world of things, with himself, and with his fellow men, and to live in these relationships in such a way that he will … grow in his relationship with God,” writes Dr. Howe in this meaningful book. He describes the true significance of Christian fellowship and how it can come about and exist. Living responsibly by giving ourselves to one another—parent to child, child to parent, pastor to congregation, congregation to one another, church to the world—
This book was born out of a living encounter with the members
of the Christian Education Conference to which I lectured
at the American Baptist Assembly at Green Lake, Wis., in August
of 1958. As I stepped to the speaker’s rostrum to begin my first
lecture to that group, and my first to so large a group of Baptist
lay people, I wondered whether I as an Episcopalian and they as
Baptists had images of each other that would help or hinder our
communication. I shared with them my question and learned
later they had been asking themselves the same question. I explained
that I had prepared myself to speak to them in the hope
that through me some of the truth of God would be heard by
them, and I explained also that their lives were to be their preparation
for hearing what I had to say; that is, that I hoped they
would work as hard to hear me as I would work to make myself
understood. They responded in good spirit, so that the Spirit of
God spoke through and to all of us.
I describe this occasion because it produced the experience and
context out of which the present book appeared. Herein Is Love
is, I believe, an outward and visible sign of the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit experienced on that occasion; and I offer it as a means
of opening to others the possibility of participating in this fellowship
of the Holy Spirit.
The theme of the book grows out of that experience: As the
love of God required incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth in order
that it might be received by us, so the Word of God’s love in
our day calls for persons in whom it may be embodied. The
church, as the embodiment of divine love in human relationships,
has tremendous responsibilities and opportunities in our modern8
culture. The old and familiar biblical symbols and stories do not
always communicate their meanings to men today, and we must
find a language that does. The language of the lived life of both
man and God is the one that we shall use here in an attempt
to open to us the meaning of the life of man and of God.