WE're God's Love?! (hides under bed)

A classmate shared this Wikipedia quote about Peter Lombard (1100~1160), whose writings were very influential to medieval theology:

Peter Lombard's most famous and most controversial doctrine in the Sentences was his identification of charity with the Holy Spirit in Book I, distinction 17. According to this doctrine, when we love God and neighbor, this love literally is God; we become divine and are taken up into the life of the Trinity. This idea was never declared unorthodox, but few theologians have been prepared to follow Peter Lombard in his audacious teaching.

Lombard's words are:

It has indeed been said above and shown by sacred authorities, that the Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son, by which They love one another and us. Moreover, it must be added to these, that the very same Holy Spirit is the Love or Charity, by which we love God and neighbor. When this Charity is so great in us, that it makes us love God and neighbor, the Holy Spirit is then said to be sent and/or to be given to us; and he who loves the very love, by which he loves (his) neighbor, in this very (thing) loves God, because Love itself is God, that is, the Holy Spirit.**

You'd have to go far to find a more humbling thought. What do you want to make of your love for others, if it's God's love? Make it more pure, less self-interested? More demonstrative and palpable? Greater in scope, for more of God's children? More in quantity--and how in the world do we do that?








**This is from the Franciscan Archive, which apparently has the only existing translation of the Book of Sentences into English. Hint, hint, enterprising graduate students . . .