This book explores the way that the study of love creates a “common ground” in religion. For the contributors, common ground is not to be understood as a minimal core of belief, but as a space which scholars from Islam, Judaism, and Christianity occupy in order to consider together the meaning and practice of love.

This book explores the way in which the study and practice of love creates a common ground for different faiths and different traditions within the same faith. For the contributors, “common ground” in this context is not a minimal core of belief or a lowest common denominator of faith, but a space or area in which to live together, consider together the meaning of the love to which various faiths witness, and work together to enable human flourishing. Such a space, the contributors believe, is possible because it is the place of encounter with the divine. This book is the fruit of a Project for the Study of Love in Religion which aims to create this space in which different traditions of love converge, from Islam, Judaism, and the Christianity of both East and West. Tools employed by the contributors in exploring this space of love include exegesis of ancient texts, theology, accounts of mystical experience, philosophy, and evolutionary science of the human. Insights about human and divine love that emerge include its nature as a form of knowing, its sacrificial and erotic dimensions, its inclination towards beauty, its making of community and its importance for a just political and economic life.

1. God is Love, but is Love God? Towards a Theology of Love as Knowledge

Paul S. Fiddes

Love in Islam

2. Love in the Holy Qur’an

HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan

3. The Journey of Love and the Challenges of the “Self”: Rūmī’s View in Islamic Context.

Leyla Tajer

4. Bridal Symbolism, Eroticization of Divine Love and Friendship Among Medieval Female Mystics in Islam and Christianity

Minlib Dallh

Love in Judaism

5. Judaism’s Commandment to Love: “A Well-Tempered Banality” or the Messianic Trumpet’s Blast?

Melissa Raphael

6. Harmony of Mind and Body: Theories of Love in Rabbinic and Mystical Literature

Naftali Rothenberg

7. Tensions within the Study of Love in Religion: Reflections Arising from Conversation

between Jewish and Christian Scholars

Eleanor McLaughlin

Love in Christianity

8. Transfiguring Love in Byzantine Theology: The System of St. Maximus the Confessor

Smilen Markov

9. “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth”: Erotic Love in the Western Christian Mystical Tradition

Louise Nelstrop

10. Sacrifice and the Self: A Christian Mystery of Love

Julia T. Meszaros

Common Philosophical Traditions about Love

11. Love and the Limits of Platonic Desire

Fiona Ellis

12. The Universal and the Individual: Aristotle on Substance and Friendship-Love (Philia)

Mircea Dumitru

The Study of Love in Religion

13. Theological Reflections on “Christian” and “Human” Love

Werner G. Jeanrond

14. Love as Belonging: Towards an Interdisciplinary Understanding of the Human

Oliver Davies

15. The Potentialities of Love in Social, Political and Economic Contexts

Paul Weller