The Analogy of Love

This book offers an overview of Christian theology organized around the twin themes of divine and human love. Love serves not only as the book's organizational centre but as the central critical principle deployed in the book to assess the appropriateness of theological formulations. The book covers the traditional theological topics - God, creation, sin, Christ, the Spirit, salvation, the church, and eschatology - as well as basic questions of theological method. It seeks to integrate a focus on love throughout. I believe the book should prove of interest because, while love is regularly canvassed as a dominant theme in Christian thought, it has rarely been the focus of Christian theological construction or a constraint on theological formulation. The book seeks to suggest, chapter by chapter, how a given topic relates to the broad theme of love. While I do not attempt to force-fit all of the doctrinal themes the book explores into a single mould, I believe it becomes readily apparent to the reader that love can serve as a fruitful touchstone for theological analysis and construction. The book is written in a way designed to make it accessible to university students and educated laypersons-the body of the text does not attempt in general to engage with arcane scholarly debates. At the same time, it takes positions on controverted scholarly issues, and the methodological approach outlined at the beginning should make it of some interest to academic theologians. Thus, it represents an attempt to communicate with both academic and lay audiences about matters of theological interest.