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Is Christian love utterly selfless? A short defence of St Thomas Aquinas's conception of self-love Open Access

St Thomas Aquinas interprets the biblical command “Love your neighbour as yourself”, to mean that I should love myself more than my neighbour. My self-love is the model for my love of neighbour, and for Aquinas, “the model exceeds the copy”. The prioritising of self-love seems at first contrary to the call to Christian love, since the central image of Christ crucified propounds a concept of sacrificial, unselfish love. Indeed, Aquinas’s view is contrary to that of other Christian writers, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, who claims that the essence of Christian love is a kenotic self-emptying. In this article I will provide a short defence of Aquinas’s understanding of Christian love, suggesting that the relation to the self is crucial in informing how one relates to others, and implying that ‘selfless’ actions cannot be separated from some form of ‘self-love’.

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Creator: Targett, Stephanie ¹
Contact person: Targett, Stephanie ¹
Data collector: Targett, Stephanie ¹
Data curator: Targett, Stephanie ¹

¹ Durham University, UK

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Keyword

Aquinas
Christianity
Self-love
Theology
Neighbour

Subject

Self-acceptance--Religious aspects--Christianity

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ark:/32150/r18336h193j
doi:10.15128/r18336h193j

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)

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Durham University

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