This is so helpful, and it actually makes me wonder (kind of as a human more than a theologian). If that’s true within God, the Spirit as the love of Father and Son, what does that love feel like toward us? How does it arrive in a human life? I imagine Augustine is doing something way more ontological here, but Scripture seems to keep pu…
This is so helpful, and it actually makes me wonder (kind of as a human more than a theologian). If that’s true within God, the Spirit as the love of Father and Son, what does that love feel like toward us? How does it arrive in a human life? I imagine Augustine is doing something way more ontological here, but Scripture seems to keep pulling that love outward into human experience, human perception, human limits. I’m curious how you think about that layer.
Man, Augustine goes in that direction! Sort of, at least. He thinks we have a psychological analogy to God within us (mind, memory, will = love).
In my view, I would say that love of God shed abroad in our hearts (that is, the Holy Spirit indwelling us) means at least two things: (1) we *feel* new desires and (2) we now unite Spiritually to Christ's flesh through whom we know the Father and all other believers.
So the feeling is not sensational per se, since the Spirit is an invisible Spirit; but its effects are felt through our new desires which in turn do provide sensations of pleasure (and sometimes pain)!
This is so helpful, and it actually makes me wonder (kind of as a human more than a theologian). If that’s true within God, the Spirit as the love of Father and Son, what does that love feel like toward us? How does it arrive in a human life? I imagine Augustine is doing something way more ontological here, but Scripture seems to keep pulling that love outward into human experience, human perception, human limits. I’m curious how you think about that layer.
Man, Augustine goes in that direction! Sort of, at least. He thinks we have a psychological analogy to God within us (mind, memory, will = love).
In my view, I would say that love of God shed abroad in our hearts (that is, the Holy Spirit indwelling us) means at least two things: (1) we *feel* new desires and (2) we now unite Spiritually to Christ's flesh through whom we know the Father and all other believers.
So the feeling is not sensational per se, since the Spirit is an invisible Spirit; but its effects are felt through our new desires which in turn do provide sensations of pleasure (and sometimes pain)!