Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the theme of Johannine love as it occurs in three writers: the proto-Reformer, Gabriel Biel ; the Cappadocian theologian, Gregory of Nyssa ; and the anonymous Syrian monk known to scholarship as Pseudo-Dionysius . It is maintained that Biel, whose works were influential especially among the Lutheran reformers, was the last great representative of a tradition that wove together biblical and patristic teaching on the theme of divine love and its relation to grace. Following a survey of Biel's teaching, the theme is explored in the earlier writers and contrasted with the Neoplatonic and Gnostic treatments.It is argued that while the proto-reformer's idiom is considerably different from the patristic development, his approach to the theme represents a consistent idiomatic interpretation of the Johannine motif of the love of God, one that can be traced through patristic authorities as diverse as Clement of Alexandria and Augustine and later writers ranging from Duns Scotus to Peter Lombard. It is also maintained that this view of love differs from alternative, especially Gnostic treatments in adhering to a relational rather than distantial view of the God and the world