Pojęcie miłości w encyklice Jana Pawła II «Dominum et Vivificantem»

Abstract

The notion of love is one of the basic notions of the contemporary Trinitarian theology. It is also in the encyclical letter “Dominum et Vivificantem” of John Paul II. This letter presents the mystery of the Holy Spirit and at the same time it is an important commentary to the biblical statement “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8.16). The Pope distinguishes two aspects of that love: the essential love and the personal love. The essential love (amor essentialis) is “shared by the three Divine Persons” (DV 10a). The personal love (amor personalis) is “the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son” (DV 10a). These statements allow to formulate some basic ontological enunciations. The essential love is a personal manner of being a gift for somebody, a being as a total gift in which the person is ready to pass to somebody everything that is communicable in him or her. This manner of existence, characteristic of a divine being, we can call prosistentia (prosistence), a new term made from Latin prosistere (to protrude, to stick out). This prosistence would be different from proexistence, because proexistence means a human created “existence for” (somebody) which is free, accidental. Meanwhile, the prosistence would be a mode of being “for somebody” resulting from its very nature. The prosistence as the mode of being of the Absolute is condition for proexistence. The prosistence is also condition for every being as related to another one, of every being as a part of a whole. The prosistence describes the being of God better than the Thomistic ipsum esse subsistens. The being of God as ipsum esse prosistens takes into account the revealed truth - “God is love” - and that He “exists in the mode of gift” (DV 10a). The prosistence as indefinite love becomes its particular, concrete realization in the personal love in which “being a gift for” becomes a gift “for” a particular, beloved person, “for this” particular person. The Holy Spirit is a particular salvific revelation of the personal love that exists in the “depths of God” (cf. DV 39). This does not mean that only the Holy Spirit is the personal love. Also the Father is the personal love in his self-giving to his beloved Son. In the same way, the Son is the personal love when he totally gives himself to the Father, which is revealed in his obedience unto death (cf. DV 39c). The personal love makes the Divine Persons distinct In each of them, it is different The difference is in the “for” (pro-) of their “being purely for” (ipsum esse prosistens). In every one of them the “for” is different, because it is related to another person: the personal love of the Father is “for” the Son, who is the love of the Father; the personal love of the Son is “for” the Father, who is the love of the Son; and the personal love of the Holy Spirit is “for” the Father and the Son, because “not only is he the direct witness of their mutual love [...], but he himself is this love” (DV 34). That is why every Divine Person is witness to the other one, not to himself (cf. Mt 3, 17; Jn 4, 34; 14, 26). The analysis of the encyclical letter Dominum et Vivificantem reveals some attributes of the personal love which constitutes each of the Divine Persons. The personal love is a radical love, it is a fatherly love, then it is also a vulnerable and mutual love. It is fatherly love because it is a source of everything that exists and because it preserves and protects all beings. It is a radical love because it consists in a total sef-giving without retaining anything that is communicable. Next, the personal love is vulnerable because it is exposed to rejection as engaged in the human salvation. Finally, it is mutual love because the total self-giving causes equal radical response. To sum up: it is important to stress that the encyclical letter Dominum et Vivificantem of John Paul II contains many important ideas for the ontology of love and points out the new perspectives for the theological reserch in the Trinitarian theology as well as in the philosophical and theological anthropology.