The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DeuteronomyHarper, Andrew
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy
Harper, Andrew
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
And not only thus does our text emphasise individuality. Love with
all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soul is possible only
to a fully developed personality; for, as Rothe says, "We love only
in the measure in which personality is developed in us. Even God can
love only in so far as He is personal."[48] Or, as Julius Muller
says in his _Doctrine of Sin_, "The association of personal beings
in love, while it involves the most perfect distinction of the I
and Thou, proves itself to be the highest form of unity."[49] Unless
other counteracting circumstances come in, therefore, the more
highly developed individuality is, the more entirely human beings
are determined from within, the more entirely will union among men
depend upon free and deliberate choice, and the more perfect will it
be. In being called to love God men are dealt with as those who have
attained to complete self-determination, who have come to completed
manhood in the moral life. For all that could mix love with alloy,
mere sensuous sympathy, and the insistent appeal of that which is
materially present, are wanting here. Here nothing is involved but
the free outgoing of the heart to that which is best and highest;
nothing but loyalty to that vision of Good which, amid all the ruin
sin has wrought in human nature, dominates us so that "we needs must
love the highest when we see it." The very demand is a promise and a
prophecy of completed moral and religious liberty to the individual
soul. It rests upon the assurance that men have at last been
trained to walk alone, that the support of social life and external
ordinances has become less necessary than it was, and that one day
a new and living way of access to the Father will bring every soul
into daily intercourse with the source of all spiritual life.
[48] _Theol., Ethik_ i., p. 515.
[49] _Doctrine of Sin_, vol. i., p. 114.
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