Which Is Greatest?

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But don’t you need to know which love saves and how to obtain this love. In a way wisdom is required.
 
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Put it this way - Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were fully as worldly wise as Gandhi or Lincoln or Martin Luther King. None of then could have done what they did without a large measure of wisdom.

What made the difference was love - lack of which steered the first group towards evil and destruction and having of which steered the second group towards building up and doing good for their fellow humans.
 
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Lee1 said:
Wisdom is also a cerebral thing, we learn wisdom but love I see a far harder thing to feel in my opinion. Agape is easier, a charitable disposition towards ours and wishing them only well, but actual love is tricky.

Even the love I felt for my parents was conditional after all, if I’d been beaten or starved I may well have still felt a need for them but not love. Love is a complex thing compared to wisdom.
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So, are you making a distinction between the feeling of love and a loving action? If so, I agree.
 
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Yes, I remember studies on altruism being very interesting, psychology.

I also think others here are right when they are saying basically that wisdom without love is not good. I’d say wisdom without love is severely depleted. However who can put hand on heart and say that they love unconditionally and universally? Parents can say that of the love they have for their children but universal unconditional love? I think perhaps very few human beings have been able to achieve that.
 
LilyM said:
Put it this way - Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were fully as worldly wise as Gandhi or Lincoln or Martin Luther King. None of then could have done what they did without a large measure of wisdom.

What made the difference was love - lack of which steered the first group towards evil and destruction and having of which steered the second group towards building up and doing good for their fellow humans.
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Yeah, no. I mean, I tend to think of knowledge as necessary for but insufficient to be wisdom. For example, Hitler said, “If you tell a lie loud enough and often enough, the masses will believe it.” This is certainly true, but is it wise to propagate lies on a mass scale in the first place? Hitler had understanding of human psychology, but I wouldn’t say he was wise! Right?
 
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Lee1 said:
Yes, I remember studies on altruism being very interesting, psychology.

I also think others here are right when they are saying basically that wisdom without love is not good. I’d say wisdom without love is severely depleted. However who can put hand on heart and say that they love unconditionally and universally? Parents can say that of the love they have for their children but universal unconditional love? I think perhaps very few human beings have been able to achieve that.
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Agreed! None but Christ, perhaps many saints, and a few blessed Catholic Thomists! 🙂
 
Actually the other Saint Bernard had the dog named after him.
 
Oh, sorry. I lack wisdom about a good number of saints! Thanks for letting me know. 🙂
 
Lee1 said:
Wisdom is also a cerebral thing, we learn wisdom but love I see a far harder thing to feel in my opinion. Agape is easier, a charitable disposition towards ours and wishing them only well, but actual love is tricky.
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I tend to think (and perhaps I’m mistaken) that both wisdom and love are thoughts, rather than actions.

Wisdom, as you said, is cerebral. For example, one discerns what God’s desire would be and the right thing to do in a specific circumstance. “Knowing what God would have me do” might be a precise but simple way of describing wisdom.

Love, I think also exists in the mind and soul - not as logical discernment but as emotional compassion. “Feeling what God would have me feel” might be a precise but simple way of describing it.

In both cases, actions are neither wisdom nor love. A wise act is correctly called an act of wisdom because it is caused by wisdom, not because it is wisdom. A loving act is correctly called an act of love because it is caused by love, not because it is love.

That is perhaps the best way I can explain to you what I have in mind when I use the words wisdom and love in this discussion. But do you think my opinion unwise?
 
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I’m going to have to think about this for a while. As an aside I assume you’ve heard of occums (possibly mispelt) razor? I personally try to keep things simple and I do believe that complications are the hallmark of man kind.
I’ll think about this if you don’t mind.
 
Yes.
Wisdom and love are both cerebral in origin. However wisdom is based on knowledge and knowledge can be flawed or erroneous or inferred wrongly and in short can be faulty.
Love by which I refer to what we commonly call love is not prone to such flaws surely?
 
Of the two, wisdom and love, only love can be a verb.
 
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Lee1 said:
Yes.
Wisdom and love are both cerebral in origin. However wisdom is based on knowledge and knowledge can be flawed or erroneous or inferred wrongly and in short can be faulty.
Love by which I refer to what we commonly call love is not prone to such flaws surely?
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If you are saying the emotion of compassion is never inandofitself flawed, you might be right! Regarding wisdom, I guess I’m defining it as correctly discerning God’s desire for a specific situation. Such accurate discernment would exclude the errors in reasoning you mention. Such errors would result in unwise decisions, I believe, and what is unwise can never be wisdom, although it can be knowledge. Make sense?
 
Lee1 said:
I’m going to have to think about this for a while. As an aside I assume you’ve heard of occums (possibly mispelt) razor? I personally try to keep things simple and I do believe that complications are the hallmark of man kind.
I’ll think about this if you don’t mind.
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Oh, you’re fine! Thanks for the thoughtful conversation. 🙂
 
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