POWERINTELLIGENCELOVE

We all know that a perfect love casts out all fear.

That fear is the opposite of love is one of those deep insights that has become a truism. So much so that I found it in a Steven Pressfield historical novel on Thermopylae. He attributed it to Greek rationality, at least in the book. Spartan men discussing the nature of things in a mini agora every night as they marched north. I’m sure he knows its actual source.

The Scripture does not say love though. It says a perfect love.

In what respect does a perfect love differ from an ordinary love? In one of his letters (2 Thes. 1:7) Paul says that power and love and intelligence combined are the opposite of fear.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

A perfect love is a powerful, keen love. Capable of overcoming any obstacle. This makes sense. Love means the power will be used on your behalf. Intelligence means the power will be used effectively on your behalf. Power means the obstacle can be overcome.  If any of those are missing, you would be right to fear.

This sounds something like a virtue synthesis, the synthesis of power and love. My guess is that there are charts I could make along those lines, but I think the reality is that power plus love plus intelligence is itself one primordial virtue that we have separated analytically because when your mind is too weak to understand things whole, you have to begin by breaking them apart. But you must not forget and we often do forget to put them back together again. Powerinteligencelove are one virtue.

There are multiple ways to be deficient in this virtue. Insufficiently loving, insufficiently powerful, insufficiently keen of mind.

The name of this virtue may be the mystery of godliness.
The name of this virtue may be priesthood.

POWERINTELLIGENCELOVE