Recently in The Triune God Category

"We are meant to interpret our humanity, our male-female relations, in the light of the Trinity. God is love. Love always implies communion between persons, and that is what we see supremely in God. The Father loves the Son in the communion of the Spirit. The Son loves the Father in the communion of the Spirit in their continuing mutual "indwelling" (perichoresis was the word used by the fathers of the church). The Spirit is the bond of communion between the Father and the Son and between God and ourselves. The Spirit is God giving God's self love. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are equally God (autotheoi). But there is differentiation within God - personal distinctions in the Godhead. There is unity, diversity and perfect harmony. It is this triune God who has being-in-communion, in love, who has created us as male and female in that image to be "co-lovers" (condiligentes in Duns Scotus's expressive word), to share in the triune love and to love one another in perichoretic unity. "Then God said, 'let us make man in our image, in our likeness.' ...So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them" (Gen 1:26-27). These purposes of God in creation find their fulfillment in redemption. Therefore, to understand what it means to be in the image of God, one must look at Christ and the new creation in him. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). This does not mean that it does not matter, therefore, whether we are male or female. We do not become unisex. If so, what would be the difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality? There is unity, diversity and harmony which should be reflected in the church. The gospel does not eliminate our gender identity. But as men and women we find our masculine and feminine identity and fulfillment in Christ, our true being in mutual communion."

- James B. Torrance, Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace, (IVP, 1996), 104-105. (HT: Michael Pailthorpe

Richard Creel in Thinking Philosophically: “The pursuit of happiness is not something we just happen to do, as though we could do otherwise; rather, it is our nature to seek happiness above and through all other things. Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant medieval philosopher…reasoned that since it is our nature to seek happiness, therefore we cannot not seek happiness. Here are several closely related statements by Aquinas: ‘Man cannot not will to be happy’; ‘Every man necessarily desires happiness’; ‘The will tends to happiness naturally and necessarily’; ‘Man will happiness necessarily, and he cannot will not to be happy, that is, to be miserable.’

“Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, echoed in the following words the sentiments of Aquainas: ‘All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.’ If…Aquinas and Pascal are correct, then it is our nature to seek happiness, and we can no more act contrary to our nature than a lion or a lizard can act contrary to its nature” (Thinking Philosophically, Richard Creel, 131-32).

The desire to be happy is essentially the desire to love and be loved. At the core of our desire for happiness is the desire to live in a world of love.