Some Systematic Theological Issues Concerning <i>Amor Mundi</i>

Abstract This essay addresses some systematic issues confronting formulation of a Christian theological rationale for a) declaring love for the‐world‐as‐a‐whole a moral duty along with the double love commandment (love God and love your neighbor) and b) for construing amor mundi as “care” for the world. It urges that if love is commanded as the appropriate human response to God's ways of loving all that is not God, then what counts as appropriate human “love” for God, neighbor, and world‐as‐a‐whole varies according to both the different natures of what or whom we are to love, on one hand, and the different ways God is said to go about loving all that is not God (e.g., to create, to bless eschatologically, to reconcile when estranged), on the other hand. It urges that of the three, an account of God relating in creative blessing to all that is not God (i.e. “the‐world‐as‐a‐whole”), understood as that “whole” in modernity's “immanent frame” (Charles Taylor), is systematically prior to the other ways in which God relates to all else and alone adequately warrants an account of amor mundi as “care.”