Richard Rohr Meditation: Love Is the Nature of Being
Love is the very meaning of Creation. Many of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, along with many of the saints and mystics throughout history, said that God created because, frankly, God needed something to love and something that could love God freely in return. I imagine if you have children you’ve experienced this. When you welcomed your child into this world, your fondest desire, perhaps at an unconscious level, was just to love this little one in every way possible. Hidden behind that is the deep desire that “someday my child will love me back in the same way that I have loved him or her.” There’s nothing wrong with that. Of course, the very way you love your children becomes their empowerment to love you back.
.. At the heart of Scotus’ theology was the doctrine of the primacy of Christ. God is absolutely free and therefore if he [sic] creates it is because he wants to create. He wants to create in order to reveal and communicate his goodness and love to another. Because God loves, he wills that his creation should also be infused by love.
.. The incarnation in Scotus’ theology is the whole purpose of creation. Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a creation designed for love, not a divine plumber come to fix the mess of original sin. [2]
In other words, we settled for Plan B, or Jesus as a mere problem solver after we messed up. The Good News is that the Christ is Plan A from the very beginning, and Jesus came along much later to make it all visible and loveable and attractive. Salvation is a historical, social, and universal notion, which is made very clear already by the Jewish prophets. But we made Jesus very small and then the good news of salvation became very small too.