💕 On the Conciliatory Spirit in Love, which wins the One Overcome

“Truly, the one who loves is too loving to face the one overcome directly and be himself the victor who savors the victory—while the other is the one overcome. It is indeed simply unloving to want to master another person in this way. With the aid of the third that the loving one has introduced between them, they are both humbled. The one who loves humbles himself before the good, whose lowly servant he is, and, as he himself admits, in frailty; and the one overcome does not humble himself before the loving one but before the good. But when in a relationship between two people both are humbled, then there of course is nothing humiliating for either one of them. How dexterous love can be, what a jack-of-all-trades!”

— Works of Love (VIII), Kierkegaard

Before I attempt - perhaps in vain, but nevertheless with earnestness - to describe the miraculous nature and method of Love, I would be foolish if not to begin with St. Paul’s famous eulogy on Love: 

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Although we as Christians are instructed to live with all lowliness and gentleness (Ep. 4:2), we are nonetheless called to overcome evil (Rom. 12:21), and what is more, to become more than conquerers (Rom. 8:37).

But how does Love overcome evil? 

Kierkegaard inserts a new, but unspoken word to expound this multi-faceted victory required of Love, and that is the winning of the one overcome. The way the loving one turns the heart of the other towards the good is with such gentility, humility and such self-mastery that not a single misspoken word, a miscalculated glance, or anything disturbing would ever arise! For so it is, that any single escaped wisp of superiority that would communicate itself between the two could be fatal and ruin everything for a long time.

With most things we are taught, we see the teacher as more knowledgeable than us and accept that this teacher is superior to us. But with regards to human imperfection, this same dynamic will build resentment between the advisor (the loving one) and the other. The one who is corrected is required to humble himself, but for the teacher this step is unncessary, since he is the one correcting, and it is in this that we find all the difficulty of reconcilement between the loving one and the other person.

With love, one is able to correct another whilst still appearing humble and not appearing in the slightest way superior to the other! With love, one can be corrected and shown their wrong without any shame or resentment, and rather becomes the force to spur them in seeking correction and change for the good. As Kierkegaard puts it:

The one who truly loves, who could not find it in his heart at any price to let the beloved girl feel his superiority, communicates the truth to her in such a way that she does not notice that he is the teacher; he lures it out of her, places it upon her lips, and thus hears not himself say it but her, or he helps the truth forward and hides himself. Now, is it humiliating to learn the truth in this way?

It is one thing to overcome an opponent and show him his wrong, but it is quite another thing to win your overcome opponent as though you were his friend or brother!

What is this gentleness, and what is this humility? Kierkegaard highlights how the lover humbles himself before the other:

But if the one who loves is himself the modest one, if he hardly dares to lift his eyes to look at the one overcome, how then can it be humiliating to be the one overcome! A person is indeed shy when another person looks at him, but if this other person, who by looking at him would make him shy, is himself ashamed to do it, then of course there is no one who looks at him. But if there is no one looking at him, there of course cannot be anything humiliating either in humbling oneself before the good or before God.

What beauty! How often we laud ourselves upon others to show them our knowledge, and with what disdain do we regard the ones we correct! Surely if we all strived to attain Love, there would be no desire to assert superiority over others who seek our help, and how careful would we be with our eyes, words and touch! Those people who we are in tension with, how we would then win them, because it is no longer a matter of pride? How persistent would we be in treating those that wrong us, because our love always sought to quench the conflict by humbling ourselves before them?

And to win the one overcome represents how love overcomes evil - and look how it closely this follows St. Paul's text above! Surely to win the one overcome, one requires longsuffering, self-sacrifice, humility, rejoicing in the truth, hope and endurance in all things! It is not loving to overcome evil, but it is all loving to win the one overcome!