Love of God

[9][10] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion wrote: "There is nothing greater or more blessed than the Love of God!

It gives healing to the sick, balm to the wounded, joy and consolation to the whole world, and through it alone can man attain Life Everlasting.

"[11] The Old Testament uses a rich vocabulary to express the love of God, as a concept that appears in many instances.

[13] However, the exegesis of the love of God in the Old Testament has presented problems for modern scholars.

[14] The love of God appears in a number of texts (e.g. Hosea 1–3, and then in Ezek 16 and Isa 62) but resolving the references to produce a consistent interpretation has been challenging and subject to debate.

Jonathan Edwards said his chief obligation was to raise the affections of his congregation as high as he could toward God in volume 4 of the Yale edition of his works, entitled “The Great Awakening.”[15] Both the terms love of God and love of Christ appear in the New Testament.

[17] In polytheism, that which is loved by the gods (τὸ θεοφιλές) was identified as the virtuous or pious.

However, Eric Voegelin used theophilos to mean "lover of God": "In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates describe the characteristics of the true thinker.

When Phaedrus asks what one should call such a man, Socrates, following Heraclitus, replies that the term sophos, one who knows, would be excessive: this attribute may be applied to God alone: but one might well call him philosophos, a lover of wisdom.

Hindu writers, theologians, and philosophers have distinguished nine forms of bhakti, which can be found in the Bhagavata Purana and works by Tulsidas.

Rabia Basri, the famous 7th century mystic, is known as the first female to have set the doctrine of Divine Love.

[23] According to Sultan Bahoo, Ishq means to serve God by devoting one's entire life to Him and asking no reward in return.