N.F.S. Grundtvig og kærligheden til næsten

Resumé

In this paper the conception of Christian love to neighbours
and fellow human beings is analyzed within the sermons of the Danish
theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872). In his sermons Grundtvig
persistently expresses the importance of the value of fatherliness. The
Christian person should thus act in a strongly fatherly way towards his
neighbour. Grundtvig criticizes popular ideas of his own time of the nature
and essence of Christian neighbour love, and he distinguishes
sharply between a true and a false sort of Christian love. According to
the sermons of Grundtvig, only a responsible and fatherly, or even patriarchal,
way of loving can be a true form of Christian love. These findings
break with quite a few common assumptions in the research literature.