First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity

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Summary: An excellent book on the trinity ,the family ,and the church
Review: A practical guide to understanding the trinity. This book starts off by talking of the three types of families, then talks about how the family resembles the trinity. The process where the husband and wife become one in marriage and conceive a child is the embodiment of the trinity. The book goes on to talk about the covenants God has made with his people, and the New covenant Jesus made through the church, then it talks about the love of God and living a more Godly life. The last part of the book talks about the similarities of the family and the church. This is another excellent book by Scott Hahn and has given me a deeper understanding of God.

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Summary: A fine book with a number of profound and intriguing points
Review: Scott Hahn's "First Comes Love" is, overall, a very fine book. It is a Trinitarian treatment of biblical theology that focuses on sacrificial self-giving as the mode of divine life that is to be replicated in the life of the church and to transform family life. "Family" is the dominant idea, encompassing the divine Trinitarian family, nuclear and extended human families, and the church. Within this overall theme, Hahn makes a number of intriguing specific points:

1) He sets things up by pointing out that Adam was not to be alone but was called into family life. When Jesus comes, however, He calls people "away from their primal families, their tribes" toward participation in the divine family. (At some points, Hahn expresses this using the language of nature and supernature, which strikes my ear as a dissonance.)

2) He has some profound points on Sabbath, points that bear much more extensive meditation and study. The covenant name, Yahweh, he points out, does not appear in the creation account until after the Sabbath, and he uses this common observation to highlight the fact that the Sabbath is already at creation a sign of covenant. As he puts it, with the Sabbath, "something has changed in the relationship between God and creation. Most especially, something has changed in the relationship between God and His highest creation. . . . As a result of the seventh day, the day of the oath, God lives in covenant, a family bond, with humankind. God is not just our creator but our Father."

On the one hand, I want to say that a covenant relationship exists from the moment of the creation of Adam. Covenant is not something added to Adam's life as such. (Hahn, I think, disagrees; and I sense the presence of a nature/supernature framework intruding again.) On the other hand, the sudden use of the covenant name in 2:4 is striking, and perhaps suggests some kind of formalization of covenant relationship with the Sabbath day. Perhaps, though, the use of the covenant name serves to introduce the work of the sixth day (2:4 begins a new section in Genesis), a point that would support the notion that Adam is CREATED always already in covenant with God, rather than created and THEN brought into covenant with God.

3) Hahn points out that the serpent uses a plural verb in the temptation of Eve, confirming that he is addressing both Adam and Eve. Further, he suggests that the serpent's assurance that "You shall not die" if they eat the fruit implies the opposite as well: "You shall die if you do not." Pointing out that the Hebrew word for "serpent" describes a dragon, he describes the temptation scene this way: "if the serpent was indeed a monstrous beast, and if Adam did indeed dread death, then suddenly we can understand our forefather's silence. He feared his own death. Moreover, he feared physical death more than he feared offending God by sin. He stood by quietly while Eve continued in conversation with the beast. He stood in silence while the serpent issued his veiled threat."

4) And this very fine formulation of covenant: "Every covenant required a sacrifice symbolic of man's total self-giving. For a covenant is not a contract; it is not an exchange of goods. A covenant is an exchange of persons. One person gives up his former self, his former identity, to be accepted into a new family."

Not unexpectedly, there are some typically Roman Catholic turns in the argument that I object to. But to repeat, overall this is a stimulating and helpful book.

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Summary: The beauty & coherence of the Catholic faith for lay people
Review: The remarkable thing about Scott Hahn's own brand of high-street theology is that it loses nothing in quality or depth. Since his conversation from hard-core Protestantism, Hahn has devoted himself to explaining the beauty and coherence of the Catholic faith to ordinary lay people. And with his infectious enthusiasm he certainly has a talent for uncovering richness of Church doctrine hidden in Scripture. But that's not all. Often, as in First Comes Love, he probes new depths, his obvious love of the Word of God leading him to insights that are, as Aidan Nichols observes in the foreword to this book, both wholly original and wholly orthodox.

The most revolutionary theory Hahn promulgates in First Comes Love is the idea that there was something left of the divine image for the man and woman to bring to completion themselves, a life-giving sacrifice. Sacrifice, Hahn argues, is the only way humans can imitate the interior life of the Trinity.

Hahn's ideas do not remain merely theoretical. In the second part of the book he brings his theology home, quite literally, with an honest discussion of how this self-giving love works practically in the family; it is a slow and gradually learned process. He includes a brief glance at the celibate vocation, as providing no less an opportunity for self-giving than married life, but this could perhaps be treated at greater length.

Hahn embarks on some bold but cautious explorations into the identity of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in a chapter devoted to the Holy Spirit. Leaning on the Scriptures and the writings of various saints and theologians, he incorporates Mary's maternity into this vision of the Spirit. This chapter demonstrates just how responsible Hahn is as a theologian. He openly and most willingly submits all his findings to the judgment of the Magisterium.

Hahn writes personally as always, with his trademark wordplay, painful or ingenious according to your taste. His theology is both profound and highly accessible, suited to those unused to reading academic works. All credit and indeed thanks to Hahn for cashing in on the fact that the Truth is simple.

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Summary: Deep & engaging, this is Hahn's best & most important book
Review: This is arguably Scott Hahn's best and most important work in print to date. In previous books, the popular speaker and theologian has traced the theme and reality of covenant in Scripture ("A Father Who Keeps His Promises") and examined the covenantal nature of the Church's liturgical worship ("The Lamb's Supper") and Mary's spiritual motherhood ("Hail, Holy Queen"). Now, in "First Comes Love," Hahn plunges even more deeply into the supernatural foundation of the New Covenant -- the Trinity -- and shows how the Triune God is the source and sustainer of both human families and the Church, the family of God. Hahn shows how the Trinity, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church" describes as "the central mystery of Christian faith and life," is inexahustible but not unknowable.

Beginning with courtship and marriage, and building on the theme of family and love, Hahn moves on to the Incarnation and then ascends to an extended consideration of the God Who is family, covenant, and love. Covenant -- the complete gift of self to another -- is illuminated by the light of the Trinity, in which the three divine Persons eternally give themselves to one another in total love: "Covenant is what God does, because covenant is Who God is." Hahn then masterfully shows how the Incarnation, the Church, and the family logically flow from the reality of the Triune life of self-gift and life-giving love.

Written in a popular and personal style, the book clearly communicates the brilliant, but often dense, writings of Pope John Paul II pertaining to family, love and sexuality. This is particularly evident in Hahn's depiction of the Fall, when Adam and Eve refused to sacrifice their natural desires for the greater, supernatural good. Sacrifice is the way to God; it "is the only way that humans can imitate the interior life of the Trinity. For God is love, and the essence of love is life-giving. Sacrifice, then, became the essential mark of all subsequent covenants between God and humankind."

Insightful, engaging and spiritually challenging, "First Comes Love" demonstrates that Hahn has few equals when it comes to explaining the complex riches of the Catholic Faith -- without watering them down or dulling their power and potency. There is no greater vocation than to be a true child of God, and "First Comes Love" is a fine articulation and explanation of that precious truth.