Love believeth all things.—I CORINTHIANS 13:7
NOW abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” which is therefore the foundation of everything, is before everything, and abides when all else is done away with. Love is consequently the “greatest” of “these”; and what is there more perfect to compare love with than faith and hope! But he who is greatest from the standpoint of perfection must also, if I may venture to say so, take upon himself the duty of bringing himself into subjection, and become even more perfect. In a worldly sense a man may sometimes be the most distinguished without being the most perfect, and this exactly constitutes the worldly imperfection. It is true that the greatest man may be able to do what the lesser man can do; and this holds true about love, that it can take upon itself the tasks of faith and hope, and do them even more perfectly.
We shall now consider this thought as we reflect on the theme: LOVE BELIEVETH ALL THINGS—AND YET IS NEVER DECEIVED. We shall first consider what it means when we say that love believes all things, and next, how the one who loves, simply by believing all things, can be assured against every deception. For truly, not everyone who believes everything is therefore a lover, and not everyone who believes everything is thereby assured against every deception—not even faith, if it will believe everything. And even if it might seem that the fact of being assured against every deception is a good for love, an advantage it has, then this meditation would not really be suitable as a subject for consideration in an essay about the works of love: since it is not that The fact of being assured against every deception is a work, a task, entirely synonymous with that of believing all things, so that one can just as unconditionally say that love believeth all things, as it can say that it is never deceived, since they are one and the same thing. It is not as if the action were one thing, and the prudence which guards against a man being deceived were another. It is not from the standpoint of earthly wisdom that love is never deceived; for to love so that one is never deceived is, according to what earthly wisdom says and thinks, the most stupid and foolish thing one can do; moreover, it is an offense to prudence—and therefore it may readily be recognized as belonging essentially to Christianity.
Love believeth all things. Thoughtlessness, inexperience, credulity believe everything that is said; vanity, conceit, self-satisfaction believe all the flattering things that are said; envy, spite, depravity believe all the evil things that are said; mistrust believes nothing at all; experience will teach that not to believe everything one hears is the wisest course; but love believes everything.
Consequently mistrust believes nothing at all; it is the exact opposite of love. Generally speaking, men do not, I suppose, think very highly of mistrust, but still it by no means follows that they have absolutely and unanimously decided to renounce all mistrust unconditionally, or that they have absolutely and unanimously decided to recommend the love which believes everything, unconditionally, Perhaps, strange to say, men prefer to make a compromise, hence a dissident compromise between the mistrust which—a little loving, still believes something, and the love which—a little mistrustful, still has a suspicion or two. Moreover, if someone wished to describe the shrewd secret of mistrust, to array it in the supernatural greatness of shrewdness, of cunning, in the dazzling appearance of sagacity, then it might well tempt many. There might be someone who would cleverly give us to understand that that was just what he had discovered—oproud of his discovery. And in contrast to this, as so often happens to the good, the love, which believes all things, would appear to a great disadvantage, so that many would not even dare to confess that they could wish to be so simple-minded.
What really is the shrewd secret of mistrust? It consists in an abuse of knowledge, an abuse which without further ceremony, in a single breath wishes to attach itself ergo to what as knowledge is absolutely true, and only becomes something else when it is preposterously believed by virtue of this knowledge, something which is just as impossible as it is preposterous, for one does not become a believer by virtue of knowledge. That which mistrust says or talks about is really only knowledge; the secret and the falsity lie in the fact that, without further ceremony, it transposes this knowledge into faith, pretending it to be nothing, pretending that it was something that need not even be noticed. “since everyone who has this knowledge must necessarily decide in the same way’; as if, consequently, it were eternally certain and absolutely decided that if a man has knowledge, then it is also known what conclusion he will reach. The deception lies in the fact that mistrust, by virtue of the disbelief inherent in it, infers, assumes, believes what it does infer, assume and believe, from its knowledge (for the appearance and fallacy is that knowledge causes the mistrust), whereas from the same knowledge, by virtue of belief, a man can infer, assume and believe exactly the opposite. Mistrust says: “Deception stretches unconditionally as far as truth, duplicity unconditionally as far as honesty; there is no absolute criterion of truth or of honesty or of sincerity. So, too, in relation to love; hypocrisy and craftiness and cunning and seduction deceptively extend absolutely as far as love extends; they are able to resemble true love so deceptively that there is no absolute criterion, because with every expression of the truth or with every expression of true love there exists the possibility of a delusion which exactly corresponds to this.” And so it is and ever shall be. Just because existence will test “you,” test “your” love or whether you have love, just for that reason it places truth and deception before you in the balance of possibilities opposed to each other, by the aid of reason, so that now when “you” judge, that is, when in judging you choose, it becomes manifest what you yourself are. Alas, many believe that the judgment is something that takes place the other side of the grave, and this is also true; but one forgets that the judgment lies much closer, that it is going on every moment, because existence is judging you in every moment you live, since to live is to judge one’s self, to reveal one’s self. Just for this reason existence must be so arranged that you may not by the aid of an authenticity of knowledge, evade revealing yourself in your judging or in how you judge. When then deception and truth are placed in the balance of possibilities opposed to each other, then it is decided whether you are suspicious or loving. For perhaps some one says, Even that which seems to be the purest of feelings might still be a deception’’—oh, well, that is possible and will always be possible: “Ergo 1 choose mistrust, or to believe nothing,” that is, he reveals his mistrust.