In the mid-20th century, Albert Camus changed that to I act, therefore I am. This expression became the calling card of those who called themselves existentialists. But in the late 1960s, William Sloane Coffin, a congregational firebrand of a college chaplain at Yale University, reformulated this concept to amo, ergo sum. I love, therefore I am.
For Coffin, it was by the fullness of love in one's life that one comes to understand who we are. He believed that if your heart is full of fear, you won't seek truth, you'll seek security. But if a heart is full of love, it will have a limbering effect on the mind. In the end, Coffin believed that love measures our stature. The more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself. Coffin could not have been more right. This is Dr. Scott Morris for Church Health.
