Modernity will, thus, use economic metaphors to help us track the “inflow” versus “outflow” across the boundary of the self. Healthy love in modernity is making sure our “love bank” gets enough “deposits” to offset the relational “investments” we make in others. But it is very difficult to see how this modern version of “love”—exchange across the boundaries of autonomous egos—bears any resemblance to the triune love of God and Christian agape. And it is not hard to see why. The modern notion of the buffered self is simply a manifestation of what Martin Luther called incurvatus in se, the self
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