Love Basics for Catholics: Illustrating God’s Love for Us Throughout the Bible is Professor John Bergsma’s fourth contribution in a series of books intended for lay readers on biblical topics. Over the course of 10 chapters, he paraphrases select Scripture passages to illustrate how love and marriage’s centrality in the Bible, from beginning to end, is a primary key for understanding the history of salvation.

Discussing the passages in the biblical canon’s order, Bergsma begins with the Genesis creation accounts of the cosmos and of Adam and Eve (chapter 1). This is followed by the sinful rejection of the created order that culminates in the flood (2). God’s redemptive plan in Abraham and Sarah’s relationship (3) leads to the (marital) covenant between God and His bride, Israel, at Sinai (4). Bergsma uses the positive examples of Boaz and Ruth from the Book of Ruth (5) and of Solomon and his bride in the poetic Song of Songs (6) to contrast the prophetic books’ rebukes of Israel’s infidelity with the foreseen redemption (7), all of which comes to a head in the New Testament. From the Gospels, Bergsma chooses most passages from John where Jesus is presented as the Bridegroom (8), who, in Ephesians, gives His life for His bride, the Church (9), culminating in a vision of the wedding of the Lamb and New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation (10). The eleventh chapter draws together the previous chapters’ major themes, concluding the book with a synthesis of divine biblical love and its lessons for life in the Church.

Bergsma proposes that creation’s goal is the marriage covenant between God and man, in which man is created to participate in divine love in the context of marriage, family nd the Church. Humankind spurned God’s love early and often. Yet divine forgiveness and man/Israel’s repentance culminate in the divine-human wedding feast, which features the divine trait of hesed, or faithful, steadfast love. Bergsma also connects chapters by revealing typological relationships between the Old Testament figures and the events involving Jesus and the Church.

Biblical passages are frequently interpreted in light of the Church’s tradition. For example, Bergsma adverts to Catholic teaching on the Trinity, love and the Church’s nature. Endnotes are few, but there are quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Calcutta, Pope St. John Paul II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Chapters conclude with a lesson on the moral life, including marriage as an indissoluble union of one man and one woman, chastity’s meaning and importance, polygamy and incest’s dangers, openness to life in marriage, the problem of artificial contraception, priestly celibacy’s purpose and fruitfulness, the theology of fidelity (hesed) and the necessity for forgiveness.

Written in simple prose and colloquial language, Love Basics for Catholics includes Bergsma’s characteristic stick-figure illustrations that make his writing easy to read and digestible.

Matthew Genung is the Ruth J. and Robert A. Conway Foundation Chair in Biblical Studies at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology.

Love Basics for Catholics: Illustrating God’s Love for Us Throughout the Bible by John Bergsma, Ave Maria Press (2023), 160 pages; $16.95

This article appeared in the November 2023 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.