Part Two, A:
VI. Esse (Creatum), Substance, and the Source of Creaturely
Perfection (413)
VII. The Creature as Active Receiver (419)
VIII. Created Esse and the Nature of Relation (427)
IX. The Filial and Spousal Meaning of the Human Person (438)
Part Two, B:
X. John Paul II’s “Hermeneutics of the Gift” (449)
XI. The Legacy of John Paul II (473)

This article develops the sense in which love is basic for human being and acting. Is creaturely being properly conceived as love, that is, as gift? Part One argued that such a claim can be rightly understood only if “giftedness” is a matter of what is first given by God—or better, of what is indeed initiated by the self but only as anteriorly given by God.¹ Granted that the act of both God and the creature is necessary to account for the creature’s original giftedness, the primacy of God’s act is made clear in 1 John 4:10: “in this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.”

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