Devotion to the Divine Bond
Ah, dearly beloved! Shift your focus to where we stow our blade cleaving division in Loyalty, the sheath to the sword of Willpower. This is an emotional bond and divine covenant, a truth-forged alliance tempered by ethical commitment’s steel. In Eros’s domain, where relationships and Logos dynamics entwine, higher Loyalty tied to the other Honesty virtues binds us tightly to eternal order, a devotion to “aligned bonds” themselves for the sake of order and for the promotion of true bonds generally, transcending most worldly delusions and ignoring remnants.
Loyalty: That Divine Covenant
Structural Virtues Theory reveals Loyalty not as passive tradition adherence but active commitment to sacred unity linking us to one another and the divine. It recognizes creation’s interconnectedness, our souls as God’s designed threads. Loyalty then becomes the epitome of worship, daily devotion honouring relationships as directed by eternal order.
The faithful servant parable (Matthew 24:45–51) illustrates this truth. The vigilant servant, loyal to his master, embodies service virtues. Jesus’s teachings underscore all significance for devotion’s spiritual warfare, true strength has very little to do with individualism or solipsism, rather defensive positions, but communion and service.
Loyalty’s Reflections
Loyalty in Structural Virtues Theory (SVT) is positioned near Ethics, Justice, Courage, Honour, and Willpower, ensuring actions align with ethical responsibility and communal principles of Justice and Honour. SVT describes Justice as the “negating action” reconfirming material exclusivity, upholding sacred bonds against erosion of truth in the internalising errors. In this we transcend legalism, recognising progress or regress in connectedness as action impacting all.
Between the realms of Eros and Logos, these other virtues guide loyalty directing it up, preventing its degeneration into selfishness or arrogance. It demands integrity, upholding faith’s sacred bonds and protecting our trust in the Will of God, even amid personal loss. The soldier in Christ cannot misuse the blade, as then they lose it completely. The soldier must loyally bear and precisely wield this sword in truth, not shrinking away, lest it become a tool of division against the loyal and true, rather than for reconciliation.
Spiritual truth’s battle is relational, actions either upholding or breaking bonds, for purpose in truth. We triumph most through communion and in God’s works, through disciplined virtue-building.