Forgive me for being slow to comprehend. For I'm not sure I understand why you think it is vague. Please explain why you hold this opinion.
As I have already stated, it attributes behavioral characteristics to love, personified, rather than to a person motivated by a spirit of love. It also ignores the fact that these behavioral characteristics could be manifested by a spirit other than love.
I apologize for being confused. For it appears the words Paul wrote actually are what he was thinking, and those words in 1 Corinthians 13 appear me to be chrystal clear. But I suppose I'll change my mind after you explain why they're only clear as mud to you.
I have already done so several times. That's enough.
You see, after our discussion, it's now apparent to me that Paul is either using personification or is speaking quite literally. As mentioned earlier, the words, "Love is patient. Love is kind..." and so on only make sense if they are describing a person: "[He] is patient. [He] is kind..."
But love is not a person. And by literal definition, patience is patience. And kindness is kindness. And neither of them
IS love as Paul asserts.
As we discussed, Paul couldn't mean love is patience and kindness, since he didn't use the words patience and kindness. Moreover, he couldn't mean love is being patient and being kind, for he didn't use the word being.
And therein lies the confusion. Language is an imprecise means of conveying thought. Always has been, and always will be. And we humans are always going to be limited in our ability to use language to convey our thought. Not to mention the fact that our thoughts are often somewhat confused, to begin with. These are just the facts of the human condition.
The most logical inference left me is that Paul meant what he wrote, I think.
I'm sure he did. But did the translators understand what he meant when they translated it? … Several times and into several succeeding languages? And did Paul understand what he meant to say as clearly as you seem to be insisting?
That's a lot of 'ifs', there.
Now that seems to leave me only two likely options:
1. Love is symbolically like a person who is kind.
or
2. Love is actually a person who is kind.
But I think you had a third option, which I don't fully understand, and which deserves further consideration. Please continue.
The third option is that love is a spirit that inhabits a person's 'being', and that when it does so, causes them to exhibit the behavioral characteristics identified by Paul's list. I do not know that Paul fully understood this from the words we are reading. But then, I don't really care if he did or didn't. The text has enough poetic inference for me to grasp the ideal, and that's good enough for me.
