God and Eros

The Ethos of the Nuptial Mystery

Colin Patterson, Conor Sweeney, Patterson, Sweeney

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781498280136
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What can God and eros have to do with each other? Against Nietzsche's claim that Christianity poisoned eros, God and Eros rereads the mystery of human love as an ecstatic sharing in the mystery of the triune God who is Love. Body, sex, and affectivity, far from being locked in a lower order called "nature, " instead belong to a sacramental order that is permeated by the call to love.In presentations designed to appeal to a general audience, the faculty of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Melbourne, approach this mystery through the lens of St. John Paul II's "theology of the body, " with the goal to both introduce and more clearly illumine its major features. In particular, emphasis is placed on how a theology of the body is not just about "sex." Rather, it is above all about how each and every person--no matter what her state of life--is stamped by the watermark of being-from and being-for. Working within this broader perspective, God and Eros offers the reader a lively, engaging, and at times challenging tour of the full "ethos of the nuptial mystery."

Part I

Approaching the Mystery

chapter 1

The Church and Human Sexuality: An Introduction

most reverend peter j. elliott

Introduction

A specific mission of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family is teaching, with the mind of the Church, that sex per se is good. Preferring the wider term “sexuality,” we interpret human sexuality as part of the creation that God looked upon and saw as “good.” This created reality from the hand of the personal God is intrinsic to marriage and the procreation of children, for from the very “beginning,” God created the embodied person. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27).

Sexuality is therefore all about being a man or a woman, not merely the biological reproductive capacity or the erotic drive or a libidinous instinct. At the center of the creation of male and female is marriage, a created reality from God the Father. Marriage was raised to be a holy sacrament by his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, who is called the Bridegroom of his beloved Church. Sacramental marriage may thus be understood as “eros redeemed.”

In his encyclical on love, Deus caritas est 3–5, Pope Benedict XVI hit back at the assertion of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that Christianity poisoned eros, a view that is widespread today among those secularists who depict Christianity as a sex-hating religion. The pope refuted this opinion in a Christian perspective, honestly admitting problems, but developing the meaning of the word for love that predominates in the Greek New Testament, agape.

Agape is self-giving love, the selfless love often attributed to Jesus Christ, although Jesus also expressed filial love for his apostles; eros in the sense referred to by Pope Benedict XVI expresses the desire to be loved, such as when Jesus repeatedly requested the company of the apostles when he prayed at Gethsemane, or wanted the gratitude of the other lepers he had cured. His love is not otherworldly or ethereal; rather, it is concretely human, which is captured in the Latin equivalent word, caritas (charity). All of us are capable of receiving and giving this kind of love, and eros is redeemed in and through such love.

But Who am I?

This conversation on eros and agape presupposes a Christian understanding of the human person, a Christian response to the basic question, who am I? The understanding of the person or anthropology consistently taught in the John Paul II Institute reflects the teaching of St. John Paul II himself. This approach may be summed up in six principles:

1. The bodily nature of the person;

2. The person as the image God in terms of moral responsibility, sexual difference, and complementarity;

3. The effects of original sin on sexuality;

4. Marriage as the norm for human sexuality;

5. Procreation as inseparable from sexuality;

6. Sexuality as a sacred mystery.

First, the human person is an embodied spirit or an enspirited body. This is the first basic principle. “Bodiliness” is essential to our nature and sexuality is intrinsic to being a living body. Catholics are not dualists, those who see the soul alone as good. The body is good. All its natural functions are good and form part of its intrinsic order, design, and finality. I will return to this question of the body because it is a major challenge.

Secondly, the human person is created in the image and likeness of God. This is the biblical principle. Thus the person, having received the divine breath, is a responsible rational agent. He or she is called to participate in the divine freedom, in the divine creativity of choice, decision, self-direction, and self-awareness. Male and female persons are therefore moral agents. At the same time, in their sexual difference and complementarity, they are called to reflect God by being in harmony with his will, that is, with the moral order he has established within human nature: the Natural Law.

Thirdly, the human person inherits the effects of original sin. Understood as a privation of freedom, the effects of original sin are evident in disordered passions, desires, instincts, and drives; sexuality is perhaps the weakest point of this problem of concupiscence, that is, disordered desires. Because sexuality is such an important part of our created nature, it seems to be a target for the forces of evil. But this is not to say that sexuality per se is corrupted by original sin. As with human nature itself, it remains good; nevertheless it is often disordered, hence prone to misuse, a focus of sin and suffering as well as joy and fulfillment.

Marriage as Eros Redeemed

As a fourth principle, the Church places the Sacrament of Marriage at the heart of her teaching on sexuality. Faithful to the sources of Revelation, she relates all sexuality to marriage and proposes the right use of sexuality in the vocations to marriage or to celibacy or virginity. In different ways these are “spousal” or “nuptial” vocations, and all are fruitful. She also finds the redemption of human sexuality here, in lives lived as a response to a divine call, lives understood as bearing a personal plan and purpose for each one of us.

Therefore, marriage is something deeper than the “remedy for concupiscence” of medieval theologians who relied heavily on St. Augustine before he was corrected by St. Thomas Aquinas. Marriage is a raising up of human sexuality within the sacrament so that sexuality is fruitful in two ways: as grace-filled love and as the means of bringing children into this world within the family. In marriage, sexual union becomes spousal union, the “one flesh” of reciprocal self-giving, of the distinctive interaction of complementarity between the two sexes. The act of consummation in marriage is thus the beginning of self-giving love. It establishes the indissoluble spousal bond (vinculum) and it is exclusive, demanding fidelity until death. True sexual freedom is found in mutual fidelity. This matrimonial focus on sexuality underlines the fifth principle: that procreation is never to be separated from sexuality. As is evident in her teaching on contraception, the Church holds together the two natural meanings of the marriage act, unitive and procreative. They are not to be separated, nor are they to be seen as if they were in opposition to one another. The Church sees the finality of sexual union not in terms of biology, as “reproduction,” but rather as procreation, that is, as a cooperation of spouses with their Creator in transmitting new life to build the kingdom. John Paul II explained this principle in terms of the vocation of a married couple to participate in and give witness to Divine love that is both unifying between the Persons of the Trinity, and between God and humanity, and also fruitful as the Creator of the entire universe. Scripture refers to marriage as an analogy for Divine love. Marital love participates closely in Divine love and a deliberate suppression of either the unitive or procreative dimension of the marital act is a rejection of that vocation to give witness to Divine love. John Paul II refers to contraception as contradicting the language of the body which should express the truth of the sacrament—the eternal plan of divine love revealed in the body in our femininity and masculinity.

The sixth principle affirms that, in spite of the effects of original sin, human sexuality is a sacred mystery and is worthy of reverence. This balance between the mystery of sexuality and human weakness is set out in the Vatican guidelines for education in human sexuality, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, 122. Consciences should be formed properly to cultivate respect for the mystery and to encourage a sense of responsibility, self-respect, and, especially, respect for others. Yet we live in an age that has demystified sexuality, reducing it to erotic sport and detaching it from abiding and binding relationships.

The Great Sources

Based in the ressourcement school of post-Vatican II theology, the John Paul II Institute constantly draws on the sources of Church teaching. As is evident in this book, the faculty of the Institute start with the Sacred Scriptures and Tradition, the sources of Divine Revelation that provide ample guidance for a Christian understanding of human sexuality.

The Old Testament sexual ethic is centered on marriage, childbearing, and hygiene, the latter linked to ritual purity. While polygamy was tolerated, it was not seen as the norm. Divorce was allowed under some circumstances, but adultery, homosexual activity, and prostitution were rejected. Romantic and faithful love are extolled in the stories of Ruth and Tobit, in the Song of Songs, and through images of God as spouse in prophetic literature. The wisdom tradition rejects recourse to prostitutes and fornication. In the Hebrew Scriptures we see development, refinement, but always a healthy positive attitude to human sexuality.

A clear change takes place in the New Testament, but it is a further development. It is most important to understand how Jesus Christ deepens and fulfills the Old Testament perspective on sexuality. He does not merely repeat it; he builds on it, and in the area of divorce corrects it (cf. Matt 5:31; 19:3–11; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18). He personalizes sexuality and indicates its interiority, so it is not what goes into a man that corrupts him but what comes from his heart (Matt 15:17–20; Mark 7:20–23). The evil thought of adultery “in the heart” matters just as much as the sinful act (Matt 5:28).

Our Lord’s sexual ethic is more personal, hence more demanding. But he is realistic—for example, in his teaching on celibacy, which he says is only for those able to receive the gift (Matt 19:10–13). Moreover, his greatest anger is directed against proud people, and he is merciful to the adulterous woman, while firmly telling her to go and sin no more (John 8:10–11). Yet he searches the conscience of the woman at the well and mentions her five “husbands” (cf. John 4:16–18).

The whole Catholic discipline of chaste thoughts, pure intentions, and purity of heart thus springs directly from the historical Christ of the Gospels. St. Paul was the faithful transmitter of his teaching, undaunted by the unenviable task of evangelizing the pagans of the Greco-Roman world. These men and women for the most part lacked Jewish sexual discipline, and they lived in places like Corinth and Ephesus, notorious seaports that were cult centers of permissiveness. Paul made it clear that unrepentant sexual sinners cannot enter the kingdom (1 Cor 6:9–10). But he constantly insisted that...