The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Erotic Love In God

I would agree with this. I have always experienced God as a type of erotic love. Christ is agape. But I also see eros. It has within it elements of mystery, beauty, wonder, and passion. It’s kind of like when you first fall in love. It’s a bond between Christ and His bride. According to the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga:

I have a few quotations for you about Divine Eros Cole -

Funnily enough they come from St Augustine’s Confessions. Even He had his good days :laughing: :laughing: Good thread Cole :smiley:

Yes. I think Augustine got it from the Bible though. The terrible things Augustine did were based on his views of remedial punishment. The Protestant and Catholic practices of torturing people and the inquisitions and burning people at the stake were done because they thought by doing these things they would purge the souls of people. They were supposedly doing these things out of love. I think we have come a long way since then. But I still believe in remedial justice.

Whatever Cole - I’ve always loved those bits from the Confession’s. For me he was at his best when not writing systematic theology.

The thing about burning people to death for what they believe is a complex one. I’ve studied the history of religious persecution and witch trials quite a lot. I think the inquisition may have sometimes thought it was burning the body to save the soul - but a more common reason was to burn someone who was a contagion potentially leading Christians astray by their wrong beliefs (and to give them a foretaste of their damnation in with the bargain). Augustine himself justified persecution meaning fines and imprisonment - but I think even he would have been deeply appalled at what he’d started off.

Anyway back to Eros Agape - and don’t forget Philia (friendship :smiley: )

Agape and Eros - the classic study. “Nygren’s work has been described as 'probably the most influential Protestant account of love in the twentieth century”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros_and_Agape

If you are the studying type, you will love the work - this is scholarship at a high level, without much of the technical apparatus that would slow it down. It is a rich feast that opens up Greek, Early Church, medieval, gnostic, and other theologies.

Hey Dave. Thanks. I’ll look into it.

Dave,

I go along with C.S. Lewis on the issue of seeking happiness.

Dick,

You may want to talk to Derek Flood who has studied this issue with great detail about “medicinal punishment”

I have been talking to Derek via a thread recently. I have enormous respect for Derek Cole :smiley:

That’s who I got my information from.

Well he’s partly right about the inquisition. Augustine certainly did promote persecution of Donatists by fines and imprisonment calling it - the ‘benign asperity of persecution’. However I’ve seen much primary source evidence of religious killing in early modern Europe also being done to stem contagion rather than for the remedial ‘salvation’ of those killed. We can both be right on this one I think - I hope :laughing:

It was CS Lewis who stated that God could be and should be loved with everything BUT sensuous love.

Dave,

The Bible says (as Plantinga has shown) that we are loved as the Bride Of Christ. It’s a mixture of all of them. Agape, eros, phileo, affection. That’s the way I experience Christ. I’ve always experienced Christ that way. The point in quoting Lewis is the show that there is nothing wrong with seeking joy or pleasure in God. Christ sought joy in His sufferings. It’s how He endured the cross. It was by the joy set before Him that He endured the cross. The joy of purifying His bride. When a man takes his wife out for dinner with joy because he loves her and then pays the bill and she says thank you. It’s not arrogant when he says - it’s my pleasure. Seeking joy in doing good for your spouse breaks arrogance.

Hi Dave :smiley:

‘Taste and see that God is good’. I’m not quite sure what C.S. Lewis meant by this Dave but he was quite affirming of the body in his own way (His ‘The Four Loves’ couldn’t get a publisher in America at first because it was through too explicit in its sexual references). Obviously in the sense that God is Spirit we cannot love God sensually. Btu we can, I think, love God through the sacrament of his creation sensually. That’s part of liturgy and sacrament in Christina tradition and in Christian art. And the sensual as a road to the divine informs the theology of icons and indeed the theology of Incarnation that underpins this and – in a sense – all Christian Art. I guess the proper enjoyment of this world including the delight we have in friends, and the delight we have in our beloved is also something we can offer to God in sacramental thanksgiving.

Hi Cole :smiley:

The idea of Eros is a nuanced one. The philosophy of Eros first crops up in Plato’s symposium where Socrates argues that sexual love rather than a road to delusion can be a road to the divine if we see through the physical and spiritual beauty of our beloved to the Divine Form and source of Beauty. This became Christianised in the poetry of Dante and the Friends of Love who saw in their angelic girls a reminder of the grace of God –

When she kills with her glances she brings life
As thought she bringing life were Jesus
The Smooth surface of her legs is like the Torah in brightness
And I follow and tread in as if I were Moses

Well it all sounds a bit weird today. But at the time this romantic theology rescued women from the status of gateways to Satan in much of the Western Christian imagination.

Dick,

I disagree. It comes from the Bible.

O God, you are my God; I will seek you eagerly. My heart thirsts for you, my body longs for you - Psalms 63:1

And as Plantinga points out:

It’s also what I experience when I experience Christ.

Again, I agree with Plantinga here:

You are right Cole - of course Eros is in the bible too :smiley: It also came from the Greeks and sort of married with Christianity when it came to the ideal of romantic love. The Song of Songs kissed with Plato’s Symposium in the Church Fathers

Cole, are you quoting from Warranted Christian Belief? I searched part of one of your quotes and that’s what I came up with. I just wanted to say that I found that book HERE, where it can be downloaded as a free PDF or plain text document (or read on-line). Just in case anyone else would like to check it out too. Thanks for a great topic! :smiley:

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Hey Cindy!

Yes, I’m sorry. I should have listed the reference.