BENEDICT XVI SPEAKS TO US

A phrase in the introduction caught my attention: at the origin of being a Christian there is no great ethical code, no grand idea, only that one has met someone. Karl Rahner, with whom Benedict had had many theological battles, had said much the same thing: the passion of “experiencing” God. Aruppe, the former General of the Jesuits now dead, would call it falling in love. But where would Benedict take this almost private emotion in an Encyclical? It turned out that Benedict was replying to two issues of our age.

The first is the centrality given to sex and, following this, to the body. Here Benedict joins some philosophers who are not necessarily Catholic.

These see this preoccupation with sex as not a revolution, but on the contrary as another form of social control. This preoccupation with the body is very much with us here both in its modern form of the exaltation of the body to the exclusion of anything else and there is the opposing Victorian disgust of the body. One has only to listen to the debates on Carnival. Both of these attitudes Benedict refuses.

The second issue is more clearly within Catholicism: it is the temptation of a personal piety. In this the love of God is separated from the ordinary human experience of love and ultimately from the love of “neighbour.” The problem is that the raison d’?tre of Christianity is the unity of love of God and love of the other — as God loves. Here again Benedict is talking of a problem that is the crucial problem in Trini Catholicism.

Only speculative

The Encyclical is in two parts. The first part Benedict XVI calls “speculative” avoiding the words philosophical or theological. I suspect that this is not by chance. It avoids the impression that the old Ratzinger is using the Papacy to impose his own ideas. And yet in this first part the Pope proceeds in a manner well known to philosophers. Benedict examines the meaning of words in order to proceed to disentangle the meaning of action and from the “finality” of the society. In doing this he compares the Greek meanings of “love” with the meaning of love given in Biblical Israel and accentuated in Christianity. Precisely because in spite of his “speculative” Benedict writes with the distance required of a philosopher, there is little sense of condemnation. The argument makes the case.

Eros and Agape

Benedict takes the three words for love in Greek: Philia (friendship), Eros (love between a man and a woman) and Agape which, marginal in Greek, becomes important in Christianity as the expression of love of God or if you like divine love. Eros is the word most used for love in “classical” Greece. It is used only three times in the Old Testament and disappears with Christianity. But does this mean that Christianity has destroyed Eros? Benedict quotes the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche for whom Christianity had given Eros a poisoned drink, not succeeding in killing Eros but succeeding in having Eros degenerate into vice. Benedict admits that in some epochs this would seem to be true. He notes that there is always the temptation to deny the importance of the body.

I couldn’t help remembering our friend now dead, tortured over what he considered as the temptation to go to bed with his wife on a Saturday night. It made it impossible for him to take communion on a Sunday without the feeling of guilt.

Benedict is not primarily interested in what he sees as a certain deformation within Christianity. Rather he replies to classical theology. This had divided love into two categories. Eros as pagan, sensual and “descending” love. Agape as Christian, ascending and “pure” love. It is this duality which Benedict questions.

The Greek Eros

He begins with Eros — that love which cannot be willed, escapes reason and promises Paradise. It is this Eros which the Greeks privileged above everything else and above all their gods. Eros was linked to the divine. It was there in the fertility gods and in the temple prostitutes. But this divine drunkenness was fleeting. And the temple prostitutes were only a vehicle through which this divine pleasure could be reached. In the final analysis the temple prostitutes were not goddesses — they were only human beings who one abused in the seeking for one’s own pleasure.

Sexuality and the body

Further on in his Encyclical, Benedict takes up the preoccupation with Eros today. This is not quite the seeking the divine pleasure as in the case of the Greeks. Rather, sex is divorced from love. “Sexuality” and the preoccupation with the body, restricts Eros only to the material part of us. There is no longer the divine. Eros becomes something which can be calculatingly manipulated as innocuous pleasure. This too becomes abuse and, in addition, becomes commerce. This manipulation and commerce of sex, eventually becomes manipulation and commerce of people. Benedict takes up the argument that this “sexuality” is somehow freedom. But freedom, he replies, is only freedom if it frees all of a person. When it is restricted to the body, it can as easily one day be turned against the body. Does this refusal of the Greek Eros or of today’s sexuality, mean that Christianity banishes or kills Eros?

The Song of Songs

Biblical Israel was horrified at the fertility gods and the temple prostitutes. And yet when Israel wishes to portray the love of the One Unique God for his people, Israel turns to a song written about the love between a man and a woman: the Canticle of Canticles or Song of Songs. Hosea, the story of a man seeking and forgiving his unfaithful wife becomes the story of God seeking and forgiving his people.

Eros turns out, not to be in contradiction with the One Unique God, but rather to be the only way to understand God’s loving. Unlike the pagan gods around, the One Unique God loves and desires love in return. In the case of Jesus the words used to describe this love, are words associated with Eros. God seeks out the lost sheep and places it on his shoulder. The woman seeks the coin she has lost.

But this is not a love that abuses. It is a love that gives even to the pouring out of everything on Calvary. The image of love is the pierced side of the God-man. God in his love challenges God. Eros meets Agape or rather they are both part of a single love.

In the beginning

It is this self-giving which Benedict argues purifies and disciplines Eros. It is a self-giving that we have humanely experienced. The first passion of love between a man and a woman becomes caring. One thinks first of the other and sacrifices one’s own desires for the desires of the other. In this giving we go beyond the body, to give all of ourselves. In other words, in losing our life we have found life.

This Eros is not only God’s love. It is fundamental to our own humanity. Benedict goes back to the story of creation. The first man, Adam, is incomplete and lonely. He seeks Eve. Only when he has found her is he completed: they become one flesh.

One God, one spouse

In the one-ness of Adam and Eve the fleeing moment of ecstasy in the Greek Eros disappears. It is replaced by the bond which created of Adam and Eve one flesh forsaking all others. As God is One Unique God, so marriage is monogamous. Marriage becomes the icon of God’s love and the representation of God’s faithfulness. We can now understand the Song of Songs. The body is not simply the vehicle of pleasure nor yet is it limited to its biological expression. Is this love different from the love most fully expressed in that Sacrament of total giving and complete loving: the Eucharist? It is this which is called Agape by the early Church. Benedict’s reply is that it is not. As God is One Unique God so love is one: the duality implied in Eros and Agape is only an apparent duality.

But that for next week.