The Reckless, Crazy, God-Intended Extravagance of Eros

If I understood his dense essay ("Nature of Original Sin" in Communio Spring 2020) correctly, Gustav Siewerth suggested that God, in creating the human person, even before the Fall, intended Eros, Passion and Desire to vastly excell human reason and will in power. This is quite a thought! Traditional Catholic anthropology finds the "image of God" specifically in our intellect and will: our spiritual capacities to know the True and to choose the Good. The passions, including sex and the rest, are meant to be subordinate to reason and will. By virtue of sin and concupiscence, the passions are out of control and must, with the help of grace, be brought back into submission to reason and will. The thought I developed from Siewerth (I may be misinterpreting him!) suggest something quite different. Without denying the reality of sin and concupiscence, the idea is: already in the state of grace and harmony, God intended our desire, delight and appreciation, even for created good, to surge in depth and intensity beyond our powers of thought, deliberation and volition. By this logic, our longing for communion, to surrender ourselve to the Good-True-Beautiful, to possess and be possessed, to hold and be held, to see and be seen, to give and to receive...all of this an echo of the eternal giving-and-receiving within the Trinity... is extravagant, excessive, profound and intense beyond the more limited abilities of thought and will. St. John Paul has already suggested that we image God in our conjugal mystery of reception, surrender, and self-gift. In this he includes intellect and will within the gift-of-self which itself is knowing and willed. But this new thought seems to go a step further: the very excess of desire and longing is itself an image of God and an impetus towards God. By any account, it is clear that in paradise, before sin, there was perfect harmony within the person in regard to intellect, will, desire and passions. This was due to the communion with God which flooded our first parents with interior peace, strength and harmony such that all dimensions rested and moved in harmony. But my image of this harmony was that will and intellect are in charge and the passions and desires fall in line: spirit in at the top of the hierarchy, flesh at the bottom. But the suggestion here is that already in the garden Adam and Eve would have customarily be grasped by ecstacy, intoxication, and mystical delight that overwhelmed the deliberative, cognitive functions. This would have been ordinary, normal, entirely non-pathological. Consider Adam's first response to Eve: "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That is an intelligent statement, but far more than that. It appears to flow from a deeper, poetic and even mystical engagement: a profound sense of communion, of delight, of longing, of satisfaction. His first response was thus an ecstacy of extravagant delight which would have silenced his cognition and deliberation. His first response was the innocent, reverent and tender gaze of contemplation, of surrender to indescribable loveliness, goodness, and dignity. Eros is prior to thought and will. Thought experiment: place is the garden of Eden; time is shortly before dinner, well before the Fall. Eve is preparing dinner (delicious vegetarian!). Adam is gathering fruit and vegetables, singing with the birds, and enjoying the bunnies and chipmunks. Into the garden walks Sophia Loren at age 20. Recall: this is before the Fall so they are both naked without shame. They are immune to embarassment, lust, covetousness, envy. Now: how does Adam react? Obviously, he is blown away! He is dizzy with intoxication, wonder, awe! His breathing is heavy as he needs more oxygen for the intensity of his reaction! His hormones...testosterone, oxytoxin, seratonin, endorphins, and the rest...are inflamed into a white heat! His cortical nerve system is heated up to full strength! His virility, in its propensity for intimacy-and-fecundity is fiercely aroused, erect and exclamatory! He is in a mystical-emotional-physical ecstacy, for which he was created! All this without privation, toxicity or indecency. Sophia (means "wisdom") cheerfully says: "Hi! You must be Adam. I am Sophia." When Adam hears these words the spell of the charm is diminished, but not entirely as he remains euphoric, so that his verbal and deliberative faculties are restored and responds: "Yes, I am Adam. Welcome, Sophia, to our garden. God be praised for all His goodness: You are a singular masterpiece of womanly loveliness! My Eve will love you! Please come and dine with us." Adam, happily in the state of grace, in communion with the Trinity, enjoys an unbounded flow of peace, strength, joy and gratitude. So, his ecstacy, while momentarily unhinged from reason and will, is entirely innocent and wholesome. It is an excess of appreciation, tenderness and reverence. It is not unintelligible as much as super-intelligible. This is good news. This should bring some release from shame and restoration of wholesome, appreciative, liberated Eros desire and energy. This, again, is not to deny the malignant, even demonic fury of lust...of sexual desire disordered by isolation, anger, self-hatred. But it is to recognize that even under the distressing disguise of sin, the fundamental Eros longing of the human heart is for the Good, for God as the ultimate Good, and the Good in all its symphonic splendor. And so, as we deal with the extravagance, exuberance and chaos of Eros, we do well to remember three truths: 1. Such desire is ususally a cross, a suffering, an ache and frustration that God allows. He actually does "lead us into temptation" (although Pope Francis does not think so) in order that we be purified and sanctified by purgation. We need to endure this. 2. In so far as the desire is oriented to evil, as in adultery and fornication, it must be decisively renounced, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of the chaste Bridegroom. 3. At its heart, however, this burning desire, however misdirected, is a longing for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, and ultimately a craving for God. The path to purity: penance and conversion; patience and endurance; but most importantly possession by the passon for God. The cure for disordered Eros is a purged, inflamed, extravagant Eros!