| GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 5 NOVEMBER On Wednesday, 5 November,
the weekly audience was held in the Paul VI Hall. The Holy Father
delivered the following message.
1. In the course of our weekly reflections on Christ's enunciation in
the Sermon on the Mount, in which, in reference to the commandment, "You
shall not commit adultery," he compared lust (looking lustfully) with
adultery committed in the heart, we are trying to answer the question: do
these words only accuse the human heart, or are they first and foremost an
appeal addressed to it? Of course, this concerns an appeal of ethical
character, an important and essential appeal for the ethos of the Gospel.
We answer that the above-mentioned words are above all an appeal.
At the same time, we are trying to bring our reflections nearer to the
routes taken, in its sphere, by the conscience of contemporary men. In the
preceding cycle of our considerations we mentioned "eros." This Greek
term, which passed from mythology to philosophy, then to the literary
language and finally to the spoken language, unlike the word "ethos," is
alien and unknown to biblical language. If, in the present analyses of
biblical texts, we use the term "ethos," known to the Septuagint and to
the New Testament, we do so because of the general meaning it has acquired
in philosophy and theology, embracing in its content the complex spheres
of good and evil, depending on human will and subject to the laws of
conscience and the sensitivity of the human heart. Besides being the
proper name of the mythological character, the term eros has a
philosophical meaning in the writings of Plato,(1) which seems to be
different from the common meaning and also from what is usually attributed
to it in literature. Obviously, we must consider here the vast range of
meanings. They differ from one another in their finer shades, as regards
both the mythological character and the philosophical content, and above
all the somatic or sexual point of view. Taking into account such a vast
range of meanings, it is opportune to evaluate, in an equally
differentiated way, what is related to eros(2) and is defined as erotic.
Connotation of the term "eros"
2. According to Plato, eros represents the interior force that drags
man toward everything good, true and beautiful. This attraction indicates,
in this case, the intensity of a subjective act of the human spirit. In
the common meaning, on the contraryas
also in literaturethis
attraction seems to be first and foremost of a sensual nature. It arouses
the mutual tendency of both the man and the woman to draw closer to each
other, to the union of bodies, to that union of which Genesis 2:24 spoke.
It is a question here of answering the question whether eros connotes the
same meaning in the biblical narrative (especially in Gn 2:23-25). This
narrative certainly bears witness to the mutual attraction and the
perennial call of the human personthrough
masculinity and femininityto
that unity in the flesh which, at the same time, must realize the
communion-union of persons. Precisely because of this interpretation of
eros (as well as of its relationship with ethos), the way in which we
understand the lust spoken about in the Sermon on the Mount takes on
fundamental importance.
Danger of reductivism and exclusivism
3. As it seems, common language considers above all that meaning of
lust which we previously defined as psychological and which could also be
called sexological. This is done on the basis of premises which are
limited mainly to the naturalistic, somatic and sensualistic
interpretation of human eroticism. (It is not a question here, in any way,
of reducing the value of scientific researches in this field, but we wish
to call attention to the danger of reductivism and exclusivism.) Well, in
the psychological and sexological sense, lust indicates the subjective
intensity of straining toward the object because of its sexual character
(sexual value). That straining has its subjective intensity due to the
specific attraction which extends its dominion over man's emotional sphere
and involves his corporeity (his somatic masculinity or femininity). In
the Sermon on the Mount we hear of the concupiscence of the man who "looks
at a woman lustfully." These wordsunderstood
in the psychological (sexological) senserefer
to the sphere of phenomena which in common language are, precisely,
described as erotic. Within the limits of Matthew 5:27-28, it is a
question only of the interior act. It is mainly those ways of acting and
of mutual behavior of the man and the woman, which are the external
manifestation of these interior acts, that are defined "erotic."
Nevertheless, there seems to be no doubt thatreasoning
in this way
it is almost necessary to put the sign of equality between erotic and what
derives from desire (and serves to satisfy the lust of the flesh). If this
were so, then the words of Christ according to Matthew 5:27-28 would
express a negative judgment about what is erotic and, addressed to the
human heart, would constitute at the same time a severe warning against
eros.
Many shades of meaning of "eros"
4. However, we have already mentioned that the term eros has many
semantic shades of meaning. Therefore, wishing to define the relationship
of the enunciation of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28) with the wide
sphere of erotic phenomena, that is, those mutual actions and ways of
behaving through which man and woman approach each other and unite so as
to be one flesh (cf. Gn 2:24), it is necessary to take into account the
multiplicity of the semantic shades of meaning of eros. It seems possible,
in fact, that in the sphere of the concept of erostaking
into account its Platonic meaningthere
is room for that ethos, for those ethical and indirectly even theological
contents which, in the course of our analyses, have been seen from
Christ's appeal to the human heart in the Sermon on the Mount. Also
knowledge of the multiple semantic nuances of eros and of what, in the
differentiated experience and description of man, at various periods and
various points of geographical and cultural longitude and latitude, is
defined as erotic, can help in understanding the specific and complex
riches of the heart, to which Christ appealed in Matthew 5:27-28.
The "ethos" of redemption
5. If we admit that eros means the interior force that attracts man
toward what is true, good and beautiful, then, within the sphere of this
concept, the way toward what Christ wished to express in the Sermon on the
Mount, can also be seen to open. The words of Matthew 5:27-28, if they are
an "accusation" of the human heart, are at the same time, even more, an
appeal to it. This appeal is the specific category of the ethos of
redemption. The call to what is true, good and beautiful means at the same
time, in the ethos of redemption, the necessity of overcoming what is
derived from lust in its three forms. It also means the possibility and
the necessity of transforming what has been weighed down by the lust of
the flesh. Furthermore, if the words of Matthew 5:27-28 represent this
call, then they mean that, in the erotic sphere, eros and ethos do not
differ from each other. They are not opposed to each other, but are called
to meet in the human heart, and, in this meeting, to bear fruit. What is
worthy of the human heart is that the form of what is erotic should be at
the same time the form of ethos, that is, of what is ethical.
Ethos and ethics
6. This affirmation is important for ethos and at the same time for
ethics. A negative meaning is often connected with the latter concept,
because ethics bears with it norms, commandments and prohibitions. We are
commonly inclined to consider the words of the Sermon on the Mount on lust
(on looking lustfully) exclusively as a prohibitiona
prohibition in the sphere of eros (that is, in the erotic sphere). Often
we are content merely with this understanding, without trying to reveal
the deep and essential values that this prohibition covers, that is,
ensures. Not only does it protect them, but it also makes them accessible
and liberates them, if we learn to open our heart to them.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ teaches us this and directs man's
heart toward these values.
NOTES
1) According to Plato, man, placed between the world of the senses and
the world of Ideas, has the destiny of passing from the first to the
second. The world of Ideas, however, is not able by itself to overcome the
world of the senses. Only eros, congenital in man, can do that. When man
begins to have a presentiment of Ideas, thanks to contemplation of the
objects existing in the world of the senses, he receives the impulse from
eros, that is, from the desire for pure Ideas. Eros, in fact, is the
guiding of the "sensual" or "sensitive" man toward what is transcendent:
the force that directs the soul toward the world of Ideas. In the
Symposium, Plato describes the stages of this influence of eros: the
latter raises man's soul from the beauty of a single body to that of all
bodies, and so to the beauty of knowledge and finally to the very idea of
Beauty (cf. Symposio 211; Repubblica 514).
Eros is neither purely human nor divine: it is something intermediate (daimonion)
and intermediary. Its principal characteristic is permanent aspiration and
desire. Even when it seems to give freely, eros persists as the "desire of
possessing." Yet it is different from purely sensual love, being the love
that strives toward the sublime.
According to Plato, the gods do not love because they do not feel desires,
since their desires are all satisfied. Therefore, they can only be the
object, but not the subject of love (cf. Symposio 200-201). So they
do not have a direct relationship with man. Only the mediation of eros
makes it possible for a relationship to be established (cf. Symposio
203). Therefore, eros is the way that leads man to divinity, but not
vice-versa.
The aspiration to transcendence is, therefore, a constituent element of
the Platonic concept of eros, a concept that overcomes the radical dualism
of the world of Ideas and the world of the senses. Eros makes it possible
to pass from one to the other. It is therefore a form of escape beyond the
material world, which the soul must renounce, because the beauty of the
sensible subject has a value only insofar as it leads higher.
However, eros always remains, for Plato, egocentric love. It aims at
winning and possessing the object which, for man, represents a value. To
love good means desiring to possess it forever. Love is, therefore, always
a desire for immortality, and that, too, shows the egocentric character of
eros (cf. A. Nygren, Eros et Agapι:
La notion chrιtienne
de l'amour et ses transformations, I [Paris: Aubier, 1962], pp.
180-200).
For Plato, eros is a passing from the most elementary knowledge to deeper
knowledge; at the same time it is the aspiration to pass from "that which
is not," and is evil, to what "exists in fullness," and is good (cf. M.
Scheler, "Amour et connaissance," Le sens de la souffrance, suivi de
deux autres essais [Paris: Aubier], p. 145).
2) Cf., e.g., C. S. Lewis, "Eros," The Four Loves (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1960), pp. 131-133, 152, 159-160; P. Chauchard, Vices
des vertus, vertus des vices (Paris: Mame, 1965), p. 147.
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