Eros and Agape in the Theology of the Body

1. What is love? Is it a kind of impulse that attracts one person to another because of
something good or beautiful about that person? Or is it that inner movement of the heart that
makes us want to serve them and bring them happiness and fulfilment? Well, the answer is
Yes to both of these. Love takes each of these forms. When it takes the form of an attraction
towards another person because of something good or beautiful about that person it is called
eros. When it takes the form of wanting to serve and bring happiness and fulfilment it is
called agape. Eros and agape each have a very different history, and in the case of Eros quite
a chequered one. Eros has its classical definition in Plato. It signifies the inner power that
“attracts” man to the true, the beautiful and the good (TOB 47). Agape by contrast comes to
prominence four hundred years later in the New Testament. You could almost say it’s native
to the New Testament. It is the inner power that works towards the happiness and fulfilment
of the beloved. When Jesus gave to his disciples the commandment: “Love one another as I
have loved you” the imperative is agapate. He is commanding that we exercise agape
towards each other, in imitation of himself. With their very different histories, these two
kinds of love eros and agape come together in the Theology of the Body in a remarkable
complimentarity.

2. I mentioned that eros has had a chequered history. It’s where we get the word erotic which
has come to mean something quite different from its original connotation. The Theology of
the Body recognises eros in its true sense as something integral to God’s design in his creation
of human beings, and restores eros to its rightful dignity.

3. Here they are again in an even more concise way: eros is the love that strives for its own
fulfilment, the fulfilment of the lover; agape is the love that strives for the fulfilment of the
other, the fulfilment of the beloved. If, however, we want a full understanding of eros and
agape charged with their full content we need to go back to their pure form as created in the
beginning.

4. The question that the Theology of the Body starts with is the question: What is Man? What
does it mean to be a human being? In order to answer this question the Theology of the Body
takes us back to the opening chapters of Genesis, to the Creator’s original intention, and says
This is what Man is. This is what it means to be a human being. We need to do the same with
eros and agape. We need to go back to the beginning and to see eros and agape operating
according to their original design. We need to see them in their fully functioning form as
intended by the Creator.

5. Unlike the other animals, Man was created for his own sake. But he was created to find his
fulfilment only by making a total gift of himself to another person. Moreover his awareness
of this was total. He only had to look at himself to see, he had only to experience himself as a
body to know, that he was created to make a gift of himself to another. Original Man had a
clarity of vision and a fullness of experience that is almost entirely lost to us. It was
immediately clear to him from the most obvious physiological structure of his body right
down to the full depth of his maleness that he was created to find his completion and
fulfilment by making a gift of himself to another. In other words he could read in his body a
meaning: and that meaning was “Gift”.

6. The same is true of Original Woman. She could see in the experience of her own body that
she was created to make a sincere gift of herself to another. Although existing for her own
sake, it was also immediately clear to her from the most obvious physiological structure of
her body right down to the full depth of her femaleness that she was created to find her
completion and fulfilment in the gift of herself to another.

7. To our eyes maleness and femaleness suggests little more than a particular biological
function, beautiful as that may be. But to the eyes of Original Man the human body was

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charged with meaning. It spoke of “Gift, Gift, Gift”, and this meaning was written into the
human body by the creator as maleness and femaleness.

8. And so we have the first awakening, the first stirring of eros in the human heart, exactly as
the Creator intended it. The Man experiences that inner movement of his heart, in fact the
inner movement of his whole being, to find his own fulfilment and completion in the gift of
himself to another. The Woman experiences that inner movement of her whole being to find
her own fulfilment and completion in the total bodily gift of herself to another. Eros is the
power, the inspiration, the movement in their hearts that urged them each to give themselves
to one another in response to a particular calling from their Creator, and in so doing to find
their own fulfilment.

9. What about agape? Yes, the Man and the Woman were inspired each to seek their own
fulfilment and completion in the gift of themselves, each to the other. This is eros. But were
they in the slightest bit interested in the fulfilment and completion of the other? The primary
motivation in any act of giving is to increase the happiness and fulfilment of the recipient.
This motivation, the fulfilment of the recipient, precedes the motivation of self-fufilment.
This is the case in particular when the gift in question is the gift of self. The self-gift of the
Lover to the Beloved is in the first place directed towards the happiness and fulfilment of the
Beloved. Agape precededs eros. In fact it could be said that self-gift would not lead to the
fulfilment of oneself at all if it were not in the first place directed towards the fulfilment of the
other.

10. So we have this remarkable complementarity of eros and agape. The decision and choice
that the Man and the Woman each take, to make a gift of themselves each to the other was
directed towards the fulfilment of both. He gave himself to her for their mutual fulfilment.
She gave herself to him for their mutual fulfilment. When in the Book of Genesis (2:18) God
declares that he will make for the Man a helper (‘ezer) I don’t think it means that he gave the
man someone to help with the gardening. They help each other to come to fulfilment.
Through their mutual self-giving they enable each other to come to completion. In the
original situation, in that state of Original Innocence, Eros and Agape work side by side with
perfect complimentarity in the hearts of each, moving them to give themselves to one another
for their mutual fulfilment and completion.

11. What seems to follow from this is the cumulative interplay between fulfilment and self-
gift. In the giving of themselves to each other they become more fully, more completely
themselves. And becoming more fully, more completely themselves leads to the possibility of
an even deeper possibility of self-gift. There is a certain unboundedness of eros and agape in
the original situation. Each experience of personal fulfilment and completeness through
mutual self-gift is succeeded by an experience of incompleteness, of not yet being filled, that
can only be satisfied by a deeper act of giving of an ever deepening self.

12. But there’s a third perspective distinct from the Lover and the Beloved – the perspective
of Love itself. What distinguishes Man qualitatively from the other animals is not his
intelligence or his capacity for language. These are simply relative. What distinguishes Man
from the other animals is the way he has been created.
“The Lord God shaped man from the soil of the ground…” (Genesis 2:7)
Okay so far he is the same as the other animals. We’ve all been created from the elements of
the earth. Were this all that we were we would be little more than dust, albeit cunningly
arranged dust. But the text goes on:
“…and the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”
This is not said of any of the other animals. Only Man. What does this mean? That God
needed to give Man artificial respiration to get him going? No. What the Creator breathed
into Man was ruah, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. In the creation of Man the Creator
infused into his creature, breathed into his creature, his own Spirit. From that moment until
the Fall in Genesis 3 this body that had been fashioned from the dust of the earth was entirely

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infused, its heart, its thoughts, its emotions, its every sinew and bone right down the marrow,
every neuron and synapse, in short every element of this body was entirely infused with the
Spirit of God – a perfect marriage of matter and spirit.

13. Original Man was completely guided and governed by the Holy Spirit. Every impulse,
every movement of the heart, every choice and every resulting action was in accordance with
the movement and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And this holds in particular for these two
movements in the heart of Man – the movement of Eros and the movement of Agape. Each is
in fact the movement, the inspiration, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the heart of
Man. When the Man made a total gift of himself to the Woman in conjugal union for the sake
of her fulfilment and completion, yes this was a decision and a choice he took. But at a
deeper level he was responding to his calling, responding to his vocation. The Holy Spirit
was at work in his heart, in his body, moving him to give himself to her for the sake of her
fulfilment – agape; moving him to give himself to her for the sake of his own fulfilment –
eros.

14. What we see here is Eros and Agape working in a creative capacity. They each play their
particular role in bringing God’s work of creation to completion: Eros directed towards the
completion and fulfilment of the lover, Agape directed towards the completion of the beloved.
No wonder the Holy Spirit is called Creator! “Veni Creator Spiritus” – “Come, Holy Spirit,
Creator, come”. What we’re looking at here is the ongoing work of creation carried out by
the Spirit of God working through the personal subjectivity of Man and Woman, and taking
the form of Eros and Agape to bring the work of creation towards its completion and
fulfilment.

15. This means that at a deeper level, the decision to give themselves to one another and the
act of giving themselves to one another were in fact, all along, the work of the Creator. At
this deeper level of reality what we’re looking at here is the giving hand of God, as it were,
behind the scenes, and the Man and Woman simply cooperating with this divine initiative,
responding with perfect responsiveness to their vocation. Were they aware that this was what
was happening behind the scenes? Were they aware that this was what they were caught up in
at this deeper level? The Theology of the Body gives a Yes to this question. This was part of
the clarity and depth of vision and experience enjoyed by original Man in the state of original
innocence. This vivid experience of the Creator giving them to each other was part of their
joy and part of their blessedness. It was integral to the meaning of Gift that they saw written
into the maleness and femaleness of their bodies.

16. But there is a deeper level still. In the reciprocal self-giving of Man and Woman in
conjugal union, not only was this the Creator giving them to each other. At a deeper level
still, this was God giving himself to them each. Man giving himself to Woman in conjugal
union in total response to the movement of the Holy Spirit was the original way in which God
gave Himself to Woman. Woman giving herself to Man in conjugal union was God’s original
way of giving Himself to Man. This is why the Theology of the Body calls conjugal union, in
the Original Situation, the Primordial Sacrament. The one flesh union of the spouses in
conjugal union was not only a sign of God’s union with Man; it was the reality. It was the
original way in which the Creator entered into covenant with his creature. And again, such
was the clarity of vision of Original Man, that in the man’s gift of himself to the woman she
saw with perfect clarity and experienced with total lucidity God’s gift of his divine self to her.
Such was the fullness of bodily experience, that she fully experienced in this one flesh union
God’s gift of himself to her. Likewise the man’s experience in the woman’s gift of herself to
him. This is the experience of Original Union.

17. When Man looked Woman in her bodiliness, in the beauty of her femaleness, and saw
“Gift, Gift, Gift” written into the full depth of her femaleness, or in the experience of his own
body he experienced “Gift, Gift, Gift”, the meaning he read in each of these bodies, with
perfect clarity, was Gift not just at the level of human self-giving, but at the level of divine

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self-giving. This is what the Theology of the Body refers to as the “spousal meaning” of the
human body. Written into the human body by the Creator himself, in the maleness and in the
femaleness of the human body, almost like a personal signature, is God’s self-revelation. He
is Gift and he has written this into the human body. And we see in conjugal union, at least in
the original situation, the operation of Gift, the operation of God’s act of self-giving,
operating through the personal subjectivity of the spouses, operating through their personal
freedom.

18. What’s this got to do with eros and agape? Although Man and Woman begin to find their
fulfilment and completion in the mutual giving of themselves in conjugal union, Man
ultimately finds his final fulfilment only in a mutual self-giving between himself and his
Creator. In the original situation, Man’s gift of himself to Woman in conjugal union was
experienced as the gift of himself to his Creator, without in any way diminishing the gift of
himself to his spouse. Woman’s gift of herself to Man was experienced as the gift of herself
to her Creator, without detracting from the gift of herself to her husband. Moved by eros, by
the yearning for self-fulfilment, each lover (you might say) looked beyond their beloved to
make a gift of themselves to their Creator, without in any way detracting from the totality of
their self-gift to their beloved. In this way they sought their final fulfilment. But at the very
same time each was moved by agape, by the desire for the self-fulfilment of their beloved.
How was this? Because each lover was blessed with that fullness of experience that in giving
themselves to their beloved they were at the same time and in the very same gift of self
bringing about sacramentally the Creator’s self-gift to the beloved for their final fulfilment.

19. It’s impossible for us to fully grasp the indescribable blessedness of this original situation;
and yet it’s important that we try to. It’s important that we allow John Paul to take us back to
the beginning. Only there that we can find an account of what it means to be Man, what it
means to be a human being, and only there can we find an account of what eros and agape
mean in their original power and purity. In doing so we’re not just learning about some
abstract realities. In doing so we learn something about ourselves, what we are meant to be in
the design of the creator, and how eros and agape should operate in us according to the
Creator’s original intention. John Paul teaches us that every human being without exception
is rooted in the original situation. Could it be that the distorted manifestations of eros in the
human heart of Historical Man as he clumsily strives for his own fulfilment, and our
impoverished attempts at agape as we very occasionally approximate an act of selfless love
are also rooted in the original situation and are in some way a faint echo of eros and agape as
they operated with perfect freedom in the original situation?

20. The time has come to leave the beauty of the original situation and cross the boundary into
the historical situation. The Theology of the Body presents the first sin as the rejection of
God’s fatherhood. God had placed Man and Woman in the Garden of Eden. In other words,
in his fatherly providence he had provided them with everything they could possibly need for
their wellbeing and flourishing. In particular he had provided them with each other for their
mutual fulfilment and completion. Everything was Gift. But at a particular defining point
they each made the choice to reject what was given, to reject God’s fatherly providence, and
to grasp for themselves what was not offered. It was a defining point because from that
moment the decision had been taken to live no longer entirely from the providence of God’s
fatherhood, but to live at least to some extent from their own resources. The decision had
been taken to live no longer by the operation of gift, but by what they could grasp for
themselves from the world around them.

21. This has obvious consequences in the first place for eros. Something gets into the human
heart that is neither eros nor agape, a new influence that shouldn’t be there, that was never
intended by the creator. Man rejects the providence of God’s fatherhood, and from this
moment a new principle gets into the human heart that prompts Man to grasp things for
himself instead of living by the gifts of God’s fatherly providence. It prompts man to live by
taking instead of by living according to the principle of gift. It prompts him to desire things

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with his heart, and to desire things with his eyes that have not been offered, and sometimes to
act out these desires by grasping them, by actually taking them for himself. What is this thing
that gets into the heart like an alien invasion? It is called Concupiscence.

22. In one respect concupiscence looks like eros: It is a movement of the heart that seeks its
own fulfilment. In reality it is the very antithesis of eros. While eros seeks its fulfilment by
giving, and in particular by giving of oneself, concupiscence seeks its own fulfilment by
taking, by grasping what has not been given. Concupiscence is a parody of eros. It
masquerades as eros, and it does this so successfully that people in our own day even call it
love: lustful acts that use another person for their own pleasure, and even the lustful look that
is the first movement of the heart towards grasping another person for oneself. It’s not love.
It’s the ongoing repetition of that original sin when Man took to himself, first with his eyes
and then with his heart, something that had not been offered.

23. Concupiscence not only usurps the place of eros in Man’s heart. It completely
overshadows Man’s capacity for agape. In the Original Situation Man lived according to
God’s fatherly providence. He lived in the perfect trust that everything he needed for life and
for fulfilment would be given. He would be taken care of. This gave him total freedom from
all self-concern. He was free to turn his attention away from himself and to direct his effort
and his intention instead towards the service of the other. This is agape. But now, in the
fallen situation, he has effectively chosen not to be taken care of. He has chosen to look out
for himself instead, and this means grasping what he can from the world around him to satisfy
his need for fulfilment. He is no longer free to direct his energy and concern on the other.
With the onset of concupiscence Man and Woman are set to strive for self-fulfilment by a
principle of taking for themselves. In this they are doomed to frustration, because Man and
Woman are not created to find fulfilment by taking. They are created to find their fulfilment
only in self-giving. This frustration, this lack of total fulfilment, even in what might appear to
be the most enjoyable marital act between spouses, the Theology of the Body refers to as the
“insatiability of the union”.

24. But all is not lost. The power of Agape is overshadowed by concupiscence, but not
entirely eradicated. The power of Eros has been usurped by concupiscence, but not entirely
destroyed. Deep in the human heart these two powers, Eros and Agape, breathed into Man by
the Creator at the dawn of creation, are still alive. It’s just that the human heart has become
like a city under enemy occupation, no longer free to live according to its deepest aspirations.
Imagine a city like Jersusalem under Roman occupation, or any city under enemy occupation.
The citizens have their own aspirations and their own way of living out these aspirations. But
they are constrained to live according to the dictates, according to the practices and according
to laws of the occupying power. They may have been occupied for many years, for many
centuries even, and they have resigned themselves to this way of living. But deep within their
memories they have not forgotten who they are. At some level of consciousness they are
waiting for the day when they will be set free, for the day when they can throw off the
domination of the occupying power and begin to live once more according to their true nature
and according to their deepest aspirations.

25. The human heart is a bit like this. It is under enemy occupation. And concupiscence is
the occupying power. The deepest movements of the heart, eros and agape, are not dead, they
are held in bondage. The heart’s deepest aspirations, to find bodily fulfilment for oneself and
for one’s beloved in the act of total self-giving, are held in check by the dominance of the
occupying force. And the heart is powerless to throw this off. So it languishes in its captivity,
no longer free to live according to the freedom of the gift, but constrained to live according to
the dictates of concupiscence. The Theology of the Body calls this the “constraint of the
heart”.

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26. What the human heart needs is a liberator, someone to come and set it free. And that is
what Jesus has come to do. He has come to redeem the human heart from its bondage to
concupiscence. He has come to set us free.

27. The work of redemption has two components, the objective component and the subjective
component. The objective component is what Jesus attained for us on Calvary. The power of
the redemption was released into the world and made available to us through the sacraments
of the church. This is standard Catholic theology and John Paul takes this as read. The
component of the redemption John Paul develops in the Theology of the Body is the
subjective component, Man’s reception of the power of the redemption at the level of the
human heart. You could say that it took three years to carry out the work of redemption, not
just the three hours he hung on the cross or the three days from his death to his resurrection.
Yes, the objective power of the resurrection was released in his death and resurrection, but
integral to his work of redemption was the three years that he spent opening the hearts of his
beloved people so that they would be ready to receive the power of the redemption.

28. Jesus said: “When a man looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery
with her in his heart” (Matthew 5). With these words Jesus pronounces a judgement not on
Man who is good, not on the human heart which is good and waiting for liberation, but on the
evil of concupiscence. That is on one level. But at a deeper level, and even more importantly,
these words of Jesus are spoken to the human heart. They are an appeal to the human heart.
And having been spoken to the human heart they find a resonance there. In that deepest part
of Man, beneath the shackles of concupiscence that have so blinded him, he knows these
words to be true.

29. Remember that Man, every man without exception, is rooted in his original situation.
This means that he knows, deep down, who he is. He knows the deepest truths about himself.
When Jesus speaks these words of redemption they reach down into the human heart and find
a resonance there. It’s like a rescuer coming to rescue a prisoner locked away in the deepest
dungeon. When he hears a voice calling him from the realm of light, calling him by his name,
he knows that his liberation is near at hand. “If a man looks at a woman lustfully he has
already committed adultery with her in his heart.” These are words of redemption, and they
strike a resonance in the human heart with the truth about who we are, known deep down, that
has been written there from the beginning of creation. Arise, daughter of Jerusalem, awake
from sleep. Arise and get ready to throw off your chains of captivity, for your liberation is
close at hand.

30. If Eros is to be set free from the domination of concupiscence then we must do two things.
Firstly we must hear these words of Jesus, and not only hear them with our ears but allow
them to penetrate our heart. These words, together with all the words of Jesus that call us to
live in accordance with the Creator’s intention, constitute what the Theology of the Body
refers to as the ethos of the Redemption, or sometimes the ethos of the Gospel. We must allow
them to penetrate our hearts, to strike the gold that lies at the deepest core of our being, to
connect with the deepest desires of the human heart which are always in accordance with the
intention of the Creator, where eros and agape remain true, albeit buried deep and constrained
by the shackles of concupiscence.

31. Secondly we must watch over the movements that arise from the heart. We must each
become master over our own innermost impulses. John Paul says we must be like a
watchman who watches over a hidden spring, affirming and acting upon those impulses that
have the mark of eros in its purity and rejecting those impulses that have the mark of
concupiscence. (TB 48) It is a task of discernment in which Man
‘learns to distinguish between the manifold richness of masculinity and
femininity in the signs that spring from their perennial call and creative
attraction, and what bears only the sign of concupiscence’ (TB 48).

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In this way eros becomes increasingly purified, increasingly conformed to the ethos of
Redemption and also increasingly free and spontaneous with all the joy of spontaneity that we
were created for.

32. When a king comes to liberate one of his cities held captive by an occupying power he
needs somehow to get an advance party in to let down the drawbridge. Then he can storm the
city with the full force of his army. Christ is a bit like a king ready to storm our hearts. The
words of the Gospel are the advance party that must find their way into our hearts. Once we
have opened our hearts in response, the full power of the redemption can storm our hearts and
vanquish the concupiscence that has held us in bondage. But the analogy breaks down in one
particular respect. We don’t have to wait for some momentous liberation at the end of time,
or at some point in the future. The power of the redemption is at work in our hearts every
day, winning daily victories over concupiscence, and bringing us day by day to ever greater
freedom, or can be if we allow it. The power of the redemption is not just something that
brings us into the freedom of eternal life at our death, but something alive and active every
day in our lives. The virtue by which we seize the power of the redemption won for us by
Christ is called Hope, and our daily turning to the power of the redemption to set us free John
Paul calls by this beautiful little phrase, ‘the hope of every day’.

33. I’ve been speaking about the plight of eros and about the liberation of eros. I now want to
reintroduce Agape, and I want to reintroduce it as the liberator that comes to the rescue of
Eros, and comes to the rescue in two intimately related ways: Through Christ in ways that we
have already seen, and through marriage in ways that have yet to be revealed! Agape is the
love that strives for the fulfilment of the other, the fulfilment of the beloved. There is no
greater example of agape than what Christ has done and is doing for the Church, his beloved
Bride. The Son of God has emptied himself in the Incarnation to come down among his
people. To use the imagery of Hosea 2:14, he has taken his Bride out into the desert to speak
to her heart. And he has laid down his life for her in order to bring her to eternal life. There
is no greater act of love than this, no greater act of agape. This is the love we are commanded
to imitate when Jesus says to his disciples:
‘This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. No one can
have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.’ (Jn 15:12)

34. This commandment is lived out in a very particular way in Marriage. Remember that in
the Original Situation the conjugal union between Man and Woman was the original
covenant, the original way in which the Creator gave himself to humanity. With the failure of
that first covenant, the conjugal union between husband and wife has been superseded by the
conjugal union between Christ and his Church. This is the new and everlasting covenant,
brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection. Does this mean that marriage no longer has
any purpose? Far from it. The conjugal union between Man and Woman in holy matrimony
has become a sacrament of the Christ-Church union. (In the words of John Paul II marriage
contains a ‘particle’ of the Christ-Church union.)

35. It’s important to be clear what is meant by this. The conjugal union that we call Marriage
is not just a sign of Christ’s Union with the Church. It is the sacramental realisation of
Christ’s Union with the Church. The conjugal union between Man in his maleness and
Woman in her femaleness is the way that Christ has chosen to make visible in this world his
conjugal union with the Church that would otherwise be completely beyond the powers of our
perception. John Paul puts it this way: Marriage contains a particle of the Christ-Church
union. And he derives this assertion from the Ephesians author who calls upon husband and
wife to strive in their conjugal union to image the mystery of Christ’s union with the Church.
‘To be able to recommend such an obligation’ he says, ‘one must admit that the very essence
of marriage contains a particle of the same mystery.’ (TB 90)

36. If Christ’s conjugal union with the Church is redemptive, and if the conjugal union
between Man and Woman is a sacramental actualisation of the Christ-Church union, it follows

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that the conjugal union between Man and Woman is also redemptive. It is a sacramental
participation in the redeeming power of the Christ-Church union. In other words, if Christ’s
love for the Church consists above all in redeeming her, and if the conjugal union between
Man and Woman contains a particle of the Christ-Church union, then husband and wife play a
part in the redemption of each other. And if Christ redeems the Church by giving himself for
her on Calvary and giving himself to her in the sacraments, it follows that the mutual
redeeming takes place between husband and wife in the very act of giving themselves for
each other and giving themselves to each other in their conjugal union. This consists in all the
daily acts of self giving on all the manifold levels of maleness and femaleness, the bodies in
their maleness and femaleness being the substratum of their interpersonal giving.

37. Man has a particular way of giving himself in accordance with his maleness. Woman has
a particular way of giving herself in accordance to her femaleness. There is an asymmetry in
their reciprocal self-giving. One way that appears from the Scriptures to be characteristically
male is for the Man to be ready give himself even to the point of laying down his life for his
beloved. This is truly to image Christ’s love for his Church.
‘Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and
sacrificed himself for her, to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water
…’ Ephesians 5:25
If the daily acts of bodily self-giving to one another (and they must be bodily for we have no
other way of self-giving) are the way in which this redemptive love is played out, then this
redemptive love must surely be at its fullest power in the consummation of all these acts of
mutual self-giving, which we call the marital act. This is agape, the love with which Christ
loves the Church and brings her to fulfilment, the love with which husband and wife love one
another in imitation of Christ’s love for his Church.

38. The Church has long had the concept of marriage as remedium concupiscentiae based on
St Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians: ‘…if they cannot exercise self-control, let them
marry, since it is better to be married than to burn.’ (1 Cor 7:9). This is sometimes
misunderstood as a concession to concupiscence or an indulgence of concupiscence. If the
conjugal union between husband and wife is based on true self-giving, rather than taking, in
other words if their marriage is based on the true spousal meaning of the body, then this love
– all the daily acts of self-giving and above all the marital act as the consummation of these
acts of self-giving – will be a true remedy for concupiscence. Agape, the redemptive love of
Christ, now working sacramentally through the spouses in their marriage, this agape will
gradually, and increasingly, day by day, set them free from concupiscence. Agape has come
to the rescue of the human heart through the conjugal union of marriage, and has come in
particular to the rescue of eros, to set it free from the constraint of concupiscence.

39. We’ve talked about agape and eros becoming increasingly free from the constraint of
concupiscence. Freedom from the constraint of concupiscence in turn brings with it all the
joy of spontaneity. This is not the spontaneity of acting under the impetus of physical instinct,
still less giving way to the urges of concupiscence. These may feel like spontaneity: doing
what you like when you like. But they’re not actions that arise from the true self, arising from
the true and deepest desires of the heart, and they certainly don’t bring the joy of true
spontaneity. In fact this arises from a misconception about who I am, a case of mistaken
identity. Fallen Man can be so dominated by concupiscence that he knows only the
concupiscent movements of his heart, and thinks “this is who I am”. He can identify so
completely with the concupiscence in his heart, that when it comes to throwing off this
occupying power it can feel like a death or falling apart of oneself. Heather Ward in her book
The Gift of Self puts it in terms of ego versus the true self.
Since man in his state of estrangement from God regards his ego as himself , the
experience of ego-denial, of removing the desires, needs and illusions of the ego
from centre stage is perceived as an act of disintegration, of the loss of all that
we have called ourselves and our lives. (Gift of Self p. 13)

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But it’s only when the false self has fallen apart, it’s only when the constraint of
concupiscence has been thrown off, that the true self can emerge, and the God given powers
of eros and agape can operate with their true freedom and spontaneity.

40. There’s no contradiction here between the true self emerging in all his freedom and
spontaneity on the one hand, and on the other hand the deepening of one’s submission to the
Holy Spirit operating in one’s heart and in one’s whole body. Concupiscence is something
that gets into the human heart that shouldn’t be there. The Holy Spirit, by contrast, is exactly
who should be there. This is who we are – body completely governed by Holy Spirit. It’s
how we are created and how we come to the fullness of our being. Nor does this mean that
we all become automatons of the Holy Spirit. Although the Spirit is one and undivided, yet
He does divide, just as He did when he came down onto and into the disciples on the day of
Pentecost. He comes into each human body in a completely unique way giving each his or
her own personal uniqueness. “You send forth your spirit and they are created, and you renew
the face of the earth.” (Psalm 104)

41. We’ve seen how eros and agape can become both free and even spontaneous. But can
they be passionate? Let me start with eros.

42. Eros remember is the inner power that attracts man to the True, the Good and the
Beautiful, to find in the True the Good and the Beautiful one’s own fulfilment. The male of
the species can be attracted to the female of the species by three distinct powers: 1. the merely
animal attraction that may have evolved for the continuation of the species. 2. concupiscent
desire which masquerades as eros because it seeks its own fulfilment but in fact does so by
taking for oneself, or 3. true eros which seeks its own fulfilment, Yes, but does so by making
a gift of self to the other and is therefore compatible with agape. True eros reads the spousal
meaning of the body correctly. A man operating by eros reads clearly in the maleness of his
body that the body is for self-giving. Included in this spousal meaning is that this self-giving
operates on a hierarchy of levels of his own maleness and her femaleness. Included also in
the spousal meaning of the body is that the marital act is total self-giving. This means that it
happens only within the lifelong commitment of marriage and is the consummation of all the
other daily acts of self-giving across the whole depth of his maleness and her femaleness.
Can eros be passionate in this context? Answer: most resoundingly Yes. Much more
passionate in fact than any act that arises either from a purely animal instinct, and certainly
more passionate than any act arising from mere concupiscence, which is by comparison
narrow and superficial and anyway fails completely to fulfil the true self because it actually
has nothing to do with the true self.

43. In May 1984 John Paul began his exposition of the Song of Songs, and its importance to
the Theology of the Body. It is the most passionate book of the Bible. Down the ages biblical
exegetes have tried to insist on an allegorical interpretation of this book, perhaps as a way of
explaining away the presence of such passionate and explicit language finding its way into
Holy Writ. But John Paul is having none of this. In a footnote to the text John Paul quotes
approvingly this assessment by a Benedictine monk called Winandy: “The Song [of Songs] is
…to be taken simply for what it manifestly is: a song of human love.” In fact it gets its
effectiveness and authority precisely from being this. The Song of Songs is the celebration of
marriage, the human reality of marriage, in all the freedom and spontaneity and passion
originally intended by the Creator:
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.
Your navel is a rounded bowl
that never lackes spiced wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
encircled with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle. (Song 6:13-7:7)

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This is unabashed eros, the perennial attraction of the male human body to the female human
body because therein lies its own fulfilment: not however through taking to oneself, but
through giving of oneself and of receiving the reciprocal self-gift of the beloved, exactly in
accordance with the Maker’s instructions. What distinguishes this mutual attraction from
mere animal attraction is that for human beings the body is what John Paul calls the
‘substratum of the person’. This perennial attraction of male human body to female human
body and vice versa is also the perennial attraction of person to person.
TB 108: The words of love spoken by both of them are concentrated on the
“body”, not so much because in itself it constitutes the source of reciprocal
fascination, but …because the attraction toward the other person lingers directly
and immediately on it.

44. This is also the perennial attraction of male to female and female to male on the level of
spirit. Eros remember is first and foremost the operation of the Holy Spirit at work in the
human body. But also what Man and Woman are ultimately attracted to in one another is
Christ himself. At the deepest level they long to be, in their coming together, the symbol and
the sacramental realisation of Christ’s union with the Church. In their maleness and
femaleness they are attracted to each other for this very reason: that their coming together is a
particle of Christ’s union with the Church, a little foretaste of that blissful union. Christ is the
True, the Beautiful and the Good to which human beings are attracted because it is in him that
they will ultimately find their fulfilment. As the Theology of the Body puts it (TB 117b):
That “fear of Christ” and “reverence” [for Christ] is nothing other than a
spiritually mature form of that reciprocal attraction of the man for femininity
and of the woman for masculinity.

45. On this basis we can deduce that eros will become ever more passionate the more clearly
and the more deeply the conjugal union between husband and wife images the union between
Christ and his Church, the more deeply it actualises that mystery sacramentally. Heather
Ward again
“Through the day-to-day living in union with another I grow in the experience of
loving as willing…I also find this life-in-partnership reverberating spiritually,
making me more aware of that other union even more basic to my existence…A
lifetime of living the icon, marriage, produces similar recognition, without in any
way denying the solidity and validity of the human bonding.” (Gift of Self p104)

46. Eros is the power or movement of the heart that drives a lover on to ever seek the beloved.
At one point in the Song of Songs the love duet fluctuates between words full of search and
longing at one moment, and mutual discovery in the next.
Tell me, O love of my soul,
where are you going to pasture your flock? (1:7)
Through the streets and through the squares
I will seek the beloved of my heart. (3:1-4)
I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had departed, he was gone.
My soul failed me, I did not find him;
I called for him but he did not answer. (5:6)
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved,
what shall you tell him?
That I am sick with love. (5:9)

47. Finding the beloved enables the lover to make a gift of self, and in doing so both lover and
beloved attain their mutual fulfilment. But this fulfilment is provisional, because it means
that lover and beloved have each taken another step into an ever fuller and deepening
personhood. And so the mutual seeking for each other begins again. The Theology of the
Body calls this the “subjective dynamism” of eros. Each moment of mutual finding leads

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onto the next level of mutual seeking, and each moment of mutual seeking leads onto the next
level of mutual finding. Eros moves the husband to penetrate ever deeper into the full depth
of his beloved’s femaleness. Eros moves the wife to open to an ever deeper and fuller depth
of her beloved’s maleness. This is another reason to deduce that eros becomes not less
passionate as the spouses come closer together but more passionate.

48. The passionate love between two lovers described so beautifully in the Song of Songs is
not simply an allegory for Christ’s spousal union with the Church. It is much more than this.
It is a description of the passionate love between Man and Woman in conjugal union, which is
much more than an allegory of the Christ-Church union. It is in all its freedom and
spontaneity and passion a sacramental realisation of Christ’s spousal union with the Church.

49. I think we could have predicted that eros would be passionate. But what about agape.
Can that be passionate?

50. I’m sure most little boys fall in love with a girl in the neighbourhood and have fantasies
about saving her from wild beasts or some other peril, especially the delight of dying in the
ordeal. My version of this was when I was about 10 or 11. I confess now that I can’t even
remember her name. In our back garden there was a gap or gully between the house and the
raised lawn about four feet wide and about three feet deep. But in my boyhood imagination
this three feet deep became a bottomless chasm. The fantasy was that my beautiful girlfriend
was falling into this bottomless chasm. So I would passionately hurl myself after her into the
abyss and somehow catch her up, and in free fall push her onto a ledge to save her life while I
went hurtling down to my death. A typical boyhood fantasy: inflating what was little more
than a boyhood crush into what I believed was real love, and vastly underestimating the
instinct for self-preservation had I been faced with the opportunity in reality. But, what I
think we’re looking at in these boyhood fantasies, is a seed of true agape. Maybe little girls
have similar fantasies about giving their lives for their children. And I know from my own
experience that this little seed of agape, albeit very small and immature, can also be
passionate. I longed to do the deed.

51. But there is one example of agape that is the real thing: fully mature and far from being a
mere fantasy. This is Christ’s choice to lay down his life for his beloved Church: to give his
life completely so that she might have the fullness of life: to bring about her redemption. Was
this agape passionate? Listen to the Lord’s own words in the Gospel:
I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were blazing already!
There is a baptism I must still receive, and how I am constrained until it is
accomplished. (Luke 12:49)
This revelation of Christ’s ardent desire to lay down his life for us is amplified in the
Revelations of Divine Love recorded by Julian of Norwich (22):
‘It is a joy, a delight and an endless happiness to me ever to have suffered for
you. If I could suffer more I would suffer more.’
Julian then goes on to give this commentary on this extraordinary revelation of Christ’s love:
And in these words, ‘If I could suffer more, I would suffer more’, I saw clearly
that he was willing to die as often as he was able to die, and love would not let
him rest until he had done it…For though the dear humanity of Christ could
suffer only once, his goodness makes him ready to do so again and again; he
would do it every day if this were possible; and if he said that for love of me he
would make a new heaven and a new earth it would be but little in comparison,
for he could do this every day if he so wished, without any difficulty. But to be
ready to die for love of me so often that the number of times passes human
capacity to compute, this to me is the most astonishing gift that Our Lord God
could make to the soul of man.
Yes, agape can be passionate, perhaps even more passionate than eros, and will become
increasingly passionate the more closely it images the love of our divine Bridegroom, the
more deeply our love is a participation in his divine love.

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52. The Theology of the Body teaches that there is no going back to the state of Original
Innocence, to our theological prehistory in which eros and agape were perfectly free and
perfectly integrated. What the Theology of the Body does teach is that we can go forward.
Each of us without exception is rooted in the original situation. This means that we have been
created with the capacity for true eros and true agape, even though the former has been to
some extent deposed by concupiscence and the latter overshadowed by concupiscence. But
by the power of his redemption, daily at work in our hearts to set them free, if daily we place
our hope in this power, then the movements of eros and agape that are native to our hearts can
become increasingly free and spontaneous and passionate, and can grow with the ever
deepening gift of self. In marriage in particular the mutual self-giving that is the sacrament of
that mutual self-giving of Christ and the Church can become an ever deeper and ever clearer
image, and therefore an ever truer sacrament of that mystery that it signifies.

Father William
3rd June 2009

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