{"id":40802,"date":"2013-07-20T22:36:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T03:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austincnm.com\/?p=40802"},"modified":"2013-07-21T19:23:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T00:23:26","slug":"erroneous-eros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2013\/07\/erroneous-eros\/","title":{"rendered":"Erroneous Eros…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last column \u201cQuid Amor?<\/a> (What is Love?)\u201d, I wrote about the different loves as explained by C.S. Lewis and by the Holy Scriptures. Love is so much more complicated than being a simple emotion without reason. According to Lewis there are four loves; Storge, Philia, Eros and Agape. Each love plays an important part in our relationships and each adds a specific beauty to our humanity. Pure Eros is a love that is of great importance to the flourishing of relationships between human beings and between the human person and God. But what if that Eros becomes erroneous? What if Eros becomes degraded?<\/p>\n

Lewis defines Eros as romance, \u201c\u2018being in love\u2019 or the kind of love which lovers are \u2018in\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"csSexuality is only a small part of Eros. Sex does not describe the entirety of Eros. In fact, Lewis states that sexuality can occur without Eros, being in love or romance. For him \u201cEros includes other things besides [solely] sexual activity\u201d. Lewis calls the sexual act without Eros \u201cVenus\u201d, which refers to the Roman Pagan goddess of love, beauty, sex and fertility. \u201cVenus\u201d is a natural instinct in all creation; however, this natural instinct can be used for the good of humanity if placed under the governance of reason.<\/p>\n

Venus is not necessary for Eros. C.S. Lewis writes that \u201cto the evolutionist Eros [is] something that grows out of Venus\u201d. This ideology is not necessarily true and should not be assumed to be the only acceptable truth. It is true that some men find that their attraction to a woman begins with the mere sexual appetite and eventually ends up falling in love with the woman, but this is not necessarily true because \u201cvery often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the [totality of the] beloved\u201d. When the man is preoccupied with the total person of the beloved, he finds that he does not have \u201cleisure to think of sex\u201d and he has a desire to know this person without the need to know her sexually. Should this desire awaken within him the \u201csexual element\u201d he knows that this sexual desire was not the foundation of his desire to know the woman. In fact, if he is functioning in Eros, then this sexual desire will be reordered. According to Lewis, Eros is what reorganizes the sexual desire to focus on the \u201cbeloved\u201d rather than \u201cthe thing…sensory pleasure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Eros makes the person want a particular beloved not the pleasure that can possibly come from the beloved, when the beloved becomes objectified. When we do not allow for our sexual desires to be overshadowed by true Eros, then all sexual conduct becomes about the \u201cme\u201d. Eros should be directed toward the outward sharing of love, Eros \u201cis something outside us, in the real world\u201d, and it goes beyond ourselves. Whenever we lose this understanding and focus on the erroneous understanding of Eros, namely to turn it inward, this leads us to reducing Eros into simply \u201csex\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est says,<\/p>\n

Eros, reduced to pure \u201csex\u201d, has become a commodity, a mere \u201cthing\u201d to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great \u201cyes\u201d to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will.
\nThrough the reduction of Eros man himself becomes objectified and sex loses its sacredness and becomes a form of currency to be used for exchange of one for another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what is the appropriate use of Eros?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Pope Benedict says, \u201cTrue, Eros tends to rise \u201cin ecstasy\u201d towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves\u201d. Eros is a path to expressing our love in an outward way, focusing on the other and not so much on our own desires for intimacy. For this reason, Eros can be lived out in platonic relationships, such as a Priest to his flock, a friend to a friend, a brother to his brother; it is the outward expression of love, of romance for another. Eros is not meant to be focused upon what pleasure is found in a relationship for my own but rather, an emptying of self for the sake of the other. The ultimate purpose of Eros is to seek relationship with God. As Benedict says it is \u201can ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.”<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict says that our faith does not seek to discount the beauty and importance of erotic love but rather that \u201cEros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.\u201d However, if we do not discipline Eros, or rather if we do not live in true Eros, then it becomes a source of degradation, reducing humanity to mere passing pleasures, reducing their human dignity and negating their identity as \u201cbeloved children of God\u201d.<\/p>\n

The perfect example of pure Eros, was the life, Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. He humbled himself from his divinity and took on our humanity in order that he might redeem our humanity. Because he was so in love with his bride, the church, he completely emptied himself out, pouring out his saving blood so that we might have life. His Eros was directed totally toward the Father and from that love between him and the Father, he in turn loved us; which resulted in the Holy Spirit, which was always present in the trinity, to be lavished over us for all eternity.<\/p>\n

Can we love in this way? Can we give ourselves for the sake of others? Are we living pure Eros?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last column \u201cQuid Amor? (What is Love?)\u201d, I wrote about the different loves as explained by C.S. Lewis and by the Holy Scriptures. Love is so much more complicated than being a simple emotion without reason. According to Lewis there are four loves; Storge, Philia, Eros and Agape. Each love plays an important… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[671],"tags":[927,1588,193,1518,1872],"class_list":{"0":"post-40802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-column","7":"tag-c-s-lewis","8":"tag-eros","9":"tag-love","10":"tag-pope-benedict","11":"tag-pure","12":"entry","13":"has-post-thumbnail"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":39009,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/review-the-four-loves\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":0},"title":"What Love Really Means (Review: “The Four Loves”)","author":"Lindsay Wilcox","date":"April 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Love is complicated. After I came back to the Church, I realized that the world's definition of love wasn't going to cut it. I knew that it had to be more than just a feeling, but I was still confused. How could I define something so powerful, so sacred, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/faith-blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo by MiRo740.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/2080809712_1668b5a0cb_z-300x215.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":308041,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/the-song-and-the-priesthood\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":1},"title":"The Song and the Priesthood","author":"William Rooney","date":"October 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, thanks to my Old Testament Writings class, I have spent a lot of time reading, meditating on, and writing about the Song of Songs. It is a marvelous book which I highly encourage you to read. In some ways, the Song is a remarkable book to find in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ACNM"","block_context":{"text":"ACNM","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Adam and Eve and the desire for something other than God","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atxcatholic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Adam-and-Eve-reaching-for-apple.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":40338,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/quid-amor\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":2},"title":"Quid Amor?","author":"Henry Cuellar","date":"June 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Love, an emotion? a feeling? What is love? Today many people, when they think of love think of it as an emotion or a feeling. For them, love is possible of fading or dying. Love, for many, is just a state of mind that one can fall into or fall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","block_context":{"text":"Column","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/column\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sacred Heart","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Sacred-Heart-109x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":101542,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/review-cs-lewis-and-the-crisis-of-a-christian\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":3},"title":"Biography, Theology, and You (Review: “C.S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian”)","author":"Lindsay Wilcox","date":"March 31, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I like C.S. Lewis a lot. He wasn't a Catholic, but he was a convert to Anglicanism, and more importantly, he was an incredible writer. I read The Chronicles of Narnia first, but when I entered adulthood, I discovered his apologetics works. I love them so much that I have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/faith-blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"\"If we find the gospel message to be true, we need to surrender to God and change our lives. For that reason\u2014whether or not the [C.S. Lewis] trilemma or some form of it works\u2014many will still never assent that Jesus is God.\" \u2014Gregory S. Cootsona","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/acnm_lewiscrisis.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":156607,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2015\/10\/taking-a-lesson-from-c-s-lewis\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":4},"title":"Taking a Lesson from C.S. Lewis","author":"Ablaze Ministries","date":"October 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cI have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo-1430747562296-5556d17a15a5","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/photo-1430747562296-5556d17a15a5-550x367.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/photo-1430747562296-5556d17a15a5-550x367.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/photo-1430747562296-5556d17a15a5-550x367.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":130041,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/a-demons-memo-what-happens-when-you-return-from-a-retreat\/","url_meta":{"origin":40802,"position":5},"title":"A Demon’s Memo- What Happens When You Return From A Retreat","author":"Matthew Hartwick","date":"July 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The following excerpt is meant to be a Screwtape Letters\u2019 type of writing. It;s written from the perspective of the demon. Because of this, \u201cthe enemy\u201d is actually God. In this letter, Slubgob, a senior demon, tells his colleagues about a group that came back from a retreat and how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/faith-blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Screwtape Letters by C.S. 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