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You started your analysis of sexuality in exactly the right place, I think. The topic is so wide that if we don't tie it down to earth somewhere, there is a risk that we might get lost in it; and I think this is a good starting point. Is our affair right or wrong -- or neither -- and why? On the one side is the clear teaching of the whole Christian Church (a "catholic" teaching in the widest possible sense of the term) that any adulterous affair is wrong. On the other side is a sense that I think we share equally clearly, that in some ways it truly does not feel wrong. Of course there is always room for self-delusion; but I think if I were eating a lunch I had stolen from somebody else, I would be aware of the wrongness even while enjoying the flavor of the food. And somehow that analogy just doesn't seem to fit the situation between you and me. So why not?
My hunch from the outset is that the traditional teaching is at best incomplete, or subtly misled -- even perhaps, as you write, "deeply flawed". If that turns out to be true, it might create something of a problem for works like the New Testament, which are sources of the traditional teaching. It may not be an insuperable problem. I think there is a way to be "open to the sacred" -- even to serve God -- while still accepting that the Scriptures can be supplemented in places. But that is a whole new discussion. The first step is to look at the traditional view as you have presented it, and to examine it afresh.
One side note on the text that follows: As I wrote this, I found that there were a lot of places where I had to meander somewhat far afield to make my point. To keep the structure from getting completely lost, I have shoved a lot of this meandering into NOTEs which I have linked in as separate posts of their own. These NOTEs form an integral part of the text; when I say "(See NOTE x)," there is a chunk of the argument missing that you'll have to click forward to NOTE x to find. But on a first reading you might find it helpful to skip them and forge ahead.
To begin: You start with a series of questions, "To what part of the human being does erotic love belong; the body or the soul? If to the body, then what part does rational choice play in our sexual emotions, and how can they be disciplined and controlled? If to the soul, then what part does the body play in it and is carnal love really the goal of it? If carnal love is the goal, is erotic love just a bodily appetite like hunger or thirst?" Of course you are right that they are not new questions. But I think that they are the wrong questions ... or, rather, I think that the questions themselves are based on faulty assumptions. That means that the conversation starts off on the wrong foot from the beginning.
"The body or the soul?" I think the distinction here is not as crisp as it sounds, and that there is a lot to be said in favor of William Blake's proposition, "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age." (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 4) Admittedly, sometimes it is useful to be able to distinguish the body from the soul in certain discussions or applications. But the interconnection between them is so deep that I think in the end they have to be considered the same. (See NOTE 1.) And therefore the question about erotic love dissolves, because it belongs to both of them. This means that a couple of your follow-on questions can be easily and immediately answered. (See NOTE 2.)
The question about choice, however, demands a few words more. You go on to explain: "As a Christian, I am aware that love is the highest commandment, and if so, then love must be a choice and involve voluntary thoughts and decisions, not just be an animal imperative." Yes and no.
First, love must certainly be consistent with the human excellences, and among other things this does involve choice. But I don't think that conscious, logical calculation is the only model for choice. I argue, rather, that -- just as there is no crisp division between body and soul -- so there is no boundary line where intelligence stops short. Our bodies, rather, contain as much intelligence (in their own way) as our conscious intellects. (See NOTE 3.) And of course our bodies make very clear decisions about whom we love, or at any rate whom we want to love. There is a crude epigram to the effect that "No-one is ugly at 3 o'clock in the morning." But by the light of day we can all tell which people our bodies would willingly choose, and which not. And I am persuaded that, if we understood well enough the "language" of our desires, we could see exactly why our libidos chose these people and not those ones -- not just that he or she is "hot" but that he or she exhibits a kind of goodness, ... a species or aspect of The Good ... which is particularly important or relevant to the intelligence that resides in our bodies. (See NOTE 4.)
Second, there may be some confusion over what is distinctively human and what is animal. I am very struck, for example, by Ryan and Jethá's argument -- based on close observation of the natural world -- that it is precisely by putting eros in the service of generation that we reduce it to an "animal imperative"; while an extensive and vigorous sex life, one far outstripping the needs of mere reproduction, is as distinctively human a behavior as speech or reason. Nor is this comparison accidental. I think an argument can be made, in fact, that our eros serves a role complementary to our logos; that both are in the service of the highest human ends; and that both are essential and irreducible components of our experience of what it is to be human. (See NOTE 5.)
Third, if love is the highest commandment, what exactly does that mean?
- In the light of my remarks in NOTE 5, I think that to say love is the highest commandment is to say (under the mode of revelation) something similar to what a philosopher might mean when he says (under the mode of reason) that the highest human end is sociability, or community. Community is what we are here for.
- But human communities are not anthills, composed of random groups of people tossed blindly together. Human communities are in the most important instances chosen. We choose our friends and companions by looking for the good in them -- good at any and all levels. We know we have found something good because we enjoy it, and The Good is what you enjoy. The lenses or filters through which we discern the good -- the fundamental criteria by which we find our friends -- may appear many on the surface, but I think in the end they can be reduced to two: logos and eros.
- We maintain our communities, those networks of interlocking friendships that bind us together, by nurturing and growing our mutual enjoyment of each other ... by making better and deeper friendships with each other. How do we do this?
- With some friends we share a bond of logos, an intellectual bond; and we nurture that bond by talking together, questioning and thinking together, helping each other to teach and to learn.
- By analogy, then, I think we also have to say that with some friends (admittedly not all) we share a bond of eros, an erotic bond. And we nurture that bond, in the first instance, by making love together, connecting in a way that nothing else can touch.
Can erotic love lead to sin? Can it be "vicious and degrading"? Of course. Anything good (meaning finite things in the world this side of Jordan) can be perverted to do evil. But it is important to distinguish carefully where the actual sin lies. Let's take the case of adultery in particular. In the face of the foregoing argument, I have to deny flatly that the sin lies in the sex itself. It doesn't. I say this with confidence because I have lived on the other side of the equation. When I was able to look at myself analytically, in the context of Wife's infidelities, it was never the sex itself that caused me the pain. But when her affair with someone else caused her to abandon me, to shut me out, to turn cold or hard-hearted to me ... or at any rate, when that was the way it felt on my side ... that was where the pain was. There was the sin. By extension, I argue that sexual love between the right friends is in itself no sin, because it is in itself no more than a working-out in practice of the command to love each other, or of the high goal of human community. Of course I speak of "the right friends" and not indiscriminate acquaintances. But the building and maintaining of ties of love and friendship cannot be in and of itself sinful. It is when building this bond causes us to neglect or betray that bond, that we sin. If our love for someone new causes us to lose our love for someone who came before (a spouse, for example) ... if our love for someone new causes us to abandon or betray the one who came before, to shut her or him out in the cold, to turn away with a hard heart ... well, it is the betrayal or the abandonment or the hard-heartedness that constitute the sin. So if loving someone new causes those things, then in that case the adultery has caused the sin. But that is not the same as saying that the adultery is itself the sin.
What is more, I categorically deny that there is anything special about erotic love in this respect. Any kind of love can become "vicious and degrading". Any kind of love can lead to sin. Love of God? Many a fanatic has been led astray by what started as a genuine, ardent love of God. Love of country? That's too easy. Love of children? You gave a simple example, of a mother whose misguided love for her children leads her to do their homework for them. But there are darker, more vicious examples. I believe that in her own mind, Wife's mother was motivated by love for all her children; yet in her hands that love became a warped and poisonous thing that left none of them whole. The absence of "carnal focus" is a red herring; it's like saying "Well at least there are no chocolate sundaes involved, to excite gluttony." No, there aren't -- but what is there is a worse sin by far than the occasional chocolate sundae. I have no doubt that your love of your children, and of your friends, are indeed all innocent, in the sense that they are not leading you into sin. But that is a blessing and a grace, that you are able to love all these people in a constructive way not a destructive one. The absence of an erotic component is just a coincidence. If the argument is valid, then innocent carnal love must also be possible.
I'm not sure that I can subscribe to all your personal generalizations about Plato (See NOTE 6), but they don't affect your argument much. Whatever his reasons, Plato certainly introduced into Western thought an aspiration toward a kind of pure, bloodless love; and the early Church picked this up with alacrity. I agree with you that this was a mistake. I am not sure I understand Plato's motives, still less those of the early Church Fathers.
But I do think the argument is clear, that a life without passionate, sexual desire is scarcely recognizable as a human life at all; and that the direct physical expression of erotic love is [or can be, if it is not perverted into causing pain and harm] absolutely right and proper as one fundamental component of the best human life, the end for which we were made.
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