Datos in situ vs bases de datos

Contemporary examinations of what Jean-Luc Marion calls the ‘erotic phenomenon’ have as one of their associated aims the intention of rehabilitating eros, with its attendant characterisation as a self- gratuitous, negative impulse, by comparing on the one hand the essential moral and ethical potential of properly constituted and exercised self-love with the perceived insufficiency of a purely

48 _{A notion present in both Vacek and Marion, but also identifiable in the writing of} the Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, who, and notwithstanding the various tensions in his writing on eros and agape identified by Clough, asks, “whether what is called

agape is not really a spiritualised, idealised, sublimated, and pious form of eros.”

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2, 280 (337-8). As cited in David Clough, Eros and Agape in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.” International Journal of Systematic

Theology 2, no. 2 (July 2000): 192.

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selfless agape.50 Edward Vacek gives the example of self- responsibility, as a form of self-love, through which we achieve crucial moral tasks not present in love for a neighbour, such as taking personal responsibility for accepting and responding to God’s love.51 Notions such as self-sacrifice and self-gift, repentance and

forgiveness, and the value of petitionary prayer are similarly gathered within this understanding. Conversely, “the advocates of self-

forgetfulness rob love of its personal quality”52 _{– their personhood} shrinks accordingly, making it very difficult for others to help them. As Vacek comments, “The classical God who has no needs is a very difficult God to love.” 53 _{For Marion, as with others, then, there is no} essential distinction between eros, agape, and philia, except in

relation to the object of the particular form of love and its intentions.54 Thus Vacek distinguishes between agape, eros, and philia by

application of the phrase, “for the sake of.” That is, “the one for whose sake we love determines the kind of love we have.” 55

Applying this formula, deformed desire, alternatively understood as “the concupiscence ‘that comes from the world,’”56 _{limits the} trinitarian potential of eros that properly seeks the other, by ‘distorting, ‘limiting,’ or ‘reducing’ the “quality of the reciprocal relations that exist between a man and a woman.”57 _Conversely, properly constituted desire that is not reduced simply to bodily or physical realities,58 provides the foundation and preparation “for man’s becoming the image of God through communion.”59 _There must be present in eros, then, an indispensable ethical component

50 _{Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, 5. Cf. Nygren, for example, who argues that it is} impossible to reconcile eros and agape, between which, “… there is universal, all embracing opposition.” See Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 159.

51 _{Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 223.} 52 _{Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 223.} 53 _{Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 231.} 54 _{Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, 220-221.} 55 _{Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 157-158.}

56 _{Pope John Paul II, Man & Woman He Created Them, n.32-1, 257.} 57 _{Pope John Paul II, Man & Woman He Created Them, n.32-1, 257.}

58 _{Ailbe M. O’Reilly, Conjugal Chastity in Pope Wojtyla (New York: Peter Lang} Publishing, 2010), 47.

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which facilitates, orientates, and guides this movement.60 In this way, “what is ‘erotic’ also becomes true, good and beautiful.”61 _{This is very} much the substance of Psalm 119, one of the most complete

expressions of the benefits of Torah in Judaism, the positive matrix of governance in ancient Israel that, as we have seen,62 _{has equivalence} with the blessings of Eden.63

However, over and against properly constituted eros, agape, and \philia there lies the ongoing tension between the unassailable perfection of creation, manifest in the imagery of Eden, and the experience of creation continually made new. That is to say, the Garden of Eden may well be eternal, but that ‘stability,’ as the Orthodox theologian Dimitru Staniloae observes in the context of the ascent towards God described by St. Gregory of Nyssa, is

simultaneously experienced as motion.64 For St Gregory the danger lies not in the movement of humanity towards God in response to God’s love. Indeed, that movement is seen as part of what might be deemed the natural order. Rather, it is the quality and nature of that response that determines whether the human remains within

“continuous newness,” or, as a consequence of imperfect love, “falls.”65

Understood in this manner Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden following their solipsistic act of eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, insofar as the act represents the transgression of God’s properly constituted eros, is the only possible outcome. God’s decision is not just ‘judicial’ but relates to the fundamental

characteristic of the world as eternally becoming, in freedom, through

60 _{Pope John Paul II, Man & Woman He Created Them, n.48-1, 319.} 61 _{Pope John Paul II, Man & Woman He Created Them, n.48-1, 319.} 62 _{See p. 82.}

63 _{Cf. Sir 24:7-23; Bar 3:9-4:4.}

64 _{Staniloae, The Experience of God, 2:209.} 65 _{Staniloae, The Experience of God, 2:209.}

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relationship;66 Adam and Eve’s self-focussed actions radically disrupt both the immediate integrity and the creative potential of that reality. The challenge for the Israelite community subsequently, reduced to its essence in the question Cain asks of God,67 _{is to reconnect with the} divine desire at the heart of that eternal becoming through proper relationship with God, and with each other. This is a theme developed in Paul’s theology of Christ as the New Adam, and further developed in Irenaeus’ doctrine of recapitulation. It was subsequently

rearticulated by others, including Ignatius, who exhorted the Christian retreatant to “apply his senses” to the mystery of faith as preparatory exercises intended to elaborate “the form, meaning, and training” for prayer.68 According to Ignatius, the practice educates the retreatant, “to use our senses in the image of the senses of the New Adam and the new Eve… our surrender to the order of the incarnation.”The

blessings of that re-union, as a fundamental motif of Old Testament narrative, indicated in the writings of the prophets, and especially in the image of Ezekiel’s repristinated Temple as Eden (Ezek 47:1-12), are a return to the Garden of Eden as a symbol of fundamental reconciliation.

Contemporary Orthodox theology supports this understanding. Kallistos Ware, for example, argues that, notwithstanding its

foundation in the contemplation of the appearances and processes of the natural world, the legitimacy of eros as a theological category within Orthodoxy, supportive of salvation, is equally perceived as dependent on its moral underpinnings:

… the contemplation of nature requires a moral basis. We cannot make progress on the second stage of the Way unless we make progress on the first stage by practicing the virtues and fulfilling the commandments. Our natural

66 _{John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, Encyclical Letter, Vatican Website,} 1995, http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0141/

_INDEX.HTM, sec.19. 67 _{Gen 4:9}

68 _{Ignatius, Exercises, Nos. 121, 133, 227, 238. As cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar,}

The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. 1. Seeing the Form, transl.

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contemplation, if it lacks a firm foundation in the ‘active life’, becomes merely aesthetic or romantic, and fails to rise to the level of the genuinely noetic or spiritual. There can be no perception of the world in God without radical repentance, without a continual change of mind.69

Within Orthodox theology, then, creation is not held to be ethical in and of itself. But, as with Roman Catholic theology, and assumed in the story of the Fall, there must be an ethical dimension to our desire for God if it is not be distorted or displaced by ego-centric, or impure motives, or otherwise appropriated by third-parties. As we shall see in the next chapter matrimonial symbolism is enlisted by the both Old and New Testament writers to represent this fidelity but is itself ultimately subsumed within the encompassing, transcendent symbolism of Eden.