By Kalvin Budiman

Among the commonly accepted four categories of love—agape (sacrificial love), philia (brotherly love), storge (familial love) and eros (sensual love)—eros is often deemed as the most notorious.  In the context of spiritual or theological discussions, in particular, eros often suffers much restraint if not complete rejection.  After all, it was a name of the ancient Greek god of sexual love.  As the oft-quoted saying goes, ‘What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?’  What does Greek mythology have to do with Christian faith?  Moreover, since Sigmund Freud—the famous Austrian psychologist—declared that religion is simply a kind of neurosis that finds its root of expression in sexual desire, many religious people attempt to prove him wrong by staying away from eros in any serious religious talks.  I think the movie industry has also contributed to the church’s avoidance from taking eros seriously.  Since erotic love has been exploited beyond its boundaries and reduced to an exhibition of mere lust, many good Christians assume that eros has no place whatsoever in thoughtful religious conversations.

That is unfortunate because, in my opinion, the Bible does speak about eros.  As a type of love, eros is a necessary part of the human life that God has “installed” in our soul.  It is true that the word “eros” does not occur in the Bible, but the meaning of this word can be found in many parts of the Bible.  C. S. Lewis in his book, The Four Loves, argues that eros in its sanctified form is different from mere physical and sexual desire.  Eros wants the beloved, not sex, as an end in itself, in its unique way that is different from the way of agape or philia or storge.  Eros is different from the other types of love not simply because it connotes specific meaning pertaining to bodily desire, but because in eros the lover and the beloved are mystically united—a holy union that can be experienced physically, but goes beyond human understanding.

Other than the book of Song of Songs in the Bible, we can discover the meaning of the sanctified eros in many biblical expressions like the following: “My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Psalm 84:2); “Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you” (Psalm 63:1); As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1); “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you” (Is 62:5b); “He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body…. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:28b-32).  Knowledge of sanctified eros can enrich and unveil to us deeper layers of love in such verses.

In essence, what the above verses and the like want to remind us is the presence of desire in our soul to yearn after divine things—a desire to be united with the highest good and beauty.  It is the kind of feelings that we want to become one with, for instance, a beautiful music that we are enjoying, or a glorious beauty of sunrise, or a majestic view of a mountain.  This kind of feeling is only a glimmer of our soul’s yearning for God.  A divine yearning absorbs a person into the thing he or she loves.  That is why the apostle Paul, swept along by his yearning for Christ, writes these inspirational words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).  Paul teaches us that lovers of God possess not their own life, but the One they love.  Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest martyrs, wrote to his congregations that he was not afraid of being put to death because: “he for whom I yearn has been crucified for me.”