Christian Eros

I find myself agreeing with what Lewis states throughout this book and my brain is just not letting me contradict him just yet. Therefore, here is one of my thoughts on agreeing with Lewis.

The idea of Eros always registered in my head as the sexual desire between a man and a woman, which, as Christians, is something we should abstain from until marriage. However, Lewis definitely mixed up my thoughts after claiming that, “Eros, without diminishing desire, makes abstinence easier,” (97). Although this is not a key, defining phrase made by Lewis, it is a phrase that one needs to understand where Lewis is coming from in order to understand why he said it, which has helped to expand my definition of Eros.

The argument leading up to the phrase begins with Lewis stating, "Eros includes other things besides sexual activity," (91). He goes on to call the sexual component Venus, a component that should be downplayed so that one can focus on the idea that "Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman," (94). This seems to mean that, in Eros, a man's first desire is not to want the woman as a vessel for physical pleasure, but that he desires her in some unexplainable way. Moreover, “in Eros, A Need, at its most intense, sees the object most intensely as a thing admirable in herself, important beyond her relation to the lover's need,” (95). Therefore, if one desires a person for who they are, than abstinence becomes easier because the “nagging and addictive character of mere appetite” for that sexual desire is diminished.

Lewis does suggest that this desire can become an “obstacle in the spiritual life,” if taken too seriously, which seems to agree with the biblical idea from Paul that “it is marriage itself, not the marriage bed, that will be likely to hinder us from not waiting uninterruptedly on God,” (94). However, he does not agree with the idea that people should reframe from marriage. And neither do I, for God joined Adam and Eve together and without marriage, we could not fulfill God’s covenant to fill the earth.

I believe the ideas Lewis presents should be presented more often when Christians view and speak of Eros. Without this more in depth description, Christians may be misled to think that abstinence means keeping Eros out of their life until marriage and not know that abstinence flourishes if one has a true knowledge of and participation in Eros with another. By teaching this definition of Eros to Christians, it might also help Christians have a better sense of who is “the one”—the person right for them to marry—for they might realize that they have an unexplainable desire for a person that they have spent many hours. Yet, they would be willing to abstain from Venus by knowing that they have this connection and then, through marriage, the connection would be able to grow by adding Venus.