The Philosophy of Love: Man, Woman, and Sacred Marriage

Copyright © 2008 by Michael Pendergast III

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Part I

Love in General

Part II

Friendship (philia)

Part III

Intimacy and Sex

Part IV

Marriage in General:

Simple Unions, Communion, and Love

Part V

Sacred Marriage

Part VI

Perfecting Christian Marriage

Part VII

Having It All in Marriage

Part VIII

Afterward

Glossary

Bibliography

END NOTES

Dedication

As a tribute to Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand,

whose teaching on the communion of love is unparalleled,

this manuscript is dedicated to the Spirit of Love itself,

and to all those who let Him be a part of themselves …

as well as to my own lost companion.

Acknowledgements

I must gratefully acknowledge the assistance of my brother, Joshua, the teaching of Drs. Dietrich von Hildebrand and Gene Scott, and all the theologians and philosophers whose thoughts and concepts I’ve built on or appropriated outright, without which this manuscript would not have been possible. I also need to thank Ms. Aaran Espling (and her sister, Andrea Zappone) for reading, critiquing, and editing this manuscript. And lastly, it would, of course, be churlish not to remember the women I’ve loved and been loved by in this life.

Preface

Agapêseis kurion ton Theon sou ex holês tês kardias sou kai en holê tê psuchê sou kai en holê tê ischui sou kai en holê tê dianoia sou.¹

— Loukan 10:27

Because God always talks about what is most important to Him first, and what is least important to Him last, it is important to consider the first and greatest commandment of the Creator, and that command is to love! Furthermore, what is commanded is not the kind of love that is practically reasoned out, a desire for things or situations that are good and useful — though, paradoxically, the greatest kind of love is both the most useful and the greatest good for us. What is commanded is rather the kind of love that bursts from a heart overflowing with well wishes for something other than itself. That is the love that is commanded.

This is not thought-out love, love that is a product of the mind and logic, which comes absolutely last to God. In the greatest love, reason is thus almost an after-thought. It appears almost like a bit player in the supporting but essential cast that together constitutes and forms a complete human being.

Of course, this is not correct. Reason is not an after-thought. Nevertheless, reason is at most a supporting actor. It is not the star of the show. Its role is to support the other, more important actors: the loving heart, the soul that is wider and more powerful that the material body, and, of course, the unlimited strength of the free will. All three of these show characteristics of superabundant sufficiency — display traces of infinity — which finite mind and limited reason (as well as frail flesh and blood) display not a trace.

Now, with this beginning barely started (and already notions of the superabundant rearing its head), it is necessary to issue a warning to you, my readers. This manuscript depends in large measure upon the conclusions I drew in a philosophical dissertation that I offered not long ago: The Philosophy of the Human Soul: A Radical Postmodern View of Corporeal and Incorporeal Substances. While I do not expect you to be familiar with that lengthy thesis, it is also much to long and involved to reproduce or adequately summarize here, the best I can do here, in preparation for the subject at hand — and the subject is none other than love — is to skim over some of the more important and most relevant conclusions of that dissertation to highlight them.

The first, which is of critical importance, was the demonstration that the soul, the human spirit, is not merely a real thing, but also a simple, indivisible, and thoroughly immaterial substance as well. As such it is an infinite, physically-powerful living entity which is not bound by some finite space (such as the human body) or even a mere instant of time (the moment we call the now, that is, the present). More important still was the demonstration that this infinite spirit possesses its own faculties of direct discernment (or intuition, that is, a form of non-material perception) and understanding that it can focus upon both other entities as well as itself. On the other hand, we are aware of and can consciously grasp this form of perception only infrequently, and then only with some difficulty.

Of yet greater importance is the conclusion, the awesome and wondrous realization that the human soul has at its disposal an infinite creative power, a truly superabundant sufficiency that bestows upon it the freedom to create ex nihilo — that is, out of nothing — and one of the things that it creates (or, to use a better word, re-creates), to some limited extent, is itself. (Pendergast, 411-412)

But as important as these conclusions are, they are nothing when compared to the fact that far from being private — as every other major school of philosophy holds — the soul, and the mind (or minds) it meshes with, are not in principle private, but rather quite public (or at least potentially public). This means that all other minds and souls are potentially knowable by any (and all) other souls. (Pendergast, 523-524) This conclusion obviously has great implications, both for our notions of inter-subjectivity (which includes our notions of sympathy and especially empathy) and one particular way in which human beings may encounter and relate to each other in this world — in love.

All of these conclusions reveal and mean that the human soul, the infinite spirit of each and every one of us, is a god (or perhaps, as we’ll see, a god-ling) because it does things (such as, create ex nihilo) that only a god can do. (Pendergast, 524) This is, I realize, an apparently blasphemous conclusion to assert, yet the facts (such as, creation ex nihilo, without which there can be no free will) force us in that direction and, indeed, to this conclusion. Besides, as we all know, appearances are often deceiving. (In the first commandment, as recorded in Exodus 20:3, after asserting "I am the Lord the God of you, God does not order You shall have no false gods before me, which might suggest that there are no other gods and what are taken for gods are not gods at all. What He does instead is to emphatically order You shall have no other gods except me"², which implicitly allows for the existence of other gods — real gods, but none of His statue, none that can rival Him, and none that we should prefer to him. In point of fact, a careful reading of the Bible no where reveals that there is only one God. It only reveals that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is infinitely superior to everything and everyone else, including any other gods that exist — be they angelic beings of great power (such as Satan and Michael) or our own parents, wives and husbands, children, and even mankind taken as a whole.)

Fortunately (or unfortunately) being a god (or a god-ling) is not the most critical aspect for understanding human beings. The most important aspect of human nature lies in the dissertation’s final conclusion. There I was forced to recognize that as powerful as we potentially are, the human spirit (even the spirit of a seemingly wise and mature person) is essentially an infant who is able to utilize and control its own marvelous faculties and powers no better than a newborn babe is able to make its eyes and limbs and mind work for his or her own benefit. (Pendergast, 373)

These conclusions have critical implications relevant to the subject of love, especially the great love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man when it binds the two into one being — or the love of God for men and women, and them for Him.

It should also be obvious, since the term god was introduced, that the last few conclusions in my earlier dissertation absolutely present us (or at least me) with the need and a demand for an as yet unwritten complementary theological dissertation. If the conclusions that were drawn are correct (and they are), then a complementary theological dissertation on the soul has become absolutely necessary — if, that is, we are to ever become what it is that we could become, namely gods who are recognizable as the sons of the God.

Equally obvious is the fact that to date human beings aren’t doing an even half-way decent job of progressing towards that end. Even with (or perhaps because of) the aid of science (which is so firmly rooted in the material that the immaterial is assumed not to exist), the disparate schools of philosophy (that firmly contradict each other), and finally the world’s numerous religions (that not only conflict, but oft war with each other), human beings seem no better as persons than they were centuries or millennia ago.

For now, however, I will leave it to others to research and write that complementary theological dissertation. On the other hand, I have thought long and hard about what such a dissertation might include. The result is that this manuscript on love builds upon many of those theological thoughts — and the thoughts of others as well.

One of those others well worth immediate mention is the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. His spiritually audacious theological thoughts on the moral grandeur of the soul seem to imply (if not second) the conclusions drawn in my dissertation. As a result, it seems to me that Heschel’s thoughts on the soul would arguably provide an ideal starting point for a theological dissertation on the soul that is second only to that of the Holy Bible itself.

As examples of Heschel’s thoughts that seem applicable, either to my earlier dissertation on the nature of the human soul or to an understanding of love (or, let me suggest, both simultaneously), consider Heschel’s 1951 observations that … life appears dismal if not mirrored in what is more than [material] life. Nothing can be regarded as valuable unless assessed by something higher in value than itself. (Heschel, 6-7) From this he goes on to exclaim that … if a man is not more than human, then he is less than human. … [for] we know that the world is more than the world (Heschel, 6-7), implicitly suggesting, perhaps, that a man is more than merely a rational animal. Unlike animals which live for themselves (their progeny being simply extensions of themselves), Heschel’s main thoughts seem to be that we are more than we appear to be, and that It is our destiny to live for what is more than ourselves. (Heschel, 8)

How we are to do that is where the problems begin. As Heschel notes (almost echoing Socrates):

The human will [even when rational] is blind and can never by its own power envision the ends of our actions. Ideals grasped by the mind in history’s rare hours of spiritual insight [discernment] are like sparks of orientation, glittering before our will during the long hours of obscurity. … Our souls became fertile, waiting to give birth. … Out of the wonder we came and into the wonder we shall return. (Heschel, 9-10)

Let me build upon those wondrous words with the words of poet Michael Mann, who asserted that love is the heart and soul of faith, and faith is but love made real (Mann, dust jacket), to introduce Heschel’s assertion that:

Trust [that is, faith … and love too, I believe] … is not found in self-detachment … but by striking at the amazing sources that are within ourselves and letting our hidden forces emanate in our thoughts, deeds, works. In exposing ourselves to God we discover the divine in ourselves and its correspondence to the divine beyond ourselves. … The sense of the sacred … is our most precious insight [intuition, discernment]. (Heschel, 5)

These thoughts nicely agree with Heschel’s 1949 pronouncements that:

Every person moves in two domains: in the domain of [finite, material] nature and the domain of the [infinite, immaterial] spirit. Half slave, half king, he is bound by the laws of nature, but at the same time able to subdue and dominate them. … As a creature of spirit … he searches for that which is special … to exist and serve a purpose. (Heschel, 54)

and that:

… this soul requires spiritual elevation. … The soul in us will not find satisfaction merely in physical fulfillment. In each of us flickers the longing for Shabbatness [that is, sabbathing] for beauty, for serenity. … [in which] … the Finite (Sof) and the Infinite (Ein Sof) kiss each other. (Heschel, 55-56)

As an aside, it seems appropriate at this time to anticipate what will be made plain later in this manuscript by quoting Saint Ambrose: Those who kiss one another are not content with the donation of their lips, but must breathe their very souls into each other.

That said, let us return to the subject of love, in the sense that love speaks of valuing something other than ourselves. Here Heschel clearly claims that:

All values are esteemed only to the extent that they are worthy in the sight of God, for only through the Divine Light is their light seen [discerned]. … Fortunate is the person who sees with eyes and heart together. … The criterion by which we judge beauty is integrity, the criterion by which we judge integrity is truth, and truth is the correspondence of the finite and the infinite, the specific to the general, the cosmos to God. (Heschel, 59)

On the other hand, he reiterates that:

It is of the essence of spirituality to perceive the hidden transcendence which is in the habitual. … [and that] the person who is only a human being is actually less than human. (Heschel, 59-60)

What then does it mean to be a genuine human being? To Heschel, it means that we discern echoes from another world. Yet he asks: How is it possible for a mere mortal to perceive [such]? (Heschel, 61) He does not know precisely, yet he did see that as God cannot be grasped by the intellect [reason] (Heschel, 61), and yet man’s position is unique. God has instilled in him something of Himself. The likeness of God is the essence of man. [Thus] Man himself is a mystery for he is not detached from the realm of the unseen. He is wholly involved with it. Whether he is conscious of it or not … (Heschel, 166-167)

Put more simply, The mystery is not beyond and away from us. It is our destiny (Heschel, 166). Why? Because man is in fact endowed with metaphysical powers (Heschel, 168), including intuition that

occurs at an outpost of the mind, dangerously detached from the main substance of the intellect. Operating, as it were, in a no-mind’s-land … its communications with critical thinking often difficult and uncertain, and the accounts of its discoveries not easy to decode. (Heschel, 169)

As a result, Heschel notes that "In the process of the emanation, the transition from the divine to the spiritual, from the spiritual to the