On Wednesday, 5 November, the weekly audience was held in the Paul VI Hall. The Holy Father delivered the following message.

1. In the course of our weekly reflections on Christ's enunciation in the Sermon on the Mount, in which, in reference to the commandment "You shall not commit adultery", he compares "lust" ("looking lustfully") with "adultery committed in the heart", we are trying to answer the question: do these words only accuse the human "heart", or are they first and foremost an appeal addressed to it? An appeal, of course, of ethical character; an important and essential appeal for the very ethos of the Gospel. We answer that the above-mentioned words are above all an appeal.

At the same time, we are trying to bring our reflections nearer to the "routes" taken, in its sphere, by the conscience of contemporary men. Already in the preceding cycle of our considerations we mentioned "eros". This Greek term, which passed from mythology to philosophy, then to the literary language and finally to the spoken language, unlike the word "ethos", is alien and unknown to biblical language. If, in the present analyses of biblical texts, we use the term "ethos", known to the Septuagint and to the New Testament, we do so because of the general meaning it has acquired in philosophy and theology, embracing in its content the complex spheres of good and evil, depending on human will and subject to the laws of conscience and the sensitivity of the human "heart". The term "eros", as well as being the proper name of the mythological character, has a philosophical meaning in the writings of Plato (1), which seems to be different from the common meaning and also from what is usually attributed to it in literature. Obviously, we must take into consideration here the vast range of meanings, which differ from one another in their finer shades, as regards both the mythological character and the philosophical content, and above all the "somatic" or "sexual" point of view. Taking into account such a vast range of meanings, it is opportune to evaluate, in an equally differentiated way, what is related to "eros" (2) and is defined as "erotic".

Connotation of the term "eros"

2. According to Plato, "eros" represents the interior force that drags man towards everything good, true, and beautiful.  This "attraction" indicates, in this case, the intensity of a subjective act of the human spirit. In the common meaning, on the contrary,—as also in literature—this "attraction" seems to be first and foremost of a sensual nature. It arouses the mutual tendency of both the man and the woman to draw closer to each other, to the union of bodies, to that union of which Genesis 2:24 speaks. It is a question here of answering the question whether "eros" connotes the same meaning in the biblical narrative (particularly in Gen 2:23-25), which certainly bears witness to the mutual attraction and the perennial call of the human person— through masculinity and femininity—to that "unity in the flesh" which, at the same time, must realize the communion?union of persons. It is precisely because of this interpretation of "eros" (as well as of its relationship with ethos) that also the way in which we understand the "lust" spoken about in the Sermon on the Mount takes on fundamental importance.

Danger of reductivism and exclusivism

3. As it seems, common language takes into consideration above all that meaning of "lust", which we previously defined as "psychological" and which could also be called "sexological": this is done on the basis of premises which are limited mainly to the naturalistic, "somatic" and sensualistic interpretation of human eroticism. (It is not a question here, in any way, of reducing the value of scientific researches in this field, but we wish to call attention to the danger of reductivism and exclusivism). Well, in the psychological and sexological sense, lust indicates the subjective intensity of straining towards the object because of its sexual character (sexual value). That straining has its subjective intensity due to the specific "attraction" which extends its dominion over man's emotional sphere and involves his "corporeity" (his somatic masculinity or femininity). When in the Sermon on the Mount we hear of the "concupiscence" of the man who "looks at a woman lustfully", these words—understood in the "psychological" (sexological) sense—refer to the sphere of phenomena which in common language are, precisely, described as "erotic". Within the limits of the enunciation of Matthew 5:27-28, it is a question only of the interior act, while it is mainly those ways of acting and of mutual behaviour of the man and the woman, which are the external manifestation of these interior acts, that are defined "erotic". Nevertheless, there seems to be no doubt that—reasoning in this way—it is almost necessary to put the sign of equality between "erotic" and what "derives from desire" (and serves to satisfy the lust of the flesh). If this were so, then the words of Christ according to Matthew 5:27-28 would express a negative judgment about what is "erotic" and, addressed to the human heart, would constitute at the same time a severe warning against "eros".

Many shades of meaning of "eros"

4. However, we have already mentioned that the term "eros" has many semantic shades of meaning. Therefore, wishing to define the relationship of the enunciation of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28) with the wide sphere of "erotic" phenomena, that is, those mutual actions and ways of behaving through which man and woman approach each other and unite so as to be "one flesh" (cf. Gen 2:24), it is necessary to take into account the multiplicity of the semantic shades of meaning of "eros". It seems possible, in fact, that in the sphere of the concept of "eros"—taking into account its Platonic meaning—there is room for that ethos, for those ethical and indirectly even theological contents which, in the course of our analyses, have been seen from Christ's appeal to the human "heart" in the Sermon on the Mount. Also knowledge of the multiple semantic nuances of "eros" and of what, in the differentiated experience and description of man, at various periods and various points of geographical and cultural longitude and latitude, is defined as "erotic", can be of help in understanding the specific and complex riches of the "heart", to which Christ appealed in his enunciation in Matthew 5:27-28.

The "ethos" of redemption

5. If we admit that "eros" means the interior force that "attracts" man towards what is true, good, and beautiful, then, within the sphere of this concept, the way towards what Christ wished to express in the Sermon on the Mount, can also be seen to open. The words of Matthew 5:27-28, if they are an "accusation" of the human heart, are at the same time, even more, an appeal made to it. This appeal is the specific category of the ethos of redemption. The call to what is true, good, and beautiful means at the same time, in the ethos of redemption, the necessity of overcoming what is derived from lust in its three forms. It also means the possibility and the necessity of transforming what has been weighed down by the lust of the flesh. Furthermore, if the words of Matthew 5:27-28 represent this call, then they mean that, in the erotic sphere, "eros" and "ethos" do not differ from each other, are not opposed to each other, but are called to meet in the human heart, and, in this meeting, to bear fruit. What is worthy of the human "heart" is that the form of what is "erotic" should be at the same time the form of ethos, that is, of what is "ethical".

Ethos and ethics

6. This affirmation is very important for ethos and at the same time for ethics. In fact, a "negative" meaning is often connected with the latter concept, because ethics bears with it norms, commandments, and also prohibitions. We are commonly inclined to consider the word of the Sermon on the Mount on "lust" (on "looking lustfully") exclusively as a prohibition—a prohibition in the sphere of "eros" (that is, in the "erotic" sphere). And very often we are content merely with this understanding, without trying to reveal the really deep and essential values that this prohibition covers, that is, ensures. Not only does it protect them, but it also makes them accessible and liberates them, if we learn to open our "heart" to them.

In the Sermon on the Mount Christ teaches us this and directs man's heart towards these values.

NOTES

1) According to Plato, man, placed between the world of the senses and the world of Ideas, has the destiny of passing from the first to the second. The world of Ideas, however, is not able, by itself, to overcome the world of the senses: only Eros, congenital in man, can do that. When man begins to have a presentiment of Ideas, thanks to contemplation of the objects existing in the world of the senses, he receives the impulse from Eros, that is, from the desire for pure Ideas. Eros, in fact, is the guiding of the "sensual" or "sensitive" man towards what is transcendent: the force that directs the soul towards the world of Ideas. In the "Symposium" Plato describes the stages of this influence of Eros: the latter raises man's soul from the beauty of a single body to that of all bodies, and so to the beauty of knowledge and finally to the very idea of Beauty (cf. Symposio 211; Repubblica 514).

Eros is neither purely human nor divine: it is something intermediate (daimonion) and intermediary. Its principal characteristic is permanent aspiration and desire. Even when it seems to give freely, Eros persists as the "desire of possessing", and yet it is different from purely sensual love, being the love that strives towards the sublime.

According to Plato, the gods do not love because they do not feel desires, since their desires are all satisfied. Therefore they can only be the object, but not the subject of love (Symposio 200-201). So they do not have a direct relationship with man; only the mediation of Eros makes it possible for a relationship to be established (Symposio 203). Eros is, therefore, the way that leads man to divinity, but not viceversa.

The aspiration to transcendence is, therefore, a constituent element of the Platonic concept of Eros, a concept that overcomes the radical dualism of the world of ideas and the world of the senses. Eros makes it possible to pass from one to the other. It is therefore a form of escape beyond the material world, which the soul must renounce, because the beauty of the sensible subject has a value only insofar as it leads higher.

However, Eros always remains, for Plato, egocentric love: it aims at winning and possessing the object which, for man, represents a value. To love good means desiring to possess it for ever. Love is, therefore, always a desire for immortality and that, too, shows the egocentric character of Eros (cf. A. Nygren, Eros et Agap¾. La notion chr¾tienne de l'amour et ses transformations, I, Paris, 1962, Aubier, pp. 180-200).

For Plato, Eros is a passing from the most elementary knowledge to deeper knowledge; at the same time it is the aspiration to pass from "that which is not", and is evil, to what "exists in fullness", and is good (cf. M. Scheler, Amour et connaissance, in: "Le sens de la souffrance, suivi de deux autres essais", Paris, Aubier, s.d. p. 145).

2) Cf., e.g., C.S. Lewis, "Eros", in The Four Loves New York, 1960 (Harcourt, Brace), pp. 131-133, 152, 159-160; P. Chauchard, Vices des vertus, vertus des vices, Paris, 1965 (Mame), p. 147.