Mere eros is an unreliable compass when it comes to marriage. Let us think of marriage rather as a very special kind of friendship, of philia – the best and most complete and all-encompassing form of friendship one can think of. Before you are way too sad about me sending charming Cupido away, don‘t worry: we will invite him back in later – or his older and wiser brother. We will see.
There is one especially outstanding model of true friendship in Sacred Scripture: the friendship between David and Jonathan, and I would like to use it as our template for pondering the commonalities between true friendship and the bond of a man and a woman in marriage. And in the second part, we will try to figure out how one might be able to separate the tares from the wheat in looking for a spouse…
True friendship as a bond between two souls delighting in one another and as a voluntary self-sacrificial covenant
“Now it came to pass, when David had finished speaking to Saul, Jonathan‘s soul was knit to David‘s soul, and Jonathan loved him as himself. (…) Then Jonathan cut a covenant with David, because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped off the robe that was on him and gave it to David, along with his armor: his sword, bow and belt.“
1 Samuel 18: 1-4
“Now Saul told his son Jonathan and all his courtiers to kill David. But Saul‘s son Jonathan delighted much in David.“
1 Samuel 19: 1-2
“Jonathan made David swear again because of the love he had for him, for he loved him as he loved himself.“
1 Samuel 20: 17
Friendship is both a gift and a choice. First of all, deep, thick friendship may develop whenever wherever we get a glimpse into the mystery of another person‘s being and delight in it, whenever wherever a spontaneous, totally uncalculated emotional connection and bonding from soul to soul happens. When Jonathan “cuts a covenant“ with David – pledges his loyalty to David even if this should entail sacrifice for David’s sake unto death – , he chooses to take the surprising gift of delighting in another person to the level of a voluntary and self-giving confirmation of their soul connection. Jonathan and David are “soulmates“ choosing to faithfully care for one another.
The love poetry comprised in the biblical book “Song of Songs“ at first sight seems to emphasize mainly the dimension of eros, of erotic attraction, between a man and a woman in love. Yet we also find the aspect of friendship, of the knitting together of souls, of being soulmates accentuated:
“In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that bore me.“
Canticles 3: 1-4
The romantic love described in the “Song of Songs“ is much more than mere eros and much more intimate than bare bodily attraction – this connection with the lover cuts to one‘s very soul.
Marriage is as voluntary and as self-sacrificial as true friendship. When we promise to marry someone, we promise lifelong fidelity, the lifelong company of our soul for another one’s soul – a friendship for life in high tide and low tide. Like true friendship, marriage is a freely given Yes of two people to sharing one‘s life, one‘s joys and one‘s sufferings, with one another. It is a gift of self by souls who have taken a deep liking to one another, yet in marriage this gift of self is as complete as complete can be – more complete than in friendship, as it encompasses the gift of one‘s body to one‘s spouse.
True friendship seeks what‘s best for the other one and implies uncompromising fidelity established in the sight of God
“Then Jonathan said to David, ‘Whatever you say, I will do for you!‘ (…) Jonathan replied, ‘Far be it from you! For if I know for sure that my father has determined evil to come on you, then wouldn‘t I tell you about it? (…) May ADONAI do so to Jonathan and even worse, should my father intend to do you evil, if I don‘t disclose it to you and send you away, that you may go in shalom. So may ADONAI be with you as He has been with my father. (…)‘“
1 Samuel 20: 4-13
“So Jonathan knew that his father was determined to put David to death. So Jonathan rose up from the table in fierce anger, and did not eat food the second day of the new month, for he was grieved over David, because his father had dishonored him. (…) Then they kissed each other and wept together, though David wept more. Then Jonathan said to David, ‘Go in the shalom that we both have sworn to each other in the Name of ADONAI saying: May ADONAI be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring forever.‘“
1 Samuel 20: 33-42
We learn that the friendship between Jonathan and David is a covenant established in the Lord and guaranteed in Him and that its level of fidelity – fidelity unto death – is mirroring the Lord‘s fidelity to His people Israel. They swear unconditional loyalty to one another before the loyal God of Israel. There is a third and higher party involved in their bond – and the same is true for marriage: it is a triad, it is a covenant made before and rooted and sustained in God. Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote a book entitled Three to get married.
“It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God.“
Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen
The spirit of true friendship is to seek what is best for one‘s friend and to do everything we can to contribute to his well-being. It is the spirit of an unreserved blessing upon our friend, and of giving our own resources on behalf of our friend‘s shalom. Friends bless one another and strive to do good unto one another in every way they can. There is a willingness to suffer alongside one’s friend and a willingness to make sacrifices out of love. Jonathan‘s commitment to David brings him into conflict even with his own father; it costs him his father‘s favor to honor his friend above himself. The voluntarily chosen covenant of friendship established in the Lord is stronger than the flesh-and-blood bond of familial relationships. And the very same spirit of self-sacrificial love is the spirit of the wedlock between husband and wife.
What about eros?
Right away I said that eros alone might lead us terribly astray when it comes to finding a spouse. Nevertheless, it is necessary to take up the cudgels on behalf of this through various abuses already highly diffamed eros here. We really don‘t want to toss out the baby with the bathwater.
The good 20th century Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper places the Catholic tradition and his own take on it against this most influential Protestant philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant, who said that the venereal desire cannot be love but is an “appetite“. Love and eros are put in opposition to one another. But Pieper views eros as an intermediary, as an agent between sexus and agape. First of all, he explains to us when and where eros arises:
„An der Schönheit vor allem entzündet sich die erotische Liebe (…).“
“Erotic love catches fire primarily at the sight of beauty.“ (my own translation)
Josef Pieper, Über die Liebe (On love), Kösel-Verlag München, p. 145
Yet sensual beauty is not only intriguing but also a bit flighty, insofar as it mediates something beyond itself:
„(…) daß wir, indem wir sinnliche Schönheit erfahren, auf etwas verwiesen werden, das gar nicht einfachhin anwesend und vorfindbar ist. Was uns widerfährt, ist nicht eigentlich Befriedigung, sondern eher so etwas wie die Hervorrufung einer Erwartung. Wir werden nicht einer Erfüllung ansichtig oder teilhaftig, sondern eines Versprechens.“
“(…) that we, when we encounter sensual beauty, are referred to something that is not simply present and traceable. What befalls us, is not really satisfaction, but rather something like the evocation of an expectation. We do not behold a fruition, but a promise.“ (my own translation)
Josef Pieper, Über die Liebe (On love), Kösel-Verlag München, p. 146
Pieper then quotes C.S. Lewis, who said that eros is promising something that eros himself cannot deliver. This is exactly the point of eros‘ agency of intermediation between earth and heaven, below and above, according to Pieper. It draws both sexus and agape beyond themselves and weds them with one another.
„Der gleiche mittlerische Daimon aber, der allein die Isolierung des sexus gegen die Liebe verhüten kann, ist auch imstande, die gleichfalls ständig von der Entartung ins Unmenschliche bedrohte, angeblich rein ethische oder geistliche ‚Liebe‘ davor zu bewahren, die sinnliche Erschütterungsfähigkeit zu unterdrücken und so zu einer düsteren und starrsinnigen ‚Karitas ohne Liebe‘ zu werden.“
“Yet the same intermediary spirit, who alone can prevent the isolation of sexus against love, is also able to keep this supposedly mere ethical or spiritual ‚love‘, as well continually endangered of degeneration into inhumaneness, from surpressing the sensual faculty for being unsettled, thereby becoming a grim and heady ‘agape without love‘ .“ (my own translation)
Josef Pieper, Über die Liebe (On love), Kösel-Verlag München, p. 149-150
The aforementioned “almost Catholic“ C.S. Lewis wrote a book about love just like Pieper did. It is called The four loves and therein we find his appraisal of eros – the real one. There is a lot to it and we certainly cannot unpack it all. But our one and only task right now is to reestablish eros‘ good name and reputation.
C.S. Lewis distinguishes eros from venus, the latter denoting “the carnal or animally sexual element“.
“Sexuality may operate without Eros or as part of Eros. (…) Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occuring within one‘s own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he ‘wants a woman‘. Strictly speaking, a woman is just that what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. (…) Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. (…) Without Eros sexual desire, like every other desire, is a fact about ourselves. Within Eros it is rather about the Beloved. It becomes almost a mode of perception, entirely a mode of expression. It feels objective; something outside us, in the real world.“
C.S. Lewis, The four loves, https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-fourloves/lewiscs-fourloves-00-h.html
A man who is truly in love with one certain woman would then find a chaste conduct actually not too hard, and vice versa. The “Song of Songs“ is exactly about this kind of erotic love: the lovers have only eyes for one another, and for no one else. They praise the beauty of the other and yearn for each other‘s company. Sensual pleasure is never once disconnected from the unique personhood of the lover with whom it is felt.
True eros then is not the least impersonal or “carnal“, as venus in isolation can be, but highly personal – aiming at one concrete person of flesh and blood and an immortal soul inside.
“As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise. Everyone knows that it is useless to try to separate lovers by proving to them that their marriage will be an unhappy one. This is not only because they will disbelieve you. They usually will, no doubt. But even if they believed, they would not be dissuaded. For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms. Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end and can clearly foresee that, if they once steeled themselves to go through the present agony of parting, they would almost certainly be happier ten years hence than marriage is at all likely to make them – even then, they would not part. To Eros all these calculations are irrelevant (…).“
C. S. Lewis, The four loves, ibid.
We might think of Romeo and Juliet, and find their love against all rationality compelling and enchanting at first sight, but then remember that Shakespeare‘s play is a tragedy where this love comes to a deadly end: obviously the power of eros entails its dangers, too.
Yet with Pieper‘s and Lewis‘ rehabilitation of eros at the back of our minds, we understand that eros might actually be present in many loves, including friendship, salting them with a certain passion – that eros might be a fire warming the air and atmosphere in many relationships. If eros is the excitement about the beauty of something or someone, it can be the excitement about the beauty of a kindred soul in friendship: Jonathan‘s excitement about David – this one moment, when his soul was knit to David‘s soul.
There is eros – there is desire, yearning, and passion specifically oriented toward the Beloved – in our love of God. Eros is a seeker moving – motivating – us. Getting us unsettled in those moments when we get “touched“.
Why then, did I state, that eros is an unreliable compass? Well, I am just skeptical about the solidity of Cupido‘s character, you know. He loves beauty and charme, granted. But is the guy really trustworthy? I suspect, he loves shooting arrows way too much and keeps shooting them way too swiftly. He is always all about those moments – and not enough about the long obedience in the same direction…
Finding a spouse with the help of Cupido‘s older and wiser brother
Cupido‘s older and wiser brother? Who is that?
Let us get into the story of one of those enigmatic couples of Sacred Scripture: Isaac and Rebekah. Because this story is about finding a spouse.
Isaac is the “son of promise“ – Abraham‘s and Sara‘s son of old age. Before his father Abraham dies, the old man entrusts a special task to “his servant, the oldest of his household who managed everything that belonged to him“ (Genesis 24: 2): “to my land and to my relatives you must go and get a wife for my son Isaac“ (Genesis 24: 4). And voilá: Cupido‘s older and wiser brother is in charge. What‘s his name? His name is “I am not sure how this is supposed to work“…
“But the servant said to him, ‘Suppose the woman were unwilling to follow after me to this land? Should I then have your son go back to the land you came from?‘“
Genesis 24: 5
Cupido’s older and wiser brother’s got no drugging arrows in store after all… Suppose she is not willing… Abraham, “advanced in years“, is not troubled by his servant‘s reply.
“Abraham said to him, ‘See to it that you don‘t return my son there. ADONAI, the God of heaven, who took me from my father‘s house and from my native land and who spoke to me and made a pledge to me saying, ‘To your seed I will give this land‘ – He will send His angel before you and you will take a wife for my son from there. If the woman is not willing to follow after you, then you will be free from this oath of mine. Nevertheless, you must not return my son there.“
Genesis 24: 6-8
The servant‘s special weapon is the help of heavenly angels, not of arrows. This is getting good…
“Then the servant took ten of his master‘s camels and left with all the best of his master‘s things in his hand. Then he arose and went to Aram-Naharaim, to Nahor‘s city. Then he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at evening time, the time for the going out to draw water.“
Genesis 24: 10-11
The wise servant knows: at evening time, all the ladies come here with their buckets to draw water from the well… If I find her, I find her here.
“‘ADONAI, the God of Abraham my master,‘ he said, ‘please make something happen before me today, and show loyalty to Abraham my master. Look, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of men of the city are going out to draw water. Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say, ‘Please tip your jar so that I may drink,‘ and she will say, ‘Drink – and I‘ll also water your camels‘ – let her be the one You have appointed for your servant Isaac. So by this I‘ll know that You have shown graciousness to my master.“
Genesis 24: 12-14
Who is “the One“? The one that gives drink to the thirsty – ready to work hard even for the well-being of the servant‘s camels.
“Now before he had finished speaking, behold there was Rebekah (…) going out with her jar on her shoulder. Now the young woman was very good looking, a girl of marriageable age, and she was a virgin. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, ‘Please let me sip a little water from your jar.‘ So she said, ‘Drink, my lord,‘ and she quickly lowered her jar onto her hand and gave him a drink. Now when she finished giving him a drink, she said, ‘I‘ll also draw water for your camels until they‘ve finished drinking.‘ So she quickly poured out her jug into the trough, ran back to the well to draw water, and drew water for all his camels, while the man continued to pay close attention to her, keeping silent in order to know whether or not ADONAI had made his way successful.“
Genesis 24: 15-21
Cupido‘s older and wiser brother is not a joker. He prays and he waits in silence, trying to decypher whether his prayer has really just been answered. Watching Rebekah, he realizes that she might be “the one“ – the gentle and hospitable and hard-working one.
“Now after the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a nose ring of gold weighing a half-shekel and two bracelets on her hands weighing ten shekels of gold. ‘Whose daughter are you?‘ he said. ‘Please tell me. Is there room in your father‘s house for us to spend the night?‘ She said to him, ‘I‘m the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.‘ She also said to him, ‘There‘s both straw and plenty of feed with us, as well as room to spend the night.‘ Then the man bowed down and worshipped ADONAI, and he said, ‘Blessed be ADONAI, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His loyalty and His truth toward my master.‘ (…) Then Laban and Bethuel answered, and they said, ‘(…) Rebekah is before you. Take her and go, and let her become a wife for our master‘s son, just as ADONAI has spoken.‘ Then the servant brought out articles of silver and gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave precious gifts to her brothers and to her mother. (…) Then they called Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?‘ She said, ‘I will go.‘“
Genesis 24: 22-58
Abraham‘s servant was successful in finding a suitable spouse for Isaac. Isaac, we read a couple of verses later, “loved her“ (Genesis 24: 67). It was a good idea to send out Cupido‘s older and wiser brother. What was his “strategy“ again? And though this story is about finding a good wife, a suitable “helpmate“, we could certainly transfer its counsel to finding a good husband in the sense of discerning which one of those men who send either Cupido or his older brother for getting in touch is a good friend for life.
The servant prays – before, during, after finding Rebekah. He notices Rebekah‘s beauty (“very good looking“), but also her chastity (“a virgin“) and all her other virtues: gentleness, kindness, hospitality, noble reservation, faithfulness, diligence… He knows his master‘s son, Isaac: he knows that he‘s the same kind of person in these things. After all, he‘s the now grown-up boy once bound by his father to wood upon an altar for being sacrificed onto the Lord who trusted his father till the very last second of their dreadful father-son trip in the mountains, carrying the wood for the sacrifice and uttering only a couple of sentences through it all:
“Then Isaac said to Abraham his father, ‘‘My father?‘ Then he said, ‘Here I am, my son.‘ He said, ‘Look. Here‘s the fire and the wood. But where‘s the lamb for a burnt offering?‘“
Genesis 22: 7
Isaac lived through this trip with his father when that, which is crucial but was missing, was suddenly miraculously provided for. If Abraham learned to trust God completely there in the land of Moriah, Isaac certainly did so no less… The thing is: Isaac is not just any other man. And Rebekkah is not just any other woman. And Cupido‘s older and wiser brother understands that they could indeed become friends for life.
We are friends with those who are touched and delighted by the same things as we are, right? Friends are able to stand side by side – looking into the same direction. And when one tells the other “I am seeing something that you don‘t see“, the friend gets excited and curious: “What is it? I would like to see it, too! Show me!“ Marriage needs this kind of friendship. And so again: mere eros might not be enough, as good as it might be as long as it does not get spoiled.
My Canadian Abraham, and the gift of a hard-working man
Once, over six years ago by now, during a very difficult time of my life in a Bavarian city where for weeks on end I could not find an apartment for myself, could not find a home, I met the most adorable and sweet old married couple from Canada – right on the banks of the city‘s river. They were tourists asking me something and I answered them as best as I could. I was new in this place. And I had a lot of worries back in those days – and my heart was tainted with lovesickness, but of the morbid kind and on account of the joker Cupido who had deemed it funny to bring me in touch with a man who really was not a good fit for me, but neither was I at this time of my life, a lost and wandering soul lacking a home in many ways as well as understanding and wisdom more than enough, a good fit for anyone. The husband of this couple, advanced in years like Abraham, gave me his fatherly advice out of the blue – without knowing anything about my sick heart, of course, as I certainly always take heed to not disclose its various diseases to strangers, both to not scare them away and to not infect them with the same virus. That is decent of us, dear reader, isn‘t it? Yet, as we were chatting a bit, I did let them know that I was on my way to yet another viewing of a vacant room and currently struggling to find a home. At some point of our conversation, my Canadian Abraham said, truly with the eyes and the voice of a father, “Marry a hard-working man. That‘s it. That is the most important thing. He must be a hard-working man.“ I will never forget this. Indeed, his words from years ago have come back to me recently and I have started to meditate on them in silence. It feels as if I understand them only now, only today, though they are so utterly simple, almost profane – and countless other fathers and fatherly men must have uttered them before.
I am sure, Isaac was a hard-working man, just as Rebekah was a diligent woman. He carried the wood that almost killed him up the steep mountain…
But why should it be so crucial to look for “a hard-working man“ for marriage? Surely, there is this aspect of a man‘s role as the one who provides for the family, for his wife and his children – through hard work. But there is something more to it. And you only get it within the framework of the Catholic religion. The poet Goethe was not a Catholic, but he did weave a sort of very Catholic notion into the final scene of the second part of his Faust tragedy, which besides this little nugget of light is full of crude theology however which no one should believe.
“Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen.“
“Whoever constantly strives and struggles, this one we can save.“ (my own translation)
J. W. Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie Zweiter Teil
A hard-working man is not a perfect man – and of course we all know there is no such thing, yet still we do not always let the fancy of it go – , but he is a man who constantly strives and struggles – and what if he and his household can thus be saved? Saint Joseph, the carpenter, is the patron saint of husbands and of workers. The two go together. A man who is diligent in his field of penance – tilling the hard ground and fighting with thorns and thistles – by this quality of his character has an endless advantage as a spouse for any woman: If he can subdue the earth, he can maybe also subdue his carnal desires and become as chaste as Saint Joseph. If he can overcome trials and tribulations in his work, he can maybe also overcome them in relationships and in the spiritual life and become as strong and as faithful and as humble as Saint Joseph.
He is moved and motivated enough – unsettled enough. Not finished yet. There is a flame of eros burning. And there is a willingness to carry the heavy weight for another one – to cut a covenant thicker than blood. There is the fire, and there is the wood, the wood of faithful friendship, of the reliable bond of two kindred souls cut from the same tree. Where‘s the altar’s burnt offering for giving off a pleasant aroma in worship of the Lord? The offering is the offering of one’s total self in marriage. And God provides for it miraculously.
“I, …, take you, …, for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.”
Traditional Catholic Wedding Vow
