Philos is not Eros

Someplace along the line we slipped a cog. We, collectively, as a society. It seems mostly the Westernized societies. Not all. We understand that it is possible to have friends and we understand that it is possible to have sex. We understand that love for pizza and love for mother and love for a spouse are not the same thing. All of this stuff is correct in our heads. But not in everyday consumption. Someplace along the line we somehow equated philos with eros^[1] -- not the same thing.

Evidence the woman who wrote a book about the correlation between loving God and sex. (I can't find the link right now and it's a shame because any thinking Christian would think I was making that up. I'm not.) When she was taken to task about this stretch of a thought -- loving God is the ultimate sexual relationship -- she said, "Well, Jonathan Edwards thought it was true because he often wrote about 'intercourse with God'." You see, in today's highly sexualized society, "intercourse" can only mean one type of intercourse, and that's sexual. And "love" can only mean one kind of love, and that's sexual.

Evidence the current trend to assign "love" to "sex" in all sorts of bizarre connections. Charles Marsh has written a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that includes the implication that he was gay. Now, mind you, "Bonhoeffer was engaged to a woman at the time of his execution, observing that he had lived a full life even though he would die a virgin." But that doesn't matter, you see, because Bonhoeffer had a close male friend, so clearly he was gay. Bonhoeffer isn't alone in this. Other voices out there tell us that David and Jonathan were gay because the Bible clearly says they loved one another and Jesus was gay because He surrounded Himself with men that He loved and ... well, you see the trend. This line of thinking demands that "love" equals "sex".

The belief in our society that is not often voiced but is almost universally accepted is the firm conviction that life without sex is life unfulfilled. And love without sex is love unfulfilled. And, obviously, pizza without sex is ... well, let's not get silly. Because if we got that silly, we'd begin to see the nonsense of our modern thinking that sex is everything important. (If, indeed, sex is required for fulfillment, it would be strange, for instance, that Jesus spoke of "eunuchs" as a good thing (Matt 19:12).)

Then there is the entire missing of the point going on in today's world. This constant equation -- "love" = "sex" and "fulfillment" -- misses the distinction of "sex" and "love". In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis writes:

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 what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).

A stroke of genius. How much of today's "sex" is a simply about "pleasure" and "personal fulfillment" rather than a physical expression of agape (limited by definition to one's spouse)? We're not looking for love. We're lusting. And we call it love. And it's only sex.

Or consider the latest figures on marriage. According to recent studies, half of today's 20-year-olds will never get married. So even though Beyonce is telling single women, "if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it", marriage rates are at historic lows and "Today's young adults are on track to have the lowest rates of marriage by age 40 compared to any previous generation," according to this CNN article. The clear distinction here is "marriage = bad" ... "but that has no bearing on love and sex."

Another example. A friend told me about his teenage son's trip to the movies with some pals. They didn't sit together even though they were all friends and all went to the same movie. Why? Well, if you sit with someone of the same gender, someone might think you're gay. So they employed the "anti-gay seat" (his words) method where they made sure there was a seat between each of the guys. That's where we've come to. Male with male must mean homosexual. Especially if you're close to each other. Yeah, that's it. Proof! Because love for fellow man must mean sex.

I would think it would be obvious -- as obvious as the difference between loving your pizza, your mother, and your spouse -- but apparently very few are paying attention. So here it is: philos is not eros. It is entirely possible for a man to love a man without having or even thinking of having sex with him any more than anyone would consider having sex with their pizza. Love and sex are not intrinsically connected. Sex can be had without love. Love can be practiced without sex. We are commanded to love God, love our neighbors, and love our wives. These are all commands. They are not the same. Indeed, until you can figure out how you can love your wife (Eph 5:25) and remember that your body is not your own (1 Cor 7:4), you haven't got this "love" and "sex" thing figured out at all.
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^[1] Just on the off chance you're not clear, philos is the Greek word (the one found in Scripture) for brotherly love, for the love of friends, and eros is the Greek word (interestingly not found in Scripture) for sex, for erotic love. As distinct from agape and storge ... because the Greeks seemed to have a lot of words for the various types of love.