Passionate Wanting (Desiring Union With God)

[St_Michael]

We choose God because he has opened our eyes to see his beauty; we love him because he first loved us. ~~ R.C. Sproul

Unredeemed man has no desire for God. The Holy Eros isn’t there in the heart. It’s smothered under layers of ego. That is to say, unredeemed man doesn’t want God. When God opens the eyes of the heart to see His beauty by ego puncturing we then come to God. He draws us to Himself with His beauty by planting the Holy Eros of desire within the heart of man and then brings it to fruition. We choose God because we want God. We not only want God but we want Him more than anything. This is the essence of true freedom. We lose ourselves to find ourselves. The false self is the ego deflated as God’s arrow pierces the heart creating the passionate desire for Him. When we make it to heaven all desire for sin is forever removed. We will therefore be like God in that it will be impossible for us to sin. We will still choose what we most want or desire = God. We will be in that Holy Union of perfection with the Divine Eros or Holy Desire.

I want You
I thirst for You
To be with You
Forever in Your glory
My dear love
Most beautiful
In all perfections
Burn away all lust
Unite me to holiness
Purify me with
Burning fire and
Be my passion
That sweet flame
Of love

Elvis Presley says it perfectly:

[St_Michael]

I have this up already but it fits with my developed understanding of desiring God. I captured this in my poem called Union:

Union

In union with you upon the cross
As love’s arrow pierces my heart
I die to myself and suffer loss
Then given a new life and start

Buried to my old self I then rise
Vision is now clear as I can see
New self reflects in Your eyes
The person I am and want to be

Looking deeper into Your face
Beauty becomes brighter inside
With no more wrath only grace
In union with You I now confide

God’s arrow pierces the heart deflating the ego and creating a passionate love for Him. God doesn’t force us against our will. No, we come to Christ because we want to. When the falling in love is fully developed we want Christ more than anything. This is the essence of true freedom.

[Paidion]

The Holy Eros isn’t there in the heart.

Where do you find “Holy Eros” in the New Testament? The primary word for “love”— either God’s LOVE for us or our LOVE for God— is “αγαπη” (agapā). This is the “love” you find in 1 Corinthians 13, the great LOVE chapter. It is used throughout the NT to express God’s LOVE for us, as well as our LOVE for God and for other people. It is the highest form of LOVE, self-sacrificing LOVE—completely giving of oneself to the needs of others, whereas “ερως” (erōs) is sexual, passionate “love.” The word “ερως” is found nowhere in the Greek New Testament. Nor is it found in the Greek apocrypha (or deuterocanonical scriptures). Indeed, there is only one instance of it found in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and that singular instance is found in Proverbs 30:16 where it is written in English translation:

The grave, and the love (ερως) of a woman, and the earth not filled with water; water also and fire will not say, It is enough.

Another Greek word “φιλια” (philia) that might be translated as “love” but would be better translated as “friendship.” It occurs just once in the NT in James 4:4. The masculine form “φιλος” (philos) would best be translated as “friend.” It occurs 27 times in the NT. The verbal form is “φιλεω” (phileō), best translated as “like.” It occurs 21 times in the NT.

However, the noun “αγαπη” (agapā), the highest form of love occurs 106 times in the NT, and the verbal form of this word “αγαπαω” occurs 109 times.

[St_Michael]

Where do you find “Holy Eros” in the New Testament?

From the Orthodox Church in America:

The Greatest Virtue is Love

God is Love

oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox- … od-is-love

The second definition of love as eros is love for the sake of union with the other. Erotic love is no sin when it is free from sinful passions. It can be the utterly pure desire for communion with the other, including God. All spiritual writers have insisted that such love should exist between God and man as the pattern for all erotic love in the world between husband and wife (See Sexuality, Marriage, and Family). Thus the mystical writers and spiritual fathers have used the Old Testament’s Song of Songs as the poetic image of God’s love for man and man’s love for God (Philo the Jew, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross, Richard Rolle in England, et al.). Indeed the prophets have used the image of erotic love in explaining the Lord’s relation with Israel (Is 54; Jer 2–3,31; Ezek 16; Hos). And Saint Paul uses this image for Christ’s love of the Church (Eph 6). In the scriptures, the union of man with the Lord in the Kingdom of God is primarily revealed in the image of eros (Mt 22, Rev 19–22).

Holy eros is a passionately wanting God. It came to refer to physical sex and can be found there but it’s not limited there. It’s also found in hope and compassion. From the Greek Orthodox Church:

The psyche of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God, yearns for God and desires union with Him. No matter how moral, how good man may be, no matter how many good deeds he may perform, if he does not find God, if he does not unite with Him, he finds no rest. Because holy God Himself placed within him this holy thirst, the divine eros, the desire for union with Him, for deification (gr. theosis). He has in himself the erotic power, which he receives from his Creator, in order to love truly, strongly, selflessly, just as his holy Creator falls in love with His world, with His creatures. This is so that with this holy erotic impetus and loving power, he falls in love with God. If man did not have the image of God in himself, he would not be able to seek its prototype. Each of us is an image of God, and God is our prototype. The image seeks the prototype, and only when it finds it does it find rest.

Link

greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html

Moreover falling in love has a sense of fate and destiny. This is more so with God who satisfies the longing of our souls. We were meant to be together. We see this in Romans:

For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined He also called, those He called He also justified, those He justified He also glorified.…

God fore loves the bride of Christ that is predestined. The word “know” when applied to relationships in the Bible is a deep intimate “knowing” of loving. Here’s an example from Genesis:

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain - KJV

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” - NIV

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain - NASB

I explained this to Randy in his thread but it deserves repeating here. Kath meditation centers on the belly or breathing in the belly. It’s the grounding center which is related to the energies of the life force or Divine Eros. When the belly centers become more developed as you also become more present to the moment you become more in touch with the raw energies of your life force. You connect the paradox of the divine with the eros (or passionate desires of wanting) maintaining and egoless or selfless love. Wanting, passion, or desire is mixed together with love to develop the Divine Eros. You can explore the paradox and bring them together by going through your life and seeing how you have experienced selfless giving of love and the experience of passionate wanting. Selfishness seeks it’s own private pleasures at the expense of others. Love is different in that it seeks joy in doing good. Love rejoices in the truth and in doing good. When I do good for someone and they say “Thank you” it’s not selfish for me to respond by saying, “It’s my pleasure”. We love doing good. That is, we should want to do good with a passion for God. Our joy is found in God. From the Orthodox church in America:

So it is that love as goodness (agape), love as union (eros), love as friendship (phila) are all to be found in God and man, between God and man, and between human beings. There is no form of true love which lays outside the realm of the spiritual life.

The Greatest Virtue is Love

God is Love

oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-greatest-virtue-is-love/god-is-love

[Paidion]

Where do you find “Holy Eros” in the New Testament?

From the Orthodox Church in America:

I asked, "Where do you find “Holy Eros” in the New Testament?
The Orthodox Church in America is not the New Testament.

[St_Michael]

They listed scriptures from the Old and New Testament. And I gave one from Romans.

[Paidion]

None of the listed scriptures contain the words “Holy Erōs” or even a single instance of the word “erōs”—simply because the word doesn’t occur in the New Testament.

[St_Michael]

They’re interpreting the images of the love between God and His people. Go back and read the article. The Orthodox interpretation of those verses is the correct interpretation. It agrees with the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga in "Warranted Christian belief also. I go along with him and the early church.

"Accordingly, the eros in our lives is a sign or a symbol of God’s erotic love as well. Human erotic love is a sign of something deeper, something so deep that it is uncreated, an original and permanent and necessarily present feature of the universe. Eros undoubtedly characterizes many creatures other than human beings; no doubt much of the living universe shares this characteristic. More important, all of us creatures with eros reflect and partake in this profound divine property. So the most fundamental reality here is the love displayed by and in God: love within the trinity. This love is erotic. It is a matter of perceiving and desiring and enjoying union with something valuable, in this case, Someone of supreme value. And God’s love for us is manifested in his generously inviting us into this charmed circle (though not, of course, to ontological equality), thus satisfying the deepest longings of our souls. Within this circle, there is mercy, self-sacrifice, overflowing agape; there is also that longing and delight, that yearning and joy that make up eros.

The whole point and climax of the Bible ends with an everlasting wedding day at the Great Wedding Banquet. It’s a deep intimacy with God like between close friends. You can be in love with someone and not have sex. It’s an intimate union. I will pray that you experience this deep passion so that you will want God more that anything.

Here you go Paidion. Here’s the Christian artist KB singing a song to his baby daughter about falling in love with her. He doesn’t have sex with her though and never has had sex with her. It’s strange that you’ve never been aware of being in love or having a deep and close intimate relationship with someone without any sexual lust.

[St_Michael]

Here’s holy eros in a Christian song. The word eros isn’t used but the elements are there (panting after God, longing after God and the heart’s desire for God culminating in worship and loving and wanting God more than anything). This song is taken from the scriptures

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longs after You
You alone are my hearts desire
And I long to worship You.

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my hearts desire
And I long to worship You.

I want you more than gold or silver
Only You can satisfy
You alone are the real joy giver
And the apple of my eye.

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my hearts desire
And I long to worship You.

You’re my friend and You’re my brother
Even though you are a King
I love You more than any other
So much more than anything.

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my hearts desire
And I long to worship You.

It’s a deep intimacy with Christ the Bridegroom

[St_Michael]

This is what I mean by Holy Eros. It’s a yearning or longing for God. A passionate desire. Hope, compassion, love. That is to say, we want God. We want to be united to God. It’s a joy, a pleasure. An intimate union. This is found all through the Bible especially the Psalms:

Psalm 84:2

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalm 63:1

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Psalm 27:4

One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

Psalm 42:1-2

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 119:131

I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.

[St_Michael]

From a Christian perspective, then, here (as often) Freud has things just backwards. It isn’t that religious eros, love for God, is really sexual eros gone astray or rechanneled, and it isn’t sexual eros (important as it is) that is basic or fundamental, with religious eros somehow derivative from it. The fact is things are just the other way around. It is sexual desire and longing that is a sign of something deeper: it is a sign of this longing, yearning for God that we human beings achieve when we are graciously enabled to reach a certain level of the Christian life. It is love for God that is fundamental or basic, and sexual eros that is the sign or symbol or pointer to something else and something deeper. (Of course I don’t mean to say that the importance and worth of sexual eros is exhausted in its being a sign of love of God.) ~~ Alvin Plantinga “Warranted Christian Belief”

[Paidion]

St. Michael, there is no evidence at all that the Greek noun “ερως” (erōs) is used in ANY of the examples of love or passion for God which you gave from the Bible, poetry, or any other source. Nor have you shown that the word is EVER used in any way other than sexual love or sexual passion. The word does not occur EVEN ONCE in the New Testament.

On the other hand, the Greek noun for the highest form of LOVE, namely “αγαπη” (agapā) is found 56 times in the New Testament, 19 of those times with regards to the LOVE of God or of Jesus, and the others concerning our LOVE for God or for each other.

The Greek noun “ερως” (erōs) is found only ONCE in the Old Testament Greek Septuagint, and the word is a reference is to sexual love:

Proverbs 30:16 The grave, and the love of a woman, and the earth not filled with water; water also and fire will not say, It is enough.

It is great that you are on fire with love and passion for God, but I don’t think it right or proper to refer to this love as erotic love, that is, “erōs.”

[St_Michael]

It is great that you are on fire with love and passion for God, but I don’t think it right or proper to refer to this love as erotic love, that is, “erōs.”

That’s what eros is. It’s a passionate wanting. I explained this as the meaning in the OP. You’re going along with a popular misconception about eros that it’s always sexual. It’s not. You know nothing about Divine Eros. The scriptures I gave teach it. Just because the word isn’t used doesn’t mean it’s not taught in the Bible. We see this in Romans:

For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined He also called, those He called He also justified, those He justified He also glorified.…

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain - KJV

it’s a deep intimate relationship with God. You contradict and go against the early church (orthodox) and are outside Christianity. The word Trinity isn’t in the Bible either. But it’s still used by theologians. Just as the words omnipotence, omnipresence, and Omni benevolence are used by theologians but they’re not in the Bible either. Maybe you should write the Christian theologians and the Orthodox church a letter telling them not to use the word eros. As long as they use it I will use it. From the holy Saint and mystic St. Teresa of Avilla

The Grail

They are like shy, young school kids - time and space
before the woman and the man who are intimate with God
The realized soul can play with this universe the way a child can a ball
A chalice - the Grail - my body became, for it held the Christ
and He drank from me
Sanctified are our limbs, for every heart has touched God,
though most with closed eyes.
A holy relic is each creature, and beauty may worry
about it’s comeliness waning
We fear dying till we know the truth of ourselves
The seams on my body are torn
I have stepped from the region of me that did not love all the time
There is a divine world of light with many suns in the sky
I slept with my Lord one night
now all that is luminous I know we conceived

[Paidion]

You know nothing about Divine Eros.

Neither do you. It doesn’t exist.

The scriptures I gave teach it.

No, they don’t. If they did, they would use the word.
Rather, the scriptures teach the Divine Agapā.

[St_Michael]

I just showed it does but you fail to interact with what I say. I pray you will experience this intimacy with God and others.

[St_Michael]

The definition from Wikipedia says it perfectly:

Eros (/ˈɪrɒs/ or /ˈɛrɒs/; Ancient Greek: ἔρως érōs “love” or “desire”) is one of the four ancient Greco-Christian terms which can be rendered into English as “love”. The other three are storge, philia, and agape. Eros refers to “passionate love” or romantic love; storge to familial love; philia to friendship as a kind of love; and agape refers to “selfless love”, or “charity” as it is translated in the Christian scriptures (from the Latin caritas, dearness).

The term erotic is derived from eros. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to “life energy”.

In the classical world, erotic love was generally referred to as a kind of madness or theia mania (“madness from the gods”). This love passion was described through an elaborate metaphoric and mythological schema involving “love’s arrows” or “love darts”, the source of which was often the personified figure of Eros (or his Latin counterpart, Cupid), or another deity (such as Rumor). At times the source of the arrows was said to be the image of the beautiful love object itself. If these arrows were to arrive at the lover’s eyes, they would then travel to and ‘pierce’ or ‘wound’ his or her heart and overwhelm him/her with desire and longing (lovesickness). The image of the “arrow’s wound” was sometimes used to create oxymorons and rhetorical antithesis concerning its pleasure and pain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros_(concept)

I captured this in my poem called Union:

Union

In union with you upon the cross
As love’s arrow pierces my heart
I die to myself and suffer loss
Then given a new life and start

Buried to my old self I then rise
Vision is now clear as I can see
New self reflects in Your eyes
The person I am and want to be

Looking deeper into Your face
Beauty becomes brighter inside
With no more wrath only grace
In union with You I now confide

God’s arrow pierces the heart deflating the ego and creating a passionate love for Him. God doesn’t force us against our will. No, we come to Christ because we want to. When the falling in love is fully developed we want Christ more than anything. This is the essence of true freedom.

[St_Michael]

Here’s an example again of how God has an intimate relationship with the predestined*** “Bride of Christ”*** in Romans 8:

For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined He also called, those He called He also justified, those He justified He also glorified.…

God foreknew the Bride that’s predestined. This is an intimate knowing as in a sexual intimacy. The Bible uses the word know for intimate relations. Here’s an example from both old and new Testaments:

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain

When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and embraced Mary as his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. ~~ Mathew 1:25

The word knew is used to denote sexual intimacy of the relationship. This is the intimate union Christ (the bridegroom) has with the Bride (the predestined Church)

Here’s a article from “Wiktionary” explaining this use of*** “know”***

Know Someone in the Biblical Sense

Etymology

From the use of know in the Bible. Some Bible translations, such as the King James Bible, translate the Hebrew word יָדַע‏ (yādaʿ) as know even in sexual contexts, giving rise to lines like “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived.”

Verb

know someone in the biblical sense (third-person singular simple present knows someone in the biblical sense, present participle knowing someone in the biblical sense, simple past knew someone in the biblical sense, past participle known someone in the biblical sense)

1. To have sex with someone.

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/know_someone_in_the_biblical_sense

[St_Michael]

For those who want to go deeper into the intimate union I recommend “Divine Intimacy” by the Carmelite priest, Father Gabriel of St. Mary of Magdalen, O.C.D. He has acquired a vast knowledge of the ways that lead to holiness and union with God. The ways that lead to union according to the teachings of the Spanish mystics are in the pages of the book. Father Gabriel was an expert on the mystical doctrine of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Here’s a couple of snippets from the book:

The more humility empties the soul of vain, proud pretenses of self the more room there will be for God. "When at last [the spiritual man] comes to be reduced to nothing, which will be the greatest extreme of humility, spiritual union will be wrought between the soul and God. page 302

O Lord, help me to excavate in my poor soul that abyss of humility which will attract the abyss of Your infinite mercies. Help me to descend, although my pride seeks to rise. Help me to recognize and humbly confess my nothingness and my weakness, although my pride desires so much to be esteemed as something great. page 303

Give me, O my God a thorough knowledge of myself! Let me be really convinced that I am nothing and that You are everything! Do not let me think that I am anything more than the nothing I am. Let me do nothing more for myself, but all for You! And may my nothingness be reduced to nothing in the eyes of all creatures and in Yours, my God, that You, the All, may be All, in all and through all. page 306

[St_Michael]

[hollytree]

The Power of Divine Eros explains the life force of eros and how it came to refer to sex but isn’t limited to sex. It’s a passion or energy of interaction with or without sex. It purifies and brings aliveness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRDswaXGtbE