Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (ESV, here and following).This structural turn follows an exposition on the life of light, and leads to an analogy of love. It is this analogy, as analogy is want to do, which leaves me with questions. The analogy follows from verses 20-21, in which Paul concludes that "out of reverence for Christ" we should give thanks in all ways, at all times, for all things and all persons. In this state of reverence and thankfulness, it follows that we are to "submit to one another". Blessed and vexing absoluteness.
Now, to the point. If one were to keep reading in this section, one would come through an application of this concept of submission to what seems to me an stunning assertion. In verse 29, Paul says:
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it...
Paul says this in order to establish the order of love upon the concept of marriage, in which two bodies become one body. Thus, the act of love begins with an act of self-love, truly born (I tip my hat to Kierkegaard here). Christ is the fountainhead of this flow of love, which consummates and communes.
I get the bit about how we ought to love because Christ loves, and that we ought to love as Christ loves because we only love with His love and through His love and in His love. The Christocentricity of love is not my problem. My problem is with this passing (unnecessary?) reference to this natural law, which is that men nourish and cherish their own flesh.
Maybe they did then, but I can't see how this is true today.
Paul doesn't say that men prefer themselves, seek to give advantage to themselves, seek to strengthen themselves, usually over and against others. No, this reference is in some supposed continuity with the flow of love. Paul isn't saying that men are selfish, and must learn to turn their selfishness with others. No, Paul is calling upon some nature by which men actually nourish their own bodies.
Maybe all that Paul is saying is that men eat food regularly. They groom and wash their bodies. Maybe this soaring exposition of marriage is based on good relational hygiene. But no. Men also tattoo, scar, poison, disuse and abuse their bodies. Especially in America, this, that seems like natural law to Paul, seems today to run counter to intuition, or even counter to natural law, if there is such a thing.
I cannot understand this verse. I feel as though I can skip it without losing the point of the passage, but I don't see how it is true, or how it ever was.
But it does matter. Kierkegaard argues that the ground of love is true self-love. In this I think he has some insight into the matter, no doubt. But surely Kierkegaard would never say that a man never (ever) hates his own flesh, but rather that when he loves truly, he does so out of the ground of self-love, born by transformation in Christ.
The difference is that it seems to me that the call of Christ is based on a hatred of the natural self, a dying to and turning from the old man. If this can be called love, then I think perhaps Paul is being especially Kierkegaardian here.
Perhaps Paul is establishing a truth which redoubles on itself, has a double meaning.
Man always loves, never hates, himself because in his natural state, his selfishness is perceived as self-love, falsely. In Christ, however, his love is transformed into the Truth, and his love turns to repentance, to hatred of the self, to renouncement of the self, and in the sign of baptism is resurrected.
There are no loves or hates which are not redoubled on themselves like this in resurrection.
Perhaps this is what Paul meant. But if it isn't something complex and subversive like this, then I can make no sense of it.
6 comments:
Two competing proposals:
First: Paul was a Platonist, philosophically, and so believed something like what's become known as Plato's 'Guise of the Good' thesis.
That's the idea that no one ever willingly/wantingly/knowingly desires the worse for oneself over the better for oneself.
I think that thesis is demonstrably false, but there are lots of folks who think it's true. It's certainly difficult decisively to show that it's false. Anyway, if it *is* false, then Paul is, strictly speaking, wrong. But so what?
Second: Paul's simply being a bit hyperbolic. It's not he thinks that, literally, no one ever hates themselves; rather, it's just generally true that they don't.
So, according to you, Paul either meant what he said but was wrong, or he didn't mean what he said.
I agree that he's possibly referring to the guise of the good, or to some perspectival aspect to self-love. That would fit. It would be interesting if Paul is being as complex in the meaning of this verse as this interpretation would require.
I have a hard time seeing how it could be true that men, then or today, can be spoken of as generally loving their bodies. But of course this depends on what "love", "nourish", etc, mean.
I'll leave off with this: If we isolated this thought, "Men, treat your wives the way that you treat your own bodies.", wouldn't you feel the need to clarify or add a bit, "And hopefully, for this to work, you'll be good to your bodies...." The sad fact is that men do tend to treat their wives the way they treat their bodies, which is not well.
Well, yes and no.
Yes, if he really believes the guise of the good thesis, and this is what he was asserting, then he's wrong.
No, if he speaks hyperbolically, it doesn't follow that 'he didnt mean what he said.' People speak hyperbolically all the time (see what i did, there?); yet they mean what they say, just not *literally*.
I don't think it's very difficult to see that men generally *do* love their bodies. Generally speaking, men believe what they do to their bodies is good for their bodies. Of course, quite often their beliefs are *wrong*; but they still treat their bodies in a way consistent with how they believe it's good to treat their bodies.
And I think the same thing is true about husbands who try and treat their wives as they treat their own bodies. They try and treat their wives in a way that *seems* good to them, though they might be wrong about how things actually *are*. Something like that.
I have no doubt that men do as they will. I just have serious reservations that, speaking generally, this has anything to do with what is good for the body or the wife. Usually it has more to do with what tastes/feels good at the moment.
I have always had trouble grasping this verse, for similar reasons. It has helped me to temper whatever intention here in Eph. 5 with Paul's more direct statement of human nature in Romans 7. I think, given that tension of will/desire in Romans 7 (I read it as if he is speaking of himself and/or one redeemed in Christ), he would not hold that men absolutely, at all times, nourish and cherish their own flesh. I'm exegeting as if Paul seeks to be consistent, of course, but I think it helps point the Eph. 5 interpretive question to more of a hyperbolic answer.
Even if the statement is corrected for hyperbole, it is still seemingly inconsistent with Paul's anthropology. Further, it seems unlikely that Paul is being hyperbolic, both because of the language used and because of the place of the statement in the argument's structure.
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