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.
