Abstract
In this article I advance the thesis that longing is one of the most fundamental of human emotions, and has a major part in shaping the world. I distinguish between desire and longing, and consider approaches to the subject in the Christian tradition. I stress the importance of combining ancient insights, such as those of Augustine and Dante, with those of Freud and Darwin, such that the range of human longings is not denied, but properly oriented. Drawing on the work of Wendy Farley and Sarah Coakley, I postulate that the human vocation is to orient our longings by what God longs for, to pray authentically ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done’. Matthew 25 gives an indication of the practical outworking of such conformed longing. Such prayer, the true outworking of human freedom, is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer, which leads in turn to the fruits of the Spirit and the virtues of faith, hope and love.
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Notes
- 1.
For a contemporary reading of the passions see Farley 2005: chs 3–4.
- 2.
So desire for something other than for God’s sake counts as cupiditas (Oord 2010: 61).
- 3.
See Coakley 2013: 127–32 on Origen’s treatment of The Song of Songs.
- 4.
Indeed, longing may be felt for someone or something that is already in the past, in which case the term ‘yearning’ perhaps expresses better the pathos of that state.
- 5.
Cf. Wendy Farley’s comments on contemplation as never leading by way of possession (2005: 123).
- 6.
See C. S. Lewis (1960: 109–10) on the difference between sexual desire that sex may take place, and erotic desire for a person who is sexually loved.
- 7.
Coakley writes of the ‘messy entanglement’ of sexual desire and desire for God (2013: 43).
- 8.
So also a great thinker of the Eastern Church, Gregory of Nyssa, for whom ‘it is in man’s investiture with animal sexuality that the most fatal consequences of his fall are evident … In Paradise, man (sic) had an angelic mode of propagation. This he lost with the fall, and he was given in its place a mode proper to animals … for St Gregory the sexual life is the source of the passions which, when stirred up, lead to sin’ (Sherrard 1976: 66).
- 9.
See Darryl Domning’s work on this in his study Original Selfishness (Domning and Hellwig 2006).
- 10.
As Moore notes, ‘psychoanalysis … consists in giving permission for desire’ (Moore 1989: 18).
- 11.
As Sherrard notes, this path is fraught with dangers, but so much better than ‘pretending to be bodiless or sexless’ (Sherrard 1976: 48).
- 12.
A bitter longing heightened by the broken grammar of the verse (Voorwinde 2011: 149–50).
- 13.
The concept of longing not out of need, but out of fullness, is an interesting one. It may be argued that human longing is distorted by the aching need to make up what we lack (or think we lack). So we tend not to long for the good of others with the generous, kenotic giving of our fullness that we find in ‘the mind that was in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2: 5; cf. also 2 Cor. 8: 9). So humans’ cultivation of that generosity would be a way in which our longings might be conformed to the divine longing.
- 14.
It is interesting to read of C. S. Lewis, sometimes thought of as such a stern apologist for orthodox Christianity, noting that sexual activity ‘reduces the nagging and addictive character of mere appetite’ (1960: 112). What he warns against is rather attempting ‘to find an absolute in the flesh’ (114). That would be idolatry.
- 15.
The ‘right aiming’ of desire, in Gregory of Nyssa’s phrase (quoted in Coakley 2013: 285).
- 16.
Stump analyses this in terms of second-order desires (2010: 124), the desire in a person that they would desire certain things, and ultimately ‘the re-folding of the heart’s desires’ (2010: 443–8). Though I prefer the language used here of the orientation of longing, I find her Aquinas-based analysis of the necessary integration of the person in the formation of second-order desires, and the necessity to that integration of relationship with God, very helpful.
- 17.
Translations are by C. H. Sisson (Dante Alighieri 1993).
- 18.
She continues: ‘in its naked longing for God, it lays out all its other desires – conscious and unconscious – and places them, over time, into the crucible of divine desire.’ ‘Over time’ is the key phrase here.
- 19.
So also Farley 2005: 32.
- 20.
Here my model differs somewhat from that of Coakley, and is more anchored in a sense that selves in competition with other selves are intrinsic to biological evolution. Coakley’s own exploration of co-operation in evolution (2012) would predispose her to her understanding of desire as ‘the constellating category of selfhood’ (2013: 26).
- 21.
‘We all desire to be desired by one we desire, but the fulfilment of this longing involves much dying to ego’ (Moore 1989: 104). Which is not to deny the huge problems associated with this path to self-transcending longing. Moore notes ‘No desire is as prone to self-deception … as is sexual desire’ (Moore 1989: 94).
- 22.
Moore also offers a very interesting reading of the Gen. 3 story, pointing out that part of the disruption the story describes as resulting from the Fall is that the ‘higher’ nature of human beings ceases to befriend the ‘lower’, the physical. The human beings in the garden became ashamed of their nakedness. The whole burden of the tradition (much influenced by Augustine), is that the lower fails the latter, by virtue of its disordered lust. Moore says rather that lust is secondary, and results from primordial shame (1989: ch. 10)
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Southgate, C. (2016). The Orientation of Longing. In: Evers, D., Fuller, M., Runehov, A., Sæther, KW. (eds) Issues in Science and Theology: Do Emotions Shape the World?. Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26769-2_6
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