The Spirit of Sophia grants us holy desire

The Holy Spirit Sophia blesses the cosmos with eros. Desire is a gift from God. It quickens us, providing both direction for our activity and energy for our movement.

Desire can get a bad rap, because so much desire is unrequited. Whether we desire an easy life, perfect love, or a just society, to desire is to experience frustration. For this reason, some wisdom teachers have advocated the complete transcendence of desire, which (so they say) would be a life unstained by frustration. Even if such transcendence were possible, the eradication of desire is not natural to the Christian tradition since Christ desired the inclusion of the excluded, reconciliation between enemies, and justice in society.

Certainly, we can become consumed by petty desires for power, prestige, and recognition, those selfish cravings that make our lives small. But the Holy Spirit Sophia instills in us a holy desire for more of all that is good—more love, more beauty, more peace, more hope, more justice, more faith, and more joy. These are the sacred desires that lift us into the life of God.

The Greek word for desire is eros. Now, we can define “erotic” in the broadest sense of the term, as the pervasive desire that animates the cosmos. Desire provides a goal, then bequeaths the energy needed to attain that goal. Desire thereby pulls us forward through time, granting life direction and purpose. Without desire there would be no frustration, but no motivation either. Without desire there would be none of the vitality evinced by Jesus of Nazareth, whose life was eros for the kingdom of God.

Unfortunately, in English eros has become associated solely with sexual desire, or the erotic. But here we are defining eros as the desire that animates the cosmos, including but not limited to sexual desire. Eros and desire are aspects of the divine love upon which the universe is founded. Faith should bless eros rather than denigrate or ignore it, because eros is most basically the desire for relationship, the desire not just to be, but to be with. Eros is the attraction of one entity toward another and their movement into everdeepening bonds.

As relational and attractive, eros expresses, resonates with, and lures us toward the interpersonal love within the Trinity. Eros invites us into the life of God. And God has declared creation to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31). When we who are made in the image of God recognize divine creation as desirable, we reap an affection toward reality itself. This affection is mystical; the mystic feels fondly toward all that is. Hence, mysticism is the opposite of aversion. It marvels at life, seeks unity with life, and plunges deeper into life.

As always, our embodiment will complicate this intensification; even the greatest of saints will prefer the smell of flowers to dung. But recognizing that all contrasts originate in God, and that God is beneficent, grants us openness to the spectrum of experience. Through such openness we appreciate the warmth that follows the cold, just as we appreciate the divine healing that follows all suffering.

Eros invites us into intimacy with all things. To feel intimate with all things is to feel open to them, to participate in them and they in you, to derive energy from them and to grant them your own in a ceaseless process of mutual increase. If we are open, then we are intimate with the universe. If we are closed, then we separate ourselves from its magnificence. Through intimacy, we find ourselves alive in a world that is itself alive. At this point, observes Thomas Merton, “The gate of heaven is everywhere.”

I do not want to overpromise here. Eros inevitably produces frustration. To desire God is to oscillate between absence and presence, disappointment and fulfillment, yearning and satisfaction. But this oscillation itself frees us from our spiritual inertia by granting us a foretaste of the more that is available. Through holy desire we are offered unending spiritual discovery. Paul writes:


For Paul, salvation is not an event but a process within which one “presses on” and “strains toward.” Since the process is never ending, our development is never ending as well.

Gregory of Nyssa called Paul’s concept of “pushing on” epektasis. Epektasis is the perpetual progress of the finite toward the infinite, drawn by the beauty of the infinite itself. This process denies any resolution or satiety since the soul can never fully encompass God. We can stretch forever into the limitless, placing us in an everlasting tension between frustration and advance, thirst and celebration.

In this schema, God is not unknowable; God is endlessly more knowable. Sin is complacency and virtue is thirst: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink,” declares Jesus, promising his followers that the Spirit of Sophia would flow out of their hearts like living water (John 7:37–39). Faith begins in discontent yet ends in joy. Along the way, it shatters all the idols that pretend to ultimacy, that declare themselves triumphant, that craftily lure us into spiritual arrest. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 168-170)

*****

For further reading, please see:

Coakley, Sarah. God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Holtzen, William Curtis. The God Who Trusts: A Relational Theology of Divine Faith, Hope, and Love. Lisle, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Merton, Thomas. Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master; The Essential Writings. Edited by Lawrence Cunningham. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1992.