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Diotima's Ladder and the Ascent to the Depths
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October 24, 2020
Readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Catholic faith is characterized by the call to trust both our faith and our capacity for reason informed by faith. Faith calls reason beyond where it can go on its own. Faith points us towards the reality of the human vocation in the world and our destiny. Faith also allows us to identify patterns of thought in humanity that bears the imprint of Christ. For the early Christians, Platonic thought pointed towards a world that lay behind all physical or natural experiences of reality. One such example is Plato’s The Symposium.
The Symposium and Diotima’s ladder
Plato and Socrates lived 400 years before Christ. The Symposium[i] is a Platonic dialogue that describes a supper attended by Socrates and other historical figures from Plato’s own Fifth Century B.C. Athens. The nature of the speeches each of the guests deliver concern the nature of eros. As you know, the Greeks were polytheists and, so, they discussed whether Eros, that is sensual desire, was a god. Yes, sensuality was popular even then. One speaker argued that Eros’ mother was Penia – which means ‘poverty’ – his father was Poros – ‘resources or a means to an end’. That is why Eros always leaves the worshipper wanting for more. Plato’s point is that a real god lacks nothing; Eros on its own always lacks something and can’t be god. Desire always wants and is never filled and therefore cannot be the purpose of life.
Towards the end of the dialogue, Socrates speaks. Up until that moment, all the speakers spoke of love, but in an exclusively same sex experience, usually involving young males. That is of course offensive to modern ears, but the ancient Greeks did not share our sense of morality. For them virtue centered around domination and power. Socrates, however, introduces a discordant note into this pagan dialogue. He spoke of a woman prophet he had met named Diotima. Plato was rather unique in the pagan world as he had, in The Republic, called for the education of women and this is a rare appearance of a woman as a teacher of men.
Diotima, in her brief time at the Symposium, summing up eros, makes the observation that eros is not meant for frustration, but must ascend to true beauty. So, she said, you may be attracted to a body, but also find that you are attracted to many bodies, a point earlier speakers had dwelt on. If you admire the beauty of many bodies, it means that each body shares this common form or idea of beauty but is, in itself, not the ultimate or absolute expression of beauty. We want, Diotima taught, beauty for itself. It is the purpose of desire. This brief, and somewhat inadequate explanation of “Diotima’s ladder” helped early Christians think through how love of neighbor and creation ultimately lead to love of God, the reality of truth, goodness and beauty. We always want something in order to get something. Christians would argue, that what we really want is God.
The Gospel today is about human and divine love, and their relationship.
The Greatest Commandment - Matthew 22:34-40—
If we are patient, we can learn so much from lawyers. In the Gospel today, a lawyer, someone who studies the Torah, asked Jesus a question to test him (22:35) “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus answered that the greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (=will), with all your soul (=life), with all your mind” (=intellect). Deut 6:4-6 The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Lev 19:18. These two commandments are drawn from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. We are called to love God completely and told to love our neighbor as ourself. We do not love ourself as we love God; only God can be the ultimate object of love.
St. Augustine commented on this saying of the Lord’s and compared it to the Two Tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from the mountain on Sinai. He said,As charity comprises the two commandments to which the Lord related the whole Law and the prophets... [Matt 22:39] so the Ten Commandments were themselves given on two tablets. Three were written on one tablet, and seven on the other. (Augustine, Sermon 33.2.2)
In Exodus 20:2-17, Moses descends from the mountain where he spoke from God to bring the law to the Israelites. It is as if he is climbing down Diotima’s ladder. Jewish, Christian and some pagans did not absolutize human love or law. There was a higher source of law that could be accessed through reason for the Greeks and Roman and faith for the Jews and Christians.
Augustine essentially divided the law along these lines arranged around love of God and love of each other.Tablet 1: Love of God
1. Idolatry
2. Blasphemy
3. Sabbath rest
Tablet 2: Love of Neighbor
4. Honor your father and mother
5. Murder
6. Adultery
7. Theft
8. False Witness
9. Coveting a Neighbor’s Wife
10. Coveting a Neighbor’ Property
The love of God is best protected by loving your neighbor. You can avoid idolatry, blasphemy by refusing to sin against the image of God in your neighbor. The Lord did not answer the lawyer by prescribing a negative, that is what you are not supposed to do, but by prescribing the positive expression of the greatest commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. Consider how Christians took the idea of the ladder of love, Diotima’s ladder, and used it to teach about the ascent to divine love.
The Three Stages of the Interior Life
Consider The Symposium as the example of teaching about human love uninformed by faith, hope and love, the three theological virtues that direct us toward participation in the life of the Trinity. Plato did not make up the idea of human life having an end or a telos in some realm that exists beyond, behind or grounding our experience of reality. Plato, like the authors of scripture, was drawing on common human experience, but, in Plato’s case, uninformed by Christian revelation. Faith takes us beyond where reason and human experience alone can lead. As Christians over the millennium that separates us from Plato and the time of Christ have contemplated the ascent to God and that has given our tradition the three stages of the interior life; the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive way.
The Purgative Way
In order to ascend to God we must do battle with sin in our life because it distorts our experience of life. Selfishness keeps turning us in on ourselves so instead of seeing human experience as a means to the Creator, we seek its pleasures and benefits absent the Creator. Nothing goes anywhere; money for money’s sake, politics for politics sake, love for love’s sake. Life in a cul-de-sac just goes around in increasingly frustrating circles. There is no escape unless you see that love of your parents, another’s life, property, good name, spouse and the truth actually can lead you out into a satisfying and challenging experience of existence. The Second Table of the Ten Commandments, dishonoring parents, murder, lying, theft and envy of another’s spouse or property make things or other persons the end of human life. If we will respect God’s image in others, we can avoid making anyone else the center of our existence, that is, idolatry and blasphemy. The experience of purgatory, the purgative way, is already to be climbing the ladder by entering the Kingdom of God.
The Illuminative Way
Love of neighbor in a human way leads to love of God. These two commandments enjoined on us by Our Lord open up the pathway to God. We see the world in a different light and we change. Loving the Lord and imitating his love of God, faithfulness to a spouse, support of other people especially the poor connects us to the well-being of others in our community. The call to fraternity is the summons to see our own well-being as inextricably connected to all others, not just my individual self.
The Unitive Way
The Symposium is, after all a dinner party. When it is done, everyone just goes home. Mass, likewise, is supper, but with another goal in mind. We hear from our teacher, the Lord, as the guests at The Symposium heard from each of the guests. The Lord is, however, showing us the way out of the experience of love as mixed poverty and plenty. Desire or eros is a means to an end. The unitive way is the experience of life with God present. The third commandment is to keep holy the Sabbath. St. Augustine taught that this commandment was the purpose of human existence. He said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” (The Confessions) The purgative way disciplines our minds and bodies; the illuminative way enlightens our intellect and the unitive way is the experience of peace.
Certain truths of human life can be learned through experience and reflection. We can seek lives of acquired virtue by trying to be good. But faith, hope and charity lead us beyond where reason alone can take us. Early Christians thought that Socrates was a prophet of Christ to the Greeks because, by use of reason, he was able to see that human desire only made sense if it was directed towards something beyond, like beauty. In short, there is a world beyond what we can see, but reason can only make us aware of it. We can only enter into union with God only through faith, hope and love, because God is love.