JPI 725
Theological Meaning of Love and Sexuality
This course will begin with a consideration of the affective dimension of human love through an analysis of the Thomistic doctrine of connaturality (amor naturalis) and the passion of love. The course will then move to an examination of the specifically human love (amor rationalis) in its two basic manifestations (“love of concupiscence” and “love of friendship”). Such distinctions (which also include that between selfishness and the proper love of one’s own good) will introduce the thorny problem of the relation between the desire for happiness (fulfillment) and the requisite love of another “for his own sake,” and its attendant problem of the “order of love” between love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor. The contemporary debate about the compatibility of eros and agape will then be considered. Finally, the course will end with a look at the essential features of a theology of sexuality, and how, in particular, the “dual unity” of man and woman bears on the aforementioned classical distinctions.
