St. John Chrysostom Speaks of Eros and Agape (Love) in marriage as the elements which unite broken humanity.

Eros and agape (love) in Marriage lead to perfection of human beings.

In his commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, which he wrote in 396-397 AD, St. John Chrysostom speaks of marriage as the opportunity for the perfection of agape (love):[1] “For God all things are secondary to agape (love),”[2] he explains. Echoing St. Paul, he goes on to say that love within marriage is an image of the love of Christ for the Church. Just like Christ loves the Church and sacrifices Himself for her, so also the husband must love his wife and be willing to even give his life for her. And just like the Church is obedient to Christ without been demeaned and reduced, so also the wife must be obedient to her husband for the sake of peace, concord and order, retaining, nevertheless, equality with him.[3] The eros of the husband for his wife and vise versa is “eros which resides in their nature.”[4] Eros is not evil or perverted, St. Chrysostom explains, but it is an integral part of human nature planted deep into the human soul. Eros is not a result of the Fall, or just a carnal desire. This eros is the force, which unites the essence of man, makes it one and completes it. Eve was formed from the essence of Adam. 

In Adam (or in every man) is united through the force of eros the other part of the human race in order to reconstitute and complete the human being into its one essence. Because the woman was made from the side of man, now they constitute two halves.[5] In this mystery of love, the two are brought together and become one body.[6] “Behold again the mystery of agape (love),” proclaims Chrysostom. If the two do not become one, they are unable to produce another, to create many. What does this mean?

“That the power of the union is great. The innovative wisdom of God divided the one into two opposites from the beginning, and desiring to show that even after the division they are still one, He did not allow for the individual to be sufficient for the birth of children, because the individual is not the fullness of the one, but only half of the one . . . Because the woman and the man are not two anthropoi but one anthropos.”[7]

The body comes unto its own member,[8] he explains further down. “They come together and the two create one.”[9] The product of this union is neither a soulless image, nor an image of someone on earth, but an image of God Himself and according to His likeness.[10] The conjoining “extends and mixes the bodies of both. Just as when one puts myrrh in oil he turns the two into one, so also here.”[11] Marriage is also a mixing of bodies; that is why there is a union.[12] Eros is that force which leads to this union. Great is the power of eros!

“Nothing unites so much our life as the eros between a man and a woman; for the sake of this eros many even surrender their weapons, many surrender even their own souls,”[13]).[14]

This eros, he explains, cannot be only in the body but it is also in the soul. Then, the eros remains strong, “because it is eros of the beauty of the soul and not just of the body.”[15] For Chrysostom now, the three forces, which bring together the male and the female, agape, eros and filia, coexist in marriage and coincide. Together they strengthen the bond of marriage, together they unite the nature of man so that the division brought about by the Fall may be abolished and man can become one again. Together they transform the carnal union of man to a union of the souls and they in turn are made spiritual. “Great is the mystery of marriage!” exclaims Chrysostom. “Marriage is a type of the presence of Christ.”[16]

With the above words, St. John has shifted twice from his original position that marriage is only for the control of the sexual drive and the avoidance of sin. First he moved to the position that marriage is equal to the monastic life and virginity, and now he explains that it is a means by which the two parts of human nature, torn apart by the Fall, may be brought back together again into unity and that the love between man and woman may be perfected according to the image of the relationship of Christ with the Church.

St. Chrysostom does not stop here, but takes a further step away from the original positions of his youth; he sees marriage as an ascesis of the responsibility of the one for the other. Advising husbands not to seek the beauty of the body in the wife but rather the beauty of the soul, he encourages:

“Let us clean up entirely the internal spots. Let us remove the internal wrinkles. Let us eliminate the imperfections from the soul. This is the kind of beauty, which God wants. Let us prepare the woman to appear beautiful in front of God, not to us."[17]

Marriage becomes spiritual as we offer ourselves in self-sacrifice and the effort for the perfection of the other. Thus marriage ceases to be governed by passion or the joining of the bodies, but becomes wholly spiritual, because “the soul is connected in an ineffable relationship with God.”[18] Thus, the bodily union leads eventually to the spiritual one.

[1] Homily 20, 1, On Ephesians, EPE (Greek Fathers of the Church, in Greek) 21.

[2] Homily 34, 3, On 1Corinthians, EPE 18A, 427. The homilies on 1Cor have to be from his time in Antioch, although we are not certain about their exact date (Quasten, Patrology, vol. III, p. 445). It seems, however, from his position on marriage that they have to be from the second period when he was a priest. Panagiotis Christou in his Patrologia, Vol 4, 285, believes that "These homilies were certainly delivered in Antioch in 395."

[3] Homily 20, 1, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 197-199. See also EPE 21, 4, 215. See also Homily 34, 3, on 1Corinthians EPE 18A, 427-429, where St. Chrysostom has equated the "desire" of the man for his wife with agape (love). The desire of the man (which is stronger) serves the purpose of subjugating the man to his wife in order to preserve the equality of the two. Also, the fact that childbearing is not depended only on the one helps preserve the balance between the two genders. See also "Concerning One marriage" 3, EPE 30, 67.

[4] Homily 20, 1, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 194.

[5] Homily 12, 4, On Colossians, EPE 22, 345 (The homilies on Colossians were written in the year 399 in Constantinople, Quasten, Patrology, vol. III, 448).

[6] Homily 12, 4, On Colossians, EPE 22, 343

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 345.

[9] Ibid., 343.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 345

[12] Homily 19, 3, On 1Corinthians, EPE 18, 531

[13] Homily 20, 1, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 195.

[14] See Chrysostomos Baur, John Chrysostom and his time, transl. by M. Gonzaga, Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1959; reprint ed., 4 vols. Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1988, volume one, part one, 164.

[15] Homily 20, 2, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 205. See also Homily 56, 1 On Genesis, EPE 4, 411, where the desire of the one for the other is the power which holds marriage intact.

[16] Homily 12, 5, On Colossians, EPE 22, 347: Through his presence at the marriage, Christ "will transform the attraction, the weak and cold desire and make it spiritual. This is the meaning of the change of water into wine." (Ibid., page 349)

[17] Homily 20, 3, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 205

[18] Homily 20, 5, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 217.

[19] Homily 20, 6, On Ephesians, EPE 21, 222, "A small church".