The Language of the Eternal

There is something, as experienced by us, that skirts the unintelligible and that, simultaneously, constitutes one of the most profusely symbolized experiences ab antiquo—indeed, ever since the human capacity to do so has been subject to scrutiny—to which we assign the name “love.” In the present essay, we propose, under the aegis of the Voegelinian articulation of the luminosity of consciousness, to scrutinize the experience of devoting one’s affection toward the beloved.

The Lover, the Beloved, and Love

In Voegelin’s late works, wherein he describes consciousness as the experiential locus of the tension between the human and the divine, we encounter—most especially in the final volume of his Order and History—an exegesis of the structure of reality that is exceedingly vast and articulated, yet endowed with a strange familiarity: reality becomes self-reflexive at the very station of itself that we call “consciousness.” In an openly expansive sense, one might say that the Whole, turning toward itself as the lover turns toward the beloved, possesses such a love that it becomes object (beloved) for its subject (lover) within love.

Thus, the opening of consciousness toward the divine ground of reality is the manifestation of the real—or, in Voegelinian terms, the area of reality—consciously turning toward what is manifested (the ground) in love. This is precisely Étienne Gilson’s description when he states that “to love the material and the perishable is to materialize oneself and condemn oneself to perish; to love the eternal is, on the contrary, to eternalize oneself; to love God is to become Him” (GILSON, 2007, p. 26)^[1].

By “to become Him,” one must not understand an obscure Gnostic thesis, nor the divinization of man in the manner of Marx, Hegel, or Feuerbach. This point must be clarified before we proceed. To this end, we shall employ Edith Stein’s explanation when commenting on Augustine concerning the lover and the beloved becoming one in love:

God is love; this is Saint Augustine’s point of departure, and it is already in itself the Trinity. For to love correspond a lover and a beloved, and finally love itself. If the spirit loves itself, then lover and beloved are one, and love, insofar as it belongs to spirit and will, becomes one with the lover. (STEIN, 2018, p. 464)

The human spirit (consciousness) becomes one with the beloved insofar as this spirit loves itself—this is the image and likeness of God in man. Stein warns that the spirit only loves itself if it knows itself, thereby establishing a Trinitarian relation between spirit, love, and knowledge. These three parts are experienced distinctly, for the spirit is neither love nor knowledge; yet these, though different, are in the spirit and are parts of a whole. The spirit that knows itself loves itself; “love encompasses itself and knowledge and, with this, the spirit that loves and knows” (STEIN, 2018, p. 465). For this reason, to love the eternal is “to become it.” The reason for this lies in the consideration of the relation between lover and beloved in the Augustinian discovery of true human nature and its divine encounter. Man perceives himself not merely as body, nor his soul merely as that of animals, but as containing an interiority in which, upon entering it—in the innermost part of man—God is found. This interiority in the soul is described as that which is loved by the spirit that loves itself, loving God within itself.

The spirit is the lover who becomes one with the beloved; moreover, the spirit knows itself in relation to God—this is its nature. Therefore, the love that encompasses itself and knowledge in the spirit is devoted to God in the very interiority of the spirit. The spirit becomes one with the beloved, the beloved being the spirit itself in its relation to God. Hence, to love the eternal is to eternalize oneself; to love God is to become Him.

There is an admirable resonance between Augustinian interiorization and Voegelinian openness of consciousness—instances wherein the equivalences of experience and symbolization reveal their profound correspondence.

Love Toward the Other

How does the immeasurable love of the Eternal, turned toward us, emanate from me toward the other? In other words: in what manner does one person truly love another? Let us return to the experience of the opening of consciousness in order to reach this answer.

The ground is devoid of limits, barriers, or finitude; it is exempt from any character of “thing,” lest it cease to be ground and become an entity in need of one. We are far too Aristotelian not to reject such a digression into absurdity. Just as we recognize the experience of a non-existent ground of existence, we must recognize that the ground—or, as Schelling wrote, the Absolute that aims at itself—constitutes infinite love for itself, revealed in the texture of the rea^[2]l.

Thus, man, in his process of interiorization, perceives that the love addressed to him from the ground is infinite, while his human response appears insufficient. This limitation on the human pole presents itself as smallness before immensity. Yet the man who loves God in his spirit becomes the portion of reality that receives the infinite love of the Whole, returning it in a will toward infinity that discovers itself limited before the Unlimited. Human love touches upon the infinite in God.

This apparent contradiction between finite human love and its infinite essence constitutes a symbol of rare potency; it is a sacrifice of the self that, in its limitation, seeks to give itself entirely by straining toward the infinite in love. It is a self-transcending—a diminishing of oneself to reach beyond oneself; in short, a self-sacrifice. The man who loves, loves the other by recognizing in him the Real loving itself; and the paradigmatic man gives himself fully by virtue of this love that tends toward infinity.

The loving surrender is felt in an immeasurable way, insofar as the experience of the act of loving constitutes a going-out-of-oneself toward the other; it is “the surrender of one’s own being and the union with the beloved” (STEIN, 2018, p. 463). Edith Stein understands that, in interiority, the mystery of perfect surrender possesses a Trinitarian and unified nature; the likeness of man to God involves the penetrating dimension of love. The man who loves encounters God within himself upon entering his own intimacy (STEIN, 2018, p. 463).

Stein remarks that Augustine, in De Trinitate, identifies triads such as memory, intellect, and will, as well as spirit, love, and knowledge. At this point, it is fitting to resume the exegesis the author offers of the Augustinian work, initiated in the first section of this essay. We concluded that interiority is loved by the spirit, which thus loves itself. The spirit, knowing itself in relation to God, becomes one with the beloved. This love and this knowledge are devoted to God in the very interiority of the spirit. Spirit, love, and knowledge are one, for knowledge and love dwell in the spirit; and they are three, for they are distinguished insofar as they relate to one another (STEIN, 2018, p. 465). Edith Stein offers an exceptional commentary synthesizing sections IX, 1–5 and 10–12 of De Trinitate:

[…] the spirit knows itself entirely and loves itself entirely; knowledge illumines itself and love, and with this, the knowing and loving spirit; love encompasses itself and knowledge and, with this, the spirit that loves and knows. Self-knowledge is born of the spirit, as the Son was born of the Father. It is knowable to itself before it knows itself; it acquires knowledge through seeking. What is found (repertum) is something born (partum). The desire to find it belongs to the will, and is something in the mode of love, and becomes love insofar as it is found. Thus, knowledge is generated by love; love itself is not. The Word, generated from the spirit through love, is the beloved knowledge. When the spirit loves and knows itself, the Word joins it through love. Love is in the Word, the Word is in Love, and both are in the one who loves and speaks. Thus, the spirit with self-knowledge and self-love is an image of the Trinity. (STEIN, 2018, p. 465)

It is impossible to love what is entirely unknown. The desire to know something unknown is based on a prior understanding of its meaning (STEIN, 2018, p. 465). Therefore, if the spirit loves itself, it must possess some knowledge of itself. The search for self-knowledge presupposes that the spirit already holds a primordial notion of its own essence: it knows what it does not know and, supported by this partial knowledge, seeks the fullness of understanding (STEIN, 2018, p. 465). In the act of knowing, memory, intellect, and will are unified, conferring depth upon the relation between gnosis and agape. Such Trinitarian analogies reveal the human person as an authentic image of the divine persons.

The similarities between willing, will, and love pertinently surround the theme. Stein derives from Augustine that the will proceeds from love, while action derives from willing (STEIN, 2018, p. 467). These three instances are affirmations of a good: the will is oriented toward the reception of the desired object; willing, toward its realization; and love constitutes the very surrender to the good. The will, consequently, finds its telos in love. We shall return to this point in due course; for now, let us proceed with the theme of love, so that we may consolidate the whole at the conclusion.

Love, since it proceeds from the infinite ground, does not constitute a “something,” but an act. For this reason, man, in loving, exercises love in act and exteriorizes it toward the other. The more expansive the love, the greater the act of loving is revealed to be.

A true surrender, as Edith Stein asserts, is only possible “in the face of a person” (STEIN, 2018, p. 469). Authentic love constitutes a full surrender of one person to another. The beloved, in turn, must open himself to the surrender of the one who loves him; thus, love leads to reciprocal union. In this union, lover and beloved may come to know one another genuinely. Although prior knowledge is necessary, it is only in love—through mutual surrender and the consequent search for understanding of the other—that this union becomes an indivisible reality. Reciprocal, perfect, and realized love finds its archetype in the surrender of the divine persons to one another; the Trinitarian image of God in man reflects love in the depth of the soul, in the desire to unite oneself entirely to the beloved person and in the complete donation of one’s being to the other.

It is possible to trace in Augustine the intensive force that binds lover and beloved, transmuting them into one. Love moves both in an identificatory surrender, in the unity of the gift and in the opening of the beloved to the love with which the lover offers himself, culminating in reciprocal donation.

Love, however, belongs to someone who loves, and something is loved by love. Behold, there are three: the one who loves, what is loved, and love. What then is love, if not a certain life that unites two things, or desires to unite them, namely, the one who loves and what is loved? (SAINT AUGUSTINE, 1956, p. 534)^[3]

The description of love as a certain life (quaedam vita) that unites two beings (copulans duo) demonstrates that love is experienced insofar as the lover projects himself toward the beloved, becoming one with him: the one who loves and the one who is loved find themselves bound by this life we call love. One perceives the existence of a reality that actualizes the surrender of the lover to the beloved, acting simultaneously in the latter by opening him to the love with which the lover seeks him. This reality, without which neither lover nor beloved would exist in their mutual relation^[4], is love itself. The unity thus constituted between them possesses fundamental interrelations:

[…] and yet two realities are one: the one who loves and love; or, if you prefer, what is loved and love. And these two realities are said relatively in relation to one another. The one who loves is referred to love, and love is referred to the one who loves. For the one who loves loves with something, and love belongs to someone who loves. (SAINT AUGUSTINE, 1956, p. 534)^[5]

The relations established occur between the realities unified by love. The lover and love constitute a unity, for the one who loves possesses love within himself; consequently, the beloved and love also become one, since the union is consummated in the act of loving. We previously established that love is the reality that actualizes the surrender of the lover to the beloved; however, we could equally affirm that love is the very surrender to the desired good. This distinction was not mentioned at the outset because it was imperative to distinguish the concepts of will, desire, and love.

Let us clarify: in certain translations, voluntas is interpreted as “desire,” while in others, as “willing.” This ambiguity fosters confusion, for “willing” and “will”—though at times taken as synonyms in Portuguese—designate distinct realities. Desire approaches “willing” (voluntas), which is the force that moves the subject toward the intended object. While the will is oriented toward the good and love surrenders to it, willing represents the dynamic movement and active effort to attain it. Therefore, desire, as impulse or longing, is linked to willing insofar as it involves effective movement toward what is sought.

The Leap into Infinitude: Surrender as the Fullness of Being

Edith Stein identifies, in Augustinian exegesis, the will as something that emanates from love. In this section, it is asserted that memory and intellect share the same genesis: “But love is the deepest thing there is. Therefore, memory finds in love its most secure foundation. Thus, it may indeed be said that intellect, will, and memory find their foundation and their end in love […]” (STEIN, 2018, p. 470). Accordingly, one may affirm that will and willing not only find their foundation and end in love, but also possess their very essence in it. Love incites the will to act: if the will is the motor and willing the impulse, love reveals itself as the primordial motor that drives both mechanism and movement.

Such an affirmation finds resonance in Étienne Gilson’s lesson: “if love is the intimate motor of the will, and if the will characterizes man, it may be said that man is essentially moved by his love” (GILSON, 2010, p. 257). Thus, although man discovers his true nature in the divine-human encounter, in the core of the spirit, it is love that truly defines him. The source of will and willing, desire in its highest instance, has its beginning and end in love. Man’s intelligence, memory, and knowledge—or, to be more explicit: his essence, from its genesis—are nothing other than love.

The true lover is he who spares no effort for the beloved, for devoted love is self-sacrifice in the surpassing of finitude toward the infinite. In it, the self ceases to be its own measure and consents to lose itself in order, finally, to find itself. To love is to allow the other to be a place of revelation of the eternal; it is to accept that the finite burn without being consumed, like a flame that exists only because it gives itself. Love elevates the creature: it makes of time a promise, of absence a calling, and of surrender, already here, a foretaste of the absolute.

Such a love is the letting go of the center of one’s own life; the self no longer suffices unto itself. The beloved becomes mystery; the more love is given, the less it is exhausted; the more it is surrendered, the more it participates in the fullness that exceeds it.

Thus, in the silent gesture of loving, the finite learns the language of the eternal, and the human heart, restless by nature, finds rest in communion; meaning in sacrifice; truth in surrender; freedom in the consecrating bond; eternity in the instant in which two recognize themselves as called by one and the same love that precedes them and surpasses them.

All quotations from Augustine, Gilson, Stein, and Voegelin are taken from Portuguese translations listed in the bibliography. English renderings are the author’s own translations from these editions.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Confissões. Tradução de J. Oliveira. 5. ed. São Paulo: Editora Paulus, 1997.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Contra os Acadêmicos. Tradução de Raimundo Nonato Pereira da Silva. São Paulo: Paulus, 1998.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. De vera religione. Tradução de Maria Cristina Oliveira. São Paulo: Paulus, 1995.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Solilóquios. Tradução de João Ferreira Santos. São Paulo: Paulus, 1995.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Sobre o Livre Arbítrio. Tradução de João Ferreira Santos. São Paulo: Paulus, 2008.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Da Trindade. Tradução de Ivo Storniolo. São Paulo: Paulus, 1994.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. O Livre-Arbítrio. Tradução de J. do Prado. São Paulo: Paulus, 2009.

AGOSTINHO, Santo. Sobre a potencialidade da alma (De quantitate animae). Tradução de Aloysio Jansen de Faria. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2012.

GILSON, Étienne. Deus e a Filosofia. Tradução de Beatriz Sidou. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2007.

GILSON, Étienne. Por que São Tomás criticou Santo Agostinho? Avicena e o ponto de partida de Duns Escoto. São Paulo: Paulus, 2010.

NOVAES, Adauto. O avesso da liberdade: Ensaio sobre Santo Agostinho. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.

STEIN, Edith. A Estrutura da Pessoa Humana. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2019.

STEIN, Edith. Ser Finito e Ser Eterno. São Paulo: Paulus, 2018.

VOEGELIN, Eric. Ordem e História, Vol. IV: A Era Ecumênica. Tradução de Luciana Pudenzi. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2010.

VOEGELIN, Eric. Ordem e História, Vol. V: Em Busca da Ordem. Tradução de Luciana Pudenzi. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2010.

VOEGELIN, Eric. Anamnese: Da Teoria da História e da Política. Tradução de Mendo Castro Henriques. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2009.

VOEGELIN, Eric. Ensaios Publicados (1966-1985): The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 12. Tradução de Elpídio Mário Dantas Fonseca. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2012.

VOEGELIN, Eric. Reflexões Autobiográficas. Tradução de Maria Inês de Castro Henriques. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2008.

^[1] De div. quaest. 83; De lib. arbitrio, II, 13, 35; De div. quaest. 83; 35, 2.

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