and they will become one flesh.

Perhaps I’m simply missing the obvious (and if so, please let me know)—but I regularly hear pastors talk of agape love as The Highest form of love—for it’s supposedly the kind of love that’s “self-sacrificial, inclusive, and unconditional.” Well, if so, why the heck does Paul and John liken the Church’s relationship to Christ to that of the union between a husband and wife? Though I’d think of the love between a husband and a wife as properly self-sacrificial, that kind of love I would call er0tic (i.e., romantic), which is entirely exclusive and conditional. But perhaps the “condition” here is “faith”. And since the Church, though (in some sense) greater than the sum its parts, is not an entity over and above the members that compose it (viz., the individual believers), we can drop the “exclusive” component of er0s or just amend it to mean “exclusive of anyone not in the Church.”

Even though this makes Jesus out to be polygamist (which—unless you’re an elder—the Biblical writers don’t seem to have a problem with), I like the idea of God’s relationship to us as that of groom to a bride, for it suggests that God is rapturously in love with us and finds us seksy. (Assuming, of course, His attitude towards us is like Jacob’s to Rachel and not Jacob’s to Leah!).

So yeah, back to my point. It seems that Paul is suggesting that er0s as opposed to agape is The Highest form of love.

Or perhaps, more modestly: agape is drenched with er0s.