One Body, by Alexander Pruss, melds rigorous philosophical analysis and insightful moral theology to advance a clearly-articulated system of sexual ethics based on the call to love.

Love and Unity: 

Sexual Ethics in the Modern World

by Christopher Kaczor

In his new book, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics, distinguished Baylor University philosopher Alexander Pruss offers novel defenses of traditional conclusions, combining insights from both new and old natural law theories of sexual ethics. He skillfully integrates scriptural revelation and contemporary sociological data in a philosophically imaginative and rigoroustour de force.

Pruss’s approach emphasizes that the fundamental law of life is love: love of God and love of neighbor. Therefore, it is essential that we properly understand the nature of love. Pruss challenges the quasi-canonical account of love—held byAnders Nygren among many others—that divides agape and eros as two distinct forms of love. Rather, he argues that agape is love itself, and all other divisions of love (e.g., brotherly love, erotic love, and parental love) are various forms ofagape.

In all its forms, agape involves good will for the other, appreciation of the other, and seeking of unity with the other. Without appreciation, good will devolves into a condescending and cold bestowal of benefits. True appreciation of the good of the beloved leads naturally to a desire to be united in appropriate ways with the beloved. Indeed, all those who love enjoy at least a formal union if not a real union with those they love. The formal union (here Pruss draws on Aquinas) consists in understanding and also willing the good of the beloved as the beloved knows and understands his or her own good. A real union, which may or may not be achievable, includes various ways in which the lover and the beloved may be joined together. All love seeks real union, but all loves are not alike in the kinds of real union sought.

In Pruss’s view, the love of fiancés, the love of parent and child, the love of brother and sister, and the love of friends are not significantly different in terms of good will and appreciation. These distinct forms of love are differentiated mainly in terms of the kinds of union (consummation) that are appropriate to seek. Parents consummate their love for their infant children through baby-talk, swaddling, and bottle feeding or nursing. Scholarly colleagues may achieve a real union in their intellectual friendship through co-authoring an article. Spouses may achieve a real union through sexual intercourse. All love seeks real union, but we can differentiate various kinds of love (brotherly, spousal, erotic) by means of the diverse kinds of real union that they seek.

Love becomes distorted when the reality of the lover, the beloved, and their relationship leads to forms of real union that are not fitting. As Pruss puts it:

If the nature of love calls for us to make the love take an appropriate form, then the form that the relationship should take is determined, at least in part, by facts outside the love itself. And this is how it must be since we need to appreciate the beloved as the beloved really is, to bestow things on the beloved that will really benefit him or her, and to unite with the beloved in reality. Thus, the characteristics of the beloved should have a role in determining the form of love.
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