Love of God as Created Good, Not Based on Lack

"The primary intentional relation of the self to its world is not theoretical reflection (Husserl) or pragmatic concern (Heidegger) but rather love (Augustine)." (p. 244)

"As such, human desire is not the result of a lack of privation but rather plentitude and excess – a positive movement toward God. Desire, then, is not the negative craving for a lack but the positive passion characteristic of love." (p. 244)

"‘When Bernard [of Clairvaux] asserts that humanity lost its likeness, he is saying that human desire is no longer in harmony with the desire from whence it came’ (Bell, Liberation Theology after the End of History p. 90-91). The fall was not the occasion for the advent of desire but rather the distortion and misdirection of the creational structure of desire." (p. 245)

"First, desire is located in God, and God cannot be characterized by lack of privation but only by plenitude. ‘God does not love us because God needs us to complete God’s own desire’ – and yet God does love us (CG, 77) A Christian theological1 account of desire ‘begins with God’s desire for me (a prerequisite for any doctrine of election and hence redemption)’ (TST, 187). Therefore, God’s desire does no operate according to a logic of privation, then two problematic scenarios would follow: Either the desire could never be satisfied, in which case we could never achieve peace and rest, or the desire would be satisfied, in which case eternity would shut down (contra Gregory of Nyssa’s picture in his commentary on Song of Songs). ‘There is a profound difference between participating in God and a need for God. In the Christian tradition.’ Ward notes, ‘God is not there to fulfill human demands. For that is to treat God as we might treat any other commodity in the marketplace’ (CG, 77). Here we see a marked difference between a properly Christian account of desire and the erotic paradigm adopted by contemporary evangelical worship, which operates according to a logic of privation and construes God as yet another commodity to satisfy a lack." (p. 246)

"The erotic structure of the creature can take different directions, and these different intentions are the products of the formation of desire by particular stories narrated by particular communities and enacted by particular disciplines. RO is concerned to analyze the specific forms of desire produced by different communities and to articulate the antithesis between these and the church as the site for authentic eros." (p. 247)

James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy