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{"id":17131,"date":"2015-03-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2015-03-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-27T00:00:00","slug":"the-creators-kiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/03\/the-creators-kiss\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creator’s Kiss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

We often believe, Paul Griffiths writes (Decreation<\/a>, 162-4) that eros is \u201ca drive or appetite internal to itself by means of which it relates itself to a world external to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not so. \u201cThe flesh\u2019s eros is received as git, not possessed as aspiration.\u201d We become capable of caressing by being caressed, and \u201cthe lover becomes such only by receiving the gift of himself as beloved.\u201d The kiss is paradigmatic: \u201cBecoming one who kisses is dependent, causally (and indeed definitionally), on being kissed. The impress of the lover\u2019s lips on one\u2019s own provides the gift of being one who, in virtue of being kissed, can kiss. Kissing is not a possibility for the unkissed; the flesh\u2019s eros, concentrated in this case in the lips, is without remainder received from without.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gift of eros comes first from the love of a mother for her baby: \u201cBabies receive the gift of their flesh as erotic, as desirous of and erotically responsible to the flesh of others, only by being caressed, usually, at least in the first instance, by their mothers. Absent the maternal caress, the eros of the baby\u2019s flesh remains surd, unvoiced and inactive, a possibility unrealized.\u201d Even our sense of fleshly boundaries has to be learned; Griffiths reminds us of \u201ca baby\u2019s surprise when it gums or sucks its toes with sufficient energy that it feels the result.\u201d Boundaries, and the erotic as the mode of fleshly interaction \u201cis learned by receiving the caress given by the flesh of others, and the touch provided by inanimate bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

That our erotic selves are awakened from without is a marker of our creation ex nihilo<\/em>, by the kiss of the Creator. \u00a0Griffiths writes, \u201cOur flesh \u2013 we as fleshly \u2013 is not properly thought of as autonomously or by nature possessed of the capacity to desire, a capacity that can seem then to be actualized by receiving the gift of being desired. Rather, our very fleshliness, eroticized, is brought into being ex nihilo<\/em> by the LORD\u2019s kiss. The only thing we can do about it is to open our mouths to the kiss, or turn our faces away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"