Philosophical

In what follows, I borrow a crucial notion from Talbot Brewer: dialectical desire. This is ‘self-augmenting attraction to [things] represented . . . [as] intrinsically good’. It draws one into ‘dialectical activity’, ‘whose value cannot be grasped . . . [perfectly] from the outset, but must be progressively clarified via engagement in the activity’. As one's knowledge of the desire's object is clarified, so is the desire itself. Examples of dialectical activity include ‘initiat[ing] an intimate love relationship . . . or deepen[ing] our appreciation of an unfamiliar genre of music’.Footnote ⁷

On this characterization, union desire concerning God is dialectical.Footnote ⁸ If God is real (which I assume for argument's sake, to give ‘interested non-believers’ something to which they can cultivate openness), then one's knowledge of God will start off incomplete, and be deepened through practices that give expression to one's desire. As one's knowledge deepens, the desire will too, taking in progressively more of who God is.Footnote ⁹

With this in mind I'll introduce the relation that, I submit, can hold between worldly union desires and a union desire concerning God: namely, one desire's being a manifestation and form of another. My desire to write this article is a manifestation and form of my desire to contribute to the philosophy of religion. My desire to sing in a choir is a manifestation and form of my desire to engage with sacred music. Now all these desires are for states of affairs. However, plausibly some desires are irreducible to desires for states of affairs.Footnote ¹⁰ The simplest way of distinguishing between these two kinds of desire is as follows. A desire of the first kind takes as its object a state of affairs to be brought about; it's ‘a call to world-making’. A desire of the second kind, in Brewer's words, takes as its object something ‘already wholly present if not wholly appreciated . . . The attraction is not itself a call to world-making, but rather a magnetic attraction to [something] already there to be vividly appreciated.’Footnote ¹¹ As an example of the second kind, interpersonal desire can remain even after any given desire for a state of affairs is satisfied; hence, the desire for the person cannot be identical with any desire for a state of affairs.Footnote ¹² The lack of total satisfaction of the non-state-of-affairs desire can draw us further into a relationship in which a loved one is increasingly revealed to us. As Brewer has put it, ‘[t]o love another is to be drawn to another by a generous straining to bring into focus the goodness, hence desirability, of an as yet obscure object of desire’ (Brewer (Reference Brewer and Chappell2006), 280). Similar things are true of our appreciating music, art, or poetry. And, importantly, such non-state-of-affairs desires can stand in the manifestation/form relation. For instance, a non-state-of-affairs desire for another person can take the form of and be manifested in an attraction to, and thus a non-state-of-affairs desire for, something the person enjoys. If I love someone and believe she enjoys Herbert's poetry, then I may well be attracted to Herbert's poetry because I see reading it as a way of deepening my knowledge of my beloved.

From the above examples, I suggest the following condition:

b takes a specific form dictated by the circumstances, finding manifestation in a. Thus a’s deepest significance for the desirer derives from b. It's important to note that the relation can hold even if the desirer is unaware of underlying b, and so hasn't conceptualized b or its object in any way. For instance, I might have an unacknowledged desire for a sense of belonging, and desire to sing in a choir because I unconsciously associate it with belonging. Again, these seem to be desires for states of affairs; but it also looks as though the manifestation/form relation can hold between non-state-of-affairs desires, even if the desirer is unaware of the underlying desire. For instance, I might have an unacknowledged desire for a particular person, and, holding a non-occurrent belief that she enjoys Herbert's poetry, I may be attracted to it because I see reading it as a way of becoming better acquainted with the person I desire – even though I haven't admitted this to myself. But regardless of whether we consider plausible an interpersonal case such as this, the primary question for our purposes is whether an underlying, non-state-of-affairs desire for God can find manifestation and form in another non-state-of-affairs-desire, even if the desirer is unaware of her underlying desire for God. And I shall argue later that, by the lights of Merton's contemplative spirituality, this is indeed possible.

Additionally, between desires in a manifestation/form relation, another relation can hold:

Clearly appropriateness is conceptually distinct from manifestation/form: in the abstract, we can make sense of the idea that someone takes (partly) attaining a’s object to be a way of (partly) attaining b’s object, without thinking she is correct in doing so. To return to the earlier example, perhaps singing in this particular choir is not in fact a way of attaining a sense of belonging, even though I take it to be. However, we'll see a little later that when we apply the two relations theologically, they are not separable in practice: a worldly union desire's appropriateness is part of what makes it a manifestation and form of a union desire for God.

Theological

For Merton, recall, rightly ordered desire concerning God lacks any self-regard; moreover, it's ultimately a desire for God, rather than a state-of-affairs desire for union:

However, such desire is fully satisfied in loving union with God – our most complete fulfilment:

We don't automatically have a pure union desire for God: if we consciously desire him at all, we inevitably domesticate him into how we'd like him to be, or grasp at him possessively.Footnote ¹⁴ Still, everyone has some union desire for God, however unacknowledged. After describing the ‘ecstasy of pure love’ that is union with God, Merton declares: ‘this is what all hearts pray for when they cry: “Thy will be done” ’ (ibid., 186–187).Footnote ¹⁵

Philosophical applied to theological

Union desires elicited by things other than God, which I've called worldly union desires, are readily recognizable. We've encountered Plantinga's ‘passionate desire[s] to be united with the object of desire’. C. S. Lewis also vividly describes this kind of experience, calling it ‘Sweet Desire’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1986a), Preface) or ‘Joy’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1986b), passim). It's an intense longing, a painful delight,Footnote ¹⁶ whose object and stimulus are distinct. The object is

In general, stimuli might include art, music, poetry, nature, or other people. But object and stimulus, though distinct, are related. We're awakened to the possibility of a beauty and goodness glimpsed in the stimulus, with which we long to be united: in Joy's ‘visitations’, says Lewis, ‘we became aware of our fragmentary . . . nature and ached for that impossible reunion which would annihilate us’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1986b), 177).Footnote ¹⁸ The longing, then, need not be explicitly for God.

I've claimed that worldly union desires can help in reaching the satisfaction of the desire for God that, on Merton's picture, constitutes our final happiness. That is, worldly union desires can help in eventually attaining union with God, if such union is possible. Specifically, I claim the following:

Let's now apply our earlier philosophical considerations to union desire for God:

Do worldly union desires satisfy this condition, by Merton's lights? I submit that they do, given some features of Merton's spirituality and some general features of desire. Suppose you have a union desire for God – which, Merton maintains, you do, however unconsciously. If, as Merton claims, the desire's satisfaction in union with God would constitute your deepest fulfilment, then you'd recognize that satisfaction by the deep fulfilment that it would afford – by the fact that the desire would be at rest. Thus, plausibly, you'd recognize glimpses of the desire's satisfaction by the glimpses of deep fulfilment that they'd afford. By Merton's lights, as I'll argue shortly, the beauty and goodness in worldly union desire elicitors offer glimpses of satisfaction of the union desire for God. Therefore, assuming you're receptive enough, in encountering such beauty or goodness you'll recognize a glimpse of satisfaction of your union desire for God. Moreover, it seems entirely plausible that this can happen even if you're unaware of that desire. If you have an underlying desire for something that is glimpsed in other things, then those other things will be lit up in your experience with special salience and significance. But there is no reason to think that this alone would necessarily render the underlying desire transparent to you, without further reflection and self-examination. You recognize, then, a glimpse of satisfaction of your union desire for God. You'll therefore sense, however inchoately and inarticulately, that partly ‘attaining’ the beauty or goodness in which you glimpse that satisfaction – feeling partly united with it – would be a way of partly attaining the object of your union desire for God. If you're unaware of your underlying desire for God then such a sense will be below the level of conscious awareness; but once again, this notion poses no real problems to our understanding. Assuming the idea of an unconscious desire makes sense (and it certainly did for Merton), it's entirely natural to think of such a desire as guiding someone to pursue things that seem to promise satisfaction. If the desirer is unaware of the underlying desire, then ‘seeming to promise satisfaction’ would take the form of being lit up with the salience and significance described earlier.

Because the beauty and goodness you encounter in some aspect of the world seem to promise satisfaction of your underlying desire for God, you'll come to desire that beauty and goodness: you'll form a worldly union desire. Nonetheless the whole process may be unconscious, experienced simply as the worldly union desire. Your worldly union desire will thus satisfy the condition for being a manifestation and form of a union desire for God. Assuming, then, that this account is accurate, we get part of my central claim: by Merton's lights, worldly union desires are manifestations and forms of a union desire for God.

Let's now look at the other part of my central claim, which was included in the foregoing argument as an assumption: worldly union desires are by Merton's lights appropriate relative to a union desire for God. Again, applying our earlier philosophical considerations, we get the following:

I claimed, recall, that by Merton's lights, the beauty and goodness in worldly union desire elicitors offer glimpses of God in loving union. ‘The only true joy on earth’, he writes, is to ‘enter by love into union with the life who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls’ (Merton (Reference Merton1999), 27). However, this requires a certain kind of engagement with creatures. First, it must be other-centred, our attention directed away from ourselves.Footnote ¹⁹ Second, we must recognize that creatures won't fully satisfy us. ‘The fulfilment we find in creatures belongs to . . . a reality that . . . reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire, which looks for . . . a greater fulfilment than any created thing [can give]’ (ibid., 28).Footnote ²⁰

Can our engagement with worldly union desire elicitors fulfil these conditions? Clearly the desires Plantinga and Lewis describe are other-centred: their elicitors draw us out of ourselves and hint at something profoundly significant. What's more, a worldly union desire looks beyond its stimulus to an intangible object seemingly glimpsed there: we don't expect full satisfaction from the stimulus, or creature. So, by Merton's lights, any fleeting satisfaction of a worldly union desire is a partial experience of God in loving union: worldly union desires are appropriate relative to a union desire for God.

Recall that, assuming God is real, union desire for God is dialectical: as one's knowledge of God deepens through practice, the desire will deepen too. Given what I've said, knowledge-deepening ‘practice’ here can include worldly union desire-centred activity: attending closely to nature, cultivating a love of art, music, or poetry, or un-self-centred engagement with other people. This means that any fleeting moments of worldly union desire satisfaction will help shape the desirer for deeper love and knowledge of God. These moments deepen and nuance one's knowledge of God (for instance, seeing his beauty as having precisely this quality). One's underlying – and perhaps unacknowledged – union desire for God is thereby deepened and nuanced: one now has a greater sense of what God is like, and a correspondingly developed attraction to him. And this increases one's capacity for loving union with God: the more our desire for someone incorporates who they are, the more we can receive of them.