The Poor Erotics of Porn
Understanding the spiritual harm of pornography
Porn is anti-erotic.
People do not know the spiritual harm of porn, because they know neither the truth about erotics nor the truth about God as Beauty-itself.
But knowing the beauty of eros reveals the ugliness of porn.
Porn is a meat grinder to man’s erotic imagination—turning man into a bestial parody of a creature made in the image of God.
The natural ascent of eros plummets into a bestial descent of irrational consumption—sons of God living a life worthy of cattle.
Save your soul. Be skilled in erotics. Let porn go.
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The Question of Erotics
To understand the spiritual harm of pornography, you must understand love—a love that resounds at the very heart of the human condition, a love that moves both mankind and the cosmos. This love is eros—the primal desire to satiate in beauty and be happy. It is the desire for satisfaction and existential rest—to feel loved, whole, and fulfilled. It is a love expressed in the ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew, and Christian traditions (check out Reclaiming Holy Eros).
To understand eros is to understand the desires of the human heart.
And pornography, an unholy coupling of perverted sexuality and technology, preys upon an existential love of the human soul.
Eros not only moves the whole soul (and the cosmos) but each part of the soul as well; thus, to truly diagnose the spiritual harm of a thing, you must understand how it perverts the very love and structure of the soul.
In short, the soul has three parts: the intellect that loves truth, the spirited that loves nobility, and the appetite that loves pleasure. And for the soul to be just, to have a beautiful harmony, these parts must not only love their respective beauties according to virtue but also must remain in hierarchy: for the intellect governs the soul with the assistance of the spirited always attempting to keep the appetitive in moderation. Humans, as Aristotle notes, are the worst animals when it comes to food and sex—for the appetitive part of man’s soul, his love of pleasure, will dominate in the soul if the intellect and spirited part are weak.
The problem of erotics, however, is that the erotic appetite of the human soul is infinite. You want to be happy all of the time and not some of the time. No one desires unhappiness; yet, if happiness is the possession of and satiation in beautiful things, then to be happy you must always have beautiful things.
And this can easily lead to a pattern of irrational consumption, a bestial life of desiring pleasure after pleasure in an attempt to satiate the human heart. You see this all the time—people who simply must have more. The ancient Greeks spoke of the condition of pleonexia, an insatiable desire for more—and we today would speak of lust, avarice, jealousy, and envy.
Yet, this is to be “unskilled” in erotics—for those who are truly skilled in eros understand that the insatiable condition of the soul of mankind is not a curse toward endless consumption but an invitation to ascend toward the divine. Eros calls the soul upward toward the beauties of the higher parts of the soul: the love of nobility and the love of truth. And even Plato, a pagan, understood that at the top of this “ladder of love” was the divine, the “divine beauty-itself.” Christians understand this as God, that, through the grace of Jesus Christ, mankind climbs the ladder of love toward God, Beauty-itself.
To wit, God enkindles eros within you to lead you back to Him.
For the infinite hunger of eros within the human soul is designed to satiate upon an infinite beauty—but all the beauties of this life are finite; thus, the soul must ascend to the spiritual reality and satiate on God, Beauty-itself, the All-Beauty, in which all other beauties participate, to find the true object of desire.
It is here, in the intimacy of the erotic and the divine, that the spiritual harm of pornography can be truly seen.
Pornography as Anti-Erotic
Now, a lustful man does not look up to the divine to satiate the existential restlessness of his soul but rather looks down toward bestial pleasures. The beauty of the female form, instead of being an icon of the beauty of God, becomes the object of irrational consumption. Pornography allows the lustful man to attempt to satiate his infinite erotic desire upon the female form by offering it to him under an artificial and false infinity: online pornography. Porn is a false god made in the image of man’s disordered desire and forged in new technologies. Online porn apes the endless quality of the Divine by offering the lustful soul an abyss of dehumanizing pleasure. It is an endless descent into ever greater inhumanities and degradations.
Porn is anti-erotic. Eros is an ascent to the divine, but porn drags the soul downward into an irrational, bestial state. If to be “skilled in erotics,” as Diotima states in Plato’s Symposium, is to climb the ladder of love toward the divine, then those who traffic in pornography are unskilled in erotics—perverting the very telos of eros.
Porn, made in the image of man’s own disordered desire, mimics the infinity of the divine; yet, like the divine, those who participate in this false god take on its image.
Made in the Image of Porn
Eros is a “self-love,” a “need-love.” To wit, that which we love is a mirror in which we see ourselves. We make ourselves in the image of that in which we satiate our erotic desires. Again, your erotic desire was ignited in you by God to lead you back to Him, Beauty-itself, and it is in God, the true Mirror of the Soul, that you should find your identity. It is only God who can reflect the true you back to you—it is in His image that you are made and you become more you when you love God, not less.
When man satiates on the demonic mockery of the divine, pornography, he becomes a mockery of man—receiving a warped and deformed identity. Porn is a meat grinder for man’s erotic imagination. It will take what is beautiful in man and make it ugly, churning new identities for him that pervert the most primal aspects of his nature. Disorder begets disorder.
In short, porn remakes man into something not man—something less than human, a disordered parody of the Image of God.
Porn will distort man’s understanding of himself and his relation to others.
It recreates man, gives him a new anthropology, and with it, a new understanding of the self, the family, and society. All politics is downstream of anthropology—who is man?
Understand the Danger
Porn and its disordered erotics will distort both the human person and society. It impedes man’s ascent to God and remakes him into an irrational, bestial creature—whose self-love and identity are easily mutilated into a inhuman parody.
Do not believe the lie that pornography is normal or unharmful.
It is fatal to your spiritual life, to the call of eros to ascend to God and become God-like.
Hold close to reason, practice temperance, pray to Jesus for help, and stay away from porn—allow your imagination to heal.
Come to know yourself and others in the image of God and true erotics.
Recover a true anthropology—one of beauty and ascent.
Dcn. Harrison Garlick is a deacon, husband, father, Chancellor, and attorney. He lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and five children. He is also the host of Ascend: The Great Books Podcast. Follow him on X at Dcn. Garlick or Ascend.
Many confuse erotism with pornography. One is a symphony, the other is a piano thrown from a tenth storey.
I like how both this and your last essay indirectly fight against the commodification and commercialization of the female body, but approach it through the lens of seeking connection with God and a higher sense of self-purpose. There’s so much written on the former subject where the conclusion is “because capitalism sucks” or “because misogyny sucks,” but they end with cynicism and lack a call to something higher.