Blackburn's purpose is to overcome all pessimism towards lust. He even defends the use of pornography, which can, he argues, point towards the higher purposes of sex, rather than the lower degradations. He takes on the evolutionary psychologists, arguing that their naturalistic view of sex is too mechanistic. But his main effort is to overcome what he sees as Christianity's pessimism towards sexual desire as an end in itself. In effect, Blackburn's effort is to deny that lust should be considered a sin at all, deadly or otherwise.

Blackburn's short book does not answer all the questions he raises. Even as he attacks Christian "pessimism" and calls for lust to be accepted as a universal human reality, Blackburn does not call for the removal of all moral boundaries on human sexuality.

In the end, Lust is a fascinating little treatise offered by a prominent intellectual, safely removed from the hard moral decisions of everyday life. His view of lust is not only sanitized, it is more deeply rooted in literature than in life. Perhaps this is due to Blackburn's profession as an academic philosopher, or perhaps it is because a modern secular philosopher can talk about sex only in the context of irony.

The Christian worldview finds congruence with Blackburn on this essential point--that lust is best described as a desire for sexual pleasure as an end in itself. Augustine aside, there is no biblical reason to suspect that sex before the Fall would have been devoid of physical pleasure. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that sexual pleasure is one of God's sweetest gifts to his human creatures. Sexual desire--and the promise of sexual pleasure--is meant to draw us into marriage, toward children, and into fidelity and responsibility. Lust is sinful precisely to the extent that sexual desire and passion are stripped form this moral context. In a God-centered worldview, nothing on earth can be seen as an end in itself--nothing is to be understood as existing for its own sake.

Sexual desire for its own sake is sexual desire stripped of the Creator's glory and stolen from its moral context. What Blackburn celebrates, Christianity rightly condemns. Intentionally or not, Simon Blackburn has put lust back on the line for debate, and his lecture-turned-essay is about as thoughtful a secular defense of lust we are likely to find. There is, of course, an altogether different understanding of lust, but it is not to be expected from a secular worldview. Christianity alone can explain why lust--and sin in every form--is so deadly.

Tomorrow:  Another Look at Lust:  The Christian View