New Covenant Patriarchy

Article

Romantic Theology of Charles Williams vs. the “Henosis” Doctrine of New Covenant Patriarchy

Introduction

Charles Williams (1886–1945), an English novelist, poet, and lay theologian, developed a distinctive “romantic theology” that treats human erotic love as a mirror of divine love. In works like He Came Down from Heaven (1938) and novels such as Descent into Hell (1937), Williams explores how romantic love and sexual union carry profound spiritual significance. He is described as “theological about romance,” a “romantic theologian” who considered the theological implications of those experiences which are called romantic. Williams believed that falling in love and the bond of marriage are not merely human feelings or social contracts, but sacraments of a sort – ways to encounter God’s reality through mutual love.

In contrast, the article “The Reality of Henosis, of Oneness with Every Sexual Partner” on the New Covenant Patriarchy website presents a patriarchal Christian perspective focused on the idea that each sexual encounter forges a real, ontological union (“henosis” is Greek for oneness). This modern framework (published in 2024) argues that sexual intercourse creates a “one flesh” bond with concrete spiritual and even biological effects. It emphasizes why premarital virginity, marital fidelity, and even racial “purity” in partners are important, grounding these in a quasi-scientific and biblical rationale for oneness.

Both Williams’s romantic theology and the “henosis” article ascribe metaphysical and theological weight to sexuality and union, but they do so in strikingly different ways. Below, we compare their views on (1) the significance of sexual union, (2) the nature and purpose of romantic love, and (3) the meaning of spiritual oneness, self-giving, and identity in union, highlighting key similarities and divergences with references to Williams’s texts and the Henosis article.

Sexual Union: Metaphysical and Theological Significance

Williams’s Sacramental View: For Charles Williams, sexual union in marriage is sacramental. As an Anglo-Catholic, he held a “high sacramental view of marriage”, seeing it as an “outward and visible sign” of divine grace. In Williams’s vision, when a husband and wife unite sexually, two separate individuals come together and unite their potentialities, restoring the single image of God that was divided by their separation. He taught that marital sex is an act of “co-inherence,” a mutual indwelling in which the lovers refresh each other’s being through “the most extreme intimacy” of body and soul. This one-flesh union is holy and purposeful: it renews order and meaning in creation by reuniting the image of God (male and female together) and even stands as “an image of the mystical body of Christ”. In He Came Down from Heaven, Williams suggests that the lover and beloved’s unity is sustained by the presence of Christ in their midst – “He who is the mystical child of the lovers sustains and supports them: they are the children of their child”. In other words, Christ’s incarnate love is mystically present in true romantic union, making the couple’s one flesh bond a small image of the Incarnation itself. Williams thus frames sexual union as ontologically real and sacred – an event in which divine love is made present among two people.

“Henosis” as One-Flesh Bond: The New Covenant Patriarchy (NCP) article also insists that sexual union creates a real, ontological bond – but it defines that bond in highly literal and physical terms. The author uses “henosis” (Greek for oneness) as essentially equivalent to the biblical “one flesh” relationship established by sexual intercourse. Crucially, the article argues this union is biological-spiritual: “Henosis refers to the union created by the transmission of the man’s seed”. Even a single sexual encounter is said to forge this one-flesh tie – for example, citing St. Paul, the author notes that “a one-time sexual encounter with a prostitute creates the one-flesh bond”. This is not understood as mere emotional attachment; in fact, the article explicitly corrects “misconceptions,” stating that henosis “does not refer to the emotional attachment” between lovers. It is depicted as a literal fusion at some level of being. The NCP author proposes a pseudo-scientific mechanism for this fusion: a virgin’s first sexual exposure to a man biochemically alters her – “Her own DNA…changes in some way that makes them one”, such that she “becomes a receiver for whatever that particular man is broadcasting” even at a distance. In this view, a woman carries the imprint of her man’s essence (his “seed” and DNA as “quantum…antenna”) permanently, and even her future children will bear traits of that first partner – a claim the author calls “the henosis effect”. Sexual union is thus seen almost as a physical melding of identities: “we are twins now,” as one anecdotal woman in the article puts it after years with her partner. The henosis bond is treated as a tangible reality that can multiply – the writer insists that polygamous marriage (one man with multiple wives) “creates more bonding, not less,” whereas it is divorce that truly “causes the breaking of the henosis”. In short, the NCP framework regards sexual intercourse as metaphysically efficacious in itself: it knits people together at the level of being (especially knitting a woman to a man through his life-giving seed).

Comparison: Both Williams and the NCP author agree that sexual union isn’t merely casual or physical but has a profound ontological significance ordained by God. Each invokes the biblical idea of “the two shall become one flesh.” Both also see the human couple’s oneness as an image of a higher spiritual union. The NCP article, drawing on Christian tradition, affirms that “the henosis of husband and wife is a divinely appointed image of the heavenly, spiritual union – the couple are sponsus et sponsa ectypi, as the celestial Bride and Bridegroom are sponsus et sponsa archetypi”. Williams would wholeheartedly agree that marital union reflects the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church. However, the nature of the union is conceived very differently. Williams’s language is mystical, sacramental, and mutual – a sharing of lives in which each person is both giver and receiver, caught up together in Christ’s love. The “one flesh” for Williams is interior and spiritual (with bodily sex as its expression), a union of souls that God uses to sanctify the lovers. By contrast, the NCP description is much more materialistic and asymmetrical: union is effected via the man’s seed, with the woman’s body and even mind becoming the receptacle of the man’s presence. The man is portrayed as the active transmitter (“broadcasting”), the woman as the receiver. Emotional love is secondary. Indeed, the article claims men and women even experience sex differently – “Women experience it as intimacy; men experience it as an achievement as part of their dominion task”. This hints at a patriarchal hierarchy in the very act of union: the husband conquers or plants, the wife yields and is changed. Williams’s theology, shaped by romantic idealism and Christian personalism, emphasizes mutual self-surrender rather than dominion. Moreover, Williams assumed monogamy as the proper context for this one-flesh bond (despite acknowledging in passing that human love poets have not always been faithful). The NCP author, however, argues that one man can rightly accumulate multiple one-flesh bonds (plural wives) without “antagonism” between marriage and one-flesh union. This reveals a fundamental divergence: Williams uplifts exclusive, devoted love as the ideal image of divine union, whereas the NCP framework permits a man’s one soul to be shared among several women. The oneness in Williams is exclusive and total for both partners; in the NCP view, oneness is important but not exclusive for the man – the total oneness is expected only on the woman’s side (she should have only one transmitter). This difference is starkly illustrated by the article’s warning that a woman with multiple sexual bonds will be psychologically and spiritually destabilized: “so many women act ‘crazy’ – they are getting all kinds of signals from many men rather than just one”. Williams, by contrast, did not frame unchastity in terms of multiple male signals scrambling a woman’s psyche; his concerns were more about the spiritual distortion of lust or idolatry, not a quasi-physical craziness. In summary, both views sacralize sexual union as an ontological “oneness,” but Williams sees it as a mystical union of love (God working through mutual self-gift), while the NCP author sees it as an almost mechanistic fusion (a bond formed by a man’s physical essence in a woman).

The Nature and Purpose of Romantic Love

Williams: Love as Divine Revelation and Vocation: Williams’s entire romantic theology hinges on the idea that romantic love is a God-given path to know Him. He considers erotic love (between man and woman) as a form of general revelation – a created reflection of God’s nature available to humans. In his view, when one “falls in love,” something spiritually monumental is at play: Williams believed that falling in love is a kind of Incarnation, a moment when divine Love takes flesh in the lovers’ experience. The ecstasy and wonder one feels are, for Williams, an echo of the Incarnation and Passion of Christ. He taught that an ordinary human romance tends to follow a pattern analogous to Christ’s redemptive story – “ecstasy, rejection, agony, despair, a kind of death, and a kind of resurrection” – thus embodying the gospel narrative in miniature. The purpose of this, ultimately, is to draw the lovers toward God. In the flush of first love, the lover sees the beloved with an almost worshipful admiration. Far from dismissing this as illusion, Williams asserts that in those moments the lover truly perceives the beloved as God intended him or her to be. The beloved appears “as she really is (as God sees her)…perfect—unfallen, sanctified…as she is in God’s eyes through Christ.” What seems like romantic “madness” is actually “seeing with God’s eyes”. This idealized vision is meant to spur the lover onward beyond the beloved. Williams insists that one must not make an idol of the beloved, but rather “use the beloved as a rung on a ladder to climb up to God.” The reasoning goes: if my beloved is so beautiful and good, there must be a Source of all beauty and goodness who created her. Thus the lovers “dedicate themselves to Love” itself (ultimately a name for God) and pursue love as a holy vocation. Romantic love, in Williams’s theology, teaches selflessness and sacrifice. It inspires “kinds of self-sacrifice and selflessness” that can become service to God. Indeed, true love leads to “a glorious, sacrificial, heavenly renunciation of self”, transforming the lovers and widening their hearts to “union with all life in earth and in heaven”. In essence, Williams sees romantic love as redemptive: its purpose is to reveal the beloved’s true, God-reflecting identity, and to bring both lovers closer to the divine through self-giving love. This idea permeates his fiction as well – for example, in Descent into Hell the contrast between a selfish, illusory infatuation and a self-giving love serves to show that only the latter aligns with Reality (God’s way). The character Lawrence Wentworth falls into a hellish trap because his “love” for a young woman is in fact “a complex form of self-love” – he cares more for the feeling she gives him than for her good. His obsessive desire, unmet, leads him to conjure a succubus (a spectral image of the girl) that indulges his fantasies, an act that isolates him completely. Williams uses this to illustrate that insisting on one’s own way in love – making an idol of one’s desire – ultimately warps reality and leads to damnation. By contrast, the heroine Pauline in the same novel learns to truly love others by bearing another’s burden out of compassion, finding joy and freedom in self-surrender. True romantic love, for Williams, always tends toward self-donation, mutual care, and a greater Love (God). Its telos (goal) is union – not only with the beloved, but union in God’s love (Caritas) which encompasses all. In sum, the purpose of romance is spiritual growth and unity: it is meant to make the lovers holy and draw them into the very life of God.

New Covenant Patriarchy: Love as Union and Dominion: By comparison, the “Henosis” article gives relatively little attention to romantic affection or courtship as a beautiful path. Its focus is on the outcome of sexual relations under God’s law – the one-flesh bond – rather than on the exaltation of the beloved or the spiritual poetry of falling in love. In fact, the author downplays the significance of subjective feelings. The term “romantic love” is scarcely used; instead, the piece frames male-female relationships in terms of purity, duty, and order. The question in its heading – “Why were men willing to pay a Bride Price for a Godly Virgin?” – sets a pragmatic, patriarchal tone: love is entwined with a man’s investment in a virginal wife. The answer given is not “for love’s sake,” but because of the henosis effect: a virgin offers an undiluted, exclusive union to her husband. The article suggests a husband wants to avoid the “cuckold effect,” i.e. avoid raising another man’s offspring, and to have a wife attuned only to himself. Romantic attachment here serves the biological-spiritual purpose of securing paternity and a stable “signal” between one man and one woman. In the NCP worldview, then, the purpose of marriage and sex is first to beget oneness (and children) under God’s mandate. They write: “the true and primary purpose of wedlock is simply that the two shall become one”. Not love for love’s sake, not personal happiness, but ontological unity is the goal – a unity that, once formed, is seen as the basis for other goods (“upon this henosis… the blessings [of marriage] may rightly be expected”). Thus, becoming “one flesh” is the purpose. Any emotional love is expected to flow from or at least be secondary to that created bond. Indeed, the article draws a sharp distinction between emotional attachment and true henosis. It insists that the one-flesh union is not an emotional union, implying that love (as affection) is not what makes a marriage – rather, the physical-spiritual fusion does. The NCP perspective is also deeply informed by a hierarchical complementarian view of gender: the man’s role in romantic-sexual relations is active leadership (associated with his “dominion task”), while the woman’s role is receptive intimacy. The love a woman experiences may be tender and all-consuming, but the man’s “love” might manifest as dutiful protection and accomplishment (he “achieves” a union by marrying and impregnating her). The end result, however, is meant to be a unified partnership under God, reflecting His design. The NCP author does nod to a higher symbolic purpose to marriage: since Christian marriage is “no mere accidental likeness or ‘bare similitude’” but intended as an image of Christ’s union with His Church, one can infer that romantic love’s purpose is to model divine love. Yet the way this is expressed in the article is largely through maintaining proper structure: chastity, fidelity, and headship. Culturally, the piece even ventures into claiming that crossing certain lines (e.g. “miscegenated” relationships – a shocking mention of interracial unions producing “dissonant” signals) frustrates the God-given harmony of henosis. Love, in this framework, is chiefly about creating a singular, exclusive channel of spiritual and biological life between husband and wife – a channel that should not be fragmented. We do not see in the NCP text the idea that falling in love reveals the beloved’s perfection or that love is a mystical reenactment of Christ’s Passion. Rather, its emphasis is earthier: romantic-sexual love is important insofar as it accomplishes God’s mandate of two-becoming-one-flesh (and thereby forming a stable family unit under male authority). Affection and emotional union are treated as byproducts or female perspectives, whereas the male perspective is duty and legacy. In short, the NCP author views romantic love as fundamentally ordered toward marital oneness, procreation, and spiritual fidelity, rather than as a beatific vision of God in the beloved. This is almost the inverse of Williams’s approach, where spiritual vision and devotion are the driving force and procreative union is one blessed facet of a much larger cosmic love story.

Spiritual Oneness, Self-Giving, and Identity Through Union

Williams: Co-Inherence and Substitution – Oneness as Mutual Self-Giving: Flowing out of his theology of love, Williams developed the concepts of co-inherence and substituted love, which illuminate how he understands spiritual oneness and identity in union. Co-inherence, in Williams’s usage, means a mystical interdependence – “we are part of one another,” he says of all humanity, especially within the Body of Christ. He believed this principle is modeled on the Trinity itself, where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit indwell each other in an eternal exchange of love. Human beings, made in God’s image, are likewise designed for interrelationship and indwelling. In romantic and marital love, co-inherence takes a very tangible form: the lovers cleave together as one, sharing their lives, identities, and even (in the marital act) their bodies. Williams explicitly calls sexual union an act of co-inherence. The two don’t just symbolically become one flesh – in a sacred mystery they do become one life, though without losing their distinct persons. He concurs with the classic view that marriage is “inseparable but not synonymous” with the one-flesh henosis – i.e. the legal bond is meant to formalize a spiritual oneness. In that one-flesh interior union, each spouse “inheres” in the other. This is not a passive fusion but an active, loving participation in each other’s being. Hence, Williams stresses self-giving as the core of co-inherent oneness. His idea of substituted love illustrates this: drawing from Christ’s atonement, he maintained that love at its zenith means bearing one another’s burdens, even taking on the suffering or guilt of the other if possible. This dramatic self-donation is exactly what occurs, in Williams’s view, between the Persons of the Trinity and was imitated by Christ on the Cross. In a marriage or romance, while it may not reach the extremity of the Cross, each lover is called to die to self for the other. Williams portrays this beautifully in Descent into Hell: Pauline’s elderly ancestor willingly carries her fear (a terrifying spiritual weight) in his own soul, freeing her – a fictional act of substitution that leads to healing and deeper union. Such “mutual giving and receiving, ultimately derived from the Trinity and most powerfully displayed on the cross” is the heartbeat of all true community and love. Therefore, for Williams, spiritual oneness is achieved by self-giving love. When a husband and wife give themselves wholly to each other in love – emotionally, spiritually, and physically – their identities are not destroyed but rather fulfilled in union. They become more fully themselves by virtue of being one. He would say the “interior ontological” one-flesh bond forms a new unit without annihilating the persons. Indeed, each sees the other’s true self more clearly (as God’s image) and helps call it forth. Their identities converge toward a single image (the image of God), yet in love they also support one another’s individuality. This delicate balance of “union without confusion” parallels, again, the Trinitarian mystery and the union of Christ with the believer – the soul is united with Christ and finds its true self thereby. Williams’s vision of romantic/spiritual oneness is ultimately expansive: the love between two people opens out into love for others and for God. The lovers, in being one, can together turn outward in self-gift to the world. In summary, Williams sees oneness as inclusive and life-giving – a union grounded in reciprocal self-donation and anchored in God’s unified love. Identity is shared and strengthened through love’s sacrifice.

NCP “Henosis”: Oneness as Exclusive Bond and Identity Imprint: The New Covenant Patriarchy perspective also places heavy emphasis on spiritual oneness, but it tends to conceive it as a one-to-one exclusive bond with a strong ontological imprinting of the partners (particularly the woman). The henosis is described as “the interior, ontological aspect of sexual union”, the “essential informing principle in marriage”. This nearly sacramental language (borrowed from a 1952 source the article quotes) indicates the author does see the union as a mystery at the level of being. Where Williams would highlight mutual indwelling, the NCP article emphasizes singularity and irreversibility. Once a man and woman have consummated, they are (in principle) no longer two but one unit. Even if they separate, that ontological fact persists unless a divorce (presumably recognized by God) breaks it. There is less focus on ongoing self-gift and more on the state of union itself. The article implies that the one-flesh bond itself will generate “blessings” if pursued in line with God’s will. In practice, the NCP framework strongly underscores that a wife’s whole being should now resonate with her husband’s. The colorful claims about DNA and “quantum” signals illustrate an underlying belief: to be “one” means the woman’s very body and psyche take on the imprint of the man’s identity. She is, in effect, marked by him at the deepest level. The anecdote of the comedian sensing her boyfriend’s infidelity because “there was so much of his DNA inside me… We are twins now”—though crude—vividly conveys the idea that the woman’s identity boundaries have been permanently altered by union. The man’s presence lives on in her (wherever he is, she “will never not know” on some level). This is a sort of quasi-mystical one-body organism concept. Notably, the article does not say the man likewise becomes physically or psychically one with the woman in the same way. The flow of influence is depicted as largely one-directional (man -> woman). He “broadcasts” and she “receives”; her behavior may grow erratic if the union is compromised (e.g. flooded by multiple men’s inputs), whereas there is no suggestion that a man who sleeps with multiple women is “overloaded” – instead, it “creates more bonding” for him. Thus, the oneness is asymmetrical: the woman’s very self is subsumed under the headship of one man. Any violation of that exclusivity (like premarital promiscuity or adultery) is seen as fragmenting her soul, which is why the author thinks many sexual partners cause emotional chaos. In terms of self-giving, the NCP perspective values the woman “giving herself” wholly to her husband (and him giving himself to her in the act), but it frames this in terms of possession and permanence rather than ongoing sacrifice. The highest virtue in this paradigm is fidelity – the wife remaining a faithful one-man woman and the husband faithfully caring for her (and not divorcing her, presumably). There isn’t a developed notion of bearing one another’s burdens or renouncing self beyond perhaps the general Christian call to love. Instead, the oneness itself is treated as the great good that fosters other goods (children, order, spiritual symbolism). The article’s use of theological sources (like Cudworth’s treatise on the union of Christ and the Church) suggests that the henosis is itself an icon of divine love – the couple’s identity as one flesh preaches about God’s oneness with His people. In that sense, the couple’s identity is primarily a unit. Unlike Williams, who delights in the dynamic give-and-take of love, the NCP author delights in the fact of bonding. Culturally, this aligns with a patriarchal ideal: the virtuous wife’s identity is defined by union with her husband (she even physically carries him in her, as it were), and the husband’s legacy is carried forward in that union (his characteristics live on in her and their offspring). In summary, the NCP view sees spiritual oneness as a fused identity – two lives made one flesh, with an emphasis on the woman’s transformation and exclusive fidelity, whereas Williams sees spiritual oneness as an interweaving of two lives through mutual self-donation, with an emphasis on shared sacrifice and spiritual enlargement. Both would agree that in marriage “they are no longer two, but one” – but Williams might say one in the sense of two cells of a Body working in concert, while NCP implies one as one body controlled by one head (an oversimplification, but reflective of the hierarchy in their model).

Conclusion

Charles Williams and the New Covenant Patriarchy author both treat sexual-romantic love as deeply meaningful – more than a feeling, more than a casual encounter, but a reality imbued with divine purpose. Each draws a link between human lovers becoming “one” and a higher spiritual truth (for Williams, the Incarnation and Trinity; for NCP, the mystery of Christ and the Church’s unity). They share the conviction that in every sexual union something metaphysical occurs: a new “one flesh” entity comes into being. They even use some common language of mystery and ontological union. However, their frameworks diverge dramatically in tone and implication. Williams offers a “romantic theology” of love – celebratory, mystical, and ethically demanding – in which romantic love is a God-given school of holiness. Love’s pleasures and pains are avenues to learn Christ-like sacrifice and to perceive the beloved (and indeed all creation) with the eyes of divine charity. Sexual union for Williams is sacramental: a mutual exchange of being that images divine love’s unity-in-diversity. By contrast, the henosis doctrine from New Covenant Patriarchy is literalist and authoritarian – it sacralizes the sexual act almost in a biological way, viewing it as a mechanism by which a woman is indelibly joined to a man’s essence. This leads to a theology of love centered on purity, exclusivity, and authority: the goal is to form an unbreakable bond under male headship, for the sake of family and faith. Where Williams sees a lover’s self-forgetful adoration as a glimpse of God, the NCP author sees a virgin’s physical fidelity as the guarantee of oneness. Where Williams emphasizes self-giving unto union, the NCP article emphasizes union as requiring exclusivity (and warns of dire effects if that exclusive bond is fractured).

In the end, both frameworks understand sexual romantic love as a path to oneness, even to participation in a divine reality – yet one approach (Williams’s) focuses on transforming the lovers inwardly by love (toward sanctification and co-inherence with all), while the other (NCP’s) focuses on binding the lovers outwardly by an unalterable one-flesh link (toward a sanctified family structure). Williams might say that the fire of romantic passion, rightly tended, becomes the flame of God’s love uniting two souls. The New Covenant Patriarchy writer might respond that the act of becoming one flesh is so real that its flame welds two people together whether they will it or not, with lifelong repercussions. Both find something sacred in the union of man and woman, but Williams locates the sacred in the love itself (reflecting God who is Love), whereas the NCP view locates the sacred in the law of union (reflecting God’s ordained created order). Each in their own way calls us to take sex and love seriously – as matters of heaven and hell – but they paint very different pictures of what heavenly love and hellish misuse look like. Williams gifts us a vision of romantic love as both beautiful and perilous, capable of leading one to God through self-sacrificial union or, if perverted into self-love, leading one to isolation. The Henosis article, with its stark claims about DNA and “oneness,” gives us a very concrete warning and value: treat sexual bonds as permanently binding and exclusive, for in each sexual act you mystically become one. Both perspectives, finally, converge on a sobering truth resonant with Christian tradition: in sexual-romantic union, two persons mysteriously participate in something greater than themselves, whether the “Glory of eternity” or a “mysterious henosis” – and how they understand and live that union will deeply shape their spiritual destiny.

Sources:

https://chatgpt.com/s/dr_6831f131bc808191a67c8616bedd899a

Comments are closed.