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158 REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE TEOLOGIA.-E. Rivera de Ventosa Christian and which Saint Augustin renders as: quia bonus est Deus sumus. Consequently, the golden circle of lave is to be understood as referring to the grandiose expression of Divine benevolence. The second part deals with the anthropological aspect of the sub– ject. Fray Juan accepts the classical description of lave-eros as a force that impels towards eternal beauty, but adding two Christian ideas to this classical erotism. To this end, he uses the Cantar de los cantares, which with candid erotism tells of God's relation to human souls. Rejecting the Protestant tendency to interpret erotic elevation as contrary to the perfectly gratuitous nature of God's grace, Fray Juan, following Christian tradition and in particular Saint Augustin, interprets this elevation as a gift of God. This tra– dition agrees with Protestantism in that the initiative springs from God, but adds that He wants us to cooperate with our desire and effort, eros. Finally, the author points out that at the root of the discrepancy between Protestant theology and that of Spanish mys– tics is the Protestant notion that human nature is radically corrupt, and consequently is incapable of cooperating with God's initiative. This notion can only be accepted or rejected, and its pessimism sets the two mentalities apart.