Someone who recently visited my blog accessed an old post from 2006 about Eros and Agape, and when I looked back at what I argued, I realized it is an important battleground in the Church and the world today and needs to be addressed again.
There are important differences between the types of love discussed in the Bible and the world at large. The Bible discusses three types of love: agape, philia, and storge. There is a fourth, culturally significant type of love, not even mentioned in the Scriptures (Eros), and it permeated the culture of the biblical (and our) world.
God’s love, as expressed in the Bible, is primarily expressed as agape, which is self-sacrificial, and one of its fundamental aspects is that it imparts worth to the recipient. That is not the focus of the modern definition. The online Free Dictionary defines it this way.
a·ga·pe (ä-gä′pā, ä′gə-pā′)
n.
1. Christianity
a. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless, and a model for humanity.
b. In the early Christian Church and some modern churches, the love feast
accompanied by Eucharistic celebration.
2. Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.
Notice how its definition fails to include one of its most significant elements, the imparting of worth to something that lacks it. That is the foundational essence of the Agape of God, and without this historical understanding, something moderns would miss entirely. This also happens with Eros’ modern definition taken from the same site.
Er·os (ĕr′ŏs′, îr′-)
n.
1. Greek Mythology The god of love, son of Aphrodite.
2. often eros Creative, often sexual yearning, love, or desire: “Eros exists in Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy; behind Homer’s poetry, Chopin’s compositions, [and] Gauguin’s exotic paintings; behind … each and every discovery that gave humanity a new aspect” (Eleni Tagonidi Maniataki and Panos Mourdoukoutas).
3. a. Psychiatry Sexual drive; libido.
b. The sum of all instincts for self-preservation.
The historic and biblical contrast between eros and agape is that Eros sees worth in the other and desires to possess it, while agape sees worth lacking and gives it. A modern trying to research the difference between eros and agape would never get this important distinction.
In biblical Agape, God sacrifices for us and gives us eternal worth where we had none. It is the foundation of Paul’s argument about Jesus in Philippians 2:1-8.
So, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:1-8
The root of the Christian heart is this sacrificial, agape giving, and it comes to fruition as we mature in the Christian life. Agape is unique in the galaxy of love in that it is a love not defined by feelings, but instead by actions, actions of self-giving, sacrifice, and imparting of worth to another. One translation of agapē, common in the King James, is “charity.” True charity gives to the undeserving with the purpose of making something out of nothing. Our modern culture resists charity because, at its core, there is the inherent realization of the lack of worth, and if we moderns are nothing else, we are worshippers of our self-worth, our self-esteem, our self-whatever.
Influenced by our culture (it is the water in which we swim), we tend towards Eros, personified in the “look at me” center of our post-modern culture. Eros sees value or desirability in something and wants it for its own sake. It takes or wants to possess, rather than give. Self-love is Eros, seeing (or imagining) the worth of what you see in the mirror and happily possessing it. There is a “deservedness” in Eros. I am reminded of a line from an old McDonald’s commercial that wonderfully illustrates the point, “You deserve a break today.” The idea was that you would take your break, what you, if you looked at yourself, deserved at McDonald’s.
Today, our culture is obsessed with rights. Not the general or inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, the foundational rights of all human beings under God, but the individual rights that belong to me, what I believe is mine. The great sin in our culture is to “diss” someone; not to give to someone what they believe is their rightful deference. We are not talking about simple respect here; we are talking about deflating a person’s sense of significant self in any way. People are killed for this.
The new Peter Pan culture of never having to grow up finds its center in Eros, but an Eros that never truly arrives. It is always becoming, wanting to be worth a little more than before; however, that worth is judged. Take your pick: beauty, money, possessions, whatever, if you are defined by what people think of what you look like or what you have (house, car, super tv, sound system, the best technology the moment can produce), then Eros defines you. The struggle for those subjugated to Eros then becomes growing that worth, or holding onto what you have as long as you can. There was a bumper sticker from the 80s that I think defines the secular male version of this struggle: “He who dies with the most toys, wins!”
The Apostle James comes at the problem from a different perspective (James 2:1-7) when he chastised the Church for giving the rich man a coveted seat at worship while telling the poor man, in effect, to stand in the back, out of the way. James warns us that we are to “show no partiality’ as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” [Emphasis added.] No partiality could be explained as seeing no worth in the person, in their riches or lack of (Eros), but only seeing Christ in them, the hope of glory, which by definition is the agape of God. In Him, we all share the same worthlessness as well as the imparted worth of the blood of Christ. We all have washed our robes white in the blood of the Lamb. We all should, along with Paul, attribute everything the world sees as value (see Philippians 3:3-11) as dung, to be flushed away, of no consequence or eternal worth.
Note: The Greek word translated dung/refuse/rubbish/etc. in Philippians is literally the common street word for human excrement. We have softened it up for cultured consumption, but Paul was making a very strong point that was not lost on his original hearers. What the world deems valuable, the body of Christ flushes out as excrement, not worth keeping for any reason.
That is why Eros has no place in the Scriptures and why God gives agape preeminence in His Word.
The new Peter Pans are trapped in the web of Eros, while Christ calls them to the freedom of agape. This is no easy task in the post-modern culture in which we live. Every venue that touches our eyes and ears screams that you deserve more. Even the recruiting for our military entices with ‘Be all that you can be.’ There are mirrors on every wall telling us that if only we try, we could be the fairest of them all. It is no wonder they avoid marriage and the commitments and changes it brings, the nakedness of heart and soul it demands (see my recent old post Hubble Tuesdays: Two Become One).
We have the key: be like Christ; abandon Eros and embrace agape, having the same mind as our Lord. May God, in His mercy, grant us the grace to, as Nike says, ‘just do it.‘ So, what are you waiting for?
You may also want to look at my old post, “Love of God, Love of Man,” for information on the other two Greek words used for love in the Bible.
God bless you as you endeavor to cleanse yourself of eros and model your life in Christ after agape.
