Agape and Eros and other words for Love

I have a prior post on this Blog deconstructing the notion that the various Greek words for Love are mutually exclusive types of Love, and I've touched on the subject in some others.  I stand by essentially everything I said there but I've also refined my understanding a bit.

Eros is absent from The New Testament, that fact is the main cause of this commotion, the idea that Eros is the only Greek word for Love that is inherently Sexual is the invention of Augustinian Puritanical Christians who want to separate Sex form all the positive Love talk in The New Testament, especially when it says God IS Love and that Jesus commanded us to Love one another or when it mentions Love Feasts as a Sacrament.  Because if they did they might have to accept that The Church was meant to be a giant Polycule.

Problem is the Septuagint Greek Translation of The Song of Songs aka The Song of Solomon also only uses Agape and never Eros, the most obviously "Erotic" book uses Agape not Eros.  Elsewhere the Septuagint uses Agape and Eros interchangeably to translate the Hebrew Ahav.  You also can't define Agape as the pure kind of Love that can't be corrupted by Sin when the Septuagint also uses a form of Agape when it says Amnon "loved" Tamar when he raped her in 2 Samuel 13:1.

People who have bought into this concept can't even agree on how to define Agape, in ContraPoints' new excellent video on Twilight (which I'll mention again later) Agape is defined as "Spiritual Love", the King James Bible in many passages translates it as "Charity".  Now the concept of Charity is very Biblical but every appearance of that word in the KJV is a mistranslation of Agape.

The issue with Agape is the overwhelming vast majority of Ancient usage of the word is by Christians and Greek Speaking Jews.  It does exist in Greek independent of that influence, a form of it does appear in Homer.  But using it as a standard part of every day vocabulary as much or more then Philia and Eros seems to have been the exclusive practice of Abrahamic Monotheists.

There is usually said to be Five Greek words for Love, but only three concern me here.  Eros, Philia and Agape.  There are distinctions between them that would cause a careful writer to prefer one over the other in a given context, but those differences are more connotative then definitional.

Because I'm a Weeb I'm once again going to use some Japanese words to help clarify how I feel these three Greek words should be thought of.

Agape = Ai

Eros = Koi

Philia = Suki

In the 24th episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion the character Kowaru uses the word Suki to describe how he feels about Shinji.  In the first ever officially licensed English Localization of NGE which was the ADV Films VHS Subtitled release Suki was translated as Like "I like you".  Later ADV releases however would upgrade this to "I love you".  And so when the Netflix versions of Eva went up a few years ago... well a lot of things were disliked for good reasons but the most intense discourse was about it translating Suki as Like, with most not even knowing that was what ADV did the first time.  The idea that this decision inherently straight washed the scene is silly because what makes Kowaru and Shinji's relationship very obviously Gay are the Vibes not any of the specific words they use.  The English word Love is not always Romantic/Sexual and English usage of Like very much can be, I know this because I'm an older Millennial with a lot of childhood memories of watching The Wonder Years.

All that context is why I identify Philia with Suki, even Philia is not inherently asexual as shown by there being a sexual goddess named Philotes, in fact it survived in how many modern clinical/psychological terms use Philia to describe a Sexual attraction.  However it is the only of the three that can be used with a complete absence of Passion.  In John 11 Philia is used twice when it is only Jesus feelings for Lazarus being described while Agape is used of Lazarus and his Sisters.  That's why when it comes to the "Beloved Disciple" verses in later chapters I view it as Mary (Magdalene and "Of Bethany" are the same Mary in my view) when Agape is used but Lazarus the one time Philia is used.

Ai is a word for Love that is clearly associated with Romantic Love and Sexual Love and Love that is neither of those.  Koi however is the most connotatively sexual of the Japanese words for Love in a way that makes it more likely to be used in the title of a Hentai.  

Eros isn't absent from the New Testament because what it does refer to is inherently sinful, it's just not the best word for what these authors are focusing on.  It has to do with the association of Eros with not just Passion but intense uncontrollable Passion. Agape absolutely does include what a modern English Speaker usually means by Romantic or Erotic Love.

In ContraPoints's Twilight video she introduces the discussion of Eros by repeating the common error that the Greek words for Love refer to different things.  However her elaboration on Eros shows that she understands it connotatively to be even more specific then just Romantic/Sexual, it's about Passion, Desire, Longing, Craving, a bunch of obscure words I've already forgotten.  The problem is when you equate that proper understanding of Eros with the notion that the other Greek Words for Love have nothing to do with Sex or Romance it causes one to have a very demeaning view of Romantic relationships that lack this unbridled Passion and thus her characterizing most Committed Long Term Relationships where the Passion has died out as not even truly being Romantic anymore.  I think it cam be very Romantic to just wholesomely enjoy another person's company.

And that's my only criticism of the video, overall it's fantastic.  

Well I'm also annoyed by her reference to Stoicism, once again the average YouTube Philosopher's understanding of Stoicism is entirely filtered through Late or Roman Stoicism which had incorporated aspects of Pythagorean Sexual morality.  Zeno Stoics were the Communist Free Love Hippies of the Hellenistic World.  Zeno tried to redefine Eros in a way that made it no longer about uncontrollable Passion but still absolutely Sexual.  It is still my hypothesis that there is a connection between Zeno's Eros and New Testament Agape.

Update April 29th: I re-found this thing I read once that helped explain my interpretation of Koi and Agape.

https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+155821

God and The Universe

The more I've thought about the issues I first discussed in Semi-Arianism and the Second Ecumenical Council the more I've come to think that the Homoousion controversy became a distraction from the actual point of the Arian Heresy.  But that's not me saying Homoousionism is wrong, per se.

So first we need to ask the question of why even did the full Arians (and even many Semi-Arians) object to the Homoousion formula so strongly?  It was not relevant to Arius's original explanation of his Theology at all.  And Arians did believe Jesus was the Son of God.  Aren't most children made from the Substance of their parents?

It's because of how by this time the Pythagorean and Platonic understanding of The Divine had influenced all schools of thought in the Greco-Roman world.  To them no Created Being could be described as being of the same Substance as the True Original God.  The Demiurge of Timaeus could be considered in some sense Homousian with the matter it was merely rearranging, but even the Demiurge was not Homousian with the True God (at least during this later post Numenius of Apamea period of Platonism and Pythagoreanism).  And the Arians were essentially Platonists who identified The Logos/Jesus with the Demiurge not the ultimate Supreme Being.  However what the Arians and Athanasians and Trinitarians who were iffy on Homoousianism like Eusebius of Caesarea all agreed on was that Creation itself is not Homousian with The Father.

I am making this post to suggest that this assumption everyone at Nicaea agreed on is actually something that The Bible maybe doesn't agree with.

I know that many Christians are used to thinking God must be completely outside The Universe in order to be it's Creator.  But if you know what you're doing, you can construct a circular wall in such a way that you are within it when you are done making it.  And maybe the Substance of God is Infinite enough that He could create the Universe from His own Substance without lessening Himself at all?

When The Bible says that The Heavens are His Throne and The Earth His Footstool, that imagery tells me He's within The Universe not outside of it.  Remember both the Ancient Hebrew and Greek words for "Heaven" at their core just meant The Sky and what we would call Outer Space.  I already made a post arguing that the Light that lightened the Universe before the Sun, Moon and Stars were created was the same Light that Jesus is identified with.  And then there is the fact that Adam became a Living Soul when God Breathed Life into him.  Breath in that verse is also a word for Spirit.  To me that is pretty strong support for at least our Spirits and/or Souls being homousian with The Holy Spirit.

InspiringPhilosophy in his video on Panentheism said there is supposed to be a strong distinction between Creator and Creation, but the only verse he cited was what Paul said in Romans 1.  First of all that verse was only about what we're supposed to Worship and nothing else.  And also Romans 1:18-32 is Paul quoting the beliefs of the Platonic Hellenized Jews of Rome he spent the rest of the Epistle refuting.  In Romans 11 Paul tells us what God is doing in grafting Gentiles into Israel is "Para phusis" thus utterly destroying the world view of Romans 1 where being "Para Phusis" is presented as inherently evil.

Materialism is often assumed to be inherently Atheistic.  However the Theology of the Ancient Stoics was a Materialist Monotheism.  (IP for some reason defined Soticism completely wrong in the Panentheism video), and so was the Theology of Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza.

God being in The Universe doesn't mean He would be in it in a way that our currently limited ablity to perceive it could detect.  We now know there are at least 10 dimensions but we live in or perceive only 4 of them, the 3 spatial dimensions and time.  "Dark matter" is just a term for matter scientists are pretty sure exists but we are not currently capable of detecting with any of our 5 senses, and it's estimated to make up 85% of all matter.  The 6 colors our eyes can see are only a small piece of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and it's the same with the other senses.

In other words No I'm not arguing that God and His Angels simply live on a Planet orbiting Polaris that we could fly a space ship to.

[Update November: See this post which is kind of a follow up.]

[The below digression into Stoicism I am more iffy on now, I don't want to erase it, it should have maybe always been a separate post.]

Agape and Eros are synonyms actually.

We keep hearing it declared that the Greek Language had multiple mutually exclusive words for "Love", the big three being Eros (Sexual and Romantic Love), Agape (Familial Love) and Philia/Phileo (Brotherly Love, which you're supposed to have for everyone).  From theologians like the late Karl Bart to to C.S. Lewis to YouTube videos like the Overly Sarcastic Productions summary of Eros and Psyche (a story that originated in the 2nd Century AD BTW).

The thing is, there is a lot of context about the history of the Language being left out of that.  I don't know if that's an accurate representation of how people in modern Greece use these words, but there are some important facts about the Ancient usage I need to point out.

First of all, and this is semi-well known, "Eros" is suspiciously missing from The New Testament, the closest we get is one guy's name seems to have Eros as one of it's roots, (Erastus mentioned in Acts 19:22, Romans 16:23 and 2 Timothy 4:20).

A popular theory for why is that the first Generation of Christians were a bunch of prudes seeking to reject Sex and Marriage so they had no need to discus Eros.  Well this entire Blog is partly dedicated to refuting that notion.

It's also been proposed that these early Jewish Monotheists wanted to avoid saying "Eros" because it was also the name of a Greek god.  Thing is lots of Greek words in the New Testament are also names of Greek gods, from Ouranos to Hades to some Olympians being explicitly mentioned.  But maybe there are nuanced reasons why Eros would be different, after all twice the Epistle known as 1 John says that "God is Love (Agape)".  Also not every deity in Greek mythology had an active cult of worship, most primordial deities were not as active as part of Greek pagan religion as Eros was.

But wait, why isn't there a Greek god named Agape?  A lot of abstract concepts and emotions are personified in Greek mythology, even some pretty trivial ones.  Well you see the well known academically but not so casually well known fact is that Agape is a word that was almost never used by Greek speaking Polytheists.  Apparently Homer used a form of it but not in any way comparable to it's NT usage.

In other words, Eros and Agape are a bit like Clark Kent and Superman, you kind of never see them in the same place at the same time.

The first problem with excluding Romantic and Sexual Love from the meaning of Agape is that Paul uses Agape of the Love that Husbands are supposed to have for their Wives in Ephesians 5.

But then there is the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.  As I've said before in my view the Septuagint is at least partly Pre-Christian in origin but the final from we typically know was copied and preserved through Christian hands.  Both Eros and Agape are used in the Septuagint, but Eros far more rarely.  It is the main place you find both being used.

Both words are used to translate the same Hebrew word, Ahav and other forms of Ahav like Ahavah.  But Eros is NEVER used in The Song of Songs that is Solomon's.  That's right, the most explicitly Erotic part of the entire Bible used Agape and not Eros.

I can't help but wonder if Agape might actually be Hebrew in origin.  There is a rarely used synonym for Ahav that only appears in Jeremiah 4:30, and Ezekiel 23&33, Agab, Egeb and Agabah (Strongs Numbers 5689-5691).  For whatever weird reason, Bs sometimes change to Ps in ancient transliterations, so Agape could easily have come from this word.  Some of it's uses do seem to imply a Sexual sense.  The Strongs definitions for the words say things like Sensually and Amorousness.  However I lack a smoking gun on this theory since I can't find a place where this word became Agape in the Septuagint, in the Jeremiah verse it is translated Eros.

So Agape can definitely include Romantic and Sexual Love in ancient Judeo-Christian use.

Meanwhile Eros was definitely used by Gentile Greeks of more then just Sexual Love.  Plato is someone who's attitudes towards sex I've strongly opposed on this Blog, but he is a witness to how the word was used, and Platonic Love was indeed Platonic Eros.  However what we today means be "Platonic" doesn't always match what Plato actually meant, so it's complicated.

So when 1 John 4:7 says that "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" using Agape.  You can't say that's separate from the Love Homosexuals feel because of some modern notion of Agape and Eros being distinct.  Agape is used in negative senses sometimes, but that's only when Love for some thing gets in the way of one's Love for God.  It's never used of love for people.  Sexual Love can be sinful when it is expressed or taken against someone's will.  But calling any consensual romantic love Demonic is in my view potentially Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Update: So I recently learned of a minor Greek Goddess called Philotes, she was associated with both Friendship and Sex, so that right there is evidence that Philia wasn't completely divorced from Sexual connotations either.