Eros And Agape?

[BigJon16]

So I just picked up [i]God is Love[/i], Benedict XVI's first Papal Encyclical, and he is speaking heavily on the subject of eros and agape.


I don't really understand what the difference between the two are. I mean, I do, but then I don't when in different contexts.


Anybody have a good way of explaining it?





I think I need some Philosophy tutoring...

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='BigJon16' timestamp='1328819068' post='2384348']
So I just picked up [i]God is Love[/i], Benedict XVI's first Papal Encyclical, and he is speaking heavily on the subject of eros and agape.


I don't really understand what the difference between the two are. I mean, I do, but then I don't when in different contexts.


Anybody have a good way of explaining it?





I think I need some Philosophy tutoring...
[/quote]

Really simply put, eros usually refers to romantic or sexual love, while agape is more along the lines of caritas, synonymous with the Christian concept of charity. If I remember back to that encyclical, one of the points the Holy Father was hammering at is that agape is entirely selfless. Agape, I think, is the word most closely associated with the way in which God loves us.

However, I may be simplifying it a little too much.

[qfnol31]

This is a very short answer to a very complex question. Following both the encyclical and Thomas Aquinas, Eros is best understood as ascending love. It's love that refers back to the lover and seeks some good for the lover.

Agape, pretty much synonymous with charity, is a descending love. This love begins with God and ultimately refers the lover back to God. Pope Benedict also speaks about how this love requires a love of neighbor and a desire for that neighbor's good.

Again, this is a super simplification of the question.

[Hubertus]

So which would apply to the ways one feels towards their spouse, their friends, and how Mother Theresa felt about the poor? (respectively)

[qfnol31]

You could have both eros and agape towards your spouse. I try to live with agape, but obviously eros gets involved too.

Mother Teresa was definitely moved by agape.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1328819522' post='2384356']
So which would apply to the ways one feels towards their spouse, their friends, and how Mother Theresa felt about the poor? (respectively)
[/quote]

I would speculate that love towards a spouse is eros primarily, but perhaps intended to lead us to perfect agape, while Mother Teresa's feelings towards the poor would be primarily agape.

[Hubertus]

And then filia would be most appropriate for friends and siblings, correct? Or could one have agape for pretty much everyone, if they were holy enough?

[Nihil Obstat]

Trololol, Q deserves many props.

[img]http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/179/295/57232%20-%20Discord%20Hubble%20official_content%20season_2.png[/img]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1328819712' post='2384362']
And then filia would be most appropriate for friends and siblings, correct? Or could one have agape for pretty much everyone, if they were holy enough?
[/quote]
Philia, and when talking about family I think storge also becomes relevant, although I'm not exactly clear on the precise differences.

[Selah]

Agape, from what I learned, is unconditional love, charity as someone mentioned, loving or caring for someone just because you can; kindness and compassion, with no strings attached.

Eros is romantic love or feelings you would have for your spouse or such...

I like Nihil's example above, about Eros leading to Agape.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Selah' timestamp='1328819851' post='2384367']
Agape, from what I learned, is unconditional love, charity as someone mentioned, loving or caring for someone just because you can; kindness and compassion, with no strings attached.

Eros is romantic love or feelings you would have for your spouse or such...

I like Nihil's example above, about Eros leading to Agape.
[/quote]

It was a long time since I read Deus Caritas Est, but I think that was sort of the point that Pope Benedict was working towards.

[Selah]

I guess it's because we eventually start to love our spouse unconditionally, right?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Selah' timestamp='1328820030' post='2384374']
I guess it's because we eventually start to love our spouse unconditionally, right?
[/quote]

I look at that in a more theological way, but that's just my preference. The vocation of marriage is meant to bring both spouses to a higher degree of holiness, so the entire purpose of a sacramental marriage, besides obviously bringing children into the world to love and serve God, is naturally to progress from eros to agape. The ordering of marriage itself would be naturally tending towards 'higher' love. Maybe we could say that the object of marriage is to turn the primarily eros love of a couple towards an agape love offered by the Church, and reflected in the domestic church.

[Papist]

Here's a summary, [url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/sumdeuscarit.htm"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/sumdeuscarit.htm[/url]

Here's a reflection,[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/refldeuscarit1.htm"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/refldeuscarit1.htm[/url] and [url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/refldeuscarit2.htm"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/doctrine/refldeuscarit2.htm[/url]

These are pretty good

[BigJon16]

You guys are amesome.

[qfnol31]

This is a really long response and it's been a while since I really read it, but here goes. I hope it works to explain this in better detail. Please forgive the typos and sloppiness throughout it:


Pope Benedict begins with I John as the inspiration for his encyclical—a choice that has great significance. In his epistle, Saint John writes, “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (I Jn 4:16). Saint John shows the intrinsic link between loving and our relationship with God. In his Gospel, John also recalls Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). John, while preserving God as Logos, says that God is Love Itself and loves us, which in turn must determine our own actions towards other people and God. The Saint exhorts Christians, “Beloved let us love one another; for love is of God, and God is love (Deus caritas est, o Theos agape estin.)” (I Jn 4:7). God is agape and so we as Christians are called to abide in this agape. As John says, agapomen allelous, “Let us love one another” (4:12). Here John, following the rest of the Scriptural authors, distinguishes between agape and eros, a distinction the Holy Father employs to explain the nature of Christian love. Thus begins his account of the Biblical preference of the term agape over eros.
From the outset of his encyclical, the Holy Father raises the question about the different uses and meaning of love in the modern world, in which many people use love to describe their feelings towards a profession, a country, family, friends, neighbor, or God. In all of this, the Pope concludes, one type of love naturally stands out: the love between a man and a woman. He goes on to describe that in this love “body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness.” Pope Benedict starts his examination of love with this love between a man and a women because it appears to be the very epitome of all love. He goes on to say “that love between a man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ancient Greeks.” However, this Greek conception of eros is opposite the Biblical account of the agape of marriage.

Agape properly corresponds with the word ahabà, found particularly in the Song of Songs, which was itself probably a collection of love songs for a wedding feast. Pope Benedict reflects on the two different loves that the Hebrew writer of the Song uses: dodim and ahabà. Dodim is used in the plural form rather than the singular, which the Holy Father takes to suggest “a love that is still insecure, indeterminate, and searching.” It also implies the reality of individuality between a newly-wed couple who have not yet become spiritually one. Eventually, the poet shifts from dodim to ahabà (translated to agape in the Greek), which the Pope calls “a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes a renunciation [of self], and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” The Pope here points to one of the reasons that marriages often fail, that perhaps each person becomes absorbed in the intoxicating nature of marriage, something found most especially in the conjugal union no longer properly ordered as it should be. This same problem may also appear in modern Catholics who wish to be caught up in a mere intoxication of the senses and equally retain their individuality apart from God. The Holy Father continues about marriage, mentioning the exclusivity and undying nature of the love between spouses. Agape, then, looks towards the eternal and not just the finite. It is the descending love of God to which Catholics respond with their lives; it is a love “grounded in and shaped by faith” and “typically Christian,” as Benedict says. Such is how Christianity seems to have defined love and charity throughout its history.

Moving in the opposite direction, Pope Benedict takes up the other Greek love, eros, to complement his account of the Christian tradition of agape. The Ancient Greeks thought of eros as a divine gift, fellowship with the Divine itself. The Pope recounts that many ancients, not just the Greeks, considered eros as an “intoxication, the overpowering of reason by ‘divine madness’ which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness.” He also quotes Virgil who said, “Omnia vincit amor…et nos cedamus amori, (Love conquers all, and let us ourselves yield to love).” The Ancients, therefore, found their eros, their “ascent” as it were to the Divine, in the temples with “sacred” prostitution. The authors of Scripture attempted to counter such a degrading version of communion with God by limiting their use of eros so that this perversion might not invade and become a temptation in the Faith, especially because such a love is an immediate satisfaction for the person while faith takes a lifetime. The Holy Father then responds to cultures such as that of Greece, saying, “An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in ‘ecstasy’ towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide, not just a fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.” This means that eros calls a man to the infinite, and so purity and growth in maturity are necessary, not a descent into what is simply instinctual.

Pope Benedict upholds that eros does in fact lead to ecstasy, but not so long as it is undisciplined or impure. Love promises the eternity and exclusivity of God because we find our happiness in God and nowhere else. Therefore, our love necessarily will be an image of marriage, in which we love one person and intend the marriage until death. The Holy Father uses this to respond to Nietzsche, who (most especially in his earlier writings) thinks that man would be best off if he were to follow his animal instincts, and that reason is only a tool so that he may survive, since he is part of a weak species by nature. Eros also desires and requires the unification of a person’s body and soul. To focus on the soul alone is to deny the dignity and freedom of the body, which contradicts the Christian understanding of the unity in duality of man.

Following this understanding of eros, Pope Benedict moves to the common distinction between eros and agape as ascending and descending love, respectively, just like the angels ascending and descending the ladder to Heaven in Jacob’s dream. The Holy Father clarifies that this distinction has often been oversimplified to separate the two loves into diverse realities. He explains this, saying, “The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift.” Man is dependent upon both eros and agape for his love with God.

This in turn brings us back to the beginning, with the command from Deuteronomy. This command teaches two things, says the Holy Father: “All other gods are not God, and the universe in which we live has its source in God and was created by Him.” Pope Benedict expounds on this to explain how God loves the world, how “His creation is dear to Him, for it was willed by Him and ‘made’ by Him.” This means that God’s love for the world is an eros, where He loves the world for His sake. Yet, even so, God’s love is completely agape as found in the First book of John and seen in Christ’s death upon the Cross. In the Old Testament, God continually forgives Israel and draws Israel to Himself that He may purify her. In the New Testament, God (in Jesus) gives His life for the Church and all men beyond the measure of His justice. About this, Pope Benedict writes, “God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against Himself, His love against His justice." Even today He gives Himself in the most Blessed Sacrament on the Altar, on which the Holy Father elaborates:

The ancient world had dimly perceived that man’s real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes food for us—as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving.
God for us, then, is both agape and eros —o Theos kai agape kai eros estin.

While he certainly agrees with this in his encyclical, Pope Benedict takes this aspect of Christian love for neighbor even further. Because Jesus gives Himself to us in real food, we become “one with the Lord, like all the other communicants.” Reflecting further, Pope Benedict says, “We become ‘one body’, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbor are not truly united: God incarnate draws us all to Himself.” But even beyond this, the Holy Father goes further and says that as we love God, we begin to have “an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting [our] feelings.” We then come to be like God in will and love that which God loves. Pope Benedict confirms this, writing, “I learn to look on this other person [whom I may not either like or know], not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His Friend is my friend. Our love is thereby directed at the person for his own sake, out of the same love as God loves Him. This is a radical step beyond what Saint Thomas said.