The Agape Factor: a Cosmic Key

The Rt Rev E J Burton

London, UK

(Reprinted from The Liberal Catholic, February 1984)

The author first gives us valuable insight into the true meaning of agape and the use of the word in St Paul's famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13. He then goes on to present agape as a tangible cosmic power operating at the frontiers of our knowledge and awareness, not only in theology but also in science and, indeed, throughout many aspects of our lives in the modern world. Although some of the details may have changed since the article was first published, the principles and ideas expounded by Bishop James remain valid today. Bishop James died in March. 1996.

The word agape is a key word in the New Testament and in Christian thought. Usually translated "love," it needs careful consideration and definition. This word "love" is constantly and conventionally linked with such statements as "God is Love," a most persistently and, I believe, thoughtlessly reiterated slogan which, unless great thought is given to what is meant by the word "love," is almost a blasphemy.

So too, in Paul's definitive statement on agape, the earlier translation "charity" and the present day "love" are equally misleading. Well meant attempts to distinguish this as "brotherly love" somehow distinct from emotional eros and sexual love lead only to further dilemmas and a weakening of the force of agape. Of course the scholar, consulting his massive tomes on agape and eros and Christian theological research, will be able to form his own balanced opinion and perceive some significant reality in the word to counter popular sentimentality and emotionalism. But what of humanity at large?

The real meaning of agape

A start may be made by listening to the words of C H Turner, FBA, DLitt, LlD, Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford. (It is as well to specify precisely this authority's status.) In considering the phrase usually rendered as "My beloved son," Turner suggests this should be rendered as "My only son." He then goes on: "Nearly all expositors have gone wrong ... by not paying sufficient attention to the meaning of the word agapetos in classical and Septuagint usage. Agape, 'love,' is practically a creation of the Christian Church for, though it is sporadically found in the LXX, it is not found in classical Greek at all. The verb, and the verbal adjective agapetos, are both classical but 'to love,' 'beloved,' are not their proper meaning" (my italics). Turner traces the use of the word from "that with which thou must be content" to "unique," "essential in relationship."

So it is used of an "only son." Aristotle, in the Ethics advises outlay by a father to celebrate the coming of age of an agapetos or "only" son. Even more to the point, in the Rhetoric he notes that barristers would distinguish in a legal action between the man who had lost one eye (retaining the use of the other) and the man who had only one eye (having already lost the use of the other) and then loses his remaining eye - his agapetos, that which is absolutely essential to him for sight.

Here, of course, Turner is making a theological point with which I am not at present concerned, the uniqueness of the Master Jesus. But what he says of the origin of the terms agape and agapetos is absolutely relevant to our understanding of this word, which we are now forced to translate as "love," or (as some modem versions) wisely leave in its original form as agape. "Agape suffereth long and is kind, agape envieth not..." "Agape beareth all things...hopeth all things..." "If we have not agape, we are nothing." We can have all knowledge, powers of prophecy, learning; but without agape all this is useless. And