Agape and “the Kingdom of God” -- part 2

In my last posting I concluded that what Jesus said about “the Kingdom of God” just didn’t jive with the standard, popular messianic meaning of his time. I dealt with the realization that Jesus had a radically new interpretation that was a spiritual meaning.

In today’s language we would say that re-interpretation given by Jesus was so radical that it seems like he was ridiculing in order to change the desperate, misguided desire of most people of his time. When we consider how much he was trying to change even the hope people placed on their longing for a messiah, we can see why he ran into so much trouble. He was showing how wrong it was to expect God to come crashing into history with a messiah leading an army of fiery angels to quickly save the people from their oppressive enemies. In that sense it was like saying that God didn’t work that way.

The words and actions of Jesus showed a completely different understanding. He wasn't willing to pander to the frantic religious zealots of his day. (And so for the following 2,000 years, people should have followed his lead and dismissed similar desires when they were piled on Jesus' memory.)

So to gain perspective, I focused on the parable of the mustard seed, and put it beside Paul’s description of God’s agape in Rom. 5:5. That led me to see that Jesus was giving a very good description of the beginning of spiritual life for those people who are able to pay attention to the way God wakes us up. As Jesus said, “Don’t you see? God’s kingdom is already among you.” (Common English Bible) (Or “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (New International Version)(Luke 17:21-22) And as he said in the Beatitude: “Happy are people who have pure hearts, because they will see God.” (Mt. 5:8 Common English Bible)

And then I asked, what kind of “power” was Jesus talking about “arriving?” Obviously it could not have been the materialistic power that everyone else at that time expected, because that did not happen. But it is as Paul discovered -- in spiritual “agape.” Clearly, Jesus and Paul were talking about spiritual power. It is only from such an awareness that we can possibly make sense of the “kingdom parables.”

But most people at the time of Jesus used "the Kingdom of God" in political terms. So a better translation than the English expression “the Kingdom of God” would be found by using spiritual terms rather than political terms. This is especially true for Americans, because we have added to the long history of cultures the profound political insight that when societies were organized, the kingship model had not been good for the development of the human race. American history has been able to demonstrate to other nations that the spiritual development of the human race was messed up during the thousands of years when the kingship model was used to order societies. So since we Americans finally have been able to demonstrate the end of kings, emperors, princes, and all forms of royalty; then it makes no sense for us to use “kingdom” as a theological model.

That means it makes much better religious sense to speak of the influence of God’s Presence in people’s lives and society. So even though the expression would be a little too bulky, still a much better translation than “the Kingdom of God” would be something like “the spiritual influence of God’s Presence” (or maybe just “the influence of God”).

The influence of God’s Presence grows up from the depths of my heart to slowly, completely change my whole perspective on Life. Or as Paul so profoundly said, “the agape of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given us.” (Rom. 5:5 Common English Bible)

In that sense, agape fits the description of a mustard seed. The metaphor would apply to the way God ‘plants’ agape in our hearts to open us up to the Holy Spirit as we slowly grow in our consciousness of God’s power in our relationships. Such growth could then be called “agape consciousness.”

That’s how we become aware of “the spiritual influence of God’s Presence.” So as we act on that influence in our relationships, feeling the power of patience, and experiencing the growth and power of kindness (1 Cor. 13:4), we truly realize that God's Presence is “among us” or “within us.” That is what Jesus was describing. That is what Jesus was making possible for people to have. And so that is what we need to open up to and allow to happen in our lives.

Agape and “the Kingdom of God”

I’ve been thinking about other Biblical expressions that have caused as much translation confusion as ‘agape’ has. The expression that usually has gotten translated as “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven” has caused probably as much confusion over the centuries as any.

The major cause of confusion for us in the 21st Century is expressed with the question: how in the world could we in America find meaning in “the Kingdom of God?” To answer such a far-reaching question, the important point to tackle first is to try figuring out what Jesus meant when he used the expression. That task is not at all an easy, straight-forward one. Usually studies of “the kingdom of God” start with the messianic meaning, but that doesn’t help us deal with the meaning Jesus gave because most of the time what he said just didn’t jive with the standard messianic meaning.

The confusion with the messianic meaning starts with the popular belief about the long-hoped-for age when a messiah would be sent from God to free the Jewish people from all oppression from foreign powers. In the century after Christianity began, a man did come along who laid claim to be such a messiah. But of course, that only ended up provoking the Roman Empire to totally devastate the Holy Land, including destroying Jerusalem and the temple. Christians did not participate in that rebellion because by then they had figured out that Jesus did not talk about that popular messianic meaning.

Now, there is a sad reason behind that desperate desire felt by so many people in the century during which Jesus was preaching. We need to always remember that those were terrifying times of violence and oppression. So there was widespread longing for a messiah to put an end to such agonizing suffering. According to that longing, the expression “kingdom of God” meant the time when the New Age would begin, bringing an end to all the violence and oppression.

There are two reasons why I think Jesus couldn’t have meant that. The first is that never happened. Secondly, can anyone honestly see Jesus advocating a military meaning? So that’s not a good place to start studying what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God.”

But if we start from a different point to look at the way Jesus used the expression, we get a different slant. For example, what happens if we start with the parables? Also we get a different slant if we start when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, and he said, “God’s kingdom isn’t coming with signs that are easily noticed; nor will people say, ‘Look here it is’ or ‘There it is!’ Don’t you see? God’s kingdom is already among you.” (Luke 17:21-22 Common English Bible) ALREADY! Or what could he have meant in the famous Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Happy are people whose lives are harassed because they are righteous, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs”? (Mt. 5:10 Common English Bible) You see, he didn’t say that the kingdom “will be” theirs, but he said it “is” theirs.

Or what happens to the time schedule with the statement: “I assure you that some standing here won’t die before they see God’s kingdom arrive in power.”? (Mk. 9:1 Common English Bible) Does that mean that the kingdom of God came into power 2,000 years ago? And if that is the actual meaning, then with what kind of “power” did the kingdom arrive? Obviously it could not have been the materialistic power that everyone else at that time expected, because that did not happen -- not only did Jesus not kick the Romans and the Greeks out of the Holy Land; but instead, the Roman army swept through the land, burning and destroying everything in their way, including Jerusalem and the Temple. So what was that power that Jesus spoke about? If not physical power (which clearly it was not), then what?

That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer for many years. Well, I think Paul was trying to find the answer to the same question. And I think he began to find that power -- in the experience of Spirit that he started calling “agape.” Clearly, Jesus and Paul were talking about spiritual power. It is only from such an awareness that we can possibly make sense of the “kingdom parables.”

So take the parable that everyone thinks is very understandable -- about the mustard seed. “What’s a good image for God’s kingdom? … Consider a mustard seed. When scattered on the ground, it’s the smallest of all the seeds on the earth, but when it’s planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all vegetable plants. It produces such large branches that the birds in the sky are able to nest in its shade.” (Mk 4:30-32 Common English Bible) Okay, so what in the world did that mean? Years ago I thought it was a parable about starting a new religion, but I no longer think that Jesus wanted to start a new religion. Obviously, the image in that parable was not what most people wanted to hear about the great messianic age.

Most of the desperate, suffering people at the time of Jesus wanted God to come crashing into history with a messiah leading an army of fiery angels to quickly save them from their oppressive enemies. That’s what salvation meant to them! But they sure didn’t want a messiah who quietly, slowly, obscurely comes as a weak little baby, born out back in a stable, to a lowly carpenter’s wife from a little town of the northern region of their country. And they sure didn’t want someone who tries to compare the great kingdom of God to a lowly, little seed -- even though it may eventually (slowly) grow into a giant bush.

So if Jesus was bringing an entirely new understanding of the “kingdom of God,” then what did he mean? If we take his many comments about seeds and growing, along with the parable of leaven, and put them beside Paul’s description of God’s agape in Rom. 5:5; then we see a very good description of the spiritual life of those people who are able to pay attention to the way God wakes us up.

What do most people with a strong spiritual life say when they reflect back on the beginning of their faith journey? All of us respond with a description that sounds a lot like a seed being planted. And the influence of God’s Presence in our lives is like something that grows up from the depths of our being to slowly take over our whole perspective on Life -- and in that gradual process, completely change our whole perspective on Life.

That means that Jesus brought a spiritual understanding of the “kingdom of God.”

Agape as Access to God’s Presence

Exactly a year ago, while I was praying about Paul’s use of “agape” (especially in Romans 5:5). I was inspired to understand that God gives the spiritual power of agape into our hearts as our way to open us up and have access to God’s Presence. What an exciting and inspirational 12 months have unfolded from that morning’s spiritual breakthrough. Of course, this blog was one of the results.

But these 12 months did not come about without a great deal of preparation. During the last several years of deeply opening up and realizing how God’s agape works in my life, I’ve discovered that there is spiritual power involved with agape that far surpasses anything that is meant by the word ‘love.’

One expression of that discovery was in my last posting when I explored the realization that Paul used a form of the Greek words for “love” as a metaphor to understand the spiritual power he experienced. I think he relied on a metaphor because our minds seem to need to use metaphors to understand Biblical truths. The reality that he tried to express with the strange word ‘agape’ was so powerful, and yet so essential to a his growth in faith, that he needed to help people understand it.

So Paul expressed that spiritual power with a word for an intense, intimate way of relating. In doing that he was very careful not to use the normal word for love. So I think he recognized that any of the usual words the Greeks used for love all fell very far short of the spiritual power he experienced. But he still needed a word that expressed intimacy, affection, and caring. But I think he saw that he would need to add meaning in order to express total, complete acceptance, support, and commitment -- without the beloved needing to fulfill any conditions -- and that means ANY condition at all. We remember how he explained in 1 Cor. 13:4, that would require the highest degree of patience and kindness. He was reflecting what Jesus had meant when he explained that we would need a depth of willingness to forgive such that the beloved could wrong you not just seven times but seventy-seven times (Mt. 18:22) -- and yet forgiveness is still granted.

I think also that Paul understood that a profound degree of spiritual development would be needed in order know God’s agape in our lives. Only a profound walk with God can begin to truly, deeply understand what happens when God opens us up with agape and uses agape to draw us into a close experience of Presence.

The other great insight that Paul learned from Christ’s spirit in his life involved actions toward other people. God’s agape not only opened us to divine Presence, but also agape opened us up to loving relations with those around us. What an insight into its double power! Through giving agape to humans, God makes it possible for us to be able to find the profound level of intimate, intense affection such that we can give full acceptance and mutual respect to everyone around us. And Paul knew a sad lesson too well from personal experience with people -- that such a way of relating does not come from normal human living. Only the power of God’s Presence can transform a human life to perform such profound actions.

So following Paul’s advice for our lives, we desperately need God’s agape in our living.

How does “Love” help us understand Agape?

In a few of my blog postings I’ve mentioned praying about Paul’s use of “agape.” During the last several years of deeply seeking God’s agape for my life, I’ve discovered that the search has opened my life to amazing changes, including deepening and expanding my perspective on the religious meaning of love.
Finally in just the last few weeks, the realization hit me that in the Greek version of the New Testament “love” is used as a metaphor. Of course, there are many metaphors used throughout the Bible to help people deal with profound wisdom. Metaphors need to be used because our minds cannot grasp such wisdom in any ‘straight forward’ approach. For example, we remember that a few metaphors used to try expressing what God means for human living are “light,” “air/wind/storm,” “water/rain,” “fire” and “smoke.” Of course, no one would confuse any of those with the Reality of God.

Unfortunately, some metaphors have actually brought about confusion. For example, many people were led into the mistake of imagining God in human form because of the use of metaphors such as “father” and “mother.” So we need to constantly keep in mind that they are merely metaphors and all such metaphors fall far short of the ineffable reality they are trying to reference.

But our minds seem to need to use metaphors to understand Biblical truths. This has become especially the case for agape. The reality that we try to express with the strange word ‘agape’ is so powerful, and yet so essential to a person’s growth in faith, that over the centuries people have used a couple of metaphors to try understanding it. The 2 main metaphors are “love” and “charity.” Unfortunately, most people have so completely confused the metaphor with the reality, that they made the mistake of thinking agape is ‘love.’

This is nowhere more confusing than in modern translations of the New Testament. That is similar to the confusion caused by taking Jesus’ use of ‘abba’ and translating it as ‘father.’ So it is absolutely critical to remember the difference between the metaphor and the reality to which the metaphor refers.

The normal English word ‘love’ is just not what is meant by God’s Agape.  But that English word can help give us some metaphorical understanding. The use of ‘love’ as a metaphor means we form an understanding by looking at that intense, intimate way of relating. And then we use that to bring a meaningful depth and concern to life.

So what “love” helps us understand is that by giving us agape, God opens the guarded heart through intense, intimate relating in such a way that the person who responds to that will experience something like acceptance, support, caring, and even affection that is more profound than is possible in any other way.

Of course, as everyone says when commenting about using ‘love’ to understand agape, it has to be “the highest form of love.”

So what do they all mean by “the highest form?” Isn’t that merely admitting that the normal meaning of love falls very far short of the job of helping understand agape? So what does help? Well, the closest anyone seems to have gotten is the unusual modern concept of “unconditional love.” (Of course, we need to remember that “unconditional love” is not a Biblical phrase.)

What in the world could possibly be meant by “unconditional love”? That must be intimacy, affection, and caring beyond any of the conditions that humans place on relationships. So it would have to mean total, complete acceptance, support, and commitment without the beloved needing to fulfill any conditions -- and that means ANY condition at all.

So that kind of love would have to be given to the beloved no matter what the beloved does or is (even if that could be given to an enemy [Mt. 5:44; Lk. 6:27, 35; Rom. 12:14-13:10]) -- in other words, giving beyond human endurance. And, as Paul explained in 1 Cor. 13:4, that would require the highest degree of patience and kindness. There would need to be a depth of willingness to forgive such that the beloved could wrong you not just seven times but seventy-seven times (Mt. 18:22) -- and yet forgiveness is still granted.

So of course, the question has to be asked of “unconditional love:” is it really humanly possible? Now, just imagine what profound degree of spiritual development would be needed in order to answer such a question. Only a profound walk with God over many years can begin to truly, deeply understand that what is not possible for a human is possible for God.

Now, what if the answer is this: “unconditional love” is only a metaphor to be used in order to begin to understand God’s agape? So… through giving agape to humans, God makes it possible for us to be able to find the profound level of intimate, intense affection such that we can give full acceptance and mutual respect to everyone around us. Only God could make that possible. And agape is how God does it.

Lighten Up, People

The last several years of political campaigns have left me so disappointed in the way various religious groups have let themselves get suckered by politicians. Such partisan maneuverings have caused such sad divisions between people of religions; and then the news media can use such stupid categories as ‘the religious right’ and ‘the religious left.’ And of course, all of this has led religious leaders to take themselves too seriously and start claiming that only certain partisan political positions are ‘religious’ and then claiming that positions they disagree with are threats to religion. All that makes me want to say, “Lighten up, people.”


Anyway, deep Truth is so far beyond anything any modern partisan group could come up with that it is laughable to think they could claim spiritual insight only for themselves. Of course, it is important and commendable for political groups to keep trying to function by values that are spiritually inspired.

The word ‘light’ in the Gospels often had at least 3 different meanings. Most of the time, of course, it was a metaphor for spiritual illumination (or in other religions: enlightenment). Other times, light referred to showing the way. But sometimes it meant easy or ease up. When used in such a light-hearted way, Jesus was bringing joy into situations to try to lift people’s spirits (or lighten their load in life) so that they weren’t so negatively serious.

Too often over the last 2,000 years interpretations have missed the spiritual deep joy that Jesus brought into the world. Of course, that joy is easily missed because of the destructiveness, corruption, repressiveness, and violence of so much of history, especially the period of history into which Jesus was born. And of course, that joy has been missed also by many Christians because, unfortunately, they misguidedly allowed destruction, corruption, repression, and violence to happen in the name of religion.

When I read the words of Jesus, I like to keep clearly in mind the modern slang expression: “Lighten up, people.” When he looked out at the faces of a large audience, we can imagine Jesus seeing so many sad, suffering, disheartened, and yet expectant expressions -- the words that usually are translated “You are the light of the world,” might be translated today as “Lighten up, people.” The newly published Common English Bible translates Mt. 5:3 at “Happy are people who are downcast, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” That makes me think that Jesus was using the messianic expression “kingdom of heaven” in a completely new, joyful way -- giving it his own, radically new, interpretation. Of course, his completely new interpretation was not at all what people expected, then and in every century since then.

Isn’t that what he meant when Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.” (Mt. 11:28-30, Common English Bible) Lighten up, people!

Near the end of the Gospel of John, in the prayer of Jesus for his followers, we read: “I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” (John 17: 13, New International Version) It is that special spiritual joy that Jesus brought into the world that was included in the New Great Commandment which was meant to have agape left in its original spiritual form so that it would read: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Have [agape] for each other as I have had [agape] for you. Greater [agape] has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:11-13 New International Version)

There is no better place in the New Testament for showing the link between joy and agape than that section of John. Let God’s agape lighten you up, people!

Centering on Agape

Every morning I’ve been doing a practice near the beginning of my morning prayers when I pray to become ‘centered’ on agape. This practice began as I used Romans 5:5 to start. I pray: May “God’s agape pour into the center of my being thru the Holy Spirit.” That prayer helps me let God’s agape open me to access God’s Presence.

What such a prayer practice means to me is
[1st] accepting agape-flow into 'the center of my being' (in ancient Greek, ‘the heart’);
[2nd] meditating on the way agape opens me to the Presence of the Holy Spirit over me, under me, around me, and thru me -- as I open to both the intimacy and the vastness of Presence.

I’ve found this to be very helpful for my spiritual development. Thru that practice I’ve slowly been able to ‘sense’ Presence permeating my being and in the next moment I ‘sense’ a deep, vast silence. As I wait upon that ‘deep, vast silence’ I gain a sense of divine Presence throughout that ‘silence’ -- in that way it’s not silence in the normal meaning of that word -- in the same way this practice has led me to realize that agape is not love in the normal meaning of that word. Then as God's agape opens me to the vastness of silent Presence, I 'sense' the spiritual connection that agape gives me with God.

Now, of course that is just the beginning of the wonder that agape brings to me. Thru that practice I have found deeper insight into Paul's conclusion that agape brings patience and kindness [1 Cor. 13: 4]. Of course, I call it “just the beginning” because I have become more sensitive to how very far I am from fully accepting agape’s patience and kindness into the everyday actions of my daily life.

I guess the most common example of my lack of progress is the way I lose patience with my grandson when he gets on my nerves and frustrates me. The need to keep working on gaining patience to handle such frustrations is one of the reasons why I talk about centering my life on agape.

It is not enough to center on agape in the moment of deep prayer, accepting God’s agape pouring into the center of one’s being; but also it’s necessary to center one’s life in God’s agape. That's needed in order for agape to work in the daily relationships and the daily times of need and struggle. That’s how we find the strength, patience, kindness, and joy of God’s agape flowing into action in our living.

But it is exactly in finding such effectiveness of agape’s help that we find our closeness to God’s Presence.

The Mistake of calling AGAPE ‘Love’

There are two major problems with translating spiritual ‘agape’ with the ordinary English word ‘love.’ So far in this blog I’ve only focused on the first -- that is, because Paul purposely chose not to use the ordinary Greek word for love, his meaning is corrupted if we translate what he wrote with our ordinary word for love.

Of course, a few centuries ago, translators tried using words like ‘charity’ and ‘loving-kindness.’ But neither of those words carries the spiritual meaning that Paul gave to agape when he referred to 'God's agape.' We can never begin to see what Paul was meaning without the sense of spiritual.

The second major problem is much, much worse. It happens when ‘love’ gets wrongly used to imagine God in our image. That happens when we think that God loves just like humans love.

And that is the problem with applying our ordinary word for love to divine action. All kinds of wrongful thinking comes from doing that. For example, in popularized religious groups, God is expected to love us in the ordinary way that humans love each other. That pushes them to fall into the mistake of pseudo-religious thinking that God is somehow a "super-powerful Man-in-the-clouds" who has to always protect us when we strictly follow a bunch of rules and regulations.

Such a mistaken image of God pictures this Being-up-in-the-clouds showering down love into us like rain. That’s why popularized pseudo-religion has set up a false system of rewards and punishments. Of course, that has led to the unfortunate state of affairs causing untold numbers of people to ‘lose their faith’ -- because life just doesn't work that way.

But of course, that is not at all what Jesus meant. In the Greek translation we see that clearly when a spiritual form of agape is used instead of ever using the Greek word for love (eros, philia, storge) applied to God.

Of course, where that truth stands out so starkly is when we finally get to 1 John 4:8. No First-Century Christian would have ever said, “God is eros;” or “God is philia.” That would have been turning God into human love. Something very different was meant when that verse proclaimed that "God is agape." But in the modern world that tragic error can be made when ‘agape’ is translated as ‘love.’

But we can gain better insight by quoting 1 John 4:7-12 -- leaving in agape, agapeo, and agapan where they were meant to be -- “Dear friends, let’s agapeo each other, because agape is from God, and everyone who agapeo is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t agapeo does not know God, because God is agape. This is how the agape of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. This is agape: it is not that we agapeo God but that God agapan us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins. Dear friends, if God agapan us this way, we also ought to agapeo each other. No one has ever seen God. If we have agape for each other, God remains in us and God’s agape is made perfect in us.” (Common English Bible)

So we can see, that during the developing process of spiritual understanding in the Early Church in the first century, Christians had transformed agape into a deeply spiritual term. Of course, we today lose all that important spiritual transformation when we make the mistake of reversing that critical religious process by translating ‘agape’ as ‘love.’ Those verses in 1 John 4:7-12 have so much deeper meaning when the forms of ‘agape’ are left in -- where they were meant to be originally.

Agape and Kindness

In my May 16 posting I compared the most important scripture passages that gave spiritual meaning to agape. Starting with Paul’s teaching about agape in Rom. 5:5, 8:35-39, and 12:9-21; I compared them with 1 Cor. 13 and Gal. 5:14; and then with the 2 Great Commandments in Mat. 22:36-40 and the extension from that in Mat. 5:44-45; and the conclusion in 1 Jn. 4:9-12.

Not only was that spiritual teaching, but it was also practical advice. In Romans 12:2-21 Paul gave practical results from letting God’s agape fill our daily living. He said it can help us “be patient in affliction, be faithful in prayer.” The next verse may be what led the earliest French translators to use “charity” to translate “agape” -- “Share with God’s people; extend hospitality to strangers.” Then he talked about not being conceited or proud, but living in harmony and peace with everyone, even to the point of blessing those who persecute you.

To show that a complete transformation happens when living by God’s agape, Paul ended by talking about not repaying evil for evil, and not taking revenge. Of course, he learned what a radical change in human perspective happens because God then makes it possible to show agape even to enemies. Paul wrote: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” He circled back to the beginning of this section by saying: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

All of this unusual teaching is what has led modern writers to conclude by defining God’s agape with words similar to Rollo May’s when he defined it as “the concern for the other’s welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it” or as “selfless giving.” [Love and Will, p. 319] Obviously, such action does not come about by just blindly following along where society tells us we must go.

For those people today who are not sure how to know if God’s agape is truly active in their lives, I refer to what Paul described in Romans. So if you are not living the way he described -- by being kind, compassionate, and charitable with everyone around you, but instead you want to take revenge against enemies and overcome evil with evil (such as using warfare to try solving problems, either in your community or around the world) -- then you can know that God’s agape is not transforming you as should be happening. And of course, both Jesus and Paul warned that it is not easy to live by God’s agape. The pressure to conform to the pattern of the world is very strong.
 
That's why people in every civilization on the planet are falsely indoctrinated to think there is nothing evil about taking revenge against enemies. That has been the sad state of affairs for thousands of years. But Jesus came to bring us the power to change all that. If we don’t put the spiritual power of agape to work, then Jesus died in vain. It is up to each of us.

That’s what I found when I started with the first place ‘agape’ appears in Romans (5:5), then followed Paul’s thinking right on through to the way God’s agape fulfills our lives -- God’s agape as a spiritual power that flows into us and through us when we open up to the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our relationships with others. Paul implies that such is the way God’s agape makes us “be aglow with the Spirit” and “be joyful in hope” as we “serve the Lord” through LIVING by God’s agape. By truly living this way, the Holy Spirit uses agape to transform us through the renewal of our minds. That transformation brings us the ability to keep from being conformed to the selfish, egotistical, violent pattern of the human world.

It is God's agape that gives us the strength to be able to be transformed to live the non-violent lifestyle that Paul pointed out was basic to being Christian. And we can take heart because God’s spiritual power in our lives is stronger than the pressure of the world. That is the hope talked about by Paul (Romans 5:4-5). That is the hope upon which the whole future of the human race hinges.

Agape Prayer

I've been developing a form of prayer using the spiritual power of agape. So here is what I’ve come up with so far.

Because this is a prayer, we start and end with God. Of course, there is the realization that in the 2 Great Commandments in both the Greek Septuagint and the Greek NT, the same word is used for both devotion to God and devotion to and caring for our neighbor and our self -- that word is ‘agapan,’ the verb form of ‘agape.’ And that is the basis for the 'agape prayer.' Matthew records Jesus as saying that the 2nd Great Commandment is like the 1st.

But what is it about the two Great Commandments that is alike? Could it be that both commandments are tied together by the verb form of agape? The 2 are alike in the way agape opens us to God and opens us to our ‘neighbor.’ So the same spiritual power is an activating, enabling force in our own life, helping us reach out to God and reach out to assist other people in need. ((Jesus said … ‘You shall [agapan] the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all our mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall [agapan] your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mt 22:36-40)))

So the Agape Prayer involves an expanding cycle of people to pray for. The first individual you pray for is yourself. So from Rom. 5:5, you begin the prayer by gratefully accepting the gift of agape into your heart and thus let agape open you to a devoted relationship with God. In that openness you focus with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind on being accepted. You pray for the deep awareness that you are accepted by God. Thus your prayer practice starts by identifying with a sensation of eternal acceptance. You recognize that such is possible because, as Paul said in Rom. 5:5, agape is given you as your access to God’s Presence. Of course you need to accept the gift. So pray Rom. 5:5 until it becomes internal reality for you.

That's why this prayer begins by praying for yourself, that you may accept God's gift to you. That means preparing your heart, your soul, your mind to be opened to both the profound intimacy of God’s Presence and also to the infinite, eternal vastness of God’s Presence. (“For God so [agapan] the world ...")
("that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16))

Praying for yourself means accepting the presence of agape pouring into you -- you pray for the power to be opened to the personal closeness of the Holy Spirit. Also, the spiritual power of agape helps us pray for a deep sense of peace. The spiritual sensation that overwhelms us as God's agape comes pouring into our heart is the feeling that has been described for centuries as "God loves you."

Next, as Paul explained in 1 Cor. 13 and Rom. 12, agape is the spiritual power both opening us to our connection with God and also empowering us to reach out to others. From the eternal Source in God, agape flows thru and from us out to other people then to the rest of Creation in compassionate, caring, loving, accepting, respectful, joy-filled ways. But it helps our faith development to pray for that to happen.

That sensation of eternal acceptance helps us realize that, as Jesus so profoundly showed, the 2nd Great Commandment is like the first -- as agape becomes also the opening power to be concerned for the well-being of other people. So, once you have relaxed completely into a profound realization of agape permeating your being, bringing into your imagination a sense of what it would be like to fulfill your well-being and deep joy; then you are ready to move on to the next step in agape prayer.

STEP 2: is to pray for agape to flow into the life of a close, respected person.

Hold that close, respected person in prayer. Honestly and truly desire for the well-being of that person. Honestly desire that person to find personal well-being and deep sense of peace. Imagine that person opening to both the personal Presence and vastness of eternity. Feel the emotion of sharing in agape with that person. Practice that until you can truly, honestly feel a soft, warm, comforting sensation of compassionate, caring, loving, accepting, respectful, joy-filled relationship.

STEPS 3, 4, 5: pray that agape pours into the heart of a succession of 3 people: a dearly beloved friend, then a neutral person, then someone you consider hostile (even as an enemy). Go thru the same process you went thru for the close, respected person. Practice this until you can genuinely feel the “soft, warm,” comforting feeling of loving-kindness for them. Of course, when you get to the 3rd person, remember that Jesus said,

"You have heard it said, ‘You shall [agapan] your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, [agapan] your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Mt 5:44-45)

STEPS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: When the “soft, warm,” comforting feeling of agape has formed in you about those people in steps 3, 4, 5, then expand out to large groups of people, communities, nations, continents, and finally all of Creation.  This can be accomplished because of the realization that the spiritual power of agape brings us a way to connect with others while connecting with God. And remember that God initiated this process ((“In this is [agape], not that we [agapan] God but that God [agapan] us and sent God’s Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so [agapan] us, we also ought to [agapan] one another. No man has ever seen God; if we [agapan] one another, God abides in us and God’s [agape] is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:9-12))).

The greater purpose of the Agape Prayer is to facilitate the flow of agape among all people.

Agape and Compassion

For the last few decades we’ve been hearing people talking more and more about compassion. I think that is a way to overcome the problems of confusion with the English word ‘love.’ There also has been increased work on the spiritual meaning in compassion. All this could mean that ‘compassion’ is a much better English word to use to translate ‘agape.’ But of course, even though it is closer to agape’s meaning than the word ‘love,’ it still falls short of the full meaning of agape.

One person who did a masterful job of finding spiritual meaning in ‘compassion’ is Matthew Fox, the Episcopalian priest (who was kicked out of the Roman Catholic Church). In his 1979 book titled A Spirituality named Compassion, he started by talking about the way joy shows the difference between true compassion and mere pity. Then he quoted an old German proverb used in Max Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy:
    “A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; but a joy shared is a joy doubled.” (p. 3)

Fox considered compassion to be our “richest energy source.” And yet, in our period of history, “compassion remains an energy source that goes largely unexplored, untapped and unwanted … almost in exile.” And that problem makes everyone into victims -- “and all dying from lack of compassion.” But he deeply believed that, as hard as it is do, all people were capable of learning compassion -- as a better way of living, “a more fun-filled and justice-oriented way.”

He quoted 1 John 3:17-18 to show the Early Church’s connection between justice and the agape of God,

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but closed his heart to him, how can the [agape] of God be in him? Dear children, our [agape] is not to be just words or mere talk, but actions and in truth."

When I look back all the way throughout the last 2,000 years, I find it tragic that something as centrally important to the start of Christianity as agape -- somehow got lost. It is now absolutely crucial to the future of Christianity that we bring agape out of its deep exile and find its meaning for our period of history. This recovery is so crucial that Christianity does not have much of a future without doing that.

When agape was mentioned in the 12th and 16th Centuries, the English word used to translate it was ‘charity’ because of the understanding that the highest form of agape leads to works of feeding, sheltering, clothing, educating, counseling, comforting, forgiving, and providing the necessities of drink and medicine. Did that mean that the system of justice needed to be set up in society so that people who did have those necessities were able to receive them? And of course we remember how Jesus used the Parable of the Good Samaritan to show that agape had to lead to actions of helping people, even if those people were being discriminated against by the society. These were seen to be acts of justice-making. 

Unfortunately, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, many people in positions of power and authority felt threatened by too many people receiving such help to lift them out of poverty, so processes were set in motion to destroy the good meaning involved with the word ‘charity.’ But we now know that agape means all that and so much more.

Even today there are many people who are so threatened by talk about justice that they will rant and rave against churches that preach about the need for Christians to work for social justice. That is why it’s so important to keep in mind the connections between agape and justice-making.

But the Apostle Paul understood this fully, as we see in the way he put together the 2 Great Commandments from Jesus: “The whole of the law is summarized in a single command: ‘Have [agape] for your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal. 5:14) Agape is what brings together our neighbor and our God. Others in the Early Church also understood that it is our works of agape, shown in helping others, that will constitute the dwelling of God among us. (1 Jn. 4:12)

Agape in Romans 5:5 and 12:9-10

I want to do for today what the Apostle Paul did with the word ‘agape’ for his time. He expanded the meaning to aid in spiritual development. When he started doing that, most of the Greek-speaking, non-Jewish audiences he addressed would not have known what he was talking about. 'Agape' was not a word in common usage.

So just as Paul’s influence helped the word gain new meaning for the 1st Century, the word started gaining new meaning during the 20th Century as it became used, once again, by more and more people. And I’m expanding on that meaning in this blog.

But in the 19th Century, when ‘agape’ was reintroduced as a religious term after centuries of not being used, most people considered it just as arcane and unusual a word as it was considered by the Greek audiences Paul addressed. To show how Paul expanded the word’s meaning, I’ll focus just on 2 sections in Romans.

Especially when we read through chapter 12, we are reminded so much of 1 Cor. 13, that I couldn’t help but think that he was showing conclusions he had come to after reflecting on what he had written in 1 Cor. 13. (Most scholars agree that Romans was written after Corinthians, even though Romans became listed first when the New Testament was finally put together as a whole unit.)

No one knows for sure, of course, about how that unusual Greek word ‘agape’ first became used by Christians to speak to Greek-speaking audiences, but there might have been a connection with the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Those translators of LXX might have started using ‘agape’ because it sounded similar to the Hebrew word for love (ahaba). Because Paul grew up in the Greek-speaking coastal city of Tarsus and was educated by Pharisees, he would have known that the two Great Commandments given by Jesus referred to Deut. 6:4-9 and Lev. 19:18. So he knew that, in the Greek version, both those passages used ‘agapan,’ the verb form of ‘agape.’ That may have been what started the use of ‘agape’ by Christians. (Those 2 Commandments are the only place in Mark where any form of ‘agape’ appears.)

The next step for Paul may have been to expand on the link between the 2 Great Commandments. In other words, asking the profoundly important question, “What is there about agape that links religious devotion with how we treat other people?” I think the first major answer to that question was 1 Cor. 13. Then he expanded on that in Romans chapters 5, 8, and 12.

But our starting place is the first place ‘agape’ appears in Romans -- that’s the passage I’ve mentioned in previous postings (Romans 5:5) as playing such an important part in my morning prayers for the last couple of years. So we need to start where Paul did -- with God’s agape as a power that comes to us when we open up to the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This verse shows how Paul linked agape with the Holy Spirit.

Keeping that linkage in mind helps when we read 12:2 -- then we can understand that the Holy Spirit uses agape to transform us through the renewal of our minds. That transformation (sometimes very slow in some people because of their resistance, or rapid in others because they throw themselves open to God’s Presence) brings us the ability to keep from being conformed to the selfish, egotistical, violent pattern of the human world.

That transformation also liberates us from being controlled by the worldly pattern, although, the tremendous pressures from the human world are very difficult to overcome because the forces of the world have been building up for the 6,000 years of the process that has been named ‘civilization.’ (Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The end of the human race will be that we will eventually die of civilization.” That slow death is what we have to overcome.)

Then in the next 5 verses Paul listed other gifts that come to us from the Holy Spirit as he did in 1 Cor. 12. Even though he did not say in exact words (as he had done in 1 Cor. 13:13) that the greatest of these is agape, he implied that by starting vs. 9 with agape. Also implied in that verse is his awareness that the word ‘agape’ was being used in so many different ways that he wanted to make sure his reader understood that he was using the word in the highest way (the Greek word that Paul used has been translated as “genuine” or “sincere” or “non-hypocritical” or “not a pretense” or “without dissimulation”).

What he seemed to have been talking about is our need for the genuineness of personal relationship (or as Rollo May put it: “authenticity in relationship.” [Love and Will, p. 306]) Paul recognized that need, and so he made the point that through the Holy Spirit we receive God’s agape to help us find such authenticity. 

Then in the next 10 verses he spelled out practical actions that God’s agape helps us do (as he had done in 1 Cor. 13:4-6). He started a little differently with the list of actions in Romans; by implying that, if we use it in the right way, agape helps us discern what is good and what is evil. Then he gave a list -- similar to 1 Cor. 13 -- by beginning with the action of treating others as kind family members would treat each other, with respect, showing honor toward the other.

He showed how he was using the spiritual meaning God’s agape -- he talked about being “aglow with the Spirit” as we “serve the Lord” through living by God’s agape. He concluded with joy -- “Be joyful in hope.”  This verse shows the link between agape and joy and hope.

How Agape can be Thought to be Similar to Love

I’ve been asked, "Why does ‘agape’ and ‘agapao’ get translated as ‘love’ and ‘loving’?” The question comes from my claim that originally ‘agape’ was not a common Greek word for love. “So why did the Greek-speaking Christians and Jews start using ‘agape’ and ‘agapao’ in a way that had a meaning similar to love and loving?” Obviously the English translators thought that there was a similarity or they wouldn’t have used the English word ‘love’ to translate ‘agape.’

So after spending the first 2 months of writing this blog by focusing on the differences, I decided today to try looking at the similarities that led people to translate ‘agape’ as ‘love.’

This concern has a special problem, of course, in America today. The modern world has produced so much confusion about love that there is no common agreement about what the word means. It’s used for everything from ‘liking [something] a lot’ to ‘sexual intercourse’ to ‘the force that holds the Universe together’ -- and an amazing variety of relational meanings in between. I’m even old enough to remember when General Motors tried to use the word to name a truck, but at least they knew enough to change the spelling to “Luv.” Recently the car manufacturers have picked up that weirdness in some of their advertising, by showing people "in love" with their cars or SUVs or trucks.

Actually, the confusion extends back thousands of years, but it has just gotten worse in the last 100 years. Even in the Bible there are a few examples of people loving the wrong way, and misusing the power of agape, and also using the word 'agape' to refer to “liking a lot” and liking in a way that leads to problems.

And then there is such a widespread problem in the modern world with dysfunctional families that the model of family relationships is not totally helpful for understanding love. Maybe the ancient Greeks had a similar problem so they used two different words for love between parents and children: 'storge' and 'philia.' (Before the Bible was written in Greek, no where in Greek literature was ‘agape’ used to refer to family relationships -- nor for that matter for any intimate or casual relationships.)

When I started searching through blogs, I saw hundreds of examples of the confusion over what kind of love. Everyone who tried connecting ‘agape’ with ‘love’ had trouble trying to figure out what kind of love applied to agape. Most people find it necessary to add all kinds of qualifiers onto ‘love’ when trying to use it to mean ‘agape’ -- as some sort of way to force the translation to work. Even though everyone recognizes there is something different about agape, there is no agreement about what causes the difference.

So when we start looking for similarities, we know we have to look at the BEST kinds of love (not just “liking a lot” -- after all, loving is about relationship). Of course, there are many good things to say about the best kinds of love, because loving relationships are such an important part of being human. Even the large number of people who want to translate ‘agape’ as ‘love,’ admit that ‘agape’ would have to be the very best kind of love that is possible. So we need to start with the best qualities of love. What comes to mind first are the qualities of caring and concern. Also, there is acceptance.

In that sense, giving us the spiritual power of agape is understood by us as God caring for us. So we feel God’s concern that we are able to have access to God’s manifested Presence with us. We experience this as being drawn to God in a powerful, close, joyful, caring (in other words, loving) way. And then we are enabled to open up to God's Presence in our times of prayer, sensing this deeply over a long period of time in a disciplined way gives us the feeling of relationship that can only be expressed as "falling in love" with God.

When we also are able to sense God's agape as coming to us through others, then we grow spiritually to know God's agape flowing out to others as caring. And then when we are thus drawn into close relationships with those around us, we are empowered through agape to reach out in caring and concerning actions to accept others, and to help them, and to share in mutual respect. 

And of course, we have the strong examples in the Gospels of Jesus showing caring and concern. So when the Disciples looked back over the years at their relationship with Jesus and at his teachings, they remembered his loving care for and acceptance of everyone. They also remembered his teachings about his followers needing to treat others with care and acceptance and mutual respect. So when it finally came time to write the Gospels in the Greek language for the new non-Jewish Greek-speaking people, they used 'agape' every time Jesus used 'love' in the Aramaic language he originally used to speak to his Jewish audiences.

All of that, of course, comes under a similarity between love and agape. So even though it makes a little sense for translators to use the English words ‘love’ and ‘loving’ to translate ‘agape’ and ‘agapao’ in some places, we can lose something important in translation if we too quickly try to understand agape by our 21st Century confusion about love. Our word ‘love’ puts unfortunate limitations on what the New Testament originally meant by ‘agape.’ So we come back to the reality that originally, ‘agape’ did not mean what people normally mean by the word ‘love.’ In fact, St. Paul was trying to take it in a completely different direction in 1 Cor. 13 and Romans 5:5 & 12:9-10 (even though at other times he seemed to use it to mean something more similar to love).

What I’m discovering in my research is that agape was far, far more than what we mean by love. 

Agape is our “Access”

When I began exploring “agape” as a spiritual power, I wanted to do more than just intellectual exploring. So for the last couple of years, I’ve started morning prayer time by focusing on my new understanding of Romans 5:5 (using my own translation -- “the agape of God has been poured into the center of our being by the Holy Spirit given to us.”) I open myself up to receive a sense of the spiritual flowing of the agape of God.

Last November, during such a practice, I had an intense Spirit-filled experience. Although it’s a little difficult putting into words, the best I can do is say that I “sensed” agape as “access.” For 2 days after that original experience, I prayed about what it meant to have “agape as access.” On that 2nd day I “sensed” that agape had brought me access to spiritual “manifestation” of God’s Presence. The word “manifest” actually appeared in my awareness.

Then the next day, I sensed that I was being led to my book shelf, to a book that I originally read in 1965. That book was Love, Power, and Justice by Paul Tillich; I opened the book and on pg. 33 found this:

"… agape enters from another dimension into the whole of life and into all qualities of love. One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love.”

Reading the word “manifests” had a powerful impact on me! When I saw the way he connected agape and divine manifestation -- used in the same way that it had come to me in prayer -- I was convinced that a breakthrough had come to me. In the weeks that followed, I became increasingly aware of the importance of this to my morning prayers. Finally as Jan. began, I decided to start this blog dedicated to exploring agape as a spiritual power that God gives us as our access to the manifested divine Presence.

That last sentence has become for me a verbal ‘touchstone.’ Because I believe that the Reality of God is so far beyond the awareness of humans that we need a way of access. That is, unless God manifests in some way to us, we have no spiritual awareness. But even at that, we still have to open up to receive that awareness. So then we need some way to access that spiritual manifestation. Such access also can only come from God. That’s how I now understand Paul’s message to the Romans that God gives agape to us through Holy Spirit.

I’ve always understood Holy Spirit as an action not a ‘thing.’ So Holy Spirit is seen by humans as the action of God manifesting to our very limited awareness. Because human ability to be aware is so faulty, we need agape as our way to access that manifesting. Agape begins the opening process, but it is still up to us to respond -- in order for the opening up to  divine Presence to continue. But agape is not forced on us, so if we don’t let ourselves be opened -- if we don’t let ourselves become fully awake to Presence -- agape does not work for us.

My exploration during these last 3 months has opened me to allow agape to pour into me as a spiritual power bringing me access to whatever divine manifestation that can come to me. I will continue to report here the results of my exploring.

Exploring the Blogosphere for Agape Talk

Weird things happen when people try to make agape mean some kind of love. When I was putting together ideas to start this blog, I did some searching of blogs to see what others were saying about agape. At first I was a little surprised to find so much variety in listings of hits. By varying just a little what I typed into search engines, I got very different results.

Even when I narrowed the wording for search engines (like blogsearch.google.com) by typing “agape power” instead of just “agape,” I got everything from martial arts, to a financial advisor, to churches and ministries that used “agape” in their name. There was even a blog about learning agape through the therapy provided by pets. A few blogs claimed to focus more on spirituality than on religion, those blogs usually claimed to be non-Christian even though they professed to follow Jesus.

One blog that shares my questioning about translating “agape” as “love” is www.freelygive-n.com by Robin Calamaio. He pointed out clearly the problems people run into by trying to have “agape” mean “divine love” everywhere the word appeared in the Bible. He discovered that obviously there was a great deal of difference in what the various writers meant by “agape” in the differing places in the Bible. Although I disagree with Robin Calamaio on all subjects of religion, I’ve enjoyed our email correspondence.

Some blogs were listed by the search engine even though they never mentioned the word, but the authors had so completely identified “agape” with “unconditional love” that they were listed because the search engine also operated under that same assumption that somehow agape was connected with love. When I searched by using “divine love,” I found some very strange blogs that fit into the category that large book stores call “New Age.”
 
So far I’ve found no one else who considers agape to be spiritual power. Of course, everyone who linked “agape” with “love” had trouble trying to figure out what kind of love applied to agape. There is complete agreement that agape cannot mean what English speakers usually mean by love, so all kinds of adjectives get tacked onto “love” when trying to use it to mean “agape” -- as some sort of way to make it work. But all of those don’t get the point that it just doesn’t work. Originally, “agape” did not mean what people normally mean by the word “love.” In fact, St. Paul was trying to take it in a completely different direction.

I’m hoping that thru this blog I can reach out to find others who are taking an alternative approach to using agape in the modern world, just as it was used in the ancient world.

Be Perfect with Agape

Because I’ve heard many people complain about the way Christian doctrines make people think they have to “be perfect,” I began to wonder what “perfect” really means. Over the years of searching, I’ve finally concluded that such opinions seem to come from a misinterpretation of the actual teachings of Jesus. Especially when we read about his actions, we can see he was trying to relieve people’s anxieties about living and about relating to God.

When we remember that the only group he ever criticized -- the Pharisees -- were the ones trying to make people think they had to practice a huge amount of rules and regulations in order to “be perfect,” we see that Jesus was reacting against that approach to religion. So today, those religious groups who make people think that only strict rules make people “perfect” are just modern-day Pharisees. And so Jesus would be just as upset with today’s groups as he was with the Pharisees of his day. He wouldn't try to get people to act like some ideal.

So what was meaning? My conclusion is Jesus had a different idea about "being" and about what “perfect” was, and about what life was? We saw evidence of that in Luke 6:35-36 -- "[agapan] your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." So something else was going on in the new meaning that Jesus was bringing into being.

What I’m learning about the spiritual power called “agape” is that it’s a gift from God to help us. Agape doesn’t cause us to be more anxious, but it brings us a way to ease out of being anxious. One way it helps us is with the strength to BE what we were created to be. So what does agape show us about being perfect?

Now, we’re ready to ask: what did Jesus mean when he said, after a long discussion about how to treat our enemies, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”? (Matthew 5:48) The struggles with those words for centuries have caused all kinds of problems. But I think Jesus seemed to be trying to get his followers to deeply comprehend that they were ALREADY PERFECT because of the presence of God with them. That’s what agape helps us see, even in relation to enemies. So he was saying something more like, “You are already perfect, so just BE perfect.” (The meaning changes when all the emphasis is on "be" and not on "perfect.")

So with the spiritual gift of agape -- it is meant not only to help us see we are already perfect, but also to help us be. In a sense, when we truly, profoundly accept the gift of agape as a spiritual power into the center of our being, we are able to relax into being what we were created to be. We don’t need to get all worked up and frustrated trying to act according to some ieal we’re not. As St. Paul said, “Agape is patient and kind.”

Jesus was trying to point out that it wasn’t something for us to intellectually understand, because the reality went so much more profoundly deeper that mere intellect. And it wasn’t something we have to make ourselves believe, because there is no point in making ourselves “become” something we already are. It was more a case of being -- (and being fully aware of our present reality) -- so he said, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

(A Side Comment griping about Blog Posting)

Because I’m so new to this world of writing blogs, I get very frustrated with the order in which postings are automatically listed. I’m so used to the old world of reading books, articles, research papers, sermons, and newspapers that I have a hard time imagining a reader starting at the end and reading to the introduction. I know I can't do anything at all about it, but that seems so backward.

When I started writing this blog, there was a certain flow to the development of my ideas. But that flow gets reversed by the way postings are listed. So when someone happens to find this blog, but wants to see how my ideas developed, the reader has to go to the bottom of the list to find the Introduction. (That’s a hint -- I would like for you to stop reading, arrow down to the bottom of the list of postings, and now read the Introduction.)

Thank you. Now I’ll stop griping. And I promise that if you email me with comments, I won’t ever mention my frustration with blog post listings.

Agape is Patient and Kind

The mystery of agape power is not found in the English word “love.” That is one of the conclusions I’ve reached during my years of looking into what agape meant for Greek-speaking Christians of the First Century. As I’ve mentioned in previous postings below this one, when St. Paul and some of his Greek helpers started their work, they needed to find Greek words to explain what they were bringing from the Jewish culture. I think they had an especially difficult time trying to find a word to express a spiritual gift that was helping them open up to the power of God.

None of the usual words seemed to work to express what was almost inexpressible, so either they had to find a new word, or they had to change the meaning of an old word from the past. It seems like they began using the word “agape” because that word was not in common usage anymore in the Greek cities where they were starting churches. (Even though the verb "agapao" did appear a mere 18 times in the entire Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, it was not in common usage in the few synagogs where that translation was available). So they took the uncommon noun, "agape," and gave it a special role in the spiritual life of their new communities, thus transforming it's meaning.

But over the centuries since then, that all was lost. Only in the early 20th Century did a slight recovery process start for the word "agape." But I think a mistake was made by claiming that “agape” was a common word for “love.” Over the last few decades, when "agape" got confused with "love," we have lost most of the meaning behind what St. Paul was doing.


While I’ve investigated the meaning behind the strange thing St. Paul was doing in 1 Cor. 13, I ran across a couple of scholars who challenged the traditional understanding of the way words were used in those verses. Those old interpretations made it seem like St. Paul was taking a verb and making it a noun. Even though we today have gotten so used to people turning verbs into nouns, that was rarely done in the ancient world. So the strangeness of that chapter extended even to the use of the noun ‘agape’ instead of the usual verb ‘agapao.’

In the Hebrew scriptures or in any other Greek or Hebrew literature, there are actually very few instances of people not using verbs as verbs but instead turning them into nouns. What I’m getting at is the difference between “love” and “loving” (or “to love”). Most of the time in the ancient world people talked about “loving” or called on people “to love” someone. That’s the usual use of love as a verb. But it would have been unusual for a writing to use “love” as a something -- for example, to say that “love is patient and is kind.” Or as it is in the King James version: “Charity suffereth long and is kind.” (vs. 4) You would almost never find such a strange expression; instead, you might see “when you are loving someone, you should be patient with them.” Or an alternative might be, “When you are loving one another, you learn how to be patient.” Such examples correctly use the verb. But who would turn “loving” into a noun and say, “Love is patient”?

It is because of such instances that I began to question how St. Paul would have wanted those sentences in 1 Cor. 13 to be read. I began to see that St. Paul was not turning a verb into a noun. I began to wonder: What if he weren’t talking about love at all; but instead, he was illustrating what the strange noun “agape” meant? I started searching for what agape meant to him. I’m using this blog to report on the results of my searching.

For example, what did he mean by saying, “Agape is patient”? 
What we would like it to mean is: through the gift of agape, God was giving us the way to help us live patiently. But … what a strange way to say that. By just using three words it sounds like he’s saying, “Whatever agape is, it is patient.” Actually, that sounds like he means that there is something about agape that is patient. What did that mean?

Why didn’t he say, “Agape gives us patience” -- or “through agape we become patient”? Was he actually meaning, “Agape [itself] is patient” -- or “Agape is [patience itself]”? Did his next phrase mean “Agape is [kindness itself]”? So what would it mean if he went on to imply, “Agape [itself] is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude”? Was he implying the conclusion that with agape active within us, we are patient and kind and not envious nor boastful nor arrogant nor rude? So was he also implying that if we aren’t patient and kind; therefore, we prove that we have not adequately let agape work in our lives -- or if we are envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, then also we prove that we have not adequately let agape work in our lives?

That would be a hard proof, because we all know how difficult it is in this modern world, with all the pressures and frustrations, to be patient and kind with all people. That seems to be why St. Paul then starts Chapter 14 by calling his readers to aspire to agape. He said that like he knew how extremely difficult it is to let the ‘agape of God’ pour into the center of our being in such a strong, conclusive way that we are transformed until we are patient and kind. I think he was saying that we have to really work at it, spiritually, to aspire to what agape can bring to us.

To be truly, profoundly patient calls for a sense of deep, inner peace and sense of wellbeing. That seems to be what he meant when he wrote the following to the Philippians:

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:4-7 NRSV)

That’s why near the end of Corinthians he concludes that we can let develop within us just such an attitude of peacefulness when we learn to “Let all your things be done with agape.” (1 Cor. 16:14 King James Version) It is that spiritual power of agape that brings to the center of our being the peace that brings patience, the strength that brings kindness, the wisdom that rejoices in the truth, the compassion that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

The Differences Between Agape, Love, and Loving

As I mentioned in my 3rd posting below, I’m taking my cue for understanding “agape” from what St. Paul wrote to the Romans. There he used a phrase I think had become very important in his spiritual life: “the agape of God.” He seemed to consider it the greatest gift that God gives through the Holy Spirit to the followers of Christ. To repeat, he wrote:

“the agape of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given us.” (Romans 5:5) 

And there “heart” didn’t mean to the ancients what it means today; instead, they used the word “heart” to mean more like “the center of a person’s being.”
 
So that’s why St. Paul told the Corinthians that compared with all the other spiritual gifts, agape is the greatest. That showed one of the many innovations that St. Paul brought to the early development of Christianity. The more I look into the amazing insight he displayed in the 13th chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, the more unusual I see that whole chapter is, but also how those words are the very key to understanding his unique spiritual experiences. Because the Corinthians would have considered those words unusual when they first read them, it’s so important not to change “agape” into our common word “love.” If we make it sound like common, everyday talk (like reading it in weddings, for example), then we lose all the shocking impact that it would have had on the Corinthians.

The more we find out about the people who lived in Corinth, the more modern they seem, and so the more we should try to identify with them. It helps when reading that chapter to feel like St. Paul is challenging us as profoundly as he was challenging them.

So over the years of research, I have started disagreeing with the traditional interpretation. Most interpreters have him saying something like, “As wonderful as are the spiritual experiences most of you have been having, when it comes to holding together a church community, if you don’t love each other, you have nothing.” Now, of course, that is an important corrective statement to make to any church. But one problem churches have with that is the reality that no one can make people love each other.

Even though you can constantly call people’s attention to the importance of loving -- by writing about it, preaching about it, counseling about it -- but there is no way to make people put into action all that’s involved with having compassion for one another. So as much as I would like to imagine him talking about the importance of compassion, I just no longer think that St. Paul was doing that in the verses we call chapter 13. Instead, I now think he was talking about a special spiritual gift that can transform us when we let it pour into the center of our being.

1 Corinthians 13

When St. Paul finally launched into showing the power of agape, his first readers would have been surprised. They would have found very strange his detailed illustration of the supreme importance of agape. He was warning them about how unusual it was going to be, when he said, “Now I shall show you a still more excellent way.” (1 Corinthians 12:31 The Anchor Yale Bible, p. 474, 2008 Vol. 32) So what was this innovation that he brought to the early development of Christianity?

He began the 13th chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, by continuing his list of spiritual gifts that he started talking about in chapter 12. He did that to show that he considered “agape” to be the greatest of all spiritual gifts. For example, without agape, “speaking in tongues” was just like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Then he said that we are nothing without agape even though we “have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and … have all faith, so as to remove mountains.” (vs. 2 The New Revised Standard Version)

Then he got into what we today mean by charity, when he said that if we give away all our possessions and even are willing to sacrifice our own bodies for the cause -- but don’t do it through the power of agape -- we gain nothing. At that point he had his readers’ attention in a shocking way! They would not have liked that list of comparisons between agape and all the other spiritual gifts that most people would find wonderful to have. So he was ready to lay out the details showing what agape power could do.

So then he pointed out that agape is what we need to be patient and kind. Agape power helps us not be envious or boastful or arrogant or rude or insist on our own way, and not be irritable or resentful. Then he hit the self-righteous religious people right between the eyes when he said that agape will help them not rejoice in the wrongdoing of those they like to judge as less religiously worthy. So of course, agape helps us “rejoice in the truth.” Agape power even gives us the internal strength to “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.” (vss. 4-7) Because everyone knows how difficult it is to live that way, we are able to see how extremely important such an inner transformation is.

Then he concluded that the effectiveness all the other spiritual gifts will eventually end, but agape will never end. So we need agape in order to become fully mature in our spiritual development -- otherwise, we remain childish in our understanding of the spiritual dimension of Life. And finally, even though we know that faith, hope, and agape abide to sustain us spiritually -- “the greatest of these is agape.” (vs. 13)

Those statements would have shaken up Christians of the First Century. Those words show a new way for Christians to develop spiritually. We lose that shocking, new, powerful quality if we just translate “agape” with our English word “love.” But by leaving the word as St. Paul wanted it, we are better able to see what he was showing us.

When we hear agape used in that chapter, then we know we are dealing with the basis for a new spiritual discipline that motivates us to look for a spiritual training that will help us live fully through the power of God.

Thomas Merton and agape/caritas

In my last posting I mentioned a book of essays on comparative mysticism by Thomas Merton. I commented on a quote from his chapter on “Love and Tao.” In that chapter he went through some mental twistings in his attempt to compare Christianity with the Chinese philosophy Taoism (the T is pronounced so much like a D that some people spell it Daoism). Here is the quote in which he used the Latin translation of First John 4:8 -- Deus caritas est. -- "God is love (agape)."

The power of the sage is then the very power which has been revealed in the Gospels as Pure Love, Deus caritas est is the full manifestation of the truth hidden in the nameless Tao, and yet it still leaves Tao nameless. For love is not a name, any more than Tao is. One must go beyond the word and enter into communion with the reality before he can know anything about it: and then, more likely than not, he will know ‘in the cloud of unknowing.’ (Mystics and Zen Masters, p. 76)

Something about that assertion of the spiritual need to “go beyond the word and enter into communion with the reality” made me think of 1 Cor. 13. Even though St. Paul didn’t use those words, I think his illustration of the power of agape pointed to a similar need to enter into communion with the reality of agape power in order to come to the truest understanding of the way such power works both in personal lives and in congregational life.

Only by experiencing the changes first hand can anyone even begin to come to terms with the effectiveness of agape power, that St. Paul listed in 1 Cor. 13, to create patience and kindness, and the capacity to endure whatever comes. Only then can a person truly understand the power to never be jealous, never be conceited, never be rude or selfish, never to be resentful nor to take offense, nor to take any pleasure in other’s sins. Only then can a person comprehend what it means to "delight in the truth," and to always be ready to "excuse, to trust, to hope." (Jerusalem Bible)

In my next posting I’ll go into a more detailed investigation into how extremely unusual were the rest of St. Paul’s proclamations in 1 Cor. 13.

Should "agape" be translated as "love"?

Many years ago I was comparing various translations of the Bible. I became especially curious about a major difference in the way the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians was handled. In the King James Version the word “charity” was used -- but in every translation in the 19th and 20th centuries, "charity" was changed to “love.” I started wondering about why that change happened. The more I looked into ideas about why “charity” was dumped, the more I started thinking that something very important had been dropped from our religious understanding about what had happened to the first Christians.

As I looked into this change, the main reason I kept running across was corruption in the English language. It seems that in Great Britain and America the word “charity” had become so ruined from its original meaning that the word could no longer be used for translating the Bible. That struck me as very strange.

That language corruption played right into what I was seeing happen among various Christian groups about the word “love.” I wondered about the arguing among Christian groups about various religious meanings of love. Some groups want to downplay emphasis on forgiveness and love, because that takes away from emphasis on sin and divine judgement. Other groups want to claim that love is the central concern of Christianity. The “sin and judgement” groups seem to claim that there is something weak about loving -- that somehow love weakens ‘true, born-again’ Christians. But on the other hand I noticed that the groups, who emphasized the central importance of love to Christian identity, seemed to have all kinds of different interpretations of what love meant to Christians in the First Century and today. 

As I continued looking into the change in meaning when translating 1 Cor. 13, I found that ever since the 1920s an increasing number of people claimed that the problem started because of the differences between the Greek, Latin, and English languages. The translators of the King James version only used the Latin Bible. The claim was that if they would have gone back to the original Greek New Testament, they would have found that in the Greek language there were several different words for love, and that one of those words was “agape.” But was that really the case? 

I found out that at the same time those claims were made about the Greek language, there was always a side comment made that originally “agape” was an obscure, arcane word that was not used by the common people. Almost no one used “agape” before the Greek-speaking Jews then the Christians started using it! 

Just about the only times it ever appeared outside of Christian writings was in a religious context, and there it seemed to mean something like “devotion.” So it was not a common word for love, and what Christians (especially St. Paul) did was transform that word by giving it a meaning unique to certain Christian groups.

That means we have a problem in understanding what the first Greek-speaking Christians were doing. If they would have wanted to talk about love, they would have used one of the common Greek words for love, like “philia” or “eros.” And "agape" was not a common word for love. Actually, they did use “philia” in many places. On the other hand, if they purposely did not want to mean the word “love” when they used their word “agape,” then what happens when we translate “agape” with our common word “love?” Do we radically change the meaning from what the first Christians wanted to say? The meaning is still changed even if we stick qualifiers onto it like "self-sacrificial," "Pure," "divine," "unconditional" or any of a number I've seen used.

So maybe the King James Version of the Bible was correct in not using “love” at all in the whole chapter of 1 Cor. 13. The team of scholars who put together that historically important 16th Century translation from Latin into English were following the lead of translators in France who used the word from Old French: “charite.” So the Latin “caritas” became the English “charity.” 

That means the Latin translation didn’t use the Latin word for love, and the French translation didn’t use the French word for love, and so the first major English translation followed that important tradition and didn’t use the English word “love.” Why? Were they implying that St. Paul didn’t want the word “love” used there? So what happens when we stick in the word love? We completely change what St. Paul was trying to do there!
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The idea for this blog came when I was re-reading a book by the Roman Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. It was his book of essays about other forms of mysticism, Mystics and Zen Masters. In his chapter on “Love and Tao” he used the Latin translation of First John 4:8 -- “Deus caritas est.” He felt the need to explain that “caritas” referred to “Pure Love.” As I re-read that chapter after almost 4 years from the time I first read it, I began to get the sense that he was not talking about what we normally call love. Of course, “Pure Love” was not a good translation either of “caritas/agape.”

That reminded me of the sense that I got the last time I re-read 1 Corinthians 13. I wondered, What if Paul was not trying to explain love to the Corinthian Christians? (Why would he need to explain love?) What if, instead, he was trying to explain why he was trying to get them to use a word that almost no one ever used anymore, and he was making it the most important word for all Christians. That word, of course, was “agape.”

So what was Paul trying to illustrate in 1 Cor. 13? Why did he end chapter 12 by claiming that he was about to show his reader “a more excellent way” than all of the spiritual gifts he had been discussing? Was he actually laying the groundwork for the spiritual breakthrough he later wrote to the Romans when he said, “the agape of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us?” (Romans 5:5 --The Jerusalem Bible)

On purpose I did not try to translate “agape” because I’ve come to believe that Paul would not want it translated. As a word, “agape” was just as unusual to the people he addressed as it is to us today. And that is just as it should be. What if Paul was purposely using it in a completely new way because he wanted it to be considered to be a new word for a new spiritual way of living?

To try seeing what that would be like, I’ve started re-reading Paul’s letters, and in every place where he used the noun “agape” (instead of the verb "agapao"), I leave it as “agape” instead of using that unfortunately misused and misunderstood English word “love.”

So after you’ve read this, give it a try yourself. Start putting “agape” back where it was meant to be, and then follow along with this blog in the weeks ahead.