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.