The origin of ‘Agape’

As my birthday approaches, I’ve been thinking back over the year, because annually I take time on my birthday to go over the last 12 months. So that caused me to think so much about this blog that I decided to put some of those thoughts into words here.  I started this blog a year and a half ago after spending a few years puzzling about why ‘agape’ ended up getting translated into the English word ‘love.’ Finally, I tried letting my own spiritual experiences of agape inspire my understanding of what the Gospels and St. Paul were teaching by not using the common word for love.

The more I let the spiritual power of agape influence my life while I worked on this translation problem, the more I realized that a lot of confusion in modern Christian theology was caused by that problem. In fact, I saw that modern Christians would have trouble understanding the main theme of the New Testament until a change in translating happens.

Although every Christian scholar has acknowledged that translating ‘agape’ as ‘love’ caused a misunderstanding about the basic spiritual meaning of ‘agape,’ the practice continued in every translation since the 18th Century. Because St. Paul was making an important religious point by using ‘agape’ instead of any of the common Greek words for love, we do St. Paul a terrible disservice when we go against everything he was trying to do when we translate him as though he used the most common word for love, which was ‘eros.’ The same way ‘eros’ was used then is what most people today mean by the English word ‘love.’ But St. Paul never used ‘eros.’

Then I began to wonder what could have happened to allow such a blatant distortion of Christian teaching to happen. So I tried to figure out what possible reason could have allowed such a radical misunderstanding to happen in modern Christianity.

But the only reason I have been able to find is the complete lack of any adequate word in English. So ‘love’ became sort of a fall-back substitute. And yet, there must have been something similar between the meanings of the 2 words so that translators could have been willing to use ‘love’ as a substitute translation of ‘agape’ until someone could come up with a better word someday.

So lately I’ve been looking back on my spiritual experiences of agape to try sensing a similarity to love. I think I found the first similarity in the sensation of being drawn into a closeness with divine Presence. This similarity is especially clear during a spiritual, joy-filled sensation of being lovingly opened to and engulfed with Presence. After all, the only way that humans could possibly be able to have such a spiritual awakening is by God giving the means for such access. Of course, from our very limited capability to express with English, we call the feeling of such spiritual sensation of well-being, acceptance, and exhilaration -- “being loved by God.”

And next then, of course, is the extension of agape power out into relationships with other beings. One of the profound biblical insights involves the way our relationship of agape with God inspires and motivates relationships of agape with “our neighbor.” So here again, our very limited English vocabulary makes it hard to find words to express a spiritual basis for intense intimacy, affection, respect and caring. There is no word that expresses a spiritual meaning for total, complete acceptance, support, and commitment-without-the-beloved-needing-to-fulfill-any-conditions. Many writers have been forced to use the strange 2-word expression, ‘unconditional love.’ But that's really not expressing a spiritual meaning, so they try giving a spiritual meaning by using the cumbersome phrase, ‘divine love given to another person.’

I think St. Paul initially had the same problem with the Greek language. None of the normal words in common, everyday usage carried any spiritual meaning. Also he seemed to be trying to explain that only through a profound walk with God can a person begin to truly, deeply understand what happens when God opens us up and draws us into a close experience of Presence. No ordinary word could possibly help with such an explanation.

Because Paul studied with a few of the best scholars of his region, he would have known about the 70 scholars in Alexandria who translated the Torah into Greek (the Septuagint). As far as I can track it, that translation seemed to have been the first time when the verb form of ‘agape’ was used in the important Jewish ‘Shema’ (that Jesus used for the Great Commandment). And at the time of the Septuagint translation, ‘agape’ was an unusual, archaic word. So when the teachings of Jesus were translated into Greek, that version of the Shema became the clue to use ‘agape’ and the verb form, ‘agapao,’ throughout the Gospels. For example in Matthew’s version, Jesus added a second commandment that was “like” the first: “You shall agapao your neighbor as yourself.”

So I speculated that Paul used the Greek translation of the Shema to get the idea to use that unusual, archaic word ‘agape’ as a spiritual word. Paul used that idea to begin teaching that God’s agape not only opened us to divine Presence, but also agape opened us up to intense intimacy, affection, respect and caring with those around us. What an insight to show agape’s double power! So by the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, he could express that 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 also explained that only the power of God’s Presence can transform a human life to perform such profound actions. (After all, how many times have you heard people complain that such actions "are not humanly possible.")

As I look back over the last few years, I try to see how I’ve been slowly transformed by living my daily life in the reality of such spiritual flow. Even though I still have times when I let myself get overly tired and frustrated, I still find I have been increasing the depth, spiritually, of concern, caring, and compassion in my relationships. The only word that expresses the spiritual depth of such living is ‘agape.’