Agape in MADELEINE L’ENGLE’s “Walking on Water”

Although Madeleine L’Engle describes the problem with translating ‘agape’ as ‘charity’ in the King James translation or ‘love’ in the modern translations, she never uses the original word ‘agape,’ but in those places in her memoir, “Walking on Water,” where she uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that shows the meaning is ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape’ to keep in the original biblical tradition.

      "In 1 Corinthians 13 there is shattering power. It is not a vague, genial sense of well-being that it offers us but particular, painful, birth-giving agape. 

      "How to translate that one word which is the key word? ‘Charity’ {the translation in the King James Bible} long ago lost it original meaning and has come to mean a cold, dutiful giving. And ‘love’ is now almost entirely limited to the narrower forms of sex. Canon Tallis suggests that perhaps for our day the best translation is the name of Jesus and that will tell us everything about agape we need to know. 

      "God gives agape to us because we are his children, because we are. The more we feel that we ought to be loved because it is our due or because we deserve it, the less we will truly feel the need for God’s agape; the less implicit will be our trust; the less will we cry out, Abba!

      "For each one of us there is a special gift, the way in which we may best serve and please the Lord, whose agape is so overflowing.

      "It is a listening, agape, and many artists who are incapable of this in their daily living are able to find it as they listen to their work, that work which binds our wounds and heals us and helps us toward wholeness.

      "The disciples, like the rest of us, did not deserve God’s agape, nor their Master’s. How must Jesus have felt when he was forced to realize that his disciples, whom he had called to be with him all the way, would not stand with him at the end? And yet, despite the fear and unfaithfulness of his followers, Jesus’ agape never faltered, for it was not dependent on the merit and virtue and the qualifications of those to whom he gave agape.

      "Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with agape. So does the Bible. God’s agape for people. All of us.

      "In moments of mystical illumination we may experience, in a few chronological seconds, years of transfigured agape."