Agape in Leo Tolstoy's teachings

 Recently I came across the last book Leo Tolstoy wrote: Wise Thoughts for Every Day. It’s very different from anything else he wrote. He started it as a way to recover in the spring of 1902, at the age of seventy-five, from falling seriously ill, first with pneumonia and then with typhoid fever. He almost died, and so in recovery he started compiling all the wisdom he had learned.

       As I read through the book I realized that his comments about love had deep spiritual meaning that made me think about the meaning of the ancient Greek word agapé.  So I tried substituting ‘agapé’ for ‘love’ in those quotes and discovered that the meaning became much more profound. So the following quotes are those substitutions.

"Only agapé is eternal. It does not disappear but grows continuously with time.  

         "Agape is a manifestation of the divine, for which the notion of time does not exist. Therefore, agape is manifested only now, in the present, in every instant. Agape is the most important thing of all. But one cannot share agape in the past or the future. One can share agape only now, at the present time and in the present moment.

"Spiritual agape for all is the state within which we can understand our own spirit.

"I want to ask for help from God. How can we talk to God? We can talk through agape. If we share agape with others with our actions and deeds— this will be our help from God, this is our greatest blessing.

"Every person’s responsibility is to nurture agape and bring it into this world.

"Through agape that is, by expanding one’s limits, a human being can become closer to God. Agape is not just a quality of God but also an ability in humans.

"Life without agape is useless. The blessings of joy are given to people only when they surrender to the godly agape that lives in their spirit.

"It is often said or thought that it is difficult to fulfill the law of God. This is not true. God does not ask you for anything other than to have agape for God and your neighbor, and agape is not difficult but joyful.

"We know in our hearts that we should strive for unification with all people. The more united we become, the better our lives will be. Likewise, the more we separate from each other, the worse our lives will be. We are united with all people and all creatures. Thus, we must treat as we would like to be treated not only other people but animals as well. Agape unites a person with all living creatures of the world, past, present, and future, and agape unites a person with God. As soon as you concentrate your life in the unification of agape with all living creatures and with God, then your life will change at once from tortures and suffering to happiness and blessings. Authentic teachers tell us that agape is the essence of life. It lives in our souls.

"Confront every obstacle that interferes with your ability to share agape.

"When we share agape with others, we unite with God, and with everything else living in this world. The improvement of this world lies in replacing violence with agape, and in understanding that the basis for a beautiful life is agape not the fear of violence.

  "Agape destroys death, brings sense to life, and turns unhappiness into happiness."

Agape in Richard Rohr’s teachings

       Recently a friend, who has been following my research about the ancient Greek version of spiritual love, recommended the teachings of Richard Rohr. So when I read his Essential Teachings on Love, I was very impressed. But I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that it took to almost the end of the book before he finally admitted that what he had been talking about was that special Greek word: agapé.

He could have avoided the need to spend so much time explaining over and over again that his use of the word ‘love’ was not meant the way most people use that word. The way to avoid the confusion would have been to start his book explaining agapé, then he could have made sure when teaching spiritual matters, to use ‘agapé’ instead of ‘love.’ 

Here’s what he actually did say about agapé: “For Paul, agapé (infinite or divine love) is the Great Love that is larger than you. It is the Great Self, the God Self. It’s not something you do. It’s something that you learn to live inside of even while you already participate in it. This ‘love’ is unconditional, always present. In Paul’s attempt to try to describe this agapé (in 1 Corinthians 13), he is not describing human friendship (philia), affection of parents for children (storge), or even passionate desire (eros); he is describing what it is like to live inside of an Infinite Source—where all the boundaries change, feelings are hardly helpful at all, and all the gaps are filled in from the other side. We have to take breathing lessons and develop larger lungs to live inside of such a new and open horizon. It does not come naturally until we draw upon it many times, and then it becomes the only deep and true natural instinct. You have then returned home and can even practice the other kinds of love with much greater ability and joy.”

You’d think that since he put in parenthesis that agapé was described in 1 Cor. 13, he would have at least used the word in his special study of 1 Cor. 13, but once again he merely added to the confusion by not using agapé. So here’s how some of his comments should have been if he had used agapé as was in the original Greek: “Paul makes me realize that I might give a wonderful sermon, but if I don’t do it out of God’s agapé for the people right in front of me, it won’t be as powerful as when I’m participating in divine agapé. Faith without agapé is not true faith. When Paul tries to describe the mystery of agapé, he finally has to resort to listing almost fifteen descriptions. He talks about agapé not as simply an isolated virtue, but as the basis for all virtue. It is the underlying, generous energy that gives itself away through those living inside of agapé. When you are inside this mystery of agapé, you operate differently, and it’s not in a guarded, protective way. Paul is touching upon something that’s infinite; it can therefore include all and has an endless ability to pour itself out. In agapé, you’re operating from this foundational sense of abundance, not from scarcity or fear. There is an inherent generosity of spirit, of smile, of gesture, of initial acceptance that you immediately sense from any person who is standing inside this Flow. The most powerful, most needed, and most essential teaching is always about agapé. Agapé is our foundation and our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As St. Paul famously says, ‘So faith, hope, and agapé remain, but the greatest of these is agapé’ (1 Cor. 13:13).”

But the most important change I need to make is in his comment about the most meaningful quote from the New Testament. So here’s what he should have written: 

“As Paul says so well in Romans, ‘We can be happy right now. Our trials produce endurance, and endurance produces a stubborn hope, a hope that will not disappoint us. It is God’s agapé poured forth in our heart.’ … At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the community is ‘God’s agapé that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 5:5).”

So I will now do him the favor of changing the following quotes as they should have appeared in his book. (In other words, I will now substitute ‘agapé’ for ‘love.’)

       “We cannot afford even inner disconnection from agapé. How we live in our hearts is our real truth. In Matthew 5:44, Jesus insists that we have agapé for our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in agapé, returning to agapé, trusting that agapé is the unceasing stream of reality.

       “Your core, your deepest DNA, is divine; it is the Spirit of Agapé implanted within you by your Creator at the first moment of your creation (see Romans 5:5, 8:11, 14–16). {from (p. 185) -- the emphasis is mine} 

       “Agapé is at the core of all beings.

       “Agapé is not just the basis on which we build everything, but it’s also the energy with which we proceed, and it’s the final goal toward which we tend.

      “The beginning and end of everything is agapé. Only inside of the mystery of agapé—mutual self-emptying and infilling—can we know God. If we stay outside of that mystery, we cannot know God.

      “If the blank white banner that the Risen Christ usually holds in Christian art should say anything, it should say: “Agapé will win!” Agapé is all that remains. Agapé and life are finally the same thing, and you know that for yourself once you have walked through death. Agapé has you. Agapé is you. Agapé alone, and your deep need for agapé, recognizes agapé everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear ‘that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd,’ says Paul (Romans 3:3). Agapé has finally overcome fear, and your house is being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there, but it took you a long time to find. ‘It is agapé alone that lasts’ (1 Corinthians 13:13).”

Humanity in Search of God

On the weekend of Martin Luther King’s birthday I read his sermon about forgiveness, and he said, “We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism.” Of course, he was thinking of the betrayals against the minority citizens by the majority-controlled power structures of America — at the same time that he was preaching about the crucifixion of Jesus. But what was there about paganism that he would refer to it here?

Why has it been so hard for the human race to rid itself of the vestiges of paganism? But let’s call it what it is in order to answer that question: it is polytheism (believing in lots of deities to be controlled). So what? Why be concerned about that? What Dr. King was referring to were the consequences suffered by the victims of polytheism. He went on to point out that, following the dictates of polytheism, people too often “bow before the altar of revenge.” He reminded people that they were following the traditions of polytheism when “their lives had been conditioned to seek redress in the time-honored tradition of retaliation.”

But what Dr. King was trying to explain to his congregation of suffering people was Jesus taught just the opposite. So was Jesus the great prophet against polytheism? Was he the great revolutionary, bringing down the social structures that polytheism had built up for thousands of years? What about this great prophet who was giving warning? And what happens when people who can’t give up polytheism try turning him into a deity so they wouldn’t have to heed his warning? 

Dr. King showed that he stood with that opposite teaching given by Jesus. Dr. King went on to say, “Generations will rise and fall; men will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation.” And that’s just one of the many beliefs of polytheism that keep fouling up the history of the human race.

When I was studying books about the hundreds of thousands of years of the history of religious beliefs, I learned about what modern theories claim is the long change from polytheism to monotheism. But there is also a development from mysticism to monotheism. Of course, such theories summarize the many versions of polytheism and the several versions of monotheism. And, strangely, most of the books completely ignored mysticism.

But I have my own theory of summary. I think monotheism can be summarized into 2 versions depending on how each developed: (1) from polytheism, (2) from mysticism. What happened in the case of polytheism is each religion merely claimed ‘their god’ was the only God, and so they developed a version of monotheism that was actually the continuation of polytheistic beliefs (like believing in revenge). 

Now, I found out that most books ignore mysticism because it is so completely different from polytheism that the books couldn’t figure out how to deal with it. But a truly modern form of monotheism can’t be explained without dealing with mysticism. You see, when modern people claim they have “lost their faith,” all that they have lost is polytheism. And I claim they should lose polytheism because it is a false belief system, and so any attempt to develop a form of monotheism from polytheism produces a false belief system.

So let’s answer the question, “Why has it been so hard for the human race to rid itself of the vestiges of polytheism.” The answer is most people wish the beliefs of polytheism were true.  They wish they could get an all-powerful deity to protect them. They wish they could make a deity change the laws of nature to benefit whatever they wanted in life. They wish they could take revenge against people they didn’t like. They wish a deity could divide Homo Sapiens into many races and in the process make their race superior over all the others. They wish a deity could control people’s sexual orientations and sexual activities. AND SO… these wishing people take all that and turn  it into a religion, and then their final wish is that such a religion is the only religion. (If you think that sounds like the Bible, you’re on to something.)

Mysticism is completely different. It requires meditation and work and complete dedication to God who cannot be controlled. And it requires people to love each other with a spiritual love called agapé that God has poured into everyone’s heart. Long ago, when a special sentence in Deuteronomy was translated into Greek, people were instructed to have such powerful devotion to God that all the worshiper’s heart, being, strength, and mind was required. That’s where that special Greek word appeared: agapé.

But most people don’t want that. So they keep on trying to make polytheism work out.