Defining Love and Agape for the Love-and-Science Research Program

by Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is a best-selling and award-winning author, having written or edited more than twenty-five books. A twelve-time Faculty Award-winning professor, Oord teaches at institutions around the globe, and is the director of the Center for Open and Relational Theology. To find out more about him or view more of his works, visit his website or the Center for Open and Relational Theology.

This article was originally published in Zygon Journal of Religion and Science, Volume 40, Issue 4, pp. 919-938. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005). (Publisher)


SUMMARY

Scholars of religion and science have generated remarkable scholarship in recent years in their explorations of love. Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines—whether natural, social, or religious—must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. I briefly introduce the emergence of the love‐and‐science research program and note that scholars have not done well defining what they mean by love. I suggest that the present surge in love scholarship will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might if love is not defined well. I provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing love‐and‐science research: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well‐being. To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases. Love is said to have many forms, but agape is the form to which the love‐and‐science literature most commonly refers. I comment briefly on the debates about how to best understand agape, noting sixteen different definitions proposed by major scholars. I identify weaknesses in many of them and then offer what I argue is a more adequate definition of agape as intentional response to promote well‐being when confronted by that which generates ill‐being. In short, agape repays evil with good. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions, I believe that the definitions I proffer can prove useful in furthering the love‐and‐science research program.


In 1974, the National Science Foundation awarded Ellen Berscheid and a colleague an $84,000 research grant to answer better the question, “What is love?” Berscheid had convinced the foundation to award the money in part by arguing, “We already understand the mating habits of the stickleback fish. It is time to turn to a new species.” The species she had in mind was human.

Berscheid’s research results may have gone unnoticed if not for the response of Wisconsin Senator, William Proxmire. “I’m strongly against this,” exclaimed Proxmire, “not only because no one - not even the National Science Foundation - can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I am sure that even if they spend 84 million or 84 billion they wouldn’t get an answer that anyone would believe. I’m also against it because I don’t want to know the answer!”

Proxmire presented Berscheid with the first of his “Golden Fleece” awards. Proxmire bestowed the award to this project, because he considered the study of love a supreme example of wasteful government spending. His advice to those who funded the grant was simple: “National Science Foundation, get out of the love racket!”

The love racket? It is difficult to think of a better use of money than the study of how well-being might be promoted. Is there any study potentially more worthwhile than the study of love?

A few came to Berscheid’s defense in 1974, including New York Times writer James Reston. He replied that funding grants to study love “would be the best investment of federal money since Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.” Apparently Reston’s retort fell on deaf ears, however, because financial resources for the study of love remained meager. Few scholars would assume the label “love researcher” for decades after the incident.

The idea that scientists ought to study love found perhaps its strongest 20th century voice in Pitirim A. Sorokin, the man many consider the father of modern sociology. Sorokin initially came to his convictions about the importance of love studies when jailed as a Russian political prisoner in the century’s early decades.

After escaping prison, Sorokin immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. He taught as sociologist at the University of Minnesota, and he eventually accepted a professorship at Harvard University. In 1949, Sorokin founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism with the financial help of Eli Lilly and the Lilly Endowment.

Sorokin’s major publishing contribution to love research was The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. In the volume’s preface he defends the importance of studying love:

At the present juncture of human history an increase in our knowledge of the grace of love has become the paramount need of humanity, and an intensive research in this field should take precedence over almost all other studies and research. . . . Considering the immensity of this task, [my] contribution is very modest in comparison with the total sum of the necessary studies. Since, however, the better brains are busy with other problems, including the invention of means of extermination of human beings . . . [and] many a religious leader is absorbed in the intertribal crusades against various enemies – under these conditions somebody, somehow, must devote himself to a study of the miracle of love ([1954] 2002, xii).

Throughout the book, Sorokin offers insights into the power of love, suggestions about how love research might be done, and uncannily accurate predictions about what would occur should society neglect the study of love.

Unfortunately, Sorokin’s research on love faded by the end of the 1950s as he retired from teaching and his research center ran out of funding. Although his own contribution to the study of love was exemplary, he inspired no immediate followers to carry his research mantle.[1] Organized research on love from a perspective that integrated science, religion, and philosophy all but vanished for almost five decades.

At the turn of the 21st century, organized research on love reemerged. With funding from the John E. Fetzer Institute and the John Templeton Foundation, biologists, ethicists, sociologists, theologians, psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, and medical care-givers conferred at an MIT conference titled, “Empathy, Altruism, and Agape.” Of course, a few scholars of various sorts had been researching and writing about love independently for decades prior to this conference. But for the first time scholars from widely diverse disciplines deliberated together on issues and challenges that arise when studying love.

One among many outcomes of the conference was the 2001 establishment of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, was named the institute’s president, and the John Templeton Foundation provided multi-million dollar funding.

President Post set several goals for the fledgling institute. He pledged 1) to fund high-level scientific research on altruism and unlimited love, 2) to sustain a dialogue between science and religion on love’s meaning and significance, 3) to disseminate true stories of love as it manifests in the helping behaviors of those whose lives are devoted to serving others, and 4) to enhance the practical manifestations of love across the full spectrum of human experience (Post 2003, vii).

The label “Unlimited Love” in the title of Post’s organization has become a source of curiosity for many. Post uses the phrase to refer to three related ideas. First and foremost, unlimited love refers to the promotion of well-being for all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner. “The ultimate expression of love is love for all humanity,” says Post, “and for all that is” (16).” Love should be expressed to those who are near and dear and to those who are enemies, as well as to the cognitively and physically impaired. Nothing exists beyond the limits of this love. Unlimited love refers, secondly, to a hidden reality or energy that underlies all that is good in the universe. Post sometimes calls this energy the “ultimate environment” (72). This environment provides integration, meaning, and purpose to life. Finally, unlimited love refers to divine benevolence. “Unlimited Love is God’s love for us all,” says Post. It is “the ultimate reality that underlies all that is, and which can transform our limited and broken lives into journeys of remarkable generous service” (11).

Research supported by the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, the Fetzer Institute, and various smaller programs has generated remarkable scholarship in recent years as scholars of religion and science explore love. I call this emergent field of scholarship the love-and-science symbiosis (Oord 2004b). Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines – whether natural, social, or religious – must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love.

The love research program involves the core belief that the world can, all things considered, be made better in some ways. In short, we ought to be about the work of promoting well-being. Individuals that express these loving actions consistently develop the kind of virtues that characterize what we call saints, sages, or mentors. We should imitate these individuals. Communities and societies that in varying ways support this love should be supported and replicated. In many and diverse ways, we must study how we might express love.

Defining Love

Virtually all people act – and often talk – as if they have some inkling about love. We speak about loving food, falling in love, loving God, feeling loved, and loving a type of music. We say that love hurts, love waits, love stinks, and love means never having to say you’re sorry. We use the word and its derivatives in a wide variety of ways. The fact that people talk of love in such varied ways prompted Sigmund Freud to note that “‘love’ is employed in language” in an “undifferentiated way” (1994, 49). Theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop concurs, saying that love is an ambiguous, multifarious “weasel-word” (1972, 9).

Although we talk about love often, few of us spell out what we really mean by the word. It may be that resources for love research have been scanty and researchers have generally been reluctant to pursue love studies in part because so few of us have given time and energy to provide an adequate definition of love. Why focus one’s scholarship upon or financially support something vague, bewildering, and unspecified?

Sometimes in reflective moments we wonder what love actually is. Is love a decision or a feeling? Is love blind or universally aware? Is it sexual, nonsexual, or asexual? Is love self-sacrificial or self-authenticating? Is it unconditional or object-specific? Is love best understood as apape, eros, philia, something else, or all of these and more? Is love something only God expresses, or are creatures capable of loving? In the final analysis, can we comprehend anything about love?

Judging by the literature, even scholars find defining love difficult. “Even those who write best about love,” noted Jules Toner, “devote very little space to considering what love is” (1968, 8). The dearth of definitions prompts theologian Edward Vacek to observe that “most philosophical and theological writing, when it speaks of ‘love,’ does not analyze what love is, but rather assumes it has an evident meaning” (1994, 34). Irving Singer argues that “the analysis of love has been neglected more than almost any other subject in philosophy” (1987, xi).

Many who consider love abandon any attempt to provide a normative definition. They rest content instead in simply trying to figure out what “love” means given the context, or language game, in which it is used. But this practice leaves central assumptions about the nature of love unacknowledged, which in turn leads to incoherence and further ambiguity. Confusion reigns.

At present, a small but growing number of scholars are offering hypotheses pertaining to love as it relates to their particular field of inquiry. For instance, neuroscientists suggest that specific brain regions must function if creatures are able to express love. Biologists explore the social interaction of species and suggest hypotheses about the altruistic or egoistic motivations and/or impetuses behind such interaction. Religious scholars in the theistic traditions suggest hypotheses and creeds about divine action as these pertain to love. And a few philosophers classify various types of love according to their motivations and/or objects.

If scholars and researchers fail to define love clearly, however, the present surge in the study of love will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might. When we are not clear about what love is, it becomes difficult to judge the value or contribution of any particular investigation of love. And if widely divergent definitions of love are employed, it is difficult to compare the theories and research of one discipline with another.

In light of this, I want to provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing research in the love-and-science symbiosis. My own definition of love is this:

To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being.

To say the same thing differently, loving actions are influenced by the previous actions of others, oneself, and God, and these actions are executed in the hope of encouraging flourishing.[2] To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases.

to act intentionally

The word “intentionally” refers to three aspects of love: deliberateness, motive, and self-determination. With regard to deliberateness, I mean that love involves a decisional aspect. This decisional aspect need not entail long and drawn out contemplation; we often express love based upon split-second decisions. But a degree of mentality accompanies action that we should regard as loving. The decisional aspect also does not mean that those who endeavor to love repeatedly step back to survey the wide range of possible alternatives available before deciding what the best action is to take. While lovers occasionally reflect on a wide array of options, they most often decide between only a few options of which they are aware. And one or more of those options may seem much more compelling than others.

This decisional aspect in my definition of love opposes the idea that a person loves when, by coincidence, a positive outcome results from that person’s actions. It opposes the idea that actions done without any judgment whatsoever, even when those actions result in good, should be regarded as loving. Of course, the good that results from unconscious or inadvertent activity is still valuable, but I reserve the label “loving action” for deeds purposefully done to promote well-being.

With regard to the motive aspect of acting intentionally, I mean that we should not say that a person has acted lovingly when a positive outcome results from actions that the actor meant for harm.[3] Motives matter, even though actions done with good motives can sometimes produce ill-being and actions done with evil motives can inadvertently produce well-being. In emphasizing the importance of motives, I am rejecting consequentialist ethical theories that judge actions as good or evil solely by their consequences. Love as I understand it assesses prospectively what actions promise to do rather than retrospectively what actions have actually yielded the greatest good.

Admittedly, being certain other’s motives may be impossible, and discerning one’s own true motives can sometimes be difficult. Only the ideal observer who knows all that can be known can accurately adjudicate motives. While more should be said about such an Observer, the weight of scientific research on love does not depend on our flawless discernment of motives. I am simply claiming that love requires good motives so as to remind us of what probably seems obvious: actions done with wrong motives should not be considered acts of love.

Third, I use the phrase “to act intentionally” to account for the self-determination inherent in love. To say it another way, love is meaningless if individuals are not free to choose one action rather than others. To be free is to make choices that are not entirely dependent upon external conditions that make it the case that one cannot do otherwise. Coercion, in the sense of unilateral determination, is antithetical to love.

Freedom does not, however, involve total spontaneity and completely random choice. Rather, concrete circumstances limit what is genuinely possible as options for action. Theologian Daniel Day Williams put it well when he says that “freedom is never absent from love, neither is it ever unconditional freedom” (1968, 116).[4] Freedom to love includes being impelled to choose between a limited number of possibilities that pertain to the chooser’s immediate context. I call this limited freedom.

To call love an action is not to claim that love is always an imposition or intervention into the affairs of others. Sometimes love entails acting in ways that do not greatly influence others. Nor is calling love an action a claim that acts of love are always demonstrable deeds perceptible to our five sense. Thinking and praying, for instance, can be acts of love. I use the word “act” to cover a broad range of activities, both seen and unseen.

In our brief exploration of science, we noted that many factors influence one’s perception of and reflection upon objects in the world. These factors affect but do not entirely determine intentional actions. For instance, one’s bodily characteristics, emotions, neural substrates, hormonal constitution, genetic framework, and other factors influence greatly but do not entirely control one’s intentional actions. Environmental dynamics beyond the lover’s own body, such as political, communal, and ecological relationships, also greatly shape intentional activity. The vast majority of recent scientific research strengthens the claim that the forms of love possible for any particular individual are partly dependent upon physical and emotional factors both within and beyond a lover’s body.

in sympathetic response to others (including God)

Love requires actual relations with others. Entirely isolated individuals – if such existed – could not love. To say that love involves sympathetic response is to presuppose that individuals are mutually influencing. It is to assume that others – whether those others are people, nonhumans, one’s own past actions, or God – have influenced the one who loves.

I use the word “sympathy” in my definition of love as a technical word to refer to the internal, constituting influence of one or more objects or individuals upon the loving actor. Many 20th century philosophers use the word in this way. Charles Hartshorne, for instance, explains what sympathy entails by saying that “the doctrine of sympathy ...is that all feeling feels other feeling, all reaction has an object which itself is reactive, [and] that we have objects at all is due entirely to the . . . immanent sociality of experience” (1937, 185). Alfred North Whitehead refers to sympathy as “prehension” and other philosophers, such as George Herbert Mead and Herbert Spencer, have called it “fellow feeling.” Because of this sympathy, or what Hartshorne calls “the social nature of reality,” to be decided in part by others is essential to what it means to be (1951, 527).

I should note that in some disciplines, what I have described as sympathy – feeling with – is instead called “empathy.” In these disciplines, sympathy carries overtones of pity and condescension rather than feeling the feelings of others. For instance, sociologists Pearl and Samuel Oliner suggest that sympathy “means pity or commiseration for another’s condition.” It implies looking at another person “at a distance.” According to the Oliners, “empathy means feeling with the other person” (1995, 32). By contrast and in congruence with my use of sympathy, social psychologist L. G. Wispe suggests that “sympathy refers to the heightened awareness of the suffering of another person,” while “empathy, on the other hand, refers to the attempt by one self-aware self to comprehend unjudgementally the positive and negative experiences of another self.” In sum, says Wispe, “In empathy we substitute ourselves for others. In sympathy, we substitute others for ourselves” (1986, 318).

My use of sympathy is not meant to be equated with looking at the other from afar in this way. Rather, to sympathize is to be internally influenced by the other such that one’s own experience is partially constituted by the one perceived. One’s sympathetic response to others entails reaction to what has occurred in both the immediate and distant past. The one who loves is internally related to what has happened in the past, as past actions influence that individual’s moment-by-moment identity as a lover. The actions of those in the present will influence those who arise in the future. The interdependence of sympathy – in this sense of the word – is essential to what it means to love.[5]

Just as one’s intentional actions are influenced by many factors, many factors also influence the nature of one’s sympathetic response. Our sympathies to our environment are partly dependent upon the make-up of our brains, bodies, and causes beyond ourselves. Just as bodily and environmental greatly shape our intentions, these same factors also greatly shape our sympathetic responses. This shaping is discussed frequently in contemporary discussions emotions, biological constraints, and affect.

An important feature of the phrase “in sympathetic response to others (including God)” is the parenthetical acknowledgement of divine influence. An explanation of the causal role that God plays requires more space than this essay allows. At this point, I simply note that I consider God an actual, causal agent to whose non-coercive inspiration – or “call” – creatures respond appropriately when expressing love (Stone & Oord, ch. 9).

The phrases of my love definition we have explored thus far – “to act intentionally” and “in sympathetic response” – reflect the two dominant ways philosophers, theologians, scientists, and poets throughout history have thought about the nature of love. Robert Hazo, in his classic study, The Idea of Love, refers to these two ways “tendency” and “judgment.”

Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as tendency identify love with feeling or emotion. They use words like “instinct” and “impulse” when referring to love. Lovers might say that they “fell in love,” that they feel as though they have been “overwhelmed by love,” or that some object or person is “just so lovable.” Neurologist Antonio Damasio argues eloquently for this understanding of love today, and he follows a line of argumentation that philosopher Baruch Spinoza proposed centuries ago (2003).

Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as judgment typically use the words “will,” “choice,” or “cognition” when talking about love. Love is a decision, they say, and we must choose to love no matter what emotions we feel. Reflecting the idea that love is a matter of the will, psychologists Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier title their best-selling book, Love is a Choice. They argue that one must choose to break free from addictive or unhealthy co-dependent relationships if they are to love as they ought (1996).

After examining a wide variety of philosophical, theological, and scientific literature, Robert Hazo concludes that “the division between the sphere or order of tendency and the sphere or order of judgment is the most basic in the literature.” In fact, he argues, “All of the critical notions and terms we use in dealing with theories of love fall under one or the other of these two headings” (1967, 11).

My own definition of love is apparently unlike the love theories and definitions with which Hazo deals. I define love as necessarily involving both spheres: tendential and judgmental or, as I put it, sympathetic and intentional. Love has both a passive and an active element.

As I see it, sympathetic feeling logically precedes decisional intentionality. But both sympathy and intentionality are present in a single responsive act of love. Martha Nussbaum gets at this when she argues that emotions are essential elements of human intelligence and choice when humans love (2001). I argue that an act of love logically begins with an individual’s feeling of or being influenced by past actualities and the relevant possibilities arising from that past. The love-act is consummated, however, by the lover’s decision about exactly how that past will be appropriated in light of expected contribution to the future.[6] My definition is consonant with Stephen Post’s proposal: “An even balance or co-primacy between emotion and reason is the fitting alternative to those who would diminish the importance of either capacity” (2003, 67). In sum, an act of love requires both sympathy and intentionality.

to promote well-being

The emphasis upon promoting well-being requires an explanation of what well-being entails. The phrase itself is related to health, happiness, wholeness, and flourishing. Aristotle called it eudaimonia. Theistic traditions have sometimes used the word “blessedness” when speaking of well-being. Moral philosopher James Griffin succinctly defines well-being as “the level to which basic needs are met” (1986, 42).

Promoting well-being involves enhancing mental and physical aspects. It may involve acting to attain sufficient food, clean air and water, adequate clothing and living conditions, personal security, opportunity for intellectual development, the satisfaction of being cared for and sense of belonging, diversity of life-forms and cultural expressions, appropriate level of leisure and entertainment, economic stability, a feeling of worth, medical soundness and physical fitness, deep personal relationships, social and political harmony, and the opportunity to develop spiritual/religious sensibilities and practices. Acting responsively to increase well-being may involve acting in ways that develop the actor into a person with virtuous dispositions, habits, and character.

To act for well-being is act to increase flourishing in at least one but often many of these dimensions of existence. Love takes into account, to varying degrees, the life of the individual, local community, and global community. And so as far as they apply, acting to promote well-being includes considering the flourishing of nonhuman organisms and ecological systems. It even includes increasing God’s own happiness. In all of this, an act of love maximizes well-being.

Part of the reason that defining love can be so difficult is that at least three divergent linguistic traditions influence our love vocabulary. I call these 1) the proper/improper tradition, 2) the mutuality tradition, and 3) the hesed (or chesed) tradition.

What I call the “proper/improper love” linguistic tradition, identified initially with the ancient Greeks, has primarily affected the way that Westerners use the word “love.” We see its influence in the earliest Western philosophers, the Christian New Testament, the Qu’ran, and in common language use. What is distinctive about the proper/improper linguistic tradition is that in it the word “love” describes any purposive action whatsoever. Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, who was greatly influenced by Aristotle’s work, expresses the proper/improper tradition’s understanding of love well when he argues that “every agent, whatever it be, does every action from love of some kind” (1981, Part I-II, Q. 28, Art. 6). We see it in Augustine’s famous directive: “Love, but see to it what you love” (1961, 90:31:5). In short, merely to act intentionally, according to this linguistic tradition, is to love.

When someone from the proper/improper tradition speaks of love, a qualifier of some sort is typically employed. An adjective such as “proper” and “improper,” “perfect” and “imperfect,” “appropriate” and “inappropriate,” and “fitting” and “unfitting” precedes the word “love.” Saints love properly; sinners love improperly. “Love” requires a qualifier if laden with moral connotations, because by itself love can refer to action that is either good or evil.

We often find the second linguistic tradition, the mutuality one, in the philosophies of the East, and it is more evident in the West’s amorous literature. According to the mutuality tradition, to love is to engage in personal interaction. The reciprocity and mutuality inherent in such relationships is itself love. For instance, contemporary theologian Vincent Brummer calls love “a reciprocal relation,” and he claims that love “must by its very nature be a relationship of free mutual give and take” (1993, 161-62). Wherever we see reciprocal relationships, says the mutuality tradition, love is present. To be related is to love.

I find unhelpful the way “love” is used in both the mutuality and the proper/improper linguistic traditions. While the mutuality tradition rightly emphasizes the importance of relationships, few of us – myself included – would describe all relationships as loving. Some relationships generate evil. While the proper/improper tradition rightly emphasizes the idea that love is an action, it strikes most people – myself included – as odd to talk of “improper love,” “inappropriate love,” “inauthentic love,” or even, as would be justified in the proper/improper tradition, “evil love.” While we can makes some sense out of what a speaker means when using “love” in these ways, these uses tend to confuse.

The phrase in my love definition “to promote well-being” places my understanding of how we best use the word “love” in the third linguistic tradition, what I call the hesed tradition. The word hesed derives from Judaism, and we find it often translated in Hebrew scriptures as “steadfast love.” In this linguistic tradition, the word “love” is reserved for descriptions of ideal ethical actions or what the Hebrew authors called “righteousness.” Such loving actions promote well-being. When I use the word “love,” therefore, I follow the practice of the hesed tradition and mean action that engenders well-being.

To speak of well-being is to implicate many versions of meta-ethics and moral theory. As is appropriate, ethicists, theologians, and moral philosophers debate the value of a variety of ethical theories when deciding how to best understand morality and the pursuit of well-being. I mean for my definition of love to fit comfortably within most of the dominant meta-ethical frameworks. Advocates of these differing theories may find my definition helpful even as they employ it in differing ways. For instance, advocates of feminist ethics will undoubtedly appreciate the central role of relational sympathy/empathy in my definition of love. Advocates of divine command ethics may find my reference to divine action helpful as they consider love as response to God’s will.[7] Those who propose various ethics of care theories should find helpful my emphasis upon relationality and response for love. Advocates of meta-ethical theories such as natural law ethics, virtue ethics, and Kantianism, among others, may find this definition helpful in various ways for their own deliberations.

To be both adequate to a wide range of specific activities that should rightly be regarded as loving and also fruitful for a wide variety of meta-ethical theories, an acceptable definition of love must be sufficiently abstract. To say it another way, a definition that seeks to be relevant to a comprehensive set of actions and theories requires abstractness. A helpful abstraction should not be so general as to allow for any action or theory. But it must be able to account for those actions that after careful reflection, we justifiably deem loving while excluding those actions that we justifiably deem unloving.

Defining Agape

The fifteenth-century French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucould wisely said, “There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.” Today we might say that love has millions, billions, or even trillions of versions. Love is pluralistic in the sense that many actions, depending on their motives and circumstances, can be acts of love. In thinking about how best to understand love in light of the recent interest in scientific research on the subject, it seems wise to consider love’s “versions.” It has become increasingly common to place the versions of love under three general forms: agape, eros, and philia.[8] I want to look closely at one of these versions: agape.

By far, agape is the form of love to which the love-and-science symbiosis literature most commonly refers. Philip Hefner, for instance, argues that “the theological elaboration of agape should not shy away from identifying it with altruism,” which means in part that “the most pressing question that arises in conversation with the sciences is . . . Can we entertain the hypothesis that altruistic love is rooted in the fundamental nature of reality, including the reality we call nature?” (1993, 208-09) Stephen Post also often employs the word agape as he oversees scientific and religions investigations sponsored by the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love.

Those who use the word agape believe it entails meanings and connotations beyond what the simple word “love” entails. Many apparently adopt agape as a way to distinguish their theories of love from romantic or popular understandings. Some adopt agape because it entails for them special reference to divine action. And scholars frequently use agape to distinguish some actions from others that might also promote well-being.

Widespread contemporary use of agape should be credited to the influential writings of theologian Anders Nygren, although the word itself dates to antiquity. Nygren’s mid-twentieth-century book, Agape and Eros, set off wide-ranging debate in its time. That debate placed the word at the center of attention in love scholarship. Nygren “so effectively posed issues about love,” ethicist Gene Outka claimed more than thirty years ago, “that they have had a prominence in theology and ethics they never had before. . . . Thus, whatever the reader may think of it, one may justifiably regard his work as the beginning of the modern treatment of the subject” (1972, 1). More recently, Edward Collins Vacek acknowledges that Nygren’s “insights are splendid, his mistakes are instructive, and his views are still very much alive” (1994, 159). Colin Grant, a contemporary advocate of Nygren’s general agape scheme, calls Nygren’s altruistic agape “indispensable,” saying that he “deserves to be heard clearly in his insistence on the distinctively theological significance of agape” (1996, 21).

Two features of Nygren’s understanding of agape greatly influence both the scholarly and popular notion of agape love. The first feature is his complex theological and philosophical understandings of agape. According to him, agape is rightly understood as

  • unconditioned, spontaneous, groundless, or unmotivated
  • indifferent to, but creative of, value
  • directed toward sinners
  • the sole initiator of creaturely fellowship with God
  • in opposition to all that can be called self-love
  • sacrificial giving to others
  • and expressed only by God (1957 [1930], 27-240).

Despite the widespread influence of Nygren’s agape assertions, critics have rejected, for one reason or another, every one of his major claims. For instance, some reject his argument that agape is opposed to all that can be called self-love. Others reject Nygren’s understanding of agape because if genuine love only entails sacrificial giving, Christians cannot act lovingly when receiving gifts from others. Others note that his understanding of agape as exclusively divine love implies some form of predestination. Nygren’s emphasis upon agape as the only appropriate Christian love, say many critics, neglects legitimate Christian philia and Christian eros.

Those familiar with the agape debate are typically aware of these and similar criticisms. They are typically less familiar with the criticisms of the second feature of Nygren’s concept of agape that influences love scholarship. That feature is Nygren’s claim that agape is the distinctively Christian understanding of love, because, as he believes, the Bible proposes a relatively unique and uniform understanding of agape.

An examination of Christian scripture reveals that, contrary to Nygren’s argument, biblical authors use the word agape to convey a wide variety and sometimes contradictory set of meanings. For instance, biblical writers sometimes use agape to refer to ideal ethical action, and other times biblical authors use agape to refer to sinful action.[9] Sometimes biblical authors use agape to talk about unconditional love and other times about conditioned, response-dependent love.[10] We find biblical authors using agape to talk about non-self-sacrificial love. Even the Apostle Paul – whom Nygren believes most supports his own agape theories – employs agape to talk about self-love.[11]

Because the context suggests it, biblical scholars translate agape in ways that we typically think the word eros or philia would be translated. For instance, agape is translated in ways that connote eros; it is rendered “to long for,” “to prefer,” “to desire,” “to prize,” “to value,” and “to be fond of.”[12] Sometimes agape is used to convey meanings traditionally assigned philia and, in many contexts, the two words seem interchangeable.[13] In sum, the Bible is far from uniform in its understanding of agape. Neither the narrow claim that agape possesses a single meaning in the Bible nor the broader claim that one meaning of agape predominates in Christian Scripture find textual support. To be true to Christian Scripture, we should not talk about the biblical understanding of agape.

Despite the objections that Nygren’s critics raise and despite the diverse meanings of agape in Christian Scripture, many contemporary scholars – excluding biblical researchers -- consider this love word to have privileged status or unique meaning. Those aligned with the Christian tradition are especially prone to afford agape such high honor. The meanings that scholars afford agape, however, vary greatly. Here are examples of this great variety:

Agape is . . .

to act “for the sake of the beloved” (Vacek 1993, 157).[14]

“equal regard” or “the attribution to everyone alike of an irreducible worth and dignity” (Outka 1972, 9 & 260).

self-sacrifice (Niebuhr 1964, 82).

“God giving himself” or “divine bestowal” (Singer 1987, 269).

“the principle of benevolence, that is, of doing good” (Frankena 1988, 44).

“the overriding, unconditional claim of God’s utterly gracious yet utterly demanding rule of righteous love” (Robinson 1964, 12).

“x loves y independently of y’s merit, and any merit of y’s that plays a role in x’s love is value that x attributes to or creates in y as a result of x’s love” (Soble 1989, xxiv).

“understanding, redeeming good will for all men” (King 1986, 19).

“simple yet profound recognition of the worthiness of and goodness in persons” (Brady 2003, 268).

“self-giving” or “a person’s spending himself freely and carelessly for the other person” (Fiddes 1988, 170).

“unconditional willing of the good” (Jackson 1999, 15).[15]

“identification with the neighbor and meeting his needs” (Williams 1968, 262).

“self-less altruism” (Martin 1996, 14).

“letting-be” (Macquarrie 1977, 349).

“ordinary human affection and compassion” (Cupitt 1988, 57).

“[a representation of] the divine extravagance of giving that does not take the self into account” (Grant 2001, 188).

The foregoing illustrates well Gene Outka’s observation that “the meaning ascribed in the literature to love, in general, and to agape, in particular, is often characterized by both variance and ambiguity” (1972, 257-58). Robert Adams notes the diverse understandings of agape that have been offered, and concludes that “agape is a blank canvas on which one can paint whatever ideal of Christian love one favors” (1999, 136). I suggest that the reasons for this variance and ambiguity have a great deal to do with the theological, ethical, anthropological, scientific, and metaphysical commitments of those who use agape to identify something unique about one form of love compared with others.

So is the word agape redeemable? Should we toss agape in the garbage pile of over-used and ambiguous words?

Given that Scripture offers no uniform meaning of agape and scholars of love offer divergent definitions, one might be tempted to pass over the word altogether in an attempt to step beyond the variance and discord. This is the same temptation, however, to which many have fallen when deciding to avoid using the even more general word, “love.” Yet love remains a uniquely powerful word. Despite the divergent meanings of agape that have been identified, the word agape carries similiarly significant rhetorical weight. It seems unwise to toss aside the great “cash value” that the word has accumulated upon finding that it has been defined variously.

Those who employ the word agape – and I count myself among them – seem obligated, however, to be careful about their use of the word. They should (1) define clearly what they mean by agape and then employ that meaning consistently, (2) show how this meaning differs from the meanings of other love forms (e.g., philia, eros) and, perhaps most importantly, (3) show how their definition of agape fits with and does not contradict their definition of love in general.

I find that all the definitions of agape I listed above have merit, but, for one reason or another, few are finally adequate. Many are not adequate because they add to the confusion by failing to meet the three obligations I have suggested.

Some definitions of agape are less adequate, because they make it difficult for us to see how these definitions allow for other versions of love to really be loves. For instance, some equate agape with doing what is good or promoting the good. I also believe that agape should be understood as promoting good. But when agape is equated with acting for the good, this implies that the other forms of love (philia, eros, etc.) are not actions that promote good. In which case, these other words aren’t forms of love – at least not love as I have defined it and as it is usually understood.[16]

Some definitions of agape are less adequate, because they equate this love form with self-sacrifice or altruism. In fact, this is the most common use of agape in the love-and-science research. There are a host of problems with this equivalence, however. First, if two persons tried always to act self-sacrificially toward one another, neither could act self-sacrificially. “In a completely self-sacrificing community,” argues Edward Vacek, “we would want to give to and not receive from persons who would want to give to and nor receive from us” (1993, 186). Neil Cooper illustrates this problem by imagining two altruists in the desert who find a cup of water. The two pass the cup back and forth, each insisting that the other drink first, until the water evaporates and both die of thirst (1981, 274). Love sometimes eschews altruism. Just as we want others to satisfy themselves by receiving our gifts, so we ought also to receive gifts given to us. If the satisfaction that comes from such give-and-take relations is thwarted because all parties insisting on acting altruistically, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s retort seems appropriate: “too much altruism is a bore” (1953, 96).

Second, equating agape with self-sacrifice or altruism denies what seems obvious: sometimes we must not sacrifice ourselves so that in the long run we can provide more benefits to others. Love sometimes requires self-realization – a form of self affirmation. In addition, feminists in many disciplines have brought to our awareness the fact that love sometimes demands that the individual eschew self-sacrifice and instead act in self-authenticating ways – for the good of the individual and the whole.[17] Becoming a doormat on whom others can walk, for instance, is an enabling act that fails to promote well-being.

Third, the idea that a loving person always engages in self-sacrifice may actually keep those at the margins or bottom of society from experiencing justice. If the poor and oppressed were always to act self-sacrificially, they would likely remain in their impoverished and unjust state of existence. To think that all people, even the poorest of the poor, ought always to be acting self-sacrificially is to fall victim to what Arthur McGill calls “the illusion of perpetual affluence” (1987, 89). If agape is a form of love, it must be an action that promotes rather than prevents the attainment of well-being. While I believe that self-sacrificial, self-subordinating, or altruistic action can be and often are expressions of love, these actions can also be actions that generate overall ill-being. Agape, if it is to be understood as a form of love, does not generate overall ill-being.

Still others place a great deal of emphasis upon agape as having some unique identification with God, and this emphasis typically results in a less than adequate definition of agape. Some argue that only God can express agape. Others contend that agape is the recognition that God gives love to the world. The first argument places into jeopardy the biblical claim that God wants us to love God, others, and ourselves. How can we love with agape if only God can express this type of love? The second argument – that agape should be defined as God’s bestowal of love upon creatures – suggests that the other forms of love (philia, eros, etc.) are not the loves God gives or expresses. According to the Christian Scriptures, however, God both inspires creatures to love with philia and eros, and God expresses these forms of love for creation.

While many of the agape definitions I have listed fail to meet the three obligations that I suggest as necessary for an adequate definition, I intend for my own definition of agape to meet my own demands. Before looking at my own definition, however, I should note that I do not claim that my definition of agape is the only one that could possibly be adequate. Other definitions could meet the three obligations I suggested earlier. I should also note that although I believe my definition fits well with some ways biblical authors employ the word agape and that my definition reflects important themes in Christian ethics, I do not claim that my definition is the biblical or the Christian understanding of agape.

Having made these qualifications, I offer my definition. I define agape as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being when responding to acts or structures of existence that promote ill-being. Or, to put it more concisely,

agape is intentional response to promote well-being when confronted by that which generates ill-being.

As I define it, agape repays evil with good, to use a phrase from Christian scripture. When we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, we express agape. In an effort to promote well-being, agape turns the other cheek. Agape acts to promote well-being in spite of the ill-being or evil (whether directed toward the lover or the larger society) that it confronts.

Acts that rightfully bear the label agape can range from those we deem exceptional to those we consider mundane. Many who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Nazi Holocaust expressed agape. They acted intentionally in response to others to promote well-being when confronted with the ill-being generated by Nazi ideals, structures, and activity. A mother who puts a band-aid on her child’s paper-cut also responds intentionally to promote well-being when confronted by her offspring’s unnecessary pain. The teacher who refuses to retaliate when a student unjustly accuses her is also likely expressing agape.

As soon as we offer concrete examples, of course, we wonder about the intentions of the ones deemed loving. These questions are legitimate, because, as I pointed out when explaining what I meant by love, motives matter. Instead of responding intentionally to promote well-being, perhaps the rescuers of Jews were motivated more by reputational gain or wished to avoid divine wrath. Perhaps the mother responding with aid merely wants her child healthy so that her genetic lineage will continue. Perhaps the teacher refuses to retaliate because she relishes being the abused authority figure. While these are all possible motives, we typically judge on a case-by-case basis, given the information we have, what a person’s motives might be. Unless one is prepared to accept the claim that no one acts to promote well-being when confronted by ill-being, it seems quite plausible that at least some if not most rescuers, mothers, and teachers in the situations noted above expressed agape. Those acting in these ways probably have a good idea what their motives are, and we onlookers can come to plausible judgments given a reasonable amount of observational data.

Finally, I believe that my definition fulfills the obligations necessary for an adequate notion of agape. First, I offer what I hope is a reasonably clear definition of agape. There are surely additional questions to resolve (e.g., What motivates one to express agape, or is it unmotivated? What role, if any, does God play in expressing or inspiring agape? What kind of person expresses agape?). But that agape promotes well-being in response to that which generates ill-being should be a reasonably clear definition of what I believe is the best understanding of agape.

Second, it would become clearer in an examination of philia and eros if space allowed it, what makes agape unique is its response to ill-being. The other forms of love are not responses to ill-being; they are intentional responses to something else. I would define eros, for instance, as intentional response to promote well-being when affirming what is valuable. And philia might best be defined as intentional response to promote well-being when acting to establish deeper levels of cooperation. Unfortunately, love-and-science researchers have not often employed these other love words in their explorations.

In meeting the third obligation, agape is a form of love. Agape is one way in which we might respond intentionally to others (including God) to promote overall well-being. Agape is a form of love, not love itself. Eros and philia, as I would define them, are other ways in which we might respond intentionally to promote well-being.

Conclusion

I believe that my definition of love – to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being – can provide the practical benefit and intellectual satisfaction needed of a definition helpful for the love-and-science research program. And defining agape as intentional response that promotes well-being when confronted by that which generates can be helpful for those who affirm that agape is a particular form of love. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions and we can express love powerfully without having a well-conceived definitions of love, my hope is that these definitions be useful in furthering research programs in the love-and-science symbiosis.

References

Adams, Robert Merrihew. 1999. Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aquinas, Thomas. 1981. Summa Theologica. Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics.

Augustine. 1961. Commentaries on the Psalms. Paulist.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1953. Letters and Papers from Prison. London: Collins.

Brady, Bernard, V. 2003. Christian Love: How Christians Through the Ages Have Understood Love. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Brummer, Vincent. 1993. The Model of Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cooper, Neil. 1981. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. Oxford: Clarendon.

Cupitt, Don. 1988. The New Christian Ethics. London: SCM.

Damasio, Antonio. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando: Harcourt.

Fiddes, Paul. 1988. The Creative Suffering of God. Oxford: Clarendon.

Frankena, William K. 1988. Ethics. Pearson Education.

Freud, Sigmund. 1994. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Random House.

Grant, Colin. 2001. Altruism and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

________. 1996. “For the Love of God: Agape.” Journal of Religion Ethics. 24.1 (Spring).

Griffin, James. 1986. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hartshorne, Charles. 1937. Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith.

________. 1951. “Whitehead’s Idea of God.” The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp. 2nd ed. New York: Tudor.

Hazo, Robert, G. 1967. The Idea of Love. New York: Praeger.

Hefner, Philip. 1993. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Hemfelt, Robert, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier. 1996. Love is a Choice: Breaking the Cycle of Addictive Relationships. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Jackson, Timothy. 1999. Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

________. 2003. The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Johnson, Barry. 1995. Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography. Lawrence, Ks.: University of Press of Kansas.

King, Martin Luther Jr. 1986. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. James Washington. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

Macquarrie, John. 1977. Principles of Christian Theology. 2nd ed. New York: Scribner’s.

Martin, Mike W. 1996. Love’s Virtues. Lawrence, Ks.: University Press of Kansas.

McGill, Arthur C. 1987. Death and Life: An American Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Moffatt, James. 1929. Love in the New Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1964. The Nature and Destiny of Man. vol. 2. New York: Scribner’s.

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Nygren, Anders. [1930] 1957. Agape and Eros. tr. Philip S. Watson. New York: Harper and Row.

Oliner, Pearl M. 1995 Toward a Caring Society: Ideas in Action. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Oord, Thomas Jay. 2004a. “Love, Morals, and Relations in Evolutionary Theory,” in Evolutionary Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective. Philip Clayton and Jeffrey Schloss, eds. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.

________. 2004b. Love and Science: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

________. 2003. “Divine Love.” In Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays. Thomas Jay

Oord, ed. Kansas City: Beacon Hill.

Outka, Gene. 1972. Agape: An Ethical Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Post, Stephen G. 2003. Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion and Service. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

Robinson, John A. T. 1964. Christian Morals Today. London: SCM.

Saiving, Valerie. 1960. “The Human Situation: A Feminine View.” Journal of Religion. 40: 100- 12.

Singer, Irving. 1987. The Nature of Love, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Soble, Alan. 1989. Agape, Eros, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love. New York: Paragon.

Sorokin, Pitirim. [1954] 2002. The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

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Vacek, Edward Collins. 1994. Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

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Williams, Daniel Day. 1968. The Spirit and Forms of Love. New York: Harper and Row.

Wispe, L. G. 1986. “The Distinction between Sympathy and Empathy.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 50.

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Notes

  1. In his authoritative biography of Pitirim Sorokin, Barry Johnson tells of an anonymous note found in the records kept by Eli Lilly. The note, apparently written by Lilly, reads: “One of constantly interesting things about Sorokin is that he is an intellectual genius, who has arrived at truth about love and altruism via this route and has wound up his life a bitter old man with no young disciples. His interpreters are all old men, and as he once told me, ‘Sorokin will be rediscovered a 100 years hence—‘” (Johnson 1995, 268).

  2. Stephen Post provides this definition: “The essence of love is to affectively affirm as well as to unselfishly delight in the well-being of others, and to engage in acts of care and service on their behalf; unlimited love extends this love to all others without exception, in an enduring and constant way. Widely considered the highest form of virtue, unlimited love is often deemed a Creative Presence underlying and integral to all of reality: participation in unlimited love constitutes the fullest experience of spirituality. Unlimited love may result in new relationships, and deep community may emerge around helping behavior, but this is secondary. Even if connections and relations do not emerge, love endures” (2003, vii.). Post’s definition provides helpful language and amplification. My own definition is more concise – although it shares many similarities with Post’s.

  3. It also makes little sense to say that someone loves if their motives are neutral.

  4. Williams was influenced by Alfred North Whitehead who argued, “there is no such fact as absolute freedom; every actual entity possesses only such freedom as is inherent in the primary phase ‘given’ by its standpoint of relativity to its actual universe. Freedom, givenness, potentiality, are notions which presuppose each other and limit each other” ([1929] 1978, 133).

  5. I find Alfred North Whitehead’s thought on internal and external relations most helpful when proposing a theory of relatedness. “Every actual entity is what it is and is with its definite status in the universe,” says Whitehead, because “its internal relations to other actual entities” shape it ([1929] 1978, 59). Each experiential organism begins with an openness to the past, and this open window makes possible the organism’s internal relations. Once the influence from the past has entered in, the window closes. Whitehead likes to explain external relations as an organism’s influence upon future others by saying that “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’” (22). Just as each organism -- through its internal relations -- drew upon its relations with others as it came into existence, each organism subsequently becomes datum for future organisms as they come into being. See also my own work on the importance of internal and external relations (Oord, 2004a).

  6. My speculations here have been influenced by Alfred North Whitehead and other process philosophers and theologians, such as John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin.

  7. For a discussion of God’s love, see Oord 2003.

  8. There are other words in the Greek language that are sometimes translated “love,” but I, like most scholars, do not consider them to have archetypal status. Instead, they are expressions of one or more of the three archetypes I list. Greek words sometimes translated “love” also include storge, epithemia, nomos, and others. Storge is not used in Christian Scripture except in the negative astorgos or when the philia prefix is added. My definition of philia is intended to incorporate subtle differences storge might denote. I subsume under eros the Greek love word epithemia, or what Paul Tillich calls “the normal drive towards vital self-fulfillment” (1963, 25, see also 91-114). Nomos, as obedience to the law, is best interpreted as righteous philia, because obedience to the law was required for right relationship within the Jewish community. Other forms of love, such as romantic love, I believe are best understood as derivative forms of the three archetypes.

  9. Although Nygren clams that Paul “knows nothing of any distinction between true and false agape”(156), Paul does speak of false agape when he speaks of Demas, who deserted him because he was “in love (agape) with this present world” (2 Tim. 4:10). Paul implies that false agape is possible when he twice urges his readers to have sincere agape (Rm. 12:9; 2 Cor. 8:8) and also urges them to express genuine agape (2 Cor. 6:6). Writings attributed to other authors and biblical figures also refer to inappropriate agape. Examples include love of darkness (Jn. 3:19), prestige (Lk. 11:43; Jn. 12:43), wages of unrighteousness (2 Pt. 2:15), and the world (1 Jn. 2:15; 2 Tm. 4:10).

  10. Nygren suggests that at least Paul reserves use agape to talk about unconditional love when he says “no words are too strong for [Paul] to use in order to press home [agape’s] spontaneous and unmotivated character” (155). However, Paul’s admonition to give cheerfully grows out of his reasoning that God agape loves those who do so (2 Cor. 9:7). In other words, Paul claims that God’s love is motivated by the activity of humans, and this is not unconditional love.

  11. Nygren says that a feature “especially characteristic of the Pauline idea of agape” is its “opposition to all that can be called “self-love” (130). He then quotes Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:5: “Love seeketh not its own.” Paul, however, is not opposed to a healthy self-love and even uses the word “agape” to speak of it. He commands those in Ephesus, for instance, to agape their own bodies (Eph. 5:28, 33).

  12. See the use of agape in the following biblical passages: 2 Tm. 4:8, 2 Tm. 4:10, Jn. 3:19 and 12:43, Hb. 1:9, Rv. 12:11, and Lk. 7:5.

  13. On this, see Moffatt 1929, 51-56.

  14. Vacek writes elsewhere, “Agape is directed to the beloved’s full value for the beloved’s own sake” (179).

  15. Jackson develops this explanation and refers to what he calls “strong agape” in Love Disconsoled (1999, ch. 5). He summarizes what he means by strong agape in his introduction to his book, The Priority of Love (2003). Jackson writes in the latter book that “I defend a position I call ‘strong agape.’ . . . When viewed interpersonally, as the conversion of human relations wrought by the grace of God, agape involves three features: (1) unconditional willing of the good of the other, (2) equal regard for the well-being of the other, and (3) passionate service open to self-sacrifice for the sake of the other” (2003, 10).

  16. Of course, one might respond to my criticism and say that love is best defined simply as acting (proper/improper tradition) or being in relation (mutuality tradition). What makes agape unique, they might contend, is that agape promotes what is good. But as I argued, this use of “love” is counter-intuitive and contributes to the general confusion pertaining to the meaning of love. When we say that Mother Theresa expressed love, we don’t typically mean that she simply acted or was related to someone else. We mean that what she did was good; her actions promoted well-being. And to say that only agape promotes good is to disparage other forms of action – like friendship (philia) – that also promote good.

  17. One of the first to make this claim was Valerie Saiving, and her article is perhaps the most cited on this point (1960, 100-12).