Agape (Part I)

Agape ( /ˈæɡəpiː/[1] or /əˈɡɑːpeɪ/; Classical Greek: ἀγάπη, agápē; Modern Greek: αγάπη IPA: [aˈɣapi])  Thomas Jay Oord has defined agape as: "an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being."

Love. So much is said and done in Its name.  Love's gesture is frequently quite counter to that which the receiver expects or knows by its name.

The term ‘agape’ is a new word to me. In  my reading and listening to how others have perceived it, it broadens the scope and deepens my understanding of the word ‘love’.  The word  becomes hard to understand when it is diminished by overuse or misuse. Is there anything bigger than Love?  Because this may be so, this post is but a Part I discourse on the subject.

La Verne Shelton* writes about how she understands agape as follows:

"Each of the three “loves”--familial love (storge), the love of friendship (filia), and romantic love or eros, offer opportunities, as we spread them around, and allow love to grow quite deep in one or two places, to live into our reason for existence: to love one another as each of us is loved by that which is Divine.  Yes, we exist to love each other in these senses.  But every such emotion is an expression of the love that is a seed within us: the love that is the divine within.  Divine love, agape, is not a feeling, but often accompanies storge, eros, or filia at their best.  It is an intention that arises out of benevolence and compassion and is marked by integrity.  It causes us to relate to each other as divine centers in human form. Hence we attend to our enemies with agape. The world is desperately in need of such intentions in our actions and ways of being with one another, and in our relationship to the earth.  

"May love, in this wholly divine sense, be the impetus of our every intention in action and the sustaining energy of our perceptions, as much as it is the logos of our being.

"It occurs to me that love-agape is not an emotion, in the way I usually use that word.  When I say or think, “I love you” in reference to someone, it may be eros,  storge, or filia, or even lust.  My attitudes and actions in relation to that person may exhibit Agape, but the feelings and, with one exception, the desires, for the other person are related to these other "loves."

"The one exception: if my attitudes and actions exhibit agape, one desire associated with them is the desire for the deep well-being and wholeness for that person.

"There seems to be one other necessary concomitant of agape intentions and actions: that the intention include and that the act be moved by the intention to enhance, support, or enable the spiritual growth of the person."

“So far, I speak of ‘love’ as a modifier.  It applies to intentions and actions. Appropriate application to a state or action has two necessary concomitants: desire for the wholeness and well-being of the person, and intent to enhance the person’s spiritual growth.

“Eros, Storge, and Filia also have this usage, of course: respectively,  romantic love, family love, or friendly love can be true of an intention or action.  If agape applies to one of these as well, and does so characteristically—loving actions and intentions in one of the other senses are also agape—then one can say that one’s romantic love (for example) exhibits agape.”

Agape can be understood as Christian love in another sense.  La Verne Shelton continues:

"There is a sense of agape that has no object, it is being in love, immersed in love. I would be happy to say that this is what living the first commandment is: loving God with all my heart, soul and mind is to have the intention of complete surrender to divine potential. Elaborating the metaphor of being in the living stream, I become one with the living stream.  Loving my neighbor as myself is the personalized aspect of this, having a loved one.  I love you (or myself) as my intention is solely to further your (my own) spiritual journey."

Although primarily a Christian term, the concept of agape seems to transcend religious ideology.  To look at this idea of love in a fuller way and to consider it in a different light than its often careless, undiscriminating use, is an exciting and hopeful prospect. Until Part II!

*La Verne Shelton is a musician, mathophile, mystic and philosopher, trained, practiced, and published in contemporary analytic philosophy, with specializations in interdisciplinary work in Philosophy and Psychology, and in Philosophy of Mathematics. She has performed with Early Music groups in Wisconsin, and in New Jersey, and Pennsylvania throughout most of her adult life. During the past decade, she has served communities at Yahara House Clubhouse and Quaker communities of Madison (Wisconsin) Meeting, and, lately, Pendle Hill.  La Verne receives inspirational poems through Spirit, and has shared them in a ten-volume series of pamphlets called Gifts of Devotion. She writes essays that inquire into the nature of truth, being, and consciousness, and is currently working on a long essay about Divine Love, or agape.