As a writer, one of the things I appreciate most about the English language is its expansive vocabulary. The plethora of synonyms at our disposal makes it possible to find just the word to express subtle nuances of feeling or thought. We owe this rich treasury largely to the Norman invasion of 1066, when the Germanic Anglo-Saxon tongue was somewhat forcibly wed to the Romance language of French. The offspring of this philological union grew up to become modern English.
This explains why we tend to have at least two words for most everything, one each with German and Latin roots. Examples include ghost (German) and spirit (Latin); body (German) and corpse (Latin). Often these words take on different connotations over time. A “body” can be living or dead, but we reserve the word “corpse” to refer to a body that’s given up the ghost. “Ghost” means the same as “spirit” but today implies a spooky spirit, so modern prayer books no longer speak of the Holy Ghost.
Yet despite our rich vocabulary, English is handicapped when it comes to speaking of love. We rely on this one little word to express so much. I love ice cream. I love my children. I love my wife. I love God. The same word is used in each instance, but what I mean by it is quite different. How I feel about ice cream is not how I feel toward God (one would hope). Why is our otherwise verbose mother tongue so impoverished when it comes to the most important thing of all? It’s a mystery I have no answer to.
Greek has us beat in this regard. The ancient Greeks came up with different words to describe the various kinds of love. Love between family members was called “storge,” while love between friends was “philia.” Romantic love was called “eros” (from which we get our word “erotic”), while “agape” referred to self-giving love. This latter term is used most often in the Greek New Testament. It was translated into Latin as “caritas,” from which we get the English word “charity.”
Agape is considered the highest and purest form of love because it is the least self-interested. To love someone with agape is to love them for their own sake, not for what we get out of it. Loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength requires agape. To love your neighbor as yourself is agape. To love your enemies is definitely agape.
In contrast, eros has historically gotten a bad rap. Where agape is selfless and giving, eros is selfish and receiving. But to suggest that erotic, or romantic love has no place in Christian life would be a mistake. We must be careful not to over-spiritualize religion. If the end of Christianity is the union of the human and the divine, what is human mustn’t be discarded but elevated. And what could be more human than falling in love?
A young man and young woman catch one another’s eye and experience the excitement of mutual attraction. Anyone who has ever been in love knows the rush of a new romance. You yearn for the other and long to possess them because of the way you feel when they are near you. Young love is in many ways selfish and possessive, but as love matures it becomes more selfless and giving.
In his 2006 encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” (“God is Love”), Pope Benedict XVI redeems erotic love by showing its connection to agape. While recognizing that undisciplined eros tends toward lust, he nevertheless observes that eros also provides “a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.”
Eros and agape, he writes, “can never be completely separated… Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to ‘be there for’ the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love….”
Erotic love has the wonderful effect of drawing us out of ourselves. We recognize in our beloved something that is good and beautiful and worthy, and we yearn to possess the object of our desire. If eros ends here, it degrades into lust. But rather than being eradicated, eros is meant to be elevated. As romantic love grows, the desire to possess the beloved doesn’t go away, but to it is added the desire to give oneself to the beloved.
As it matures, eros doesn’t transform into something different; it grows into something greater. Whereas eros says “I want to possess you,” agape says, “I want to give myself to you.” True, mature romance has both. “My lover belongs to me, and I to him” (Song 2:10).
Of all the many and varied forms of love, the mutually self-giving love between spouses most reflects the inner life of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit mutually giving and receiving the gift of Themselves to each other for all eternity. Thus eros, when disciplined and directed toward agape, becomes holy.
The good news revealed by Christ is that God has this mutually reciprocal love for us. “I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you,” Jesus says (Jn 14:20).
That’s why at the center of the Bible we find an erotic love poem, the Song of Songs. What better response could we make to God’s offer of love than that given by the Bride in its opening lines: “Draw me after you! Let us run! … Let us rejoice and exult in you; let us celebrate your love” (Song 1:4).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.