Eros and Agape: The Greek Origins of Christian Love

In his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI looked over the course of his life, beginning before World War II, throughout which he witnessed firsthand the propensity of human beings to hate, interspersed with episodes of what the world called “love.” Love, he reflected, “has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings.” The misuse of love is the possessiveness that it entails, as humans seek material items, ideological and institutional icons to love, and to satisfy lust with other humans.

Benedict, however, saw that what was essential to understand was “the love which God mysteriously and gratuitously offers to man, together with the intrinsic link between that Love and the reality of human love.” Following upon and guided by Benedict’s Deus Caritus Est, I seek in the coming weeks to uncover the meaning of love throughout time, especially as it relates to Catholicism.

The Philosophical Origin and History of Eros

As Benedict noted, “That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ancient Greeks.” The Greeks personified human emotions and ideas, such as love, by anthropomorphizing them into male and female deities.

Homer used the word eros to designate love, desire, inclination, and appetite. His Odyssey provided a poignant portrait of conjugal love in the years separating Odysseus from his wife Penelope, and her patient endurance and battle to maintain her marital purity as she awaited the return of her husband.

This love between Odysseus and Penelope can also be described by the word agape, which Homer used to denote kindliness and the belovedness of two lovers. Pope Benedict noted that “descending, oblative love—agape—would be typically Christian, while on the other hand ascending, possessive or covetous love —eros—would be typical of non-Christian, and particularly Greek culture.” Interestingly, the pope notes, “eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated.”

The early Greek philosophers believed that Love, Eros, was very ancient, even predating the Olympian gods. Hesiod wrote in Theogony:

At the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus…and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.

An early hymn to Hermes suggested the primeval role of Eros: “Now Eros the early born was rising from deep-flowing Ocean, bringing light to men.”

The philosopher Empedocles suggested that in the beginning there was Strife and Love, contrasting and balancing existence. He interpreted Love as having a role similar to the Christian concept of Logos, present at the Creation: “In Love [all things] come together and are desired by one another. For from these comes everything which was and which is and will be.” The Greek Neoplatonist Simplicius wrote, “the one-from-many…comes about because of Love.”

The greatest of the Greek philosophers, Plato, in Dialogues, provided a foundational view of love that later philosophers, including Christians, relied on. In Phaedrus, he had Socrates proclaim that Love is associated with Beauty and the Good in the intelligible realm of ideal forms. This form of love mirrors what agape meant for Christians centuries later.

Likewise, in Symposium, Love (Eros) had some of the same qualities as Jesus, as related by His disciples, especially the Apostle John. Plato wrote, “God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on.” His description sounds very much like Christ the Mediator and John’s portrayal of the Logos—“and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”

One of Plato’s disciples who lived four hundred years later, Plutarch, priest to Apollo, biographer, historian, essayist, and philosopher, rejected the tendency in Plato’s Dialogues to idealize the love of men and boys among themselves, condemning it as profligate and unnatural. Plutarch’s writings, such as his dialogue on Love, instead lifted up the relationship between man and woman, arguing that beyond the erotic impulses of desire, there is a wonderful belovedness and affiliation between husband and wife, epitomized by conjugal love.

Husband and wife, he wrote, are “carried from love to friendship, as it were with wind and tide, the God of Love assisting.” Further, “the enthusiasm of lovers is neither void of divine inspiration, neither is it under the guardianship and conduct of any other Deity but him,” Eros, “whose festivals we solemnize, and to whom we offer our oblations.”

Physical love in time penetrates beneath the skin to find in the beloved a truth that is incorporeal and transcendent. Thus, Plutarch’s ideas on love, though he was pagan, fit nicely with Benedict’s ideas on eros and agape.

A Truth About Love in Mythological Romance

As seen in Plato, Plutarch, and other ancient writers, Homer held quite a spell over the Greco-Roman world. Greek and Latin writers imitated Homer’s brilliant portrait of mythological romance. Of note was the ancient myth of the romance of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Lucius Apuleius, in his Latin novel, Metamorphosis (or The Golden Ass).

The story is about magic and the religious rites of the fertility goddess Isis, but in between its covers is a full retelling of the story of Cupid, or Eros, the son of the goddess of love, and Psyche, a beautiful maiden. Although Apuleius wrote in Latin, using the word amor for love, the essential Greek concept of Love, Eros, as first used by Homer, is still understood in the story.

In Metamorphosis, Psyche, “Soul,” is a beautiful virgin that people compare to Venus. They accord her the honor due to the goddess, who, offended, plans her revenge by calling upon her son Cupid. Psyche is untarnished and pure, and hence symbolizes the human soul—the being and intellect before corruption, sin, and despair take hold. According to Apuleius, Cupid, as erotic love, inspires pleasure and licentiousness in humans, yet with Psyche he is smitten and monogamous.

Writing in the second century anno domini, Apuleius reveals the corruption of civilization during the Pax Romana, during which, as Paul wrote in his Epistles, the Romans had given themselves up to the sole pursuit of pleasure by drink, sex, and all material and physical pursuits. Apuleius recognized this and, though he was devoted to the mystery religion of the Egyptian goddess Isis, retained the ideas of the early Greek philosophers about the unity of Love and Soul, such that, in the myth, Eros and Psyche must unite, as Pope Benedict suggested in Deus Caritus Est.

The moral of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is that there is a union of Love, which is divine, and Soul, which is a transcendent being. Love comes to Soul, but Soul does not quite know Love during the journey through time. This distance causes Soul suffering. When time finally comes to an end, Soul and Love are united and spend existence in eternity.

Christian writers of the first several centuries were heavily indebted to the Greeks. This series on the History of Love will continue examining how the Gospel writers, St. Paul, and other early Christians relied on the conception of Love found among Greek poets and philosophers.

Editor’s Note: This is the first article of a new CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.

Image from Wikimedia Commons