In order to understand the early Church’s ideology behind agape, we must examine the previous aspects of “loving” as the ancient Greeks knew it. This includes the study of storge, philia, and eros as they will show us a wide range of human “loving” and perhaps, guide us toward the new kind of “love” and the reason for which church-going people had to fill agape with their meaning. All of these “loves” are ingredients of human “loving” and necessary to the understanding of agape. While agape can exist on its own, as God is agape, the remaining ingredients of “loving,” storge, philia and eros, need agape as their foundation, not necessarily for their existence, but for their successful development and endurance.
1. Storge.
The Greek word storge could be translated into English as affection and it is the first ingredient in loving. Affection is both a need-love which needs to give and a gift-love which needs to be needed.[1] We all feel the need to receive it and we all desire to give it. It can exist between anyone - the poor and the rich, the young and the old - as it is the least discriminatory of “loves.”[2] At this stage of “loving”, there are no expectations for a commitment or a level of giving, as this ingredient of love exists in its natural way of working. Think about it, if a hug is needed, a child can turn to its mother, a friend embrace his friend and even a dog can lay down by a cat to keep each other warm. In other words, affection is a natural need to touch and to be touched. Storge naturally is not selfish in its own terms, as it wishes not to hurt, humiliate, nor dominate its object, but it is not perfect[3] in that it does not tolerate changes well. When a new object of storge is introduced to already existing ones, the primary objects will be in danger of falling into jealousy and therefore their motive for stroge will become corrupt and will not be pure anymore. Because of this, storge can start at any moment and it can end just as quickly, as true storge may not put up with impure motives - as humans we all have a sense of when something becomes abused and when the object of our affection takes advantage of us. C.S. Lewis described the corruption of pure affection into unhealthy desires by using the example of pet’s care-taker, saying: “that terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal. [. . . ] it’s a very bad luck for the animal.”[4]
Human beings, no matter how rich or poor, how selfish or how humble, all desire to touch and to be touched, generally with no other intention than to genuinely give or genuinely receive. It is our instinct, as any other breathing creature on this earth responding to its nature and true being. And yet this pleasure-love needs another ingredient in order to develop into something more intentional and completed, as it cannot be our ultimate answer to what “loving” is all about and how it should look? For when the object of one’s affection becomes the center of one’s life, it is then that the storge becomes his or her demon.[5] It will turn back on you.
2. Philia.
Philia-love is what we today call friendship, but to the Ancient Greeks friendship was not as simple as it might seem. First of all, it was the kind of “loving” which only gods had for men, which meant embracing everything that was given human expression. Further it was not an impulse that overcame men, but a sort of order.[6] We learn from an Aristotelian writer in 1208 that it was impossible to imagine a friendship between, or with a god, because the thinking was that there must be some kind of return of affection (storge) for this friendship to work, and how could one say that he “loved” Zeus?[7] Deities, certainly had their favorites, but that was how far their “love” for a human being could reach in this line of Greek thought. In the Greek New Testament philia is used only once and it is in James chapter four, verse four in the context of befriending the world rather than God.[8] This follows that the writers of the New Testament did not consider philia the kind of “loving” that their new faith could be defined by, or could be enough to practice, as they were aware of this term, because they grew up on it!
Lewis says that philia was the one “love” which seemed to be the happiest and most human of all “loves;” where one could learn virtues of life and yet today, we come to ignore it. At the same time he argues that we can survive without friendship as it is the least natural of “loves,” perhaps because it involves our choice of a friend? In order for someone to be accepted as our friend, we need to find something in common between us, such as sport or religion. Friends must have previously established companionship, which Lewis argues is the matrix of friendship, and which will allow the few chosen ones to walk beside each other and share the same vision;[9] therefore, “those who have nothing can share nothing”.[10] Philia-love is not enough to exist by itself, but it is one of the ingredients in our journey of “loving.” The modern day problem is that, when our so called “friend” does not call us, we tend to think: “Why didn’t she call me? What is she thinking standing me up like that!” This is a problem because we are naturally self-centered beings and we have an innate tendency to think about ourselves and our needs first. Unnaturally, we need to change that thinking and train our minds and hearts to ask: “My friend didn’t call me, I wonder what came about? Is she ok? Perhaps she needs some space, if so, I shall give it to her. I will wait a little and trust my friend.”
Just as philia was not easy for the Ancient Greeks to comprehend, it is also not as easy for us today, especially in the age of false reality TV shows which corrupt our idea of what philia-love truly means. Friendship is a choice but it is also a response and the beginning to a process which will lead us to a greater understanding of true “loving” and the importance of giving to the other, rather than naturally trying only to take. In a good friendship each member tends to feel humbled by the other’s gifts and greatness; he appreciates what he is able to share with them and he wonders what he is doing among his betters - in short, he feels lucky to call himself a friend to the rest, as their company is more than he deserves.[11] It is a friendly love, between two alike, and a response of the heart to the pleasure one takes in another.[12]
2. Eros.
Eros is a name of a Greek god who was compelled by none but compelled all; Greeks saw in him “intoxication” and this was to him a sort of religion. Poor men on earth had no choice whatsoever, nor freedom in choosing to “love” Eros, as they were totally mastered by the desires which Eros used to seize them.[13] Plato used this kind of “love” in his poetic expressions of the ultimate fulfillment and elevation of one’s life, as the people drowned deeper and deeper into their sexual desires.[14] Eros-love is then a passionate desire which desires the other for itself; religion and ecstasy come together in a type of religious eroticism, thus prostitution was quite popular and even encouraged in the temples of the gods and goddesses of love.[15] Through the sexual expressions of human nature and its pleasures, people found themselves in unions with gods, as if this “love” was their ancient idea of connection between man and a god, because how else could you explain such sensation of pleasure? For the Greeks sought in others (through this eros-love) the fulfillment of their own life’s hunger for a greater satisfaction in whichever way they could find it.[16] Even more, the desire to possess is so “crucial” that the only way a satisfaction can be gained is through the possession of the object of one’s eros-love.[17]
Is “love” then, truly blind? For eros-love that is possible, not because the lovers become physically or mentally blinded to the reality of each other, but because they become consumed by their passion and deep desire for one another. This state of “loving” is what we recognize as a state in which the lovers are “in”.[18] This cannot be simply thought of as a “sexual desire,” for sex can occur without this eros-love, but this is rather the state in which one of the beloved wants not the pleasure in itself, but he is rather so pre-occupied with the other beloved, that he wants the beloved for whom she or he is.[19] Lewis further says, that eros-love transforms this need-pleasure into the most appreciative of all pleasures! In this thinking, the eros-love is no longer corrupted by orgies and prostitution for the sake of gods, as eros-love is meant to be a private “love” between the two people desiring one another and appreciating who the other is.[20] Lewis even says, that this “love” is the one and true “love,” like the Love himself, not by approach but by resemblance. Again, there is a warning that if this eros-love becomes “unconditionally” obeyed, it will turn “being in love” into religion; the adoration of the beloved for each other becomes “idolization” of each other, and the eros in itself will become a demon.[21] Therefore, this eros needs help of yet another ingredient in order to remain what it purely is and not die on us or become a demon.
Copyright © 2007 by Dorota Krzyzaniak
All rights reserved
[1] Lewis, Loves, 32.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Perfect- defined here as something that has been completed, according to its purpose and use.
[4] Lewis, Loves, 52.
[5] Ibid., 56.
[6] Gerhard Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans., and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eardmans Publishing Company, 1964), 36.
[7] Moffat, 9.
[8] Morris, 119.
[9] Lewis, Loves, 65.
[10] Ibid., 67.
[11] Lewis, Loves, 72.
[12] Pamudji, The Concept of Agape in Selected Passages of Jesus’ Teachings (Western Evangelical Seminary, 1980), 24.
[13] Kittel, 35.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 37.
[17] Morris, 142.
[18] Lewis, Loves, 91.
[19] Ibid., 94.
[20] Morris, 118.
[21] Lewis, Loves, 115.
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