agape

Etymology

The noun ἀγάπη is formed from the older verb ἀγαπάω (agapáō). The verb is Homeric; the noun is late. Etymology of the verb is unknown. A derivation from ἄγαν (“very much”) plus a root of feeding or protecting is sometimes offered and has not been secured. Beekes: origin unknown; the Christian sense may have been influenced by Hebrew אַהֲבָה (ʾahavah).

Do not take the Sunday-school gloss “unconditional love” as the word’s Greek meaning. That is a later pastoral summary.

Historical use

Classical ἀγαπάω is ordinary and untheological: to treat with affection, to greet warmly, to be fond of, to prize, to be content with. It can be used of a spouse, a child, a friend, a place, even a preference for one thing over another. It is not, in classical prose, a technical name for God’s love.

The Septuagint translators often chose ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω to render Hebrew ʾahavah, including in the Song of Songs. That choice is one of the reasons the Greek noun thickens in Jewish and then Christian Greek. The New Testament then makes ἀγάπη a central word (Paul’s hymn in 1 Corinthians 13; the Johannine writings). Even there, it is not cleanly opposed to φιλία: in John 21 the two verbs alternate in ways that need not encode a doctrine.

Later Christian theology (and modern English preaching) hardened agape into selfless, non-erotic, non-preferential love. The Greek sources are more mixed. They include preference. They include emotion. They include the love-feast as a meal.

Semantic range

• Affection, esteem, the act of holding someone dear.
• Preference: to love this rather than that.
• In Jewish and Christian Greek: the love of God, and the love owed in response, including toward neighbor and enemy.
• A communal practice (the agape meal), not only an interior state.

Semantic change

From an unspectacular Greek verb of fondness to a theological keyword, then to an English loanword used to mean “the highest, purest love.” Each step leaves something behind. The English loanword cannot do the work of the Homeric verb; the sermon cannot do the work of the Septuagint’s Song of Songs.