Can God love?

[emjay]

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I have no problem with Paul's description of love there. For instance I would define depression as the absence of hope, and without hope, everything is meaningless. Or to be the richest man in the world, but alone and without love or companionship would be its own hell... because no man is an island. Or the power of love to metaphorically move mountains. Or the endurance of love. Or self-sacrificing love...even without hope of self-gain or even acknowledgment by another; to seek good for the other for their sake rather than your own, even at cost to you, and even with no expectation of gratitude, acknowledgment or even knowledge by the other... such as the self-sacrificing love a parent has for their child.

But those things to me are a description of earthly love... human love... not... or at least not necessarily agape. That's what I'm trying to work out here... what agape is in comparison to human love, and where from my position as an atheist as opposed to yours as a theist, agape is theoretical rather than self-evident, hence trying to discover not only what it is but whether it's a coherent concept, just as this thread is. For the sake of argument I'm all putting all kinds of human love... whether egocentric or 'othercentric'... under the heading of eros, because it's as good a theory as any for present purposes, and some interpretations (in the book I'm reading) see no need for it to be entirely egocentric... ie based on personal gain... and I'd agree with that; I'd say the essence of it is seeking the eternal good, whether that be for yourself or someone else. Plato seems a lot more cynical in his approach, essentially saying that the love of a parent for the child is egocentric because the child is the parent's closest thing to achieving immortality, I guess equivalent to arguing the evolutionary reasons for that love. But what does he know (about his own theory)? I prefer the other interpretation, because that sort of self-sacrificial/othercentric love is not just restricted to parent-child. But whether eros is the best description for it or something else, I don't know... time will tell on that... but the point is that by eros I'm referring to human love as we know and understand it (and misunderstand it ).

The book I'm reading... Eros, Agape, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love (by Alan Soble, 1989)... is very interesting and I'd thoroughly recommend it. Its main purpose is to analyse and define the essence of love... something that we all know what it is but at the same time don't know what it is... primarily using these three classical sources for discussion. It does have quite a theist bent, but then, so does antiquity... so I can forgive that So my perspective and goal in this is understanding love itself, with discussion of agape being incidental rather than my main objective. But whether god exists or agape exists or not, it's still useful in that task if for no other reason than it reveals what our (as in human) ideals might be.

The concern I'm having with what you're saying is that you're describing a reciprocal relationship, but in the cause of understanding agape, if agape resembles human love, then to me it can't be agape. Ie if god wants anything from you or for you... then he's wanting... eros; wanting. Hence suggesting 'meh' as the only alternative that takes out the human love... eros... aspect.


As I said, I'm concentrating on the divine side of this equation, not the human side... trying to discover what agape is as separate from human love... eros... and therefore not including any aspects of eros.


I understand the example you're giving here... but my concern is whether that can be called agape as opposed to a different/higher form of eros on God's part. For instance by personifying god and saying he would lament on that day along with all the rest, that implies wanting/attachment/loss... eros. And with your example of the landowner, the landowner is indeed human... he may have higher status and power than his tenants, he may be aloof and interact with them differently than they do to him, he may be incredibly anal and love his rules and regulations, and respect fairness and equal opportunities... but despite all that, he's human and he still wants something. But for agape to make any sense to me, there can be no want involved, hence the meh example.

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I think the problem lies in your understanding of eros. you define it as wanting or longing.. why wanting and longing are apart of eros that wanting and longing is limited to sexual drive. Eros is passionate seual love.. I hope God is not wanting to share 'eros' with me/us or Heaven can quickly turn to Hell.

Just so we are on the same page

Eros = Sexual lust/love
Agape =  Respect, honor, commitment through a whole host of challenges and trials. the love God has for us.
phillia= bonded brotherly love, as in band of brother war bonds and or deep friendships.

No, no... eros as I'm reading about is much more involved than that; that's one example of it, and what it's most associated with, sure, but that's not all there is to it, and that part is something that Plato would consider one of it's baser forms, mainly on account of its transience. The way I'm understanding it is x loves (seeks to possess) y because y has value to x... but where y can be anything... ie it's value-seeking love. So sexual lust is just one example of it, y in that case being beauty, but y could be anything that has value to you. But where you cannot seek something you already possess, only inasmuch as seeking not to lose it (ie seeking its permanence... eternal-ness), this means you can only seek what you lack. And where in the book, that is contrasted with agape as being a type of love that is not based on seeking value because its source - God - lacks nothing... and is eternal. So, according to the book, agape is not value-seeking, but value-creating, but as I said, that's still a murky concept to me. But fair enough that I may well be misunderstanding things as this is a new subject to me, and it's a complicated read, but just take it that what I meant by eros... even if erroneously... was human love/want in all its forms... with value being anything that you can seek... basically you seek positive experiences, or to maintain existing positive experiences, but those experiences can come in different forms, some more transient than others (eg lusts), some nobler than others, some more selfless than others. As for philia, I haven't really got onto that yet where I'm up to in the book but from what little has been said, I find it harder to understand because Aristotle's writing style is decidedly more cryptic than Plato's But in a one liner earlier in the book it basically said that philia was conceptually mid-way between eros and agape. But yeah, maybe I am getting a bit confused in my definitions, overcomplicating things as I tend to do... I just need to finish reading the book... and then probably reread it a few times