Can God love?

[Drich]

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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

Here is where we examine source material. Source material can be categorized into three forms primary source first draft/print of a document being discussed an author of a book concerning his book an eye witness or a new paper of a days event.. secondary sources compiled reference material like lexicons and concordances, then tertiary material which amount to commentaried and compiled interpreted information. like books on a given subject matter. for instance your book. 

Now to cross reference a book's facts is to seek out a secondary source or primary source like a lexicon for koine greek to english or maybe a koine to english dictionary.

first we start with a common english defination:
Definition of Eros

1: the Greek god of erotic love — compare 

2: the sum of life-preserving instincts that are manifested as impulses to gratify basic needs, as sublimated impulses, and as impulses to protect and preserve the body and mind — compare 

: love conceived by Plato as a fundamental creative impulse having a sensual element: erotic love or desire

further down that page it is noted defination two is the medical defination of the word. the first centry/love defination pertains to erotic love.

Then we look at what other forms the word eros took in the first century:
The primary use of the word was to identify the greek god of passion and sex. Eros was also known to the romans as cupid.
https://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Eros/eros.html

The for the final nail we look at how the word eros was used in the ancient greek by using a greek to english dictionary
Definition

Eros pronunciation: [AIR - ohs]


Of the four Greek terms that describe love in the Bible, eros is probably the most familiar today. It's easy to see the connection between eros and our modern word "erotic." And there are certainly similarities between those two terms — as well as a few differences.

Eros is the Greek term that describes romantic or sexual love. The term also portrays the idea of passion and intensity of feeling. The word was originally connected with the goddess Eros of Greek mythology.
The meaning of eros is slightly different than our modern term "erotic" because we often associate "erotic" with ideas or practices that are naughty or inappropriate. This wasn't the case with eros. Instead, eros described the healthy, common expressions of physical love. In the Scriptures, eros primarily refers to those expressions of love carried out between a husband and wife.

Seems to me there is only one defination to Eros and that is a passionate/sexual/physical type of love.