When I was 19 years old, my would-be husband brought me home to meet his family for the first time. We got a ride to meet up with his parents somewhere between school and their house and that night, my dear mother-in-law-to-be, Marie embraced me at a rest stop somewhere in Pennsylvania. She didn’t even say hello first, she just sprang on me the moment I stepped out of the car. I was bewildered. I was nervous to meet her, and we knew almost nothing about each other. It took me years to understand the emphatic declaration of love that she chose to make in that moment. I’m sure there was a lot about me that she didn’t understand back then; I had a funny accent, I was shy and introverted, and I was raised in a different religion. I’m sure the list went on, but she chose not to care about any of it. Now that I’m a mother myself, I have a better appreciation for how frightening it might be for some stranger to come along and abscond with your beloved child. For all she knew, I could have broken her boy’s heart. It would have been far easier, I’m sure, for Marie to have welcomed me with suspicion and kept me at arm’s length until she could scope me out. That was my natural inclination. But here’s just one of the truly beautiful things about who Marie is: she chose to love me sight unseen, regardless of who I was or whatever fears she had. That embrace shaped the entire course of our relationship because she showed me that for her, love comes first and foremost. It was the first lesson of many she’s taught me by example about being a kinder and more loving person. Marie was and is one of the best examples in my own life of how to love others with faith that they’re worth loving. In the last few weeks, I’ve just about solved the mysteries of love, so you’re welcome for that. Just kidding, that’s far above my pay grade, although I have explored storge (affection) and philia (friendship). But I’ve not touched on what seems to me perhaps the most mysterious love of all: human/amphibious lab-creature agape. Marie practiced agape the first time we met.

I fell down a research rabbit hole of etymology and philology to pin down a succinct meaning for agape, and I’m not sure I can deliver one. I’ve seen it variously translated as charity, love, and value. Some people claim versions of the word agape were used by Homer in The Odyssey and by Plutarch and Aristotle. Others say that although the word was in use, it wasn’t all that common and that it was appropriated by the Christians for the New Testament—that indeed the god of the New Testament is agape manifest. Confession: I don’t know any Ancient Greek—it’s all Greek to me. To the best of my knowledge, I can’t accurately back up any of these claims. Sorry. There’s a world of scholarly, religious, and secular debate about the exact meaning of this word, and I’m not qualified to end it. As far as I can tell, there seem to be two essences of the word:

1). For Christians, agape refers to the love of god for creation and vice versa.1 and,
2). Agape also refers to the unselfish love of one person for humanity.2

I was thinking about love in the first place because its many, varied, and nuanced meanings are confusing; attempting to encompass them all renders that one word—love—inarticulate. Unfortunately, it sounds like agape is also somewhat muddied. Even within the Greek translation of the New Testament, the verb agape was used for both the love-verbs below and both verbs encompass each of the different essences above:

‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’
‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this:…Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.’3 (Mark 12:28-31)

I’m beginning to feel like I’ll never understand what love really means. According to C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves,4 the other kinds of love are a sort of practice at achieving the higher-level love of agape, which he calls charity. We start by loving what we’re already inclined to love, whether through the desire of eros, the affection of storge, or the friendship of philia. We get better at loving in those ways and they pave the way for us to love what we are not naturally inclined to love, like criminals, the sick, those on the other side of the political aisle, or anyone else by whom we are repulsed. (128) So agape calls us to keep loving beyond what feels easy or natural to love; whether that love is for an extremely warty humanity or a god that isn’t experienced with rational senses. It’s a love that by its nature requires faith. Agape is for those who recognize that we’re all connected to each other and that, as such, we must bring love and compassion to every corner we can reach.

The Harry Potter series beautifully weaves all four of these Ancient Greek words for love. When we first meet Harry, his parents have just sacrificed their lives to protect him (storge). Unfortunately, he proceeds to have a dismal childhood wherein he’s starved of every conceivable manifestation of love. It isn’t until he reaches Hogwarts that he develops bonds of friendship (philia) with Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid. His friends lead him to affection (storge) as he becomes a member of the Weasley family, as well as his all too brief relationship with Sirius. We even see his exploration of erotic love with Cho Chang. Later we see all three love bonds begin to converge in his relationship with Ginny. It takes the development of all these bonds to lead Harry to agape at the end, where the sum of his love exceeds the parts of the specific bonds he’s formed and extends to encompass all of humanity. During the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry could easily let his enemy—Draco Malfoy—die, but he chooses to risk his own life to save him. It foreshadows the climax of the entire series, wherein Harry chooses his love for humanity over himself. There’s further evidence of agape when Harry summons Lupin, who has just died after the birth of his son:

“—right after you’d had your son…Remus, I’m sorry—”
“I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know him…but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.” (700)5

Lupin, like Harry’s mother, Lily, has sacrificed his life in an act of storge; he dies to protect his own son, but Lupin’s storge is emerging agape. The love he feels for his son transcends to encompass a greater love, one that he dies to share with the whole world. Lupin is the example to Harry, and gathers along with Harry’s parents and Sirius to help him finish his journey:

“Their presence was his courage, and the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.” (700)

Agape begets agape. Harry needed those other loves represented in his final moments when the whole story comes full circle and he makes the choice to sacrifice his own life to save the world. Storge (his parents, Sirius), philia (Sirius, Lupin), and eros (his last thought is of Ginny, “her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his—” (704)) surround Harry and propel him toward agape. The moral of Harry Potter is that even while agape seems to cost the most—to demand everything from us and give us the least in return—it is in fact our salvation. It’s the salvation of our individual humanity and by extension, the humanity of the whole world. For Harry, who believed he was sacrificing his own life, that love—his sacrifice—was the only thing that ultimately saved not only the world but his own life.

The meaning I choose to pluck out of the hot mess of meanings and definitions around this word is that agape calls us to keep loving each other. Even when it’s difficult. Especially when it’s difficult. I’m doing my best to keep figuring out how to practice agape and I keep learning as I go. Marie tossed me a buoy; I hope you have a Marie in your life and that we can all beget some agape. Let me know in the comments some of the ways in which you practice agape or call out a someone who’s doing good work. And of course, you can always find me on Facebook and Instagram.

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Notes:

Artwork: Life by Stan Petersen is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons.

1)      H. G. Liddell; Robert Scott (October 2010). An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon: Founded Upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. Benediction Classics. p. 4.
2)      “Agape.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/agape.
3)      The Student Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. 1996.
4)      Lewis, C.S. “Friendship.” The Four Loves. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
5)      Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007.