Via Logos Agape is a strange name for a blog, but I’m hoping to dispel some of the strangeness by explaining what it means and why I chose it. Simply put, Via Logos Agape means The Way of Reason and Love.

Via (vee’-ah) is Latin for “Way”

Lógos (log’-os) is a Greek term that can translate to “Word”, “Wisdom”, or “Reason”

Agápē (ag-ah’-pay) is another Greek term, which translates to “Love”

That’s far from the whole story, though, and in order to give these topics more attention (although still not nearly as much as they deserve; that would take several books) I’m going to dedicate a separate post to each word. But rather than starting with Via, I’m going to go in reverse order, which means I’ll be beginning this blog the way that we should all strive to begin every single thing that we do: with love.

Defining Terms

What exactly is love, though? Based on usage alone, the meaning of the word isn’t entirely clear. A person will say that they love you, then later say that they love a song on the radio, then later say that they love tater tots. Should we really conclude that this person’s love for you is the same as their love for tater tots? When someone uses the word ‘love’, they’re obviously expressing that they are fond of someone or something, but there seem to be different kinds and varying levels of fondness. The ancient Greeks recognized this, and they actually came up with different words to describe different kinds of love, such as:

Érōs — romantic love or sexual desire.

Phileó — the love between friends.

Storgē — the love between family members.

Unfortunately, English doesn’t make distinctions between different kinds of love, so we end up using the same word to describe our feelings for our spouse, our friends, our parents, and our favorite food.

In every case, though, we do indeed seem to be describing feelings, yes? So we evidently think of love as something that we feel. Not only that, but we seem to consider who and what we love to be out of our control; love isn’t a choice, it’s something that happens to us. We say that we ‘fall in love’ and ‘fall out of love’ implying a lack of responsibility on our part. This reasoning is often used by people to justify breaking their marriage vows; they say ‘the love is gone’ or ‘I don’t love you anymore’ as though the matter is completely out of their hands. We essentially speak as if love is some kind of rogue spirit that possesses us against our will, and can leave us again as suddenly as it arrived, while we’re powerless to stop it. The Greeks really ran with this idea, portraying Eros — sexual desire — as one of the gods.

It’s important to realize that these lower forms of love — eros, phileo, and storge — cannot possibly last, because they are based on feelings, and feelings are fleeting. How you feel about your friends, your romantic partner, even your family members, can and does change over time. It’s no wonder divorce is so common today, when relationships are built on a foundation as fragile as feelings. If we want our relationships to endure, we must build them on something much stronger, which means rethinking the way we understand love. What we need is an entirely different kind of love, something that goes beyond mere emotion.

Divine Love

This is where agape comes in. Although it’s a Greek term, the Greeks did not come up with the definition I’m using. The word originally meant something more generic like ‘affection’, but it was adopted by the New Testament authors and they elevated the word to a new level. Through their usage of it, agape came to refer to a uniquely Christian concept: Divine love.

As you might guess, agape stands apart from all previous notions of love; it is not only greater in degree, but greater in kind. Where love was previously viewed as a feeling (as our secular world views it today), agape makes love into an action. As the great philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas put it, “to love is to will the good of the other.” Alright, you may say, but how did this concept of love actually develop, and what makes it divine?

Most of us have heard the phrase “God is love” at some point in our lives. I used to think this saying was just a sort of feel-good hippie platitude. Boy was I wrong! This phrase was actually first articulated by none other than Saint John the Apostle, one of the twelve original disciples of Jesus, and author of one of the four canonical Gospels. In a letter he wrote to a community in the early Church, John gives us some beautiful insight into the Christian notion of love, and how love relates to God:

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.

No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.”
_{(1 John 4:7-12)}

There’s so much to reflect on here, but to really understand what John is saying we need some background information regarding Christian theology.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

John says that God’s love was revealed to us when “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.” Now, I’m planning to dedicate a future post to explaining the doctrine of the Trinity (God as three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) because it would take far too long to cover here, so for our purposes just take for granted that Jesus Christ — “the Son of God” — is God, himself. Jesus is “God made flesh”, so when Jesus gave his life for us it was God himself giving his life for us.

God gave his life, as John says, “so that we might have life through him.”

But there’s another key piece of information that we need in order to get the full picture.

In the Christian tradition, God is the infinite, eternal, perfect Being, which created all that exists and actively holds it all in existence from moment to moment. But if God is perfect, it means that he lacks nothing and needs nothing. This means that literally everything God does is for the benefit of others, because if he lacks nothing then he cannot possibly gain anything. So it follows that God gained nothing from creating the world, he gained nothing from lowering himself infinitely to take on the form of man in Jesus Christ, and he gained nothing from sacrificing his life for us; absolutely everything that he does is out of complete selflessness.

So, John is saying, this is love: to sacrifice your own life for the life of another, not for your benefit but for theirs; not to gain honor or recognition or to be memorialized or for anything else you may get out of it, but purely for the good of that person.

What a standard! I know I said that we need to rethink our understanding of love, but perhaps this is raising the bar too high? It seems like much of the good that we do for others is at least partially for our own benefit, right? We give to charity in part because it makes us feel good. We love people in part because of how they make us feel, because we enjoy spending time with them, etc. Is it even possible for a human being to do something that is truly selfless?

Divine Assistance

We may be made ‘in the image of God’, but we aren’t God, which means that we aren’t perfect, which means that everything we do is going to involve some level of imperfection. Left to our own devices, we could never achieve the perfectly selfless love that John is referring to. Fortunately for us, though, we won’t be left to our own devices.

Take note of the final lines of the passage I quoted from John’s letter:

“No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.“

John is giving us a sort of formula for achieving perfect love — agape. It’s a pretty simple formula, too: if we love one another, then over time our ability to love will be perfected, because God will dwell within us, and the longer God remains in us the more perfected our love will become.

Think of God (or love, since, as John says, God is love) as a purifying fire that burns away all of the ‘dead wood’ in the forest so that the trees can flourish like they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to. This is what God does to us — this is what love does to us — ‘burns away’ all of our imperfections.

So we essentially have a positive feedback loop of love; the more we love, the more we can love, and so if we cooperate with this process and give ourselves over to it, our love will keep increasing exponentially, growing more and more perfect throughout our lives.

This explains why we do see instances of agape in the world, unlikely as it may seem. One of the most common and obvious examples comes from parents who love their children in this self-sacrificial way. Mothers and fathers will often confess that they grow to love their child more and more each day and yet don’t know how it’s possible, because they’ve felt from the beginning that they love the child as much as they can possibly love! Not only that, but their love is clearly self-sacrificial; parents truly sacrifice their lives for the good of their children. That’s what divine love does, it allows us to love more than we ever imagined we could, and to do so in a genuinely selfless way.

The Nature of Existence

Why exactly does this happen though, this positive feedback loop of love? To help us see the big picture, let me lay it all out in logical form:

1. God is perfect; he lacks nothing.

2. If God lacks nothing, everything he does is a purely selfless act.

3. God created the universe.

4. Therefore, creating the universe was a purely selfless act.

5. To love is to act selflessly for the benefit of another.

6. The creation of the universe benefits everyone in the universe.

7. Therefore, the creation of the universe was an act of love.

And the second part, which is a bit simpler:

1. God is love.

2. God created the universe.

3. Therefore, love created the universe.

This is really the essence of the Judeo-Christian belief system: Our universe — all of existence — is an act of love, created by Love, itself.

This is why engaging in love has the purifying effect I described above, because love is like the universal law underlying all that exists — love is the very foundation of reality.

Try to really let that sink in.

Obviously these are pretty profound concepts, and it can be difficult to wrap our minds around them. But that’s what contemplation is for. These ideas aren’t meant to be easily and quickly understood; they’re meant to be mulled over throughout our lives. If we all took more time to reflect on the deepest truths and ponder the greatest mysteries of existence, imagine how different our world would look.

And if you’re reading this thinking “Okay sure, the idea that love is the foundation of reality is beautiful and all, but that doesn’t make it true,” I have a couple of things to say in response.

First, that’s technically incorrect — the objectively true and the objectively beautiful are essentially synonymous, so if something is objectively beautiful then it is by that very fact objectively true, and vice versa (more on this in a future post).

That being said, I do admit I haven’t proven these things to be true, but that wasn’t my goal here. There will be plenty of time in subsequent posts to examine the evidence for things like the existence of God, the attributes of God, the existence of Jesus, the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts, etc. All I wanted to do today was give everyone something beautiful and profound to reflect on. Forget momentarily about worrying whether the things I’ve said here are true, and instead think about what it would mean if they were true — what would it actually mean if love were the foundation of reality? If our coming into being was an act of love? What implications would that have? How would that affect the way we view life? The way we behave day to day? The goals that we set? How we choose to spend our time?

Would it be good? Would it affect us positively? If so, it seems to me that this idea is worth taking seriously and examining further, at the very least.

I’d also like to challenge you, especially if you aren’t convinced that what I’ve said here is true, to investigate it, to find out for yourself. How?

Do it.

Love.

Engage in agape. Work on growing to love everyone around you in a genuine, self-sacrificial way (and for many of us it really does take work), not only wishing the best for people but willing their good, taking action to benefit others — even at your expense.

Start small. Look for all of the little ways that you could make life a bit easier for those around you by making small sacrifices — not in a resentful way, but in a joyful way, being grateful for the opportunity to positively affect someone else. Once you start looking for these opportunities, you’ll begin seeing them everywhere. And if you give yourself over to this process — to agape — over time it will transform your life, and it will purify your soul.

God love you.