The Moral Virtues: Love
And the greatest of these is Love
Love is the queen of the virtues; the one that binds the others together. But in our modern culture, we throw that word around loosely, so what does love actually mean? And how do we distort it to our own desires?
Definition of Charity (Love)
Charity (Love) is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Associated Vices: Greed & Pride
Love in the Great Books
The Greeks had 7 different words that expressed a type of love. For this purpose, we will look at the four main types, Eros, Philia, Storge, and Agape.
Eros (ἔρως) refers to passionate, romantic love, often associated with desire and intimacy.
The disorder of eros predominates the Great Books. The story of the Iliad begins with the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, promising Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. This disordered eros eventually breaks down the very walls of Troy and leads to the death of almost everyone in Paris’ life, including himself.
We will see disorder caused by eros throughout the stories, from Zeus who appears incapable of controlling himself around any attractive woman, to the beautiful Anna Karenina who leaves all that she has for a torrid affair.
It should be noted that in the Greek creation story The Theogony by Hesiod, Eros is a primordial god that was born out of chaos, meaning that the Greeks understood passionate love as one of the core foundations of the universe.
Philia (φιλία) encompasses the love between friends, characterized by loyalty, camaraderie, and shared experiences.
Philia is perhaps the most common love that we humans will experience, as friends and shared experiences predominate our interactions with others.
Aristotle makes the point that, unlike eros, philia is mutual. One can lust after another, but philia is the type of mutual love between two friends that genuinely wish the best for one another.
Storge (στοργή) This type of love is the natural affection between family members, like the bond between parents and children.
Storge is a more fulfilling form of love that perhaps usually begins with eros or philia, but then grows to a much deeper level. Imagine the love that a mother feels for a child, something that words cannot express, or perhaps the love of a couple that has been married for 50 years and truly loves the deepest part of their spouse’s soul. That is storge.
Agape (ἀγάπη) is the highest form of love, often described as selfless, unconditional, and universal, especially the sacrificial love of God for man.
Agape is rarely used in the early Greek works: 10 times in all of Homer and 3 times in Euripides. When used, it is more generic as affection between comrades.
Plato uses the term agape as a contrast to eros. While eros is often associated with passionate desire and the pursuit of beauty, agape focuses on selfless giving and the well-being of the other.
In the New Testament, agape takes on a whole new depth, appearing over 300 times. Here, agape refers to the sacrificial love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God and others. Agape is seen here is the highest form of love, a love that comes at the expense of the self. As John 15 says: 13 Greater love [agape] has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
The Queen of Virtues
As we look at the Greek definitions of the word love, we see an incredible clarity of meaning, yet a disorder of purpose. It is insightful to distinguish between eros and agape, or between philia and storge, yet there is something missing. A true understanding of love is the realization that, when used in an ordered way, each type of love leads to the same place.
As an example, an ordered use of passionate eros results in the deeper storge between a man and wife, resulting in well-loved children, with philia between their wider group of family and friends. However, if a man cannot control his eros, now the bonds between man and wife are broken, the trust between friends is shattered, and the love in their life has become disordered.
Similarly, agape towards God results in us following His commands, to include: “37’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22 37-40
What we see from this verse is that if we truly agape God, then we will philia our neighbors, storge our families, and control our eros. In fact, this is implicit within the 10 Commandments: In order to love God and God alone, we must honor our father and mother [storge], and we must not kill, steal, lie [philia], commit adultery, or covet anything from your neighbor [eros]. Here we have subordinated the other forms of love beneath the higher agape towards God.
As Dr. Tom Neal described, to love our neighbor is to desire their good over our own, and to love God is to desire what God desires, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here we have come full circle in the proper ordering of love in our lives.
These understandings of love are not distinct virtues, but they are distinct from the world’s view of love. For the Greeks, eros was the primordial form of love, one of the universe’s core tenets. They correctly understood that love was the foundation of all creation, but they misunderstood the type of love. Eros is not the ultimate form of love, in fact, when disordered, it quickly becomes a vice. Agape is the ultimate form of love, the one which keeps the other loves, and other virtues, in their correct order.
This is why in the theological sense, the term love is most commonly stated as charity. Charity conveys the agape, philia, and storge types of love, while isolating eros. Yes, eros is important within the monogamous relationship, but eros is the result of a properly ordered love, not the ends, itself. When eros is not properly ordered, chaos ensues.
Unlimited Love
When Aristotle wrote of the virtues in Ethics, he expressed virtue as a median between extremes. In this sense, courage was acting bravely, but not foolishly. Temperance was finding the appropriate use of goods, but not to excess. There was a balance to be struck between two extremes in action.
This is not the case with agape. There is no limit to our love of God and neighbor. There are obvious times when eros is taken to an extreme, or when storge with the overprotective mother, but agape is different. In fact, there is an idea that when we fully sacrifice ourselves to God, we become more like ourself than ever.
In this sense, true humility is not ignoring our identity, it is finding our true identity, as we were created to be. As David Brooks said in The Road to Character: “Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry.”
God is Love
1 John 4 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love lies at the very heart of the human experience. The Greek creation myth of humans was simply a disruptive act, a by-product of a battle between gods where Prometheus created man, raising the ire and punishment of Zeus. This is the opposite of the Judeo-Christian perspective.
According to the Bible, man is not an accident or a by-product. Man is not even just a step along the way of creation, but the very purpose, itself. Here we can already see a marked difference in the understanding of meaning and purpose between the Greek Theogony and the Judeo-Christian Genesis. If God created us in His image, and God is love, then God created us to be with Him in love. We are not some cosmic accident, or the result of blind forces permeating through the universe, humanity was purposely created with the primary intent of loving and being loved.
This contrast could not be more stark than in the behavior of the early church. As we’ve discussed, the early church exploded because of the hope that it promised through the culture of sacrifice and love. This was not an accident. The message of the early church was love and unity, even in the face of tragedy and persecution. Why? Because God is love, and Jesus desires us to be one, as He and the Father are one.
This desire for unity has been clear since the earliest writings of western literature, manifested in the repeated lesson that humans are made to worship. We worship ourselves, each other, sports teams, celebrities, and sometimes even our own kids. The human heart is made for unity with someone or something else, yet trying to fill this void with the wrong thing will leads us astray. There is something unique about God that is made to fulfill the human heart.
St. Augustine famously said: "You have made us for yourself O Lord & our heart is restless until it rests in you." Even atheist Jonathan Haidt said that humans appear to have a “God-shaped hole” in their hearts that they look to fill with other things. This is not some philosophical idea to be debated, it is a natural reality, manifested throughout the Western canon. So how can we understand the desire to love and be loved?
God created us so that we can share in His infinite love. We have the opportunity to unite ourselves with the author and creator of the universe through love, but this is more than just saying some empty words. We choose to worship what we love, and if we choose to love ourselves, it will end in vainglory. Our other option is to be united with the logos, the creative force of the universe, through worship, which will result in an all-consuming, limitless love.
Associated Vices
The two vices most closely associated with Love are Greed and Pride.
Greed is the inordinate love of worldly goods and the desire to possess more than one needs. Unfortunately, greed is usually a comparative vice. It is only when see our neighbors house, or car, or wife, that greed enters our heart. Or perhaps it is the greed of stature, that we don’t need more, but rather, we don’t want anyone else to have it. Greed is Smaug from The Hobbit, sitting on a pile of treasure that, though unusable to a dragon, still must be hoarded away from others.
Pride on the other hand, is the opposite of love. Pride is the love of the self, to the point that the individual is unable to love others. Just as love is the queen of virtues, pride is the queen of vices, after all, pride comes before the fall. The thing about pride is that we can see it in others, and shudder…but we can’t see it in ourselves. Humans are terrible at self-introspection. We require an external perspective to see our own character, but this introspection requires humility, which so few are willing to offer. Pride is the great cardinal sin, the sin of all sins, the source of all destruction. Pride consumes all others for the sake of the self, and then consumes the self.
It All Ends with Love
If you could sum up the meaning of life and the secret to happiness, it would be to love the Lord your God, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Those that are able to do this will be statistically happier, which is ironic since Aristotle taught that happiness would be the result of living according to virtue, in order to live to our fulfilled purpose. In this sense, he was spot on. Aristotle correctly surmised that finding our fulfillment was at the end of virtue, he just didn’t understand the role of humility towards God in achieving this end.
We are all searching for our purpose and meaning in this life. For those that are prideful and seek their own glory, the end will be miserable and lonely. For those that choose to humble themselves before God and love their neighbor as themselves, this life will end up fulfilled and meaningful. The choice is ours. All we have to do is choose to love.