From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 08 2001 - 20:18:28 EST
At 12:09 PM +1100 1/9/01, One of the McKays wrote:
>Is there a similar instance in the NT of one person using one word, while
>t'other consistently uses a synonym? [I know, of course, Jesus finally uses
>Peter's word].
>
>I haven't noticed a passage quite like it, yet.
>
>And if there is a distinction, it would seem likely to me also, that Peter
>intends to raise the stakes, and says he loves Jesus truly, madly, deeply,
>or something of the kind.
>
>Makes a lot more sense than the other way round. I can't imagine the Peter
>we find in the Gospels saying "No, I only love you a little bit!" Can you?
>
>But the problem is that we have all been taught about this special AGAPH
>love, and it is hard to get away from that.
>
>Amazing how much interest this little passage raises. Is it because it is
>fairly easy to at least get some kind of a handle on?
>
>Or is it because of all those sermons?
It's partly a matter of those sermons; it's also because of a good deal of
infelicitous pitting of Hellenic and Jewish cultures against each other as
if they were utterly antithetical--and a great deal of the damage was done
in an epoch-making book by the Swedish(?) theologian Anders Nygren entitled
_Eros and Agape_ published more than a half-century ago. The book built an
immense edifice upon a few facts about the difference between the Platonic
ERWS that is supposedly humanity's self-seeking love of God and the NT
AGAPH that is supposedly God's self-giving love of humanity that Christians
emulate in their care for each other. The problem is that the analysis
conducted by Nygren ignored the self-giving aspects of Greek ERWS and the
self-seeking aspects of Nt AGAPH. Moreover, as we have had ample
opportunity to observe in this forum, the distinction between FILIA and
AGAPH has been distorted far beyond the clear and convincing evidence of
wide-ranging overlap of meaning precisely because people have honestly
WANTED to believe that the difference is real. Yes, there really is such a
thing as WANTING something to be true whether or not the evidence genuinely
supports it. Not that I think anybody really WANTS to be deceived about a
notion, but I think that we find some notions very appealing and for that
reason very difficult to surrender in the face of evidence to the contrary.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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