Agape & the great controversy

[Robert]

When Satan rebelled against God in heaven [Revelation 12:7-9], he was really rebelling against the God’s agape love the spirit of His law [Matthew 22:36-40; Romans 13:10; Galatians 5:13-14]. The idea that “love (agape) seeketh not her own” (i.e., self) [1 Corinthians 13:5] was too restrictive to Lucifer. Consequently he objected to it and introduced the principle of self-love or eros [Ezekiel 28:15; Isaiah 14:12-14]. Therefore, ever since his fall, the enemy of God and man (Satan) has hated the concept of agape. When this concept was restored to the human race through the preaching of the gospel, he naturally was ready to attack it with all his might [Revelation 12:10-12]. Hence, the very first thing he attacked in the Christian church was not the sabbath or the state of the dead; these truths came later, but he zeroed in first on the concept of God’s agape love.

After the disciples had passed away from the scene, the leadership of the church fell into the hands of the church “Fathers,” who were of Greek origin. Immediately the great battle to substitute eros concepts for agape began.

The Greeks were insulted that the New Testament writers ignored the highest form of love in their language (heavenly eros) and used an obscure word (agape) instead. They felt that the disciples of Christ, who were all Jews (except Luke), did not really understand their language and, therefore, a correction had to be made. The first to attempt this was Marcion (died in 160 A.D.). He was succeeded by Origen (died in 254 A.D.) who actually changed John’s sublime statement “God is agape” [1 John 4:8] to “God is eros.” However, the battle did not stop there; it continued until we come to Augustine, the fourth century bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and one of the great “fathers” of Roman Catholic theology.

Augustine realized how futile it was to substitute eros for agape. Instead he did a very smart thing. By using Greek logic, he took the concepts of agape as well as eros and married the two together, producing a synthesis which he called caritas (Latin) and from which we get our English word charity, the word that is often used in our KJV for agape. This word caritas was not only accepted by Christendom but became the key word to define divine and Christian love in Roman Catholic theology. Its meaning was a mixture of agape and eros so that the gospel was perverted from “Not I, but Christ” [Galatians 2:20] to “I plus Christ,” a concept of the gospel still prevalent today. The moment the pure meaning of agape was corrupted, the gospel became perverted with self-love, and the Christian church lost its power and was plunged into darkness. It was not until the Reformation (16th Century) that Luther realized the problem and tried to break the synthesis. However, the church today is to a large degree still groping in darkness as to the true meaning of the gospel.