Why think that the english word love is univocal?

Plus, if you define love as you do, then an action that is not ‘in response’ could not be loving.  I think that’s an untoward consequence.

Seems like the approach here is a classical delineation of categories.  The description on Amazon seems to focus on the challenge of a socio-biology that claims that there is no such thing as agape in human relations.  How much of the book is the former and how much is given to the later?

This is a great definition, though I am one of those who would prefer the term “empathy.” It seems to echo the incarnational suffering of God, which inspires me to not only sympathize with those who I love but also to carry their burdens and celebrate their fortune, to experience their pain and their pleasure, and to walk with them through the good times and the bad.

Thanks for all of your comments!

Kevin - I agree that “love” is not univocal. That’s one of the points of my book. I also think, however, that one ought to propose a definition of love and then identify various forms. In addition, I argue that love is always expressed in relations, which means that responsiveness to some degree and of some kind is a precondition.

Chris - The first chapter of the book offers and defends my definition of love.  The second chapter identifies the main forms of love and love’s recipients(especially focusing on the vexing issues of agape and self-love). Chapter three addresses love and altruism in various social sciences; chapter four examines sociobiology using Darwin’s two main books as a framework and recent research as key components; chapter five explores cosmology and love. The final chapter sketches what a theology of love consonant with science and my definition of love might look like.

Matthew - I like the word “empathy” too.  Over the pas decade, I have discovered that most psychologists equate “sympathy” with “pity,” which is not my reason for using the word in my definition. Philosophers—especially 20th century American philosophers—like “sympathy.”  It’s roots “sym” “pathy” indicate the idea of suffering with—which seems to be the reason you like “empathy.” The overall point, however, is that love has a relational component.

“three Greek words – agape, eros, and philia” I have always loved these words to describe Love. Just the word love is too small without offering further definitions as you have. I really like yours. We say we love coffee, we love dogs, we love this that and the other and then we say “I love you.” We need more English words as the Greeks to describe the love we mean. For me love is always in relationship with something. What I desire most in a man woman relationship is to have all three Greek meanings inter into our relationship. God would be the center of our relationship (Agape) but eros (healthy human sexuality) would be a loving shared part of our realtionship as well as we would be best friends. When I say to my partner “I love you” it means that I love him as God intends, I love our coming together as one in sexual activity, and you are my very best friend. Thanks for giving us your definitions, they are great, and I look forward to buying your book later.

Hey Tom,

Are you familiar with Catherine Osborne?

(Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love: Oxford, 1994)

TomB

Jo Ann - Thanks for your kind words.  I think you’ll enjoy reading my book!

Tom - I read Catherine’s book about ten years ago.  I really liked it. I refer to it sparingly in my own new book, though.

Nicholas Wolterstorff’s December 1, 2009, “How My Mind Has Changed” article in the _Christian Century_ (pp. 26-30), raises some important questions in my mind about defining love.

He describes a conference he attended in South Africa in 1976: “The blacks ... spoke movingly of the ways in which they were daily humiliated and demeaned, ... they cried out for justice.”

In response, “the Afrikaners ... insisted that justice was not a relevant category. The relevant category was love, charity, benevolence. They proceeded to tell stories about the ways in which they exhibited charity toward blacks and coloreds. ... They argued that it was not self-interest but benevolence that motivated the entire system of apartheid.”

For Wolterstorff, “What I saw, as I had never seen before, was benevolence being used as an instrument of oppression” (p. 28).

He is working on a manuscript now “on the relation between love and justice that I am tentatively calling _Justice in Love_.”

“Love sometimes does injustice, or appears to do so; justice is sometimes unloving, or appears to be so.”

“Malformed love does indeed come into conflict with justice. But well-formed love incorporates doing justice; justice is the ground floor of well-formed love. To delete justice from the Bible is to have very little left; that holds for the New Testament as well as the Old.” (p. 29)

The definitional questions are clear: Do we need to include considerations of justice in our definitions of love? If not, how do we address love’s malformations in a Christian account of love?

Alan

Thanks for alerting me to Nick’s work, Alan. 

One of the reasons I defined love the way I did and the reason I shy away from equating benevolence with love is the problem that Nick identifies. 

By defining love in terms of promoting overall well-being, however, I can incorporate justice without having to pit love and justice against one another. For this reason, I disagree with the claim that love ever does injustice.

I also don’t like to qualify love with proper/improper adjectives like “malformed” and “well-formed.” As I define love, love is always well-formed. A good definition of love can avoid the proper/improper confusing linguistic tradition, a tradition that has a powerful influence in Christian theology although a very minor influence in the biblical text.

I’m curious if Nick actually takes the time to define love carefully.  So few people do this.  Perhaps I’ll send him an email asking him about his definition of love.

Thanks again, Alan.

Tom,

I wonder to what extent your not wanting to qualify love with adjectives indicating the degree to which a particular form of love represents the ideal stems from your Wesleyan background. Love must be well-formed or it isn’t love is a holy, very pure form of love.

From my Lutheran theological perspective, with a strong sense of our ongoing sinfulness, all forms of love are tainted by sin, even as we are always fully redeemed by God’s grace. Accordingly, none of our love is well-formed, but the well-formed love of God in Christ becomes the manifestation of the grace of God that reconciles us to him anyway.

Hence, one of the Niebuhrs (I can’t remember which) talked about the equality of guilt (we’re all in the need of God’s jusifying grace) and the inequality of sin (because, in fact, our efforts at love always—to varying degrees—fall short of what God wants from us).

Or, to rephrase my comment: Would any Calvinists and Lutherans agree with your definition, or is particular to Wesleyan/Holiness traditions?

Interesting discussion!
Alan

It seems to me that there are two quite different types of love: love as in personal relationships between lovers or friends on the one side, and love as required in the command of loving thy neighbour, which requires good actions towards others, unknown and enemies included. These are different kinds of love; in personal love the other person is so highly valued that a mutually wanted relationship is a goal in itself, but it is impossible to share this kind of close love with everyone. Neighbour-love, however, one should strive to show towards all (anonymous people in need on another continent included), but this is not based on valuation of and desire for a mutually wanted relationship with the other.

It seems to me that in your definition, the main focus on neighbour love, although I see that you include personal love as well. Could your definition of love also be a definition of benevolence, or how would you distinguish between love and benevolence?

I think that neighbour-love is very important in a world full of evil. But in many ways personal love is more fascinating and more intriguing to try to understand. It seems to me that this part of love, which has to do with the desire for relationship, is not in focus in your definition. Since I think that the personal love is the most fascinating, I made a longer (and clumsier) definition. I’ll give you the definition first, and then explain it afterwards: Love is a complex process where you value another human being in such a way that a mutually wanted relationship with this person becomes a valued goal in itself, and the natural consequence of this is a good will and good actions toward the other.

The definition above is my general definition of personal love. Neighbour love is described only be the last part of the definition: as good will and good actions towards others, but it does not require desire for a mutually wanted relationship.

To love God is a complex process where you value God in such a way that a mutually wanted relationship with God becomes a valued goal in itself, and the natural consequence of this is a good will and good actions toward others. When you love God you want to be with him, but you cannot do good things to God in the same physical way as you can with humans. But since God loves everybody and want them to be happy, you can be good to God by being good to others.

You can switch God or humans with animals, and make the definition work quite well for love of a specific animal as well. Although animals do not express a conscious desire for relationship, many animals can express it in other ways. Love for all animals (as opposed to loving one concrete animal) would be like neighbour love towards animals.

Within personal love we can distinguish between family-love, friends-love, and romantic-love. What distinguishes romantic-love one the one hand from family-love and friend-love on the other hand is that romantic-love is exclusive between two, whereas you can love more than one family member or friend. Romantic love is a complex process where you value another human being in such a way that a mutually wanted EXCLUSIVE relationship with this person becomes a valued goal in itself, and the natural consequence of this is a good will and good actions toward the other. Family-love and friend-love can be described with the general definition of personal love. Family love is different from the others in that there is a biological (or adoption) bond between them.

Some don’t want to define love, because they hope/wish that it is a mystical and incomprehensible power. Others think that it cannot be defined because of its richness. Of course it cannot be captured fully in words, since the world and our experiences are more fine-grained than our language. But it can be given a quite good general definition, and as you say: even a poor definition is better than no definition.

Atle Sovik

It is so amazing that there are so many different definitions of love in this world going from different cultures to different languages and even different households. But the sentence in this passage that really amazed me was when the French Philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucould said “that although there are a thousand different versions of love, there is only one kind.” To me that is telling us that there can be so many different so called variations but we as people really know when something is loving to us.

In regards with your affirmation to Francois de La Rochefoucould comment, I would have to disagree.  Attempting to make a distinction between versions and kinds is only possible when dealing with ideas that are singular and absolute, and while this may be your idea regarding the word love I am not as convinced.  It seems to me that this claim on the use of love is just cleverly muddled word play that allows those who hold to it to hind behind its ambiguity.

In a majority of settings the act of clearly defining broad concepts helps to create an environment of purpose and respect. Since love is such a broad term its significance escapes our notice, this seems to be profoundly true among generational gaps. As a representative of a younger generation I find that a growing majority of my peers are caught between states of empathy and apathy. As Christians how are we act according to Christ’s commands and yet live an entirely authentic life of love… At least this is an issue that has not escaped my notice.

Dr. Oord,

I have always thought that the english word “Love” has far too many definitions. many of us use it in a mundane way like, ” I really love this song.” after realizing this I began to try to think of things by using the three greek terms you listed. I never thought of them as unified though, but after reading this it begins to make sense. I like they way you define love, it is helpful to hear it this way. I don’t think that any earthly definition of love will be correct, but it is quite helpful to think about it as many different ways as possible.

Thank you for your post…

Love is a word that confuses many. Trying to find a definition for a word that instills certain feelings and actions that are hard to describe is almost impossible. Love makes people do and feel crazy unimaginable things. To promote overall well being in your definition is not my idea of a personal account of love. You can love a large group of people as Christ does but I strongly feel we don’t have the capacity to love is a sense to promote great over all well being. We can love and help promote greater good for many but cannot love the individuals personally who need it. My idea of love consists of acting selfless to benefit a certain or certain fews surrounding you.

I am interested in the relationship between “love” and “goodness” - particularly, who love is for in a particular instance. This, also, makes me think of the relationship between love and altruism - and at what point these can be contradictory terms. I also agree that we need to carefully think about the way that we define and use the word “love,” so that we can develop a rhetoric and worldview that more accurately describes what “loving” somebody actually looks like. If loving somebody is a self-conscious action, then it would be helpful to know what loving somebody actually means. I think that article like this help us start an important dialogue in that direction.

I know that it goes without saying, but I still feel like this needs to be said: I think that in order to effectively “define love,” one has to critically evaluate one’s situation, because although the basic premise of love is to “act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being,” I think that the measure of response, or rather, the amount of action deliberately taken to promote overall well-being changes within a given situation. For example, what could be considered loving during a time of peace, may simply not be enough in times of war. I think that the measure of love is a critical element to the overall idea of demonstrating love.

I have just come to your blog today…after spending 40 years wondering would pause long enough in their use of the term “love”...and to take the time to define it. Having blabbed earlier on another of your blogs, about the “definition” I had “arrived at”...your definition has come to me as a breathe of fresh air. I will be spending some time on your site!