So what exactly is this ‘love’ of which Paul speaks so passionately? People used to say that the word agapē referred to a special ‘Christian’ kind of love. Not so. The Septuagint uses the word for everything from God’s love for Israel to Amnon’s destructive lust for Tamar.3 So why do the early Christians focus on agapē in the way they do, picking up the theme (rather than the linguistic phenomenon) of the Hebrew hesed in particular (‘mercy’, ‘loving kindness’, ‘generosity’ and so on)? They – John and Paul in particular – use the word to indicate the biblical theme of gratuitous divine love,
...more
