Academic literature on the topic 'Nygren, Anders, Love Agape'

C. S. Lewis read Anders Nygren's Agape and Eros in his mid-thirties, probably during the Christmas holiday of 1934. His first recorded thoughts, including the statement above, are from a letter dated “Jan 8th 1935” to his Oxford colleague Janet Spens. Despite his decisive criticism of what he calls Nygren's “central contrast”—that agape is selfless and eros self-regarding—Lewis ends this letter with a declaration of uncertainty: “However, I must tackle him again. He has shaken me up extremely.” It is remarkable, then, that Nygren is not mentioned by name in Lewis's The Four Loves (1960). Lewis's opening remarks on his theology of love, which do not directly refer to Nygren, “are critical of Nygren's main thesis in Agape and Eros.”

This article offers a critique of Anders Nygrens influential theory of love, which radically distinguishes among ^ros, agape, and philm. By contrast, a defense is offered of Thomas Jay Oord's view, which I label "kenotically donated love" or "full-Oorded" love. Comparisons are developed of related biological relationships like mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.

Di Indonesia, percakapan tentang dasar meta-etis dari perbuatan baik bagi sesama masih didominasi oleh agapisme, yaitu pemahaman bahwa agape adalah jenis cinta paling utama, dikerjakan oleh Allah, dan yang patut diterapkan oleh seorang Kristen. Penolakan secara teologis mulai muncul dari beberapa teolog seperti Ferry Mamahit dan Joas Adiprasetya. Mamahit mengkritik polarisasi dikotomis antara agape dan eros, sedangkan Adiprasetya mengembalikan nama baik philia di hadapan agape. Tulisan ini mengkritik agapisme, khususnya agapisme klasik dari Anders Nygren, melalui sudut bidik filsafat. Dengan aparatus antropologi filosofis dari seorang pemikir Kristen, James K. A. Smith, penulis menjelaskan bahwa menginginkan (cinta-erotis) adalah keniscayaan sebagai seorang manusia. Permasalahannya bukan terletak pada apakah manusia mau meninggalkan eros—sebagaimana secara normatif Nygren utarakan—sebab sejatinya eros sudah pasti menjadi dorongan utama yang mendasari perbuatan baik pada sesama. Masalahnya justru terletak pada apa yang menjadi tujuan akhir (causa finalis) dari perbuatan baik itu. Melengkapi pemikiran Smith, tulisan ini mengambil ide Nicholas Wolterstorff yang mengusung shalom sebagai causa finalis dari perbuatan baik seseorang. Upaya ini hendak menandaskan bahwa model Smith/Wolterstorff lebih sesuai kenyataan ketimbang agapisme.

This paper criticizes one of the premises of Schellenberg’s atheistic argument from divine hiddenness. This premise, which can be considered as the foundation of his proposed argument, is based on a specific interpretation of divine love as eros. In this paper I first categorize several concepts of divine love under two main categories, eros and agape; I then answer some main objections to the ascription of eros to God; and in the last part I show that neither on a reading of divine love as agape nor as eros can Schellenberg’s argument be construed as sound. My aim is to show that even if – contra Nygren for example – we accept that divine love can be interpreted as eros, Schellenberg’s argument still doesn’t work.

Anders Nygren's Agape and Eros is a classical work in the history of Christian ideas of love. It has inspired the academic debate on the relationship between Agape and Eros, while the former is a core concept in Christian theology and ethics, the latter represents the ancient Greek humanistic ethos. Nygren points out that agape and eros encounter and mingle with each other at the theoretical level. However, he suggests that in the Christian idea of love and theology, the erotic ingredient, which invades in and weakens the pure original meaning of agape, should be eliminated. In achieving this, he attempts to deny the role of eros, which manifests the existential characteristics of human being, in the Christian ethical life. Thus Nygren not only makes agape and eros distinctive in their respective meanings, but also separates them in human existential situation.
In the history of Christian theology, we can find "Tradition of Separating" which tends to separate agape from eros like Nygren does. Meanwhile, there is "Tradition of Uniting" claiming to unite the two kinds of love and Tillich's idea of love is a typical example. Therefore, an investigation of Tillich's idea of love, especially its elaboration on the agape-eros relationship, is helpful and constructive not merely to a deeper understanding of Tillich's systematic theology, but also a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the two trends mentioned above in the history of Christian theology.
In this thesis, we examine Tillich's idea of love within the context of history of ideas and trace its historical roots, so that the tradition of uniting agape-eros in the history of ideas, mainly in that of Christian theology can be demonstrated. On the one hand, we try to retrieve the Courtly Love tradition in Medieval-Renaissance ages and Marcilio Ficino's Neo-Platonist understanding of eros in Renaissance as the historical sources to the particular meaning of Tillich's eros. On the other hand, our discussion makes particular reference to Gregory of Nyssa and John of the Cross, two representatives of the Christian spiritual theologians, whose spiritual writings on love will be considered as the historical roots of Tillich's agape-eros union within the Christian tradition. At last, the present study attempts to show that the modern application of Tillich's uniting agape with eros in Christian theology and ethics, along with related secular philosophy, revitalize this "Tradition of Uniting".
Paul Tillich handles the relationship of agape-eros in his systematic theology in a way radically different from the Nygrenian way. In dealing with the relationship between agape and eros, Tillich proposes a "quadric interactive structure of love" in which the four qualities of love namely libido, eros, philia and agape united and synergized in one love. In this structure, agape uplifts eros (including libido, eros and philia qualities) as divine-human power from the ambiguities of life into the unambiguous transcendent unity of life; while eros substantiates the abstract agape by clothing it in substantial appearance common to human existential feature.
王濤.
呈交日期: 2006年5月.
論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006.
參考文獻(p. 282-301).
Cheng jiao ri qi: 2006 nian 5 yue.
Adviser: Lai Pan Chiu.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4225.
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
School code: 1307.
Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006.
Can kao wen xian (p. 282-301).
Wang Tao.

Nygren’s book Eros och Agape was first published in Sweden in 1930/36. It was then published in English translation in 1953 under the title Agape and Eros. The author’s idea was to describe the development of the Christian concept of love through the centuries. Nygren argued that eros is the term for Platonic, self-centred love that strives for union with the divine realities, while agape, denoting the Christian concept of love, is the free, divine movement towards human beings. Agape is unselfish and is not motivated by any value in the recipient. This distinction drawn by Nygren has been so influential that it has been taken for granted in a lot of Christian contexts worldwide, even if one does not associate it with the name Nygren. In this paper his methodology and the distinction he draws are criticised. He finds in eros and agape two so-called “fundamental motifs” that, as he sees it, unfortunately merge in Christian tradition and thereby obscure the original Christian understanding of love that emerges in its purest form in St Paul and later in Luther. There are a lot of problems in Nygren’s book. He argues, for instance, that Christianity emerges from Judaism as a completely new religion, and separates the Old and the New Testament as if they had nothing in common. Agape as the divine gift to human beings excludes all human activity since God has freely and graciously chosen human persons as his slaves. In the present paper it is argued that Nygren’s methodology is unsound and that his conclusions are not even in agreement with the New Testament.

In Anders Nygren’s seminal study of the Christian concept of love, Eros och Agape, the second century bishop and theologian Irenaeus of Lyons is given an important role in the development of the “Christian idea of love”. In this chapter, I will critically discuss certain aspects of Nygren’s and his colleague Gustaf Aulen’s treatment of Irenaeus. Nygren and Aulen presuppose that one can delineate “pure” concepts or ideas or motifs in history (such as “Christian love”), they maintain that it makes sense to speak of the “essence” of Christianity as a given, and they find their normative basis in the genius of Luther, against which they can evaluate the genuineness of any given conception of Christianity. This is of course both provincial and anachronistic. A critical reading of Nygren’s and Aulen’s understanding of Irenaeus and the concept of Christian love raises important questions concerning objectivity, normativity and givenness. I argue in this chapter that there are no stable given “ideas” or “motifs” that can be “identified” or “discovered” or “described” objectively. I believe it is possible, however, to give accounts that will be recognizable and plausible to others who are familiar with the fragmentary sources upon which our accounts are based. At best, we can together construct plausible understandings of a concept such as Christian love, or of a thinker such as Irenaeus, or of something as broad and multifaceted as Christianity – without purporting to have found the true “essence” of the thing we are studying.