Ineffability OR Why "What is Love?" is a Silly Question

During my degree - way back now, buried in the distant past - I was lucky enough to do a course on New Testament Greek.  One thing that sticks with me from this course (apart from the fact that the lecturer used to check to see if we’d actually done the prep work, which I hardly ever had) was that the Greeks had four different words that had the meaning “love”.

Initially this was something of an annoyance to me - after all, why learn 4 words when they could all be defined by one? - but over the years this fact has stuck with me and, though it sounds more cheesy than a ploughman’s sandwich, has shaped my view on the eternal question of what love really is.  I’m sure there is a scientific explanation for love, since when two people strike it off so well it is referred to as “chemistry”, but I think love is something that might just be a little too intangible for science to try and explain away.

Every Christmas we still hang up stockings in the parlour around the fireplace - although the chimney is closed up - and last Christmas one of the gifts inside on Christmas morning was a paperweight with the word “LOVE” on it.  It’s sitting on my drawers at the moment, not holding down papers but still looking very nice.  It got me thinking about love, what it is and what it means to people.  As the last blog might have revealed I am a fan of John Denver’s music, his melodies and especially his lyrics.  He wrote a song called “Perhaps Love” which I have had the privilege to sing on a few occasions as a duet with my sister.  In it he lists a number of things that different people say love is, but I think love is all those things to all people though different avatars are attributed to it depending on what the individual is like.

The four sides of love that the Greeks saw were:

• Family Love (storge)
• Comradely - a word I really struggle to say - Love (philos)
• Passionate Love (eros)
• Soulful Love (agape)

And when considering how different each one of these are, it becomes clear why the Greeks wanted different words for them.  Whatever it is that attracts one person to another it will inevitably be one of these things, the best matches are those that share 3 of them.

As with most things, I think the obsession with the question is what hides the answer.  I’m loved and I love but I’m still searching for love.  I think, deep down, it is what every human on the planet is searching for, irrespective of whether they have found it.  It’s not one of those things that has a limit - family, brotherhood, passion and especially soul are all boundless.  A man - or a woman, I wouldn’t want to be accused of discrimination - has not lived if they have not loved.

So get out there and spread a little love - and no, I don’t mean eros love, I mean agape.  Get that ineffable feeling of all those things John Denver tried to list, because with love comes inspiration and with inspiration comes courage and with courage: dreams come true.

Love is many faceted and I think there are far more forms of it than just four, perhaps I should invent words for them…  Or maybe I should just thank Plato, Aristotle and Socrates for making my course four times as hard but my view of life four times richer.

Cheers, boys!