Tag Archives: agape

Love vs. the Barbarians

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The story of the Tower of Babel (depicted here in a 12th century mosaic in the cathedral of Monreale, Sicily) is about people losing the ability to communicate with each other. God punishes their arrogance with more than 70 languages and these many languages divide the human race into struggling, battling factions; it is the gift of many languages at Pentecost that makes these languages a reflection of harmony rather than a cause of division.


For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays and my mind is useless. What then? I will pray in the spirit and I will pray in my mind. I will sing praise in the spirit and I will sing praise in mind…. I prefer to utter five words with my mind so that I instruct others rather than utter an untold number of words in a tongue. (1 Cor. 14:13-19)

When St. Paul talks about love (agape) in this epistle, he wants his readers to understand that when we love/practice agape, we are participating in the Kingdom of God. When the gospels talk about love, it is always in the context of behavior: love is not a feeling or emotion but a way to behave. In this epistle, love is both a way to behave and a way to think; “strive for love” is both a way for the Corinthians to behave towards each other and an attitude towards each other that they should embrace.

If the Corinthians love one another, they should always want to support each other and build each other up. St. Paul points out that this attitude should be apparent in the way they pray together: it is better to say a few words that everyone can understand and that build up the community rather than lots and LOTS of words that mean nothing to most people.

The notion of “barbarian” is rooted in this inability to speak in a way that others can understand. The ancient Greeks thought that anyone who could not speak Greek and that they could not understand was simply making nonsense sounds and repeating “bar, bar, bar.” Hence, the term barbarian to mean someone who could not be understood. St. Paul implies that if the Corinthians do not pray with love, they are barbarians.

“I would rather speak five words that other people can understand.” Today, many preachers might take this to heart. Rather than say many fancy-sounding words that only a few can understand, it is better to preach in a way that everyone can appreciate. It is possible to talk about many sophisticated theological ideas in very simple language; one of my favorite guides to preaching suggests that a preacher never use words that are more than one syllable. That way the preacher avoids using fancy-sounding jargon and sticks to words that everyone knows. But using short words that everyone knows does not make a sermon boring. What makes a sermon boring are words that no one understands!

Love is Not Jealous

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This icon shows monks climbing the ladder of virtues toward Christ and the saints. Most fall to their doom because they give in to temptations rather than heeding their guardian angels and struggling against sin. The monks reach the top of the ladder when they focus on love and Who it is that they are climbing toward.


Love waits patiently, it is kind; love is not jealous, love is not conceited, nor is it inflated… nor does it seek its own interests… it bears everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything. (1 Cor. 13:4-7)

This chapter which describes love is perhaps the chapter heard most often because it is read at weddings so often. St. Paul describes love in phrases that are short and simple, just as Plato describes love in a series of short sentences although Plato uses eros rather than agape as the word for “love.” Plato’s praise of love is part of an after-dinner speech in the Symposium and other authors who praised love after that usually made it part of an after-dinner speech as well. St. Paul’s praise of love is also in the context of an after-dinner reflection (cf. 1 Cor. 11:17-34).

Much of what St. Paul writes in 1 Cor 13 also appears in Romans 12. Both chapters are describing what love looks like and how people behave who love one another.

“Love is not jealous.” That is especially important in a parish like Corinth that is torn apart by jealousy. The parishioners are jealous of each other’s spiritual gifts and abilities. They refuse to talk together or eat together. “Conceited” people brag about themselves and their gifts and their abilities, just as the Corinthians bragged.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent (a guide to monastic life but with much applicability to Christians who are not monastics) suggests that jealousy is the result of avarice (Step 17) or pride (Step 23). Avarice always wants, wants, want. It wants more. In Corinth, this creates jealousy because people wanted more spiritual gifts, they wanted what they saw other people had and felt jealous that they did not have these gifts as well. Pride gives birth to jealousy because if I am proud, I want the most and the biggest and most spectacular of the spiritual gifts; pride leads to jealousy if someone has what the proud person wants.

If the parishioners in Corinth claim to practice love, they have to first stop bragging about themselves and being jealous of each other.

The greater the love of God that the saints possess, the more they endure all things for him.

St. Augustine of Hippo, On Patience, 17

Older translations of the New Testament often used “charity” to translate agape.

A man with charity fears nothing for charity casts out fear. When fear is banished and cast out, charity endures all things, bears all things. One who bears all things through love cannot fear martyrdom.

St. Ambrose of Milan, Letter 49

Love (our behavior now), faith (in God and Christ now), and hope (about the General Resurrection, the Kingdom of God, and the Second Coming of Christ) support and complement each other. They define authentic Christian life.