The Illusive World of Love: Demystifying the Mindset of True Love in Theological Perspectives

By Revd Dr Gabriel J. Anan

This book attempts to demystify the complexity of the illusive world of love, labeled by the ancient Greeks in the three distinct types of love, particularly eros. The book is challenging this axiom in stressing that majority of people in the world are being fooled into thinking that there is such a thing as true love, as eros.

People may say, Not another book on loveyes, but with a difference. The belief is that the word love (eros) is an illusion, and that having been entrenched in the certainty of what love has to offer, the more knowledge we have about it, the better. The instance here is this: whilst love is held with higher regard in the world since time immemorial, it is time to have a fresher thought about the reality of love. By engaging in the exploration of the influence of eros (love), we shall be in a supreme position to be able to disentangle the mind-set being enculturated into society centuries ago by the Greek philosophers. It cant be stressed highly enough as we are all witnessing the devastating impact of the Platonic love eros on many innocent people, particularly children in our modern society.

Marinoff claims that the ancient Greeks, whose development and discoveries in many subjects continue to exert primary influence on Western civilization, and therefore also on the global village, were vitally interested in love and its relation to the human soul. In this pre-Christian period, the Greeks were pagans, and the view of the soul was not a religious one involving spirits or ghosts. Plato and others conceived of love as residing in the soul and the soul itself (and therefore love). This book reveals what true love is in the Bible, contrary to what the ancient Greeks handed to modern society. The Greeks third and highest form of love is agape. It is the rarest and most valuable kind of love. Agape is unselfish; its expression always helps and never harms another. What makes agape different from eros and philos is its selflessness. Although agape love was mentioned by the Greeks, its true meaning is given by Jesus in the Bible. In this respect, the book is saturated with the biblical verses of Gods love, particularly agape love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504988513

Revd Dr Gabriel J. Anan

The Reverend Dr. Gabriel Anan was born and raised in Ghana, where he received his primary and secondary education. He worked for the ministry of interior for five years before leaving for Great Britain to study law, shipping, and transport. His management training earned him the corporate membership of the professional bodies, including Chartered Institute of Shipbrokers, Chartered Institute of Transport, and the Institute of Export. He later worked as a manager and director for five years before engaging in academic studies at Greenwich University for his youth work qualification.. He achieved a master of arts in voluntary sector studies before gaining a PhD in the area of church leadership and management of change at the University of East London. As a Church of England priest, he completed a BA in contextual theology at Middlesex University. He also studied for an evangelical degree at Elim Bible College (now Regents Theological College). He has a vast practical experience in voluntary and charity organizations, as he served as chairman of Canning Town Outlook and was a director for Newham Credit Union, vice chair for Drew Primary School Governors for four years, and youth adviser for London Borough of Newham for over ten years. Currently, he is an associate minister at St. George’s Church of England in East London. He lives in Essex, UK, with his family.

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© 2015 Revd Dr Gabriel J. Anan, PhD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation — Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/14/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8849-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8850-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8851-3 (e)

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 The Art of Enculturation

Personal Experience

Chapter 2 World View on Love

Definition of Love

Describing Love

Some General Comments about Love

Comments from People in the Survey

Chapter 3 Voices of People

What Is Love? The Voices of People in the Survey

How Would You Describe Love?

Chapter 4 Biblical Love: Human Lust or Divine Love?

Love in the Old Testament

The Ten Commandments

Love in the New and the Old Testament

Characteristics of Divine Love

God’s Love Is Eternal

God’s Love Is Immutable, Changeless

God’s Love Is Holy

God’s Love Is Sacrificial

God’s Love Is Sovereignly Bestowed by Grace

The Love of God Is Present in Person

God’s Love Is One Attribute among Many

God’s Love Is the Source of Human Love

Chapter 5 Understanding God’s Love in the New Testament

The Grace of God’s Love

The Holy Spirit: The Gift of God’s Love

Chapter 6 The Perception of Change

Dealing with Change

Change of Behaviour

Chapter 7 Conclusion: Comparing Love with Law

The Law of Love

Agape Love

God’s Love

Love in the New Testament

God’s Love for His Son

God’s Love for Men

Man’s Love for God and Christ

Man’s Love for Man

Man’s Love for Things

Some Related Topics for Agape Love

Summary

A Note on the Author

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to a number of people, especially men and women who plucked the courage to have a constructive dialogue with me in gathering information for this book. Their courage to talk candidly has resulted in collecting the necessary materials without which this book would not have been in print. I am grateful to my publishers, who found the manuscript useful for publication. I am also grateful for my family whose patience allowed me to get on with my loneliness as I continued to compose the message being received and digested. I thank the vicar, Revd Canon David Haokip of St Georges and the staff of Newham council for their moral support.

A book of this magnitude of love of the Living God must be applauded. In this respect I dedicate this book to all believers. I must confess this inspirational book is worthy of exploration by the brothers and sisters in the world for enhancement of faith. Jesus commands that we must love God and also to love our neighbour. For this reason we shall all be blessed abundantly with the love of God.

—The Reverend Canon David Haokip,

Vicar, St. Georges and St. Ethelbert, East London

PREFACE

The need to change the perception of what the Greek word eros (love) is meant to the world is critically long overdue. The fact is that the power of this love can never be underestimated or undermined, because from generation, we have been conditioned into perpetuating this type of love (eros) as something worth cherishing, whereas in my view it is nothing more than illusion, since its true nature is easily quantifiable. Nonetheless, the modern world is under the impression that this love (eros) is not only true love as we know it today, but that it is also a holy grail and, as such, cannot be challenged or even called into question. And regardless of its many irreparable and untold ills afflicted on the weak and the vulnerable people by the perpetrators in our societies, all in the name of love (eros), there has always been a wall of silence in most cases as to who is responsible. We have also been conditioned into accepting the fact that its impact on the weak by the strong in the society should be tolerated and condoned due to many feeble excuses. In this case, it has resulted with many devices being designed and constantly promoted into attracting the opposite sex into submitting to the perpetrators’ quest.

Essentially, whilst love means a different thing to different people in our society, according to the popular view, the underlying fact is that we need to re-evaluate our thought in order that more light could be shed in our understanding as to what the word love is, its purpose, its place and position in the society, and above all, the part it is meant to be playing in our lives.

This book has come into print because the author has come across many instances, and graphically witnessed the voice of a child who was supposed to be protected by her own father but instead found herself wanting.

CHAPTER 1

The Art of Enculturation

Whatever has occupied mankind for so long, it’s worth knowing it.

—Author unknown

It is peculiar to the nature of man to be inquisitive into the causes of the events they see, some more, some less; but all men so much, as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and evil fortune.

—Thomas Hobbes

The important thing is to not stop questioning.

—Albert Einstein

The text of this book begins with philosophical questions such as, what is love; can the world survive without it? Probably not! The book is challenging this axiom in stressing that the world is being fooled into the thought that the Greek word eros, meaning ‘love’, is true love for modern society. The author, in this respect, has methodically put together a popular thought for pondering without provoking thought.

However, people may say, not another book on love, surely! But, yes, with a difference. The belief is that the Greek word eros (love) which has captured the imagination of people in the modern word is an illusion. This is because being entrenched in the dubiety of what this love has to offer humankind shows that the more knowledge we have about it, the better. The instance is that, whilst love is held with the highest regard in the world, described by many people in chapter 2 and 3, since time immemorial, it is now time to have a fresh thought about the reality of love. By engaging in the exploration of the influence of eros (love), we shall be in a supreme position to disentangle the mindset being enculturated in the society since the days of Methuselah. We have seen its impact progress during the passage of time of Platonic love (eros) handed down to the world, in particular Western civilization, by the ancient Greek philosophers. Stokes asserts that ‘philosophy in the West has a long and venerable tradition, stretching back to almost six centuries before the birth of Christ’ (Stokes, 2003).

In the words of Marinoff, ‘The ancient Greeks, whose development and discoveries in mathematics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy and many other subjects continue to exert primary influence on Western civilization, and therefore also on the global village, were vitally interested in love and its relation to the human soul. In this pre-Christian period, the Greeks were pagans, and the view of the soul was not a religious one involving spirits or ghosts. Plato and others conceived of love as residing in the soul and the soul itself (and therefore love) as having three parts or dimensions. These correspond to the guts, the mind, and the heart. The Greeks labelled these three distinct types of love as eros, philos, and agape.

He further stated that although today we use the word ‘erotic’ to mean sexual, the Greek concept of eros actually referred to all human physical appetites. The appetite for food and drink were erotic (belonging to the domain of the gut) as much as the appetite for sex. In this view, sex is just another appetite, with no more value judgement connected to it than to food. It is only when religions started controlling human social conduct that we saw sexuality treated as something different from other bodily appetites, which led to the narrowed (and current) meaning of eros. ‘Erotic love’, then, in today’s parlance, means sexual love and carries with it connotations of attraction, allure, mystique, chemistry, and animal magnetism. We cannot deny its importance, but we must also affirm love’s higher aspects.

Philos means an intellectual attraction to someone or something that develops into a kind of love. Philosophy itself, meaning ‘love of wisdom’, happens to be good example. Philos means loving people, things, or ideas in nonsexual ways. The relationship between a student and teacher can be philial love, as can the attraction to a friend, poem, landscape, mathematical theorem, moral theory, subject of