But I do not believe this is what Christian love in the New Testament is. There isn’t a pattern in John, or in the New Testament, of noticeable difference between ἀγαπάω and φιλέω—so what’s the difference here? How is the AP calling Virginia in favor of Biden even though he's behind on the vote count? One of the problems with using Greek without knowing it well is that you tend to fail to apply your principles rigorously. Although common in both the Septuagint and the New Testament, the word rarely occurs in existing secular Greek manuscripts of the period. After all I’ve written, I admit to enough doubt that I couldn’t absolutely rule out the alternative viewpoint (though I don’t recall that specific Leedy lecture—do you have notes?). Mr. Peters is not calling Carson's exegesis fallacious. Peter had to look to the future.

Why is character "£" in a string interpreted strange in the command cut? I have read DA Carson's exeetical fallacies.

He’s no novice.

Great article—thinking about having my Greek students read it today. I stand in an Augustinian tradition which views Nygren’s position as problematic. site design / logo © 2020 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa. by Chaim & Laura | Feb 14, 2014 | Devotionals | 1 comment. Why didn't the Imperial fleet detect the Millennium Falcon on the back of the star destroyer? This approach to John 21 is a start to learning by what standard we will give account to Jesus when we appear before Him. Because I want to know what God wants me to know I depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal it to me from the Scripture. I like that a lot. Carson points out in one of the most valuable little collections Logos sells, Jesus doesn’t just vary his words for love in his conversation with Peter, he varies his word choice for the noun “sheep”: Is it lambs or sheep? You and I, simple little frail human beings, have the ability to bring joy to the God of the Universe by simply saying: “I love you.”   Have you told Him today that you love Him? I was further told that these two Greek words pointed to two vastly different kinds of love, the one selfless and non-emotional and the other merely emotional and friend-ish. do not consider the word variation to be meaningful. Jesus isn’t invoking two radically different kinds of love in his conversation with Peter. True enough. By all means do both, but know in advance which one weighs more than the other. “The Four Loves” by C.S.Lewis): eros (commonly understood as a kind of physical/sensual love); storge (affection or heartily kind of love); philea (friendship or emotional kind of love) and agape(sacrificial or spiritual love). Still, even if Jesus and His disciples used two different Aramaic words for love, the writer and/or translator putting his words into Greek would have been stuck with only one possible word that would fit and that would be, So when Jesus said that “God so loved the word” He used the Aramaic word. I’ve said it before but I am so very glad that our Beloved pointed me to your writings. Can you comment or clarify? Recently in a Bible study group there was some discussion about Isaiah 9:6. They might not have ready access to the primary resources to recheck their work but might have to rely on the work of other exegetes of bygone generations spanning back to the church fathers who tried to assign alleged meanings to Greek/Hebrew words. (Not that everyone who knows these languages is immune from this temptation!) That’s a confusion of word and concept.

But then I wonder: exactly what difference is intended, if there is one?

If not then why did John pick different words for love at different places? "The grass withers, You know that I love (phileo) you. I do it all the time—and if you’re curious as to what I think “love” really means, I actually believe the standard Greek dictionary (BDAG) defines it pretty well if you put senses one and two together: “to have a warm regard for and interest in another; to have high esteem for or satisfaction with something, cherish, have affection for, love, take pleasure in.” (citation). Many scholars no longer think there is, in fact, any significance in the difference between agape and phileo. It is indeed a very powerful interaction (as discussed elsewhere) ... but it only works in Greek. If all this is true then perhaps the grief of Peter was, as the text states, “because he asked the third time”. By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy.

Why didn't the Jews understand “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”? If there is any passage in the New Testament which points up the difference between the two synonyms, you’d think this would be it. This article explores this question and includes the statement: More evidence is also deduced from the silence of the Greek speaking Fathers of the Church who do not make mention of this distinction in the verbs for love when they comment on this passage. So the actual conversation took place in Aramaic even though the report of it was in Greek I think God speaks from His Word to say to the reader what the reader needs to know and not necessarily a precise exegesis. It is not unusual to use synonyms for purely stylistic reasons. However, their are grammarians of greater experience and noteworthiness than someone, such as myself, who hold to the “intentional” distinction. The conversation may never really have happened. We know it by reading the New Testament. I think it’s simpler to say that ἀγαπάω is as flexible as “love” is an English (lexicographically speaking, anyone can “love,” and pretty much anything can be “loved”). The Father loved the Son with both verbs and command us to love with both verbs. It is when we love Him in return that His love is complete, it is when we love Him in return that he is able to rejoice over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). Bishop John Shelby Spong, in his book Resurrection, Myth or Reality (not free on the web, alas) supposes it could have been an hallucination brought on by Peter's guilt over the fact that, despite promising that whatever anybody else did, he would never abandon Jesus; had then done exactly that. Listen to a dean of evangelical Old Testament study, Walt Kaiser: Greek and Hebrew study involves more than a mere ability to parse verbs and look up words in a lexicon or concordance or in one of several analytical tools in ways that can be taught in a matter of two to four hours of instruction. The most responsible proponents of the alternative view (the idea that ἀγάπη does or can refer to a different “kind” of love than φιλέω) would say, with some justification, 1) that Plato’s Greek is from a different era on the diachronic timeline of Greek, and that 2) the New Testament is allowed to develop something of a technical sense for ἀγάπη. Isaiah in prophesying of the coming Mesiah calls the One to be born as (among other things) Mighty God and Everlasting Father. (citation). These are Chav (also transliterated in English as hooba) and Racham (or raham). However, in John 21:20 where we read about the disciple that Jesus loved the Greek uses the word Agape, but the Peshitta uses the Aramaic word Racham which is identical to the Hebrew …