“Agape… excludes all self love” (A Nygren). Discuss.

There is no doubt that love is a central concept in Christian faith and ethics, and yet we must be
very careful to assume that its content is self-evident. A number of terms in different languages
have been used as ‘sub-headings’ within the category of love, differentiating between (for example)
Agape and Eros. In his book, Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren attempts to demonstrate that the
intermingling of these two concepts results in the loss of force of Agape and distorts the true
Christian notion of love, arguing that self-love can never be a part of true, Christian, self-sacrificing
love. I will attempt to argue that although highly influential, Nygren’s work is doomed to failure from
the start. His conclusion is essentially determined by his starting point, which is the clearly drawn
definition of two categories or ‘fundamental motifs’, Agape and Eros, in such a way that they can
never coexist. Approaching Augustine’s work (which attempts to deal with different understandings
of love, particularly self-love, in a far more subtle and nuanced way than Nygren) with these robust
categories in mind inevitably leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of what is being said.
Instead of excluding all self-love, Augustine’s understanding of Christian agapeistic love actively
includes self-love as the natural consequence of proper love of God.

I wish to look first to the premise of Nygren’s book, Agape and Eros. His treatment of these
two conceptions of love which he sees as wholly distinct is considered to be one of the most
influential works on the Christian notion of love ever published, even though more recently many
theologians have rejected Nygren’s categories and his assertion that his ‘Agape’ is the only proper
Christian understanding of love. His central grievance is that modern study and publication both in
doctrinal and ethical fields have placed love where it belongs (occupying “a… central place in
Christianity”1) and yet have failed to properly explicate the concept of ‘love’, as if the mere mention
of the word would properly define it in the readers mind. Furthermore, such studies, he claims,
have left the eventful history of the Christian idea of love largely to one side, ignoring the conflict
and development it has undergone2. He argues that the erroneous synthesis of Eros and Agape, of
love of self and of love devoid of all concern for self, is due to both a tradition that tells us the two
belong together but also due to linguistic confusion as both concepts are represented in the
English language by one word, ‘love’3. I am moved to note what I see as irony - whilst blaming the
conflation of the two terms by Augustine, amongst others, upon language, Nygren fails to see that
it is arguably his over-reliance on language and labelled categories that leads to his conclusion.
Why should it be that we must set apart these two categories of love and place self-love in one and
the proper Christian love of others and God in the other as if the two can never be coherent? He
asks why it is that the New Testament makes large use of the term ‘agape’ when discussing love
and consistently avoids use of the term ‘eros’, never considering that perhaps Paul, for example,
did not have such clearly defined and separate categories in mind. I would be more than happy to
concede that Agape may be the most suitable term to label proper Christian love, but this does not
necessarily exclude certain forms of self-love. In the introduction to his work, Nygren writes that he
intends not to use the terms Agape and Eros in a general philological sense but instead “in
reference to the special content with which creative minds have filled them”4 - and yet he allows
little space to consider the way in which Augustine ‘fills’ the term Agape in his own characteristic
manner.

Turning to look at Augustine’s account in Book One of De doctrina christiana, it is essential

to look at the way Augustine considers ‘things’ (here meant as any ‘thing’ - a log, a stone, a sheep
etc. - which are not employed to signify something5) to understand what it is he means when he
says ‘love’. As noted by Fitzgerald, there is no one clear definition of love in the work of Augustine

1
Nygren A, Agape and Eros (London: SPCK, 1957).
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Augustine, On Christian Teaching, Trans: R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
and there is no clear difference drawn between the three Latin words ‘amor’, ‘caritas’ and ‘dilectio’6.
This is largely due, I would argue, to Augustine’s nuanced approach which enables him, unlike
Nygren, to argue that concepts such as ‘self-love’ can be either good or evil depending upon how
they are applied. He has no need to set up two (or more) distinct categories of love as Nygren
does. Augustine draws a distinction between those things that are to be enjoyed for they make us
happy, and those things which are to be used in order to assist us in reaching those things that
make us happy7. This is the crux of why I would argue Augustine’s approach is far more successful
than Nygren’s. Instead of drawing a distinction between self-love and Agape, Augustine draws a
distinction between a love of lower and higher things. To love a lower thing would be to decide to
enjoy a ‘thing’ which belongs to the category of things to be used, and such a love would impede
our advance towards our attainment of those things which ought to be enjoyed. Augustine’s image
is one of travellers returning to their homeland - much like these travellers, we are away from the
Lord and we must use this world in order to return to our ‘homeland’ instead of merely being
satisfied by what we already possess. The things to which we voyage and which are the proper
objects of enjoyment are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Only these eternal, unchangeable
things are to be enjoyed and other things must be used to attain enjoyment of these things8.

Within this rubric of things to be enjoyed and things to be used, it is at first challenging to
see where human beings, both ourselves and others, fit. Are we to enjoy one another or to use one
another? We know from the ‘second commandment', second only to the commandment to love
God with all our heart and all our soul and all our might, that we must love our neighbour as we
love ourselves. The reason this is the case is not for some gain nor on account of the person lest
that person be made to constitute eudaemonia, but instead on account of God, the proper object of
our love. The great commandment leaves no part of our being free from obligation, and loving
others as ourself should be related to love of God, argues Augustine9. Indeed, there are four things
which ought to be loved: that which is above us (God), that which we are (our person), that which
is close to us (other human beings), and that which is beneath us (our body)10, and all are inter-
related - or rather the latter three should all be related to the first. When we look to Augustinian
ideas about goodness we see that, much like existence, all occurrences of goodness are
reflections of ‘the Good’ (and with existence, ‘the Being’) - namely God11. He is the source of these
attributes. Much like goodness and existence, we must always be relating love back to God - and
the same applies to self-love. Love of others, for Augustine, does not exist in a vacuum and neither
does love of self. The same could not be said for Nygren who, in his continued assertion that the
goal of ethics must be to seek that which is ‘Good-in-itself’, seems to hold that self-love always
takes the same characteristics, characteristics that ought to be rejected. Meanwhile, Augustine
demonstrates awareness of the ways in which self-love may be good or evil.

In many ways, self-love in the work of Augustine as we know it is actually a product of the
evolution of his thought, and indeed in the entry on love Fitzgerald regularly references a change in
Augustine’s work and opinions post-39712 - the year in which the first three books of De doctrina
christiania were published. It comes from a recognition that we must reject typically Platonic ideas
that the soul is somewhat kept prisoner by the body or despises the body, although Augustine still
held that the subjection of body by soul is a necessity. This is borne from a belief that nature in
itself is something good by virtue of creation, and instead of attributing evil and sin to matter and
flesh, we should instead look to ourselves as a whole human being. From 397 onwards, Augustine
recognises that self-love is a natural phenomenon in that no-one ever hates himself or herself, or

6
Fitzgerald A D, Augustine Through the Ages (Cambridge: William B Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1999).
7
Augustine, On Christian Teaching, Trans: R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Fitzgerald A D, Augustine Through the Ages (Cambridge: William B Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1999).
12
Ibid.
his or her own body. Martyrs may have forsaken their love of self but this by no means equates to
despising oneself13. This natural love of self may not always be aligned with the true quest for
happiness, and as elsewhere the image of cities is used. The city of this world loves itself so much
that by comparison it despises God; the ‘eternal city’ loves God so much that by comparison it
despises itself14. Self-love must never be contrary to love of God, for knowing how to properly love
oneself is to love God.

Of course, when we say we love ourself and we love God, we are not using the term
univocally. O’Donovan draws a helpful contrast between cosmic and benevolent love to illustrate
this point15. The ‘cosmic’ love we have for our creator is of the kind that firstly sets us on a path
towards eudaemonia, much like the way in which we use those things that ought to be used.
However, unlike love of self or love of others, this love does not and cannot add anything to God
for he is the summum bonum. This has implications for the way we love ourselves - benevolently.
As we love God we are drawn towards him and towards eudaemonia, and so through love of God
man stands to benefit. We can see here how tightly intertwined love of God and love of self are.
When we love God we are essentially willing that we may be brought ever closer to our homeland
and that we may reach our full potential, loving ourselves in the process. Furthermore, we must
defend self-love against accusations of stagnancy. Without denying the dignity we have received
from God, we must in one sense hate ourselves as we are due to the weakness in us, and this
enables us to make progress16. It is certainly easy to see why O’Donovan identifies a “Problem of
Self-Love in St. Augustine”. Self-love appears to be used by Augustine with various implications -
for example, that by loving oneself too much, the city of the world hates God, and yet elsewhere
we are told that self-love equates to loving God and is actually a necessity of loving God. We are
also told that loving God is a natural phenomenon, a necessity of being a human, and yet are told
that self-love is the outworking of love of God in those that do love God17. However, if we look
closely at Augustine we cannot pretend that he does not explain these seeming contradictions.
Self-love is not one consistent concept as Nygren treats it, but instead is to be sought only in
relation to love of God.

Nygren’s criticism of Augustine’s eudaemonistic system of ethics is perhaps his most

sympathetic moment. Each person ought to use those things that ought to be used to achieve
flourishing and the supreme good, and yet this is not without motivation - beatitude, or vision of the
divine, which Augustine characterises as what is best for human beings. Thus, argues Nygren,
Augustine’s system is ultimately governed by the idea that God actually is to be used for an end -
that end being beatific vision and eudaemonia. For Nygren in this context, Eros has identified the
value of God in attaining this supreme good and happiness, instead of sacrificing itself for that
which is ‘Good-in-itself’18. However, I would argue the flaw here is that Nygren has not properly
grasped the interrelation of such concepts as the summum bonum, eudaemonia, ‘Good-in-itself’.
These are a fundamental part of what we mean when we say we are striving to attain God, to
reach full and proper enjoyment of God. That is to say eudaemonia is our ‘goal’ in the same sense
God is our ‘goal’. Nor has Nygren properly understood Augustine’s distinction between things to be
used and things to be enjoyed. God is not to be enjoyed in the sense that we might enjoy leisure
activity, but rather that in God we find a realising of our full potential. Furthermore, our attainment
of eudaemonia is the will of the divine, not simply the desire of a selfish human ego.

In conclusion, whilst Nygren makes some important observations especially concerning the
history of the Christian notion of love, his conclusion that Agape must always exclude self-love is

13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
O’Donovan O, The Problem of Self-Love in Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980).
16
Fitzgerald A D, Augustine Through the Ages (Cambridge: William B Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1999).
17
O’Donovan O, The Problem of Self-Love in Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980).
18
Nygren A, Agape and Eros (London: SPCK, 1957).
fundamentally flawed largely because his treatment of Agape and self-love as concepts lacks
nuance. He sets these two up as categories that can never overlap and imposes this system upon
Augustine, accusing his ethics of egocentric selfishness instead of recognising the important and
complex relationship of Agape and self-love in Augustine’s work. Therefore I cannot conclude that
Agape must exclude self-love; in fact quite the opposite. I would argue that Agape through relation
to God as the proper object of our enjoyment always entails self-love.