Fred Martinez's Monitor

The Suspense of Love

By Fred Martinez

The Christian culture is based on love. The Greek language of the New Testament has three different words for love: agape, philia and eros.

Eros is the love of a person for another person. Its highest form is the attraction of a man for a woman. The symbol of eros is a man and a woman facing each other.

Philia is the love of a group of persons for each other. The city of brotherly love in the East Coast is named after this love. Its highest form is the unity of family members. The symbol of philia is persons side by side.

While eros and philia were widely used before Christ's time, agape was relatively unknown. Agape is love of God man. Its highest form is the God-man giving His life for enemy and friend. The symbol of agape is the cruxifix. Agapes fulfillment is the resurrection.

D H Lawrence touched on eros and philia when he said, “There are, the young women say, no real men to love. And there are, the young men say, no real girls to fall-in love with."1

According to Lawrence, the women’s love tends toward Eros. Her love is direct, face to face. Men’s love tends toward philia. His love falls through something to meet the woman. His love is hand holding hand, side by side.

Lawrence wrote," I believe there has never been an age of greater mistrust between persons than in ours today." 2 In other words, eros was mistrusted and a superficial philia was trusted. This was written when the feminist and socialist state was being established in England.

The feminist denied eros and the state upsurged the philia of the family. The state in Western secular regimes has been at war with the family since this time.

The feminist and the Puritan for different reasons taught their daughters not to love, but to mistrust their personal eros and their father’s philia.

G K Chesterton defended love and children against the sterile Puritan/feminist monster and it’s power mad Frankenstein father- the monopolistic capitalist/socialist state. He was a troubadour who fought for love of a woman and the right of a men to sing and drink beer. His love poetry to his wife are masterpieces and his beer songs are still fun.


1 (Edited By) Cavitch, David, Life Studies-A Thematic Reader. New York: St. Martins Pess, !983 and Lawrence, D H Counterfeit, p.385.

2 Ibid., p. 385.


Ernest Van Den Haag said the medieval troubadour “conceived love a longing, a tension between desire and fulfillment.” 3 In this way he showed the similarity between loveless anxiety and loving faith suspense.

Anxiety is a suspense. It is a suspense with fear about the outcome of relationships. In a way anxiety is a good sign. If one has it, it show they have not gone mad like Marx’s and Nietzsche’s self-actualized supermen Hitler and Stalin who believed they were beyond relationship. If anxiety does not find a relationship with God or another beloved it finally falls into distrust and despair.

Faith is also a suspense, but a suspense with excitement about the outcome of it’s relationship with God the beloved or another beloved. It leads to trust and hope.

But Van Den Haag got it wrong when he said, " the religious too perpetuate longing by placing the beloved altogether out of physical reach." He didn’t understand agape.

Agape is the God-man giving his life and everything human thing he had in total self-giving to friend and enemy. The Catholic faith teaches that Jesus, God and man, gives hypocrite and saint his body, soul and divinity when they receive Holy Communion.

Christ gives us his blood body, soul and divinity for the same reason that a husband gives a blood transfusion to a bleeding wife or a friend gives a skin graft to a burned friend. He loves and wants to save our life. Our friends may save our life for a few more decades, but with Jesus we are saved to live forever.

posted by Fred Martinez @ 3:04 PM