A few days ago the second lesson at Evening Prayer was from the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to St John. It is among my favourite passages of scripture. But I have a problem with the translations of it. There is in the original Greek something that the English translations fail to transmit. Confessedly translations always fall short. The King James Version is excellent in keeping the idioms set out in the Hebrew and Greek. However, that often means some degree of exegesis is required to make the text comprehensible to the present day. Many newer translations convey the meaning at the cost of the original idioms, and therein the flavour of the culture in which the text was created. In John 21 two specific Greek verbs are consistently translated into one English verb, and I am at a loss to understand why this is the case.
Read more: “Do you love me?” -reflections on a gospel narrativeThe ancient Greeks understood there are varied types of love from the acquisitive and desirous to the altruistic, and they had distinct verbs for them. In the gospel narrative under consideration love is used to translate both φιλέω [phil-e-o] and ἀγαπάω [aga-pe-o]. Phil-e-o is properly used for a love characterised by friendship. The relationship is reciprocal, and marked by familiarity and a willingness to stand by or stand with another. Aga-pe-o is used for an unconditional love. It need not be reciprocal. It is a pure, no-strings-attached giving of self to another. It is a state of being unreservedly “for-you.” [i]
I make no pretense of being an authority in either scripture or Greek. Whatever facility in Greek I may have enjoyed sixty-plus years ago has regrettably faded from my head. I am left with little. However, I do remember a delightful evening in the mid-1960s spent in the company of a man who was considered a biblical scholar of note and an expert in the Johannine corpus. He disserted upon the distinction between aga-pe-o and phil-e-o as used in John’s 21st chapter. Yet, several years later, when he published volume two of his commentary on the gospel, he decided translating both verbs as love was justifiable on the basis of the rest of the work. However, chapter 21 is a late addition to a text that had already been edited several times. The member of the Johannine school who produced this chapter may have written in the spirit of the Johannine tradition, but that does not necessitate that he was bound to every nuance of vocabulary used by his predecessors responsible for the first twenty chapters of the text. Unconditional love and friendship are not the same thing, and one does not purposefully select differing words unless one is trying to make a point. The point—in the Greek text—is made. It simply is not translated into the English.
In the Greek of chapter 21 Jesus asks Peter: Do you unconditionally love [aga-pe-o] me? Peter replies: I am your friend [the verb is phil-e-o]. This seems reasonable. In John’s gospel, the night before Jesus is executed he tells his disciples that henceforth he calls them friends. But much has happened between that evening and now. In a sense a new reality has begun, a new heaven and earth are on the horizon. This is a new day. Jesus has just issued an invitation to breakfast. In the narrative span of the gospel this is the last recorded encounter of Jesus and the disciples, and Jesus is raising the bar in his relationship with Peter. Thus, for a second time Jesus asks Peter: Do you unconditionally love [aga-pe-o] me? Peter again replies: I am your friend [phil-e-o]. But now Peter, being his irascible self, is getting a tad hot under the collar, and Jesus knows it, because in John’s gospel the divinity of Jesus is always front and centre. He knows everything that is happening and going to happen, and if he wills to do so, he can control it, manipulate it. Jesus makes a move. He comes down to Peter’s level. He meets Peter where he is comfortable. Jesus asks: Peter, are we friends [phil-e-o]? Peter rather heatedly replies: You know everything. I am your friend [phil-e-o].
Jesus always meets us where we are. But as is always the case, he is not done. He is, as St. Paul marks, a life-giving spirit. There is nothing static about him. Peter and Jesus move on together. Jesus then issues his challenge: “Follow me.” Jesus is always one step ahead of Peter, and of us all. That is part of his Risen reality: “He goes before you.” That is why the disciples never immediately recognize him. He is out of focus; he needs to be discerned. Now, lest Peter not see into the future where the following of Jesus will lead, Jesus offers what seems to be a cryptic message. Peter will be led to a place he would rather not go. He will die for Jesus. One thinks of St. Paul to the Romans: “Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.” In my mind’s eye, as Peter hung upon his cross and felt death enveloping his body, he looked to his Lord and at last met him on his ground. He said to him: “[aga-pe-o] Unconditionally, I love you.”
There is something about death here to consider. How often have we experienced one dear to us turn as death comes to the body and say: “I love you”? There is something there. It is as if as we experience the body fade away from us that we are freed to see into the soul, to see the soul, to see there the image of God, the image of Love, to realize our soul is love, the essence of us is love, and so we must pass it on before death comes. “I love you” to one near and dear is a reaching out to eternity, to the creativity and giving away of self that is eternity. It is a committal. Blest are the dying who have one to whom to say such. It is the capstone of a life shared and given. It is in such a moment that Peter becomes not simply a disciple, not just a friend. It is in this moment Peter becomes the saint.
St. Peter, pray for us.
[i] The essence of this is rehearsed in the apercu: on John, Reflections on a Vision, February 2016.