Word Studies Done Right

The Hermeneutics track's lesson Word Studies Done Properly, in its module The Toolbox, named the fallacies and gave a method. Module 2 of this track, in What the Tools Cannot Do, showed how the free tools can lead a student into those fallacies. This lesson does one complete word study from beginning to end, on the most preached-about pair of words in the New Testament, so that you can see the method work and then use it on your own passage.

Begin where Paul begins. In the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT), 1 Corinthians 13:4 opens Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη (Hē agapē makrothymei, chrēsteuetai hē agapē, love is patient, love is kind). Then come thirteen more verbs, eight of them negated: love οὐ ζηλοῖ (ou zēloi, does not envy), οὐ περπερεύεται (ou perpereuetai, does not boast), οὐ φυσιοῦται (ou physioutai, is not puffed up), and so on to the end of verse 7. Paul's definition of ἀγάπη (agapē, love) is not a dictionary entry. It is fifteen things love does and does not do.

That is the first rule of a word study done right: the passage itself is the best evidence for what a word means in that passage. Here Paul has written the definition for us, and it is a portrait of behaviour, not a special word. The two verbs found nowhere else, χρηστεύεται and περπερεύεται, are worth a moment each. The first belongs to the family of χρηστός (chrēstos, kind), the word Jesus uses of God in Luke 6:35, He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked; love acts the way God acts towards those who do not deserve it. The second is a rare word for showing off, bragging, making oneself out to be more than one is.

The second rule is to look first at the same writer in the same book. Search φυσιόω and the reason for the negative verbs appears at once. Six of its seven New Testament uses are in this letter, and every one is about the Corinthians: puffed up in favour of one teacher against another (4:6), puffed up as though Paul were not coming (4:18-19), puffed up when they should have grieved over a scandal in the church (5:2), and puffed up by knowledge (8:1, Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up). So when Paul says love οὐ φυσιοῦται, he is holding up a mirror. The portrait of love in chapter 13 is drawn against the gifted, quarrelling, proud church of chapters 12 and 14. No dictionary of classical Greek would have told you that, and five minutes with the free tools does.

Now widen the study to the whole New Testament. Counting the SBLGNT, the agapē family has three common members: the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō, to love), 143 times; the noun ἀγάπη, 116 times; and the adjective ἀγαπητός (agapētos, beloved), 61 times. The phileō family is much smaller: the verb φιλέω (phileō, to love, to be fond of, to kiss), 25 times; the noun φίλος (philos, friend), 29 times, 15 of them in Luke; and φιλία (philia, friendship) once, in James 4:4, friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Sort the verbs by writer, as the method requires, and John stands out: 37 of the uses of ἀγαπάω are in his Gospel and 28 in 1 John, and 13 of the 25 uses of φιλέω are in his Gospel. Whatever is happening between these two verbs, John's Gospel is where it happens.

Next, ask what each verb can take as its object, because that is the quickest way to see a word's range. ἀγαπάω is used of God's love for the world (John 3:16), of the love commanded between disciples (John 13:34), and of love for one's enemies (Luke 6:35). It is also used of loving the darkness (John 3:19), praise from men (John 12:43), the chief seats in the synagogues (Luke 11:43), and the present age, for which Demas abandoned Paul, ἀγαπήσας τὸν νῦν αἰῶνα (agapēsas ton nyn aiōna, having loved the present age, 2 Timothy 4:10). It is a broad word for valuing, wanting, preferring, setting the heart on something, good or bad.

φιλέω has its own range. It is used of the hypocrites, who love to pray standing on street corners (Matthew 6:5), of loving father or mother more than Christ (Matthew 10:37), and, in a sense the other verb does not have, of a kiss: the betrayer's signal in Matthew 26:48 is The One I kiss is the man, and the verb is φιλέω. But it is also used of God. In John 5:20 the Father φιλεῖ (philei, loves) the Son; in John 16:27 the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, with φιλέω for both; and in Revelation 3:19 the risen Christ says Those I love I rebuke and discipline, with φιλέω again. Paul uses it for the love every believer owes Christ: If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be under a curse (1 Corinthians 16:22).

So the uses, gathered and sorted, say something clear. Neither verb is confined to one kind of love. ἀγαπάω can be used of loving the wrong things; φιλέω can be used of God's love and of love for God. In most sentences the two overlap so much that a writer can use either. That does not yet answer whether they ever differ, and section 4 will take that seriously. It does rule out one claim entirely.

The claim runs like this: agapē is a word the pagan world hardly used, perhaps one the Christians invented, and it means God's kind of love, unconditional and self-giving, so wherever you see it in the New Testament you are seeing divine love. It is preached widely and sincerely. It is also wrong, and on this point there is no real disagreement among those who study Greek. It should be corrected wherever you hear it, gently.

The evidence is threefold. First, the verb ἀγαπάω is ordinary Greek, used by Greek writers centuries before the New Testament for being fond of, welcoming, being content with, preferring. Only the noun ἀγάπη is rare before the Bible, and rarity is not holiness. Second, the noun's first large body of use is in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, and the uses are very human. In the story of Amnon and Tamar, the Septuagint of 2 Samuel 13:15 uses both the verb and the noun for Amnon's love that turned to hatred, a love that was nothing like God's. In the Song of Songs the noun names the love between the two lovers, the love the BSB renders as strong as death in 8:6, and of which it says Mighty waters cannot quench love in 8:7. Third, the New Testament itself, as section 2 showed, uses ἀγαπάω of loving darkness, praise, seats of honour and this present age. D. A. Carson, in Exegetical Fallacies (1984), uses exactly this evidence to show that the word alone cannot carry the meaning preachers give it.

Where did the myth come from? Partly from a serious book. Anders Nygren, a Swedish Lutheran theologian, published his study of the two ideas of love in two Swedish parts in 1930 and 1936; it is known in English as Agape and Eros, and a revised one-volume English translation appeared in 1953. Nygren argued that Christian love, which he called agapē, is a different motif from the Greek love of desire, eros: spontaneous, unmotivated by the worth of its object, creating value rather than seeking it. That is a theological argument about two ways of thinking about love, and it can be weighed as such. In popular preaching it hardened into a claim about a dictionary, that the word itself means what Nygren said the Christian motif means. C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves (1960), which used English names, affection, friendship, eros and charity, was then often taught with Greek words attached to each, as though Greek had four clean boxes. It does not.

James Barr's The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) was largely a protest against this way of doing theology, reading doctrines off the supposed inner meaning of single words, as some articles in Kittel's great Theological Dictionary of the New Testament had done. Barr's point is the one this module keeps making: words mean what their sentences make them mean. It is the sentences, not the word, that tell you what God's love is.

And the sentences are more than enough. And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10). But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). As I have loved you, so you also must love one another (John 13:34). What makes Christian love distinctive is what God did and who he loved, and the New Testament poured that content into an ordinary word, as it did with grace, faith and gospel. A preacher who says agapē means divine love has given his hearers less than the truth. A preacher who shows them the cross has given them the definition.

Now the passage where the question is genuinely open. Three times the risen Jesus asks Peter whether he loves him, by the fire on the shore where the disciples have just eaten. The first two times he asks ἀγαπᾷς με; (agapas me, do you love me?), the first time adding πλέον τούτων (pleon toutōn, more than these), which may mean more than these other disciples love me or more than you love these things. Each time Peter answers Ναί, κύριε, σὺ οἶδας ὅτι φιλῶ σε (Nai, kyrie, sy oidas hoti philō se, yes, Lord, you know that I love you), with φιλέω. The third time Jesus asks φιλεῖς με; (phileis me), using Peter's verb, and Peter is grieved.

Many careful readers have held that the change is deliberate and meaningful. Among nineteenth-century scholars, R. C. Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament, and B. F. Westcott, in his commentary on John (1880), both held that the two verbs differ in this passage, and the view has had defenders ever since, among them W. E. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (first published 1939 to 1941), still one of the most used word books in English-speaking churches. It takes two forms. In one, the more common in preaching, ἀγαπάω is the higher love of will and devotion and φιλέω the love of personal affection, so Peter, humbled by his denials, will not claim more than affection, and Jesus at last comes down to the word Peter can honestly use. In the other, associated with Trench, φιλέω is the warmer, more personal word, so Peter answers Jesus' question with something closer and more heartfelt than he was asked for, and the third question searches even that.

The defenders' arguments are serious. First, the pattern is too regular to be careless: Jesus uses one verb twice, Peter answers with the other every time, and then Jesus switches to Peter's verb. A writer varying words for elegance does not usually produce a pattern that clean. Second, the narrator draws attention to the change. John 21:17 says Peter was grieved ὅτι εἶπεν αὐτῷ τὸ τρίτον· Φιλεῖς με; (hoti eipen autō to triton, phileis me, because he said to him the third time, do you love me?), repeating the very word Jesus had switched to. On this reading the hurt is not only that he was asked three times but that he was asked, the third time, in his own word. Third, in John's Gospel ἀγαπάω carries the weight of the great sayings: Jesus loved his own to the end (13:1), the new commandment is to love one another as I have loved you (13:34, 15:12), and God so loved the world (3:16) all use it. A reader who notices that may hear Jesus' first two questions in that register.

The defenders know the evidence of John 3:35 and 5:20, where both verbs describe the Father's love for the Son, and they have an answer. Words that overlap in most sentences can still be distinguished when a writer sets them side by side in one exchange. English speakers use like and love interchangeably in many sentences, and yet if one person says Do you love me? and the other answers I like you very much, every hearer knows something has happened. The same writer can use two words as synonyms in one chapter and play them against each other in another, and the defenders argue that John 21, where the words are placed in deliberate alternation in a single conversation, is the place where he does the second. On this view, saying the words sometimes overlap does not show they never differ.

Preached well, this reading has real pastoral weight. Peter, who boasted that he would lay down his life (13:37) and then denied Jesus three times, no longer claims more than he has. Jesus does not reject what he offers. He takes it, gives him the flock, and tells him that he will in the end glorify God by his death (21:18-19), which is the love he could not claim. A congregation hears that Jesus meets a failed disciple where he is and does not leave him there.

Other careful readers take the opposite view, among them Raymond Brown in the Anchor Bible (1970), Leon Morris in the New International Commentary (1971), and D. A. Carson in the Pillar commentary (1991). The view is older than they are. Augustine, in The City of God (book 14, chapter 7), argued that scripture does not separate the Latin words for love by moral quality, and used Jesus' questions to Peter, where his Latin Bible had two verbs, to show that the two meant one thing. On this reading John varies his verbs the way a good storyteller varies his words, and the variation carries no separate message.

The evidence is also serious. First, John uses the two verbs for the same relationships throughout his Gospel, as the inquiry found: the Father loves the Son with ἀγαπάω in 3:35 and φιλέω in 5:20; Jesus loves Lazarus with φιλέω in 11:3 and 11:36 and ἀγαπάω in 11:5; the disciple whom Jesus loved is described with ἀγαπάω in 13:23 and φιλέω in 20:2. The Father φιλεῖ believers in 16:27. If φιλέω named a lesser love, John could hardly use it of the Father's love for the Son and for the disciples. Second, the love verbs are not the only words varying in this passage. The care verb moves between Βόσκε (Boske, feed) and Ποίμαινε (Poimaine, shepherd); the flock moves between ἀρνία (arnia, lambs) and πρόβατα (probata, sheep); and in the third answer Peter says both σὺ οἶδας (sy oidas, you know) and σὺ γινώσκεις (sy ginōskeis, you know), two different verbs for knowing in one breath. Some who see a contrast in the love verbs have found shades of difference in these pairs too, but most readers do not build anything on the change from feeding to shepherding or from one verb for know to the other, and the defenders of variation ask why the love verbs should be treated differently from their neighbours. Leon Morris documented how often John repeats a statement with small changes of wording elsewhere in the Gospel, and on this view John 21 is one more example.

Third, the text says why Peter was grieved: ὅτι εἶπεν αὐτῷ τὸ τρίτον (hoti eipen autō to triton, because he said to him the third time). The emphasis falls on the third time, and the third time points back. John is the only Gospel writer to mention that the fire at which Peter denied Jesus was a charcoal fire, ἀνθρακιά (anthrakia), in 18:18, and the only other use of that word in the New Testament is the charcoal fire on this shore in 21:9. Three denials beside one charcoal fire, three questions beside another: the grief makes full sense without any difference in the verbs. Fourth, Jesus and Peter very probably spoke Aramaic with each other, and whatever the conversation was in Aramaic, the pairing of these two Greek verbs is John's way of telling it. Defenders of this view take that as a further reason not to rest a separate point on the choice.

The defenders of stylistic variation also have an answer to the argument from juxtaposition. They grant that synonyms can be played against each other when a writer wants to, but they say a writer who does so usually gives some signal that the difference matters, and that here the signals point elsewhere: the other word pairs vary in the same exchange, Peter's answers say yes to the questions rather than correcting them, and the narrator explains Peter's grief by the number of the question, not its verb. On this view the pattern of the verbs is the natural result of Jesus asking three times and Peter answering in his own habitual word.

Preached well, this reading also has real pastoral weight. Jesus asks three times because Peter denied three times, and each question undoes a denial. The commission to feed and shepherd is given three times, so that no one, least of all Peter, can doubt he has been restored. The love Jesus asks for is the same love each time, and the same love Peter, grieved and honest, says he has. A congregation hears that Jesus restores a failed disciple fully, in the same place and the same way he fell.

Notice how much the two readings share. Both hold that the three questions answer the three denials. Both hold that Peter is restored and commissioned to feed Christ's people, and that his love will be tested to death (21:18-19). Both hold that the scene is about grace meeting failure. They differ over one thing: whether John wants you to hear a difference between the verbs, and if so which direction it runs. That is a real question and a reader should hold it open. Each side, as sections 4 and 5 showed, has an answer to the other's strongest argument, and neither answer ends the discussion. Most recent commentaries on John favour the stylistic reading, while the older reading has never lacked able defenders, and a count of commentaries is not an argument either way. It is also smaller than either camp's preachers sometimes make it. What you must not do is preach either reading as though the Greek proves it, or mock the other as ignorance. Say what you think and why, say that careful scholars disagree, and preach the restoration, which is not in doubt.

Notice also what this study has settled. The claim that agapē is a uniquely divine word is wrong, and you can say so. The claim that φιλέω is a weak or merely human love is wrong too, since God is its subject in John 5:20 and 16:27. The method that settled those claims is the one you will use on your own passage: begin in the passage, look first at the same writer, gather every use with the free tools, sort them by writer, see what each verb can take as its object, and only then ask whether a contrast is being drawn, and what signals there are for it.

This week, choose one word from your Words to study list, ideally one that your passage leans on. On a fresh page headed with the word, do five steps. One: write the sentence it stands in, in Greek and English, and what the passage itself tells you about it. Two: find every use by the same writer and note what each means. Three: count its uses in the whole New Testament and note which writers use it most. Four: write down what it can take as its object or what it is said of, good and bad. Five: write one paragraph on what the word means in your passage, and one sentence on any claim about it you have heard that the study does not support. If the word has a near synonym that your passage sets beside it, write the case for a difference and the case against, as this lesson did, before you decide. Add anything you are unsure of to your Claims to test page.