Theological Distinctions of Love: Agape and Eros

Miroslav Volf critiques Nietzsche’s vision of power, love, and suffering—and offers Jesus’s unconditional love as a more excellent way.

The idea that competitive and goalless striving to increase one's power is the final Good, does very important work in Nietzsche’s philosophy. For Nietzsche, striving is good. Happiness does not rest in feeling that one's power is growing. In the modern world, individuals are, as Nietzsche puts it, ‘crossed everywhere with infinity.’ …

And therefore condemn to ceaseless striving … The will to power aims at surpassing the level reached at any given time. And that goal can never be reached. You're always equally behind.

Striving for superiority so as to enhance power does not just elevate some, the stronger ones. If the difference in power between parties increases, the weak become weaker in socially significant sense, even if their power has objectively increased. Successful striving for superiority inferiorizes.”

In this third installment of his Gifford Lectures, Miroslav Volf offers a trenchant critique of Friedrich Nietzsche’s moral philosophy—especially his exaltation of the will to power, his affirmation of eternal suffering, and his agonistic conception of love. Nietzsche, Volf argues, fails to cultivate a love that can endure possession, withstand unworthiness, or affirm the sheer existence of the other. Instead, Nietzsche’s love quickly dissolves into contempt. Drawing from Christian theology, and particularly Jesus’s teaching that God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good alike, Volf explores a different kind of love—agapic, unconditional, and presuppositionless. He offers a vision of divine love that is not driven by need or achievement but that affirms existence itself, regardless of success, strength, or status. In the face of suffering, Nietzsche's amor fati falters—but Jesus’s embrace endures.

Episode Highlights

1. "The sun, in fact, has no need to bestow its gift of light and warmth. It gains nothing from imparting its gifts."
2. "Love that is neither motivated by need nor based on worthiness—that is the kind of love Nietzsche thought prevented Jesus from loving humanity and earth."
3. "Nietzsche aspires to transfiguration of all things through value-bestowing life, but he cannot overcome nausea over humans."
4. "God’s love for creatures is unconditional. It is agapic love for the states in which they find themselves."
5. "Love can only flicker. It moves from place to place because it can live only between places. If it took an abode, it would die."

Show Notes

• Miroslav Volf’s engagement with Nietzsche’s work
• Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as life-denying and his vision of the will to power
• Schopenhauer’s hedonism vs. Nietzsche’s anti-hedonism: “What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power.”
• The will to power as Nietzsche’s supreme value and “hyper-good”
• “The will to power is not a philosophy of life—it’s a philosophy of vitality.”
• Nietzsche’s agonism: the noble contest for superiority among equally powerful opponents
• “Every GOAT is a GOAT only for a time.”
• Amor fati: Nietzsche’s love of fate and affirmation of all existence
• Nietzsche’s ideal of desire without satisfaction: “desiring to desire”
• Dangers of epithumic (need-based, consuming) love
• “Love cannot abide. Its shelf life is shorter than a two-year-old’s toy... If it took an abode, it would die.”
• Nietzsche’s nausea at the weakness and smallness of humanity: “Nausea, nausea... alas, man recurs eternally.”
• Zarathustra’s conditional love: based on worthiness, wisdom, and power
• “Joy in tearing down has fully supplanted love’s delight in what is.”
• Nietzsche’s failure to love the unworthy: “His love fails to encompass the great majority of actually living human beings.”
• Volf’s theological critique of striving, superiority, and contempt
• “Nietzsche affirms vitality at the expense of concrete human beings.”
• The biblical God’s love: “He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good.”
• “Even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars.”
• Jesus’s unconditional love versus Nietzsche’s agonistic, conditional love
• Kierkegaard and Luther on the distinction between person and work
• Hannah Arendt’s political anthropology and enduring love in the face of unworthiness
• Volf’s proposal for a theology of loving the present world in its broken form
• “We can actually long also for what we have.”
• “Love that cannot take an abode will die.”
• A vision of divine, presuppositionless love that neither requires need nor merit