NYGREN : AGAPE CONTRA EROS

Until his death in 1977, Anders Nygren was bishop of Lund in the church of Sweden and a very influential Lutheran theologian. One of his most important books was Agape and Eros which had a wide influence, especially in contemporary protestant theology. The main point of his book was to show how agape and eros are contrasted with one another … as Christian and non-Christian fundamental motifs (39), and how, in the course of the history of theology, ‘an admixture of the eros motif has weakened the agape motif and rendered it more or less ineffective’ (38–9). In discussing Nygren's views, we will in this section pay special attention to the way in which he contrasts agape and eros, and in the next section to the way in which he proposes to fill in the so-called ‘dimensions of love’ in the light of his concept of agape.

According to Nygren ‘eros and agape are the characteristic expressions of two different attitudes to life, two fundamentally opposed types of religion and ethics. They represent two streams that run through the whole history of religion, alternately clashing against one another and mingling with one another. They stand for what may be described as the egocentric and the theocentric attitude in religion’ (205).