The Christian concept of dispassionate love (an audio recording)

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This past July 29th, I addressed a conference/retreat of Norwegian university philosophy students — mostly Christians — on the topic of dispassionate love (what is meant by agape) in classical Christian ascetical theology. The two sessions were audiotaped and edited to make a continuous lecture lasting one hour and sixteen minutes. The talk is in English. (There are two versions, incidentally, the other one having an extra hour of Q&A, with some excellent discussion included, but I decided to present only the lecture portion below. Anyone wanting a link to the longer version can email me at addhart@yahoo.com, and I’ll send it.)

(Frank Moss Bennett (British, 1874-1953) The Sonata)

Listening to it again (or as much of it as I could endure — listening to myself is likely far more grueling for me than it is for others), I am bound to admit that my pronunciation of Greek is less than adequate. Reading it silently is one thing, but I’ve become terribly rusty reading it aloud (and — much to my brother Ben’s (“DBH’s”) disdain — I learned the Erasmian pronunciation at the University of Maryland and Harvard).

Worse, my mind went blank when referring to John 21, where both agape and philia appear in the exchange between Jesus and Peter, and I botched it somewhat. At least, I ended up on the right note.

Lastly, although I referenced Cassian’s Conferences, time didn’t allow me to get to the text I wished to cite (although I did outline it during the Q&A). If you’re interested in the text, you can read about it here in an earlier Substack post.

With all that off my chest, you can listen to the audio recording of the lecture by clicking here.