Copyright 2022 by Randy Leedy, all rights reserved

I have noticed as a member of the Facebook group "Nerdy Biblical Language Majors" that the topic of the meanings of ἀγαπάω and φιλέω in John 21 arises frequently. It is certainly one of the most commonly raised topics in the group, if not the most common. I have observed that the standard orthodoxy on this question is that John does not intend any difference in meaning between these two words and that the cause of Peter's grief at Jesus' third question is nothing more than the fact that Jesus has asked him the same question three times now and seems unwilling to accept Peter's affirmative replies.

Recently the question was raised once again, and the initial replies included pointers to the work of Moises Silva (Biblical Words and their Meaning) and D. A. Carson (Exegetical Fallacies), both of whom maintain that the words are interchangeably synonymous and are perhaps more responsible than any others for the status of this view as the current linguistic orthodoxy.

I have tended to let these discussions pass without much if any contrarian comment, but this time I finally decided to speak up at greater length. A full treatment of the topic requires much more space than a blog post provides, but one must start somewhere. So I posted a semi-lengthy comment in the discussion, offering some pushback. The subtitle of this post, "A Little Introduction," indicates that what I have written so far is only a decent scratch in the surface of what a full treatment would include. It is my hope to produce additional posts in this blog to expand the argumentation, leading eventually to a more formal academic presentation for publication. The post on the Nerdy Biblical Language Majors group, only lightly edited, now follows.

I believe Silva and Carson are wrong. I guess I need to write up a good discussion for publication somewhere. But so many other things press! 

Anyway, a few teaser points. First, Carson is legitimately big on Illegitimate Totality Transfer as a fallacy, but his discussion of the synonymy in John 21 neglects to defend itself against another illegitimate transfer that James Barr (The Semantics of Biblical Language) pointed out, which is "Illegitimate Identity Transfer." This fallacy assumes that two words sharing the same referent must have the same sense. So, to take a modern example with nouns, we might find a news story calling a group of emergency personnel "firefighters" and another story of the same event calling them "first responders." It would be illegitimate to assume that "firefighter" and "first responder" mean the same thing just because in these passages they refer to the same people.

So everybody points out that John uses these two Greek verbs for love to assert the Father's love for the Son. Fine. I can say that I like my wife, I love my wife, I appreciate my wife, I adore my wife, etc. It doesn't follow that these verbs are interchangeably synonymous. There's a common referent: my positive relational disposition toward my wife. But the verbs sharing that referent do not necessarily all mean exactly the same thing. So the fact that two different verbs very similar in meaning can be used with the same subject and object and the same basic referent does not in itself prove that they mean the same thing. For Silva's and Carson's case to stand, they must go further and demonstrate by thorough lexical method employing the componential analysis that Silva himself promotes that in fact the two verbs either share the identical set of meaning components so regularly that they must be assumed to be identical in this passage or else that this particular context requires them to be understood as lexically identical. These they fail to do, so they cannot legitimately assert that they have proven their case. They have provided some support, but that support falls far short of proof.

Second, assuming that John 21 was written by the same author as the other 27 chapters constituting the Johannine gospel and epistles, we would expect the lively interchange between these two verbs in chapter 21 to characterize his deployment of these verbs in at least some of the other passages that repeatedly use a verb for love. The reality is the exact opposite. John does not hesitate to use ἀγαπάω again and again and again with no variation at all across extended passages elsewhere in his writings. No other passage uses these two verbs with the degree of mixture that we find in John 21. The closest would be John 11 (vv. 3, 5, 36), but in that passage, too, a distinction in meaning is highly plausible, and at any rate, this passage using these words only a few times does little or nothing to override the significance of the several passages that use ἀγαπάω repeatedly without variation.

When we combine careful word study of the NT usage of these verbs and careful exegesis of the conversation between Jesus and Peter in John 21, including sensitive treatment of Peter's psychology after his terrible collapse on the eve of the crucifixion, a highly credible case can be made for a distinction in meaning between these verbs in this passage.

Even if the verbs could be demonstrated to be interchangeable in some contexts (which may or may not be the case; I'm not quite sure of that point myself right now), it would not follow that they must be interchangeable in all contexts or that there is no reliable basis on which to perceive difference of meaning in some contexts. Each passage must be carefully considered on its own terms; the case cannot be judged reliably by the kind of superficial larger-scale observations that Silva and Carson have published.

My claim does not require that all the pairs of synonyms in this passage (the other three pairs are verbs for knowing, verbs for shepherding, and nouns for sheep) must differ in meaning in ways significant for the interpretation of this passage. I think that the word choices for knowing probably do carry interpretive significance and could not be interchanged without loss or confusion of intended meaning, but not those for shepherding and sheep. 

If anyone wants to claim that the presence of one or more pairs of interchangeable synonyms in a passage forbids the possibility of difference of meaning between another pair, I would ask what sort of pedantry imposes such a straitjacket upon a skilled author?! No valid rule of linguistics or exegesis requires us to treat every instance of a surface-level phenomenon within a passage as sharing the same deeper-level meaning. Each part of a given text must be carefully analyzed for its own role within the context, both the narrow, immediate context and the broadening circles of wider context that competent Bible interpretation must include.

When good alignment of contextual indicators emerges, with no compelling evidence to the contrary, the interpreter is entitled to consider his findings valid. This is exactly the case with the verbs for love in John 21: abundant evidence in support, with no compelling evidence to the contrary.

I can imagine an objector shouting, "Leedy! Don't you see what Peter says the first two times Jesus asks him if he loves him with ἀγαπάω? He says, Nαί (Yes); he doesn't say, Οὐ, ἀλλὰ φιλῶ σε (No, but I have affection for you)! Clearly Peter considers the two verbs to be synonymous!" My response would be, "A fine observation, that! Now let's get psychological and see whether your conclusion is the only plausible one. Put yourself in Peter's place. You are sure that you do love Jesus, and there is considerable overlap between these two synonyms. Don't you want to answer 'Yes'? At the same time, though, don’t you remember how badly your recent claim that you would die rather than deny Jesus turned out? And won’t that fact make you careful not to claim too much for yourself now? One way you could avoid claiming too much is to substitute, in place of Jesus’ word that (as I hope to show in the course of this discussion) might well be understood as denoting a self-sacrificial love, a different word that denotes simply an affectionate bond. You know you can affirm this much with no qualms of conscience at all. So Isn't Peter's reply, understood in these terms, exactly the one that you would hope to have the courage to make?"

Can I prove my contention absolutely? No, I cannot. Welcome to the world of literatry interpretation! What I can do is build a case that is quite strong (there are other arguments that I'm not mentioning here), and I can considerably weaken the contrary claims. The bottom line, as I see it at least, is that I can shift the relative weight of the arguments rather decisively in favor of distinction in meaning. Some of what I would write in a fuller treatment of the topic has already been observed by others, and some of what I would write is, so far as I'm aware, my own original work.

I don't know what kind of torrent of criticism this post might unleash, and I don't promise to engage with all of it, or any of it, really. I just tire of the hearing the party line repeated so often in this group with no remonstrance raised against it. So at least this once, I am devoting the time to raise at least this one remonstrance. I would love to publish on the topic. We shall see whether the opportunity to do so actually materializes.