“GOD IS LOVE”

Agape, Ahavah, and the Question of Divine Love in the Quran

A Comparative Study for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readers

Sidney Louis Davis, Jr.

AskTheTeacher.blog

Roxbury, Massachusetts

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Scripture quotations from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are the author’s rendering unless otherwise noted; readers are encouraged to consult the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint (LXX), and standard critical editions of the Greek New Testament. Quranic citations follow standard Surah:Ayah numbering and are given in widely used English translation for accessibility; readers are encouraged to consult the Arabic text directly.

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Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1

Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1

Divine Love, Enemy-Love, and Covenant: A Biblical and Quranic Comparison.. 2

Enemy-Love in the Biblical Tradition………………………………………………………….. 2

The Quranic Framework: Justice, Restraint, and Better Conduct…………………….. 2

Love as the Essence of God………………………………………………………………………… 3

The Hebraic Roots of Covenantal Love………………………………………………………… 3

Agape, the Septuagint, and Jewish Continuity………………………………………………. 3

Thesis: Angelic Transmission and the Biblical-Agapic Category…………………….. 3

Angelic Transmission and Divine Self-Giving………………………………………………. 4

Quranic Divine Love in Contrast…………………………………………………………………. 4

The Biblical Gospel and the Quranic Injil as Documents of Love……………………. 5

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Abstract

Israel’s Scriptures and the apostolic writings present divine love as a disclosure of God’s own character, not merely as mercy, favor, or moral benevolence. Through ahavah and chesed, YHWH’s love is elective, faithful, restorative, and morally demanding: it chooses before merit, binds itself by oath, remains steadfast through failure, and acts for the redemption of the undeserving (Deut. 7:7–8; Jer. 31:3; Isa. 54:10). The apostolic writings intensify this Hebraic vision by declaring that “God is love” and by extending covenantal love into the command to love the enemy (Matt. 5:44; 1 John 4:8, 16). By contrast, the Quran speaks with moral seriousness about mercy, justice, repentance, patience, and compassion, but it does not name love as the very being of God or command active, self-giving enemy-love in the same covenantal sense (Q. 5:8; 41:34; 60:8). The essay therefore argues that agape, in the biblical and apostolic sense, is a specifically biblical-Jewish category grounded in ahavah and chesed: the Quran gives divine guidance, while the biblical Gospel reveals YHWH giving himself in covenant love.

Preface

The central claim is direct: the Gospel, at its deepest level, is that God is love. This is not sentimental abstraction or doctrine detached from Israel’s Scriptures. It is the revelation of YHWH’s covenantal, self-giving love—love that chooses, binds, remains faithful, redeems the undeserving, and commands love even for the enemy. The issue is not whether Islam teaches mercy, justice, restraint, or compassion; it plainly does. The issue is whether the Quran makes the same theological claim: that love is grounded in God’s own being, disclosed in covenantal self-binding, and extended toward the undeserving and hostile.

The approach taken here is historical-critical and text-based (peshat): claims are tested against the wording of the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, the Septuagint, the Apostolic Writings (New Testament), and the Quran, rather than against later doctrinal summaries of any of the three traditions. The New Testament is treated throughout as what it is: a body of Second Temple Jewish literature, written by Jews, about a Jewish teacher, and addressing internal Jewish questions of covenant, Torah, and holiness under Roman occupation. Reading it otherwise obscures both its content and its argument.

The challenge, then, is both textual and theological. If the Quran teaches that God’s very essence is love, or that God’s people must extend active, self-giving love to enemies who remain hostile, the question is where that claim appears and how it functions within the Quran’s own argument. If no such text can be produced, the distinction should be stated clearly rather than softened by general appeals to compassion, mercy, or moral seriousness.

Divine Love, Enemy-Love, and Covenant: A Biblical and Quranic Comparison

The key distinction between the biblical and Quranic frameworks concerns the relation of love to enemies, covenant, and the character of God. In the biblical tradition, love is not only a virtue God commands; it is an active, covenantal posture rooted in God’s dealings with Israel and then made normative for God’s people. The Quranic framework emphasizes justice, restraint, mercy, and righteous conduct. These are morally serious claims. Yet they do not amount to the same command to love enemies in an active, covenantal, and self-giving sense.

Enemy-Love in the Biblical Tradition

Matthew 5:44 commands more than non-retaliation. It calls for active benevolence toward enemies: love, blessing, prayer, and the pursuit of the adversary’s good.

This teaching belongs within Judaism, not outside it. The New Testament is Second Temple Jewish literature, and Jesus’s command develops a scriptural trajectory already present in Torah, Prophets, and Writings.

The Torah commands Israel not to harbor hatred in the heart and to love the neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:17–18). The prophetic and wisdom traditions likewise portray righteousness as more than legal compliance: it is a life ordered toward mercy, fidelity, and the good of others (Prov. 25:21–22). Jesus’s teaching intensifies that trajectory by extending active benevolence even toward the enemy (Matt. 5:44).

The Quranic Framework: Justice, Restraint, and Better Conduct

The Quran does not contain an equivalent command to love one’s enemies in this same active, covenantal sense. It does, however, command serious ethical restraint: hatred must not become injustice, kindness and equity remain possible toward those who are not hostile, and evil may be answered with what is better.

Surah 5:8 requires justice even toward hated people; Surah 60:8 permits righteousness and fairness toward those who are not hostile; and Surah 41:34 urges believers to repel evil with what is better, opening the possibility that hostility may become friendship (Q. 5:8; 60:8; 41:34).

These passages establish a serious moral framework: hatred must not override justice, retaliation must be restrained, and evil may be answered with superior conduct. The point is not that the Quran commends cruelty or indifference. It plainly does not. The point is that these texts stop short of making enemy-love a theological imperative grounded in God’s own covenantal self-disclosure.

Love as the Essence of God

A second distinction concerns divine love itself. First John 4:8 and 4:16 declare that “God is love,” an ontological claim about God’s character. For Jewish readers, this should not sound like a rejection of the Hebrew Bible. It compresses what Torah and Prophets already display covenantally: YHWH loves before Israel merits it, binds himself by oath, preserves covenant fidelity through failure, and acts for restoration rather than abandonment.

Deuteronomy grounds Israel’s election in YHWH’s love and oath, not Israel’s greatness; Jeremiah joins everlasting love to covenantal kindness; and Isaiah presents divine chesed as more enduring than the mountains (Deut. 7:7–8; Jer. 31:3; Isa. 54:10). First John gives this covenantal pattern its sharpest apostolic formulation: God is love (1 John 4:8, 16).

The Quran describes Allah as merciful, compassionate, forgiving, and loving. Names such as Al-Wadud, often rendered “the Loving” or “the Affectionate,” show that love belongs to Quranic divine description and should not be denied or caricatured (Q. 11:90; 85:14). Yet the Quran does not contain an equivalent formulation declaring that God is love in the same ontological and covenantal sense. Love appears as an attribute, action, or relational approval, commonly associated with repentance, righteousness, justice, patience, and obedience (Q. 2:195; 2:222; 3:31; 3:76; 3:146; 5:42). It is not presented as the definition of divine essence or as the ground of an oath-bound covenant by which God gives himself to a people despite their unworthiness.

The Hebraic Roots of Covenantal Love

Because the New Testament is Jewish literature, divine love should not be reduced to a later Greek abstraction. The Greek term agape becomes especially prominent in Christian theological vocabulary, but the underlying pattern of active, covenantal love is already present in the Hebrew Bible through terms such as ahavah and chesed.

Ahavah speaks of love, affection, and chosen attachment, while chesed carries the sense of steadfast loyalty, covenant faithfulness, and enduring kindness. Together, these concepts portray YHWH’s love as more than emotion. It is a binding commitment expressed through election, promise, deliverance, patience, and restoration.

In Israel’s story, divine love initiates, binds, and persists. YHWH chooses the patriarchs and Israel, keeps oath with the undeserving, and joins love to promise, deliverance, patience, and restoration.

Agape, the Septuagint, and Jewish Continuity

The noun agape appears only sparsely in the Septuagint, while the related verb agapao is used more broadly to translate Hebrew love-language. This matters because it shows that the later theological prominence of agape does not depend on the frequency of the noun alone. The biblical idea is older than the Greek label. The Greek vocabulary becomes a vehicle for expressing a Hebraic covenantal reality already embedded in Israel’s Scriptures.

Thus, what later Christian theology calls agape is best understood as a Greek vehicle for a Hebraic covenantal reality. YHWH’s love is sovereign, initiating, faithful, and costly—not a response to Israel’s worthiness, but an expression of promise and covenant.

Thesis: Angelic Transmission and the Biblical-Agapic Category

The thesis advanced here is that sacred texts grounded in an exclusively angelic transmission model do not generate agape as a theological category. By “exclusively angelic transmission,” I mean a revelatory model in which a heavenly messenger delivers, mediates, restores, or authorizes a scriptural corpus as a discrete communication from heaven. Islam and Latter-day Saint scripture provide prominent examples of this structure: the Quran is associated with Jibril’s mediation to Muhammad, while Latter-day Saint scripture appeals to angelic mediation through figures such as Moroni. However different these traditions are from one another, both present important scriptural claims through a strongly angelic mode of transmission.

Such texts may claim heavenly origin, command obedience, announce warning, narrate divine action, restore lost truth, or establish religious law. Yet angelic mediation, as a mode of transmission, is not identical with covenantal self-disclosure. It can communicate a message from God, but it does not itself enact YHWH’s oath-bound love for the undeserving. Angels may deliver words, visions, commandments, or restorations; they do not bind themselves by covenant, remain faithful through covenant breach, redeem the hostile, or disclose divine love as the very form of God’s self-revelation.

The biblical tradition operates on a different axis. The Hebrew Bible is not presented as a single angelically dictated script delivered whole to one prophet. It is a covenantal-historical archive formed through Torah, prophecy, wisdom, lament, exile, restoration, promise, judgment, and praise. Its theology of love develops through YHWH’s election of Israel, covenant oath, steadfast chesed, disciplined mercy, and fidelity to an undeserving people. The Septuagint, as the ancient Greek witness to this Hebrew scriptural world, does not invent that theology; it renders and carries it into Greek idiom. In that setting, agape and related Greek love-language function as vehicles for a prior Hebraic reality rooted in ahavah and chesed.

This is why agape should not be treated as a purely New Testament or later Christian invention. Its apostolic prominence depends on a longer Jewish scriptural trajectory. The New Testament gives decisive expression to this trajectory by declaring that God is love and by commanding love for enemies, but it does so as the culmination of Israel’s covenantal grammar, not as a departure from it. The biblical-agapic category therefore belongs to the continuity of Tanakh, Septuagint, and apostolic witness.

The polemical claim, stated carefully, is this: sacred texts structured primarily around angelic delivery may contain mercy, compassion, moral seriousness, divine command, or claims of restoration; but that mode of revelation does not, by itself, disclose agape as the defining architecture of revelation. The Hebrew Bible, together with its Septuagint witness and apostolic continuation, develops love through covenantal self-disclosure: YHWH binds himself by oath, remains faithful to the unworthy, redeems the hostile, and commands his people to embody that same love. Angelic transmission can deliver a message from heaven; the biblical covenantal tradition discloses God giving himself.

Angelic Transmission and Divine Self-Giving

There is also a distinction in the mode of revelation. Biblical agape is not merely information communicated from heaven. It is divine self-disclosure: YHWH binds himself by name, oath, covenant, promise, presence, and steadfast love. In the apostolic witness, this self-disclosure reaches its decisive expression in the Messiah, where love is not only announced but enacted through covenant fidelity, suffering, and redemption.

An angel can transmit a message, command, warning, or announcement, but angelic transmission is not agape. It is not self-disclosure, and it is not covenantal redemption. Angels do not bind themselves by oath to a people, bear with covenant breach, remain faithful to the undeserving, or enact redemption through covenant love. They may announce or serve the purposes of divine love, but they do not embody or constitute that love.

The comparison with Latter-day Saint scripture is relevant only at the level of revelatory structure. The point is not to equate Islam and Latter-day Saint tradition theologically, historically, or morally, but to identify a shared transmission pattern: both appeal to angelic mediation as the means by which a scriptural claim is delivered, restored, or authorized. That model differs from the biblical pattern, in which revelation is not exclusively angelic communication but the covenantal history of YHWH’s self-disclosure to Israel. The biblical witness communicates love in the specifically covenantal sense: YHWH elects, binds himself by oath, dwells with his people, endures Israel’s covenant unfaithfulness, remains faithful, and acts for redemption. By contrast, extra-biblical traditions grounded in exclusive angelic mediation may transmit law, warning, guidance, restoration, or command, but they do not generate agape as the governing category of revelation. Angels can deliver communication; they do not constitute covenantal self-disclosure.

Biblically, neither Gabriel nor any other angelic being functions in the same way Jibril functions in the Quran. In the biblical writings, Gabriel interprets visions and announces particular divine communications; he does not deliver the whole Jewish canon as a verbally unified revelation to a single prophet (Dan. 8:16; 9:21; Luke 1:19, 26). In the Quranic tradition, by contrast, Jibril’s role in bringing down the Quran is canonically far more exclusive and comprehensive (Q. 2:97; 26:193–194). This distinction between biblical transmission and Quranic transmission matters because it clarifies what is at stake in Paul’s warning in Galatians 1:8. From the standpoint of the apostolic gospel, a revelation mediated by an angelic figure cannot override or replace the Gospel already proclaimed in Messiah. If the Quran presents another account of God, revelation, Messiah, and salvation, then the apostolic argument would place it under the warning against “another gospel”—not because all angelic messages are false, but because no angelic mediation may replace the covenantal Gospel already given (Gal. 1:8).

This is why Galatians 1:8 is so severe: even “an angel from heaven” preaching another gospel cannot be received (Gal. 1:8). The gospel is not simply heavenly communication; it is the revelation of God’s covenantal, self-disclosing love. If agape is the disclosure of God himself in covenant love, it cannot be reduced to angelic mediation. Angels may transmit. YHWH gives himself.

Quranic Divine Love in Contrast

The Quranic portrayal of divine love operates differently and must be stated carefully. Allah’s mercy is broad and sustaining, and the Quran repeatedly presents Allah as merciful, compassionate, forgiving, and responsive to repentance. But Allah’s specific love, expressed through hubb, is repeatedly linked to particular moral and religious qualities. The Quran says that Allah loves those who do good, those who are just, those who are patient, and those who repent. It also says that Allah does not love the arrogant, the corrupt, the transgressors, and the disbelievers.

This creates a conditional and reciprocal pattern. Surah 3:31 expresses the dynamic clearly: if people love Allah and follow the Messenger, Allah will love them and forgive their sins (Q. 3:31). Quranic hubb is therefore tied to submission, obedience, repentance, and righteousness. That does not mean Islam lacks mercy, nearness, devotion, or reverence; it means Quranic divine love does not function like YHWH’s oath-bound covenantal self-disclosure to Israel, nor like the apostolic command to love the hostile enemy.

The Biblical Gospel and the Quranic Injil as Documents of Love

As documents of love, the biblical Gospel and the Quranic Injil do not represent two equivalent articulations of the same theological category. The biblical Gospel is not merely a message about divine compassion or moral instruction; it is the apostolic proclamation that the God of Israel has disclosed his own covenantal being in self-giving love. In that framework, love is not simply commanded, admired, or rewarded. It is revealed as the very character of God and enacted in Messiah for the undeserving and the hostile.

The Quranic Injil, by contrast, is presented as a revelation given to Jesus within a prophetic economy of guidance, confirmation, warning, and command. It does not function, within the Quranic account, as the climactic disclosure that God is love, nor as the historical enactment of divine self-disclosure through Messiah’s covenantal suffering and redemption. Its logic is therefore instructional and prophetic rather than covenantal-redemptive in the biblical sense.

This is the central polemical point: the divergence is not secondary but structural. The biblical Gospel identifies love with God’s covenantal self-disclosure and redemptive self-giving; the Quranic Injil identifies revelation with divinely authorized guidance mediated through a prophet. One proclaims love as God giving himself; the other presents guidance as God giving instruction. These are not minor differences in vocabulary but different claims about revelation, God, and the way divine love is made known.

Conclusion

The central distinction is not that the Quran lacks moral seriousness, mercy, compassion, or language of divine love. It contains those themes, and they should be acknowledged honestly. The distinction is that agape, in the biblical and apostolic sense, is not a Quranic category. In the biblical tradition, the Gospel is the revelation that God is love: YHWH’s initiating, covenantal, self-disclosing love, disclosed in Israel’s Scriptures and brought to decisive expression in Messiah. This love is not merely a quality God displays; it is the way the God of Israel binds himself by covenant, remains faithful, redeems the undeserving, and commands his people to love even the enemy. The Quranic tradition emphasizes justice, restraint, compassion, righteous reciprocity, submission to mediated divine command, and divine love expressed as approval of repentance, righteousness, justice, and obedience. These are significant theological and ethical claims, but they do not form an equivalent category of agape: an ontological declaration that God is love, an oath-bound covenantal self-disclosure to the undeserving, or a command to love enemies in the biblical sense. The difference is therefore covenantal, revelatory, and theological: angels may transmit, but YHWH gives himself.

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