Love’s Spectrum: Understandings of Human and Divine Love in Classical Texts

Love, in its many hues, has long preoccupied poets, philosophers, and mystics. From the ardent yearnings of lovers to the soul’s ecstatic union with the Divine, classical texts across cultures map a vast spectrum of love. In this post, we journey through key writings—Greek, Judeo-Christian, Islamic, and Hindu—to discover how ancient thinkers and poets understood human affection, spiritual longing, and transcendent union.

1. Eros and Ascent in Ancient Greece

Plato’s Symposium

In Plato’s Symposium, love (Eros) is more than physical desire; it’s a ladder to the Form of Beauty itself. Diotima’s famed “Ladder of Love” describes five stages:

1. Love of a single beautiful body

2. Appreciation of beauty in all bodies

3. Love of beautiful souls (character and virtue)

4. Love of knowledge and ideas

5. Love of Beauty itself, the immutable and eternal

Here, human erotic love becomes a vehicle for philosophical ascent—Eros is both passionate and profoundly intellectual.

Neoplatonist Echoes

Later Neoplatonists like Plotinus (Enneads) deepened this vision: the soul’s longing for the One mirrors the lover’s yearning for the beloved, collapsing the boundary between human affection and divine union.

2. Erotic Allegory in Judeo-Christian Writings

The Song of Songs

The Hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim) celebrates the mutual ardor of two human lovers in lush, sensuous imagery—“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” Early Jewish and Christian commentators interpreted it allegorically: the poem becomes a portrait of God’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for the Church, and of the soul’s intimate embrace with the Divine.

Augustine’s …