"God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation – the Logos, primordial reason – is at the same time a lover with all the passion of true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with [...]
"God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, God is Love: Deus Caritas Est, Ignatius Press, 2006.
"In the account of Jacob’s ladder, the Fathers of the Church saw this inseparable connection between ascending and descending love, between eros which seeks God and agape which passes on the gift received, symbolized in various ways." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, God is Love: Deus Caritas Est, Ignatius Press, 2006.
"Yet eros and agape – ascending and descending love – can never be completed separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if Eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a [...]
"Let us take a look at the pre-Christian world… Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine… The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather, [...]
"The tendency to avoid the word eros, together with the new vision of love expressed through the word agape, clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christian understanding of love." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, God is Love: Deus Caritas Est, Ignatius Press, 2006.
"Let us note straight away that the Greek Old Testament uses the word eros only twice, while the New Testament does not use it at all: of the three Greek words for love, eros, philia (the love of friendship) and agape, New Testament writers prefer the last, which occurs rather infrequently in Greek usage." [...]
"With her commandments and her prohibitions, does not the Church turn to bitterness the joy of eros, of being loved, which urges us toward the other person and wants to be realized in union? In the encyclical, I have tried to show that the deepest promise of eros can bear fruit only when do not [...]