ἔρως
Eros
Intense longing — the soul's burning desire for the divine
Eros in the Philokalia does not mean what modern culture means by "erotic." It denotes the intense longing and aspiration that draws the human person toward God — a burning desire for union with the divine that is more passionate and urgent than the steady, quiet warmth of agape.
The tradition does not oppose eros to agape. They are the same love at different temperatures. Agape is love in its settled, self-giving form. Eros is love on fire — "the force which links the divine and the human," as the Philokalia's glossary puts it. Dionysios the Areopagite and Maximos the Confessor both used the term deliberately, insisting that the soul's desire for God is not something to be suppressed but redirected — away from created objects and toward the uncreated source.