Abstract

This essay considers the contemporary debate about the nature of Christian love and its relation to friendship from a perspective informed by the martyrological context in which Christian love is disclosed. In this context agape is understood as simultaneously the willing of the neighbor's good and the witness to the divine source of all goodness. From this perspective it is argued that friendship, far from being alien to Christian love, is one of its primary works, its principal criterion, and the context in which it is put most decisively to the test.