Abstract

This essay takes up the question of what "agape" intends for the neighbor. Though material welfare and freedom have been adequately emphasized in recent Christian ethics, the God-relation has not. Drawing on T. S. Eliot, Abraham Heschel, Kenneth E. Kirk, and Max Scheler in particular, the case is made for a retrieval of the Augustinian assumption that the service of the most lasting significance for the neighbor is the restoration of the divine-human encounter that issues in true happiness. Criticism is directed at efforts to understand "agape" within the limiting terms of modern secular frameworks.