Abstract

Love is religious love to the degree that it cooperates with God's love. Interpretations of God's love and what it would mean to participate in God's love rest on deeper and sometimes divergent conceptualizations of God and God's relation to the world. Agape is an essential feature of Christian life, but it does not follow that it is the distinctive form of Christian love. It is not equally privileged in all Christian theological traditions. Within the framework of Roman Catholic theology, a full understanding of God's love requires appeal to all three relationships that we know under the names of philia, agape, and eros. The most inclusive of these is not agape but philia.