The Greeks had two further words for love : eros is the passionate desire of lovers, and storge is a general affection for family members or acquaintances. They weren’t ready to lay down their lives. Before they received the Holy Spirit, they didn’t know how to love Christ back as he loved them. Beneath that green-glass overhanging lamp, your beloved takes a sip of Carlo Rossi, then looking at you doe-eyed, says softly, “I love you.” If you reply, “I am your friend,” there are some major relationship issues you might need to discuss. Imagine it’s Valentine’s Day, and you’ve booked a reservation with your significant other at a particularly classy place, say Applebee’s. We know it from Phila delphia, the City of Brotherly Love. It’s the love of bridegroom for bride, pronounced in Robin Hood’s melodic confession, “Marian, I love you more than life itself.” But Peter responds that he has philia, friendship, for Jesus. Agape is that kind of selfless love shown on the cross. What is lesser known is that they’re using two different words for “love.” Jesus asks Peter if he has agape for him, and Peter says he has philia for Christ. It is the scene where Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me,” to repair the three times he betrayed him. For Lewis, friendship was an appreciative love -but he also saw the risks in it of pride, rebellion and isolationism.In the last chapter of the last gospel ( Jn 21 ), there is something strange going on.

The modern world, in comparison, ignores it’. He goes on to say, 'to the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves the crown of life and the school of virtue. Lewis explains that true friendships, like the friendship between David and Jonathan in the Bible, are now rare and thinks that modern society dismisses friendship. In classical and medieval thinking, therefore, it was highly valuable. Friendship is not ‘necessary’ as such -we don’t biolgically need it in order to reproduce, it doesn’t arise out of maternal or paternal warmth, it is a freely chosen relationship, based as much on reason as emotion. Lewis differentiates friendship from the other types of affinity: it is, he says, 'the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary.the least natural of loves'. Examples might be the comradeship shared between supporters of the same football team, or fans of the same books or films. Friendship is the bond existing between people who share common interests, values, or activities. Philia (philía, Greek: φιλία) is what we call friendship, the love between friends as close as siblings in strength.

Four loves