ABSTRACT
This chapter pursues the potentially problematic tensions raised in chapter 7. These relate to friendship’s aspects of particularity and preference and its mutuality, each of which is developed in detail here in conversation with later theological scholarship from a range of sources, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and feminist. In the face of dissenting voices such as Søren Kierkegaard and Anders Nygren, compatibility between neighbour-love and Christian friendship is yet defended in the context of a wide-ranging discussion including matters such as the exclusivity of preferring some, the fragility of a relationship which depends entirely on mutual fidelity, and the challenges of a love which demands personal vulnerability. Finally, with Paul J. Wadell and others, friendship is presented as agapē made concrete and, with Edward Collins Vacek and other, as agapē in its optimal context.
