한국서양중세사학회

In Greco-Roman culture, friendship was not only a popular topic but also highly valued. On the contrary, it is difficult to find detailed descriptions of interpersonal friendship in the Bible and the Christian tradition. It has been argued that the Christian tradition does not place a high value on friendship. Some scholars say that Christianity dethroned eros and friendship to replace them with universal love, i.e., the love of neighbor. Kierkegaard, a leading proponent of this argument, contrasts Christian love for neighbor with Greek friendship and eros. This article studies a Christian view of friendship, focusing on Thomas Aquinas's view of friendship. In contrast to Kierkegaard, Thomas did not regard the concepts of ‘philia’ in classical culture and of ‘agape’ in Christianity as opposed to each other, and tried to synthesize the two. Thomas does not deal with friendship as a separate topic, so it is necessary to reconstruct his theory of friendship from what he says about friendship in several works. This reconstruction especially focuses on how Thomas synthesizes the agape of the Bible and the philia of the Nicomachean Ethics , the two main sources of his view of friendship, in explaining divine love, caritas (Latin translation of agape ). This study argues that Thomas uses Aristotle’s ‘philia’ to explain the concept of ‘caritas ’ by expanding the concept of philia and deepening its meaning. Aristotle believes that friendship is rooted in self-love. While Thomas accepts this, he insists that the reason of friendship is the love of God. Aristotle defines true friendship as friendship between virtuous people. Although Thomas agrees that the reason of friendship is goodness, he proposes an open friendship that includes sinners and enemies beyond the closed friendship between virtuous people, modeled on God's friendship that accepts people as his friends (amici Dei).