The Synonymous Rendering of Aristotelian φιλέω with ἀγαπάω in the Gospel of John (original) (raw)

The resolution to the apparently synonymous usage of the φιλία/φιλέω and ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω word clusters in the Gospel of John lies in the Aristotelian discourse about ‘friendship’, as the author of the Gospel sees it intersect with the Christ-event. The Gospel author coordinates the Hellenistic preference for φιλέω and Jewish-Christian preference for ἀγαπάω as the highest forms of love, yet revises Aristotelian φιλία by subsuming it under Christian ἀγάπη, by dissolving Aristotle’s view of unequal friendships and by reconfiguring divinization as the greatest good one should desire for a friend, against Aristotle’s own view. The two terms are rendered fully synonymous by the Gospel’s conclusion, but especially in light of the death and resurrection— the divinization of Jesus— and in the discourse between Peter and Jesus in John 21, thereby bringing together Athens and Jerusalem.