If it is undeniable that friendship was an important concept in both Greek and Roman social thought, offering one of the highest ideals for human life, the picture seems at first sight very different when we turn to Christian attitudes, for the common view appears to be that the arrival and spread of Christianity in the ancient world pushed this ideal out and made it redundant: Christian agape and Classical amicitia were not compatible. As Kierkegaard expresses it, ‘Christianity has pushed earthly love and friendship from the throne, the impulsive and preferential love, the partiality, in order to set spiritual love in its place, the love to one's neighbour, a love which in earnestness and truth and inwardness is more tender than any earthly love… The praise of earthly love and friendship belongs to paganism’, and this view is echoed by many. It may be argued that such a radical contrast is misleading, for in its finest forms even earthly love and friendship can be virtuous, spiritual and intent on truth, as many Classical writers have shown; however, there is a problem in the apparent difficulty of reconciling the Biblical commandment to love your neighbour, so central to Christian ethics, with what seems to be an essential characteristic of friendship, namely exclusivity and partiality in our love for others. Later in this chapter we shall consider how this problem was handled by some of the early Christian writers.