Economies of Agape

The essay by former colleague Jeff Murphy that Rick mentions is, indeed, "a great read."  If you're interested in these questions and haven't already seen it, you should check out Ch. 4, "Forgiveness as an Eternal Work of Love," of Tim Jackson's (Emory) The Priority of Love (Princeton 2003).  Jackson does a bang-up job of bringing out the dangers of "diluting agape by entangling it in economies of exchange."