In C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, philia means affectionate friendship. Lewis uses four Greek terms to examine different kinds of human love: storge, philia, eros, and agape.
The book developed from a series of BBC radio talks and was published in book form in 1960. Lewis distinguishes friendship from romantic love, familial affection, and self-giving divine love. For him, friendship is not simply a lesser form of romance; it has its own value and often grows from shared interests, understanding, and companionship.
Modern writers sometimes use the Greek terms with slightly different emphases, and ancient Greek vocabulary does not map perfectly onto modern English categories. Lewis’s framework is therefore a literary and theological discussion, not a complete technical dictionary of Greek words. The four terms are useful for identifying the contrasts he develops in the book.