Correspondence Archives

A Bond Between Souls: Friendship in the Letters of Augustine (Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology), Coleman M. Ford. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022.

Summary: A study of the correspondence of Augustine revealing the qualities of his friendships and a vision of friendship rooted in God, encouraging one another in Christian virtue and the love of God.

Coleman M. Ford has come up with a great idea in this book. Study Augustine’s ideas about friendship in the context of his friendships for what we might learn about them through his extant correspondence.

He sets this against the classical Greco-Roman ideas of friendship, difficult for some to define, as was the case with Socrates, who valued his friendships. Aristotle defined friendships based on utility, pleasure, and virtue, with the latter being the highest form. Epicureans saw friendship in terms of mutual dependence, a willingness to lay down one’s life for the other. Stoics believed only the truly wise and good could know friendship. Cicero saw friendship involving mutual accord accompanied by good will and affection.

To all this Augustine adds the recognition that spiritual friendship is the gift of God, grounded in the love of God for the encouragement of one another in both Christian virtue and in faith, hope, and love. Its intent is to prepare us for the heavenly city. Friends also add to one’s happiness in this world and the happiness of our friends is to be prayed for. Friends also exhort one another to pursue greater holiness and virtue, as was the case with Augustine and Martianus.

That brings us to a study of his letters to various persons. Perhaps the most interesting, and first in this monograph, is the study of his correspondence with another great church leader, Jerome. Augustine, the younger of the two, but already a bishop, desires spiritual and intellectual friendship with Jerome. He has an interesting way of going about this, sparring with Jerome over Jerome’s interpretation of Galatians 2. What was grievous was that his initial letter went astray and was read by others as a criticism of Jerome rather than an effort to engage with a respected intellectual peer and to have an honest friendship where no idea was off the table. Jerome was not pleased and subsequent correspondence reveals Augustine’s attempt to heal the misunderstanding, and his genuine sorrow for the grievance. We see someone interested in both their mutual spiritual improvement and deeply committed to his fellow leader. Ford doesn’t say this, but I have a hunch that Augustine could have been a demanding friend, but also one that could call one out to greater intellectual and spiritual depth. We see the two of them strive toward a mutual love that could stand disagreement and difference.

With others, Augustine could be an affectionate and perceptive friend, as was evident in the long correspondence between Paulinus and Therasia, and Augustine, calling them deeper into their union with Christ and the forsaking of the world’s riches for the hope of heaven. We see similar qualities in other correspondence with clergy, as they deal with various disputes including the Donatist controversy. While remaining faithful to Christ, they must also minister out of holy love, the real foundation of their office.

He also corresponds with civic officials, bidding them to Christlike virtues as they sought the common good. They could only offer ordered leadership out of ordered lives. His writing reflects a love of truth rather than an attempt to wield influence over those in power. He writes with affection and intellectual seriousness.

What impresses me in all of this is how Augustine combines warm affection, intellectual substance, and spiritual devotion to foster Christ-likeness in his friends, and how he invites this from them as well. There is no mere sentimentality or a casual “best buds” attitude. Caught up in the pursuit of the heavenly call and the City of God, Augustine rigorously wanted friends who challenged him to his spiritual best, and this is what he offered others. Strong stuff to be sure.

Coleman M. Ford has given us a fine piece of scholarship in this monograph that shows us dimensions of Augustine’s life of which many of us are unaware. I’m left thinking how this challenges our casual and utilitarian approaches to friendship and the shallowness of many of our relationships in the body of Christ, where “hanging out” substitutes for spurring each other on to “love and good works,” to the Christ-likeness that is God’s intention for each other, that is willing to exhort and correct out of deep affection and uncompromising longing for the other’s progress in Christ.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Anchorhold, Kirsten Pinto Gfroerer. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2022.

Summary: A two-year correspondence with Julian of Norwich, reflecting upon the Revelations of Divine Love.

Anchorhold. The residence of an anchoress. This work engages the writings of perhaps the most famous of all anchoresses, Julian of Norwich, who chose to spend her life within a cell. The writing she is known for is The Revelations of Divine Love. Kirsten Pinto Gfroerer is a modern writer from Canada, a counselor and theologian. She spent two years in a written dialogue with Julian’s work, deeply reflecting upon, mulling over, questioning, and moving deeper in her own journey into Divine Love through this process. This book is a product of that time.

In 86 reflections, she considers passages of The Revelations. It takes her on a journey of seeing how that love meets her own brokenness, of how Julian believes that we are not truly shown our sin until we are shown the divine love, and how we are invited to participate in that divine love, invited into the very Godhead, and in knowing that love, we find rest, that no matter what we suffer, even in the face of dying, “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” For Julian, this love is knowing the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit but also experiencing the maternal love of Mary.

One of the early and most famous reflections concerns Julian’s vision of being given the hazelnut. Gfroerer writes:

“In the hazelnut you see three attributes: the first, that God made it, the second that God loves it, the third that God cares for it.…Nothing in the hazelnut’s essence reveals these attributes; in fact, it is so small, it is almost nothing. However, it has these attributes of being created, loved, and cared for by the Godhead because the Godhead gives them to us. Because they are gifts there is nothing we can do to lose them” (p. 14).

Some of the most searching entries are around suffering and sin. Where our tendencies are to focus on these, and sometimes it is hard not to, there is this constant movement in Julian, and in the author’s reflections to move back to Divine Love, and the extravagant, unconditional acceptance we find as we live into Christ. When we do so, these things are swallowed up in the immensity of the one who loves us.

In many ways, this is far better than a commentary on Julian’s visions. While we do have the parsing out of what Julian meant, Gfroerer’s reflections, which join thinking deeply about Julian, deeply of herself, and deeply of the Godhead takes us far more deeply into a spiritual reading of Julian, one that invites us into the same kind of process.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.