Friendship

Review: A Bond Between Souls

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

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.

________________________________

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

Review: Spiritual Friendship

/ rtrube54 / 5 Comments

Spiritual FriendshipSpiritual Friendship by Wesley Hill. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015.

Summary: This is an exploration of the place of friendship in the life of the Christian, particularly its importance for those who chose, either because of sexual orientation, or other reasons to live celibate, chaste lives.

The idea of a celibate, chaste, single life is scorned today not only because of the myth that one can only live a fulfilled, fully human life within the context of a sexually intimate relationship. Perhaps more fundamentally, if less openly acknowledged, this seems a terrible choice for those who are single, gay or straight, because it is a call to loneliness. Wesley Hill, a celibate gay Christian contends that the greatest gift the church could give to those like himself, and indeed to all of its members, is a renewal of the idea of friendship–of voluntary, non-sexual relationships of deeply knowing and being known by another.

Given this premise, this book is bound to be controversial or even challenging to many. It will be challenging to all, gay or straight, who disagree with Hill’s contention that:

“There is a divine ‘Yes’ to marriage and sexual intimacy between a man and a woman, premised on their bodily difference that seemed to gesture toward (albeit faintly) the transcendent difference of Creator from creature. But that ‘Yes’ also seemed to disclose a corresponding ‘No’ to sexual intimacy in any other context.” (p. 18)

But equally it is challenging to a church that focuses so heavily on the nuclear family that those outside one are left with shallow interactions and a profound sense of loneliness and alienation even while supposedly affirming the “communion of the saints.”

Hill’s book is divided into two parts, the first laying out the historical and theological basis for the idea of friendship, and the second talking very honestly about the lived experience of friendship. The first part begins by talking about the eclipse of the idea of friendship in a sexualized culture.where any deeply affectionate and caring relationship between human beings is concluded to be sexual, something especially difficult for the gay celibate Christian for whom a deep non-sexual friendship may be a lifeline. Hill argues that it was not always this way, citing the examples of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge and Aelred of Rievaulx Abbey and the idea of “vowed friendships”, friendships bound by vows similar to that of marriage but non-sexual in their expression of love.Christians have had a complicated relationship with the idea of friendship throughout history, believing that the gospel call to agape love that loves even one’s enemies relegates friendship to a lesser category. Yet Hill points to the relationship of David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and ultimately Jesus and his disciples who he call “friends” as counter examples and that what the gospel does is transform friendship from ‘we two’ to ‘we two who welcome a third and fourth’ in an outward looking community of love.

The second part is more personal. He begins by discussing an issue I’ve wondered about; can friendship and romance be sealed off from each other, particularly when friendship is with a person whose gender one is attracted to. Hill contends that it is not, but that our sexual orientation, even if gay, is in fact a gift in relationships if offered up to God, a gift that brings unique sensitivities and blessing to another, if there are others willing to receive and enter in. The next chapter is the most vulnerable in the book where Hill speaks of what it is to love and lose in friendship. He describes a relationship with a male friend who subsequently enters into a romantic relationship with a woman and the deep sense of loss and hurt this meant for Wes. Friendships end. Sometimes friends die. To love deeply is to be willing to suffer, which is perhaps why we hang back from such love, knowing what it will cost. However he does not end here but rather in a chapter on the ways a church might begin to recover friendship and what it could mean not only to individuals but to the quality of community. Among his challenges is one to mobility. This probably touches me most, because I know of those I’ve bonded deeply with at various points in life, who moved away. There are times when moves are right, and we’ve moved ourselves on two occasions. Do we ever consider that refraining from moving for the sake of friendship and community may sometimes be right?

I would have liked Hill to address the differences between healthy, deep relationships and unhealthy, co-dependent or manipulative relationships. I also wonder about how these deep friendships work out in the context of relationships with a person who is also married and is in that vowed relationship. It is apparent that he has enjoyed relationships with couples and it would be interesting to tease out these dynamics further.

I will be thinking about this book for some time. I find deeply compelling, for Christ-followers, the idea that our sexuality is not ultimately something to be fixed or satisfied, gay or straight, but offered to God. Hill’s vulnerability challenges me with my own self-protectiveness that does not want to suffer, but in the end settles for the superficial. Might this not be the same challenge we face in the church?

_____________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”