Friendship (Part 2)
Book Review (Victor Lee Austin)
Read part 1 of this review here. In this second part, we are picking up at chapter six, where Austin treats of "biblical friendships". I appreciate that he has taken so long to get here, and even here there are surprises. For there are only two people spoken of in Scripture as friends with God - Abraham and Moses. And yet, in the case of Abraham, it's not until Gen 41.8 that you get that description, long after Abraham's death, looking back on Abraham as someone who listened to, and spoke, with God.
Moses too is called God's friend, though via a simile in Ex 33:11, and in relation to the fact that Moses and God spoke face to face. Speaking, and in fact dialogue, seems to be a sine qua non of friendship.
What about human friendships in the Bible? Sometimes I feel like Austin is fulfilling Mt 13:53, bringing new and old things out of his treasure. Because here he insightfully suggests, nay argues, that Jonathan and David is not a model of friendship at all. Why? Because the text all the way through makes clear that Jonathan loves and is devoted to David, and is almost culpably silent of David's devotion to Jonathan. The only place David speaks of Jonathan in a loving manner is his state-funeral, and even there, he speaks of Jonathan's love for him.
So, let's stop using Jonathan and David as our go-to exemplar. Instead Austin surprises once more - by suggesting that it is in Job and Job's friends that we see real friendship. This is surprising because we are so used to thinking of Job's friends as bad friends, at least once they start speaking! But here's what Austin draws out: 1) the friends come and mourn in silence and solidarity, 2) that it is Job who breaks the silence, 3) that despite the inadequacy of their speech, they stick with him and stick with the discourse, 4) that the ending, for all its complexity, involves Job going home to his place in the world - recognising his finitude, praying, and the final picture is one of human communion - friendship
What of Jesus? At first glance, friendship doesn't seem to have much to do with the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly our usual vocabularies about Jesus don't led us to think that friendship is the point of Jesus' mission. But Austin suggests that it lies at the heart of the gospel. One more of his provocative points.
In John's gospel, between the foot washing in which Jesus symbolically anticipates his death, and the high priestly prayer in which he prays for their post-passion future, Jesus states that the greatest love of a person is to lay down his life for his friends and moves his students from the category of servants to friends. Jesus' mission and ministry does not just make disciples. It makes friends. Why? How? Because he shares all things with them, shares his mind with them, shares his plan and purpose with them.
Saint John shows us two additional and important elements of friendship with Jesus: it is personal, and it is expansive. p70
It is personal, as he calls his sheep by name. Whom does Jesus call by name in John's Gospel? Mary Magdalene. Not one of the disciples, but one whom Jesus calls friend.
It is expansive because there are other sheep whom he will call by name. In fact, the nature of Jesus' friendship is that it is not limited to Cicero's 6 at best. It is always expanding. And this, in turn, is going to lead us into a paradox - friendship for Christians is additive - there is no limit to friendship. And yet, we are finite, and six friends is... a lot.
Austin's claim that friendship lies at the heart of the gospel is so audacious, which is why we need to keep hearing it in those terms:
Not just to live with others in a certain peace, not just to help others as best we can, not just to share the good and pursue it with those who are close to us but to have that closeness of common life and common mind with every other redeemed person (and not forgetting that we may dare hope that every person be a redeemed person)—this is the specificity that “friendship” brings to the mandate of reconciliation. p72
And, in fact, through the incarnation we have a "double weirdness" - that God makes it possible, and in fact does, become our friend, and us friends with him; and that we may have a friendship that extends expansively without limit.
What then of the relationship between Christian love and Christian friendship? That's the topic of the next chapter (seven); I myself have often said to others that they don't need to be friends with everybody, but they do need to love everybody. I think after this chapter I would revise my position a little!
How do these two differ?
Friendship is particular, but Christian love is universal. Friendship is reciprocal, but Christian love is unidirectional. p75
How then, do we reconcile the two? Austin takes us firstly to Augustine, for whom love is one of the great keystones of his theological work. In particular, following Lienhard, Augustine has a theology of friendship worked out in his Confessions - friends and friendship are a gift from God, a divine grace. One of the famous incidents in the Confessions is Augustine's extreme grief for the death of a friend (Conf. 4), which leads Augustine eventually to new insights:
he identifies the problem: he had loved his friend as if his friend would never die. But, he now says, that kind of love should be given only to God. p78
We need first to love God and then to love our friends in God, who in fact gives our friends to us. p78
Augustine has a strong drive to say that we must direct all our love to God, but we must also love others, and yet we love others in God, desiring ultimately that they too will love God supremely.
Secondly, we look at Aquinas, for whom Christian love actually is friendship with God. How can that be? For Aquinas, to love a friend is to love what they love, and to love God is to love those whom God loves, and so the circle of friendship and love must be expansive; to the finitude question, Aquinas says (I paraphrase) that we are not required to specifically do certain things and all things for all people, but we are always in the posture of friendship towards all, seeking and reading and desirous of sharing in friendship with others.
The third thinker that Austin turns to here is Aelred of Rievaulx. He is an English monk of the 12th century, whose book I have long owned but struggled to read! He wrote one of the very few explicit works on friendship. Over three dialogues, he explores both a theology and a practicality of friendship, especially spiritual friendship. He does so drawing on Cicero, and gracing them with Scripture.
One thing I have always struggled with in Aelred is this:
He quotes Proverbs 17:17, “He who is a friend loves for all time” (I.21), which “makes it quite clear that friendship is eternal, provided it is true friendship.” Aelred takes this verse from Proverbs to mean that if a friendship ends, it was never really a friendship. p85
As a person who has rarely ended friendships, has struggled with friendships fading with time/distance/changes, has often felt that I have invested in friends and friendships, only to reap a poor harvest, the sense of simply not having true friends brings with it a real sense of friendship grief. It is not exactly the same as loneliness; perhaps as a species of pain it is more akin to those who remain unmarried and long to be married, to feel like someone particularly loves and chooses them; to watch the rich friendships of others, and to feel passed over, has the reminiscence of being picked last for the sports team back in school.
To return to Aelred. What about the rarity of friendship? That few people in fact find true friends? For Aelred, the answer lies in the Lord, the giver of virtues, who gives friendship. Indeed, the examples of the martyrs are full of thousands of those who were willing to die for their friends. Drawing us back to John 15:13, both Jesus' act and Jesus' teaching lay down the pattern of our friendship, and the multiplication of friends.
Read part 3 here.