The Church As the Ultimate Society of Friendship Rightly Understood
It was the Roman orator, lawyer and philosopher Cicero who once sagely observed that “’Nature abhors solitude’, with the consequence that he urged that we should ‘put friendship ahead of all other human concerns, for there is nothing so suited to man’s nature, nothing that can mean so much to him, whether in good times or in bad’ (On Friendship, Frank O. Copley (tr.), U. Michigan Press, 1967, 88,17).
His definition of friendship is important here, for he held that it is, ‘just this and nothing else: complete sympathy in all matters of importance, plus goodwill and affection, and I am inclined to think that with the exception of wisdom, the gods have given nothing finer to men than this’ (Ibid, 20).
Notable here was his view that friendship is an expression of our human nature, rather than merely a tool that avails us the opportunity to progress toward our nature. In other words, the impetus towards friendship is already within us: “And so I should say that friendship takes its beginning from our very nature rather than from our sense of inadequacy that it is due to an inclination of the heart together with a feeling of affection rather than to a consideration of the advantages which we might derive from the relation.” (Ibid, 27).
This view is different from that of Aristotle for example, for whom friendship is predicated upon the desire for some good, with the consequence that while the variety of goods loved by friends might include wisdom, virtue, pleasure, or material advantage, friendship for Aristotle can never escape an element of calculation and discrimination. In other words, Aristotelian friendship is advantage friendship even though he ranks the advantages gained based on traditional categories of what is noble and what is base.
Ciceronian friendship eschews advantage since, “if we put friendship together through the expectation of advantage, a change in our expectations would also rend it apart. But our essential nature cannot be changed, and for that reason true friendship endures forever’ (Ibid, 32).
But it is with Christianity that we find a yet fuller understanding.
Hence it was that great reader of Cicero, namely St Augustine, who saw something made uniquely possible through the Christian perspective on friendship. For Augustine friendship is always to be related to a higher good for each friend sine a Christian must ultimately wish for the other, first a life of holiness and grace in this world and then (yet more important) an everlasting happiness with God and the saints in heaven in the life to come. Thus while all true friends must seek for one another well-being and happiness in this world, the primary aim of benevolence in Christian friendships must ultimately be to ensure that one’s friends grow in the new life of grace made possible in Christ.
Indeed for Augustine it is only in right relation to God that truest form of friendship may thrive, for it is only with God that one is able to cast off the earthly temptations to which each of us is subject. In the words of one of his Sermons, ‘He truly loves a friend, who loves God in the friend, either because God is actually present in the friend or in order that God may become so present.” (Sermon 336, cited in R.X. Burt, Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine’s Practical Philosophy, Grand Rapids, 1999, p.62).
This perspective upon the love of God in the friend, and of the friend in God, also casts light on the further point that in the Latin concept of caritas it is possible to see a synthesis of elements from both the two related but distinct Greek concepts of eros and agape.
As we look to the great festival of Pentecost which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit we do well to ponder these insights for there is an important sense in which the Church is the ultimate body of friends and friendship when rightly understood.
In the eyes of Saint Paul, the Church of Christ is not an administrative organisation; but rather a living whole made up of gifts, charisms which we Christians are called to share in a particular way, in what should be the ultimate society of friends (to borrow a term the Quakers made their own).
The Spirit is given to all Christians; to all and to each He distributes His gifts and His charisms “which differ according to the grace which has been given us” (Rom. 12:6). Yet we must always remember that “to each the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), which is to say, “so that the Church may derive edification from it” (1 Cor. 14:12). Thus every Christian possesses in everyday life a spiritual gift proper to himself and the building up of the Church –something which it can be a useful challenge to recall!
Pentecost, in a profound way marked the commissioning of the Church to become militant in its proclamation of the Gospel through the ages that follow as we seek and look to a world made good once more, and ultimately, the dawn of the Parousia, which is to say the Second Coming of Our Lord.
Thus we remain now, in the era of the Holy Spirit, by whose action the glorious Christ gathers together the people of God who are awaiting the Day of the Lord and purifies them, gives them life and leads them to the fullness of truth.
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector