A theology of friendship

There's a post at America magazine's blog about the pope's new children's book, The Friends of Jesus, and it quotes a story at NCR by Dennis Coday ....

The prologue, by Spanish Fr. Julian Carron, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, begins: ""One upon a time there was a small group of men who, one day two thousand years ago, met a young man who walked the roads of Galilee . Each had his own job and family but, in an instant, their lives changed. They were called Andrew and John, Peter, Matthew, Thomas, etc. They were twelve and we know them today as the 'Apostles'. ... In Jerusalem at that time everyone knew that they were Jesus' 'friends'. ... Later they were joined by St. Paul ..."

Carron writes that Benedict XVI "takes us by the hand and accompanies us as we discover who Jesus' first companions were, how they met him and were conquered by him to the point that they never abandoned Him." [What about that "three times you will deny me" bit and who went to the grave first on that first Easter?]

I guess left out of friendship are Lazarus and his two sisters (who Jesus loved but apparently liked not so much :), Mary M, and doubtless others, including everyone who follows Jesus' teaching.

I read an interesting paper on the subject of friendship with Jesus from The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. Here's just a bit from the beginning of it ......

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"I Have Called You Friends"
by Gail R. O'Day

[...] Friendship was an important topic in the Greek and Roman cultures in which the early Church took shape and the New Testament documents were written. For Aristotle and classical philosophers who followed him, friendship was a key social relationship. In the democratic ideal of the Athenian polis, or city-state, friendship exemplified the mutual social obligation on which the polis depended.

But it is also true the virtuous man’s conduct is often guided by the interests of his friends and of his country, and that he will if necessary *lay down his life in their behalf*…. And this is doubtless the case with those who give their lives for others; thus they choose great nobility for themselves. (1)

This quotation from Aristotle represents the classical ideal of friendship expressed by many writers. In the Symposium, Plato writes, “Only those who love wish to die for others.” Lucian, a Hellenistic philosopher and storyteller, promises to tell his readers of “many deeds of blood and battles and deaths for the sake of friends.” (2)

For modern readers, Jesus’ definition of love and friendship in John 15:13—to lay down one’s life for one’s friend—is completely unprecedented. Most contemporary language about friendship does not speak in terms of life and death. We celebrate our friends, we eat and drink with friends, we take vacations with friends, we are there when a friend is in need; but the modern ideal of friendship is not someone who lays down his or her life on behalf of another. In the ancient world, however, Jesus’ words articulated a well-known ideal for friendship, not a brand new idea. This does not mean that any more people laid down their lives for their friends in the ancient world than are inclined to do so today—but it does show that the ideal of doing so belonged to the ancient perspective on friendship.

An additional aspect of ancient friendship is important for understanding friendship in the Gospel of John. In the first-century world of the New Testament, discussions of friendship moved from a friendship ideal to focus on the more pragmatic realities of patron-client relationships and on the political expediency captured in expressions like “friend of the emperor” (see 19:12). One of the main distinguishing marks of a friend in this context was the use of “frank speech” (parrēsia). Philosophers counseled the patron to be on the lookout for whether “friends” were speaking honestly and openly or whether they were engaging in flattery to further their own ends:

Frankness of speech, by common report and belief, is the language of friendship especially (as an animal has its peculiar cry), and on the other hand, that lack of frankness is unfriendly and ignoble…. (3)

According to the Hellenistic philosophers, to be someone’s friend was to speak frankly and honestly to them and to hold nothing back.

The New Testament writings were not created in a social vacuum. These two dimensions of friendship in the ancient world—the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and the use of frank and open speech—informed the way that the Gospel of John and its readers understood language about friendship.

John 15:12-15 is the key passage in John for a theology of friendship. Jesus enacts friendship throughout the Gospel, but these verses provide the words to describe and name who and what Jesus is as friend. In John, Jesus is both the model and the source of friendship. As the model of friendship, he calls the disciples to love as he has loved. As the source of friendship, he makes possible their own friendship through what he has given them .......

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(1) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX.8 (1169a18–25), quoting from H. Rackham, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), italics added.
(2) Plato, Symposium 179B, also 208D; Lucian, Toxaris 36. In the New Testament, Paul echoes this theme: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).
(3) Plutarch, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, 51.

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