In the previous two posts in this series, I reviewed the desire of many Christians to ditch discipleship for friendship, or, spiritual friendship. I argued that this is a bad idea, for Christian discipleship is nothing like friendship today, however it is very much like the ancient institution of friendship. Modern friendship is a "distraction, something quite marginal" according to CS Lewis, and is unsurprisingly rarely the cause of real personal transformation anymore. I then traced the denigration of modern friendship to Christian teachings that call us to focus our hearts on love for humanity and for family, such that the exclusive, private attachments of friendship appear suspicious, insignificant and good for only a diversion.
So what was ancient friendship all about? Friendship was the subject of treatises by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epicurus and Seneca. Throughout these classical texts, and articulated most fully by Aristotle, one finds the central classical insight into friendship that is lost today: true friendship requires virtue, and only to the extent that a person is virtuous can that person experience true friendship.
Virtue is a little-understood concept today, and is obscured by anthological books of virtues. Virtue was described most authoritatively by Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics, which should be required reading in any seminary - Protestant or Catholic. Aristotle's teachings on virtue and friendship are summarized very, very well by John Cuddeback in his little book, Friendship: The Art of Happiness, which is also used by FOCUS campus ministry as a small group study.
The nature of virtue sheds light on the essential connectedness between virtue and friendship. To be virtuous is not simply to know what is good, but it is also to do what is good, and to do it enough times such that doing good comes naturally. As one continues to make the same decision over and over, one disciplines one's appetites and directs one's will towards the good. When this happens, then doing good is no longer done against one's will, but is actually what one wants to do. This is virtue. To be virtuous, then, is to be happy. (For Dallas Willard fans out there: if this sounds alot like Willard, that's because Willard sounds alot like Aristotle.)
Aristotle connects virtue with friendship by distinguishing between three types of friendship: friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility and virtuous friendships. These three types of friendships are distinguished according to the good that each friend seeks. In the first two types of friendship, we may seek the pleasure of our friend's company, or the ability of a friend who helps us study for a class. But the pleasure that one can provide, or one's usefulness, are incidental to who we really are. Unsurprisingly, these first two types of friendships are usually short-lived, as these goods are short-lived.
Virtuous friendships are not based on the good times one has with a friend, or the turns friends take in babysitting for each other, though both pleasure and utility are elements of virtuous friendships. Virtuous friends seek the best in all things for each other. Furthermore, as the best for virtuous people is be virtuous, virtuous friends support and encourage each other in seeking the good in all things. For a person of virtue, to be happy is to will the good and be virtuous. A virtuous friendship is thus characterized by friends who seek happiness together, which for people of virtue happens when seeking the good.
This connection of virtue with friendship looks alot like Christian discipleship, doesn't it? In John 15:12-15, the friendship described by Jesus sounds like the virtuous friendships described by Aristotle.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Disciple means learner. Virtuous friends seek the good together and thus learn from each other. Virtuous friends disciple each other. It is rarely an equal trade, as one friend usually has more to offer than the other. But these differences come out and are celebrated in virtuous friendship just as they come out in discipleship, because seeking the good together is the basis of such friendships.
Does this sound elitist? Can unvirtuous people have no real friends? Can virtuous people only be friends with each other? It is to these questions of elitism that we turn next in the last of this series of posts.
"To be virtuous, then, is to be happy."
That's the Stoics, not Aristotle, who insists that happiness (eudaimonia) also requires external goods or "the goods of fortune." You can't be eudaimon, in Aristotle's view, without e.g. friends and good health. So, towards the end of NICOMACHEAN ETHICS I Ch.8 (Ross trans.), "[Eudaimonia] needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. ... there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness, as good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death." Virtue is not enough -- ask Job.
Posted by: Dabodius | August 17, 2005 at 03:59 AM