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Friendship in Pursuit of Truth

December 28, 2020 13 min read
By Dr. W. Scott Cleveland Director of Catholic Studies, University of Mary
Three Friends Hiking

Catholic Studies helps the university to fulfill its purpose. St. John Henry Newman held that the purpose of the university is the advancement and sharing of an integrated understanding of the truth. This requires the formation of the habit of mind that enables a person to have such an integrated understanding of the truth. Such a habit is the capacity to see things in relation and to make sound judgments about the reality one encounters.

How is this two-fold purpose accomplished? One requirement is the teaching of truth from different disciplines that sufficiently represent what Newman calls the "circle of knowledge." The knowledge from different disciplines must be integrated such that the student sees reality from the disciplinary vantages in the circle. It is only when we bring to bear knowledge from multiple disciplines that we can understand the whole of which each is a part. For example, we can understand much about aspects of human beings from various disciplines such as biology, chemistry, psychology, history, philosophy, literature, theology, and so on. But we can only understand human beings as wholes when we bring together the truths these disciplines yield into a more complete understanding.

How does Catholic Studies serve this purpose of the university? Catholic Studies is an interdisciplinary project of faculty and students from various disciplines that seek together to unite the truths of the disciplines to understand the whole. This includes the truths of faith. Catholic Studies requires the assistance of the Church via its faithful guardianship of divine revelation, which is the object of theology. Pope St. John Paul II writes at the beginning of Fides et Ratio,Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Faith and reason are distinct and complementary sources of truth. Hence, the circle of knowledge is incomplete without the truths of faith. The separation of faith and reason and the privatization of faith are obstacles to the complete fulfillment of the purpose of the university. Doubt about the human capacity to attain integrated knowledge is also an obstacle to fulfilling the purpose of the university that can result from mere specialized learning. As an interdisciplinary project that unites faith and reason, Catholic Studies works against these.

In addition to teaching universal knowledge, the university must also form the habit of mind that fits the mind for such knowledge. For the university to accomplish its formative purpose there must be the development of something akin to a college, which is a context of formation for integrating into one’s mind and life the truths one receives. Following Newman, Don Briel, the founder of Catholic Studies, calls this the collegiate principle. While a university need not have a formal system of colleges with residential tutors, it must find a way to accomplish the formation of mind that a tutorial and residential system allows. It is essential for the task of the university. Without some means of realizing the collegiate principle, there is a danger that knowledge is never integrated into the mind and life of the student. Without the collegiate principle at work, university education can lead to a fragmented and compartmentalized mind and life.

Catholic Studies aims to provide that collegiate principle through convivial gatherings and tutorials that foster intellectual friendships and challenge persons to pursue integrated understanding of truth and develop habits of mind necessary for the task. Given that Catholic Studies focuses on the integration of the truth known into one’s life, and that an essential part of one’s life is one’s relationships, I now offer some reflections on friendship in the spirit of Catholic Studies.

In his Nicomachean Ethics Book 8, Aristotle asserts that there are three things worthy of love or three reasons why we choose what we choose. We choose what we believe is useful, pleasant, or good in itself.

While a university need not have a formal system of colleges with residential tutors, it must find a way to accomplish the formation of mind that a tutorial and residential system allows... Without some means of realizing the collegiate principle, there is a danger of fragmented knowledge that is never integrated into the mind and life of the student.

The basic definition of friendship Aristotle gives is that it is a relationship characterized by mutual good-will of which both parties are aware that is based on some likeness between them. Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship.

The first are friendships of utility, which are based on mutual benefit. The second are friendships of pleasure, which are based on mutual pleasure. The third are complete friendships (or friendships of virtue), which are based on mutual love for the other for his or her own sake, that is, for his character or who he or she is as a person. In this friendship there is a likeness or equality of character between the friends.

Aristotle notes some similarities and differences between the three kinds of friendship. Friendships of pleasure or utility are not necessarily bad, but they are incomplete friendships. The good and bad have them. They are not necessarily long lasting. They are quick and easy to form and dissolve. They are possible with many.

By contrast, only the good have complete friendships. Complete friendships are long-lasting. They are slower and more difficult to form and dissolve. They are rarer and possible with only a few.

But how might we relate Aristotle’s view to other things we know? In particular, how does God’s revelation in Jesus Christ relate to this? How might our reflection on friendship (and the truthfulness of Aristotle’s view) change in light of the Incarnation? Let’s take a theological turn and try to answer these questions by integrating what Aristotle as a philosopher has arrived at by the use of his reason with what is known by faith.

The claim I will seek to support is that the difference between the notion of friendship we gain from the Incarnation and Aristotle’s notion is startling. But this theological notion is also one not entirely at odds with Aristotle’s notion, which has merit.

In John 15:13, Jesus says, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Aristotle would agree, writing in his Nicomachean Ethics IX.8 that a good man will die for his friends.

Jesus lives out what he says as St. Paul reports in Romans 5:8, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” And St. John continues in chapter 15,

You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
“I have called you friends.” Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the sinless man, a friend with sinners? God the Father showing love for us through sending Christ to die for us? There is an astounding disparity between the human and divine character of Jesus and the characters of Jesus’s disciples! This seems to clash with Aristotle’s view that requires a certain measure of equality between the characters of the friends.

Aristotle thinks that God spends all eternity thinking of the noblest thing, which is Himself. But here we have a God who thinks of and befriends sinful human beings. The gap between our sinful character and His perfect one is infinite – they are radically unequal and unalike! How could we be friends?

Perhaps one might think because of this that such a friendship between God and man must be a friendship of utility or pleasure. But it is not so. God’s love for us is not based on our being useful or pleasant to Him, although we may be useful and pleasing to Him. Yet the friendship is not based on this for he needs nothing that he cannot supply and is perfectly fulfilled in Himself. His is the summit of joy. If Aristotle’s distinction between kinds of friends is correct, God’s love for us must be based on a love of us for our own sakes. Yet, how could God, the source of all goodness, offer complete friendship to us, weak and sinful? This notion of friendship is startling different from Aristotle’s.

God humbles himself in the Incarnation to take on our nature to relate to us at our natural level. He then calls us to something greater.

The possibility of complete friendship between God and human beings stretches Aristotle’s notion of friendship almost to the breaking. God, our infinite superior in nature, offers friendship to us. God offers this friendship to many, in fact to all rational creatures, but Aristotle holds that complete friendship can only be had with a few. God offers this friendship to those who are bad, to sinners, whereas Aristotle holds that only the good or virtuous can have complete friendships. There is a gratuity and generosity to God’s love that Aristotle’s notion of friendship does not capture. For all these reasons, we might think Aristotle’s view of complete friendship incompatible with the message of the Incarnation.

And yet the friendship God offers is not as different from Aristotle’s as might first seem to be the case. God humbles himself in the Incarnation to take on our nature to relate to us at our natural level. He then calls us to something greater. Jesus says, “So be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” God befriends us to make us fit for friendship with Him.

God befriends us and then offers us the grace to remove the impediments in ourselves to deeper friendship with Him. And not only that, but God’s design for us is to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). He wants to make us participants in the divine life – sharers in the friendship between the persons of the Trinity and the perfect happiness they enjoy.

The elevation to a supernatural life that God wants for each one of us raises us up to be like God in a way that fits with Aristotle’s insight that there must be a likeness between the characters of those who are complete friends. The difference is that, for Aristotle, that likeness of character is a precondition for the friendship. For God, that likeness is not a temporal precondition for beginning a friendship, but is His gracious and glorious loving purpose for our friendship with Him and one realized in and for eternity.

Just as God loves and befriends us for the sake of our moral development and perfection and ultimate happiness, so too do the human friendship we have in this life contribute to our perfection and fulfillment. Contributing to the perfection and fulfillment of one’s friend is a noble endeavor.

For the final portion of this essay, I will dwell on three ways that our friends contribute to our development, perfection, and happiness and briefly relate this back to Catholic Studies. I’ve taken these three contributions from Paul J. Wadell’s chapter titled “Not Going it Alone” from his Happiness and the Christian Moral Life.

First, friends pull us out of ourselves and help us to focus on caring for others for their own sake. They work against our sinful tendencies of self-absorption so aptly described by Augustine as incurvatus est in se or to be turned in on ourselves. Friends help us to become capable of greater friendship.

Second, friends help us know ourselves. Pope Saint John Paul II reminds us in his Intro to Fides et Ratio of the inscription on the Temple at Delphi to “know thyself.” This has long been recognized as a key to human flourishing. Friends help us to know our strengths and weaknesses. They do so by their knowledge of us and our trust in their judgment and that such judgment flows from their love for our good rather than pride or shrewd manipulation.

Finally, friends keep us focused on what is best – on doing noble deeds and making the most of our lives.

Think of friends like St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas, who despite significant intellectual disagreements, sharpened one another in mind and thought as well as in holiness.

Think of friends and spouses like St Louis and Zelie Martin whose marital friendship sanctified them and inspired their daughters, including Thérèse of Lisieux, to entire religious life and to seek holiness.

Complete friends rouse us to adventure and noble deeds, help us face life’s obstacles with joy, and play a key role in our own transformation as we seek to transform the world for the good.

Think of the two priest friends in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Bishop Jean Marie Latour, and Fr. Joseph Vaillant. So different in temperament and taste and yet united in their mission to serve the people of the Southwest region of the country.

Think of the characters from Tolkien’s Middle Earth, of Bilbo and the Dwarves, of Frodo and Sam, who shared common quests and, in the process, became transformed into far more than they were at the beginning.

Continuing to think of Middle Earth, I share the following Illustration of the way friends contribute to our fulfillment by keeping us focused on what is best. Bishop Robert Barron writes in his “Tolkien, Chesterton, and the Adventure of Mission”:

There is a common, and I’ll admit somewhat understandable, interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy that sees the great work as a celebration of the virtues of the Shire, that little town where the hobbits dwell in quiet domesticity. Neat, tidy hobbit holes, filled with comfortable furniture, delicate tea settings, and cozy fireplaces are meant, this reading has it, to evoke the charms of a “merrie old England” that existed before the rise of modernity and capitalism. As I say, there is undoubtedly something to this, for Tolkien, along with C.S. Lewis and the other members of the Inklings group, did indeed have a strong distaste for the excesses of the modern world.
However, I’m convinced that to see things this way is almost entirely to miss the point. For the ultimate purpose of Lord of the Rings is not to celebrate domesticity but rather to challenge it. Bilbo and Frodo are not meant to settle into their easy chairs but precisely to rouse themselves to adventure. Only when they leave the comforts of the Shire and face down orcs, dragons, goblins, and finally the power of evil itself do they truly find themselves. They do indeed bring to the struggle many of the virtues that they cultivated in the Shire, but those qualities, they discover, are not to be squirreled away and protected, but rather unleashed for the transformation of a hostile environment.
Frodo and Sam’s friendship was based, like all friendships, on the sharing of common goods. That good including helping to secure justice and peace in the land by destroying the ring. With the aid of much divine providence, their friendship enabled them to be transformed in the process of accomplishing their task together.

All friendships involve common or shared goods. Truth is one of the great shareable goods and its pursuit and finding is one source of union between those in Catholic Studies.

And this leads me to think of Catholic Studies students who are transformed in their quest for an understanding of the truth. They seek to befriend others like themselves who are on this quest. They hunger and thirst for fulfilled minds and lives and to share what they’ve discovered. God’s own friendship love for them impels them to share the gifts and education they have received. They generously give from what they have been given, trusting in God who is never outdone in generosity and will reward them with greater friendship with Him.

In summary, complete friends draw us out of ourselves and help us to focus on others. They help us to know ourselves – our limits and our strengths. Complete friends rouse us to adventure and noble deeds, help us face life’s obstacles with joy, and play a key role in our own transformation as we seek to transform the world for the good.

I add one more, which reveals a way friendship is essential to the project of Catholic Studies and university education. Friends help us to become well-educated – to form the integrated habit of mind a university education should provide. Friends sharpen our minds and help us to focus not just on learning what is pleasant to us or useful for getting a job, but to focus on learning and contemplating what is beautiful, true, and good in itself.

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