Friendship

The friends that you do have should be of benefit to you and contribute to your way of life. Avoid associating with crafty or aggressive people, and do not live with anyone of that kind but shun their evil purposes; for they do not dwell close to God or abide with Him.¹

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Created as we are in the image of the Most Holy Trinity, friendship is essential both to our flourishing and our growth in holiness. Friendship is so important to us that chronic loneliness can negatively affect our physical health and psychological well-being. Being lonely can make me sick.²

And yet, as Evagrios points out, not all friendships are not all equal. He tells those who have undertaken the solitary life that they are to avoid "crafty and aggressive people" lest we be drawn into "their evil purposes."

Writing several centuries later, the Cistercian monk Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167) writes in a similar vein as Evagrios:

You should separate that friendship which is spiritual from the many other kinds of friendship. Spiritual friendship is to some extent involved with and obscured by other kinds of friendships, which can hinder those who desire spiritual friendship.³

That all friendships are not equal is something lost on most people today. This is especially true of the young who are often, as Aristotle reminds us, motivated more by noble sentiment than by prudence.

Ever the realist, the Philosopher also points out that the thieves might enter into what he calls a friendship of utility to more effectively rob others. The common project of thieves doesn't invalidate the moral goodness of working together but it does encourage me to take Evagrios's counsel to heart and look more carefully at my friendships.

Do my friendships serve human flourishing both mine and yours? I must ask myself a hard question. Am I better off morally (or at least not harmed) by working with these specific individuals on this particular project?

Again, let's listen to Aelred:

My friend must be the guardian of our mutual love, or even of my very soul, so that he will preserve in faithful silence all its secrets, and whatever he sees in it that is flawed he will correct or endure with all his strength. When I rejoice, he will rejoice; when I grieve, he will grieve with me.⁴

For our Medieval Catholic monk, our heterodox Christian hermit living in late antiquity, and our pagan Greek philosopher, this view of friendship is not simply a lofty ideal. It is rather a description of the everyday reality of friendship in the fullest sense. Aristotle calls this type of friendship a friendship of virtue. “For perfect friendship, you must get to know someone thoroughly,” Aristotle says, “and become intimate with them, which is a very difficult thing to do.”⁵

This is why Evagrios tells his monastic readers that they must shun crafty and aggressive people. Around individuals such as these, I must always be guarded. But this undermines the trust that a perfect friendship requires.

It is also why perfect friendship is so hard for the young. They lack the experience to “Test [a person’s] intent, to ensure that he is looking for nothing from the friendship except God and that natural good that comes from your mutual friendship.”⁶ For the young, friendships of utility or pleasure hint at that more perfect form of friendship where Christ is both “principle and goal.”⁷ It simply takes time--and instruction--for us to learn that

He who seeks from friendship some profit other than friendship itself has not yet learned what friendship is. Friendship will be full of riches for those who cherish it when it is completely centered upon God; for those whom friendship joins together, it immerses in the contemplation of God.⁸

The crafty person by his plotting, the aggressive person by his violence, might aid me in my pursuit of success or pleasure. But his character will eventually corrupt me. Either I will always be suspicious when it comes to him or, what is infinitely worse, I will become like him a crafty and aggressive person who others would do well to avoid and mistrust.

We must avoid suspicion before all else – it is poison to a friendship – so that we never harbor evil thoughts about a friend, nor give credence to or go along with someone who makes slanderous remarks about our friend.⁹

To avoid drinking poison "Do not pass your time with people engaged in worldly affairs or share their table," Evagrios warns us, "in case they involve you in their illusions and draw you away from the science of stillness. For this is what they want to do." He concludes saying

Do not listen to their words or accept the thoughts of their hearts, for they are indeed harmful. Let the labor and longing of your heart be for the faithful of the earth, to become like them in mourning.¹⁰

Unlike friendships of utility or pleasure, the virtuous friendship is in the service of the moral perfection of the friends. While these other friendships have their place, they aren't sufficient in and of themselves for a life of human flourishing. Much less, are they enough if we are to be the men and women God has created us to be; that is to say, saints.

These lesser friendships can--and often do--prepare us for perfect friendship. They teach us, as Erik Erikson says about the clannish friendship of adolescence, to pledge and fulfill the demands of fidelity—more than this. “One can make a rather easy transition from human friendships,” as Aelred says, “to friendship with God himself.”¹¹

Once again, this is no mere sentimental comment but reflects the seriousness and sobriety with which the ancient pagan and Christian world understood friendship.

A foundation must be laid for friendship, namely the love of God. To this love of God, everything that has to do with friendship must be compared; one must examine whether the concerns of a friendship are in keeping with the love of God, or opposed to it.¹²

Today friendships of utility and pleasure hold sway. And, to be honest, I suspect this has always been the case. The difference between today and those days is not the relative presence of moral failure but the standard against which such failure is perceived and understood.

A bad friendship undermines our shared work and will rob you of pleasure in doing good and being virtuous. What is worse, entering a bad friendship is like being a party to thieves who work together to steal and so increase each other pleasure in committing a crime. In either case, what has been lost is not utility or pleasure but the sense that these friendships are frail.

This is the real tragedy of our contemporary view of friendship. We have lost the sense that by their very fragility, the bonds of utility and pleasure point beyond themselves to something more: friendships of virtue that don’t aim at making us more successful or our lives more pleasurable but help us to become more fully who God has created us to be.

1. Evagrios, "Outline Teaching on Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life," Philokalia, vol I, p. 31.

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Loneliness and Social Isolation Linked to Serious Health Conditions,” https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older-adults.html, accessed 11 December 2023.

3. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship. Cistercian Publications, 2010, p. 35

4. Ibid., p. 32.

5. Quoted in Jack Maden, “Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life),” Philosophy Break: Your home for learning about philosophy, https://philosophybreak.com/articles/aristotle-on-the-3-types-of-friendship-and-how-they-enrich-life/, accessed 11 December 2023.

6. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, p. 70.

7. Ibid., p. 31.

8. Ibid., p. 54.

9. Ibid., p. 77.

10. Evagrios, “Outline Teaching on Asceticism,” p. 33.

11. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, p. 77.

12. Ibid., p. 68.