This three-fold understanding of friendship is neat and tidy. Aristotle understood, however, that these are not rigid categories. Our friendships tend to be a blend of these three categories. Some produce a large measure of utility while only offering a little pleasure, perhaps with a conscious desire to pursue the good of the friend as well. Others provide more pleasure than utility with only a slight concern for developing into a good friendship. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these sorts of friendships. As long as there is good will they will be oriented in some modest way toward the good. The three distinctions are meant rather to help us to isolate aspects of friendship as we seek the good of one another. As long as we are being friendly in a broad and blended way with one another, all is well on Aristotle’s understanding of friendship. Friendship is not a stagnant virtue. We have fun playing a board game with our friends one day, seek their help to move books or furniture on another day, and all the while seek to help our friends and ourselves pursue the good life.

The Limits of Aristotle on Friendship

Aristotle’s notion of friendship has been influential in the history of ideas. As we have seen, there is much that is commendable and worth learning from his writings. At the end of the day, however, what Aristotle and the rest of the ancient philosophers give us is an enlightening but all-too-human understanding of God and God’s purpose for humanity. The Greco-Roman philosophers may have “eternity in their hearts” (Eccl. 3:11), but their conception of the highest good as the end to which all human activity should be directed is too vague. Bald philosophical theism is not enough. Yes, Aristotle sees all virtue as directed, knowingly or unknowingly, to the divine. However, Aristotle’s notion of God, what it means to contemplate God, and what kind of happiness God produces in us are lacking in definition and ultimately unsatisfying.

God’s historical self-revelation, recorded in the Bible, laid the foundation for a particularly Christian account of God that filled the need for a clear sense of the highest good for early Christians. Christians, in reading the Bible, believe in salvation history, which culminates in the second coming of Christ, at which time all believers throughout history will be reunited in perfect fellowship with God. Many early Christians combine this biblical understanding of God and history with the ancient philosophical notions of happiness and the highest good to describe the Christian life as a journey of being gradually configured to Christ until he returns one day to bring his followers into perfect union with the triune God.⁹

II. Redeeming Friendship

Every person in the college or university setting will have a different experience of friendship. Of all Olivia’s relationships at school, it happens that only her Christian friends talk about the idea of friendship. At the beginning of freshman year, she formed relationships with her floor mates and other people with whom she shared interests. They didn’t talk about becoming friends; it just happened. When Olivia grew apart from some of them between semesters, it wasn’t an issue. Among the Christian freshmen girls, friendship was very intentional. They organized a testimony sharing night in order to get to know one another, exchanged contact information, and met weekly for prayer. It was assumed that they would all know each other and continue to stay in touch, regardless of scheduling or personality differences. With Olivia’s non-Christian friends, rifts have ended in split friend groups or people who don’t work to solve their differences. However, in the Christian fellowship, any conflict is automatically seen as a problem for the entire group and addressed immediately as a threat to friendship within the group at large. While no one story is normative or representative (and many will have had experiences that are quite the opposite of Olivia’s), Olivia’s experience of Christian friendship is provides a useful example.

In this case, what might be the motivation for Olivia and her Christian friends to be more intentional in their cultivation of friendship than her non-Christian friends? What is the appropriate goal of a God-honoring friendship? Are there any examples we can learn from to teach us how to have the most fulfilling friendships?

The Two Greatest … Friendships

While Aristotle provides the framework underlying much of ancient thinking about friendship, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) brings the best of classical and the best of Christian insights on the topic into profound unity. Augustine’s approach to friendship gives a Christian twist to Aristotle’s third type of friendship. He speaks more concretely about the nature of the highest good, the source of lasting human happiness. According to Augustine, friendship is most meaningful and prosperous not just when it is ordered toward virtue or the benefit of others and ourselves, but when it is also directed toward what Augustine understands to be the highest good, namely, the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This leads us to two primary distinctions between Augustine and Aristotle.

First, Augustine understood that for friendship to be ordered toward the Christian God would require more than ancient philosophy had to offer. Although Augustine reports in the Confessions that reading the books of the Platonists around the age of 30 had a significant role in helping him to come to his Christian faith, “that ‘the word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (Jn. 1:13–14), [he] did not read there.”¹⁰ What even the Platonists could not overcome was the sinful pride of believing they could participate in God without the grace and mediation of God in Christ. Augustine argues that through his humble sacrifice on the cross, Christ accomplished the salvation of his followers, which is worked out through the work of the Holy Spirit to conform the believer into Christ, the image of God.