Theologizing Friendship - Nathan Sumner Lefler

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Aelred focusing on inter-human relationships and Thomas on the human-divine relationship, but in addition to this, their approaches and styles differ. Do differing approaches and styles matter? Lefler argues yes. He proposes that “a certain recognizable correspondence between the mode in which a subject is presented and the nature of that subject itself has great merit, especially in terms of its capacity for being fruitfully received by a hearer or reader.” This is “one of the great strengths of Aelred’s account,” whereas Aquinas’ scholastic approach is not exactly aglow with the warmth that corresponds to friendship. At the same time, Lefler entertains the possibility that “the charm of Aelred’s account, for all its power to seduce us, may risk intermittently obscuring our Lordly Friend from our vision, in his less comely guise as a Suffering Servant” (p. 165). Lefler further entertains, by way of Leclercq, that monastic theology, typified by Aelred, and scholastic theology, typified by Aquinas, may complement each other.

      Lefler is appreciative of both thinkers, but in the end his sympathies are with the monastic style of St. Aelred. One senses that this is especially in resistance to the dominance that the scholastic style gained at the end of the Middle Ages. But such a resistance to scholastic dominance in theology may be a favor shown to scholastic theology. To this writer at least, the scholastic mode of inquiry is like that of a commentary which presupposes familiarity with the texts, ideas, and realities upon which it comments. If, then, these texts, ideas, and realities are forgotten, the scholastic style loses its purpose and lends itself to caricature. It was never meant to monopolize the way in which Christian truths were presented. Other texts and media were meant to present these truths and to be the means, even the primary means, for gaining access to them. Accordingly, I have found that the brilliance of St. Thomas’ writings shines forth most brightly when they are kept in conversation with other thinkers, especially the Fathers and biblical authors.

      While I would not read Aquinas’ scholastic approach in substantial continuity with modernity’s detached, impersonal mode of pursuing the truth, still Lefler forces us to consider the impersonal style of Aquinas. What are we to make of it? Does it hinder his aims? Is it at odds with the personal, enlivening faith it aims to present? Or if his style is indeed valuable, how is this to be understood? In turn, if we look to the writings of Aelred, we might ask: How is their more charming style not to be mistaken for sentimental theologizing? Or granted that Aelred’s thinking does not lack rigor, can that rigor be explicated academically without using a more scholastic or dry and impersonal style? Reading Lefler’s study is an invitation to exercise the mind on such questions, in addition to questions concerning friendship itself. But the two sets of questions may be related, especially if friendship is at the heart of the intellectual endeavor. In that case, the greatness of a university may lie not simply in how strictly it adheres to scientific and critical methods, but in the quality of relationships between its scholars, not to mention between the scholars and God.

      Austin G. Murphy, OSB

      Preface

      The following work constitutes a lightly edited version of my dissertation, originally defended in 2008. As the project is anchored in a comparison of the writings of two men whose floruits were many centuries ago, I have not deemed it necessary to update the essentially speculative argument derived from my original analysis: though there has been a good deal of work done on each author over the past several years and some work drawing Aelred and Aquinas into the same ambit under one rubric or another, no one that I know of has placed their thinking on friendship head to head in an extended discussion, much less as an entrée into the comparative evaluation of monastic and scholastic theology. There is a further, positive reason for leaving my original argument essentially as-is, namely, that, as the reader shall see in my introduction, I deliberately draw attention to the genre of the dissertation, noting some of the implications of that form for academic discourse and proposing to engage that form in my own case in what may be deemed somewhat problematic ways, at any rate according to the canons of modern scientific discourse. Whether the outcome is beneficial or deleterious to the common good is for the reader to decide.

      The dissertation investigates the theological accounts of friendship offered by Aelred of Rievaulx and Thomas Aquinas, compares these accounts, and applies this localized comparison as an index of the relationship between monastic and scholastic theology in general.

      Through close reading of the key texts in which the subject of friendship is treated, Aelred’s Speculum caritatis and De spiritali amicitia and Thomas’s Summa Theologiae, the two authors are found to epitomize their different theological milieux, the monastic and the scholastic respectively. This judgment pertains as much to the content of the two accounts as it does to the form. Thus, not only each author’s theological approach, but his distinctive understanding of friendship itself, proves to be profoundly congruent with his spiritual-theological matrix, whether twelfth-century monasticism on the one hand, or thirteenth-century scholasticism on the other.

      In fact, a loose, tripartite analogy may be seen to obtain among friendship, reading and theology in the monastic milieu, while a parallel analogy is to be found, mutatis mutandis, in the scholastic realm. Taking due care to demonstrate this relationship according to the rigors of comparative textual analysis, the earnest effort is made at the same time not to minimize the heterogeneity of the texts and theological perspectives in question. Granting Jean Leclercq’s wise dictum that the Church has but “one theology,” we recognize as well the risk of misconstruing that theological unity as monolithic.

      In short, monastic theology, like monastic friendship according to the exemplary account of Aelred of Rievaulx, is ideally a balanced activity of reason and will, profoundly Christ-centered, existentially grounded in both sensible and spiritual experience, and quintessentially expressed in the perfect union of will and ideas between the persons involved. Scholastic theology, on the other hand, seeks to elucidate as clearly as possible both nature and supernature and the relation between them, in the bright light of natural reason, yet simultaneously elevated by the brighter light of supernatural grace. In doing so, the enterprise strongly resembles Thomas’s notion of friendship as the ideal relation between God and man.

      Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank several people for their especial support in bringing to completion the original form of this book, namely, my dissertation. First, I must acknowledge the faithful work of my director, Father James Wiseman, O.S.B., whose unwavering consistency and extraordinary efficiency made the project far less onerous than it might have been. I would also like to thank my readers: Father Regis Armstrong, O.F.M.Cap., for his willingness to read my dissertation, but also and particularly for one of the finest seminars in medieval theology I have had the privilege of attending, and Father Raymond Studzinski, for stepping into the proverbial breach. I should add that Father Studzinski’s recent book, Reading to Live: The Evolving Practice of Lectio Divina, has provided welcome confirmation of part of the background argument for my opening chapter. To these older debts of gratitude I must now append those accrued through the process of editing and preparing my manuscript for publication as a book. Above all in this latter category, I must thank Father Austin Murphy, OSB, Abbot of St. Procopius Abbey and old friend, for his willingness to read my dissertation and write a foreword, in the midst of overseeing a large Benedictine community and its numerous adjoining apostolates. Next, I am deeply grateful to Mary Ann Smith, whose sharp eye and editorial prowess when thrown suddenly into the breach enabled her quickly and unerringly to accomplish what would have taken me months of fretting and probably years off my life. I am also grateful to Patricia Mecadon for her professional typesetting skills. I would like to acknowledge as well the spiritual and emotional support of my parents, Charles and Susan

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