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Browning identifies descriptive theology, historical theology, systematic theology, and strategic practical theology as the four sub-movements of theology.⁷¹ The interdisciplinary theoretical research presented in this book is based primarily on these sub-movements, as outlined below.

      Part I: The Current Reality

Descriptive theology considers underlying norms and metaphors and seeks to capture and clarify practical questions. This phase is not simply the realm of the social sciences. Rather, questions emerging from the descriptive task are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including theology. While various disciplines help develop a thick description of an issue, each carries its own implicit and explicit norms and must be incorporated critically.⁷² Browning suggests that questions such as the following guide this movement of theological reflection: “What, within a particular area of practice, are we actually doing? What reasons, ideals, and symbols do we use to interpret what we are doing? What do we consider to be the sources of authority and legitimation for what we do?”⁷³ Reflection on these questions encourages us to in turn consider what we really should be doing, reflect on the accuracy and legitimacy of our sources, and consider why dominant understandings prevail.

      Thus, I seek to name the way things are with two descriptive chapters. Many of the conversation partners within this stage will be re-engaged with in subsequent stages of this research. Chapter 1 considers ways in which friendship is defined, understood, and lived out, drawing on writings from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and identifies key questions concerning the nature and status of friendship. Chapter 2 considers various forms of relationality and friendship within Aotearoa New Zealand, paying particular attention to Māori expressions of relatedness, power dynamics in Aotearoa, and the impact of both on the possibility of friendships between Māori and settlers. This chapter also examines the contemporary coexistence of varying friendship worlds and considers various forms of relationality and friendship within, as well as beyond, one colonized country. Key to this consideration are holistic multidimensional Indigenous understandings of relationality, the signing and subsequent dishonoring of a treaty during the nineteenth century, resistance to colonization and the loss of land, and various forms of friendship throughout. This includes a certain amount of storytelling.

      Why prioritize identifying the relational perspectives of an Indigenous minority in a far-flung part of the globe? I am convinced that a practical theology of friendship must include Indigenous perspectives and grapple with issues of power and colonization. Indigenous traditions are wisdom traditions. Indigenous peoples recognize the cosmic dimensions of relationality and are committed to right-relatedness and harmony. Westerners have much to learn about relationality and right-relatedness from a breadth of Indigenous perspectives, given the value that Indigenous peoples place on relationships.

Why focus most specifically on Māori perspectives? I have been privileged to learn from the wisdom of Māori leaders, authors, and friends, and am convinced that Māori theology and practice has much to offer as a conversation partner within practical theology. I lament the distorted social imagination that led to the dishonoring of the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi between Māori and the British Crown and the subsequent oppression of te tangata whenua (the people of the land). I am grateful for the gifts of wisdom, hospitality, friendship, and mentoring I have received from Māori, and for the encouragement that this work is relevant to church and nation(s).

      Part II: A Deep Remembering

The normative task, based on Browning’s historical theology sub-movement, involves confronting the scene set in the previous section with the central normative texts of Christianity. The goal is to consider the implications of honest confrontation with normative texts of the faith, including whether theology has understood its ideals appropriately.⁷⁴ The tasks of interpretation and retrieval of normative texts is not only integral to, but also at the very heart of the hermeneutical process.⁷⁵ This normative work is not a distanced study of ideas of the past. The past is not disconnected from present events.⁷⁶ Rather it is the past from which the present emerges and takes its shape.

A note of caution: if interpretive work focuses primarily on understanding contemporary praxis rather than on understanding texts within their historical contexts, then the work fails to respect history as a separate dialogue partner. Biblical and historical texts stripped of their initial context and meanings are “partially silenced.”⁷⁷ There is a danger of focusing on the way texts are used and understood within current contexts, rather than on the context within which they originated. Consideration of both contexts is important: context matters in relation to both current practice and the interpretation of historical documents. I acknowledge, however, that it is impossible to do justice to all contributing disciplines within this wide-ranging research. It is not possible to provide equally thorough descriptions of current practice and historical-contextual analysis of normative texts.

These chapters consider what a variety of normative texts have to say about friendship and seek to identify the understandings and practices of friendship that these texts encourage. I seek to assist communities to draw upon the richness of ancient texts and traditions, in their responses to contemporary relational needs. Christian practical theology gives special weight to classic Christian texts, while also considering classic texts within inter-related traditions, including the Greek classics “that influenced the Israel of Jesus’ day,” as well as the writings of the Second Testament.⁷⁸

Listening to texts to which Christianity has itself listened includes attentiveness to the Hebrew scriptures. These scriptures are the focus of Chapter 3. I focus particularly on the possibility of friendship being inherent within the creation accounts, and the role of friendship within the prophetic tradition, within covenantal relationships, and within the wisdom tradition. Chapter 4 turns to Matthean, Lukan, Johannine, and Pauline depictions of friendship and community.⁷⁹

      The philosophers of antiquity influenced early Christian writings and practices and continue to inform conversations regarding friendship. Within Chapter 5 I intertwine the insights of the classical philosophers, particularly Aristotle and Cicero, with themes emerging from the lives and writings of four conversation partners within subsequent Christian traditions, focusing on the essentialness of friendship, characteristics and practices of friendship, the question of friendship with the divine, and the relevance of friendship to communities.

A transitional bridging chapter notes pivotal shifts in vision in the Western world that took place in the late medieval and early modern period, their negative impact on personal and civic expressions of friendship in and beyond that world, and the potential for a cosmic vision of friendship to reveal the broader reality in which we are immersed.

      Part III: Friendship, Theology, and the Social Imagination

The third phase of this research explores the relevance of the normative work (Part II) to the descriptive work (Part I) and further develops core normative ideals. This is not a simple application of the past to the present, but rather involves the examination

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