By Clark Elliston
Friends are all-too-frequently taken for granted, both in everyday human experience and in theology. It seems that for many people friends simply emerge; a shared laugh or thought becomes many and through some unseen alchemy a friend is created. Theologically the situation is a little more delicate. The concept of friendship poses a problem for theology insofar as friendship, in both antiquity and early theology, remains largely a preferential love. We choose our friends based on any number qualities, but we nevertheless choose them. This is a good gift, but as Soren Kierkegaard makes all too plain, this can be problematic for followers of a Savior who commands a neighbor-love of all persons. A preferential love which by necessity excludes others (as no one can love the whole world equally) thus violates the universality of Christ’s command to love all. Yet even here there are perplexing tensions. After all, the New Testament repeatedly mentions “the beloved disciple” and Jesus suggests an appropriate category of friendship when he notes that the greatest love is laying one’s life down for friends. Nonetheless such difficulties, as well as the embedded character of human friendship, have made it strikingly absent from much theological discourse.
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