Aristotle And C. S. Lewis On The Moral Significance Of Friendship

By Timothy S. Yoder

[Timothy S. Yoder is associate professor of theological studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

Philosophers and theologians do not often consider the nature and importance of friendship. Aristotle and C. S. Lewis are two notable exceptions. A comparison of their accounts of friendship offers insights into the moral significance of friendship and the theological significance of having a friendship with God.

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Friendship is not frequently the focus of philosophical reflection and deliberation. It seems more suited to the playground or ballfield than to rigorous analysis or weighty contemplation. Even in ethics, one rarely meets discussion of the topic. However, two significant thinkers, one Christian and one not, addressed the subject with care, consideration, and some measure of success. The great Greek thinker Aristotle (384–322 BC) devoted significant space to the topic of friendship in his famous Nicomachean Ethics.[1] Among the many books by the twentieth century’s most important Christian thinker and writer, C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), is The Four Loves,[2] in which Lewis analyzes Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. The similarities and differences between their two treatments make for an interesting exercise in reflection, not to mention useful fodder for considering the moral significance of friendship. This article alternates between the two thinkers on this topic, first laying out the context of the issue, then examining the philosophical content, and finally offering a critique of both Aristotle and Lewis on friendship. It concludes with two final sections, one on the moral significance of friendship and the other on its theological significance. The goal of this project is to explore the role of friendship in the life well lived, as understood by both philosophy and theology.

Aristotle—Context

The goal of Aristotle’s ethical system is eudaimonia, a term often misleadingly translated as “happiness.”[3] As he notes in the opening lines of the book, “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good” (1.1.1). The rub is that not everyone can agree on what that good is. Some think it is health, others wealth or power or reputation and so on. Undeterred, Aristotle reasons that not all goods are complete in themselves. Some are a means to a further end. Thus, there must be a final end that all subordinate ends seek. If we must give it a name, we can call it “happiness,” but naming it does not alter the lack of agreement as to what it actually is. Aristotle is convinced of one thing, namely, that the good is not accurately defined as a Platonic Form. The good, Aristotle asserts, “is not something common corresponding to a single Idea” (1.6.11). Therefore, he cannot definitively identify what the good is, either as a matter of metaphysics or more practically in a person’s life. He can only offer a broad, philosophical description of eudaimonia as a somewhat open-ended answer to the question of what the good is for each person.

First, eudaimonia is something complete (1.7.3). It is not chosen for something else. It is the final goal. In addition, it is self-sufficient, since “all by itself it makes a life choiceworthy and lacking nothing” (1.7.6). It is also the best of all goods. It is “not one good among many,” but instead the highest good (1.7.8). It is clear, then, that what Aristotle intends by it is much different from what we usually intend by the word “happiness.” For us, happiness is a feeling, a temporary moment of elation or joy over something that gives pleasure, like making a hole-in-one. Eudaimonia, however, is the state of having fulfilled one’s purpose as a rational being, or, as Aristotle describes it, “a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with virtue” (1.9.7). Aristotle scholar Richard Kraut argues that eudaimonia is not to be understood as an accumulation of all desirable things, but rather as the good that is the pinnacle of all goods.

Happiness is whatever lies at the top of a hierarchy of ends connected by the for-the-sake-of relation. It is the pinnacle of that hierarchy, not the combination of that pinnacle and any subordinate goods, even if those subordinate goods are desirable in themselves. It does not include honor, or pleasure, or virtue, for although these are perfect ends, they are desirable for the sake of something further. Happiness is that further thing—or those further things—for the sake of which we desire these subordinate ends.[4]

One does not slip in and out of eudaimonia based on the fortunes of one’s favorite sports team or stock portfolio. One displays eudaimonia at the end of a life well lived, a goal missed by some who seem otherwise rather successful (1.11.11). The purpose of our lives is given by our rational souls. The best kind of life is one of study (1.5.7). The pathway to eudaimonia is found in the habituation of the virtues. Thus, Aristotle’s ethical system is both teleological and aretaic. It is teleological because we habituate the virtues with a view to a greater goal, and it is aretaic because the focus is on cultivating a virtuous character, rather than following a system of rules or laws.

After the first book, much of the rest of Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to a description of the various virtues and how one acquires them. A virtue is a state (2.5.6) “which causes its possessors to be in a good state and to perform their functions well” (2.6.2). Virtues are discovered in an intermediate range between the vices, which are either excesses or deficiencies of the virtue (2.6.11). The virtues include such qualities as bravery, temperance, generosity, and the like (cf. 2.7). Generosity, as a virtue, is found in the mean between its excess, which is wastefulness, and its deficiency, stinginess. Aristotle painstakingly examines these virtues in books 3–6 of Nicomachean Ethics. However, toward the end, he devotes two books (8 and 9) to the topic of friendship. He asserts that friendship is a virtue (“or involves virtue,” 8.1.1) and that it is necessary for life. An important puzzle presents itself at this point. If friendship is a virtue and necessary for life, one may wonder what makes it so, especially since eudaimonia is complete and self-sufficient. Put another way, if virtuous people achieve eudaimonia, why do they need friends?

Lewis—Context

Lewis, not a systematician like Aristotle, is disinclined to develop a moral theory. Rather, in The Four Loves he is interested in exploring the various kinds of love that exist in the Greek mind. Lewis’s discussions are more episodic and spontaneous. The result is that, while some questions are left unaddressed, there is a freshness and newness to Lewis’s approach that repays close attention.

Despite his occasional approach, there is no doubt as to the ethical framework from which Lewis operates. The beginning of Mere Christianity reveals him to be a strong advocate of Natural Law ethics. Lewis argues that the presence of quarrels reveals the existence of a universal moral code. When we quarrel, we do so not because of individual preferences or standards, but because we all appeal to a common notion of justice and fairness. “Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are.”[5] This commonality is found in all cultures around the world. Lewis asserts that all people have basically the same morality. Minor differences do not negate the basic truth that there is a universal moral standard, which all peoples of every ethnicity and religion affirm. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis critiques as unworkable the notion of subjective values and affirms the universality of basic moral requirements, a notion he names the Tao.

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value systems.[6]

The foundation for ethics having been established, Lewis proposes in Mere Christianity that morality is concerned with three broad issues.

Firstly, with fair play and harmony among individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.[7]

The first of these, the relationships between individuals, sets up the specific context for The Four Loves and the topic of friendship. As a Christian, Lewis understands love to be the distinct contribution of the Bible to moral philosophy. Since God is himself Love and he expressed his love to the human race prior to any human action, the consequence is to understand every relation and action on the basis of love.

Lewis begins The Four Loves with a critical distinction between what he calls Gift-Love and Need-Love. To quote Lewis, Gift-Love is that “which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing” (1). On the other hand, Need-Love is what “sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother’s arms” (1). Gift-Love is the love one extends to others in attempting to meet their needs, while Need-Love is the love one experiences in receiving something from another. Lewis argues that both are indeed worthy of the name “love,” even though divine love can only be described as Gift-Love and never Need-Love (1–4). Need-Love is part of human nature, and it reveals the necessity of community. Friendship, thus, is essential to ethics, because it affirms the communal aspect of society. Sharing another’s burdens, not to mention celebrating together life’s joys and triumphs—both ends of the spectrum require the community of one’s friends.

The four loves that Lewis analyzes are based on the four words from classical (not koine) Greek that are translated “love.” They are storge, which is Affection, as between a parent and a child; philia, Friendship; eros, which is Erotic or Romantic Love; and finally agape, which is usually translated as Charity. Lewis considers them in this order. In the next Lewis section, I will unpack his thoughts on philia.

Aristotle—Philosophy Of Friendship

Ironically, Aristotle never defines friendship in Nicomachean Ethics, but he does offer a definition in Rhetoric. A friend is one with whom you share “friendly feelings,” which occur when one wishes good things for another person for the sake of the other and not for oneself, and being thus inclined, one does what is possible to bring about these good things.[8] According to classicist John Cooper, this definition suggests “that the central idea contained in philia is that of doing well by someone for his own sake, out of concern for him (and not, or not merely, out of concern for oneself).”[9] Cooper also mentions that for Aristotle, friendship is a broader term than it is for contemporary Western society. For the Greeks, family relations (father to son, brother to brother) and business associations would all be included under the concept of friendship.

There are, according to Aristotle, three species of friendship. The first two have significant deficiencies but are still considered real friendships; the third kind is described as complete. The first two kinds of friendship are friendships of utility (or Advantage-Friendship) and friendships of pleasure (or Pleasure-Friendship). The friendship of utility occurs because “those who love each other for utility love the other not in his own right, but insofar as they gain some good for themselves from him” (8.3.1). The friendship of pleasure has a parallel basis. “The same is true of those who love for pleasure; for they like a witty person not because of his character, but because he is pleasant to them” (8.3.1). It is clear that these kinds of relationships do not fully meet the standard for friendship, in that they exist for some kind of self-interest. If you are friendly with the neighbors because they get the mail and watch the dog while you are away, this Advantage-Friendship is self-oriented and not for the sake of the other. Similarly, if you claim to be friends with a colleague because you like to talk sports together or because she makes you laugh, it is a Pleasure-Friendship, which seems to be more self-focused than others-focused. Aristotle describes these two kinds of friendships as “coincidental,” since one is not prized for who one is, but rather because of the help or pleasure provided (8.3.2). Consequently, these friendships are “easily dissolved” (8.3.3).

Nevertheless, friendships of pleasure and utility are still considered friendships, because both parties may receive something advantageous from the relationship. Thus, there may be some element of reciprocity found even in the friendships of “bad people” who have no virtues (8.4.2). Not every relationship needs to be perfectly symmetrical. Aristotle gives this interesting example:

For the erotic lover and his beloved do not take the same pleasure in the same things; the lover takes pleasure in seeing his beloved, but the beloved takes pleasure in being courted by his lover. When the beloved’s bloom is fading, sometimes the friendship fades too; for the lover no longer finds pleasure in seeing his beloved, and the beloved is no longer courted by the lover (8.4.1).

The third kind of friendship, however, exists on a different moral plane. Aristotle says that it is the “friendship of good people similar in virtue; for they wish goods in the same way to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good for their own sake” (8.3.6). The friendship of good people takes time to develop, and while it is rare, it is also enduring (8.3.7–8). The cause of this kind of friendship is the character of the other person. There is a mutual attraction because of the virtue that is observed in the other one. “Good people will be friends because of themselves, since they are friends insofar as they are good. These, then, are friends without qualification; the others are friends coincidentally and by being similar to these” (8.4.6). Character-Friendship is formed with the other person in view. The goal is not the advantage or pleasure that can be gained. Rather, one admires and loves the friend because of the friend’s virtue, and vice versa. Therefore, this friendship has a deep and mutual reciprocity that is not found in Pleasure-Friendships and Advantage-Friendships, even those in which both parties experience similar benefits. These two kinds of friendship are self-oriented, whereas Character-Friendship is formed for the sake of the other.

“Friendship seems to consist more in loving than in being loved” (8.8.3). For this reason, it is possible for there to be friendships among “unequals”—men and women, parents and children, powerful and weak. However, for this kind of friendship to last, “the loving must be proportional; for instance, the better person, and the more beneficial . . . must be loved more than he loves” (8.7.2). Thus, it follows that unequal friendships (including marriage) can never truly be complete friendships, since they would never display full reciprocity. Marriage, for Aristotle, is always a relationship of unequals, and therefore never a paradigm example of genuine friendship.

One of Aristotle’s most intriguing assertions regarding friendship in Nicomachean Ethics is that the “defining features” of a friendship with another are “derived from features of friendship towards oneself” (9.4.1). Self-love is the root of friendship because the good friend is really a second self. “The decent person, then, has each of these features in relation to himself, and is related to his friend as he is to himself, since the friend is another himself” (9.4.5). What does Aristotle mean by this second-self assertion, and does it turn Character-Friendship into nothing more than some species of egoism?

Aristotle addresses the notion of the friend as a second self in 9.9, where he contends that life is a good thing, and further that the perception of this truth is also a good thing, especially for the virtuous person (9.9.9). The awareness of his own virtuosity is not so much an arrogance, but rather an appreciation of the good, even if (or especially if) it is found in his own person. The point is that the good person’s admiration of his friend is rooted in his admiration of his own virtuous traits. The mirroring of the admirable traits is what makes the friend a second self (9.9.10). Kraut interprets the passage in this way:

Friendship towards others “comes from” self-love in the sense that the latter provides the paradigm case of the attitudes characteristic of the former. Or, as Aristotle puts the point in IX.4, the virtuous person is a “standard of each thing.” The excellent person’s attitude towards himself provides the model for good relationships with others, and this ideal is nearly matched by the perfect friendship of two virtuous individuals.[10]

Thus, according to Kraut, Aristotle’s account of the friend as a second self is not egoistic, since the priority of self-love is simply for the sake of a model or paradigm. Whether his defense of Aristotle on this point succeeds will be addressed in the critique section.

Lewis—Philosophy Of Friendship

Lewis laments that moderns seem so uninterested in Friendship, although he might think differently in the era of social media. The evidence that Lewis presents for this claim is largely literary—a lack of poems or novels on the topic, especially in contradistinction to the ancients, like Aristotle, who seemed to prize it very highly. Lewis suspects that friendship is ignored because too few people today have experienced it (58). He admits, however, that there is another reason: Friendship is radically different in nature from both Affection and Eros.

Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of all loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has the least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing which quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart together from the herd. Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without

Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship (58).

In other words, Friendship does not capture the interest of the poets of the Romantic movement, nor does it figure in the speculations of the evolutionists.[11] Thus, it is underappreciated. When it is considered, it is often in a way that provokes Lewis’s ire, namely, that “every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual” (60). Some of Lewis’s most memorable words on the subject of friendship come from this attempt to refute the reduction of friendship to some kind of latent same-sex attraction. Lewis’s strong disavowal of a link between the two is one way that he is distinguished from the Greek philosophical tradition.

Lewis does not deny that Friendship and Eros can have some commonalities. In fact, “we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair” (61). Lewis pursues this distinction in the following passage:

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. . . . True Friendship is the least jealous of the loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend (61–62).

Thus, Friendship is not simply a subset of Eros. Lewis asserts that they are both great loves and can exist together in the same relationship. He establishes this point by supposing that one has fallen in love and married one’s friend (perhaps he is thinking of his relationship with his wife, Joy). In this state of affairs, one is faced with two possibilities: “Either you two will cease to be lovers but remain forever joint seekers of the same God, the same beauty, the same truth, or else, losing all that, you will retain as long as you live the raptures and ardours, all the wonder and the wild desire of Eros. Choose which you please” (67–68). It is obvious that either choice would be regrettable. Therefore, Lewis reasons that Eros and Friendship are distinct from each other.

Another important distinction is between Companionship and Friendship. Whereas community could survive were there no Friendship, it could not survive without Companionship. Companionship is joint cooperation on projects that are too big for a single individual to accomplish, like hunting or fighting a battle. Men and women need to come together (albeit separately, Lewis contends, according to their genders) to plan, discuss, and succeed in these sorts of endeavors. Companionship, however, is only the “matrix” of Friendship (64), although it is frequently mistaken for the real thing. Friendship is Companionship with more intensity. It occurs “when two or more companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one’ ” (65).

In analyzing the genesis of Friendship, Lewis is describing almost exactly the first moments of one of his most important friendships. When he was 15 or 16 years old and home on holiday from school, he paid a visit to a bedridden neighbor, a boy about his age. When he walked into Arthur Greeves’s room, Lewis found him sitting up in bed. Here is Lewis’s account of the meeting:

On the table beside him lay a copy of Myths of the Norsemen.

“Do you like that?” said I.

“Do you like that?” said he.

Next moment the book was in our hands, our heads were bent close together, we were pointing, quoting, talking—soon almost shouting—discovering in a torrent of questions that we liked not only the same thing, but the same parts of it and in the same way; that both knew the stab of Joy and that, for both, the arrow was shot from the North.[12]

Jack’s friendship with Arthur was to last the rest of their lives. Their initial connection over myth and “Northness” is a good example of Lewis’s contention that Friendship must be about something. By itself, the desire for a friend is not sufficient for a friendship to arise. “There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice” (66).

Lewis opines that while some measure of friendship (or at least companionship) is good for society—as some (like Aristotle) would say—“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like arts, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value: rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival” (71). His conception of perfect Friendship is found in this passage, which is no doubt inspired by memories of Inklings[13] gatherings in a local pub.

In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out what is best, wisest or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inns; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could deserve it? (71–72)

Two questions arise regarding Lewis’s philosophy of friendship: What is the purpose of friendship? and What is distinctively Christian about this account? Lewis praises Friendship as “something that raised us almost above humanity” (77), because it is “eminently spiritual.” It is, Lewis suggests, “the sort of love one can imagine between angels,” and maybe even a “natural Love which is Love itself” (77). However, Lewis offers a quick caution. That it is spiritual does not mean that it is necessarily good. The demons are spiritual, as are our worst sins as humans. The spirituality of friendship comes from the fact that is prone to both vices (arrogance, pride, and envy) and virtues (selflessness, gratitude, and the like), which exist even among the angelic community.

Some of these vices emerge because we believe that the wonders of friendship we enjoy arise from our efforts. We made the friendship, and we chose our friends in a way that Affection (based on kinship) and Eros (thought to be fated) do not (89). Lewis reminds us, however, that but for the accident of the year of our birth or the location of our home or a hundred other minor factors, many friendships would not come into existence. Ultimately, friendship is grounded in the providence of God. “The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others” (89). The beauties of our friends are grounded, as all beautiful things are, in God. The purpose of Friendship, like all the loves, is to direct our attention to the God who is the source of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Friendship is “His instrument for creating as well as revealing [beauty]. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside” (90).

Aristotle—Critique

Of Aristotle’s account of friendship, there is much to commend. While it would perhaps be difficult to shoehorn every example of friendship into one of Aristotle’s three species, the general outline of his account rings true. One of Aristotle’s enduring qualities is that many of his ideas and assertions sound like common sense. Such, I believe, are his thoughts on the two inferior kinds of friendship and the friendship of good people. I can easily categorize many of my own acquaintances and relationships according to his schema, and readily see why the substantial, lasting friendships are so.

One obvious problem with Aristotle’s account is his elitism and chauvinism. His philosophy as a whole is marred by his condescending attitude toward women and nonaristocrats.[14] Another concern presents itself regarding the notion of self-love and the second self. Aristotle believed that our love of self is prior to our love of friends, in the sense that our love of self (if we are virtuous) is a model for Character-Friendship. Thus, the friend is a “second self.” Some scholars have defended Aristotle’s account as non-egoistical, but doubts remain. Is Aristotle really an egoist? Does his account of Character-Friendship really reflect genuine love?

If a person uses her love of herself as a model and her own cultivation of the virtues as a paradigm for virtuousness, then it is hard to see how one could learn virtues from others. Some of my most important friendships have been with people for whom I have great respect. In observing the virtues that they possess, I have discovered various lacunae in my own character. It seems that this rather common practice of patterning our lives after those we respect and admire is hard to fit into Aristotle’s account of the priority of self-love.

A defender of Aristotle, however, might mention that his account bears at least a passing resemblance to Jesus’s command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). This comparison, I believe, gets us to the heart of Aristotle’s conception of friendship. Jesus, recognizing that we all have a great instinct to protect ourselves and care for ourselves—in short, to love ourselves—commands that we show the same concern for others that we already bear for ourselves. Paul echoes this requirement in Philippians 2:3 when he enjoins us to regard one another as more important than ourselves. The Christian principle is to perform acts of love, even sacrifice, for others, above doing things in our own self-interest. The focus is on the action of love, as Jesus highlights to the disciples in John 15:12–14.

Aristotle, however, holds that the virtuous person will love the other person because that one displays the virtues he already holds. There is a subtle but significant difference here between Jesus and Aristotle. Even a sinner instinctively protects and cares for himself, and Jesus calls him to do those same things (and more) for others. The virtuous person beholds the goodness in himself, and Aristotle urges him to befriend others who are a second self to him. It is hard not to imagine that some arrogance or self-importance would emerge from such a process. The Christian ideal is to love others more than yourself. The Aristotelian dictum is to love those who are more like yourself.

Lewis—Critique

Like Aristotle’s treatment of the topic, Lewis’s philosophy of friendship is replete with perceptive observations and distinctions. His contrast between Friendship and Eros is valuable. His opinion that Friendship is the least natural and least necessary of the four Loves provokes longer and more sustained reflection than can be done in an article like this one. Overall, there is much to applaud in his discussion. However, two problems emerge. One is minor, the other more substantial.

Lewis was fond of calling himself a dinosaur, and sometimes it is hard to remember that he was a twentieth-century writer, so much does he inhabit the mentality of earlier ages. The problem with this mentality is that sometimes it results in stale discussions, such as his analysis of male-female relationships, the roles that they inhabit in society and the possibility of mixed-gender friendships. Large parts of the chapter on Friendship are, quite frankly, dated. For much of his life, Lewis lived a very isolated, male-dominated existence, and occasionally it shows.[15]

A more significant concern is whether Lewis has correctly identified what Friendship truly is. While some of what he says about the theological significance of Friendship is rewarding, his discussion of the spirituality of Friendship is not convincing. In addition, I am not convinced that friendship must be about something. I favor Aristotle’s analysis that a genuine friendship is rooted in our admiration of the other, not in what likes or passions we share. In considering each of the loves separately, Lewis seems to have erred in emphasizing their distinctive traits at the expense of what unites them. All loves are rooted in putting the other first. While Lewis makes a good case for the distinctiveness of Eros and Friendship, at the end of the day, they are still loves. Friends say to each other, “We used to be closer. Are you mad at me?” or “Your friendship means a lot to me. Thanks for encouraging me.” The natural loves are closer to each other than Lewis sometimes makes them seem.

This imbalance is subtly corrected in the last chapter of The Four Loves, which examines Charity. Lewis acknowledges that the three natural loves (Affection, Eros, and Friendship) are insufficient (116). They need the completion that only comes from divine Gift-Love, which is Charity. Some have held that the insufficiency is due to the fact that the natural loves are rivals of divine love. Eros is inferior because it distracts from love of God. While there is certainly truth in this conclusion, Lewis argues that the real problem lies in the other extreme. We don’t love enough.

Recalling the story of Augustine’s grief over the death of his friend Nebridius, Lewis reminds us of Augustine’s resolution. “This is what comes, [Augustine] says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose” (120). Forcefully rejecting this perspective, Lewis asserts that there can be no “safe investments” of love. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will surely be wrung, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one” (121). His final word on the attempt to avoid all loves save for God is this classic line: “The only safe place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell” (121).

The natural loves are not so much inordinate as they are insufficient. They are completed by divine love, which is always Gift-Love. There are three ways our natural loves receive the grace of divine love to complete them. We receive a portion of divine Gift-Love in order to love the unlovely, like lepers and criminals. Our natural Gift-Love inclines us to love the lovable, but this divine Gift-Love takes on a decidedly altruistic mentality (128). The Father had love for us while we were still hopelessly in our sins and definitely unlovely (Rom 5:6–8). It is a gift of the Spirit that our natural Gift-Love is completed such that we can love after the manner of God. In addition, we receive supernatural Need-Love both for God and for others. In both cases, this Need-Love helps us take joy in our dependence on the love we receive so that we may not become embittered or jealous. Lewis gives a stirring example of a handicapped husband who must daily rely on his wife for everything. Suppose the kindness of his wife is inexhaustible. Lewis’s point is that it is not only the wife’s Gift-Love that is transformed by divine charity, but also the husband’s Need-Love.

The man who can take this sweetly, who can receive all and give nothing without resentment, who can abstain even from those tiresome self-depreciations which are really only a demand for petting and reassurance, is doing something which Need-Love in its merely natural condition could not attain (132).

This Charity does not replace the inferior loves; it completes and transforms them into something they could never be alone. The third grace is an infusion of supernatural Appreciation-Love toward God, which can only be tasted or sampled in this life. Lewis clearly has in mind the elevation of our ability to love in the life to come. This love is the one most to be desired, but Lewis (and the rest of us) are ill-equipped to describe it, save to say that “all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be” (140).

The previous paragraph represents Lewis’s closing thoughts in The Four Loves. These go a long way toward answering an earlier question about what makes Lewis’s account of the loves Christian. Being more comfortable in literature and philosophy than systematic theology, Lewis does not use the typical language of sanctification and glorification or refer to the relevant passages of the New Testament. Even so, the general direction of his comments points us in fruitful directions.

A problem remains, though. In the last chapter on Charity, in which the natural loves become transformed into divine loves, Lewis’s account seems to conflate all the loves into one amorphous “Love.” Earlier, Lewis’s account of the loves seemed too disparate, but by completing them all in Charity, Lewis erases important distinctions between them, especially with regard to Friendship. How does the infusion of divine Charity affect Friendship in particular? How does Friendship operate in the divine sphere? To answer these questions (at least in part), we must enlist the help of another thinker who profoundly influenced both philosophy and Christian theology, namely, Thomas Aquinas. Before moving to these issues, however, it would be good to summarize what has been established about the moral significance of friendship.

The Moral Significance Of Friendship

Points of similarity exist in Aristotle’s and Lewis’s accounts of friendship. Both think that friendship is important and that life would be less sweet without friends. Both address the relationship of Friendship to Eros and conclude that one does not reduce to the other. Both also recognize that friendship exists because of some commonality. Aristotle attributes it to the friend being a second self, while Lewis holds that the friendship exists because it is about something.

From the perspective of Aristotle’s aretaic system of ethics, friendship is a virtue, and it is the habituation of virtues that produces eudaimonia. If one thinks that the virtues are in competition with eudaimonia, then one misunderstands their nature. The virtues are means to the final goal of eudaimonia. The virtue of friendship indicates that one is on the path to eudaimonia.

Cooper notes two reasons why friendship is essential to eudaimonia. First, one must know virtue to acquire it. Genuine knowledge of virtue comes from observing it in oneself and in one’s second self—a friend of good character. Second, human life does not flourish in isolation. Friends must partake in shared activities.[16] Aristotle notes that friends must “live together” (8.5.1). It is appropriate to recall that for Aristotle, ethics is a species of political science. The moral life is a component of life in the polis (1.2.4). Therefore, friendship connects the individual with the broader community. The virtues of the good person are shared with the friend for the good of the society. “For in every community there seems to be some sort of justice, and some type of friendship also” (8.9.1). An important passage is this one toward the end of book 9:

It is also absurd to make the blessed person solitary. For no one would choose to have all other goods and yet to be alone, since a human being is a political animal, tending by nature to live together with others. This will also be true, then, of the happy person; for he has the natural goods, and clearly it is better to spend his days with decent friends than with strangers of just any character. Hence the happy person needs friends (9.9.3).

Friendship, for Aristotle, is the necessary social context from which happiness emerges. It is a mark of eudaimonia. It would be worthless to habituate all the other virtues and then to live alone. One could summarize these conclusions into two principles about the necessity of friendship in the moral context of this life.

1. People are made for community, and friends make the good things of life sweeter and the bad things of life bearable.

2. Since friendship is a virtue, having good friends is a kind of moral barometer. One is on the path to a life well-lived if he or she has friends.

Nothing in our study of Lewis on friendship would undermine these principles. However, there is something missing. For Lewis, friendship is ultimately intended to point us to God. It is insufficient by itself, but this incompleteness is necessary. Love your friends deeply, but recognize that true Charity is a divine grace, and all of our loves are poor images of the divine Gift-Love. Love is ordained by God, and it is kept by God, and it is beautiful, as God is. This perspective is what makes friendship Christian. It is a love that rises above the possibility of sin to become a godly entity. It is ethical because it is love. Thus, a third principle needs to be added:

3. Friendship with God is possible (John 15:15; Jas 4:4). It is not simply a metaphor, but a reality.

The Theological Significance Of Friendship

The notion that we can enjoy friendship with God invites a number of questions. Specifically, how does what is special and unique about the love of human friendship become transformed into a relationship with the divine? How can divine love and human love operate in the same relationship? Does friendship somehow operate in the divine sphere?

The best way to briefly explore these questions is to invite another voice into the conversation. Thomas Aquinas heavily relied on Aristotle (“the Philosopher”), and C. S. Lewis, in turn, greatly admired the medieval tradition. Thus, Aquinas, the great synthesizer, is a natural choice to take this discussion to the next level. His contributions are especially evident where he carries Aristotle’s teaching as far as it can go, and then he supplies from the resources of Christian thought what is missing. In the treatise on theological virtues in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas takes up the nature of charity. He concludes, on the strength of Jesus’s declaration in John 15:15, that charity is nothing less than friendship, even friendship with God.[17] His reasoning path is worth following.

It begins with the Philosopher’s three kinds of friendship and the observation that not every type of charity (or love) can be friendship, but only those loves that involve benevolence. If we love something for ourselves and not for its own sake, this kind of love can never be friendship. Aquinas helpfully suggests the examples of a horse or some wine. One can say that he loves his horse or his wine, but this love is purely for his own sake. “For it would be absurd to speak of having friendship for wine or for a horse.”[18] Friendship also must be more than well-wishing, since some degree of mutuality must be present. This interaction Aquinas calls “communication,” and he concludes that since there is communication between man and God, it follows that there is “some kind of friendship” that obtains between human and deity. He cites 1 Corinthians 1:9: we are called into fellowship with the Son, and the love based on this communication is nothing less than the friendship of man for God.[19]

Aquinas scholar Brian Davies helpfully points out that an underlying theological commitment elucidates this divine/human friendship. “God’s love is simply a matter of him being drawn to himself as the perfect or ultimate good. And that, so Aquinas also thinks, is what is at issue when it comes to the love that is charity. Those with charity, he says, are drawn to God purely and simply for the goodness that God is. . . . This, in turn, means that those with charity aim for God as God aims for himself in willing himself. They are attracted to God, not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.”[20] Hence the desire that underlies both God’s love and a human’s love, inasmuch as it is charity, must be directed toward the highest good, which is God. The inequity of the friendship relationship between God and an individual human is remedied because they both desire the highest good, namely, the very nature of God.

God’s love for himself in this regard is not as strange as it might sound, since the Godhead is a Trinity. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Justified human beings are adopted into this fellowship. We are joint heirs with Jesus (Rom 8:17). It is no accident that Jesus’s teaching that we are his friends is offered in the context of his great Trinitarian discussions of John 14–16. Our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father so elevates our eternal status that we are no longer just servants of the triune God. We are friends with the Almighty. This indeed is the deepest of all the truths about friendship, and one of the most profound of all theological revelations about our human situation. Aristotle argued that having the highest quality of friendships is a mark of a life well lived. The words and work of Jesus point to an even deeper truth, that humans can have a genuine friendship, a true love relationship, with the members of the Trinity. This eternal truth elevates the notion of friendship far beyond the playground or ballfield. We are not just worshipers of God, as from a distance, but we are brought near to be his friends. Our friendship is rooted in our mutual love for each other and also in our mutual love of the good that is found in God. Thus James can write, “Come near to God and he will come near to you” (Jas 4:8). Thus we walk the paths of life, confident that we do so shoulder-to-shoulder with the Almighty.

Notes

1. Quotations are from the second edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). Citations note the book, chapter, and paragraph, and are placed in parentheses in the text.
2. The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) was originally published in 1960; a new Harcourt edition, with new pagination, was released in 1991 and is used in this article.
3. Translation of eudaimonia is difficult. Most frequently, translators choose “happiness,” but some prefer to speak of “human flourishing,” which is perhaps more accurate, but rather clumsy to use. Whatever word is used to gloss it, the reader will get an accurate sense only if the term is unpacked and delineated. I prefer to leave it untranslated.
4. Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 273.
5. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 18.
6. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 55. All italics found in quotations are from the original source.
7. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 71.
8. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.4 (1380b35–1381a1).
9. John Cooper, “Aristotle on Friendship,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amelie Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 302. Cooper makes the point that Aristotle has this same conception of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics.
10. Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good, 132.
11. One can certainly dispute Lewis’s conclusion of modern disinterest in Friendship or his analysis of the reason for it. I think Lewis is probably wrong on both accounts, but this does not greatly undermine his overall treatment of Friendship. It is also noteworthy that contemporary Darwinists have paid quite a bit more attention to friendship than those who lived during Lewis’s lifetime. See Jerry Coyne’s defense of an evolutionary account of altruism in Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (New York: Penguin, 2015), 172–77.
12. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1956), 130.
13. Lewis, his brother Warren, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and a small number of other men met regularly to read from their writings, to talk, and to laugh. They called themselves “the Inklings.” Without this group, it is doubtful that the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings books would have been published.
14. A full-scale interaction with the sexism in the work of Aristotle (and others) is well beyond the bounds of this article, but it deserves careful consideration. I will proceed under the assumption that the main points of Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship can be salvaged despite this glaring weakness.
15. A similar conclusion is reached by Alan Jacobs in The Narnian (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 255–57.
16. Cooper, “Aristotle on Friendship,” 330–31.
17. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a.23.1, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in The Great Books of the Western World, vol. 20, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952). All quotations are taken from this version.
18. Ibid.
19. In asserting that there is a friendship with God, Aquinas goes well beyond and even disagrees with Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle restricts friendship to the human context. It is not possible to envision a friendship with a deity, since gods, having no needs, cannot have friends (cf. 8.7.6).
20. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 291.