**FRIENDSHIP** — Mutual affection between one person and another.
I. IN THE NATURAL ORDER
Friendship (φιλία) has been studied by ARISTOTLE, who defines it as “a reciprocal and manifest love reigning between several persons, consisting in an exchange of gifts and benefits.” The first of all gifts is affection itself (Ethica ad Nicom., 8, 2-3). Not every love — he observes — deserves the title of friendship; this is love of benevolence, by which one wills the good of another person, rather than loving them merely for one’s own sake; it therefore differs from, indeed opposes, self-love or love of concupiscence. It further requires that such love of benevolence be bilateral or reciprocal. Yet this is not enough, for even two men who barely know one another may bear mutual benevolence; for friendship, a certain communion of life, *convictus* (convivere, συζήν), a certain sharing of ideas, feelings, and will is required. CICERO goes so far as to call friendship “the greatest harmony between what partakes of the divine and the human, in the bond of benevolence and mutual love” (De amicitia, 1). The presupposition for the arising and flourishing of any friendship is living and conversing together.The dynamic principle of mutual attraction is similarity in nature: “nihil est enim appetentius similium sui, nihil rapacius quam natura.” The indispensable psychological ground for human friendship is the conformity of personal tastes and temperaments, since love by innate impulse tends toward the fusion of the lover with the beloved, so as to render the friend another self: “alter idem.”
By its end or object, ARISTOTLE distinguishes three kinds of friendship, according as it is founded on the pursuit in common of the pleasant good, or the useful good, or the honest good that is the object of virtue. Thus there are friendships of the young who chiefly seek to enjoy themselves together, of merchants intent chiefly on their material interests, and finally of upright men who chiefly pursue the honest good, both in individual and in social life. Yet friendship deserves that name only insofar as it aims at the true and inalienable good, which is virtue. Therefore true friendship is virtue. Its qualities and safeguards are sincerity, fidelity, and disinterestedness; while opposed to it are selfishness, pretense, and flattery. Hence true and lasting friendship is exceedingly rare, like a notable treasure (Eccli. 6, 15-16).
Many among the Greek philosophers wrote on friendship; these have been studied by R. EUCKEN. THEOPHRASTUS, a disciple of ARISTOTLE, composed a treatise from which, according to AULUS GELLIUS, CICERO drew in *Laelius, de amicitia*.
II. IN THE SUPERNATURAL ORDER
The concept of friendship was placed on a new foundation by Christianity. *Φιλία* is transfigured into *φιλανθρωπία* (II Pt. 1, 7), in the school of Jesus (Io. 13, 34; 17, 21), and flourishes in *ἀγάπη* (see CHARITY). In the climate of the Gospel, human friendship was rectified and sanctified, its motives and aims elevated beyond the contingent sphere. Yet beyond ennobling human friendship, Christianity inaugurated among men a true and proper supernatural friendship, consisting in a reciprocal love between God and men and among men themselves, having as its specific fruit an exchange of goods of a divine order.According to Sacred Scripture, infused charity is a true friendship between the just man and God, and among the children of God. In the Old Testament, Abraham is called “the friend of God” (Judt. 8, 22; cf. Jac. 2, 21). Ps. 138, 17, according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate: “Thy friends, O God, are greatly honored.”
But above all the New Testament portrays charity as friendship: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,” said Jesus to the apostles (Io. 15, 15). St. THOMAS (Sum. theol., 2a 2ae, q. 23, a. 1) demonstrates that infused charity cannot in fact exist without mutual benevolence between God and the just man: God wills the good of the just man, who wills God’s glory; and there is a communion of life (*convictus*) between them, by the fact that the just man has received sanctifying grace, a participation in the divine life and the seed of eternal life in union with God seen face to face. With charity there also occurs true supernatural friendship among the just, since they are truly children of the same heavenly Father; they even have friendship for sinners, inasmuch as they desire their conversion, so that they may become children of God and glorify Him eternally. It is therefore said: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute and calumniate you” (Mt. 5, 44).
In this way the various forms of friendship are harmonized and elevated one above another: the human or natural, whose characteristics we have described; the Christian, which is a moral virtue and a principle of supernatural love existing among Christians already bound together by human friendship; and the divine, which is the theological virtue of charity, and has as its reference point and primary object of love God Himself, infinite goodness.
As regards friendship in relation to interior life, one should hold to what St. FRANCIS DE SALES teaches (Intr. à la vie dévote, ch. 20 ff.): if the sensible element predominates in friendship, one must for a long time renounce every particular relationship outside of unavoidable encounters; if, however, the spiritual element predominates, one may cultivate friendship, purifying it by custody and mortification of the senses and the heart.
Thus the spiritual masters, who echo the saying of Eccli. 6, 14: “A faithful friend is a powerful protection; whoever finds one has found a treasure; it is a remedy for life; those who fear God find it.” SIRACH (like Proverbs) gives many practical counsels on relations of friendship: Eccli. 6, 7 ff. coincides with Ennius: “Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur”; ibid. 6, 13 is paraphrased by St. AMBROSE (De off., 3, 137): “An enemy may be avoided, but not a friend, if one wishes to be treacherous”; elsewhere St. AMBROSE (ibid., 128: “There are good rebukes and often they are better than silent friendship”) recalls Prov. 27, 6.
Reginaldo Garrigou-Lagrange — Luigi Ciappi