Theologizing Friendship. Nathan Sumner Lefler

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Theologizing Friendship - Nathan Sumner Lefler


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heart, no matter how frequent and great have been my own mistrust of both. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my wife, Annie, for whom this work in many ways has been principally executed, and without whom it would never have taken the shape it has.

      Abbreviations

      DDN In Librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus

      De am. De amicitia

      Eth. Sententia Libri Ethicorum

      Iesu puero De Iesu puero duodenni

      Ioannis Super evangelium S. Ioannis lectura

      NE Nichomachean Ethics

      O. past. Oratio pastoralis

      RB The Rule of St. Benedict

      SA De spiritali amicitia

      SC Speculum caritatis

      SCG Summa contra Gentiles

      Sent. Scriptum Super libros Sententiarum

      ST Summa Theologiae

      Introduction

      Not surprisingly, the theological treatments of friendship produced by these two authors—the twelfth-century monk on the one hand, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian on the other—differ in many significant ways. It is precisely the central thesis of the following dissertation that the differences between these two accounts of friendship exhibit a certain congruence with fundamental differences between monastic and scholastic theology tout court. However, this thesis may be further subdivided, inasmuch as we will argue that the correspondence asserted is not merely formal, limited, for example, to ways in which each of our two authors’ accounts of friendship respectively instantiates monastic or scholastic theological method per se. Rather, we contend that the discovered correspondence touches also the particular subject matter in question, namely, friendship under its Christian theological aspect. What is true, therefore, about the monastic notion of friendship can be seen to characterize the monastic theological project as well, and the same reasoning applies, mutatis mutandis, to the scholastic notion and enterprise. In order, then, to facilitate the reader’s progress through the dissertation, we will now briefly outline the procedure whereby we arrive at these conclusions.


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