76. Augustine on Friendship

True friends are a gift from God. In today’s journey back through the archives, Dr. Stephen Nichols introduces us to several of Augustine’s close friends and discusses his view on friendship.

Thanks for tuning in to 5 Minutes in Church History, I’m Steve Nichols. What you’re about to hear is one of my favorite episodes from our archives. We’re taking a short break from releasing new content, but we will be back with all new material in January 2023. Make sure you’re subscribed to the show so you won’t miss any favorites. I hope you enjoy this archival episode of 5 Minutes in Church History.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode we’re going to be looking at our good old friend Augustine, but this time we're going to be considering Augustine and his friends, and Augustine on friendship.

Friendship was very meaningful to Augustine. In fact, one writer said that Augustine is the first person to think of and to give us a theology of friendship. Friendship was very important to him. He often liked to quote the famous line about friendship from Cicero. The Greeks often thought about friendship. They thought, “What is the nature of friendship? What brings friends together?” And all this sort of culminates in a thought that was presented by the great Roman thinker Cicero when he says that friendship is “agreement with kindliness and affection about things human and divine.” Augustine believed this, and throughout most of his life he would quote this when he was writing to good friends of his. But later in his life he adds a little bit of a twist to this definition of friendship. But before we get to his definition, let's talk about some of the friends that are in Augustine's life.

One of his friends is Alypius. They grew up not too far from each other, although Augustine is a little bit older than Alypius, and Alypius was one of Augustine's early students. Alypius followed Augustine as he made his journey from North Africa, first to Rome, and Alypius was there. Then Augustine went on to Milan, and Alypius followed him there too. And it was at Milan that Augustine was converted. In fact, it was while he was with Alypius in the gardens at Milan reading in his New Testament that he was converted, and Alypius was converted at the same time. They were both baptized on the same day by the same person, Ambrose, the famous Bishop of Milan. And then they went into the priesthood together, and they were even bishops together in neighboring bishoprics. Augustine there at Hippo and Alypius at Thagaste which is the hometown for both of them, for Alypius and for Augustine. Not only were they converted together and friends together and bishops together, but they actually died about the same time. As the 420s were coming to a close, as the Vandals were sacking Rome, and as the Roman Empire was crumbling, both Augustine who died in Hippo and Alypius who died in Thagaste died about the same time. So this was a friendship that spanned really their entire lives and also the entire career of Augustine as a bishop and as a churchman.

There was another friend for Augustine, we don't know what his name was. In fact, Augustine writes about him in the Confessions. And this was a friend that had pursued philosophy as Augustine had, and Alypius for that matter to, had looked to the Manicheans, this was an early group of thinkers that sort of played off of some of Plato's ideas and combined some elements from Christianity into that, and presented it as a sort of secret society, a secret way of understanding things, and inner rings of hidden knowledge, this kind of a movement. Well, this friend had been part of that, and he was converted out of that and he even expressed his testimony of his conversion to Augustine and then he died. And Augustine, this is before Augustine himself is converted in Confessions, writes about the effect of this friend’s death on him. And so impactful was this friend’s death that Augustine couldn't even bring himself to put a name to this friend. He never even tells us what this friend’s name is. It was so meaningful to him.

So, here we have some of the friends in Augustine's life, and one of those friends is Marcianus. And near the end of his life, it's one of the last letters that Augustine writes, Augustine finds out that this friend from his youth, Marcianus, had now become a Christian. And this so thrilled Augustine, and this is what causes him now to think about a definition of friendship. So again, he quotes Cicero that friendship is “agreement with kindliness and affection about things humans and divine” and then Augustine adds this, “in Christ Jesus our Lord who is our real piece.” And so there is true friendship as we are united to one another as friends through our union with Christ. And ultimately Augustine says, “the friendship that matters for us is our friendship with God.” I'm Steve Nichols, thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.