Liberatory Politics and Friendship with God

Problem and motivation: According to a long tradition in Christian theology, human flourishing and salvation is at least partially constituted by enjoying friendship with God. This position is explicitly defended in classical theological works such as Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, and it is suggested by Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics IV/1. This theological tradition shapes the piety of many ordinary Christians, too. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches millions of Roman Catholics worldwide to organize their lives around seeking friendship with God, while T. M. Luhrmann’s ethnographic study of American evangelicals highlights that many evangelicals conceive of their religious experience in terms of a friendship with God or Jesus (see When God Talks Back). 

Despite its prominence in the Christian traditions, the claim that friendship with God is central to human flourishing raises a significant ethical-political problem. Such a view threatens to encourage a form of religiosity that downplays or is disengaged from the manifold forms of oppression in the world, and thus functions ideologically to support an unjust status quo.

One source of concern here is theological. On some views, divine-human friendship is ultimately achieved only in the post-mortem “beatific vision,” although individuals can gain a foretaste of it through contemplative prayer. These views seem vulnerable to the critique of individualistic and “otherworldly” spiritualities advanced by liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez (e.g., A Theology of Liberation). 

Another source of concern is conceptual. According to some philosophical analyses, friendship is an exclusive relationship that tends to separate friends from other relationships and projects. Further, friendship and the love it involves are supposedly in tension with the impartial demands of morality. For these reasons, friendship is characteristically apolitical, and certainly not a resource for social justice work (see, e.g., Alexander Nehamas, On Friendship). Friendship with God would therefore seem to be in tension with social justice and liberatory politics.

Thesis: In this paper, I argue that the claim that human flourishing centrally involves friendship with God need not be in tension with striving to achieve social justice and freedom from oppression. Indeed, such an idea can provide powerful motivation for participation in liberatory politics, and participation in liberatory efforts can even serve as a site for enjoying friendship with God. Whether the goal of sharing friendship with God is repressive or liberatory depends principally on one’s conception of what God cares about and seeks. If Christians conceive of God as caring deeply about justice and seeking to end oppression, then a theology of friendship with God can be a valuable resource for liberatory politics. 

Argument sketch: After introducing the problem animating my paper, I begin the argument by considering the nature of friendship. I argue that friendship centrally involves friends sharing activities together, which in turn presupposes that friends share certain cares (or values). This thesis about friendship goes back to Aristotle and Cicero, but I develop it in conversation with the contemporary philosopher Bennett W. Helm (see Love, Friendship, and the Self). Particularly important for my argument is Helm’s concept of the “substance” of a friendship—i.e., the range of shared cares and activities through which friends relate to each other and enjoy being with one another. This idea helps us see that friendship does not necessarily close friends off from other people and projects. Rather, friendship involves friends mutually engaging the wider world together. 

Next, I consider the implications of this conception of friendship for how Christians might imagine friendship with God. If Christians seek to enjoy friendship with God, they must seek to share cares and activities with God. The question therefore becomes: what does God care about and seek to do? Utilizing Gustavo Gutiérrez’s notion of salvation as “integral liberation,” I sketch a theology according to which ending every sort of oppression is central to God’s purposes in the world. Further, I briefly argue that the witness of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus provides Christians with reason to think that sharing God’s concern for justice and care for the oppressed is a non-negotiable part of right relationship with God (cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Hearing the Call, Part I). It follows that sharing these divine cares, and doing one’s part to achieve social justice, is necessary for growing in friendship with God. 

I then draw two practical implications of this account of friendship with God. The first is that if someone conceives of God as caring deeply about justice and ending oppression, then the desire for friendship with God can provide powerful motivation to seek social justice and to resist oppression. That is because friends characteristically seek what is good for their friends, which is largely determined by what their friends care about and seek to achieve. Further, being motivated to seek justice and end oppression for God’s sake can help people come to care about these things for their own sake. (See Anne Jeffrey, “The Divine Friendship Theory of Moral Motivation,” for a related argument.) 

The second practical implication is that actively working to achieve social justice and end oppression can be a way of enjoying friendship with God. That is because friends engage with each other and enjoy being together through sharing activities with one another (see above). Therefore, if Christians conceive of their efforts for social justice as something they do together with God, they can experience this as a way of enjoying friendship—even intimacy—with God. 

I conclude the paper by briefly reflecting on how this theology of friendship with God can provide resources for religious studies scholars interested in friendship more generally. The account I developed highlights that friendship involves friends engaging the world together, which can include participating in liberatory political efforts. My paper therefore helps scholars resist apolitical conceptions of friendship, regardless of their own religious commitments.