Because we are exploring life in society as a web of relationships, it is important to establish from the outset a picture of what the fathers of the Conferences thought relationships should be like for Christians. No matter how deep into the desert they went, none of the fathers was under any illusion that a human being can live free from relationships with others. What is more, the fathers did not consider a life of absolute solitude, totally cut off from anyone else permanently, to be particularly appealing. Human beings, they seem to assume, require at least a small level of contact with others for their basic spiritual health. Thus, the fathers of the Conferences engage in a substantial amount of straightforward discussion about human relationships. The most extended such discussion occupies all of the sixteenth conference, delivered by Abba Joseph on the topic of friendship. Our first task here is to present a summary of his teaching on the ideal for Christian relationships, namely friendships built on Christian love (a term that we will define in a moment), along with the key impediment that derails them from this ideal, namely, anger (the opposite of love).
Abba Joseph presents his definition of Christian love near the start of the conference. He begins by assessing a few of the different kinds of close human relationships that exist in the world, emphasizing especially relationships between family members, and those between people who associate for various necessary pursuits, for example, business partners. For Abba Joseph, these kinds of human associations are perfectly normal and good-but they are fundamentally relationships of necessity that can often fall short of the ideal of love. In explaining this, he defines love nicely.
One sort of love, in particular, is insoluble. This is that love that is founded not on the basis of a recommendation, or some office, or great largess, or a business contract, or natural necessity, but only on mutual similarity in virtue. This love, I say, is not sundered by any turn of events; long distance and the mard1 of time cannot prevail to erode or destroy such love. And not only that—even death itself cannot rend it. This is the true and unwavering affection that forms out of the perfection and virtue that is mirrored between the friends. 1
Real love, according to this passage, is not any feeling of admiration, nor dependence. We may add that, by extension, it is not some sense of fondness or emotional warmth, nor is it the acceptance of another person without criticism, nor is it a protective instinct for a family member, nor is it by any means a romantic feeling. Instead, for Abba Joseph, real Christian love is nothing more and nothing less than that which arises from a devotion to virtue shared between two friends.
If, then, we import the language that we used in chapter one in our discussion of the goal and telos of Christian life, we see that Abba Joseph is teaching here that genuine Christian love amounts to a shared pursuit of purity of heart. We can conclude this because, as we know, purity of heart and the real fullness of virtue are one and the same thing. Thus, genuine Christian love is purity of heart made mutual and binding between two human beings. It is what arises when two individuals commit themselves to the pursuit of this goal together, and thus begin to keep one another aflame like logs in a fire that burn bright in one another’s presence, but can scarcely stay lit at all when alone. Real love is the yoke that brings together two people onto a single path if and when that path is purity of heart, and its destination the kingdom of God.
The passage that we just quoted makes evident that for Abba Joseph, the ideal human relationship is simply a relationship of this kind of love. Through love, two people strengthen one another in their holy pursuit of their Christian goal, and in so doing, their bond becomes indestructible, he says, to the point that “neither a divergence in what they desire, nor a quarrel will break it.”2 To establish a relationship so constituted on genuine love is, for him, to create a Christian friendship.
~Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert
1 Conf. 16.III.I-2.
2 Conf. 16.III.2.
