Theologizing Friendship

In Theologizing Friendship, the author aims to revitalize Jean Leclercq's defense of monastic theology, while expanding and qualifying some of the central theses expounded in Leclercq's magisterial The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. The current work contributes to a revised and updated status quaestionis concerning the theological relationship between classical monasticism and scholasticism, construed in more systematic and speculative terms than those of Leclercq, rendered here through the lens of friendship as a theological topos. The work shares with Ivan Illich's In the Vineyard of the Text the conviction that the rise of the Schools (Paris, Oxford, etc.) constitutes one of the greatest intellectual watersheds in the history of Western civilization: where Illich's ruminations are largely philosophical and particularly epistemological, the author's are theological and metaphysical. In his novel proposal that within the monastic and scholastic milieux there obtain parallel threefold analogies among friendship, reading, and theology, the author not only offers an original contribution to current scholarship, but gestures towards avenues for institutional self-examination much needed by the contemporary--modern and postmodern--Academy. ""This book is breathtaking in its scope but incisive in its precise formulation of a new starting point for anyone looking for a way to integrate monastic wisdom into his or her own theological method."" --Peter Casarella, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Notre Dame University, Indiana ""In this important work, Nathan Lefler contributes significantly to the traditional debate about the setting of theology: the monastery or the university? Without opposing the irreplaceable contributions of scholastic theology, and of Aquinas in particular, the author evokes the centrality for theology of liturgical worship and a community of religious observances. His thesis has implications for our broader understanding of university education in general, and of the crisis of identity in contemporary academic theology."" --Thomas Joseph White, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Thomistic Institute, Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C. Nathan Lefler is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Scranton, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on friendship, worship, and the rudiments of the Christian Tradition.