Description
In Theologizing Friendship, Nathan Lefler revitalises Jean Leclercq's defence 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. His work contributes to a revised and updated status quaestionis concerning the relationship between classical monastic and scholastic theology, construed in more systematic and speculative terms than those of Leclercq and rendered here through the lens of friendship as a theological topos.
In his novel proposal that within the monastic and scholastic milieux there are parallel threefold analogies between friendship, reading and theology, Lefler not only offers an original contribution to current scholarship, but gestures towards avenues for institutional self-examination much needed in contemporary – modern and post-modern – academia.