Dissertation Defense: James Shelton Nalley
Candidate: James Shelton Nalley
Major: Theological and Religious Studies
Advisor: Rev. Stephen Fields, S.J.
Holy Friendship: A Comparative Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and Muḥyiddīn Ibn Al-ʿarabī
Interreligious friendships are an inevitable feature in religiously heterogeneous societies. Such friendship begin with an admiration of holiness in the religious other. This dissertation seeks to answer the following question: is there any justification for this admiration, and if so, is there any spiritual benefit to interreligious friendships? As a practice of Catholic comparative theology, this study will argue that Catholic and Muslim interreligious friendship is a possible means to cultivating holiness in the self and the other precisely as friendship with God. Using Erich Przywara’s analogy of being as a methodological tool and framework, this dissertation will explore the nature of friendship with God in Christianity and Islam through the theologies of St. Thomas Aquinas and Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī. As such it examines the grounds, means, and ends of divine friendship for the two authors. I will show that the theology of creation in each of their respective theologies establishes an analogy between God and the human person which serves as the ground of possibility for divine befriendment. This act of divine befriendment is contrasted in these two authors. I will show that Aquinas’s theology of the mysteries of the incarnation and passion have the character of divine friendship in the person of Jesus. Further, for Ibn al-ʿArabī, the offer of divine befriendment is made directly through the prophet Muḥammad but is also be mediated through the prophets of other religions. Lastly the end of divine befriendment for both figures is the theo-ethical transformation of the friend. For Aquinas this is understood primarily as a deification of the intellect and the will through a union with the Word and the Holy Spirit following the model of the incarnation. For Ibn al- ʿArabī this is understood as assuming the divine names or character traits of God in a model following the prophet Muḥammad. Situating their respective theologies in the analogy of being will show that both Christians and Muslims have resources for making sense of interreligious friendship as a means of cultivating holiness in the self and the religious other.