Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

Chapter 2: The Definition and Origin of Spiritual Friendship (Book 1.31–71)

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matter. But before we go on to other things, I would like to know where friendship among mortals first came from. Is it natural or accidental, or does it arise from some necessity? Was it imposed upon the human race by some statute or law? For indeed, our experience with it is what makes it attractive to us. 51. AELRED: It seems to me that nature herself first stamped human minds with the emotion of friendship, and then experience increased it, and finally the authority of law put it in order. 9 For God, being the highest power and the highest good, is self-sufficient with regard to what is good, since he himself is his own good, his own joy, his own glory, his own blessing. 52. Nor does he need anything which is external to himself, neither man, nor angel, nor heaven, nor earth, nor anything which is in these. Indeed, every creature proclaims to him, “You are my Lord, since you need none of my goods” (Ps 16:2). 10 Not only is God self-sufficient; he is himself the sufficiency of all created things, granting some mere existence, granting others sentience, and granting still others knowledge, while himself remaining the cause of all existing things, the life of all sentient things, and the knowledge of all knowledgeable things. 53. And so God himself, as the Highest Nature, established all natures, put all things in their proper place, separately distributed all things to their proper

9 For Aelred, “nature herself” points to the God who authored nature. Thus, friendship is part of human nature because God designed it as an important aspect of humanity. 10 Aelred paraphrases Ps 16:2 here.