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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56. So even among the angels divine wisdom saw to it that not just one, but many were created, among whom community was welcome and the sweetest love created a unity of will and affection. This was so that, once differences in rank were recognized, there would be no occasion for envy—but agape love intervened to prevent this. And so sheer numbers banished solitude and mutual participation in agape love increased the happiness of the many. 57. And when God created mankind afterward, in order to commend more highly the good conferred by human society he said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). Certainly divine virtue did not simply form this helper from similar or even from the same material, but woman was created expressly as an incentive for Christian love and friendship, from the very substance of the man himself. And so it is beautiful that the second created being was Men and Women Are Equal and Created for Friendship (1.57−60)

taken from the side of the first so that nature might teach that all are equals, as it were “collateral.” 12 In human affairs there is to be neither superior nor inferior; this is the appropriate mark of friendship.

“In human affairs there is to be neither superior nor inferior; this is the appropriate mark of friendship.”

12 Collateral – a person having the same descent in a family, but by a different line. Aelred is also making a pun in the Latin since the word “side” is latus , and Eve came from Adam’s side.