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

Introduction

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Aelred was also a good friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was perhaps the most important Christian thinker of his century, and an expert on the topic of Christian love. Bernard urged Aelred to write, and so Aelred wrote a book about love called The Mirror of Charity as well as a number of other books. Aelred wrote Spiritual Friendship at the end of his life, sometime between 1164 and 1167, and it represents the fruit of decades of reflection on Christian community, Christian love, and spiritual friendship. Aelred saw Christian friendship as eternal (1.21). It offers a visible sign of Christ’s kingdom come to earth. 6 Aelred believed that a spiritual friend is “the guardian of love—or, as some prefer to say, the ‘guardian of the soul’ itself” (1.20). Sources for Spiritual Friendship How did Aelred develop his understanding of spiritual friendship? What were his sources? Throughout history, Christian understandings of spiritual friendship at their best have sought wisdom from four sources. 7 First, Scripture, followed by three other areas: science (reason); the lived theology of the church (tradition); and experience. One reason Aelred’s spiritual classic has remained helpful for over eight hundred years is that it draws wisely from all four of these sources. Aelred’s example of exploring how Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience teach us about friendship is a model for disciples today.

6 Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship: The Classic Text with a Spiritual Commentary , ed. Dennis Billy, trans. M. Eugenia Laker (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria, 2008), 16. 7 See Uche Anizor, How to Read Theology: Engaging Doctrine Critically and Charitably (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).