Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

82 DENNIS J. BILLY
son’s friendship with Christ is the true “medicine of life.” All other
spiritual friendships are of a participatory nature. Their curative
powers flow from Christ and ultimately lead back to him.
8. This participatory nature of spiritual friendships in Christ
provides an important context for Aelred’s understanding of
goodness. In God, goodness is a transcendental perfection (e.g.,
the One, the True, the Good, the Beautiful) and possesses all the
characteristics typically associated with it. In humanity, however,
goodness is merely participatory and can never achieve the
transcendental status reserved only to the divine. The distinction
between the divine and the human, between the Creator and the
created must always be strictly maintained. For Aelred, moreover,
the participatory nature of human goodness differs greatly
depending on which particular mode of human nature one is
talking about at the time. Humanity’s participated goodness before
the fall, for example, differs from what it is like after the fall
and also after the Christ’s redemption has reached its full effect.
Aelred’s practical concerns about the formation of spiritual
friendship reflect this qualified understanding of the participatory
nature of human goodness.
9. The qualified participatory nature of human goodness allows
Aelred to treat the healing of human nature as an ongoing
process. Rooted in an allegorical interpretation of The Song of
Songs 1:1 (the only such interpretation in the entire treatise) his
metaphor of the three kisses – carnal, spiritual, and intellectual
– allows him to describe spiritual friendship as a mingling of
spirits that mediates one’s relationship with Christ and eventually
leads to a direct mingling of one’s spirit with the Spirit of
Christ. Spiritual friendship is likened to the exchange of breath
that takes place in a kiss. Just as breathing is necessary for life,
so too is friendship necessary for spiritual life. This necessity,
however, comes not from the bond of friendship itself, but from
the grace of Christ, who makes it possible and to whom the spiritual
friendship ultimately leads. The medicinal powers of spiritual
friendship, in other words, derive from their “graced capacity”
to mediate Christ’s presence and to lead a person into an intimate
relationship with Christ himself.
10. All of the practical advice on spiritual friendship given in
Book Three, the longest in the treatise, stems from Aelred’s sensitivity
to the precarious nature of humanity’s present earthly ex-