Aelred of Rievaulx: Pursuing Perfect Happiness (review)

Sommerfeldt explains in the preface that the book's purpose is to provide a general introduction to the key ideas and themes in Aelred of Rievaulx's work by relying on the words of Aelred himself. He achieves his goal masterfully. What emerges is a clear portrait of Aelred's theology and theological anthropology, which helps the reader understand this Cistercian whose works are still being rediscovered. Sommerfeldt's portrait adds to the current scholarship and will serve as a wonderful aid to those approaching Aelred, whether for the first time or not.

Sommerfeldt's book is organized around the premise that understanding Aelred's theological anthropology is the key to understanding all of his thoughts. Through the structure of the human, one comes to see the human creature's end goal (God), and one also sees how both the goodness of human nature and the grace of God conspire to work together in the human to achieve the otherworldly happiness of salvation. Thus, although this is a work of Aelred's theological anthropology, Sommerfeldt starts and ends with God. According to Aelred, God creates the human in the Triune image and likeness and prompts fallen humans to return to God and join God in the eternal happiness and peace that the beatific vision of God bestows. In this way, Sommerfeldt's work follows squarely in the same line of explication as Aelred saw his own. As Sommerfeldt demonstrates, Aelred believes that ultimately the human can only be known in relation to God, the beginning and the end of the human; the rest of the chapters in the book then outline Aelred's understandings of the structures of the soul that make human beings capable of responding to God's prompting.

The reformation of the human is not accomplished all at once; nor does it involve only one particular faculty of the soul. Sommerfeldt endeavors to show how the whole person is involved in the reunion with God. To this end, Sommerfeldt's book delineates the various faculties of the human—body and soul, memory, will and intellect; affectus—and shows how they function toward the human's end. Sommerfeldt then explores how each is affected by the fall, and shows the regrowth of each into the full restoration of the human.

Chapter 3 describes the fall and its effects on the faculties of the human: the intellect's darkened ability to judge, the will's self-defeating choices, and the body's dulled senses. Next, Sommerfeldt explains the role grace plays in the restoration of this human. The human can no longer just will good but needs to follow God's prompting and initiative. In chapter 4, Sommerfeldt turns to the virtues, where humility is the capstone virtue. When the human continues to return to God, the human's virtues necessarily return. Key to this is humility where the human comes to know herself as she truly is. This chapter also contains a description of meditation, for the practice of this exercise orders the soul's intellect toward humility and self-knowledge, which will ultimately lead to knowledge of God.

Chapter 5 relates love and the purification of the will to humility and human growth in the intellectual virtues. Love must inform these virtues if they are to lead the human back to God. In the process, the human learns to distinguish true and false loves. The fruits of true love as it develops are a peace, which Aelred says is a preparation for the lasting peace of beatitude in heaven. Chapter 6 then puts this in a more concrete context: love and the soul are discussed in terms of attachments—and in particular those attachments found to be good in helping the person grow to God—namely the attachment of friendship, which will lead to friendship with God.

Chapter 7 describes the growth of the cardinal virtues in the human soul and relates these back to the various faculties of the intellect, will...