MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

proud way of Satan which leads to spiritual death and misery. And, as in SC 34-38, the
monk’s decision to embark on either path will turn on his self-knowledge, on his
willingness or unwillingness to face the bitter truth of his fallen condition, to
acknowledge honestly the disquieting reality of his self-imposed and inescapable slavery
to sin, and the justice of his consequent consignment to eternal death. Should the monk
accept and confess this truth about himself, he may be converted to Christ and be led by
Christ along the way of humility and love which leads to contemplation, divine espousal,
and the beatific vision God. Should the monk obstinately refuse to see and admit the
truth of his sinfulness and weakness, he will succumb to self-deception and embrace
Satan’s way of pride and self-will which leads to eternal blindness, misery, and
condemnation.
In spite of these indications of an elegant symmetry to Bernard’s composition,
there is at least one obvious and puzzling asymmetry between his treatise’s two main
parts. Whereas Bernard’s second part deals explicitly with the twelve steps of pride he
derives from Benedict’s twelve steps of humility, his first part does not discuss
Benedict’s steps of humility in themselves, but rather situates them within a further,
tripartite schema of the spiritual life of his own devising, namely his three steps of Truth.
Foregoing any commentary on Benedict’s steps and their relationships, Bernard is
content simply to assert that by ascending these twelve steps of humility, the monk will
gradually arrive at the knowledge of the Truth in himself, in his brothers, and in Truth’s
own nature. If his second main part identifies and traces the relationships between the
twelve steps of pride, his first main part identifies and traces the relationships between
these three steps of Truth.
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