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

a “false image” of himself. 26 Similarly, Roch Kerestzy argues that, for Bernard, the fallen
human being is “alienated from himself” and, moreover, subject to a “false self-
consciousness.” 27 Again, Charles Dumont suggests that, for Bernard, the fallen human
being suffers from a “falsification” of the truth concerning himself. 28 Despite this
widespread acknowledgment that Bernard envisions some sort of defective self-
knowledge, or self-deception, associated with pride, there is as yet no study directed to
the precise nature of this self-deception, its development, and its consequences in
Bernard’s overall vision of the spiritual life.
In addition to noting Bernard’s teaching on this self-deception the soul suffers
prior to its first conversion, and the humbling self-knowledge it acquires in that first
conversion, recent scholarship on the abbot’s doctrine of the spiritual life has also
gestured towards Bernard’s conviction that as the soul is progressively renewed in the
lost divine likeness by Christ’s grace, it comes to experience itself anew, as one being
conformed to Christ as his Bride. Particularly noteworthy in this connection are a pair of
articles written in the 1990’s by Denis Farkasfalvy in which he argues that the key to
Bernard’s theological synthesis is his understanding of the “spiritual life,” the human
being’s quest for finding God in Christ, a spiritual journey which begins in conversion
and progresses through purification to contemplation, the anticipation of the
26 Denis Farkasfalvy, “St. Bernard’s Spirituality and the Benedictine Rule in The Steps of
Humility,” Analecta Cisterciensia 36:2 (1981), 254.
27 Roch Kereszty, “Relationship between Anthropology and Christology. St. Bernard, a Teacher
for Our Age”, in La dottrina della vita spirituale nelle opere di San Bernardo di Clairvaux (Rome:
Editiones Cistercienses, 1991), 275.
28 Charles Dumont, Pathway of Peace: Cistercian Wisdom According to Saint Bernard, trans.
Elizabeth Connor, Cistercian Studies 187 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1999), 43-46.
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