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

indeed to the entirety of his theological enterprise for, as Bernard McGinn has written,
“Bernard’s mystical theology is solidly rooted in, indeed inseparable from, its doctrinal
foundations.” 316
Whereas contemporary theological discourse has lamented a certain divorce
between theology and spirituality in the modern era, there is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar
has remarked, no such divorce apparent in Bernard’s writings. 317 On the contrary, for
Bernard, the task of theology is to present the traditional dogmas of the Catholic faith in
so moving a manner that he and his brother monks might begin to regard their entire
monastic life, in both its contemplative and ascetical dimensions, as a living expression
of all the Church proposes for belief. And it is this conviction that accounts for Bernard’s
repeated insistence on the essential dimension of experientia, or the lived appropriation
of the truths of faith, for any adequate theology. For in his view, if theology is to be more
than yet another manifestation of curiositas, more than an impersonal and ineffectual
mental exercise concerning the doctrines of the faith and their logical relationships, the
monk must attempt not only to understand this faith in its complexity, but also to discern,
by continual recourse to the work of self-judgment and self-knowledge, how this faith
informs both who he is and how he must live. Indeed, for Bernard, the doctrines of the
faith are never finally understood until they are performed in the Christian life, and, for
316 McGinn, “Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘That Contemplative’ (Quel Contemplante),” 165.
317 See Balthasar’s classic essay, “Theology and Sanctity” in The Word Made Flesh, vol. 1 of
Explorations in Theology, trans. A.V. Littledale and Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989),
181-209. For contemporary discussions of the “divorce” between theology and spirituality and
constructive proposals for their reintegration, see Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of
Theology and Spirituality (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998); Phillip F. Sheldrake, Explorations in
Spirituality: History, Theology, and Social Practice (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010); and the articles by
Bernard McGinn, J. Matthew Ashley, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth A. Dreyer, and others in
Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, eds. Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
206