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

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this reason, doctrine and spirituality remain for him always intimately and necessarily related. Consequently, if we are to understand the role Christ assumes in Bernard’s theology of self-knowledge and the spiritual life, we must first begin with an account of the abbot’s teaching concerning the Person and work of Christ, the Incarnate Word. For while it is true, as McGinn has suggested, that Bernard and his Cistercian contemporaries are concerned less with the metaphysical constitution of the Person of Christ and more with the meaning of the redemption Christ has effected, it is also true that Bernard understands well the link between an account of Christ’s Person and an account of his redemptive work. 318 For Bernard, that is, we cannot begin to understand the nature of the Incarnate Word’s redemptive work and its implications for the spiritual life of Christian believers until we have first established who this Word is and how he has taken flesh for the sake of our salvation. Though he was the author of treatises as well as sermons, Bernard nowhere in his corpus offers an ex professo treatment of Christ’s Person and saving work. Yet, this does not mean that Bernard has failed to develop and articulate a rigorous, systematic Christology. Indeed the Person and work of Christ are so essential to the abbot’s theological imagination that they imbue all his theological writings and it is therefore possible to glean from his many treatments of Christ a consistent doctrinal foundation that undergirds his entire spiritual theology. In what follows, we will first attempt a brief overview of his Christological teaching and then examine one of the abbot’s most 318 Bernard McGinn, “Resurrection and Ascension in the Christology of the Early Cistercians,” Cîteaux 30 (1979): 8. 207
significant individual expressions of this Christology, namely his sixtieth sermon De Diversis, on the mystery of the Ascension. Together with his Cistercian contemporaries, Bernard takes as the basis of his Christology the dogmatic formula of Chalcedon: Jesus Christ is true God and true man, one Person from and in two natures. And, as a faithful heir to the orthodox patristic tradition reflected in Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine, Bernard expounds this Chalcedonian formula in a thoroughly incarnational manner. For Bernard, the single subject of Christ is the fully divine Person of the Word, the second Person of the Trinity, who is consubstantially and coeternally begotten of the Father and who together with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one and the same God in a Trinity of Persons. In the act of his Incarnation, this fully divine Person of the Word, without loss to himself as fully divine, has taken up and come to express an integral human nature, complete with a true human body and soul, and the full complement of the human faculties and passions. Since the Word suffers no loss to his divinity, what is true of him from eternity remains true of him in and following the act of his Incarnation. Yet, on account of his Incarnation, something new comes to be true of the Word. For in virtue of the integral human nature he has now assumed, the divine Person of Word as Incarnate is now capable of living an authentically human life, of sensing, feeling, knowing, and willing in a genuinely human way. In taking up and coming to express all that is required of being human, the Word Incarnate has, for Bernard, also taken up certain features of human existence which though not strictly essential to being human nevertheless reflect the condition of actual human beings in time. In determining which of these additional characteristics the Word 208
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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To my Father, James U. DeFrancis, S
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Christ as the Model of Self-Knowled
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esearch: John Cavadini, Cyril O’R
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self-knowledge is the indispensible
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For Bernard, then, humble self-know
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likeness of charity. Within the Cis
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When Gilson asserted that by self-k
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Bernard, Sommerfeldt continues, hum
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a “false image” of himself. 26
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some newfound and joyous moment of
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ecognize that same sinfulness in hi
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foundations of man’s return to Go
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the descent of humility begins the
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saving work of Jesus Christ in the
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the humility, obedience, and love C
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Of particular importance to Bernard
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and second, “what it is like in i
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In his ground-breaking study of med
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direct links between the two. 52 It
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swells in one’s heart that it mov
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pride as “the desire for a perver
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The knowledge of self and God in th
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mercy until you renew all that is i
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CHAPTER 1: THE SCOPE OF BERNARD’S
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Prior to its first conversion, Bern
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Origen, Bernard here and elsewhere
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of God, they will grow ever more un
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and love as she is loved, and the B
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In the interim or “meanwhile” o
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Why do you judge yourself worthy to
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For Bernard, the lesson to be drawn
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warning and why should it compel he
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worldly things her flesh and senses
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aspired to seize a kind of parody o
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thousands of evils upon our entire
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edemptive work is suitably adapted
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emains forever, this grass too rema
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graciously condescending to assume
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Thus the abbot resolves his spiritu
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of self-knowledge enabled self-dece
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humbles himself will be exalted”
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Church, enabling scholars to instru
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Through this unflinching self-exami
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soon tempers my bitter vision of my
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edeem him, sanctify him, and offer
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As observed above, in the second ha
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modeled and effected by the Word-ma
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Ignorance of self breeds pride when
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consideration of others and their a
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consideration of his treatise as a
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symmetry between these two parts an
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Though this discrepancy at first ap
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self, God, and neighbor. Since it i
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estored in this divine likeness as
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eturn to his suffering brothers and
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much more should the monk not exalt
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for your brother’s misery and not
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sinful weakness and nothing of thei
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Finally, we should note that Bernar
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journey to which the monk will comm
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and judge others or to see how they
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condemned. Lifting his eyes in humi
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will contrary to both the law of Go
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in him by her obedience to his will
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contempt not only for herself and h
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his rule over the reprobate he woul
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in misery rather than to be subject
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descending these early steps of pri
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pleases them and avoid what makes t
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knows.” 201 Should the topic of c
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Here abbot Bernard figures the prou
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ut believe in his inmost heart that
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Asserting Self-Will Against Superio
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As so often in his narrative of the
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who he is, everyone judges him, and
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monk’s descent into this deepest
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God in heaven. He will acknowledge
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Consumed by this self-centered love
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their hearts. Hence Bernard’s fre
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done…by whoever would walk in the
Page 165 and 166: In recognizing the two distinct mom
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Page 177 and 178: arguing from both allusions in text
Page 179 and 180: upon the “stage” of the soul an
Page 181 and 182: (Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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Page 189 and 190: Reason’s rebuke is powerful, and
Page 191 and 192: In this vision, reason is permitted
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Page 207 and 208: Conclusion Having considered three
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Page 215: indeed to the entirety of his theol
Page 219 and 220: The foregoing elements of Bernard
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perhaps she means, “My Beloved in
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To such a soul, the abbot continues
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gradually assuming the figure of Ch
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to judge themselves in Truth, and s
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ejoice with those who rejoice and w
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love of himself in the glory of div
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I. Works of Bernard of Clairvaux BI
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------. Sermo 29A. Edited by C. Lam
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Courcelle, Pierre. Connais-toi toi-
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------. “Le premier traité authe
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