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

“learned” (didicit) is being predicated not of the Person of Christ as Head, but of the
Church as his members. On this reading, the members of Christ’s Church would learn
obedience, humility, and charity from the example of Christ’s obedient sufferings in the
flesh. Such a reading would seem to make good sense of the passage while preserving
the omniscient, immutable Word of God from any suggestion of learning and growth.
While Bernard is willing to accept this reading in principle – “I do not deny this
reading” – he ultimately finds it inadequate to the full biblical witness concerning Christ
and Christ’s saving work. 334 Hebrews 5:8, he argues, must of necessity be read in
conjunction with an earlier passage from the same letter which makes it clear that the
single subject of the suffering, learning, and growth attributed to Christ is Christ himself
in his own Person: “He did not lay hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham he laid
hold; for which reason it was fitting for him to become like his brothers in all things that
he might become merciful (Nusquam enim angelos apprehendit, sed semen Abrahae
apprehendit; unde debuit per omnia fratribus similari, ut misericors fieret)” (Heb 2:16-
17). Since these words can not be applied to the Church, Christ’s body, it follows that
they apply to the Word of God himself in his own Person; the divine Person of the Word,
then, is the subject of these and other Scriptural statements concerning Christ’s suffering,
learning, and growth.
Read in this light, the abbot continues, Hebrews 2:16-17 indicates that the divine
Person of the Word has assumed to himself the seed of Abraham that he might become
like his human creatures in all things. By the act of his Incarnation, that is, the Word has
humbly rendered himself capable of human suffering and immersed himself in every
334 Hum 8 (III, 22): “Non nego hunc intellectum, quin rectus sit.”
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