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

and second, “what it is like in its affections.” 45 In brief, Origen identifies two distinct
aspects under which the soul will seek to understand itself as created in the image of God,
the metaphysical and the moral respectively. Given Bernard’s markedly practical bent
and his disinterest in abstract metaphysical speculation, it is perhaps not surprising to find
that he does not develop to any great degree the Alexandrian’s concern for the soul to
know itself in substantia or in its essence. Bernard does not, that is, share Origen’s keen
interest that the soul consider “what it is in its essence, whether it is corporeal or
incorporeal, whether it is simple or consists of two or three parts,” 46 etc. It is, however,
worth noting that when Origen urges faithful souls to these more speculative aspects of
their self-understanding, he also exhorts them to seek the knowledge of the Trinity. For
Origen, then, the knowledge of self and God are closely linked and though he does not
elaborate the relationship in the manner Bernard will in his own commentary in SC 34-
38, it seems plausible that the abbot’s decision to treat these two forms of knowledge and
their relationship was inspired by Origen’s own interpretive association of the two.
If Bernard seems less interested than the Alexandrian in questions of the soul’s
self-knowledge in substantia, he readily embraces and develops Origen’s insistence that
the faithful soul must also seek to know itself in affectibus, in its affections or
dispositions. For Origen, this search takes the form of a rigorous, penetrating self-
examination of conscience. The soul must ask itself “whether its affections are good or
45 Commentarium in Cantica Canticorum, II.5.7 (SCh 375:358): “Videtur ergo mihi duplici modo
agnitionem sui capere animam debere, quid ve sit ipsa et qualiter moveatur, id est quid in substantia et quid
in affectibus habeat.”
46 Commentarium in Cantica Canticorum, II.5.21 (SCh 375:366): “Inter haec ergo erit animae
quaedam etiam sui agnitio, per quam scire debet, quae sit eius substantia, utrum corporea an incorporea et
utrum simplex an ex duobus vel tribus an vero ex pluribus composita.”
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