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

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James U. DeFrancis, Jr.<br />

the prerequisite for its return to God. Yet, the soul’s humbling self-awareness as a<br />

defaced image of God is far from Bernard’s final word on the subject of the soul’s self-<br />

knowledge. For as the soul undertakes the way of its restoration in the lost divine<br />

likeness by its gradual conformity to the humility and charity of Christ, it comes to know<br />

itself anew, as one gradually assuming the figure of Christ’s own Bride, radiant with her<br />

Bridegroom’s own beauty.<br />

Proceeding in four chapters, this dissertation begins with an overture to Bernard’s<br />

comprehensive doctrine of self-knowledge through a study of his Sermones super<br />

Cantica canticorum. Chapters 2 and 3 trace respectively his parallel accounts of the<br />

soul’s descent into self-deception by way of pride and self-will and its ascent to self-<br />

knowledge by way of humility and love. Finally, Chapter 4 shows how, for Bernard,<br />

Christ the Incarnate Word both models and effects the soul’s ascent to self-awareness as<br />

his Bride by his own journey of self-knowledge in his Incarnation.

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