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

Here Augustine invokes Sirach 10:13, “Pride is the beginning of all sin (initium omnis
peccati superbia),” and, just as Bernard later will, interprets this verse to mean that pride
is the origin of all sins, both that first sin of Adam and Eve and all the subsequent,
personal sins of their descendants.
Here too, Augustine teaches that pride, understood as excessive self-love and the
love of one’s own superiority, so swelled like a tumor in the hearts of humanity’s first
parents that they succumbed to self-deception. Satan would not, Augustine explains,
have attempted to tempt Adam to disobedience unless “there had first existed in that
man’s soul a certain self-exaltation (elatio)” by which he entertained “a false and
presumptuous opinion of himself.” 56 More precisely, Augustine continues, this false self-
understanding born of excessive self-love consisted in Adam’s belief that he could by his
own strength, and without any help from God, exalt himself to a share in God’s divinity.
For this reason, Augustine explains, God has allowed the story of Adam’s proud self-
exaltation and subsequent humbling to be included in Scripture as a lesson to the proud in
every age: “Throughout the divine Scripture, with constant care, humility is so highly
commended to us, that we might not presume on our own power as if we had no need of
God’s assistance.” 57 In our study of Bernard’s teaching on the self-deception that attends
pride in Chapter 2, we will see that the abbot has made Augustine’s teaching here his
own: pride, the love of one’s own superiority, leads one into self-deception when it so
56 De Genesi ad litteram X.5.7 (CSEL 28.1:338): “nec arbitrandum est, quod esset hominem
deiecturus iste temtator, nisi praecessisset in anima hominis quaedam elatio conprimenda, ut per
humiliationem peccati, quam de se falso praesumserit, disceret.”
57 De Genesi ad litteram X.6.8 (CSEL 28.1:339): “mirum est enim, quantum ista humilitas, qua
subdimur creatori, ne tamquam eius adiutorio non egentes de nostris uiribus praesumamus, per scripturas
omnes diuinas cura continua commendatur.”
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