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

thousands of evils upon our entire race!” 107 As the abbot’s lament suggests, the
consequences of Adam’s ignorance are not limited to himself, but extend to and condition
the lives of all his sons and daughters in the flesh. By their generation from Adam, all
human beings have assumed the likeness of beasts: their reason is darkened by ignorance,
their wills enslaved to concupiscence, and their bodies subject to suffering and death.
Sadder still, Adam and has descendants have fallen not merely to the level of
equality with the beasts, but even lower. As Bernard notes, the Bridegroom warns his
Bride that if she does not know herself, she must go forth not with the flocks of her
companions or to the flocks of her companions, but after the flocks of her companions.
Though fallen human beings now live like beasts, they are, beneath their newly acquired
bestial likeness, still rational and free creatures. Consequently, unlike the beasts they
imitate, they are guilty of violating the law of their own nature and therefore deservedly
subject to eternal damnation.
By their own sins and their participation in the sin of Adam, human beings have
not ceased to be in the image of God, but find this image covered over or trapped beneath
their new and alien likeness to irrational beasts. They are still the image of God, but an
image disfigured by sin. Still capable of knowing themselves and their Creator in truth,
their minds are blinded by ignorance of both and compelled to wander after their curious
senses. Still free and capable of loving their Creator, they find their wills voluntarily and
yet inescapably enslaved to the service of their fleshly lusts. Their enduring rationality
and freedom not only explains why fallen human beings are guilty of sin and deserving of
107 SC 35.6 (I, 253): “Hinc egregia creatura gregi admixta est, hinc bestiali similitudine Dei
similitudo mutata est, hinc societas cum iumentis pro consortio angelorum inita est. Vides quam sit
fugienda nobis haec ignorantia, de qua tot millia malorum universo nostro generi provenerunt?”
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