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

edemptive work is suitably adapted to the manner of humanity’s fall and fallen
condition. 109
In keeping with the patristic tradition, Bernard understands God’s redemptive
work in Christ as his free decision to deliver fallen human beings from their sin and to
offer them a share in his own divine life, the very offer Adam refused in his pride. Given
the nature of humanity’s sin and fallen condition, however, God is, in a sense, required to
address several specific needs of fallen human beings if he is to accomplish his saving
intention.
In the first place, God must, Bernard believes, meet fallen human beings where
they are by rendering himself accessible and attractive to human beings in their fallen
state. As Bernard has just shown, human beings have exchanged the likeness of God for
the likeness of beasts. That is, they have voluntarily enslaved themselves to their fleshly
desires for sensible goods and live only for the immediate, though ephemeral satisfaction
of those desires. Consequently, if God, who is perfectly spiritual, is to recall the hearts of
fallen human beings to himself, he must first allure them to himself by assuming a
fleshly, sensible form, that they might first cling to his flesh and then ascend to the
contemplation of him in his divinity.
Second, in their fallen condition, Adam’s descendants, in imitation of their
forebear, are inclined to pride and self-will, inclined to ignore the truth of their being
creatures, and driven to seize their own sort of divinity through the autonomous assertion
of their own wills above the will of their Creator. Consequently, if God is to recall his
109 See Roch Kereszty, “Relationship between Anthropology and Christology. St. Bernard, a
Teacher for Our Age,” 271-99.
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