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

this very same condescension, the Word also reveals the joyous and consoling truth about
God: the God who created human beings to see him as he is and to share in his own
divine life lovingly wills to raise his fallen creatures from their self-imposed slavery to
sin and to elevate them to their originally intended end in himself. If humanity’s fall
from the spirit to the flesh consisted in their ignorance of themselves and God, their
return to him, the spiritual life, will conversely consist in their growing knowledge of
themselves and him.
The Ways of Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception
If SC 35 establishes Adam and Christ as the opposed and inverted paradigms of
human sin and redemption, SC 36-38.2 considers how individual souls recapitulate these
paradigms through their respective ignorance and knowledge of themselves and God. In
SC 37, Bernard offers a concise sketch of his teaching on these two paradigmatic ways
which should be counted among the most succinct summaries of his entire spiritual
theology:
Just as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom (Si
1:16), so pride is the beginning of all sin (Si 10:15); and just as the
love of God is the perfection of wisdom, so despair is the
consummation of all malice. And as the fear of God arises in you
from knowledge of yourself, and love of God from knowledge of
God, so, conversely, pride arises from ignorance of yourself, and
despair from ignorance of God. 115
115 SC 37.6 (II, 12): “Etenim sicut INITIUM SAPIENTIAE TIMOR DOMINI, sic INITIUM
OMNIS PECCATI SUPERBIA; et quomodo perfectionem sibi sapientiae vindicat amor Dei, ita desperatio
sibi omnem malitiae consummationem Et quemadmodum ex notitia tui venit in te timor Dei, atque ex Dei
notitia Dei itidem amor, sic e contrario de ignorantia tui superbia, ac de Dei ignorantia desperatio venit.”
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