Bernard of Clairvaux: Part One
This series is going to be composed of parts of an essay I wrote two semesters ago on Bernard of Clairvaux's On Loving God. It is by no means an exhaustive analysis of the text, but is meant to provide Bernard's view of the world and man through the lens of his famous "four stages of love." This first entry is merely the introduction and thesis of the essay:
In the repetition and performance of our faith there is, rightfully so, an inculcation within us of the basic narrative patterns and archetypes which are foundational to that performance. It is this habitus that is so often described as discipleship to Christ and that has, in the better moments of Christian rhetoric throughout the centuries, been elaborated on in multitudinous ways. But often the paradox of this formation is that the colloquialisms of the Christian faith, repeated in unreflective mimesis, lulls one into a ritualism which overlooks—and so becomes ironically unaware of through familiarity—the intricate theological justifications for the particular aesthetic and habitual forms of our spirituality.
In this manner the seemingly innocuous question to which Bernard’s treatise is dedicated, “Why we should love God, and to what measure” (I) may seem only to glide across the surface of Christian theology, eliding the depths and scope of Christian wisdom by addressing a question so fundamental that even the nubile believer has mastered it. But the initial perception of its simplicity belies the scope and beautiful complexity of this architectonic theme; it is, in fact, for Bernard the question which opens up knowledge of the organizing principle of life itself.
In order to demonstrate how ontology and spirituality are linked for Bernard, this essay will proceed in two sections: the first on how Bernard’s concept of God grounds his concept of reality and man, and the second how Bernard’s spirituality is shaped by this overarching theological ontology. In a certain respect the first section could be described as elaborating God’s love for man, and the second as man’s love for God. These two sections should not be conceived as in some sense discretely separated however, but as two different perspectives on the same topic in order to gain a holistic perspective on Bernard’s main thesis that God is the ultimate object of our love, and that all other lower loves are grounded in and stem from this highest love of God. In this exegetical and theological analysis of Bernard’s On Loving God, it will be our main goal and thesis to demonstrate that Bernard provides a theological resource for demonstrating that spirituality is not an isolated inner-psychological state of the individual, as it has so often become in our contemporary culture, but is intimately connected to our picture of the world, and has a profound effect on our interaction and perception of other people and physical reality as a whole.
In the repetition and performance of our faith there is, rightfully so, an inculcation within us of the basic narrative patterns and archetypes which are foundational to that performance. It is this habitus that is so often described as discipleship to Christ and that has, in the better moments of Christian rhetoric throughout the centuries, been elaborated on in multitudinous ways. But often the paradox of this formation is that the colloquialisms of the Christian faith, repeated in unreflective mimesis, lulls one into a ritualism which overlooks—and so becomes ironically unaware of through familiarity—the intricate theological justifications for the particular aesthetic and habitual forms of our spirituality.
In this manner the seemingly innocuous question to which Bernard’s treatise is dedicated, “Why we should love God, and to what measure” (I) may seem only to glide across the surface of Christian theology, eliding the depths and scope of Christian wisdom by addressing a question so fundamental that even the nubile believer has mastered it. But the initial perception of its simplicity belies the scope and beautiful complexity of this architectonic theme; it is, in fact, for Bernard the question which opens up knowledge of the organizing principle of life itself.
In order to demonstrate how ontology and spirituality are linked for Bernard, this essay will proceed in two sections: the first on how Bernard’s concept of God grounds his concept of reality and man, and the second how Bernard’s spirituality is shaped by this overarching theological ontology. In a certain respect the first section could be described as elaborating God’s love for man, and the second as man’s love for God. These two sections should not be conceived as in some sense discretely separated however, but as two different perspectives on the same topic in order to gain a holistic perspective on Bernard’s main thesis that God is the ultimate object of our love, and that all other lower loves are grounded in and stem from this highest love of God. In this exegetical and theological analysis of Bernard’s On Loving God, it will be our main goal and thesis to demonstrate that Bernard provides a theological resource for demonstrating that spirituality is not an isolated inner-psychological state of the individual, as it has so often become in our contemporary culture, but is intimately connected to our picture of the world, and has a profound effect on our interaction and perception of other people and physical reality as a whole.
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