Bernard of Clairvaux Part Two: The Ground of Love
Why should God be loved? And to what measure? Bernard opens with two prolegomena which guide the whole reflection: Nothing is more reasonable. Nothing is more profitable. (I) The scope of these two questions do not redound on an individual’s subjective appraisal of benefit, so that the intrinsic worth of these two propositions rely on what we might anachronistically call the consumerist preference of the individual. Rather these two answers to the initial question provide two sides to a single heuristic essentially attempting to guide our spiritual formation and life before God by fostering an awareness of the actual ontological structure of existence, which is God’s love.
But love as a concept is notoriously plastic so that any appeal to it in abstract is evanescent and insubstantial. Love is given a sharper definition by Bernard by expounding in it a logic of selflessness: “Hence in seeking why God should be loved, if one asks what right he has to be loved, the answer is that the main reason for loving him is ‘He loved us first’ [1 Jn 4:9-10]. Surely he is worthy of being loved in return when one thinks of who loves, whom he loves, how much he loves…This divine love is sincere, for it is the love of one who does not seek his own advantage.” (1.1) Indeed “such a One loved us so much and so freely,” (6.16) in justification for our love of God, or for our gain in so loving this God, “the same sufficient cause of love exists, namely God Himself.” The inner content of love is filled by Christ’s self giving mission and suffering for us on the cross.
If one could define the law of love then it would be that “love which bids men seek not their own, but every man another’s wealth.” (12). “Whoever loves in this fashion, loves even as he is loved, and seeks no more his own but the things which are Christ’s, even as Christ sought not His own welfare, but ours, or rather ourselves.” (10) This Bernard calls the “Law of the Lord,” yet we should not be misled to understand this as a merely forensic term of legal or contractual declaration. In fact Bernard explicitly denies this type of coercion, for “neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire.” (12) In order to elaborate upon this we turn to Bernard’s own intricate gloss on his term “law”:
Several points can be taken from this lengthy quote in order to outline Bernard’s theology of God as love and hence as the ontological basis for reality: First God himself is Love, and Bernard defines this love as charity, that is, essentially selfless giving. This love is an essential perfection of God. Earlier Bernard comments “’For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’. This sets for the Father’s love. But ‘he has poured out His soul unto death’ was written of the Son…and of the Holy Spirit it is said, ‘The Comforter…shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.” So that therefore Bernard concludes “It is plain…that God loves us, and loves us with all His heart; for the Holy Trinity altogether loves us, if we may venture to speak of the infinite and incomprehensible Godhead who is essentially one.” (4)
Second, if God as Trinity is love, the ontological force of this theological statement cannot be lost upon our hermeneutic for interpreting Bernard’s concept of law. The law which God follows is Himself. Law here cannot then mean an extrinsic contract not touching upon the reality of the thing. Rather “law” in this instance is a reference to natural order, that is to say, it is an ontological description. Bernard’s reasoning can be seen thus: Even God lives by the law of love; this love is the essential unity of the Trinity, the very substance of the Godhead; so Bernard can conclude, as we saw at the end of the paragraph above, “the Universal Law cannot itself be without a law, which is itself.” Law is a reference to nature, to how something ought to be, and to how something is, and in the case of God these two coincide. The world, as a creation of God, follows analogically this same law, which is to say—to speak in the language of philosophy—its hypokeimenon (substrate) or ousia (essence) is itself love.
Third, since this law of love is God Himself, the highest form of love is love of God Himself. Hence Bernard, in outlining the four stages of love, is in logical conformity with his ontology when he writes that it is love of God Himself that is the fourth and highest stage, where “do not even love ourselves except for God’s sake.” This is not only located in the specific exposition of the fourth level of love (which will be elaborated upon in greater detail in the next section), but is a trenchant mantra of Bernard throughout On Loving God: God as God, and so as Love, serves as the highest “object,” of our affection, and the ultimate warrant justifying our love for Him is Himself. Or in the words of Bernard: “He Himself [God] is the reward of them that love Him, the everlasting reward of an everlasting love” (6) and elsewhere “in the Kingdom of Heaven [is] His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude…” (3). This must be the case, for “the one who loves God truly asks no other recompense than God Himself; for if he should demand anything else it would be the prize that he loved, and not God.” (7).
Fourth, the other side of the “Law of the Lord,” being an ontological description of God’s life itself and so God as the ultimate object of our love makes explicit the connection at the beginning of the long quote above that “no man has it except by gift from Him.” This links grace and love together. God as being-itself, or love-itself, means that mans participation in this existence and this love can only be through the initiation from the side of the Trinity. Earlier Bernard writes “to this degree [that man’s perfect love will be reached only in the resurrection] no human effort can attain [perfect love]; it is in God’s power to give it to whom He wills.” (10)
By the strictures of the logic that God is the ultimate object of our love, ontologically this means that the lower reality (men, creatures, the world) are loved on account of love of that which is higher (God). “[S]elf interest is restrained within due bounds when love supervenes; for then it rejects evil things altogether, prefers better things to those merely good, and cares for the good only on account of the better.” Likewise, “by God’s grace, it will come about that man will love his body and all things pertaining to his body, for the sake of the soul. He will love his soul for God’s sake; and he will love God for Himself alone.” (14).
This creates an intricate hierarchical ontological order of participation, which is reminiscent of neo-Platonism without carrying the same implications of emanationism, whereby each level necessarily emanates or participates in the higher (as God’s grace is free). Nor does this descending/ascending schema indicate “lower” reality as a material degradation or deracination of purity from the higher spiritual realities. The continuum describes a participation of the finite as given depth in the infinite love of God, and whose internal logic is a reflection upon the reception of finite reality as a free gift: “Who is it that gives food to all flesh, light to every eye, air to all that breathe?..[It is He] who is the Author and Giver of all good, and who must be in all things glorified.” In this sense “continuum” or its synonyms are perhaps improper insofar as they could be taken to imply an uninterrupted or necessary gradation of being from lowest to highest. The lower participating in the higher rather is a picture of the cosmos attempting to work out ontologically the concept that “God deserves love from man in recognition of his gifts, both material and spiritual and…these gifts should be cherished without neglect of the Giver.” (2).
The force of this statement along with the logic developed in On Loving God, indicates both that the world cannot be divorced from God and understood as a self-contained equilibrium (as in Deism) and that God and the world cannot be identified pantheistically. There is both an ontological divide in the form of the free bestowal of grace, and by that very same act there is also literally a paradoxical continuity in which the gift is seen in the light of the love of divine Glory (para-doxa, overarching glory): “There is no glory in having a gift without knowing it. But to know only that you have it, without knowing that it is not of yourself that you have it, means self-glorying, but no true glory in God…showing that guilt is not glorying over a possession, but in glorying as though it had not been received. And rightly such glorying is called vain-glory, since it has not the solid foundation of the truth” (2). An object’s verity is outside the object itself in God—only by pointing to God and not itself can it be itself at all; man’s truth is outside himself in God, and only in this exterior reference and only in self-dispossession can man exist authentically and truly love anything:
This reflects the very structure of God’s own life as the charity of love, as we saw above, and as such the ecstatic or outward moving reference of man and of reality to find its identity situated and defined by that which is greater finds its inner ontological ground in God Himself, who is love. One can, on this account only truly "see" or "possess" or "use" or "share" if one does these things in light of God's love--in other words Berarnard provides a counter ontology to our modern day notions of the "factical" experience of everyday life: there are no "facts" which are value free, there are only harmonious (and, due to sin, destructive) relations and interconnected nexuses and flux, in which various things are manifest or exist as "gift" (donum) and so their only true existence can be achieved in never letting the flow of gifts to and for one another cease from the entire lattice structure of relations seen in the light of God. "Sin" on this account would be a stoppage of the flux: one acts in self-possession or in the will to dominate, to secure identity by contaminating the uncontrollable flow of gifts and create for oneself artificial security. In a way anticipating the comments of the 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger, Bernard sees the movement toward accumulation as based upon anxiety: anxiety to control, to shore up the restless, uncontrollable energies of the world to "instrumentalize" them; but this is to misunderstand reality. Reality itself, according to Bernard, structured as it is by love, makes accumulation an artificial escape which merely precipitate its own disaster: in accumulation, rather than gaining true power over events, one has merely redirected faith to finite things which simply moth and rust destroy. The question of sin then, also is one of faith and joy (which will have to become another post, sadly). This means, frankly, that any sin is not merely "personal," for all sin, just as all good, only occurs as it manifests itself in various dispositions and networks of relations of love--the human is only what it is in these structures as they are related to God. So to speak the interior of the human is merely the exteriorized gift interiorized, and vice versa: any "personal" sin or stoppage in charity and love perverts the entire latticed structure of relation. This is, in short, where Bernard's own Augustinianism points toward the eschatological hope of the Civitas Dei (City of God) in which all things are given meaning rightly as objects and acts of infinite charity. In the next post we will outline this relation and its effects on Bernard's view of the human.
But love as a concept is notoriously plastic so that any appeal to it in abstract is evanescent and insubstantial. Love is given a sharper definition by Bernard by expounding in it a logic of selflessness: “Hence in seeking why God should be loved, if one asks what right he has to be loved, the answer is that the main reason for loving him is ‘He loved us first’ [1 Jn 4:9-10]. Surely he is worthy of being loved in return when one thinks of who loves, whom he loves, how much he loves…This divine love is sincere, for it is the love of one who does not seek his own advantage.” (1.1) Indeed “such a One loved us so much and so freely,” (6.16) in justification for our love of God, or for our gain in so loving this God, “the same sufficient cause of love exists, namely God Himself.” The inner content of love is filled by Christ’s self giving mission and suffering for us on the cross.
If one could define the law of love then it would be that “love which bids men seek not their own, but every man another’s wealth.” (12). “Whoever loves in this fashion, loves even as he is loved, and seeks no more his own but the things which are Christ’s, even as Christ sought not His own welfare, but ours, or rather ourselves.” (10) This Bernard calls the “Law of the Lord,” yet we should not be misled to understand this as a merely forensic term of legal or contractual declaration. In fact Bernard explicitly denies this type of coercion, for “neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire.” (12) In order to elaborate upon this we turn to Bernard’s own intricate gloss on his term “law”:
It is called the law of the Lord as much because He lives in accordance with it as because no man has it except by gift from Him. Nor is it improper to say that even God lives by law, when that law is the law of love. For what preserves the glorious and ineffable Unity of the blessed Trinity, except love? Charity, the law of the Lord, joins the Three Persons into the unity of the Godhead and unites the Holy Trinity in the bond of peace. Do not suppose me to imply that charity exists as an accidental quality of Deity; for whatever could be conceived of as wanting in the divine Nature is not God. No, it is the very substance of the Godhead; and my assertion is neither novel nor extraordinary, since St. John says ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:8) One may therefore say with truth that love is at once God and the gift of God, essential love imparting the quality of love. Where the word refers to the Giver, it is the name of His very being; where the gift is meant, it is the name of a quality. Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and ruled. Since all things are ordered in measure and number and weight, and nothing is left outside the realm of law, the universal law cannot itself be without a law, which is itself. (12)
Several points can be taken from this lengthy quote in order to outline Bernard’s theology of God as love and hence as the ontological basis for reality: First God himself is Love, and Bernard defines this love as charity, that is, essentially selfless giving. This love is an essential perfection of God. Earlier Bernard comments “’For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’. This sets for the Father’s love. But ‘he has poured out His soul unto death’ was written of the Son…and of the Holy Spirit it is said, ‘The Comforter…shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.” So that therefore Bernard concludes “It is plain…that God loves us, and loves us with all His heart; for the Holy Trinity altogether loves us, if we may venture to speak of the infinite and incomprehensible Godhead who is essentially one.” (4)
Second, if God as Trinity is love, the ontological force of this theological statement cannot be lost upon our hermeneutic for interpreting Bernard’s concept of law. The law which God follows is Himself. Law here cannot then mean an extrinsic contract not touching upon the reality of the thing. Rather “law” in this instance is a reference to natural order, that is to say, it is an ontological description. Bernard’s reasoning can be seen thus: Even God lives by the law of love; this love is the essential unity of the Trinity, the very substance of the Godhead; so Bernard can conclude, as we saw at the end of the paragraph above, “the Universal Law cannot itself be without a law, which is itself.” Law is a reference to nature, to how something ought to be, and to how something is, and in the case of God these two coincide. The world, as a creation of God, follows analogically this same law, which is to say—to speak in the language of philosophy—its hypokeimenon (substrate) or ousia (essence) is itself love.
Third, since this law of love is God Himself, the highest form of love is love of God Himself. Hence Bernard, in outlining the four stages of love, is in logical conformity with his ontology when he writes that it is love of God Himself that is the fourth and highest stage, where “do not even love ourselves except for God’s sake.” This is not only located in the specific exposition of the fourth level of love (which will be elaborated upon in greater detail in the next section), but is a trenchant mantra of Bernard throughout On Loving God: God as God, and so as Love, serves as the highest “object,” of our affection, and the ultimate warrant justifying our love for Him is Himself. Or in the words of Bernard: “He Himself [God] is the reward of them that love Him, the everlasting reward of an everlasting love” (6) and elsewhere “in the Kingdom of Heaven [is] His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude…” (3). This must be the case, for “the one who loves God truly asks no other recompense than God Himself; for if he should demand anything else it would be the prize that he loved, and not God.” (7).
Fourth, the other side of the “Law of the Lord,” being an ontological description of God’s life itself and so God as the ultimate object of our love makes explicit the connection at the beginning of the long quote above that “no man has it except by gift from Him.” This links grace and love together. God as being-itself, or love-itself, means that mans participation in this existence and this love can only be through the initiation from the side of the Trinity. Earlier Bernard writes “to this degree [that man’s perfect love will be reached only in the resurrection] no human effort can attain [perfect love]; it is in God’s power to give it to whom He wills.” (10)
By the strictures of the logic that God is the ultimate object of our love, ontologically this means that the lower reality (men, creatures, the world) are loved on account of love of that which is higher (God). “[S]elf interest is restrained within due bounds when love supervenes; for then it rejects evil things altogether, prefers better things to those merely good, and cares for the good only on account of the better.” Likewise, “by God’s grace, it will come about that man will love his body and all things pertaining to his body, for the sake of the soul. He will love his soul for God’s sake; and he will love God for Himself alone.” (14).
This creates an intricate hierarchical ontological order of participation, which is reminiscent of neo-Platonism without carrying the same implications of emanationism, whereby each level necessarily emanates or participates in the higher (as God’s grace is free). Nor does this descending/ascending schema indicate “lower” reality as a material degradation or deracination of purity from the higher spiritual realities. The continuum describes a participation of the finite as given depth in the infinite love of God, and whose internal logic is a reflection upon the reception of finite reality as a free gift: “Who is it that gives food to all flesh, light to every eye, air to all that breathe?..[It is He] who is the Author and Giver of all good, and who must be in all things glorified.” In this sense “continuum” or its synonyms are perhaps improper insofar as they could be taken to imply an uninterrupted or necessary gradation of being from lowest to highest. The lower participating in the higher rather is a picture of the cosmos attempting to work out ontologically the concept that “God deserves love from man in recognition of his gifts, both material and spiritual and…these gifts should be cherished without neglect of the Giver.” (2).
The force of this statement along with the logic developed in On Loving God, indicates both that the world cannot be divorced from God and understood as a self-contained equilibrium (as in Deism) and that God and the world cannot be identified pantheistically. There is both an ontological divide in the form of the free bestowal of grace, and by that very same act there is also literally a paradoxical continuity in which the gift is seen in the light of the love of divine Glory (para-doxa, overarching glory): “There is no glory in having a gift without knowing it. But to know only that you have it, without knowing that it is not of yourself that you have it, means self-glorying, but no true glory in God…showing that guilt is not glorying over a possession, but in glorying as though it had not been received. And rightly such glorying is called vain-glory, since it has not the solid foundation of the truth” (2). An object’s verity is outside the object itself in God—only by pointing to God and not itself can it be itself at all; man’s truth is outside himself in God, and only in this exterior reference and only in self-dispossession can man exist authentically and truly love anything:
Ah, if you wish to attain to the consummation of all desire, so that nothing unfulfilled will be left, why weary yourself with fruitless efforts, running here and there, only to die long before the goal is reached?...[the wicked] want to traverse creation, trying all things one by one, rather than think of coming to Him who is Lord of all. And if their utmost longing were realized, so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desires would make them condemn what they had and restlessly seek Him whom they still lacked, that is God Himself. (7).
This reflects the very structure of God’s own life as the charity of love, as we saw above, and as such the ecstatic or outward moving reference of man and of reality to find its identity situated and defined by that which is greater finds its inner ontological ground in God Himself, who is love. One can, on this account only truly "see" or "possess" or "use" or "share" if one does these things in light of God's love--in other words Berarnard provides a counter ontology to our modern day notions of the "factical" experience of everyday life: there are no "facts" which are value free, there are only harmonious (and, due to sin, destructive) relations and interconnected nexuses and flux, in which various things are manifest or exist as "gift" (donum) and so their only true existence can be achieved in never letting the flow of gifts to and for one another cease from the entire lattice structure of relations seen in the light of God. "Sin" on this account would be a stoppage of the flux: one acts in self-possession or in the will to dominate, to secure identity by contaminating the uncontrollable flow of gifts and create for oneself artificial security. In a way anticipating the comments of the 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger, Bernard sees the movement toward accumulation as based upon anxiety: anxiety to control, to shore up the restless, uncontrollable energies of the world to "instrumentalize" them; but this is to misunderstand reality. Reality itself, according to Bernard, structured as it is by love, makes accumulation an artificial escape which merely precipitate its own disaster: in accumulation, rather than gaining true power over events, one has merely redirected faith to finite things which simply moth and rust destroy. The question of sin then, also is one of faith and joy (which will have to become another post, sadly). This means, frankly, that any sin is not merely "personal," for all sin, just as all good, only occurs as it manifests itself in various dispositions and networks of relations of love--the human is only what it is in these structures as they are related to God. So to speak the interior of the human is merely the exteriorized gift interiorized, and vice versa: any "personal" sin or stoppage in charity and love perverts the entire latticed structure of relation. This is, in short, where Bernard's own Augustinianism points toward the eschatological hope of the Civitas Dei (City of God) in which all things are given meaning rightly as objects and acts of infinite charity. In the next post we will outline this relation and its effects on Bernard's view of the human.
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