I've been speaking these days on the idea of love, incestuosion, how they trust this dynamic power in men, how they trust the value of love, any kind of love, even the love of self, to direct man and to lead man as a natural power to his destiny to God, return to God. Now, this trust, this optimism of human nature is based on the theological doctrine of man created the image of God. There's a patristic doctrine which goes back to the very beginning.

[01:03]

Uranus, Santa Uranus, used already the image which is taken from the Genesis and his commentary or an allegorical commentary on the Genesis. When the book of Genesis says God created man in his image, and likeness. In his image he created him. Now the critical exegetes of our time don't believe very much that there is a distinction between image and likeness, and most probably there isn't. But the father never pretended, never maintained that there was one. They use this distinction, well, just for using it because I found it very interesting to use them, use this distinction for their theological reflection. We are always to be prudent when you read even the Fathers, and especially the medieval authors, not to ask from them what they don't want to tell you and not to require from them so scientific statement.

[02:20]

They don't pretend to be scientific in the way we pretend to be scientific. Sometimes I think it's a pretension. There's as many diversity and variation in the scientific literal sense than there is in the allegorical sense. It changes every year. And it's always the last statement. Next year there's another system. They use scripture in a very familiar way. There's an article being published, I saw in the library just now, an article published by Jesuit, on a book written by Pierre Dumontier, Maurice Dumontier, who was one of my colleagues in school. He lived 20 years, last year of his life, in my monastery.

[03:24]

And he wrote a book, a book on Saint Bernard and la Bible, which where he shows very well, Saint Bernard uses Bible. He uses the Bible as something given to him by God, sort of love letters given to him by God, and he used this text as sort of intimate confidence or revelation from God, this text belongs to him, belongs to the Christian faith, belongs to us. And we can read that as a family letter. And since we have also the same spirit, who inspired the author of the text. When we read the text, the same spirit inspires us. We have to be extremely free and just be led by the spirit.

[04:30]

And that is a completely different approach from the modern approach. Obviously, we cannot be monks or priests today without a certain amount of critical knowledge of the Bible. And you have to certainly know how to reach a textual, critical, valuable text. But that's only the beginning. And certainly many people just remain all their life on this critical business. The beautiful page in his book on contemplative prayer, on this danger for a contemplative monk to

[05:35]

led himself too much in his critical studies. Eventually he cannot hear the word of the scripture in an open soul, with an open heart. I was in Paris two months ago, coming here, and I heard some friend there who studies in the Sorbonne, and I heard everywhere speaking now, after years of hypercritical studies and teaching, everybody speaks now of lecture naïve. a naive reading of the Bible. That's where we are now. We reached this. After all this critical thing, let us read the Bible naively as it was written. There is something of that in St. Bernard. And all this great liberty, these allegorical fantasies comes from that.

[06:38]

St. Bernard reads the Bible as Words of God, words of Christ spoken to him directly, personally. He finds in the Bible all the feelings, emotions, experiences of religious souls. All personages, all people of the Old Testament and the New. He finds himself in these people. And he recites a psalm and he is himself involved, his own life. And he speaks all the time of tasting, the sense of taste. You have to taste what it means, taste. And that's savour, sapientia, what it tastes. And if you have not that, well, you cannot read the Bible, because the Bible remains a closed book for you. You have notions, truths, but it never become part of yourself and never enter in your own life.

[07:48]

So that's why the Bible for him is a message, direct message from God. Now this way of reading the scripture is traditional. And it becomes more alive today since we have this reading in church in our own language. Because the Bible should be spoken, should be said, read to the people. So you have many examples in the past and most obvious is the vocation of St. Anthony. Anthony comes in the church and he was late for mass. He just arrived when the priest was reading the gospel of the teacher. And it was the passage of the gospel saying, give everything to the poor and follow me.

[08:53]

And Anthony said, yes, yes, I'm going to follow you. That's the message. And St. Antonesius says, Gods told him, you see, directly. They say, yes, it's told to me. So this direct message of the Lord to you personally is the way they were listening to the scripture. You can well see a critical mentality, just to get notion, truth, doctrine is an obstacle to this free, open heart listening to the Word of God. cannot be there and say, well, perhaps there is another meaning, there is another version, or perhaps to forget as these Texans, the Greeks mean something else. There is sort of, again, a suspicious mentality, which is scientific, technical mentality, which is to be avoided.

[09:56]

After you have done the normal study, And the ancients were very keen also to have a literal exact text. But the very first exegete, Origen, spent a lot of time and a lot of money to have his examples, see, Bible in six versions, six columns. done very tacky graphs and we spent a lot of money to these people to put that and have a text, really critical text. So we had the First Cistercian. St. Stephen Harding was the third abbot of Citeaux. Spent a lot of money and gold in going to Dijon by night to consult rabbi. That was extraordinary for the time because rabbi was devil. He went to consult the rabbi and give him, of course, some gold because that's Jewish, dealing with rabbi to know the version.

[11:09]

And they tried to have an exact version of the Bible, which is the Bible of Saint Stephen, which is the known. So they were really conscious and trying to have a literal sense. But that was only the beginning. When you have what is in the text, it's only a starting point. Just to start on that, only because the beginning of the Sermon 80, on page 29, on the Song of Songs, Saint Bernard clearly said, some of you, my brothers, as it appears, are feeling disappointed because for several days past, I have given myself exclusively to the delight of studying sitting with wonder and admiration the mystical meanings of this speech of the spouse that my sermon have been seasoned with few moral application, if any at all.

[12:20]

Well, you are there in the distinction between mystical meanings and moral application. That certainly is not in accordance with my usual practice. It's not very true, but anyway. But I want your permission now to go over again what has been treated already. I will not proceed until all has been rehearsed. I pray you then to tell me if you remember, because he doesn't, at what verse I began to defraud you of these moral reflections so that we may commence again from there. and so on. Unless I am mistaken, the starting point should be the verse, in my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved. And then that goes back to sermon 75. He spends five sermons on the mystical meaning of this verse.

[13:25]

which is the love of the church and Christ as a mystical thing. Now, perhaps it's interesting to point out what means this distinction between the allegorical sense or mystical sense and the topology or moral reflection. Père de Lubac has written a wonderful book, I think the book of his life, which is four volumes, you probably have this book, four volumes called Exegesis Medievale, le Quatre-Cents de l'Ecriture, and you have, I mean, told a resume of that in a book called The Sources of Revelation, because they're probably not the courage to translate these four volumes. 10 or 12,000 notes, footnotes. It's a courage to produce that.

[14:29]

It's an enormous thing. It covers the whole tradition from origin to Erasmus on this precise topic of the four senses of the scripture. Now, what are the four senses of the scripture? As the Ribbeck shows very well, it has been the way of teaching the doctrine of the church from the very beginning, for 16 centuries, 1600 years, that has been a method of the church. That has been lost in the Reformation debate, where everybody was trying to have literal text and fight on literal text. But even Luther and Erasmus, we are still using the four senses of the scripture as a method. Thomas uses it and everybody since the very beginning. The advantage of this method is that it is unified, it's a unified teaching from one text.

[15:39]

You start with the text, you start with the scripture, you start with the revelation. After that, after the 16th century, the first treatises, as we know them, as we have known them, the treatises of theology, these treatises were built upon profane knowledge. I mean, moral theology was built on the ethic of Tunicamac. The treaties of the church was built on the politics of Aristotle. What is a church? What is a perfect society? What is a hierarchical and monarchic society? You define all these principles as political science and then you say, Is the church dead? Yes, of course, mature, 28, and so on. That was the way of, you see. It is the reverse, you see, very well.

[16:43]

Instead of starting with the revelation, we start with all sorts of knowledge and say, well, the church answers this definition. And even in the manuscript you can see the progress of that. Beginning it was the text of the Bible and a few lines in between the lines or in the margins. And the text progressively with the centuries, see the text were reduced more and more. and the commentary took more place until the commentary was in the full page and the text in the footnotes. So that's how it's been, you can trace that. So it's very important to see that it was a system of the ancient. Now it is very curious to see that there is a renewal of that and I was told recently that a structuralist People who are trying to study the Bible by structural principle, this famous philosophy of structuralism, we try to explain some patterns of our mind, find again that these four senses are really a structure of the mind, normal, natural structure of the mind.

[18:04]

And there are schools in Brussels, or Louvain, Jesuits, who are teaching theology, now modern theology, giving a degree in theology, to their own scholastics and lay people. And it's based on the Four Senses. The whole course is based on the Four Senses. It's very, very popular, very great success. The traditional method. modernized and giving more importance to the literal sense, but it's the idea. See, the idea is to center, concentrate all the teaching on one text. And naturally, first of all, what is the doctrine in this text? What is relation between Christ and the church? That is dogma, ecclesiology, Christology. Then on that base the moral, morality, Christian morality, Christian ethic has to be built on the sense, the allegorical sense, the Christian sense of the scripture.

[19:16]

And then after that normally you develop this moral sense and allegorical sense in mystical and spiritual developments. It's a normal way of reading the Bible. or reflecting and commenting on the Bible. And that was the way they were doing, more or less strictly. Here you have this the way. So once St. Bernard say they are frustrated from moral application, that means that was because obviously a monk preferred much more the moral application was a bit more personal, more direct on the daily life than the mystical meanings were with some hope, sometimes a bit above their heads, chiefly when it was in the morning in the chapter before breakfast. So they always complained that St.

[20:17]

Bernard did not give moral application, I mean he was always speculating in theology. I will therefore go back to seek for more an interpretation. I do not bid afraid, nor the work shall prove worrisome to me, provided it be profitable to you. The most convenient plan will be to endeavour to apply to the word and the individual soul what I have already said concerning Christ and the Church. The moral application now is relation between the word and the soul. And it will be on the same line, parallel of what he has said about the relation between church and Christ. Since, obviously, St. Bernard, the soul has no relation to the word but in the church. Anyway, he will try to, now,

[21:20]

show the application of this union of the soul and the word. But here I may be met with the objection. Why do you join these together? What is there in common between the word of God and the soul of man? I answer, much in every way. For in the first place, there is a close, natural affinity between them, since the Word is the image of God, and the soul is made according to this image. The soul is the image of the image. You see, from the very starting point, there's a close affinity, natural close affinity between the Word and the soul, because it is the image. Now this theory of the image, as I said, goes back to the very origin of the Christian theology.

[22:30]

DNA has been the first to deal with it and then origin and so on and so forth. Now, under this topic of the image, doctrine of the image, lies in the whole anthropology or theological anthropology of the Christian fathers and of the medieval authors. And it's extremely important for us, all of us, in sometimes very immediately, very sometime immediately, to know what is man. What can he hope? What is he? Especially, is there in men some waiting place, waiting stone for grace, for the revelation of God, for God giving himself to him?

[23:35]

Is there something longing for that in men? All theology is there, at least starting point. So, as so much, the famous question of the desiderium naturae evidentiae, the natural desire for the beatific vision. Is there a natural desire in man for beatific vision? You know, all this controversy in which Father de Lubac has been nearly condemned. You see, the whole fight is there, but it's extremely important. Is there natural insertion in man for revelation of God, or for salvation, or for supernatural life? It's very difficult. The problem is, as you know, the problem is very difficult since grace is gratuitous, revelation is gratuitous.

[24:37]

Therefore, you cannot have an exigency in man. There is, of course, natural tendency in man. Man is incomplete. without God, without the recognition of God. I want to just avoid this problem now, but just to see how important it is. I mean, practical dealing with people and souls and moral problems today, it always comes back to that. What is man? Is he good? Is he bad? Is he completely good or completely bad? Is he not really perfect? Or is he not really completely corrupted? Or is it somehow good and bad or something happened? What? We have the doctrine of the original sin, which is for us the the doctrine and the revelation, but most people who think a bit say that if we are not that, we should have to invent something, because obviously you cannot explain the presence of evil in man without finding some kind of solution.

[25:59]

Or you become Manichaean and you see there are two gods, one god of good and one god of evil, fighting on the battlefield of man. And man is purely there on the battlefield. But this notion of the original sin, that man is being created good by a good God, but by an accident something happened that he distorted some of this goodness and there's a mixture. Something happened, there's a wound. Now, we have this theory from St. Augustine. St. Augustine has a very pessimistic idea of the original sin, and it passed in the tradition and doctrine of the Church. Everything St. Augustine said has been canonized by the Church. But before him was very interesting doctrine of Saint Irenaeus, which is being studied. I spent some days a year before the symposium to read some good books you have here on Saint Irenaeus doctrine of the original sin and of the image of God.

[27:12]

Irenaeus as an idea had an idea that man was not perfect. So the idea of Saint Augustine is man was perfect, he has a lot of virtues and extraordinary capacities, of extraordinary power, superhuman, and he lost all that in the sin, and he is what he is now. Now, Irenaeus says Man was not completely fully developed in paradise. And so he was an adolescent or even a child. Adam and Eve was two children. It's a very beautiful description of Adam and Eve playing in the garden as children. And then the snake came and the snake was much more intelligent than these poor little children. And he fooled them very easily and they sinned. irresponsibly almost.

[28:17]

It's very interesting this, it's in the demonstration of apostolic truth and also in Adversus Reses it takes the same doctrine. This doctrine, of course, is very tempting for people, or Teilhardian people, who see the evolution of man. Well, you have to be prudent. But it's really very tempting. The idea of tyrannies is a beautiful idea of man, which is an idea of evolution. Man grows slowly and he will only be perfected in the resurrection of his body and soul. That is his goal. He will only be man there before his growing. And the whole history of humanity is the same as the growing of a man. A very continuous progress of the history of salvation. It's a long, you say, melody.

[29:24]

Melody, of course, and reached eventually its perfection in heaven. So you have to understand the famous text which is quoted again and again and misquoted, of course, today. The glory of God is man fully alive or something like that. Gloria divens omo. But then you have to follow to the next line and say that, and human life is the vision of God. Don't put that on stadium and hospital. I see the two stages. First, the glory of God is to create a man, living that That's only the starting point. Instead of having this mortal spirit, which is his soul, he has received the Holy Spirit, which will give him immortality.

[30:28]

And he will only reach his full stage of man, realization of his full humanity in the vision of God. The life of man is the vision of God. And slowly he learned this vision of God in trying to restore in himself the image of God. When I was teaching, when I was speaking of St. Gerenius, saying that he was The only one who had this idea, somebody told me that Origen, that was in Bellevueville and some Monday's theologian, told me that Origen had this idea. You see that second time, to show how the ancient was attentive to the text, you see the first time in Genesis,

[31:31]

It said God created man to his image and likeness. And the second time he said only to his image. No, the second time he said to his likeness. So he says that that is an indication that in the first condition it's only the image And the likeness to this will be only in the consummation. Same idea as Irenaeus, that we shall be perfectly like God only in the consummation. But if you read a bit further in the text, This consummation origin, say, is to restore what was given before the fall. Origin as the classic idea which is in Augustine. It's only Irenaeus who has this idea of a progress, slow progress, and therefore the original sin being a sort of

[32:43]

Almost a mistake. Nothing. So, St. Bernard in his first sermon, A.T., you must not read the whole sermon, distinguished two things. At the bottom of the page, it distinguishes between the word which is truth, the word which is wisdom, and the word which is justice. And under each of these respects, it is an image. An image of what? An image of justice, an image of wisdom, and so on. For the word as an image is justice of justice, wisdom of wisdom, truth of truth, light of light.

[33:50]

He is in God. He is God. God of God. But the soul is known of these things because she is not the image. Nevertheless, she is capable of them and is desirous of them too. And perhaps it is with respect to this capacity and this desire that she is said to be made according to the image. Capacity, the desire for divine perfection. Capacity. She is a noble creature. Forget these things Saint Bernard said, although he said we are vile and wretched, he can also say that man is a noble creature. whose greatness is revealed in the fact of the soul that she possesses in herself such a capacity for participating in the perfection of the world.

[34:55]

And in her yearning for the same, she gives proof of her righteousness. And then there are two characteristics here, where St. Bernard will deal with in all his sermons. Righteousness and Greatness. So Greatness and Righteousness. Magnitudo and rectitudo. We read in Ecclesiastes that God made man right. And that he made him great also is clear, as I have said, from his capacity for greatness. And what happened Ah, yes. Yes, if you're late today, do pass it because time is running. Page thirty-one. Greatness and righteousness, as everybody knows, differ from each other in their proper natures.

[36:05]

Nevertheless, they are one in the image. What is more, they are one with the image. For image, not alone is it the same thing to be great as to be righteous and so on, but in God everything is one. Such, however, is not the case with the soul. Greatness and righteousness in her are both distinct from her substance and distinct from each other. For is, as they have already pointed out, the soul is, for this, the soul is great in that she is desirous of things divine and eternal. It follows that a soul which neither seeks nor relishes the things above, but the things that are upon the earth, can no longer be called righteous, but rather cursed. Although she does not cease thereby to be great, since she still retains her natural capacity for eternal glory.

[37:06]

This is one theory of what Saint Bernard will repeat in various images and theories and doctrines of what happens. See, kova, anima kova. Indeed, it is not possible that she should at any time be without this capacity, even though it is destined never to be realized. See, the idea is that man is great and righteousness. So this erecta positio, the position of man, which is from antiquity, man is the only animal who looks to heaven, who is straight. Now, when he looks to things on earth, and he forgets the things divine and eternal, his soul is curved. And that's what happened in the original sin, but he kept, it's always the same theology, he kept his greatness.

[38:12]

Something has been lost and something has been retained, which is extremely important because if man remains great, no matter if he's curved, he can be straightened again, kept his same dimension of greatness. And then he commented, he had a passage, Psalm 39, 6, which is taken from the Vulgate, of course, and probably has nothing to do with this idea in the Hebrew text. He has two ideas there. Men continue in the image, in spite the fact that he's been troubled, conturbato, troubled.

[39:14]

But it's always the same idea, which is very important, and the theologically, the basis of our confidence in human nature. This is perhaps enough for today. Tomorrow we shall read the Sermon 81 and 82, where St. Bernard will change completely his symbolism, theology. He will take three properties, simplicity, immortality and freedom, And you will try to see how these three properties, these three qualities are realized in the world and are realized in the soul.

[40:16]

And what happened in the soul since she is the image of God and why she is not altogether and completely and perfectly the image of God. What happened to the image? This theory is very important. When you have this idea in mind, you can see the difference in theology, in many theologies. For instance, the theology of inspiration of the Reformation, especially Calvin, Luther and Calvin, have something to do With that, and you can even, in modern authors, of course modern authors are very, very close now to Catholics. There is no more Protestant, and there is probably no more Catholics anymore. But we come very much closer.

[41:19]

But the idea of Calvin was precisely the complete corruption of human nature. So the image was completely lost. Not the likeness, but the image. Human nature was completely destroyed. All dignity, all beauty of human nature was destroyed, utterly destroyed, with no hope. And even in the salvation, in the redemption, human nature is not restored. It is covered by the grace of Christ. and the sin is forgiven, but human nature is not changed. It's still there, completely deformed and utterly corrupted. And in the system, after all, the Kelvin system of the dreadful theory of Predestination, you have there the logical consequence of that.

[42:29]

Predestination is purely capricious will of God, and man cannot even wish it in its own nature. And it's a very hard doctrine, but it's based on this complete corruption of men. There is no hope for men. Simply complete relying on the will of God, the good will of God. It's very far from the patristic doctrine. And you will always find this distinction. You'll find, for instance, the Greek theology much more tendency to divinization. Divinization is based on the fact that man is capable, capax dei, is still capable of divinization in his very nature. But it's very hard for a good Protestant to believe in divinization. It's almost unbelievable.

[43:31]

It's sort of blasphemy. I was speaking one day in Switzerland with a Calvinist, very intelligent man who was publishing some commentary on St. Paul in the French part of Switzerland. I was while there in a resting room and I was visiting this minister very often. And one day, speaking of that, and just casually I spoke of the divinization of the Christian and he was shamed. And he said, what? What are you speaking about? I'm very curious for a man who was very cultured in theology not to be able to grasp this idea. You will see this distinction very clearly. Recently I was giving a talk in Karamazoo at the Medieval Conference last year, and I was giving something on the Elred's Doctrine of Friendship, and I didn't know very much what to say, and when I was in the plane going there, a friend of mine gave me a book of Max Weber.

[44:49]

first, one of the first sociologists, and it was something, his first book on the first thesis on the Protestant idea and the capitalist state or something like that. But it is very much with the Calvinist idea of the first settler in America. In Calvin, he gives a beautiful text of Calvin's who say you cannot trust your friend. It's not allowed, you cannot trust your friend. You can only trust God. Because human nature is completely corrupted. He clearly said it. There is no possibility of trusting human nature because it's corrupted. Even your best friend, you cannot trust him. It is just the opposite of what St. Bernard will say. He will try to do the more possible for him to bring human nature the closer to grace as he can.

[45:59]

And you will see the effort for that. It's very interesting to see. This affinity, this close affinity will try to make it closest as possible. in order to show that really man and God are of the same nature, same nature, and that this is the base of the love of God, the love by which God loves man and desires man, because man is like him, and he seeks the like. This is the basis. And we say that if man loves God, he can presume that he is loved by God. It's always based on this similitude, affinity of nature.

[46:56]

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