We shall read the Sermon 81 and 82 on the canticle. Saint Bernard chooses another way of looking at the image of God in men. We saw yesterday this The image was the greatness of man, his dignity, his nobility as a man, noble creature, and the likeness was righteousness, rectitudo, which he lost. Therefore, man or the soul of man is curved towards earth and he has to straighten, but he is capable of doing that because he remains great.

[01:16]

And here, we shall discern, he will take another system. And it's interesting to know, as we shall see at the end of this Sermon 81, that St. Bernard dealt with the problem of the question of the image of God in man in his one of his first treatises, 1128, Dei gratia et libero arbitrio, Grace and Free Will, which he wrote to William of Sanctuary. In that treatise, which is considered by the theologian or the scholastics today as a masterpiece of scholasticism, he takes the very classic Augustinian demonstration where free will is the image

[02:24]

That the liberty of choice is the image in men and men has only lost the faculty or the easiness to use this freedom for good. I was told that in English there was a slight difference between freedom and liberty, but just now somebody gave me a reference, Peter gave me a reference from the Webster Dictionary and there isn't any clear distinction. Freedom, somebody told me, was more free choice and liberty, free from hindrance, obstacles, or determination and all that. Well, there is a difference, obviously, when you speak of liberty or freedom from these two kinds of freedom.

[03:28]

One is free choice. Free choice is simply to do this or that, and that remains in men. If a man is devoid, if a man does not have this liberty or free choice, he is no more a man. And that's what Sartre pointed out very clearly. That is the basic or most elementary human quality is this free choice. That is not in a man, a man is no more a man. Think, for instance, of people who have been brainwashed in communist countries If I sign a document or if I confess all sort of kind of so-called free confession, you cannot say that there is a man anymore.

[04:32]

Man is defined by this liberty of free choice. And Saint Bernard says that remains in man after the fall, obviously. Otherwise he would not be a man. But what he lost was the free use of this faculty of freedom for the good. He's, after the sin, he's no more capable of easily decide for the good. Something happened there, sort of entrance that is blind or at least not completely in possession of his this freedom. He's tempted, he's submit to sin, He is not able to be without sin if grace does not come to his help and more than that he cannot freely enjoy to do all the time good, the good,

[05:48]

which should be normally the condition of man and which will be a condition of heaven. Because the good will be so evident, God will be so clearly seen that it will be impossible to do evil, to turn your back from this truth and goodness and beauty. So what has been some, no, this freedom to turn your back from the goodness has been said by modern philosophy precisely to be the real freedom of man, to go against God, which is blasphemous, but you see very well that, as we say yesterday in the question, that if God does not exist,

[06:51]

There's no, there's only one possibility for man is to be the absolute himself. And if precisely definition of man is his freedom, he has to give to this freedom, this complete, he has to be absolutely free from any other any other suggestion or determination different from his own decision. So, Sartre will be in the text of Thomas Merton, which is there in this booklet. You will see that Sartre would say that the liberty to sin is really the summit of man or the Israelization. Now, the Christian would say, or the traditional would say precisely, the liberty not to sin, to be free from this tendency, is precisely what makes men more fully at the image of God.

[08:00]

So it is only to see, or it's always to find out how important is this doctrine, to know exactly where we stand, what is the possibility of man. Let's then start this reading the text. Preceding this course, my brother and I inquired into the nature of the affinity between the word divine and the soul. And so on. examining the various points of relationship between the word and the soul. For who is so dull as not to be able to perceive how closed must be the relation of conformity between the image and that which is made according to the image.

[09:10]

Now conformity is a technical word, conformitas, going to the Greek philosophy of forma, the form, the cause, the example of cause. To understand this doctrine of image, we have to go to this early Greek philosophy of Plato, that to cause a being, a being here below, a finite being, is continuously caused by the four causes, one of which is the exemplar cause. So there is a continual relationship between the being here on earth and its cause, his exemplar, which is perfect, which is beautiful, which is eternal. And if the creature turns away from this exemplar, this model, he loses identity, we would say today.

[10:20]

He doesn't know anymore who he is, because he lost this dynamic relationship between the cause and the effect, which is exemplar, exemplarity. That's the background of all this theory of image. In yesterday's sermon, if you remember, I gave the former of this name to the word, no, the image, and the latter to the soul, according to the image. And in the same discourse, I pointed out to you not only the relationship which comes from the souls having been made according to the image, but are due to being made to the likeness of the image, no, image and likeness. I have not yet, however, explained in what this likeness essentially consists.

[11:22]

Now, he's going to speak of the likeness and he will forget. He will just drop the distinction between the image and the likeness. That's all. There are no systematic, that never would happen with St. Thomas. St. Thomas always remembers clearly what he announced. You cannot escape. But here, you just forget it. So you will not have the distinction between the image and likeness, but you will just speak of the likeness just indifferently with the image. Now, this likeness, paragraph the second, Let her take notice, therefore, that it is to this prerogative or likeness to the world she owes the essential simplicity of her substance, in virtue of which it is the same thing for her to live and to exist, to the simplicity of the soul's substance.

[12:31]

Although for her it is not the same to live virtuously or to live happily as to exist as difference between the soul and the world. But between her and the world there is only similitude nor equality. There is a degree of affinity, yet it is only a degree. But it is extremely important for us to understand that it is a degree. Because we have all been brought up in scholastic philosophy and Thomistic, which is Aristotelian philosophy, and it's a very, very clear-cut distinction in the history of spirituality between the two systems—Platonist, Augustinian system, Saint Albert, and the Flemish, Rhino-Flemish mystics, and the other side you have Aristotelian Thomist and all the Thomist system which follows.

[13:40]

The two, to just have an idea, just in a few sentences, the difference, the main difference, which is very important to our understanding of this spiritual doctrine is that In the Thomist, Aristotelian-Thomist system, you have an infinite gap between finite being and the infinite. And this gap cannot be bridged. It's only by analogy, which is a process of the mind, that the gap is can be breached, an allergy which is process, an intellectual process. In the Platonist, Augustinian system, or Plotinian, Neo-Platonist, there is a degree, everything remains in the mind of God,

[14:44]

even for Saint Augustine, all beings remain in the mind of God, but fall from this perfection by degrees. And then the return is also by degrees. But you see that there is no this infinite, finite, clear distinction. because here it's quite clear this is a degree of affinity. All the beings have then a scale, a sort of ladder of degrees, and you return to God by degrees. For there is no this unbreachable gap. And then it goes on a bit. Now, page 35, paragraph fourth. None of these things, all the qualities of God, I mentioned yesterday that modern man, or modern philosophy, or atheistic philosophy, or existentialism as such, is to give men the classical attributes of God, or try to give to men classical attributes to God.

[16:17]

Now, what Saint Bernard is doing here is doing the same thing, but These attributes are given by God, not stolen by men from God, which is a Promethean challenge. Furthermore, none of these things, whose being is not identical with life, can ever advance or attain the virtue of happy life. The human soul only, which is known to stand upon this eminence, has been created, thereon, as life from life, as simple from the simple, as immortal from the immortal, so that she is not far below. supreme degree. You see the same theory here. She is not far below the supreme degree that namely where being is identical with blessedness of life in which he alone stands who is the blessed and the almighty, the king of kings and the lord of lords.

[17:33]

The rational soul accordingly has received at her creation, if not the actuality, at any rate the possibility of happiness. And she therefore approaches as near as is possible to the highest degree, which, however, she can never attain to. the acknowledged likeness and not the equality. And page 36, he will now distinguish three attributes of God which also are in the soul, immortality, Simplicity first, immortality and freedom.

[18:40]

In the word and in the soul, but according their condition, this present condition. It starts with the immortality here. Change is an image of death. There you are again, the idea of Sandokasthi. Indeed, everything which undergoes change, where it is passed from one state of being to another, must necessarily die, in a certain sense, with regard to what it is, so that it may begin to be what it is not. But how can you have immortality there where you have as many deaths as changes? Therefore, the soul has lost a bodily immortality that kept immortality of the soul. And then we go a bit further, and yet what has been said in the present discourse has enabled us to understand how exalted is the dignity of the human soul, which appears to approximate to the Word of God by a twofold affinity of nature, affinity of nature, namely by simplicity of essence and immortality of life.

[20:12]

Yet another point of relationship, that's paragraph six, page 36, yet another point of relationship now occurs to me, which I must by no means pass over, because no less than Lewis already mentioned, and perhaps even in a greater degree, It renders the soul glorious in herself and like to the world. I refer to the faculty that the mind possesses, the power of judging and the liberty of choosing between life and death, between light and darkness. There will be any other object which in the same manner appears to stand in mutual opposition as regards the state of the soul. Between these also this vigilant arbiter, which may be called the soul's high, judges and determines, free choice, as free in electing, as it is peremptory in deciding. Hence, it is called the faculty of free choice.

[21:15]

because namely it freely chooses between opposites according to the pleasure of the will, and so on. Then paragraph seven, man is the only mortal who can resist the coercive power of nature. And consequently, he alone is free amongst all earthly creatures. This is an important statement and we could develop on this and comment on this very long commentary, comparing with the present way of thinking and so much has been said recent philosophy and modern psychology or sociology to diminish even to the extreme this power of men to resist the coercive power of nature.

[22:28]

One of the last attempts to reduce men to nature completely to nature, is the structuralism in France, which is structuralism in France, which is a great, great fad. Now, everybody is structuralist in France, you know. There's a collection of book in France, Tout le monde en parole. Everybody speaks of it. Therefore, it must be true. Anyway, everybody speaks structuralist today. Structuralist. The ladies on the bus speak structuralist in Paris. Structuralism is a dreadful thing, especially as it is exposed by, developed by Lévi-Strauss. Great success in Paris, now Sartre, and all these people are the passé. And Lévi-Strauss is the great success in the Sorbonne.

[23:33]

Lévi-Strauss is born in Brussels and became professor of philosophy for a time in Paris, then was just fed up with philosophy, as so many people are, and they see that all the systems are contradictory and destroying one another. And then he switched on ethnology. Ethnology, and he spent most of his life in South America, going from one tribe, little tribe, to another one, and collecting all the myths. And he published four volumes of Mythologiques, where he collected hundreds and probably thousands of myths. put that in the computer, computing machine, and classify all these myths, each myth having a number. And eventually, he overstepped his own discipline, which is always very dangerous and fatal, and tried to make a philosophy of it, and say that, well,

[24:49]

From the study, from the ethnological study of men, you can see that there is a pattern, universal pattern of thinking, which is absolutely determined, and that you can see that not only for the primitive tribe, but for the professor in the Sorbonne, or the mystic, or anybody. Mind is bound to act or reflect or think according a determined pattern. Now, this pattern of thinking is determined by it, it, which is not explained of course, which is most probably sort of materialistic power, like the stoic logos or something. And therefore, you resume philosophy in saying that you cannot say that man thinks, or man loves, or man imagines, or man speaks, but it speaks.

[26:09]

It speaks. It thinks. And it is not the subconscious, which is still personal and historical. It is absolutely unhistorical and completely anonymous. It's a force. So that's been said that it was the death of men. No liberty, no freedom, no conscience, since what you say is dictated to you by a force, an it, anonymous, and determinate. You cannot escape it. So that is the last word now about man, which is the death of man after the death of God. Not much left now. He says the universe starts without man and the universe will end without man. Don't make too much fuss about men.

[27:13]

This will perish like a mushroom and that will be the end. And take it lightly and cheerfully. Now, Saint Bernard, We'll analyze the freedom and what happened to freedom. The necessity and the freedom. Page 29, paragraph 9, line 10.

[28:13]

Now, where there is will, there is also liberty. Yet I am speaking only of natural liberty, not of that spiritual liberty where is, as the apostle says, Christ has made us free. So we distinguish two kinds of liberty, free choice, and the liberty which makes us free, free from, from the temptation, from sin, from this necessity. For with regard to this latter liberty, the same apostle tells us that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Thus, my brethren, in a certain evil yet marvelous way, the soul is held captive under this voluntary and sinfully free necessity, at one and the same time bound and free.

[29:16]

Which is a sort of position, I think. Paradoxical explanation. Voluntary free necessity. She is born slave by reason of her servitude and she is free on account of the voluntariness of this servitude. And what is stranger, still and still more pitiful, she is guilty because of her freedom and she is born slave because of her guilt. Consequently, she is born slave because of her freedom. That's Saint Bernard at his best. Unhappy man that I am who shall deliver me from the dishonor of this shameful servitude. I am unhappy yet I am free. I am free because I am a man. I am unhappy because I am a slave. I am free because of my resemblance to God. I am unhappy because of my opposition to God. or keeper of men, why dost thou set me opposite to thee, exclaim Holy Job."

[30:23]

And then at the end of this sermon, 40, end of the sermon, 88, page 40, he has again this, what is very constantly can be found in Saint Bernard, this effort to decrease or diminish as much as he can the gap, the difference between or the distortion of the image. And it's about, well known, I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, St. Paul, famous chapter to the Romans. And then at the end of the sermon you see this very beautiful one. And now then it is no more I that do it but sin that dwelt in me, says Saint Paul.

[31:31]

And perhaps, says Saint Bernard, it was for this reason the law which he found in his members was expressly called another law because namely he regarded it as something alien and advantageous. That will be the next sermon. Everything will be on these advantages. Therefore, I will venture to go even further and to say surely without rashness that Saint Paul is no longer evil, evil on account of the evil law which he has in his flesh, but he's had a good by reason of the good law which dwelt in his mind. So there is more good than evil anyway. That's the optimism of Saint Bernard. How can he be otherwise than good himself who consents to the law of God because it is good?

[32:33]

He also indeed confesses that he serves the law of sin, yet he does so not with his mind, but only with his flesh. Now, since he serves the law of God with his mind and the law of sin with his flesh, I leave it for you to decide, my brethren, as to which should be the more particularly imputed to St. Paul. As for myself, I have been easily convinced that which belonged to his mind was more truly his own than what appertained to his flesh. Now, is this conviction confined to me? Since I have remarked, it was also entertained by the Apostle himself who says, if then I do that which I will not, It is by no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. It's a typical passage of Saint Bernard trying to see more goodness in men than probably there is.

[33:41]

sort of tendency, optimistic tendency. And then you have there at the end of this sermon, so much as suffices on the subject of liberty, in the little book which I compose on grace and free will, you will perhaps find questions concerning the image and the likeness treated somewhat differently, yet without any real contradiction of what I have been saying now. You have read that work and you have heard the sermon. I submit both to your judgment. Choose that which you find the more pleasing. That's also typical. So that shows that you have to take that as it is. Speculation, reflection, meditation on the condition of men according to the reading of the scripture and based on the text, but in a very free way. However, this may be remembered what I have now said concerning the soul's three characteristics of simplicity, immortality, and liberty, which form the three principal points of today's discourse.

[34:55]

And I think that this much at least is now clearly evident to you, namely that the soul, by reason of unnatural and unknowing likeness to the world, which finds out so conspicuously in the characteristics referred to, has a very close affinity to him with the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ of Law. Sermon 82. We shall start and continue tonight. It's a long sermon, probably the based on this question of the image. Now, between 1128 when St. Bernard dealt with the grace and free will, and this series of sermons, 20 years have elapsed.

[35:58]

During this time, St. Bernard read a lot, and especially he read the Greek Father. Nobody knows exactly how or to what extent. He certainly didn't know Greek. There was some translation, most probably Floridage. they got some kind of knowledge, but sometimes also some text. William of Sanctuary most probably knew the Greek fathers through Regina, who translated, also Regina translated the Greek Theologian, forgot, 6th, 7th century. Maxim the Confessor, that is the name. Maxim the Confessor gave, so Theology of the Greek Father, that was translated by Scott of Regina, the Irish theologian master, the last who knew Greek in Europe at the time.

[37:16]

great pride for the Irish, and then passed on to the Middle Ages fathers, most probably Cistercians and Bernards, and certainly William of St. Thierry. I've had some contact with the, what they call, orientally lumen, eastern light. And Saint Bernard, definitely here, takes the exposition of the system of the doctrine of Gregory of Nyssa on this question of image, which you can find in the work of Gregory of Nyssa, which is called the creation of man, the omnis superficial, the creation of man. Watching you, my brethren, may we now return to the point when she digressed, also all the time digression, and resume the order of our exposition.

[38:29]

For the digression was made for the purpose of demonstrating the affinity between the word and the soul, and this has already been rendered sufficiently plain. made me go back, as it seems to me, did I not feel conscious that there still remains some little obscurity in regard to what has been said. This is a very interesting passage, it's very often quoted, of the way of St. Bernard dealing with his own meditation and also his way of teaching. I desire not to defraud you of nothing. I should not like to pass over anything at all which I think might profit you. How then could I dare to withhold from you any part of that which has been given me for you especially? You see this close relation between a master and the community, the disciple.

[39:32]

It's so important because it makes it real. It's not purely speculative. I know a person, this is a famous passage here, I know a person, that's himself of course, I know a person who once, while delivering a discourse with a diffident, although not with a faithless soul, wished to keep back and preserve for himself some of the thoughts wherewith the Holy Spirit was inspiring him in order to have matter for another sermon. on the same subject. But lo, he heard a voice saying to him, so long as thou withhold this, thou shalt receive nothing else. What would have been the case had he kept back what was given him, not from any desire to make provision for his own poverty, but through envy of his brethren's progress in virtue?

[40:34]

And so on. like the unprofitable servant, and of even that which is seen to have may God continue always the future, and so on. Well, paragraph the second, just five minutes just to introduce, to introduce the question As St. Bernard introduced it himself, almost in the way of St. Thomas, would do it, say, by objections. Well then, as I was saying, there is a difficulty arising out of my last two discourses, which I'm afraid will prove a stumbling block to some of you unless it is explained away. And indeed, if I am not mistaken, there are some here present whose minds are already perplexed concerning this very point whereof I am about to speak. So probably some monk's been telling him, what about this and what about this verse of the scripture?

[41:43]

Are you sure of what you say or affirm? With regard to that threefold likeness to the world which you have assigned to the soul, or rather to which I have called your attention, as naturally implanted in the soul, incerta, do you remember my saying also that it inheres inseparably in the soul, inheres? Yet, this appeared to conflict with certain passages of Holy Scripture. For example, with this word of the psalmist, when a man, when he was in honor, did not understand, he is compared to senseless beast and is become like to them. See, this objection is exactly the objection I pointed out yesterday. at the end of the lecture, is that man is corrupted, completely.

[42:46]

It's like beast, since he refused. And with the other passage, Psalm 106, they change their glory into the likeness of a calf that eats idiot grass. And with what the same prophet says, speaking of the person of the Lord, Psalm 49, Thou taught unjustly that I shall be like thee, as well as with all those other testimonies which seem to agree in declaring that man's likeness to God has been lost, utterly lost, by sin. How are we to solve this difficulty, my brethren?" And so on. We shall leave that suspense for tonight. I know there is, do you want to have any questions?

[43:45]

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