Sermon 82 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
How the Soul, Remaining Like God, Was Nevertheless Made Unlike through Sin in Simplicity, Immortality, and Freedom.
1. What does it seem to you? Can we now return to the order of exposition from which we digressed, since the affinity of the Word and the soul is now clear, for the demonstration of which indeed the digression itself was made? We could, as it seems to me, if I did not sense that some small measure of doubt still remained in the things that have been said. I wish to steal nothing. I do not willingly pass over what I think useful to you. And how should I dare to do so, especially concerning those things which I receive on your behalf? I know a certain man who once, while speaking, was retaining and reserving for himself something from the things which the Spirit was suggesting, with a mind not indeed unfaithful, but insufficiently trusting, so that he might have something to say when he would treat the matter again; and behold a voice came to him, as indeed it seemed to him: "As long as you hold on to that, you will not receive another." What if he had retained it, not providing for his own want, but envying the progress of the brethren? Would not even that very thing which he seemed to have be taken away from him, and rightly so? May God ever keep this far from your servant, as indeed he has always done. May that unfailing fountain of saving wisdom deign to flow abundantly for me continually, just as without envy I have communicated to you and poured back whatever he himself has deigned to pour into me until now. If I defraud you, from whom shall I not fear to be defrauded myself? Not even from God.
2. There is therefore in the things that have been said something which, as I fear, could give offense, if it is not smoothed out. And, unless I am mistaken, there are some standing here to whom what I wish to say has caused a scruple. That threefold likeness of the Word, which we assigned to the soul, or rather which we observed to be stamped upon it — do you recall that it also appeared to us to belong to it inseparably? This indeed may seem to conflict with certain testimonies of the Scriptures, as for example, that passage in the Psalms: "Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and was made like to them" (Ps 48:13, 21); and likewise that: "They exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass" (Ps 105:20); but also what was said plainly in the person of God: "You thought wickedly that I would be like you" (Ps 49:21); and many other passages which seem concordantly to assert that the likeness of God in man was destroyed after sin. What therefore shall we say to these things? That those three things do not at all exist in God, and so other things must be sought in which we may assign the likeness? Or that they do indeed exist in God, but not in the soul, and that thus neither is the likeness found in these? Or that they exist also in the soul, but can also not be present, and therefore are not inseparable? Far from it! They are both in God and in the soul, and they are always present; nor is there reason for us to regret having said any of these things, so entirely is the whole supported by undoubted and most absolute truth. But what Scripture speaks of concerning the unlikeness that was made, it does not speak because this likeness was destroyed, but because another was drawn over it. The soul did not at all strip off its native form, but put on over it a foreign one. That one was added, this one was not lost; and what came upon it was able to obscure the inborn likeness, but not to destroy it. Finally: "Their foolish heart was darkened," says the Apostle (Rom 1:21); and the prophet: "How is the gold become dim, the finest color changed?" (Lam 4:1). He laments the gold darkened, but it is gold nonetheless; the finest color changed, but the foundation of the color not uprooted. The simplicity remains in its foundation utterly unshaken, but it scarcely appears, covered over by the duplicity of human deceitfulness, dissimulation, and hypocrisy.
3. How incongruously is duplicity mixed with simplicity! How unworthily is such a structure committed to such a foundation! The serpent had put on craftiness of this kind for himself, when, in order to deceive, he presented himself as a counselor, pretending to be a friend. The inhabitants of paradise, seduced by him, had likewise put on this kind of craftiness for themselves, when they attempted to cover their now shameful nakedness, both with the shade of a leafy tree, and with coverings of leaves, and with words of excuse (Gen 3). How widely from that time forward the hereditary poison of hypocrisy has infected all posterity! Whom will you find among the sons of Adam who would wish, I do not say, but would even endure to appear as what he is? But nevertheless the general simplicity persists in every soul alongside the original duplicity, so that from the comparison the confusion may be increased: immortality likewise persists, but darkened and gloomy, with the shadowy murk of bodily death rushing in. For, even if the soul is not deprived of life, yet it no longer suffices to vindicate the benefit of life for its own body. What is more, it does not even retain its own spiritual life for itself. For "the soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezek 18:4). Does not this twofold death pressing in render that immortality of whatever kind, which it retains, sufficiently darkened and wretched? Add that the craving for earthly things, which indeed are all heading toward destruction, thickens the darkness, so that in a soul living thus, in no part whatsoever is anything seen to appear except a pallid face and a certain image of death. For why does she who is immortal not desire things immortal and eternal like herself, so that what she is may be apparent, and she may live as what she was made? But instead, she savors and seeks contrary things, and conforming herself to mortality by a degenerate manner of life, she blackens the brightness of immortality with a certain pitch-dark color of death-dealing habit. Why should not the appetite for mortal things make the immortal one like to mortal things, and unlike to the immortal? "He who touches pitch," says the Wise Man, "will be defiled by it" (Sir 13:1). By enjoying mortal things she has clothed herself in mortality, and the garment of immortality she has discolored by the encroaching likeness of death, but she has not cast it off.
4. Consider Eve, how her immortal soul brought upon the glory of its immortality the paint of mortality, by desiring mortal things indeed. For why, since she was immortal, did she not despise mortal and transitory things, content with things like herself, immortal and eternal? "She saw," it says, "the tree, that it was beautiful to the eyes and delightful to behold, and sweet to eat" (Gen 3:6). That sweetness, O woman, is not yours, that delight, that beauty: and if yours in part on account of the clay, not yours alone, but common to all living creatures of the earth. Yours, which is truly yours, is from elsewhere, and is other: for it is eternal, from eternity. Why do you imprint upon your soul another form, or rather an alien deformity? For indeed what one delights in having, one also fears to lose: and fear is a color. This fear, while it tinges freedom, covers it, and renders it no less unlike to itself. How much more worthily would it desire nothing beyond its origin, where it would fear nothing, and by this would defend from that servile fear its inborn freedom, remaining in its own vigor and beauty! Alas! It is not so! "The finest color is changed." You flee, and you hide: you hear the voice of the Lord God, and you conceal yourself. Why this, unless because you fear him whom you used to love, and the servile form has excluded the appearance of freedom?
5. But also that voluntary necessity, and that contrary law inflicted upon the members, about which I discoursed in the recent sermon, weighs upon that same freedom, and the creature free by nature, through its own will, while it entices, subjects it to servitude, filling its face with shame, so that even with the flesh it serves the law of sin, and not willingly. Because therefore it neglected to defend the nobility of its nature by uprightness of character, by the just judgment of its Author it came about, not indeed that it was stripped of its own freedom, but nevertheless that it was "clothed, as with a double garment, with its confusion" (Ps 108:29). And fittingly "as with a double garment," where with the garment as it were doubled, while freedom remains on account of the will, a servile manner of life nonetheless proves the necessity. This is what one may observe concerning the simplicity, and concerning the immortality of the soul: and nothing will appear to you in it, if you consider well, which is not covered over with a double garment of this kind of likeness and unlikeness alike. Is it not a double garment, where fraud is not innate but affixed, and sewn as it were with a certain needle of sin to simplicity, death to immortality, necessity to freedom? For the duplicity of heart does not overrule the simplicity of essence; nor does death overrule the immortality of nature, whether the voluntary death of sin or the necessary death of the body; nor does the necessity of voluntary servitude overrule the freedom of the will. Thus the adventitious evils, since they do not succeed but accede to the goods of nature, disfigure them indeed but do not destroy them; they disturb them but do not overthrow them. Hence the soul is unlike God, hence it is unlike also itself; hence it is compared to the senseless beasts and made like to them; hence what is read about exchanging its glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass; hence men, like foxes, have dens of duplicity and fraud, and because they have made themselves equal to foxes, they shall be the portions of foxes; hence, according to Solomon, "there is one end for man and for beast" (Eccl 3:19). Why should he not go out similarly, who lived similarly? He lay upon earthly things in a bestial manner; by a bestial death he will depart from the earth. Hear another thing. What wonder if we receive a similar departure, who also have a similar entrance? For whence comes to men, if not from the bestial likeness, that so intemperate ardor in coitus, that so immoderate pain in childbirth? Thus man in conception and birth, in life and death, is compared to the senseless beasts and is made like to them.
6. What of the fact that the free creature does not govern its appetite, which is subject to it, as a mistress, but follows and serves it as a handmaid? Does it not in this too liken and number itself among the other living creatures, which nature did not call into freedom, but created in servitude to serve their belly, to obey appetite? Is not God ashamed, given such desert, to be declared or thought similar? And therefore he says: "You thought wickedly that I would be like you"; and he adds: "I will reprove you, and set it before your face" (Ps 49:21). It is not of a soul that sees itself, to think that God is like itself, at least of a soul such as mine is, sinful and wicked. For such a one is reproved: "You thought wickedly," he says; and he does not say: "You thought, O soul"; or, "You thought, O man, that I would be like you." But, if the wicked one is set before his own face, and is made to stand against the sickly and putrid countenance, as it were, of his inner man, so that he cannot dissimulate or turn away from the impurity of his own conscience, but sees even against his will the filth of his sins, and gazes upon the deformity of his vices, he will by no means any longer be able to think that God will be like him, but as if losing confidence on account of the great unlikeness which he will see, I think he will cry out and say: "Lord, who is like you?" (Ps 34:10). Which indeed was said on account of that voluntary and newfound unlikeness. For the first likeness remains: and therefore that unlikeness displeases all the more, because this likeness remains. O how great a good is this likeness, and how great an evil is that unlikeness! Yet from their mutual comparison each thing stands out more in its own kind.
7. When therefore the soul perceives in itself so great a distance of things, how should it not cry out, placed as it is between hope and despair: "Lord, who is like you?" It is drawn toward despair on account of so great an evil; but it is called back to hope by so great a good. Hence it is that the more it displeases itself in the evil which it sees in itself, the more ardently it draws itself toward the good which it equally perceives in itself, and desires to become what it was made to be: simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil. Why should it not be able to recede from that to which it was able to approach? Why should it not be able to approach that from which it was able to recede? Which two things, however, I would say must be presumed from grace, not from nature, nor indeed even from industry. For "wisdom overcomes malice" (Wis 7:30), not industry or nature. Nor is the occasion for presuming lacking: its conversion is toward the Word. The noble kinship of the soul with the Word is not idle, about which we have been treating now for three days, and the persevering likeness is the witness of that kinship. The Word graciously admits into the fellowship of the Spirit one who is like in nature. And certainly by the reason of nature, like seeks like. The voice of the one seeking: "Return, O Shulamite; return, that we may behold you" (Song 6:12). He will behold the like one, he who was not beholding the unlike one; but he will also present himself to be beheld. "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2). Think therefore that that question, "Lord, who is like you?", comes more from the difficulty than from the impossibility.
8. Or, if you prefer this more, it is the voice of one marveling. Truly to be marveled at and wondered at is that likeness which accompanies the vision of God, or rather which is the vision of God; but I say it consists in charity. That charity is the vision, that is the likeness. Who would not be astonished at the charity of God who was spurned and yet calls back? Rightly is that wicked one reproved, who was introduced above, usurping for himself the likeness of God, when, by loving iniquity, he can neither love himself nor God: for thus you have it: "He who loves iniquity hates his own soul" (Ps 10:6). When therefore iniquity is removed from the midst, which causes the unlikeness that is partial, there will be a union of spirit, there will be a mutual vision and a mutual love. Indeed, when that which is perfect comes, that which is partial will be done away with; and there will be between them a chaste and consummated love, a full recognition, a manifest vision, a firm conjunction, an undivided fellowship, a perfect likeness. Then the soul will know, even as it is known (1 Cor 13:10, 12); then it will love, even as it is loved; and the Bridegroom will rejoice over the bride, knowing and known, loving and loved, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.