A Review of On Loving God by St. Bernard of Clairvaux
This
summer I was inspired by the The Best Christian Book of All Time Tournament to pick up a few classic Christian
books that I had yet to read. One
of those was On Loving God by St.
Bernard of Clairvaux. While there
are many books in the tournament that I have on my list to read, like City of God by St. Augustine and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, I selected On Loving God
because it is broken up into fourteen short chapters, one to four pages a
piece, making a nice supplemental morning devotional on a two-week vacation
with the family. Each day I
considered one of St. Bernard’s thoughts on loving God and was able to ruminate
on it throughout the day. Overall
I really enjoyed this classic Christian work and here is why.
This
work is rooted in the Gospel. On
page one of St. Bernard’s work he sets out the reason why we should love God;
because He is God and He first loved us in the person of Christ, citing 1 John
4.19. God’s love is demonstrated
in the sending of His son for our salvation (John 3:16). He goes so far as to call this “the
claim” God has upon mankind. And I
could not agree more. God is our God
by right of His creation of us. He
is set supreme over us by the nature of our relationship, Creator and created. This claim is only enhanced by the fact
that we rebelled against Him and even in our sin He set forth a plan to rescue
us through the death and resurrection of Christ, paying our very debt. By the nature of His position as God
and His righteous work on the cross love for God is demanded of mankind.
I also
love St. Bernard’s forward lean towards our future Hope of resurrection and
eternal life. In this old work,
the classic Christian hope of resurrection, perfection, and life with God is
revived. Modern Christianity often
times tries to place our hope in the possibility of good life now but the
classic and Biblical Christian hope looks forward to the future when God
returns and rescues us from our bodies of death and we live with Him forever in
the new heavens and new earth.
Finally
and most intriguingly, St. Bernard put into words something I have long considered
about the Christian life. He aptly
describes our progress in our love for God in four degrees. The first degree is “wherein man loves
God for self’s sake” (17). Here
man is initially drawn to God out of selfish interest. He sees in God salvation for His soul
and blessing ever after and so is drawn into a love for God. God uses our very desires for
self-preservation to draw us into Himself and then shows us something much
better. When I think of my own
salvation this seems to describe the situation well. I began to love God because I wanted out of Hell. I recognized myself as a sinner and saw
the salvation offered through Christ and the Gospel and I accepted. But God didn’t leave me there.
St.
Bernard describes the second degree of love for God coming out of our experience
with Him. He says that our
“frequent troubles [in this life] drive us to frequent supplications” and we
then begin to love God not out of a necessity for salvation, “but because we
have tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is” (19). The third degree of love St. Bernard describes closely
follows and flows from our walk with God in Christ throughout our life. The third degree “is to love God on His
own account, solely because he is God” (19). This is progression in love again parallels my own experience
in salvation and I hope yours. We
come to Christ out of a desire to assuage the wrath of God that is upon us for
our sins and then we begin to taste and see that the Lord is who He says He is
and that He is good. As He
sustains us, our experiences with Him begin to move us to a place where we
understand better who He is and we begin to love Him solely because we
recognize Him as God in our life and over all.
I
would venture to guess that if you call yourself a Christian you have probably
experienced St. Bernard’s first three degrees of love for God, but St. Bernard
goes one step further in a fourth degree.
In my own experience I feel like I have just begun to taste the fourth
degree that he describes. If is if
I have seen the edges of this degree, like the hidden peak in a mountain range
that only peaks through the clouds every so often when the light is right and you
happen to be standing in the right place.
You stand in awe for that moment and at the same time an insatiable
desire to climb the peak arises in you.
He describes the fourth degree as “wherein one loves himself only in
God” (21)! Let that one roll
around in your head for a moment.
St. Bernard is striving to put into language what Peter mentions in 2
Peter 1:3-4 when he says that we will “become partakers of the divine
nature.” St. Bernard is describing
the eclipse of everything in us by everything that is in God. St. Bernard is describing the ultimate
Christian hope, that God would form in us exactly what He has purposed and we
would be free from our sin nature.
But unfortunately we only get a taste of this fourth degree of love in
this life. This degree can only
come about in the new creation.
St. Bernard says,
It is therefore impossible to offer
up all our being to God, to yearn altogether for His face, so long as we must
accommodate our purposes and aspirations to these fragile, sickly bodies of
ours. Wherefore the soul may hope
to possess the fourth degree of love, or rather to be possessed by it, only
when it has been clothed upon with that spiritual and immortal body, which will
be perfect, peaceful, lovely, and in everything wholly subjected to the spirit. And to this degree no human effort can
attain: it is in God’s power to give to whom He wills (21-22).
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012. 40pp. $6.99.
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