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The Steps of Humility and Pride III: 7
are on fire.54 They "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those weep."55 Their hearts are made more clear-sighted by love56 and they experience the delight of contemplating truth, not now in others but in itself, and for love of it they bear their neighbors' sorrows. A man who does not live in harmony with his brothers, who mocks at those who weep and sneers at those who are glad, has no sympathy with them because their feelings do not affect him, he can never really see the truth in others. The proverb fits him well: the sound man feels not the sick man's pains, nor the well-fed man the pangs of the hungry.57 It is fellow-sufferers that readily feel compassion for the sick and the hungry. For just as pure truth is seen only by the pure of heart, so also a brother's miseries are truly experienced only by one who has misery in his own heart.
You will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your soul. Our Savior has given us the example. He willed to suffer so that he might know compassion;58 to learn mercy he shared our misery. It is written: "He learned obedience from the things he suffered;"59 and he learned mercy in the same way. I do not mean that he did not know how to be merciful before; his mercy is from eternity to eternity;60 but what in his divine nature he knows from all eternity he learned by experience in time.
7. You may not be ready to agree with me when I say that Christ the Wisdom of God61 learned mercy, as if he through whom all things were made62 could ever have been ignorant of anything that exists. This especially so since the text I quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews can reasonably be
54. 2 Cor 11:29.
55. Rom 12:15.
56. Cf. Conv 30; OB 4:106; CF 43.
57. The first part of this proverb can be found in Terence, Andria, 309; otherwise its source has not been identified.
58. Heb 2:17.
59. Heb 5:8.
6ft Ps 102:17.
61. I Cor 1:24. Bernard goes off here into an excursus (7-12) on the knowledge of Christ He presents the alternate views held by the Fathers (See, eg., St Anselm
Cur Deus Homo, 1:9; in at., p. 194), opts strongly for a particular one and offera a substantiating argument employing a faulty Scripture text (11) which he later has to retract (see above, p. 25).
62. Jn 1:3.
The Steps of Humility and Pride 111:8 taken in another sense. It could be taken that the subject of "learned" is our Head, not in person but in his body, the Church.63 "He learned obedience from the things he suffered" would then mean that the body learned obedience from the things our Head suffered. The death, the cross, the insults, spitting and scourging suffered by Christ give a perfect example of obedience to us his body.
St Paul says: "Christ became obedient to the Father even unto death."64 Why had he to do that? St Peter tell us: "Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps,"65 by imitating his obedience. From those things which he suffered we mere men may learn how much we should be ready to suffer for obedience since for it he who himself is God did not hesitate to die. You argue then that if we take this meaning there is no difficulty about saying that Christ learned obedience or learned anything else so long as this is confined to his body, holding firmly that in his own person he could never have been ignorant of anything that happened in time; still, as Head and Body are one Christ, it is correct to say that Christ both taught and learned.
8. I will not say that you are wrong in this, but there is another text in the same Epistle which seems rather to bear out the first interpretation: "He did not lay hold on the angels, but on the seed of Abraham he laid hold; whence it was fitting that he should become like to his brothers in all things, that he might become merciful."66 It seems to me that these words refer to the Head and could not possibly apply to the body. It is certainly about the Word of God that it is said: "He did not lay hold of the angels," meaning that he never assumed an angelic nature, but that of the seed of Abraham. We do not read that the Word was made angel, but that "the Word was made flesh."67 and that flesh was the flesh of Abraham according to the promise made beforehand.68 In the assuming of our nature "it behoved him in all things to be made like his brethren;" it was right and even necessary that he should be like us, subject to suffering, and experience all our miseries,
63. Col 1:24.
64. Phil 2:8; RB 7:34.
65. 1 Pet 2:21.
66. Heb 2:16-17.
67. Jn 1:14.
68. Gen 17:7; Gal 3:29.
The Steps of Humility and Pride 111:9
except sin.69 If you ask: "Why should it be necessary?" I answer: "So that he might become merciful." You object that this could apply quite well to his body. But notice the words that follow: "Because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted."70 I do not see what better meaning you can draw from these words than that being like his brethren in all things means that he willed to suffer and be tempted and share in all human miseries except sin so that having thus suffered and been tempted he might learn by experience the lesson of sympathy and mercy.
9. I do not say that he became wiser by such experience, but he was seen as closer to men. And the frail sons of Adam, to whom he was willing to give the title and the reality of being brothers,71 would have less hesitation about laying their weaknesses before him, who as God could heal them, as one close would heal them, and as one who had suffered the same would understand. For this reason Isaiah calls him "a man of sorrows and aquainted with infirmity,"72 and the Apostle tells us: "We have not a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness."73 Then to show from where this arises, he adds:
"One who in every respect has been tempted as we are but without sinning."74 The blessed God, the blessed Son of God, in that form in which he did not think it robbery to be equal with the Father,75 was without doubt impassible before he emptied himself taking on the form of a slave.76 Thus he had no experience of misery and subjection, he did not know by experience mercy and obedience. He knew by the knowledge natural to him, but not by experience. He assumed a state that was not only less than what is his by right, but even a little less than that of the angels;77 for they too are impassible, but by grace, not by nature.78 Lower still he came to take our form in which he could do what he could not do before, suffer and 69. Heb 2:16.
7 4 . I b i d .
7ft Heb 2:18.
75. Phil 2:6.
71. Heb 2:11.
76. Phil 2:7.
72. Is 53:3.
77. Heb 2:9; Ps 8:6.
73. Heb 4:15.
78. Bernard expresses the same opinion in Csi 5:7; OB 3:471; CF 3 7.
The Steps of Humility and Pride 111:10 be subject to authority and learn by experience the mercy of a fellow-sufferer and the obedience of a fellow-subject. As I said already, he did not increase his personal knowledge but he deepened our trust in him when we see him from whom we strayed draw near to us to know our misery by a shared experience.79 Hardly could we have dared to approach him in his eternal tranquility but now the Apostle can urge us to go with confidence to the throne of grace80 because, as he tells us in another place, he has borne our weakness and our sorrows81 and will have compassion on us since he has borne the like.82
10. Therefore it ought not seem absurd if it is said not that Christ began to know for the first time something which he did not know before, but that there is no contradiction in saying that something he knew from all eternity by his divine knowledge he now began in time to learn by human experience.83 I think you will find our Lord, speaking in a similar vein when, in answer to a question of his disciples, he said that he did not know the time of the last judgment.84 He could not be ignorant of it because in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.85 Why did he deny knowledge he must have had? It is out of the question that he could have told a lie, even to conceal from them something they had no need to know. He is wisdom and could not be ignorant; he is truth and cannot lie; he wished to stop the idle curiosity of his disciples. He replied that he did not know the thing about which they asked. He did not say absolutely that he was ignorant of it. His words allowed for a certain degree or kind of ignorance which made it true in one sense to say that he did not know. His divine gaze was upon all things, past, present and future, and saw that day clearly; but he could not experience it by any of his bodily senses. If it did come before 79. Cf. Eph 2:13.
8a Heb 4:16.
81. Is 53:4.
82. Heb 2:18; 4:15.
83. Cf. Miss 2:10; OB 4:28; CF 43.
84. Mk 18:32.
85. Col 2:3.
The Steps of Humility and Pride III: 11
his bodily senses we should have to conclude that he already slew Antichrist with the breath of his mouth,86 his bodily ears heard the sound of the trumpet-blast of the Archangel calling the dead to rise, and his bodily eyes already distinguished the sheep from the goats.87
11. T o make it quite clear that his denial of knowledge of the last day concerned only what he knew by his bodily senses, he used carefully chosen words. He did not simply say: " I do not know;" but: " N o t even the Son of Man knows."88 The term "Son of Man" refers to the assumed human nature. When he says that there is something he does not know and uses this expression, he indicates that he is speaking as man, not as God.
When he is referring to his divinity he does not say " S o n " or "Son of Man," but " I " or " M e . " We have several instances of this. For example, he said: "Amen, Amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made I am."89 Note: "I am;" not: "The Son of Man is." He is clearly speaking here of his divine nature which is before Abraham and knows no beginning, not of his human nature which was born of Abraham and came into being after him. On another occasion he asked his disciples what men thought about him. "Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?"90 In this case he did not say " I " but "the Son of Man."
He changed the phrase when he was asking them about their own opinion. "Whom do you say that I am?" 9 1 When he was enquiring what a carnal people thought about the human body that they saw before them he used the title that referred directly to the human nature: "Son of Man." When he questioned his disciples, spiritually minded men, about his Divine
Person he did not say, "Son of Man," but pointedly said " I . "
St Peter understood the question as we can see from his answer: " Y o u are Christ, the Son of God." 9 2 If he had said:
86. 2 Thess 2:8.
87. Mt 25:32.
88. Mk 13:32. See above, Retractation, p. 25, where Bernard withdraws this misquotation and the argument following it.
89. Jn 8:5a 9ft Mt 16:13.
91. Mt 16:15.
92. Mt 16:16.
The Steps of Humility and Pride 111:12
"You are Jesus, the Son of the Virgin," he would, of course, have spoken correctly, but he was quick to notice the significance of the changed form of the question, so he aptly and properly answered: "You are Christ, the Son of God."
12. You see, then, that Christ in his one Person has two natures, one eternal, the other beginning in time.93 According to one he knows all things eternally; according to the other there are many things he first experienced in course of time.
There need then be no hesitation in admitting that, as his human nature had its beginning in time,94 his humanly acquired knowledge of the miseries of this life had its beginning in the experience of the limitations of human nature. Our first parent, and future, and saw that day clearly; but he could not of knowledge which they could gain only by folly and woe.
But their Creator,96 seeking what was lost, followed the work of his hands and came down in mercy to where they lay in misery.97 He would experience for himself what they rightly suffered for their disobedience. He was not led by curiosity as they were, but by a wondrous charity. It was not his intention to remain with them in misery, but to raise them from it by his mercy.
When I say he became merciful I am not speaking of the mercy that was his in the happiness of eternity; but of the mercy that sprang from sharing in our misery. The work of his tender love had its beginning in his eternal mercy, its completion in the mercy shown in his humanity. All could have been done by the eternal mercy but it would have failed somewhat in satisfying us. Both kinds of mercy were needed but the latter is more in harmony with our condition. It was conceived
93. Bernard treats of the unity of Christ more fully and formally in Csi 5:20; OB 3:483f; CF 19.
94. Rom 1:3.
. .
95. Protoplastii This word is not a biblical term but is from the Patristic tradition
(eg Tertullian,Deexhortationecastitatis 2; PL 2:916; tr. S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers [New York: Scribners, 1899), 4:51; St Cyprian, De habitu virginis 4; PL
4:444; tr. W, LeSaint, Ancient Christian Writers 13 [Westminster: Newman, 19511, ix 44} 96. Hasmator: the corresponding term to protoplasti, found also in Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos 2; PL 2:599.
97. Ezek 34:16.