The Image and Likeness of God in Bernard of Clairvaux's Free Choice and Grace
Reflections both Philosophical and Theological
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As a first task, we need carefully to scrutinize descriptions and quasi-definitions of free will, as we search for Bernard''s formal definition of voluntas/liberum arbitrium.
At the very beginning of the treatise, liberum arbitrium, free choice, is understood in terms of its relation to grace and to salvation. What is liberum arbitrium? It is what is saved, salvatur. Take away liberum arbitrium, and then there is nothing to be saved. Free choice is an “operative principle,” “uno a quo fit.” Free choice is capability, “tantum capax.”
Free choice can receive salvation, “nec capere valet nisi liberum arbitrium.” And only liberum arbitrium can accept salvation, “solidatur libero arbitrio.” Now a refinement is added: without the recipient''s consent (absque consensu) no salvation happens. There follows, then, a splendid statement of Bernard''s thesis.
Consequently, free choice is said to co-operate with operating grace, “gratiæ operanti salutem cooperari,” in its act of consent, or, in other words, in its process of being saved.
In this treatise free choice''s consent is viewed as a vital movement, but simultaneously this movement is said to require an antecedent movement and the intrusion of an outside agent, an operating agent. But why? Because our nature is more corrupted in regard to our appetite for good than in regard to our knowledge of the truth. Without operating grace we are incapable of recognizing (through our practical judgment) the good to be done, and incapable of impelling ourselves to action. But the practical intellect and the free choice are necessarily the counterpart of operative grace. Voluntarius consensus can not be absent if we would “tranquilly submit to a saving God.” The notion of grace in this text stresses its character as a transitory movement, rather than its stability as an abiding form. And while it is sure that God is an extrinsic principle of grace, it is essential that we appreciate Bernard''s conviction that grace find an intrinsic acceptance. In its stable form grace inheres in man, in its transcient expression it engages man''s person and actions.
What exactly is free choice? Like all good definitions, Bernard''s is succinct and positive.
Est enim habitus animi, liber sui.
Voluntary consent is a self-determining habit of the soul.
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About the Book
We are made in the image and likeness of God.
Bernard of Clairvaux, the versatile troubadour of Christian love, is no naive romantic. He understands that a series of moral changes must precede any exercise of this love. For him, the seat of love is the faculty of the human will (the Image). On the other hand, the uninhibited action of free choice (the Likeness) constitutes the perfection of the faculty. The Image, because of sin and consequent misery, has lost its Likeness to God. Only divine intervention, through the efficacy of grace, can restore Likeness and cleanse the blemished Image.
The text is not a polemic, but rather and apologia rooted in Bernard''s personal experience. The ardour of love springs from a flourishing freedom, the direct result of a double cause: divine grace and the restored union of Image and Likeness. Without free choice there is nothing to be saved; while without grace there is no salvation.
About the Author
Luke Anderson, a Cistercian monk and Catholic priest, is the Prior of St. Mary’s Monastery, in New Ringgold, PA.
He earned a Th.M. from Princeton Theological, and a Ph.D. from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in