Divine Grace and Human Responsibility in Bernard of Clairvaux
Philip Schaff described Bernard of Clairvaux as the “the model monk of the Middle Ages, the most imposing figure of his time, and one of the best men of all the Christian centuries” [1]. Yet many know very little of this important saint.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was born into a wealthy family in northern France. Throughout his life, he was a monk, mystic, and theologian. Within a few centuries, he was the most oft-quoted author among the Reformers (barring Augustine), especially by Luther and Calvin [2]. Today, he is perhaps best remembered for the hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” [3].
However, he also authored a significant treatise entitled On Grace and Free Choice, in which he considers the interplay between divine grace and human responsibility in redemption. It is this work that I will explore throughout this essay. The threefold paradigm from which Bernard considers divine grace and human responsibility is creation, reformation, and consummation [4].
Creation and Freedom
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” states Genesis 1:26. Yet what does Scripture mean by God’s image and likeness? And what does it mean for mankind to be made in them? In response to such questions, Bernard suggests that mankind possessed three distinct freedoms in their wills before the Fall: (1) free choice, (2) free counsel, and (3) free pleasure. In presenting them, he distinguishes between God’s image and God’s likeness, suggesting that free choice is derived from God’s image, and free counsel and pleasure from God’s likeness.
Accordingly, Bernard interprets the phrase, “let Us make man in Our image,” as referring to free choice. Free choice refers to mankind’s ability to will—what he refers to as a “self-determining habit of the soul.” Because this freedom belongs to human nature, all persons possess it, before and after the Fall. And to deny someone’s free choice is to deny his humanity.
Similarly, the phrase, “let Us make man…according to Our likeness,” refers to free counsel and free pleasure. Free counsel refers to mankind’s ability not to sin, or simply freedom from sin. In it, mankind possessed “full wisdom,” in which “sin d[id] not so reign”—as Bernard puts it [5]. Free pleasure refers to mankind’s ability not to experience sorrow or suffering. In this freedom, mankind possessed “full happiness” and “full power.”
Hence, before the Fall, mankind possessed “full judgment” in their free choice, having abilities neither to sin, nor to experience suffering. However, mankind forfeited these two freedoms in the Fall.
Enter Sin, Redemption, and the Incarnation
How did the Fall affect each of these freedoms? Mankind has retained free choice, belonging to the righteous and the unrighteous. Bernard writes, “[It] alone suffers not lessening or falling away,” because it is “imprinted [with] some substantial image of the eternal and immutable deity” [6]. However, mankind has forfeited free counsel and free pleasure. And, as a result, mankind can neither escape sin nor suffering. True wisdom (cf. Eccl. 9:10), and true happiness and power (cf. Mt. 22:13), have altogether disappeared. Therefore, having lost free counsel and pleasure, free choice is captive to sin and suffering. And it on its own cannot will or accomplish the good.
Since mankind by their free choice has discontinued free counsel and free pleasure, God seeks to redeem the willing and restore to them these freedoms—what Bernard refers to as reformation or reconciliation. The concept of reformation is particularly important: God seeks to reform that which Adam deformed in conformity to the original form. Redemption is therefore ultimately a perfect reformation of mankind to God’s image and likeness. And the means through which God accomplishes this is Jesus Christ, who Himself is the very form of God (cf. Phil. 2:6). In Bernard’s words: “[W]e are re-formed in innocence, a new creature in Christ” [7]. For Bernard, this reformation refers the entire breadth of redemption, salvation and sanctification.
Yet how precisely does this reformation occur? What is the interplay between divine grace and human responsibility? Such questions are the very reason for which Bernard wrote On Grace and Free Choice in the first place. And he presents his answer in three steps: thinking, willing, and accomplishing. Daniel Akin describes this as “a masterful and intricate tapestry of the relationship between grace and free choice” [8].
Thinking, Willing, and Accomplishing: Bernard’s Answer to the “Divine Sovereignty-Human Responsibility” Question
Thinking refers to the “beginning of salvation” in which God gives to mankind prevenient and saving grace through Jesus Christ and draws a depraved people unto Himself. God alone acts as the single mover in this step. John Sommerfeldt writes concerning this point, “The source of this restoration is God’s free gift of himself, which is grace” [9]. Therefore, mankind’s involvement is altogether absent, since he wills only the bad—his free choice being captive to sin and suffering [10]. In this, Akin suggests that Bernard believes in “total depravity” [11]. However, in this, “God’s grace,” according to G. R. Evans, “does not take away [persons’] freedom; it merely helps move it in the right direction” [12].
Willing, the second step, refers to the “consent” that God gives to mankind. In this, he may choose by free choice whether to consent to God’s grace, finding deliverance from sin, suffering, and death (Rom. 8:21; Jn. 8:36). And whereas thinking includes divine grace only, willing includes both divine grace and human responsibility. First, redemption includes human responsibility for at least two reasons: (a) free choice factors into God’s redemption of the willing, because it comprises human nature and still remains even after the Fall; and (b) since deformation began in the will, so reformation must also begin in the will.
Second, redemption also includes divine grace. Bernard does not believe that human responsibility operates independently from God’s grace, but that they work in tandem. Sommerfeldt writes emphatically: “Bernard is no Pelagian or semi-Pelagian. The will responds to God as a direct result of God’s gift of himself in Christ by the Spirit” [13]. God’s grace does not compel, but makes plain to reason how the will ought to respond [14].
Therefore, to the unwilling, God withholds His saving grace, being necessary for mankind to will the good in his free choice. As a result, they are justly condemned for their disregard of God’s grace. God will not save the unwilling, since they retain their free choice—it being tied to their nature. Otherwise, He’d be saving some creature that is less than human. However, the willing are saved by God’s grace, who, being predestined, choose by their free choice to accept God’s saving grace. And as a result, they are mercifully saved, by exercising their free choice and accepting God’s free grace.
So, in salvation, what is the relationship between divine grace and human responsibility? Bernard does not believe that the answer lies in an “either/or” scenario, but in a “both/and” scenario, wherein each part does the whole work. Bernard writes, “[W]hereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace…Not singly but jointly; not by turns, but simultaneously” [15].
Finally, accomplishing refers to the “merit” or “work” that is evidence of faith (cf. Jas. 2). However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Bernard does not locate this step in human responsibility. The willing neither “earn” their way to heaven by their works, nor do they do anything in salvation in which they may boast or glory. Instead, by locating this step in God’s grace, merits are God’s gift, which descend from above. [16]. A. N. S. Lane writes, “Bernard warns against relying on one’s own merit…Not that we can boast of our merit as if it were our own achievement. Our merits are God’s gifts; they are the fruit of God’s grace” [17].
Having considered creation and redemption, Bernard proposes the third component of his paradigm: consummation.
From Redemption to Consummation
Consummation is the climax of redemption in which God in His grace restores to the willing those freedoms they lost in the Fall. First, at redemption’s consummation, Christ will restore “true wisdom” to the redeemed, and therefore freedom from sin. These will possess perfection in righteousness. Second, as the power of God, Christ will renew “true power” to the redeemed, and therefore freedom from suffering. These will possess completion in happiness (cf. Rom. 8:21).
When do the redeemed realize these restored freedoms? To an extent, they realize them presently. Bernard writes, “By a fault [sin] we lost them [both]; by grace, we recovered them; and daily, each in varying degrees, either advance in them or fall away” [18]. However, Bernard also recognizes the reality of sin and suffering in this life and concludes that the redeemed will realize these freedoms fully in glory [19]. Then, mankind will exist in a greater state than that in which he was created pre-Fall [20]. In Bernard’s words,
[W]e are raised up to glory, a perfect creature in the Spirit…[W]e shall possess [all three freedoms] when, by God’s mercy, we shall obtain what we pray for [Mt. 6:20]. This shall come to pass when that which appears…shall be in the elect of the human race also…secure from sin and safe from sorrow [21].
Conclusion
While many of his teachings reflect an Augustinian understanding of soteriology, as a twelfth-century man, Bernard also anticipates contemporary evangelicalism [22]. He works from a creation-reformation-consummation paradigm. In explaining redemption, he simultaneously emphasizes divine grace and human responsibility, giving each its proper emphasis and not forfeiting either’s biblical integrity. Indeed, Bernard’s significance is great and warrants more contemporary attention.
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[1] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume V: The Middle Ages (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1907), 343.
[2] For example, M. B. Pranger writes, “Bernard is known to have enjoyed an immense popularity with the Reformers, especially with Luther and Calvin” (M. B. Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought: Broken Dreams [New York: E.J. Brill, 1994], 23).
[3] The hymn is traditionally attributed to Bernard, though some scholars suggest that poet Arnulf of Louvain (c. 1200-1250) actually composed it.
[4] Bernard suggests the same paradigm in his Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, LTR 3, 68.1, except he uses different terms: creation, reconciliation, and confirmation.
[5] Bernard, On Grace and Free Choice (Collegeville: Cistercian Publications, 1989), 68.
[6] Bernard, 84.
[7] Bernard, 62-63. He writes further, “That very form came, therefore, to which free choice was to be conformed, because, in order that it might regain its original form, it had to be reformed from that out of which it had been formed” (Bernard, 89; cf. John R. Sommerfeldt, The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux [Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991], 28).
[8] Daniel Lowell Akin, “Bernard of Clairvaux: Evangelical of the Twelfth century (A Critical Analysis of His Soteriology) (Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, 1989), 21-22. He writes also that the book’s “purpose…is to discuss and reconcile in some measure the difficult question of the relationship between God’s grace and man’s free choice” (20).
[9] Sommerfeldt, 27. Similarly, Akin notes, “Bernard points out that it is grace that enables him to even desire to do right” (Akin, 20).
[10] Bernard writes that mankind wills only the bad so “long as it is unaccompanied or imperfectly accompanied by the two remaining freedoms” (72).
[11] Akin, 55.
[12] G. R. Evans, Bernard of Clairvaux (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 90.
[13] Sommerfeldt, 28-29; cf. Bernard, 10, 35.
[14] Evans, 89; Bernard, 4.9.
[15] Bernard, 106. Christians should not have difficulty with a paradox such as this, since Christianity contains several paradoxes of faith. Other examples include the concept of Trinity (how can God be three and one simultaneously?) and the hypostatic union of Christ (how can Jesus be 100% divine and 100% human simultaneously?).
[16] Bernard, 101. He writes further that they are “our own here and now by possession” (101). In contrast to “merit,” Bernard also describes “rewards,” which refers to those gracious promises and we “await their recompense as our due” (101).
[17] A.N.S. Lane, “Forerunner of John Calvin?,” Bernardus Magistes: Papers Presented at the Nonacentenary Celebration of the Birth of Saint Bernard of Clairvaus, Kalamazoo, Michigan (Spencer: Cistercian Publications, 1992), 538-39. Akin writes similarly, “Bernard dismisses any notion of merit arising from ourselves unaided by God’s grace” (Akin, 21).
[18] Bernard, 84. Additionally, he writes, that some may participate in “happiness” by “being caught up in the Spirit through excess of contemplation…sweetness of heavenly bliss [though] rarely [and] fleetingly…only in part, in very small part, and on the rarest occasions” (71).
[19] For example, Bernard writes, “[W]hen freedom of counsel shall have been fully achieved, the judgment’s shackles shall also fall away” (68).
[20] To better understand this statement, readers should note that Bernard distinguishes between two degrees under the two freedoms derived from God’s likeness: free counsel and free pleasure. Pre-fall man possessed only the lower degrees of each freedom. Therefore, pre-fall man possessed “lower counsel,” or the ability not to sin, and “lower pleasure,” or the ability not to suffer.
Post-consummation man, however, will possess the higher degrees of each freedom. Therefore, post-consummation man will possess “higher counsel,” or the inability to sin, and “higher pleasure,” or the inability to suffer (cf. Rom. 6:20, 22; 8:3).
Augustine makes the same distinction in Of Correction and Grace 12:33.
[21] Bernard, 62-63, 67.
[22] Akin, 53.
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