The Work
On Loving God (De diligendo Deo) was written by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) as a long letter to the chancellor of Pope Innocent II, Cardinal Aimeric, who had asked Bernard to write on the topic. The treatise occupies a central place in Bernard's corpus and in the history of Christian mysticism: it articulates his characteristic vision of the spiritual life as a gradual transformation of love, from self-love through love of God for self's sake to love of God for God's sake - and, in the treatise's most audacious claim, finally to love of self only for God's sake.
Bernard is the greatest contemplative theologian of the twelfth century and one of the most influential spiritual writers of all time. His Sermons on the Song of Songs - eighty-six sermons that never reached the end of the Song of Songs before Bernard's death - established the allegorical reading of the Song (the beloved as the soul, the Bridegroom as Christ) as the dominant tradition in Western mysticism. On Loving God is the most systematic presentation of his vision of the soul's ascent to union with God through love.
Biblical Engagement
1 John 4:19 - 'We love him, because he first loved us' - is the verse that grounds Bernard's answer to the question 'Why should God be loved?' His answer is: because he first loved us, supremely, in the Incarnation and the Cross. Before the soul can aspire to the fourth degree of love - loving oneself only for God's sake - it must first be captured by the prior love of God: the initiative is always divine. Bernard's mysticism is not a technique of ascent by human effort but a response to divine condescension.
Song of Songs 1:2 - 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine' - is the verse Bernard takes as the starting point of his Sermons on the Song of Songs and the text that underlies On Loving God. The Song of Songs, for Bernard, is the supreme scriptural expression of the soul's desire for God: not the abstract desire of the philosopher for the unmoved mover, but the erotic desire of the beloved for the Bridegroom. The body language of the Song - kisses, embraces, seeking and finding - articulates the soul's experience of divine love more accurately than any theological abstraction.
Romans 5:5 - 'And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us' - is the Pauline foundation for Bernard's conviction that the love he describes is not a human achievement but a divine gift. The love of God is 'shed abroad' in the heart by the Spirit - poured in from outside, not generated from within. Bernard's mysticism is pneumatological as well as christological: the ascent to union with God is accomplished by the Holy Spirit dwelling in and transforming the soul.
Matthew 22:37 - 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind' - is the great commandment that defines the fourth degree of love for Bernard: 'loving self for God's sake.' The 'all' of the commandment - all heart, all soul, all mind - requires the complete reorientation of the self so that even self-love is ordered toward God. This is the state Bernard identifies as the mystical union - not the annihilation of self but the transformation of all self-directed love into love directed toward God.
The Four Degrees of Love
Bernard's most celebrated contribution to mystical theology is his account of the four degrees of love, which provides the structural framework of On Loving God:
1. Loving self for self's sake: the natural starting point, the love of the unredeemed self. 2. Loving God for self's sake: the beginning of spiritual development, when one turns to God for what he gives. 3. Loving God for God's sake: the heart of Christian maturity, when God is loved for himself rather than for his gifts. 4. Loving self for God's sake: the rare mystical summit, when the soul loves itself only insofar as it belongs to God and exists for God's glory.
Bernard acknowledges that the fourth degree is rarely attained in this life and is experienced only fleetingly - a glimpse of the beatitude that awaits the resurrection.
Author and Context
Bernard of Clairvaux was born near Dijon, Burgundy, entered the Cistercian monastery of Cîteaux in 1112, and founded the abbey of Clairvaux in 1115, where he remained abbot until his death. He was the most influential ecclesiastical figure of his century: he preached the Second Crusade (1146-1147), combated the theology of Peter Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, advised popes, and shaped the Cistercian reform that spread from Cîteaux across Europe. His public career might seem at odds with his mystical vocation, but Bernard understood his activism as an expression of the love he describes: the soul transformed by love of God is unable to remain passive before the needs of the Church.
His Cistercian context is important: the Cistercian reform was a movement of simplicity and interiority against the elaborate liturgical and architectural grandeur of Cluniac monasticism. Bernard's mysticism is correspondingly interior and affective - concerned with the transformation of the soul's love rather than with elaborate devotional programs.
Reception and Legacy
On Loving God was widely copied and read throughout the medieval period. It was one of the texts that shaped the affective mystical tradition represented by the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, and Richard of St. Victor. Dante placed Bernard in the highest sphere of Paradise as his final guide - the theologian of love who can speak of the beatific vision. Thomas Merton's engagement with Bernard was a significant element of his own Cistercian formation. The treatise remains one of the most luminous accounts of the soul's journey into divine love in the Christian tradition.