Reason as Love, Love as Reason

Hugh of Saint Victor connected the two elements of the creation of humanity -- image and likeness -- with two elements of the human person, reason and love. Hugh then proceeds to use the former element to investigate God, the creation, and how the component truths of revelation ought to be understood. He performs this analysis primarily by asking and answering questions about God and man. Bernard of Clairvaux, on the other hand, uses the latter element of the person in his exposition of God. While we discussed this in class, it appeared as those these were equally valuable, merely distinct means of coming to know God better. Yet, if we combine the fact that God created man with two elements reflecting Himself and that knowing God requires the full giving of the self to God, these appear as only parts of a whole. If these are two acceptable ways of knowing God, they should engage both the image and the likeness of God in them. I, however, find it an unacceptable solution to this problem that these two servants of the Church, one even her Doctor, failed to employ their faculties in the pursuit of God. So, what follows is an attempt to understand how they employed the elements of the human reflection of God in their works.

Hugh certainly investigates the nature of God using a question and answer method to better understand the complexities of God and creation. The use of reason is clear: he logically works out the solutions which hold together the meaning of the terms employed. My quest here is to find the place of love in Hugh's work. I find that the best solution to this problem is not to miss the forest for the trees. Analyze how Hugh chooses the questions which he asks: they are not picked merely by interest or by what seems the most important questions; rather, he asks each question in order to better understand the response to the prior question. For example, at the end of Book I, Part VI Chapter III "On the Creation and Origin of the Soul" he conclude and then begins Chapter IV:

"...and thus the body might move according to reason through sense, but reason move through free will according to God.

Chapter VI: On Free Will

Moreover, there are three movements in Man..."

Hugh chooses to address free will so as to understand the soul. If we follow these back to the original questions of each Part, we find that they each concern a characteristic of God or an action of God. For example, Part VI begins "why God made man of body and soul."

Our discussion of fan-fiction in class suggests that these inquiries are the same sort of devotion as the fanatics of Supernatural: he want to know everything about the character and understand his decisions.

The Mellifluous Doctor clearly writes with an outpouring of love for the author of Holy Writ. Yet, the use of reason to delve the questions which that Writ raises is not absent. Consider the passage which typifies Bernard's meekness towards his Lover:

"Note how I do not presume that it is with his mouth I shall be kissed, for that constitutes the unique felicity and singular privilege of the human nature he assumed. No, in the consciousness of my lowliness I ask to be kissed with the kiss of his mouth, an experienced shared by all who are in a position to say: 'indeed from his fullness we have, all of us, received.'"

He does not merely reflect upon or dive into the scene of the scripture (i.e. meditation or contemplation, respectively); rather, he draws joy at the passage, and then reasons through the possibilities regarding the words so that he can better realize the way the great Author approaches him as beloved.

Nicholas Duffee