The IVP Formatio line provides the most wide ranging catalogue of spiritual formation books in the market today. I will be doing a series of posts looking at a newer book that I am really excited about: Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion by Richard Foster and Garle Beebe. The goal of the book is to provide a look what they discern to be seven emphases in the spiritual tradition, and take each chapter to highlight one of the major thinkers within that emphasis or stream.

The first stream, what they call "The Right Ordering of Our Love for God," looks to the likes of Origen, Augustine, Bernard and Pascal. Here, I will focus on the Bernard of Clairvaux whose view they summarize as, "The Desire for God and the Ascent of Pure Love." Bernard, in his work, The Steps of Humility and Pride, begins by suggesting three major kinds of contempt (p.35ff.): Our soul deteriorates when there is 1) a loss of love for our neighbor, 2) contempt for one's superiors, and 3) contempt for God (36). Failing to love our neighbor is a failure to love God - and doing so leads to greater and greater contempt, pride and division. Each of these three, and the various steps under each one, is an isolation of the self, where the person seeks to create themselves and to Lord themselves.

In contrast to this, Bernard suggests twelve steps of humility:

1. Love of God
2. Watchfulness against sin
3. Submission to superiors
4. Patience in the face of accusation
5. Honesty in confessing our sins
6. Refraining from taking the initiative to remove our sin
7. Humility in the face of others
8. Refusing to assert any special rights
9. Refraining from speaking unless asked
10. Reluctance to laugh
11. Restrained speech
12. Limited expectations (see p.37)

Each "level" is a finding oneself in others - God and neighbor - with a refusal to assert one's will and individuality. Bernard spells this out more fully in his famous work On Loving God. There, he offers four levels of "ascent" in the Christian life. First, we all, as carnal beings, begin with self love. If we come to believe in Christ, we begin that journey out of our carnality - loving him for our own sake. The authors of the volume state, "The primary motivation is self-preservation, not love of God, but we take this important step when we realize our ultimate destiny" (39). The third stage is that we come to love God for God's sake. We come, as it were, to recognize the light for what it is, that it is truly lovely. Likewise, in the words of the authors, "because God is seen as a center of the universe distinct from ourselves, others are seen as centers of value distinct from ourselves as well" (39). The final stage involves coming to love ourselves in the way we are loved by God. This is not moving back to the second phase, far from it. Our self-preservation is not the motivation, but love itself - God - as he loves us.

Are there any thoughts about Bernard's development (or our authors' development of Bernard)? Any thoughts about this?