On Loving God (Version 2)

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153)

"You want me to tell you why God is to be loved and how much.I answer, the reason for loving God is God Himself; and the measure of love due to Him is immeasurable love. . . ."

Saint Bernard's On Loving God is one of his most delightful, and most widely read, works. It stands in the tradition of the Fathers of the Church, but it carries patristic teaching into the Middle Ages and into the cloister. Its famous affirmation that God is to be loved without limit, sine modo, is taken directly from the letters of Saint Augustine. While the tract is not an example of scholastic theology, it shows a typically twelfth-century love of logic and an unexpectedly precise use of terminology. In reading or listening to this work, it is very important, as with all medieval authors, to take them on their own terms, without superimposing on them categories favored by later generations, even our own. Or especially not our own.(summary from wiki and the reader)

Genre(s): Christianity - Commentary

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 00 Dedication Phil Chenevert
00:02:02
Play 01 Chapter I: Why we should love God and the measure of that love Phil Chenevert
00:03:54
Play 02 Chapter II: On loving God. How much God deserves love from man in recognition of His gifts, both material and spiritual: and how these gifts should be cherished without neglect of the Giver Phil Chenevert
00:10:13
Play 03 Chapter III: What greater incentives Christians have, more than the heathen, to love God Phil Chenevert
00:08:44
Play 04 Chapter IV: Of those who find comfort in the recollection of God, or are fittest for His love Phil Chenevert
00:08:56
Play 05 Chapter V: Of the Christian’s debt of love, how great it is Phil Chenevert
00:06:40
Play 06 Chapter VI: A brief summary Phil Chenevert
00:02:43
Play 07 Chapter VII: Chapter VII: Of love toward God not without reward: and how the hunger of man’s heart cannot be satisfied with earthly things Phil Chenevert
00:14:11
Play 08 Chapter VIII: Of the first degree of love: wherein man loves God for self’s sake Phil Chenevert
00:06:15
Play 09 Chapter IX: Of the second and third degrees of love Phil Chenevert
00:03:48
Play 10 Chapter X: Of the fourth degree of love: wherein man does not even love self save for God’s sake Phil Chenevert
00:07:04
Play 11 Chapter XI: Of the attainment of this perfection of love only at the resurrection Phil Chenevert
00:09:32
Play 12 Chapter XII: Of love: out of a letter to the Carthusians Phil Chenevert
00:05:37
Play 13 Chapter XIII: Of the law of self-will and desire, of slaves and hirelings Phil Chenevert
00:03:28
Play 14 Chapter XIV: Chapter Of the law of the love of sons Phil Chenevert
00:03:50
Play 15 Chapter XV: Of the four degrees of love, and of the blessed state of the heavenly fatherland Phil Chenevert
00:06:13