Abstract
Summary In this article Bernard of Clairvaux, well-known as a mystic, is tried as a systematic theologian on one complex theme. In his search for a sound spirituality and its prerequisites his analysis of freedom and grace, especially in the expositions of De gratia et libero arbitrio and of the Sermones super canticum (80–85), displays an almost scholastic clarity. In man's mind or psyche Bernard distinguishes two fundamental levels which may be called its essential respectively accidental nature (which he, in a traditional way, calls ‘imago’ and ‘similitudo’). The potency of free consent, the ‘liberum arbitrium’, is always there, thanks to God's creating grace; but free counsel and free pleasure (‘liberum consilium et complacitum’) depend on the interaction of free consent and grace, in which the former plays the main role. Bernard delicately distinguishes the inner structure of free will in which usually both things are contracted—on the one hand self-movement of the will and choice and on the other ha...
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