On Loving God (Version 2)


Read by Phil Chenevert

(4.8 stars; 22 reviews)

"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) (1 hr 43 min)

Chapters

Dedication 2:02 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter I: Why we should love God and the measure of that love 3:54 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter II: On loving God. How much God deserves love from man in recognition … 10:13 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter III: What greater incentives Christians have, more than the heathen, t… 8:44 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter IV: Of those who find comfort in the recollection of God, or are fitte… 8:56 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter V: Of the Christian’s debt of love, how great it is 6:40 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter VI: A brief summary 2:43 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter VII: Chapter VII: Of love toward God not without reward: and how the … 14:11 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter VIII: Of the first degree of love: wherein man loves God for self’s sa… 6:15 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter IX: Of the second and third degrees of love 3:48 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter X: Of the fourth degree of love: wherein man does not even love self s… 7:04 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter XI: Of the attainment of this perfection of love only at the resurrect… 9:32 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter XII: Of love: out of a letter to the Carthusians 5:37 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter XIII: Of the law of self-will and desire, of slaves and hirelings 3:28 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter XIV: Chapter Of the law of the love of sons 3:50 Read by Phil Chenevert
Chapter XV: Of the four degrees of love, and of the blessed state of the heave… 6:13 Read by Phil Chenevert