Thought for the day

from first things blog:

I’ve tried to follow St. Bernard by encouraging theologians to return to biblical commentary—for example, the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series.

But as I’ve thought more about St. Bernard and Abelard, I can see that perhaps I haven’t really understood the deeper issue, which is the relation of spiritual discipline to intellectual discipline. Reading St. Bernard, one can see that his deepest commitment is to the priority of spiritual discipline. Our love, for St. Bernard (following St. Augustine) is our weight, our center of gravity. And our love is not formed, shaped, and guided by syllogisms—at least not reliably, not consistently.

There is, I think, a larger truth here. The wise are not always clever, nor are the clever always wise. Wisdom has to do with a feel for life—its fragility, its possibilities, its integrity. This is especially true for theological wisdom, which concerns God, a fullness of truth at once far more alien than what is known by natural wisdom, and at the same time far more searching, more personal, and more penetrating. To receive divine truth the soul must be carefully cultivated with instruments of prayer and spiritual discipline that are more powerful than the intellectual tools of analysis and argument.