tor of eternal values.

The foremost of the precursors of Eckhart was Bernard of Clairvaux
(1091-1153). He was the exponent of the love of God which he placed
above knowledge; in one of his letters he calls love "the existence of
God Himself," basing his definition on the passage in the Gospel of St.
John, "God is Love." "Love is the eternal law which created and
preserves the universe; the whole world is governed by love; but
although love is the law to which all creation is subject, it is not
itself without law, but it is a law unto itself. Serfs and mercenaries
are ruled by laws which are not from God, but which they made
themselves; some because they do not love God, others because they love
the things of this world better than God.... They made their own laws
and subordinated the universal and eternal laws to their own will. But
those (who live righteously) are in the world as God is: neither serfs
nor mercenaries, but the children of God and, like God Himself, they
live only by the law of love." "His greatest happiness is complete
absorption in the vision of the divine and forgetfulness of self." "All
love is an emanation of that one love. It is the eternally creative and
governing law of the universe." "To be penetrated by such emotion is to
become deified. As a drop of water in a cup of wine is completely
dissolved and takes the taste and colour of the wine, so also, in an
indescribable manner, is the human will absorbed in the divine will, and
transformed into the will of God. For how could God become all in all if
anything human were left in man?" "They are completely immersed (the
martyrs) in the infinite ocean of eternal light, in radiant
eternity...." The entranced soul "shall lose all knowledge of itself
and become completely absorbed in God; it shall become unlike itself in
the measure as it has received the gift of becoming divine." Sensuous
metaphors from the Song of Songs and the Psalms are again and again
intermingled with these lofty thoughts. But in spite of his divine
emotion, in spite of his anticipations of the German mystics, Bernard
took the standpoint of ecclesiastical orthodoxy whenever he was not in
the ecstatic state; his contemplative mind was unable to grasp the
importance of independent thought, a fact amply proved by his inglorious
quarrel with Abelard, the greatest thinker of his time. This quarrel was
a typical illustration of the difference between the believer and the
thinker. Berna