Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
The Four Degrees of Love
To locate where one’s love currently stands among four ascending degrees — and to aspire, gently, toward a less self-referential, more wholehearted love of God.
Four Degrees of Love: (1) love self for self’s sake; (2) love God for self’s sake (for what God gives); (3) love God for God’s sake (because He is God); (4) love even self only for God’s sake. Honestly locate where your love stands, without shame, then gently aspire toward the next degree. Keynote: “the reason for loving God is God himself, and the measure is to love without measure.” Carry the question into daily life: for whose sake am I loving here?
What it is
This is a contemplative self-examination and aspiration drawn from Bernard’s On Loving God. Bernard maps the soul’s growth as an ascent through four degrees of love, each less self-referential than the last:
- Love of self for self’s sake — we begin loving ourselves, for our own sake.
- Love of God for self’s sake — we come to love God, but chiefly for what God does for us (“man loves God, not for God’s sake, but for his own”).
- Love of God for God’s sake — we love God “on His own account, solely because He is God,” for God’s own goodness rather than for benefits received.
- Love of self for God’s sake — the rare, heavenly degree in which “one loves himself only in God,” self-forgetful, with “nothing of self remaining to hinder.” The practice is to use this ladder as a mirror: honestly locate where your love actually stands right now, then gently aspire toward the next degree. It is not a checklist to complete by force but a contemplative orientation of the heart. Bernard’s keynote frames the whole: “the reason for loving God is God himself, and the measure, is to love without measure.” The practice trains feeling as the engine of the soul (The Inner Creates the Outer), deepens self-knowledge about the true object of one’s love (All Is One), and holds the tension of personal effort answered by grace (The Inner Creates the Outer). (Distinct file note: this differs from, which examines one’s faults to ground humility. Here the object is the quality and direction of one’s love — toward whom, and for whose sake. It also differs from gratitude or affirmation practices: the aim is the gradual purification of love’s motive, not a feeling to generate on demand.)
The Method
Drawn from Bernard’s On Loving God:
- Settle and recall the measure. Begin quietly with Bernard’s keynote: “the reason for loving God is God himself, and the measure is to love without measure.” This sets the horizon — love is not transactional.
- Honestly locate your love. Ask, without flattery: For whose sake do I love? Most of us live mostly in the first two degrees — loving self for self, and loving God largely for what God gives. Name where you actually are.
- Notice the second degree at work. See where you love God (or the good) chiefly for benefit — comfort, help, reward. Acknowledge it honestly; Bernard treats it as a real and necessary stage, not a sin to despise.
- Aspire to the third degree. Turn the heart toward loving God “solely because He is God” — for God’s own goodness, apart from what you receive. Let this be a sincere desire, dwelt on warmly, not a performance.
- Hold the fourth degree lightly. Contemplate the furthest reach — loving even yourself only in and for God, self-forgetful — as a horizon and longing. Bernard says it is scarcely attained in this life; receive it as grace’s gift, not your achievement.
- Return as a daily orientation. Carry the question into ordinary life (“for whose sake am I loving here?”) so the reflection becomes a slow re-tuning of the heart. (Sourcing note: the four degrees and the “measure is to love without measure” keynote are from On Loving God, esp. chs. 1 and 8–15, in standard public-domain English translations; exact wording varies by translator.)
Source & Lineage
On Loving God (De diligendo Deo), written around 1128 at the request of a cardinal, is Bernard’s most systematic treatise on love and the medieval West’s classic account of love as the engine of the soul’s ascent.
Building on Augustine’s theology of love and desire, Bernard traces the soul’s rise from self-love toward selfless union, giving the tradition its enduring four-degree schema. The work shaped later love- and bridal-mysticism, Bonaventure, and Dante (who gives Bernard the final guiding role in the Paradiso). → author id bernard of clairvaux.
Common refinements
Treating it as a ladder to climb by willpower. Bernard sees each degree as drawn upward by love and grace, not achieved by force; the higher degrees are aspired to, not seized.
- Despising the lower degrees. Loving God for what God gives (degree two) is a real and good beginning, not hypocrisy — don’t shame yourself for being there.
- Forcing the fourth degree. Bernard says it is scarcely reached in this life; treating it as a standard breeds spiritual perfectionism.
- Making it abstract. Anchor it in the concrete question, for whose sake am I loving here?, in real situations.