Pater Bernhardus

de Franz Posset

Bernard of Clairvaux (1153) is known as the last of the Fathers' because he taught and preached in continuity with the patristic tradition, in marked contrast to the scholastic style of doing theology which developed in the late twelfth and thirteenth century. Martin Luther (1546), trained in the monastery, also taught and preached within the tradition of biblical, patristic, and monastic theology, and was thus in discontinuity with much of the scholastic tradition which by his day dominated theological study. Luther had no problem in searching for theological insights in Bernard's work, which were readily accessible in the library of the Erfurt Augustinians. As the dust of centuries of polemic is swept away in this study, readers become aware of the striking similarities between the doctrine of the sixteenth-century Reformer and that of the twelfth-century Cistercian whom Luther respectfully called 'Father Bernard.'