The Human Person as Relatio:

The Icon of the Holy Trinity in St Bonaventure

Krzysztof Kukulka, M.A.

Director of Studies: Dr. Johannes Hoff

Second Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Herbst

This research was undertaken under the auspices of the

University of Wales: Trinity Saint David
and submitted in partial fulfilment for the award of degree of Ph. D.
in the school of Theology of the
University of Wales.

June 2012

1
ABSTRACT:

The contemporary concept of the human person as a self-determining subject or an

atomistic and mechanistic individual with unlimited freedom leads to the dehumanisation
of the person. However, a proper understanding of relationship in the Trinity reveals
persons in their interactive nature, their interdependence and life in communion with and
for others. My research is based St Bonaventure’s use of the term “person” in reference to
the Trinity to allude to divine relations rather than to substance, and also to the human
person as distinguished from other subjects by the ability to “be” or “exist” in a
relationship. Since Bonaventure never expounded a theory of the human person as such,
my research required an analysis of his writings about the Persons of the Trinity, the
human nature of Jesus Christ and the personal nature of angels. My research reveals that
Bonaventure added the “property of dignity” to the traditional concept of the person. The
human person is ordered to achieve the greatest dignity through relation to God and to
others in the same way that the triune God is related to all creatures. Bonaventure’s
teaching about the human person conforms to contemporary Christian anthropology and
offers an antidote to the ills of an increasingly individualistic and fragmented society by
providing a basis for a fulfilling life lived in communion with others.

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 Table of Contents
Abbreviations.............................................................................................................6
Introduction..............................................................................................................12
Introductory Chapter: Towards an ontology of personhood during ancient times...17
1. 1. The Graeco-Roman sense of the individual human being................................23
1. 1. 1. The concept of the human soul.....................................................................23
1. 1. 2. Ancient Greeks and the concept of πρόσωπον (prosópon)..........................32
1. 1. 3. Ancient Romans and the concept of persona...............................................33
1. 1. 4. Understanding oύσία (ousia)........................................................................35
1. 1. 5. Understanding ύποστασις (hypostasis).........................................................36
2. On Being a Person: Toward an Ontology of Personhood in the Bible and in
Patristic Exegesis......................................................................................................38
2. 1. The Hebrew concept of the person...................................................................38
2. 2. Septuagint and Jewish Usage of prosópon.......................................................39
2. 3. Anthropology in New Testament.....................................................................42
2. 3. 1. Πρόσωπον (prosópon ).................................................................................42
2. 3. 2. Psyche – soul................................................................................................43
2. 3. 2. 1. Soul in the Synoptic Gospels....................................................................43
2. 3. 2. 2. Soul in the Pauline Corpus.......................................................................44
2. 3. 3. Sarks (sarx) – flesh and sōma – body...........................................................46
2. 3. 4. Pneuma – spirit.............................................................................................48
2. 3. 5. Nous – mind..................................................................................................48
2. 4. Hellenism and the New Testament...................................................................49
2. 5. Person in theology in the time after the First Oecumenical Council................50
2. 6. Personal ontology in God in the Cappadocians................................................57
2. 7. Relationality in Augustine’s approach to man and the Godhead.....................60
3. The concept of person in the Middle Ages ..........................................................70
3. 1. Boethius and the classical definition of the person..........................................70
3. 2. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite....................................................................76
3. 3. Richard of Saint-Victor....................................................................................80
4. Bonaventure’s concept of unity and differentiation of the human person...........87
4. 1. Introduction......................................................................................................87
4. 2. Man as a composite and simple being..............................................................88
4. 3. Bonaventure in the context of 13th-century Aristotlelianism............................93
4. 4. Explanations of the substantial and formal pluralism in man..........................98

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4. 4. 1. The position of St Thomas Aquinas...........................................................100
4. 4. 2. The position of St Bonaventure..................................................................104
4. 4. 2. 1. Matter and the form of the soul..............................................................107
4. 4. 2. 2. The principle of individuation ...............................................................111
4. 4. 2. 3. Materia prima and secunda, rationes seminales...................................114
4. 5. The substance of the human body..................................................................116
4. 6. Bonaventure’s teaching about the rational soul..............................................118
4. 6. 1. The orientation the soul toward the body: the soul as the act of being and
life...........................................................................................................................125
4. 6. 2. The orientation of the body toward the soul..............................................129
4. 6. 3. The interdependence of the soul and the body...........................................137
4. 7. The Universe as Divine Self-Expression of the Trinity.................................142
4. 7. 1. Creation in the light of St Francis’s spirituality ........................................153
4. 7. 2. Christocentrism and creation......................................................................162
4. 8. Vestige............................................................................................................175
4. 9. The anima rationalis as an image of the Triune God.....................................178
4. 9. 1. The intellective powers of the soul — memory.........................................189
4. 9. 2. The cognitive faculty..................................................................................191
4. 9. 2. 1. Ratio........................................................................................................191
4. 9. 2. 2. Intellectus................................................................................................193
4. 9. 2. 2. 1. The agent and possible intellect..........................................................193
4. 9. 2. 2. 2. Christ as exemplar and source of knowledge.....................................193
4. 9. 2. 2. 3. Illumination........................................................................................195
4. 9. 2. 2. 4. Rationes aeternae...............................................................................200
4. 9. 2. 2. 5. Contuition...........................................................................................205
4. 9. 2. 3. Intelligentia.............................................................................................208
4. 9. 3. The affective powers of the soul ................................................................210
4. 9. 3. 1. Synderesis...............................................................................................211
4. 9. 3. 2. Free will..................................................................................................216
4. 10. The soul as similitude...................................................................................218
5. Trinitology and divine “relationes”....................................................................222
5. 1. The Trinity: necessity and congruity..............................................................223
5. 2. The two modes of emanation..........................................................................224
5. 3. The Trinitarian God as Persons in Communion.............................................226
5. 4. Bonaventure and the concept of bonum est diffusivum sui.............................230
5. 5. God’s relations to creation and man...............................................................235

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5. 6. The Trinity as the foundation of relationality in Bonaventure.......................239
6. The human person as relational being................................................................243
6. 1. “Relatio” in the Trinity and in the concept of the human person...................243
6. 2. Forma humanitatis and the hypostatic union in the person of Verbum
Incarnatum.............................................................................................................245
6. 3. Implications of Bonaventure’s definition of the human person.....................248
6. 4. Personal discretion and human dignity..........................................................253
6. 5. Man’s relation to creation...............................................................................256
6. 6. Relations to other human persons...................................................................262
6. 7. Relations in the community of the Church.....................................................269
6. 8. Man’s relations to angels................................................................................275
6. 9. The inter-relations of God and Man...............................................................280
Conclusion..............................................................................................................284
Selected Bibliography.............................................................................................295

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 Abbreviations

Writings of St Bonaventure in Latin

Apol. paup. Apologia pauperum contra calumniatorem (VIII, 233–330)

Brev. Breviloquium (V, 199–291)
Christus mag. Christus unus omnium magister (V, 567–574)
Coll. In. Collationes in Evangelium Ioannis (VI, 533–634)
Comm. Eccl. Commentarius in librum Ecclesiasten (VI, 1–103)
Comm. Ioan. Commentarius in Evangelium Ioannis (VI, 239–532)
Comm. Luc. Commentarius in Evangelium Lucae (VII, 1–604)
Comm. Sap. Commentarius in librum Sapientiae (VI, 107–233)
Corp. Chr. De sanctissimo corpore Christi (V, 553–566)
Decem praec. Collationes de decem praeceptis (V, 507–532)
De donis Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti (V, 457–503)
Hex. Collationes in Hexaëmeron (V, 327–454)
Itin. Itinerarium mentis in Deum (V, 293–316)
Lign. vitae Lignum vitae (VIII, 68–87)
Myst. Trin. Questiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (V, 45–115)
Perf. ev. Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica (V, 117–198)
Perf. vitae De perfectione vitae ad sorores (VIII, 107–127)
Praep. miss. Tractatus de praeparatione ad missam (VIII, 99–106)
Red. art. De reductione artium ad theologiam (V, 319–325)
Reg. animae De regimine animae (VIII, 128–130)
Regno Dei De Regno Dei (V, 539–553)
Reg. nov. Regula novitiorum (VIII, 475–490)
Scien. Chr. Questiones disputatae de scientia Christi (V, 3–43)
Serm. dom. Sermones dominicales (IX, 23–461)
Serm. sanctis Sermones de sanctis (IX, 463–631)
Serm. Virg. Sermones de beata Virgine Maria (IX, 633–721)
Solil. Soliloquium (VIII, 28–67)
I Sent. Commentaria in I librum Sententiarum (I, 1–861)
II Sent. Commentaria in II librum Sententiarum (II, 1–1016)
III Sent. Commentaria in III librum Sententiarum (III, 1–896)
IV Sent. Commentaria in IV librum Sententiarum (IV, 1–1054)
Testim. Trin. De triplici testimonio sanctissimae Trinitatis (V, 535–538)

6
Tripl. via De triplici via (VIII, 3–27)
Vit. myst. Vitis mystica sive Tractatus de passione Domini (VIII, 159–189)
XXV Mem. Epistola de XXV Memorialibus (VIII, 491–492)

Writings of St Bonaventure in English Translation

BB Breviloquium by St. Bonaventure, trans. Erwin Esser Nemmers (London: B.

Herder, 1946)

BJTF Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, the Life of St.
Francis, trans. and intro. Ewert Cousins (SPCK: London, 1978)

BMGW Bonaventure: Mystic of God’s Word, trans. Timothy Johnson (NY:

New City Press, 1999)

FA:ED Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. II, The Founder. Ed. Regis
Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, William Short (NY: New City Press, 1999–2001).

Hex. (Delorme) S. Bonaventurae Collationes in hexaëmeron et Bonaventuriana

quaedam selecta, Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, vol. 7, trans. Ferdinand
Marie Delorme (Quaracchi 1934)

SFA The Disciple and the Master. St. Bonaventure’s Sermons on St. Francis of
Assisi, trans., ed. and intro., Eric Doyle (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983).

TWB, I The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, Mystical
Opuscula, vol. I, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960)

TWB, II The Works of Bonaventure Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, The
Breviloquium, vol. II, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963)

TWB, III The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, Opuscula,
vol. III, Second Series, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1966)

TWB, V The Works of Bonaventure Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, vol. V:
Collationes on the Six Days, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press,
1970)

WSB, I-EH Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. I: On the Reduction of the Arts to
Theology, trans., intro. and commentary Emma Therese Healy (St. Bonaventure NY:
Franciscan Institute, 1955)

WSB, I-ZH Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. I: On the Reduction of the Arts to
Theology, trans., intro. and commentary Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan
Institute, 1996)

WMM What Manner of Man? Sermons on Christ by St. Bonaventure, trans.

Zachary Hayes (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974)

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WSB, II-H Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. II: Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, trans.
Zachary Hayes; intro. and commentary Philotheus Boehner (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 2002)

WSB, II-B Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. II: Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, intro.,
trans. Philotheus Boehner (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1956)

WSB, III Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. III: Disputed Questions on the Mystery of
the Trinity, intro. and trans. Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute
1979)

WSB, IV Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. IV: Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of
Christ, intro., trans. and notes Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute,
2005)

WSB, V Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. V: Writings Concerning the Franciscan

Order, intro. and trans. Dominic Monti (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994)

WSB, VI Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. VI: Collations on the Ten Commandments,
intro. and trans. Paul J. Spaeth, (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1995),

WSB, VII Works of St. Bonaventure vol. VII: Commentary on Ecclesiastes, trans. and
ed. Robert Karris and Campion Murray (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005)

WSB, IX Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. IX: Breviloquium, intro., trans. and notes
Dominic Monti (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005)

WSB, X Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. X: Writings on the Spiritual Life, intro. and
notes F. Edward Coughlin, trans. Girard Etzkorn, Robert J. Karris, Oleg Bychkov (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2006)

WSB, XI Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XI: Commentary on the Gospel of John,
intro. trans. and notes Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2007)

WSB, XII Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XII: The Sunday Sermons of St. Bonaventure,
intro., trans. and notes Timothy J. Johnson (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute,
2008)

WSB, XIII Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XIII: Disputed Questions on Evangelical
Perfection, intro. and notes Robert J. Karris; trans. Thomas Reist and Robert J. Karris (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2008)

WSB, XIV Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. XIV: Collations on the Seven Gifts of the
Holy Spirit, intro. and trans. Zachary Hayes, notes Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 2008)

WSB, XV Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. XV: Defense of the Mendicants, intro. and
notes, Robert J. Karris; trans. José de Vinck and Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 2010)

Periodicals and other Serial Publications

AmCathPhilQ American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (Philadelphia 1990–)

8
AnalTOR Analecta Tertii Ordinis Regularis (Rome 1933–)
AnGr Analecta Gregoriana (1930–)
Ant Antonianum (Rome 1926–)
Cd Cord (St. Bonaventure, NY 1950–)
CF Collectanea Franciscana (Rome 1931–)
DS Doctor Seraphicus (Bagnoregio 1954–)
ÉF Études Franiciscaines (Paris 1899–1976)
ETL Ephemeridies Theologicae Lovanienses (Louvain 1924–)
FF La France Franciscaine (Lille 1912–1939)
FKS Franziskanische Studien (Werl/Westfalen 1914–1995)
FSt Franciscan Studies, first series (NY 1923–1940)
FS Franciscan Studies (St. Bonaventure, NY 1941–)
GR Greyfriars Review (St. Bonaventure, NY 1987–)
HeyJ Heythrop Journal (1960–)
IThQ Irish Theological Quarterly (Maynooth 1959–)
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas (Philadelphia 1940–)
JR The Journal of Religion (1921–)
JTS The Journal of Theological Studies (1889–)
ModSch The Modern Schoolman (1925–)
ModTheol Modern Theology (1984–)
MS Medieval Studies (Toronto 1939–)
MF Miscellanea Francescana (Rome 1886–)
MedPhilTheol Medieval Philosophy and Theology (Notre Dame/Cambridge 1991–)
NOAB New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (1977)
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (Grand
Rapids 1979)
PG Patrologiae cursus completus series graeca (Paris 1857–1866)
PL Patrologiae cursus completus series latina (Paris 1844–1864)
PACPA Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Assn
(Philadelphia 1926–)
RevMet The Review of Metaphysics (1948–)
SB, II S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, vol. II (Rome/Grottaferrata: Collegio S.
Bonaventura 1973)
SB, III, IV S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, vols III, IV (Rome/Grottaferrata:
Collegio S. Bonaventura 1974)

9
SBM, I, II, III San Bonaventura Maestro di Vita Francescana e di Sapienza
Christiana, vols I, II, III (Rome: Pontificia Facoltà Teologica San
Bonaventura 1976)
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology (Cambridge 1948–)
SF Studi Francescani (Florence 1914–)
SM Studia Mediewistyczne (Wrocław 1958–2000)
StPatr Studia Patristica (1957–)
STA Studium Theologicum Augustinianum (Rome 1961–)
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1964–1976))
ThT Theology Today (1944–)
Thomist The Thomist (1939–)
TNS The New Scholasticism (Washington 1927–1989)
TS Theological Studies (Milwaukee 1940–)
WW Wissenschaft und Weisheit (Düsseldorf 1934–)
VC Vigiliae Christianae (1947–)
VV Verdad y Vida (Madrid 1943–)

For distinctions in individual texts

a. articulus
ad opp. ad oppositum
an. annotatio
a. au. articulus unicus
arg. argumentum
c. capitulum
coll. collatio
con. contra
concl. conclusio
d. distinctio
dub. dubium, dubia
epis. epistula
f. fundamentum
fol. folium
n. numerus
nn. numeri
opp. oppositum

10
p. pars
prael. praelocutio
praenot. praenotata
prol. prologus
prooem. prooemium
q. questio
resp. respondeo
rub. rubrica
sc. sed contra
scil. scilicet
serm. sermo
tom. tomus
tract. tractatus
un. unicus
vol. volumen

11
Introduction

In his influential work Being as Communion, John Zizioulas wrote, “Although the
person and ‘personal identity’ are widely discussed nowadays as a supreme ideal, nobody
seems to recognize that historically as well as existentially the concept of the person is
indissolubly bound up with theology”.1 We might say today that while many people speak
about “relationality”, Christian theologians have written very little about how the
relationality of the human person is indissolubly bound up with God’s Trinitarian nature.
To my knowledge, no attempt has been made to create a systematic Trinitarian theology of
relationality.

My aim in this thesis is to examine the writings of Saint Bonaventure (1217–1274)

in an attempt to present the Bonventurian view of human relationality vis-à-vis the
relationality of the Holy Trinity. As the title of the thesis suggests, I propose that in the
writings of Saint Bonaventure, we can find such a close correspondence between the
relational character of the Persons of the Trinity and the imago Dei that we can call man an
icon of the Trinity. That is, man is the closest created representation of a divine reality —
the Trinity — even closer than the angels. This truth has important implications for how
man is to view himself personally, socially and morally.

Bonaventure wrote at length about the Holy Trinity. However, he did not write a
treatise on man per se. His anthropology is scattered throughout theological, philosophical
and mystical works which deal to a greater or lesser degree with aspects of the human
person and human experience (for example, the constitution of man, his place in creation,
the aim of his existence, etc.). Many conclusions about man’s intrinsic relationality are
thus drawn from the context of Bonaventure’s doctrines about the Holy Trinity, the person
of Christ, the creation, angels, and the fall and redemption of man. Therefore the method
of my work involved selection, systematization, composition and critical analysis of a
variety of texts connected, indirectly or directly, with the question of the human person in
the teachings of the Seraphic Doctor.

The primary texts for my research are the works of Saint Bonaventure in the critical
editions published by the Franciscan Fathers of the College of Saint Bonaventure,
Quaracchi, from 1882–1902. Although almost every work of the Seraphic Doctor
furnished some material for my study, the key texts were the Commentary on the Books of

1
John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), p. 27.

12
the Sentences of Peter Lombard (especially the second book, which is concerned with the
creation and formation of things); the Breviloquium (a summary of Catholic theology);
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum; the Collationes De Decem Praeceptis, Collationes de
Septem Donis Spiritus Sancti, and Collationes in Hexaemeron (theological sermons
describing the mystery of the Church); Quaestiones Disputatae de Scientia Christi; and
De Mysterio Trinitatis.2 To a lesser degree, some sermons and commentaries on Scripture
were helpful in clarifying or confirming Bonaventure’s teachings.

As is evident from my bibliography, I have drawn on many secondary sources in

my research. Here I will only mention the most significant. In the past hundred years,
several scholars stand out as having made invaluable contributions to Bonaventure
studies. The great historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson, in publishing his Philosophy of
Saint Bonaventure (trans. 1938) and History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages
(1955),3 is responsible for inspiring scholarly interest in (and debate about) Bonaventure’s
work which continues to bear fruit today. I do not always accept Gilson’s conclusions
about Bonaventure’s philosophical thought; however, his writings provide a clear and
systematic synthesis of Bonaventure’s philosophy. A secondary source that I referred to
often is The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy by John Francis
Quinn (1973).4 Quinn’s exhaustive, detailed study is a vital resource for anyone wishing
to explore and understand the intellectual background and writings of Saint Bonaventure.
For the purposes of my research, a key resource was “The Position and Function of Man
in the Created World According to Saint Bonaventure”, by Alexander Schaefer (1960–
1961).5 Even though Schaefer does not deal with the topic of relationality as such, on a
number of points his insights illuminated my own understanding of the relational aspect of
Bonaventure’s anthropology. The many works of Zachary Hayes, including articles,
books and introductions to and translations of Bonaventure’s writings were invaluable for
their clarity and depth of perception in explicating the Seraphic Doctor’s often ponderous
and complex theological insights. I turned most often to “Bonaventure: Mystery of the
Triune God” (1994), The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St.
Bonaventure (2000), and “Incarnation and Creation in the Theology of St. Bonaventure”
2
It is important to note that Bonaventure’s Collationes were delivered when Bonaventure was a bishop (from
1265). It is significant, then, that in the Collationes we are not only hearing the voice of the General of the
Franciscan Order and a Master of the University of Paris, but the voice of a pastor and a guardian of the
deposit of faith. With few and minor exceptions, his teachings in the Collationes are consistent with his
commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.
3
Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965); History
of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (NY: Random House, 1955).
4
John Francis Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973).
5
Alexander Schaefer, “The Position and Function of Man in the Created World According to Saint
Bonaventure”, FS 20 (1960) pp. 261–316 and 21 (1961), pp. 233–382.

13
(1976), though everything by Hayes is useful. Bonaventure studies would be
unimaginably impoverished without his contribution.6

To my knowledge, there are no book-length studies of Bonaventure’s

anthropology in English. In Italian, Giuseppe Rocco has published L’antropologia in San
Bonaventura.7 Rocco writes of the body, the soul, and man’s heavenly destiny, but
unfortunately does not address the human person as such. In Spanish, “Concepto de
Persona Humana Segun S. Buenaventura: Una Valorización Actual de Su Pensamiento”,
by Isadoro G. Manzano appeared to be promising, but does not address the human person
as relational.8 Francisco de Asís Chavero Blanco’s Imago Dei: Aproximación a la
antropología teológica de San Buenaventura9 is only available in Spanish, and I could not
access the entire text. An article by Chavero Blanco that has been published in Italian 10
touches on the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity and a human being, but is
mainly concerned with man as the image of God and his capacity to know God. Although
many scholars have written about specific aspects of Bonaventure’s anthropology, in my
investigations I have never found a systematic treatment of Bonaventure’s anthropology or
a synthesis of the available scholarship in this area. It is my hope that this thesis, in
particular chapter four, provides a substantial overview of Bonaventure’s anthropology
which will be useful to future scholars who may wish to build upon it.

I began my approach to Bonaventure’s concept of the human person by giving a

brief historical outline of the concept of “person” in Graeco-Roman thought, including
definitions of prosópon, persona, ousia, and hypostasis, thus establishing the essential
terms of any philosophical or theological discussion of the ontology of personhood,
whether human or divine.

In the second chapter, I investigate biblical concepts of personhood in the Old and
New Testaments, especially terminology for body and spirit which borrow from ancient
pagan philosophy, while bringing out how Jewish and pagan understandings of the person
influenced each other. An important part of this chapter is the development in thinking
6
Zachary Hayes, “Bonaventure: Mystery of the Triune God”, in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed.
Kenan B. Osborne (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994); The Hidden Center: Spirituality and
Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2000); “Incarnation
and Creation in the Theology of St. Bonaventure” in Studies Honoring Ignatius Charles Brady, Friar Minor,
eds. Romano Stephan Almago and Conrad L. Harkins (St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan Institute, 1976).
7
Giusepe Rocco, L’antropologia in San Bonaventura, (Vicenza: Editrice Veneta, 2009).
8
Isidoro G. Manzano, “Concepto de Persona Humana Segun S. Buenaventura: Una valoración Actual de Su
Pensamiento”, in Bonaventuriana: Miscellanea in onore di Jacques Guy Bougerol OFM, Francisco de Asís
Chavero Blanco (ed.), vol. 1 (Rome: Antonianum, 1988). pp. 391–416.
9
Francisco de Asís Chavero Blanco Imago Dei: Aproximación a la antropología teológica de San
Buenaventura (Murcia, Spain: Publicaciones del Instituto Teológico Franciscano, 1993).
10
“Per una teologia e antropologia dell'immagine in San Bonaventura”, in DS 37 (1990) pp. 5–35.

14
about the Divinity in Christianity, that is, the Church Fathers’ attempts to explain the
mystery of God as one God in three Persons, culminating in the Cappadocian identification
of ousia with nature and hypostasis with person. The chapter finishes with a discussion of
Saint Augustine’s teaching that the names of the Persons of the Trinity are relational terms,
rather than terms indicating substance.

Drawing closer to the time of Bonaventure, I complete my summary of the

development of the pre-Bonaventurian concept of the Person in chapter three, which
discusses the concept of the person in the Middle Ages in the teaching of three theologians
who strongly influenced Bonaventure’s thought: Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite, and Richard of Saint-Victor. Certainly the greatest intellectual influence on
Bonaventure was his teacher Alexander of Hales. Hales’s influence is so pervasive,
however, that I did not include him in chapter three, but draw references to him where
appropriate in my discussion of Bonaventure’s own thought.

Chapter four is a broad and extensive summary of Saint Bonaventure’s teaching

about the human person. The discussion covers many aspects and levels, including the
universe as an expression of the Trinity with Christ as the exemplar; the substantial
composition of the body and soul in the formation of a human person; and the soul’s
activity in the human person in terms of the cognitive and affective faculties. The aim of
the chapter is to present a synthesis of Bonaventure’s anthropology as completely as
possible without delving into the specifically relational nature of the human person as such
or vis-à-vis the Trinity.

Chapter five focuses on Bonaventure’s thinking about God in the category of

relationality. I explain the intrinsic relationality of the Godhead as a community of
Persons over against conceptions of God as pure or impersonal “goodness” or “being”.
This discussion of inter-Trinitarian and extra-Trinitarian relations is the basis for all
concepts of relationality in Bonaventure’s thought, and the foundation for my final chapter,
in which I analyse the relationality of the human person on a variety of levels, always
bearing in mind the ontological differences between divine Persons and human persons,
while bringing out evidence for the case that man is the created image of the relational
Godhead.

This thesis has three results. First, I collated, evaluated, and synthesised studies of
various aspects of Saint Bonaventure’s anthropology in order to create a coherent view of
the Seraphic Doctor’s conception of who man is. Second, I analysed Bonaventure’s

15
conception of the relationality of God as a communio of Persons and dynamic source of all
reality, and brought out how everything that exists has a dynamic, relational foundation in
the Trinity. Finally, I demonstrated how humans, as summit of creation and imago Dei,
expresses in our being the relationality of God to such a degree that we can call the human
person the icon of divine relationality.

16
1. Introductory Chapter: Towards an ontology of personhood during ancient times

The human person is a perpetual self-questioner, constantly in search of his

identity: Who am I? What is my true value? What can I do? What should I do? What
may I hope for? Especially “[t]he question, ‘where do I come from and where am I
going?’ makes evident to man the fact that he is greater than anything he could possibly
think himself to be”.11 The mysteries of the human person — his dignity and equality,
diversity and unity, freedom and responsibility, individuality and corporate oneness, his
transience and self-transcendence, of human death and the afterlife — these mysteries have
constantly engaged the attention of man throughout the centuries. Today this quest
continues with even greater urgency and renewed interest.

Agreeing on a concrete conception of the essence of human nature constitutes the

core of any anthropology. Therefore, in order to state explicitly from a spiritual
perspective what human nature is, we must start with a short presentation of the
understanding of the word “person” as a central point to any further anthropological
consideration.

A century ago, an English scholar complained,

I cannot ascertain that, even among professed philosophers,

there is any generally accepted doctrine of personality. A
German friend, whom I can implicitly trust, tells me that
there is no monograph on the subject in German.12

Today the situation is much improved, but even now we only have a few books about the
history of the word “person” (in the fourteen-volume International Encyclopedia of Social
Science, “person” is not in the index). 13 We still lack a systematic approach that assembles

11
Stanisław Grygiel, “Extra Communionem Personarum Nulla Philosophia”, Communio 29 (Winter, 2002),
pp. 691–702, p. 691.
12
William Sanday, “Personality in Christ and in Ourselves: Personality in Ourselves”, in Christology and
Personality (NY: OUP, 1911), p. 8.
13
Important studies on this theme can be found in: C.C.J. Webb, God and Personality (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1919); H. Dörrie, “Υποστασις: Wort- und Bedeutungsgeschichte” in Platonica Minora, (Munich: W.
Fink, 1976), pp. 12–69; Andre de Halleux, “‘Hypostase’ et ‘Personne’ dans la Formation du Dogme
Trinitaire (ca 375–381)”, in Patrologie et oecuménisme (Louvain: Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 113–214; Marcel
Mauss, “A Category of Human Mind: The Notion of the Person; The Notion of the Self”, in The Category of
Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes (Cambridge: CUP,
1985), pp. 1–25; John Rist, Human Value: A Study in Ancient Philosophical Ethics, Philosophia Antiqua 40
(Leiden: Brill, 1982); Alistair I. McFadyen, The Call to Personhood: A Christian Theory of the Individual in
Social Relationships (Cambridge: CUP, 1990); Armin G. Wildfeuer, et al., “Person”, in Lex. Theol. Kirche
VIII 3, pp. 42–52; Catherine McCall, Concepts of Person: An Analysis of Concepts of Person, Self and
Human Being (Farnham: Ashgate, UK, 1990).

17
all the elements and accounts for all the factors determining the nouns for the different
parts of what we usually associate with the human person. Contemporary anthropological
reflection is represented in a wide variety of forms,14 with different models of the reflexive
self,15 singular subject, the ego, experiential self, and self-knowledge, as synonymous for
the self, offered mostly by psychologists, or modern concepts of the human person
according to which he/she is understood as a centre of consciousness. 16 Moreover, as
Adolf Harnack (1851–1930) emphasised, the ancient “persona and our person are not the
same thing”.17 (Also the term anthropos did not suggest to its ancient philosophical users
what our term “person” does.) Apparently, the word “person” is used in a variety of
contexts (very often seeing “person” from within), and acquires a diversity of meanings as
one goes from one discourse system to another; thus the history of the meaning of “person”
cannot be synthesized. Nevertheless it is strange that the recently published and very
interesting Dizionario Bonaventuriano has no reference to the concept of person in
Bonaventurian thought.18

Historically speaking, the contemporary Western concept of the person (and

personality)19 had its origin not in the attempt to comprehend man as a person, but in the
philosophical-theological task of defining both the relations of the three “Persons” within
the Trinity and the “Person” of Jesus Christ. “Indeed almost all that we know of the
philosophy of personality is found in the mediaeval thinkers in the questions they devote to
14
“Marcel Mauss initiated this discussion by arguing for an evolutionary process in the concept of the person
as a self-contained judicial and moral entity. He brings examples of several cultures that feature very close
correspondence and even identity between mask, face and name”. Matti Fischer (n.d.), “Portrait and mask,
signifiers of the face in classical antiquity”, Department of Art History, Tel Aviv University,
http://arts.tau.ac.il/departments/images/stories/journals/arthistory/Assaph6/02fischer.pdf, n.d., viewed 8 July
2010, p. 33. See also William P. Alston, “Self-intervention and the Structure of Motivation”, in Theodore
Mischel (ed.), The Self: Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977); J. A.
Holstein and J.F. Gubrium, The Self We Live By (Oxford: OUP, 2000); C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The
Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: CUP, 1989); J.P. Forgas and K.D. Williams (eds.), The Social
Self (NY: Psychology Press, 2003); A. Newen and K. Vogeley (eds.), Selbst und Gehirn (Paderborn: Mentis
Verlag, 2000).
15
Cf. Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (Notre Dame, IN: UND Press, 1966), p. 31.
16
See Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (1989), “self”, 3: “That which in a person is really and intrinsically
he (in contradiction to what is adventitious); the ego (often identified with the soul or mind as opposed to the
body); a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness”. See also OED “personality”,
la, 1c, 3a.
17
Adolf Harnack, A History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan, (NY: Dover, 1961), vol. IV, p. 117. Cf. “If in
classical Latin persona did not, on the one hand, acquire the vague colourless sense which person has among
ourselves when we use it to mean no more than ‘individual human being,’ neither did it, on the other, come
to be expressive of what may be supposed to distinguish the inner life of a human being from that of an
animal — self-consciousness, moral purpose, aesthetic emotion, intellectual point”. C.C.J. Webb, God and
Personality (London: Allen and Unwin, 1919), p. 36.
18
Dizionario Bonaventuriano, ed. Ernesto Caroli (Padua: Editrici Francescane, 2008).
19
Porter has noted at least nine general definitions of person in use today, including two theological uses
(Trinitarian and Christological). L.B. Porter, “On Keeping ‘Persons’ in the Trinity: A Linguistic Approach to
Trinitarian Thought”, TS 41(1980): 531ff. See also “personality” in OED 2a: “That quality or assemblage of
qualities which makes a person what he is, as distinct from other persons: distinctive personal or individual
character, esp. when of a marked or notable kind”. On the history of term “personalism”, see Albert C.
Knudson, The Philosophy of Personalism (NY: Abbington Press, 1927), pp. 17–67.

18
the theology of the Trinity”.20 In other words, personhood as such is conceived from a
Trinitarian perspective and therefore it is clear that the problem of the human person arises
in Western Philosophy solely in a Christian context.21

The history of the term “person” is a circuitous one, and in

retracing it we are drawn briefly into the heart of Christian
theology. Without Christian theology we would have had no
name for what we now call “persons”, and, since persons do
not simply occur in nature, that means we would have been
without them altogether. That is not to say that we can only
speak intelligibly of persons on explicitly theological
suppositions, though it is conceivable that the disappearance
of the theological dimension of the idea could in the long run
bring about the disappearance of the idea itself.22

In light of this, it is safe to suppose that anthropology stems from theology, and not
the other way round.23 (The implications of this for other world religions would make an
interesting thesis in itself. For example, a concept of a personal God is not shared in the
Islamic world, where in general, “belief in a personal God is a minority opinion” among
Muslim theologians. Indeed, both Sunni and Shi’ite theologians have created a theological
and philosophical basis for the claim that God is not a person.24)

Certainly in the West, the concept of modern man began with what C.C.J. Webb
calls “personality in God”.25 Cardinal Ratzinger explains the dialogical origins of the
concept of person: “It refers to God as the being that lives in the word and consists of the
word as ‘I’ and ‘you’ and ‘we’”. Thus, Christian thought gave to the concept of the person
a new meaning and a special dignity so that “the true nature of humanity became clear in a
new way”.26 The idea that there is a historical parallel between the development of the
theological notion of the person in Trinitarian theology and Christology, and human
reflections upon being a person, is an idea that itself has had an interesting history, and has
20
Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, trans. A.H.C. Downes (London: Sheed & Ward,
1950), p. 204.
21
“The concept of the person with its absolute and ontological content was born historically from the
endeavor of the Church to give ontological expression to its faith in the Triune God”. John D. Zizioulas,
Being as Communion, p. 36.
22
Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between “Someone” and “Something”, trans. Oliver
O’Donovan (Oxford: OUP 2006), pp.17–18.
23
See Jean Cardinal Daniélou, “La notion de personne chez les pères grecs”, in Ignace Meyerson (ed.),
Problèmes de la personne (Paris: Mouton, 1973), pp. 113–121.
24
Gary Legenhausen, “Is God a Person?”, Religious Studies 22.3/4 (Sep.–Dec., 1986), pp. 307–323, p. 307.
25
“Where, then, shall we look for an example of what is really meant by ‘a personal god’? We shall plainly
be most likely to do so with good hope of success in the one historical religion of which, as we have seen,
Personality in God (though not, until quite modern times, ‘the Personality of God’) has been a recognized
tenet — that is to say, in Christianity.” Clement C.J. Webb, God and Personality (London: Allen and Unwin,
1919), p. 81.
26
Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology”, Communio 17 (Fall, 1990), pp. 439–
454, p. 443. Zachary Hayes points out that the understanding of the human person as an image of God, “set
the stage for centuries of theological work”. Introduction to WSB, III, p. 15.

19
become fairly widespread in at least some contemporary schools of theology. 27 As
Kallistos Ware aptly observes, “The human person — free, unpredictable, self-
transcending — is coming more and more to constitute the central theme of contemporary
theology, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox”.28

Jesus Christ is the man, the model of what it means for us to

be human, the mirror in which we see reflected our own true
face; all theology of the human person needs to be Christ-
centered, and so in the end anthropology turns out to be an
aspect of christology.29

In general — as stressed by the Eastern Orthodox theologian, John D. Zizioulas —

we could also accept that the Western philosophical understanding of man has been formed
by two main constituents: the concept of rational individualism commonly attributed to
Boethius, and the psychological consciousness of the other exemplified by Augustine.
Combining these two elements, the West’s view of man became that of an individual
centre of consciousness that contains intellectual, moral, and psychological qualities.30
Moreover, as Zizioulas emphasizes — and this hypothesis can be considered historically
correct — “The person both as concept and as a living reality is purely the product of
patristic thought. Without this, the deepest meaning of personhood can neither be grasped
nor justified”.31

It seems to me that in recent times, the emphasis on the self-consciousness of the

subject shifted the concept of person from ontological to psychological, from the idea of
“person” itself to a concept of “monadic sameness”.32 Ted Peters has observed that the
modern concept of the person is one who is “a unique individual...a self-initiating and self-
determining subject”. In this view, every person “is a distinct seat of subjectivity, and
hence independent of other persons and things. One’s personhood signals one’s

27
Cf. Carl Ludwig Michelet, Die Epiphanie der Persönlichkeit: Eine philosophische Trilogie (Nürnberg,
1844–52). Norman Russell calls J.R. Illingworth’s Bampton lectures of 1894 a “fruitful starting-point for the
modern study of theological anthropology. It was Illingworth’s conviction that our personality ‘is essentially
triune’ because self-consciousness depends on ‘a subject, an object, and their relation’ (1903: 39). But ‘it is a
potential, unrealized triunity, which is incomplete in itself, and must go beyond itself for completion’ (1903:
41)”. Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp.
312–13, quoting J.R. Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine. The Bampton Lectures for 1894, (London:
Macmillan, 1903).
28
Bishop Kalistos Ware of Diokleia, in Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on
the Nature of the Human Person, trans. Norman Russell (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1997). Foreword, p. 9.
29
Ware, in Nellas, Deification, p. 13.
30
John D. Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood”,
SJT 28 (1975), pp. 401–447. esp. 405–08.
31
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 27.
32
Calvin O. Schrag, The Self After Post-Modernity (New Haven: Yale UP, 1997), p. 37.

20
autonomy”.33 This explanation, related to the definition offered by Locke — for whom a
person was only “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can
consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing” 34 — brings nevertheless new challenges to
the modern conception of person.

On the other hand, current debates about the limits of “personal autonomy” and the
cultural constraints of “human rights”, as opposed to the view of man as a determinated
individuum with unlimited freedom, can be seen as signals of growing dissatisfaction with
the tendency to identify person and privacy.

Recently there have been strong reactions against the

Enlightenment idea of the self, originating with Descartes, as
a unitary “I”, defined as wholly self-legislating and self-
identical. It has become commonplace to stress the dialogic
disposition of the self and affirm not only the social
dimension of selfhood, but also its ineradicable
embodiment.35

As Karen Kilby views it, “the problem with our usual notion of personhood lies in its
connotations of individualism, in the assumption that ultimately each person is an isolated
being over against all others”.36 These contemporary ideas about the human person as a
self-determining subject or an atomistic and mechanistic individual having unlimited
freedom lead finally to the dehumanisation of the person as such.

Therefore, as I pointed out earlier, contemporary society’s basic understanding of

what it means to be a person needs to be modified by a return to a true Trinitarian
perspective.37 I submit that a proper understanding of the relationship in the Trinity
enables one to understand persons as by their very nature interactive, interdependent and in
communion with one another.38

33
Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1993), p. 35. Cf. “To be modern is primarily to affirm the freedom, autonomy and sovereignty of
the human person; hence, secondarily, to be modern is to repudiate totally all external authority — of God or
Creator, of religion or revelation, of tradition or metaphysics…. Thus, for ‘modern man’ the autonomy and
sovereignty of the human person is based squarely…on the fact that the mature human being is self-
sufficient, sovereign and free to act on the authority of his or her own reason alone….” Paulos Mar
Gregorios, “Does Neoplatonism Have Anything to Say to Post-Modern Spirituality?” in Neoplatonism and
Contemporary Thought, Part Two, R. Baine Harris (ed.), vol. 11 in Studies in Neoplatonism: Ancient and
Modern (SUNY Press, 2002), pp. 303–320, pp. 307–308.
34
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), bk II, ch. xxvvii, paragraph 11, ed.
Alexander Campbell Fraser, 2 vols (NY: Dover, 1959), vol. I, pp. 448–449, as quoted in Patrick Grant,
Spiritual Discourse and the Meaning of Persons, (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 10.
35
Catherine Pickstock, “Rethinking the Self”, in Telos 112 (Summer, 1998): pp. 161–177, p. 161.
36
Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity”, New
Blackfriars 81 (2000), pp. 432–445, p. 436.
37
Cf. Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press, 1992), pp. 233–316.
38
Thus it should be indisputably clear that I cannot agree with Immanuel Kant, who declared that the doctrine
of the Trinity “has no practical relevance”: “The doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally, has no practical

21
 My research is based on the idea that St Bonaventure not only teaches that the term
person is used in reference to the Trinity to allude to divine relations rather than to
substance, but also that the human person is distinguished from other subjects by the
ability to “be” or “exist” in a relationship. 39 Bonaventure emphasizes that the
exceptionality of the person lies, on the one hand, in his or her individual rational
substance and, on the other hand, in his or her unique dignity and nobility which is founded
on its incommunicability and relational character.40 This means that Bonaventure was
concerned with the idea of the dignity and the relational character of the human person.
Moreover, this idea is so original that it rightly points to Bonaventure as precursor of
contemporary axiology in his theory of the human person, long before Kant (although as I
will show later, his doctrine in many dimensions depends on the teaching of Alexander of
Hales, his great predecessor). For these reasons the present paper is particularly motivated
by the challenge of the idea that a person is constituted by his or her relation to another
person (or to other persons), and that in this respect human persons are modelled on the
divine Trinitarian Persons. Here we can only acknowledge that for the pre-Christian pagan
philosophers, an individual was of value solely insofar as he reflected the fullness of
human nature, of the “type”; this meant that human nature alone has permanence, and the
individual is ephemeral.41

The need to recover the significance of a Trinitarian understanding of the sense of

persona, and the desire to understand Bonaventure’s doctrine about the human person in
the fullness of its originality, leads us to a somewhat surprising course of action: we must
return to Homer’s time and to the pre-Socratic phase of Greek philosophy and examine the

relevance at all, even if we think we understand it”. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans.
Mary J. Gregor (NY: Abaris Books, 1979), p. 65 (italics original). I assert, on the contrary, that the wide
variety of contemporary theological texts on the Trinity indicate that the doctrine of the Trinity is more
“relevant” than ever. See for example Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet & Co.,
1944), and How Can God Be Both One and Three? (London: SPCK, 1960); John Thompson, Modern
Trinitarian Perspectives (NY: OUP, 1994); Catherine Mowry LaCugna God for Us: The Trinity and
Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper, 1992); Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. “The Perfect Family: Our Model for
Life Together Is Found in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, Christianity Today (4 Mar. 1988), pp. 24–28;
“Social Trinity and Tritheism”, in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological
Essays, ed. R.J. Feenstra & C. Plantinga (Notre Dame: UND Press, 1989), pp. 21–47; Joseph Bracken, The
Triune Symbol: Persons, Process, and Community (Lanham: Univ. Press of America, 1985); Persons, Divine
and Human: King’s College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. Christoph Schwöbel and Colin E.
Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991); Trinitarian Theology Today, ed. Christoph Schwöbel (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1995); Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).
39
“Utrum nomen personae in divinis dicatur secundum substantiam, an secundum relationem?” I Sent., d. 25,
a. 1, q. 1 (I, 435).
40
“[P]ersona de sui ratione dicit suppositum distinctum proprietate ad dignitatem pertinente”. I Sent., d. 23, a.
1, q. 1; (I, 405b). Cf. “suppositum distinctum habens dignitatem” or “nobilem proprietatem convenientem
supposito rationali”. I Sent. d. 23, a. 1, q. 3 (I, 410 a).
41
Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (Irving, Texas: Univ. of Dallas Press,
1970), p. 115. On the semantic transformations undergone by the term as a result of Christian faith in the
Word of God, see Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion”, pp. 441–443.

22
development of the meaning of prosópon-person terminology in ancient Greek and Roman
thought.

The purpose of the following chapter is to argue that the ancient conception of
“human nature” as a nature unto itself is incompatible with the notion of “person” which is
grounded in Bonaventure’s doctrine and teaching. Without doubt we cannot perceive how
the Bonaventurian ontology of personhood is original (and also how it is problematic),
unless certain explanations –– and possibly drastic revisions –– of philosophical thinking
about the human being as a composite of the body and soul, are first introduced.

1. 1. The Graeco-Roman sense of the individual human being

1. 1. 1. The concept of the human soul

According to Homer, only one part of man’s composite nature survived death —
the soul (ψυχή – psychē). The Homeric conception of the soul is peculiar. 42 Psyche is the
life principle; it lives inside the body and when the body dies the soul freely withdraws
itself from the body. For Homer, the soul was not active while it was contained in a living
human being. The psyche is not the centre of thought (nous); rather the body is responsible
for intellectual activity as well as emotions, which are located in the chest (phrenes,
thymos, kēr).43 It naturally follows that the body seems to be far more important and more
essential than the soul.

Orphic teaching begins a new stage in the development of thought about the
psyche. In the Orphic conception, the body is the soul’s prison (δεσμωτήριον) or tomb
(σώμα-σήμα) where the soul is punished. 44 Thus in the Orphic view, the rule of
transmigration changes.45 For Pythagoras, there is no particular connection between a soul
and the prison-body it is confined in for punishment. When the soul is released from the
prison of the body by death, it is purified in Hades before being reborn in its next

42
Modern research on the early Greek idea of the soul began in 1894, when Erwin Rohde published his
Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 2 vols. Trans. W. B. Hillis as Psyche: The Cult
of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks (London, 1925). Cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the
Irrational (Berkeley: UC Press, 1951), pp. 135–139.
43
Erwin Rohde, Psyche: The Cult, pp. 4–8. Cf. Richard B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about
the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: CUP, 1954), p. 116.
44
Cf. Cornelia J. de Vogel, “The Sōma–Sēma Formula: Its Function in Plato and Plotinus Compared to
Christian Writers”, in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, H. J. Blumenthal and R. A. Markus, eds.,
(London: Variorum, 1981), pp. 79–95, 87–88.
45
Cf. Francis M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation,
(Princeton: Princeton UP: 1991), p. 176.

23
incarnation in the upper world.46 The form of every subsequent incarnation depends on its
behaviour in the previous incarnation. At the end of its series of transmigrations, the soul
ascends to an eternal existence among the gods.47

Like his Orphic or Pythagorean predecessors, Plato accepted that the soul was
immortal and of divine origin. But for Plato, the soul is an entity in itself. 48 As Platonic
doctrine developed, the soul was conceived as purely spiritual, uncreated (άγέντος),49 and
apparently eternal (εΐδιος).50 The soul enters the body in accord with a universal cosmic
law (according to the Timaeus51), or because of a declension of the soul from its original
destiny (Phaedo52). The soul lives as if imprisoned in the body.53

For Plato, the human soul does not have a permanent “individuality” connected
with one particular body, because he allows for many reincarnations of one and the same
soul.54 Through reincarnation, Plato believed, the soul can be united with subsequent
bodies, including the bodies of animals, and become another “individuality”. 55 As long as
individuality was seen as a sign of imperfection, the status of an individual body-soul
composite was unclear.56 That is why scholars often represent Greek thought as essentially
“non-personal”.

46
Cf. W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), pp. 262–264.
47
Cf. Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 1972), pp. 120–165.
48
“Plato’s position on the relationship between bodily characteristics and virtue is best stated in the terms of
a view Socrates airs in the Cratylus: ‘some people say that the body [sôma] is the tomb [sêma] of the soul, on
the grounds that it is entombed in its present life, while others say that it is correctly called “a sign” [ sêma]
because the soul signifies whatever it wants to signify by means of the body’”. Rachana Kamtekar,
“Distinctions Without a Difference? Race and Genos in Plato”, in Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays,
eds. Julie K. Ward and Tommy Lee Lott (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 1–13, p. 7.
49
Cf. Phaedrus, XXIV.
50
Cf. Republic, X. 611 B.
51
See Thomas Johansen, “Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato’s Timaeus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy, 19 (2000), pp. 87–111. Cf. Richard Mohr, “The Relation of Reason to Soul in the Platonic
Cosmology: Sophist 248e–249d”, in The Platonic Cosmology (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), pp. 178–183.
52
In the Phaedo psyche has a fairly extensive variety of connotations: “(1) the element within us whose good
condition constitutes our true wellbeing; (2) the ‘true self’… (115b–116a); (3) the intellect, reason or
thinking faculty (65b–c; 76c); (4) the ‘rational self’ in contrast to emotions and physical desires (94b–d); (5)
the ‘life principle’ or ‘animating agent’ (64c; 72a–d; 105c–d); (6) generic ‘soul-stuff’ in contrast to individual
souls, just as matter may be contrasted to individual bodies (70c–d; 80c–d). These various meanings of ψυχή
[psyche] cannot be understood within a single consistent framework”. David E. Aune, “Human Nature and
Ethics in Hellenistic Philosophical Traditions and Paul: Some Issues and Problems”, in Paul in his
Hellenistic Context, ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen (London: T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 291–312, pp. 292–293.
53
“According to Plato, the soul wore the body like clothes to be discarded (Phd. 87b); the soul is woven
through the body (Tim: 36e); or a person is a soul using a body (Alc. 129c–e). One of the persistent problems
with Plato’s conception of the soul-body relationship (and one which was attacked by both Stoics and
Epicureans) was the assumption that the incorporeal could somehow associate with the corporeal to form a
single substance –– a human person”. Aune, “Human Nature”, op. cit., p. 293.
54
See Phaedo, 249B; Republic, 618A; Timaeus, 42 BC.
55
Cf. Thomas Johansen, “Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato’s Timaeus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 19 (2000), pp. 87–111.
56
John Rist, Human Value: A Study in Ancient Philosophical Ethics, Philosophia Antiqua 40 (Leiden: Brill,
1982), esp. “Individuals and Persons”, pp. 145–152.

24
 There is no personality, no eyes, no spiritual individuality.
There is a “something”, but not a “someone”, an
individualized “it”, but no living person with his proper
name…. There is no one at all. There are bodies, and there
are ideas. The spiritual character of the ideas is killed by the
body, but the warmth of the body is restrained by the abstract
idea. There are here beautiful, but cold and blissfully
indifferent statues.57

According to Plato’s view, for example, “the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of
his or her individuality, will never be the object of our love” because “what we are to love
in persons is the ‘image’ of the Idea in them”.58

From the foregoing it is indisputably clear that the classical world did not reflect
upon the self, as is evidenced by the teachings of the philosophical schools which showed
little interest in or respect for “the self, the individual, and the particular”. Classical
literature too, often lacks a subject, and the self appears “pale and stilted”. 59 “[N]o ancient,
not even the poets, is capable of talking about oneself. Nothing is more misleading than
the use of ‘I’ in Graeco-Roman poetry”.60 For this reason, we can say that the ontology of
a person in the thought of classical Greeks is in fact impossible.

We must remember that from first to last the aim of the

Platonic philosopher is to live on the universal plane, to lose
himself more and more in the contemplation of truth, so that
the perfect psyche would, it seems, lose itself completely in
the universal mind, the world-psyche. Hence it remains
individual only in so far as it is imperfect, and personal
immortality is not something to aim at, but something to
outgrow.61

Thus we can see that in classical Greek thought, the idea of a personal existence which
implies self-determination (αύτοεξούσιον) was alien and even irreconcilable with the
premises of the Greek-Hellenistic way of thinking. 62 According to Paul Henry only one

57
Aleksei F. Lossev, Essays on Ancient Symbolism and Mythology, vol. I (Moscow, 1930), pp. 632, 633.
Quoted by Georges Florovsky in “Eschatology in the Patristic Age: An Introduction,” in F.L. Cross (ed.),
StPatr, vol. II (1957), pp. 235–250, p. 248.
58
Gregory Vlastos, “The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato”, in his Platonic Studies (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1973), pp. 3–42. p. 31.
59
Gedaliahu A.G. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity,
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), p. 170.
60
Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire” in Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (eds.), A History of Private Life
(Harvard, MA: Harvard UP, 2003), p. 231.
61
George M.A. Grubs, Plato’s Thought (London: Methuen, 1935), p. 148.
62
“To give ontological primacy to the person would mean to undo the fundamental principles with which
Greek philosophy had operated since its inception. The particular person never had an ontological role in
classical Greek thought. What mattered ultimately was the unity or totality of being of which man was but a
portion”. John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian
Contribution”, in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwöbel
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 44–60, p. 53.

25
Greek word comes very close to expressing the idea of a person — the pronoun autòs —
he, he himself (in Latin ipse): “I find no other word that approaches our notion of
person”.63

We can conclude that the ancient Greek philosophers talked about man, about the
responsibility of the individual, but not about the person. However, as Pickstock remarks,
even if we could see some element of subjectivity in Homeric or Platonic thought, it is not
“the self” of Cartesian and contemporary thought.64 Von Balthasar concurs that “in Greek
and Roman antiquity there could be no concept of person in the Christian or modern
sense”.65

Aristotle departed from Plato’s teaching that man is composed of two things, a
body and a soul.66 As Aristotle’s thought developed, he conceived man as one thing, a
besouled body or embodied soul, formed matter or enmattered form. When Aristotle
created this formulation of soul and body, it raised the question of who is the subject of
human action — the soul or the body? His answer is that it does not make sense to say that
the soul is the subject of human action, but rather the whole human being:

[S]aying that the soul is angry is the same as if one were to

say that the soul builds houses and weaves: for it is perhaps
better to say not that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but
that the man does [these things] with his soul.67

However, as Philip van der Eijk points out, sometimes Aristotle refers to the soul as a
separate entity from the body.68 Nevertheless, he was convinced that with death, the
concrete individuality of a human being ceases.

63
Paul Henry, Saint Augustine on Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1960), p. 6.
64
Catherine Pickstock, “Rethinking the Self”, in Telos 112 (Summer, 1998), pp. 161–177, pp. 168–69.
65
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person”, Communio (Spring, 1986), pp. 18–26, p. 20. Some
scholars suggest that despite the lack of a word for “person” in the modern sense, the Greeks still had a
concept of personhood: “Although there was no exact equivalent for ‘person’ in ancient Greece, it would be a
mistake to assume there was no concept of person at that time”. Stanley Rudman, Concepts of Person and
Christian Ethics, (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 124.
66
According to some scholars Aristotle’s concept of the body-soul relationship cannot easily be labelled or
classified. Cf. Richard Sorabji, “Body and Soul in Aristotle”, Philosophy 49.187 (Jan., 1974), pp. 63–89;
Howard Robinson, “Aristotelian Dualism”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1983), pp. 123–144; Christopher Shields, “Soul and Body in Aristotle”, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy, vol. 6 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 103–135.
67
De Anima, 408b 11–15. As quoted in Christopher Shields, “The Soul as Subject in Aristotle’s de Anima”,
The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 10 (January 1988), pp. 140–149, p. 140. Cf. John M. Rist, “Notes on Aristotle,
De Anima 3, 5” in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy eds. John P. Anton and G.L. Kustas (Albany, NY:
State Univ. of NY Press, 1971), pp. 506–507. See also Richard Sorabji, “Soul and Body in Aristotle”,
Philosophy 49 (1974), pp. 55–79.
68
Philip J. van der Eijk, “Aristotle’s Psycho-physiological Account of the Soul-Body Relationship”, in John
P. Wright and Paul Potter (eds.), Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body
Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (NY: OUP, 2003), p. 68.

26
 For Aristotle, the psyche has no existence apart from a body, being separable from
it only in thought, but not in fact.69 Man as a concrete individuality (a terrestrial and
perishable substance,70 an animal) ceases at the moment of death, when the psychosomatic
union ends; the auto passes away; what survives is the aion auto (the everlasting-eternal
auto).71 It is evident, therefore, that Aristotle created a new version of hylomorphism that
makes no room for the individual human being with his or her permanent qualities,72 so for
Aristotle, the concept of a “person” was logically impossible.73

Moreover, Aristotle calls the universe έμψυχος (empsychos), which could be

explained by the fact that the universe, as Aristotle conceived it, has a principle of
movement within itself.74 In Aristotle’s view, all things have life — have psyche — plants
included. Together they form the one φύσις (physis) which leads everything to its end.75

For Aristotle, physis is a principle of movement and rest: it is a “process of

growth”, or “being full-grown”.76 From this point of view, it is not surprising that Aristotle
does not draw a sharp distinction between organic and inorganic nature. Together they
form the one physis who, as a kind of “person”, leads everything to its end. Such phrases
as “Nature does nothing in vain” 77 and “Nature always has the best in view” 78 are no poetic

69
Ibid., p. 64.
70
It is impossible to summarize Aristotle’s complex conceptualization of “substance”. In general I can say
that Aristotle’s concept of “substance” is very ambivalent. According to Metaphysics Λ 6, Aristotle describes
three kinds of substance: terrestrial (perishable), celestial (eternal changing) and unmoved substances (eternal
unchanging). Cf. Enrico Berti, “Unmoved mover(s) as efficient cause(s) in Metaphysics Λ 6” in Aristotle’s
Metaphysics Lambda: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michael Frede and David Charles, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2000), pp. 181–182.
71
“What Aristotle calls Aion is, on his view, likewise imitated by the periodic repetitions in the temporal
world, while itself encompassing it as its Telos and actualization. As such Aion is not the same as infinite
time or sempiternity. Moreover, he grants Aion a divine nature, and it may in fact apply as a mode of
existence to what lies outside the first heaven. If it is so applied, it must practically come to mean the same as
timelessness”. W. von Leyden, “Time, Number, and Eternity in Plato and Aristotle”, in The Philosophical
Quarterly 14.54 (January 1964), pp. 35–52, p. 47.
72
Aristotle says that “no human achievement has the stability of activities that express virtue, since these
seem to be more enduring even than our knowledge of the science”. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1985), p. 25 (1100b12–14). See J. Doris, “Persons,
Situations, and Virtue Ethics”, Noûs 32 (1998), pp. 504–530.
73
See Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 28.
74
Cf. Mary Louise Gill, “Aristotle on Self Motion”, in Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton, ed. M.L. Gill
and James G. Lennox (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994), pp. 15–34, p. 15. Cf. also De caelo et mundo, 2.2,
285a29.
75
Cf. W.K.C. Guthrie A History of Greek Philosophy: Vol.1, (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), p. 120. Also see M.
Furth, Substance, Form and Psyche: An Aristotelean Metaphysics (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), p. 236.
76
Physica, 2.1, 192b13–14. Cf. Friedrich Solmsen, Aristotle’s System of the Physical World (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell UP, 1960), pp. 92–99.
77
De caelo et mundo, 1.4, 27l a 33.
78
De Motu Animalium, 8, 708a10–11.

27
images, but they reflect the close connection between teleology 79 and hylozoism80 and even
polytheism.81 At the beginning of book 2 of the Physics, Aristotle writes that

there is another way of speaking, according to which nature

is the shape and form of things which have in themselves a
source of their changes, something which is not separable
except in respect of its account. Things which consist of this
and the matter together, such as men, are not themselves
natures, but are due to nature.82

This means that for Aristotle nature is an inherent source of motion and rest. He does not
suppose that the world had a beginning and therefore for him the world-Cosmos has
always existed and always will exist,83 for if the world could have ever not existed there is
no reason why it should now exist, and it cannot be in an entity’s nature to cease to exist.84

From this perspective we can say that in the Greek conception there can be no
increase in “being”.85 What is real is “always ‘behind,’ (from eternity) and never
‘ahead’”.86 Greek philosophy was characterized by ontological monism from its inception,
which led the Greeks “to the concept of the cosmos, that is, of the harmonious relationship
of existent things among themselves”,87 and although “the cosmos becomes the
paradigmatic image of human existence”,88 its sense, however, is dominated by merciless
necessity.89 “Not even God can escape from this ontological unity and stand freely before
79
Engelmann writes “that Aristotle’s teleology is in many ways a sophisticated elaboration of an archaic way
of thinking which saw all nature as somehow imbued with vital and psychic qualities. A philosophical
expression of this way of thinking is first found in the writings of the Presocratic thinkers”. In his article he
tries to show not only 20th century strategies of demythologization of Aristotle’s teleology, but also how
modern concepts of teleology differ from Aristotle’s understanding. Edward Engelmann, “Aristotelian
Teleology, Presocratic Hylozoism, and 20th Century Interpretations”, in AmCathPhilQ 64 (1990), no. 3, pp.
297–312, p. 297.
80
Cf. Theodore Scaltsas, “Substantial Holism” in Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
ed. T. Scaltsas, D. Charles, and M.L. Gill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 107–128, p. 120; See also
V.J. Verdenius, “Hylozoism in Early Greek Thought”, Janus 64 (1977), pp. 25–40.
81
Cf. Philip Merlan, “Aristotle’s Unmoved Movers”, Traditio 41 (1946), pp. 1–30.
82
Aristotle, Physics, 2.1. 193b5–10. In Aristotle’s Physics: Books I, II, trans. with introduction and notes by
William Charlton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 25.
83
“[E]very movement is continuous”, Physica, V 4, 228a 20. Cf. Fred D. Miller, Jr., Aristotle against the
Atomists, in Infinity and Continuity in Ancient and Medieval Thought, ed. Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 87–111, p. 87.
84
Cf. Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (London: Duckworth,
1980), p. 143.
85
“Each separately existing object in the sensible world is resolvable into a compound (Greek syntheton,
‘composite’ or ‘concrete’ object), consisting of a substratum (hypokeimenon, ‘underlying’), also called its
matter (hyle), informed by, or possessing, a certain form (eidos). Since sensible substance changes from one
state to another (Phys. 205a6, ‘everything changes from opposite to opposite’), the forms are seen as pairs of
opposites, and are often so called”. W.K.C. Guthrie A History of Greek Philosophy vol. VI: Aristotle: An
Encounter (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), p. 103.
86
Georges Florovsky, Aspects of Church History, vol. IV: (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1975), p. 69.
http://www.bulgarian-orthodox-church.org/rr/lode/florovsky4.pdf, viewed 8 July 2011.
87
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 29.
88
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (NY: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 165.
89
Cf. Cornelia J. de Vogel Greek Philosophy, vol. 3: The Hellenistic Roman Period (Leiden: Brill: 1959), pp.
438–440.

28
the world, ‘face to face’ in dialogue with it”. 90 Therefore, in fact, Aristotle’s gods are no
creators. The world exists eternally, without beginning or end, and its life is always
complete.91

It would never have entered the mind of Greek philosophers that the divine substance
could be thoroughly relational. For them, a god or gods are bound to the world by
ontological necessity, and the world is bound to them. 92 This bond is expressed also
through the Logos of the Stoics or in the “emanations” of Plotinus’s Enneads.93

All things which exist, as long as they remain in being,

necessarily produce from their own substances, in
dependence on their present power, a surrounding reality
directed to what is outside them, a kind of image of the
archetypes from which it was produced: fire produces the
heat which comes from it; snow does not only keep its cold
inside itself. Perfumed things show this particularly clearly.
As long as they exist, something is diffused from themselves
around them, and what is near them enjoys their existence.
And all things when they come to perfection produce; the
One is always perfect and therefore produces everlastingly;
and that which it produces is less than itself.94

Therefore, the main relation of ancient man was his relation to the divine Cosmos, to gods
as powers, but not persons.95 For example, in Plato’s eschatology, “God or gods are the
guides or mystagogues, or fellow visionaries, but not worthy as the object of vision
itself....” The impossibility of real communion between humans and gods is found
everywhere in Greek literature.96

The key to Greek human tragedy

lies in the paradox that human existence transcends the

sphere of dumb subhuman nature and stands in a zone
determined by the fate of gods; so that it thus comes into an
extreme darkness beyond all earthly reckoning, but in honor
of the gods is not oppressed in the face of its own tragedy,
90
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 29.
91
Cf. William Kneale, “Time and Eternity in Theology”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. LXI,
(1960–1), pp. 87–108.
92
“[God] has no relation of transeunt efficiency to nature; and as it appears that there is no other relationship
which He has to the world, there is no basis which would justify Aristotle in describing Him as the fullness of
being”. George A. Lindbeck, “A Note on Aristotle’s Discussion of God and the World”, RevMet 2.5 (Sept.,
1948), pp. 99–106, p. 104–05.
93
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 30. Cf. Lloyd P. Gerson, “Plotinus Metaphysic: Emanation or
Creation?” RevMet, 46, no. 2 (1992–1993), pp. 559–574.
94
Plotinus, Enneads (5.1.6.31–8). Quotation taken from Lloyd P. Gerson, op. cit., p. 565.
95
Cf. Jean Pierre Vernant, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1983), p. 328.
96
Frederick E. Brenk, Relighting Souls: Studies in Plutarch, in Greek Literature, Religion and Philosophy,
and in the New Testament Background (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), p. 272.

29
 but affirms it as its own incomprehensible greatness
surpassing perhaps even that of the gods.97

Among ancient thinkers, probably Plotinus — who raised the question of the
possibility of the existence of forms of individual humans — went furthest in elaborating a
theory of forms.98 However, he never truly recognized distinctive human individuality, so
we cannot call him a pioneer in the teaching about human individuality.99

Plotinus refers to the constituents of the human self in his

treatise on “The Heavenly System” (II 1 [40], 5, 18 ff.). The
self, he says, is formed by the soul which is given by the
divine beings in the heavens, and by the heavens themselves.
By this soul he apparently means the soul in the universe, the
lower, creating soul (physis, cf. IV 4, 20, 15) — it is, in fact,
a “shadow of soul” (IV 4, 18, 7) — and through it we are
associated with the body. But it is not this principle which is
the basis of the self: that is the higher soul’s prerogative (IV
4, 18, 11).100

In Plotinus’s understanding of the soul, it does not truly participate in the life of a physical
human being. There is a light that is distinct from the soul but which comes from the soul.
This light combines with something entirely physical, and this combination gives rise to
the human being.101 Thus, for Plotinus, man is, in a sense, divine. The purpose of the
philosophic life is to “understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the
divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or
Good”.102

As we have seen, ancient Greek thought in all its forms (Homeric, Platonic and
Aristotelian) was convinced that the world is a well-ordered and harmonious whole,
beautiful, good and rational.103 This order is eternal, without beginning or end.104
97
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Balthasar Reader, ed. M. Kehl and W. Löser, trans. R.J. Daly (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1982), p. 97.
98
“Plotinus distinguishes between a transcendent phase of soul (‘all soul’) and an immanent phase attached to
body…. Soul is thus ambivalent”. Paul C. Plass, “Timeless Time in Neoplatonism”, ModSch 55 (Nov. 1977),
pp. 1–19, p. 1.
99
See John Rist, Human Value: A Study in Ancient Philosophical Ethics, Philosophia Antiqua 40 (Leiden:
Brill, 1982), pp. 145–152.
100
Gerard O’Daly, Platonism Pagan and Christian: Studies in Plotinus and Augustine (Farnham, UK:
Ashgate, 2001), pp. 39–40.
101
See Peter Burnell, The Augustinian Person (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2005), p.
20.
102
A.H. Armstrong, “Man and Reality,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval
Philosophy, ed. A.H. Armstrong (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), p. 222.
103
“That eternal Being which is unbounded by chronology (Phys IV.1.13, IV.2.23) and exists unchanging in
its eternal Now, does not require that all else be unchanging and utterly determinate (VI. 15). The now is one
and the same in being whatever its changing description (Phys. IV, 219b12f): necessarily, for there is only
one world, and that a completable one (11–3–17f)”. Stephen R.L. Clark, Aristotle’s Man: Speculation upon
Aristotelian Anthropology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 129.
104
“Anything in the universe, which lasts through the entire cosmic cycle is neither destructive nor
destructible ‘because all things in the cycle as a whole are unfolded’”. Paul C. Plass, “Timeless Time in

30
Everything is caused by something else, but the world is not ontologically caused. 105
While the outward appearances of the world are confusion, change, decay and death, in its
essential aspects it is an immutable structure, possessing power to arrange the particular
into the whole and to act as an imminent norm by which irrationality and disorder are to be
judged. In other words, the philosophers mostly thought that the true being, in the absolute
sense, cannot be attached to the particular; participation in being is a condition for the
particular’s being: “the many are always ontologically derivative, not causative”. 106 This
leads to necessity in ontology.

With a striking consistency, classical Greek tragedy invited

man — and even the gods — to succumb to the order and
justice that held the universe together, so that cosmos
(meaning both natural order and proper behaviour) may
prevail.107

In this way, as Zizioulas remarks, “Greek thought creates a wonderful concept of

‘cosmos’, that is, of unity and harmony, a world full of interior dynamism and aesthetic
plentitude, a world truly ‘beautiful’ and ‘divine’”.108

St. Gregory of Nyssa summarizes Greek-Hellenistic wisdom in these words:

[P]agan philosophy says that the soul is immortal. This is a

pious offspring. But it also says that souls pass from body to
body and are changed from a rational to an irrational nature.
This is a fleshly and alien foreskin. And there are many
other such examples.... It acknowledges [God] as creator,
but says He needed matter for creation. It affirms that He is
both good and powerful, but that in all things He submits to
the necessity of fate.109

1. 1. 2. Ancient Greeks and the concept of πρόσωπον (prosópon)

Neoplatonism”, ModSch 55 (Nov. 1970), pp. 1–19, p. 12.

105
“The main distinction between Hellenism and the Christian philosophies lies precisely in the fact that the
latter are based on a conception of the divine Being which neither Plato nor Aristotle ever attained to. As
soon as we identify God with Being it becomes clear that there is a sense in which God alone is. If we refuse
to admit this we shall have to assert that all things are God, and that is precisely what a Christian can never
do, and this not merely for religious but also for philosophical reasons; of which the chief one is that if all
things are God, then there is no God”. Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. A.H.C.
Downes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1950), p. 65.
106
John D. Zizioulas, “On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood”, in Christoph Schwöbel and
Colin E. Gunton (eds.), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), p. 36.
107
John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity”, loc. cit., p. 54.
108
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 30.
109
Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St. Moses, intro., trans. and notes Abraham Malherbe and Everett Ferguson
(NY: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 63.

31
 In the Iliad Homer uses prosópon to refer to the “face or the forehead”, as when he
describes the face of Eleni, wife of Menelaus. 110 From another point of view the term
prosópon 111 seems to mean specifically the part of the head that is “below the skull”. 112
Usually the Greek uses prosópon for men’s faces, sometimes for gods’ faces, but never for
animals’ faces.113 In the Homeric to Hellenistic period, we find the word prosópon in the
works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato,
and Aristotle, but the word never has “an ontological significance in regard to total
man”.114

“Prosópon” derives from the root “pro-ops” meaning “that which faces the eyes (of
another)”115. From “prosópon” referring to the human face, the Greeks created the word
“prosopeion” to refer to theatrical masks. In time “prosopeion” came to mean the actor
who wore the mask or the “character” the actor was portraying. From that it developed
into meaning the sort of character portrayed, and finally, it began to refer to the particular
individual who bore that character.

According to Smith, by the time of Polybius (c. 201-120 BC), prosópon did not yet
mean

an individual tout court, but an aspect or role, sometimes an

individual who plays a role. It can also mean a person who
distinguishes him- or herself in a group; also moral dignity,
the dignity even of a group. Polybius writes of the name and
“prosôpé” of Hellas.

It was not until the Christian era that prosópon began to mean an individual or person.116

In this context a significant point becomes clear: because prosópon was a “non-
metaphysical term for ‘individual’, while hypostasis was a more or less metaphysical term
110
Demetrios Constantelos, “The human being: a mask or a person?” Myriobiblos online library,
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constan.html, (n.d.), viewed 8 July 2010.
111
Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon lists the following meanings for prosópon: “I.1 face,
countenance; 2. front, facade; II.1 one’s look, countenance; 2. domain (astrological); III.1 mask, bust or
portrait; 2. dramatic part, character; IV.1 person; 2. legal personality; 3. (grammar) person; 4. Feature”. H.G.
Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
112
Aristotle, Historia Animalium, vol. 1, trans. A.L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965), p. 39. Cf.
Homer, Iliad E24, H212. The full reference to Aristotle is worth quoting: “The part below the skull is named
the face (προσωπον), but only in man, and in no other animal; we do not speak of the face of a fish or of an
ox. That part of the face (προσωπον) which is below the bregma and between the eyes is the forehead”.
Aristotle, Historia Animalium I. VIII, 491b 9–12.
113
TDNT, vol. VI, s.v. “prosópon”, pp. 768–780, p.769.
114
Demetrios Constantelos, “The Human Being: A Mask or a Person?” Myriobiblos online library,
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constan.html, (n.d.), viewed 8 July 2010.
115
Claude Calame, “Facing Otherness: The Tragic Mask in Ancient Greece”, History of Religions 26.2.
(Nov., 1986), pp. 125–142, p. 138.
116
Michael A. Smith, Human Dignity and the Common Good in the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition
(Lewiston, NY: Mellen Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 39–40.

32
for ‘independent object’”,117 being a prosópon meant having something added to one’s
being so that “the ‘person’ is not his true ‘hypostasis’” 118 Many centuries would have to
elapse before Greek thought reached the historic identification of “hypostasis” with
“person” 119 bringing a new understanding of the meaning of Greek term prosópon.120

1. 1. 3. Ancient Romans and the concept of persona

In ancient Roman thought, unlike prosópon, the original meaning of persona is

mask.121 The Oxford Latin Dictionary lists the following meanings for persona: 1. mask
(a) actor’s, (b) protective gear, (c) religious symbol, (d) gargoyle; 2. character (a) in a
dramatic role, (b) in a dialogue, (c) subject in a portrait, (d) assumed pretence; 3.
characteristics (a) position in life (b) personal qualities; 4. individual personality; 5. legal
person; 6. individual person; 7. (gram., in conjugation) a person.122

When comparing prosópon to persona, Ernout notes in his etymological dictionary

of Latin that “persona never has the meaning of ‘face, countenance, front’, that prosópon
has in Greek and that there is no expression corresponding to kata prosópon [in person]”.123
Therefore a fundamental difference exists in the root meaning of persona and prosópon.

Persona primarily means an external mask worn by a person,

whereas προσωπον primarily means the anatomical face of a
person. Persona is an extraneous object apart from a person,
whereas προσωπον is integral to a person.124

(In this sense the denotation of mask is not intrinsic to the term prosópon as it is to
persona.) “Persona never functions the same way as προσωπον does”.125

Putting aside the etymological discussion and concentrating on the meanings of the
terms, it seems that at least early on, the Roman use of persona did not differ essentially

117
George Leonard Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), p. 179.
118
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 33.
119
Ibid.
120
The question of the relationship of the concepts of prosópon and hypostasis will receive a more detailed
analysis in the following sub-chapters.
121
Michael A. Smith, Human Dignity and the Common Good in the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition
(Lewiston, NY: Mellen Univ. Press, 1995), p. 40.
122
Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1983, s.v. “persona”.
123
“[P]ersona n’a jamais le sens de «face, figure, front» que προσωπον a en grec et qu’il n’y a pas
d’expression correspondant à κατά προσωπον.” A. Ernout, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine
(Paris: Klincksieck, 1959), s.v. “persona” (my translation).
124
Daniel F. Stramara, Jr., “Unmasking the Meaning of προσωπον: Prosópon as Person in the Works of
Gregory of Nyssa”, Ph.D. diss. (Saint Louis Univ., 1996), p. 15.
125
Ibid., p. 17.

33
from the Greek prosópon. When connected with man, the Roman persona perhaps had a
stronger connotation of concrete individuality than the Greek equivalent. 126 However, in
sociological and legal senses, persona always expressed the ancient Greek prosópon or
prosopeion in the theatrical connotation of a role:

[P]ersona is the role which one plays in one’s social or legal

relationships, the moral or “legal” person which either
collectively or individually has nothing to do with the
ontology of the person.127

In other words, as Schmitz points out, in Cicero’s time (1st century BC), persona was used
to describe the character of a genuine, living person, and not merely a theatrical role, and it
was used in law to distinguish a juridical person, who had rights and duties, from a mere
object of property.128 Roman thought was primarily concerned with man’s relationship to
others, the associations he forms, the contracts he enters into, the collegia he creates and
the state to which he belongs. Consequently, Roman thought can be described as
“fundamentally organizational and social” and not particularly concerned with “ontology,
with the being of man.” So for the Romans, personhood is devoid of ontological content
and is rather merely adjunct to concrete ontological being. It permits one man to play
more than one role, one prosopa within society.129 In sum, we can say that persona in
Rome (unlike prosópon in Greece) passed by analogy from the stage to the Forum: to
describe the concrete subject of a legal relation or plexus of relations, and his abstract
status, function, or dignity.

1. 1. 4. Understanding oύσία (ousia)

The history of the terms ousia and ύποστασις (hypostasis) is extremely complicated
and does not interest us here directly.130 In our paper, we will only give a general outline
of how these concepts were understood. Ousia underwent a vigorous development in the

126
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 33–34.
127
Ibid., p. 34.
128
Kenneth L. Schmitz and Paul O’Herron (eds.): The Texture of Being: Essays in First Philosophy
(Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2007), p. 151. “Cicero frequently used persona for
homo, especially in his Epistles and Philosophical Works.” W. M. Thorburn, “What is a Person?” Mind, n.s.
26.103 (Jul., 1917), pp. 291–316, p. 299. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2249083, viewed 3 July 2009.
129
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 34.
130
For further reading on this subject, see Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: OUP, 1977) and
C.C.J. Webb, God and Personality (London: Allen and Unwin, 1919). Christopher Stead proposes twenty-
eight different possible senses of the word “ousia” in the Patristic period in “The Concept of Divine
Substance”, VC 29.1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 1–14.

34
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and was used by all subsequent schools. 131 Its main idea
is that of permanent being as opposed to becoming (γίγνεσθαι).

For Aristotle, the highest and most comprehensive category

of being was ousia (oύσία), the existing essence. Both
aspects — existence and essence — come together in one
ousia, in his view; the clearest indication of this is that form,
by being the form of matter, also gives matter existence.
Originally, then, ousia is used indifferently with regard to the
pair, essence and existence, and this remains basically true
even after Aristotle.132

The world of ideas — especially in Plato’s doctrine — is called νοητή oύσία (noete ousia),
and combines the concept of permanent being with that of true being (ideas are the
unchanging patterns or prototypes of all things). Although there is no English word that
can successfully capture all the senses conveyed in every use of ousia, it is most frequently
translated as “substance”.133
In general, the “the ousia of x” refers to its ontological status, “its nature, or the
category to which it belongs”. According to some ancient schools of thought, the ousia of
a thing “could be closely associated with the notion of existence, since ‘the being of things’
could mean ‘their distinctive mode of existence’” and this would be different depending
upon what was being considered.134

1. 1. 5. Understanding ύποστασις (hypostasis)

Hypostasis literally means, “a standing under or below”. In classical Greek it

referred to solids that had settled to the bottom of a liquid, e.g. dregs or sediment. It also
could refer to someone who has concealed himself under something or who is lying in

131
Cf. Giovanni Reale, The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, ed.
and trans., John R. Catan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1980), pp. 95–96.
132
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus Confessor (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 216.
133
“On account of this modern philosophical background, ‘substance’ is far more open to misinterpretation
than was substantia in the days of St. Augustine. Its etymology hinders it from conveying the notion
expressed by the Greek ousia, and all the more seriously when associated with a non-Aristotelian — even
anti-Aristotelian — frame of reference. But in any case, ‘substance’ could never convey the primary meaning
of the Aristotelian term. The nearest equivalent in the Metaphysics of the notion expressed by ‘substance’ is
τό ύποκειμενον. This Aristotle calls ousia, but states that it is not ousia in the primary sense. If such were the
case, then the absolutely undetermined matter would be the primary instance of ousia (Z 3, 1029a7–30). The
peculiar importance attached to the primary sense of a term in denominating equivocals should be the
paramount consideration in selecting the translating word. Only when this condition is satisfied can the
translation be a correct guide in following Aristotle’s thought”. Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought (Toronto: PIMS, 1978), p.
145
134
Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: OUP, 1977), p. 137.

35
ambush. Later, hypostasis came to signify “what we may call concrete existence as
opposed to a mere appearance with nothing solid or permanent underlying it”. 135 In short,
the word hypostasis is used to denote “any reality behind appearance” whether physical or
non-physical, as in “plan,” “purpose”, or “basic conception”. “Hypostasis indicates being
as manifested in an individual phenomenon”, 136 nevertheless, “in Greek philosophy the
term hypostasis never had any connection with the term ‘person’”.137

In its philosophical sense, the word hypostasis seems to have developed in two
ways. On the one hand, it developed along the line of being identified with ousia or
essence, so that often, hypostasis and ousia were synonymous. On the other hand, it
developed along the line of being identified with the concrete act of subsisting in a
substance.138 In other words, in this latter sense “hypostasis would refer to the
concreteness or objective actuality of [some] intelligible presence” 139 and therefore, be
formally distinct from ousia. Thus as Eugene Webb explains, hypostasis

constitutes the “real” object of the operation of judgment —

objective in that it can be inquired into and known by way of
intentional operations, “real” in that it is judged to be actual
and not just conceivable or imaginary.140

135
Clement C.J. Webb, God and Personality (London: Allen and Unwin, 1919), p. 37. Cf. Christopher Stead,
“The Concept of Divine Substance”, VC 29.1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 1–14, p. 2.
136
John C. Médaille, “Lost in the Translation: Hope and Hypostasis in Hebrews”,
http://www.medaille.com/hope%20and%20hypostasis%20in%20hebrews.pdf, 18 November 2003, viewed 7
July 2010, p. 3.
137
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 36.
138
“We first encounter substantia in Seneca, where it is used to reproduce the Stoic contrast between
ύποστασις and έμφασις, reality and appearance. Quintilian also uses substantia in several senses which
apparently connect with ύποστασις: presence, content, thing as opposed to name. But he also seems to use it
with the meaning ‘nature’, which rather suggests ούσία”. Christopher Stead, “Divine Substance in
Tertullian”, JTS 14.1 (1963) pp. 46–66, pp. 47–48. As we will show, ousia and hypostasis were differentiated
in the debates on the Trinity according to the three hypostases in God. As Christian language developed, the
term hypostasis slowly evolved from the sense of substance to the sense of subsistence and of person.
139
Eugene Webb, “The Hermeneutic of Greek Trinitarianism: An Approach through Intentionality Analysis”,
http://faculty.washington.edu/ewebb/R428/trinity.pdf, (n.d.), viewed 7 July 2010, p. 9.
140
Ibid.

36
2. On Being a Person: Toward an Ontology of Personhood in the Bible and in
Patristic Exegesis

In this chapter I will try to show the concept of the person in the Old and New
Testaments; then I will examine the way the term “person” was used in the so-called
Hellenic-Christian doctrine of hypostasis-person in patristic theology. Finally, I will
attempt to outline how the concept of the person developed in theological thought in the
Early and Late Patristic period and into the Middle Ages. 141 In the lines that follow, I will
ask what can be called “personal” in the strictest sense, and try to elicit its ontological
ingredients.

2. 1. The Hebrew concept of the person

The Old Testament is not concerned with creating a doctrine or abstract philosophy
of “the human”. References to what we may call “general humanity” are rare and
peripheral.142 In the OT, two concepts of man are emphasized: “man as a unique and
responsible individual” and man as “a social and representative being”. In Genesis,
“Adam” expresses both individual personhood (as a man) and social solidarity (as
mankind).143 However, we can say with Westermann that

[i]t is fundamental to the Old Testament understanding of

human beings that the human is not seen first as an
individual — who then goes on to build communities — but
as one who is from the beginning part of a larger pre-existing
entity. The human is not the tree, but the branch; not an
organism, but an organ; the human is a member of a body.144

From this point of view, we could say that one of the most important concepts of
Hebrew thought in the Old Testament is what H. Wheeler Robinson termed “corporate
personality”.145 “Corporate personality” expresses in a short formula the teaching of the
141
In the Western Church, the era of the Church Fathers is usually thought of as beginning when the New
Testament was completed at the end of the first century and ending with the deaths of Gregory the Great (d.
604AD) or Isidore of Seville (d. 636AD). In the Eastern Church, the period of patristic literature extends to
749AD, with the death of John Damascene.
142
Claus Westermann, “The Human in the Old Testament”, Word & World 9.4 (Fall, 1989), pp. 318–327, p.
320.
143
H.D. McDonald, “Doctrine of Man in the Old Testament”, Believe Religious Information Source,
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/manot.htm, 28 Jan. 2010, viewed 8 July 2010.
144
Claus Westermann, op. cit. p. 323.
145
According to Gary W. Burnett, “As early as 1911, H. W. Robinson used the term ‘corporate personality’
to describe the lack of sense of the individual within Israelite society.” Paul and the Salvation of the
Individual (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), p. 73. See also Aubrey R. Johnson, The One and the
Many in the Israelite Conception of God (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1942); George E. Wright, The

37
Old Testament regarding the union between the individual and the community. Ancient
Israel has been called “an aggregate of groups rather than a collection of individuals”. 146 In
other words, man is not an entity unto himself, but stands at the centre of ever-widening
circles of relation defined by kinship, beginning with the “family.” The individual is not
socially, economically or juridically viable outside of his family. 147 In the words of H.W.
Robinson, “corporate personality means the treatment of the family, the clan, or the nation,
as the unit in place of the individual”.148 Equally, whatever the individual does is
considered as being done by the whole group and the group is necessarily involved in the
consequences of his action. However,

[i]t is not simply a question of establishing a more or less

close relationship between an individual and a collectivity
within a given group, but of being aware that the two aspects
of “corporate personality” are bound together by a physical
and real bond. Rather than thinking of the two elements as
possessing an external and “juridical” solidarity, we must
realize that the group and the individual together make one
single total reality. In fact, we are concerned here with a
point of view, a manner of thinking, which does not at all
agree with our philosophical perspective that we have
inherited from Aristotle. We must accustom ourselves to
thinking at one and the same time of the two aspects of
“corporate personality” as together forming one reality and
one single psychic whole.149

The extension of belonging in time and space to “one family” gave the Hebrews a
sense of history in which those within the present totality were nevertheless seen as part of
a totality which was past, “a system of generations interlocking with each other [in] an
elaborate network of perpetual encounter”.150 Thus “Israel” may refer both to the original
Patriarch who bore the name and to the corporate body of people who participated in the
Patriarchal Covenant. The Hebrews did not have a concept of an autonomous individual,

Biblical Doctrine of Man in Society (London: SCM Press, 1954); Jean de Fraine, Adam and the Family of
Man, trans. Daniel Raible (NY: Alba Haus, 1965); J.R. Porter, “The Legal Aspects of the Concept of
‘Corporate Personality’ in the Old Testament”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 15, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1965), pp. 361–
380.
146
J.W. Rogerson, “Anthropology and the OT”, in The World of Ancient Israel, ed. R. E. Clements
(Cambridge: CUP,1989), pp. 17–38, p. 25.
147
Robert Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity”, Catholic
Biblical Quarterly 61:2 (April, 1999), pp. 217–238, p. 221. As quoted in Jon Douglas Levenson,
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale UP,
2006), p. 167.
148
H. Wheeler Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology”, in The People and the Book, ed. A.S. Peake (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1925), pp. 353–382, p. 375. See also his classic essay “The Hebrew Conception of
Corporate Personality” in Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die
Alttestamentliche, 66 (1936), pp. 46–62, p. 49ff.
149
Jean de Fraine, Adam and the Family of Man, trans. Daniel Raible (NY: Alba Haus, 1965), pp. 30–31.
150
M. E. Dahl, The Resurrection of the Body: A Study of I Corinthians 15, Studies in Biblical Theology 36
(London: SCM, 1962), p. 64.

38
isolated from other humans and the rest of creation; rather, they viewed the human person
in relation to other totalities and finally to God, the Creator. 151 In other words, the Old
Testament roots human dignity in social identity, rather than in “a radical disengagement
from social location” as is common nowadays.152

Individual Israelites, disengaged from the socially

determined roles which form the basis of their responsibility,
are not “selves” about whom one can speak meaningfully or
whose actions one can meaningfully evaluate. Only the
socially “embedded” self, identified by membership in a
“father’s house,” is a morally intelligible agent.153

As Fehlner points out,

the concept of corporate personality and social solidarity is

not a simple one, and can be dangerously abused, if applied
unilaterally. The solidarity of the human race with Adam, of
the Israelites with Israel, of the Christian with Christ, are
analogous, but the solidarity in each case is not identical.154

2. 2. Septuagint and Jewish Usage of prosópon

In the Septuagint, prosópon appears more than 850 times. The most common LXX
usage of prosópon is for “face” in various senses (e.g., Gen. 17:3, “Then Abram fell on his
face”; 31:2, “And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him as before”; 32:30: “So Jacob
called the name of the place Peniel, saying ‘For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is
preserved’”; 50:1, “Then Joseph fell on his father’s face, and wept over him, and kissed
him”; Dt. 34: 10: And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the
Lord knew face to face”; Ezek. 1:10, “As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face
of a man in front; the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of
an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle at the back”). 155 Sometimes
when a man’s face is referred to, it denotes the whole man (Dt. 7:10, “and requites to their
face those who hate him…”). Occasionally, prosópon is used for inanimate objects like

151
See Aubrey R. Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God (Cardiff: Univ. of
Wales Press, 1942).
152
James Beck, “Self and Soul: Exploring the Boundary between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Formation”,
BNET, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6566/is_1_31/ai_n28995241/?tag=mantle_skin;content, (n.d.),
Viewed 9 July 2011. Originally published in Journal of Psychology and Theology 31 (Spring, 2003), pp. 24–
36.
153
Robert Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity”, Catholic
Biblical Quarterly 61:2 (April, 1999), pp. 217–238, p. 225.
154
Peter D. Fehlner, The Role of Charity in the Ecclesiology of the St. Bonaventure, Ph.D. diss. (Rome:
Miscellanea Francescana, 1965), p. 19, n. 13.
155
Unless noted otherwise, Bible quotations are taken from New Oxford Annotated Bible with the
Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version, Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. (NY: OUP, 1977).

39
the “the surface of the earth” (Gen. 2:6, “but a mist went up from the earth and watered the
whole face of the ground”). At times, God is anthropomorphised, in that He “lifts his
countenance over man” in pity and gives peace to man (Num. 6:26). God is prayed to
“cause his face to shine” on His people; His grace is withdrawn when “He hides His face”
(Dt. 32:20; Mic. 3:4). In several instances prosópon Theou (πρόσωπον Θεού – prosópon
of God) is used cultically. “To see God’s face” is “to visit the cultic site”, for example
when believers “seek the face of the Lord” and find it in the temple (Zech. 8:21). Seeing
the face of God provides certainty that God is present and gives His grace.156

Applying to our present topic, we can say that Judaism and the Old Testament
exerted a great influence on the future formation of Christian dogmas and ordinary life.
With Philo of Alexandria — a Jewish intellectual who lived from about 25 B.C. to about
A.D. 50 — the Greek culture was mingled with the religion of Moses.157

Hebrew thought never conceived of man abstractly, either in his creation or his
manifestation. He does not become human independently of or in opposition to his body.
Adam became a nephesh; he was not supplied with one.158 His life is physical and
relational, on the one hand with the One who first breathed life into him, and on the other
as an individual relating to his people in their historical role.

Man is always seen in his totality, which is quickened by a

unitary life. The unity of human nature is not expressed by
the antithetical concepts of body and soul, but by the
complementary and inseparable concepts of body and life.159

Therefore in the Bible, words such as “soul”, “body”, “spirit”, “flesh” etc., “do not analyse
man into his component parts” because “[man] is not a composition of different parts but
an indivisible whole of extreme complexity in which one may discern different facets”.160

156
TDNT, vol. VI, s.v. “prosópon”, pp. 768–780, pp. 769, 771, 772, 773.
157
“Philo’s doctrine on the transcendence of God is not motivated by philosophical concerns only. There are
strong religious motivations that permeate his thought. God is both being (to on) and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob”. David Runia, “The Rehabilitation of the Jackdaw: Philo of Alexandria and Ancient
Philosophy”, in Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 BC–200 AD, vol. II , ed. Robert W. Sharples and Richard
Sorabji (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007), pp. 483–500, p. 499.
158
“The basis of its essence was the fragile corporal substance, but by the breath of God it was transformed
and became a nephesh, a soul. It is not said that man was supplied with a nephesh and so the relation between
body and soul is quite different from what it is to us”. Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture I–II
(London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1946), vol. 1, p. 99.
159
TDNT, vol. IX, s.v. “psyche”, p. 631.
160
Bennie J. Van Der Walt, “Man, the Tension-Ridden Bridge between the Transcendent and the Non-
Transcendent World in the Thought of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio”, in SBM, II, pp. 583–599, pp. 595, 596.

40
2. 3. Anthropology in New Testament

In their shared belief in man’s creation in the image of God and in the resurrected
body, Judaism and Christianity differed sharply from pagan anthropological philosophy.
(For example, when Paul uses Greek terms for body, flesh, soul, spirit, mind, and heart, he
does not designate parts of human beings, as the Greeks might, but aspects of the whole
person as seen from different perspectives. 161) Old Testament anthropology was enriched
by the fact of Christ’s incarnation. The New Testament message provides a picture of the
man to whom the message is addressed as well as a description of humankind renewed by
Christ’s redemptive action and destined for full self-realization on the model of Christ.
This context is vital to a proper understanding of New Testament anthropology. 162 The
scope of this chapter does not allow us to explore in detail the anthropological terms of the
New Testament, and therefore we will briefly consider only prosópon, soul, flesh/body and
spirit, as kardia and nous.

2. 3. 1. Πρόσωπον (prosópon)

In their use of prosópon, early Christian writers drew on their familiarity with the
Greek version of Hebrew Scripture, where the appearance of the term prosópon is more
frequent than in any classical Greek authors (and where it is never used in the sense of
“theatrical mask”). The use of prosópon in the NT follows closely that of the LXX and the
word has the same range of meaning as in the OT — generally, person, surface of a thing,
the countenance of God, and most often, face. Only in II Cor. 1:11 do we see prosópon
being used as synecdoche for “individual” or “person”.163

Occasionally, New Testament writers built on the Old Testament use of prosópon
to express something new. For example, in the Old Testament, the Jews could go to the
temple to “seek the face of the Lord” (Zech. 8:21), whereas in the New Testament, we find
the promise of seeing God face to face in the heavenly sanctuary (Rv. 22:4). In Exodus,
the face of Moses shone with glory because he had been talking with God. The Israelites
could not look at Moses’ face when it shone, and so he had to veil his face (Ex. 34:29-35).
161
That New Testament anthropology is more Hebraic than Greek is especially noted in the writings of Paul.
See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Paul and His Theology, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), p. 82.
Cf. Ernst Käsemann, “On Paul’s Anthropology”, in Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1971), p. 7.
162
See Hugh Thomson Kerr, “The Human Problem in Contemporary Thought”, ThT, 1 (1944), pp. 158–172.
163
Cf. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature,
ed. Fredrick Danker (Chicago: UCP, 2000), p. 888; Johannes R. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-
English Lexicon of the New Testament, Based on Semantic Domains (NY: UBS, 1988), p. 105.

41
For Saint Paul, a “veil” still exists between the Jews and the true sense of the OT as
revealed in Jesus Christ. Christians have no such “veil” between themselves and the truth,
because they have seen the glory of God in the face (prosópon) of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:7–
18; 4:6).164

2. 3. 2. Psyche – soul

The New Testament uses the word psyche about 100 times, most frequently in the
Gospels and in Acts. When quoting from the Old Testament, NT writers use psyche for
nephesh. In the New Testament, psyche has the same broad semantic range that it
possesses in the OT, following from classical and koine Greek, but as Paul MacDonald
points out, in the New Testament, “psyche indicates something distinctive about human
being as the carrier of life-force”.165 The psyche of Jesus is sought by Herod (Mt. 2:20),
and in the parable of the rich man who has stored up wealth for years to come, it is his
psyche that will be required of him (Lk. 12:20).

Psyche never refers to the phenomenon of life in general. It is one’s own natural
life, a gift received from God. To the degree that psyche indicates the physical life of a
human being, it can be an agent of doing harm to other souls. It can also be sacrificed for
the good of others, and in this case, the psyche in the sense of “eternal life” will be saved.
Psyche, as a gift from God, can also be taken away by God, thus the soul is limited in what
it can do.166

2. 3. 2. 1. Soul in the Synoptic Gospels

According to James Beck, there are at least five ways in which the word psyche is
used in the synoptic accounts of the life of Christ. Sometimes, psyche can mean the
“natural, physical life of a person”, corresponding to the body. An example of this usage is
found in the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life
[psyche], what you will eat or drink; or about your body [soma] what you will wear”
(6:25a).
164
TDNT, vol. VI. s.v. “prosópon”, pp. 768–780, p. 776.
165
Paul MacDonald, History of the Concept of Mind: Speculations about Soul, Mind and Spirit from Homer
to Hume (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), p. 95. There is only one place in the NT when psyche is not used
to refer to the life of human beings; in Revelation 8:9, it refers to the living (psyche) creatures in the sea.
166
Ibid. pp. 95–96.

42
 In Matthew 11:29, the whole person is meant by psyche: “Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls [psychai]” (“psychai” is used almost as a plural pronoun).

Just as nephesh was used in the Old Testament, in the synoptic Gospels, psyche can
refer to the seat of emotions in the human person. In her joy, Mary, the mother of Jesus,
sang, “My soul [psyche] magnifies the Lord” (Lk. 1:46). In Mark 12:30, love of God is
associated with the psyche: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul [psyche] and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

Psyche occasionally refers to “true life” rather than merely physical life, as in Mark
8:35: “For those who want to save their lives [psyche] will lose them, but those who lose
their lives [psyche] for me and for the gospel will save them”.

Finally, psyche may carry a sense that is in marked contrast to the body: “Do not be
afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who
can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt. 10:28). This last example indicates a sort of
dualism, in which the death of the body does not imply the destruction of the entire
personality.167

In this way the western dichotomy between the psychic and the somatic, between
soul and body, spirit and flesh, is foreign to the “classically Hebraic” conception of the
human person.

2. 3. 2. 2. Soul in the Pauline Corpus

Saint Paul’s depiction of human nature differs in subtle ways from the portrayal in
the rest of the New Testament. 168 It is noteworthy that Paul rarely uses psyche; it occurs
only 13 times, about once per letter. Paul’s avoidance of the term psyche seems to argue
that Paul’s view of the soul was more Hebraic than Greek. 169 Schweizer sums up Paul’s
view thus:

167
James Beck, “Self and Soul”, loc. cit. See also TDNT, vol. IX, s.v. “psyche”.
168
See Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1992), pp.
580–85. Cf. David E. Aune, “Human Nature and Ethics in Hellenistic Philosophical Traditions and Paul:
Some Issues and Problems”, in Paul in His Hellenistic Context, Troeles Engeberg-Pederson (ed.) (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 291–312, p. 291.
169
James Beck, “Self and Soul”, loc. cit. Notably more common in Paul are anthropological terms like heart,
flesh and spirit. Cf. James Beck, The Psychology of Paul: A Fresh Look at His Life and Teaching (Grand
Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2002).

43
 Paul does not think in such strongly Greek terms that he can
adopt the Hellenistic idea of the soul, nor in such strongly
non-Greek terms that he can ignore the fact that in Greek
culture ψυχή means something different than nephesh.170

When Paul does use psyche, most often he is referring to the state of being alive, though
sometimes psyche is used to denote a person, as in Romans, 2:9: “There will be tribulation
and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek....”
Paul does not use psyche in a negative sense, but did use it with a neutral sense in
Colossians: “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men” (3:23).
When Paul speaks of an intermediate state between physical death and the resurrection, he
does not use psyche in reference to this state. It’s Paul’s intention to emphasize that “life
after death is a gift from God that is heavenly and divine”, and is not simply an inherent
part of being human.171

Though the word psyche is widely used in the Gospels and Epistles, the various
authors use the word in several ways. Peter, for example, uses it in a different way than
Paul does.172 The context of any given New Testament use of the word psyche must be
considered in order to determine what psyche means. We can, however, draw one
conclusion about the use of psyche in the New Testament: it is never used in a thoroughly
Greek sense. The Old Testament emphasis on wholeness is continued in the New
Testament, with some additional material suggesting that the soul can also be part of a
person.173 When nephesh is rendered as psyche, it does not carry any connotations of the
dualistic Greek conception. As Colin Brown points out,

[a] clear indication of how unfamiliar the OT is with the

concept of a soul separate from the body, or a soul which
becomes separated from the body at death, is the fact that it
can speak of a dead person as the soul of that person, and
mean by this phrase the dead person in his corporeality.174

2. 3. 3. Sarks (sarx) – flesh and sōma – body

170
As quoted in Paul S. MacDonald, Concept of Mind, p. 97.
171
James Beck, “Self and Soul”, loc. cit. See also James R. Beck, “Questioning the Intermediate State: A
Case Study in Integration Conflict”, Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 10.1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 24–35.
172
As Beck notes, “In 1 Peter 2:11, the ‘most strongly Hellenized psyche passage in the New Testament’
Peter uses psyche in contrast to flesh as Paul uses spirit (pneuma) in contrast to flesh in his letters”. James
Beck, “Self and Soul”, loc. cit.
173
James Beck, “Self and Soul”, loc. cit.
174
The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 3, s.v. “soul-psyche”, pp. 676–89, p.
680 (1978a). As quoted in Paul S. MacDonald, Concept of Mind, p. 90.

44
 In the New Testament, the Hebrew word bāśār is translated by the Greek sarx, used
in at least eight different senses, compared to six uses of sarx in classical Greek.175 Sarx
appears at least 135 times as a noun and 10 times as an adjective, in twenty-one books of
the New Testament.176 The highest concentration of uses of sarx in the New Testament is
in the Pauline texts, where it is used 91 times, 26 times in Romans alone.177

Like bāśār, the simplest English translation of sarx is “flesh”, but in fact, sarx has
many shades of meaning. It may refer to the flesh of humans as well as animals, birds and
fish. We experience pain in the flesh; the flesh is circumcised. Jesus has a fleshly body
(Col. 1:22, “his body of flesh”). As well as designating the fleshly part of the body, sarx
can refer to the body as a whole: someone can be present or absent physically, “in the
flesh” (1 Cor. 5:3; Col. 2:5). Sarx may also imply humanity which is constituted of flesh,
“a person’s human relationships, one’s physical origin, the natural ties that bind him or her
to other human beings” as Jesus’s human nature comes through his descent from David
(Rom. 1:3).178

Besides referring to the physical aspect of man’s existence or man as a whole, in

the New Testament, sarx also means “flesh as a tendency within fallen man to disobey God
in every area of life”.179 This understanding of sarx, most often found in Paul’s writings,
has been a source of much controversy and debate. Paul’s connection of “flesh” with sin
has caused some to conclude that the body is by its nature evil or sinful, in opposition to
the Spirit, which is good. This interpretation is undoubtedly wrong. When Paul writes in
Romans 7:5 that “we were living in the flesh” (sarx), he means living by our “sinful
nature”. In condemning the “flesh”, Paul is not referring to the human body, but “rather to
a psychological and spiritual defect that leads every human being to place self or the
creature ahead of the Creator”. Paul’s teaching about the “flesh” undoubtedly is based in
the Old Testament, but in this sense he goes beyond the Old Testament use of “flesh”.180

In connection with “flesh” (sarx), we must consider the New Testament usage of
another equivalent of the Hebrew bāśār which has a similar meaning to sarx-sōma,

175
H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones & R. McKenzie, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996), s.v. “sarx”.
176
Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
and other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1952), s.v. “sarx”.
177
James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 62.
178
George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 509.
179
Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 216.
180
Ronald H. Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), p. 82. That Paul did not
mean to condemn the physical body as evil is evidenced by the New International Version of the Bible
translating sarx as “sinful nature”. Cf. Rom. 8:3, 4, 13.

45
“body”. In the Septuagint, we find bāśār translated as sōma, while in the New Testament,
we find sōma used by Paul 91 times, and in extra-Pauline works 51 times.

When sōma is used in the New Testament, it can have the traditional meaning of a
corpse of a man or animal (Mk. 15:43; Lk. 17:37). The body can be ill or in need of food,
clothing or healing (Mk. 5:29; Jas. 2:16). Jesus in His body — sōma — (and blood) offers
Himself as a sacrifice. 181 Finally, as in the Old Testament use of bāśār, in the New
Testament, sōma indicates “identification with the whole person and not mere
representation of the whole person”.182

Paul reaffirms the Hebraic concept of the body as intrinsically good; he instructs
the Corinthians to “glorify God in your body” because the body is a “temple of the Holy
Spirit” (I Cor. 6:19-20). However, Paul goes further than other New Testament uses of
soma in his teaching about our life in Christ as embodied persons. We are both
individually members of the body of Christ and the body of Christ ourselves (I Cor. 12:12,
27), because we all partake of the same Body (soma) of Christ in the Eucharist. Thus for
Paul, soma

denotes equally the physical body of the worshipper, the

sacramental body that each receives in holy communion, and
the social or ecclesial body into which each is incorporated
through participating in the Eucharist.183

The same soma that participates in the life of Christ in the Eucharist has the potential to be
glorified in the resurrection.

2. 3. 4. Pneuma – spirit

The Hebrew term rūah is translated pneuma in the Greek Septuagint. Pneuma is
used in the Greek New Testament 379 times; in English it is usually translated “spirit”.184

181
TDNT, abridged ed., s.v. sōma, p. 1145.
182
Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: CUP,
1995), p. 30.
183
Kallistos Ware, “‘My Helper and My Enemy’: The Body in Greek Christianity”, in Sarah Coakley (ed.),
Religion and the Body (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), p. 94.
184
“Spirit” may also be used to translate the Hebrew neshamah (“breath”). Daniel L. Akin (ed.), A Theology
for the Church (Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing, 2007), p. 605.

46
 Pneuma is used in four ways in the New Testament. It is used least to mean
literally “breath” or “wind” (3 instances). The demonological sense of pneuma, to indicate
impure or evil spirits, occurs about 38 times, most often in the Gospels and Acts. Of more
significance is the use of pneuma in its anthropological sense, for the “spirit of life”, but
also the “human person in his or her totality or inwardness”. The most frequent use of
pneuma is in the theological sense of the “transcendent Spirit of God or Christ”.185

The pneuma is “the highest (or deepest) dimension” of the human person, and may
even be viewed as a manifestation of the divine Spirit: “For what person knows a man’s
thoughts except the spirit which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of
God except the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11). Man serves God with his spirit (Rom. 1:9).
Clearly, the spirit is the “dimension of the human person by means of which the person
relates most directly to God”.186

2. 3. 5 Nous – mind

Nous appears rarely in the Septuagint. In the New Testament, nous is almost
exclusively a Pauline concept, occurring 21 times in Paul (6 times in Romans) and only
three times in other places.187 When Paul uses nous, he refers to a human being who is
knowing, thinking and judging, but not engaging in speculation or reflecting, because nous
is an organ of understanding. The nous (understanding) can be strong or weak, high or
low, with a moral or immoral quality. Godless people, for example, have a “base mind”
(Rom. 1:28). Believers have to guard their nous: the Thessalonians are warned not to be
shaken in their minds (II Th. 2:2), and believers must renew their understanding (Rom.
12.2; Eph. 4:23). Nous can be applied to the “mind” of God (Rom. 11:34), or Christ (I
Cor. 2:16). Man’s nous is his moral consciousness that identifies the will of God and
wishes to obey it.188

The New Testament does not depart from the general line of Old Testament
teaching about the human person. The main terms related to the human person that we
185
In the theological sense of the Spirit of God or Christ, pneuma occurs 275 times in the New Testament.
“The Spirit in the theological sense is used 149 times in the absolute sense; 93 times as Holy Spirit or
holiness,…18 times as Spirit of God, once as Spirit of the Father, five times qualified christologically”. Jean-
Yves Lacoste, Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (NY: Routledge, 2005), p. 726.
186
James D.G. Dunn, Theology of Paul, p. 77.
187
Paul S. MacDonald, Concept of Mind, pp. 100–101.
188
George Eldon Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, pp. 518–519. See also Robinson H. Wheeler, The
Christian Doctrine of Man (Charleston, SC: Bibliolife, 2009), p. 107.

47
find in the Hebrew Scriptures and Septuagint retain the same meaning in the New
Testament writings. In the New Testament, however, the Incarnation bestows on the
human person a higher value, because God Himself has taken on a human body and soul.
Everything has changed because Jesus gave His body as food in the Eucharist. In the
body, by partaking of the Eucharist, every human person participates in fact in the nature
of God. All who partake of the Eucharist are made one in the mystical Body of Christ that
is the Church: “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one
of another” (Rom. 12:5).

2. 4. Hellenism and the New Testament

Hellenism permeated Judaism in the last few centuries before Christ, and its
influence on the development of the early Church continued for the first three centuries of
the Christian era.189

If the “Hellenization” of Christianity is understood as the development of a

“philosophically articulated doctrinal system only distantly related to the words of
Scripture”, it is misleading to say that Christianity was “Hellenized” in the first few
centuries.190 Many if not most Christian thinkers in the Patristic period were often
suspicious of or even hostile to Hellenistic philosophical thought. It is well known that
Gregory the Great placed no value on philosophy. In the Stromata, Clement of Alexandria
accused Greek philosophers of falsifying the truth and stealing their wisdom from the
Hebrews, going so far as to call them “thieves and robbers”.191 Origen and Eusebius
agreed with his view. In his Apologia (46), Tertullian called philosophers “falsifiers of the
truth”, famously asking, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” 192 Lactantius
thought pagan philosophies were false and erroneous, and in his highly representative
Divine Institutes, backed up his conclusion with Scripture: “For the wisdom of this world

189
On the influence of Hellenism on Judaism, see Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols., trans. John
Bowden (London: SCM, 1974), 1.104; I. Howard Marshall, “Palestinian and Hellenistic Christian: Some
Critical Comments”, New Testament Studies 19 (1973), pp. 271–287; Troels Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Paul
Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001); Anders Gerdmar,
Rethinking the Judaism-Hellenism Dichotomy: A Historiographical Case Study of Second Peter and Jude,
Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series 36 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001).
190
Lewis Ayres, Nicea and Its Legacy (Oxford: OUP, 2004), p. 31.
191
Stromata I, ch.17. New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02101.htm, (n.d.), viewed 9 July 2011.
192
De Praescriptione Haereticorum VII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, eds. Alexander Roberts, James
Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), p. 246.

48
is folly with God” (I Cor. 3:19). 193 In the view of Lactantius, clearly Greek philosophy
could not be reconciled with the revelation of God.

Hellenistic and Patristic thought could not escape having some affinities or general
intuitions in common. However, we can see that Patristic anthropology and cosmology
were at odds with those of the ancient Greeks.194 The Christian vision of the creation of the
universe ex nihilo, for example, was utterly contrary to the Greek doctrine of the eternity of
the cosmos: the Judeo-Christian presupposition that man and the world were created was
so fundamental that the Greek alternative was inconceivable to the early Christians. 195
Already in Apostolic times, Paul was fully aware of the uniqueness of Christian revelation
and that a Greek audience would consider the incarnation of a divine Person to be “folly”
(I Cor 1:23).196 In their process of theologizing, the early Church Fathers chose to use
words, images and concepts that they found in Hellenistic thought, but the theology they
produced was different in content and in intention from Greek philosophy.197

2. 5. Person in theology in the time after the First Oecumenical Council

Around the beginning of the fourth century, two Trinitarian theologies denied the
individual reality of the Three. On the one hand, there was Marcellus of Ancyra, who
adhered to a radical monotheism. He thought of God as one prosópon, “source of action”,
because he could not imagine a Godhead of two “I’s”. 198 Marcellus believed that the
Logos existed eternally, but only became the Son at the Incarnation. At the consummation,

193
“[P]hilosophiam quoque ostendere quam inanis et falsa sit” (Inst., III, 2). As quoted in Ernest A. Moody,
“Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy”, The Philosophical Review 67.2 (Apr., 1958), pp.
145–163, p. 152.
194
See I.P. Sheldon-Williams, “The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus
and Eriugena”, in the Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. Hilary
Armstrong (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), pp. 425–488.
195
“Only through gnosticism did belief in creation become a theological problem, and out of the encounter
with philosophical metaphysics arose the necessity of formulating conceptually the freedom and the
unconditioned character of God’s creative activity”. Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of
Creation out of Nothing in Early Christian Thought, trans. A.S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp.
26–27.
196
For a broad survey of pagan criticism of Christianity see S. Benko, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity
During the First Two Centuries AD”, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und
Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1980), pp. 1055–1118.
197
Gregory Telepneff and Bishop Chrysostomos, “The Transformation of Hellenistic Thought on the Cosmos
and Man in the Greek Fathers”, Orthodox Christian Information Center,
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/hellenistic_thought.aspx, 1990, viewed 9 July 2010. Originally
published in The Patristic and Byzantine Review, no. 9, 2–3, 1990.
198
Joseph T. Lienhard, “The Arian Controversy: Some Categories Reconsidered,” TS 48.3 (1987), pp. 415–
436, pp. 426–427.

49
the Logos and the Spirit — which Marcellus taught is also a projection of the Father —
would return to the Original Unity from which they came.

The more radical theology came from Eunomius of Cyzicus. Eunomius asserted that
God the Father and God the Son had a different essence (ousia), because God the Son was
begotten, and God the Father was not. If the Father begot the Son, then by Eunomius’s
logic, the Son must be subordinate to and less than the Father.199 The Son does not partake
of the Father’s ousia, but rather of the Father’s creative power (energeia). For Eunomius,
the Father’s paternity rests in His energeia, not His ousia. This shared energeia is the
sense in which we can use the term “Son of God”.200 This view emphasizes the Son’s
created status and role as “Creator”: He is not the true God, though He is God for man.201

It was the achievement of the Cappadocians to have entered into the complicated
quarrels over Trinitarian language, and to have made a crucial contribution to
standardizing Trinitarian language in the East.202

St Athanasius makes it clear that hypostasis did not differ

from ousia, both terms indicating “being” or “existence’”.
The Cappadocians changed this by dissociating hypostasis
from ousia and attaching it to prosópon. This was done in
order to make the expression “three persons” free from
Sabellian interpretations and thus acceptable to the
Cappadocians.… [T]his constitutes an historical revolution
in philosophy….203

While we justly credit the Cappadocian Fathers with arriving at the formula “one
ousia, three hypostaseis”,204 we must bear in mind that the formula is rarely found in their
writings, but seems to be a sort of “modern academic shorthand” to use Lienhard’s
phrase.205

199
Albert-Kees Geljon, “Divine Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa and Philo of Alexandria”, in VC 59.2 (2005),
pp. 152–177, p. 153.
200
Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), “Eunomianism”, New Advent,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05605a.htm, 2009, viewed 12 July 2010.
201
Michel René Barnes, “Eunomius of Cyzicus and Gregory of Nyssa: Two Traditions of Transcendental
Causality”, VC 52 (1998), pp. 59–87, pp. 86–87.
202
See D.L. Balás, “The Unity of Human Nature in Basil’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s Polemics against
Eunomius”, StPatr 14.3 (1976), pp. 275–281.
203
John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity”, loc. cit. p. 47.
204
Jürgen Hammerstaedt shows that while Origen introduced the term hypostasis to Christian theology, his
concept of hypostasis was not the same as the later fourth century theologians. “Der trinitarische Gebrauch
der Hypostasisbegriffs bei Origenes” in Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 34 (1991), pp. 12–20.
205
Joseph T. Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of ‘One
Hypostasis’”, in Stephen Davis, et. al., The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (NY:
OUP, 1999), p. 99. According to Hildebrand, Basil “never used the phrase [one ousia, three hypostaseis] as
such.” Stephen M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
Univ. of America Press, 2007), p. 99.

50
 Basil of Caesarea was the first to posit a distinction between ousia and hypostasis.206
Late in his life, Basil wrote two letters in which he made it clear that the difference
between ousia and hypostasis is between that of the universal and the particular:

I shall state that ousia has the same relation to hypostasis as

the common has to the particular.... [T]he term ousia is
common, like goodness, or Godhead, or any similar attribute;
while hypostasis is contemplated in the special property of
Fatherhood, Sonship, or the power to sanctify. If then they
describe the Persons as being without hypostasis, the
statement is per se absurd; but if they concede that the
Persons exist in real hypostasis...let them so reckon them that
the principle of the homoousion may be preserved in the
unity of the Godhead….207

To explain the formula treis hypostaseis en mia ousia, Basil clarifies: “We…confess the
Son to be of one substance [ousia] with the Father…; but the Father to exist in His own
proper hypostasis, the Son in His, and the Holy Ghost in His”.208
When Gregory of Nazianzus preached the Last Farewell at the Council in
Constantinople in 381, he said,

[W]e walking along the royal road which is the seat of

virtues...believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, of
one Substance [ousia] and glory; in Whom baptism has its
perfection...acknowledging the Unity in the Essence [ousia]
and in the undivided worship, and the Trinity in the
Hypostases or Persons (which term some prefer).209

206
The record of Basil’s thinking about the distinction or non-distinction between ousia and hypostasis is
complex and the subject of much scholarly attention. For example, De Castro simply writes that in using the
term hypostasis (ύποστασις), Basil is not consistent: “der Gebrauch von ύποστασις, den Basilius fixirt hatte,
ist bei ihm nicht consequent durchgeführt”. Michael Gomes de Castro, Die Trinitätslehre des. Hl. Gregor
von Nyssa (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1938), p.72. Hanson thinks that Basil’s position is not always clear, since
in Against Eunomius “he speaks of two ‘substances’ (ousiai) in the incarnate Logos. But later he writes of the
‘characteristics of his nature’ of the incarnate Christ, as if he had only one nature’ (DSS VIII.17 /96/ 304)”.
R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1988), p. 734.
Basil’s varying usages of hypostasis can be summarized briefly: (1) as synonymous with ousia; (2)
with concrete connotations, giving ousia the same connotations when the words are used together; (3) in rare
passages where hypostasis is used without any allusion to ousia, we find hints of Basil’s later Trinitarian use
of hypostasis as distinct from ousia. David G. Robertson, “Stoic and Aristotelian Notions of Substance in
Basil of Caesarea”, VC 52.4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 393–417, pp. 396–97.
207
Basil, Letter 214, NPNF 2, 4:138. See also Basil, Letter 236.6. The letters date from early in 375 and
autumn of the same year.
208
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 125.1 (NPNF 2, 8:194).
209
Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 42, The Last Farewell, NPNF 2, 7:90. In his dissertation, Peter Gilbert states
that “[t]he word πρόσμοπον occurs 25 times in the whole corpus of Gregory’s poetry, as against 64 instances
in his prose works. There are only two instances in the poetry of it being used in the sense of trinitarian
‘persons’, and these instances are found in the poem Ad Seleucum, which is now usually attributed to St.
Amphilochius of Iconium”. Peter L. Gilbert, Person and Nature in the Theological Poems of St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, Ph.D. diss. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America, 1994), p. 84.

51
 Not everyone shared Gregory’s happiness. The Cappadocian settlement met with
criticism primarily from the neo-Arians, of whom Eunomius is the most well-known. 210
Even highly orthodox personages such as St Jerome found it difficult to accept the formula
“three hypostaseis, one ousia”. The Cappadocian distinction of hypostasis and ousia so
distressed Jerome that in 376 he wrote to Pope Damasus:

Accordingly, now — O woe! — after the Nicene Creed, after

the Alexandrine decree (with the West equally in accord), I,
a Roman, am importuned by the Campenses, that offspring
of Arians, to accept a newfangled term, “three hypostaseis.”
What apostles, pray tell me, authorized it? What new Paul,
teacher of the Gentiles, has promulgated this doctrine?211

From Basil’s time the words prosópon and hypostasis became synonymous.212
Thanks to this “revolution” in ontological thinking, 213 Gregory of Nazianzus was able to
speak of the completeness and subsistence in se proper to persons, as well as the numerical
distinctness of each of the divine persons. Gregory, more clearly than Basil, 214 further
elucidates the distinction between the divine persons in terms of relations of origin, rather
than “relations of opposition”.215 Gregory teaches that when we think of the Father, by
necessity we are thinking of the Son and the Spirit. 216 The hypostasis of each Person is
only defined in terms of relation to and with the other hypostases; the identity and reality
of each Person exists entirely in relation to another Person.217

With greater speculative adeptness, Gregory of Nyssa develops a more lucid and
logical elaboration of Trinitarian unity and division than either of the other Cappadocians
especially in his Contra Eunomium218 and his treatise “On the Distinction between Ousia

210
Eunomius identified God’s essence as unbegottenness, and concluded that the begotten Son was therefore
not God. Both Basil and Gregory of Nyssa wrote extensive works against Eunomius.
211
As quoted by Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis”, loc. cit., p. 101.
212
“In polemic with the Sabellians and with the Pauhnians, Basil insists that prosópon must be used only with
hypostasis so as to avoid an errant understanding of divine unity and plurality. But in polemic with the
Eunomians and the Macedonians, whom he does not suspect of Sabellianism, Basil himself uses prosópon
without hypostasis to express the divine plurality. Understanding the historical development of Basil’s
thought makes it evident that, although he clearly comes to judge some Trinitarian words better than others,
his Trinitarian terms are not enshrined in formulae”. Hildebrand, Trinitarian Theology, p. 99.
213
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 36.
214
A systematic study of the paired terms prosópon – hypostasis in some of St Basil’s writings can be found
in Lucian Turcescu’s essay, “Prosópon and Hypostasis in Basil of Caesarea’s ‘Against Eunomius’ and the
Epistles”, VC 51.4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 374–395.
215
See Oratio 39.11. English translation in The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the
Fathers from St Cyril of Jerusalem to St Leo the Great, ed. Henry Bettenson (London: OUP, 1970), p. 118.
216
Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 38:4, NPNF 2, 8:138–139. Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29 and 31,
NPNF 2, 7:301–309, 318–328.
217
Gregory of Nazianzus was the first Eastern theologian to apply these Trinitarian reflections to the mystery
of the Incarnation.
218
See Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I: PG 45, 320 or Refutatio confessionis Eunomii 205 (II. 399).

52
and Hypostasis”.219 Nyssan insists that the three divine Persons do not participate in
something extrinsic to themselves, such as the divine essence (ousia) understood as
“Fullness of Being”. For him “ousia is the whole that unites the three hypostases without
adding an extra entity to the Trinity”,220 and therefore, as Cross notes, “Gregory does not
mean that the three divine persons imitate some extrinsic idea — viz. the divine essence.
He means that they are exemplifications of an intrinsic universal, immanent in them”. 221 A
difficult question in considering Nyssan’s theological concepts is the precise meaning of
the “intrinsic universal”, that is, whether it is possible to describe what is the “centre” of
God’s divinity (Divine Substance).

Mühlenberg asserts that the concept of God’s infinity is fundamental to Nyssan’s

description of God’s mystery.222 Anthony Cirelli has summarized Balthasar’s
understanding of the relationship of finite and infinite in Nyssan’s theology:

In order to explicate this relationship between finite and

infinite, Balthasar grounds it in what he understands to be
Gregory’s identification of God with Being. Accordingly,
Balthasar argues that in Gregory’s theological works Being
does not mean the totality, or equivalent, of intelligible
reality [nous, or that which can be known], which is the
prevalent doctrine of neoplatonism. Nor is Being to be
understood in the sense of ousia, which Balthasar identifies
as the essence of a thing, that is, the presence of universals in
particulars, making it possible to distinguish beings one from
the other. Rather, according to Balthasar, Gregory identifies
God with Being [to einai]. This identification implies an
understanding of God as the power of existence, or the “to
be” of beings.223

However, Gregory’s argument in On “Not Three Gods” and On the Holy Trinity
indicates “a shift from an argument for the unity of nature based on the single Power

219
Gregory’s treatise To His Brother Peter: On the Distinction Between Ousia and Hypostasis (Ad Petrum),
was also called Basil’s Epistle 38. There was a long debate about the Basilian authorship of this letter. The
authorship debate was reviewed by Marcella Forlin Patrucco, 407–408 in her edition of the first portion of
Basil’s letters, Basilio di Cesarea: Le lettere I, Corona Patrum (Torino: Societa Editrice Internationale,
1983).
220
Johannes Zachhuber, “Once Again: Gregory of Nyssa on Universals”, JTS 56.1 (April 2005), pp. 75–98,
p. 85.
221
Richard Cross, “Gregory of Nyssa on Universals”, VC 56.4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 372–410, p. 401.
222
See Ekkehard Mühlenberg, Die Unendlichkeit Gottes bei Gregor von Nyssa: Gregors Kritik am
Gottesbegriff der klassischen Metaphysik, Forschungen zur Kirchen und Dogmengeschichte 16,
(Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1966), p. 26. It is acceptable that, as Mühlenberg writes, Nyssan is the first one
who introduced the concept of infinity to theology, but we agree with Geljon that it is difficult to accept
Mühlenberg’s thesis that “infinity” as such is for Nyssan the main concept of describing God’s ousia. See
Albert-Kees Geljon, “Divine Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa and Philo of Alexandria”, VC 59.2 (2005), pp.
152–177.
223
Cirelli is commenting on Balthasar’s Présence et Pensée: Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire
de Nysse, in “Re-assessing the Meaning of Thought: Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Retrieval of Gregory of
Nyssa”, HeyJ 50 (2009), pp. 416–424, p. 417.

53
common to the Persons to an argument for the unity of nature based on multiple operations
common to the Persons”.224 We can conclude that a shift is made from an abstract, inactive
concept (like “Infinity” or “Being”) to a living reality — a communio of the divine
Persons. It seems to me, therefore, that for Gregory, the concept of “Being” (“real Being”
or “Infinity”) cannot be taken as a definition of the “intrinsic universal” or “Divine
Substance”.

Gregory of Nyssa built on Basil’s distinction between ousia and hypostasis, with a
comparison of the two terms.225 According to Gregory, the hypostasis “is the conception
which, by means of the specific notes it indicates, restricts and circumscribes in a particular
thing what is general and uncircumscribed”.226

In light of what has gone before we cannot agree with the opinion of Marmion that
“the three hypostases manifest the unknowable ousia of God; what Father, Son, and Spirit
are is the same; who each is, is unique”.227 Likewise, Prestige’s summary of the
Cappadocian view of substance does not exactly express the truth of the communion of the
Divine Persons, assigning too great a role to common substance-ousia:

The whole unvaried substance, being incomposite, is

identical with the whole unvaried being of each Person.
There is no question of accidents attaching to it; the entire
substance of the Son is the same as the entire substance of
the Father: the individuality is only the manner in which the
identical substance is objectively presented in each several
Person.228

It is also evident that according to the Cappadocians, divine ousia is not simply
identical with one of the given concepts of ousia whether Platonic, Stoic, or Aristotelian. 229
Even if we accept, as Mosshammer asserts, that “Gregory uses ‘hypostasis’ in a wide

224
Michel René Barnes, The Power of God: Λύναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology,
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2001), p. 299.
225
“Aqui es donde el Niseno segue principalmente las huellas de su hermano Basilio. Este, forzado por las
circunstancias historicas en que vivió a abordar la cuestión filosófica de las tres hipóstasis, parts del supuesto
de que ούσία e ύποστάσις no son sinónimos entre si; sino que ούσία representa lo común de la naturaleza,
mientras que ύποστάσις es lo propio de cada persona o individuo”. Severino Gonzalez, “La formula μία
ούσία τρείς ύποστάσέις en San Gregorio di Nisa”, AnGr 21 (1939), p. 16. “The Cappadocian Settlement
finally fixed the statement of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the formula of one ousia and three hypostaseis.”
Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), p. 233.
226
Ad Petrum, 3 (ed. Courtonne), I. 82–3, as translated in Joseph T. Lienhard, in “Ousia and Hypostasis”, loc.
cit., p. 101. In this way hypostasis is used by Gregory for that which subsists, which possesses subsistence,
that is, independence and individuality.
227
Declan Marmion, “Trinity and Salvation: A Dialogue with Catherine LaCugna”, IThQ 74 (2009), pp. 115–
129, p. 119.
228
Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), p. 244.
229
Cf. Vladimir Lossky, “The Theological Notion of the Human Person”, Chapter 6 of In the Image and
Likeness of God (NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 1974), p. 115.

54
variety senses [and] nowhere defines his term very precisely”,230 we can say that the
hypostasis is not one thing and the ousia another, but hypostasis is the ousia insofar as it is
concretized in objective reality.231 In this way, as Thompson points out, “hypostasis was a
quite original way in which the Cappadocians broke through to the personal and dialogical
view” of the Divinity in the New Testament.232

When the Cappadocians developed the concept of mia ousia, treis hypostaseis,233
they allowed both unity and difference in God at the same time, seeing “the triune deity as
a unity-in-trinity”:234

[H]e who received the Father has received alongside both the
Son and the Spirit potentially, for there is in no way any
severance or division to be thought of, by which either the
Son would be thought of apart from the Father or the Spirit
cut off from the Son.235

2. 6. Personal ontology in God in the Cappadocians

Gregory of Nazianzus states, “[The Father] is the principle...of the divinity, which
(divinity) is seen in the Son and Spirit”. 236 According to Basil, “the originator of all things
is one: He creates through the Son and perfects through the Spirit”. 237 These and many
230
Alden A. Mosshammer, “Non-Being and Evil in Gregory of Nyssa”, VC 44.2 (Jun., 1990), pp. 136–167, p.
164, n. 1. On Gregory’s use of “hypostasis”, see Christopher G. Stead, “Ontology and Terminology in
Gregory of Nyssa”; Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, ed. H. Dörrie et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1976), pp.
107–127, reprinted in Christopher Stead, Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers (London, Variorum,
1985).
231
Stephen Prickett points out that languages become richer through “de-synonymy”. Two words which were
once synonyms begin to take on subtly different meanings and are able to function in different ways. This
process of dy-synonymisation of ousia and hypostasis made it possible both to distinguish and hold together
the unity and plurality of God. See Stephen Prickett, Words and the Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical
Interpretation (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), pp. 138–39.
232
William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (NY: Paulist, 1985), p. 308.
233
Severino Gonzalez, “La formula μία ούσία τρείς ύποστάσέις en San Gregorio di Nisa”, AnGr 21 (1939);
Jean Pepin, “Ύπαρξις et ύπόστασις en Cappadoce”, in Hyparxis e hypostasis nel neoplatonismo: Atti del I
Colloquio Internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo, eds. F. Romano and D. P. Taormina
(Florence: Olschki, 1994), pp. 59–78.
234
Johannes Zachhuber, “Once Again”, loc. cit., p. 97.
235
(Basil) Ep. 38. 4. 79–83 (vol. I, pp. 86–87 Courtonne), translation and numbering of quotation taken from
Johannes Zachhuber, “Once Again”, loc. cit., p. 97.
236
Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 2.38; 11.11–12, Discours 1–3, ed. Jean Bernardi, Sources chrétiennes 247,
(Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978), p. 140. Translation taken from Richard Cross, “Divine Monarchy in Gregory
of Nazianzus”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 14.1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 105–116. p. 106.
237
Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, 38, 62, as quoted by Najeeb G. Awad, “Between Subordination and
Koinonia: Toward a New Reading of the Cappadocian Theology”, ModTheol 23.2 (April 2007), pp. 181–

55
other statements that attempt to describe the personal ontology of God are necessarily
conditioned by the corporality and temporality of the human beings who utter them: “God
is above every name, thought or concept, not only of humans, but also of angels, and above
any linguistic expression, transcendent and incomprehensible”. 238 “Because the divine
essence is perfectly ungraspable and cannot be compared to anything”, 239 “every idea made
up about God is essentially an idol, a false likeness”, declared Gregory of Nyssa.240

The limits of human language always put us in danger of suggesting that the Father
has ontological priority over the Son and the Spirit (as in Arian monarchism, which
distinguished the divine essence into “greater” and “smaller”). It is difficult for us to speak
about the Father without conceiving of the Son and Spirit as two additional, qualitatively
different natures. Athanasius laid the groundwork for resolving this difficulty when he
made the ontological connection of the being of the Father, Son and Spirit through the
affirmation that they are one ousia. The Cappadocian Fathers articulated how the
communion of the Father and the Son could be expressed in ontology. In the words of
Gregory of Nazianzus, “‘Father’ is a term neither of essence (ousia) nor of energy
(energeia), but of relation (schesis), of the manner of the Father’s bearing toward the Son
or of the Son’s bearing toward the Father”. 241 The ousia (or Godhead) of Three Persons
now becomes understandable on the level of communion or relations.

In creating their doctrine of the relationality of the divine Persons, the

Cappadocians recognized “the Person of the Father as the source of governing
authority”;242 God the Father is the “Head” of the two other divine Persons. The distinct
characteristics of the hypostases come from the Father, who is the source of relations in the
Trinity. Simultaneously, the Cappadocians maintained the “absolute hypostatic difference
and…the equally absolute essential identity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”. 243
The Father is in union with the Son and Holy Spirit in the perfection of His
incomprehensible divinity, and the hypostasis always acts in unison.244 In fact, we must

204, p. 187.
238
Contra Eunomium I, PG 44, 686. As quoted in Anita Strezova, “Knowledge and Vision of God in
Cappadocian Fathers”, Theandros Online Journal of Orthodox Christian Theology and Philosophy,
http://www.theandros.com/cappavision.html, 2007, viewed 13 July 2010.
239
De Vita Moysis, PG 44, 377. As quoted in Anita Strezova, “Knowledge and Vision”, loc. cit.
240
Homily on Beatitudes, PG 44, 1269A. As quoted in Anita Strezova, “Knowledge and Vision”, loc. cit.
241
St Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29, 16 (PG 36, 96). As quoted in David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The
Doctrine of the Triune God (NY: OUP, 1999), p. 68.
242
Anita Strezova, “Knowledge and Vision”, loc. cit.
243
Gregory the Theologian, Oratio 30, 9; PG 36, 141D–144A, quoted in Anita Strezova, “Knowledge and
Vision”, loc. cit.
244
Nathan Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’ — Again: Can a Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia
and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?” ModTheol 24.3 (July 2008), pp.331–358, p. 340.

56
say that the divine Persons, which Basil characterised as “paternity”, “sonship” and
“sanctifying power”, are Union.245

One way to describe the relationship among the three divine Persons is to call the
Father the “uncaused causer” of the other two Persons, without in any sense suggesting
that as “cause” the Father is temporally “before” the Son and Spirit. 246 As Gregory of
Nazianzus wrote:

To us there is One God, for the Godhead is One, and all that
proceeded from Him is referred to One, though we believe in
Three Persons. For one is not more and another less God;
nor is One before and another after; nor are They divided in
will or parted in power; nor can you find here any of the
qualities of divisible things; but the Godhead is, to speak
concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one
mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each
other.247

The Father’s “monarchy” by virtue of being uncaused, does not mean that the “caused”
Son and Spirit are subordinate to or less divine than the Father. 248 On the contrary, God’s
being is “reciprocally koinonial”, a “community of hypostaseis who give and receive their
reality to and from one another”.249 There is no “being” in God apart from a dynamic of
persons in relation. As Osborn puts it, “there is no monarchy without trinity and no trinity
without monarchy; they are mutually dependent”.250

The notion of divine monarchy based the unity of God on the single Person of the
Father, rather than on the one substance. 251 The Cappadocians recognized that the key to
resolving the “philosophical scandal” of the Trinity was for the concept of “substance” to

245
Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa used the terms “ingenerateness” (agennesia), “generateness”
(gennesia) and “mission” (ekporeusis/ekpempsis) or “procession”. John N.D. Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines (NY: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 265.
246
The notion of the Father as the origin of the Son does not “[i]ndicate a certain subordination of the Son to
the Father, but it is a useful way of showing that the one God, who stands so clearly apart from the world, is
and was nevertheless not an inactive and lonely being”. Eginhard Peter Meijering, “Athanasius on the Father
as the Origin of the Son”, in God Being History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy (Amsterdam: North-Holland
Publishing, 1975), p. 12.
247
Gregory of Nazianzus, Fifth Theological Oration 14 (NPNF 2, 7:322).
248
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.2 (NPNF 2, 7:301). Gregory affirms that when Christians call God
Father they do not speak of “an essence or an action”, but of “a relation in which the Father stands to the
Son” (Oration 29.16). This is why the Son is begotten. However, the notion of begotten should not be
understood by analogy with the created order.
249
Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, (London: T&T Clark, 1997), p. 94.
250
Eric Francis Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 124. Torrance
puts it this way: “The Μοναρχία is not limited to one Person: it is a Unity constituted in and by the Trinity”.
Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), p. 322.
251
According to Torrance, it is possible that a contemporary of the Cappadocians, Didymus of Alexandria,
first replaced the Nicene formula “from the being of the Father” (έκ τής ούσίας του Πατρός) with “from the
Person of the Father” (έκ τής ύοστάσεως του Πατρός). Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, p. 325.

57
give way to “personhood” as the “causing principle or arche in ontology”.252 Here there is
none of the necessity implied by “substance”; rather God’s Trinitarian existence results
from a Person — the Father — who acts in freedom and love. 253 John Zizioulas puts it this
way:

God, as Father and not as substance, perpetually confirms

through “being” His free will to exist. And it is precisely His
trinitarian existence that constitutes this confirmation: the
Father out of love — that is, freely — begets the Son and
brings forth the Spirit.254

For Zizioulas, God’s love, given and shared among the divine Persons, as well as God’s
being, is “identical with an act of communion”.255

The Cappadocians viewed the Godhead exclusively as a communal existence, and

persuasively demonstrated that God is not a static, self-enclosed ousia, but a dynamic,
relational communion of love. The divine ousia “is communicated co-equally among the
three persons”.256 According to the Cappadocians, the properties of the Father, Son or
Holy Spirit are incommunicable and particular to each Person, and that by which each
Person is what It is — Son, Father, Spirit — is intrinsic to Its relations to the other Persons.
Thus “the Son is only the Son by being begotten by the Father, the Spirit is only the Spirit
by being poured forth from the Father, and the Father is only the Father as the Father of the

252
John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution”
T.R. Valentine, http://home.comcast.net/~t.r.valentine/orthodoxy/filioque/zizioulas_cappadocians.html,
2009, viewed 12 July 2011.
253
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Divine Energies or Divine Personhood: Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas on
Conceiving the Transcendent and Immanent God”, in ModTheol, 19.3 (July 2003), pp. 357–385, p. 368.
254
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 41. Thomas H. McCall raises a problem with Zizioulas’s proposal
here, since it seems to make God’s existence contingent, which would presumably clash with Zizioulas’s
insistence on God’s absolute freedom. Commenting on this text, McCall states, “The existence of the triune
God is contingent — it rests upon the perpetual decisions of the Father both to exist and to exist in relation”.
Thomas H. McCall, “Holy Love and Divine Aseity in the Theology of John Zizioulas”, SJT 61.2 (2008), pp.
191–205, p. 198.
In McCall’s analysis, “Zizioulas sets out…two foundational theses. The first is the BAC thesis [i.e.
“Being as Communion”], according to which God exists as a relational being. As Zizioulas puts it, ‘the being
of God is a relational being: without the concept of communion it would be impossible to speak of God.…
The Holy Trinity is a primordial ontological concept’ (p. 17 [Being as Communion])…. The second thesis is
the SAC [i.e., the “Sovereignty-Aseity Conviction”]: the Father is prior in an absolute sense and as such is
radically free. But these theses do not appear to fit together comfortably, and the conjunction of them raises
some difficult questions. How are both of these concepts ‘ultimate’ or ‘primordial’? How could communion
be an ultimate concept if it must be caused by the Father? How can it be so if it is contingent? And how could
the Father be a person if — given the BAC and its affirmation that personhood exists only in communion —
he is prior to the other persons and to the communion itself?” Thomas H. McCall, “Holy Love and Divine
Aseity in the Theology of John Zizioulas,” in Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and
Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010),
pp. 196–197.
255
Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 44.
256
Douglas H. Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 2007), p. 56.

58
Son”.257 This ontology based on personhood is fundamental to understanding the
Cappadocian conception of the Trinity as “a unity or openness emerging from
relationships”.258

The developments in thinking about the Trinity that resulted in the Cappadocian
clarification of the terms ousia and hypostasis created a cultural and philosophical rupture
with the ancient Greek conception of the person. Unlike the Greek vision, in which
universals have the preeminent claim to “truth”, the Christian vision insists upon the
intrinsic worth of every human being. Further, this new, Christian understanding, derived
from the Church’s thinking about the divine Persons, rests upon the concept of “the person
as one whose uniqueness and particularity derive from relations to others”. 259 This concept
of the human person as unique, unrepeatable and of inestimable value has shaped and
enriched Western civilization for centuries, and continues to exert its appeal in the face of
threats posed to it by various forms of materialism and rampant individualism.

2. 7. Relationality in Augustine’s approach to man and the Godhead

The four greatest influences on the doctrines of Bonaventure are Augustine of

Hippo, Pseudo-Dionysius, Richard of St Victor and Alexander of Hales. 260 In this section,
I will discuss relationality in the Trinity and in the human person in the thought of Saint
Augustine (354–430), who raised Trinitarian theology to a new level and was profoundly
influential on the development of Latin Trinitarian theology in particular, 261 as well as
providing a framework for medieval anthropology. 262 (The details of Augustine’s
parentage, his restless youth, his passionate pursuit of transcendent knowledge through the
pagan philosophies of his day, his dramatic conversion to Catholicism and his subsequent
career as a Bishop of Hippo are well-known and need not be rehearsed here.263)

257
Ibid.
258
John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution”
T.R. Valentine, http://home.comcast.net/~t.r.valentine/orthodoxy/filioque/zizioulas_cappadocians.html,
2009, viewed 12 July 2011.
259
Colin Gunton, Promise, p. 96.
260
See WSB, III: p. 22. Cf. Hex., 11, 4 (V, 381a).
261
St Bonaventure “quoted Augustine over three thousand times”. J.G. Bougerol, Introduction, p. 33. He
called Augustine the “Greatest of the Latin Fathers” (III Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (III, 86b)) and
“Distinguished Doctor” (Brev., p. 3, c. 8 (V, 237) (cf. III Sent., d. 38, a. 1, q. 4 (III, 849a)) and in many
themes adopted his spirit and approach. On the influence of St Augustine on St Bonaventure, see E. Longpré,
Saint Augustin et la pensée franciscaine, FF, 15 (1932), pp. 5–76.
262
Gordon Leff, “St. Augustine’s Concept of Man” in Heresy, Philosophy and Religion in the Medieval West
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 173–186, p. 173 .
263
The standard biography is Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography London (Berkeley: UC Press,
2002).

59
 De Trinitate is the most significant of Augustine’s writings on the Trinity, and
consequently, the focus of this section.264 Such texts are perhaps always in danger of
misreading, and Augustine himself admitted that the work was not likely to be
comprehensible to most people.265 Augustine’s works must be read in their historical
context if we are not to go astray. It is important to remember that De Trinitate was
written in a time of response and reaction to the Nicene Creed, when various terms about
the relationship of the Son to the Father — as equal, similar or of one will — were used
both by theologians who accepted and those who rejected the Nicene Creed. 266 Scholars
need not be reminded to bear in mind Augustine’s intellectual background, especially his
familiarity with Neoplatonic ideas.267 It is undeniable that a man’s thinking is shaped by
his intellectual formation, and that Augustine brought all of the powers of his mind and
education to bear on his Christian writings, especially in his concern to refute various
contemporary heresies and pagan philosophies with which he was intimately familiar.

When it comes to De Trinitate, however, it is perhaps sufficient to put scholarly

debates about Augustine’s Neoplatonic influences aside and note that Augustine’s defence
of Christian doctrines is rooted in Scripture and supported by reason: the two were
inseparable for Augustine.268 The texts that were essential to Augustine’s treatment of the
Trinity were Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; Galatians 4:4: “God
sent forth His Son” (as well as John 3:17: “For God sent the Son into the world”) and in
reference to the Holy Spirit, John 14:26: “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name…”; but also John 15:26: “when the Counselor comes, whom I shall
send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father….” 269
However, as Scott Dunham makes clear,

264
Augustine also treats the Trinity in Letter 11 (see NPNF 1, 1:228–30); in “A Treatise on Faith and the
Creed” (De fide et symbolo), (NPNF 1, 3:327–31); and in Tractate 39 (see NPNF 1, 7:222–24). See also
Michel René Barnes, “Rereading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity,” in Stephen T. Davis, et al. (eds.), The
Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (NY: OUP, 2000), pp. 145–76.
265
Cf. Barnes, “Rereading Augustine’s Theology”, loc. cit., p. 145.
266
Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge:
CUP, 2001), p. 92.
267
To review the scholarly debate about the Neoplatonic influence on Augustine, see Colin Gunton,
“Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West”, SJT 43.1 (1990), pp. 33–58, p. 45; Neil
Ormerod, “Augustine and the Trinity: Whose Crisis?” in Pacifica 16 (February 2003), pp. 17–32; John
Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De Trinitate”, Augustinian Studies 23 (1992) pp. 103–
23, pp. 104–107; and Thomas A. Wassmer, “The Trinitarian Theology of Augustine and His Debt to
Plotinus”, The Harvard Theological Review 53.4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 261–268, p. 262.
268
Many scholars have proposed structural analyses of De Trinitate, ranging from a simple division of the
“scriptural books” and the “rational books” to Neil Ormerod’s Lonerganian approach. For a discussion of
these various approaches, see Ormerod, “Augustine's De Trinitate and Lonergan’s Realms of Meaning”, in
TS 64 (2003), pp. 773–794.
269
R.D. Richardson, “The Doctrine of the Trinity: Its Development, Difficulties and Value”, The Harvard
Theological Review 36.2 (Apr., 1943), pp. 109–134, p. 110. Cf. Augustine, De Trin., 15, 51.

60
 Augustine does not appeal either to Scripture and tradition as
his starting point or to the triune nature of God as his
primary focus, but rather to both — that is to the scriptural
evidence for the triune nature.270

In the Confessions, Augustine wrote of his difficulty in learning Greek when he was a
child,271 and much has been made of his alleged insufficiency in Greek, even to the point of
asserting that his lack of Greek indicates a lack of knowledge of the Trinitarian theology of
his predecessors.272 This is certainly an overstatement, since Augustine’s Latin use of “one
substance, three persons” clearly conveys exactly the same meaning that the Greeks
intended by “one ousia, three hypostaseis”.273 We can say with confidence that
Augustine’s notions of the Trinity were such that his Greek counterparts would have found
no fault with them.274 In De Trinitate IV, 32, 176–77, Augustine labours to show that
although the Father is the “source and origin” of all deity, the Son and Holy Spirit can in
no way be considered “less” than the Father:

[I]t has been sufficiently demonstrated, so I think, that the

Son is not less than the Father just because he was sent by
the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit less simply because both the
Father and the Son sent him. We should understand that
these sendings are not mentioned in scripture because of any
inequality or disparity or dissimilarity of substance [non
propter inaequalitatem vel imparilitatem vel
dissimilitudinem substantiae] between the divine persons,
but because of the created visible manifestation of the Son
and the Holy Spirit; or better still, in order to bring home to
us that the Father is the source and origin of all deity. For
even if the Father had chosen to appear visibly through the
creation he controls, it would be quite absurd to talk about

270
Scott A. Dunham, The Trinity and Creation in Augustine: An Ecological Analysis (Albany: SUNY Press,
2008), p. 26.
271
The Confessions of St Augustine, trans. Frank J. Sheed (Sheed and Ward, 1944), Book I: XII, XIV, pp. 12,
13.
272
“A Christian like Augustine, who knew no Greek, had to depend on whatever translations were available
for his knowledge of Greek philosophy”. John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480-1150) (London:
Routledge, 2002), p. 17 (emphasis added).
273
“Augustine modified Greek (Cappadocian) terms inappropriate to a Latin audience, but preserved their
basic insights and continued — some would even say improved upon — their relational principles grounded
in the notion of perichoresis (the mutual indwelling of persons constituting a single communal being)”. C.C.
Pecknold, “How Augustine Used the Trinity: Functionalism and the Development of Doctrine”, Anglican
Theological Review 85.1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 127–141, pp.133–134. In the words of Augustine himself, we
can see that he had no difficulty whatever with the concepts that his predecessors enunciated concerning
ousia-hypostasis/substantia-persona: Cf. Saint Augustine, De Trin. V, 8. 9–10, Città Nuova Editrice,
http://www.augustinus.it/latino/trinita/index2.htm, (n.d.), viewed 13 July 2010.
274
William J. Hill — among many scholars — refers to Irénée Chevalier’s argument that circa 413,
Augustine had discovered the concept of relationality in the Trinity by reading the Cappadocians, most
probably Gregory of Nazianzus, and that Augustine uses Gregory’s method of arguing against Eunomius.
“He drops once and for all the misleading categories of ‘substance,’ versus ‘relation’ as a mere accident
thereof and casts his thought henceforward in terms of an intrinsic ‘relationality’ as the inner structure of an
‘essence’ that remains one”. Hill, The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1982), pp. 56–57.

61
 him being sent by the Son he begot or the Holy Spirit who
proceeds from him.275

Here, Augustine is making points that were quite familiar to the Cappadocians: the
headship of the Father, the co-equality of the Son and Spirit. At the same time — and
without falling into modalism — Augustine defends divine unity from anti-Nicene critics
who held that neither Christ nor the Word of God is God:

The purpose of all the Catholic commentators I have been

able to read on the divine books of both testaments, who
have written before me on the trinity which God is, has been
to teach that according to the scriptures Father and Son and
Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance
present a divine unity; and therefore they are not three gods
but one God; although indeed the Father has begotten the
Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and
the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the
Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the
Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and the
Son, himself co-equal to the Father and the Son, and
belonging to the threefold unity.276

When he considers the relationality of the Persons of the Trinity, Augustine is quite
close to his Greek counterparts in his logic: “the Father is not called the Father except in
that He has a Son, and the Son is not called Son except in that He has a Father”. 277
Augustine makes it clear that “Fatherhood” and “Sonship” are neither accidents nor
substance, but terms of relationality:

[T]hese things are not said according to substance; because

each of them is not so called in relation to Himself, but the
terms are used reciprocally and in relation each to the other;
nor yet according to accident, because both the being called
the Father, and the being called the Son, is eternal and
unchangeable to them. Wherefore, although to be the Father
and to be the Son is different, yet their substance is not
different; because they are so called, not according to
substance, but according to relation, which relation,
however, is not accident, because it is not changeable.278

275
The Trinity, intro., trans., notes. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991),
p. 185.
276
Augustine, De Trin., IV, 7, trans. Edmund Hill, op. cit., pp. 48–49.
277
Augustine, De Trin., V, 6, in Philip Schaff, (ed.) and A.W. Haddan (trans.), St. Augustin on the Holy
Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises and Moral Treatises: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,
Part 3 (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), p. 89.
278
Saint Augustine, De Trin, V, 6, in Schaff and Haddan, St. Augustin, p. 89.

62
Therefore, “the Father is called such ad Filium, the Son, ad Patrem, and the Holy Ghost,
ad Patrem et Filium”.279 It is clear, then, that in Augustine’s thought

the multiplication of persons does not entail the

multiplication of essence: “In the simple Trinity one is as
much as three are together, and two are not more than one,
and in themselves they are infinite. So they are each in each
and all in each, and each in all and all in all, and all are
one”.280

A trend in modern scholarship is to insist that Augustine neglected (or missed) the
relationality of the divine Persons taught by the Cappadocians, because he focused on the
unity of the Godhead rather than elucidating the relationships between the Persons.281
However, as Keith Johnson has noted, in De Trinitate, Augustine is not so much trying to
explain the doctrine of the Trinity (which no human being will ever be able to do), but to
illustrate what the Church teaches about the Trinity. 282 Nevertheless, the concept of
relationality is fundamental to Augustine’s approach both to man and to the Godhead. In
his Letter 238 Augustine wrote: “What is meant by these names [of the Father, of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit] is to be referred to their mutual relationship, not to the substance by
which they are one”.283

We can concur with Brad Green’s conclusion that for Augustine, “relationship itself
is a reality that is common to the Godhead, and as such, relationship constitutes what it
means for God to be”, and that “in Augustine’s Trinitarian theology it is completely
legitimate to call ‘relationship’ a ‘substance-word’”. Man, made in the image of God,
reflects the relationality of God’s being, according to Green:

[A]t the heart of what it means to be a human person is the

Trinity and relationship. Man is in a real sense less than
what he ought to be when he is focused inward. For
Augustine, the image of God is not simply a static faculty
279
Thomas A. Wassmer, “The Trinitarian Theology of Augustine and His Debt to Plotinus”, The Harvard
Theological Review 53.4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 261–268, p. 265.
280
Augustine, De Trin., VII, 1, 1 in Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?”, HeyJ 43.3 (2002) pp. 275–
294, p. 282.
281
Scholarly opinion ranges from Colin Gunton, who thinks that Augustine “failed adequately to understand”
the achievement of the Cappadocians (Gunton, Promise, p. 53) and C.C. Pecknold who concludes that “there
is some truth in crediting Augustine for his brilliant synthesis of the Nicene tradition (Pro and Neo), though
that credit should be shared with the Cappadocians themselves”. C.C. Pecknold, “How Augustine Used the
Trinity”, loc. cit., pp. 134–135.
282
Keith Edward Johnson, “A ‘Trinitarian’ Theology of Religions? An Augustinian Assessment of Several
Recent Proposals”, Ph.D. diss., (Durham, NC: Duke Univ., 2007), p. 55.
http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/10161/190/1/D_Johnson_Keith_a_052007.pdf, viewed 5
September 2009.
283
Saint Augustine, “Letter 238, To Pascentius” in Saint Augustine: Letters, vol. 5, trans. Sister Wilfrid
Parsons, vol. 32 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, ed. Roy D. Defarrari (NY: Fathers of the
Church, 1956), p. 198. Cf. PG 33, 1043.

63
 such as reason. To truly image God in the fullest sense man
must be focused in a loving relationship on another — God.
Thus the “being” of man is only fully actualized when man is
actively engaged in an outward relationship with God.284

Augustine is always aware that man’s relationship to God is seen “through a glass,
darkly”: man will never fully comprehend God, and what intuitions or intimations we have
now about the Trinity are extremely limited. Only when we see God face-to-face in
heaven will our vision be clear. He uses Trinitarian analogies with human experience
cautiously and reticently in most cases, knowing that he is engaged in reverent
speculation.285 Even at the end of De Trinitate he does not summarize what he has
explained about the Godhead or the relations of the Persons, but reminds the reader that
such speculation will never be satisfied this side of heaven:

So then, when this image is renewed to perfection by this

transformation, we will be like God because we shall see
him, not through a mirror but as he is (1 Jn 3:2); what the
apostle Paul calls face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). But now, in
this mirror, in this puzzle, in this likeness of whatever sort,
who can adequately explain how great the unlikeness is?286

Augustine wisely abstains from attempting the impossible, but he does wish to put
the strange notion of three-in-oneness within the grasp (if not the understanding) of his
readers by drawing on man’s inner life.287 He attempts to illustrate Trinitarian likenesses in
analogies between the Triune God and the character of man: memory, understanding and
will (IV, 30; X, 17-19; XIV, 8, 10); the mind remembering, understanding and loving itself
(XIV, 11, 13, 14); the Lover, the Loved, and Love (VIII, 14; IX, 2).288 The last example —
of lover, loved and love — implicitly illustrates the relationality of Augustine’s concept of
both man and God: how can there be love, without one who is loved? And if there is one
who is loved, there must be a lover.289

284
Brad Green, “The Protomodern Augustine? Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine”, International
Journal of Systematic Theology 9.3 (July 2007), pp. 328–341, p. 340.
285
Ibid. pp. 336–337.
286
Augustine, De Trin. XV, 21, trans. Edmund Hill, p. 414.
287
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger asserted that by attempting to put the concept of the three divine Persons into
anthropological terms, Augustine unwittingly weakened the impact of the Trinitarian concept of the person as
a whole. See Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion”, p. 447.
288
Paul Henry adds the triads “mens, notitia, amor (mind, consciousness, love); also esse, intelligere, vivere
(existence, understanding, life)”. He notes that Augustine uses possibly fourteen such triads, all taken from
the inner psychology of man. Paul Henry, Saint Augustine on Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1960), p. 15.
289
For Augustine’s concept of the human person, see A.C. Lloyd, “On Augustine’s Concept of a Person”, in
Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays, Robert A. Markus (ed.), (NY: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 191–
205; William R. O’Connor, “The Concept of the Person in St. Augustine’s De Trinitate”, Augustinian
Studies 13 (1982), pp. 133–44; Hubertus R. Drobner, Person-Exegese und Christologie bei Augustinus: Zur
Herkunft der Formel Una Persona (Leiden: Brill, 1986); John M. Rist, “What Will I be Like Tomorrow?
Augustine versus Hume”, AmCathPhilQ 74.1 (2000), pp. 95–114; Stanisław Kowalczyk, Człowiek i Bóg w
nauce św. Augustyna [Man and God in the Teaching of St Augustine] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2007).

64
 When Augustine speaks of man’s memory, understanding and will, 290 he is not giving
us an explanation of the Trinity, but trying to draw his readers into the “supreme act of
contemplative wisdom”. This act “transforms the divine image…of inner self
remembering itself, understanding itself and willing itself”. It becomes what Hill terms
“the super-image of the inner self remembering God, understanding God, and willing or
loving God”.291

This trinity, then, of the mind is not therefore the image

of God, because the mind remembers itself, and understands
and loves itself; but because it can also remember,
understand, and love Him by whom it was made. And in so
doing it is made wise itself. But if it does not do so, even
when it remembers, understands, and loves itself, then it is
foolish. Let it then remember its God, after whose image it is
made, and let it understand and love Him.292

Here Augustine has moved beyond Plotinus, by using man, mind and soul instead of
the universe or cosmos as the least inadequate analogy for attempting to communicate
something of the richness of God’s inner life. In doing so, he was inspired by the truth
revealed in Genesis, that God made man in His own image and likeness, as well as by the
Incarnation by which the Son of Man became man’s Brother. Augustine brings out the
intimate, intrinsic relationality of God through his triadic analogies of the human person,
and which in turn draw the human person ever more out of himself and more deeply into a
relationship with God:

[F]or Augustine, the most perfect analogy for God’s triune

life is not man enclosed within himself, viz., memoria sui,

290
According to W.P. O’Connor, in Augustine’s writings the three faculties of the human soul, memoria,
intelligentia, and voluntas, are “not separate distinct entities but they are functions of the soul that share in its
substantiality. There is no real distinction between the soul and these faculties. They are essentially one but
relatively three”. William P. O’Connor, The Concept of the Human Soul According to Saint Augustine, Ph.D.
Diss. (Washington, D.C: Catholic Univ. of America, 1921), pp. 41–42.
291
Edmund Hill, “Translator’s Introduction” to Saint Augustine, The Trinity (Hyde Park, NY: New City
Press, 1991), p. 27.
Keith Edward Johnson relates a point made by Michel René Barnes concerning Augustine’s triad of
memory, understanding and will. “Barnes argues that [the] triad of memory, understanding and will should
not be numbered among the core elements of [Augustine’s] thought. Although this mental triad plays an
important role in de Trinitate, there are ‘many significant discussions by Augustine of the Trinity in which
the triad makes no appearance whatsoever.’ This reality stands in contrast with later medieval trinitarian
thought in which the mental triad clearly plays a dominant role. To read Augustine’s psychological analogy
as a core element of his trinitarian thought is to transform Augustine into a medieval figure. The tendency to
read Augustine through the lens of Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians is quite prevalent”.
Johnson, “A ‘Trinitarian’ Theology of Religions? An Augustinian Assessment of Several Recent Proposals”,
Ph.D. diss. (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2007, pp. 68–69 (italics original).
http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/10161/190/1/D_Johnson_Keith_a_052007.pdf, viewed 15
July 2010. Johnson is summarizing a point made by Michel René Barnes in “The Logic of Augustine’s
Trinitarian Theology”, an unpublished paper presented at the “Aquinas the Augustinian Conference,” Naples,
Florida, 4 February 2005.
292
Saint Augustine, De Trin., XIV, 12, in Schaff and Haddan, St. Augustin, p. 191.

65
 intelligentia sui, voluntas sui, namely, memory,
understanding and willing of oneself. It is man viewed as
bound to God, viewed as proceeding from Him and
constituted in his personality by a sort of fundamental and
radical pre-awareness of God as the Source of his being, that
is to say, memory, intellect, illumination and love of self —
identical with the ecstatic love of God.293

Augustine’s triads describing man’s inner or psychological life are fundamentally

active and relational. Insofar as they reflect the Trinity that is imaged in man, they reveal
that “relationship is constitutive of the entire Godhead”; without relationship, the Godhead
simply is not.294

The relationality in the Trinity is bound up in the eternal processions of the Son and
Holy Spirit from the Father. It is the sendings of the Son and the Holy Spirit that reveal to
man the eternal processions in the Godhead. What God is in Himself (the so-called
“immanent” Trinity) is revealed in how He acts in creation and redemption (the so-called
“economic” Trinity):295

For as to be born, in respect to the Son, means to be from the

Father; so to be sent, in respect to the Son, means to be
known to be from the Father. And as to be the gift of God in
respect to the Holy Spirit, means to proceed from the Father;
so to be sent, is to be known to proceed from the Father.296

From the foregoing, it is evident that there is no great disagreement between the
Cappadocian and Augustinian theologies of the Trinity.297 Although they use different
paradigms to make their case, in general, their doctrines are parallel rather than
incompatible. As Cross points out, even though we may accept “the claim that Augustine
understands the divine essence in a non-generic, unitary way”, it does not signal a
meaningful divergence between the doctrine of the Cappadocians and that of Augustine:

[T]he Cappadocian generic interpretation and the

Augustinian unitary interpretation do not differ in any
substantial metaphysical way. “Generic’ and “unitary” are
293
Paul Henry, Saint Augustine on Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1960), p. 17. C.C. Pecknold builds on
Edmund Hill’s observation that “Augustine is proposing the quest for, or the exploration of, the mystery of
the Trinity as a complete program for the Christian spiritual life, a program of conversion and renewal and
discovery of self in God and God in self”. Pecknold goes on to explain that, “understood this way, we can see
how Augustine uses the Trinity as both the epistemological starting point and the eschatological goal”. C.C.
Pecknold, “How Augustine Used the Trinity”, loc. cit., p. 138. Pecknold quotes Hill’s “Translator’s
Introduction” to Saint Augustine, The Trinity (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991), p. 19.
294
Brad Green, op. cit., p. 340.
295
Ibid. p. 338.
296
Augustine, De Trin., IV, 29, in Schaff and Haddan, St. Augustin, p. 84.
297
A useful article on this subject is T. R. Martland, “A Study of Cappadocian and Augustinian Trinitarian
Methodology,” Anglican Theological Review 47 (1965), pp. 252–263.

66
 simply in this context different labels for the same thing, and
the choice of terminology is determined by considerations
extrinsic to the question of the Trinity.298

Chadwick suggests that Augustine cannot simply say that “persona” means relation. For
Augustine, this idea “remains confused and imprecise, so that it is unclear whether we are
being told that the three Persons exist in relation to one another, or whether relation is
integral to the notion of Person”.299 So although Augustine’s contribution — namely, that
real distinctions exist between the Persons that are grounded in subsistent relations — is a
key contribution to the development of Trinitarian theology in the West, it does not fully
explain the concept of relations that obtain between the divine persons, and perhaps it was
not intended to do so.300 As Chadwick concludes:

Augustine dislikes talk of “one substance” almost as much as

“three persons”. What he wants to say is that God is
essentia, being.… To Augustine the plurality of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit is not a differentiation of being or substance,
but of relation; a relation of equals and identical for which no
earthly analogy can really be found. All that is certain is that
Father, Son, and Spirit are not words separately expressive of
substance, and that in the Holy Trinity relation is eternal, and
not an accident (De Trinitate V, 5, 6).301

298
Richard Cross, “Two Models”, HeyJ 43 (2002), pp. 275–294, p. 290, n. 1.
299
Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolation of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 212.
300
Augustine’s grammar of relations is fleshed out through polemical engagement with Homoian theologians.
See Michel René Barnes, “The Arians of Book V, and the Genre of ‘de Trinitate’”, JTS 44 (1993), pp. 185–
95.
301
Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolation, p. 196. Cf. Lewis Ayres, “The Fundamental Grammar of
Augustine’s Trinitarian Theology”, in Augustine and His Critics, ed. R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London:
Routledge, 2000), pp. 51–76, p. 64.

67
3. The concept of person in the Middle Ages

3. 1. Boethius and the classical definition of the person

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born in Rome around the year 480,
making him a contemporary of St Benedict of Nursia. Boethius has been called
“incomparably the greatest scholar and intellect of his day” 302 and “the last of the Romans,
and the first of the scholastics”. 303 His formulation of the problem of the concept of a
person and his terminology were hugely influential on medieval theological discussions
especially in the period before the thirteenth century, making Boethius’s definition of
“person” a point of departure for theology in the West. This section will discuss the
development of Boethius’s classical definition of “person”.

In the preface to Contra Eutychen, Boethius explains what prompted him to write
about the two natures of Christ:

[N]ow you remember how, when the letter was read in the
assembly, it was read out that the Eutychians confess that
Christ is formed of two natures but does not consist in them,
but that Catholics give credence to both propositions, for
among followers of the true Faith he is equally believed to be
of two natures and in two natures”.304

Boethius then carefully defines “nature” (chapter 1) and “person” (chapter 2). In doing so,
he explains that the errors of the Nestorians and Eutychians come from the same source:
mistaken ideas about “nature” and “person”. Nestorius predicated two natures in Christ,
but falsely concluded that because He has two natures, Christ must also be in two persons.
Eutychen believed that Christ was one person, and that therefore that He must have one
nature. Thus the character of Contra Eutychen is chiefly polemical, rather than an
ontological analysis of “person” as such. His focus is on the divine and human natures of
Christ, so even though he does include human and angelic persons in his consideration,
philosophical anthropology in general was at best a secondary concern.

302
F. Anne Payne, King Alfred and Boethius: An Analysis of the Old English Version of the Consolation of
Philosophy (Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 7.
303
For the derivation of the sobriquet, see the chapter “Boethius the Scholastic”, in Edward Rand, Founders
of the Middle Ages (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1957), p. 144.
304
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, trans. H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, S.J. Tester (Bury St Edmunds:
Loeb Classical Library, 1973), 6–12, p. 72.

68
 “One thing is clear”, writes Boethius, “namely, that nature is a logical substrate of
person, and that person cannot be predicated apart from nature”. 305 When speaking of
“nature” there can only be substances or accidents, 306 and since a person is certainly not
predicated of accidents, then the only conclusion possible is that “person is properly
predicated of substances”.307 Substances can be either particular or universal, but “person
cannot anywhere be predicated of universals but only of particulars and individuals”. 308
This means that there is no such thing as a general person, but only singular persons.
Therefore, in Contra Eutychen Boethius defines a person as “naturae rationabilis
individua substantia”: “the individual substance of a rational nature”. 309 Boethius’s
concept of “person” can be rewritten as “an individual substance whose specific difference
is rationality”.

In formulating his concept of “person”, Boethius has moved away from the
Cappadocian focus on relations (or relations of origin) and relied instead on Aristotle’s
distinction between substance and accidents. In chapter three of Contra Eutychen,
Boethius explains that the

equivalents of the Greek terms ούσίωσιν [ousiosin] or

ούσίώσθαι [ousiosthai] are respectively subsistentia and
subsistere, while their ύποστασιν [hypostasin] or ύφίστσθαι
[hyphistasthai] are represented by our substantia and
substare.310

In short, what the Greeks call ousiosis, the Latins call subsistentia; what they call
hypostasis, the Latins call substantia.311 He defines a substance as “a subject which gives
305
“Manifestum est personae subiectum esse naturam nec praeter naturam personam posse praedicari”.
Boethius, Contra Eut., II, 10–11, Loeb edition, p. 82
306
“Naturae aliae sunt substantiae, aliae accidents”. Boethius, Contra Eut., II, 14–15, Loeb edition, p. 82.
307
Boethius, Contra Eut., II, 18, Loeb edition, p. 82: “personam in substantiis dici conveniat”.
308
Boethius, Contra Eut., II, 47–49, Loeb edition, p. 84: “nusquam in universalibus persona dici potent, sed
in singularibus tantum atque in individuis”.
309
“Hoc interim constet quod inter naturam personamque differre praedixmus, quontam natura est cuiuslibet
substantiae specificata proprietas, persona vero rationabilis naturae individua substantia”. Boethius, Contra
Eut., IV, 5–9, Loeb edition, p. 92. In Migne, PL, LXIV col. 1343, and in many mediaeval versions, the
reading is “rationalis”.
310
Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 42–45, Loeb edition, p. 88: “nam quod Graeci ούσίωσιν vel ούσίώσθαι dicunt,
id nos subsistentiam vel subsistere appellamus; quod vero illi ύποστασιν vel ύφίστσθαι, id nos substantiam
vel substare interpretamur”. (The verbal ούσίώσθαι would render: “to be existing as an essence”.)
311
Boethius was aware that in some circumstances, the individual subsistence was called hypostasis by the
Greeks: “Greece with its richer vocabulary gives the name υποστασις to the individual subsistence…. [S]ince
subsistences are present in universals but acquire substance in particulars they rightly gave the name
υποστασις to subsistences which acquired substance through the medium of particulars”. Boethius, Contra
Eut., III, 28–29, 36–39, Loeb edition, pp. 86, 88.
However, later in the same chapter, he outlines his translation of Greek terms equating individual
substance with hypostasis: “But the Greeks called individual substances υποστασεις because they underlie
the rest and offer support and substrate to what are called accidents; and we in our term call them substances
as being substrate — υποστασεις, and since they also term the same substances προσοπα, we too may call
them persons. So ουσια is identical with essence, ουσιοσις with subsistence, υποστασις with substance,
προσοπον with person”. Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 62ff. Loeb edition, pp. 88–90.

69
help to accidents so that they are able to be”; a thing subsists when it does not need
accidents to be.312 According to Boethius “genera and species, which are universals
without accidents, subsist but do not have substance.313

Individuals have subsistence because they do not need accidents in order to be, and
they have substance because they are subjects already possessing form and specific
differences, and because they help accidents so that they are able to be:

[I]ndividuals not only subsist but also stand-under, for they

themselves do not need accidents in order to be; for they
have already been informed by their properties and by their
specific differences and they help accidents so that they [i.e.,
the accidents] are able to be, while [the individuals] are
subjects [for the accidents].314

Accidents, on the other hand, depend on individuals as a substrate for their being.315
Subsistence is logically isolated from substance because it has no accidents, while
“standing under” accidents identifies substance. The two terms may be used to signify one
and the same thing, but they are different in meaning. It is independence that separates the
two terms: subsistence indicates independence from accidents; substance indicates being
placed under accidents as a substrate.316

Following from all of this, we arrive at Boethius’s description of a “person”:

To begin with, then, man is essence, i.e. ουσια, subsistence,

i.e. ουσιοσις, υποστασις, i.e. substance, προσοπον, i.e.
person: ουσια or essentia because he is, ουσιοσις or
subsistence because he is not accidental to any subject,
υποστασις or substance because he is subject to all the things
which are not subsistences or ουσιοσεις, while he is
προσοπον or person because he is a rational individual.317

312
Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 46–48 , Loeb edition, p. 88.
313
Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 36–41, Loeb edition, p. 88: “quocirca cum ipsae subsistentiae in universalibus
quidem sint, in particularibus vero capiant substantiam, iure subsistentias particulariter substances
ύποστασεις appelaverunt. Neque enim pensius subtiliusque intuenti idem videbitur esse subsistentia quod
substantia”. See Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 45–48, Loeb edition, p. 88: “subsistit enim quod ipsum
accidentibus, ut possit esse, non indiget. Substat autem id quod aliis accidentibus subiectum quoddam, ut esse
valeant, subministrat”.
314
This translation, as better than in the Loeb edition, is taken from Sean Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”,
Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Toronto, 1994), p. 156. “Individua vero non modo subsistunt verum etiam substant, nam
neque ipsa indigent accidentibus ut sint; informata enim sunt iam propriis et specificis differentiis et
accidentibus ut esse possint ministrant, dum sunt scilicet subiecta”. Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 51–55, Loeb
edition, p. 88.
315
“This doctrine of the individual’s priority to accidents also appears in the second commentary on
Porphyry” (316, 2–4). Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolation, p. 194.
316
“Itaque genera vel species subsistunt tantum; neque enim accidentia generibus speciebusque contingunt”,
Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 49–51, Loeb edition, p. 88.
317
Boethius, Contra Eut., III, 79–87, Loeb edition, p. 90. We must add that the Greek hypostasis was not
applied to irrational animals the way the Latin substantia was, while persona can have no reference to beasts.

70
 In 1955, Maurice Nédoncelle noted that there are variations in Boethius’s notion of
the person.318 More recently, Sean Mulrooney wrote a dissertation in which he outlined six
descriptions of person to be found in the writings of Boethius which could be associated
either with the divine Persons or created beings (angels or human):

(1) A person considered as an individual substance is a unique bundle of accidents

(Isagoge and De Interpretatione commentaries).
(2) A person considered as an individual substance is an individuated subject
which underlies a unique bundle of accidents (Categories commentary).
(3) A person is an individual substance of a rational nature (Contra Eutychen).
(4) A person is a correlative which differs from other persons only in relational
and not in substantial characteristics (De trinitate).
(5) A person is the one brought to trial, some deed or speech of whom is censured
(De topicis differentiis).
(6) A person considered as a rational substance is a composite of rational immortal
soul and mortal body (Consolation).319

The main thesis of Mulrooney’s dissertation is that descriptions 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6

represent “different but complementary perspectives on ‘person’”.320 Taken one by one,
these five definitions are intrinsically quite coherent, but none of them can be applied when
speaking of the divine Persons of the Trinity. Neither do they offer an adequate
metaphysical principle of identity. In Mulrooney’s analysis, Boethius fails to

propose a satisfactory principle of individuation. Either

accidents individuate substance, in which case that which
inheres in an individual substance must be prior to that
substance, which is impossible; or substance individuates
accidents, in which case Boethius needs a non-accidental
principle of substantial individuation; and this he does not
have.321

Of the principles of individuation considered thus far, none “can account for the
individuality of the divine Persons”.322 While it is common to assume that Boethius has
given one, clear account of person (i.e., number three, above: “the individual substance of
a rational nature”), Mulrooney’s evidence indicates that this is not the case.

In Mulrooney’s view only the fourth account of a person, found in De Trinitate —

“a person is a correlative which differs from other persons only in relational and not in
substantial characteristics” — can be applied to divine Persons. It does not conflict with
Cf. also S.A. Turienzo, “Aspectos del Problems de la Persona en el Siglo XII”, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia
2, “Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter” (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963), pp. 180–183.
318
Maurice Nédoncelle, “Les variations de Boèce sur la personne”, Revue des sciences religieuses 29 (1955),
pp. 201–238.
319
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, pp. 199–200.
320
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 200.
321
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 207.
322
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 207.

71
Boethius’s other accounts of person because it is limited to the divine Persons. 323
However, for Boethius, the relations of the Persons of the Trinity only provide a way to
understand the otherness of the divine Persons. The relations do not seem to function as a
principle of individuation, since “individuation presupposes difference, and there is no
difference in God”.324 Moreover, Boethius apparently thought of God not only in terms of
substance, but as being beyond substance (ultra substantiam), and so stated that
“Relation…cannot be predicated at all of God”. He attributed the weakest type of relations
to God — extrinsic relations — so “his point is to exclude relation in terms of God’s actual
being”.325

The third account purports to describe both human and divine persons (“a person is
an individual substance of a rational nature”). However, despite being considered the
“classic” definition of the person, used in theological and grammatical dictionaries of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and often being referenced by Thomas Aquinas, 326 it has
met with objections virtually from the start. It was seen as “more philosophical than
theological” and thus unacceptable for Trinitarian theology.327 Theologians discussed the
Boethian conception of persona in relation to the Trinity and criticised it because it seems
to make the three Persons of God into three individual substances. Such was the objection
of Richard of St Victor in the twelfth century, who, like many other theologians, reworked
Boethius’s definition in consideration of other conceptions of the person. 328 As Walter
Kasper explains, Boethius’s definition “seems to understand personality and individuality
as identical. Individuality, however, defines a what and not a who; it describes the
person’s nature, not the person as such….” Kasper finds Richard of St Victor’s definition
of person more satisfactory: “naturae rationalis incommunicabilis existentia” (an
323
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 208.
324
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 208.
325
Philip A. Rolnick, Person, Grace and God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 43. See Boethius, De
Trinitate, ch. 4, “Relation, for instance, cannot be predicated at all of God; for substance in Him is not really
substantial but supersubstantial”. De Trin., IV, 9–11, in Boethius, Tractates, the Consolation of Philosophy,
trans. H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, S.J. Tester (Bury St Edmunds: Loeb Classical Library, 1973), p. 17.
326
Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Murphy (Oxford:
OUP, 2007), p. 104.
327
Emery, Trinitarian Theology, p. 104. Emery cites Peter of Poitiers (ca. 1130-1215) as a critic of
Boethius’s definition. See Peter of Poitiers, I Sent., 4 and I Sent., 32 (PL 211.801 and 923). For more on
Boethius’s definition of person, see B. Wald, “‘Rationalis naturae individua substantia’: Aristoteles,
Boethius und der Begriff der Person im Mittelalter”, in Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, (eds.), Individuum
und Individualität im Mittelalter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 371–88; Jorge J. E. Gracia, “The
Legacy of the Early Middle Ages,” in Jorge J. E. Gracia (ed.), Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later
Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650 (NY: SUNY Press, 1994).
328
“One can find two versions of Richard’s definition of person, a short one which parallels the formulation
of Boethius’ famous definition, and a more extensive one. In the shorter version person is called ‘an
incommunicable existentia of the divine nature’. In its most articulated form the definition reads: ‘a being
existing in itself alone by way of a singular mode of rational existentia’”. Nico den Bok, Communicating the
Most High: A Systematic Study of Person and Trinity in the Theology of Richard of St. Victor (+1173)
(Paris/Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), p. 210.

72
incommunicable existence of a rational nature).329 As we will see in a subsequent chapter,
St Bonaventure considered Boethius’s definition330 and rejected it, also creating his own
definition of person, influenced by the notion of incommunicability. (“Incommunicability”
indicates the distinction of each person, which another person does not have and which
cannot be received from another person).

It is unsurprising that modern scholars should find fault with Boethius’s famous
definition; Mulrooney concluded that “a person is an individual substance of a rational
nature” fails because it does not provide a coherent general account of person.331 It has
also been criticised on the grounds that it leaves out most of a human person’s experience
of being human (possibly in order to serve the theological purpose of making “person”
applicable to God and angels as well as man). There is no room in Boethius’s definition
for the body, emotions, imagination — aspects of lived experience that are integral to the
human person. Thus the definition fails on philosophical grounds.332

[T]he most serious objection to Boethius’s definition, [is]

that it relegates to the accidental precisely those features of
persons that emerge in lived experience as distinctive of
them. Our “being” lies, not just in mere existing, but in the
exercising of our existence, in the actual living out of what
we are; and this actual living, will in Boethius’s view, belong
to the category of accidents. Yet surely it is precisely here
that we find what is most important about persons. What is
most important is made least important by Boethius.333

Brian Johnstone criticizes Boethius’s definition as inappropriate for discussion of moral

questions334 facing us today, since “it provides... only an ‘ontological’ definition. It does
not offer any explanation as to why a being, so defined, has a moral status for those who
are involved with that being”. Johnstone concurs with Joseph Ratzinger, who found that

329
Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans., Matthew J. O’Connell (London: SCM Press, 1992), p.
281. Cf. “In his commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, Boethius is the first to adopt a philosophical
use of incommunicabilis as a characteristic quality that is non-transferable because utterly unique to the
individual….” However, “[w]hile incommunicabilis does not appear in Boethius’ oft-cited definition of
person, it is thereafter commonly used to elaborate what person means. Even those who criticize his
definition, such as Richard of St. Victor, significantly depend upon the use of incommunicabilis in their own
work”. Philip A. Rolnick, Person, Grace and God, pp. 40, 41.
330
I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q. 1 and 2, (I, 435–441).
331
Mulrooney, Boethius on “Person”, p. 211.
332
“There are other problems with the definition also. It does not mention anything about pleasure or the
capacity for enjoying certain kinds of pleasure, which at least one recent writer has claimed is what is really
the sign or sufficient condition of being a person. Also it does not mention anything about the bodily or the
physical, yet this seems central to our idea of persons”. Peter Simpson, “The Definition of Person: Boethius
Revisited”, TNS 62 (1988), pp. 210–220, p. 210–11.
333
Peter Simpson, “Definition of Person”, pp. 216–17.
334
Brian V. Johnstone, “The Human Embryo: Person and the Gift”, in Life and Learning: Proceedings of the
Seventeenth University Faculty for Life, ed. Joseph W. Koterski (Washington, D.C.: Univ. Faculty for Life,
2007), pp. 489–505, p. 495.

73
Boethius’s concept of a person is theologically insufficient, and suggested that an adequate
definition would be cast in terms of existence, rather than essence.

Boethius’s concept of person, which prevailed in Western

philosophy, must be criticized as entirely insufficient….
One sees that the concept of person stands entirely on the
level of substance. This cannot clarify anything about the
Trinity or about Christology; it is an affirmation that remains
on the level of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist
terms.335

3. 2. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

The teaching of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite had inestimable and various

influence on thinkers in both the East and the West. His influence on philosophy in the
high Middle Ages is evident in the concept of “intelligible species,...the notion of divine
attributes predicated of God and his distinction in creatures of essence, power and
operation”.336 Eriugena, Hugh of St Victor, Thomas Gallus, Albert the Great, and Thomas
Aquinas all wrote commentaries on the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. Aquinas quoted him
1,700 times and Bonaventure cited him 248 times.337 (Such was Bonaventure’s respect for
Dionysius that he called him “the prince of mystics”. 338) In the East, John of Damascus
even included Dionysian writings in The Orthodox Faith, his definitive summary of
Orthodox doctrine.

335
Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion”, p. 448. See also Joseph Ratzinger, “Zum Personverständnis in
der Theologie”, Dogma und Verkündigung (Munich and Freiburg: Wewel, 1973), pp. 205–223, n. 225.
336
Edward P. Mahoney, “Pseudo-Dionysius’s Conception of Metaphysical Hierarchy and its Influence on
Medieval Philosophy” in Die Dionysius: Rezeption im Mittelalter, eds. Tzotcho Bojadjiev, Georgi Kapriev
and Andreas Speer (Paris/Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 429–475, p. 429.
337
Jean Leclercq, “Influence and Noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages”, in Pseudo-
Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 29. For a more
complete study of Dionysius’s influence on Bonaventure, see J.G. Bougerol, “Saint Bonaventure et le
Pseudo-Denys l’Areopagite”, Actes du Colloque Saint Bonaventure, Etudes Franciscaines, Tom XVIII,
supplement annuel (1968), pp. 33–123. Bougerol described 248 citations taken by Bonaventure from
Dionysius’s writings in Saint Bonaventure et la Hiérarchie dionysienne, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du moyen âge 36 (1969), pp. 131–167. These two articles are reprinted in Bougerol’s Saint
Bonaventure: Etudes sur les sources de sa pensée (Northampton: Variorum Reprints, 1989). His conclusions
are also in Introduction à l’étude de Saint Bonaventure (Paris: Desclée, 1961), translated as Introduction to
the Works of Bonaventure (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1964). See also his “Saint Bonaventure et
Saint Bernard”, Ant 46 (1971) pp. 3–79; and “Saint Bonaventure et Guillaume de Saint-Thierry”, loc. cit., pp.
189–231. Bougerol summed up Dionysius’s influence on Bonaventure: “we may say…that [Dionysius’s]
influence on Bonaventure was threefold: he gave Bonaventure a viewpoint, a method, and few fundamental
themes”. J.G. Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of St. Bonaventure (Paterson NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press,
1964), p. 40. See also Werner Beierwaltes, “Dionysius und Bonaventura” in Ysabel De Andia (ed.), Denys
l’Areopagite et sa Postérité en Orient et en Occident, Actes Du Colloque International (Paris, 1994), pp.
451–501.
338
Guntriem G. Bischoff, “Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, the Gnostic Myth,” in The Spirituality of
Western Christendom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), p. 39.

74
 To this day, no one knows who Pseudo-Dionysius was.339 He hid his identity under
a pseudonym, identifying himself as the Dionysius of Acts 17, who was converted by St
Paul in the Aeropagus along with a woman named Damaris. 340 His treatises are addressed
to contemporaries of St Paul such as Timothy, the Apostle John (during his exile on
Patmos), and Bishop Titus, and it is often noted that his status for medieval scholars was
connected with his association with the Apostle. 341 However, careful study indicates that
Dionysius was a Syrian (probably a monk) who lived in the late 5 th and early 6th
centuries.342

The Corpus Dionysiacum (CD) comprises ten letters and four treatises: Divine
Names, Mystical Theology, Celestial Hierarchy and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.343 From the
beginning, Dionysius’s writings were controversial, in part, at least, because they were
easily misconstrued.344 A case can certainly be made for his Donatism as well as for his
Monenergism. However, as Jaroslav Pelikan explains,

his interest was in spirituality rather than in the nuances of

dogmatics, and…therefore he could not have anticipated the
technical debate over whether “operation” [energeia]
belonged to “nature” or to “person” [hypostasis].345
339
Dionysius is the Latin form of his name; in Greek, it is rendered Dionysios. It is translated into English as
Denis, in French as Denis or Denys, and in Italian Dionigi. In the following pages I will refer to him as
Dionysius.
340
Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, “On Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, General Audience, Vatican City, ZENIT,
http://www.zenit.org/article-22588?l=english, May 14, 2008, viewed 15 July, 2010; Paul Rorem, Pseudo-
Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. 7.
341
Mediaeval scholars could not be expected to notice that many of the attributes that Dionysius applied to
God, particularly in De divinis nominibus “are derived from philosophical terms in Plato’s dialogue
Parmenides”, or that “the whole discussion of the divine names is related to a conceptual structure derived
from [Parmenides] through the intermediary of commentaries upon it by the pagan Neoplatonic Syrianus and
his successors”. Stephen Gersh, “Ideas and Energies in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, StPatr 15.1
(1984), pp. 297–300, p. 298.
342
Cf. Kevin Corrigan and Michael Harrington, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/,
September 2004, viewed 15 July 2010.
343
Other writings mentioned by Dionysius or quoted in the CD, such as the treatise Symbolic Theology, have
never been found. Christian Schäfer, Philosophy of Dionysius the Aeropagite: An Introduction to the
Structure and the Content of the Treatise on the Divine Names (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 11.
The critical edition of the Greek texts has appeared as Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 1: Pseudo-
Dionysius Areopagita: De divinis nominibus, ed., Beate Suchla, Patristische Texte und Studien 33 (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1990). The second volume, comprising the other works, is edited by Gunter Heil and
Adolf Martin Ritter: Corpus Dionysiacum 2: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita: De coelesti hierarchia, De
ecclesiastica hierarchia, De mystica theologia, Epistulae, Patristische Texte und Studien 36 (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1991). The best English translation, (with foreword and notes) is Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1987). Alternatively, see The Divine Names
and Mystical Theology, trans. John D. Jones (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette Univ. Press, 1980).
344
Martin Luther, for example, was critical of Dionysius. See John Rist, “Pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonism
and the Weakness of the Soul” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought: Studies in
Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, ed., Haijo Jan Westra (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 135–161. Christian Schäfer
suggests that Dionysius may have alienated both Platonists and Christians. See Christian Schäfer, Philosophy
of Dionysius, p. 166.
345
Jaroslav Pelikan, “The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality”, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works,
trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1987), p. 27.

75
 On the contrary, we can say that Dionysius’s teaching is a-personal, perhaps
because of his concept of God. For Dionysius God is first of all τών όντων ούσία — “the
being of beings” and πάσης ούσίας έπέκεινα “beyond all being”. 346 In fact, “Dionysius
wants not so much to state what God is, as to show how he should be praised”. 347
According to Bogdan Bucar, for Dionysius,

God is “beyond being” (and is, therefore, correctly described

as “non-being”), even while He is the benevolent cause of all
being, beauty, wisdom, etc. In other words, God is cause of
being, yet “non-being” in so far as He is “beyond being”....

God is described as “non-being” only inasmuch as one

engages in what Dionysius dubs impossible, namely “to
manifest the being beyond being as beyond being” — that is,
to speak about God inasmuch as He is beyond being (DN
5:1, 816 B). Such an endeavour is impossible, because
“[o]ur language like our knowledge is fundamentally
directed towards and has its limits in being (ousia)”.348

Had Dionysius focused more on Christ’s humanity, he might have left us an

enriched understanding of human personality. However, Dionysius has nothing to say
about the human person as such, which makes him sharply different from Basil, Gregory of
Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus and others we have considered.

Most scholars agree that the central notion of Dionysius’s vision lies in hierarchy or
in ontological hierarchisation,349 thus no special attention is paid to the question of
individuality as such, because hierarchy “suggests a community that is essentially
structured”.350 Dionysius treated of the hierarchical levels of being in two works. The
Celestial Hierarchy deals with the orders of angels, while the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
explicates the reflection of the heavenly hierarchy in the Church of God on earth.351

For Dionysius, in Bonaventure’s words, “a hierarchy is a divine order, a knowledge

and action assimilated as much as possible to the deiform and rising proportionally in the

346
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita: De divinis nominibus, ed. Beate Suchla, Patristische Texte und Studien 33
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 1.3.589C, 1.1.588B.
347
David Bradshaw, “Time and Eternity in the Greek Fathers”, Thomist 70.3 (2006), pp. 311–366, p. 320.
348
Bogdan G. Bucar, “The Theological Reception of Dionysian Apophatism in the Christian East and West:
Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas”, The Downside Review 125 (2007), pp. 131–146; pp. 132, 133.
Moreover, as Jeffery Fisher notes, “Dionysius writes of non-entitive God, transcendent ontologically, beyond
substance, beyond being, even beyond God [superdeitatis]”. “The Theology of Dis/similarity: Negation in
Pseudo-Dionysius”, JR 81:529 (October 2001), pp. 529–548, p. 530; see also p. 534.
349
Ronald F. Hathaway, Hierarchy and the Definition of Order in the Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius: A Study
in the Form and Meaning of the Pseudo-Dionysius Writings (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1969). Cf. Carl Andresen,
“The Integration of Platonism into Early Christian Theology”, StPatr 15.1, 1984, pp. 399–413, p. 403.
350
Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (London: Continuum, 1989), p. 132.
351
Frederick Charles Copleston, History of Medieval Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 53.

76
likeness to God towards the light conferred on it from on high”.352 “The goal of a
hierarchy, then,” as Dionysius wrote, “is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God
and to be at one with him”. 353 Thus, hierarchy is the principle of divinization, whereby the
human person grows closer and closer to God.354

Drawing on the thought of this important and influential

thinker, Bonaventure articulated his own understanding of
the hierarchizing activities as the dynamic and ongoing
processes through which the soul of the faithful person
becomes “as like as possible” to God, is led back to God, and
comes to experience a greater measure of union with God.355

For Bonaventure, a hierarchy is “an ordered power of sacred and reasonable things,
retaining a due principality in regard to [its] subjects”, 356 which is evident in his treatment
of ecclesiastical hierarchies. In these, the Seraphic Doctor used Dionysian terminology
and the triadic structure of hierarchy and adapted it freely, creating something that was
“quite different from the Dionysian trio of sacraments, local clergy and groups of laity”.
He follows Dionysius in putting the laity — which includes kings — in the lowest
category, while placing the pope in the highest triad of authority. But for Bonaventure, the
middle triad included all active clergy — including the pope — who were not in religious
orders. In the spiritual life of contemplation, the highest triad consists of religious and
monastic orders, the mendicant orders and “rare rapt and ecstatic individuals, like Francis
of Assissi [sic], who corresponds to the highest Seraphim”. 357 In these brief examples we
can see an intellectual link between the triadic modes of thought of Dionysius and
Bonaventure.

Dionysian theology has at its core the experience of good as self-diffusive, which is

expressed in the proposition Bonum diffusivum sui est. This Dionysian principle further

applied by Richard of St. Victor to his Trinitarian doctrine became, in turn, an important

352
“Est autem hierarchia ordo divinus, scientia et actio ad deiformae, quantum possibile est, assimilata, et ad
inditas ei divinitus illuminationes proportionaliter in Dei similitudinem ascendens”, Hex., 21, 17 (V, 434a).
Trans. TWB, V, p. 329.
353
The Celestial Hierarchy, III, 2, 165A, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 154.
354
Harvey D. Egan, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), p. 95.
355
Introduction to WSB, X, p. 44. Cf. TWB, V (21, 18), p. 330.
356
“Hierarchia est rerum sacrarum et rationabilium ordinate potestas in subditis debitum retinens
principatum”, II Sent., d. 9, a. un., q. 1 (II, 238b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02237.html, 2008, viewed 29 July, 2010.
Bonaventure’s broadest adaptation of the idea of hierarch is found in his Collatio XXII in Hexaemeron.
357
Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence,
(Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. 32.

77
source for Saint Bonaventure to create a more intelligible elaboration of “the dynamic of

the intra-trinitarian processions”358 with an emphasis on the related idea of primacy.359

3. 3. Richard of Saint-Victor

Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173) inherited the speculative and innovative legacy of
the schools of Laon, Chartres, Orleans, and Paris. He is rooted in the tradition of his
glorious predecessor, Hugh of Saint Victor, and like him, Richard concerned himself
especially with mystical theology.360 Dante immortalized him in Il Paradiso as being “in
contemplation more than man”.361 Bonaventure held him in the same high regard, saying
that Richard, follower of Dionysius, excelled in contemplation.362 Hugh and Richard are
credited with the critical analysis and systematic exposition of the contemplative teaching
of their predecessors through the centuries. They made contemplation a discipline that
could be taught in a systematic way to others, while at the same time adding their own
insights into the psychological aspects of contemplative life.363

Not much is known about Richard’s life. He was greatly respected by his
contemporaries, but he is not venerated by the Church. Richard seems to have been aware
of theological developments of his time, without involving himself in controversies. He
was a prolific writer, producing sermons, letters, and forty-two treatises on mystical and
philosophical-theological themes,364 which were widely read in the medieval and
Renaissance periods.365 Among his most influential mystical works are De statu interioris
hominis; De preparatione animi ad contemplationem, liber dictus Benjamin minor; and De

358
John P. Dourley, Paul Tillich and Bonaventure: An Evaluation of Tillich’s Claim to Stand in the
Augustinian-Franciscan Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1975), p. 117.
359
Ratione primitatis persona nata est ex se aliam producere; et voco hic primitatem innascibilitatem, ratione
cuius, ut dicit antiqua opinio, est fontalis plenitudo in Patre ad omnem emanationem”. I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 2
concl. (I, 54a).
360
According to Claire Kirchberger, Richard was the first to “systemize mystical theology”. Richard of St.
Victor: Selected Writings on Contemplation, trans. and intro. Claire Kirchberger (London: Faber and Faber,
1957), p. 37.
361
Dante, Divine Comedy, “Paradise,” Canto X, line 121, in The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans.
Charles Eliot Norton (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), p. 121.
362
“Anselmus sequitur Augustinum, Bernardus sequitur Gregorium, Richardus sequitur Dionysium, quia
Anselmus in ratiocinatione, Bernardus in praedicatione, Richardus in contemplatione — Hugo vero omnia
haec”. Red. art., 5 (V, 321b).
363
See Patrick J. Healy, “The Mysticism of the School of St. Victor”, Church History 1 (1932), pp. 211–21.
364
Not all of Richard of Saint Victor’s works have been translated into English. Where possible, I will give
reference to English translations. Unless otherwise noted, the reference will be to PL.
365
Before the beginning of the twentieth century, eight complete editions of Richard’s works were published:
See Carmelo Ottaviano, Riccardo di S. Vittore, la vita, le opere, il pensiero (Rome: no pub., 1933), series VI,
vol. IV, fasc.V, p. 446.

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gratis contemplationis libri quinque, occasione accepta ab arca Moysis et ob eam rem
hactenus dictum Benjamin major. The major philosophical-theological works are De
Trinitate libri sex;366 De tribus appropriatis Personis in Trinitate, ad divum Bernardum
abbatem Clarevallentem; Liber de Verbo incarnato, ad divum Bernardum Clarevallentem
abbatem;367 and Quomodo Spiritus Sanctus est amor Patris et Filii.368 Of all his works, De
Trinitate is entirely speculative, as well as being his most significant theological
contribution.369 It opened up a new approach to the Trinity which was to have great
influence especially on Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure.370

This part of my thesis will focus especially on those places in De Trinitate where
Richard elaborates an original conception of person.371 It is impossible to summarize
Richard’s doctrine about the person in a few pages, but in general we can say that he
replaces the concept of substantia with existentia, and replaces “individual” with
“incommunicable”.372

As mentioned above, Richard rejected Boethius’s definition of “person” in order to

avoid the confusion caused by using “person” variously to indicate substance, subsistence
or personal properties.373 Richard concluded that Boethius’s definition could not be
applied to the Persons of the Trinity, because it makes the concept of person more obscure,
rather than clearer. He accepted Boethius’s definition to the degree that it can be applied
to created persons — humans and angels — but found it inappropriate for divine Persons.

366
PL 196, 887–991.
367
PL 196, 995–1010; Richard de Saint-Victor: opuscules théologiques, Textes philosophiques de moyen âge
15. Critical text, introduction, notes, and tables by J. Ribaillier (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1967).
368
PL 196, 1011–1012; Richard is credited with some works, such as Liber exceptionum, which have been
attributed to other writers (Liber exceptionum, critical text with introduction, notes, and tables by J. Châtillon.
(Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1958)). See Carmelo Ottavianno, Riccardo di S. Vittore, la vita, le
opere, il pensiero, (Rome: no pub., 1933), series VI, vol. IV, fasc. V, pp. 427–29.
369
There are 54 existing manuscripts of De Trinitate, of which 31 are complete texts, indicating the
popularity of the text in medieval times. See Richard of Saint Victor, De Trinitate, Ribaillier, ibid. pp. 34–76.
All references to this work shall correspond to the critical edition by J. Ribaillier: De Trinitate: text critique
avec introduction, notes et tables, Vol. VI, in Textes philosophiques du Moyen Age (Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1958). For English translations see Richard of St. Victor, The Twelve Patriarchs, the
Mystical Ark and Book Three of the Trinity. trans. Grover A. Zinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1979).
370
Itinerarium mentis in Deum is the best example of the profound influence of Richard’s thought on
Bonaventure’s vision of six kinds of contemplation. See Bernard McGinn, “Ascension and Introversion in
the Itinerarium mentis in Deum,” SB III, pp. 535–552. See also F. Andres, “Die Stufen der Contemplatio in
Itinerarium mentis ad Deum and in Benjamin major des Richards von St. Viktor”, FKS 8 (1921), 189–200;
Robert Javelet, “Saint Bonaventure et Richard de Saint Victor”, in Bonaventuriana: Miscellanea in onore di
Jacques Guy Bougerol OFM, Francisco de Asís Chavero Blanco (ed.), vol. 1 (Rome: Antonianum, 1988), pp.
63–96.
371
Cf. Richard, De Trin., IV, 21. See also John Bligh, “Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate: Augustinian or
Abelardian?” HeyJ 1.2 (1960), pp. 118–139.
372
Theodore De Regnon, Études de théologie positive sur la sainte Trinité, 3 vols. (Paris: Victor Retaux
1892–1898), vol. 2, p. 246.
373
“Nam sunt qui dicunt nomen personae aliquando substantiam, aliquando subsistentiam, aliquando
personarum proprietates significare”. Richard, De Trin., IV, 3.

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“Literally applying Boethius’s definition of ‘person’ to God would yield the absurd
conclusion that the divine substance is not one alone or that the Trinity is a person”.374

In order for the [definition] to be universal and complete, it is

necessary that every individual substance of rational nature
be a person, and, conversely, that every person be an
individual of rational nature. Consequently, I ask about the
divine substance. Since it is not but one alone, I ask whether
it is individual. That the divine substance indeed is the
Trinity of persons, which is believed without doubt,
manifestly disproves what was approved above. If,
therefore, the divine substance must be called individual,
there is some individual that is not a person, for the Trinity is
not a person nor can it rightly be called a person.375

For Richard, a created person is rationalis naturae individua substantia, but a divine
Person is rationalis naturae individua existentia.376

In Richard’s thinking, person is substance, but he is not only substance. That is

why it is possible for several persons to be several substances. But it is also possible for
several persons to be one substance. 377 To explain how different persons could have the
same substance, Richard turned to the crucial concept of existentia.378

Richard, who restricts the word substantia to its abstract

sense, proposes to substitute the words incommunicabilis
existentia for individua substantia; he intends to justify the
use of the word “person” as applied to the Trinity, a
term/usage Augustine admits only ex necessitate for lack of
anything better, and which seems to the Victorine to have
been inspired by the Holy Spirit. If one appeals to
etymology, the word existentia in effect signifies two things:
substance, quod est, and origin, unde habeat esse. The
divine Persons, who belong to the class of existents, as do all
374
Corey L. Barnes, “Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas on Person, Hypostasis and Hypostatic Union”,
Thomist 72 (2008), pp. 107–46, pp. 111–12.
375
Richard, De Trin., IV, 21. Trans. in Corey L. Barnes, “Person, Hypostasis and Hypostatic”, p. 112, note
10.
376
“quoniam quam verum est, quod quaelibet creata persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia, tam
verum est, quod quaelibet persona increata est rationalis naturae individua existentia”. Richard, De Trin., IV,
23.
377
“studebo, prout Dominus dederit...persone significationem determinare, et juxta proposite determinationis
assignationem ostendere quomodo possit personarum pluralitas cum substantiae unitate convenire” (Richard,
De Trin., IV, 4). “Cum dicitur persona, pro certo intelligitur aliquis unus qui tamen sit rationalis substantia.
Cum nominantur tres personae, absque dubio intelliguntur tres aliqui, quorum tamen unusquisque sit
substantia rationalis naturae. Sed utrum sunt plures an omnes una eademque substantia, nihil interest
quantum ad proprietatem veritatemque personae” (Richard, De Trin., IV, 8). “Ecce invenimus non esse
impossibile plures personas esse in unitate substantiae; consequens est autem ut queramus quomodo possit
esse alteritas personarum sine alteritate substantiarum” (Richard, De Trin., IV, 11).
378
In his examination of the concept of person, Richard abandoned the Greek ύποστασις as perhaps too subtle
for his expression and too obscure for his readers. Cf. Richard, De Trin., IV, 4. In other works, e.g. De tribus
personis appropriatis in Trinitate, Richard is less consistent in this regard. Cf. Nico den Bok,
Communicating the Most High, p. 209–10.

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 other persons, can then be distinguished according to origin,
without, however, being differentiated according to
substance.379

Richard posited two senses of existentia, corresponding to two realities of being. Being a
substance with a qualification of origin is indicated by the term “existentia”. A reality
which can either stand in itself or stand from the other is indicated by the term “-sistentia”
(without the prefix “ex-”).380 As Balthasar notes, Richard posited the “(divine, but also
human) person as ex-sistentia, this means as a spiritual subject that earns the name person
only by going out beyond itself (ex)….”381 Applying Richard’s term existentia to both
human and divine persons leads John Crosby to propose a Ricardian definition of “person”
that encompasses both human and divine persons:

Richard of St. Victor says that a person, whether human or

divine, is rationalis naturae individua existentia, and then
proceeds to indicate that the individua existentia can as well
be called incommunicabilis existentia, so that we can
translate: a person is an incommunicable existence of a
rational nature.382

Existentia can express two things: what a being is (a being’s quale quid, its essentia or
substantia) and the origin of the being (its unde, obtinentia, or origo).383

Substantiality thus is not the basic element of Richard’s understanding of person.

In fact, in De Trinitate, we may say that the problem of personhood is considered “behind”
the concept of substance,384 because to be a person signifies something more than a
379
J. Ribaillier, Richard de Saint-Victor: De Trinitate (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1958), p. 24. As
quoted in Corey L. Barnes, “Person, Hypostasis and Hypostatic”, p. 111, note 9.
380
“Nomen exsistentiae trahitur verbo quod est existere. In verbo sistere notari potest quod pertinet ad
considerationem unam [sc. ad rationem essentiae]; similiter per adjunctam praepositionem ex notari potest
quod pertinet ad alliam [sc. ad rationem obtinentie]. Per id quod dicitur aliquid sistere, primum removentur
ea quae non tam habent in se esse quam alicui inesse, non tam sistere, ut sic dicam, quam insistere, hoc est
allcui subjecto inhaerere. Quod autem sistere dicitur, ad utrumque se habere videtur et ad id quod aliquo
modo et ad id quod nullo modo habet subsistere; tam ad id videlicet quod oportet quam ad id quod omnino
non oportet subjectum esse. Unum enim est creatae, alterum increatae naturae. Nam quod increatum est sic
consistit in seipso ut nihil ei insit velut in subjecto. Quod igitur dicitur sistere tam se habet ad rationem
creatae quam increatae essentiae”. Richard, De Trin., IV, 12.
381
“Bonaventure picks up Richard’s initiative; he seeks, moreover, to distinguish between individuum and
persona. He does this, however, by philosophical means even though he makes use of the concept largely for
theology. He follows, on the one hand, Boethius, even when using Richard’s terminology, and he
distinguishes, on the other hand, person from individuum by its ‘exalted dignity’”. Hans Urs von Balthasar,
“On the concept of person”, Communio 13.1 (Spring, 1986), pp.18–26, p. 22–23.
382
John F. Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press,
1996), p. 59.
383
“In discernendis itaque persons opus est, ut arbitror, gemino consideratione, ut sciamus videlicet et quale
quid sit et unde habeat esse.” Richard, De Trin., IV, 11. “Possumus autem sub nomine existentie utramque
considerationem subintelligere tam illam scilicet que pertinet ad ratinem essentie, quam illam que pertinet ad
rationem obtinentie; tam illam, inquam, in qua queritur quale quid sit de quolibet ante, quam illam in qua
queritur unde habeat esse”. Richard De Trin., IV, 12.
384
With the exception of the systematic investigation of Nico den Bok in Communicating the Most High,
scholars have not paid much attention to Richard’s understanding of personality (cf. den Bok, p. 83).

81
substantial being. The notion of person indicates proprietas individualis, singularis,
incommunicabilis, whereas the notion of substance denotes the proprietas communis. By
responding to the question quid, one indicates substance (a common — natural —
property). A singular property is indicated by responding to the question “quis”. The
answer to “quis” is always a proper name, which sets off every person discretely from
every other.385 Over and above being rational substance, a person has another quality that
cannot be shared by a plurality of substances, and pertains only to one person. This is the
incommunicable personal property that makes a particular individuum one and distinct and
thus pertains to personhood above and beyond the common notion of substances. 386
Because the property is incommunicable, existentia is incommunicable.387
Incommunicability is thus the defining characteristic of the person:388 to be person requires
incommunicable existence (that which is not common and cannot be common).389 By
virtue of this incommunicability, the person is one who cannot be absorbed into or
replaced by another. Furthermore, since God’s attributes are identical to Him, the
communicability (relations or communion) of the divine Persons, as well as the
incommunicability of each Person, is identical with God’s divinity.

In defining a divine Person as “the incommunicable existentia of the divine

nature”,390 Richard also affirms the distinct origin of each person of the Trinity. In a more
comprehensive version of his definition, he says that a person is “existing through itself
alone as [iuxta] a certain singular mode of rational existence”.391

385
Cf. “per quid itaque inquiritur de proprietate communi, per quis de proprietate singulari.... Ad nomen
autem persone, nunquam intelligitur nisi unus aliquis solus, ab omnibus aliis singulari proprietate discretus”.
Richard, De Trin., IV, 7.
386
“Proprietas personalis est ex qua unusquisque habet esse is que ipse est. Personalem proprietatem dicimus,
per quam quilibit unus est ab omnibus aliis discretus”. Richard, De Trin., IV, 17. Cf. Nico den Bok,
Communicating the Most High, pp. 234–281.
387
“Existentia vero alia pluribus communis, alia autem omnino incommunicabilis.... Existentia vero
incommunicabilis est, que nonnisi uni alicui persone convenire potest...existentia designat substantiale esse,
sed aliquando quod sit ex communi, aliquando quod sit ex incommunicabili proprietate”. Richard, De Trin.,
IV, 16.
388
“Multum est tamen inter significationem unius et significationem alterius...cum intelligentia substantia...
subintelligitur proprietas communis...sub nomine personae, similiter subintelligitur quaedam, proprietas quae
non convenit nisi uni soli…proprietas individualis, singularis, incommunicabilis”. Richard, De Trin., IV, 6.
389
“Illud veraciter incommunicabile est quod commune quidem non est, sed nec esse potest...et cum
nominamus personam, nunquam intelligimus nisi unam solam substantiam et singularem aliquam”. Richard,
De Trin., IV, 17; De Trin., IV, 6; PL 196, 934B.
390
“non inconvenienter fortassis dicere poterimus quod persona divina sit divinae naturae incommunicabilis
existentia.” Richard De Trin., IV, 22. A.M. Éthier notes that Richard’s conception of “divinae naturae
incommunicabilis existentia” brought him close to the concept of the Greek theologians. A.M. Éthier, Le
“De Trinitate” de Richard de Saint-Victor (Ottawa: Institut d’études médiévales, 1939), pp. 94–101.
391
“Fortassis erit planius et ad intelligendum expeditius, si dicimus quod persona sit existens per se solum
juxta singularem quemdam rationalis existentia modum”. Richard, De Trin., IV, 24. English translation from
Corey L. Barnes, “Person, Hypostasis and Hypostatic”, pp.107–46. p.112, n. 11.

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 Richard’s teaching about the incommunicability and distinctiveness of persons does
not exclude communion or relationship between persons, especially the divine Persons.
On the contrary, Richard teaches that love requires two persons and the perfection of love
requires three persons. When there are two lovers, love goes out from one to the other, but
they do not truly share love. Their love is perfected when it is fused into a shared love for
a third person.392 Thus if God is perfect love, God must be a Trinity. 393 As Richard
explains: “From these things it is evident that shared love would have no place in Divinity
itself if a third person were lacking….”394

By following this line of thinking Richard has created a new Trinitarian model of
the community of related incommunicable persons or persons in mutual communication. 395
In Richard’s conception, the unity of the divine Persons is based on the communicability of
perfect, ecstatic love which requires dynamic relations between the Persons.

The Trinity is the ideal of perfect interpersonal relations

because in Divine existence there is an infinite self-giving
and receiving of love, without entailing a loss of one’s
identity or a rejection by the other. Human interpersonal
relations…are only images of God’s divine life.396

Thus Richard’s description of immanent Trinity presupposes the idea of person as

individual; nevertheless divine Persons are conceived dynamically as an individual-in-
relation and love.

Joseph Ratzinger notes the great advance that Richard of Saint Victor made over
ancient Greek philosophy:

[Richard’s definition of “person”] correctly sees that in its

theological meaning “person” does not lie on the level of
essence, but of existence. Richard thereby gave the impetus
for a philosophy of existence which had, as such, not been
made the subject of philosophy at all in Antiquity. In
Antiquity philosophy was limited entirely to the level of
essence.397

392
Richard of St Victor, Book Three of the Trinity, III, in Grover A. Zinn, trans., Twelve Patriarchs, pp. 373–
397, p. 384.
393
“Caritas autem, ut esse vera posit, personarum pluralitatem exigit; ut vero consummata sit, personarum,
Trinitatem requirit”. De Trin., III, 13.
394
Richard of St Victor, Book Three of the Trinity, XIX, in Grover A. Zinn, Twelve Patriarchs, p. 392.
395
Peter Hofmann, “Analogie und Person: Zur Trinitätsspekulation Richards von St.-Victor”, Theologie und
Philosophie 59 (1984), p. 233.
396
Dennis Ngien, “Richard of St. Victor’s Condilectus: The Spirit as Co-beloved”, European Journal of
Theology 12:2 (2003), pp. 77–92; p. 78.
397
Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion”, p. 449.

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As well as moving beyond the philosophers of antiquity, Richard of St Victor cast a long
shadow over medieval mysticism and theology. Most theologians in the following century
found a rich vein to be mined in Richard’s thought. His writings about God’s
incommunicable existentia and intra-Trinitarian self-communication greatly influenced the
thought of Alexander of Hales, St Bonaventure398 and John Duns Scotus, all of whom
defended Richard’s definition of “person” as superior to that of Boethius, and took him as
a starting point for their own theological and philosophical investigations. As one scholar
has pointed out,

the deduction of the mystery of Trinity from the perfection of

love remains unique to Richard. The authors after him do
not develop further such a reflection, but inspired by
Richard’s reflection they develop their own explanations.399

398
Grover A. Zinn, “Book and Word: The Victorine Background of Bonaventure’s Use of Symbols”, in SB,
II, p. 149.
399
Matheus Purwatma, The Explanation of the Mystery of the Trinity Based on the Attribute of God as
Supreme Love: A Study on the “De Trinitate” of Richard of St. Victor, Ph.D. diss. (Rome, Pontificia
Università Urbaniana, 1990), p. 126.

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4. Bonaventure’s concept of unity and differentiation of the human person

4. 1. Introduction

Although there are scholarly articles and studies of Bonaventure’s anthropological

teachings,400 Bonaventure himself never expounded a theory of man in a particular book or
treatise containing a complete explication of his notion of the human person. 401 Rather, it
is largely from his teachings about angels and on the Trinity and the human nature of
Christ that we can extrapolate Bonaventure’s concept of human nature and the personal
individuation of man. Nevertheless, it is not my intention here to create a coherent and
comprehensive theory of Bonaventure’s idea of the human person and personality as such.
It is my intention in this chapter to present an overview of Bonaventure’s understanding of
the constitution of the human person and the personal nature of man, with respect to
Bonaventure’s theological approach to these questions. I will also touch on the how his
concept of the human person is related to his vision of relationality in God, and how this
vision allows us to call the human person a relational being. This theme of man as a
relational being will be more fully explicated in a subsequent chapter.

The Seraphic Doctor was a great synthetic thinker. He quoted Augustine 3050
times, Aristotle 1015 times, and Anselm of Canterbury 249 times, as well as Pseudo
Dionysius, Hugo and Richard of St Victor; the Greek Fathers Gregory of Nanzianzus, John
Chrysostom, and John Damascene; the Latin Fathers Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, and
Gregory the Great, as well as the medieval writers Boethius, Isadore of Seville, the
Venerable Bede, Rabanus Maurus, and Bernard of Clairvaux. 402 Bonaventure assures his
readers that “if our voice has sounded out a little anywhere, it has not departed from the
limits of the Fathers”.403 Nevertheless, in many areas of philosophy and theology he in fact

400
See Francisco de Asís Chavero Blanco, Imago Dei: Aproximación a la Antropología Teológica de San
Buenaventura, introduction by J.G. Bougerol (Maurica, Spain: Espigas, 1993).
401
We do not find in mediaeval summa a place for anthropology as an autonomic discipline. Cf. Francisco de
Asís Chavero Blanco, “Per una teologia e antropologia dell’imagine in San Bonaventura”, DS 37 (1990), pp.
5–35, p. 7.
402
Bougerol, Introduction 23–48. Dante Alighieri was “personally acquainted with the University of Paris at
the beginning of the fourteenth century”, and it is interesting to note that among the philosophers who
accompanied Bonaventure and Thomas in the fourth sphere of Paradiso, Dante includes “Hugh of St. Victor,
Peter Comestor, and Peter of Spain, the prophet Nathan and John Chrysostom, Anselm of Canterbury and
Donatus, Rhabanus Maurus and Joachim of Fiore”. Andreas Speer, “Bonaventure and the Question of a
Medieval Philosophy”, MedPhilTheol 6 (1997), 25–46, p. 26.
403
“sicubi vero parum vox nostra insonuit, non paternis dicessit limitibus”, I Sent., prol. (I, 17b).
The “fathers” Bonaventure referred to include the Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle and Eudes (or
Odo) Rigaud. Cf. Kenan B. Osborne (ed.), “Alexander of Hales: Precursor and Promoter of Franciscan
Theology” in The History of Franciscan Theology (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994), pp. 1–
38, p. 36.

85
brings new light and introduces new concepts. This makes Bonaventure a true author,
according to his own definitions of writer, compiler, commentator and author. For
Bonaventure, a mere writer writes down another person’s words, changing nothing; a
compiler writes another’s words and adds words that are not his own; and a commentator
writes someone else’s words and adds his own words for evidence. But a true author, like
Peter Lombard,404 writes his own words, and adds other people’s words to confirm his
own.405 This last also describes Bonaventure, who created his own original doctrine,
including his concept of the human person, drawing largely on his Franciscan mentors in
Paris, where he studied and served as a magister regens, as well as on the older
philosophical and theological tradition which has been summarised in the foregoing
chapters. As I mentioned above, Bonaventure’s first and greatest master was Alexander of
Hales. In subsequent pages I will bring out connections between Bonaventure’s thought
and Alexander’s.406

4. 2. Man as a composite and simple being

Because everything outside of God is composed,407 therefore also “totus homo

componitur ex carne at anima”.408 We might say that this statement contains
Bonaventure’s simplest and shortest definition of the human being.409 The wonder of

404
Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris (ca. 1095–1160), was the author of Sententiae in quatuor libris distinctae,
completed ca. 1152. It was approved by the Lateran Council in 1215, used by Alexander of Hales in his
teaching and became a basic teaching text until the 16th century. See Maria Dominic Chenu, Toward
Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,
1964), p. 265; Philip W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp. 3–4.
405
“Ad intelligentiam dictorum notandum, quod quadruplex est modus faciendi librum. Aliquis enim scribit
aliena, nihil addendo vel mutando; et iste mere dicitur scriptor. Aliquis scribit aliena, addendo, sed non de
suo; et iste compilator dicitur. Aliquis scribit et aliena et sua, sed aliena tamquam principalia, et sua tamquam
annexa ad evidentiam; et iste dicitur commentator, non auctor. Aliquis scribit et sua et aliena, sed sua
tanquam principalia, aliena tamquam annexa ad confimationem; et talis debet dici auctor. Talis fuit Magister,
qui sententias suas ponit et Patrum sententiis confirmat. Unde vere debet dici auctor huius libri”. I Sent.,
prooem., 4 (I, 14b-15a). See Philip Rosemann, “What is an Author? Bonaventure and Foucault on the
Meaning of Authorship”, Fealsúnacht 2 (2001), 23–45.
406
According to Huber, Lampen called Alexander “the ‘theologorum monarcha’ and Wadding [asserted] that
he was ‘Philosophorum et Theologorum sui temporis vix cuiquam secundus’. He brought honor to England,
for it is conceded that he ‘was one of the first English scholars and theologians to make his influence felt in
Paris’ and one of the first to shed the glory of learning on the Franciscan Order throughout the whole world”.
Raphael M. Huber, “Alexander of Hales, OFM”, FS 26 (1945), pp. 353–365, p. 365. Bonaventure expresses
his respect for Alexander explicitly on several occasions. See for instance: “At quemadmodum in primo libro
sententiis adhaesi et communibus opinionibus magistrorum, et potissime magistri et patris nostri bonae
memoriae fratris Alexandri, sic in consequentibus libris ab eorum vestigiis non recedem”, Prael. ad II Sent.,
(II, 1a). See also II Sent., d. 23, a. 2, q. 3, ad 7 (II, 547a–b); Epis. de Tribus Quaestionibus n. 11 (VIII, 335a).
407
See I Sent., d. 8, p. 2, a. un. q. 2 (I, 168b); II Sent., d. 12, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 294b).
408
III Sent., d. 21, a. 1, q. 3 (III, 440b).
409
Tadeusz C. Niezgoda, “Człowiek według nauki św. Bonawentury” [Man According to the Writings of
Saint Bonaventure], in Bonawentura: życie i myśl [Bonaventure: His Life and Thought] (Warsaw: OO.
Franciszkanie Niepokalanów, 1976), p. 278. This definition serves as a point of departure for an exposition
of the complex philosophy and theology of the person that can be drawn from Bonaventure’s writings.

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man’s existence is that in him are united spiritual and material components as a unique,
complete substance410 or nature.411

In the beginning, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the term “substance” used
by Bonaventure to discuss what is individual and general, material and spiritual. A
summary of his teaching on substance can be found in Dubia 4:

It must be said, that just as the name of “nature” is accepted

in a multiple manner, so too the name of “substance”. For
besides those four manners, which the Philosopher says, on
which account a “substance” is said (to be) the “matter”, the
“form”, the “composite” and the “essence” of any one
(thing), “substance” can be distinguished in another manner
in accord with the words of blessed Augustine: in one
manner, so that it be said (to be) a thing permanent and
standing through itself [per se stans]; in another manner, so
that it be said (to be) a thing permanent, yet not standing
through itself, but inhering in another; in a third manner, so
that a “substance” be said (to be) an essence being in act
[essentia actu ens], whether standing through itself, or not;
and in this manner “substance” extends itself to every
being.412

When Bonaventure uses “substance”, it is evident that he does not imply that it means a
whole individual thing or something complete in itself (a thing which is a being through
itself). The term has many meanings, and for the most part, the Seraphic Doctor uses it
analogically. In the context of trying to understand Bonaventure’s concept of “substance”,
we have to bear in mind that the Seraphic Doctor described three kinds of differences in
creatures:
The first kind, found in created agents, is a difference of
substance and accident, or of a substance from its powers

410
“substantia dicitur res per se existens”, IV Sent., d. 12, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1 ad 4 (IV, 271b). Cf. Conrad O’Leary
The Substantial Composition of Man According to Saint Bonaventure (Washington DC: Catholic Univ. of
America Press, 1931), pp. 87–95; Anton C. Pegis, St Thomas and the Problem of the Soul (Toronto, 1934),
pp. 26–32, 50–52. For the historical sources of the terms: subsistentia, essentia, hypostasis and persona, as
used by St Bonaventure, see: Vincenzo Cherubino Bigi, “Concezione bonaventuriana della sostanza e
concezione aristotelica”, SF 55 (1958), pp. 198–209; “II termine e il concetto di sostanza in S. Bonaventura,
come risuito della discussione dei termini e concetti sinonimi e apparentati”, SF 56 (1959), pp. 16–36.
411
In Bonaventure’s doctrine, the term “nature” can have as many meanings as the term “thing” or
“substance”. Nature, in a very broad sense, signifies everything that exists, and that conserves the thing’s
nature: “Dicendum quod sicut hoc nomen res tripliciter accipitur, ita hoc nomen natura. Uno enim modo
dicitur natura res quae naturaliter est vel proprietas quae naturaliter inest. Secundo modo dicitur natura
largius, non solum res per se ens vel proprietas naturaliter inhaerens, sed etiam omne quod conservat naturam
vel quod saltem aliquo bono non privat.... Tertio modo dicitur natura largissime omne ens quod est in aliqua
re naturali, sive sit naturaliter inhaerens sive non, sive sit salvativum sive non — Cum ergo dicit Augustinus,
quod natura est omne quod Deus fecit”, II Sent., 37, dub. 2, resp. (II, 876). See also Myst. Trin., q. 1, a. 2, ad
7 (V. 57b); Myst. Trin., q. 2, a. 2 (V, 65b). Cf. Antonio M. Di Monda, “Natura e sopranatura in S.
Bonaventura”, in SBM, II, p. 258.
412
II Sent., 37 dub. 4 (II, 877a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2010, viewed19 July 2010.

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 and their operations. This difference is proper to a created
subject of action because, having being mixed with potency,
it does not act from its whole self; in such a subject, that
which acts and that by which it acts are not the same. The
second kind of difference, which is between supposit and
essence, is found in the creature as a being in a genus. That
difference is proper to every individual thing: having being
within limits, one individual thing with respect to another is
both the same and different; it is the same in essence, but
different in supposit, for essence is multiplied in supposits.
The third kind of difference is found in every created and
concreated thing. Since all things, other than God, receive
being from an extrinsic principle, they are not their own
being, and so there is a difference in them of the being and
its being. All three differences are grounded in the essential
composition of creatures, either through matter and form or
through body and soul.413

It is clear that when Bonaventure is talking about the conjunction of a human body
and a rational soul — whether as a composition of an incorporeal substance and a
corporeal substance or as a union of a spiritual nature and a corporeal nature — he does not
use the terms substance and nature in their strictest senses.

So that divine power might be manifest in human

nature, God fashioned it from the two natures that were the
maximum distance from one another, united in the single
person or nature. These are the body and the soul, the former
being a corporeal substance, the later a spiritual and
immaterial one. Within the genus “substance,” these two
stand furthest apart.414

And so, to reveal divine power, God brought forth all

things from nothing for his praise, glory, and honor. A
certain part of God’s creation — material nature — is close
to nothingness. Another part — spiritual nature — is close
to himself. These two natures God has joined together in the
human being into one nature and person, namely a rational
soul and a material body.415

This new entity, (the human nature) created through a conjunction of body and
soul, can also be called a person.416 The composite of body and soul is not a mere
aggregation of two or more entities; it differs from both its components in nature and

413
John Francis Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973), pp. 164–165.
414
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a). WSB, IX, p. 90.
415
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289a). WSB, IX., p. 292.
416
“unio animae cum corpore facit hominem et facit vivum….” Brev., 4, 9 (V, 250b); “Ut igitur in homine
manifestaretur Dei potentia, ideo fecit eum ex naturis maxime distantibus, coniunctis in unam personam et
naturam”. Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a).

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operation; it is the essential union.417 The union is also called tertium quoddam genus or
positivum quid, a substantial being,418 the forma totius or the forma consequens.419 The
united soul and body make up one “principium totale quod agendi ac patiendi”.420 This
substantial union of a rational soul and human body, both before and after resurrection, 421
constitutes a human being who is one thing essentially:422

According to predication, “man” expresses a form common

to Peter and Paul. According to constitution, “man”
expresses a form simultaneously related to soul and body
that results from the conjunction of the soul with the body.
The soul and the body concur in constituting one essence.423

When preaching about the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was assumed into heaven body and
soul, Bonaventure very clearly emphasizes that “persona non est anima, sed coniunctum:
patet, quod secundum coniunctum, id est corpus et animam, ibi est”.424 Thus we cannot
speak of human nature (person) unless there is a body (matter) 425 with its members, and
the soul (form) with all its potentialities. 426 In other words, the human person is a
spiritually existent body, but as I will show later, this is not the same thing as saying that
the human person is an “embodied soul”.

417
“Item, esse unibile convenit animae rationali: aut ergo essentialiter, aut accidentaliter; sed non
accidentaliter, constat; quia tunc ex corpore et anima non fieret unum per essentiam: ergo essentialiter hoc
convenit animae”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2, f. 2(II, 49a). See also II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 ad 6 (II, 413a);
III Sent., d. 21, a. 1, q. 3 ad 1 (III, 441b).
418
“Ideo ea tertia positio satis plenior, quod individuatio consurgit ex actuali coniunctione materiae cum
forma, ex qua coniunctione unum sibi appropriat alterum”. II Sent., d. 3, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 109b). Cf. O’Leary
Substantial Composition of Man, p. 99.
419
III Sent., d. 22, a. un. q. 1 (III, 450–451). Cf. “Et huius ratio est unio animae et corporis ad unius tertii
constitutionem, quod est unum per essentiam et cui debetur propria operatio secundum quod est unum”. II
Sent., d. 25, p. 2, a. un., q. 6, resp. (II, 623a). See also Romano Pietrosanti, “La struttura metafisica degli
angeli e dell’anima umana nell’ilemorfismo universale di san Bonaventura”, MF 106–107 (2006–2007) pp.
465–503, p. 500.
420
See Norbert Oldegeering, Discussion in Ignatius Brady, “Beatitude and Psychology: A Problem in the
Philosophy of St. Bonaventure”, FS, vol. 23, n. 3 (1942), pp. 411–427, p. 427.
421
“Requirit etiam natura animae rationalis et immortalis, quod sicut habet esse perpetuum, sic corpus habeat,
cui perpetuo influat vitam; ac per hoc corpus quod animae unitur, ex ipsa unione ordinationem habet ad
incorruptionem perpetuam, ita tamen, quod illud, in quo consistit substantia totius corporis”. Brev., 7, 5 (V,
287a).
422
“[I]ndividuum habet enim esse, habet etiam existere. Existere dat materia formae, sed essendi actum dat
forma materiae. Individuatio igitur in creatures consurgit ex duplici princio”. II Sent., d. 3 p. 1.a 2. q. 3 (II,
110a).
423
III Sent., d. 2 art. 2 q. 3 resp. (III, 48b). Trans. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation, p. 152.
424
De assumptione B. Virginis Mariae, sermon 1, sec. 2 (IX, 690a). Cf. the Bynum translation: “The person
is not a soul; it is composite. Thus it is established that she [Mary] must be there [in heaven] as a composite,
that is of soul and body; otherwise she would not be in perfect joy”. Caroline Walker Bynum, “Material
Continuity, Personal Survival, and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in Its Medieval and
Modern Contexts”, History of Religions 30.1 (Aug., 1990), pp. 51–82, pp. 68–69. See also WSB, IX, p. 294,
n. 74.
425
“caro quantum est de ratione sui nominis, non nominat materiam ipsam tantum, sed materiam sub tali
forma”, III Sent., d. 2, a. 2, q. 2 (III, 88b).
426
“caro est principium hominis materiale, anima vero formale”, III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 1 (III, 131a).

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 Human nature, understood this way, as Bonaventure often repeats, is created after
the image of God, which, eo ipso, expresses its nobility. As we will see, the term “image
of God” is mostly reserved for the description of the human soul: “God created a man from
the earth, that is, with respect to the body and after his own image, that is, with respect to
the soul”.427 Nevertheless, since a man as such is one composite, the term imago Dei refers
to the united body and soul, and therefore is related to the mystery of man as man. 428 “To
speak of man as an image of God — in Bonaventure’s mind — is to speak of him in terms
of an ideal, a goal, something to be accomplished”. 429 Because Bonaventure looks at man
realistically, he is fully aware that man, “as we find him concretely, is in a state of
alienation from the only destiny he really has; but he has lost neither the desire nor the
capacity to realize that destiny”.430 We see this expressed in Bonaventure’s comments on
verse 7:29 of Ecclesiastes, in the prologue to the second book of the Sentences:

...God made the human person upright, and he has

entangled himself in an infinity of questions. This statement
encompasses two realities: upright formation and rectitude
come from God, since God made the human person upright,
and the miserable deformation of humankind originates in
the human person, since he has entangled himself in an
infinity of questions. These two statements encompass the
goal of all human understanding: to recognize the origin of
good, to seek it out, reach it, and rest in it; and to know the
source and origin of evil, so as to avoid it and guard against
it.431

As has been shown above, it is evident that for Bonaventure the terms “human
nature” or the “human person” have the same or very similar meaning. The mutual
relationship between human nature and the human person is expressed quite explicitly
when Bonaventure discusses the transmission of original sin: “Et sic persona corrumpit
naturam, et natura corrupta corrumpit personam”.432

427
“Deus de terra creavit hominem, scilicet quantum ad corpus, et secundum imaginem suam fecit illum,
scilicet quantum ad animam”. De donis, 8, 13 (V, 496a), my translation. It is interesting that in number 15 of
this same chapter when speaking of the soul, he uses the verb “formavit” instead of “creavit”: “solus Deus
habet potestatem super ipsam animam rationalem, quia ipsa immediate a Deo formatur”. De donis, 8, 15 (V,
497a).
428
It seems that Cullen is not right when he concludes that “Bonaventure agrees with Aristotle that the human
being is a rational animal. This definition implies that the human being is a complex creation, a combination
of rationality and animality, matter and form. It relies on the Greek view of the soul as the principle of life in
living things”. Christopher M. Cullen, Bonaventure (Oxford: OUP, 2006), p. 51. As I have already shown,
the concept of the soul in Greek and Christian understanding are not compatible.
429
Zachary Hayes, “Toward a Philosophy of Education in the Spirit of St. Bonaventure”, Spirit and Life 2
(1992), pp. 18–37, p. 22.
430
Hayes, “Toward a Philosophy”, p. 25.
431
II Sent., prooem., (II, 3b–4a). Trans. of “Prologue to the Second Book of Sentences”, by Timothy J.
Johnson, Bonaventure: Mystic of God’s Word (NY: New City Press 1999), pp. 59–64, p. 59.
432
“In this way one person so corrupted nature, that now a corrupt nature corrupts the person”. Brev., 3, 6 (V,
235a). WSB, IX, p. 112.

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 To lay the groundwork for a consideration of Bonaventure’s conception of the
relational character of the human person, I will now look at the Aristotelian intellectual
currents of his time, before turning to the concept of the body and soul as constitutive parts
of human beings.

4. 3. Bonaventure in the context of 13th-century Aristotelianism

To begin, it is necessary to understand the influence of Aristotle on the universities

in the time when Bonaventure was magister regens. During the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, almost all of Aristotle’s extant works returned to circulation in the West, after an
absence of almost 500 years. Not all of Aristotle’s works were unconditionally accepted;
some, like the libri naturales, were condemned by Church statute.433 Others, such as those
comprising the Organon, were easily accepted by Christian scholars. 434 The writings of
Aristotle were not studied in the Middle Ages as we study them today, as a part of a “great
books” curriculum. Rather, trained philosophical thinkers used Aristotle as a frame of
reference for writing commentaries, raising questions and as source material for discussing
philosophical problems. Thus we can say that Aristotelianism in the later Middle Ages
provided “a common source material, a common terminology, a common set of definitions
and problems, and a common method of discussing these problems”.435 (Modern
scholarship has elucidated the problems that arose for the Scholastics, who treated the
Aristotelian works as a static system of thought, rather than as the product of a dynamic
development in Aristotle’s thinking.436) For example, in the Arts Faculty at Paris, when
logic was taught, the Organon provided a means for dealing with psychological,
epistemological and metaphysical questions, but the commentaries of Porphyry, Boethius
and perhaps Abelard were used along with Aristotle.

433
The texts of the 1210 and 1215 condemnations at Paris have been translated in Lynn Thorndike, ed.,
University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1944), pp. 26–30.
434
See Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism, trans. Leonard
Johnson (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1955), pp. 66–77. The inclusion of the Metaphysics among the libri
naturales is defended by Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger, 1975), p. 195. Cf. Cary J. Nederman, Medieval
Aristotelianism and Its Limits: Classical Tradition in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12 th -15th Centuries
(Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1997), pp. 55–56.
435
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classical, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (NY: Harper
& Row, 1961), pp. 31–32.
436
Sebastian J. Day, Intuitive Cognition: A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics (St. Bonaventure,
N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1947), p. 3. Day asserts that if Aristotle, like Augustine, had written a book of
Retractationes, “medieval philosophy would probably have developed along vastly different lines”.
However, because he did not, “the scholastics accepted all of his writings as though they were of equal value
and as though they all developed a single and consistent line of thought”.

91
 What we see in this period then, is an “embryonic Aristotelianism growing around
the logic of Aristotle”.437 As van Steenberghen has characterised it, “this Latin
Aristotelianism is still loosely knit, hesitant, not yet acclimatized, mixed with
unassimilated suspect elements. In short, it is an eclectic Aristotelianism...”438 or more
precisely, “an eclectic Aristotelianism with neo-Platonic tendencies, put at the service of
an Augustinian theology”.439 It is not surprising, then, that Bonaventure had “a fairly
extensive knowledge of Aristotle’s works”..440 As we see in his biblical commentaries and
the Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure seems to have been greatly impressed by
Aristotle’s theory of the four causes, which was popularly called upon in contemporary
rhetoric.441

Despite drawing on Aristotelian fourfold causality, in his Commentaries (ca. 1250–

52)442 and Collationes on the Six Days of Creation,443 Bonaventure condemns in strong
words some fundamental questions of Aristotle’s and other pagans’ philosophies. 444 In the
Collationes de decem praeceptis of 1267, Bonaventure rejected two Aristotelian theses:
that the world is eternal, and the doctrine of the unity of the intellect in all men. In 1268,
he presented “a finished canon of anti-Aristotelianism”, the Collationes de donis Spiritus
Sancti, in which he added a third error: the necessity of fate. 445 These errors, according to

437
Fernand Van Steenberghen, The Philosophical Movement in the Thirteenth Century (Edinburgh: Nelson
and Sons, 1955), pp. 38ff.
438
Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism, trans. Leonard
Johnson (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1970), pp. 126–7. See also Fernand Van Steenberghen, La théologie au
XIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut supérieur de philosohie, 1991), ch.5.
439
Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, p. 162.
440
Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, p. 150.
441
George Tavard, The Forthbringer of God: St. Bonaventure on the Virgin Mary (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald Press, 1988), pp. 58ff.
442
For the dating of Bonaventure’s works, see John F. Quinn, “Chronology of St. Bonaventure (1217–1274)”,
FS 23 (1972), pp. 168–86. Cf. also, Bougerol, Introduction, pp.171–77.
443
The Collationes have been aptly described by Bernard McGinn as “a masterpiece of symbolic and
mystical theology”. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism,
1250-1350 (NY: Crossroad, 1998), p. 97. Kevin Hughes calls the Collationes a “passionate exhortation to an
integral life of study and holiness” and “Bonaventure’s scholastic mystagogy”. Hughes understands the
Collationes to be “sermons adapted to the mode of protrepic. Protrepic is a mode of discourse that aims to
exhort readers to pursue a particular form of life and provides exemplary instances for the practice of that
form, even in the exhortation”. Kevin Hughes, “St. Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Fractured
Sermons and Protreptic Discourse”, FS 63 (2005), pp.107–129, pp. 108, 109.
Nevertheless, these last writings of Bonaventure are not purely mystical or protrepic. In many places
they are sharply critical of Aristotelian philosophy. As Marc Ozilou points out, “no one can understand
Bonaventure without reading these final collations, in which the writer unifies the whole of his life’s
reflections, both philosophical and biblical”. Marc Ozilou, “Saint Bonaventure in Paris”, in A Pilgrimage
Through the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, ed. Andre Cirino and Joseph Raischl (Canterbury: FISC,
2008), pp. 227–253, p. 239, emphasis added.
444
Leo Sweeney explains how Bonaventure criticized Aristotle and other pagan philosophers in Collationes
in Hexaemeron. See Leo Sweeney, “Christian Philosophy in Augustine and Bonaventure” in Essays
Honoring Allan B. Wolter, ed. William A. Frank and Girard J. Etzkorn (St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan
Institute, 1985), pp. 271–308, p. 280. See also Hex., 6, 3–4 (V, 361a); and 7, 2. (V, 365a–b).
445
Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press,
1971), p. 134.

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Ratzinger’s view, are exposed by Bonaventure as violating “the three basic forms of truth
to which the three primary philosophical disciplines — physics, logic, and ethics — are
ordered”. He calls Bonaventure’s argument a “deliberate construct” that uncovers
“Aristotelianism as the enemy of the basic truths of human life....”446

On the matter of the eternity of the world, to take one example, Bonaventure
especially maintains that the notion of an eternal universe entails an intrinsic contradiction
and therefore he expresses his conviction that Aristotle was seriously mistaken on this
question:

[I]f [Aristotle] posited, that the world did not begin

according to nature, he posited a truth…. But if he thought
this, that in no manner it began; he manifestly erred…. It
was necessary, to avoid a contradiction that he posit, either
that the world was not made, or that it was made out of
nothing. But to avoid an actual infinity it was necessary to
posit either the corruption or the unity, or the circulation of
the rational soul; and thus to bear off beatitude. Wherefore
this error of his both has a bad start and has the worst end.447

He leaves no doubt that “the world is necessarily temporal and impossibly eternal”. 448 The
position taken by Saint Bonaventure was absolutely rooted in the teaching of the Church,
which in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 “solemnly proclaimed that God created all
that is, matter and spirit, earth and angels, from nothing [de nihil condidit], and that this
creation occurred ab initio temporis”.449 And in 1270, the Bishop of Paris, Etienne
Tempier, had condemned thirteen propositions, including that the world is eternal.450

Bonaventure firmly grounded his own teaching in Sacred Scripture, which “deals
with the whole universe: the highest and the lowest, the first and the last, and everything
446
Ratzinger, Theology of History, pp. 134–135.
447
II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (2, 23a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02019.html, 2008, viewed 14 July 2011. Cf. Hex.,
6, 5 (V, 361b) and Hex., 6, 4 (V, 361a): “Never will you find that he said that the world had a principle or a
beginning”. TWB, V, p. 97.
448
Francis J. Kovach, “The Question of the Eternity of the World in St. Bonaventure and Thomas: A Critical
Analysis” in Bonaventure & Aquinas: Enduring Philosophers, ed. Robert W. Shahan and Francis J. Kovach
(Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1976), pp. 155–186, p. 163.
449
William E. Carroll, “Creation, Evolution and Thomas Aquinas”, Catholic Education Resource Center, ,
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0035.html, (n.d.), viewed 20 July 2010. Originally
published in Revue des Questions Scientifiques 171.4 (2000), pp. 319–347. Cf. Denz., 800 (428).
450
A list of the condemned propositions was issued by Bishop Tempier in 1277. Cf. Roland Hissette,
Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1977);
Kurt Flasch, Aufklärung im Mittelalter? Die Verurteilung von 1277: Das Dokument des Bischofs von Paris
übersetzt und erklärt (Mainz: Dieterich, 1989); Luca Bianchi, “New Perspectives on the Condemnation of
1277 and its Aftermath”, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 70.1 (2003), pp. 206–229;
J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris 1200-1400 (Philadelphia: Univ. of
Pennsylvania Press, 1998); John F. Wippel, “The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris”, The Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977), pp. 169–201; John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the
Condemnation of 1277”, ModSch 72 (1995), pp. 233–272.

93
that comes between”.451 In Sermon II, he warned against accepting the notions of the
Philosopher where those ideas were in conflict with Christian revelation:

But if you follow the example of the philosophers, you will

say, “How could be Aristotle have been deceived?” And you
will not love Sacred Scripture. Of necessity, you will fall
from faith. If you hold that the world is eternal, you know
nothing of Christ. If you hold that there is but one intellect
for all men, and you hold that there is no happiness after this
life and no resurrection of the dead — if you eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil — you will fall from
faith. Those who are studying the philosophers should be
careful to avoid everything contrary to the teaching of Christ,
since such things can kill the soul.452

In the context of this caveat and other criticisms of the Philosopher, it is perhaps best to
conclude with Zachary Hayes that Bonaventure “related to Aristotle in a way that was
respectful yet critical”.453

It would be a mistake to leave the reader with a sense of Bonaventure as writing

only in reaction to the Aristotelian intellectual currents of his time, when many of his
interpreters have claimed that the Seraphic Doctor is a Platonic Augustinian, a neo-
Augustinian and so on.454 Joseph Ratzinger attempted to address the differences between
such scholars as Etienne Gilson and Fernand Steenberghen, reminding us that
Bonaventure’s aim was a defence of Christian truth:

The question remains: Can we see Bonaventure’s thought as

an “Augustinianism” in opposition to the “Aristotelianism”
of Saint Thomas by reason of the fact that he rejected the
Thomistic separation of philosophy and theology which had
been worked out from an Aristotelian background?
Certainly we cannot and should not speak of an Augustinian

451
Brev., prol., 6 (V, 208a). WSB, IX, p. 22.
452
Dom. III Adventus, Sermo 2 (IX, 63a–b). WMM, p. 112.
453
Hayes continues, “Already in his early Sentence Commentary he calls Aristotle the ‘princeps et dux’ of the
Peripatetics. This seems to reflect a genuine respect for the Philosopher (II Sent., d. 1. p. 1, a. 1, q. 2. II, 17)”.
Zachary Hayes, “Beyond the Prime Mover of Aristotle: Faith and Reason in the Medieval Franciscan
Tradition”, FS 60 (2002), pp. 7–15, p. 8. The dispute about interpretations of the grounds of Bonaventure’s
opposition to Aristotle is summarized by Robert J. Roth in “The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure — A
Controversy”, FS 19 (1959) pp. 209–226. Cf. Quinn, Constitution, pp. 17–99. A profound and detailed
description of how Bonaventure uses Aristotle’s writings was prepared by J.G. Bougerol, “Dossier Pour
L’Étude des Rapports Entre Saint Bonaventure et Aristote”, in Archives d’histoire docrinale et littéraire du
Moyen Âge 40 (1973), pp. 135–222.
454
See Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965),
especially pp. 79–105. In Theology of History, Ratzinger remarks that “Gilson’s image of Bonaventure
gained something of a classic stature”, and goes on to list scholars who adopted Gilson’s position (p. 125). A
more up-to-date summary of the debate can be found in the dissertation of Jerzy Łopat, Współczesne
interpretacje poznania Boga według św. Bonawentury [Contemporary Interpretations of the Knowledge of
God According to Saint Bonaventure] (Niepokalanów, Poland: Wydawnictwo Ojców Franciszkanów, 1999),
pp. 19–31.

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 philosophy in opposition to an Aristotelian philosophy, for
this would mean that we would miss the heart of the
question. On the other hand, the notion of the undivided
unity of Christian wisdom is a genuinely Augustinian
concern and not simply a Platonic idea. It was this notion
that Bonaventure defended against the new Aristotelian
understanding of the Christian mode of thought.455

Whatever his influences, we can say with certainty that the Seraphic Doctor has left us
with a unique body of thought:

For the most part, Bonaventurean doctrine, seen according to

its historical sources, manifests a combination of
Augustinian and Aristotelean elements. These elements are
carefully balanced by St. Bonaventure, so that the resulting
synthesis is neither Augustinian nor Aristotelean, but
noticeably Bonaventurean.456

Scholars will perhaps never stop debating whether Bonaventure was more
Augustinian or Aristotelian. If one could ask the Seraphic Doctor himself, he might
suggest that we have missed the point of his work by focusing on the means, rather than
the end. In De Donis, Bonaventure called the knowledge of philosophy and theology a gift
of God. “But properly speaking, the gift of God is the knowledge of grace. And the
knowledge of glory is not only a gift, but also a reward”.457

Zachary Hayes suggests that for Bonaventure, both philosophy and speculative
theology fall short of the ultimate aim; we are to move beyond them to contemplative
union with God:

Ratzinger concludes correctly that what appears as anti-

Aristotelianism in Bonaventure is at root the rejection of any
self-sufficient philosophy. In as far as Aristotle is seen at
that time as the very embodiment of human reason, this
qualified acceptance of philosophy is concretely a qualified
acceptance of Aristotle. Its provisional character, together
with that of rational theology, is seen most emphatically in
the Bonaventurian view that looks forward to a final age in
which both philosophy and speculative theology will be left
behind in favor of contemplative love.458

4. 4. Explanations of the substantial and formal pluralism in man

455
Joseph Ratzinger, Theology of History, p. 132.
456
Quinn, Constitution, p.134.
457
De donis, 4, 4 (V, 474a–b). WSB, XIV, p. 85.
458
Zachary Hayes, The Hidden Center, p. 213, note 68. Cf. Ratzinger, Theology of History, p. 119ff., 159ff.

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 Contrary to the Aristotelian theory of hylemorphism, the Seraphic Doctor did not
hesitate to examine the soul and the body separately as two diverse substances — although
not in a dualistic sense459 — and therefore I can agree with Anton Pegis that “St
Bonaventure has little, if any, room in his system for any Aristotelian conception of the
soul as the form of the body”.460

He was able to understand the soul and the body as different substances for two
reasons. First, he developed the view inherited from his predecessors — including his
master, Alexander of Hales — that all created beings, including the soul and the body,
consist of matter and form.461 Second, he recognized the broader use of the word
“substance”462 that was current at the time. This means that for Bonaventure, contrary to
Thomas (who taught that separate substances are pure forms totally free from composition
with matter463), the soul itself is a created being, and just like the body consists of matter
and form.464

Thinkers who adopted the Aristotelian teaching 465 about matter and form and who
applied it to explain the complexity of man, fall into three groups:

1. Those who accepted (pure) Aristotelianism466

2. Those who accepted the unity of the soul and body in an external manner
459
Dawn M. Nothwehr, The Franciscan View of the Human Person: Some Central Elements (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005), p. 35.
460
Anton C. Pegis, Problem of the Soul, p. 52.
461
According to Alexander of Hales, there are “five types of composition: two, that is composition from
matter and form and from quantitative parts, are not present in angels; three, that is composition from genus
and differences, from substance and its properties, and from quod est and quo est, are present in angels”.
Alexander of Hales, Glossa II, 3, 7e. Trans., Walter Henry Principe, in his Alexander of Hales’ Theology of
the Hypostatic Union (Toronto: PIMS, 1967), p. 46.
The common doctrine of the Scholastics held all corporeal, complete being, both living and not
living, to be intrinsically constituted of matter and form just as of essential parts. See: II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1,
q. 1, scholion (II, 92). Cf. Tadeusz C. Niezgoda, “Człowiek”, p. 281. See also Medieval Theology and the
Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A.J. Minns (Woodbridge, UK: York Medieval Press, 1997).
462
“Substantia dicitur dupliciter: prima, quae est individum et hypostasis sive persona, et secunda quae est
commune”. I Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 1 (I, 117b).
463
See De ente ei essentia 4; II Sent. 3. 1. 1; Summa contra gentiles 2.50–51, 54; De spiritualibus creaturis 1;
Quaestiones quodlibetates 9.4.1; Summa theologiae 1.50.2; De substantiis separatis, passim.
464
I omit the discussion of the human body as a composition of matter and form as not relevant to the present
discussion. For an exposition of this issue see Quinn, Constitution, pp. 219–319. See also chapter 4. 6. 3 of
this paper: The interdependence of the soul and the body.
465
See also Charles H. Lohr, “The new Aristotle and ‘Science’ in the Paris Arts Faculty (1255)”, in O.M.
Weijers and L. Holz (eds.) L’Enseignement des disciplines à la Faculté des arts (Paris et Oxford, XIIIe-XVe
siècles) (Turnhout: Brepols 1997), pp. 251–269.
466
There was probably no such thing as a pure Aristotelian in 13 th-century Europe. As Van Steenberghen
writes, the Latin philosophers of the first half of the thirteenth century “are exegetes rather than philosophers,
they are trying to penetrate the sense of the difficult texts which have come into their hands. They go for help
to the paraphrases of Avicenna and more recently to the commentaries of Averroes. Without much
discernment, they mix the authentic doctrine of Aristotle with neo-Platonic ideas of Jewish or Arab origin”.
Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, p. 127. Here I remind the reader that the Aristotelian
solution, which views the soul merely as a form dependent on matter, means that the soul would undergo
annihilation simultaneously with the death of the body.

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 (the Augustinian-Aristotelian theory)
3. Those who modified the Aristotelian approach in light of faith.467

Aquinas and Bonaventure belonged to the third group. 468 Despite Gilson’s
argument that “there is no room in Aristotelianism for an intellectual form that is, at one
and the same time, the form of body and a spiritual substance in its own rights”, 469 both
saints agreed that the soul is an immortal substance, 470 but also the form of the mortal body.
The great Scholastics agree that man consists of two composing principles, a corporeal
body and a spiritual soul, but they disagree as regards the “how” of the substantial
composition of the body and soul.471 The differences in their conclusions perhaps stems
from the different approaches taken by the two great thinkers:

Bonaventura and Aquinas shared a common subject matter

and a common vocabulary in their organization of the
sciences. They used different philosophical methods and
principles in setting up their classifications, Bonaventura
assimilating all arts, sciences, and actions into a single
affective science oriented by illumination to the different
truths of different sciences, Aquinas resolving the sciences
into different kinds distinguished by the subject matters
which they ordered in different ways.472

As Van Steenberghen sees it, “St. Thomas...meditated deeply on philosophical problems

and…carved out a solid system of philosophy before using it in theology; while St.
Bonaventure did not do this to the same extent”.473

467
“Można wyróżnić trzy główne grupy myślicieli średniowiecznych przyswajających sobie arystotelesowską
naukę o materii i formie zastosowaną do czlowieka. Są to: 1. stanowisko czystego arystotelizmu, 2.
koncepcja zewnętrznego augustyńsko-arystotelesowskiego połączenia duszy i ciała, 3. metafizyczna
modyfikacja arystotelizmu na potrzeby chrześcijańskie”. Stanisław Wroński, “Średniowieczna filozofia
osoby ludzkiej”. [“The Medieval Philosophy of the Human Person”], SM 23.1 (1984), pp. 59–130, p. 80. The
paraphrase in the main text is mine.
468
“Tomas und Bonaventura, die in Paris am gleichen Tag des Jahres 1257 zu Theologieprofessoren ernannt
werden, gehören zu zweiten Autorengeneration, welche die intellektuale Herausforderung des Zeitalters
annimmt. Sie repräsentieren dabei unterschiedliche — nach Meinung vielen Interpreten sogar diametral
entgegengesetze — Positionen. Etienne Gilson Gegenüberstellung beider Denker löste eine Kontroverse über
Ähnlichkeit und Differenz ihrer Einstellung zum Aristotelismus und zur Philosophie überhaupt aus, die noch
nicht abgeschlossen ist”. Von Rolf Darge, Aristotelesrezeption im Ansatz der Ersten Philosophie bei
Bonaventura und Thomas von Aquin, Theologie und Philosophie 81.2 (2006), 161–180, pp. 161–2.
469
Etienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden City, NY, 1960), p. 208.
470
“Ad praedicta dicendum est, quod anima rationalis est immortalis, secundum quod dicit fides catholica,
cui concordat philosophia et omnis ratio recta...solum Deum habere immortalitatem, quia solus est, qui potest
summe se perpetuare sine alterius iuvamine. Anima autem, etsi sit secundum suam originem idonea ad
immortalitatem, non tamen potest sufficienter se continuare in esse, nisi conservetur a summo Auctore”. II
Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 460a, 460b). In the previous part of this distinction Bonaventure cites twelve
arguments to prove that the immortality of the soul proceeds from the soul’s nature. See: II Sent., d. 19, a. 1,
q. 1 (II, 458–460).
471
Stanisław Wroński, “Średniowieczna filozofia”, p. 81.
472
Richard McKeon, “Philosophy and Theology, History and Science in the Thought of Bonaventura and
Thomas Aquinas”, JHI 36.3 (Jul.–Sep., 1975), pp. 387–412, p. 403.
473
Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, p. 159.

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 Bonaventure’s elucidation of the question of matter and form, body and soul seems
to me much clearer and more logical than the explanation proposed by Aquinas. In my
view, Bonaventure’s resolution of the fundamental question of the nexus of the body and
soul shows in a more convincing way how the soul, composed of matter and form, is a
substance existing by itself and at the same time is a form and act of the compositum. In
the following pages I would like to explore how the position of Bonaventure relates to that
of Thomas.

4. 4. 1. The position of St Thomas Aquinas

On one hand, Thomas474 accepted that there is composition of matter and form in all
material substances, but on the other hand he rejected the possibility that the soul is
composed of matter and form, “even though what the soul is (quod est) and that by which
it is (quo est) are distinct from each other”.475

It seems to me that there is no matter in any spiritual

substance, but that they are simple forms and natures,
although some disagree. Besides the reasons why it seems
impossible that there be matter in the angels, matter is
excluded from the soul for a special reason. Since the soul is
the form of the body it is necessary that it be the form of the
body, either according to its total essence or according to a
part of its essence.... If according to its total essence, it is
impossible that a part of the essence be matter.... If,
however, according to a part of its substance it is in the form
of the body, by which it is in act, and not according to the
other, which is its matter, there follow…inconsistencies….

Nor do we deny that there is some composition in the

soul, namely ex esse et quod est — which manner of
composition is, nevertheless, not found in other forms,
because they cannot be subsistent as if in their being, but are
per se composite. In this the soul falls short of divine
simplicity.476

474
About the life and career of St Thomas, see James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life,
Thought and Works (NY: Doubleday, 1974); Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas
(Chicago: Regnery Publishing, 1964); Thomas Franklin O’Meara, Thomas Aquinas Theologian (Notre
Dame, IN: UND Press, 1997).
475
Quinn, Constitution, pp. 159–160.
476
ST q. 75, a. 5; Cf. Sum. c. Gent. II, c. 50; De Spiritualibus Creaturis, Art. 1, ad Resp. Trans., Clement
Maria O’Donnell, The Psychology of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas, Catholic University of
America Philosophical Studies 36 (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1937), p. 30.

98
Thomas did not treat the notion of matter and form in the soul as “a plain absurdity”. 477
However, when discussing the composition of spiritual substance, he preferred to use the
terms esse and essentia. According to Thomas, matter in spiritual creatures (i.e., angels
and human souls) cannot exist, because the essence of spiritual matter is totally dependent
on the act of being which gives it form.

Therefore because matter receives an actual determinate “to

be” [esse] through a form and not conversely, there is
nothing to prevent the existence of a form which receives the
“to be” [esse] in itself, not in some subject. For a cause does
not depend on the effect, but rather conversely. In this way,
therefore, a form subsisting through itself participates in “to
be” [esse] in itself just as a material form participates in its
subject. If, therefore, when I say “non-being” the effect is to
remove only the “to be” [esse] in act, the form, considered in
itself, is non-being but sharing in “to be” [esse]. But if “non-
being” removes not only the “to be” [esse] in act but also the
act or the form through which something shares in “to be”,
[esse] then, in this sense, matter is non-being, whereas a
subsistent form is not non-being [non ens] but an act which
is a form that can participate in the ultimate act which is the
“to be” [esse].478

Since Saint Thomas is “considering the rational soul as a form without matter”, it is natural
for him to see in it “an incomplete substance which constitutes by its union with the body,
another incomplete substance, a complete and substantial whole”. 479 In brief, Aquinas held
the theory of the unicity of form480 and therefore, as Gilson explains,

[the human soul] is an intellectual substance indeed, but one

to which it is essential to be the form of body and with it to
constitute a physical compound of the same nature as all
compounds of matter and form, namely, a “man”.… On the
other hand, insofar as it is the form of body, it dominates and
prevails over it in such a way that the human soul marks the
confines and a sort of horizon between the kingdom of pure
Intelligence and the domain of corporal beings. In a sense,
this doctrine complicates the structure of man; in another
sense it simplifies it. In Thomism there is in man (as in all
corporeal beings) a twofold composition. First, that of soul
and body.... Secondly, since it is a created being there is in
man a composition of essence and existence.… For this
reason, each corporal being, including man, is the seat of
477
Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 139.
478
Sanctae Thomae De Aquino Opera omnia, De angelis, seu De substantiis separatis, vol. XL, ed., H.F.
Dondaine (Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1969), cap. 8 (pp. 225–240) in F. J. Lescoe (trans.), Saint Thomas
Aquinas: Treatise on Separate Substances, (West Hartford, CT: Saint Joseph College 1959), pp. 55–56. Cf.
Armand Maurer, “Form and Essence in the Philosophy of St. Thomas”, MS 13 (1951), pp. 165–76.
479
Gilson, Bonaventure, p. 292.
480
See Anton C. Pegis, At the Origin of the Thomistic Notion of Man (NY: Macmillian, 1963); Daniel Angelo
Callus, “The Origin of the Problem of the Unity of Form”, Thomist 24 (1961), pp. 257–285.

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 twofold composition: that of matter with form, that of
essence with its act of being. In this structure, esse, the act
of being, is the keystone of the whole. It is the act of even
the form; consequently, it is the act of acts and the perfection
of the formal perfections.

At the same time he was complicating finite being,

Thomas was simplifying it.... [I]n introducing the notion of
the act of being, Thomas was eliminating the plurality of
forms in the composite. So long as there is no actus essendi
distinct from the form, there is no reason why a being should
not include a plurality of substantial forms held together and
ordered by the highest one.481

This statement briefly highlights the fundamental metaphysical doctrine of St

Thomas, to whom
all finite beings are beings outside the one infinite Plenitude
of Existence that is God himself, are limited participations in
one central core perfection of the universe, the act of
existence (esse) by being composed of one act of existence
limited by its particular essence as a distinct limiting
potency.482

Thus the soul is substantial due to its own specific participation in the act of
absolute being.483 This affirmation however — as Bañez remarks — became “a point on
which Thomas had met persistent opposition even within his own school”. 484 This
opposition could be clarified thus: when Aquinas says that the rational soul is composed
only of being and essence, he is saying at the same time that the soul is a pure form in
potency to an act of being. Nevertheless, as the form of a human body, at the same time it
is also a principle of act (since the body is in potency to the being of the soul, which gives
its being to the body). Hence, in the order of being, the soul is in potency and, in the order

481
Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy, p. 376. See also St Thomas De Pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad 2m.
C.G. II, 54. S.T., I, 3, 4.
482
W. Norris Clarke, “The Role of Essence within St. Thomas’ Essence-Existence Doctrine: Positive or
Negative Principle?” in Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario: Atti del Congresso Internazionale,
vol. 6. L’Essere (Naples: Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, 1977), pp. 109–115, p. 109. Cf. also Armand Maurer
“Form and Essence in the Philosophy of St. Thomas”, MS, 13 (1951), pp. 165–176.
483
“Anima rationalis praeter alias formas dicitur esse substantia, et hoc aliquid, secundum quod habet esse
absolutum”. II Sent., 19. 1. 1 (II, 465). From the context we know that Thomas was speaking here about
substantial absolute existence, but he also supports another point of view. In his Commentary we read: “Dico,
quod cum esse consequitur compositionem materiae et formae, non tamen denomimatur aliquod ens a forma,
sed a toto”. I Sent., 23. 1. 1 (IX, 307). This suggests that being results from the combination of matter and
form. In another place he writes: “the being himself of the thing composed out of matter and form, from
which [the human mind] obtains knowledge, consists in some composing of form with matter, or of an
accidence with a subject (consist in quadam compositione formae ad materiam vel accidentis ad subjectum)”.
I Sent., 38. 1. 3, ed. P. Mandonnet (Paris: Letheilleux, 1929), 903 ad 2. See also: Lawrence Dewan, “The
Individual as a Mode of Being According to Thomas Aquinas”, Thomist 63 (1999), pp. 403–424.
484
“Et hoc est quod saepissime D. Thomas clamat, et Thomistae nolut audire, quod esse est actualitas omnis
formae vel naturae….” Domingo Bañez, Commentary on Summa theologiae, I, 3, 4, ed. Luis Urbano
(Madrid: F.E.D.A., 1934), I, 141. Quotation is taken from Gilson History of Christian Philosophy, (footnote
116), p. 714.

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of nature, the soul is an act. 485 This incomprehensible explanation shows that Aquinas’s
theory of esse-existence raised other difficult questions; for example, what kind of relation
exists between the soul and created being (esse) of the soul, what is the difference between
the being (esse) of the soul and the Being (Esse) in God, or Being (Esse) as God, etc.
Jason West points out one difficulty:

The metaphysics of esse is one of the most discussed aspects

of Aquinas’ thought. Yet, the case of Christ brings with it an
added difficulty due to the fact St. Thomas held in many
works that there is an esse in Christ, while arguing in one
work, the Disputed Question on the Union of the Word
Incarnate, that the human nature can be considered as having
a secondary esse.486

At this point, it is necessary to make clear that if, as Thomas states, “esse is said to be
the act of being inasmuch as it is being”,487 it leads Thomas to the logical conclusion that
“there is one substantial esse in Christ, the proper esse of the suppositum, even though
there might be in him a multiplicity of accidental esse”..488 However, this leads to a further
problem, raising the well-known question, “How many esse are there in Christ?”489

As Gilson points out, the question of the state of being in the doctrine of St Thomas
depends on the answer to a well-known open question:

Is it St. Thomas the theologian who, reading in Exodus the

identity of essence and existence in God, taught St. Thomas
the philosopher the distinction between essence and
485
“Readers familiar with Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Aquinas’ commentary on it should know the conceptual
difficulty of posing the problem in this way about forms, particularly the substantial form that is the soul”.
John P. O’Callagan “Aquinas’ Rejection of Mind, Contra Kenny”, Thomist 66 (2002), pp. 15–59, p. 52.
It is well recognized that the distinction between essence and existence itself was one of the many legacies
bequeathed to Thomas by Avicenna. See John F. Wippel, “The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Thomas
Aquinas’s Metaphysics”, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie and Theologie 37 (1990), pp. 51–90; and
David B. Burrell, “Aquinas and Islamic and Jewish Thinkers”, in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed.
Normann Kretzmann and Eleanore Stump (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), pp. 60–84, esp. pp. 62–70.
486
Jason Lewis Andrew West, “Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Esse in Christ”, Thomist 66.2 (2002), pp.
231–250, p. 231. Cf. W. Norris Clarke, “The Role of Essence”, p.112; Bernardo J. Cantens, “A solution to
the problem of personal identity in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas”, PACPA 75 (2001) pp. 121–134.
487
“Alio modo esse dicitur actus entis in quantum est ens, id est esse quo denominatur aliquid ens actu in
rerum natura” (Leonine ed. 25. 1:94, II.43–46). Trans. in Victor Salas, Jr., “Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s
Esse: A Metaphysics of the Incarnation”, Thomist 70 (2006), pp. 577–603, p. 582.
488
“oportet dicere quod in Christo est unum esse substantiale...secundum quod esse proprie est suppositi,
quamuis sit multiplex esse accidentale” (Leonine ed. 25.1:95, II.83-86). Trans. Salas, “Christ’s Esse”, p. 586.
Cf. John Tomarchio “Aquinas’s Division of Being According to Modes of Existing”, RevMet 54.3 (Mar.,
2001), pp. 585–613.
489
Bonaventure did not accept a plurality of esse in Christ. His discussion of related issues is found in III
Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 1 (III, 148ff.), where he asks whether Christ is two. Instead of even speaking about esse
unum, he preferred to use simply unus: “Ad illud quod obiicitur, quod Christus est unum, secundum quod est
Deus, unitate increata, et unum, secundum quod homo, unitate creata; dicendum, quod magis proprie dicitur
unus, quam dicatur esse unum. In Christo est una sola persona, quamvis non sit una sola natura. Nihilominus
tamen potest dici unum, secundum quod Deus, et unum, secundum quod homo”. III Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 1,
concl., ad 3 (III, 150a).

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 existence in creatures? Or is it St. Thomas the philosopher
who, pushing his analysis of the metaphysical structure of
the concrete even as far as the distinction between essence
and existence, taught St. Thomas the theologian that He Who
Is in Exodus means the Act-of-Being?490

Unfortunately there is no simple and unequivocal answer to this question.491

4. 4. 2. The position of St Bonaventure

Bougerol has pointed out that “[i]n the framework of medieval Christianity,
[Aquinas and Bonaventure’s] closeness is much more apparent than their opposition”. 492
Some scholars suggest that they were not so much opposed as trying to answer “the same
questions in divergent ways”.493 On the subject of the matter and form in the soul,
however, it is clear that the Seraphic Doctor reached different conclusions from Saint
Thomas.

As was shown above, Bonaventure accepted the established doctrine that all created
beings — including the angels494 and corporeal beings — are composed of matter and

490
Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L.K. Shook (Notre Dame, IN:
UND Press, 1994), p. 94.
491
“God’s essence is to be. Here there is no case of a ‘definition’ that ‘happens’ to be instantiated in being. In
God we cannot think of a distinction between his essence and existence. ‘Tell them I AM sent you.’ But what
does this ‘I AM’ mean? Precisely that it is beyond conceptualization, for only essences can be conceived,
and being is not an essence!” Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (NY: Continuum, 1994), p. 31. Cf. John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Univ. of America Press,
2000), p. xxi. See also Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas’s Doctrine of God as Expounded in the
Summa Theologiae (Oxford: OUP, 1987), pp. 5–17.
492
Bougerol, Introduction, p. viii. For example, in a recent book, Gregory T. Doolan posits that the idea of
exemplarism, commonly associated with Bonaventure, is also an essential element of the doctrine of St.
Thomas. According to Doolan, “the word exemplar and variations thereof occur more than eight hundred
times in his writings, and ex professo treatments of the divine ideas occur in each of his major systematic
works. In short, the doctrine of divine exemplarism is one that is essential to his metaphysical thought”.
Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Univ.
of America Press, 2008), pp. xiii-xiv. Cf. “Aquinas touches on the divine Ideas as exemplars in at least ten
texts over nearly twenty years, the whole length of his teaching career. The persistence of the topic is good
evidence that the ideas were not mere anachronisms for him”. Mark D. Jordan “The Intelligibility of the
World and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas”, RevMet 38.1 (Sep., 1984), pp. 17–32, p. 17–18.
493
Anton C. Pegis, “St. Bonaventure revisited” in SB, II (Rome/Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura,
1973), pp. 21–44, p. 26.
494
“Sed de compositione materiae et formae sive materialis et formalis, de hac dubium est. Et voluerunt
aliqui dicere, quod talis removetur ab Angelo, et sunt in eo compositiones prius dictae. — Sed, sicut
ostensum est supra, cum in Angelo sit ratio mutabilitatis non tantum ad non-esse, sed secundum diversas
proprietates, sit iterum ratio passibilitatis, sit iterum ratio individuationis et limitationis, postremo ratio
essentialis compositionis secundum propriam naturam: non video causam nec rationem, quomodo defendi
potest, quin substantia Angeli sit composita ex diversis naturis, et essentia omnis creaturae per se entis; et si
composita est ex diversis naturis, illae duae naturae se habent per modum actualis et possibilis, et ita
materiae et formae. Et ideo illa positio videtur verior esse, scilicet quod in Angelo sit compositio ex materia
et forma”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 91a).

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form.495 Bonaventure did not agree with Aquinas’s theory of “uniqueness in substantial
form” because of his own doctrine “on the unity of substantial form” which “includes a
plurality of substantial disposition”.496

Bonaventure’s conception seems clearer and more coherent than that of Aquinas.
However, before we turn to various aspects of Bonaventure’s solution, it is necessary to
explain that for the Franciscan Master “esse and existere are themselves neither essential
nor accidental features”.497 For him, “existere is a feature of actual beings”, rather than
“merely possible beings, above and beyond the subsistence which such possible beings
have”. Esse, on the other hand, “refers to the actuality possessed by that which is informed
by a form”.498 This means that “everything having existere must have esse, but the
converse need not hold; not every actualization will produce a genuine existent”.499

Bonaventure’s ontological view is that everything in existence is in fact not

homogeneous but a composition. From both a metaphysical and physical point of view,
what exists is a binding together of matter and form. Each conjunction of matter and form
is unrepeatable and creates a new essence. This essence does not exist in itself, but only as
a result of the bond or relationship between matter and form. In this way, everything that
exists images the Trinity:

For every created substance has matter, form, and

composition: the original principle or foundation, the formal
complement, and the bond. It has substantial existence,
power, and operation. And in these the mystery of the
Trinity is represented: the Father, as the origin, the Son as
the image, and the Holy Spirit as the bond.500

For a deeper understanding of Saint Bonaventure’s doctrine on the constitution of

the every created being (for us it will be mostly the human soul) we must grasp his

495
“Necesse est enim, cum in omni creatura potentia activa coniuncta sit potentiae passivae, quod illae duae
potentiae fundentur super diversa principia rei”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1. sc. (II, 93b).
496
Quinn, Constitution, p. 311, n. 252. According to D.A. Callus the unity-thesis has its roots in the writings
of Aristotle and Avicenna, the plurality-thesis in the work of Avicebron. Both of these positions were
mediated to the thirteenth century schools by Gundissalinus. D.A. Callus “The Origin of the Problem of
Unicity of Form”, Thomist 24 (1961), pp. 257–85.
497
Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation, p. 147. Bonaventure used the traditional axiom
“forma dat esse” and tried to explain the mutual connection and interdependence of these two concepts using
the new formula “materia dat existere”.
498
Peter King, “Bonaventure”, loc. cit., p. 147. See also J. Bittremieux, “Distinctio inter essentiam et esse
apud S. Bonaventuram,” Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses 14 (1937), pp. 302–307; G. Klubertanz, “Esse
and Existere in St. Bonaventure”, MS 8 (1946), pp. 169–188; Vincenzo Cherubino Bigi, “La struttura
dell’essere secondo s. Bonavenntura”, CF 32 (1962), pp. 209–229; Quinn, Constitution, in particular chapter
two.
499
Peter King, “Bonaventure”, loc. cit., p. 148.
500
Hex., 2, 23 (V, 340a). TWB, V, p. 33. Cf. “Deus enim manifestat se in qualibet creatura tripliciter;
secundum substantiam, virtutem et operationem”. Hex., 13, 11 (V, 389b.)

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understanding of matter, both in itself and in relation to the being of form. To do that, we
must examine two problems: the identity of matter — in the metaphysical sense — in
spiritual and corporeal substances; and the meaning of creation with respect to being.501
For Bonaventure, as we already mentioned, the soul is the form of the body as its essential
and constitutional principle502 and at the same time, the soul itself as a created being — just
like the body — consists of spiritual matter and form.503 And therefore it is not enough, in
Bonaventure’s judgment, to say that the human soul is a simple substance having only a
composition of quod est and quo est. A created spirit must also have a composition of
form and matter.504

The difference between Bonaventure and Aquinas on the

essence of a spiritual creature is grounded in their separate
views of matter. Those views involve distinctive
interpretations of the significance of quod est and quo est
with regard to the creature. The two theologians concur on
the quod est, which is the form of the creature; but they
depart from each other on the quo est. For Bonaventure, this
is matter as the potential constituent of a created essence,
which has being from form. For Aquinas, the quo est is
being, which is the act of a created essence, whether
composed of matter and form or consisting of form alone.
The fundamental point of difference between Bonaventure
and Aquinas, then, has to do with the essential dependence
of the creature on being, or with its quo est.…
Consequently, considering the nature of all creatures,
Aquinas holds that none of them has an intrinsic tendency to
non-being. Lacking contrariety, spiritual creatures have
permanent being through the immaterial nature of their
simple forms.505

501
We must note here parenthetically that according to Bonaventure’s thought, existere or “to exist” is not the
act of “to be” of Thomistic philosophy, rather the actus essendi is similar to this act of “to be”. “The meaning
of esse in St. Bonaventure is a real problem. Some writers maintain the traditional view that he held the real
distinction between essence and existence…. Others have denied that the Seraphic Doctor held this
distinction”. George B. Klubertanz, “Essere and Existere in St. Bonaventure” MS (1946), pp. 169–88, p. 169.
502
“...idem est principium, per quod datur rei esse, et per quod in esse continuatur, sed anima rationalis, quae
est forma per naturam immortalis et incorruptibilis, corpori dabat naturaliter esse et complementum”. II Sent.,
d. 19, a. 3, q. 1 ad 5 (II, 468b).
503
Luigi Iammarrone, “Anima e corpo secondo Bonaventura: Raffronti com Tommasi d’Aquino”, DS, 31
(1984), pp. 5–29, p. 8.
504
“Quidam enim dixerunt nullam animam, nec rationalem nec brutalem, habere materiam, quia spiritus sunt
simplices; animam tamen rationalem dixerunt habere compositionem ex quo est et quod est, quia ipsa est hoc
aliquid et nata est per se et in se subsistere. — Sed cum planum sit animam rationalem posse pati et agere et
mutari ab una proprietate in aliam et in se ipsa subsistere, non videtur quod illud sufficiat dicere quod in ea
sit tantum compositio ex quo est et quod est, nisi addatur esse in ea compositio materiae et formae”. II Sent.,
d.17, a. 1, q. 2, in resp. (II, 414 b). Cf. 39–44.
505
Quinn, Constitution, pp. 162–163, italics original.

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 According to this argument, everything constituted from matter and form is
something singular and complete, so that it cannot enter into the constitution of a third
thing.506 Bonaventure’s view is significantly different:

it is true only under one condition, namely, that the matter

and form, when joined to one another, exhaust all
possibilities that both have for further development….
When such a condition is realized there is no appetite either
in the matter or in the form for further composition, and the
inclination and appetite of both is terminated by each other
and in union with each other as ultimate complements.
Consequently,… in the eyes of St. Bonaventure, the
determining factor in this question is not the composite
character of the soul or the body, but solely the degree to
which matter and form develop all the possibilities for
further composition in each other. If an appetitus still
remains, that indicates that either of the components is only
partially developed. Such is the case of soul and body,
whose individual composition makes them to be substances,
but does not develop them completely.507

The rational soul as a substance has a composition of spiritual matter and form;
nevertheless, it has an appetite for perfecting a corporeal nature, just as the organic body is
composed of corporal matter and form, and it has, nevertheless, an appetite for receiving
the soul.508

4. 4. 2. 1. Matter and the form of the soul

Even if Aristotle does not teach that the human soul is composed of form and
matter, we find that St Bonaventure will demonstrate the necessity of this composition for
the human soul. In the view of Saint Bonaventure, the two principles of form and matter
are necessary; but like act and potency, they differ from each other. 509 Therefore, they

506
In Bonaventure pp. 292–293, Gilson answers the difficult question, “[H]ow can a soul already composed
of matter and form enter into composition with a second matter and by uniting itself with it constitute a
substance that is really single?”
507
Anton C. Pegis, Problem of the Soul, p. 40.
508
“Ad illud quod obicitur, quod compositum ex materia et forma est ens completum, et ita non venit ad
constitutionem tertii, dicendum quod hoc non est verum generaliter, sed tunc quando materia terminat
omnem appetitum formae et forma omnem appetitum materiae; tunc non est appetitus ad aliquid extra et ita
nec possibilitas ad compositionem, quae praeexigit in componentibus appetitum et inclinationeni. Licet
autem anima rationalis compositionem habeat ex materia et forma, appetitum tamen habet ad perficiendam
corporalem naturam; sicut corpus organicum ex materia et forma compositum est et tamen habet appetitum
ad suscipiendam animam”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 ad 6 (II, 415b–416a). Cf. “materia quae huic formae
unitur...cum optima colligantia iungantur ad invicem”. II Sent., d. 19, a.1, q.1 (II, 460b); “Sic anima tanto
affectu unitur substantiae carnis quam prius vivificavit, quod non complete ei satisfit nisi illa eadem,
ubicumque lateat, reparetur”. IV Sent., d. 43, a.1, q. 5 ad 6 (IV, 894a).
509
However, as Peter King remarks: “Bonaventure does not explicitly argue for the alignment of form/matter
with act/potency; it is assumed rather than explored”. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia Individuation, p.
166 (note 16). Cf. Iammarrone, “Anima e corpo”, pp. 5–31, p. 7.

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must “have a distinctive function in the composite”.510 Although he teaches that spiritual
substances are composed of matter and form, Bonaventure is not saying that the soul is
stricte dicta only a substantial form. According to the Seraphic Doctor, the human soul is
also hoc aliquid.511 In his Commentary to the Second Book of Sentences, we read:

The rational soul, since it is a hoc aliquid, and naturally

subsists by itself, and acts and undergoes, moves and is
moved, has within itself the foundation of its own existence
[existere]: both a material principle by which it exists, and a
formal principle by which it has its being [esse]. One need
not say the same about the soul of beasts, since it is founded
in the body. Therefore, since the principle by which the
existence of a creature is fixed in itself is a material
principle, it must be conceded that the human soul contains
matter. But this matter is above the condition of extension
and above the condition of privation and corruption, and
therefore it is called spiritual matter.512

In this way “the composition of matter and form explains the mutability of the human
soul” and “the ground of its substantiality and thus guarantees its ability to subsist
separately”.513

For Bonaventure the soul as substance possesses matter as well as form and this can
be demonstrated on the basis of the following arguments:

1. What is changeable cannot be simple but must be composite. Where change

exists there has to be also the principle of changing and this is principle of mutability is
matter.514

2. We know that nothing can be active and passive simultaneously; this means that
each of these potencies flows from a different source (has to have its own principle). Form

510
Klubertanz, “Essere and Existere”, p. 184.
511
“Quoniam [anima] autem ut beatificabilis est immortalis;… ac per hoc non tantum forma est, verum etiam
hoc aliquid”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a).
512
II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 concl. (II, 414b–415a). Trans., Richard C. Dales, The Problem of the Rational
Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1995), p. 101. See also “Anima autem non tantum est forma
immo etiam est hoc aliquid…. Ipsa autem anima cum sit rationalis, cum sit per se existens, aliquam
compositionem habet, quam aliae formae non sunt natae per se habere, dum non sunt natae per se existere”.
II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2, ad 5 (II, 415b). Cf. Paul Bissels, “Die sachliche Begründung im
philosophiegeschichtliche Stellung der Lehre von der materia spiritualis in der Scholastik”, FKS 38 (1956),
pp. 241–95.
513
Gilson, Bonaventure, p. 289.
514
“Nullum mutabile est simplex; sed Angelus de natura sua est mutabilis et mutatur: ergo habet
compositionem. Sed ulterius, quod ex materia: cuicumque inest mutatio, inest principium mutabilitatis: sed
principium mutabilitatis est materia”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 89a), my paraphrase. Although this and
the following text treat the combination of matter and form among angels, they can be applied equally to the
spiritual soul.

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is the principle of action, while matter is the principle of passive potency. (Therefore, both
potencies must appear in the soul.)515

3. According to Aristotle, matter is of the subject of substantial forms. The

composite is, in like manner, the subject of an accident; but the rational soul is the subject
of the sciences and the virtues and also considered in itself, so the soul is composed of
matter and form.516

4. Every created being has both an active and a passive principle of its proper
operation. If the soul were purely form, it would act only from itself, but the soul acts
according to its principles of operation, so the soul has some material principle.517

5. Everything susceptible to contraries according to an intrinsic mutation is both a

singular thing (hoc aliquid) and a substance existing through itself in a genus, and every
such thing is composed out of matter and form. The soul is susceptible to contraries (for
example, joy and sorrow), and thus the rational soul is composed of matter and form.518

6. The soul not only gives life to the body, but it also lives by itself. The soul,
then, is either its own life or it is not. It is necessary therefore to posit in the soul
something giving it life and something receiving that life. Consequently, the soul must be
composed of form and matter as angels are.519

As spiritual being the soul is a substance existing through itself, having a principle of
passive potency in its own spiritual matter and an active principle and source of life of
spiritual form as well.520 In other words the rational soul is a spiritual being (ens)

515
“quia nihil idem et secundum idem agit et patitur;… ergo habet aliud et aliud principium, secundum quod
agit, et secundum quod patitur. Sed principium, secundum quod agit est forma, principium vero, secundum
quod patitur, non potest esse nisi materia”. Ibid. (II, 89b), my paraphrase.
516
“Item, in nono Primae Philosophiae dicit Philosophus, quod ‘sicut materia est subiectum formarum
substantialium, sic compositum est subiectum accidentis’; sed anima rationalis est subiectum scientiarum et
virtutum, etiam secundum se considerata ergo composita est ex materia et forma”. II Sent., d. 17, a.1, q. 2 (II,
413b), my paraphrase.
517
“Item, hoc ipsam videtur ratione. Omne creatum, cui debetur propria operatio, habet haec duo diversa,
scilicet quod agit et quo agit; sed animae secundum se consideratae debetur propria operatio; ergo videtur,
quod non solum sit forma, quia, si pure forma esset, tunc ageret se ipsa: ergo habet aliquid de materia”. Ibid.
(II, 414a), my paraphrase.
518
“Item, omne illud quod secundum sui mutationem est susceptabile contrariorum, est hoc aliquid et
substantia per se existens in genere, et omne tale compositum est ex materia et forma; sed anima secundum
sui mutationem est susceptiva gaudii et tristitiae: ergo anima rationalis composita est ex materia et forma”.
Ibid. (II, 414a), my paraphrase.
519
“anima rationalis non solummodo vitam praebet corpori, sed etiam vivit; aut igitur est sua vita, aut non. Si
sic: ergo non differt in ea vivens, et quo vivit. Et iterum, si est sua vita, non vivit per participationem, sed per
essentiam;… ergo ponere est in anima, secundum se considerata, aliquid quod det vitam, et aliquid quod
recipiat. Et si hoc, ergo est composita ex materia et forma”. Ibid. (II, 414a), my paraphrase.
520
“sed per se posse subsistere”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 3 (II, 417b).

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subsisting in itself through its material principle (matter),521 which is the foundation of its
existence (existere), and formal principle, which gives it its being (esse). However, as a
creature, “the soul depends on God for the conservation of its being (esse)”.522 The soul,
then, is (exists) in God and thanks to God, as in a subject. It is only as a spiritual being that
the soul subsists in itself through its matter and form.523

Of course, only God who is eternal can freely give and preserve the life of the soul:
“quia Deus se ipso permanet, anima autem, etsi de sui natura sit ad permanendum idonea,
tamen nunquam permaneret, nisi conservaretur per gratuitam Dei influentiam”.524 It
seems that for a contemporary reader, who is not steeped in the terminology of the
Franciscan Master, this formula which speaks of the existence of the substance of the soul
in itself could sometimes be misinterpreted because it suggests that the soul from the first
moment of creation is somehow independent in its being from God; or as Thomas
supposed, that its being participates in the Being of God. The truth is that the soul as such,
as Bonaventure taught, is not pure spirit and does not have a being (ens) through itself and
therefore cannot exist in an infinite way:

To that which is objected, that God grants a sempiternity; it

must be said, that both “to be everywhere” and “(to be)
always”, conveys a certain infinity; and the infinity of
sempiternity is an infinity of duration, which is according to
power, and this is not repugnant to a creature, because it does
not impede the duration of a creature to be finite according to
act and infinite according to potency; and for that reason for
every duration of the creature it is necessary that something
be adjoined.525

The soul, of course, like all that exists, is produced by God out of nothing 526 and from
the moment of its creation the soul consists of spiritual matter and form as its constituent

521
See Anton C. Pegis, Problem of the Soul, p. 37.
522
Quinn, Constitution, p. 140.
523
Quinn, Constitution, p. 140. See also: Ignatius Brady, “‘In seipsa subsistere’: An Examination of St.
Bonaventure’s Doctrine on the Substantiality of the Soul”, in J.A. McWilliams, (ed.), Progress in
Philosophy: Philosophical Studies in Honour of Rev. Doctor Charles A. Hart (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce: 1955),
pp. 141–52; Michael Schmaus, “Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele und die Auferstehung des Leibes nach
Bonaventura”, in L’Homme et son Destin: Actes du premier Congrès International de philosophie médiévale
(Louvain, 1961), pp. 473–83; Cf. Sophia Vanni Rovighi, L’Immortalità dell anima nei maestri Francescani
del secolo XIII (Milan, 1936), pp. 33–56; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “In the Image of God: The Trinitarian
Anthropology of St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas and Blessed Jan Van Ruusbroec”, in IThQ (2001), pp. 109–
123.
524
II Sent., d. 17, a.1, q.1 ad 5 (II, 412b).
525
I Sent., d. 37, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1 (I, 643b) Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 29 July 2010.
526
“Dicendum, quod haec veritas est: mundus in esse productus est, et non solum secundum se totum, sed
etiam secundum sua intrinseca principalia, quae non ex aliis, sed de nihilo sunt producta”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1,
a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 16a). Cf. “universitas machinae mundialis producta est in esse ex tempore et de nihilo, ab
uno principio primo, solo et summo”. Brev., 2, 1 (V, 219a).

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principles.527 In others words, Bonaventure taught that the soul is not produced from pre-
existing matter (because this matter would be either corporeal or spiritual), nor from matter
which preceded the soul in time.528

4. 4. 2. 2. The principle of individuation

In general, Bonaventure, like other mediaeval writers, does not seem to have been
concerned about the issue of individuation for its own sake. Nevertheless he touched on
the question of individuation in his writings on Christological questions (see III Sent., dd.
5, 6, 10 and 17) and Trinitarian questions (as in Questiones disputatae de mysterio
Trinitatis, qq. 2, 3 and 4) as well as in three questions devoted to the personal discretion of
angels, especially in II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2.

In Bonaventure, the simplest text referring to individuation or individual

discreteness is the tenth distinction of the third book of Sentences:

In individuo proprie dicto, est principiorum substantialium

unio et primi supositi constitutio in se ipso, non in altro.
Utrumque autem horum deest in accidentibus, quae nec in se
nec per se substitunt.529

The result of this union is that which exists by itself and in itself, and is what Bonaventure
referred to as hoc aliquid — “this something”. Hoc means what is principally from matter;
aliquid, what is principally from form. Hence, “[e]verything which is this something, is a
singular, and every singular is here and now.” 530

Bonaventure acknowledged a debate over the question of whether individual

discreteness is due to the formal principle or to the material principle. Those philosophers
who held to the material principle contended that individuation comes from matter because
“individual” does not add anything beyond the species except matter. Others argued that
individuation comes from form, saying that there is an individual form beyond the form of
the species specialissima.531 Bonaventure found both positions implausible:

527
II Sent., d. 17, a.1, q. 2, scholion (II, 416a). See also O’Leary, Substantial Composition of Man, p. 93.
528
“anima vero rationalis cum sit hoc aliquid et incorruptibilis nec educatur de materia praeiacente, necesse
est, eam ex nihilo educi et ita creari. Quod autem non possit produci ex materia praeiacenti, multipliciter
ostendit Augustinus super Genesim ad litteram libro septimo, quod illa materia praeexistens nec possit esse
corporalis nec spiritualis”. II Sent., d. 18. a. 2, q. 3 (II, 454a).
529
III Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 3 (III, 232b).
530
I Sent., d. 37, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, f. 3 (I, 642a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01642.html (n.d.), viewed 2 August 2011.
531
“Aliis vero aliter visum est, scilicet quod individuatio esset a forma, et dixerunt, quod ultra formam
speciei specialissimae est forma individualis”. II Sent., d. 3 p. 1, a. 2, q. 3 resp. (II, 109b).

109
 [I]t is quite difficult to see how matter, which is common to
everything, would be the main principle and cause of
distinctness; again, it is difficult to grasp how form is the
entire and special cause of numerical distinctness....532

Bonaventure therefore proposed a third explanation:

[I]ndividuation arises from the actual conjunction of matter

with form, from which conjunction each appropriates the
other to itself…. [I]f you were to ask from which
[individuation] comes principally, it should be stated that an
individual is a this-something (hoc aliquid). That it is a this,
it has more principally from the matter, by reason of which
the form has a location in space and time. That it is
something, it has from the form. An individual has being
(esse) and also has existence (exsistere). Matter gives
existence to the form, but form gives actual being (actum
essendi) to the matter. Therefore, in the case of creatures,
individuation arises from a double principle.533

In other words, he argued that every substance proceeds from two causes: namely, from
matter and form in relation. Matter is the principle of extension in space and time, (it
“locates the form in space and time”) while form is its concrete expression (“form
actualizes the potencies latent in matter”). 534 Thus, each “individual contains in itself both
the esse and the existere: matter gives the to-exist to form; form imparts the actus essendi
to matter”.535 We could say, then, that every individual being is characterised by
incommunicability and singularity. For Bonaventure, that which is incommunicable
cannot be a part of something else and therefore cannot be involved in the composition of a
third thing.536 That which is singular is not common to several but refers only to one and
thus excludes what is common to others.537 An individual, then, is incommunicable and
singular, not part of something common, and cannot be composed into another.

The question of individuation belongs to the most difficult and complex field of
philosophical inquiry. (The further issue of personal individuation and personal discretion
will be discussed later in this paper.) Although Bonaventure certainly followed in the

532
II Sent., d. 3 p. 1, a. 2, q. 3 resp. (II, 109b) Trans. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation, p.
145.
533
II Sent., d. 3 p. 1, a. 2, q. 3 resp. (II, 109b–110a). Trans. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia,
Individuation, p. 146.
534
Peter King, “The Problem of Individuation in the Middle Ages”, Theoria 66 (2000), pp. 159–184, p. 172.
535
Colman Majchrzak, “The Human Person According to St. Bonaventure”, in The Mind of Modern Man
(Washington, DC: Franciscan Education Conference, 1958), pp. 21–40, pp. 31–32.
536
“Distinctionem incommunicabilitatis dico, quod aliquid non sit alicuius pars sive veniens in
compositionem tertii; unde pes vel manus hominis, proprie loquendo, non dicitur individuum”. III Sent., d. 5,
a. 2, q. 2, ad 1 (III, 133b).
537
“Distinctionem singularitatis voco, quod aliquid non sit commune ad altra, sed dicatur de uno solo;
propter quod Socrates dicit individuum, homo vero non dicit individuum”. III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1 (III,
133b).

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footsteps of his predecessors,538 nevertheless, we have to give him credit for his original
contribution in terms of the concept of mutual appropriation of matter and form.

Turning now to Saint Thomas, we must begin by saying that the Angelic Doctor’s
understanding of the cause of individuation is anything but easy to present in a
comprehensive and coherent way. There are many inconsistencies in Saint Thomas’s
writings. Contemporary commentators are divided on the question of which intrinsic
principle of human nature is the main cause of the individuation of the human person. 539
The debate is still open on this point. However, in general we may say that there are
innumerable texts in which Aquinas calls matter the principle of individuation.540

4. 4. 2. 3. Materia prima and secunda, rationes seminales

To provide a clear elucidation of Bonaventure’s theory of individuation based on

the substantial unity of matter and form, it would be necessary to give a detailed
explanation of his teaching on materia prima and materia secunda as well as on seminal
reasons. Since it is not the purpose of the present study to go into the diverse scholarly
interpretations of this deep and complex subject, I will only give a brief outline of the topic
here.
538
According to Tonna, Bonaventure’s doctrine of individuality depends on the doctrine of John Peckham
who wrote, “Nec materia est tota causa individuationis, cum materia ponatur una in multis, sed
complementum individuationis est a forma”. Ioannes de Peckham, Quaestiones tractantes de anima q. 4, ed.
H. Spettman, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters 19.5-6 (Münster 1918), p. 51.
Quoted in Ivo Tonna, S. Bonaventurae doctrina de entis individuatione, Ph.D. diss. (Rome: Pontificium
Athenaeum Antonianum, 1982), p. 18, n. 13.
539
For example, for Bobik the primary principle of individuation is matter. See Joseph Bobik, “The
Individual Body”, in Readings in the Philosophy of Nature, ed. H. J. Koren (Maryland: Newman Press,
1964), pp. 327–340. For Winiewicz, “matter is, indeed, a principle of individuation but, more properly, it is
only a co-principle. Being (esse) is a prior cause of diversity than matter”. Dawid Winiewicz, “‘Alteritas’ and
Numerical Diversity in St. Thomas Aquinas”, Dialog (Canada) 16 (1977), pp. 693–707. Cf. Robert A.
O’Donnell’s “Individuation: An Example of the Development in the Thought of Aquinas”, TNS 33 (1959),
pp. 49–67; Joseph Owens, “Thomas Aquinas: Dimensive Quantity as Individuating Principle”, MS 50 (1988),
pp. 279–310; Montague Brown, “St Thomas Aquinas and the Individuation of Person”, AmCathPhilQ 65
(1991), n. 1, pp. 29–44. See also Jorge J. E. Gracia, Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early
Middle Ages (Münich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989).
540
“...materia est individuationis principium omnibus formis inhaerentibus”. ST III, 77, 2. Cf. De Ente I, 6,
ST 1, 3,3, SCG I , 21 [4]. 92. In reflecting on this, see the opinion of Klinger: “In seiner Abhandlung De ente
et essentia und im dritten Buch des Sentenzenkommentars nennt der junge Aquinate in dieser verbindenden
Betrachtungsweise die materia sub dimensionibus determinatis Prinzip der Individuation. Dabei kommt im
dritten Buche des Sentenzenkommentars eine gewisse Unsicherheit zum Ausdruck, wenn er sagt, Prinzip der
Individuation sei die materia aliquo modo sub dimensionibus terminatis considerata”. P. Ingbert Klinger, Das
Prinzip der Individuation bei Thomas von Aquin, Ph.D. diss. (Munster, 1964), p. 122.

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 If we accept that matter itself supplies the principle of possibility and limitation, 541
we must conclude that materia prima (materia secundum se or secundum essentiam) has in
itself neither extension nor volume but the potency to it,542 and therefore,

since matter is a being wholly in potency, it thus has no act

by its essence, no form, and therefore no distinctness; if it
has no distinctness and is not nothing, it is thus necessary
that it be one without multitude, and so numerically one.543

In other words, “matter considered in itself is neither spiritual nor corporeal”. 544 As such it
is essentially pure passive potency, and has the capacity to be informed and therefore it is
“not entirely something and not entirely nothing, but a medium between non-being and
actual being”.545 This “numerical unity” of matter Bonaventure calls the “unity of
homogeneity”.546

541
According to Bonaventure, no distinctness or differentiation is possible in matter, since matter is by
definition free of all forms. As King explains, matter “is in itself ‘a mere being in potency’ [‘materia est
omnino ens in potentia’] (II Sent., d. 3 part 1, art.1, q. 3 resp. [II, 99b]); it is ‘in potency in every way’ and
‘informed” by every possibility’ [‘nam materia secundum suum essentiam est informis per possibilitatem
omnimodam; et dum sic consideratur, ipsa formarum capacitas sive possibilitas est sibi pro forma’] (II Sent.,
d. 12, art. 1, q. 1, resp. [II, 294a]), that is, with possibility for all forms [‘sicut potentia agendi essentialiter
consequitur formam, ita potentia suscipiendi essentialiter, immo essentialius consequitur materiam’] (II Sent.,
d. 3 pars. 1 art. 1 q. 2 ad 3 [II, 95 b])”. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation, p. 148.
542
“quia materia, abstracta omni forma, simplex est; non tamen habet actualem simplicitatem, ut punctus, sed
est simplex, quia caret actuali extensione, habet tamen posibilitatem ad illam”. II Sent., d. 3, p.1, a.1, q. 2 ad 4
(II, 98b).
543
II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 3 conc. (II, 100b). Trans. Peter King in “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation,
p. 152.
544
“Item intelligamus materiam sive spiritualium, sive corporalium per abstractionem ab omnibus formis;
intelligitur materia ut simplex, intelligitur materia ut unica, nullo modo multiplicata nec distincta; sed formae
supervenientes non mutant essentiam materiae, sed solum esse: ergo si prius erat quantam ad essentiam unica
numero, ergo nunc, cum habet formas”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 3 ad 6 (II, 99a–b). Remembering that St
Bonaventure holds that self-same matter is in spiritual and corporeal beings, we must keep the above
distinction in mind: “the potency of matter considered in its essence has no more inclination to one form than
to another and it is indifferent to all forms. Matter…in its essence is neither corporal nor spiritual; hence, the
capacity following the essence of the matter is indifferent to a spiritual or corporal form”. O’Leary
Substantial Composition of Man, p. 31. “Matter considered in itself, he says, is the possibility of taking on
every kind of form. But in nature it never exists in this condition and is, in fact, never separated from some
form or other. Considered in itself it is neither corporal nor spiritual, and its essence is indifferent to either. It
acquires either spiritual or corporal being by virtue of subsequent forms, which make it one or the other of
these”. Richard C. Dales, Rational Soul, p. 100.
545
“et ideo quamvis ens in potentia simpliciter inter non-ens et ens-actu sit medium, non oportet, quod
duratione sequantur unum”. II Sent., d. 12, a. 1, q. 1, ad 6 (II, 294b). Even if it is entirely without form and
has no distinction it cannot be called a pure nothing or “next to nothing”. Thus I have to disagree with Van
Der Walt who wrote, “The created universe has a double origin: God and non-existence. Bonaventure tried to
neutralize this dualistic tension”. B.J. Van Der Walt, “Man, the Tension-Ridden Bridge Between the
Transcendent and the Non-Transcendent World in the Thought of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio”, MF 75
(1975), Supplement I, pp. 583–599, p. 587.
546
“Sed si habet unitatem, unitatem homogeneitatis habet. Haec autem unitas simul manet in diversis, sicut
patet: si de eodem auro fiant multa vasa, illa sunt de eodem auro per homogeneitatem. Sed aurum quod est in
uno differt ab auro quod est in alio, adeo ut non sint unum per continuitatem. Si igitur materia non est una
actuali simplicitate, ut angelus, nec continuitate, ut mons vel auri frustrum, sed sola homogeneitate, et haec
non tollitur per adventum formarum, ita est materia una sub omnibus formis, sicut omnibus formis abstractis.
Sed abstractis omnibus formis, nulla est distinctio in materia; immo intelligitur ut simpliciter una. Nunc igitur
materia est in omnibus materiatis numero una, quia est ens omnino in potentia”. II Sent., d. 3 p. 1 art. 1 q. 3
resp. (II 100b). In this article Bonaventure also presents other arguments for the homogeneity of matter.

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 In this case materia prima can be understood as matter in the abstract or as an
intelligible darkness.547 (Bonaventure taught that matter and time, angelic nature and the
empyrean Heaven (caelum empyreum) were the first four created “things”.548) Materia
secunda or materia secundum substantiam (or secundum esse) means matter in reality or
existential matter (created matter). This kind of matter can only exist as informed — that
is, along with some form giving it esse — therefore could we say that existential matter is
prior to form in the order of nature and production, or the order of generation, 549 but it is
posterior to form in the order of time, because the completion and perfection of matter
depends on a necessary ordination to form.550 Such matter, according to Bonaventure, has
an appetite ordered to form as to its substantial perfection.

For the Franciscan Master, the way organic bodies are produced and behave cannot
be understood apart from principles of growth and development (following the well-known
theory of rationes seminales especially in St Augustine’s writings).551

Properly considered, seminal reasons are the media through which the complete
being (esse) of an individual substance is educed from the potency of matter: “whatever
nature makes, it makes according to seminal reasons”.552 In themselves, however, seminal
reasons are “an active potency innate to matter”, 553 subjected to matter, in potency to
complete actuality by the form.554 As John Quinn summarises it, “existing in this matter
547
Cf. “quod materia est tenebra; dicendum, quod tenebra dicitur ratione privationis formae, quae forma
lumen est”. II Sent., d.3, p. 1, a.1, q. 2 (II, 98b).
548
“quatuor fuerunt primo creata, scilicet caelum empyreum, angelica natura, materia et tempus”. II Sent., d.
2, p. 1, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (II, 68a). Cf. “Potest etiam supponere pro creatura, utpote pro principio temporis; sed
non dicit tunc ordinem, sed concomitantiam mensurae ad mensuratum, scilicet quod caelum et terra cum
principio temporis esse coeperunt”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, dub. 2 (II, 37b).
549
II Sent., d. 12, a. 1, q. 1, arg. 2–3 ad opp. 1–3 (II, 293–94). On the metaphysical and physical conditions of
being that are proper to matter, as described by Bonaventure, see II Sent., d. 3, a. 1, q. 2–3 (II, 94–101).
550
For some considerations of this doctrine, consult O’Leary, Substantial Composition of Man, pp. 26–45;
Anton C. Pegis, Problem of the Soul, pp. 34–37; Léon Veuthey, “S. Bonaventurae philosophia christiana”,
MF 42 (1942), pp.1–38.
551
Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation, p. 150. “The idea of seminal reasons (rationes
seminales) as the sources of all individual things in Augustine’s philosophy can be found in the work of other
Patristic authors, such as Ambrose, Ephrem of Syria, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. It is present in a variety of
non-Christian writers, including Philo, the Stoics, Aristotle, Democritus and Anaxagoras. This idea was
originally developed by Anaxagoras (5th century BC), who replaced the then current idea of four elements
with the notion of an infinite number of inert prime causes, or seeds, spermata, which were activated by
thinking rational essence, Nous.” Chris Gousmett, “Creation Order and Miracle According to Augustine,”
The Evangelical Quarterly 60.3 (July 1988), pp. 217–240, p. 219.
552
“secundum rationes seminales attenditur rerum propagatio et generatio”. II Sent., d. 18, a 1, q. 2 (II, 435b).
553
“There are two main types of potency, passive potency and active potency. Passive potency is the power to
undergo or receive some act or action, as for example to be informed by a form. Active potency, in contrast,
is the power to do or perform some act or action”. Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia, Individuation p.
154.
554
See II Sent., d. 18, a. 1, q. 3 ad 4 (II, 443a). There is no doubt that Bonaventure’s doctrine about rationes
seminales is grounded in his teaching about the relation between form and matter as such: “Alia via est, quod
formae sunt in potentia materiae, non solum in qua et a qua aliquo modo, sed etiam ex qua. Et hoc dicunt,
non quia ipsa essentia materiae sit, ex qua res producitur, sed quod in ipsa materia aliquid est concreatum, ex
quo agens, dum agit in ipsam, educit formam; non inquam ex illo tanquam ex aliquo, quod sit tanquam

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and having an ordination to a particular form, a seminal reason disposes the matter of a
bodily substance to receive a new form”.555

4. 5. The substance of the human body

According to Saint Bonaventure, man was created as an “image and likeness of

God”,556 but the whole world has been created for man’s sake because he is the “end of all
things”. Only through the particular act of generation belonging to the nature of human
men and women can a human body be produced. That is, “it can be drawn from them only
through the concourse of the exterior power residing in” them and “without whom the
human body cannot be brought into perfect act”.557 In other words a human body is
producible only by a sexual union.

Only the body of Adam was formed from the “slime of the earth”, which means
that it was not formed from a purely celestial nature, but from an elementary one, and this
was required “for the order of man, whether in himself, or regarding an inferior creature,
or regarding a peer creature [creaturam parem], or regarding God as (his) End….”558

The body generated by Adam, according to Bonaventure’s thinking, had the nature
of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire), and was “organized in a way similar to the
mode of organization proper to the more perfect animals”.559

The human parents produce a mixture “composed of complex matter and a seminal
reason, giving incomplete being to its matter”. Because seminal reason has a “natural
force or power of organization”, it “forms its matter organically” to be appropriately
disposed to receive a rational soul. When the flesh is suitably prepared, it receives “its
specifying and substantial form”; it is transformed when a rational soul, created by God, is

aliqua pars formae producendae, sed quia illud potest esse forma et fit forma, sicut globus rosae fit rosa. Et
ista positio ponit, quod in materia sint veritates omnium formarum producendarum naturaliter; et cum
producitur, nulla quidditas, nulla veritas essentiae inducitur de novo, sed datur ei nova dispositio, ut quod
erat in potentia fiat in actu. Differunt enim actus et potentia, non quia dicant diveras quidditates, sed
dispositiones diversas eiusdem; non tamen sunt dispositiones accidentales, sed substantiales. Et hoc non est
magnum, si est in potentia agentis creati, ut quod est uno modo faciat esse alio modo”. II Sent., d. 7, p. 2, a.
2, q. 1 concl. (II 198b).
555
Quinn, Constitution, p. 276.
556
“Anima et corpus sunt partes constitutivae, propter quem factae sunt ceterae creaturae, secundum illud
Genesis primo: ‘Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, et praesit volatibilibus coeli’
etc.” Comm. Luc., 12, 34 (VII, 319b).
557
Quinn, Constitution, p. 287.
558
II Sent., d. 17. a. 2. q. 1 (II, 419b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02418.html, 2008, viewed 29 July, 2010.
559
Quinn, Constitution, p 284. Cf. “Quedam completam, ut animalia sensibilia perfecta et gradientia, ut
equus; ettalia non potest nisi per vim formativam influxam cum decisione seminis; et tale est corpus
humanum, quod non potest naturaliter organisari nisi adsit et debitum vas suscipiens, scilicet matrix; et ideo
non est similie de serpentibus”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 5 ad 4–5 (IV, 893a).

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united to it and communicates to it “a complete act of being, thus perfecting its due
organization as a human body”.560 (Bonaventure thought, following the common
understanding of this question in his time, that the soul is indwelling in a human body 45
or 46 days after conception.561) The body, as Bonaventure teaches, is therefore perfectly
organized562 and due to the harmony of its members (parts) has very high dignity.563

Before the rational soul is united to the flesh, the embryo “receives incomplete
being from a seminal reason” as well as some principle functions as a “semi” form.564 An
organic body, being a composite of a seminal reason and corporeal matter, “is called a
substance, because, through its matter and its seminal reason, it is placed in the genus of
substance as a material component of a human nature”.565

At the end of this section it is necessary to note that in Lignum Vitae, when
Bonaventure was speaking of the Incarnation of Christ, he posited a rather different model
for the union of the soul and body.

[T]he Holy Spirit came upon her like a divine fire inflaming
her soul and sanctifying her flesh in perfect purity. But the
power of the Most High overshadowed her (Luke 1:35) so
that she could endure such fire. By the action of that power,
instantly his body was formed, his soul created, and at once
both were united to the divinity in the Person of the Son, so
that the same Person was God and man, with the properties
of each nature maintained.566

560
Quinn, Constitution, p. 290.
561
Cf. “anima circa quadragesimum quintum vel quadragesimum sextum diem conditur corpori”. Comm.
Sap., 7, 1 (VI, 151b). Cf. Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of
Summa Theologiae 1 a 75–89. (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), p. 419 n. 13.
562
Cf. “Corpus enim humanum nobilissima complexione et organizatione, quae sit in natura, est organizatum
et complexionatum; ideo non completur nec natum est compleri nisi nobilissima forma sive natura. Illud
ergo, quo anima est unibilis corpori, tale dicit quid essentiale respiciens quod est nobilissimum in anima; et
ita penes illud recte sumitur specifica differentia, secundum quam anima differt a natura angelica”. II Sent., d.
1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 50b).
563
Cf. “Magna est dignitas humani corporis, propter magnam harmonium et proportionalem coniunctionem
suarum partium, ob quam is statu viatoris conformis fit naturae caelesti”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 2, q. 2, ad 6 (II,
423b).
564
Quinn, Constitution, p. 292. Richard Dales comments, “Hence the vegetative-sensitive soul of the embryo
ceases to function as a soul but continues to exist after the infusion of the rational soul as a ‘disposition and
medium of union’. It is not clear how he would reconcile this with his earlier contention that the soul is
united to the body without any medium”. Richard C. Dales, Rational Soul, p. 104.
565
Quinn, Constitution, p. 295, See also pp. 293–94. Cf. Anima e corpo nella cultura medievale: Atti del V
Convegno di studi della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale: Venezia, 25-28 settembre
1995, ed. Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1999), especially
B. Faes de Monti, “Bonaventura e il corpo nell’angelo”, pp. 157–179.
566
Lign. vitae, 3 (VIII, 71b). Trans., BJTF, p. 127. Cf.: “absque dubio…, corpus Christi ad instanti
conceptionis habuit perfectionem organizationis. — Et ratio huius sumi potest ex parte Verbi assumentis, et
ex parte virtutuis efficientis, et ex parte Virginis concipientis.... Et quoniam anima non est nata uniri nisi
carne formatae et organizatae, ideo in primo instanti conceptionis necesse fuit, corpus ad perfectionem
organizationis perduci”. III Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (III, 93a–b).

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Another difficulty about the soul-body question arises when Bonaventure considers the fate
of the soul after the death of the body. This problem will be discussed in a subsequent
section of my dissertation.

4. 6. Bonaventure’s teaching about the rational soul

According to Bonaventure, the human act of generation is not the origin of a

sensitive soul. Augustine had taught that the human soul, when it leaves the body, retains
the powers of sense — imagination, reason and understanding. If the sensitive powers of
man are separable from the body, they cannot originate from the body. Following from
this, Bonaventure taught that there is one substantial principle of life; this principle is the
rational soul created by God. Thus Bonaventure rejects the view that the sensitive soul
could receive its being through generation. For him, both the sensitive part of man and the
rational soul receive their esse by creation.567 It is clear, then, that Bonaventure also rejects
the theory that the souls of human beings are produced from God’s substance.

For God holds Himself to creatures in the reckoning of an

efficient, formal, and final (cause); but in no manner can He
hold Himself in the reckoning of a material (cause), however
so much the creature be noble.568

The rational soul of man, the noblest of all natural forms, was created as the final and
most perfect form after vegetative and sensitive soul.569 It is a spiritual substance created
directly by God alone from nothing:

And for that reason there is a third manner of speaking

(which is) the Catholic one and the true one, that souls are
not sown, but with (their) bodies formed they are created by
God and by being created are infused and by being infused
are produced. — For God ought to have reserved the creation
of [the] soul to Himself alone, both on account of their
dignity, and on account of their immortality. On account of
souls’ dignity, because, since the soul is the image of God
567
Cf. “…sed anima sensitiva et intellectiva in eodem homine sunt idem in substantia, quia unius perfectibilis
una est perfectio: ergo, si rationalis non est per generationem, videtur quod nec est sensibilis”. II Sent., d. 31,
a. 1, q. 1 ad 4 (II, 740b). “Doctores autem theologici dicunt quod sensibilis et rationalis in homine eiusdem
sunt subtstantiae et ab eodem principio, habent educi in esse, videlicet et a Creatore, pro eo quod in nobis non
nominant diversas substantias, sed diversas potentias eiusdem substantiae, sicut Augustinus ubi de hac
materia loquitur, insinuat expresse. Et hoc idem valde est rationabile, ponere in homine unam substantiam
perficientem, quae det ei vitam et sessum et intellectum. Nec repugnat illud verbis Philosophi si recte
intelligantur”. II Sent., d. 31, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4, concl. (II, 742a).
568
II Sent., d. 17. a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 412a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 29 July, 2010.
569
“anima rationalis nobilissima inter omnes formas naturales: ergo ultima: ergo produci debuit post
vegetabilem et sensibilem”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 3 ad 3 (II, 417a). Cf. II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 446a).

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 and bound to be born immediately into God and to be
beatified in Him by loving (Him) with (its) whole heart, it
ought to have had its whole “being” immediately from Him,
so that it might be bound to love Him with (its) whole heart.
— This was also fitting on account of the immortality of
souls. For since God alone is, He who has life in His very
Self and Life unfailing; He also is, the One who can produce
a perpetual principle of life. Therefore since an incorruptible
thing cannot become a substance [substantificari] in
transmutable matter, and the operation of the creature is over
transmutable matter; it is impossible, that any creature
produce a rational soul: and for that reason God ought to
have reserved its production to Himself alone. Therefore the
reasons proving, that rational souls are not out of a
transduction [ex traduce], but by a creation, are to be
conceded.570

According to Hayes, when Bonaventure speaks of the rational soul being created from
nothing, he is not speaking of “some pre-existent formless matter”, nor is he speaking of
“the divine substance itself, but simply and absolutely non-existence”. We must say that
“God creates from nothing” because “there is no direct analogy from any human art that
can be used to express the nature of God’s creative act”, since God’s creative act confers
existence as such, which is impossible for a finite act. Hayes warns that “[e]ven the
category of cause which is commonly used in this context must be carefully qualified”.571

As we have shown, the rational soul does not exist before the body, but God creates
it in (and today we would also say with) the body of a new human being. Bonaventure
makes this point when he speaks of the creation of the body and soul of Adam:

[T]he soul of Adam was produced in (his) body,…God did

not produce it before the formation of the body. — For
though it seems sufficiently reasonable to be able to say, that
God produced the soul before his body, so that there might
be shown, that it does not depend upon the body, but is able
to subsist through itself...yet it seems by far more reasonable
to posit, that the soul was produced immediately with the
body….572

570
II Sent., d. 18. a. 2, q. 3 (II, 453a–b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 29 July, 2010. Cf. “…sensualitas est in homine ab anima perficiente,
quae quidem non habet esse per generationem, sed per creationem…”. II Sent., d. 31, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 742a); “…
quia anima bruti, cum sit forma tantum et forma corruptibilis potest de potentia materiae educi; anima vero
rationalis cum sit hoc aliquid et incorruptibilis nec educatur de materia praeiacente, necesse est, eam ex nihilo
educi et ita creari”. II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 3 ad 5 (II, 454a). In the Breviloquium he very briefly describes why
the soul proceeds neither from itself nor from the divine essence: “ideo anima nec a se est nec de divina
natura quia mutabilis nec producta de aliquo nec per naturam generata quia est immortalis et incorruptibilis et
ita haec forma non potest per generationem in esse introduci quia omne naturaliter generabile est naturaliter
corruptibile”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a).
571
Zachary Hayes, A Window to the Divine: A Study of Christian Creation Theology (Quincy, IL: Franciscan
Press, 1990), p. 27.

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 In his Commentary, Bonaventure describes two ways of giving or receiving life.
According to the Franciscan Master, life is transmitted either per modum efficientis, that is,
absolutely, or per modum informantis, that is, imperfectly. The transmission of life per
modum efficientis belongs exclusively to God, while the soul transmits life indirectly per
modum informantis.573

The soul, generally speaking, is a simple spiritual substance. 574 It unites with and
perfects the body through its faculties,575 serving as a sort of “engine”576 or as a mover
which generates life.

[T]he soul is called the life of the body in two senses; either
in as far as it informs the body or in as far as it influences the
body, because the soul is related to the body in two ways,
namely, as the perfecting form or as the principle of
movement. Therefore, when the argument shows that, as a
principle of life, the soul is like God, it must be said that this
is understood of the soul in as far as it is a motor, not in as
far as it is a perfection. Moreover, the soul moves the body
by means of its power and by disposing the body in such a
way that it is capable of being influenced by the soul.577

As a spiritual substance, the rational soul, on the one hand — although it has no extension
either per se or per accidens — is not simpler than other substances because it is composed

572
II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 3 (II, 417b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 31 July, 2010. Cf. II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 452–4).
573
Cf. “Dicendum, quod aliquid communicare sive dare vitam alii potest dupliciter: aut per modum
efficientis, et hoc simpliciter perfectionis est, et sic competit soli Deo; aut per modum informantis, et sic non
est simpliciter perfectionis, immo perfectionis cum impererfectionae iunctae”. II Sent., d. 8, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1 ad
5 (II, 211b).
574
“anima est substantia spiritualis”. I Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a.1, q. 3 (I, 86a). “In substantia autem corporali
spiritus dicitur dupliciter: aut a spiritualitate contra corpulentiam; et sic dicitur absolute, et vocatur spiritus
corpus subtile…aut a spiratione; et sic dicitur spiritus flatus…. Secundum hunc duplicem modum accipitur in
substantia spirituali sive rationali, aut a spirtualitate contra corporeitatem; et sic substantia rationalis vel eius
potentia interior dicitur spiritus…aut a spiratione; et sic affectus vel amor dicitur spiritus”. I Sent., d. 10, a. 2,
q. 3 resp. (I, 204a). “Anima rationalis, quamvis sit simplex in essentia, tamen est multiplex in effectu”. II
Sent., d. 17, a. 2, q. 1, f. 2 (II, 419a).
575
“forma, quae totum perficit, tamen nec extenditur nec dependet quantum ad operationem; et talis, quia
perfectio est, est in toto et partibus; quia vero non extenditur, perfectionem totius non communicat partibus;
quia non dependet, ideo nec operationem communicat; et talis est anima rationalis, quia nulla pars hominis
est homo, et nulla pars hominis intelligit”. I Sent., d. 8, p. 2. a. un. q. 3 ad 2 (I, 172a); “anima sit perfectio
totius corporis”. Ibid., (I, 172b); “Nam illud quod mediante anima perfecit corpus humanun est illud quo
anima est anima rationalis, et quod etiam est principium aliarum nobilium operationum”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a.
3, q. 2 ad 2.3 (II, 50b); “anima unitur corpori ut perfectio et ut motor”. II Sent., d. 8, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 221a).
576
“Nam operationes, quae consequuntur animam ut motorem, sic exercet per corpus, quod illas easdem
exercet in corpus, quia non solum movet alia corpora, sed etiam corpus proprium. Operationes vero, quae
consequuntur animam in corpore, ut perfectio, sic exercet anima in corpore per corpus, quod exerceas cum
orpore”. II Sent., d. 8, p.1, a.3, q. 2 (II, 222a); “quia anima est forma simplex et motor sufficiens”. I Sent., d.
8, p. 2, a. un., q. 3 (I, 171b); “corpori autem, quod movetur ab anima, debetur motus in omnem differentiam,
cum anima sit motor sufficiens”. II Sent., d. 17, q. 2, q. 1 (II, 419b); “et ideo non tantum unitur corpori ut
perfectio verum etiam ut motor; et sic perficit per essentiam quod movet pariter per potentiam. Et quoniam
ipsa non tantum dat esse verum etiam vivere et sentire et intelligere ideo potentiam habet vegetativam
sensitivam et intellectivam”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a).
577
Scien. Chr., 5, ad 11, (V, 31a). WSB, IV, p. 157.

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from matter and form, which pertains to its completion and perfection; however, on the
other hand, it is simpler as regards the privation of quantitative parts.578

As mentioned above, the concept of substance has multiple meanings in

Bonaventure’s writings. In regard to the soul, “substance” has three senses. The rational
soul is called a substance because it exists in a human body as its substantial and
completed form and its first act.579 Thus, in a second sense, it is called substance because it
gives to this body an act of being and life. Then, in the third sense, it is called substance
since it is “the principle of the completive difference of a human nature” 580 having “a
proper aptitude to be united to a human body”.581

The soul itself is also a hoc aliquid or quid positivum582 and the image and
similitude of God.583 Nevertheless, if the rational soul is considered in isolation from the
body, its being is not complete.

A rational soul considered in itself, or apart from a body, has

being that is less complete than the being of the individual
substance constituted by a soul and a body. Since a rational
soul has complete being only in a whole man, therefore,
since it is part of man, a rational soul has its complete being
only in man, as a part of his nature…. As a consequence, the
soul does not have the whole being of a man’s essence, even
though it is the first act giving him being and life.584

578
Cf. “Quamvis anima non sit aliis formis simplicior quantum ad partes constitutivas, quia tales partes
habere spectat ad complementum et perfectionem, hoc enim facet rem ease per se; simplicior tamen eat
quantum ad privationem partium quantitativarum. Ipsa enim nec habet extensionem per accidens, nec
quantum ad substantiam nec quantum ad proprium actum”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 (II , 415a).
579
This designation is echoed in Enchiridion Symbolorum, where we read, “Substantia animae rationalis seu
intellectivae vere ac per se humani corporis est forma.” Denz., 902 (481). In old literature we also encounter
the term “forma corporeitatis”.
580
Quinn, Constitution, p. 295.
581
Ibid. Cf. “Quod obicitur, quod differentia completiva debet esse propria, dicendum quod uniri corpori non
est proprium animae rationalis; sed tamen uniri corpori humano, sicut dicit illud quod est animae essentiale et
nobile, sic etiam importat quod est proprium”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 ad 2. 3. ( II, 50b).
582
“Anima non tantum est forma, immo etiam est hoc aliquid”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 ad 5 (II, 415b);
“anima rationalis, cum sit hoc aliquid, et per se nata”. Ibid., II, 414 b–415a; “ac per hoc non tantum forma est
verum etiam hoc aliquid”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a). According to Quinn, “[t]he doctrine of substance as
something singular (hoc aliquid) is derived from Aristotle; consult Metaph., 4. 8 (1017b10–25, 9.7
(1049a25–35)”. Quinn, Constitution, p. 141, n. 14. Iammarrone, however, added that the doctrine of the soul
as hoc aliquid is also influenced by Averroes’s philosophy: “S. Bonaventura rispondendo ad Averroè
sostiene che l’anima no è solo forma del corpo ma è anche una realtà compiuta, un hoc aliquid, un subsitens”.
Luigi Iammarrone, “Anima e corpo secondo Bonaventura: Raffronti con Tommaso d’Aquino”, DS 31 (1984),
pp. 5–29, p. 10.
583
“consideratur enim anima ut forma et perfectio corporis, ut hoc aliquid et ut imago”. De donis, 8, 13 (V,
496b).
584
Quinn, Constitution, pp. 295–96. Cf. “Item, pars suum esse completum non habet, nisi secundum quod est
in toto; ergo cum anima rationalis sit pars hominis, suum esse completum non habet, nisi secundum quod est
in toto suo, scilicet in homine, ut pars”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2, f. 3 (II, 49a). Cf. Brev., 7, 5 (V, 286a).

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And therefore only the human being or the human person — as we more often call it —
has the whole being of man as such.

In his Breviloquium, Bonaventure gives a brief summary of the rational soul. “The
soul is a form endowed with being, life, intelligence, and freedom”:

A FORM ENDOWED WITH BEING, not of itself nor as an

emanation of the divine nature, but as brought into being by
God through creation out of nothingness.

A FORM ENDOWED WITH LIFE, not through some

extrinsic nature, but in its own essence; not for a mortal span,
but for eternity.

A FORM ENDOWED WITH INTELLIGENCE, grasping

not only created essence, but also [being a] [c]reating
[e]ssence,… made an image [of God] through memory,
intelligence, and will.585

A FORM ALSO ENDOWED WITH FREEDOM, for it is

always free from compulsion. In the state of innocence, it
was free from misery and sin as well, but in the state of
fallen nature this is not so. Freedom from compulsion is
585
I have amended the quotation on this point, because De Vinck’s translation does not exactly convey
Bonaventure’s original sense. Bonaventure’s text quite clearly states: “[anima est] [f]orma vero intelligens
non tantum creatam, sed etiam ‘creatricem essentiam’ ad cuius imaginem facta est per memoriam,
intelligentiam et voluntatem”. The phrase “creatricem essentiam” is concerned here with the human soul as
having similitude to God who alone can be referred to as the “Creatrix essentia” (“Creating Essence”). In I
Sent., d. 36, dub. I (I, 630b) we find confirmation that Bonaventure used “creatrix essentia” to speak of
created things: “Ad illud quod obiicitur, quod creatura in Creatore est creatrix essentia; dicendum, quod
creaturam in Creatore esse est ideam vel similitudinem eius quod Deum esse; et Anselmus vult dicere, quod
illa similitudo est creatrix essentia, non quod illa creatura sit essentia”. Thus it is not a question of the soul’s
knowledge of the Creating Essence, but of an analogical way of talking about the soul as such.
De Vinck’s translation seems to have been accepted without question, for example by Monti, who
translates this point thus: “It is a form endowed with intelligence, grasping not only created essence, but even
the ‘creating essence’” (Brev., 2, 9, p. 84). However, Monti remarks in the Introduction to his translation of
the Breviloquium, Bonaventure warned that theologians will never grasp the Divine: “This is evident in the
introductory paragraphs of the Prologue. Citing Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Bonaventure begins by
‘bowing my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ for he wishes to remind theologians of their
natural incapacity to comprehend the divine mystery.” Monti’s footnote to this remark cites the
Breviloquium, part 5, chapter 7.4: “The truth of the First Principle is infinitely greater than all created truth
and infinitely more radiant than any light of our [human] understanding”. WSB, IX, p. XL. The only
translator who seems to have grasped the spirit of Bonaventure’s original words is Nemmers: “It [the soul] is
a form intelligent, not only created form but also a ‘creating essence’ made to God’s image in memory,
intellect, and will”. BB, p. 67.
The mistaken translation seems to come from a failure to notice how Bonaventure was constructing
his sentences at this point. First he explains that the soul is a form with existence, life, intelligence, and
freedom of choice (“forma ens, vivens, intelligens, et libertate utens”). His sentences then explain how the
soul has these qualities, not in one way, but in another way: “Forma quidem ens non a se ipsa, nec de divina
natura, sed a Deo de nihilo per creationem in esse deducta. — Forma autem vivens; non ex natura
extrinseca, sed se ipsa; non vita mortali, sed vita perpetua.” It is in this way that we should read the next
sentence: “Forma vero intelligens non tantum creatam, sed etiam ‘creatricem essentiam’”. Thus Bonaventure
must be saying, “the soul has intelligence that is not only created but also creative [creative essence].” Of
course this interpretation raises new questions. For example, how do the creatrix essentia of God and that of
the human soul differ? Or how does the soul’s creatrix essentia participate in God’s creative power? To some
extent these questions are addressed in the section on Illumination, below.

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 nothing else than a joint capacity of will and intellect, the
principal faculties of the soul.586

The soul, being conjoined to the body and playing such a specific role in it, more
perfectly than other creatures, as Bonaventure writes, represents God who is the Principle
of all things.587 For this same reason man as such is seen as “in medio”, between the
spiritual and corporal world and thus occupies the first position in the created cosmos.
Bonaventure also teaches that God

made men and women upright when he turned them toward

himself. In their turning toward God they became upright
not only in relation to things above them, but also in relation
to things beneath them. Men and women stand [in medio] in
the middle”....588

Moreover, he continues with an insight that is particularly important for us in the current
the time of ecological crisis. It is only as long as [homo] men and women
are turned in the direction of God and subject to him, [that]
everything else is subject to them. This is because God
subjected every created truth to their intellect for
discernment, every good to their affections for use, every
force to their power for governance.589

As well as being the first in the created cosmos and in medio between the spiritual and
corporal world, Bonaventure also sees man “in a certain sense” as “the end of all”. 590 In De
triplici via, Bonaventure writes that God “gave humankind the entire universe: namely
inferior things as submissive, equal things as matter for merit, and superior beings as
protectors”.591 This does not mean, however, as suggested above, that man’s dominion
over nature is an absolute or rapacious power to do with creation what he will. Rather, as

586
“quod ipsa [anima] est forma ens, vivens, intelligens et libertate utens. Forma quidem ens non a se ipsa
nec de divina natura, sed a Deo de nihilo per creationem in esse deducta. — Forma autem vivens; non ex
natura extrinseca, sed se ipsa; non vita mortali, sed vita perpetua. — Forma vero intelligens non tantum
creatam, sed etiam ‘creatricem essentiam’ ad cuius imaginem facta est per memoriaim, intelligentiam et
voluntatem. — Forma libertate utens, quia semper est libera a coactione; a miseria vero et culpa libera fuit
in statu innocentiae, licet non in statu nature lapsae; haec autem libertas a coactione nihil aliud est quam
facultas voluntatis et rationis, quae sunt potentiae animae principales”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 226b). TWB, II, p. 93.
587
“sic anima est imago expressior, quae in hoc, quod coniungitur corpori ita, quod per illud est principium
aliorum, et per illud totum inhabitat, magis repraesentat Deum, qui est principum omnium et qui unus est in
omnibus”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 401b–402a).
588
II Sent., prooem. (II, 5a). BMGW, p. 61. It is evident in this translation that for the Latin noun homo,
Timothy Johnson used “men and women,” which reflects a contemporary expression of the spirit of
Bonaventure’s writing. However, Girard Etzkorn translates the word homo as “humankind”, and explains,
“The Latin word homo is a common noun referring to any human person”. WSB, X, p. 347, note 2.
589
II Sent., prooem. (II, 5a). BMGW, p. 61.
590
“creatura rationalis quae est quodam modo finis omnium”. Brev., 1, 1 (V, 210a), my translation.
591
Tripl. via, 1, 13 (VIII, 6b). WSB X, p. 100.

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he beautifully explains in his “manual of theology”, 592 the Breviloquium, creation is at the
service of man as man makes his ascent to God.593

It is therefore undoubtedly true that we are the goal of

everything that exists. And that all corporeal beings were
made to serve humankind. So that through these things
humanity might ascend to living and praising the Creator of
the universe whose providence disposes of all. Therefore
this physical machine of corporeal beings is like a dwelling
fashioned by the supreme architect to serve human beings
until such time as they arrive at that dwelling not made with
hands…in heaven. And so, just as the soul, by reason of the
body and its deserved state, is now on earth, so one day the
body, by reason of the soul and its deserved reward, will be
in heaven.594

It is important to mention at this point, that although in Bonaventure’s view man is the
most noble of creatures and situated above all of them, at the same time, man is like the
rest of creation, which “is generated from nothing, has some defect in itself and plainly
declares itself defective”.595 He continues that man, “by reason of his defect and
nothingness,…is equal to others”.596 Man’s superior position, then, depends on his
deiformity and his moral status.597

4. 6. 1. The orientation the soul toward the body: the soul as the act of being and life

“When God created the body, God joined it to the soul, uniting them to each other
by a natural and mutual yearning”. 598 However, since it is immortal, the soul is not only
joined to the mortal body, but can also be separated from it. 599 Thus, according to
Bonaventure, the union of soul and body in man is founded on a natural and inseparable

592
Bougerol, Introduction, p. 108.
593
See II Sent., prooem. (II, 5a).
594
Brev., 2, 4 (V, 222a). WSB, IX, pp. 71–72. Cf. “Item, omnia corpora propter humanum obsequium sunt
facta, unde ‘sumus nos finis quodam modo omnium eorum quae sunt’”, II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a.1, q. 2 (II, 73a).
595
Perf. ev., 1, concl. ad 1 (V, 122b). WSB, XIII, p. 48.
596
Perf. ev., 1, concl. ad 6 (V, 123b). WSB, XIII, p. 51.
597
Cf. Hex., 2, 5 (V, 337a).
598
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). WSB, IX, p. 294. Cf. O’Leary Substantial Composition of Man, p. 84.
599
“Quoniam autem ut beatificabilis est immortalis; ideo cum unitur mortali corpori potest ab eo separari”.
Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a).

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property of unibility which is essential600 and not accidental to the soul.601 This unibility
cannot be taken away from the soul without destroying it.602

For the spirit, which is naturally conjoined to a body, is

never bound to be separated from the body except on account
of the punishment for sin. For since it is incorruptible
according to (its) natural institution, an incorruptible body
ought to be fitted [aptari] to it, since it cannot be separated
from it apart from sorrow [dolore].603

This means, in other words, that unibility is a natural and inseparable property of
the rational soul,604 and when the soul is naturally separated from the body by the
corruption of the nature of the whole composite, it “cannot be fully happy unless a body is
restored to it, because it has an inclination built into it by nature to be reunited with a
body”.605
600
“quae est esse unibile, non dicit puram relationem, sed naturalem aptitudinem, quae inest animae
secundum principia intrinseca, quae priora sunt animae per naturam, sicut rationale respectu hominis”. II
Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 50b); “anima magna inclinatione inclinatur ad corpus”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 2
(II, 461b); anima semper appetit uniri corpori”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 2, q.1 ad 6 (II, 465b); “anima habet
naturalem inclinationem ad corpus sicut ad propriam materiam, quam perficit”. III Sent., dub. 2 (III, 164b);
“anima habet naturalem appetitum ad corpus; quod patet, quia non vult separari, etiam corpore existente
misero”, IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 1 ad 4 (IV, 883a); “Si enim anima essentialiter inclinationem habet ad corpus,
nunquam anima plene quietatur, nisi sibi corpus reddatur”. Hex., 7, 5 (V, 366a); “Naturalis appetitus animae
ad corpus, qui est ad ipsam unionem et unionem antecedit natura, quamvis non antecedat tempore, se habeat
in ratione efficientis eo modo, quo est dicere, peccatum habere causam efficientem”. II Sent., d. 31, a. 2, q. 2
(II, 752b).
601
“Hoc enim, quod est animam uniri corpori humano sive vivificare corpus humanum, non dicit actum
accidentalem nec dicit actum ignobilem: non accidentalem, quia ratione illius est anima forma substantialis;
non ignobilem, quia ratione illius est in anima stat appetitus totius naturae”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 (II,
50b).
602
“unibilitas sive aptitudo uniendi cum corpore non est animae accidentalis, sed est ipsi animae essentialis,
et ita non potest ab ea separari vel circumscribi, salva ipsius natura”. III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (III,
137a). Cf. “Does unibility describe a property of the soul that distances the soul from the body? Unibility is
the ability of the soul to actualize the body through itself without the mediation of something else…. J.F.
Quinn, although he gives the best existing treatment of Bonaventure’s anthropology, sometimes implies not
only that unibility is the property of the soul to unite with a body, but also that unibility is a type of mediation
between the soul and body…. [W]e need not reason with Quinn that since the soul is united to the body by
means (mediante) of its own powers, there must be strictly speaking a mediation between the soul as a
substantial form and the body”. Thomas M. Osborne, “Unibilitas: The Key to Bonaventure’s Understanding
of Human Nature”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 37.2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 227–250, pp. 229, 234. He
also adds in footnote 14, “It is not clear exactly what Quinn means by ‘mediation’. Since unibility is a
property of the soul, is Quinn saying that the soul is united to the body somehow by the mediation of itself?”
Cf. “The soul is not generated mediante semine, but when the body is organized the soul is created by God”.
O’Leary, Substantial Composition of Man, p. 8.
603
“Spiritus enim, qui naturaliter coniungitur corpori, nunquam natus est a corpore separari nisi propter
poenam peccati. Cum enim sit incorruptibilis secundum naturalem institutionem, debet ei aptari corpus
incorruptibile, cum non possit ab eo separari absque dolore”. II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 2 ad 5 (II, 451a). Trans.,
Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02448.html,
2008, viewed 18 July 2011.
604
In footnote 52 (p. 126), of his Constitution, Quinn cites O’Leary’s Substantial Composition of Man (pp.
83–84) commenting that O’Leary “does not consider either the formal principle of unibility or the union of
soul and body as a proper form in its proper matter”. Citing Edouard Szdzuj (“Saint Bonaventure et le
problème du rapport entre l’âme et le corps”, FF 15 (1932), pp. 285–93), Quinn notes that “Szdzuj pays
special attention to unibility; coupling it with the notion of perfection, he suggests that the natural, or
substantial, union with the body realizes the perfections of the soul by actualizing its potency of unibility”.
Cf. Thomas M. Osborne, “Unibilitas”, p. 240.
605
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). WSB, IX, p. 294.

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 It is evident that the soul does not exist in the body as a juxtaposed entity as Plato
taught;606 neither are all souls created in the beginning and infused into organized bodies
successively.607 From all this it is clear that, infused into the body, the soul is not
imprisoned nor does it dwell in it accidentally, and that the soul and body are mutually
proportional and conformable. Nevertheless, ever since orginal sin, “through its union
with body, the soul contracts weakness, ignorance, malice, and concupiscence”. 608
Bonaventure expresses this unibility of body and soul more poetically when he says that “a
double shield has been given to us by God, and for our own honor we ought to bear them:
the first is the soul, the second is our flesh”.609

In this case, as Bonaventure teaches, there is one soul for each individual body.610
The soul has not only spiritual powers, but also the vegetative and sensitive powers by
which it is linked to the body and which it is able to use only in union with the body. 611
Therefore the soul desires to communicate its operations to the individual body in which it
is infused.612

The soul, as the mover of its body, exercises operations both in and through the
body; as the perfection of the body, the soul exercises operations not only in and through
the body, but also with the body: the soul moves the bodily organs, particularly the senses,

606
“Contra rationem et sensibilem experientiam est, quia videmus animam quantumcumque bonam, nolle a
corpore separari; secundum quod dicit Apostolus: ‘Nolumus expoliari, sed supervestiri’ (II Corinth., 5, 4);
quod mirum esset, si ad corpus naturalem aptitudinem et inclinationem non haberet sicut ad suum sodalem,
non sicut ad carcerem”. II Sent., d. 18 a. 1, q. 1, (II, 449b).
607
“anima rationalis nobilissima est inter omnes formas naturale: ergo ultima: ergo producit debuit post
vegetabilem et sensibilem. Item ordinata productio procedit ab imperfecto ad perfectum: si ergo perfectio
omnium operum facta est in homine, et maxime quantam ad animam, videtur, quod homo quantum ad
animam produci debuit ultimo post omnia”. II Sent., d.17, a. 1, q. 3, f. 3–4 (II, 417a).
608
“quia contrahit ex unione ad corpus anima infirmitatem, ignorantiam, malitiam, concupiscentiam; ex
quibus inficitur intellectiva, amativa, potestativa”, Hex., 7, 8 (V, 366b). TWSB, V, p. 114. According to José
de Vinck in his note to this text, “Bonaventure appears here as being under the influence of the worst kind of
Platonic dualism”. His opinion seems to be erroneous, since these four effects of original sin are mentioned
already by the Venerable Bede in his In Lucam (10, 30), PL 92, 468–469.
609
“Duplex clypeus nobis a Deo datus est, quos ad honorem suum portare debemus: primus est anima,
secundus est caro nostra”. Serm. dom., XXII p. Pent., Sermo 6, (IX, 448a), my paraphrase.
610
“Si ergo anima rationalis est perfectio corporis humani, illa anima rationalis, quae est perfectio istius
corporis, non est perfectio alterius corporis; et ita impossible est, quod perficiat aliud corpus”. II Sent., d. 18,
a. 2, q. 1. (II, 445b).
611
The soul is united with the body by means of its lower faculties, which, nevertheless, form one substance
with the soul. — “anima rationalis unitur mediante vi sensitiva et vegetative”. II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 (II,
74a); “anima rationalis unitur mediante potentia sentiendi et illa potentia vegetandi”. IV Sent., d. 11, p. 2, a.
1, q. 3 ad 3 (IV, 257b); “sensibile et vegetabile non sunt de necessitate rationalis, nisi quod est rationale per
unionem. Anima enim, ut prius tactum est, cum sit spiritus simplex et purus, non potest uniri carni nisi
duplici medio ex parte sui; similiter nec corpus complexionatum”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1 ad 4 (II, 43a).
Echoing Aristotle, Bonaventure proposes an interesting understanding of the mutual dependence among the
faculties of the soul: “sensitivum est in intellecto sicut tetragonus in pentagono; et vegetativum in sensitivum
sicut trigonus in tetragono”. II Sent., d. 31, a.1, q. 1 (II, 740b). Ibid., Hex., 4, 10 (V, 351a).
612
“Anima magna inclinatione inclinatur ad corpus et corpori suas operationes communicat”. II Sent., d. 19,
a. 1, q. 1. ad 6 (II, 461b).

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so that it operates through them and with them, just as the eyes must be opened for the soul
to see through and with them.

As the form of the human body, the soul gives being to the whole body and to all its
parts. At the same time, the soul reaches the fullness of its perfection 613 by becoming an
act proper to the body,614 thus forming a complete being615 with the body or, to put it
another way, a being which possesses the “form of completeness” or wholeness. 616 In
order to illustrate the intensity of the soul’s love and desire for its own body, St
Bonaventure compares the union between the two with the most intimate relations among
men and women, especially with the bond of love in marriage, 617 but the desire of the soul
for its body surpasses even this.618 The inclination of the soul is, then, met by an appetite
on the part of the corporeal nature which likewise inclines to the most perfect form of the
human soul; for in this union the appetite of matter for higher forms comes to rest. 619 The
inclination thus becomes mutual;620 through this union both soul and body receive their
final perfection. This means that if the body suffers, also the soul suffers, as both the body
and soul of Christ suffered during his Passion.621
613
“Anima est perfectio quantum ad substantiam et motor quantum ad potentias”. IV Sent., d. 44, a.1, q. 2. ad
3 (IV, 914a).
614
“cum iterum sit forma nobilissima inter naturales formas, dans actum et complementum corpori”. II Sent.,
d. 18, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 446a); “…anima propria est actus corporis et forma, et per essentiam inclinatur ad corpus
sicut proprius actus ad propriam materiam, quia anima est proprius actus corporis. Oportet igitur, quod in
quolibet corpore sit anima tamquam eius propria forma, quae inclinatur ad corpus et individuatur secundum
individuationem corporis”. Sermo in Sabb., I, 4 (IX, 269b).
615
“...in unibilitate ad corpus consistit complementum animae”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 49a); “sed
perficit se ipsa; se ipsa enim anima perficit corpus, sicut ipsa unitur materiae”. Op. cit., (II, 50b–51a).;
“anima quando non haberet corpus, non haberet esse perfectum”. II Sent., d. 8, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 221b).
616
“[anima] cum iterum sit forma nobilissima inter naturales formas, dans actum et complementum corpori”.
II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 446a); “instrumentum sive organum unitum...et hoc perficitur et convenit cum
motore in unitate formae totius, et operationis consequens”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 1 ad 3 (IV, 884a);
“Completio vero naturae requirit, ut homo constet simul ex corpore et anima tamquam ex materia et forma,
quae mutuum habent appetitum et inclinationem mutuam”. Brev., 7, 5 (V, 286b). The “form of the whole”
(forma totius) is contrasted with the “form of the part” (forma partis). See II Sent., d. 18 a. 1 q. 3 resp. (II,
441a). The distinction between these two classes of forms is clarified by Bonaventure’s remarks in III Sent.
d. 2, a. 2, q. 3 (resp).
617
“[anima] habet inclinationem ad corpus quia rationalis, ad corpus humanum; quia nobilis ad nobilius
organizatum; sed ad hoc magis quam ad illud propter coniunctionem, quam habuit ad illud. Exemplum est: si
quis velit contrahare cum duabus virginibus existentibus aeque pulcris et bonis et paribus conditionis
ceteris…. Sed esto, quod coniungatur alteri, ipsa coniunctio iam alligabit adeo isti, si fuit ex amore, ut iam
non consoletur habere aliam nec dare hanc pro alia pulciori et meliori. Sic anima tanto affectu unitur
substatiae carnis”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 5 ad 6 (IV, 894a).
618
“Unde notandum, quod magna est dilectio, qua mater diligit filium.... Maior, qua uxor virum.... Maxima
anima ad corpus”. Comm. Ioan., 15, 13 (no. 20), (VI. 450b). See also II Sent., d. 31, a. 2, q. 2. ad 1 (II, 753a).
619
“anima naturalem habet appetitum ad carnem, et caro ad spiritum”. II Sent., d. 32, a.3, q. 2 ad 3 (II, 773b).
620
“Appetitus et indigentia est in utroque, quia constituunt tertium”. IV Sent., d. 17, a. 1. dub. 3 (IV, 433a);
“Completio vero naturae requirit, ut homo constet simul ex corpore et anima, tanquam ex materia et forma,
quae mutuum habent appetitum et inclinationem mutam”. Brev., 7, 2 (V, 286b).
621
“cum habeat naturalem appetitum et inclinationem ad corpus, utpote perfectio ad perfectibile [anima
Christi] patiebatur corpore patiente. Anima enim rationalis non tantum est perfectio corporis humani
secundum potentias sensibiles, cum corpus humanum sit ordinatum ad nobiliorem perfectionem, quam sit
corpus brutale; sed secundum se totam, hoc est, secundum complementum suae essentiae et suarum
potentiarum universitatem, est corporis perfectio et habet ad ipsum naturalem appetitum et inclinationem et
coniunctionem, ac per hoc delectationem et compassionem”. III Sent., d. 16, a. 2. q. 1 (III, 354a).

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 The soul is the natural form of the body and not in any way supernatural. 622
Although it can exist separated from its matter, the body,623 the soul always has a longing
for it and can achieve its final perfection in reunion (after resurrection 624) with its body, the
same body that the soul previously vivified. 625 We could say, following Bonaventure, that
that “it is a punishment for the soul to be without the body and to be sequestered from
it”,626 because “perfect peace is possible only in the reunion of body and soul: and this is
certain”.627

In some places Bonaventure followed the ancient tradition of speaking about the
body-soul relationship using the concept of microcosm.628

[I]n his microcosmic teaching the soul, as form and being,

sentient and intelligent, leads all natures back in a circle to
the one principle in whom the perfection and beatitude of all
consists.629

Bonaventure’s explanation of the compassion between the body and soul concurs with Aristotle’s teaching
on the natural union of the body and soul. Cf. “compasssio enim illa non habet ortum ex determinatione
organi, sed potius ex coniunctione vel unione naturali”. III Sent., d. 16, a. 2. q. 1 (III, 354b). In the II
Sentences, Bonaventure gives a definition of the soul taken verbatim from Aristotle: “Anima rationalis est
actus et entelechia corporis humani”. II Sent., d. 18, a. 2, q. 1. (II, 445a). According to a note in the
Quaracchi edition, entelechia “in operibus Aristotelis significat perfectionem sive actum vel formam”. II
Sent., p. 35, note 3. Cf. O’Donnell, Psychology of St. Bonaventure, p. 20.
622
Any natural form is either produced simultaneously with the matter or it is produced after matter;
therefore, either the soul is not the natural form or if it is the natural form, it is produced after the body or
simultaneously with the body. It is no way produced before the body.
623
“cum unitur mortali corpori, potest ab eo separari”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a).
624
“quod etsi anima separetur a corpore, resumet tamen aliquando corpus suum per resurrectionem”. II Sent.,
d. 18, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 418a).
625
“Sic anima tanto affectu unitur substantiae carnis quam prius vivificat, quod non complete ei satisfit nisi
illa eadam, ubicumque lateat, reparetur”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 3 ad 6 (IV, 894a). Cf. “et ideo anima non est
beata perfecta beatitudine nisi cum corpore. Hoc autem erit in resurrectionis generali”. Sermo in Sabb., I, 4
(IX, 269b). For this reason, following its separation from the body, the soul will not enjoy complete
happiness until it once again unites with the body: “si ergo anima appetit naturaliter corpori uniri, et iste
appetitus, cum sit naturalis non possit terminari nisi per unionem; impossibile est, animam perfecte
beatificari, quousque resumat corpus”. IV Sent., d. 49, p. 2 sec. 1, a. 1, q. 1 (IV, 1012a).
626
“ut sine illo [corpore] poena sit ei esse et ab illo sequestrari”. II Sent., d.17, a. 1, q. 3 (II, 417b), translation
mine.
627
“perfecta pax non est nisi in reunione corporis et animae; et hoc certum est”. Hex., 7, 5 (V, 366a). TWSB,
V, p. 112.
628
“secunda ratio est propter maiorem divini exemplaris repraesentationem, ratione cuius homo dicitur minor
mundus”. III Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 2 concl. (III, 40b); “Homo igitur, qui dicitur minus mundus”. Itin., 2, 3 (V,
300a). Cf. G.P. Conger, Theories of Macrocosm and Microcosm in the History of Philosophy (NY: Columbia
Univ., 1922); Robert Allers, “Microcosmos from Anaximandros to Paracelsus”, Traditio 2 (1944), pp. 319–
407; M. Fernández Manzanedo, “El hombre como microcosmos según Santo Thomás”, in Angelicum 56
(1979), pp. 62–92.
629
James McEvoy, “Microcosm and Macrocosm in the Writings of St. Bonaventure”, in SB, II, p. 337.

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 Finally, it is not inappropriate to note that especially in his mystical and theological
writings,630 when speaking about the soul, Bonaventure often compared it to a friend, a
daughter or a spouse:

Therefore, hasten, O soul, not with bodily steps, but with

affections and desires…. God the Father awaits you as his
most beloved daughter…. God the Son as his sweetest
spouse, God the Holy Spirit as his most gracious friend.631

4. 6. 2. The orientation of the body toward the soul

The body has a natural inclination and disposition toward the noblest form, the soul,
and its appetite is fulfilled in union with it and it seeks no other form than the human
soul.632 This means that the human body — the noblest of all material beings — is also by
its nature633 oriented toward the soul,634 which represents its limit and the consummation of
the entire work of creation.635 Without doubt due to the soul as the life-giving principle,
the body lives in and through the soul, or in other words, the very life of the soul is given
(as informans not efficiens) to caro organizata. As the subiectum636 of the soul, the body
achieves its own fulfilment and happiness by means of its union with the soul. 637 This

630
Parenthetically I may note that according to Tillich, “Every medieval scholastic was a mystic: that is, he
experienced what he was talking about as personal experience. This is what mysticism originally meant in the
realm of scholasticism. There was no opposition between mysticism and scholasticism. Mysticism was the
experience of the scholastic message. The basis of the dogma was unity with the divine in devotion, prayer,
contemplation and ascetic practices”. Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought (London: SCM Press Ltd.
1968), p. 135.
631
Solil., 4, 3 (VIII, 57b). WSB, X, p. 315. According to a note in the Quaracchi edition (p. 316, note 355),
this Bonaventurian text is in fact an adaptation of Pseudo-Bernard’s Meditationes piissimae. Cf. “Fecit
animam christianam suam amicam, suam filiam, suam sponsam”. Tripl. via., 1, 13 (VIII, 6b).
632
“…unio animae cum corpore facit hominem et facit vivum…”, Brev., 4, 9 (V, 250b).
633
“Materia enim a forma dependet et ad ipsam habet necessariam ordinationem; et quamvis sit prioror
productione sive genaratione, posterior est tamen complexione”. II Sent., d. 12, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 294b).
634
“corpus organicum ex materia et forma compositum est, et tamen habet appetitum ad suscipiendam
animam”. II Sent., 17.1.2 ad 6 (II, 416b); “in corpora humana, quae disposita sunt ad nobilissinam formam,
quae est anima rationalis”. Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b).
635
“post omnia producta est anima humana tanquam finis omnium et consumatio”. II Sent., d. 17, a.1, q. 3 ad
6 (II, 418b); “anima nobilissima formarum omnium, et in anima stat appetitus totius naturae”. II Sent., d. 1, p.
2, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 50b); “ad quam [animam] ordinatur et terminatur appetitus omnis naturae sensibilis et
corporalis, ut per eam...quasi ad modum circuli intelligibilis reducatur ad suum principium, in quo perficiatur
et beatificetur”. Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b); “quod est de consideratione phisici, qui considerat mobile et
generationem secundum influentiam corporum caelestium in elementa, et ordinationem elementorum ad
formam mixtionis, et formae mixtionis ad formam complexionis, et formae complexionis ad animam
vegetabilem, et illius ad sensibilem, et illius ad rationalem, et ibi est finis”. Hex., 1, 18 (V, 332b).
Bonaventure argues that the body exists for the soul, rather than the soul for the body: “Cum anima non sit
propter corpus, sed corpus propter animam praecellentia ex parte animae venit. In hac autem praecellit una
anima alteram, non ratione principi ex quo, cum sit ex nihilo, sed ratione sapientiae Conditoris, qui producit
omnia secundum debitum ordinem”. II Sent., d. 32. dub. 6 (II, 777b).
636
“corpus...sic conditum fuit...ut tamen esset animae subiectum”. Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a).
637
“per quam [animam] etiam corpus et natura corporalis efficitur participes aeternae beatitudinis’. II Sent., d.
1, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 (II, 42b); “Quoniam ergo corpus unitur animae ut perficienti et moventi et ad beatitudinem
sursum tendenti”. Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a).

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means that the body, since it has the highest and the most noble complexity, is destined for
and inclines to the noblest form, the soul, and therefore in the union of body and soul the
matter’s appetite for higher forms comes to rest.

Bonaventure certainly would have known the popular and influential De Miseria
Humane Condicionis of Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216), with its grim view of the
human condition evidenced in this ego-deflating passage:638

Who therefore will give my eyes a fountain of tears so that I

may bewail the miserable beginning of the human condition,
the culpable progress of human behavior, the damnable
ending of human dissoluteness. With tears I might consider
what man is made of, what man does, what man will be.
Man is indeed formed from earth, conceived in sin, born to
pain. He does depraved things that are unlawful, shameful
things that are indecent, vain things that are unprofitable. He
becomes fuel for the fire, food for worms, a mass of
putridness.639

In the same vein, Bonaventure was able to refer to humans as “putrid worms”, 640 and in
speaking to religious sisters, he reminded them that, “you should know that you stem from
a mass of perdition, from the dust and slime of the earth” .641 But this rhetoric — such
language as “massa perditionis”, for example — seems incompatible with Bonaventure’s
teaching about matter or about a creation as vestige and image. On the whole, the Seraphic
Doctor’s view of the human person was far more positive than that of Pope Innocent. One
could even argue that Bonaventure’s explanation of the embodied soul as it was initially
created — before the Fall — presents perhaps a too idealized understanding of human
nature.

According to Bonaventure, the body’s role is twofold: on the one hand, it is

“positive” when the body enables the soul to turn its intentio into actio; on the other hand,
it is “negative” when the body renders the soul dependent and limits its activity (especially
in its vegetative and sensitive powers).

638
“The popularity of De Miseria can be seen in the number of extent manuscripts in which it appears (some
672), in the number of printed editions it went through by the middle of seventeenth century (52), and in the
number of languages into which it was translated by the end of the same century (Dutch, English, Flemish,
French, German, Irish, Italian, Spanish)”. Introduction in Lothario Dei Segni (Pope Innocent III), De Miseria
Condicionis Humane, ed. and trans. Robert E. Lewis (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1978), p. 3
639
Lothario Dei Segni, Miseria Condicionis Humane, p. 95. Latin critical text: Prima pars, n. 10–20, Lewis
edition, p. 94.
640
“Tu enim es vermiculus putridus, ipse vero Deus est aeternus”. Reg. nov., 2, 3 (VIII, 477b).
641
Perf. vitae, 2, 5 (VIII, 111b). WSB, X, p. 151. Cf. “Considera, unde veneris, quia de massa perditionis et
pulvere et limo terrae factus et in peccatis natus es totus et in peccatis conversatus; et nunc exules a
beatitudine paradisi”. Sermo 5 De s. Patre Francisco (IX, 596b).

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 The body was created as a “subject” that is “to be obedient to the soul….” 642 God’s
original intention was that the created soul should be subject to the uncreated Spirit. When
this condition existed, the body was subject to the soul. Sin occurred when this
relationship was broken, when the created soul rebelled against the uncreated Spirit, with
dire consequences for the body:

God so made humankind that the spirit would be pre-eminent

over the body, and that the body would be subject to the
created spirit as long as it were subject to the uncreated
Spirit. But should the soul, on the other hand, disobey God,
by God’s just judgment the body would begin to rebel
against it. This is precisely what happened when Adam
sinned.643

In his “Sermon on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost”, Bonaventure speaks of the
prelapsarian state of Adam’s body:

Truly Adam, existing in the state of innocence, would have

never suffered agitation or disintegration in his body, unless
from within.... Whence even if it was mortal, corruptible,
and possessed within itself the cause of corruption, it
nevertheless was subjected by the order of divine justice to
the will; and therefore, if the will were not disordered the
body would never be corrupted.644

Had our first parents not fallen, the body-soul relationship of all subsequent humans would
have been quite different:

Now if Adam had stood firm, his body would have remained
obedient to his spirit, and he would have transmitted it as
such to his posterity. Then God would have infused a soul
into a body that was both immortal and obedient to it, so that
the soul would have been thus established in righteousness
and exempt from every penalty. But in fact Adam did sin,
and thus his flesh rebelled against the authority of his
spirit.645

It is therefore clear that Bonaventure did not consider the body and soul in the
abstract or only according to some philosophical paradigms. Thanks to the truths revealed
in Holy Scripture, Bonaventure was conscious that the ordinary man about whom he is
speaking is a man with a fallen nature, who bears in himself the consequences of the sin of
our first parents:

642
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a). WSB, IX, p. 89.
643
Brev., 3, 6 (V, 235a–b). WSB, IX, p. 113.
644
Dom. XII p. Pent., Sermo 1 (IX, 399b–400a). WSB, XII, p. 423. Cf. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230b).
645
Brev., 3, 6 (V, 235b). WSB, IX, p. 113.

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 Even though the soul is not passed on [through physical
generation], original sin has nevertheless been transmitted
from the soul of Adam to the souls of his descendants
through the medium of the flesh generated through
concupiscence. As Adam’s flesh was infected by his sinful
soul, becoming prone to lust, so that flesh, seeded in lust and
thus carrying within itself a virulent disease, infects and
taints the soul. This infection in the soul is not only a
punishment but also a true fault. In this way one person so
corrupted nature, that now a corrupt nature corrupts the
person. And yet the justice of God remains unimpaired; for
though God infuses a soul as he creates it, and through this
infusion, attaches it to infected flesh, he can ever be blamed
for the soul’s infection.646

And therefore in our state of misery,647 the relationship between his body and soul
is disordered by this sinful reality:

In the state of innocence, the senses were moved by reason

alone, and so if human beings had stood firm, there would
have been no venial sin. But now [because of
concupiscence] the senses are opposed to the reason whether
we wish it or not….648

According to Bonaventure’s writings on the fate of the soul in purgatory, “the penalty [for
sin] ought to be justly punitive”:

Thus a spirit that has spurned the eternal and highest Good
and stooped to a lesser good must rightfully be subjected to
things of a lower order. In this way it will receive
punishment from that which had been the occasion of its sin
and the reason why it had spurned God and defiled itself.
Therefore the order of divine justice demands that a material
fire punish the spiritual soul. For, as the soul is united to the
body in the order of nature for the sake of vivifying it, so it
should be united to material fire in the order of justice for the
sake of receiving punishment — for one who is to be
punished must be united to a punishing agent.649

646
Brev., 3, 6 (V, 235a). WSB, IX, p. 112.
647
“Est enim status gloriae, et est status miseriae, et est status innocentiae. Secundum statum gloriae, qui est
perfectus, debetur corpori humano aequalitas a iustitia, aequalitas, inquam, perfecta, in qua nec cadit
discordia nec repugnantia, nec actu nec potentia. — Secundum statum miseriae, qui est status imperfectus,
debetur corpori hominis aequalitas, sed diminuta, quae permisceri habet inaequalitati et discordiae, non
solum possibilitate, sed etiam quadam necessitate. — Secundum statum vero medium, scilicet innocentiae,
debetur corpori hominis aequalitas media, quae a discordia et repugnantia miscibilium erat aliena in actu per
adiutorium intrinsecum animae gubernantis, et per adiutorium extrinsecum alimenti nutrientis. Erat tamen
haec aequalitas possibilis ad inaequalitatem, sive ob defectum virtutis contentivae, sive etiam ob defectum
alimoniae. Nullus autem horum defectuum esse poterat in homine, nisi praecederet transgressio
inobedientiae”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 2, q. 3 c. (II, 425b).
648
Brev., 3, 8 (V, 237b). WSB, IX, p. 120.
649
Brev., 7, 2 (V, 282b). WSB, IX, pp. 270–271.

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There is a certain logic to Bonaventure’s notion that the “stain”, so to speak, of a “lesser
good” must be cleansed away by a “lower” means. However, this logic seems to
undermine Bonaventure’s anthropology. If we accept that the soul as hoc aliquid exists
after death as a spiritual being in itself and it can undergo spiritual suffering in purgatory, it
is difficult to imagine how a spiritual soul could be united with a material fire. Unlike the
notion of the soul being united to a human (material) body, the idea of the soul being
united to a material fire seems contrary to the natural order. The only explanation
Bonaventure gives for this notion is the “divine order of justice”. However, we could
argue that divine justice cannot violate the order of nature, the laws of which were laid
down by Divine Justice. Moreover, these are not all of the objections that could be raised
concerning Bonaventure’s teaching about purgatory in the Breviloquium.

Bonaventure remarks in the subsequent part of this same chapter that the final
effect of the cleansing fire depends on the special spiritual power or grace that exists in it:

Finally, the punishment of purgatory must have a

cleansing effect, and this cleansing is spiritual. Therefore,
either the fire of purgatory possesses a God-given spiritual
power, or else, as I am inclined to believe, the very power of
indwelling grace, assisted by the external punishment,
effectively cleanses the soul, which is thereby punished for
its offenses and relieved of the burden of its guilt.650

Thus not only is the material fire united with the spiritual soul, the material fire has a
cleansing effect on the soul, through a spiritual power or grace. Bonaventure does not
explain how a material fire can have a spiritual power endowed by God, or how God’s
grace could “indwell” in a material fire. One can imagine that the spiritual substance of
the soul could be cleansed by a spiritual power, and perhaps that is what Bonaventure
means here.651 But it remains to be explained how the material fire — apparently —
“assists” the spiritual power in inflicting some kind of “external punishment” on the soul.
How does a material substance punish a spiritual substance?

A similar question arises when Bonaventure discusses the fate of the damned in hell:

650
Brev., 7, 2 (V, 283a). WSB, IX, p. 272.
651
Bonaventure might have been influenced here by Peter Lombard’s Liber sententiarum, in which he
“declares unequivocally for material fire” punishing the souls in hell. Lombard invokes Augustine, who
considered the soul to have “within itself a certain likeness to the body. This image of the body in the soul
allows the torments of hell to be perceived in the soul, and so cause the soul itself to suffer”. However,
“[w]hat Augustine suggests happens to the soul’s image of the body, Peter sees happening directly to the
soul”. Alan E. Bernstein, “Esoteric Theology: William of Auvergne on the Fires of Hell and Purgatory”,
Speculum 57.3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 509–531, pp. 517, 522.

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 Concerning infernal punishment we must hold that this
punishment takes place in a material place beneath us, where
all the damned, both humans and the bad angels, endure
eternal torments. They are afflicted with the same material
fire that will burn and torture both their souls and bodies.652

If we are talking about human beings who have bodies in hell (unlike the souls in
purgatory) then there are no objections to this theory. However, Bonaventure ascribes the
same kind of suffering to fallen angels and to humans:

By sinning, the rational spirit wantonly turns to a good of its

own, loving what is merely here and now, thus selfishly
spurning the divine command and sovereignty. And so, in
fitting punishment for such vicious gratification, a pleasure
mingled with contempt, the sinner — whether human or
angelic — must be chastised by being cast down to the
lowest place, a place most remote from the state of glory,
that is the depths of hell. Likewise, the sinner must be
afflicted there by what is of the basest nature, and hence
must suffer, not from a spiritual substance, but from one that
is material and lowly, that is, the dregs of material bodies;
they must be fettered to this filth, and tormented with fire
and sulfur.653

But the same problem pointed out above applies to the fallen angels in hell: they have no
material bodies. How can they suffer from a material substance? In the Breviloquium, in
any case, this is unexplained.

Moreover, when the Seraphic Doctor describes the suffering of the condemned he
does not speak of how the human person as such will suffer. As will be discussed below,
the glorified human body will have four qualities that make possible its ascent to God,
however, when it comes to the bodies and souls of the damned, Bonaventure only remarks
in a general way that “the purpose of this fire is not to increase, but to destroy the peace of
the soul within its body, and the peace of the incorporeal spirit within itself”. The nature
of the discord between the body and soul in hell is not elucidated in the Breviloquium.

Near the end of the Breviloquium, the Seraphic Doctor provides a more explicit
description of the body-soul relationship in terms of the glorified body and soul:

When God created the body, God joined it to the soul,

uniting them to each other by a natural and mutual yearning.
God placed the body under the government of the soul,
creating it in a state of merit. To gain this merit, God willed
that in this pilgrim state the soul should stoop down to the
652
Brev., 7, 6. (V, 287b) WSB, IX, p. 286.
653
Brev., 7, 6 (V, 288a). Italics original. WSB, IX, pp. 288–289.

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 level of the body, directing its attention toward governing
it.654

It is true that “the human soul strives to its end through free will [and] by virtue of this
freedom it excels every power of corporeal beings”. It is also true that nothing in the
created order has dominion over the soul: “nothing can rule it except God alone — neither
fate nor any power of the stars’ positions”. However, this does not imply — as Monti’s
translation of another text in the Breviloquium seems to suggest — that “all things are born
to serve the soul”.655 A more accurate translation would be that “all are born to serve each
other”. There is not a strict “ruler and ruled” relationship between the soul and body, with
the body in a servile position to the domination of the soul. Rather, the body’s subjection
to the soul is the means of the body’s own perfection. The soul will “be enlightened”; it
will become “supremely spiritual”, be “totally incapable of suffering”, and will have a
“supreme readiness to ascend to God”. Through its submission to the soul, the glorified
body will, correspondingly, possess the same four properties. It will “shine with great
splendor”, “display…subtlety and spirituality”, “become completely impassable, internally
as well as externally” and the glorified body will “possess supreme agility” to make its
ascent to God.656

Because these four properties make the body conform to and

subject itself to the spirit, they are said to be the special
dowry of the body. They enable it to follow the spirit even
to the heavenly region where the blessed abide. They
likewise assimilate the human body to the heavenly bodies,
for through these four properties the heavenly body is
gradually drawn away from the four earthly elements.
Hence, this fourfold dowry of the human body not only
perfects itself but also conforms it to its heavenly dwelling
place and to the blessed Spirit.657

Since the body and the soul have a “natural and mutual yearning” to be united; and since
“the soul cannot be fully happy unless a body is restored to it”, 658 we may venture to
conclude that the body, by submitting itself to the soul, and the soul by governing the
body, serve each other for the attainment of their mutual fulfilment.

Thanks to the rational soul which itself has perpetual being, the body has a
necessary ordination to perpetual life and, in order that it be perfectly blessed, it has to be

654
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). WSB, IX, p. 294.
655
“cuncta nata sunt sibi servire….” Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b). WSB, IX, p. 71.
656
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 290a). WSB, IX, p. 295.
657
Ibid.
658
Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). WSB, IX, p. 294.

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reunited with (to be restored to) its soul. 659 As Bonaventure puts it, “the body is united
with the soul as its perfective principle, so that it might move toward and attain the
blessedness” for which it was made.660 Furthermore, because of the mutual love between
body and soul, the body cannot be called the connection between the sacred and the
profane; on the contrary, Bonaventure believed that the body plays a vital role in uniting
the human to the divine. And since the soul always possesses a natural and essential
inclination towards its body, its joy is not complete and its peace not perfect as long as it is
separated from its body.661 In order for the soul, in its glorified state, to serve as a perfect
instrument and to be in harmony with the body, the body must be likewise glorified. 662
Thus the full restoration of man’s complete nature and of his function in creation includes
the resurrection of the human body as part of the final act in the drama of creation.663

4. 6. 3. The interdependence of the soul and the body

The soul exists through itself; however, as soon as it unites with the body — even
though it remains independent in its esse in se664 — it becomes dependent on the body, and
at the same time, the body cannot act without the soul.665 This dependence of the human
soul is due to the fact that it does not have complete being (ens naturae) without the body:

[I]t must be said, that even if it does not depend upon the
body as one indigent in that regarding its own conservation,
yet it is [dependent] through its inclination of appetite, which
it has for that, just as a form (is) for its proper matter….666

659
“anima potest uniri corpori, quae separatur ab eo necessitate”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (IV, 883b).
660
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a). WSB, IX, p. 91.
661
“Nec naturalis appetitus patitur, quod anima sit plene beata, nisi restituatur ei corpus, ad quod
resumendum habet inclinationem naturaliter insertam”. Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). It is clear then, that the opinion
of Van der Walt cannot be true: “it [the body] will be resurrected one day for the sake of the soul, but it is not
so important because the immortal soul can exist without it…. [T]he body does not play any significant role
in the service of God”. B.J. Van Der Walt, “Man, the Tension-Ridden Bridge”, in SBM, II, p. 592.
662
“Simon of Tournai, William of Auxerre, Thomas, Bonaventure, and Giles of Rome all held that the
resurrection of the body was both natural and supernatural”. Caroline Walker Bynum, “Material Continuity,
Personal Survival, and the Resurrection of the Body…”, History of Religions 30.1 (Aug., 1990), pp. 51–85,
p. 66. n. 42.
663
Kieran Nolan, “The Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Body according to Giles of Rome:
A Historical Study of a Thirteenth-Century Theological Problem”, STA 7 (1967), pp. 96–104, p. 140. Cf. “Si
enim Christus est caput et membra debent conformari capiti, cum Christus resurrexit, consequens est ut nos
resurgamus.... Super hoc fidei fundamentum superaedificatur persuasio rationis, quia quod resurrectio sit
futura, exigit remuneratio divinae iustitiae, quae homini retribuit sicut et meruit; secundo, consummatio
gloriae, quae omnem animae appetitum complebit vel quietabit; tertio, perfectio naturae, quae consistit in
toto composito, non in altera eius parte”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1. q. 1 concl. (IV, 883b, 884a).
664
“anima rationalis propriam operationem habet, secundum quam non pendet ex corpore”. II Sent., d. 19. a.
1, q. 1 (II, 459b). See also Quinn, Constitution, p. 140.
665
“Ad illud quod obiicitur de corporibus miscibilibus, dicendum, quod non est simile, quia elementa, quae
miscentur, non dependent ab invicem, et unum potest habere esse complementum sine altero; non sic autem
est de anima et eius corpore, quorum utrumque ab altero dependet”. II Sent., d.17, a. 1, q. 3 ad 5 (II, 418b).

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 Bonaventure’s use of anima does not imply a dualism. He writes that the whole
human and not just the soul, is glorified in the final union with God. 667 This means that
from the moment the soul and body are united, the effectiveness of the soul is dependent
on the availability of the body and is affected by its weaknesses, which thus also become
the weaknesses of the soul. “For it is plain, that a various disposition of the body works
much for the variation of affections and morals of [the] soul”.668

Yet it must not be denied, that the body works much for the
exercise of those abilities, which are in the soul from its
creation. Wherefore the good disposition of the body
expedites much, just as, contrariwise, the bad (disposition)
impedes much.669

But this union of body and soul does not mean — as we have already shown — that
the soul must work exclusively “in” and “through” the body. 670 As a spiritual substance,
the soul is only limited insofar as it works “in the body” 671 but not because of the body.672
And therefore on account of their substantial union,

so long as the soul is in the body, its own understanding is

not without the body and without some disposition on the
part of the body, the actuality of which it communicates to
the act of understanding, just as a congruous disposition
corresponded to the existence of the soul in the body and to
the perfection of the same.673
666
II Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 3. ad 4 (II, 418a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02416.html, 2008, viewed 19 July 2011.
667
“...ergo cum perfectio gratiae et gloriae praesupponta perfectionem naturae, necesse est totum hominem,
non tantum animam, glorificari”, IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 1, f. 5 (IV, 883a).
668
II Sent., d. 14, p. 2, a. 2, q. 3 concl. (II, 363b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 9 August 2010. Cf. “operatio animae in
corpore impendiri habet propter corporis ineptitudinem”. II Sent., d. 25. p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II, 623a). Cf.
“[anima] ratione tamen carnis, quae habet per vim humani ministerii propagari, subiici habet suae origini,
sicut proles parenti, ita tamen, quod ex hoc in nullo dignitati imaginis praeiudicium generetur”. Perf. ev., q. 4,
a. 2 concl. ad. 4 (182a).
669
II Sent., d. 32, dub. 6 (II, 777b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02774.html, 2010, viewed 4 August 2010. Cf. “Principium omnis
limitationis est materia vel aliquid materiale”. Myst. Trin., 4, 1, ad 13 (V, 79b).
670
“Since a soul that is capable of blessedness has to be immortal, it follows that the soul is united to a mortal
body in such a manner that it can be separated from it. Hence it is not only a [perfecting] form but also an
individual substance [hoc aliquid]. Thus the soul is united to the body not only as a perfection, but also as a
mover; its essence perfects what it likewise directs. Now the soul confers not simply existence, but also life,
sensation, and intelligence. It therefore possesses a vegetative power, a power of sensation, and an
intellectual power”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a). WSB, IX, pp. 86–87.
671
“Nam operatio sensitivae et vegetativae sic communicatur corpori, ut sit in corpore et per corpus, sit etiam
in corpore et non sine corpore”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6, concl. (II, 622b); “Nam quantum ad actum
vegetandi et sentiendi sic pendet, ut nullo modo possit illos exercere nisi in corpore — non autem sic de actu
intelligendi — sic etiam pendet, ut illos actus exerceat per corpus et per organum corporeum — at ideo actum
sentiendi dicitur communicare anima corpori”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II, 623a).
672
“non intelligat per corpus; sic intelligat etiam in corpore”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II, 622b); “anima
sentire per corpus, et non intelligere per corpus”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II, 623a).
673
II Sent., d. 25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II, 623). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/index2.html, 2009, viewed 3 August 2010. Cf. “anima rationalis propriam
operationem habet, secundum quam non pendet ex corpore, scilicet intelligere, quia nullum organum sibi

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This explains, for instance, why the soul retains the capacity for knowledge even after it
separates from the body:674

[B]ecause the intellective operations of [man’s] soul do not

depend intrinsically on the body, the soul, on its separation
from the body, can continue to exercise those operations, but
in an imperfect manner.675

The dependence in both cases is not the same, for the body without the soul cannot
exist at all, however the “being” of the soul in itself does not depend on the body. 676 To
understand fully that the soul enjoys its own action independent of the body, it seems
necessary to add that the soul differs from the body, just as the spiritual differs from the
material, and just as the eternal and the incorruptible differs from the mortal and the
corruptible.677 Thus, the divine power is manifest in the creation of human nature:

God fashioned it from the two natures that were the

maximum distance from one another, united in a single
person or nature. These are the body and the soul, the former
being a corporeal substance, the later a spiritual and
immaterial one. Within the genus “substance,” these two
stand furthest apart.678

This relationship does not denigrate either the body or the soul.679

The action whereby the soul unites itself with the human
body and gives it life is neither accidental nor shameful. It is
not accidental, because the soul is the substantial form in the
body; it is not shameful, because in the body the soul
becomes the noblest of all forms, and all the longing struggle
of nature finds its goal in this soul.680

Bonaventure understood the body to be “proportioned” to the soul in that it

possessed a “well-balanced physical constitution, of beautiful and highly complex
structure, and upright posture”.681 Furthermore, the union of body and soul in man comes

appropriat”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 1 f. 9 (II, 459b).

674
“Et propterea intellectus dicitur vis non alligata materiae, et operationem hanc potest habere, cum est
separata a corpore; quamdiu autem est in corpore, non omnino intelligit praeter corpus, sicut enim esse
animae in corpore aliquo modo pendet ex corpore, quamvis non pendeat esse ipsius animae in se”. II Sent., d.
25, p. 2. a. un. q. 6 (II 623a). For Bonaventure’s discussion of the cognition of the separated soul, see IV
Sent., d. 50, p. 2, a. 1, q.1 (IV, 1044–1047).
675
Quinn, Constitution, p. 303.
676
“Sicut enim esse animae in corpore aliquo modo pendet ex corpore, quamvis non pendeat esse ipsius
animae in se”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 2, a. un., q. 6, concl. (II, 623a).
677
“Distat anima a corpore, et non solum sicut forma a materia sed etiam sicut spirituale a corporali et sicut
perpetuum a corruptibili”. II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 385a).
678
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a). WSB, IX, p. 90.
679
“Anima enim et corpus concurrunt ad unam essentiam constituendam”, III Sent., d. 2, a. 3, q. 1 (III, 48b).
680
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 (II, 50b). As translated in Balthasar, Glory, p. 315.
681
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 228a). WSB, IX, p. 89.

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about without a transmutation of either one, yet they constitute a third nature — a person
as such — because neither one repels the other, since they depend on each other. 682 It is
precisely thanks to this relationship that the human person is not just a soul or a body but a
being having a soul and a body as a unique and complete substance.

In light of this we see that it is inappropriate to identify humanity exclusively with

the rational soul without taking into account the role the body plays in the human
condition. Thus it seems to me that Sister Savino missed the fundamental connection
between the body and rational soul when she wrote that “[h]umans, as rational spirits,
intermediate in the created order between matter and divine”. 683 It is true that from time to
time Bonaventure spoke of the rational soul as a synonym for man, but he never identified
man only with his soul as such.684 Even when the Seraphic Doctor did describe the
position of man (or his soul) as “intermediate” or “midway” (“[anima] sit medium inter res
creatas et Deum”),685 he used those words to indicate that human beings are between
“corporeum et incorporeum” or between “substantiam spiritualem et corporalem”,686 “in
medio inter caelum et infernum”687 “inter primam et ultimam”688 and not to describe man as
between matter and divine.

The human holds the middle place because he or she is

formed from the highest of heavenly spiritual nature and also

682
There are other places where Bonaventure calls this substance the “third nature”: “[anima] appetitum et
aptitudinem habet, ut uniatur corpori ad constitutionem tertii”. III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3 (III, 136b); “quia
spiritus unitur corpori, ita quod ex his fit unum”. III Sent., d. 12, a. 3, q. 2 ad 3 (III, 271b); “Divinitas et caro
non cedunt in unam naturam;…non sic autem est de carne et anima, quia unam naturam constituent”. III
Sent., d. 21, a.1, q. 3 ad 4 (III 441b); “...ita quod appetitus et indigentia est in utroque, quia constituunt
tertium”. IV Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 3 (IV, 433a).
683
Damien Marie Savino, The Contemplative River: The Confluence Between People and Place in
Ecological Restoration (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008), p. 64.
684
We see this for instance in I Sent., d. 1, a. 3, q. 2: “quia nata est anima ad percipiendum bonum infinitum,
quod Deus est, ideo in eo solo debet quiescere et eo frui”. (I, 40a). This suggests that only the soul may enjoy
God on account of its perfect delectation. From the context, however, we know that Bonaventure is speaking
about a human being as such.
685
In De scientia Christi Bonaventure wrote that “the soul occupies a middle place between God and created
things”, but he did not equate the soul with “humans” in that context. Rather, he was speaking of the soul’s
(or reason’s) superior and inferior parts, and their ability to receive “a relative certitude from below”, and “an
absolute certitude from above.” Cf. “anima autem secundum suum supremum habet respectum ad superiora,
sicut secundum suum inferius ad haec inferiora, cum sit medium inter res creatas et Deum; et ideo veritas in
anima habet respectum ad illam duplicem veritatem, sicut medium ad duo externa, ita quod ab inferiori
recipit certitudinem secundum quid, a superiori vero recipit certitudinem simpliciter”. Scien. Chr., 4. (V,
26b). WSB, IV, p. 143.
686
“ergo ad perfectam bonitatis manifestationem necesse fuit, fieri substantiam spiritualem et corporalem”. II
Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 (II, 42a).
687
Decem praec., coll. 1, 13, (V, 509a).
688
“Et quoniam creatura habere non potest Deum sicut principium, quin configuretur ei secundum unitatem,
veritatem et bonitatem; nec Deum sicut obiectum, quin eum capiat per memoriam, intelligentiam et
voluntatem; nec Deum sicut donum infusum, quin configuretur ei per fidem, spem et caritatem, seu triplicem
dotem; et prima conformitas est longinqua, secunda propinqua et tertia proxima: hinc est quod prima dicitur
vestigium Trinitatis secunda imago et tertia similitudo. Est igitur spiritus rationalis medius inter primam et
ultimam, ita quod primam habet inferius secundam interius, tertiam superius”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a–b)

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 from the lowest dust of the earth. In the human the two
extremes of spiritual and material are drawn together.689

Since for Bonaventure a human person” is “in medio” between the spiritual and
corporal world, and at the same time the summit of creation, we cannot accept any
interpretation which suggests a one-sided spiritual doctrine about the human being as such
or about the human soul. Bonaventure is quite clear that the body shares and completes the
soul’s contemplation of the divine; the two cannot be separated in this:

It is certain that the soul would never desire reassuming a

body, no matter how glorious it might be, if it were to
impede the contemplation of the divinity. Now, according to
the opinion and doctrine of Augustine, the holy soul desires
its [the body’s] resumption and waits to be reunited to it,
because without it happiness cannot be consummated or joy
be complete.690

Therefore it is difficult to agree with Ivo Tonna, who writes that that the soul “is created as
an image of God and is destined to the mystical union with God”. 691 On the contrary, the
destination of the soul is to be united with its own body and then to be united with God.
Therefore it is not true that the soul longs to exist separately from the body as “a more
perfect and desirable condition”.692 In the Bonaventurian view, the whole man, not only
the soul, must be transfigured and made happy. The Seraphic Doctor expressly teaches
that the body will take part in heavenly glory:

There the eye will see most beautiful decor, the sense of taste
will savor the sweetest of tastes, [the sense of smell will
perceive the sweetest perfumes], the touch will embrace the
most delightful object, the hearing will be refreshed with the
most pleasant of sounds.693

By the same token, we must be wary of using the term “embodied soul” to refer to
the human being. One objection to using this term in the context of Bonaventure is that it
might easily be interpreted according to the well-known formula from dualistic Platonic
philosophy which states that “man is a soul who uses his body”. 694 Stephen Fields
correctly points out, following from Balthasar, that “the nature and purpose of the human
689
J.A. Wayne Hellmann, Divine and Created Order in Bonaventure’s Theology, trans. and ed., Jay M.
Hammond (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 2001), p. 94.
690
Solil., 4, 21 (VIII, 63b–64a). WSB, X, p. 333.
691
Ivo Tonna, Outlines of Franciscan Philosophy: Doctrinal Synthesis of the Franciscan Thought in the XIII
and XIV Centuries (Malta: Franciscan Fathers, 2008), p. 47.
692
Alexander Schaefer, “The Position and Function of Man in the Created World According to Saint
Bonaventure”, FS 21 (1961), p. 374.
693
Solil., 4, 20 (VIII, 63a). WSB, X, p. 332. In his translation Etzkorn omitted the phrase “olfactus odorabit
odorem suavissimum”. The translation in brackets is mine.
694
Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L.K. Shook (Notre Dame, IN:
UND Press, 1994), p. 193.

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soul is to be embodied”.695 However, the term “embodied soul” suggests that the soul
existed before the moment of union with the body, while we know that with the exception
of the soul of the First Man, Bonaventure thought that the soul was created 45 or 46 days
after the creation of the body. Furthermore, it is impossible to speak of “embodied souls”
in the context of purgatory. Using the term “embodied soul” to refer to the person may
carry the implication that the human being is a soul who happens to be embodied, or who
is embodied at some point (45 or 46 days after conception) but not at other points (in
purgatory).696

4. 7. The Universe as Divine Self-Expression of the Trinity

“If Greek thought of God”, as Kuntz wrote, “led to identifying God with pure act,
utter simplicity, absoluteness to the exclusion of suffering, multiplicity, relatedness, then
there is something very non-Greek in St. Bonaventure”.697

Bonaventure begins his Breviloquium from the beginning, the First Principle, God,
and notes that the first topic one must consider in theology is “God triune and one”. 698 In
the thought of the Seraphic Doctor, God is always Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Of these, the first proceeds from no other; the second, from

the first alone through generation; the third, from the first
and second through spiration or procession. Such a Trinity
of persons does not deprive the divine essence of its supreme
unity, simplicity, infinity, eternity, immutability, necessity,
and sovereign primacy; and yet it includes the highest
fecundity, love, generosity, equality, relationship, likeness,
and inseparability. All of these things true faith understands
to exist in the most blessed Trinity.699

Bonaventure’s teaching about the Trinity is complex and may be challenging for
some contemporary readers. But it always reflects “true faith” — the teaching of the
Catholic Church. It is by this standard that we must judge the conclusions of scholars such
as Burkhard, who, allowing himself to be misled by the feminist theologian Catharine
LaCugna, offers a heterodox and thus decidedly un-Bonaventurian view of the Trinity:
695
Stephen Fields, “Balthasar and Rahner on the Spiritual Senses”, TS 57 (1996), pp. 224–241, p. 237.
696
Cf. “[Vitis-Filius de Patre] plantata est in terra, quod est in Virgine Maria conceptus, factus quod non erat,
manens quod erat”. Vit. myst., 1, 2 (VIII, 160a). An exception was made for Christ.
697
Paul Grimley Kuntz, “The Hierarchical Vision of St. Bonaventure”, in SBM, II, pp. 233–248, p. 238.
698
“In principio intelligendum est, quod sacra doctrina, videlicet theologia, quae principaliter agit de primo
principio, scilicet de Deo trino et uno, de septem agit in universo, scilicet primo de Trinitate Dei”. Brev., 1, 1
(V, 210a).
699
Brev., 1, 2 (V, 210b–211a). WSB, IX, pp. 29–30.

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 In Bonaventure’s trinitarian vision, the Father is understood
as the fontalis plenitudo who pours out the divine self in
diffusive love, the very source of the Son and the Spirit....
All begins with Father as Unoriginate, who is “absolutely
prior to everything else, including the Son and Spirit. The
Father is the principle of fecundity, the source of absolute
goodness, that overflows, the source of Son and Spirit, the
source of creation”.700

This mistaken view of Bonaventure’s trinitarian vision provides an opportunity to

underline some of the fundamentals of Bonaventure’s teaching on the Trinity before we
explore how the Trinity is expressed in the universe.

Both Burkhard and LaCugna refer to “the Father” as being prior to the Son. They
seem to have confused or identified the generation of the Son with the creation of all
things (thus placing the Son and Spirit on the same level of all creation). However as we
have seen, Bonaventure clearly teaches the “immutability” of the Trinity and pointedly
asserts that “[g]eneration in creatures means an emanation through a manner of action
[actionis] or of mutation [mutationis], in God (it means) an emanation through a manner of
relation”.701

In Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, Bonaventure explains that “the
divine being is eternal in that it is both simple and infinite. Because God’s being is
infinite, it lacks beginning and end….”702 Because God’s being is simplicissimus,703 “the
understanding of God is the understanding of three Person with unity of essence”. 704
Positing the Father alone as “source” of the Son and Spirit leads Burkhard to accept
uncritically LaCugna’s untenable notion of the Father as “absolutely prior” to the Son and
Spirit and yet at the same time “the principle of fecundity”. Again this defies logic as well
as Bonaventurian theology. The Father cannot be both the “principle of fecundity” and
also “absolutely prior” to the Son and Spirit. To imagine this is to imagine a time when the
Father was not “fecund”, not “overflowing” with creativity, a time before His fecundity
700
John J. Burkhard, “Being a Person in the Church: Contemporary Ecclesiology and the Franciscan
Theological Tradition”, in In Solitude and Dialogue: Contemporary Franciscans Theologize, ed. Anthony M.
Corrozzo (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2000), pp. 125–153, p. 132. Burkhard is quoting
Catharine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), p.
164.
701
I Sent., d. 9, a. un., q. 2, concl. (I, 183a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01182.html (n.d.), viewed 29 July 2011.
702
Myst. Trin., 5, 1 concl. (V, 89b). WSB, III, p. 208.
703
“Est ergo haec consideratio esse purissimi; purissimum autem, quia simplicissimum, simplicissimum
autem, quia summe unum”. Hex., 20, 6 (V, 426a).
704
“Notitia enim Dei est notitia trium personarum cum unitate essentiae”. Hex., 8, 9 (V, 370b). TWSB, V, p.
126. As Bonaventure explains further, thanks to the unity of divine essence, the Persons could be
distinguished, although they “sunt summe conformes, summe concordes, summe coaequales, coaeternae,
consubstantiales, coessentiales”, Hex., 8, 10 (V, 370b–371a). The original Quaracchi edition reads coaeterni.
It is corrected to coaeternae in the 1994 edition.

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was operative in the generation of the Son or the procession of the Spirit. Furthermore, it
is illogical to say that “all begins with Father” who is “prior to” the Son, since the Father
can only be “Father” if he has a Son. Bonaventure’s theology on divine fecundity is
explicit:

It must be said, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father
and the Son, inasmuch as They are one in fecundity of Will.
Moreover, there is in the Father and the Son one Will,
because the Father and the Son are one Substance; if,
therefore, there is in them a fecundity of Will, there is one
fecundity in Them.705

By accepting LaCugna’s notions about the “absolute priority” of the Father,

Burkhard has lost sight of Bonaventure’s teaching on the simplicity of the Trinity:

Because it is simple, it lacks both prior and posterior which

necessarily include diversity and some composition.
Therefore, supreme simplicity involves total simultaneity;
supreme immensity involves total interminability; and when
both these attributes are joined together, they constitute
eternity.706

In the first book of Sentences, Bonaventure suggested that if “the emanation of the
Persons in the Trinity is described as a river” then “this emanation uniquely is without
beginning and without end”.707 But he also warned that “eternal duration cannot be
understood correctly by anyone who does not first lay aside his imagination”. 708
Burkhard’s mistaken conclusions seem to derive from an over-emphasis on a time-bound
notion of primacy, imagining the Trinity in time.

We can legitimately speak of “primacy” (without the adjective “absolute”) of the

Father since He does indeed beget the Son, and the Spirit is the bond of their mutual
love.709 However, as Bonaventure carefully explains, primacy “does not exclude the
Trinity, but actually includes it”:

Supreme primacy in the supreme and highest principle

demands the highest actuality, the highest fontality, and the
705
I Sent., d. 11, a. un., q. 2 concl (I, 215b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01214.html, (n.d.), viewed 19 July 2011. Italics
mine. Cf. “sic Pater est in se et in Filio et in Spiritu sancto, et Filius est in Patre et in se et in Spiritu sancto, et
Spiritus sanctus est in Patre et in Filio et in se secundum rationem circumincessionis, quae notat identitaem
cum distinctione”. Hex., 21, 2 (V, 431b).
706
Myst. Trin., 5, 1 concl. (V, 89b). WSB, III, p. 208.
707
“propter perennitatem dicitur fluvius personarum emanatio, quoniam illa emanatio sola est sine principio,
sine fine”. I Sent., prooem. (I, 1b). Trans., Timothy J. Johnson in “Prologue to the First Book of Sentences”,
in his Bonaventure: Mystic of God’s Word (NY: New City Press 1999), pp. 49–58, p. 50.
708
Ibid.
709
“Pater et Filius diligunt se Spiritu sancto”. I Sent., d. 10, a. 3, q. 1, concl. (I, 201b).

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 highest fecundity. For the first principle, by virtue of the fact
that it is first, is the most perfect in producing, the most
fontal in emanating, and the most fecund in germinating….
And since the most perfect production is not realized except
with respect to equals, and the most fontal emanation is not
realized except with respect to coeternals, and the most
fecund germination is not realized except with respect to
consubstantial beings, it is necessary to admit that the first
principle includes within itself three hypostases that are
coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial. The primacy of the
first principle, therefore, demands the most perfect trinity in
order, origin and distinction; of coequality, coeternity, and
consubstantiality; it demands also the highest unity,
simplicity, immensity, eternity, immutability and actuality.
Therefore it requires a trinity in the first principle together
with the above-mentioned essential qualities.710

The Seraphic Doctor realized that “as long as we are in the flesh” our understanding
of “the eternity of the divine being” will be imperfect, especially since “while we live here
‘we have no knowledge without succession and time’”. 711 Thus if we accept a time-bound
reading of the Trinity, we will stray from Bonaventure’s teaching. But the metaphysics of
Saint Bonaventure “is based on a theology of the divine Word by which the two mysteries
of Trinity and Christ are intrinsically connected” and cannot be separated.712

Beginning, apparently, with Ewert Cousins, we can discern a trend toward referring
to the internal life of the Persons of the Trinity as “expressionism” rather than
“expression”. One immediately perceives this choice of word to be problematic, if only
because in the twenty-first century, we connect “expressionism” with literary and artistic
trends. On a more subtle level, one feels that while “expression” — a term used by
Bonaventure — belongs to persons and implies a giver and receiver of what is expressed,
“expressionism” is an abstraction: I can express myself to someone else, but I do not
thereby take part in “expressionism” with someone else. “Expressionism” is not a personal
act. Thus, use of this term weakens our sense of the mutual relations of the three divine
Persons when we read, for example, that “For Bonaventure, the inner life of God is
constituted according to expressionism — an eternal divine language in which the Father
expresses himself in his eternal Word”; 713 or “Expressionism, then, is at the heart of the
Trinitarian life and thus at the center of reality.” Or again, “The eternal expressionism

710
Myst. Trin., 8, concl. (V, 114a–b). WSB, III, p. 263.
711
Myst. Trin., 5, 1 (V, 90b). WSB, III, p. 209.
712
Ilia Delio, “Theology, Metaphysics and the Centrality of Christ” TS (June, 2007) pp. 254–273, p. 256. Cf.
Persons of the Trinity “are absolutely inseparable from their one and indivisible essence”. John F. Quinn,
“The Role of the Holy Spirit in St. Bonaventure’s Theology”, FS 33 (1973), pp. 273–284, p. 274.
713
Ewert H. Cousins, “Language as Metaphysics in Bonaventure”, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia: Sprache und
Erkenntnis im Mittelalter 13.2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), pp. 946–951, p. 946.

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within the Trinity is the basis for exemplarism in creation”. 714 This use of “expressionism”
suggests almost an automatic or unconscious process in the inner life of the Holy Trinity.
Such an implication is contrary to the orthodox conception of the Trinity as a relationship
between Persons, a community of Persons united “in”, “by” and “through” Love, which —
grounded itself in free will — is the only reason for God’s action.715

The Trinity, according to Bonaventure, “in itself it has first perfection, since it is the
first number, which is composed [constat] from all its parts, that is from unity and duality,
which joined together makes three”.716 In Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites,
Cousins seems to ignore the orthodoxy of Bonaventure’s teaching about the triunity of the
divine Persons by suggesting that the divine Persons are in opposition:

In his boundless fecundity the Father generates the Son as

the expression of himself. In this expressionism there are the
two opposites — the Father and his Image — and their
coincidence precisely in imaging. Hence at the very base of
Bonaventure’s thought, in the inner life of the mystery of the
Trinity, there is an archetype for all of the opposites within
the created universe.717

Curiously, this model leaves out the operation of the Spirit within the Trinity at the service
of a metaphysical archetype for “all the opposites within the created universe”. On the
other hand, as we mentioned above, Cousins also wrote that “The eternal expressionism
within the Trinity is the basis for exemplarism in creation” (italics added). 718 He seems to
acknowledge this Trinitarian exemplarism when he states that “[t]hrough the Son there is
activated a type of exitus from the Father and a reditus in the Spirit, which has its
counterpart in the exitus and reditus of creatures”.719

It seems to me that Cousins forgets that the “Word expresses not only the Father and
Himself, but also the Holy Spirit, who issues from the will of the Father and the Son as
their bond of love”.720 For the Holy Spirit as a bond or unity of the Father and the Son is
714
Cousins, “Language as Metaphysics”, p. 949.
715
“in emanatione divinarum personarum debet attendi originalis distinctio et plenissima communicatio”. I
Sent., d. 7, a. un., q. 2 concl. (I, 139b).
716
I Sent., d. 2, q. 4, conc. (I, 57b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, (n.d.), viewed 20 October, 2010.
717
Ewert H. Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1978), p. 94. In this book, by my count, the term “expressionism” occurs 24 times.
718
Cf. “[T]he doctrine of the Trinity is foundational; for it provides the basis of all the other elements in the
system: the doctrine of creation, of God’s relation to the world, of man as image and the world as vestige, of
Christ the center and the return of all things to God. It is also the foundation of all the coincidences of
opposites in Bonaventure’s thought”. Cousins, Coincidence of Opposites, p. 98.
719
Cousins, Coincidence of Opposites, p. 111.
720
Bonaventure Hinwood, “The Principles Underlying Saint Bonaventure’s Division of Human Knowledge”
in SB, III, p. 478. Cf. “quia Verbum et Patrem et seipsum et Spiritum sanctum exprimit et omnia alia”. Hex.,
9, 2 (V, 372b–373a); I Sent., d. 11, a. 1, q. 1, ad 1; and d. 31, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1.

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also personal Love, “a love that is unique and at the same time mutual for the Father and
Son”.721 Therefore — as Bonaventure writes in De donis — “whatever the Father does or
the Son suffers is nothing without the Holy Spirit”.722

It is difficult, therefore, to accept Cousins’s view of the mystery of the Trinity as the
archetype for the opposites in the universe. Cousins’s “oppositional” model of the Trinity
seems to overlook the significance Bonaventure placed on the number three, by which
Bonaventure structures all his thought.723

With the number three, the difference between the first and
second are resolved. This means that the unity is real. The
medium is fully brought into the whole and does not remain a
mere connecting link between the two separated extremes.
With the number three Bonaventure would say that the circle
is closed. The beginning, middle and end are brought into
unity.724

When we look at Bonaventure’s own words, we can see that he does acknowledge
dualities that can be ascribed to God, for example, that God is “totally within all things
and totally outside them” or “within all things, but not enclosed; outside all things, but not
excluded”.725 However, Bonaventure does not stop at such dualities, but always returns to
the Trinity. Cousins, on the contrary, by stopping at dualities — which he calls
“opposites” — creates oppositions and tensions within the Trinity that were not intended
by Bonaventure.

[T]he supreme communicability of the good demands

necessarily that there be a Trinity of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. And in these persons, because of supreme
goodness, it is necessary that there be supreme
communicability...there must be supreme mutual intimacy by
which each is necessarily in the others by reason of their
supreme interpenetration, and one acts with the others in a
total unity of substance, power and activity within the most
blessed Trinity itself.726

Cousins’s “oppositional” model is at odds with Bonaventure’s conception of the

harmony and unity in the universe, which proceeds from the exemplarity of relations
among the three Persons of the Trinity. (Thus I cannot accept, either, Cousin’s assertion

721
Walter H. Principe, “St. Bonaventure’s Theology of the Holy Spirit with Reference to the Expression
‘Pater et Filius Diligunt se Spiritu Sancto’”, in SB, IV, p. 257.
722
De donis, 1, 7 (V, 458b). WSB, XIV, p. 32.
723
“ubi est perfectus ordo, ibi est ratio principii, medii et ultimi”. Hex., 11, 7 (V, 381a).
724
Hellmann, Order, p. 11–12. See also pp. 16–17.
725
See Itin., 5, 8 (V, 310a). BJTF, p. 100.
726
Itin., 6, 2 (V, 311a). WSB, II-H, p. 125.

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that “Bonaventure focuses on the Father as dynamic source and not on the persons as
relations as Augustine had done”.727) It is not opposites that characterise the development
of history, but relations which connect people with one another, with the angels and with
all creation in which is reflected the relationality of the divine Persons. As I will show in
this paper, Bonaventure does not posit a principle of opposition, but a principle of
relationality between the divine Persons and as the source of the interrelationality of
everything that exists.

Since it is easy for scholars to misread or misinterpret Bonaventure’s trinitarian

theology, in our discussion of the self-expression of the Trinity in the universe, we must
always bear in mind that even when we speak of, for instance, Christ as the Exemplar, we
are always speaking of the immutable, eternal Trinity: “God is the exemplar in a true and
proper sense just as the divine mystery is truly and properly the efficient and final
principle”.728

In addition, every creature, because of its inherent unity (unum) truth (verum), and
goodness (bonum), reflects God in terms of threefold causality: efficient, exemplary, and
final.729 “The deeper source and basis for such a threefold causality is seen in God’s
power, wisdom, and goodness.730 Following Augustine’s formula of God as “causa
subsistendi, et ratio intelligendi et ordo vivendi”,731 Bonaventure taught that God is not
only the efficient cause of all that exists, but also the reason of the gnoseological order and
the purpose of all human action.732

727
Ewert H. Cousins, “The Two Poles of St. Bonaventure’s Theology” in S. Bonaventura 1274-1974, vol. IV
(Rome/Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1974), pp. 153–176, p. 156–57.
728
Scien. Chr., 2, 8 (V, 7a). WSB, IV, p. 85. Cf. “Deus ergo est exemplar aeternum”, Hex., 12, 8 (V, 385b).
729
“Per hoc autem, quod additur in certo pondere, numero et mensura, ostenditur, quod creatura est effectus
Trinitatis creantis sub triplicii genere causalitatis: efficientis, a quo est in creatura unitas modus et mensura;
exemplaris, a quo est in creatura veritas, species et numerus; finalis, a quo est in creatura bonitas, ordo et
pondus. Quae quidem reperiuntur in omnibus creaturis tanquam vestigium Creatoris, sive corporalibus, sive
spiritualibus, sive ex utriusque compositis”. Brev., 2, 1 (V, 219a). Cf. Hex., 1, 12 (V, 331a–b).
730
Schaefer, “The Position and Function of Man in the Created World According to Saint Bonaventure”, FS
20 (1960), p. 265. Cf. III Sent. d. 37 a. 2, q. 1, concl. (III, 8221b). Cf. “Ens autem increatum est causa
omnium rerum, causa, dico efficiens, formalis-exemplaris et finalis, et habet potentiam, sapientiam et
benevolentiam et producit omnia in esse. Et ista tria appropriatur tribus personis in Trinitate: potentia sive
maiestas appropriatur personis Patri, sapientia sive veriatas Filio, benevolentia sive bonitas Spiritui sancto”.
Decem praec., 2, 4 (V, 511b); “Ex his ergo visibilibus consurgit ad considerandum Dei potentiam,
sapientiam, et bonitatem ut entem, viventem et intelligentem, mere spiritualem et incorruptibilem et
intransmutabilem”. Itin., 1, 14 (V, 299a); “omnia essentialia omnibus personis aequaliter et indifferenter
conveniat; tamen Patri dicitur appropriari unitas, Filio veritas, Spiritus sancto bonitas”. Brev., 1, 6 (V, 214b).
731
De civ. Dei, 8, 4. PL 41, 228. Cf. Red. art., 4 (V, 320b).
732
“nihil est in aliqua istarum scientiarum [scientiae rationalis, moralis et naturalis] quod non importet
vestigium Trinitatis”. De donis, 4, 11 (V, 475b). Cf. De donis, 4, 6; Red. art., 4 (V, 321a–b).

145
 We find the notion of threefold causality often in Bonaventure’s writings, 733 but it is
described in the most sublime way in the twelfth collation of the Hexaemeron:

It must be assumed by faith that God is the Creator of things,

the Ruler of actions, the Teacher of intelligences, the Judge
of merits. And from this may we understand that He is the
Cause of causes, the Art originating in an outstanding
manner, the Leader governing most providently, the Light
declaring or representing most manifestly, the Right
retributing and judging most justly.734

Everywhere the Seraphic Doctor looks, he sees creation reflecting the divine
Exemplar. In the following passage, the “light is a metaphor for the divine reality. The
colored window…is the metaphor for the created cosmos”:735

In every creature something of the divine exemplar shines

forth, but it is mixed with darkness; hence there is a sort of
darkness mixed with the light. There is, then, in every
creature a pathway leading to the exemplar. As you notice
that a ray of light coming in through the window is colored
according to the different colors of the many glass panes, so
the divine ray of light shines differently in each creature and
in the various properties of the creatures.736

By creating the world, God leaves traces of Himself everywhere, as a transcendent

cause leaves traces in its effects.737 In his Commentary on the Second Book of Sentences,
Bonaventure explains that all of creation has been made for and manifests God’s glory:

[I]t must be said, that things have been made for the sake of
God’s Glory, not, I say, to acquire and/or amplify (It), but to
733
See for example Brev., 4, 1 (V, 242a); Scien. Chr., 4, 24 (V, 19b); Itin., 1, 14 (V, 299b); Itin., 3, 6 (V,
305b); Itin., 5, 7 (V, 310a); Christus Mag., 17–18 (V, 571–572); De donis., 4, 6 (V, 474b); De assumptione
B. Virginis Mariae, sermon 4 (IX, 697b); Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b); Hex., 3, 2 (V, 343a); Decem praec., 2, 4 (V,
511b); Hex., 4, 3, (5) (V, 349b); Lign. vitae, 12, 46 (VIII, 84ff). In a slightly different form we also find this
formula in other places: Hex., 10, 14 (V, 378b); Dom 5 Epiph., sermo 1, 1 (IX, 193a); Sermo de Trinitate (IX,
352a). According to Bougerol Bonaventure “does not quote this text at all” in his Commentaries on the
Sentences (Bougerol Introduction pp. 165 and 231, n. 8). However, I find that in some places we have some
indirect and direct references to this phrase, for instance: “vestigium quantum ad proprietatem, quae respicit
Deum sub ratione triplicis causae, efficientis, formalis et finalis, sicut sunt unum, verum et bonum”. I Sent.,
d. 3, p. 1, a. un., concl. (I, 73b); “...dicendum quod res triplicer sunt in Deo, vidilicet ut in principio
producente...ut in exemplari exprimente...ut in fine conservante”. I Sent., d. 36, a. 2, q. 1 (I, 623–24);
“Attenduntur enim in unaquaque creatura, secundum quod ipsa est vestigium Creatoris; quod quidem
vestigium consistit in comparatione creaturae ad Creatorem secundum triplex genus causae, sicut in primo
libro dictum fuit, ita quod modus attenditur secundum comparationem creaturae ad Creatorem in ratione
causae efficientis, species in ratione causae exemplaris, et ordo in ratione causae finalis”. II Sent., d. 35, a. 2,
q. 1 concl. (II, 829b).
734
Hex., 12, 2 (V, 385a). TWB, V, p. 173.
735
Zachary Hayes, “The Metaphysics of Exemplarity and the Itinerarium”, Cd 59.4 (2009), pp. 409–424, p.
410.
736
Hex., 12, 14 (V, 386b). Trans. Zachary Hayes, “Metaphysics of Exemplarity”, pp. 409–10.
737
“creatura procedit a Deo tanquam exemplatum ab exemplari, et sic exemplar importat formalem
respectum exemplati”. I Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 3, concl. (I, 129b); “Omnis creatura repraesentat Deum qui est
Trinitas”, Hex., 13, 11 (V, 389b).

146
 show and communicate (It). And though God’s Glory is
without things made, yet It is not communicated and/or
manifested except through produced things.738

Or again, he writes that “of all creatures, both rational and irrational, God is the End,
because the Most High has created all for the sake of Himself; for He made all (things) to
praise His own Goodness”.739

However, further on Bonaventure says that the universe was created for man: “qui
factus fuerat propter ipsum”, i.e., for human beings.740 Or again, “Realize then, O soul,
and consider diligently that your Creator, your King, your Spouse, and Friend, has put the
whole fabric of the universe at your service”. 741 This seems to be inconsistent with another
text in which Bonaventure says that only Christ “[holds] the central position in all things”
(tenens medium in omnibus).742 In fact, as we will see, there is no contradiction or
inconsistency in these various assertions.

We can demonstrate from Bonaventure’s commentary on the Sentences that he had

in mind a two-fold purpose for the existence of the world. He does not posit an either–or
purpose (either the glory of God or the salvation of man). Rather the reason for creation is

738
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1, (II, 45a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 15 September 2010. In this same context Bonaventure also writes,
“Deus nos fecit et diligit non propter utilitatem suam, sed propter bonitatem suam et utilitatem nostram;
quaeritur ergo, quis sit finis principalior conditionis rerum, utrum divina gloria, vel utilitas nostra. Et quod
gloria Dei, videtur... (p. 43); “aliter dicendum, quod res factae sunt propter Dei gloriam, non, inquam,
acquirendam vel ampliandam, sed ostendendam et communicandam. Et quamvis gloria Dei sit sine rebus
factis, non tamen communicatur vel manifestatur nisi per res productas”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1. (II,
45a). Cf. Hex., 13, 12 (V, 389b–390a).
739
“Sic omnium creaturarum tam rationalium quam irrationalium finis est Deus, quia omnia propter fecit ad
laudem semetipsum creavit Altissimus; omnia enim fecit ad laudem suae bonitatis”. II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1,
concl. (II, 382b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02382.html, 2008, viewed 20 July 2011. See also “Manifesto divini
exemplaris et bonitatis Dei est in productione universi”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 2 concl. (II, 463a).
740
Brev., 2, 11 (V, 229b). Cf. “Deus secundum sapientiam suam ordinatissimam cunctum mundum istum
sensibilem et maiorem fecit propter mundum minorem, videlicet hominem, qui inter Deum et res istas
inferiores in medio collocatus est”. Brev., 7, 4 (V, 284b).
741
Solil., 1, 2 ad 7 (VIII, 31b–32a). WSB, X, p. 230. Cf. “Totus mundus servit homini, quia factus est pro
homine, ut ipse serviat ei, qui fecit mundum et hominem”. Dom. VIII p. Pent., Sermo 1, 1, 2 (IV, 385b); II
Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 382–84); Brev. prol., 2 (V, 204a); Tripl. via, 1, 4 (n.18), (VIII, 7b).
742
Hex., 1, 10 (V, 330b). TWB, V, p. 5. “In the Incarnation, the ground of all reality, the divine Word
appeared at the center of creation. The Word who is the truth of all things took flesh and was made known in
the person of Jesus Christ”. Ilia Delio, Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life, Thought, and
Writings (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001), p. 62. Cf Delio, Franciscan View of Creation, p. 30. It is
clear from the context that when Delio writes that “The Word who is the truth of all things took flesh and was
made known in the person of Jesus Christ”, she means that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh, that Jesus
Christ is the incarnate Word. Nevertheless, her wording here is unfortunate, since it can easily be construed
to suggest that the Word and the person of Jesus Christ are separate entities. Such language might mislead
theological neophytes to the conclusion that the Word “was made known” “in” the person of Jesus Christ
rather than that the Word and the person of Jesus Christ are identical.

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“both–and”: the manifestation of God’s glory in His creation works for the salvation of
man.743 God’s work of creation was made

for the sake of His own Glory, not, I say, for the sake of
increasing (His) glory, but for the sake of manifesting (His)
Glory and for the sake of communicating His Glory; in the
manifestation of which and participation (in which) there is
attained the most high utility of the creature; namely its
glorification or beatification.744

In light of this, it makes sense for Bonaventure to write that all was created for the
sake of man — “God made all things for the human being” 745 — and “only the human
person can be called ‘every creature’ [i.e., the human person is the fulfilment of all created
things] and everything that is, came into being because of him, and is to be referred to
him”.746 But although everything has been made to serve the ends of man, man himself is
not the ultimate end of creation.747 The human person is only the non-principle end of
creation, the “finis sub fine”:

For there is a certain principal and ultimate End, but there is

a certain end under the End. If we speak in the first manner
of an “end”, thus of all creatures, both rational and irrational,
God is the End, because the Most High has created all for the
sake of Himself; for He made all (things) to praise His own
Goodness. But if we speak of the non-principal “end”,
which is an end in a certain manner and an end under the
End; thus all sensible animals have been made for the sake of
man.748
743
“quia duplicem finem contingit reperire in universo: unus est salus electorum, alius divina laus”. I Sent., d.
47, a. un, q. 3 (I, 844b).
744
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2. a. 2, q. 1 (II, 44b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 15 September 2010. Cf. “fecit omnia ad sui laudem; cum sit summa
lux, fecit omnia ad sui manifestationem; cum sit summa bonitas, fecit omnia ad sui communicationem. Non
est autem perfecta laus, nisi adsit qui approbet; nec est perfecta manifestatio, nisi adsit qui intelligat; nec
perfecta communicatio bonorum, nisi adsit qui eis uti valeat”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q 1, concl. (II, 394b); II
Sent., d. 1, p. 2. a. 1, q. 2 (II, 42a).
745
“omnia propter ipsum [hominem] fecit”. Tripl. via, 1, 18 (VIII, 7b), translation mine. Cf. “omnes
creaturae ad hoc factae sunt, ut serviant homini tendenti ad supernam patriam”. Brev. prol., 4 (V, 206a–b).
746
“solus homo dicitur omnis creatura, et omnia propter ipsum quodam modo fieri, et ad ipsum etiam
referri”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1. q. 3, concl., ad 5 (II, 399b), translation mine; “Item, omnia corpora propter
humanum obsequium sunt facta, unde ‘sumus nos finis quodam modo omnium eorum quae sunt’”. II Sent., d.
2, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2, f. 2 (II, 73a). Here Bonaventure is quoting Aristotle’s De mundo. In another place speaking
about this same question he quoted Remigius, an otherwise unknown scholar: “Quia enim homo omnibus
indiget, Angelus nullo nisi Deo; ideo omnia propter hominem, non omnia propter Angelum”. II Sent., d. 1, p.
2, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 46b). Cf. also “Tertius est ordo, quo creaturae irrationales ad rationalem ordinantur tanquam
in finem, propter quem sunt factae, et mediante illo in ultimum finem principalem; et secundum hunc
ordinem magis convenit homo cum Deo quam Angelus”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 401b).
747
As Schaefer points out “With Bonaventure, we can distinguish 1) the ordination of the visible universe
towards man and its service to him, 2) the service of the animal world in particular, and 3) the role of all
these creatures as guideposts on man’s road to God”. Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 316. Also
see pp. 349–50.
748
II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 382b–383a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 15 September 2010.

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Balthasar provides a neat summary: “For Bonaventure, man is the crowning of the process
of the world’s coming to be, and Christ is the crowning of the historical process”.749

In the Breviloquium, Bonaventure says simply that “the First Principle made this
sensible world in order to make itself known so that the world might serve as a footprint
and a mirror to lead humankind to love and praise God, its Maker”. 750 (As he clarifies in
Hexaemeron, the creature is also a speculum — a mirror — because it participates in God’s
being, which is the first mirror, 751 by its own order, origin and completion which exist in
creatures.752 However — as he articulates in De regimine animae — only the soul truly is
“a mirror of the most blessed Trinity”.753)

In sum, we can see that for Bonaventure to speak about “God” always means to
speak about the Trinity. To understand revelation means to see the Trinity in the universe,
in ourselves and especially in Holy Scripture. To describe creation means to show how the
Trinity is reflected in all that exists. To explain history means to show how human actions
and events are grounded in conformity or nonconformity with the loving relations of the
Trinity. All things find their point of departure, their frame of reference, and their
resolution in the Trinity, “because God is the first, all things flow from the Origin; and in
as far as they flow from Him, they return and will be reduced to Him as to their final
end”.754

4. 7. 1. Creation in the light of St Francis’s spirituality

749
Balthasar, Glory, p. 309.
750
Brev., 2, 11 (V, 229a). WSB, IX, p. 94. Cf. “Et propterea indubitanter verum est quod sumus finis omnium
eorum quae sunt. Et omnia corporalia facta sunt ad humanum obsequium ut ex illis omnibus accendatur
homo ad amandum et laudandum factorem universorum cuius providentia cuncta disponuntur”. Brev., 2, 4
(V, 222a). Bonaventure makes it clear that only before the Fall was man led directly back to God by
knowledge of created things, but now this ability has passed away. Cf. Hex., 13, 12 (V, 390a).
751
“Dictum est ergo de primo speculo, scilicet quod est esse; hoc enim est nomen Dei manifestissimum et
perfectissumum, quia omnia quae sunt Dei, comprehenduntur in hoc nomine”. Hex., 11, 1 (V, 380a).
752
“Omnis enim creatura concurrit ad hoc speculum faciendum et iungitur in hoc speculo secundum viam
ordinis, originis, completionis”. Hex., 10, 12 (V, 378b). Cf. “Et sic patet, quod totus mundus est sicut unum
speculum plenum luminibus praesentantibus divinam sapientiam, sicut carbo effundens lucem”. Hex., 2, 27
(V, 340b).
753
“[Creaturae] sunt vestigium Creatoris tui, tu [anima] vero speculum beatissimae Trinitatis”. Solil., 1,7
(VIII, 32a).
754
“Nam eo ispo quo est primum, omnia ab ipso fluunt, et eo ispo quo fluunt ab ipso, ad ipsum recurrunt et
reducuntur tanquam ad finem ultimum”. Myst. Trin., 3, 1, concl. (V, 70b), my translation.

149
 In all of Bonaventure’s theology, Saint Francis “was his principal inspiration and
constant point of reference. “No matter how far he travels in speculative genius, the link
with St. Francis is never lost”. 755 Indeed, Eric Doyle believes that “practically every
theological doctrine of St. Bonaventure can be traced back ultimately to a source in the
spirituality of St. Francis”.756 Nevertheless, Bonaventure then created his own theology.
As Balthasar puts it, “when we have established that the Franciscan mystery is the center
that crystallises all” we have more to uncover, that is, “the ethos that is peculiar to
Bonaventure. For Bonaventure does not only take Francis as his centre: he is his own sun
and his mission”.757

Bonaventure’s theology (and philosophy) of creation is grounded in the theological

vision of the Poverello and his intimate relationship with all creatures. Like no one before
him or after him, Saint Francis’s relationship to God involved a special love of God’s
creation. As we know from his writings and his biography, Saint Francis called all created
things “brothers” and “sisters” because they spoke to him of their Creator.

We ought to learn meekness, which is utterly necessary,

from St. Francis. He cherished an extraordinary meekness
not only toward other people, but also toward dumb animals.
He called all animals by the name “brother” and we read in
the account of his life that even wild animals came running
to him as their friend and companion.758

David Tracy calls the Itinerarium a theological articulation of Francis’s vision of the
whole world as God’s own sacrament.759 Francis “read the vestiges of God in creation like
words on the page”,760 and we find his intuition in the cosmic synthesis made by

755
Eric Doyle, “The Seraphic Doctor”, in My Heart’s Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor,
Theologian (Canterbury, England: FISC, 2005), pp. 178–182, p. 180.
756
Eric Doyle, “St. Bonaventure 1274–1974. Some Aspects of His Life and Thought”, loc. cit., pp. 206–221,
p. 219. In his Commentary to the Sentences Bonaventure identified Francis as an exemplar of piety for all.
Cf. III Sent., d. 28, a. un., concl. (III, 622b).
757
Balthasar, Glory, p. 263.
758
Sermo 5 De s. Patre Francisco (IX, 595a). Translation taken from SFA, p. 72. In the Doyle edition it is
Sermo 1 (preached at Paris, Oct. 4, 1255); in the Quaracchi numeration it is Sermo V.
759
David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (NY:
Crossroad, 1981), p. 381. Cf. Ray Petry, who calls the Itinerarium “a genuinely revealing exposé of Francis’
own postulates”. Late Medieval Mysticism ed. Ray C. Petry (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1957), p. 126. However, I think McKeon exaggerates a little when he says that “all the works of
Bonaventura are about that itinerary”. Richard McKeon, “Philosophy and Theology, History and Science in
the Thought of Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas”, JHI, 36.3. (Jul.–Sept., 1975), pp. 387–412, p. 396.
Hammond proposed that “[t]he Itinerarium is essentially an interpretation of Francis’s stigmata”. Jay M.
Hammond, “An Historical Analysis of the Concept of Peace in Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum”,
Digest for Ph.D. degree (St. Louis University, 1998), p. 25.
760
Savino, Contemplative River, p. 65.

150
Bonaventure, who consciously styled himself the “seventh successor of the Seraphic
Patriarch”.761

[A]ll creatures in this world of sensible realities lead the

spirit of the contemplative and wise person to the eternal
God. For creatures are shadows, echoes, and pictures of that
first, most powerful, most wise, and most perfect Principle,
of that eternal source, light, and fullness; of that efficient
exemplary, and ordering Art. They are vestiges, images and
spectacles, proposed for us for the contuition of God.762

“Bonaventure, like Francis, did not view the material world as ‘brute matter’, that is,
lifeless and inert”,763 but as dynamically interrelated reality. The interrelatedness of
created reality differs, however, from the relationality between human persons as such,
which in turn differs from the relationality between the human person and the Persons of
the Holy Trinity. Denis Edwards comments, “In the free divine action of creation, the
Trinitarian fullness of divine goodness ‘explodes’ into what is not God, into creatures
which are not God, but are God’s self-expression”.764

Every creature is understood as an aspect of God’s self-

expression in the world. Every creature in its form,
proportion and beauty, reflects the Word and Wisdom of
God, the divine Exemplar. Every creature is a revelatory
word written in the great Book of Creation. Every species
and every ecosystem, every grain of sand and every galaxy
are the self-expressions of the eternal art of Divine
Wisdom…. God is profoundly present to all things, and God
is expressed in all things, so that each creature is a symbol
and a sacrament of God’s presence and trinitarian life.765

José de Vinck has said that the Bonaventure’s genius lies essentially here, in the
Seraphic Doctor’s “integrated vision of reality” which is not “divided between the natural
and supernatural,” but is seen as “one continuum in which the supernatural shines through

761
“I a sinner who, unworthy as I am, had become the seventh general minister of the brothers after the death
of the most blessed father”, Itin., prol., 2. WSB, II-H, p. 37.
762
Itin., 2, 11 (V, 302b) WSB, II-H, p. 77. Cf. “Et ideo intelligendum, quod cum creatura ducat in
cognitionem Dei per modum umbrae, per modum vestigii et per modum imaginis, differentia eorum notior, a
qua etiam denominatur, accipitur penes modum repraesentandi. Nam umbra dicitur, in quantum representat
in quadam elongatione et confusione; vestigium, in quantum in elongatione, sed distinctione; imago vero, in
quantum in propinquitate et distinctione”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2 (I, 73a–b).
763
Ilia Delio, A Franciscan View of Creation: Learning to Live in a Sacramental World (St. Bonaventure,
NY: Franciscan Institute, 2003), p. 25.
764
Denis Edwards, “The Discovery of Chaos and the Retrieval of the Trinity” in John Russell, et. al., eds.
Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Rome and Berkeley, CA: Vatican
Observatory Publications/ Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1995), pp. 161–162.
765
Edwards, “The Discovery of Chaos”, p. 163.

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the natural and leads it back to its source, the creative Word, the Omega Point of Teilhard
de Chardin”.766

In Bonaventure’s noticeably Franciscan view “all things are directed towards God”
and therefore “should not be despised, but rather accepted and loved”. 767 God’s goodness
is manifest in His conservation of the order of the wisdom that orders the world. 768
Therefore our response to the world must be properly ordered:

There is twofold hatred or contempt…. Contempt for a ring

by treating it as a poor and ugly gift reflects on the husband,
but contempt of a ring by regarding it as almost nothing
compared to the love of a husband, gives glory to the
husband.769

In his Soliloquium, Bonaventure makes this point again, quoting Gregory the Great: “You
love him less, if there is anything which you desire that you do not love in him and for his
sake”.770 Loving the world for its own sake is vanity, because the world is vanity itself, in
the sense that it is temporal, fluid and mutable. 771 On the contrary, the created order is
highly regarded only because it reflects the wisdom and goodness of God, who is always
and everywhere present in it.

All creation is a manifestation of God’s glory and each thing leads to and shows forth
its Triune Maker. However, the Unseen Creator can be “seen” not only by way of
affirmation but also by way of negation, because creatures are at once similar and
dissimilar to Him.772 For example, Bonaventure writes that “the deep mystery of creation

766
José De Vinck, “Two aspects of the Theory of the ‘Rationes seminales’ in the Writings of Bonaventure”,
in SB, III, pp. 307–316, p. 316. For more on Saint Bonaventure and Teilhard de Chardin, see Ewert Cousins,
“Christ and the Cosmos: Teilhard de Chardin and Bonaventure”, Cd 16 (April, 1966), pp. 99–105 and Ewert
Cousins, “The Evolving Cosmos: Teilhard de Chardin and Bonaventure”, Cd 16 (May, 1966), pp. 131–136.
See also Ewert Cousins, “The Two Poles of St. Bonaventure’s Theology” in SB, IV, pp. 153–176.
767
Comm. Eccl., 1 (VI, 6b). WSB, VII, p. 77.
768
“Deus non manifestat bonitatem, nisi salvo ordine sapientiae ordinantis mundum”. II Sent., d. 9, a. un., q.
1 ad 1 (II, 243a).
769
Comm. Eccl., 1 (VI, 6b). WSB, VII, p. 78.
770
Solil., 2, 1 (VIII, 44a). WSB, X, p. 271
771
“Profundum creationis est vanitas esse creati”. I Sent., prooem. (I, 3b). The vanity is based in two things:
“Nam vanitas esse creati in duobus consistit, videlicet in mutatione de non esse in esse et rursum in
reversione in non esse”. Ibid., prooem. (I, 4a); “impossibile est, quod habet esse post non-esse habere esse
aeternum, quoniam hic est implicatio contradictionis”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2, f. 6 (II, 22a); “quia per
creaturae nomen potest significari et importari omne quod est ab alio, ita quod habet esse post omnino non-
esse”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 34a–b). Cf. I Sent., d. 37, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (I, 639a); Scien.
Chr. 4, f. 21 (V, 19a–b); Comm. Eccl., prooem. 2, resp. (VI, 7a); Ibid., 1, (VI, 11a–12b). Bonaventure also
echoes Ecclesiastes on vanity in his Collationes on the Six Days: “Vanitas vanitatis et omnia vanitas. Haec
propositio vera est et probatur in toto libro. Oportet ergo transire ab omnibus ad veritatem, ut non sit dilectio
nisi in Deo”. Hex., 19, 2 (V, 420a). Cf. Gilbetto Zappitello, “La ‘Vanitas’ in S. Bonaventura”, in SB, IV, pp.
638–654.
772
“nulla creatio perfecte Deo assimilatur, sed quodam modo est similis, quodam modo disimilis”. III Sent., d.
6, a. 2, q. 2. concl. (III, 161a). “Sed creatura producitur a primo esse et est dissimilis”. Hex., 11, 9 (V, 381b).

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is the vanity of created being”. 773 Creation comes “to be” after “non-being”, and as
tenebra, umbra and mendacium. By way of negation, this gives us a positive description
of the mystery of the Triune Creator. Compared to God, creation is nihil, and by being
nihil, it adds to divine excellency 774 and testifies to the fullness of God even better than a
“super-eminent affirmation”.775

Bonaventure elucidates this way of speaking of God in De triplici via:

There is another way which is more eminent because,

as Denis says “Affirmations can be disjoined; negations are
true;” the latter, while they appear to say less, actually say
more. And this is the method of raising oneself up by the
abnegation of all things, such that in these denials there is an
order, beginning with the lowest and rising to the higher.
Also, this involves a super-eminent affirmation, as for
example, when we say that God is not something sensible,
but God is supersensible; nor is God imaginable or
intelligible or existing, but above all these things. Thus, the
gaze of truth leads to the warming of the mind where it is
raised higher and penetrates deeper, because it rises above
itself and all created things. This then is the most noble of
ascents. However, for this to be perfect, something else is
required: just as perfection requires illumination, so negation
requires affirmation. This manner of rising up is stronger to
the extent that the power of ascent is more intimate; it is
more fruitful to the extent that the affections are more closely
bound.776

Jane Kopas has pointed out that “[a]t the heart of Francis’s vision was the belief that
each individual has a unique relationship with God”. 777 Likewise, in Bonaventure we find
that every creature has a relationship to God as principium creativum, and all creatures are
ordered to God as their final end.778 In the drama of creation, we can discern three phases:
the emanatio, the exemplaritas,779 and the consummatio. The closing movement of this
773
“Profundum creationis est vanitas esse creati. Creatura enim quanto modo evanescit, tanto magis in
profundum tendit”. I Sent., prooem. (I, 3b), my translation. Cf. “Nam vanitas esse creati in duobus consistit,
videlicet in mutatione de non esse in esse et rursum in reversione in non esse”. Ibid., (I, 4a); “Et omnis
creatura vana est, quia subiecta vanitati id est mutabilitati”. Comm. Eccl., prooem., q. 2 resp. (VI, 7a).
774
Cf. “creatura in comparatione Creatoris nihil est, unde quasi nihil addit supra divinam excellentiam”. III
Sent., d. 39, dub. 2, resp. (III, 882a); “quia creatum nec actu nec potentia aequari potest increato”. Scien.
Chr., q. 1, f. 7 (V, 3b).
775
Cf. Myst. Trin., 4, 1 conc. (V, 81b–83b).
776
Tripl. Via, 3, 13 (VIII, 17), WSB, X, pp. 81–133, pp. 131–132.
777
Jane Kopas, “A Franciscan Interpretation of Person in a Postmodern Culture”, in Franciscan Identity and
Postmodern Culture: Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers, 2002, ed. Kathleen A. Warren (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2003), pp. 55–72, p. 72.
778
“Ratio autem ad intelligentiam praedictorum haec est: quia cum omnes creaturae respectum habeant et
dependentiam ad suum Creatorem, tripliciter ad ipsum comparari possunt, scilicet aut sicut ad principium
creativum aut sicut ad obiectum motivum aut sicut ad donum inhabitativum”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a).
779
“From the divine point of view exemplarism can be understood as the fundamental reason for creation’s
existence and the means by which it is enabled to ‘return’ to its source. From the human point of view the
same process initiated and completed by Christological exemplarism is apprehended and expressed according

153
drama is the reductio,780 “whereby all things are brought to the ultimum in the completion
of order”.781

The meaning of these three basic terms [emanatio,

exemplaritas, consummatio] is that the created world as a
whole and all creatures in this world have their origin in God
from whom they proceed; having been created, they reflect
God, their divine mode or exemplar; according to which they
were made; they finally return to God for whom they were
created and who is their ultimate end.782

It should be clear that Bonaventurian reductio cannot be confused with “a modern monistic
sense whereby there is a system of knowledge eliminating all differences”.783

Another summary of the reflection of the Trinitarian nature of God in the created
order appears in De Mysterio Trinitatis:

Every creature is either a mere vestige of God — as is

corporal nature — or an image of God, as is the intellectual
creature. Each of these gives witness to the [T]rinity.
However, that which is but a vestige does so, as it were, from
afar. Every creature has measure, species, and order; or
unity, truth, and goodness; or measure, number, and weight,
which by appropriation correspond to the [T]rinity of
[P]ersons, and thus give witness to the fact that God is a
trinity….

But the creature which is an image — such as the

intellectual creature — testifies to the threefold character of
God, as it were from near at hand, because an image is an
express similitude. The intellectual creature has memory,
intelligence, and will; or mind, knowledge, and love; mind
like a parent, knowledge like an offspring, and love like a
bond proceeding from both and joining them together. For
the mind cannot fail to love the word which it generates.
to the praxis of itinerarium and imitatio, and in its completion the soteriological objective of the Incarnation
is realised”. Thomas J. Herbst, The Road to Union: Johannine Dimensions of Bonaventure’s Christology
(Rome/Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2005), p. 307.
780
“Bonaventurean reduction [is the process] whereby the mind attempts to trace reality to its ultimate source
and goal. Reduction can be seen at two levels. The first, and perhaps the most obvious, is the level of logical
analysis and argument; here reduction is realized in the cognitive order. Reduction at this level, however, is
intimately related to an ontological reduction, which is the real return of creatures to God through grace.”
Introduction to WSB, III, p. 27. For Bonaventure, “[t]he reductio — a word meaning both resolution and
retracing [to the origin] — is ‘the soul and technique of return to God’”. Bougerol, Introduction, p. 75. See
also his summary of the scholastic background of the term reductio on pages 75–77. Cf. Edward Kinsella,
“Christ as the Center and Heart of All Knowledge”, GR 12 (1998), pp. 77–97, pp. 79–80. For the significance
of the exitus/reditus schema in scholastic thought, see Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding St.
Thomas (Chicago: Regnery Publishing, 1964).
781
Hellmann, Order, p. 20. Cf. “Nam eo ipso quo [divinum esse] est primum, omnia ab ipso fluunt, et eo ipso
quo fluunt ab ipso, ad ipsum recurrunt et reducuntur tanquam ad finem ultimum”. Myst. Trin., 3, 1, concl. (V,
70b).
782
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 20, p. 262.
783
Hellmann, Order, p. 20.

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 Therefore, these not only indicate origin and emanation
which leads to distinction among them; but they indicate also
quality, consubstantiality, and inseparability, from which an
express testimony is given to the fact that God is a
[T]rinity.784

In the same treatise, Bonaventure explained that besides the book of creation, which gives
testimony of the Trinity, God also give us other books which reveal the mystery of the
Trinity and Divine Wisdom, namely book of life and the book of Scripture.785

But when man had fallen, since he had lost knowledge, there
was no longer anyone to lead creatures back to God. Hence
this book, the world, became as dead and deleted. And it
was necessary that there be another book through which this
one would be lighted up, so that it could receive the symbol
of things. Such a book is Scripture which establishes the
likeness, the properties and the symbolism of things written
down in the book of the world.786

Creation does not have only a representative or significative function; it also has a
kerygmatic role, showing the One who is the beginning of all that exists and in whose
triune being all participate. But as Bonaventure points out, since the Fall, man has not
been able to “read” creation aright, or as Zachary Hayes put it, “the original, cosmic
revelation has been rendered dark and opaque through the reality of sin”. Neither fallen

784
Myst. Trin., q. 1, a. 2, concl. (V, 54b–55a). WSB, III, pp. 128, 129. See also Myst. Trin., q. 5, a. 1 (90a).
Bonaventure’s description here is correct when speaking of the divine Persons and when speaking of
intellectual creatures as long as those creatures speak and live in the truth. But if a human tells a lie, the mind
does not “love the word it generates” but rather is ashamed, rejects it or corrects it. The rupture that occurs
between the mind and word when a human tells a lie does not reflect the perfect relations between the
memory, intelligence and will of the Triune God.
785
“This twofold witness of the book of creation was efficacious in the state of innocent nature, when the
book had not been obscured; nor had the eye of man been darkened. But when the sins of man had weakened
his sight, then that mirror was made dark and obscure, and the ear of our inner understanding was hardened
against hearing that testimony. For this reason, divine providence saw fit to provide the testimony of another
book; namely, that of the book of Scripture which was written in accord with the divine revelation which has
never been deficient nor absent from the beginning of the world to the end....
“But because ‘not all listen to the Gospel’ and since this is a truth beyond reason, therefore the divine
wisdom has provided an eternal testimony, which is the book of life. This book of life by itself and in itself
explicitly and expressly gives incontestable witness to the eternal Trinity to those who see God in heaven
with ‘unveiled faces’. For those on earth, it provides a testimony through the influence of light, since while
on earth, the soul is capable of receiving such influence, as it is written in John 1: ‘The Life was light for
men’; because that book of life is ‘the true light which illumines every man coming into the world’.
Illumination is given in two ways, namely, by an innate light and by an infused light. From these two lights,
concurring with the habit of faith, the argument that God is a Trinity arises for our belief, and eventually
every truth which pertains to the practice of the Christian religion”. WSB, III, pp.129, 130–31. In this text, we
see that Bonaventure speaks of two kinds of light in the process of illumination, namely about “innate” and
“infused” light. These terms bring some new concepts to his theory of illumination. Cf. “every Wisdom is
found in Jesus Christ, as the Book of Life in which God the Father has hidden all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge. Therefore, the only-begotten Son of God, as the Uncreated Word, is the Book of Wisdom
and the Light”. The Tree of Life, twelfth fruit, n. 46 in TWB, I, p. 141. Lign. vitae, fructus 12, 46 (VIII, 84b–
85a).
786
Hex., 13, 12 (V, 390a). TWB, V, pp. 190–191. In Bonaventure’s Vitis mystica, Jesus refers to himself as a
book which can be read on the outside and the inside: “Lege ergo me, librum vitae scriptum intus et foris, et
lectum intellige”. Vit. myst., 24, 2 (VIII, 188a). Cf. Brev. 2, 11 (V, 229a); Hex., 12, 14–17 (V, 386b–387a–b).

155
man’s inability to “read” creation nor scriptural revelation nullify cosmic revelation.
Rather, one of the main purposes of the “historical revelation of biblical history is to enable
humanity to read the primal revelation of creation in an appropriate way”.787

In this context we shall also point out that the Trinity is known in creatures only
insofar as it manifests itself through analogy. Without gainsaying any part of his other
teachings about creatures as expressions of God, Bonaventure, following the lead of
Augustine, “sees the creature as an inadequate expression of the archetype, hence it can be
deceptive”.788 This statement flows from his understanding of the Uncreated Word as the
Truth:

What is truth by definition? “An adequation of the intellect

with the object understood”. I am speaking of that intellect
which is the cause of the object, and not of my own intellect
which is not its cause.

This adequation is true when the object has quantity,

quality, order, action, passion, time, place, and habit,
according to the differences of the categories. For things are
true when they exist either in fact or as universals, as they
exist in Eternal Art or are expressed in it. A thing, then, is
true in so far as it is adequated to the causing intellect. But
because it is not perfectly adequated to the reason that
expresses or represents it, every creature is a lie, as
Augustine says. For the adequated thing is not its own
adequation: hence it is necessary that the Word or Likeness
or Reason be the Truth.789

Since God is One in Essence and Three in Persons we have to resolve a very
pertinent question: “Is God the First Exemplar of creatures by reason of the Unity of His
Essence, by reason of the Trinity of Persons”, or by reason of both?790

[W]hen there is asked, whether things are in God according

to a reckoning of essence, and/or of person; it must be said,
that properly speaking (they are) neither in the former nor in
the latter manner [nec sic nec sic], but they are in God as in a
cause, and thus according to a reckoning of the appropriated
(names), which are (names) for the Essence (as they are)
considered in the Persons.791

787
Zachary Hayes, “Bonaventure: Mystery of the Triune God”, in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed.
Kenan B. Osborne (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994), pp. 39–125, pp. 83–84.
788
Commentary to “Christ, the One Teacher of All” in WMM, p. 48, n. 21.
789
Hex., 3, 8 (V, 344b). TWB, V, p. 46.
790
Nothing exists in things per se and in se, but things exist only insofar as they pertain to the divine Persons
as the principium quod and His Essence as the principium quo. St Bonaventure put the question in this way:
“Are created things in God by reason of His Essence or His Persons?”; “Utrum res sint in Deo ratione
essentiae, vel personae”. I Sent., d. 36, a. 1 q. 2 (I, 621).

156
It is evident in St Bonaventure’s writings that he sees every creature as mirroring God who
is the Trinity792 and therefore every creature is an expression of the essential unity and the
trinity of the divine Persons.793 However, the Holy Trinity is most perfectly manifested in
man, about whom God said, “Let us make man to our image and likeness”.

It must be said, that in the production of man there was not

only a manifestation of the Trinity in the vestige, but also
according to the image; for that reason the production of man
is attributed to the three Persons in the plural to show, that in
man the Trinity is represented expressly, but in the other
(creatures) the Trinity is hinted at in some manner, though
not so explicitly.794

Every creature is referred to the Triune God as to his own cause (the Principle), and thus is
called His vestige and manifestation ad extra. Moreover, creatures have God as their
Principle in a three-fold way, by “being fashioned after Him according to unity, truth and
goodness”.795 Rational creatures have God as their motivating object and their End, and
they are called his images. As images, they have a relationship to and with the Trinity ab
intra. They can attain God by knowledge and love, but they cannot have God as their
object without embracing Him “by memory, intelligence and will”. 796 Righteous spirits
possess the Holy Spirit as an infused gift. They are related to God as their indweller,
however they cannot conform to God “without conforming to Him by faith, hope and
charity, the threefold endowment”.797 Because of their special relationship with God,
righteous spirits are called his similitude.

791
I Sent., d. 36, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (I, 622b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01621.html (n.d.), 22 July 2011.
792
“Esse enim non est nisi dupliciter: vel esse, quod est ex se et secundum se et propter se, vel esse, quod est
ex alio et secundum aliud et propter aliud. Necesse etiam est, ut esse, quod est ex se, sit secundum se et
propter se. Esse ex se in ratione originantis; esse secundum se in ratione exemplantis, et propter se in ratione
finientis vel teminantis, id est in ratione principii, medii et finis seu termini. Pater in ratione originantis
prinicipii; Filius in ratione exemplantis medii; Spiritus sanctus in ratione teminantis complementi. Haec tres
personae sunt aequales et aeque nobiles; quia aequae nobilitas est Spiritui sancto divinas personas terminare,
sicut Patri originare, vel Filio omnia representare”. Hex., 1, 12 (V, 331a–b). Cf. “Et omnis creatura
repraesentat Deum, qui est Trinitas, et qualiter pervenitur ad eum”. Hex., 13, 11 (V, 389b).
793
“et sic cum creatura fiat ad expressionem unitatis essentiae in trinitate personarum, potest dici imago de
tota Trinitate”. I Sent., d. 31, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (I, 540b); “[Effectus causanti] non probat quacumquae
diversitatem in creaturis, sed diversitatem cum ordine et connexione et inclinatione ad unitatem, et ita
diversitatem in unitate”. Myst. Trin., 2, 1 ad 10 (V, 63a). In q. 8 of Myst. Trin., Bonaventure asserts that
processions within the Trinity are the preconditions for the procession of creation from the Trinity. See Myst.
Trin., 8 (V, 112–115).
794
II Sent., d.16, dub. I (II, 406a–b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, 2008, viewed 25 July 2010.
795
“Et quoniam creatura habere non potest Deum sicut principium, quin configuretur ei secundum unitatem
veritatem et bonitatem”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a). BB, p. 75.
796
“[creatura habere non potest Deum] sicut obiectum, quin eum capiat per memoriam, intelligentiam et
voluntatem“. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a–b). BB, p. 75
797
“[creatura habere non potest Deum] sicut donum infusum, quin configuretur ei per fidem, spem et
caritatem, seu triplicem dotem”. Brev., 2, 12. (V, 230b). BB, pp. 75–76.

157
 According to Titus Szabó, the three divine Persons are known merely as shadowed
in the Essence or in the essential appropriated attributes, “from afar, obscurely and
enigmatically”:

The divine Persons are not the Exemplar of things by reason

of their mutual relations, or by reason of the real distinction
among themselves — which distinguishes them clearly from
one another; but the Persons are the Exemplar of things only
insofar as they are referred to the divine Essence and the
essential attributes, which are common to the Three divine
Persons and in which they are One.798

It seems to me that Szabó places emphasis on the commonality, oneness or Essence

of the divine Persons at the expense of the distinctions and relationality of the Trinity.
However, we cannot speak of the Essence or unity of the persons of the Trinity without at
the same time speaking of them as distinct persons, as Hellmann makes clear:

The relationship of Creator to creature, from God to the

creature, is as one principle (unum principium), but the unum
principium of the divine essence always remains “God the
Father through the Son and with the Holy Spirit” (Deus
Pater per Filium cum Spiritu sancto). The primum
principium does not lose its intrinsic order, and so each
divine person retains its own personal identity even in
relation to the created person precisely because that identity
is one determined by the divine order.799

Thus every creature is not formed in imitation of one of the divine Persons without at one
and the same time inseparably reflecting the other Two. This principle is absolutely
universal and governs both the natural and the supernatural order, for it is rooted in the
loving relations that are in the Trinity:

The coexistence of unity and plurality in creatures darkly

foreshadows that pre-eminent realization of unity and
multiplicity in God. [This unity] must…be understood as a
unity of love which is more perfect than a mere unity of
nature. But love, of its very nature, must involve a
plurality.800

798
Titus Szabó, De SS. Trinitate in creaturis refulgente: Doctrina S. Bonaventurae (Rome, 1955), MA thesis,
trans., Alvin Black: The Doctrine of the Image and Similitude in St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 1962), p. 19.
799
Hellmann, Order, p. 57. Hellmann refers to Myst. Trin., q. 8, ad 7 (V, 115b) on this point.
800
Introduction, WSB, III, p. 84. Cf. “Et quoniam cognoscens est unum, et cognita sunt multa; ideo omnes
ideae in Deo sunt unum secundum rem, sed tamen plures secundum rationem intelligendi sive dicendi. Unde
concedendum est, omnes rationes in Deo esse unum quid, sed non unam ideam sive rationem, sed plures. I
Sent., d. 35, a. un., q. 3 concl. (I, 608a–b).

158
4. 7. 2. Christocentrism and creation

All of creation leads man to love and praise his Maker. Hence, Bonaventure can
say that Christ — the Divine Exemplar for “totius machinae mundialis”801 — “holds the
center in all things”.802 In Him, as in a mirror

all things produced shine forth in their exemplarity, from the

beginning of the creation of the world until the end to bring
about the perfection of the universe both spiritually and
materially.803

Indeed, the summation of Bonaventure’s exemplarism is the cosmic Christ or Christ as

cosmic Lamb: “The Lamb in the midst of waters is the Son of God, the Son I mean who is
the central Person, and from whom all happiness comes forth”.804

Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the efficient, formal, and final cause of all that
exists; “both the point of origin for the entirety of creation and the final point of cosmic
resolution”.805 The whole of creation, which flows from the inner life of the Trinity, “is
achieved, expressed, and fulfilled in the figure of Christ”, so that “Christ recapitulates in
himself the entire reality of the world, and even its history”.806

[W]e come to the conclusion that the highest and noblest

perfection can exist in this world only if a nature in which
there are the seminal causes, and a nature in which there are
the intellectual causes, and a nature in which there are the
ideal causes are simultaneously combined in the unity of one
person, as was done in the Incarnation of the Son of God.807

The human and cosmic Christ “is the ‘supreme Hierarch’” 808 “in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, but also in the angelic hierarchy, and is the middle person of that supercelestial
hierarchy of the Blessed Trinity”.809 Moreover, as a supreme Hierarch of the Church, He

801
Apol. paup., 2, 12 (VIII, 242b).
802
Hex., 1, 10 (V, 330b). TWB, V, p. 5.
803
Apol. paup., 2, 12 (VIII, 242b). WSB, XV, p. 61–62.
804
Hex., 1, 38 (V, 335b). TWB, V, p. 19.
805
Sean Edward Kinsella, “Christ as the Center and Heart of All Knowledge”, GR 12 (1998) pp. 77–97, p.
79.
806
Leonard J. Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure”, JR 55.2 (Apr., 1975), pp. 181–198, p.
190, 188.
807
Red. art., 20 (V, 324b). WSB, I-EH, pp. 37, 39.
808
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), p. 117.
809
Brev., prol. 3 (V, 205a). WSB, IX, p. 12. Cf. “Filius, dico, qui est media persona, a qua omnis beatitudo”.
Hex., 1, 38 (V, 335b).

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stands in its midst as its heart810 and only when his heart becomes the heart of all members
of his mystical body — redeemed mankind — will his mission be accomplished.811

According to Bonaventure, Christ “fulfils” his mediating function as the supreme

Exemplar in three ways or states: first, as the uncreated Word (Verbum increatum), second
as the incarnate Word (Verbum incarnatum) and third as inspired Word (Verbum
inspiratum).

[T]he only-begotten Son of God, as the Uncreated Word, is

the Book of Wisdom and the Light, replete with the eternal
principles alive in the highest Maker’s mind; as the Inspired
Word, He dwells in the minds of the angels and the blessed;
as the Incarnate Word, He dwells in spiritual minds which
are still united with flesh. Thus, throughout the kingdom, the
manifold wisdom of God shines forth from Him and in
Him…yet all this in a single Word!812

These three terms describe the unity and the interrelatedness in the eternal mystery of the
Son as eternal Word. “This is one of the powerful synthetic formulae of Bonaventure
which expresses his conviction that all things in the order of creation, knowledge, and
salvation are to be referred to Christ”. 813 The key to contemplation is found in the mystery
of Christ as the threefold Word:

The key to contemplation is a threefold understanding: of the

Uncreated Word by whom all things are brought forth; of the
Incarnate Word by whom all things are restored; and of the
Inspired Word, by whom all things are revealed. For no one
can have understanding unless he considers where things
come from, how they are led back to their end, and how God
shines forth in them.814

810
“Unde sicut in corpore humano non est diffusio a capite in membra, nisio sibi unita; sic in corpore
mystico. Ipse est ergo medium duoroum animalium ut cor”. Hex., 1, 20 (V, 332b); “Hinc est, quod propter
generalem influentiam magis dicitur Christus caput, quam dicatur cor”. III Sent., d. 13, a. 2, q. 3 concl. (III,
290a).
811
“Sicut enim cor, quod est medium vivifici caloris in sensibus…sic Christus crucifixus in medio latronum,
qui est lignum vitae planatatum a Deo in medio paradisi, id est Ecclesiae militantis, mediantibus Sacramentis
influit vitam gratiae in cetera membra corporis mystici”. Dom. III Adventus, Sermo 1 (IX, 57b–58a). Cf.
“Bene ergo mihi; ecce, ego cum Jesu cor unum habeo et quid mirum: cum etiam multitudinis credentium cor
fuerit unum”. Vit. myst., 3, 4 (VIII, 164a).
812
Lign. vitae, 46 (VIII, 84b–85a). TWB, I, pp. 141–142. See also Hex., 3, 22, 32 (V, 347a, 348b). A very
beautiful description of how the Son of God supports the universe as Verbum increatum, repairs humanity as
Verbum incarnatum, and as Verbum inspiratum sustains the intellectualia is found in Sermo 3 post Pascha
(IX, 301a–b). Cf. Jay M. Hammond, “Contemplation and the Formation of the Vir Spiritualis in
Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaemeron” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden, Brill,
2007), pp. 123–165, pp. 152–164.
813
Hayes, Center, p. 205. Hayes continues on the same page “The synthetic power of the formula rests in the
fact that it is one and the same Word in each instance, while the particular qualification expresses diverse
dimensions of His presence and activity”.
814
Hex., 3, 2 (V, 343a). TWB, V, p. 42. For other references to the three states of the Verbum, see, e.g., Hex.,
9.1–8; Itin., 4. 3; Brev. 4.1; and Lign. vitae, 12.

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 In the fourth book of the Sentences, the Seraphic Doctor explained that the
exemplary cause is double in the sense that the whole Trinity and everything is known and
disposed in the divine nature of the Son of God. At the same time, everything has its
beginning and exemplar in Christ.815 In his discussion of Christ as Exemplar, Bonaventure
also uses the terms Verbum incarnatum and Verbum increatum to explain a twofold
principle of exemplarity:

Since Christ is the Word both uncreated and incarnate, in

Him is found a twofold principle of exemplarity, the one
eternal and the other temporal.

…[As exemplar] “He is the brightness of the Father’s glory

and the image of His substance, and also the ‘refulgence of
eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God’”….“In
this mirror all things shine forth in their exemplarity, and
they are produced in their spirit and in their matter from the
beginning of the creation of the world until its end, for the
perfecting of the entire universe”.816

To say that the created image is ordered to the Son does not contradict Bonaventure’s
assertions that the created image is ordered to the Trinity.817 However, it is no
exaggeration to say that the centrality of the image of Christ the divine Word is a
prominent and defining characteristic of Bonaventure’s philosophy, theology and
mysticism.818 Moreover, because the Word as such is related to the Father as well as to the
Spirit and to creation and to human history, “an understanding of this relationship is the
key to a proper understanding of the world”.819

Zachary Hayes calls the Seraphic Doctor unique “in the history of Western thought”
because of his grasp of “the profound unity between the created world and Christ”.
815
“Similiter causa exemplaris duplex est: una in qua res cognoscitur et disponitur, et sic est Dei Filius
secundum divinam naturam et tota Trinitas, alio modo, in qua res inchoatur et exemplificatur”. IV Sent., d. 43
a. 1 q. 6 (IV, 895a).
816
Apol. paup., II, 12 (VIII, 242b). Hayes, Center, pp. 131–132. In speaking of the two-fold principle in
Christ, we cannot conclude with Nguyen that “[t]here is a twofold Word in God: the Word from all eternity
and the Word created in time”. Ambroise Nguyen Van Si, “The Theology of the Imitation of Christ
According to St. Bonaventure”, trans., Edward Hagman in GR 11, Supplement (1997), pp. 1–181, p. 50.
817
“A tribus datur testimonium [a Patrem, Verbum et Spiritum], sed exprimitur per Verbum, quia Verbum et
Patrem et seipsum et Spiritum sanctum exprimit et omnia alia”. Hex., 9, 2 (V, 327b–328a).
818
“Already early in his career Bonaventure had had the conviction that the person of Christ lay at the center
of reality”. Zachary Hayes, “Christology and Metaphysics in the Thought of Bonaventure” in Celebrating the
Medieval Heritage: A Colloquy on the Thought of Thomas and Bonaventure, ed. David Tracy, JR 58,
Supplement (1978), S82–S96, S88. Cf. “Bonaventure’s [T]rinitarian thought views the Son precisely as the
middle person of the [T]rinity. It is in and through that center that God reaches to the world as creator, as
redeemer, and as consummator. Thus the Word lies at the center of created reality and of entire order of grace
and glory. The whole reality is stamped with that fundamental relational quality which is the mystery of the
Son” (italics mine). Hayes, Center, pp. 192–193. See also Alexander Gerken, Theologie des Wortes: Das
Verhältnis von Schöpfung und Inkarnation bei Bonaventura (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1963).
819
David Carpenter, Revelation, History, and the Dialogue of Religions: A Study of Bhartrhari and
Bonaventure (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), p. 99.

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According to Hayes, for Bonaventure, “the whole of the world and its history constitutes a
magnificent Christophany”.820 Both the metaphysical and historical structures of the world
reflect “the life-process of the eternal archetype”. History “is related to the [T]rinity…in
terms of the three times (tempus legis naturae; legis scriptae; legis gratiae) and the seven
ages” with the number three relating to the Trinity and the seven ages echoing the creation
account in Genesis.821 “Bonaventure raises the Christ-centered spirituality of Francis to a
more conscious and articulate level”, and as he articulated his Christocentric Franciscan
spirituality, Bonaventure’s theology led him “ever more strongly” to think of Christ “as the
center of unity of the entire theological project”.822

In his writings, Bonaventure uses a number of names to refer to Christ. He is called

“Son” because He is generated; He is referred to as “Image” when referring to the mode of
His emanation; and He is called “Wisdom” in His relation to understanding. All of this is
expressed in the term “Word”, which goes further, because it includes the fact that He is
ratio exprimendi et exemplandi.823 “Word” can refer to the relation of the word to the
speaker or content that the word expresses, or the knowledge that a second party grasps
through the medium of the word. Thus “its reality as expression lies precisely in its
expressiveness”.824 Hence “Word” expresses the relation of the second Person of the
Trinity to creation, to His own human nature and to the process of revelation. By the name
“Word,” “he is described ‘nobilissime et decentissime’”.825 Bonaventure explains this very
clearly in his Commentary on the Gospel of John:

It has be said that the word Son only expresses a relationship

with the Father while the term Word refers to relationships to
the speaker, to what is being said by the word, to the voice
that embodies the word, and to the teaching that is learned by
another through the medium of the word. And since the Son
820
Hayes, Window to the Divine, p. 25. On the same page, Hayes notes that “Forms of this Christocentric,
historically-oriented theology of creation were to become characteristic of Eastern patristic theology”.
821
Zachary Hayes, “The Doctrine of the Spirit in the Early Writings of St. Bonaventure”, in Steven Chase,
ed., Doors of Understanding: Conversations in Global Spirituality in Honor of Ewert Cousins (Quincy, IL:
Franciscan Press, 1997), pp. 179–198, p. 189. Cf. “The full compass of time, running according to a triple
law — innately given, externally imposed, and infused from above — rightly passes through seven ages,
reaching its consummation at the end of the sixth”. Brev. prol., 2, 2 (V, 204b). WSB, IX, p. 9. It is useful to
note that for the Seraphic Doctor, time as such is also “aeternitatis vestigium”. Myst. Trin., 5, 1 concl. (V,
90a). See Vincenzo Cherubino Bigi “La dottrina della temporalità e del tempo in San Bonaventura”, Ant 39
(1964), pp. 437–489, and Ant 40 (1964), pp. 96–151.
822
Zachary Hayes, “Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: A Paradigm for Franciscan Theologians?” in Elise Saggau
(ed.), The Franciscan Intellectual Tradition: Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2001 (St.
Bonaventure NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2002), p. 52.
823
“Rursus, quia summe unum et primum tenet rationem principiandi et originandi; summe pulcrum et
speciosum tenet rationem exprimendi et exemplandi; summe proficuum et bonum tenet rationem finiendi,
quia ‘bonum et finis idem’: hinc oritur tertia ratio appropriandi efficientiam Patri, exemplaritatem Filio,
finalitatem Spiritui sancto”. Brev., 1, 6 (V, 215a).
824
Carpenter, Dialogue of Religions, p. 97.
825
WMM, p. 77, n. 4.

162
 of God had to be described in these sentences not only in
relationship to the Father, from whom he proceeds, but also
to creatures, which he made, and to the flesh which he took
on, and to the teaching that he communicated, he had to be
described in a most excellent and fitting manner with the
term Word. For that term relates to all these matters, and a
more appropriate term could not be found in the world.826

In this sense Christ-Word as the expression of the Father is also the medium of divine
wisdom and power’s expression beyond the Trinity:

The Word, which is the imitative likeness of the Father and

the exemplative and operative likeness of things, thus holds,
as it were, the central position and the Father is said to work
through the Word.827

To put it another way, in the Son, who is the true imago Patris, are expressed all
three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, “for the Word expresses the Father,
and Itself and the Spirit, and all other things besides”.828

We can find a short explication of this position in Bonaventure’s Collationes on the

Hexaemeron829 (both his “last will and testament” 830
and “umfassendsten Entwurf einer
Summa in ganzen Mittelaltern”831). In this “bedeutendste Geschichts — und Gemeischafts
philosophie des Mittelalters”832 or “protreptic discourse”,833 the Seraphic Doctor articulated
826
Comm. Ioan., 1, 1 (VI, 247b). WSB, XI, p. 62. I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, a. un, q. 3 (I, 487–88). See also
Alexander Gerken, “Der Johanneische Ansatz in der Christologie des hl. Bonaventura”, WW 27 (1964), pp.
89–99.
827
I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, art. un. q. 2 concl. (I, 485b). Translation taken from McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism,
p. 90. Cf. “Pater Verbo suo, quod ab ipso procedit dicit se et omnia, quia Verbo suo seipsu declarat”. I Sent.,
d. 32, a. 1, q. 1, f. 5 (I, 557a); I Sent., d. 36, dub. 4 (I, 632b). “A tribus datur testimonium, sed exprimitur per
Verbum quia Verbum et Patrem es seipsum et Spiritum Sanctum exprimit et omnia alia”. Hex., 9, 2 (V,
372b–373a); “Sicut Pater intelligendo se intelligit quidquid potest intelligere, sic dicendo Verbum dicit
quidquid potest dicere et quidquid dici potest in deitate. Unde nec ipse aliud verbum dicere potest nec aliqua
persona in Trinitate, pro eo quod illo dicitur quidquid dici potest”. Myst. Trin., q. 4, a. 2, ad 8 (V, 87a).
828
Hex., 9, 12 (V, 372b–373a). TWB, V, p. 133. Cf. “Thus the created image is both image of the three
persons and image of the Son. These two images (of the Trinity and the Son) are one and the same because
the Son expresses the complete divine reality”. Hellmann, Order, p. 117.
829
“In the early thirteenth century, the term collatio referred to an afternoon sermon. Though collationes
began to take the form of an academic lecture, the Collationes on the Six Days hold an intermediate position
between academic lecture and sermons. As was customary for this type of work, we have only the notes of
the listeners”. C. Colt Anderson, A Call to Piety: St. Bonaventure’s Collations on the Six Days (Quincy, IL:
Franciscan Press Quincy Univ., 2002), p. vi. “[W]hen a non-regent master delivered the sermons, as is the
case with Bonaventure, the collatio resembles a conference rather than an official university act of the studia
generalia. Thus, these conferences took the form of a series of sermons on a designated topic of great
theological import”. Hammond, “Vir Spiritualis”, p. 123, footnote 3.
830
McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, p. 88.
831
A. Dempf, Metaphysic des Mittelalter (München-Berlin 1920), p. 119, as quoted in Ratzinger, Theology of
History, p. 4.
832
A. Dempf, Sacrum Imperium (Darmstadt, 1954) p. 292, as quoted in Ratzinger, Theology of History, p. 4.
833
“The Collationes in Hexaëmeron are best understood as sermons adapted to the mode of protreptic.
Protreptic is a mode of discourse that aims to exhort readers to pursue a particular form of life and provides
exemplary instances for the practice of that form, even in the exhortation…. The Collationes in Hexaëmeron
not only exhort their audience to seek wisdom above all things; more than this, they initiate the audience into
an exemplary theological discourse, an intellectual itinerary ordered by Scripture toward humanity’s proper

163
why the Word is the metaphysical centre of the universe and of his philosophical and
theological writings:

The Word expresses the Father and the things made through
him, and he is foremost in leading us to the unity of the
Father who brings all things together. For this reason he is
the Tree of Life, because through this center (medium) we
return and are given life in the fountain of life.... This is the
metaphysical center that leads back and this is the sum total
of our metaphysics: concerning emanation, exemplarity and
consummation, that is, being illuminated by spiritual rays
and being drawn back to the Highest Source.834

We are led back to “the unity of the Father who brings all things together” through the
reductio, which is “both speculative and practical”:

It is speculative because it retraces all knowledge to God; it

is practical because it simultaneously leads the wayfarer to
union with God. Within this tremendous movement, all of
creation is included in the divine mystery of Christ’s
reductio to the Father.835

When the mind speculates on God’s order in created reality, more and more it grasps “the
relationship of all reality to God”. By a process of ascent, “the reductio leads from the
inferior through the intermediate to the superior”.836

“God does not grant to the creature the whole beauty of exemplarity” — it belongs
only to the Son.837 However, it seems that in the thought of the Seraphic Doctor, every
creature is, in the final analysis, considered to be a “verbum” as such:838 “[a] divine word is
every creature because each creature speaks of God. This word the eye sees”. 839 But only
man, bearing in himself the “stamp of Sonship”, is “called into being so as to enter into the
mystery of the Son and thus into the proper relation to the Father and the Spirit”.840
ultimate end, repose in the living God”. Hughes, “Fractured Sermons”, p. 108, 115.
834
Hex., 1, 17 (V, 332a–b). Translation from McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, p. 88. Cf. “Verbum autem
non est aliud quam similitudo expressa et expressiva”. I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, a. un, q. 3 (I, 488a). For how the
central position of Christ can be connected with the seven disciplines of science, see the table in Hughes,
“Fractured Sermons”, pp. 119–127.
835
Jay M. Hammond, “Order in the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum”, Appendix to Hellmann, Order, p. 213.
836
Appendix to Hellmann, Order, pp. 212–213.
837
“quia Deus non dat totum decorem exemplaritatis creaturae”. Hex., 11, 11 (V, 381b), my translation.
838
Cf. “Ebbene, secondo Bonaventura ogni creatura è in ultima analisi ‘verbum’ o parola, sicche più che in
un mondo do cose viviamo in un modo di parole o in mondo di cose in ultima analisi son parole. Pare che si
debba dire con l’Ecclesiaste che ‘ogni creatura è una parola divina’ (In Ecc. I, q. 2)”. Orlando Todisco,
“Verbum divinum omnis creatura: La filosofia del linguaggio di S. Bonaventura”, MF 93 (1993), pp. 149–
198, p. 178.
839
Comm. Eccl., 1 (VI, 16b). WSB, VII, p. 115. Ilia Delio has coined her own expression for this concept of
each creature being a verbum: “[b]ecause the world expresses the Word through whom all things are made
(John 1), every creature is itself a ‘little word’”. Delio, Franciscan View of Creation, p. 29.
840
Commentary on “Sermon II on the Nativity of the Lord”, in WMM, p. 79, n. 11. Cf. Hayes, “Doctrine of
the Spirit”, p. 192.

164
 Hayes speaks of how the Word reveals Himself in His very Incarnation, as well as
His words and deeds:

There is an inner relation and correspondence between the

various forms in which one and the same Word of the Father
comes to us and reveals Himself to us. Christ is the Revealer
not in the sense of one who comes to teach doctrine
extrinsically or accidentally related to Himself; but in the
sense of one who, precisely in the mode of His human
existence, externalizes the eternal mystery of Sonship. This
externalization takes more explicit form in His words and
signs, which in turn lead the believer into the eternal mystery
of Sonship, and thus to the mystery of the Father.841

As Bonaventure teaches, Christ is the “center of the metaphysical order”. “As all things
are brought forth through the Word eternally uttered, so through the Word made flesh all
things are restored, impelled, and achieved”; 842 “though the Word is one, all things are said
to have been made through him, and shine forth in him”. 843 All the realms of history and
being are brought into a harmonious unity through the medium or centre that is Christ, who
is “tenens medium in omnibus”.844 This harmony was accomplished through the union of
Christ’s divine and human natures, through His willing sacrifice on the Cross by which He
broke down the wall of discord that stood between creature and Creator and established
peace and harmony:

The Son of God, assuming human nature in the unity of his

person, made both, that is divinity and humanity, one, by
taking on the voluntary torment of the cross and death
without obligation, so that free from all sin, he voided the
divine decree that closed the door of paradise; breaking
down the intervening wall of hostility and discord, which
was between us and God; as so Christ, as the true mediator,
in coming he preached peace, and established harmony
between us and God through himself and not through
another, as that would not be fitting.845

841
Commentary on “Sermon II on the Nativity of the Lord”, WMM, p. 77, n. 4. Cf. “Lux in tenebris lucet.
Lux ista...lucet exterius secundum operationes humanae nature; item lucet interius secundum operationes
divinae naturae”. Coll. In., 3 (VI, 536a).
842
Lign. vitae, 48 (VIII, 85b). TWB, I, p. 143.
843
Brev. prol., 4 (V, 205b). WSB, IX, p. 14. “in Christo est thesaurus omnis essentiae. Omnia enim, quae sunt,
quae fuerunt, quae erunt, vel quae fieri possunt, ab ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt. Cogita ergo, qualis est
thesaurus iste, de quo caelum terra, mare et omnia quae in eis sunt, prodierunt”. Corp. Chr., 3, 31 (V, 563a).
Bonaventure’s logic is echoed in the words of the Catechism of Catholic Church: “Christ is Lord of the
cosmos and of history. In him human history and indeed all creation are ‘set forth’ and transcendently
fulfilled”. CCC 668.
844
Hex., 1, 10 (V, 330b).
845
WSB, XII, p. 62. According to the translator’s note on p. 59, this text is based on edition of Sancti
Bonaventure Sermones Domincales, ed. J.G. Bougerol, Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi 27
(Grottafferata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1977). In fact, the text is identical to Quaracchi edition. See Sermo
II, Dominica Prima Adventus, (IX, 27b).

165
From eternity, Christ stands at the centre of divine life, and He stands at the centre of all
reality by virtue of the Incarnation. “In Him are brought together the extremes of material
reality and finite spirit; but also the extremes of finite spirit and Absolute Spirit”.846

In this context it is pertinent to mention that when speaking of the Word as

“medium” Bonaventure is not necessarily referring to him as Mediator847 as understood in
the satisfaction theory of Anselm. These conceptions are very close one to another, but not
the same. To be Mediator is to be in the position of “medium”: “Non enim est idem dicere
esse mediatorem et esse medium; verumtamen mediator esse non potest, nisi esset
medius”.848 As Justo L. Gonzalez puts it, “The term ‘middle’ refers to a communication of
two extremes, whereas ‘mediator’ refers to the work of reconciliation”. 849 Bonaventure
explained this simply and concisely in his first sermon on the third Sunday of Advent:

It was appropriate, certainly, that he who held the middle of

the throne, would hold the office of medium, and he who
was the medium in way of creation, would be the medium in
the way of recreation. Consequently, the world might be
restored through the Word through whom it was made.
Christ is the appropriate medium, first of all, in the
miraculous way he draws together in the incarnation; second,
in the regular discipline of conduct; third, in the powerful
influence of the passion.850

As Hayes puts it succinctly: “From whatever aspect Bonaventure approaches the Trinity,
the Son is the center person. He is also a central position in the works of God ad extra”.851
846
Zachary Hayes, “Incarnation and Creation in the Theology of St. Bonaventure”, in Studies Honoring
Ignatius Charles Brady, Friar Minor, eds. Romano Stephan Almago and Conrad L. Harkins (St. Bonaventure
NY: Franciscan Institute, 1976), pp. 309–329, pp. 328–29.
847
“Solus igitur, qui fuit principium creativum, est et principium recreativum, Verbum scilicet Patris
aeternum, quod est Christus Iesus, mediator Dei et hominum, quod quia omnia de nihilo creat, ideo creat se
ipso solo sine aliquo intermedio”. Brev., 5, 3 (V, 255a). See also Hex., 1, 10ff. (V, 330b–335); Serm. dom.,
III Adventus, Sermo 2 (IX, 59b–67a).
848
III Sent., d. 19, a. 2, q. 2 concl., ad 1 (III, 411a). Cf. “Est notatandum quod differt dicere esse medium et
esse mediatorem. Medium namque dicit communicatiam cum extremis. Mediator autem non tantum dicit
communicatiam, sed etiam dicit officium reconciliationis”. III Sent., d. 19, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (III, 410b);
“Mediatoris namque est esse medium inter hominem et Deum ad reducendum hominem ad divinam
cognitionem, ad divinam conformitatem et ad divinam filiationem. Nullum autem magis decet esse medium
quam personam, quae producit et producitur, quae est media trium personarum”. Brev., 4, 2 (V, 243a). Cf.
“Zwischen zwei Naturen ist das ‘medium’ entweder eine Natur oder eine Person oder einne beiden Naturen
entschprechende Eigenschaft. Aus dem Begriffe des medium wird der des ‘Mittlers’ (‘mediator’) entwickelt.
Mediator kann nur sein, wer medium ist”. Romano Guardini, Die Lehre des heil: Bonaventura von der
Elösung: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zium System der Erlösungslehre (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1921),
p. 48. See also Rufin Silic, Christus und die Kirche: Ihr Verhältnis nach der Lehre des hl. Bonaventura
(Breslau, 1938), pp. 75–89. Contrary to what Savino asserts, to be “medium” is not to indicate that Christ “is
in the middle between God and man”. Cf. Savino, Contemplative River, p. 73. Cf. also, “Mediatoris namque
est esse medium inter hominem et Deum ad reducendum hominem ad divinam cognitionem, ad divinam
conformitatem et ad divinam filiationem”. Brev., 4, 2 (V, 243a).
849
Justo L. Gonzalez, “The Work of Christ in Saint Bonaventure’s Systematic Work”, in SB, IV, pp. 371–
385, p. 384.
850
Serm. dom., III Adventus, Sermo 1 (IX, 57a–b). WSB, XII, p. 92.
851
Commentary to “Sermon II on the Third Sunday of Advent” in WMM, p. 117, n. 10.

166
 In his “Sermon on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost”, Bonaventure taught that
“[f]or God to descend does not mean the degradation of the divine similitude, but the
exaltation of human nature”. In His Incarnation, God “joined human nature to himself and
raised it up above” the angels.852 The Incarnation is how “humanity reaches fullest
participation in the divine archetype and thus the deepest fulfillment of its potential”. 853 In
Zachary Hayes’s interpretation of Bonaventure’s soteriology, Christ’s life story “reflects
the movement of the creature under the direction of the eternal archetype”, which makes
Christ’s life “the normative pattern for human life as such”. In His suffering and death
“Jesus is the exemplar of the necessity to die to sin in all its forms”, while the Resurrection
of Christ “is the exemplar of glory in which the world in humanity will be brought to its
completion”.854

Bonaventure’s theology is uniquely focused on the mystery of the Cross. The Cross
of Christ is the central theme of Lignum vitae855 and it figures significantly in other
Bonaventurian writings.856 So important is this theme to Bonaventure’s theology and
spirituality that he says of himself “ego servus crucis”, 857 and for that reason, we may also
appropriately refer to him as the “Servant of the Cross”.

Balthasar has correctly stated that Bonaventure’s theology “starts from the central
image of the cross and returns there”. 858 Christ on the Cross is “the universal center of
meaning”;859 “the means…[and] the meaning”, “the Word and eternal Exemplar, the
metaphysical and cosmic Center”.860 Christ’s death on the Cross brought about a
reconciliation that “is not only moral, but cosmic as well”. 861 In speaking about the
Verbum Crucifixum,862 the Servant of the Cross does not go beyond traditional theology,
852
“Sermon 47: Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost”, WSB, XII, p. 502.
853
Zachary Hayes, “Bonaventure: Mystery of the Triune God”, in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed.
Kenan B. Osborne (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994), pp. 39–125, p. 86.
854
Hayes, “Mystery”, pp. 96.
855
Cf. Lign. vitae, prol. 1 (VIII, 68a). “The true worshiper of God, the true disciple of Christ, wanting to
conform perfectly to the Saviour of all who was crucified for his sake, should try in the first place, with
earnest intent, always to carry about, in soul and in body, the cross of Jesus Christ”. TWB, I, p. 97.
856
Cf. Reg. Anim. 7 (VIII, 130a) “You should desire more vehemently conformity to the divinity by expressly
imitating Christ crucified”. WSB, X, p. 206. Cf. also Perf. vitae 6, 1 (VIII, 120a); Tripl. via, 3, 3 (VIII, 13a).
857
Dom. XIII p. Pent., Sermo 1 (IX, 404a)
858
Balthasar, Glory, p. 360.
859
Hayes, “Mystery ”, p. 86.
860
Turner, Darkness of God, p. 117.
861
Hayes, “Mystery ”, p. 96.
862
For a detailed analysis of aspects of Bonaventure’s theology on the Verbum Crucifixum as it is presented
in his various writings, see Noel Muscat, The Life of Saint Francis in the Light of Saint Bonaventure’s
Theology on the “Verbum Crucifixum” (Rome: Editrice Antonianum, 1989). According to Muscat,
Bonaventure speaks about the Verbum Crucifixum “particularly in two of his last works, namely, Collationes
de Donis Spiritus Sancti and the Collationes in Hexaemeron. However, it is clear that he had it at the back of
his mind much earlier. Most probably, it was the experience of Francis himself which played a major role in
Bonaventure’s elaboration of the notion of Verbum Crucifixum, seen as an integral part of his theology of the
Verbum Incarnatum”. Ibid., p. 26.

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“nevertheless in a unique way he stresses the mystery of the Cross” which in his teaching
is “the epicentre of theology even in the questions of the creation of the world and
man…:”863

[B]y His cross, Christ has definitively solved the geometry

problem of world history. With His cross He has uncovered
the lost center of the circle of the world so as to give the true
direction and meaning to the movement of the individual life
and to the history of mankind as such.864

Only in the mystery of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection does the mystery of the Universe
receive its fullness and sense. Bonaventure explains this in The Threefold Way by
outlining how the seven seals of the book in Revelation have been opened and the seven
hidden things have been revealed through Christ’s passion on the Cross. In the revelation
of these seven hidden truths, all things stand revealed:

Because, from the fact that the Lamb has suffered, the seven
seals of the book have been opened, according to Revelation.
This book contains a comprehensive knowledge of all things.
In it, the knowledge of seven things was hidden from
humankind, but [it has been] opened up by the efficacy of
Christ’s passion…. First of all, God — through the cross —
is seen to be the highest and inscrutable wisdom, of the
highest and irreprehensible justice, and of the highest and
unspeakable mercy…. Second, an intelligent spirit was
revealed through the cross according to a threefold
distinction; namely, God’s great generosity regarding the
angels, great dignity regarding humankind, and great
vengeance regarding the demons.... Third, the sensible
world was made manifest through the cross because it is the
place in which blindness prevails…. Fourth, through the
cross it was made clear that paradise is desirable…. Fifth, it
became obvious through the cross that hell is a terrible
place…. Sixth, it became obvious through the cross that
virtue is laudable and how it is precious, beautiful, and
fruitful…. Seventh, it became clear through the cross that
evil is culpable and just how detestable it is, because to
redeem sin it demanded such a great price…. Thus, all
things are made known in the cross, since all things can be
included in this sevenfold division. From that follows that
the cross is the key, the gate, the path, and the very splendor
of truth.865
863
“Teologia Doktora Serafickiego jest wprawdzie tradycyjna, ale w nietradycyjny sposób podkreśla
tajemnicę krzyża. Upatruje w nim epicentrum teologii, nawet w problematyce stworzenia świata i
człowieka....” Maurycy Sulej, Świętego Bonawentury teologia krzyża [Saint Bonaventure’s Theology of the
Cross] (Niepokalanów, Poland: Wydawnictwo Ojców Franciszkanów, 1994), p. 44, translation mine. For
more on Christ as the centre, see Alexander Gerken, “Der Johanneische Ansatz in der Christologie des hl.
Bonaventura”, WW 27 (1964), pp. 84–100.
864
Ratzinger, Theology of History, p. 146.
865
Tripl. via, 3, 3–5 (VIII, 13a–14a). WSB, X, pp. 119, 120, 121, 122.

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 In De donis (where, according to Noel Muscat, the term Verbum Crucifixum first
appears866), Bonaventure speaks of Christ the Word using a different tripartite formula:
“grace descends on rational minds through the incarnate Word, the crucified Word and the
Inspired Word”.867 In this formulation we see again how the Servant of the Cross gives
centrality to the Verbum Crucifixum.

For Bonaventure, even “the sensible world was made manifest through the
cross…”868 and so he wrote in his ascetic and mystical Soliloquium, “Wherever I turn, I
always see you crucified for me”.869 Not only truth but grace comes through the crucified
Word: “Christ has died in order to restore the dead to life for the reception of life and
grace. Hence grace flows to us through the incarnate Word and the crucified Word”. 870
Furthermore, in the process of illumination, we only reach God through the crucified
Christ:

The figure of the six wings of the Seraph, therefore, is a

symbol of six stages of illumination which begin with
creatures and lead to God to whom no one has access
properly except through the Crucified.871

Like Saint Francis, who received the stigmata while in rapturous contemplation, the
person “who turns fully to face [the] Mercy Seat with faith, hope, and love, devotion,
admiration, joy, appreciation, praise and rejoicing, will behold Christ hanging on the
Cross”. For the Bonaventure, this vision of Christ on the Cross is intimately connected
with the Eucharistic sacrifice, for in this contemplation “a person celebrates the Pasch, that
is, the Passover, with Christ” and through the “rod of the Cross” is able to “pass over the
Red Sea, moving from Egypt into the desert, where the hidden manna will be tasted”.

This person may then rest with Christ in the tomb, as one
dead to the outer world, yet experiencing, in as far as
possible in this pilgrim state, what was said on the cross to

866
Noel Muscat, The Life of Saint Francis, p. 35.
867
De donis, 1, 5 (V, 458a). WSB, XIV, p. 30. Cf. II Sent., d. 16, a. 2, q. 3 arg. 4 (II, 404b). It is worth noting
that in Bonaventure’s writings the term “the inspired Word” is rarely used to describe of the third Person of
the Trinity. Cf. De donis, 1, 7 (V, 458b). Moreover, as Nguyen points out, “the expression Verbum
inspiratum as referring to the person of the Word, Christ,…seems to us typically Bonaventurian”. Nguyen,
“Imitation of Christ”, p. 142. He also points out that “The meaning of the term ‘inspired Word’, as well as the
relationship of human activity to the inspired Word — these are questions that need to be treated”. Nguyen,
“Imitation of Christ”, p. 125, n. 1.
868
Tripl. via, 3, 3 (VIII, 13b). WSB, X, p. 120.
869
Solil., 1, 34 (VIII, 40a). WSB, X, p. 258. Cf. “Ad quae omnia prosequenda super omnia credo valere
memoriam Crucifixi, ut dilectus tuus”. Reg. animae, 10 (VIII, 113b). WSB, X, p. 210. Cf. also, Perf. vitae, 6,
1 (VIII, 120a).
870
De donis, 1, 6 (V, 458b). WSB, XIV, p. 32.
871
Itin., prol. 3 (V, 295b). WSB, II-H, p. 37–38. Cf. “Igitur ad gemitum orationis per Christum crucifixum,
per cuius sanguinem purgamur a sordibus vitiorum”. Itin., prol. 4 (V, 296a).

169
 the thief who was hanging there with Christ: This day you
will be with me in Paradise.872

In contemplation of Christ on the Cross the mind may “pass over and transcend not
only the sensible world but the soul itself”.873 The soul who desires this “passing over”
totally into God must leave behind all else and embrace the Cross:

Let us die, then, and enter into this darkness. Let us

silence all our cares, desires and imaginings. Let us pass
over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father,
so that when the Father has been shown to us, we may say
with Philip: It is enough for us.874

Bonaventure sums up the Christocentrism of Creation in his Second Sermon on the

Nativity in which he explains how the Word “brings all reality to its consummation and
completion”:

Indeed God is simply the First. And the last among the
works of God is man. Therefore, when God became a
human being, the works of God were brought to
perfection…. The ability of human nature to be united in
unity of person with the divine — which is the most noble of
all the receptive potencies implanted in human nature — is
reduced to act, so that it would not be a mere empty potency.
And since it is reduced to act, the perfection of the entire
created order is realized, for in that one being the unity of all
reality is brought to consummation.875

In the Breviloquium and other writings, Bonaventure, like Francis, saw the
sacramental and “theophanic” presence of God in creation expressed at three levels:876

[T]he created world is like a book in which its Maker, the

Trinity, shines forth, is represented, and can be read at three
levels of expression: namely, as a vestige, as an image, and
as a similitude. The reality of the vestige is found in all
creatures; that of the image is found only in intellectual
beings or rational spirits; and that of the similitude is found
only in those creatures which have become conformed to
God.877

872
Itin., 7, 2 (V, 312b). WSB, II-H, p. 135. Cf. IV Sent, d. 8, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 concl. 4 (IV, 182b–183a); IV Sent.
d. 9, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (IV, 207b–208a–b).
873
Itin., 7, 1 (V, 312a). WSB, II-H, p. 133.
874
Itin., 7, 6 (V, 313b). WSB, II-H, p. 139.
875
Nativitate Domini, Sermo 2 (IX, 110a). WMM, p. 74.
876
On Bonaventure’s theory, see Szabó, Trinitate in creaturis refulgente; Alexander Schaefer, “Position and
Function”, FS 20, pp. 261–316, and FS 21 (1961), pp. 233–382. Bonaventure’s chief discussions of the
degrees of godlikeness (vestige, image, likeness) are as follows: in I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 4 (I, 73);
I Sent., d. 3, p. 2 (I, 80–93); II Sent., d. 16 (II, 393–397); Brev., 2, 9 and 12 (V, 226–27, 230); Myst. Trin., q.
1, a. 2, resp. (V, 54b–55a); Scien. Chr., q. 4, resp. (V, 24); Christus mag., 16–18 (V, 571–72); and Itin., cc.
1–4 (V, 296–308), passim.

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We turn now to a more detailed description of the representation of the Divine
Exemplar at different levels of created reality.

4. 8. Vestige

In order to understand Saint Bonaventure’s thought about the human soul and its
faculties, we must first of all investigate his teaching on the vestige of the creative Trinity
(also referred to as a “sculpture” 878); then consider the image of God in the soul, as an
object naturally known and loved; and finally the teaching of similitude, which is
constituted by the one sanctifying grace and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and
charity.879

According to Bonaventure’s doctrine — as we mentioned briefly above — the

prototype, “pattern” or “exemplar” according to which each created object is made, is God
Himself. Thus Bonaventure teaches that “every creature that proceeds from God is a
vestige. Every creature that knows God is an image. And every creature in whom God
dwells, and only such a creature, is a likeness” or similitude. 880 In his sermon Christus
unus omnium magister, Bonaventure explains these three levels of creatures’ conformity to
God:
We must note that in the creatures there are three levels of
conformity to God. Some things are conformed to God as
vestige, some as image, and some as similitude. A vestige is
related to God as to the creative principle. An image is
related to God not only as to principle but also as to its
motivating object, as Augustine writes in On the Trinity:
“The soul is an image of God in that it is capable of God and
of participation in the divine life”, namely, through
knowledge and love. The similitude is related to God not

877
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a). Cf. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2 (I, 71a–73b); I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1 ad 5 (I,
81a); II Sent., d. 16, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 404–406b); Hex., 2, 20–27 (V, 339b–340b). The three degrees of similarity
to the divine order correspond to three different grades of divine cooperation: “Creatura enim comparatur ad
Deum in ratione vestigii, imaginis et similitudinis. In quantum vestigium comparatur ad Deum ut ad
principium; in quantum imago, comparatur ad Deum ut ad obiectum; sed in quantum similitude, comparatur
ad Deum ut ad donum infusum…. Et secundum istum triplicem gradum comparationis triplex est gradus
divinae cooperationis”. Scien. Chr., q. 4, resp. (V, 24a). Cf. Thaddaeus Soiron, “Gott und Welt nach dem
heiligen Bonaventura”, Katholische Gedanke 2 (1929), pp. 111–24; E. Woo, “Theophanic Cosmic Order in
Bonaventure”, FS 32 (1972), pp. 306–330.
878
“[creatura] est vestigium Dei. Unde creatura non est nisi quoddam simulacrum sapientiae Dei et quoddam
sculptile”. Hex., 12, 14 (V, 386b).
879
According to Fornaro, Bonaventure takes the terminology of vestige, image and similitude from
Alexander of Hales and especially from John of La Rochelle’s Summa de Anima, chapter 28. See Italo
Fornaro, La Teologia dell’immagine nella Glossa d’Alessandro d’Hales (Vicenca: L.I.E.F, 1985), pp. 71–73.
880
“Et ideo omnis creatura est vestigium, quae est a Deo; omnis est imago, quae cognoscit Deum; omnis et
sola est similitudo, in qua habitat Deus”. Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V, 24a). WSB, IV, p. 135.

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 only as to principle and object, but also as to a gift infused
into it.881

Following from this, I cannot agree with Van der Walt who stated that when Bonaventure
accepted that the soul is the “image of God”, he went against the logic of Scripture, which
“does not tell us that the image of God is somewhere in man, but that the whole man is the
image of God”.882 The way Bonaventure speaks about the vestige or image of God
concerns only different degrees of representation of the presence of God through and in
creation. It is not reserved only for some specific and unique place or concrete created
being.

At this point it is important to stress that Bonaventure rejected the notion that the
image of God is a complete representation of God, while vestige is a partial one. God has
no parts, and therefore nothing can represent God partially. Also, God is infinite, so no
creature can possibly represent God completely. Thus both vestige and image are
representative of the whole of God, but they differ in their degree of closeness. A vestige
is a more distant representation of God than the image. However it is not contradictory to
say that God is both distant from and present in all creatures.883

Vestige is that first degree of likeness which is rooted in the fact that with “all
created things God cooperates as their principle and cause”. 884 However in its relationship
to God, the vestige stands at a long distance, 885 and therefore by comparison Bonaventure
could say that

[e]very creature is either a mere vestige of God — as is

corporeal nature — or an image of God, as is the intellectual
creature. Each of these gives witness to the Trinity.
However, that which is but a vestige does so, as it were, from
afar.886

881
Christus mag., 16 (V, 571b). BMGW, p. 161. In I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., concl. (I, 73a–b), Bonaventure
used slightly different terms: umbra, vestigium et imago.
882
B.J. Van Der Walt, “Tension-ridden bridge”, in SBM, II, p. 589.
883
“Ad praedictorum intelligentiam est notandum, quod Deus esse in rebus dupliciter potest intelligi: uno
modo, ut idem sit quod esse praesentem cuilibet rei, non connotando effectum; et sic uniformiter est in
omnibus rebus, eo quod intimus est cuilibet rei et summe praesens et totus in qualibet re. Alio modo potest
connotare effectum, sicut artifex dicitur in artificio esse per connotationem effectus et per impressionem suae
similitudinis”. I Sent., d. 37, p. 1, a. 3, q. 1, concl. (I, 647a).
884
“In illis ergo operationibus creaturae, quae sunt ipsius, in quantum est vestigium, sicut sunt universaliter
actiones naturales, cooperatur Deus sicut principium et causa”. Christus mag., n. 17 (V, 571b), paraphrase
mine. See also: Myst. Trin. q. 1, a. 2, resp. (V, 54b).
885
“sed illa quae assimilatur magis de longinquo, habet rationem vestigii; illa vero quae de proximo, habet
rationem imaginis; talis autem est creatura rationalis, utpote homo”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (II, 394b).
886
Myst. Trin., q. 1, a. 2, concl. (V, 54b). WSB, III, p. 128.

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 As a vestige, each material thing is characterized by unity, truth, and goodness;
measure, number, and weight; and mode, species, and order. 887 (A thing considered in
itself is called modus; when compared to other things it is called species; it is ordo when
compared in respect to its relation to the end.888) In the formation of creatures, vestige is
found in those attributes that hold the first place, namely, in power, wisdom and goodness,
which are most especially praised in the Scriptures. “The supreme power; wisdom and
benevolence of the Creator shines forth in created things….”889

We conclude that through the vestige of omnipotence,

wisdom and goodness, the Triune God testifies to himself in
a threefold way. And because these vestiges shine forth in
each and every creature — because no creature completely
lacks power, truth and goodness — therefore the triune God
manifests and testifies to his own threeness through the
universality of all that is created.890

The vestige is not an accident in a creature; 891 it is an essential or substantial

perfection because the essence itself or the substantial form of things is produced by divine
Causality. Thus we may define the vestige as a distinct and universal analogy of the
Trinity, an analogy manifested by the appropriated attributes and imprinted in the
substance of things.

It is useful here to explain that in the Hexaemeron, Bonaventure described the

threefold degree of relation between the Creator and creation in significantly different
words:

The work of God may be expressed in three ways: first in

terms of essence, concerning whatever a thing is, and in
whatever genus, be it substance or accident: second, in terms
887
“Primo modo aspectus contemplantis, res in se ipsis considerans, videt in eis pondus, numerum et
mensuram; pondus quoad situm, ubi inclinantur, numerum, quo distinguuntur, et mensuram, qua limitantur.
Ac per hoc videt in eis modum, speciem et ordinem, nec non substantiam, virtutem et operationem. Ex
quibus consurgere potest sicut ex vestigio ad intelligendum potentiam, sapientiam et bonitatem Creatoris
immensam”. Itin., 1, 11 (V, 298b).
888
Emma Jane Marie Spargo, The Category of the Aesthetic in the Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure (St.
Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1953), p. 50. Cf. “Quaelibet enim res tripliciter habet comparari,
videlicet in se et per comparatione ad alias res universi et in comparatione ad finem. Ut autem in se
consideratur, sic attenditur in ea modus; nam unaquaque res in se ipsa finita est et modificata. Ut autem
comparatur ad res alias, sic attenditur in ea species, sicut attenditur pulcritudo partium secundum situm,
quem habent in toto. Ut autem comparatur in relatione ad finem, sic attenditur in ea ordo; unaquaeque enim
res ordinata est, dum directe tendit ad finem, ad quem est”. II Sent., d. 35, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 829b).
889
Itin., 1, 10 (V, 298b). WSB, II-H, p. 55.
890
“Ex dictis igitur colligi potest, quod Deus-trinitas testator se ipsam trinum per vestigium omnipotentiae,
sapientiae et benevolentiae. Et quoniam hoc vestigium relucet in omnibus et singulis creaturis — nulla est
enim creatura, quae sit omnino expers virtutis, veritatis et bonitatis — manifeste colligitur quod Deus-trinitas
manifestat et testificatur se ipsum trinum per universitatem omnium creatorum”. Testim. Trin., 7 (V, 563b).
Cf. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un. q. 4 (I, 76b), my translation.
891
“Esse imaginem Dei non est hominis accidens, sed potius substantiale, sicut esse vestigium nulli
creaturae”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 2, f. 4 (II, 397a).

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 of actuated essence, and this applies to substance alone;
third, in terms of essence made in the likeness of God and
such is the spiritual creature.892

According to this new division, vestige belongs to a higher level (altius vestigium), that is,
to “substance alone”. (The preferred terms in this paper, “imago” and “similitude”, refer to
God’s likeness: imago to likeness according to nature; similitude to likeness according to
grace.) Turning to the first level as described in the Hexaemeron above, we see that every
essence or each created thing, which Bonaventure also called vestigium (this is evident
only in the Latin), is a trace which “leads to that Wisdom in whom there is mode without
qualification, number without quantity, and order without ordination”.893

[T]he whole world is a shadow, a way, and a trace

[vestigium]; a book with writing front and back. Indeed, in
every creature there is a refulgence of the divine exemplar,
but mixed with darkness: hence it resembles some kind of
opacity combined with light.894

It is evident that each thing, being a vestige by its own matter, form, and composition, is a
vestige “that represents the divine nature”.895

4. 9. The anima rationalis as an image of the Triune God

As we have shown, Bonaventure explains that every creature is assimilated to God

in some manner “and for that reason every creature has the reckoning of a vestige, but
some (creature) [man] has the reckoning of an image”.896

892
Hex., 2, 22 (V, 340a). TWB, V, p. 33.
893
Hex., 2, 23 (V, 340a). TWB, V, p. 33. In these words we can see an analogy to the negative way of the
knowledge of God.
894
Hex., 12, 14 (V, 386b). TWB, V, p. 179.
895
Hex., 2, 23 (V, 340a). TWB, V, p. 33.
896
II Sent. d. 16, a. 1 q. 1 (II, 394b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02393.html, 2008, viewed 25 July 2011. “The theme of the ‘image’ has a
long history. It was a basic term in Greek philosophy, in Plato, the Stoics and later, the Neoplatonists. At the
same time it lies at the heart of the anthropology of the Old Testament…. In the New Testament the term is
further enriched with a christological content, a fact which endows anthropology with new dimensions”.
Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 21. Nellas also provides a bibliography on the theme of the
“imago Dei”. For a study of the relationship between man and angels, see B. Faes de Mottoni, San
Bonaventura e La scala di Giacobbe (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995), pp. 165–236.

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 In the sixteenth article of the Second Book of Sentences,897 Bonaventure
distinguishes among several kinds of likeness. (Likeness as such could be seen here as an
extension of the full understanding of the concept of “imago”.) First, there is likeness
through complete agreement in nature (convenientia omnimoda in natura). Such is the
likeness among the Persons of the Trinity. Second, there is likeness through the sharing
(participatio) of a universal nature (univocal resemblance). Third, there is likeness of
proportion or proportionality (relational resemblance). Fourth, there is likeness through
agreement of order (convenientia ordinis — simple resemblance), as an exemplatum is like
its exemplar. No creature can be like God in either of the first two ways, but all creatures
are like God in the third and fourth ways (relational and simple resemblance), which do not
require the sharing of a common nature.898

Man, then, must not be called an artificial image, for in such an image the
representation is an accident of the substance. Nor must man be called a connatural image
because to be a connatural image there must be an identity of nature with the Prototype.
The Son, the Image of the Father, is the sole connatural Image of God.899 “He is the perfect
reflecting-likeness of all the Father is in one who is not the Father”. 900 Moreover only He
is the true, real, and genuine “Image” and in fact the Archetype Image.

The Son is not the copy of an archetype,…but the expression

of the archetype itself and thereby absolute expression: this
makes him the archetype of every expression of God in what
is not divine.901

As St. Bonaventure teaches, “the name ‘image’ is said of the Son and of human
beings neither univocally nor equivocally but analogously”.902 Man is truly called a natural

897
“Ad quod intelligendum notandum est, quod quaedam est similitudo per convenientiam omnimodam in
natura, et sic una persona in Trinitate est alteri similis, quaedam per participationem alicuius naturae
universalis, sicut homo et asinus assimilantur in animali; quaedam vero secundum proportionalitatem, sicut
nauta et auriga conveniunt secundum comparationem ad illa quae regunt; quaedam est similitudo per
convenientiam ordinis, sicut exemplatum assimiliter exemplari. Primis duobus modis nulla creatura potest
Deo assimilari, secundis duobus modis omnis creatura assimilatur, sed illa quae assimilatur magis de
longinquo, habet rationem vestigii, illa vero quae de proximo, habet rationem imaginis; talis autem est
creatura rationalis, utpote homo”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 394b).
898
“similitudo, quae est in imagine, non attenditur per identitatem, aut eiusdem naturae participationem, sed
per convenientiam in ordine et proportione; quae similitudo non exigit communicantiam in tertio, quia in
convenientia ordinis unum est similitudo alterius; in convenientia proportionis non est similitudo in uno, sed
in duabus comparationibus”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1, concl., ad 2 (II, 395b).
899
“Nam imago naturalis est, quae repraesentat per id quod habet a natura, sive cum illo quo repraesentat,
conveniat in natura, sive non. Imago vero connaturalis dicitur, quae imitatur et refetur non solum per quod
habet a natura, sed per convenientiam in eadem natura. Ideo, etsi esse imaginem conveniat homini, esse
tamen imaginem connaturalem no convenit homini, sed soli Filio Dei”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 2 concl. (II,
397b).
900
Hayes, “Incarnation and Creation”, p. 318.
901
Balthasar, Glory, p. 348.
902
Philip L. Reynolds, “Analogy of Names in Bonaventure”, MS 65 (2003), pp. 117–162, p. 145. Cf.
“Dicendum est, quod imago de Filio Dei et homine nec dicitur aequivoce, nec dicitur univoce, sed analogice

175
(substantial) image of the Divine Image — the Son.903 However, “everything that exists,
exists thanks to the Son as the image of the Father, and therefore only He is ‘Imago, non
ad imaginem’”.904 Man is merely oriented and directed towards the image (ad
imaginem):905 “[A]s a conscious, free creature”, man “is established with the task of
reflecting in creation the mystery of the Trinity as this is focused in the Son-Image”. 906
Moreover, being made in the image of God (ad imaginem) means that for a human being
God is not only the transcendental object, but also his objectum fontanum,907 and — as will
be explained more fully later — the fontale principium illuminationis cogniscitivae.908

According to the homily De imagine dei (Bonaventure’s authorship is disputed),909

the human soul can be called “imago” because it has “unum magistrum propriissime
proprium qui eam fecit in creatione, depinxit in passione, illuminabit in aeterna
remuneratione”.910 Of course this “propriissime proprium magister” is the Divine Image,
the Son of the Father.

Being made in the image of God is the source of the dignity of the soul. Thus in the
Soliloquium the Seraphic Doctor exclaims,

[t]herefore, realize, O my soul, what a marvelous and

inestimable dignity it is to be not only a vestige of the

secundum prius et posterius”. II Sent., d. 16, dub. 4 (II, 407b). For a discussion of equivocation and analogy
in Bonaventure, see especially pages 144–148 of Reynolds’s article, under the heading “Naming According
to Prior and Posterior”.
903
“esse imaginem Dei non est homini accidens, sed potius substantiale, sicut esse vestigium nulli accidit
creaturae”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 2 (II, 397a).
904
“Filius vero secundum omne quod est, est imago Patris, et ideo solum est imago, non ad imaginem”. II
Sent., d. 16, dub. 3 (II, 407b), translation mine.
905
“Verum est enim, quod homo praedestinatus est, ut conformetur, imagini Filii Dei; nec ideo Magister illam
positionem redarguit, quod hoc non sit verum, sed quia illa imago non potest proprie dici nostra; vel etiam,
quia non solummodo Filius est imago, sed etiam homo.... Hinc est, quod homo non tantum est imago, sed
etiam ad imaginem, quia non secundum omne quod est, est imago, immo differt ab imagine; Filius vero
secundum omne quod est, est imago Patris, et ideo solum est imago, non ad imaginem”. II Sent. d. 16, dub. 3
(II, 407b). Cf. “Dicendum, quod quia imago dicit ordinem ad illud cuius est imago tanquam in finem et
ordinem et immediatum”. II Sent., d. 16, dub. 2 (II, 407a); “Unde nunquam imago pure dicitur ad se, quia
semper dicit respectum vel ad aliam personam, vel ad creaturam, sive creaturae ad divinam naturam”. I Sent.,
d. 31, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (I, 540b).
906
Hayes, “Incarnation and Creation”, p. 318. In “The Reason and Meaning of the Incarnation of Christ
According to Alexander of Hales”, Horowski writes that according to the teaching of Alexander of Hales,
“the Son of God, who is the image of the Father in unity of divine essence, is at the same time the reason of
the restoration of the image [of God] in man” (my translation). Aleksander Horowski, “Uzasadnienie i
znaczenie Wcielenia Chrystusa według Aleksandra z Hales”, St. Franciszkańskie 17 (2007); 43–56, p. 49.
Horowski cites his authority as Italo Fornaro, La Teologia dell’immagine, no page number.
907
“deinde in luce aeterana tanquam in obiecto fontano”. Hex., 5, 33 (V, 359b). Cf. Hex., 6, 1 (V, 360a).
908
“est fontale principium illuminationis cognoscitivae”. Christus mag., 1 (V, 567a).
909
We know only one codex (in Basel) which gives witness to Bonaventure as the true author. Cf note 8 of
the Quaracchi editors (IX, 446). Gustavo Cantini doubts Bonaventure’s authorship of this sermon: “Per le
stesse ragioni mi permetto di dubitare della paternità del sermone VI è relativa collazione della Domenica
XXII dopo Pentecoste”. Gustavo Cantini, “S. Bonaventura da Bagnorea ‘Magnus verbi Dei sator’”,
Antonianum, XV (1940), pp. 245–274, p. 266, n. 1.
910
Dom. XXII p. Pent., Sermo 6 (IX, 446b).

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 Creator, as is common to all creatures, but to be God’s image
which is peculiar to rational creatures.911

For a better understanding of the term “imago” when it is used to describe the soul
of the human person and the person as such, it is worth noting that when he used this term,
Bonaventure sometimes connected it with another term, similitudo expressa. In the
sixteenth distinction of the Second Book of Sentences, Bonaventure used the term
similitudo expressa in the context of the human person:

[E]very creature has the reckoning of a vestige, but some

(creature) has the reckoning of an image, that, namely, which
is assimilated expressly. But this is a rational creature, such
as man; and for that reason it must be conceded, that man is
an image of God [imago Dei], because he is His expressed
similitude [expressa similitudo].912

It is possible to say that being created in the image of God means that each person
is created “propter sui ipsius expressionem” (“as an expression of Himself”). 913 In De
donis Bonaventure compares imago with imitago and using the imperative tense, he
exclaims: “Listen! You are the image of God. And image means, as it were ‘I am like’.
Therefore, if you are truly an image of God, you must make yourself like God in piety”.914

This is quite different from how Bonaventure understands the state of the soul
which is infused with grace and can be called similitudo expressa.915

The Son of God likewise is identified with the similitudo916 or similitudo Patris
imitativa917 because the Son of God is synonymous with the Word and the Image: the Son
is the Image, the Word, and the Son as such. “Image” designates him as the expressed
similitude, “Word” as expressive similitude, and “Son” as hypostatic similitude. 918 (In
911
Solil., 1, 3 (VIII, 30b). WSB, X, p. 226. Because of the soul’s great dignity, it is unnatural for the soul to
gravitate towards temporal things: “Non eim decet animam insignatam Dei imagine, decoratam Dei
similitudine, redemptam Dei sanguine, capacem beatitudinis, volitare circa ista temporalia”. Perf. vitae, 5, 10
(VIII, 120a).
912
II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 394b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02393.html, 2008, viewed 13 August 2010. See all of distinction XVI
under the title; “In what kind of manner did God produce man to His image?” II Sent., d. 16 (II, 393–409).
913
Brev., 3, 6 (V, 235a). BB, p. 91.
914
De donis, 3, 11 (V, 471a). WSB, XIV, p. 75.
915
A more detailed discussion of similitudo expressa as the soul infused with grace will appear in a
subsequent chapter of this paper.
916
“Pater enim ab aeterno genuit Filium similem sibi et dixit se et similitudinem suam similem sibi et cum
hoc totum posse suum”. Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b).
917
I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, a. un., q. 2 concl. (I, 485b). Cf. “in Verbo triplex similitudo, scil. Patris imitativa
(expressiva), rerum creatarum exemplativa, et earundum operativa”. I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, a. un., q. 2, scholion
1 (I, 486b).
918
“Similiter, cum Filius sit imago, verbum et filius; imago nominat illam personam ut similitudinem
expressam; verbum, ut similitudinem expressivam; filius, ut similitudinem hypostaticam”. Brev., 1, 3 (V,
212a). The English translation is my conflation of Nemmers, for closeness to the Latin original, and Monti
for clarity of construction. Cf. BB, p. 28, and WSB, IX, p. 36. Cf. also, “Verbum autem non est aliud quam

177
another work, Bonaventure says that “the Father generates a Word which is the similitude
of the Father and equal to Him in all things”. 919) In this way the term imago expressa is
connected with the same term that is used for Christ. Furthermore, the Son of God as
“expressed similitude” and equal to the Father also has the same beauty, because “only
God is real (true) Goodness and Beauty”920 and therefore He is also the model of the beauty
in all creation, since “He has beauty in comparison to every exemplified beauty”.921

However, in the Itinerarium, when the concept of similitudo expressiva is used to

describe man as the image of God (imago Dei) it has a different meaning.

For if an image is an expressed likeness, then when our mind

contemplates in Christ the Son of God, Who is by nature the
image of the invisible God, our humanity so wonderfully
exalted, so ineffably united, and when at the same time it
sees united the first and the last, the highest and the lowest,
the circumference and the center, the Alpha and the Omega,
the caused and the cause, the Creator and the creature, that is,
the book written within and without, it has already reached
something perfect.922
similitudo expressa et expressiva”. I Sent., d. 27, p. 2, a. un., q. 3 concl. (I, 488a).
Monti’s translation seems to me problematic: “Similarly, the Son is properly the Image, the Word
and the Son as such. ‘Image’ designates him as expressed likeness, ‘Word’ as expressive likeness, and the
‘Son’ as personal likeness. Again, ‘Image’ designates him as likeness in the order of form, ‘Word’ as
likeness in the order of reason, and ‘Son’ as likeness in the order of nature” (my italics). I find Monti’s
translation infelicitous because “hypostatic similitude” is not comparable to “personal likeness”. This is made
clear in the continuation of the sentence: “rursus imago, ut similitudinem conformem; verbum, ut
similitudinem intellectualem; filius, ut similitudinem connaturalem” (my italics). Here, in the Latin original,
the term filius is connected with the hypostatic similitudo and with similitudo connaturale. A hypostatic
similitude and a connatural similitude are on the same level — the level of divine nature (ousia). Monti’s
translation of similitudinem hypostaticam as “personal likeness” suggests that the Son and the Father are
similar or alike on the level of the person rather than on the order of nature. This translation does not
acknowledge that the basis for speaking of difference in the Trinity is on the level of persons, while
hypostatic similitudo or similitudo connaturale in the Trinity are on the level of nature. Therefore in my
view, while Monti’s translation of similitudo connaturale as “likeness in the order of nature” is accurate, his
translation of hypostatic similitudo as “personal likeness” does not follow Bonaventure’s logic in this
passage. For more information about the concept of image related to the Divinity see I Sent., d. 31 p. 2, a. 1 q.
1–3, (I, 539–545). On Bonaventure’s understanding of Son, Image and Word, see Jean Bissen,
L’exemplarisme divin selon saint Bonaventure (Paris: J. Vrin, 1939), pp. 101ff; Antonellus Elsässer,
Christus, der Lehrer des Sittlichen: Die christologische Grundlagen für die Erkenntnis des Sittlichen nach
der Lehre Bonaventuras (Munich: Schöningh, 1968), p. 35; Gerken, Theologie des Wortes, pp. 60–80; Nicola
Simonelli, Doctrina Christocentrica Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventurae (Assisi, 1958), pp. 13–36; Albert
Stohr, “Trinitätslehre des hl. Bonaventura”, Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, Journal 3 (Münster:
Aschenderff, 1923), pp.137–148.
919
Myst. Trin., 4, 2 concl. (V, 87a). WSB, III, p. 201.
920
“quoniam solus Deus est ipsa bonitas et pulcritudo”. I Sent., d. 1, a. 3, q. 2. concl. (I, 40a), my translation.
921
I Sent., d. 31, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3, (I, 544a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01543.html, 2007, viewed 25 July 2010. According
to Balthasar, “statements about beauty [occupy] so important a place in Bonaventure’s theology that one
begins to be afraid that there is no unity to give shape to their multiplicity”. Balthasar, Glory, p. 333.
922
Itin., 6, 7 (V, 312a). WSB, II-H, p. 131. It is worth adding that in the Breviloquium, Bonaventure describes
Christ as verbum using the term similitudo expressiva. However, in his Itinerarium, he identified the concept
of similitudo expressiva with Christ when he spoke of him as Imago. We see that Bonaventure used the term
similitudo expressiva in various senses. In Hexaemeron we read: “Pater enim, ab aeterno genuit Filium
similem sibi et dixit se et similitudem suam similem sibi et cum hoc totum posse suum; dixit quae posse
facere, et maxime quae voluit facere, et omnia in eo expressit, scilicet in Filio seu in isto medio tanquam in

178
 As image, the intellectual beings (angels) and rational spirits (souls) have God not
only as their cause and origin, but also as their object. 923 This means that the imago is
immediately ordered to God, and this immediate ordering to God is possible because the
image is interiorly ordered with the spiritual powers of memory, intellect, and will, which
give the image an essentially new relationship to the Triune God.924

It must be said, that,…the image is attained in these three

powers, however (this is) in comparison to the unity of
essence and the plurality of acts, in which there is distinction
and order and origin of one from another through a certain
manner of disposing.925

Without these three, the image could not have God as its object.

Because in these three powers there is the distinction which corresponds to the
distinction of the three Persons in the divine order, 926 Bonaventure understood them as
three powers to be “consubstantial, coequal and coeval, and mutually interpenetrating”. 927
This means that in fact the internal and intrinsic order within the divine essence is also the
foundation of the internal and intrinsic order within each rational essence:928

sua arte”. Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b). Cf. “Pater enim, ut dictum est, similem sibi genuit, scilicem Verbum sibi
coeaternum, et dixit similitudinem suam, et per consequens expressit omnia, quae potuit”. Hex., 1, 16 (V,
332a); “Atribus datur testimonium, sed exprimitur per Verbum, quia Verbum et Patrem et se ipsum et
Spiritum Sanctum exprimit et omnia alia”. Hex., 9, 2 (V, 372b–373a). Cf. also “Verbum autem non est aliud
quam similitudo expressa et expressiva, concepta vi spiritus intelligentis, secundum quod se vel aliud
intuetur”. I Sent., d. 17, p. 2, a. un., q. 3 (I, 488a).
923
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a–b). See also Léon Veuthey, “L’Unione con Dio”, MF 48 (1948), pp. 279–95, and
“Le Potenze dell’anima secondo S. Bonaventura”, MF 69 (1969), pp. 134–39.
924
“From the theological viewpoint, the essential unity of the three potencies of memory, intelligence and
will constitute the soul as an image of the Trinity. From the philosophical viewpoint, the proper distinction of
potencies follows their first and essential acts; so the memory is distinguished by its proper act, which is
retention or conservation of species, from every other cognitive potency, which either abstracts species or
makes a judgment concerning them”. Quinn, Constitution, p. 356, n. 78.
925
I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (I, 81a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01080.htmlQUAESTIO_I (n.d.), viewed 4 August
2011.
926
“Ad rationem enim imaginis requiritur expressa conformatio in distinctione; sed distinctio in divinis
attenditur quantum ad tres personas: ergo maxime in imagine creata attenditur quantum ad tres potentias”. I
Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, f. 1 (I, 80a).
927
Itin., 3, 5 (V, 305a). WSB, II-H, p. 91. Cf. “Contingit iterum nominare potentias animae, ut immediate
egrediuntur a substantia, ut per haec tria: memoriam, intelligentiam et voluntatem.... Unde istae potentiae
sunt animae consubstantiales et sunt in eodem genere per reductionem, in quo est anima. Attamen, quoniam
egrediuntur ab anima — potentia enim se habet per modum egredientis — non sunt omnino idem per
essentiam, nec tamen adeo differunt, ut sint alterius generis, sed sunt in eodem genere per reductionem”. I
Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3 (I, 86a). St Bonaventure indicates five classes of reduction: “Sunt enim quaedam
quae sunt in genere per se, aliqua per reductionem. Illa per se sunt in genere quae participiant essentiam
completam illius generis, ut species et individua; illa vero per reductionem, quae non dicunt completam
essentiam, et haec sub quinque membris continentur. Quaedam reducuntur sicut principia, qaedam sicut
complementa, quaedam sicut viae, quaedam sicut similitudines, quaedam sicut privationes”. II Sent., d. 24, p.
1, a.2, q. 1 ad 8 (II, 526b). For St Bonaventure, the term “to reduce” means “to indicate the class of substance
in which being is grouped which is not itself a substance”. Louis J. Secondo, The Relation of Human Reason
to God’s Nature and Existence in the Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure (Rome: Angelicum, 1961), p. 30.
928
“Creatura vero rationalis non solum sic convenit, sed etiam quantum ad intrinsecarum suarum potentiarum
originem, ordinem et distinctionem, in quibus assimilatur illi distinctioni et ordini, quae est in divinis

179
 [I]n the rational soul there is a unity of essence with a trinity
of powers ordered to one another and quasi consimilar in the
manner of holding themselves, just as the (Divine) Persons
hold themselves among the divine.929

Therefore these three powers are ordered to communication and exchange between the
Father, Son, and Spirit.930 In other words, they not only indicate origin and emanation,
which leads to distinction among them, but also the three powers indicate equality,
consubstantiability, and inseparability, from which an express testimony is given to the fact
that God is a Trinity.931 Furthermore they are a both a means and a sign of the relation and
relatedness that exists between God as Triune Creator and the created soul.

In this way, it could be said that because memory, intellect, and will are one or
compose one essence which is triune in powers, the human soul is the real image of God.
In addition, Bonaventure says that the soul is also “capax Dei” because it is “imaginem
Trinitatis propter unitatem in essentia et trinitatem in potentiis” and because it is “forma
beatificabilis”.932 At this point, Bonaventure seems to be using a kind of circular logic:
“the soul is capable of God because it is His image, and again, the soul is the image of God

personis intrinseca divinae naturae”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (II, 395a).

929
“in anima rationali est unitas essentiae cum trinitate potentiarum ad invicem ordinatarum et quasi
consimili modo se habentium, sicut se habent personae in divinis”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 395a).
Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02393.html, 2008, viewed 26 July 2011. Cf. “Nam proprie loquendo,
imago consistit in unitate essentiae et trinitate potentiarum, secundum quas anima nata est ab illa summa
Trinitate sigillari imagine similitudinis, quae consistit in gratia et virtutibus theologicis”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a.
2, q. 1, concl. (I, 89b).
930
“...sicut in divinis Pater est generans, Filius genitus, Spiritus sanctus ab utroque procedens; ita in anima
memoria per exhibitionem cognoscibilis est gignitiva; intelligentia per receptionem eiusdem est formabilis et
generabilis; voluntas vero sive dilectio per notitiam boni ex illa est processalis sive emanabilis ad sibi
uniendum quod placet iam cognitum”. Dom XXII p. Pent., Sermo 6 (IX, 447a–b).
931
“Illa vero creatura, quae tenet rationem imaginis, utpote intellectualis, Deum esse trinum testatur quasi de
propinquo, quia imago est expressa similitudo. Habet enim creatura intellectualis memoriam, intelligentiam
et voluntatem, seu mentem, notitiam et amorem: mentem ad modum parentis, notitiam ad modum prolis,
amorem ad modum nexus ab utroque procedentis et utrumque connectentis; non enim potest mens non amare
verbum, quod generat. In iis autem non attenditur origo et emanatio, per quam est in eis distinctio, verum
etiam aequalitas et consubstantialitas et inseparabilitas, ex quibus expresso testimonio clamatur, Deum esse
trinum”. Myst. Trin., q. 1, a. 2, concl. (V, 55a).
932
Monti’s English translation, “[the soul] is capable of union with God”, does not capture the sense of the
original. Bonaventure in fact is saying that the soul is “capable of God” through its memory, understanding
and will (“capax Dei per memoriam, intelligentiam et voluntatem”) and not that it is “capable of union with
God”. The concept of “union’ with God” is not present in the original text: “Rursus quia forma beatificabilis
est capax Dei per memoriam, intelligentiam et voluntatem; et hoc est esse ad imaginem Trinitatis propter
unitatem in essentia et trinitatem in potentiis: ideo animam necesse fuit esse intelligentem Deum et omnia, ac
per hoc Dei imagine insignitam”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227a). We cannot find evidence elsewhere in his summa
brevis that capacitas Dei is connected with union with God, for example: “Et productio Dei fecit rationalem
spiritum prope Deum, capacem Dei, capacem scilicet secundum vim inditae imaginis ipsius beatissimae
Trinitatis”. Brev., 7, 7 (V, 289b). Denys Turner raised a similar problem when he wrote, “Through grace, our
remembering and knowing and loving participate in the relations of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and so in
the inner life by which they live in the Godhead itself” (Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of
God (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), p. 56). I can agree that, as Bonaventure writes, grace gives to the soul as
similitude through faith, hope and love the possibility to participate in the life of God, but this seems to me
not the same as participating in the “inner life” by which the Divine Persons “live in the Godhead itself”.

180
because it is capable of Him”.933 The point may be this: because God has created the soul
in His image and similitude, the soul cannot be satisfied by anything except by God of
whom it is capable as its highest goodness.934

[N]othing sufficiently finishes the soul except the infinite

Good, because for this, that it be finished, it is necessary, that
it be finished according to (its) estimation; otherwise it
would not be blessed, unless it considered [existimaret] itself
(to be) blessed. But estimation oversteps every finite,
because something greater than every finite can be thought:
therefore since affection can extend itself where (there is)
also estimation, the affection of the soul necessarily
oversteps every finite; and if this (is so), (then) by no finite
good is it sufficiently finished. Therefore one is to enjoy
God alone, because (He is) the most high Good and the
Infinite One.935

For Bonaventure, when “one considers the order, origin, and relation of these
faculties [potentias] to one another; one is led to the most blessed Trinity itself”. 936 These
same three powers — namely mens, notitia, and amor — in so far as they are actualized,
allow Bonaventure to call the soul (the human being as such) capax Dei.937

So through the operations of memory, it becomes clear that

the soul itself is an image of God and a similitude so present
to itself and having God so present to it that it actually grasps
God and potentially “has the capacity for God and the ability
to participate in God”.938
933
Ignatius Brady, “Beatitude and Psychology: A Problem in the Philosophy of St. Bonaventure”, FS 23.3
(1942), pp. 411–427, p. 415. Cf. “Quia enim ei [Dei] immediate ordinatur, ideo capax eius est, vel e
converso; et quia capax est, nata est ei configurari; et propter hoc fert in se a sua origine lumen vultus
divini”. II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 395a).
934
“Quoniam igitur anima rationalis creata est ad imaginem Dei et similitudinem et facta est capax boni
sufficientissimi; et ipsa sibi not suficit, cum sit vana et deficiens: ideo, dico, quod veram beatitudinem appetit
naturaliter”. IV Sent., d. 49, p. 1, a. un., q. 2 concl. (IV, 1003b). See also “nihil potest animam sufficienter
finire nisi bonum, ad quod est. Hoc autem est bonum summum, quod superius est anima, et bonum
infinitium, quod excedit animae vires. I Sent., d. 1, a. 3., q. 2 concl. (I, 40b); “Quia vero creaturae
quantumcumque sublimatae finita est substantia, virtus et operatio, ita tamen, quod mens humana non
quiescit nisi in bono infinito, nec tamen illud proprie comprehendit, quia infinitum non comprehenditur a
finito, accepta comprehensione proprie”. Brev., 4, 6 (V, 247a).
935
I Sent. d. 1, a. 3, q. 2 concl. (I, 41a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01039.html (n.d.), viewed 20 October 2010. Cf. “Beatitudo aeterna
consistit in habendo summum bonum; et hoc est Deus et bonum excellens improportionaliter omnem humani
obsequii dignitatem: nullus omnino ad illud summum bonum dignus est pervenire, cum sit omnino supra
omnes limites naturae, nisi, Deo condescendente sibi, elevetur ipse supra se”. Brev., 5, 1 (V, 252b).
936
Itin., 3, 5 (V, 305a). WSB, II-H, p. 91.
937
“Ita omnis pars nostri corporis potest vocari simpliciter capax animae, quia anima tota est in singulis
partibus corporis, licet non sit in singulis totaliter sive sub omni respect, quia cetera etiam membra eadem
perfection replete”. Szabó, Trinitate in creaturis refulgente, p. 67. In his study, Szabó describes how
Bonaventure accepted Augustine’s meaning of the expression capax Dei, and added his own insights (see
especially pp. 66–89).
938
Itin., 3, 2 (V, 304a). (Bonaventure is quoting Augustine, On The Trinity, XIV, 8, 11.). WSB, II-H, p. 83.
To be capax Dei means also to have a capacity for beatitude, which could be found only in God who is the
source of all happiness. Cf. [Anima] facta est ad participandam beatitudinem, quae consistit in solo summo
bono, facta est capax Dei, et ita ad ipsius imaginem et similitudinem”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 460a);

181
 To be “capable of God” does not mean that God is present in the soul in his
substance or essence because He is thus present in every creature. 939 Because the human
person is close to God “per assimilationem”,940 he is “destined to receive and share the
goodness of God”941 and is able to know God and all that was created (especially knowing
by love942). It is necessary to point out that when Bonaventure speaks of fallen man seeing
God, he stresses that this seeing is only possible in a “speculum obscurum”, “through a
glass, darkly,” so we cannot see God in Himself.943 We will see Him plainly only in
glory.944

We can also point out the difference between the Bonaventurian method of
knowing God through creatures and that of Saint Thomas:

The latter derived knowledge of God from creatures by

causal deduction. For Bonaventure, creatures make known
the Creator by their likeness to their Divine Exemplar, and
this knowledge is gained by contuition rather than by
discursive reasoning.945

In the twenty-fourth distinction of Saint Bonaventure’s Commentary on the Second

Book of Sentences, the Seraphicus Doctor mentions six divisions of the powers (potentiae)
of the soul made by various authors. For Bonaventure, the diversification of the powers is
only properly attained by the division made according to their nature, namely the division
of the powers into the vegetative, sensitive and rational, and the further division of the
rational into the intellective and affective faculties. 946 In what follows, we are most
“Anima enim ‘est imago Dei, quia capax Dei est et particeps esse potest’ et ita propter beatitudinem facta est
et ad beatitudinem apta”. II Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 4, ad 1 (640b–641a).
939
“‘Eo mens est imago Dei, quo capax Dei est et particeps esse potest’. Capere autem non est secundum
substantiam vel essentiam, quia sic est in omnibus creaturis: ergo per cognitionem et amorem: ergo Deus
potest cognosci a creatura”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. u., q. 1, f. (I, 68b).
940
Cf. “et talis est in anima respectum Dei, quia quodam modo est anima omnia, per assimiliationem ad
omnia, quia nata est cognoscere omnia et maxime est capax Dei per assimilationem, quia est imago et
similitudo Dei”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 1 (I, 69a). Cf. I Sent., d. 1, a. 3, q. 2 concl. (I, 40b).
941
Praep. miss., 1, 3 ad 12 (VIII, 103b). TWB, III, p. 229.
942
“Omnis intellectus, quantumcumque parum habens de lumine, natus est per cognitionem et amorem capere
Deum”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a). In the II Sentences, prol., n. 13, Bonaventure states that “Humankind fell from
rectitude such that rectitude was lost, but not the tendency to rectitude; lost the habit, but not the appetite for
rectitude”. WSB, X, p. 354. Cf. “‘eo enim est anima imago Dei, ut dicit Augustinus decimo quarto de
Trinitate, quod capax eius est et particeps esse potest’, scilicet per cognitionem et amorem”. Scien. Chr., 16
(V, 571b).
943
“In statu vero innocentiae et naturae lapsae videtur Deus mediante speculo; sed differenter, quia in statu
innocentiae videbatur Deus per speculum clarum; nulla enim erat in anima peccati nebula. In statu vero
miseriae videtur per speculum obscuratum per peccatum primi hominis; et ideo nunc videtur per speculum et
in aenigmate”. II Sent., d. 23, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (II, 545a).
944
“[in gloria] Deus videbitur aperte in omnibus creaturis”. III Sent., d. 31, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (III, 682b).
945
Lillian Turney, “The Symbolism of the Temple in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum”, in
SBM, III, pp. 427–437, p. 430.
946
“Unde notandum est quod multis modis consueverunt auctores divisionem potentiarum animae accipere.
Aliquando secundum naturam ipsarum potentiarum, ut cum dividuntur potentiae animae in vegetabilem,
sensibilem et rationalem vel ipsa rationalis in intellectivam et affectivam. Aliquando vero secundum officia,
ut cum dividitur ratio in superiorem et inferiorem. Aliquando, secundum status ut cum dividitur intellectus in

182
concerned with the intellective and affective faculties of the soul, since the division of the
faculties into cognitive and affective, or reason and will, is a sufficient and adequate
division, and all the acts of the soul can be exercised by these faculties.947

Although Bonaventure classifies these powers of the simple substance of the soul in
various ways, he does not admit a real distinction between the soul and its powers, and
states that the soul operates through its powers.948 The distinction that Saint Bonaventure
recognizes between soul and power is not the same949 as the distinction between substance
and accident, nor is it the distinction that is found between two different substances.950

In his opinion, the powers of the soul differ from one another more immediately by
their acts than by their objects, so that they cannot be said to be one power,951 and they
differ essentially in kind of power, so that they are called diverse powers or different
instruments of the same substance.

[C]ertain powers of the soul so differ to one another [ad

invicem], that they can in no manner be said (to be) “one
power”; however, they neither concede, that they are to be
diversified simply according to essence, such that they be
called “diverse essences”, but that they differ essentially in

speculativum et practicum; intellectus enim speculativus secundum alium statum efficitur practicus, videlicet
dum coniungitur voluntati et operi in dictando et regendo. Aliquando vero fit divisio potentiarum secundum
aspectus, sicut dividitur potentia cognitiva in rationem, intellectum et intelligentiam, secundum quod aspicit
ad inferius, ad par et ad superius. Aliquando vero fit divisio secundum actus, sicut fit divisio in inventivam et
iudicativam; invenire enim et iudicare sunt actus potentiae cognitivae ad invicem ordinati. Aliquando vero fit
divisio potentiarum animae secundum modos movendi; et sic est ills, quae est per naturalem et deliberativam.
Omnibus his modis diversitatis utuntur auctores in divisione potentiarum animae, et in solo primo modo
dividendi attenditur proprie potentiarum diversificatio”. II Sent., d. 24. p. 1, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 566a–b).
947
Cf. “Potentiae animae rationalis sufficienter dividuntur per cognitivam et motivam, et omnes actus animae
per has potentias, quae sunt cognitiva et affectiva, sive ratio et voluntas, exerceri possunt, sicut rationes, quae
ad hoc inducuntur, ostendunt”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 1, a. un. q. 2 (II, 596b).
948
“Anima rationalis, quamvis sit simplex in essentia, tamen est multiplex in effectu”. II Sent., d. 17, a. 2, q.
1, f. 2 (II, 419a).
949
“...dicendum quod immediatius distinguuntur potentiae per actus quam obiecta. Ad differentiam autem
potentiarum essentialem sufficit diversitas obiectorum secundum rationem; et ideo, quamvis verum et bonum
non differant essentialiter, nihilominus tamen, quia cognoscere et amare absque dubio sunt actus differentes,
potentiae, quae sunt ad hos actus, per se ipsas diversitatem habent”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1, sc 4 (II,
561b).
950
They are, as St Bonaventure states, “distinct as faculties, but one as different faculties of the same
substance, and in consequence, although they are not substance, all that is positive in their being must be
reduced or referred to the class of substance”. Gilson, Bonaventure, p. 313.
951
In order to illustrate the difference between the faculties of intellect and will, Bonaventure points out that
when a person knows or loves, he has recourse to different instruments: “Rursus, cum quis ad semetipsum
redit, volens quasi quodam experimento discere potentiarum quas habet in se convenientiam et differentiam;
inveniet, se in cognoscendo et amando recurrere ad diversa instrumenta”. II Sent., d. 24, p.1, a. 2, q. 1 (II,
560b). He also argued that will and reason must be distinct faculties because if one act of a faculty is
intensified, any other act of the same faculty is diminished. But it is not true that as knowledge increases,
love decreases. Thus knowledge and love cannot be the same faculty. Furthermore, faculties can be
distinguished more immediately by their acts than their objects. Knowing and loving are different acts, and
therefore these acts must proceed from different faculties. See also III Sent., d. 27, a. 1, q. 1, ad 5 (III, 593a);
d. 35, a. un. q. 1, f. 5 (III, 773b).

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 the genus of power, such that they be called “diverse
powers” or “diverse instruments” of the same substance.952

Bonaventure asserts that the powers of the soul are different among themselves, as
Alexander of Hales, his predecessor and master, taught, and he holds that they are in the
genus substance, not, however, per se, but per reductionem.953 In other words the powers
of the soul are consubstantial with the soul. 954 If both faculties are consubstantial with the
soul, the only real distinction between them must be in the genus of powers (genere
potentiae). Thus the potentiae are not really distinct from the soul: they are consubstantial
with the soul and distinct from one another but at the same time united together.955

It is worth noting that St Albert and St Thomas differed from Bonaventure on the
consubstantiality of the powers of the soul. In general, for both the great Dominicans, “the
soul is distinct from its faculties ontologically”, 956 which means that they did not accept the
unity of the soul with its powers. Alexander Gerken explains:

Thomas was strongly inclined toward the position of an

essential difference between the soul and its powers. That is,
he leaned more to the distinct properties of the soul’s powers
than to their unity with the soul. In fact, he placed the
distinction between the spiritual soul and its powers on a par
with the difference between substance and accident.957

This division and unity of the faculties of the soul is concerned with the
relationality between the powers of the soul. Since relationality is central to my thesis, this

952
II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 560b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02558.html, 2009, viewed 13 August 2010.
953
Cf. Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologica, II, q. 21; m. 1, ad 2; q. 65, m. 1. See also “Unde si aliqua
auctoritas inveniatur, quae videatur ponere unitatem potentiarum animae et virtutum; intelligenda est
secundum modum praescriptum, videlicet secundum quandam collectionem. Si iterum inveniatur, quae dicat,
potentiam animae esse animae essentiam, intelligenda est per reductionem ad idem genus”. II Sent., d. 24, p.
1, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 562b). Cf “Since these three, the memory, the understanding, and the will, are, therefore, not
three lives but one life, not three minds but one mind, it follows that they are certainly not three substances,
but one substance”. Augustine, On the Trinity, 10.11.18 (NPNF 1:3, 142)
954
When the three faculties of the soul are seen to be consubstantial with the essence of the soul, it raises the
problem of distinguishing the powers of the soul. The problem of the consubstantiality of the soul with its
faculties is beyond the scope of this paper. On the problem of the relations between the powers and the soul
see O’Donnell, Psychology of St. Bonaventure, pp. 53–60; Mary Rachael Dady, The Theory of Knowledge of
St. Bonaventure, PhD diss., Catholic Univ. of America Philosophical Studies, 52 (Washington, DC: Catholic
Univ. of America Press, 1939), pp. 4–9.
955
“Cum iterum non sint omnino idem cum animae essentia, dicunt, quod non sunt omnino idem per
essentiam; et ideo quasi medium tenentes inter utramque opinionem dicunt, quasdam animae potentias sic
differe ad invicem, ut nullo modo dici possint una potentia; nec tamen concedunt, eas simpliciter diversificari
secundum essentiam, ita ut dicantur diversae essentiae, sed differre essentialiter in genere potentiae, ita ut
dicantur diversae potentiae sive diversa instrumenta eiusdem substantiae”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1. a. 2, q. 1 (II,
560a–b).
956
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “The Early Albertus Magnus and his Arabic Sources on the Theory of the Soul”,
Vivarium 46 (2008), pp. 232–252, p. 243.
957
Alexander Gerken, “Identity and Freedom: Bonaventure’s Position and Method”, GR 4.3 (1990), pp. 91–
106, p. 91.

184
subject will be explored in greater depth in the subchapter concerned with the process of
knowledge.

4. 9. 1. The intellective powers of the soul — memory

Memory, in the deepest sense of the word, has many dimensions and embraces a
number of interrelated ideas in the thought of Bonaventure. Bonaventure’s understanding
of the power and function of memory relies heavily on the thought of Augustine.958

Speaking broadly, we can define memory as “the necessary disposition for the
operation of the intellect which apprehends the object thus presented”.959 Bonaventure
joins memory to the intelligence and distinguishes both powers from the will. The
common object of memory and intelligence is what is true, as true, or what is good
according as it is true. The object of the will is what is good according as it is good.960

The term memory is understood here in a wider sense than we usually give to this
word. We mostly think of memory as the power to retain a consciousness of the past.
Bonaventure uses this term to embrace also our awareness of the present and some
foreknowledge of the future:

The function of the memory is to retain and to represent not

only things that are present, corporal, and temporal, but also
things that are successive, simple, and eternal. Memory
holds past things by recall, present things by reception, and
future things by means of foresight.961

958
In the Confessions, for example, Augustine describes the “faculty of memory as a great one, O my God,
exceedingly great, a vast, inner recess…. This is a faculty of my mind, belonging to my nature, yet I cannot
comprehend all that I am”. Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding (NY: Random House, 1997),
p. 206. Augustine devotes the whole of book X to a discussion of the power of memory.
959
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 342.
960
“Bonum enim, in quantum bonum, est obiectum affectus, non intellectus. Intelligentiae autem et memoriae
obiectum est verum sub ratione veri vel bonum sub ratione veri”. II Sent., d 39. a. 2, q. 3, dub. 1 (II, 916a).
Bonaventure’s theology here is clearly in contrast to the teaching of the Latin Averroists such as Siger of
Brabant. Among Averroist teachings that were condemned by Bishop Stephen Tempier in 1270 are “(1) that
the intellect of all men is one and numerically the same; (2) that the proposition that man understands is false
or improper; (3) that the will of man wills and chooses in a necessary manner….” Lech Szyndler,
“Averroism”, Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal Encyclopaedia of Philosophy],
http://peenef2.republika.pl/angielski/hasla/a/averroism.html (n.d.), viewed 26 July 2011. As Patrick Robert
notes, St Bonaventure was the first to point out the dangers of Averroism. He did this already in his
Commentary on the Sentences, at least four years before De unitate intellectus of St. Albert the Great and six
years before Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles. See Patrick Robert, “St. Bonaventure, Defender of Christian
Wisdom”, FS 3 (1943), pp. 159–179.
961
Itin., 3, 2 (V, 303b). WSB, II-H, pp. 81, 83. For this reason, as Bonaventure teaches, “Memory is similar to
eternity whose undivided presentness extends to all times”. Itin., 3, 2 (V, 303b). WSB, II-H, p. 83.

185
Bonaventure maintains that the act of retaining cognitive species is the proper act of
memory,962 and distinguishes memories of the senses from memories of the intelligence
and the will. For Bonaventure, memory functions in three ways. The first function of
memory “is similar to eternity”, because it refers to “the actual retention of all temporal
things past, present and future”. The second function of memory refers to our imagined
concept of external objects perceived through the senses, but also to the memory
“receiving and holding within itself simple forms which cannot enter through the doorways
of the senses”. The third function of the memory has to do with “a changeless light” by
means of which the memory “remembers changeless truths” such as “principles and
axioms of the sciences” that our “inner reason” recognizes to be true immediately when
they are proposed to us. By this third function of memory we recognize, for example, the
truth that “every whole is greater than its part” and we apply such principles in various
cases.963

From another point of view the memory, as the place “where eternal truth
resides”,964 may be described as the “light of the divine countenance” which the soul bears
“within itself, from its origin”965 or as “the ground of the soul which reflects the presence
of God”.966 In this sense, memory is one of the places where one can hope to “see” God.

Consequently, memory is the first power of the image, and thus it is also the first
principle of understanding and love.967

[Y]our mind [mens] loves itself most fervently. But it cannot

love itself if it does not know itself. And it would not know
itself unless it remembered itself, for we do not grasp
anything with our understanding [intelligentia] if it is not
present to us in our memory.968

962
According to Balthasar, in Bonaventure’s writings the term species has, at minimum, a threefold meaning:
“first expressive image (in the sense of eidos, reproduced in Latin by similitudo), second, an image which
imparts knowledge (as the object emits knowledge and imprints it on the subject’s capacity to know: species
ex- and impressa) finally, simply beauty, as indicated by the adjective speciosus”. Balthasar, Glory, p. 298.
963
Itin., 3, 2 (V, 303b). WSB, II-H, p. 83.
964
Cousins, Coincidence of Opposites, p. 82.
965
II Sent., d. 16, a. 1, q. 1 concl. (II, 397). See also The Confessions, Bk. X, 25, 36 (Boulding trans., p. 221).
For another example of this line of thought see Itin., 3, 1–2.
966
Cousins, Coincidence of Opposites, p. 82.
967
Szabó, Trinitate in creaturis refulgente, p. 121.
968
Itin., 3, 1 (V, 303b). WSB, II-H, p. 81.

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 Memory corresponds to the Father.969 Like the Father it is the origo, the origin of
the two that follow; memory disposes the mind for understanding and understanding leads
to love.970

4. 9. 2. The cognitive faculty

Bonaventure divided the cognitive faculty into ratio (reason/understanding),

intellectus (understanding/intellect), and intelligentia (understanding/intelligence).971
However, he is not speaking about distinctions between these functions as independent and
divided parts of the cognitive faculty, but simply about the distinction between functions or
dispositions of this faculty. The terms ratio, intellectus and intelligentia refer to a diversity
of functions, rather than to a diversity of powers.972

Sometimes the division of the faculties is made according to

particular perspectives as when the cognitive power is
distinguished as reason, intellect, and intelligence to
distinguish when it is dealing with things below itself, with
things equal to itself, or with things superior to itself.973

In other words, the differentiation of reason, intellect and intelligence diversifies the
rational, intellectual and intelligent modes of operation appropriate to the human potency
of cognition.

4. 9. 2. 1. Ratio

Bonaventure sometimes used the terms for reason and intellect interchangeably, but
in general, the whole range of activities pertaining to the intellectual life can be discussed

969
“Primo modo memoria sequitur sensum, secundo modo sequitur ipsam intelligentiam et voluntatem, tertio
modo antecedit et respondet Patri”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, ad. 3 (I, 81b).
970
“Dicendum quod, sicut dicit Augustinus et Magister recitat, imago attenditur in his tribus potentiis
[memoria, intelligentia et voluntate], tamen in comparatione ad unitatem essentiae et pluralitatem actuum, in
quibus est distinctio et ordo et origo unius ab altero per modum quaendam disponendi. Nam retentio speciei
disponit ad intelligendum et intelligentia ad amandum, si quod intelligitur est bonum”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1,
q. 1, resp. (I, 81a).
971
In the Latin, each word suggests a nuanced understanding of the intellect’s capacity to know and
understand things in different but interrelated ways. Unfortunately, the distinctions are difficult to convey in
the English language since the meanings of the words are close; the words may even be used interchangeably
in certain contexts.
972
“hinc est, quod potentia cognitive, utpote intellectus vel ratio, dividitur ita, quod intellectus in
speculativum et practicum, ratio in superiorem portionem et inferiorem; quae potius nominat diversa officia
quam diversas potentias”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b).
973
II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 566b). As given in WSB, II-H, p. 161, n. 8.

187
in terms of “reason” (ratio). When he wanted to describe the nature of the rational
faculty,974 Bonaventure used a variety of speculative and philosophical categories.

When Bonaventure speaks in terms of the ratio “superior” and “inferior”, he is

standing in a long tradition that begins with Plotinus. Augustine borrowed directly from
Plotinus in his Trinitate when he wrote of the two “parts” of the reason or of the soul. In
the twelfth century, especially in commentators on Boethius, these terms were refined to
distinguish ratio, whose object was material, and intelligentia, whose object was to the
eternal reasons.975

For Bonaventure, truth may be known either in itself or as good. Truth-as-good may
be eternal or temporal, above the soul or inferior to it. So he distinguishes the function of
the speculative and practical intellect from the function of the superior and inferior reason.

Because there is a double cognition of truth, either truth as

truth or truth as good, and truth is either eternal which is
above the soul or temporal which is below it, it follows that
the cognitive power, namely the intellect and reason, is so
divided that the intellect resides in the speculative and
practical and reason in the superior and inferior part. But
this indicates diverse function rather than diverse powers.976

Inferior (lower) reason is oriented toward temporal things, things outside the self, the
world of sense reality. It refers to the mind’s capacity to “apprehend” what is in the
sensible world, the first operation of the intellect.

Beyond this, in the very terminology used by Bonaventure for explaining what he
has in mind using the terminology ratio superior and ratio inferior, he speaks sometimes
about duplex aspectus animae (twofold regard),977 oculus mentis (eye of the mind),978
aciens mentis or aciens intellectus possibilis.979 Similarly he uses the phrase facies animae
974
The discussion of reason follows closely the clear and helpful analysis provided by George Tavard in “The
Book of the Soul”, in Transiency and Permanence: The Nature of Theology According to St. Bonaventure
(St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1954), pp. 80–102.
975
Robert W. Mulligan, “Portio Superior and Portio Inferior Rationis in the Writings of St. Bonaventure”,
FS 15 (1955), pp. 332–349, pp. 332, 333.
976
Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b). BB, p. 69.
977
“Unus aspectus eius est ad caelestia et invisibilia, alius est ad terrena et corruptibilia; ita est etiam duplex
affectus animae: unus est aeternorum, et alius est temporalium. Sic est etiam sapientia, quae est desursum, et
alia, quae est deorsum”. De donis, 9, 2 (V, 499b).
978
“Perturbatio illa solum tangit potentias inferiores et nullo modo tangit oculum mentis; aut tangit oculus
mentis ad tempus turbando, sed non excaecando; aut oculum mentis attingit ipsum perturbando et
obnubilando”. III Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 3 (III, 340a).
979
“Si enim intellectus possibilis esset potentia pure passiva et se teneret ex parte materiae, in omnibus posset
poni, in quibus est reperire materiale principium. Praeterea, sicut oculus non dicitur visus, sic talis potentia
non deberet dici intellectus”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (II, 568b). “Similiter nec ipse intellectus agens
operationem intelligendi potest perficere, nisi formetur acies intellectus possibilis ab ipso intelligibili, ex qua
formatione est in pleniori actualitate respectu eius quod debet cognoscere, quam erat prius, cum carebat

188
or supremum animae980 — terminology used before by Avicenna and John of La
Rochelle.981

4. 9. 2. 2. Intellectus

The intellect can be called the “the potency of understanding, the habitus of
understanding, and the principle by which something is understood”. Bonaventure posits a
speculative intellect and a practical intellect. The practical intellect is concerned with
“things that are to be done”. The speculative intellect “concerns things that are to be
known” — that which is true.982 Here we are concerned with the speculative intellect.983

4. 9. 2. 2. 1. The agent and possible intellect

To better understand the function of the intellect in the process of abstraction, it is

useful to consider Bonaventure’s adoption (from Aristotelianism 984) of the notion of the
active (or agent) and passive (or possible) intellect. Bonaventure reasoned that the soul
could not be in act and in potency at the same time with respect to the same thing.
Therefore the rational soul must have both an agent and a passive intellect.985
specie”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 ad 5–6 (II, 570b–71a).
980
“In anima namque humana idem est intimum et supremum; et hoc patet, quia secundum sui supremum
maxime approximat Deo, similiter secundum sui intimum; unde quanto magis redit ad interiora, tanto magis
ascendit et unitur aeternis”. II Sent., d. 8, p, 2, a. un. q. 2 (II, 226b–227a).
981
Cf. Avicenna, De Anima I, v, 5; John of La Rochelle, Summa de anima I, ch. 43.
982
Quinn, Constitution, p. 326. Cf. “Iudicium autem duplex est in quolibet ratiocinante: unum, quod est
cognoscendorum, quod est veri sub ratione veri; aliud agendorum sub ratione boni. Et primum est intellectus
speculativi nec spectat ad liberum arbitrium; secundum vero est intellectus practici et est pars liberi arbitrii”.
II Sent., d. 7, .p. 2, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (II, 190b). In Hex., 5, 24 (V, 358a), Bonaventure also used another division
of cognitive power: “sunt duo potentiae, scilicet ratio et intellectus: per rationem confert, per intellectum
cognoscit se et substantias spirituales; et tunc ingerit se Intelligentiis, et tunc intrat aeviternum ipsarum”.
983
In his Itinerarium mentis in Deum, Bonaventure explains that the intellect understands terms through
definitions. Each thing is defined, then defined again in broader terms, continuing until the highest terms are
reached. See Itin., 3, 3 (V, 304a).
984
According to John Francis Quinn, Bonaventure probably used Averroes as his source for Aristotle’s
thought on the possible intellect: “The probable source of the doctrine of the possible intellect as a material
potency is Alexander of Aphrodisias, whose view would have been known to Bonaventure from Averroes:
De anima, c. 5”. Quinn, Constitution, p. 347, n. 61.
985
Quinn, Constitution, pp. 345–346. “Though Bonaventure maintains that the soul is a composite of form
and matter, he rejects the view that the agent intellect is subject solely to the form of the soul, with the
possible intellect subject solely to its matter; this view, in Bonaventure’s judgment, takes the agent intellect
as a purely active potency and the possible intellect as a purely passive potency. In his own view, the agent
intellect needs a phantasm in order to operate, and the possible intellect is able to turn itself toward the
phantasm, so that the one potency is not purely active, and the other is not purely or entirely passive.
Consequently, coming together in one complete act of understanding, the two potencies look to the whole
composite of form and matter in the soul. Because the agent intellect is always in act, or ever ready to
operate, it looks more to the form than to the matter of the soul; therefore, Bonaventure prefers to appropriate
the agent intellect to the form of the soul. Because the possible intellect, which can be impeded by the body,

189
 The active and passive intellects are one and the same reason spoken of as different
aspects and functions, or as Bonaventure put it, two differences of one intellective
power.986 In Bonaventure’s writings, the agent intellect turns to sensible species and
abstracts from the intelligible species, thus illumining the possible intellect. The
relationship between active and passive intellect is not that of matter and form or pure
potency and pure act. Rather, “the agent intellect is as a light, and the possible intellect as
that illuminated by the light”.987

As possible intellect, the mind extracts the intelligible

content from the data of experience and already begins to
make judgements. As active intellect, the mind illumines the
possible intellect so that it may more readily carry out its
task. Thus, the possible intellect, while receptive, is not
totally passive; for it is already engaged in abstraction and
judging. But it does this only under the activity of the agent
intellect.988

In Bonaventure’s words “neither does the possible (intellect) understand without the agent
(intellect), nor the agent without the possible”.989

4. 9. 2. 2. 2. Christ as exemplar and source of knowledge

Christ is the Word, the expression of the Father; hence, a thing’s existence or
“presence” pre-exists or is eternally present within Christ, the Eternal Art. He contains the
divine ideas of everything, and they are contained in him.990

Christ is the exemplar in which all of the exemplata acquire for us their
significance:

For from all eternity the Father begets a Son similar to

Himself and expresses Himself and a likeness similar to
Himself, and in so doing He expresses the sum total of His
[active] potency; He expresses what He can do, and most of
is not always in act, it looks more to the matter of the soul than to its form; so Bonaventure prefers to
appropriate the possible intellect to the material principle of the soul”. Quinn, Constitution, p. 349.
986
See II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4, concl. (II, 568–571).
987
Leonard J. Bowman, “The Development of the Doctrine of the Agent Intellect in the Franciscan School of
the Thirteenth Century”, ModSch 50 (Nov. 1972–May 1973) pp. 251–279, pp. 262–263.
988
WMM, p. 53, n. 54. Cf. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (II, 568–71).
989
“Unde nec possibilis intelligit sine agente, nec agens sine possibili”. II Sent., d. 24 p. 1, a. 2, q. 4, concl.
(II, 569a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02567.html, 2009, viewed 31 August, 2010.
990
In Bonaventure’s understanding, sua ars or ars aeterna are synonyms and concern Jesus Christ. Cf.
“Filius est ars quaedam omnipotenti Dei plena omnium rationum viventium, et omnia in ipso sunt unum”. I
Sent., d. 35, a. 1, q. 2, f. (I, 605a).

190
 all, what He wills to do, and He expresses everything in Him,
that is, in the Son or in that very Center, which so to speak is
His Art.991

In fact, “Christ is the ontic basis of reality”, 992 the medium of the ontological foundation
of metaphysics, physics, mathematics, logic, ethics, politics and theology. 993 Christ is the
treasure of knowledge and exemplar of all that is. Therefore He is the first of all teachers
(principalis instructor, magister et doctor),994 and the verus doctor Christus,995 the
infallible teacher of all truth. Christ is the “one teacher of all” (unus omnium magister).996
Since Christ is the Truth, He knows and possesses all truth, and it is Christ who teaches
truth “interiorly” (doctor interius):

Again, because He Himself is the Teacher, He teaches

infallibly and makes assertions in such a way that He could
not possibly have done otherwise. In the opinion of all the
doctors Christ teaches interiorly, so that no truth is known
except through Him, not through speech as it is with us, but
through inner enlightenment.… If, indeed, to know a thing
is to understand that it cannot be otherwise than it is, by
necessity He alone will make it known who knows the truth
and possesses the truth within himself.997

Christ as the source of all truth was so fundamental to Bonaventure’s teaching that he often
expressed astonishment “at the blindness of the human understanding which fails to see
God notwithstanding the fact that He is the very condition of its knowing all that it
knows”.998

4. 9. 2. 2. 3. Illumination

991
Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b). WSB, V, p. 8. Cf. “Pater Verbo suo, quod ab ipso procedit, dicit se et omnia, quia
PaterVerbo suo, quod ab ipso procedit, se ipsum declarat”. I Sent., d. 32, a. 1, q. 1, f. 5 (I, 557a).
992
Hendrikus Van Der Laan, “The Idea of Christian Philosophy in Bonaventure’s Collationes in
Hexaëmeron” in S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, vol. III (Rome/Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1973),
pp. 39–56, p. 44.
993
“Est autem septiforme medium, scilicet essentiae, naturae, distantiae, doctrinae, modestiae, iustitiae,
concordiae. Primum est de consideratione metaphysici, secundum physici, tertium mathematici, quartum
logici, quintum ethici, sextum politici seu iuristarum, septimum theologi”. Hex., 1, 11 (V, 331a). See Table 1
in Hughes, “Fractured Sermons”, p. 120.
994
Dom. XII p. Pent., Sermo 3 (IX, 402a).
995
Dom. I Adventus, Sermo 2 (IX 28a). Cf. “quod ille [Christus] solus est verus doctor, qui potest speciem
imprimere et lumen infundere et virtutem dare cordi audientis. Et hinc est, quod ‘cathedram habet in caelo
qui intus corda docet’”. Red. art., 18 (V, 324a).
996
Christus mag., (V, 567).
997
Hex., 12, 5 (V, 385a, 385b). TWB, V, pp. 174–175. See also Hex., 3, 4 (V, 343b); 3, 25 (V, 347a). Cf.
“Deus est praesens ipsi animae et omni intellectui per veritatem”. I Sent., d. 3, a. un., q. 1, concl. (I, 70a).
998
Theodore Crowley, “Illumination and Certitude”, S.Bonaventura 1274–1974, vol. III (Rome/Grottaferrata:
Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1973), pp. 431–448, p. 441.

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 Bonaventure was convinced that there was an essential relationship between truth
and light: “Divine truth is itself light” .999 This conviction provides a basis for his
explanation of how and why human reason can apprehend the unchanging truth by
illumination.1000

In chapter two of the Itinerarium, Bonaventure makes it clear that God — the “ratio
omnium rerum et regula infallibilis et lux veritatis” — is the source of our process of
knowing and the source of the immutable laws which we use for judgment. The passage is
worth quoting in full:

Moreover, in a way that is more excellent and more

immediate, judgment leads us to see the eternal truth with
greater certainty. If a judgment has to be made by means of
reason that abstracts from place, time, and change, and hence
from dimension, succession and change, it takes place
through a reason that is immutable, unlimited, and unending.
But nothing is entirely unchangeable, unlimited, and
unending except that which is eternal. But whatever is
eternal is either God or in God. Therefore, if all of our more
certain judgments are made by virtue of such a reality, then it
is clear that this reality itself is the reason for all things and
the infallible rule and light of truth in which all things shine
forth in a way that is infallible, indelible, beyond doubt and
beyond questioning or argumentation, unchangeable, having
no limits in space and no ending in time, in a way that is
indivisible and intellectual. Therefore those laws by which
we judge with certitude concerning all sense objects that
come to our consideration, since they are infallible and
beyond doubt to the intellect of the one who apprehends
them; and since they cannot be removed from the memory of
one who recalls, for they are always present; and since they
are beyond question and beyond the judgment of the intellect
of the one who judges because as Augustine says: no one
judges about them, but by means of them, it follows that
these laws must be changeless and incorruptible because they

999
“quia ipsa divina veritas est lux”. Scien. Chr., 3, concl. (V, 14a); “Dictum est quod intellectualis lux est
veritas, quae est radians super intelligentiam sive humanam, sive angelicam”. Hex., 5, 1 (V, 353a–b); “ita
Deus omnia videt et illustrat, quia ipse est lux”. De donis, 3, 5 (V, 469a).
1000
For a more complete treatment of the theory of illumination, see Scien. Chr., questio 4 (V, 17–27). For an
analysis of the interpretation given to the theory of illumination, see B. Rosenmöller, Religiose Erkenntnis
nach Bonaventura, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, XXV, 3–4, (Münster,1925);
Gilson, Bonaventure, ch. 12; Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. II (Westminster, 1950), p.
278ff.; Gerken, Theologie des Wortes, pp. 104–120; Quinn, Constitution, pp. 526–551 and passim; Vincenzo
Cherubino Bigi, “La dottrina della luce in S. Bonaventura”, Divus Thomas, 64 (1961), pp. 395–422; George
Tavard, “The Light of God in the Theology of St. Bonaventure”, Eastern Churches Quarterly 8 (1950), pp.
407–417; Luis Diego Cascante, “La metafísica de la luz, una categoria de ontologia bonaventuriana”, Revista
de Filosofia 36 (1998), pp. 141–148. For St Bonaventure, following the Augustinian teaching as developed
by Robert Grosseteste, corporeal light is the noblest of all substantial forms. Cf. II Sent., d. 13, a. 2, q. 2, f. 2
(II, 319a). Robert Grosseteste’s teaching on light can found in his De luce seu de inchoatione formarum, pp.
51–59 of Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischof von Lincoln (München: L. Baur, 1912).
See also James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

192
 are necessary. They are without limits in space since they
are not circumscribed. They are endless in time since they
are eternal. They are indivisible because they are intellectual
and incorporeal. They are not made but are uncreated,
existing eternally in the eternal Art from which, and through
which, and in accordance with which all beautiful things are
formed. Therefore they cannot be judged with certainty
except through that eternal Art which is the form that not
only produces all things, but also conserves and distinguishes
them; for this is the Being that sustains the form in all things
and the rule that directs all things. And it is through this that
our mind comes to judge about all those things which enter
into it through the senses.1001

In other words, as the source of all understanding, God both illumines the human intellect
and moves it into operation, manifesting to it “the truth of creatures in their eternal
reasons”. This same lux veritatis enables us to recognize “upon the face of our mind” the
image of the most blessed Trinity.1002

Although it may be true as Pasnau relates, that by the beginning “of the fourteenth
century, the theory had fallen out of fashion”,1003 for Bonaventure, the theory of divine
illumination can be considered the conditio sine qua non of his conviction about the
certitude of knowledge1004 — the “cognitio certitudinalis” which Bonaventure understood
as “the infallible knowledge of what is strictly necessary, what cannot be otherwise”. 1005
Or, as Zachary Hayes put it, essentially, “the theory of illumination is an analysis of the
metaphysical conditions for the fact of human certitude”.1006

Bonaventure states that “created truth is not immutable in an absolute sense but only
conditionally”.1007 In light of this fact, and given that the human condition is temporal,
mutable and not necessary, how can the human intellect know anything with certitude, but
particularly, how can it know with certitude intelligible things which it sees as universal
truth, infallible and immutable?1008
1001
Itin., 2, 9 (II, 301b–302a.)
1002
“ad nosmetipsos intrantes...conari debemus per speculum videre Deum; ubi ad modum candelabri relucet
lux veritatis in facie nostrae mentis, in qua scilicet resplendet imago beatissimae Trinitatis”. Itin., 3, 1 (V,
303a–b).
1003
Robert Pasnau, “Henry of Ghent and the Twilight of Divine Illumination”, RevMet 49.1 (Sep., 1995), pp.
49–75, p. 50.
1004
Cf. Introduction in WSB, X, p. 23.
1005
Bernard A. Nachbahr, “Pure Reason and Practical Reason: Some Themes in Transcendental Philosophy
and in St. Bonaventure”, in SB, III, pp. 449–469, p. 454.
1006
Introduction in WSB, IV, p. 56.
1007
“Veritas autem creata non est immutabilis simpliciter, sed ex suppositione”. Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V,
23b). WSB, IV, p.135.
1008
Cf. “necessitas non venit ab existentia rei in materia, quia est contingens, nec ab existentia rei in anima,
quia tunc esset fictio, si non esset in re”. Itin., 3, 3 (V, 304b); “quia creatura habet in se possibilitatem et
vanitatem, et utriusque causa est, quia producta est de nihilo. Quia enim creatura est et accepit esse ab alio,
qui eam fecit esse, cum prius non esset; ex hoc non est suum esse, et ideo non est purus actus, sed habet

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 Scientific knowledge necessarily requires immutable truth on
the part of the thing known and infallible certitude on the
part of the knower…. Therefore, on the part of that which
can be known, immutable truth is required. Such a truth
cannot be a created truth simply and absolutely, since every
creature is capable of motion and change. It is, rather, the
truth which creates that is fully immutable.1009

If “the knowable is eternal as such, it necessarily follows that nothing can be

known except through a truth that is immutable, undisturbed, and unconfined”.
Consequently, no truth can be known except through Christ the Truth and the Centre of
everything,1010 the door and root of the understanding. 1011 Illumination as such is
appropriate to Christ, because He “is the principle of all revelation by His coming into the
mind, and the foundation of all authority by his coming into the flesh”. 1012 Apart from
Christ, no one can be enlightened to achieve certitude. 1013 “Furthermore, it is He who
teaches rational knowledge in as far as He is the Truth”. 1014 Nevertheless, as the Seraphic
Doctor also points out, illumination comes from the divine Trinity as such; “The Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the origin of all illuminations or irradiations by reason of
excellence, influence and pre-eminence”.1015 If the divine lumen or lumen Christi is needed
for certitude of our knowledge, it has to be understood that this light is not a “lumen quod,
that is, the object, which could be grasped by apprehension, but rather a lumen quo, that by
which we see and understand all else”.1016

Although he [the Word] bestows understanding upon all, he,

nonetheless, does not bestow understanding of himself upon
all since sinners understand through the light, but do not
comprehend and understand the light.1017

Christ, then, “who is the only Light by which our world is seen for what it truly is”,
is also “the exemplar in which all of the exemplata” become meaningful to us.1018
Moreover, he is not only “the exemplar that creates and disposes”, but also the exemplar
possibilitatem; et ratione huius habet fluxibilitatem et variabilitatem, ideo caret stabilitate, et ideo non potest
esse nisi per praesentiam eius qui dedit ei esse”. I Sent., d. 37, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1 concl. (I, 639a).
1009
Christus. mag., 6–7 (V, 26, 568b, 569a). WMM, p. 26.
1010
“Si enim scibile in quantum scibile secundum Philosophum aeternum est; necesse est, ut nihil sciatur nisi
per veritatem immutabilem, inconcussam, incoangustatam”. Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b). TWB, V, p. 8.
1011
Cf. “ostium est intellectus Verbi increati, qui est radix intelligentiae omnium”. Hex., 3, 4 (V, 343b).
1012
Christus “qui est principium omnis revelationis secundum adventum sui in mentem, et firmamentum
omnis acutoritatis secundum adventum sui in carnem”. Christus mag., 2 (V, 568a). WMM, p. 23.
1013
De donis, 8, 15 (VIII, 497a). WSB, XIV, p. 174.
1014
“Est etiam magister cognitionis, quae est per rationem, et hoc, in quantum est veritas”. Christus mag., 6,
(V, 568b). WMM, p. 26.
1015
“Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus est origo omnium illuminationum vel irradiationum in ratione
excellentiae, influentiae, praesidentiae”. Hex., 23, 1 (V, 444b). TWB, V, p. 365.
1016
Thomas A. Fay, “Bonaventure on the Existence of God: The Relation of his Thought to Thomas
Aquinas”, in SBM, II, pp. 15–52. Cf. “omnia quae cognoscuntur, ipse [Christus] cognoscere facit. Ipse enim
est lux, quae illuminat omne lumen et conservat in suo vigore”. Corp. Chr., 31 (V, 563b).
1017
Comm. Ioan., 1, 12 (VI, 249a). WSB, XI, p. 67.

194
“that expresses and represents”.1019 Bonaventure’s teaching about illumination is
connected to his metaphysics of exemplarism and cannot be separated from it.1020

Light is Bonaventure’s preferred metaphor for the grace that descends from the
Father and leads those who pray upward, returning them to God. 1021 “The human
intellect”, Bonaventure asserts, “cannot be sufficiently illuminated without the assistance
of a superior and higher light” .1022 In the Hexaemeron, Bonaventure expresses this by way
of a simile: “as the sun by shining brings forth a variety and number of colors, so out of
this Word there comes forth a variety of things. Hence there is no understanding except
through the Word”.1023 Bonaventure urges everyone, especially the devout soul, to “run
with living desire to this Fountain of life and lights”, to “the pure brightness of the eternal
light,…light illuming every light, and keeping in perpetual splendor a thousand times a
thousand lights brilliantly shining....”1024

When the fallible creature is enlightened by the Light of the World, the Eternal
Word, the creature is able to know with certainty:

Since the intellect knows that this truth cannot be other than
it is, it knows also that this is an unchangeable truth. But
since our mind itself is changeable, it would not see this truth
shining unchangeably except by reason of the illumination of
some other entirely unchangeable light shining through. And
it is impossible that such a light would be a changeable
creature. Therefore the mind knows in that light which

1018
Charles Carpenter, Theology as the Road to Holiness in Saint Bonaventure (NY: Paulist Press, 1999), p.
79. Cf. “licet tota Trinitas sit lumen intelligendi, Verbum tamen naturaliter habet rationem exprimendi”. Hex.,
11, 13 (V, 382a).
1019
“dupliciter contingit loqui de sapientia increata aut secundum quod est exemplar factivum et dispositivum
aut secundum quod est exemplar expressivum sive repraesentativum”. Scien. Chr., 7, concl. (V, 39b). WSB,
IV, p. 186.
1020
Following James Weisheipl, Jay M. Hammond writes that “By beginning with the metaphysics of
exemplarism, Bonaventure opposes the prevalent practice of classification at the University of Paris, which
placed metaphysics as the ‘last science to be studied’”. Hammond, “Vir Spiritualis”, p. 134. Cf. James
Weisheipl, “The Nature, Scope, and Classification of the Sciences” (in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. David
Linderberg (Chicago, 1978), pp. 461–482, pp. 467–68).
1021
Timothy Johnson, “Into the Light: Bonaventure’s Minor Life of Saint Francis and the Franciscan
Production of Space”, in Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents,
ed. Jay M. Hammond (Hyde Park, 2004), pp. 229–249. For Bonaventure’s theological use of light metaphors,
see Bonaventure’s On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, ed. Zachary Hayes, in WSB, I, esp. pp. 4–6, 13–
21.
1022
“Nec potest iste intellectus sufficienter illuminari sine adminiculo superioris et altioris lucis”. De donis 8,
20 (V, 498b). Cf. I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 1, f. 2 (I, 68a); II Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q.2 (II, 264-67); II Sent., d.
28, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (II, 690a). Scien. Chr., q. 4 (V, 17-27).
1023
Hex., 3, 9 (V, 344b–345a), as quoted in Carpenter, Road to Holiness, p. 79. Cf. “Ipse enim intimus est
omni animae et suis specibus clarissimis refulget super intellectus nostri tenebrosa; et sic illustratur species
illae obtenebratae, admixtae obscuritati phantasmatum, ut intellectus intelligat. Si enim scire est cognoscere,
rem aliter impossibile se habere; necessarium est, ut ille solus scire faciat, qui veritatem novit et habet in se
veritatem”. Hex., 12, 5 (V, 385a–b).
1024
Lign. vitae, 12, 47 (VIII, 85a). BJTF, p. 171.

195
 enlightens all who come into this world, and which is the
true light and the Word in the beginning with God.1025

In this answer we can see why Bonaventure criticized and rejected Plato’s theory of
anamnesis, which postulated knowledge of the Ideas (“aeternas rationes”) in a pre-existent
state. Plato’s theory has no place for the notion of the Eternal Word as the source of all
light, of course, and at the same time, it renders meaningless the possibility of scientific
knowledge through the “rationes creatas”:

Because Plato related all of certain knowledge to the

intelligible or ideal world, he was justly criticized by
Aristotle not because he was wrong in affirming the ideas
and eternal reasons, since Augustine praises him for this, but
because — despising the sensible world — he wishes to
reduce all certain knowledge to the ideas. In doing so he
would seem to provide a firm basis for the way of wisdom
which proceeds according to the eternal reasons, but he
destroyed the way of science which proceeds according to
created reasons.1026

4. 9. 2. 2. 4. Rationes aeternae

Following Augustine’s theory of illumination, 1027 Bonaventure also held that all
things are knowable because everything exists eternally in the Eternal Art as rationes
aeternae, or sempiternae rationes. As Bonaventure explains, the sempiternae rationes are
not independent essences and as such they are in God and they are God Himself. “But
since these eternal Ideas are not distinct from their Creator, they are not the true essences
or quiddities of created things”.1028

As he points out, even God himself knows things by eternal Ideas. As such they
also play a specific role in our process of understanding, being the formae exemplares.

Therefore the Ideas must be the exemplary forms and hence

the representative likenesses of created beings. Therefore
they are the principles of knowledge since knowledge,
precisely as knowledge, involves expression and assimilation
between the subject and the object known. Therefore...we

1025
Itin., 3, 3 (V, 304b). WSB, II-H, p. 87.
1026
Christus mag., 18 (V, 572a). BMGW, p. 162.
1027
According to Carpenter, “[a]ctually we find no essential difference between Augustine’s and
Bonaventure’s theories of illumination. What is special to the Seraphic Doctor is the particular interpretation
he gives to Augustine’s theory of illumination, as well as the extended meaning he assigns to illumination in
his more spiritual works, applying it to grace and the gifts”. Carpenter, Road to Holiness, pp. 79–80.
1028
Scien. Chr., 2, concl. (V, 8b). WSB, IV, p. 89.

196
 must say that God knows created beings through their
Ideas.1029

For clarity it is necessary to stress once again that the rationes aeternae are not the objects
of our knowledge, nor do they operate through an influence created in our minds. The
rationes aeternae act with created reason, and are “seen by us ‘in part’ in accordance with
our wayfaring condition”.1030 The rationes aeternae, also called “eternal rules [or rules of
Divine law],...operate...by means of themselves as realities which are above the mind in
eternal truth”.1031 In the twelfth collation of the Hexaemeron Bonaventure explains in more
detail the relationship between God and rationes aeternae which are also formas ideales:

The creature comes forth from the Creator, but not through
nature, since it is of another nature. Hence it comes forth
through art, since there is no other noble manner of
emanation besides through nature and through art, that is, out
of an act of the will. And this art is not separate from Him
wherefore He is both acting through art and willing, and
hence it is necessary that He possess both expressed and
expressive reasons. And if He gives to this [created] being a
form through which it is distinguished from other beings, or
a property (individuality) by which it is distinguished from
others [of the same kind], He must necessarily possess the
Ideal Form, or rather the Ideal Forms.1032

In light of this understanding of the rationes aeternae it is not correct to say, as Van
Nieuwenhove did, “that things have their true reality in the divine ideas”.1033 To
understand my disagreement, we have to return to Bonaventure’s distinction of three levels
of existence, namely, existence in reality, in the human mind and in the aeterna ratione1034
or arte aeterna1035 (i.e., God, the Word). Thus, a thing has its own being according to its

1029
Scien. Chr., 2, concl. (V, 8b). WSB, IV, pp. 89–90. Cf. “Quia per rationes aeternas, quae sunt idem quod
ipse, cognoscit quaecumquae cognoscit”. Scien. Chr., 1, concl. (V, 5b).
1030
Eugene Fairweather, A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham (London: S.C.M., 1956), p. 393.
1031
“mens in certitudinali cognitione per incommutabiles et aeternas regulas habeat regulari, non tanquam per
habitum suae mentis, sed tanquam per eas quae sunt supra se in veritate aeterna”. Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V,
23a). WSB, IV, p. 133.
1032
Hex., 12, 3 (V, 385a). TWB, V, p. 174.
1033
Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “Catholic Theology in the Thirteenth Century and the Origin of Secularism”,
IThQ 75.4 (2010), pp. 339–354, p. 345.
1034
“res habeant esse in proprio genere, habeant etiam esse in mente, habeant esse in aeterna ratione”.
Christus. mag., 4, 7 (V, 569a).
1035
“haec respicit triplicem rerum existentiam, scilicet in materia, in intelligentia et in arte aeterna, secundum
quam dictum est; fiat, fecit, et factum est; haec etiam respicit triplicem substantiam in Christo, qui est scala
nostra, scilicet corporalem, spiritualem et divinam”. Itin., 1, 3, (V, 297a). This formula occurs in other places
in various forms. Cf. “Dicendum, quod triplex est existentia rerum, scilicet in exemplari aeterno, et in
intellectu creato, et in ipso mundo”. I Sent., d. 36, a. 2, q. 2 concl. (I, 625b); “res tripliciter habent esse
scilicet in materia vel natura propria in intelligentia creata et in arte aeterna”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230b); Brev.
prol., 3 (V, 205a). According to P.L. Reynolds the formulation “fiat, fecit, et factum”, taken from Augustine’s
De Genesi ad Litteram, which initially “pertains to the Angelic involvement in creation” was transferred by
Bonaventure “from an angelic to a human context”. Philip L. Reynolds, “Threefold Existence and
Illumination in Saint Bonaventure”, FS 41(1981), pp. 190–215, p. 204, 208.

197
entity, but in the human intellect and in God it has being only according to its
similitude.1036 In themselves and in the mind, however, things “are not entirely
immutable”; they are only immutable “in as far as they are in the eternal Word”. For this
reason, “nothing can render things perfectly knowable unless Christ is present, the Son of
God and the Teacher”.1037 Finally, it is asked, “What has a more true and more noble
‘being’ [habet esse verius et nobilius], whether the thing itself, and/or its similitude?”
Bonaventure replies:

that the similitude of the thing has a more true and more
noble “being” in God, than the thing itself (does) in the
world, according to a reckoning of that which it is; because
(a similitude in God) is God Himself.1038

The “true reality” of things, then, cannot be understood as the nature of its “Knower” or
“Producer”’. As we read, the eternal-divine Ideas “are not the true essences or quiddities
of created things”. As the “rules of Divine Law”,

[they] are all the ways by which the mind knows and judges
that which could not be otherwise…. These rules are beyond
error, doubt, and judgment, for judgment is by them, and not
of them.1039

As Bonaventure explains in the same place, these rules “are also beyond change, restriction
and cancellation”, and therefore they are “so certain that they cannot be contradicted in any
way, except as regards exterior reason”. Furthermore, as Bonaventure explains, “they are
rooted in Eternal light and lead to it, but this does not make such light visible”. 1040 The
“rules of divine Law that bind us” fill “the rational mind with splendid light”, and thus “the
mind knows and judges that which could not be otherwise”, specifically,

that the supreme Principle must be supremely venerated, that

the supreme Truth must be supremely believed in and
assented to, and that the supreme Good must be supremely
desired and loved.1041

1036
“et hoc modo concedendum est, quod verius est unaquaeque res in proprio genere quam in Deo”. I Sent.,
d. 36, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (I, 625b).
1037
“Cum igitur res habeant esse in proprio genere, habeant etiam esse in mente, habeant esse in aeterna
ratione; nec esse earum sit omnino immutabile primo et secundo modo, sed tantum tertio videlicet prout sunt
in Verbo aeterno: restat, quod nihil potest facere res perfecte scibiles, nisi adsit Christus, Dei Filius et
magister”. Christus mag., 7 (V, 569a). WMM, p. 27.
1038
I Sent., d. 36, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (I, 625b–626a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01625.html (n.d.), viewed 28 July 2011.
1039
Hex., 2, 9, 10 (V, 338a). TWB, V, pp. 26–27.
1040
Hex., 2, 10 (V, 338a). TWB, V, p. 27. De Vinck explains that “exterior reason” refers to “false reasoning
based on externals only, as opposed to ad interius rationem”. TWB, V, p. 27, note.
1041
Hex., 2, 9 (V, 338a). TWB, V, p. 26.

198
The divine Laws are “unrestricted in that they offer themselves to the minds of all”. 1042
Nevertheless, the supreme light of the eternal reasons does not “shine upon us with such
clarity that evidence bursts upon us with ineluctable force”. As long as we remain in the
world, “we are still subject to confusion and mystery”. 1043 Thus the rationes aeternae are
not the object of our knowledge, but only an immediate cause or means by which, thanks
to contuitio, we come to knowledge. Therefore there is no doubt that “to say that we know
by God’s light,…is not to say that we know God”.1044

As I said above, created reason and the eternal reasons work together. The eternal
reasons “provide a direction for knowledge and give it such an impulse that they establish
certitude”.1045 Thus the human intellect can understand truth with certitude and can come
to certain knowledge through science because it judges created things through the
immutable, perfect and eternal laws of God. 1046 The eternal reasons are “the pillar and
ground of certitude [but] are not visible in themselves and in their clarity here below”. 1047
Although they are not known in themselves, the eternal reasons are “co-affirmed in every
cognitive act and its principles or conditions”. The intellect “inescapably affirms” the
eternal rules because they are the condition of the very possibility of any cognitive act. As
Nachbahr puts it, eternal reasons are “the necessary, a priori transcendental experience of
the Infinite in the affirmation of the finite as finite”. 1048 We can “know in the eternal
reasons” (in rationibus aeternis) if we see the perfect order of the divine in the created
order,1049 that is, the order of created things to an end — God — but also order as the order
of parts to a whole.

In Christus unus omnium magister, Bonaventure, referencing Augustine, speaks of

the soul being bonded or joined (connexa) to the eternal laws through the agent intellect
and the superior part of the reason.1050 Bonaventure agrees with Augustine that “in some
manner” the soul attains to the light of the eternal laws, but clarifies that “nevertheless it is
1042
Hex., 2, 10 (V, 338a). TWB, V, p. 27.
1043
Bougerol, Introduction, p. 114.
1044
Scott Matthews, “Arguments, Texts, and Contexts: Anselm’s Argument and the Friars”, MedPhilTheol 8
(1999), pp. 83–104, p. 102.
1045
Bougerol, Introduction, p. 114.
1046
Quinn, Constitution, p. 527. Cf. “Ergo impossibile est, quod intellectus noster certitudinaliter cognoscat
aliquod verum, quin attingat aliquo modo summam veritatem”. Scien. Chr., f. 29 (V, 20a); “Divinus
intellectus, sua summa veritate omnia aeternaliter exprimens, habet aeternaliter omnium rerum similitudines
exemplares, quae non sunt aliud ab ipso, sed sunt quod est essentialiter”. Ibid., 2, concl. (V, 9a).
1047
Crowley, “Illumination and Certitude”, p. 440.
1048
Nachbahr, “Pure Reason”, p. 465.
1049
Hellmann, Order, p. 15. Cf. J. Hamesse, “Le concept ordo dans quelques oeuvres de saint Bonaventure”,
in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi (eds.) Ordo II, Atti del Colloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale
Europeo (Rome: Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1979), pp. 27–57.
1050
“Unde licet anima secundum Augustinum connexa sit legibus aeternis, quia aliquomodo illud lumen
attingit secundum supremam aciem intellectus agentis et superiorem portionem rationi”. Christus mag., 18,
(V, 572a).

199
indubitably true…that cognition is generated in us by way of the sense, memory and
experience, from which within us there is gathered the universal”.1051 In light of this logic
we cannot accept Joanna Waller’s simple assertion that the rationes aeternae are
“implanted in the soul by God”.1052

To use Bonaventure’s words, “in all certain knowledge, those principles of

knowledge are attained by the knower”,1053 though the eternal reasons are reached by
different people in different ways, and to different degrees:

Since certain knowledge pertains to the rational spirit in as

far as it is an image of God, it is in this sort of knowledge
that the soul attains to the eternal reasons. But because it is
never fully conformed to God in this life, it does not attain to
the reasons clearly, fully, and distinctly, but only to a greater
or lesser degree according to the degree of its conformity to
God. However, since the nature of the image is never absent
from the rational spirit, it always attains to the reasons in
some way.1054

According to Bonaventure, God and the eternal reasons are in relation to human
knowledge as the objectum fontanum, source of being and knowing.1055 This expressive
metaphor is used by Bonaventure to describe how the rationes aeternae are the source of
knowledge, and yet at the same time are not perceived by the person who relies on the
source of knowledge, who is Christ.1056 As we already mentioned, the rationes aeternae,
like the eternal Light, are not the objectum quod or known object, but only the objectum
quo, by whose influence we know and reach absolute certitude. 1057 This means that we are
able to contuit God and the eternal reasons without seeing them directly:
1051
Christus mag., 18, (V, 572a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon05567.html, 2005, viewed 28 July 2011.
1052
“His belief in divine illumination was based on Augustine’s concept of rationes aeternae, implanted in
the soul by God”. Joanna Waller, “Aristotle and Bonaventure: The Points of Convergence and Departure of
Greek Philosophy and Dionysian Mysticism”, Ex Corde: Franciscan Studies in Theology I (2009), pp. 82–
105, p. 92. In Itinerarium Bonaventure very distinctly remarks that eternal laws are eternal and uncreated and
therefore can exist only in the eternal Art: “eas esse incommutabiles et incorruptibiles tanquam necessarias,
incoarctabiles tanquam incircumscriptas, interminabiles tanquam aeternas, ac per hoc indivisibiles tanquam
intellectuales et incorporeas, non factas, sed increatas, aeternaliter existentes in arte aeterna, a qua, per quam
et secundum quam formantur formosa omnia”. Itin., 2, 9 (V, 302a).
1053
Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V, 24b.). WSB, IV, p. 137.
1054
Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V, 24a). WSB, IV, p. 136.
1055
“Nam idem [Christus] est principium essendi et cognoscendi”. Hex., 1, 13 (V, 331b).
1056
“ut singulariter unus Magister dicatur, eo quod ipse est fontale principium et origo cuiuslibet scientiae
humanae. Unde sicut unus est sol, tamen multos radios emittit; sic ab uno Magistro, Christo, sole spirituali,
multiformes et diversae scientiae procedunt; ut quemadmodum multiplices et distincti rivuli ab uno fonte
egrediuntur, unus tamen est fons, qui in tot rivulos sine sui defectibilitate (se) multiplicat; sic ab uno fonte
aeterno, ab uno Magistro, Christo, sine sui defectibilitate egrediuntur rivuli diversarum scientiarum”. Dom.,
XXII p. Pent., Sermo 1 (IX, 442a). WSB, XII, pp. 516–517.
1057
“In this context, the ideas are not the obiectum quod of human knowledge — not that what we can
perceive — but only the obiectum quo — that through whose influence we attain certainty. The ideas, insofar
as they can be grasped at all by the human intellect, can only be grasped reflexively by it”. Speer,
“Bonaventure and the Question”, p. 36.

200
 [T]he eternal reason does not move us to knowledge by itself
alone but together with the truth of principles, and it does so
not in a special way but in a general way in this wayfaring
state. Therefore, it does not follow that it is known to us in
itself. Rather, it is known to us in as far as it shines forth in
its principles and in its general character. And thus, in a
certain way, it is most certain to us, because our intellect can
in no way think that it does not exist.1058

4. 9. 2. 2. 5. Contuition

From time to time the word “contuit” has appeared in this section. In the works of
Saint Bonaventure, the term “contuitio” is given various senses. In some cases,
Bonaventure uses “contuition” in the sense of “intuition or vision” — the words seem
interchangeable. In the fourth chapter of the Itinerarium, Bonaventure uses contuitio in the
context of the soul’s ability to see itself and the eternal truth within itself:

[So] our soul would not be able to be lifted up perfectly from

sensible realities to see itself [contuitum sui] and the eternal
truth within itself unless the truth, assuming a human form in
Christ, should become a ladder to repair the first ladder that
had been broken in Adam.1059

This connection of contuitio with the eternal truth within oneself is strikingly different
from the strict sense of the term which we are using in this paper, namely that contuitio
“most often indicates the kind of knowledge we have of the ‘rationes aeternae’, which are
ultimately identical with God”.1060

For our purposes, contuitio is the process that gives us an indirect awareness of
truth.1061 Through contuition, “the principles of knowledge are attained by the knower”. 1062
“‘[C]ontuition’, in the proper sense, is only the apprehension in a perceived result of the
presence of a cause which we cannot discover intuitively”. 1063 The experience of
1058
Scien. Chr., 4, 16 (V, 25b). WSB, IV, p. 140.
1059
Itin., 4, 2 (V, 306a). WSB, II-H, p. 97.
1060
Nachbahr, “Pure Reason”, p. 464.
1061
For more on the concept of Bonaventure’s understanding of contuition, see: Jean-Marie Bissen, “De la
contuition”, ÉF 46 (1934), pp. 559–69; Raniero Sciamannini, La Contuizione Bonaventuriana (Florence:
Editrice Città di Vita, 1957); Léon Veuthey, “La via affermativa e la via negativa nell’ascesa a Dio”, Vita
Christiana 17 (1948), pp. 398–409; Leonard Bowman, “A View of St. Bonaventure’s Symbolic Theology”,
PACPA 48 (1974), pp. 25–32.
1062
Scien. Chr., 4, concl. (V, 24a). WSB, IV, p.136.
1063
The full context of this statement is as follows: “This indirect apprehension by thought of an object which
itself eludes us, the presence of which is in some way implied in that of the effects which follow from it,
receives the name contuitus in St. Bonaventure’s teaching. Intuition is just the direct vision of God which is
refused us; ‘contuition,’ in the proper sense, is only the apprehension in a perceived result of the presence of
a cause which we cannot discover intuitively; divine light therefore cannot be immediately perceived,
although it acts upon us immediately”. Gilson, Bonaventure, p. 362. Cf. “omnes creaturae…sunt vestigia,

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contuition is “the outcome of the subtle relation between illumination and the operations of
the mind”. In this event, the mind “grasps with certitude what is presented to it either in its
abstract concepts or in its immediate experience of itself”. Contuition does not occur in the
mutable light of the mind or in the mind’s immediate experience of itself, “but in the light
of eternal reasons, which shine through the objects of its knowledge in consequence of the
illuminative presence of God”.1064 That is, we do not directly perceive the light that
illuminates our minds (such intuition/contuition belongs to the blessed), or directly
apprehend the object of contuition. Rather, by virtue of this divine light, we have an
indirect awareness of truth, which could be described as pre-conceptual truth; it becomes
evident without being directly revealed.

This [light] can be seen by none but a man suspended

beyond himself in a lofty vision; and when we wish to see by
means of simple intuition how such art is one and yet
manifold, we cannot conceive how infinite it is, except in
terms of extension, because the imagination interferes: and
so we cannot see by simple intuition, except through
reasoning.1065

Although we do not attain the fullest clarity of the object itself, our minds are drawn to the
attainment of ultimate truth with certainty. Thus, as we have said, rationes aeternae are
not the object of our knowledge but only an immediate cause or means by which, thanks to
contuitio, we come to knowledge.

Bonaventurian contuitio is a “co-recognition, a co-knowledge of one object

together with another”; to recognize one is to recognize the other. For the Seraphic
Doctor, contuition’s immediate character is “closely connected with its indubitable self-
evidence”. In contuition, a person experiences an

immediate, not perfectly objectifiable, non-intentional

awareness of the divine presence in the experience of the
finite, especially in the self-experience of the soul in its
desire for wisdom, beatitude and peace.1066

The human person “recognizes the created and uncreated at the same time”. What
we know naturally leads to “the supernatural vision of contemplation” in this life before
the intuition of heaven, the “final vision of divine order” which alone will satisfy the

simulacra et spectacula nobis ad contuendum Deum proposita et signa divinitus data”. Itin., 2, 11 (V, 302b).
“Dum haec igitur percipit et consurgit ad divinum contuitum”. Hex., 5, 33 (V, 359b).
1064
Desmond Connell, “St Bonaventure and the Ontologist Tradition”, SB, II, pp. 289–308, p. 304.
1065
Hex., 12, 11 (V, 386a). TWB, V, p. 178.
1066
Nachbahr, “Pure Reason”, p. 467.

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human intellect.1067 In heaven, we will see God face to face; “the contuition will be
dissolved into a univocal intuition”. In the meantime, “with contuition it is possible to
begin toward that end”.1068 During his earthly life, man will not see God in His Essence.
But a contuition in the sense of “a beholding of God through and in God’s effects in the
natural and supernatural order” is possible through “illuminative contemplation”. This is
not an intellectual process; it requires the “mystical disposition” of one “who is purified
and advancing toward the highest degree of contemplation”. It is, in Boehner’s words,
“the mystical stage of admiration”.1069

From Bonaventure’s description of joy in the heavenly Kingdom we see that

sometimes the concept of contuitio is identified with a final act of contemplation of God:

Ista enim pulcritudo caelestis patriae, quae est in Deo Patre,

nihil aliud est quin sensibilium et insensibilium, rationalium
et irrationalium, Immanitatis Christi, Dei unius trinique
pulcritudo, quam exponit glorificatis spiritibus
contemplandam, qui nomine volatilium caeli designantur, eo
quod pennis contemplationis elevantur usque ad contuitum
caeli Trinitatis.1070

Thus we see that contuitio is a process by which we can “see God” and all in God
according to God’s order:1071 “Post considerationem essentialium elevandus est oculus
intelligentiae ad contuitionem beatissimae Trinitatis”.1072 For those who are purified and
1067
Hellmann, Order, pp. 15–16.
1068
Sciamannini, La Contuizione Bonaventuriana, p. 113. As quoted in Hellmann, Order, p. 16.
1069
Philotheus Boehner in WSB, II-H, pp. 26–27.
1070
Dom. V p. Epiph., Sermo 1 (IX, 194a–b).
1071
“This description of contuition is close to that of Bettoni: our knowledge is nothing other than to see all
things in God and from the point of view of God”. As quoted in Hellmann, Order, p. 15.
1072
Itin., 6, 1 (V, 310b). Translations of this sentence are problematic. Hayes renders “post considerationem
essentialium” as “After our consideration of the essential attributes of God” (WSB, II-H, p. 123). This is
similar to Boehner’s translation: “Having considered the essential attributes of God” (WSB, II-B, p. 89). Both
translators attribute to Bonaventure language that he could not have intended, specifically, “attributes of
God”. As we see from the text, neither “God” nor “attributes” are mentioned in Latin. However,
“essentialium” is in the genitive case, so we must ask whose or what’s “essentialia” have been just been
considered. It seems to me clear that the answer lies in the previous chapter, number V: “De speculatione
Divinae unitatis per eius nomen primarium, quod est esse”. God as Ipsum Esse is what has been considered
before the eye of the intelligence can be raised to contuition of the Blessed Trinity. Obviously, God’s Being
is not an “attribute” of God.
God’s Ipsum Esse is the “principium radicale et nomen” of the “visionis essentialium”, which
means all that comprises God’s Ipsum Esse. We are here speaking of God’s Being itself, a concept far
removed from the possibilities opened up by “essential attributes of God”. If we posit “essential attributes of
God”, may we then imagine some inessential or non-essential attributes of God? The phrase “essential
attributes of God” seems contradictory and redundant at the same time. If something of God is “essential”, it
cannot be at the same time merely an “attribute”. On the other hand, all that can be called an “attribute” of
God is at the same time “essential” to God and is God. If “the essential attributes of God” had any meaning,
it would have to mean God Himself, which brings us back to our proposed interpretation: God as Ipsum Esse
is what Bonaventure has considered before the eye of the intelligence can be raised to contuition of the
Blessed Trinity.
Unsurprisingly, I have not been able to find any reference to “essential attributes of God” in either
the Catechism of the Catholic Church or any Church documents available on the Vatican website, since the
expression is clearly theologically untenable.

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have cleanliness of heart, contuition refers to a “state of reverential amazement”, in which
the soul is capable of receiving “the divine manifestation of eternal Truth…in the world
outside, inside and above the mind”. 1073 We may conclude with Hellmann that
contemplation is “the perfection of contuition”.1074 However, as Bonaventure explains,
only through ecstatic love which unites us with God can we know Him more fully even
than we can know Him by faith:

Cognoscitur enim Deus in vestigio, cognoscitur in imagine,

cognoscitur et in effectu gratiae, cognoscitur etiam per
intimam unionem Dei at animae, iuxta quod dicit Apostolus:
“Qui adhaeret Deus unus spiritus est”. Et haec est cognitio
excelentissima, quam docet Dionysius, quae quidem est in
ecstatico amore et elevat supra cognitionem fidei secundum
statum communem.1075

4. 9. 2. 3. Intelligentia

As I have already mentioned above, the cognitive power can be considered as

reason, intellect and intelligence, according as it looks toward things inferior, equal or
superior.1076 Intelligentia is most often translated as “understanding” or “intelligence”. It
is the mens in the most restricted sense of the term. 1077 The intelligentia — as Bonaventure
presents it in the Itinerarium1078 — is concerned with the soul as similitude and is central to

1073
Introduction, WSB, II-H, p. 27.
1074
Hellmann, Order, p. 15. In this place Hellmann quotes Edgar Sauer’s characterization of Bonaventure the
contemplative: “he recognizes our metaphysical nature as an image of God, and he simultaneously sees this
image as an archetype or prefiguration of God.” Edgar Sauer, Die religiöse Wertung der Welt in
Bonaventuras Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in Franzikanische Forschungen 4 (Werl: Druck, 1937), p. 18.
1075
III Sent., d. 24, a. 3, q. 2, dub. 4 (III, 531b). Bonaventure expresses a similar logic in different language in
Hex., 3, 24 where we read: “Est visio intelligentiae per naturam inditae, et visio intelligentiae per fidem
sublevatae, per Scriptura eruditae, per contemplationem suspensae, per prophetiam illustratae, per raptum
in Deum absorbtae. Ad has sequitur visio septima animae glorificatae”. (V, 347a).
1076
“Aliquando vero fit divisio potentiarum secundum aspectus, sicut dividitur potentia cognitiva in rationem,
intellectum et intelligentiam, secundum quod aspicit ad inferius, ad par et ad superius”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a.
2, q. 3 (II, 566b).
1077
“mens nostra tres habet aspectus principiles. Unus est ad corporalia, exteriora, secundum quem vocatur
animalitas seu sensualitas; alius intra se et in se, secundum quem dicitur spiritus; tertius supra se secundum
quem dicitur mens”. Itin., 1, 4 (V, 297a–b). Boehner elucidates the various senses of mens: “Mens, mind. In
its general meaning, the word designates the soul in its three powers — memoria, intelligentia, voluntas —
which make it an image of God…. (In one sense it is taken from mene, which signifies the moon or a weak
light. In this sense it refers to the entire substance of the soul because of the changes it undergoes. In a second
sense, it is understood in relation to measure, and in this sense it refers to the power of judgment…. In a third
sense it comes from eminent, and in this sense it refers to the higher reason…. In the fourth sense it comes
from the word to remember, and here it stands for memory, both in habit and in act). Saint Bonaventure
obviously uses mens here in the third sense, that is, superior reason as opposed to the inferior. This is an
important distinction introduced by Saint Augustine (e.g. De Trinitate, I, 2; PL 42, 997 ff.). The inferior
reason yields knowledge, the superior reason, wisdom”. Philotheus Boehner in WSB, II-H, pp. 143–44. See
also Bonaventure’s discussion of intelligentia as the “divine power” in Hex., 5, 24 (V, 358a). Cf. C.H.N.
Foshee, “Bonaventure and the Augustinian Concept of Mens”, FS 27 (1967), pp. 163–175.
1078
Itin., 1, 6 (V, 297b).

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preparation for the contuition of God by the apex mentis, that is, synderesis.1079
Intelligentia, then, can be described as that aspect of higher reason that looks toward those
things that are superior. In his De regno Dei, the Seraphic Doctor presents intelligentia as
the power of the soul by which we may “know God, the Supreme Good”. 1080 Since the
intelligence is oriented toward things that are superior, it seeks truth, and “[o]nce our
intelligence is turned to the truth, it is ‘made true’ and consequently consonant with the
truth, and when consonant with rectitude, it is rectified”.1081 (The theme of rectitude will
also be addressed by Bonaventure when he treats of the will.)

Generally speaking, intelligentia “designates the act of the intellection, or the act
by which the intellect understands its object”. 1082 It gives human persons the potential to
“understand the spiritual significance of what is grasped” and to “read inside (inter-
legere)”1083 what it has come to know. For this reason, intelligentia almost always
indicates “the highest level of understanding toward which the rational soul may aspire”,
“the mind’s potential to experience contemplative knowing, that is, wisdom”. 1084 In the
First Book of Sentences, Bonaventure writes that through the intelligence, in some way, we
can ascend to a contuition of the divine simplicity, 1085 although this is not a typical use of
“contuition” in Bonaventure, as I have explained above.

4. 9. 3. The affective powers of the soul

Bonaventure taught that both the cognitive and affective powers of the human soul
could find their rest in “infinite good and truth”: “the intellect and affective power of the

1079
“Post considerationem essentialium elevandus est oculus intelligentiae ad contuitionem beatissimae
Trinitatis”. Itin., 6, 1 (V, 310b).
1080
“quid est intelligentia, quae nata est apprehendere Deum, summum bonum”. Regno Dei, n. 9 (V, 542a),
my translation.
1081
“Intelligentia autem nostra ad veritatem conversa verificatur, ac per hoc veritati aequatur, et dum aequatur
rectitudini, rectificatur”. II Sent., prooem. (II, 4a). WSB, X, p. 349.
1082
Quinn, Constitution, p. 340.
1083
Tavard Transiency and Permanence, p. 87.
1084
Introduction to WSB, X, p. 22. According to Quinn, “Bonaventure has only a few references to the
intelligence” outside the context of the soul as an image of God. See Quinn, Constitution, p. 327.
1085
“Nam etsi intellectus aliquo modo per intelligentiam ascendat ad contuitum simplicitatis”. I Sent., 34, a.
un., q. 2, concl. (I, 590a).

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rational soul” only come to rest in God. “Therefore, it is true that the intellect and
affectivity are directed to the infinite good and truth….”1086

Bonaventure subdivided the affective potency into the natural or instinctive will
and the elective will, characterising the elective will as the “will in the proper sense”. 1087
The natural or instinctive will has the concupiscible and irascible appetites, 1088 which are
either drawn toward acquiring and defending the good or repulsing and avoiding evil. 1089
We should clarify from the start that “concupiscible” and “irascible” as used by
Bonaventure here do not necessarily carry the entirely negative connotations of modern
English. Typically, “concupiscence” refers to an inordinate desire for carnal pleasure, or a
disordered vanity or curiosity, etc., while “irascibility” has the common sense of “irritable”
or “hot-tempered”. (Possibly, the negative connotations of “irascible” and
“concupiscence” stem from the fact that when we sin, the irascible and concupiscible
appetites are distorted.1090) As we will see, Bonaventure’s use of these terms is far more
developed and nuanced than their modern connotations suggest.

For Bonaventure, the concupiscible appetite refers to an innate orientation toward

the good. When a person is moved by some particular good, it is the concupiscible
appetite that causes the person to long for, seek and strive to acquire that good. It is
important to make clear, however, that the concupiscible appetite is not for a particular
moral good, but for the moral good in universali.1091 Of course, the highest good is the
love of God, and the love of or desire for any goods must be ordered to this highest good.
When this “order of love” is violated, we have disordered desires (concupiscentia), a
disorder of “the flesh” or “cupidity”, which Bonaventure calls “the root of all evil”, and

1086
Scien. Chr., 6, concl. (V, 35a). WSB, IV, p. 171.
1087
“quod potentia affectiva dividitur in voluntatem naturalem et voluntatem electivam, quae proprie voluntas
dicitur”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b). TWB, II, p. 96.
1088
“Maior est differentia intelligentiae ad voluntatem quam sit intelligentiae ad memoriam vel etiam
irascibilis ad concupiscibilem.... Et quia utrumque horum necessarium est ad perfectionem actus cognitionis
et affectionis, ideo memoria et intelligentia potius dicuntur diversae vires quam diversae potentiae, similiter
irascibilis et concupiscibilis”. II Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 560b). Cf “Nihil autem aliud est voluntas
quam affectus sive appetitus ratiocinnatus. Omnis autem affectus sive appetitus vel est irascibilis vel
concupiscibilis”. III Sent., d. 33, a.1, q. 3 (III, 717a).
1089
“Concupiscibilis et irascibilis ita se habent quod concupiscibilis aquirit et irascibilis defendit”. II Sent., d.
24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 560b). “Per intellectivam (animam) autem discernit verum, refugit malum et appetit
bonum; verum quidem discernit per rationalem, malum repellit per irascibilem, bonum appetit per
concupiscibilem”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b).
1090
“cum peccatum dicat recessum a primo principio trino et uno omne peccatum imaginem Trinitatis
deformat et ipsam animam foedat quantum ad triplicem potentiam scilicet irascibilem rationalem et
concupiscibilem”. Brev., 3, 11 (V, 249a).
1091
Robert P. Prentice, The Psychology of Love According to St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 1957), p. 39.

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which is, of course, opposed to charity.1092 The assistance of grace is needed to cleanse,
strengthen and lift up the soul that has fallen into a disordered desire for “goods”.

Contrary to the concupiscible appetite, which naturally seeks the moral good, the
irascible appetite is the innate inclination to withdraw from what is evil. The irascible
appetite struggles to attain goods that are difficult to attain (“the arduous good”) and battles
to defend the good.1093 Just as the concupiscible appetite is drawn to the moral good in
general, so the irascible appetite does not withdraw from particular evils, but “rejects moral
evil in universali”.1094 When the irascible appetite is thwarted, it tends to anger (ira –
hence the name). It is also inclined to negligence, diffidence and — unsurprisingly —
impatience, and needs the help of grace, particularly the virtues of hope and fortitude.
When the irascible appetite is strengthened by fortitude and hope, a person has the power
to face the difficulties and deprivations of earthly life.1095

The soul’s appetite desires the good according to natural instinct as well as
deliberation and choice. Thus to complete the description of the motion of the affective
potency, we now have to analyse its two modes, synderesis and free will.

4. 9. 3. 1. Synderesis

“Synderesis” is another potentially confusing term, since it seems to have come into
use in Latin through a medieval error in transcription, when the Greek “synderesis” or
“synteresis” (conservation) was written in the place of “syneidesis” (conscience).1096

According to Robert Greene, Bonaventure inherited the consensus of a century of

scholarly debate that began with Peter Lombard, specifically, that “synderesis was an
intellectual habit of primary practical principles that operated in an intuitive, indefectible,

1092
“Concupiscentia autem duplex est, scilicet carnalis et cupiditatis; et haec ultima est radix omnium
malorum…et ideo sicut caritas est finis et perfectio omnium praeceptorum; sic abdication cupiditatis, quae
caritati opponitur, perfectio est praeceptorum”. Hex., 21, 9–10 (V, 433a).
1093
Introduction, WSB, X, p. 26.
1094
Prentice, Psychology of Love, p. 39.
1095
Introduction, WSB, X, p. 26.
1096
Ibid., p. 28, n. 94. Joseph Ratzinger writes, “The word synderesis (synteresis) came into the medieval
tradition of conscience from the stoic doctrine of the microcosm. It remained unclear in its exact meaning,
and for this reason became a hindrance to careful development of this essential aspect of the whole question
of conscience. I would like, therefore,…to replace this problematic word with the much more clearly defined
Platonic concept of anamnesis. It is not only linguistically clearer and philosophically deeper and purer, but
anamnesis above all also harmonizes with key motifs of biblical thought and the anthropology derived
therefrom”. Joseph Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth”, paper presented at the 10 th Workshop for Bishops,
Dallas, TX. http://www/ewtn/com/library/curia/ratzcons.htm, Feb. 1991, viewed 29 July 2011.

207
inextinguishable and non-discursive manner”. But at the same time, Bonaventure “shifted
the ground under synderesis”.1097 The Seraphic Doctor

retains and acknowledges in traditional terms the disposition

of the intellect to exercise the light of nature to recognize the
primary general principles of moral action, but he reserves
the term synderesis for the parallel movement of the will.1098

Bonaventure used synderesis to refer to a “habit-like faculty of the will” distinct

from conscience, thus emphasizing “the involvement and cooperation of both the cognitive
and affective powers in the process of choosing”.1099 Synderesis is the instinctive
inclination (instinctus naturae) of man’s affective nature which goads man “to embrace
what is morally good and/or to avoid what is morally evil”. 1100 In this “he does not mean
that we are directed by synderesis to pursue good objects in themselves; rather, we are
directed to the good found in objects”.1101 Drawing on the expressive language of
Bonaventure, Luc-Thomas Somme calls synderesis a “natural weight” that “is drawn by
the ‘gravity’ of the good”.1102

Synderesis is a natural tendency placed in man by God when man was created, 1103
and thus is innate to human nature.1104 As natural and innate, it can never be destroyed.
This makes synderesis unlike the impulse to sin, “which for Bonaventure comes from a
fault in the will that is contrary to nature”. Some persons — such as Christ and the Virgin
Mary — lack the impulse to sin, but every human being has synderesis.1105 It is not even
lost in the case of the damned. It no longer goads them to pursue the good, but it still
“speaks” to them of their guilt:

1097
Robert A. Greene, “Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral Sense”, JHI 58.2 (Apr.,
1997), pp. 173–198, p. 186.
1098
Greene, “Instinct of Nature”, p. 187
1099
Introduction, WSB, X, p. 28.
1100
Introduction, WSB, X, p. 27. Cf. “quemadmodum ab ipsa creatione animae intellectus habet lumen quod
est sibi naturale iudicatorium dirigens ipsorum intellectum in cognoscendis, sic affectus habet quoddam
naturale pondus dirigens in appetendis. Appetenda autem sunt in duplici genere: quaedam enim sunt in
genere honesti, quaedam in genere commode: sicut et cognoscibilia sunt in duplici genere: quaedam in
genere speculabilium et quaedam ex parte moralium. Et quaemadmodum conscientia non nominat illud
iudicatorium nisi in quantum dirigit ad opera moralia, sic synderesis non nominat illud pondus voluntatis,
sive voluntatem illo pondere nisi in quandum illum habet inclinare ad bonum honestum”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 2,
q. 1 (II, 910a). See also II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 1, ad. 4 (II, 910b).
1101
Douglas Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to McIntyre (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania Univ. Press, 2001), p. 30.
1102
Luc-Thomas Somme, “The Infallibility, Impeccability and Indestructibility of Synderesis”, Studies in
Christian Ethics, 19.3 (2006), pp. 403–416, p. 414.
1103
Cf. “[Synderesis] inest enim secundum primam naturam institutionem; et ideo natura salvata, non omnino
auferri potest”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 913b).
1104
Cf. “Dicendum, quod synderesis quantum ad actum impediri potest, sed exstingui non potest. Ideo autem
non potest exstinqui, quia, cum dicat quid naturale, non potest a nobis omnino auferri”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q.
2 (II, 912a–b).
1105
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 31.

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 Thus synderesis [in the case of the damned] is perpetually
hampered from goading to good and, consequently, can be
said to be extinguished in respect of its exercise, but not
extinguished without qualification, because it has another
use, namely to murmur in reply [to evil]. In this use, in
which the function of synderesis is to sting and murmur in
reply to evil, it flourishes most in the damned. I say this, in
the sense in which murmuring in reply to evil is a
punishment, not in the sense in which it is a matter of justice,
because this murmuring in reply will be a commendation of
divine justice but will not have the purpose of bringing forth
fruitful repentance. Hence, in the damned, synderesis
murmurs in reply to their guilt, yet in relation to
punishment.1106

Synderesis moves the will and the sense appetites rightly and naturally, but not
deliberatively.1107 As a natural, non-deliberate will, synderesis itself cannot be depraved,
taken away or destroyed by sin completely, but “it can be temporarily prevented, either by
the darkness of blindness or by the wantonness of pleasure or by the hardness of
obstinacy”.1108 According to Douglas Langston, the first impediment to synderesis —
blindness — “corresponds to Plato’s explanation for human beings’ performance of evil:
They do it through ignorance”.1109 In the case of wantonness of pleasure, it “corresponds to
Aristotle’s explanation for human evil: It is done through weakness of will”. 1110 Hardness
of obstinacy, on the other hand, “is, in fact, moral perversity”: a person chooses evil even
though he knows that he will suffer as a result. 1111 This third impediment to synderesis
cannot be attributed to a classical source, “but it is a major point of discussion in the
voluntarist tradition”.1112

1106
II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2, concl (II, 912b). Trans., Timothy C. Potts in Conscience in Medieval Philosophy
(Cambridge: CUP, 1980), p. 118, as quoted and with emendations by Langston, Conscience and Other
Virtues, pp. 33–34.
1107
John F. Quinn, “St. Bonaventure’s Fundamental Conception of Natural Law”, in: SB, III, pp. 571–598,
pp. 581–82. Cf. “Synderesis autem, ut prius ostensum est, non dicit vim animae rationalis ut moventem per
modum deliberationis, sed ut moventem per modum nature”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 912a).
1108
II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 912b). Trans., Potts in Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, p. 117.
1109
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 32. Cf. “Synderesis is hampered by the darkness of blindness
so that it does not murmur in reply to evil, because the evil is believed to be good, as e.g., in the case of
heretics who, while dying for the impiety of their error, believe that they die for their piety of faith, so that
they feel no guilt, but instead a fictitious and vain joy”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 912b). Trans.,
Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, p. 117.
1110
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 32. Cf. “Similarly, [synderesis] is hampered by the
wantonness of pleasure, for sometimes in the sins of flesh a man is so engrossed by the exercise of the flesh
that a sense of guilt has no place, because men of the flesh are so far carried away by the impulse to pleasure
that reason has no place [in them]”. Op. cit., loc. cit.
1111
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 33. Cf. “Synderesis is also hampered by the hardness of
obstinacy, so that it does not goad towards the good, as e.g. in the case of the damned, who are so strongly
reinforced in evil that they can never turn towards the good.” Trans., Potts, Conscience in Medieval
Philosophy, pp. 117–118, as emended and quoted by Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 33.
1112
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 32. Without wishing to over-simplify, we may speak of two
views of synderesis and conscience that emerged in the Middle Ages, the voluntaristic view that is associated
with Bonaventure, and the intellectualist view connected with Aquinas. “Bonaventure’s voluntaristic view of
synderesis and conscience presents synderesis as the drive to the good and places it in the appetitive faculty.

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 “The integrity of synderesis is thus indefectible”; it “refutes evil in a universal
mode,” rejecting an evil act not due to a “particular evil, but simply because it is evil”. We
may say that “the faculty of synderesis cannot be mistaken” because “[i]t always compels
us to seek the moral good (bonum honestum)”.1113 When the will is habituated by
synderesis, it “acts in such a way regarding the sense appetites that it is not associated with
their erroneous actions, but rather corrects them”.1114 If there is error, it is attributed to
conscience or free will, not to synderesis.1115

Synderesis is called the “natural will” and the ground for our conscience, which
depends on or works with the mediation of synderesis.1116 For Bonaventure, the conscience
relied on the mediation of synderesis to stimulate a person in the same way that reason
relies on the will.

To the objection that synderesis is the “spark of conscience,”

it ought to be said that it is called “spark” insofar as
conscience, in itself, cannot move or vex or stimulate
without the mediation of synderesis, which is like the
stimulus and flame [of conscience]. Thus, just as reason
cannot move without the mediation of the will, so conscience
[cannot move] without the mediation of synderesis.1117

Since synderesis “provides a spark that conscience needs in order to operate”, 1118 we may
call it “a dynamic force of the will, directing our entire moral life”. 1119 In Douglas
Langston’s words, “conscience and synderesis interpenetrate each other”. That is, for
Bonaventure, conscience is driven by synderesis and at the same time directs synderesis.1120
In addition, they are both related to natural law.

In contrast, Aquinas (1225–74) claims that synderesis is in the rational part of human agents. It is a natural
disposition of the human mind by which we apprehend without inquiry the basic principles of behavior; it is
thus parallel to the disposition by which we directly apprehend the basic principles of the theoretical
disciplines”. Op. cit., p. 39.
1113
Severin Valentinov Kitanov, “Bonaventure’s Understanding of Fruitio”, Picenum Seraphicum (2001), pp.
137–191, p. 143.
1114
Quinn, “Fundamental Conception”, SB, III, pp. 581–82.
1115
Somme, “Infallibility, Impeccability and Indestructibility”, p. 404.
1116
Cf. “Postremo quoniam appetitus dupliciter potest ad aliquid ferri, scilicet, secundum naturalem
instinctum vel secundum deliberationem et arbitrium, hinc est quod potentia affectiva dividitur in voluntatem
naturalem et voluntatem electivam, quae proprie voluntas dicitur”. Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b). According to
Bourke’s explication, for St Thomas Aquinas synderesis “does not tell us what is good or what is evil; these
must be known by reasoning and not by simple intuition”. See. Vernon J. Bourke, “The Background of
Aquinas’ Synderesis Principle”, in Graceful Reason, ed. by Lloyd P. Gerson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1983), pp. 345–360, p. 360.
1117
II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 910b). Trans., Douglas Langston, “The Spark of Conscience: Bonaventure’s
View of Conscience and Synderesis”, in FS 53 (1993) pp. 79–95, p. 85.
1118
Langston, “Spark of Conscience”, p. 85.
1119
Mulligan, “Portio Superior”, p. 338.
1120
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 35.

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 And therefore, just as a free choice simultaneously embraces
reason and will, so synderesis simultaneously embraces
reason and will, and similarly natural law, and similarly
conscientia, and they can be taken as being the same.
Synderesis is, however, appropriately called a potentiality,
conscientia a disposition and the natural law their object, or,
according to another classification, synderesis is a
disposition with respect to good and bad in general,
conscientia a disposition with respect to good or bad in
particular, and the natural law is related indifferently to
either.1121

While conscientia is an intellectual disposition of practical reason, synderesis is “a

dispositional potentiality” of the desiring part the soul:

And just as “conscientia” only names judgement which is

directed to behaviour, so “synderesis” only names that bias
of the will, or the will with that bias, which makes it turn to
good things which are honourable.1122

In other words, the rules of conscience are the means by which we reach the end of
synderesis. When we do evil and have an emotional reaction of guilt or remorse, that “is a
reaction to the frustration of the desire for good caused when one fails to adhere to what
the conscience has determined leads to the good”.1123

To clarify the foregoing outline I will finish this subchapter by focusing on the
citation from Itinerarium where synderesis is placed by Bonaventure in an exclusively
superior position, namely at the top of the soul’s powers in its ascent to God: “These six
powers are senses, the imagination, the reason, the understanding, the intelligence, and the
summit of mind or the spark of synderesis”.1124

1121
II Sent., d. 39, a. 2, q. 1 (II, 910a). Trans., Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, p. 116.
1122
Ibid.
1123
Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues, p. 35. Cf. “Ad illud quod obiicitur de remorsu, dicendum, quod
conscientia dicitur remordere, propter hoc quod, dum ipsa monstrat aliquod malum ipsi affectui habenti
rectitudinem, superinducit remorsum, pro eo quod ille affectus recalcitrat”. II Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 1, concl.,
ad 4 (II, 900b).
1124
“Iuxta igitur sex gradus ascensionis in Deum, sex sunt gradus potentiarum animae per quos ascendimus
ab imis ad summa, ab exterioribus ad intima, a temporalibus conscendimus ad aeterna, scilicet sensus,
imaginatio, ratio, intellectus, intelligentia et apex mentis seu synderesis scintilla”. Itin., 1, 6 (V, 297a). WSB,
II-B, p. 41. In his translation, Monti renders “synderesis scintilla” as “spark of conscience” (p. 51). This is
inconsistent with the information in the Boehner note to which Monti refers his readers. In his note, Boehner
shows that Bonaventure sometimes equates synderesis with conscience (“to Saint Bonaventure it is
conscience”) and sometimes distinguishes between synderesis and conscience (“[h]e also explains the
parallelism between synderesis and cognition as well as the distinction from conscience”, p. 163). It seems to
me that in this particular place, where the six steps of ascension to God are considered, synderesis, rather
than “conscience” is the appropriate translation. Cf “In the next century and a half a number of mystical
writers enshrined synderesis as the pinnacle of the soul, the flashpoint of human contact with the divine and
invented a variety of metaphors, synonyms, and epithets for it: principalis affectio (Thomas Gallus), grunt
(Eckhart), vünkelin (Ruiusbroec), scintilla (Bonaventure, Eckhart), semen (Eckhart), apex mentis
(Bonaventure), portio virginalis animae (Gerson)”. Robert A. Greene, “ Instinct of Nature”, p. 188. Cf. also
Robert A. Greene, “Synderesis, the Spark of Conscience, in the English Renaissance”, JHI 52.2 (Apr.–Jun.,

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4. 9. 3. 2. Free will

Free will or deliberative will, by which the will can choose to act or not to act, or to
act one way instead of another, is said to be operative when, being indifferent to two
objects, it freely and after due deliberation chooses one of them in preference to the other.
This power to embrace any one of a set of objects according to our own wish and
discretion is what constitutes the essence of free will. This is tantamount to saying that the
essential of the free will is self-determination.

Free choice involves deliberation, judgment, and desire. These three activities are
involved in the process of coming to proper judgments about the good. Such judgments
are made in the light of laws that transcend the soul itself. As Bonaventure explained it,
deliberation consists in inquiring which is better. What is “better” is determined in terms
of “closeness” or “likeness” to the “best” — the highest Good, Christ the Exemplar of all
things. In judging, the mind strives to deliberate in light of the divine laws “impressed
upon the mind” so that it can arrive at “a full and complete analysis”. Finally, as indicated
above, human desire must search honestly for “the supreme Good, or that which leads to it,
or reflects that Good in a certain way”.1125 Thus, through this kind of threefold effort, “the
soul strives to its end through free will”. 1126 It is drawn in cooperation with grace toward
its completion and redemption. When “the will is in conformity with the highest
Goodness” it is “rectified”. The one “who loves goodness is made upright”, better, more
just.1127

In the moral order, the cognitive and affective potencies of the soul form one
integral faculty of liberty of choice (liberum arbitrium),1128 which, as such, is found only in
entities having a rational nature.1129 For Bonaventure, as well as for the Doctor of Grace,
liberum arbitrium — free choice or freedom of choice — is defined in this manner: “Free
choice is the faculty of reason and will”.1130 This means that while free choice is distinct

1991), pp. 195–219, p. 199.

1125
Itin., 3, 4 (V, 304b), WSB, II-H, p. 89.
1126
Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b). WSB, IX, p. 71.
1127
“Qui enim diligit bonitatem rectus est”. II Sent., prooem. (II, 4b). WSB, X, p. 350.
1128
Cf. “Quoniam igitur liberum arbitrium secundum propriam suam assignationem facultas rationis et
voluntatis recte esse dicitur; hinc est, quod liberum arbitrium principaliter dicit habitum et complectitur
rationem et voluntatem, non tanquam una potentia ex eis constituta, sed tanquam unus habitus, qui quidem
recte dicitur facultas et dominium; qui consurgit ex coniunctione utriusque et potens est super actus utriusque
potentiae, per se et in se consideratae, sicut arbitraria potestas in duabus personis regimen habet super actus
utriusque in se consideratae”. II Sent., d. 25, p. 1, a. 1, q. 4 (II, 601b–602a). In II Sentences, two parts of
distinction 25 are especially concerned with liberum arbitrium. See pp. 591–629.
1129
“Dicendum, quod absque dubio liberum arbitrium reperitur in solis substantiis rationalibus”. II Sent., d.
25, p. 1, a. un., q. 1, concl. (II, 593a).
1130
“Liberum arbitrium sic definitur ab Augustino: ‘Liberum arbitrium est facultas rationis et voluntas’”. II
Sent., d. 25, p. 1, a. un., q. 1, concl. (II, 592b). In footnote 6 to this text (in the critical edition) we read: “In

212
from reason and will, because free choice is a facultas rationis et voluntatis, these faculties
are mutually related.1131 This does not means that free choice is adding something that is
beyond the essentiam of reason and will (as a new quality), but only that due to their
mutual relation they are able to join in one operation. In fact, the predispositions of reason
and will are fulfilled when they are united to operate as free will. Hence, full freedom is
exercised — for good or evil — when reason and will act together:

Since this elective power is not determined in regard to either

of the possible choices, it must proceed from free will. And
because such autonomy implies both antecedent deliberation
and concomitant volition, freedom of choice is a power of
both reason and will, so that, as Augustine explains, it
applies to all the…rational powers. He says, indeed: “When
we speak of freedom of choice, we refer not only to a part of
the soul, but most assuredly, to the whole”. The co-operation
of these two powers — reason reflecting upon itself and will
acting in conjunction — gives rise to full freedom, the source
of merit or demerit accordingly as good or evil is chosen.1132

Because liberum arbitrium is a faculty of reason and will, all the rational potencies — of
memory, ratio, intellectus, intelligentia — are contained within that faculty.

4. 10. The soul as similitude

After vestige and image, the most proximate degree of perfection is what
Bonaventure calls similitude, “the perfection of the image as a whole and in each part”.1133

the text of Master (Peter), ch. 3: ‘Free will is a faculty of reason and will, by which the good is chosen, with
grace assisting, and/or evil (is chosen), with it desisting’. This definition, which recurs often in the following
Questions, Master (Peter) derived from Hugo of St. Victor (Sentences, tr. 3, ch. 8, where it seems to be
attributed to St. Augustine); according to Bl. (now St.) Albertus (Magnus), Summa., p. II, tr. 4, q. 16, m. 1 f.,
it was taken from (St.) Augustine, On Free Will, Bk. I, (ch. 7, n. 16 ff.)”. Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan
Archive, http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02591.html, 2009, viewed 30 July 2010.
Cf. “liberum arbitrium potius dicitur facultas voluntatis et rationis quam intellectus et affectus”. II Sent., d.
25, p. 1, a. un., q. 3, concl. (II, 599b).
1131
“Concedendae sunt igitur rationes ostendentes, quod liberum arbitrium secundum essentiam nihil addit
supra rationem et voluntatem; addit tamen aliquo modo secundum esse sive secundum relationem, quae
quidem non ponit, aliquam novam qualitatem esse in ratione vel voluntate, sed ponit, rationem et voluntatem
ad unum actum concurrere secundum naturalem aptitudinem”. II Sent., 2, 25 p. 1, a. un., q. 5, concl. (II,
603b).
1132
Brev., 2, 9 (V, 227b). TWB, II, pp. 96–97.
1133
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 366.

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It consists principally in “the union of the soul with God”, which comes about through
grace.1134
[G]race is a gift that purifies, illumines, and perfects the soul;
that vivifies, reforms and strengthens it; that elevates it,
likens it, and joins it to God, and thereby makes it acceptable
to God. This is a gift of such kind that it is rightly and
properly called “the grace that makes pleasing” [gratia
gratum faciens].1135

Through the soul’s participation in the life of grace, the soul grows in likeness to the
Creator. The soul is never identified with the Creator, but the soul becomes more fully
itself.1136 In creatures, this “divinization” of similitude does not come about according to
nature (as in the case of the Son) because no one is “worthy to attain this supreme good,
which totally exceeds the limits of human nature, unless elevated above self through the
condescending action of God”.1137 Thus this “divinization” comes through grace and
ultimately by glory, what Bonaventure calls the “deiformitas gloriae”. Through this grace,
“the human is made the child of God”.1138 The soul moves from the level of created nature
to the level of grace, and is made a temple of God, His daughter or spouse.1139

[N]o one possesses God without being possessed by God in a

special way. And no one possesses and is possessed by God
without loving God and being loved by God in a particular
and incomparable manner.... And no one is loved in this way
without being adopted as a child entitled to an eternal
inheritance. Therefore, the “grace which makes pleasing”
makes the soul the temple of God, the bride of Christ and the
daughter of the eternal Father. And since this cannot occur
except through a supremely gracious condescension of [sic]
the part of God, it could not be caused by some naturally
implanted habit, but only by a free gift divinely infused.1140

Another way of referring to similitude is to speak of the ordered soul (anima

ordinata), that is, an intimate union of a created person with the Divine Persons, who are

1134
II Sent., d. 16, a. 2, q. 3 (II, 405b); I Sent., d. 48, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (I, 852a–b). Also see Joanne J. Hartnett,
Doctrina S. Bonaventurae de Deiformitate (Mundelein, 1936); Léon Veuthey, “La nature de la grace”, MF
43 (1943), pp. 289–93.
1135
Brev., 5, 1 (V, 252a–b). WSB, IX, p. 170.
1136
Hellmann, Order, p. 119.
1137
Brev., 5, 1 (V, 252b). WSB, IX, p. 171.
1138
Hellmann, Order, p. 152.
1139
Cf. “Gratia dicitur perfectio naturae, non solum quia adiuvat, sed etiam quia defectum eius excluditur”. II
Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad 3 (II, 555b); “et ideo nec consecratio nec adoptatio nec unio animae ad Deum
fit per aliquam proprietatem naturae, sed per aliquod donum gratiae superadditum, quod animam consecret,
ut sit templum; assimilet, ut sit Dei filia; quod faciem animae decoret, ut apta sit esse Dei sponsa. Haec
autem omnia facit gratia gratum faciens”. II Sent., d. 29, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 696a). Cf. “Unde homo per vim
naturae sibi inditam potest pervenire ad perfectam aetatem et proficere ad cognitionem, sed nunquam potest
per se homo in habitum gratiae, nisi Deus infundat mera sua benignitate”. II Sent., d. 29, a. 2, q. 2, ad 4 (II,
704b).
1140
Brev., 5, 1 (V, 253a). WSB, IX, p. 172.

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the fullest expression of the divine order. In Wayne Hellmann’s words, “the anima
ordinata is loved with the same divine love shared among the three divine persons”. 1141
The ordered soul “is imprinted and signed, and it is thereby configured and conformed to
God”. Such a soul is fully illumined by the divine light of the Trinity, and only when the
soul is “graced with such a likeness, is [it] called the ordered soul (anima ordinata)”.1142

In the anima ordinata there exists a conformity between God and man, an indwelling
presence of the three Divine Persons in the individual human soul.

“To indwell” indicates a spiritual effect and the acceptance

of it; such is the effect of grace making us pleasing to God,
which is God-conformed, leads to God, and makes God
possess us and be possessed by us, and thus, “to dwell”
within us. And because the effect of grace is common to all
persons [of the Trinity], it follows that one person does not
indwell without the others; rather, the whole Trinity indwells
simultaneously.1143

This conformity to God, this indwelling of Creator in creature, is rooted in grace and
makes the soul acceptable to God. It is a supernatural accident in the soul, however, and
thus it can be lost.1144 It is achieved — and when lost, it can be regained — through the
Church, which itself is a mystery of the union of the Divine Persons and created
persons.1145 Because “the church is so ordered to conform to the order of the divine
persons”, the soul “conforms to the divine hierarchy when there is an identity between the
individual soul and the church”. The Church is the “mother of influences…and the divine
light which illumines and orders the soul per Ecclesiam”. In creation, the “perfect order of
the divine Trinity can be found” only within the Church.1146

At this point I will show how Bonaventure briefly outlined the main differences
among vestige, image and similitude.

Vestige, image and likeness differ in proximity of resemblance and are also related
to and dependent on their Creator in three different ways. 1147 A vestige is related to God as
to a cause (especially an efficient cause); an image is related to God as to a “motive
1141
Hellmann, Order, p. 153.
1142
Hellmann, Order, p. 152.
1143
Brev., 1, 5 (V, 214a). WSB, IX, p. 43. Cf. “Anima enim sic hierarchizata est civitas, in qua Deus habitat et
videtur….” Hex., 23, 2 (V, 445a).
1144
Cf. “Imago dicitur dupliciter: quantum ad substantiale esse; et haec respicit trinitatem potentiarum et
ordinem et aequalitatem, et sic semper permanet; alio modo prout supra esse addit bene esse, ut decorem et
honorem; et haec potest perdi”. I Sent., d. 3, p. 2 dub. 1 (I, 93a).
1145
“The anima ordinata does not exist in isolation. This is not possible.... Bonaventure sees an
interdependence between the anima ordinata and the ecclesia ordinata”. Hellmann, Order, p 154. Cf. Hex.,
21, 18 (V, 434a).
1146
Hellmann, Order, pp. 154, 155.

215
object”, for every intelligence is by nature capable of grasping God through memory,
understanding and will; and a similitude is related to God as to an indwelling gift.

The first difference of the grades lies in their manner of representing the Trinity as
their Prototype: the vestige reveals the Divine Exemplar in a way that is far removed; the
image in a way that is, as it were, nearer to the Divine Exemplar, and the similitude reveals
the Divine Exemplar as its child by adoption.1148

The second difference is in the properties through which this representation takes
place: the vestige is always connected with those properties which reflect God as the
Triune Creator; the image abides in the powers by which the soul possess God as an object;
and the similitude is rooted in the supernatural gift through which the soul possess God as
its indweller.1149

The third difference lies in the ends to which each of the grades tend: the end of the
vestige is the knowledge of the Persons of the Trinity according to their essential attributes;
the end of the image is the properties of the Divine Persons, yet in an absolute diversity of
nature; and the end of the similitude is these same properties but in their participative
conformity to the Divine Nature.1150

The fourth difference is in their extension: the more limited one of the grades is in
extension, the higher is its degree of analogous perfection. The lowest grade of analogy,
the vestige, is the greatest in extension since it is found in each and every creature. The
image, as it is only found in rational creatures, is higher in perfection but more limited in
extension than the vestige. The similitude, however, excels the image and the vestige in

1147
Cf. “omnes creaturae respectum habent et dependentiam ad suum Creatorem, triplicer ad ipsum comparari
possunt, scilicet aut sicut ad principium creativum, aut sicut ad obiectum motivum, aut sicut ad donum
inhabitativum. Primo modo comparatur ad ipsum omnis eius effectus, quantumcumque parum habens de
esse, habet Deum sicut pricipium. Omnis intellectus, quantumcumque parum habens de lumine, natus est per
cognitionem at amorem capere Deum. Omnis autem spiritus iustus et sanctus habet donum Spiritus sancti sibi
infusum”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a). Cf. also, Scien. Chr., q. 4, resp. (V, 24); Christus mag., 16–18 (V, 71–72); I
Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 4 (I,73b). On vestige and image as pertaining to God as cause and as object
respectively.
1148
Cf. “Et ideo intelligendum, quod cum creatura ducat in cognitione Dei per modum umbrae, per modum
vestigii et per modum imaginis, differentia eorum notior, a qua etiam dominatur, acipitur penes modum
representandi. Nam umbra dicitur, in quantum representat in quidam elongazione et confusione; vestigium in
quantum in elongazione, sed distinctione; imago vero in quantum in propinquitate et distinctione”. I Sent., d.
1, p.1, a. un, q. 2, ad 4 (I, 73a–b).
1149
Cf. “Nam creatura dicitur umbra quantum ad proprietates, quae respiciunt Deum in aliquo genere cause
secundum rationem indeterminatam; vestigium quantum ad proprietatem, quae respicit Deum sub ratione
triplici cause, efficientis, formalis et finalis, sicut sunt unum, verum et bonum; imago quantum ad
conditiones, quae respiciunt Deum non tantum in ratione cause, sed obiecti, quae sunt memoria, intelligentia
et voluntas”. I Sent., d. 1, p.1, a. un, q. 2, ad 4 (I, 73b).
1150
Cf. “Nam creatura ut umbra ducit ad cognitionem communium, ut communia; vestigium in cognitione
communium ut appropriate; imago ad cognitionem propriorum ut propria”. I Sent., d. 1, p.1, a. un, q. 2, ad 4
(I, 73b).

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perfection. The extension of the similitude is quite limited for it only exists in rational
creatures who are adorned with supernatural grace.1151

The fifth difference lies in the nature of the inherence of each grade: the vestige
resides in the substance of things, and as a result it is the foundation of the other grades.
The image, too, although not so deeply as the vestige, has a presence in the substance of
the soul. St. Bonaventure equates the image and the vestige in the sense that both have a
presence in substances.

The three-fold powers of the soul render it an image of the Trinity. “Behold,
therefore, how close the soul is to God, and how through their function the memory leads
us to eternity, the intelligence leads to truth, and the power of choice leads to the highest
Good”.1152 And since a creature cannot have God as its principle unless it is conformed to
Him according to unity, truth, and goodness; nor can it have God as its object unless it
grasps Him through memory, intellect, and will; nor can it have God as an infused gift
unless it conforms to Him through faith, hope, and charity, its threefold dowry; the first
conformity is distant, the second closer, and the third most near: this is why the first is
called a vestige of the Trinity, the second an image, and the third a similitude.1153

1151
Cf. “Sola rationalis creatura comparatur ad Deum ut obiectum, quia sola est capax Dei per cognitionem et
amorem: ideo sola est imago”. I Sent., d. 1, p.1, a. un, q. 2, ad 4 (I, 73b). Cf. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a).
1152
Itin., 3, 4 (V, 305a). WSB, II-H, p. 91. Beyond this Bonaventure states that “if one considers the order,
origin, and relation of these faculties to one another, one is led to the most blessed Trinity itself”. Itin., 3, 5
(V, 305a). WSB, II-H, p. 91.
1153
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a–b). English paraphrased from WSB, II-H, p. 97.

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5. Trinitology and divine “relationes”

The writings of Bonaventure are concerned with the theme of relationality on

various levels of existence. From the perspective of God, Bonaventure discusses relations
among the divine Persons, between God and man, between God and the world, and
between God and angels. Viewed from the perspective of man, we can distinguish
relations between man and God, man and man (including relations between the faculties of
the soul –– memory, understanding and will), between man and the angels, and between
man and the world. The Seraphic Doctor did not create a neat scheme of these relations;
his ideas about relatio1154 are found in diverse theological, philosophical and mystical
works. Some categories of relationship are explicated to a greater degree than others, and
some are so closely connected that it is difficult to treat them completely separately. In the
following pages, I will describe Bonaventure’s view of relationality on several of the most
significant levels.

In the thinking of the Seraphic Doctor, it is impossible to separate God who is

“Being Itself”, “The One Who Is”, from God as a Trinity of Persons in loving relation to
one another, a community of divine Persons. In Itinerarium 5, 1, Bonaventure posits “two
modes or levels of contemplating the invisible and eternal qualities of God. The first of
these concerns the essential attributes of God; the second concerns the properties of the
persons”.1155

The first method of contemplation focuses on “the fact that God is. The first name
of God is ‘To Be’, which is most manifest and perfect — and therefore first”. “Being” “is
truly God’s proper name”.1156 The second method of contemplation “fixes our attention on
the reality of the Good, saying that this is the first name of God”. Bonaventure can call

1154
For the most part, when Bonaventure wants to convey the sense of a some kind of relationship, he uses
relatio, habitudo or ordinatio. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes between habitudo and
ordinatio thus: “‘Disposition’ (habitudo) or ‘relative disposition’ (habitudo relativa),...suggests that relations
account for the way a thing ‘holds itself toward something’ (se habere ad aliquid); ‘Order’ (ordo), ‘ordering’
(ordinatio), and ‘directionality’ or ‘toward-ness’ (aditas),...are used to indicate that relations account for the
order or structure we find in the world”. Jeffrey Brower, “Medieval Theories of Relations”, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/relations-medieval/, viewed 11 August 2011. Cf. “Et quia
cuilibet emanationi respondet duplex habitudo relativa ideo sunt ibi quatuor relationes scilicet paternitas
filiatio spiratio et processio”. Brev., 1, 3 (V, 212a). “Quae unitas nunc inchoatur in via sed consummatur in
aeterna gloria iuxta quod Dominus orat ut sint unum sicut et nos unum sumus; et ego in eis et tu in me ut sint
consummati in unum; qua unitate consummata per vinculum caritatis erit Deus omnia in omnibus aeternitate
certa et pace perfecta, eruntque omnia per amorem communia communione ordinata et ordinatione connexa
et connexione indissolubiliter alligata”. Brev., 5, 8 (V, 262a).
1155
Itin., 5, 1 (V, 308b) WSB, II-H, p. 111.
1156
Hex., 10, 10 (V, 378b). TWB, V, p. 150.

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“Being” “the first name of God” 1157 and also say that “Good” is the first name of God,
because he sees no difference between the “The One Who Is” and “the Most Blessed
Trinity…, which is the Good”.1158 For Bonaventure, truly, the basis of all theology is “the
First Principle — God, three and one….”1159

5. 1. The Trinity: necessity and congruity

In the first book of Sentences, Bonaventure demonstrates that there must be only
three divine Persons, no more and no less, for reasons of necessity and congruity. When it
comes to necessity, Bonaventure argues that God’s “most high beatitude” demands
dilection — one who is loved — and condilection — one who is loved by both the one
who loves and the one who is loved. God’s “most high perfection” requires a “twofold
emanation” of nature and liberality. Because of God’s “most high simplicity”, it is
necessary that there not be more than three persons who are distinguished according to the
manner by which they are emanated: by nature (generation) and by will (spiration):

Whence the first Person, because He is innascible and

inspirable, generates and spirates; the second, because (He
is) inspirable, but generated, does not generate, but does
spirate: but the third Person, because He is spirated and
proceeds from one generating, neither generates nor spirates.
And for this reason it is impossible, that there be more than
three.

When speaking of congruity, the Seraphic Doctor posits two reasons: the
“sufficiency of the combinations” and the “perfection of the number three”. There is a
sufficiency of combinations because there is only a three-fold love in the Trinity: “namely
‘a gratuitous and a due and a mingling of them both’”. Thus, there are only three Persons:
“One, who only gives, in whom is gratuitous love” (i.e., the Father); “the Other, who only
accepts, in whom is due love” (i.e., the Spirit); “and a Middle, who gives and accepts, in
whom is a love mingled from both” (i.e., the Son). 1160 The three must be distinguished

1157
Itin., 5, 2 (V, 308b). WSB, II-H, p. 111.
1158
Itin., 6, title (V, 310b): “Speculation on the Most Blessed Trinity in its Name, which Is the Good”. WSB,
II-H, p. 123.
1159
Brev., 1, 1 (V, 210a) WSB, IX, p. 27.
1160
I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 4 concl. (I, 57a–58a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01056.html (n.d.), viewed 11 August 2011.
Bonaventure’s thinking here is similar to the beautiful summary of Meister Eckhart: “[w]hat God gives is his
being, and his being is his goodness, and his goodness is his love”. Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart: The
Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and Bernard
McGinn (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 195.

219
because “one is produced by the other, not essentially, and not accidentally, but
personally”.1161

As to the perfection of the number three, Bonaventure teaches that “‘three’ has in
itself the first and most high perfection”. The number three has first perfection because it
is the first number we encounter “which is composed [constat] from all its parts”; that is, it
has “unity and duality” (one and two) “which joined together makes three”. Bonaventure
goes on to explain that the number six has “most high perfection” because it “is composed
from all its several parts, that is from three, two and one”, “[a]nd that is very similar to the
uncreated Trinity, in which in the unity of substance there is a Trinity of reasons….”1162 At
this point it is significant to point out that the Quaracchi editors note that in Codex Z, “vel
relationem” is added to this statement,1163 giving us a Trinity “in which in the unity of the
substance there is a trinity of reasons and/or relations”.

5. 2. The two modes of emanation

Bonaventure took the Neoplatonic axiom “the more a thing is prior, the more
fecund it is and the more it is the principle of others,” and applied it to God: 1164 “‘The
Father is the beginning of the whole Divinity, because (He is) from no One’”. 1165 For
Bonaventure, the Father’s innascibility is inescapably linked to his fecundity. As the One
who has no origin, the Father is absolutely first. As the first, “the primal good that exists
only in the form of love, God is the creative principle of all created reality”, 1166 the fontalis
plenitudo or fountain-fullness: “the person of the Father, since He is first, because (He is)
from no one, is the principle and has a fecundity in respect of persons….”1167

As He is absolutely first and most high perfection, for the Father, only two modes
of emanation are possible “‘by means of nature, or by means of will’”. 1168 The first mode
of emanation — emanatio per modum naturae, concomitante voluntate — is expressed in
1161
“qui necessario distinguuntur, cum unus ab altero producatur, non essentialiter, non accidentaliter, ergo
personaliter”. Itin., 3, 5 (V, 305a–b).
1162
I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 4, concl. (I, 57a–58a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01056.html (n.d.), viewed 11 August 2011.
1163
I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 4, concl., note 1 (I, 58a).
1164
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 56.
1165
I Sent., d. 27, a. un., q. 2, concl. (I, 470b) Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01468.html, (n.d.), viewed 12 August 2011.
Bonaventure is quoting Peter Lombard.
1166
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 57.
1167
I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 2, f. 4 (I, 53b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01053.html, (n.d.), viewed 12 August 2011.
1168
I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 4, f. 2 (I, 56b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01056.html, (n.d.), viewed 12 August 2011.

220
the Son. The other mode of emanation — emanatio per modum voluntatis or per modum
liberalitatis concomitante natura — is expressed in the spiration of the Holy Spirit.1169
“The primary principle of the first emanation is the divine nature precisely as the good; the
primary principle of the second is the will as free and generous”.1170

Only the two taken together can express Bonaventure’s

understanding of the unity of the trinitarian God. Only when
both are viewed together do we see Bonaventure’s trinitarian
God as a fully personal God whose unity is thought of better
as a dynamic unifying power than as a static condition.
For…what is involved in the two emanations and in their
inter-relationship is basically the radical identity of esse,
posse, and velle (being—power—will).1171

Unlike creatures, who are produced through a decree of the divine will, the Son is
generated per modum naturae, concomitante voluntate. He proceeds from the Father
“through a manner of exemplarity as a reason for exemplifying”.1172 He is “the Word of
God’s self-expression” in whom all things are disposed. Everything that God can do and
does do, everything that is good and beautiful, “all that God can be in relation to the finite”
finds its exemplar in the Son. “The triune structure of God Himself is expressed in the
Son”:1173

Witness is given by the Three, but it is expressed through the

Word, for the Word expresses the Father, and Itself and the
Spirit and all other things besides.1174

If the divine nature, which is supremely fecund, necessarily communicates itself in

the generation of a person, then the supremely liberal divine will also necessarily produces
a person:

It must be said, that,…among the divine one is to posit

a Third Person proceeding through a manner of liberality,
who is called “The Gift”. And the reason for this is the
perfection of dilection, the perfection of emanation and the
perfection of the Will, by which existing most liberal cannot
not produce a Person; just as the Nature, by existing most
fecund, cannot not produce a Person….1175

1169
Cf. I Sent., d. 6, a. un., q. 2, concl. (I, 128a).
1170
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 58.
1171
Hayes, “Doctrine of the Spirit”, p. 180.
1172
I Sent., d. 6, a. un., q. 3, concl. (I, 129b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01129.html, (n.d.), viewed 13 August 2011.
1173
Introduction, WSB, III, p. 47.
1174
Hex., 9, 2 (V, 372b–373a). TWB, V, p. 133.
1175
I Sent., d. 10, a. un., q. 1, concl. (I, 195b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01194.htmlQUAESTIO_I, (n.d.), viewed 9
August 2011. Italics added.

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The third Person who proceeds “through a manner of liberality” is not produced in the
same manner as the Son, but proceeds from the concord of the mutual love of the Father
and the Son, from their common spiration, ab una fecunditate voluntatis:1176

among the divine there is truly and properly a love,…a

hypostasis: of love on account of this, that from a most
liberal will He first proceeds through a manner of perfect
liberality….1177

Love in the Trinity is understood on three levels: essentially, notionally and

personally. It is essential “because each [Person] loves Himself”. It is notional “because
the Father and the Son concord in spirating the Holy Spirit, which concord is love or
dilection”. And finally, it is personal, “because He who is produced through a manner of
perfect liberality cannot be but Love or Dilection….”1178

God is the pious worshiper of Himself, the true witness to

Himself, and the true love of Himself. And every one of the
Persons is in a state of piety, truth, and holiness in relation to
Himself and in relation to the others: so that the Father is
pious toward Himself, toward the Son, and toward the Holy
Spirit, and true, and holy, and likewise with the others.1179

5. 3. The Trinitarian God as Persons in Communion

There is no direct analogy in creation for God being three Persons having one
nature, because in creation, everything and everyone is a conjunction of matter and form
resulting in a supposite or subject. Acknowledging this difficulty, Bonaventure
nevertheless is able to demonstrate that there must be three Persons in the Godhead and
that the Persons have the same nature. Beginning from a principle found in Aristotle, in
the second question of De Trinitate Bonaventure teaches, “‘That which generates does not
generate another except by the means of matter’. But in God there is no matter. Therefore,
the one who generates is not distinguished from the one generated”. Furthermore, “if in
God there exists generation without matter, then there exists a plurality of persons without
the multiplication of form”.1180 Finally, since God “is spirit and intellect, [and] He can lack

1176
Hayes, “Doctrine of the Spirit”, p. 181.
1177
I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (I, 201a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01200.htmlQUAESTIO_I, (n.d.), viewed 9
August 2011.
1178
I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (I, 201a). Trans., Bugnolo, loc. cit.
1179
Hex., 21, 7 (V, 432b). TWB, V, p. 323.
1180
Myst. Trin., q. 2, a. 2, f. 7 (V, 64b). WSB, III, p. 150.

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neither a word that is begotten nor a love that proceeds”,1181 it follows that in the one divine
nature there must be a trinity of Persons.

Even when we accept that there is a trinity of Persons in the divine nature, our
descriptions can be more or less tainted by our human perspective, especially — as we
have discussed above — the sense of time1182 or cause and effect. Our attempts to describe
the mystery of the Trinity usually posit the Father who loves the Son, and the Son who
loves the Father, and the Spirit who — as mutual and personal Love — is the bond and
result of this love between the Father and the Son; the Spirit is the one who proceeds from
the Father and the Son. Although this is orthodox thinking, there is a danger here of
imagining the Spirit as One who is “consequent”.

For Bonaventure (and Aquinas and other theologians of the mid-thirteenth century),
the relations in the Trinity were explained by the notion of the opposition of relations. As
Russell Friedman explains it, “we might describe opposed relations as ‘mutually
implicative’”. Very simply, the existence of a Father implies the existence of a Son and
the existence of a Son implies the existence of a Father. Since “paternity and filiation are
opposed to or toward each other, they are the constituting properties of the Father and the
Son”. Likewise, the Holy Spirit’s passive spiration (being “breathed” by someone) “is
opposed to the Father and Son’s active spiration” so that “passive spiration is the
constitutive property of the Holy Spirit, though active spiration does not constitute a person
in its own right, since it is shared by the Father and the Son”.1183

Bonaventure is careful to explain that the distinctions among the Persons of the
Trinity are different from the essence only as a mode of reference. “This mode of
reference is precisely what makes a relation relate; it is the particular characteristic that all
relations have, the relation’s being toward something (ad aliquid)….” If, for example, we
compare the Holy Spirit’s passive spiration to the active spiration of the Father and Son, a
“true distinction arises between these two relations, because they have opposing modes of
reference” (i.e., active to passive; passive to active). Because of this opposition of
relations between the Persons, they are distinct, but they are not essentially different, for
“when the relations are compared to the essence, they vanish into the essence and become
one with it….”1184 Bonaventure explains this reasoning in the first book of his commentary
on the Sentences:
1181
Myst. Trin., q. 1, a. 2, concl. (V, 55a). WSB, III, p. 129.
1182
See section 4.7: “The universe as divine self-expression of the Trinity”.
1183
Russell L. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p.
10.
1184
Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, pp. 12–13.

223
 Relation, by reason of comparison to its subject [i.e.,
divine essence or substance], vanishes into (transit in)
substance, and so the property is the divine substance. But
by reason of comparison to its term or object it remains, and
with respect to this it is distinctive and differs from the
essence — not because it indicates another essence but
because it is another mode of reference (modum se habendi),
and in comparison to the essence or the person this mode of
reference indicates a mode that adds nothing. But in
comparison to its correlative, the relation truly indicates a
thing and distinction. And thus neither is there futility in the
way that we understand things nor is there composition in the
thing (in re), but true distinction.1185

Bonaventure prefers to speak about the Father and the Son who love each other in
the Spirit, “in Spiritu”, instead of speaking about the Spirit as the fruit of the mutual love
of the Father and Son. Remembering that the Father, Son and Spirit exist from eternity,
without beginning, Bonaventure teaches that the Spirit is present simultaneously with the
Father and the Son and in the Father and the Son and through the Father and the Son:

The Father is in Himself and in the Son and in the Holy

Spirit; and the Son is in the Father and in Himself and in the
Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is in the Father and in the
Son, and in Himself, by reason of circumincession which is
characterized by identity with distinction.1186

In the first book of the Sentences, Bonaventure acknowledges that precisely “because the
Father and the Son are distinct, for that reason They are rightly said (to be)
‘connected’”.1187 They “do not convene formally in one Person”. Rather, they “convene
originally, because one Person arises from each One and in the same manner” (that is, the
Spirit arises from the Father and the Son by procession). This “convenience” or coming
together of the Father and the Son is “in the Holy Spirit, as in love” because it belongs to
love to join.1188 Thus the Holy Spirit is a “nexus” or “unity” of the Father and the Son:

It must be said, that a “nexus”, or “unity” of both, is properly

said of the Holy Spirit. Moreover the reason for this is, that
the Father and the Son communicate in the One Spirit, and
for that reason, He is the unity of Both. And again, that
Spirit is Love, and for that reason They communicate in Him
as in one Love; and because love is most properly a nexus,
1185
I Sent., d. 33, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (I, 575b). As translated in Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, pp.
11–12.
1186
“sic Pater est in se et in Filio et in Spiritu sancto, et Filius est in Patre et in se et in Spiritu sancto, et
Spiritus sanctus est in Patre et in Filio et in se secundum rationem circumincessionis, quae notat identitaem
cum distinctione”. Hex., 21, 2 (V, 431b). TWB, V, pp. 319–20.
1187
I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (I, 202b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01202.html, (n.d.), viewed 12 August 2011.
1188
I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (I, 203a). Trans., Bugnolo, loc. cit.

224
 for that reason the Holy Spirit properly is the Nexus, because
He is (Their) mutual Love, He is the Unique and
“Substantifying” Love.1189

In God, unity of essence “implies a true distinction of Persons” who “are supremely
conforming to each other, supremely in accord, supremely coequal, coeternal,
consubstantial, and coessential”:1190

[T]he essence of the Father is entirely in Himself, entirely in

the Son, and entirely in the Holy Spirit; and the essence of
the Son is entirely in Himself, entirely in the Father and
entirely in the Holy Spirit; and the essence of the Holy Spirit
is entirely in the Father, entirely in the Son, and entirely in
Himself.1191

In light of this logic, it is impossible to think of God as a static entity or substance or as

“Being” in an abstract sense: if we speak of the being of God as an abstract idea,
automatically we are speaking about an abstracted God. Being in God is always the being
of Persons and not a philosophical question of “being as being” as in Heidegger’s
philosophy.1192 Neither can we see God either as one and unique or as three separate
subjects. On the contrary, “[each Person] is both self-existent and related to the
others….”1193 For Bonaventure, then, God is Relation, understood as the relations among
the three Persons in a dynamic communio of Persons who “mutually interpenetrate and
embrace”.1194 As McFadyen correctly puts it:

The Father, Son and Spirit are neither simply modes of

relations nor absolutely discrete and independent individuals,
but Persons in relation and Persons only through relation.
[Divine] Persons exist only as they exist for others, not
merely as they exist in and for themselves.1195

1189
I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (I, 202a). Trans., Bugnolo, loc. cit.
1190
“ibi [in Deo] est vera distinctio Personarum cum unitate essentiae, per quam sunt summe conformes,
summe concordes, summe coaequales, coeternae, consubstantiales, coessentiales”. Hex., 8, 10 (V, 370b–
71a). TWB, V, pp. 126–127.
1191
Hex., 21, 19 (V, 434b). TWB, V, p. 331.
1192
“Heidegger respinge a ragione un pensiero oggettivante dell’Essere, ma anche egli deve riconscere un
pensiero in relazione all’Essere. Con questo però la concezione di Bonaventura è al riparo dall’accusa di
oggettivazione dell’Essere. Bonaventura pensa l’Essere come relazione personale, e perciò lo chiama Dio.”
Alexander Gerken, “Bonaventura e Heidegger a Confronto”, in Contributi de Spiritualità Bonaventuriana
vol. 3, eds. Giorgio Zopetti and Davide Maria Monagna (Padua: Studio Teologico Comune de Frati nel
Veneto, 1975–1976), pp. 51–73, p. 71.
1193
“quod est in se ipsa et ad alias personas”. Hex., 21, 12 (V, 433a). TWB, V, p. 326. In Mascall’s
formulation, the divine Persons are “three subjects of a concrete triadic relation by which God exists as
supreme reality in trinitarian being”. Eric L. Mascall, The Triune God, An Ecumenical Study (Allison Park,
PA: Pickwick Publications, 1986), p. 79.
1194
Hex. (Delorme), 4, 17, “invicem circumincedunt et complectuntur”. Translation mine.
1195
Alistair I. McFadyen, The Call to Personhood: A Christian Theory of the Individual in Social
Relationships (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), p. 27.

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The divine nature can only be described as a communio of Persons united in Love. “God”
described any other way simply does not exist.

5. 4. Bonaventure and the concept of bonum est diffusivum sui

Another way of explaining why in God there are three Persons is Bonaventure’s
understanding and interpretation of the Neoplatonic concept of how things come into
existence. In the Neoplatonic view, all that exists comes from a first cause. This first
cause is not a personal God, “but a single, bare and disinterested ultimate principle at the
end of a chain of causes that produces what we perceive in the universe”. At the end of
this chain was “the One”, a perfect unity. For the Neoplatonists, creation comes about
because “true perfection and goodness ‘overflows’”. This overflowing goodness is
expressed by the formula “bonum est diffusivum sui”.1196 Although Bonaventure uses the
phrase “bonum est diffusivum sui”, in his thought, “the supreme form of unity is not a
monadic oneness, but a unity of plurality; for this is what characterizes the highest good
which is God”.1197

In the first distinction of the second book of Sentences, Bonaventure addresses the
various theories about where things come from. If we ask where “the multitude of forms”
come from “as from an extrinsic, effective principle”, the answer is that these forms come
from “one efficient (principle)”. However, Bonaventure finds it difficult to understand “in
what manner a multitude can come from a Principle most highly and [perfectly] One”, and
characterises this thinking as erroneous. If we posit a “Creator of things” who is “one, and
yet makes many and various (things) on account of a multitude of ideal forms”, this too,
Bonaventure dismisses as incorrect, for in God, there can be found no number of things,
only a number of Persons. Furthermore, the production of things cannot occur by a
multitude of means “by descending and multiplying” because “God produces all (things)
immediately”. Finally, Bonaventure responds to the theory that a multitude of things come
from “the unique Principle on account of the multitude and infinite reflections by which
the Divine Intellect is reflected upon Itself and understands Itself…even thus unto
infinity”. This idea is false for two reasons. First, there are no reflections of the Divine
Intellect because “God is His own act of understanding”. Second, if it were true, there
would not be a diversity of things, but only “a diversity according to number”.1198

1196
Paulina Remes, Neoplatonism (Berkeley: UC Press, 2008), p. 42–43.
1197
Hayes, Center, p. 159.

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 The Seraphic Doctor understands the “concepts of bonum diffusivum sui,
fecunditas, plenitudo fontalis and primitas to be personal properties attributed to the Father
because the Father is first”. The Father is “the inaccessible origin that produces, [and] the
ultimate source of all authority and all order, both created and divine.” 1199 The Father is
“uniquely the One” and “the First Principle”:

[B]ecause (It is) uniquely the One, for that reason (It is) the
Most Simple, and the Most Spiritual and the Most Perfect:
because (It is) the Most Simple, (It is) of the greatest power,
because (It is) the Most Spiritual, (It is) of the greatest
wisdom; because It is the Most Perfect, (It is) of a most high
goodness; because (It is) of the greatest power, It can (cause)
many (things); because (It is) of the greatest wisdom, It
knows many (things); because (It is) of a most high
goodness, It wills to produce many (things) and to
communicate Itself. — For that reason from the One
Principle, because (It is) the First and the One, there goes
forth a multitude.1200

Following the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius, Bonaventure taught that “[s]ince God is good,
and since the good is by nature self-diffusive, it follows that God is necessarily self-
communicative”.1201 Furthermore, “if highest is understood absolutely, then the highest
communication within is appropriate to the highest good, but not the highest
communication to something outside itself.”1202 It follows that the highest mode through
which God communicates himself is personally1203 — that is, in the generation of the Son
and the spiration of the Holy Spirit:

“[T]he good is said to be self-diffusive”. The supreme good,

therefore, is supremely self-diffusive. But the highest
diffusion does not exist unless it is actual and intrinsic,
substantial and personal, natural and voluntary, free and
necessary, lacking nothing and perfect. In the supreme good
there must be from eternity a production that is actual and
consubstantial, and a hypostasis as noble as the producer,
and this is the case in production by way of generation and
spiration.1204
1198
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 1 (II, 39b–40a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02038.html, 2008, viewed 18 August 2011. Cf. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q.
1, concl. in which Bonaventure refutes the theories of the Platonists, of Aristotle, the Peripatetics and others
(II, 16b–17a).
1199
Jay M. Hammond, “Order in the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum”, Appendix to Hellmann, Order, p. 252.
1200
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 1 (II, 40a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02038.html, 2008, viewed 18 August 2011.
1201
Introduction, WSB, III, p. 33.
1202
Myst. Trin., q. 2, a. 1, concl., ad 7 (V, 62b). WSB, III, p. 146.
1203
“[I]f…God is the highest good, and if the good is by nature self-diffusive, it would be contrary to most
noble thinking about God if one were to deny Him the possibility of communicating Himself in the highest
mode, that is, in a personal way”. Hayes, “Incarnation and Creation”, p. 313.
1204
Itin., 6, 2 (V, 310b). WSB, II-H, p. 123.

227
 Bonaventure respects the Neoplatonic tradition of bonum diffusivum sui when he
teaches that God is the supreme good, and therefore, by His nature, he is self-
communicative. But the Christian tradition adds the insight that “the supreme good
subsists as a mystery of personal love, the nature of which involves free self-
communication”. This is why “the mystery of self-diffusiveness” in God is explained “in
terms of a dialectical relationship between nature and will in God; that is, in the dialectic
between self-diffusiveness that is both necessary and free”.1205

In Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, Bonaventure teaches that unity
is highest when it exists in many but is undivided. The highest truth “is infallible and most
certain, and this implies necessity”. The highest goodness is “both lovable and loving; and
this implies will”. “Therefore, the highest unity, truth and goodness necessarily require
that trinity, necessity and will exist together”. Finally, “since in the triune God, necessity
is simultaneous with will, and will is simultaneous with necessity, it follows that He is the
highest good by reason of His essence”. 1206 From this highest Good, the personal, triune
God, acting in perfect freedom, all creation flows:

Insofar as [the Trinity] is the ORIGINATING PRINCIPLE,

three attributes are appropriate [to it], to wit, power, wisdom
and will. These three are required of an originating
principle. For wisdom is founded on a certain power: for if
[the Trinity] had no power, it would not be able to produce
anything. If it had power but no wisdom, it could not
produce wisely, for power without wisdom is foolhardy.
Likewise, if it had power and wisdom, but willed not, it
would either produce nothing or produce against its will, and
thus be unhappy. And so it is evident that will brings the
principle into act. And because in these matters there is also
some relation to eternal participating, these three are
appropriated to them not only as the principle originating
other (Persons), but also as the principle originating the
Persons (themselves).1207

The Trinity is equally free in the production of creatures, in which case “the first
cause acts by way of art and will. For this reason, it is supremely free as a cause and is
limited by nothing”.1208 It is “the divine artist alone who confers existence after simple and
unqualified non-existence”.1209 Thus “creation” does not signify a specific kind of being or

1205
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 59.
1206
Myst. Trin., q. 7, a. 2, concl., TWB, III, p. 256.
1207
Hex., 21, 5 (V, 432a). TWB, V, p. 321.
1208
“Prima causa agit per modum artis et voluntatis in creaturarum productione; propterea est causa liberrima
et ad nihil arctata”. Myst. Trin., q. 2, a. 1, concl., ad 9 (V, 62b). TWB, III, p. 146.
1209
Hayes, “Mystery”, pp. 62–63.

228
something that exists by itself, but a transition from non esse to esse: “Creari enim non
significat esse principaliter, sed exire de non-esse in esse, et hoc ab aliquo”.1210

Although Bonaventure teaches that creation is action,1211 he also distinguishes two

kinds of creation, namely, creatio-actio and creatio-passio. Creatio-actio — creative
action — “is identical with God Himself. For God is identical with Being (esse), and His
being is act; He is the highest simplicity”:1212

The divine being alone is simple, for in it, there is no

difference between being, being such, and being fittingly.
Hence “To Be” is called a name of God, for “To Be” in the
case of God is that which God is.1213

As such, creatio-actio is rooted in the inner life of God and can only be posited as a result
of speculative thinking:

[T]hat knowledge which causes things to be requires an

exemplary likeness. Such a likeness does not come from
outside. Hence, it implies neither composition nor any
imperfection, but only absolute perfection. But the divine
intellect is the supreme light, the full truth, and pure act. So,
as the divine power to produce things is sufficient in itself to
produce everything, so the divine light and truth is sufficient
in itself to express all things. And since this expression is an
intrinsic act, it is eternal. 1214

Creatio-passio refers to the created being, but there is not a simple equation
between “being created” (creatio-passio) and the creature. Bonaventure explains that “the
name of ‘creature’…not only names the created (thing) itself, but even the (creature’s) co-
created (act of being)”.1215 As Jos Decorte puts it, “the creature is not only a created thing,

1210
II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 34b).
1211
“Sed creatio est actio, in qua totum producitur”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, f. 1 (II, 28b). Cf. “Item,
creatio est actio; sed ‘omnis actio est in motu, et omnis motus in actione’: ergo qui creat, vere agit: ergo vere
movet. Si tu dicas, quod actio divina magis est substantia quam actio, et talis est creatio; obiicitur de
passione, quia creari est ipsius creaturae. Si ergo creatura susceptibilis est vere passionis et mutationis, ergo
creatio-passio est mutatio”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 1, f. 2 (II, 31a). When discussing the objection that
something must be made out of something else, Bonaventure offers a distinction between “creating” and
“acting”: “Quod obiicitur, quod actio est in quid; dicendum, quod creare non est agere, sed facere, et hoc
refert inter agere et facere; nam agere in quid, non quid agat exigit; facere autem e converse”. II Sent., d. 1,
p. 1, a. 1, q. 1 (II, 18a).
1212
Jos Decorte, “Creatio and Conservatio as Relatio”, in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy: Acts of
the Third Symposium, ed. Egbert P. Bos (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1998), p. 29. See also “Ipse solus est,
id est a se solo habet esse”. De donis, 2, 8 (V, 465b).
1213
“Solum enim esse divinum simplex est; nec differt in eo esse et sic esse et bene esse. Et ideo esse dicitur
nomen Dei, quia esse in Deo est id quod est Deus”. Hex., 2, 25 (V, 340b). TWB, V, p. 34. De Vinck’s
translation is missing the next sentence: “In creatura autem differt esse et bene esse et sic esse”: “In the
creature there is a difference between being, being fittingly, and being such” (my translation).
1214
Scien. Chr., 2, concl. (V, 9a). WSB, IV, p. 90.
1215
II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 34a–b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02033.html, 2008, viewed 17 August, 2011.

229
i.e., an individual substance with an essence, but also (much) more than that, i.e., a created
thing”.1216 Another way of looking at creatio-passio is to posit that “‘creature’ names the
substance itself of the thing produced by something from nothing”, and thus “‘creation’
holds an intermediary (place) not according to thing and nature, but according to reckoning
and habitude”.1217 Decorte explains that in this way Bonaventure is positing creatio
passiva “as a ‘middle’ between created substance and Creator:…not as nothing or as
something that essentially differs from the creature…, but as a real relatedness or relation
of dependence….”1218

As part of a discussion of the equality of the Divine Persons, Bonaventure speaks

of a twofold diffusion, “that is, within [intra] and/or outside of [extra]”. Diffusion extra “is
attained in the production of an effect” and is “the reckoning of the good”. To this
category belongs all of creation, which God in His goodness brings forth from non-being
into being at some moment in time. The second kind of diffusion Bonaventure describes
as “not properly diffusion” since it is “not attained according to the reckoning of the
goodness of the Essence, but rather of the fecundity of the Person and/or in the Person”.
This diffusion intra “is when a person proceeds from a person in the unity of nature”. It is
not properly called “diffusion” because it “is not consequent to the good, because (it is)
good, but to the good in a hypostasis, which is bound to produce another….”1219

The Divine Word is the central Person of the Trinity and the exemplar for all
creation. In the Person of the incarnate Word are joined three natures: divine, spiritual and
material, and thus in the incarnate Word we find the fullness of God’s fecund goodness:
“in incarnatione fuit copissima divinae bonitatis effusion”.1220 Bonaventure contemplates
this mystery in his Itinerarium:

[S]ince the Son is sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit is
sent by both the Father and the Son, yet the one that is sent
does not depart from the others but remains with them, look
toward the Mercy Seat and be amazed that in Christ there is
personal union together with a trinity of substances and a
duality of natures. And total harmony exists together with
plurality of wills. There is the mutual predication of God
and humanity together with a plurality of properties. Co-
adoration exists together with a plurality of rank; co-
exaltation over all things exists together with the plurality of

1216
Decorte, “Creatio and Conservatio as Relatio”, p. 29.
1217
II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 34a–b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, loc. cit.
1218
Decorte, “Creatio and Conservatio as Relatio”, pp. 29–30.
1219
I Sent., d. 19, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (I, 345b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01344.html, (n.d.), viewed 19 August 2011.
1220
III Sent., d. 4, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (III, 99b).

230
 eminence; and co-dominion exists together with a plurality
of powers.1221

Later Bonaventure continues that “[a]nyone who turns fully to face this Mercy Seat…will
behold Christ hanging on the Cross”.1222 We can conclude with Ilia Delio that indeed, “[i]n
the Crucified Christ the entire Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, is manifested as the self-
diffusive love of God”.1223

5. 5. God’s relations to creation and man

In the teaching of the Seraphic Doctor, because a creation is a production from non-
esse to esse, or from absolute nothing to being something, and because it eo ipso has a
beginning, creation is essentially a relation because it is totally dependent on its Creator
and thus has no reality of its own apart from its Creator: “the relation of the creature to the
Creator is not accidental, but essential”.1224

The ontological basis for all relations is the relations between the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit:
generare et generari non significat in divinis actionem vel
passionem, sed relationem; sic etiam uniri dictum de divina
natura vel persona, non dicit actionem aliquam, sed
relationem potius.1225

For this reason, all creation is a pure reception of being, just as the Son is from the Father,
but this is perceived most particularly in humanity. God’s relationship to His creation is
inescapably Trinitarian, as Zachary Hayes points out: “[T]he created world is known by
God in the knowledge whereby he generates the Son and is loved by Him in the love by
which He spirates the Spirit”. 1226 However, although the inner emanations of the Son and
Spirit are intrinsic to the nature of God who is supreme goodness and love, the external
expression of God’s knowledge and love in the form of creation is unnecessary for God to
exist as God or for the full and complete communication of God’s goodness. For this

1221
Itin., 6, 6 (V, 311b–312a). WSB, II-H, p. 131.
1222
Itin., 7, 2 (V, 312b). WSB, II-H, p. 135.
1223
Ilia Delio, Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ (Quincy, IL: Franciscan
Press, 1998), p. 65.
1224
Hex., 4, 8 (V, 350a). TWB, V, p. 62. Cf. “Dicendum, quod creatura quantum ad esse primum essentialiter
dependet; et talis relatio, quae exprimit illam dependentiam, non est creaturae accidentalis, sed magis
essentialis”. I Sent., d. 30, dub. 4 (I, 528b ).
1225
III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (III, 10b).
1226
Introduction, WSB, III, p. 59.

231
reason, God’s act of creation is radically free, and the existence of the created universe is
radically contingent.

Although God’s relationship to His creation is naturally Trinitarian, the bond

between the Creator and creation is different from the intra-Trinitarian relations. The love
of the Trinity “is like an eternal cycle from which all proceed, through which all things are
preserved, and to which all tend”.1227

In the teaching of the Seraphic Doctor, “every single creature from the angel to the
grain of sand has its direct model and foundation in the Word himself, in the eternal
reasons”.1228 God’s work is expressed in terms of essence (that which a thing is, whether
substance or accident), actuated essence (“substance alone”) and essences “made in the
likeness of God” (i.e., spiritual creatures).1229 Thus “each being is equally close to God,
though the mode of relationship with God differs according to the capacity of the
creature”.1230 Each creature, in its own specific relation and dependence upon God, is
referred to Him in three ways, namely, as to its Principle, the End, and the Gift.

All creation, by the very fact of its being, is referred to the Triune God in the first
way, that is, as to its cause (the Principle). Thus all creatures are His vestige and
manifestation ad extra, and have God as their principle by virtue of “being fashioned after
Him according to unity, truth, and goodness”. 1231 Furthermore, the “vestige is related to
God by way of triple causality: efficient, exemplary and final”.1232

The rational beings for whom God is their End and the object who motivates them,
are referred to Him in the second way and are called His images. As such they have a
relationship “to” and “with” the Trinity ad intra. They attain God by knowledge and love,
having God as their object and “embracing Him by memory, intelligence, and will”. 1233
“These powers recapitulate the roles of the three persons of the Trinity. The memory gives
rise to knowledge that becomes…explicit in the intellect, and the two are affirmed and
united by the will”.1234

For properly speaking, the image consists in a unity of

essence and a trinity of powers, according to which (powers)
1227
Brady, “Beatitude and Psychology”, p. 414.
1228
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 187.
1229
Hex., 2, 22 (V, 340a). TWB, V, p. 33. Cf. II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 34b–35a).
1230
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 187.
1231
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a). BB, p. 75.
1232
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 186.
1233
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a, b). BB, p. 75.
1234
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 187.

232
 the soul has been born to be sealed by the Most High Trinity
with the image of similitude, which consists in grace and the
theological virtues.1235

All righteous spirits are referred to God in the third way: possessing the Holy Spirit
as an infused gift they are related to God as their indweller. 1236 They are conformed to God
“by faith, hope, and charity, the threefold endowment”,1237 and the “Spirit effects in the
sanctified soul the bond by which the soul is joined to Christ and to the Father”. 1238 The
special relationship which exists between God and righteous spirits makes them His
similitude.

Bonaventure teaches that by grace the Triune God conforms us to Himself. His
divine grace
leads back to God, makes God to possess us and be
possessed by us, and, through this, also to dwell within us.
And since the effect of grace comes from all three Persons,
the indwelling is not of one Person without the others, but of
the whole Trinity together.1239

God in His action, in His love and by His gifts is always in the “state” of
demonstrating His own relation to us. He is known by us as related to us and always in
relation to us; moreover by grace, which is a supernatural gift common to all the divine
Persons by which they dwell in us, we are invited to live in relation to each of the divine
Persons.

The processions of the divine Persons ad intra are manifested through the missions
of the divine Persons ad extra. By “mission” we mean “that an eternal emanation has a
temporal effect whereby it comes to be known expressly in history”. 1240 The visible
missions of the Son and the Spirit (only the Father sends and is not sent) are ordered to the
manifestation of the divine life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to rational
creatures and in this way to reveal and to share with them the supernatural and invisible
nature of the divinity which is communicated by processions within the Trinity. 1241 The
doctrine of the Incarnation “is nothing but a discussion of the mission of the Son. The

1235
I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a, 2, q. 1 (I, 89b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/index2.html, (n.d.), viewed 8 August 2011.
1236
“Omnis autem spiritus iustus et sanctus habet donum Spiritus sancti sibi infusum”. Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a).
1237
Brev., 2, 12 (V, 230a–b). BB, pp. 75–76.
1238
Ibid.
1239
Brev., 1, 5 (V, 214a). TWB, II, p. 50.
1240
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 60.
1241
Cf. “visibilis missio est apparitio; sed haec non est tota ratio, sed apparitio, in qua manifestatur divina
pesona non tantum ut operans, sed etiam ut inhabitans, nec tantum ut inhabitas, sed etiam ut emanans, quasi
ab alio veniens”. I Sent., d. 16, a. un., q. 1 (I, 279b).

233
mission of the Spirit is discussed in the doctrine of the Church and the doctrine of
grace”.1242 As Bonaventure taught, every

mission of a divine person always bears a relation to the

mode of procession of that in the Trinity. Thus to manifest
and make present to rational creatures the distinctive
personal properties of the three divine persons, so that
rational creatures can live the life of the divine persons, it is
necessary that the temporal procession of the divine persons
follow the order and origin of their eternal processions.1243

In the treatise Vitis mystica, Bonaventure gives a beautiful meditation on the mission of the
Son which implicitly reflects the “order and origin” of the Son’s eternal procession and the
love that flows between the Father and the Son. The Son, who is the personal likeness of
the Father, generated in the fecundity of the Father’s love, created man in His own
likeness. Because man deformed that likeness, the Son took on man’s humanity in order to
reveal Himself to man and to restore man to his proper love-relation with the Triune God:

I conformed you to the likeness of My divinity; to re-form

you, I conformed Myself to the likeness of your humanity….
If you did not stay as I created you, stay at least as I re-
created you. If you fail to understand how great were the
powers I granted you in creating you, understand at least
how great were the miseries I accepted for you in your
humanity, in re-creating you, and in re-forming you for joys
much greater than those for which I had originally formed
you. I became human and visible so that you might see Me
and so love Me, since, unseen and invisible in My divinity, I
had not been properly loved…. I gave Myself to you, now
give yourself to Me.1244

Because the divine Persons are distinguished and at the same time united in one perfect
unity, the Son, as the middle Person in virtue of His procession, 1245 plays a special role
manifesting to human beings the mystery of the community of divine Persons. As a divine
Person related to the other Persons, and by His invitation of human persons into
relationship with Himself, the Son invites all of humanity into the community that exists
among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By inviting human persons into the divine
community, the Son also invites us into community with one another:

so the mission of the Son ad extra must in manifesting to

men the mode of procession of the Son, manifest and involve
them also in a community of persons whose relations
1242
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 60.
1243
Fehlner, Role of Charity, pp. 48–49.
1244
Vit. myst., 24, 3 (VIII, 189a–b). TWB, I, pp. 204–205.
1245
“primum medium ... in aeterna Personarum emanatione”. Hex., (Delorme) 1, 11.

234
 between one another and the center of unity in the
community are analogous to those of the Son in the divine
community.1246

Thus the mission of the Son is to invite every human being into the community of divine
Persons and to create a new human family — the Church — the relationality of which is
based on inter-relationality in the Trinity. In this way every human person is capable of
enjoying participation in God’s relationality by his own relation to the Trinitarian divine
communication and communio. By our relation to the relations which are in the Most Holy
Trinity we can return to the Father from whom not only other divine persons but all things
proceed.

5. 6. The Trinity as the foundation of relationality in Bonaventure

In recent years, some specialists in medieval theology have argued convincingly

that the starting-point for Bonaventure’s trinitarian theology is the concept of emanations
in God, while Aquinas focused on a relational account of personal distinctions in the
Trinity.1247 However well-founded their arguments, this should not lead us to the facile
conclusion that Bonaventure’s conception of the Trinity is not fundamentally relational or
that it is somehow “less” relational than that of Aquinas. The difference between the two
great theologians is more one of approach to discussing the Trinity than a different
perception of the relationality of the divine Persons. Furthermore, I think that is it possible
to demonstrate that Bonaventure’s approach to speaking of God is implicitly relational,
precisely because of his method, and not in spite of it.

Aquinas begins his Summa Theologica with the question of whether there is a god,
and only after spending about a hundred pages on this question does Thomas turn to the
Trinity.1248 On the other hand, the Bonaventurian approach is focussed on the Trinity from
the start:

In contrast to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas who, in their

trinitarian treatises, undertake an excursus on the unity and
perfections of God prior to and independently of a treatment
of the Trinity, Bonaventure instead treats the divine
simplicity, infinity, immutability, and primacy from within
1246
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 54.
1247
See Emmanuel Durand, “L’innascibilité et les relations du Père, sous le signe de sa primauté, dans la
théologie trinitaire de Bonaventure”, Revue Thomiste (Oct.–Sept. 2006), pp. 531–563.
1248
Kenan Osborne, A Theology of the Church for the Third Millennium: A Franciscan Approach (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), p. 217.

235
 and in the course of his treatment of the mystery of the
Trinity.1249

As Zachary Hayes points out, the “Trinity is…a structural principle of the Seraphic
Doctor’s entire theological vision”, and he “built his own vision of the trinity in the form
of a metaphysics of love”.1250 It is impossible to imagine a Trinity (any trinity) in which
there are no relations. For this reason, we can say that Bonaventure’s theological vision is
implicitly relational even when the Seraphic Doctor is not explicitly speaking in terms of
relationality.

Russell Friedman has clearly and carefully explained the different approaches taken
by Aquinas and Bonaventure in the ways they conceived the personal properties of the
Persons of the Trinity — as either emanations or as relations. The “relational” view
attributed to Aquinas begins with the notion that “the Father is the Father because he has a
Son; the Father and the Son are constituted as persons due to the opposition of relations
between them….” When personal distinctions are accounted for in terms of emanations —
the Bonaventurian approach — “the Father is counted more on the basis of his not being
from another than by his relation of paternity to the Son”.1251 However, despite their
different approaches to thinking about the personal properties in the Trinity, Aquinas and
Bonaventure would have agreed about what those properties are, namely, relations. 1252
Moreover, I would argue that because his theological perspective is always trinitarian,
Bonaventure’s entire theology is inescapably and inherently relational.

Bonaventure describes the divine being as both infinite and simple, and explains
that there is no contradiction in these terms. Further, he identifies God’s being with His
power:

[T]he divine being — in as far as it is infinite — is

supremely simple and absolutely highest. Since it is
supremely simple, it is supremely unified in itself….
Furthermore, because it is supremely unified in its power,
therefore, being and power are identical to it in every way;
and therefore wherever God’s being is, there also is His
power. And where His being is, there is the center and origin
and fount of His power. And where the fount and origin and
1249
Anne Hunt, The Trinity: Insights from the Mystics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), p. 57.
1250
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 56.
1251
Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, p. 20.
1252
Friedman explains that “for Aquinas…the Father generates because he is the Father, and he is Father
because of the opposition of the relations paternity and filiation” (Medieval Trinitarian Thought, p. 22).
Bonaventure teaches in Myst. Trin. 2, 2 (replies), that “He is called Father not because there is an essential or
real distinction between deity and paternity, but because the Father involves a relation to another which is not
included in the essence”. TWB, III, p. 155. Clearly both theologians are concerned with a “relational” view
of the Trinity.

236
 center of His power is, He can always produce a great
number of effects. Therefore, wherever He is capable of
acting, He is always able to do even more; and hence His
power as well as His being necessarily possess infinity….
[T]his sort of infinity is not repugnant to simplicity; indeed it
is in harmony with it in a marvelous and inseparable
concord.1253

It is important to note in this passage that by identifying God’s being with God’s power to
“produce a great number of effects”, Bonaventure is speaking in relational terms even while
speaking of the supreme simplicity of God, for God cannot produce effects without having
a relationship to those effects. If God’s infinite being is unified with God’s infinite power,
then God’s being is at the same time unified with His infinite relationality.

In the first book of his commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure asks whether
there is to be posited a plurality of persons in God. He offers four reasons for his
conclusion that there must be a plurality of Persons in the Divine:

For by reason of simplicity, the Essence is communicable

and able [potens] to be in more. By reason of the primacy,
the (first) Person is naturally bound [nata est] to produce
Another from Himself; and here I [call this
primacy-“innascibility”], by reason of which, as the ancient
opinion says, there is a fontal plenitude in the Father toward
every emanation…. By reason of perfection, He is apt and
prompt for this; by reason of beatitude and charity (He is)
willing [voluntaria].1254

As Kenan Osborne points out, Bonaventure is using inherently relational language when he
describes the Essence of God as communicable, powerful, productive and the source of all
emanations. His communication, power, productivity and fontal plenitude all occur from
God’s infinite free will because of God’s infinite love (beatitude and charity), which is
poured out in infinitely voluntary diffusive goodness.1255

If one refers to God as infinite, the immediate question

arises: infinite what? Some what-factor or x-factor is

1253
Myst. Trin., 4, 1, concl. (V, 81a–b). TWB III, p. 189.
1254
Bugnolo’s translation seems to be missing something: “Nam ratione simplicitatis essentia est
communicabilis et potens esse in pluribus. Ratione primitatis persona nata est ex se aliam producere; et voco
hic primitatem innascibilitatem, ratione cuius, ut dicit antiqua opinio, est fontalis plenitudo in Patre ad
omnem emanationem; et hoc infra patebit. Ratione perfectionis ad hoc est apta et prompta; ratione
beatitudinis et caritatis voluntaria. Quibus conditionibus positis, necesse est ponere personarum
pluralitatem.” I Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (I, 54a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01053.html, n.d., viewed 26 August, 2011.
Bugnolo’s translation of “voco hic primitatem innascibilitatem” is unclear. The phrase “call this
primacy-‘innascibility’” is my translation.
1255
Kenan Osborne, A Theology of the Church for the Third Millennium: A Franciscan Approach (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), p. 221.

237
 hermeneutically needed to give a positive interpretation to
this term. For Bonaventure, the positive factor involves:
bonum est sui diffusivum, simplicitas, primitas, perfectio and
beatitudo-caritas. In other words, through these terms
Bonaventure is focusing on infinite relationality. His
meaning is not merely simplicitas, but relational simplicitas.
It is not merely primitas but relational primitas. The same
can be said for relational perfectio and relational beatitudo-
caritas. All of these goodnesses are diffusive of themselves
and therefore they are all relational.1256

Perhaps Saint Bonaventure never articulated a “theology of relationality” per se

because he took the relationality of God for granted. In his view — and implicit in all of
his language — to speak of one God, one essence, one substance, summe simplex,
immutable, is to speak of the three Persons of the Divine Trinity in all their depth, breadth
and immensity, in relation to themselves and to all that is. In Bonaventure’s view, the
Triune God encompasses all that exists: the divine relations ad extra are radically
connected to the divine relations ad intra. For the Seraphic Doctor, “[a]nything and
everything one says about God must be shaped and colored by divine relationality”.1257

A passage from the Itinerarium illustrates this point. Notice how Bonaventure can
speak of God in terms such as “pure and absolute being”, “immutable” or “simple unity”
and at the same time speak of God as “all-embracing”: the One who is One by His very
nature is relational because all things are “from him and through him and in him are all
things”:

[L]et us say that the most pure and absolute being, because it
is being in an unqualified sense, is first and last; and
therefore it is the origin and consummating end of all things.
Because it is eternal and most present, it embraces and enters
into all things that endure in time, simultaneously existing as
their center and circumference. Because it is most simple
and greatest, it is within all things and outside all things, and
hence “it is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere
and whose circumference is nowhere.” Because it is most
actual and immutable, while “remaining unmoved, it imparts
movement to all things.” Because it is most perfect and
immense, it is within all things but is not contained by them;
and it is outside all things but is not excluded; it is above all
things but not distant; and it is below all things but not
dependent. Because it is supremely one and all-embracing, it
is all in all, even though all things are multiple and this is
simply one. And because this is most simple unity, most
peaceful truth, and most sincere goodness, it is all power, all
exemplarity, and all communicability. Therefore, from him
1256
Osborne, Theology of the Church, p. 235.
1257
Osborne, Theology of the Church, p. 269.

238
 and through him and in him are all things, for he is all-
powerful, all-knowing and all-good.1258

On the conceptual level, Bonaventure did not separate the one “God” from the three
Persons of the Trinity, even for the sake of argument in his commentary on the Sentences.
Likewise, and because of that, it was impossible for Bonaventure to separate God’s
essential relationality from his thinking about God. If we look at everything that
Bonaventure has to say about the Trinity, we must concur with Osborne that God’s “all-
encompassing infinite communicability is the basic reason why Bonaventure focuses only
on a Triune God, leaving no room at all for a view of God who is not relational”.1259

6. The human person as relational being

6. 1. “Relatio” in the Trinity and in the concept of the human person

As I have discussed above, Bonaventure unfolds the economy of creation in three

stages (emanatio, exemplaritas, consummatio-reductio) in which the world comes from
God, exists as God’s expression and returns to God. 1260 The process begins with the
interpersonal love of the Trinity, in which the Father generates the Son, the Son and Father
breathe forth the Spirit and love each other in the Spirit. All creation “exists as the
outward expression of God, reflecting him by recapitulating in material beings and in man
the inner dynamism of the Trinity”. As such, creation “presents an almost limitless series
of correspondences between creatures and God and among creatures”. The summit of
creation is man, made in the image and likeness of God, and “the created world returns to
God through man’s discerning and loving God in [God’s] created expression”.1261 Thus,
for man to live out his calling as man and to fulfil himself as imago Dei, he must be ever
more conformed to the Trinity, which is intrinsically relational.

We find the image of God in man’s soul, specifically in the powers of memory,
intellect and will. Since Bonaventure sees no real distinction between the soul and its
faculties, for him, the three powers of memory, intelligence and will –– which recapitulate
the roles of the three Persons of the Trinity –– are one. As the image of God, man both

1258
Itin., 5, 8 (V, 310a). WSB, II-H, p. 121.
1259
Osborne, Theology of the Church, p. 245.
1260
See sections 4. 7. 1., “Creation in the light of St. Francis’s spirituality”; 5. 3. “The Trinitarian God as
Persons in Communion”; 5. 4., Bonaventure and the concept of bonum est diffusivum sui”; and 5. 5., God’s
relations to creation and man.
1261
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 190.

239
consciously reflects God and knows God as his object, and he is led back to God through
the powers of his soul:1262

Therefore since, when the soul is converted to God, it is

conformed to itself, and the image is attained according to
the conformity: for that reason the image of God consists in
these powers, according to which they have (as their) object
God.1263

Everything naturally tends toward its source. A stone tends

downward; fire tends upward; rivers run to the sea; the tree is
joined to its roots, and other things are joined to their root.
The rational creature is God-like. It can turn back to its
source by means of memory, intelligence, and will.1264

In other words, the more we are conformed to God, the more we become like
ourselves as relational beings, both in our relation to the three faculties of our souls and in
relation to God in whose image we are made. As our wills are conformed to the will of
God, we will what God wills and in the way God wills and for the same end that God wills:

[O]ur will can be conformed to the Divine (Will), namely

through a similar habitude to an act, such as, just as God
wills what He wills, liberally and charitably [caritative], so
also a man; and through a similar comparison to an object,
such as that which God wills, the man wills; and for the
same end, for which God wills (it), the man wills (it).1265

The fundamental truth about who a human person is can be explained thus: the
human being develops, realises and fulfils himself through relations –– to himself, to other
humans, to creation and to God. As the image of God, who is the fountain-fullness of self-
expressive love, man is most conformed to God as he opens himself and expresses himself
in readiness to be for others and with others. Our relationship with God is the foundation
and regulating principle of our relationships with and to other human beings. Michael and
Kenneth Himes see man’s position in creation as indicative of man’s relationship to God
and his nature as self-donating:

[I]f God is triune, if God is the perfect relationship of the

love and the beloved and the love which unites them, then to

1262
Bowman, “Cosmic Exemplarism”, p. 187.
1263
I Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 (I, 83b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01082.html, (n.d.), viewed 13 September 2011.
1264
“Naturaliter quaelibet res tendit ad suam originem: lapis deorsum, et ignis sursum, et flumina currunt ad
mare, arbor continuatur cum radice, et ceterae res continuationem habent cum radice. Deiformis est creatura
rationalis, quae potest redire super originem suam per memoriam, intelligentiam et voluntatem; et non est pia,
nisi refundat se super originem suam”. De donis, 3, 5 (V, 469a). WSB, XIV, pp. 68–69.
1265
I Sent., d. 48, a. 1, q. 1 (I, 852b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01850.html, (n.d.), viewed 13 September 2011.

240
 maintain that the human being is created in the image of God
is to proclaim the human being capable of self-gift. The
human person is the point at which creation is able to
acknowledge gratefully the divine self-gift and to respond by
giving oneself in return.1266

Just as the Persons of the Trinity each fully goes out of Himself in love for the others, so
human beings, as imago Dei, were created “to be ecstatic beings, longing always to go out
of ourselves in love for God and for others”.1267

6. 2. Forma humanitatis and the hypostatic union in the person of Verbum

Incarnatum

In chapter four, I discussed the human person as a union of soul and body. 1268 In
this union, which does not transmute either soul or body, a third nature (as substantial
being) is constituted. This nature “is a unum per se, not a unum per accidens”.1269 The
human person as the composite of the body and soul is also called a tertium quoddam or a
positivum quid, a substantial being, the forma totius or the forma consequens1270 being at
the same time supposite1271 or hypostasis.1272

This explanation of the composition of the human person cannot be used to explain
the mystery of the Incarnate Word, who is the medium Person of the Holy Trinity, Head
of Humankind, and Centre of the Universe “in quo totum esse rei stabilitur et
fundatur”.1273 In the third book of the Sentences, while discussing how it was possible for
the eternal hypostasis to be united with human nature, Bonaventure made a comparison
between the act of creation and the hypostatic union of God and man. Nothing changes in
God when He creates; change comes about only in what is created. Similarly, when the

1266
Michael J. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, “Rights, Economics, and the Trinity,” Commonweal 113
(March 14, 1986), p. 139.
1267
Aidan Hart, “Icons and the Human Person”, A talk given at Iona, Scotland,
http://www.aidanharticons.com/articles/Oct%2007/HUMANPER.pdf, 2009, viewed 13 September, 2011.
1268
See section 4. 2: “Man as a composite and simple being”.
1269
Clement Maria O’Donnell, Psychology, p. 26.
1270
“nulla forma predicatur de toto, quia forma, sed quia est forma consequens totum compositum”. III Sent.,
d. 22, a. un., q. 1 (III, 450–451).
1271
Since the term “subject” also applies to beings other than man, “...convenit non tantum individuo
hominis, sed etiam asini”. I Sent., d. 23, a. 1, q. 3 (I, 410b). The term suppositum was understood as a centre
which contains the essence of a thing. III Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 1 (III, 149b). The supposite is, so to speak, a
container, and the union of body-soul in respect to this supposite is said to be in the supposite (in quo). On
supposition theory in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Stephen F. Brown, “Medieval Supposition
Theory in Its Theological Context”, MedPhilTheol 3 (1993), pp. 121–57.
1272
“Ideo dicit Boethius, quod Graeci utuntur nomine hypostasis pro supposito rationalis naturae”. I Sent., d.
23, a. 1, q. 3 (I, 410a).
1273
III Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 3, concl. (III, 231a).

241
Son took on human nature, neither his divine Person nor divine nature was changed; only
the human nature was elevated and perfected when it was assumed to the divine Person:

Sic persona Filii Dei, quae non erat hypostasis humanae

naturae in actu, habet esse eius hypostasis absque aliqua sui
mutatione vel innovatione, sola facta mutatione ex parte
naturae assumtae.1274

Since Bonaventure approaches the question of the human person in the context of
his Trinitology and Christology, it is necessary to discuss in more detail how Bonaventure
understood the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the
Verbum increatum et incarnatum. By looking at what is unique to the God-Man, a clearer
picture of the condition of created man will emerge.

In his teaching about the second Person of the Holy Trinity, Bonaventure writes
that “sicut in aliis hominibus ex coniunctione animae ad carnem per modum perficientis et
informantis resultat forma humanitatis, sic et in Christo”. 1275 This unambiguous statement
suggests that forma humanitatis is common to Christ and every human person. However,
it raises difficulties in understanding the real ontological differences between the divine
Person and human persons.1276

Bonaventure teaches that the union of the body and soul results in a person. At the
same time, as we have said, he teaches that the union of a body and soul results in forma
humanitatis, both in the case of creatures and in the case of the Incarnate Word. Yet he
also says, in conformity with Catholic tradition, that Christ has two natures, but is one
Person (i.e., not both a divine Person and a human person). It would seem, then, that
Bonaventure is saying that in the case of the divine Person, forma humanitatis is
impersonal.

Bonaventure solves this problem by appealing to two different kinds of

composition. There is the “proper” composition of things which tend toward each other
and combine to make a third (as in the ordinary combination of body and soul to make a
human person) and there is in a broader sense a combination which simply indicates that
one thing can exist together with another (simul-cum-alio-positio1277). In the case of
Christ, the body and soul do not compose in the sense of coming together and creating a

1274
III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (I, 10a).
1275
III Sent., d. 2, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (III, 48b).
1276
It seems that sometimes forma humanitatis is identified by Bonaventure with the human person as such:
“ergo completior et perfectior est forma humanitatis quam ipsa forma, quae est anima”. IV Sent., d. 43, a. 1,
q. 1 (IV, 883a).
1277
III Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (III, 153a).

242
third –– a person.1278 Presumably, then, we must conclude that in Christ, the body and
soul are a composition only in the sense of existing together with one another: Christ is
body, soul, and divinity, and in Christ the human body and human soul exist together
along with (are assumed by) the divine Person. 1279 Thus, “the fact that the Word is a
hypostasis in relation to two natures would not mean that His person as such is
composite”. Rather, the same divine Person “who existed as a supposite in one simple
nature” before the Incarnation exists as the “supposite to both the divine and human
natures after the incarnation”. 1280 This is fitting, since the soul has more ability to realize
its own function when it is joined with divine nature than in respect to the human body. 1281
Therefore “[t]he honour which is shown to Christ is shown neither to the soul nor to the
body but to the person in which both subsist”: 1282 “Incarnatio enim est union carnis ad
naturam divinam in personam distinctam”.1283 As a unity of two natures in a single divine
person, the divine hypostasis Himself is implicitly relational, both in terms of the Triune
Godhead and to man: “unio dicit relationem”.1284 As imago Dei, the human person is
bound up in the relationality of the Incarnate Word, though his relationship to God is on a
different level than the relations in the Trinity. 1285 Everything finds substantification in the
human person and the human person finds his substantification in the divine hypostasis:
“rationalis natura dependet ex hypostasi divina et habet substantificari in illa, sicut natura
substantificatur in persona”.1286

1278
“Dicendum, quod compositio dupliciter potest dici. Uno modo proprie dicitur compositio unio aliquorum
duorum habentium mutuum inclinationem ad consitutionem tertii…. Alio modo dicitur compositio large
simul-cum-alio-positio…. In persona Christi non est compositio proprie dicta.” III Sent., d. 6, a. 1, q. 2,
concl. (III, 153a).
1279
When it comes to precisely how the human body is conjoined to the divine hypostasis, Bonaventure
teaches that this comes about “per medium congruentiae”: “absque dubio concedendum est, quod caro unitur
ipsi Verbo mediante spiritu creato” [without doubt it is conceded that the body is united with the Word by
means of the created spirit]. III Sent., d. 2, a. 3, q. 1, concl. (III, 50b).
1280
Hayes, Hidden Center, pp. 82, 83. The logic might work like this: A body and soul come together and
result in a person (“totus homo componitur ex carne at anima”–– III Sent., d. 21, a. 1, q. 3, p. 440b). Every
person is forma humanitatis (“Et hoc patet, quia forma humanitatis una est unitate universalitatis; ideo simul
verum est, quod est homo, qui generatur, et est homo, qui generandus est, et est homo albus, et est homo
niger, et in omnibus his est forma universalis una” –– II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1. q. 3, p. 101). Thus, every body
and soul that come together result in a forma humanitatis (“sicut in aliis hominibus ex coniunctione animae
ad carnem per modum perficientis et informantis resultat forma humanitatis, sic et in Christo” –– III Sent.,
d. 2, a. 2, q. 3, concl., p. 48b). In the composition of a human person this is straightforward, and the result of
“proper” composition. In the case of the Incarnation, however, the body and soul do not come together in the
“proper” sense of “composition”. They are together as “compositio large simul-cum-alio-positio”. Since they
are together, we can posit forma humanitatis in Christ, but since body and soul do not compose in the
“proper” sense, we cannot posit a human person in the Incarnation. See III Sent., d. 6, a, 1, q. 2 (III, 153a).
1281
“sed anima plus habet de possibilitate respectu Dei; quam habeat corpus respectu animae”. III Sent., d. 1,
a. 1, q. 1, f. 3 (III, 9a).
1282
“Honor enim qui exhibetur Christo, nec animae per se nec corpori exhibetur, sed personae, in qua illa duo
subsistent”. Scien. Chr., 5, 14 (V, 31a). WSB, IV, pp. 158–159.
1283
III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 2, concl., ad 1 (III, 13a).
1284
III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl., ad 3 (III, 10b).
1285
“sic etiam uniri, dictum de divina natura vel personam non dicit actionem aliquam, sed relationem potius,
quae quidem relatio dicit dependentiam solum in natura create”. III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (III, 10b).
1286
III Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (III, 10a).

243
 The concept of forma humanitatis helps us if we wish to see a point of contact
between Christ who is the Exemplar and human beings who are made in His image and
likeness. However, the personhood of Christ is clearly on a wholly different plane from
the personhood of human beings: there is no analogy between the hypostatic union and
anything else,1287 so the concept of forma humanitatis only takes us so far when we wish to
see how human persons reflect the divine Persons. I propose that relationality, which is
grounded in the nature and Persons of the Divinity, and in the nature of human persons, is
key to explicating the image of God in man.

6. 3. Implications of Bonaventure’s definition of the human person

In Chapter 5, I explained how man is referred to God by being God’s vestige,

image and similitude. Implicit in that discussion is the inescapable fact that the human
person is relational vis-à-vis God. In this section, I would like to look at Bonaventure’s
definition of a “person” and draw from it some conclusions about the distinctive nature of
human relationality which will be explored more fully in the rest of this chapter.

In his approach to the definition of a “person”, Bonaventure had many sources

upon which to draw. He was aware of Boethius’s definition, of course — “an individual
substance of a rational nature” 1288 –– and used it as a starting-point for a number of
refinements in his own attempt to forge a definition of “person”. He was familiar as well
with the definitions of his contemporaries, 1289 but rejected some of them (for example, that
of Hugh of St Victor), on the grounds that they could be applied equally to the human
soul.1290 We know from the Summa Theologica that Aquinas was familiar with Alan of
Lille’s definition of a person as “an individual [hypostasis] distinct by reason and

1287
I Sent., d. 3, a. 6, q. 2, concl. (III, 161a).
1288
“Naturae rationalis individua substantia”. PL 64, 1343: Liber de persona et duabus naturis. Bonaventure
cites this definition in a slightly altered form: “Persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia.” I Sent., d.
5, a. 2, q. 1 (I, 117b); I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q. 1, arg. 4 (I, 435b); “individua substantia rationalis naturae”. II
Sent., d. 3, p.1, a. 2. q. 2 (II, 105b).
1289
Bonaventure attributes the following definitions to scholars from Paris: “persona est hypostasis distincta
proprietate ad nobilitatem pertinente”. I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q. 2, ad 4 (I, 441b); “persona est existens per se
solum, iuxta singularem quendam rationis existentiae modu”. Ibid. The definition of Richard of St Victor:
“persona est intellectualis naturae incommunicabilis existentia”. Ibid. The Scholium of I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q.
1 (I, 436b) attributes the following to Alexander of Hales, Summa, p. I, q. 56, m. 3: “persona dicitur rationalis
naturae suppositum proprietate distinctum”. In short, it reads as “suppositum distinctum proprietate”.
1290
“Dicendum, quod sicut apparet et textu opinion Magistri fuit, quod anima separate sit persona: et haec
opinio fufit magistri Hugonis de Sanctae Victore”. II Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (III, 136b). Although Peter
Lombard and Hugh of St Victor taught that a separated soul is a person, Bonaventure did not follow
their teaching, because, in his view, a separated soul lacks the distinction of incommunicability. See Hugh
of St Victor. De sacramentis, 2.1.11 (PL 176.401–12). Peter Lombard said: “Persona enim est talis
individuae naturae, hoc autem est anima. Ergo si animam assumpsit, et personam; sequitur quia anima non
est persona quando alii rei unita est personaliter, sed quando per enim a corpore persona est, sicuti angelus”.
Liber sententiarum, 3.5.5 (PL 192.767).

244
dignity”.1291 Although he does not reference Alan by name, Bonaventure’s concept of the
person is also connected to dignity, and he might have been influenced by Alan’s
definition.

We can say with certainty that in coming to his own definition of the person,
Bonaventure followed his teacher Alexander of Hales in positing the concept of dignity as
distinctive of a person. 1292 Alexander taught that “Persona est hypostasis distincta
proprietate ad dignitatem pertinente”. 1293 Bonaventure’s definition is: “persona de sui
ratione dicit suppositum distinctum proprietate ad dignitatem pertinente” (“‘person’ from
its own reckoning means ‘a supposit distinct by a property pertaining to dignity’”). 1294 As
we see, Bonaventure only slightly changed Hales’s definition, so we cannot say that he is
proposing something completely original.

With typical medieval rigour, before discussing the person of God, Bonaventure
examines the quiddity of the word “person” itself. The context is a discussion of whether
the name “person” signifies substance or whether it is said according to relation when
speaking of God. Quite apart from arguments concerning the relationality of the Trinity,
Bonaventure makes it clear that it is reasonable to conclude that the word “person”, while
it may indicate a substance, always pertains to relation. The word “person” can be
multiplied or used in a plural sense, and every name that can be so used pertains to a
relation, while “the substance always remains undivided”. 1295 Bonaventure also notes that
“every name of itself, conveying a distinction, is said according to relation”, and that “the
name for ‘person’ itself conveys a distinction, because a person is a hypostasis
distinguished by a property….” 1296 Echoing his own definition of a “person”, therefore,
Bonaventure posits relationality as intrinsic to personhood.

1291
Quoted by Aquinas in Summa Theologica I, q. 29, a. 3. Alan’s definition in fact “does not tell us what it is
about persons that gives them dignity. It also does not tell us what dignity is”. Linda Zagzebski, “The
Uniqueness of Persons”, The Journal of Religious Ethics, 29.3 (Fall, 2001), pp. 401–423, p. 402.
1292
Leonard Glavin, A Comparison Between the Writings of St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure on Mary, the
Mother of God, diss., Pontifical Theological Faculty Marianum, Rome (Dayton, Ohio: Marian Library
International Marian Research Institute, 2005), p. 201.
1293
Glossa I, 23, 9a–b, pp. 225-226. As quoted in Principe, Hypostatic Union, p. 66.
1294
I Sent., d. 23, a. 1, q. 1 (I, 405b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01404.html, (n.d.), viewed 20 September 2011. Cf. “persona importat
proprietatem dignitatis”. III Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 3, resp. (III, 230b). See also Stanisław Wroński, “Osoba
ludzka u św. Bonawentury” [“The Human Person According to Saint Bonaventure”], in SM 20.2, 1980, pp.
29–44.
1295
“si ergo nomen personae est multiplicabile, patet quod dicitur secundum relationem”. I Sent., d. 25, a. 1,
q. 1, con. 3 (I, 436a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01434.html, (n.d.), viewed 21 September, 2011.
1296
I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q. 1, con. 4 (I, 436a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01434.html, (n.d.), viewed 21 September, 2011.
Cf. “distinctio personarum spectat ad modum dicendi secundum relationem”. I Sent., d. 31, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2,
concl. (I, 535a–b).

245
 As I will show, when Bonaventure speaks of a “person” –– whether divine or
created –– he includes two important and related concepts: rationality and dignity. These
two concepts are integral to the human person and to the quality of his relationality.

In the first book of Sentences, Bonaventure asks, “Whether the name for ‘person’
has been fittingly transferred to the divine”. He lists four objections to transferring the
name “person” to God, the third of which is that “person” usually refers to “the name of a
particular, and this of the most highly composed”, “a rational creature” 1297 –– that is, a
person is usually thought to be a human being (or an angel). In other words, the name
“person” was first attributed to human beings because of their rationality and their
dignity:

And because among ecclesiastics a distinction of dignity is

attained most of all, [the name person] was drawn first to
signify honor among ecclesiastics. Then, because an
individual of a rational nature is distinct from others, and by
this property of dignity among creatures, hence it is, that it
has been extended to signify a supposit of a rational
nature.1298

The important point here is that being an individual of a rational nature distinguishes a
person from others and gives dignity to the person among other creatures. 1299 As I will
show in more detail in the following sub-chapter on personal discretion, when
Bonaventure speaks of “the dignity of personality” he refers it to “the nobility of a
rational nature”.1300

At the beginning of the first book of Sentences, Bonaventure asks two essential
questions about how man functions as a rational being: he asks about “using” and
“enjoying”, and he concludes that these are acts of the will and other powers belonging to
rational beings. It is immediately clear that these questions cut to the heart of what it is to
be relational, for to ask what it is “to use” or what it is “to enjoy” is to posit an object to be
used or enjoyed, and a relationship between the user/enjoyer and the object of use and

1297
I Sent., d. 23, a. 1, q. 1, (I, 405a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01404.html, (n.d.), viewed 21 September 2011.
1298
I Sent., d. 23, a. 1, q. 1, (I, 406a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01404.html, (n.d.), viewed 21 September 2011. Cf. “Persona enim dicitur
suppositum rationalis naturae distunctum proprietate”. I Sent., d. 34, a. un., q. 1, concl. (I, 587a).
1299
Cf. Distinctionem supereminentis dignitatis intelligo, illam quae accipitur a proprietate digniori. Hoc
enim nomen “persona” sumtum est a dignioribus; unde non reperitur nisi in individuo nobilissimae creaturae,
utpote rationalis, et ratione suae nobilissimae proprietatis”. III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1 (III, 133b).
1300
II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 106a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02105.html, 2008, viewed 7 September 2011.

246
enjoyment. In a very general way, these acts are directed to how man is to relate to the
created and the uncreated in a way that is keeping with his dignity as a human person.

[S]ince “to use” is to assume something into the faculty of

the will, this can be in a fourfold manner: into the faculty of
the working will, as concerns those (things) which properly
pertain to human use; and/or into the faculty of the
accepting will, as is love [dilectio] of (one’s) neighbor and
(things) of this kind [huiusmodi]; and/or into the faculty of
the tolerating will, as are the evils of punishment; and/or
into the faculty of the rejecting will, and thus the evils of
fault are assumed and ordained. In the first two manners is
understood that (which is said): “The use of which is good
etc.”1301

Bonaventure is clear that it is licit for man to use the created good, but not the uncreated
Good, even if one would wish to “use” God for the sake of salvation, for to do so would
be to make a means out of God.1302

By an act of will, 1303 the human person is also capable of enjoying both spiritual
goods and –– in the truest sense of enjoyment –– God Himself:

It must be said, that one is to enjoy God alone, in the proper

acceptation of “to enjoy”, insofar as it means [prout dicit] a
movement with delectation and a going to rest [quietatione].
But in the common acceptation of “to enjoy”, inasmuch as it
means a movement with delectation only, all things, which
spiritually delight and have been conjoined with (one’s) End,
of which kind are fruits, gifts and beatitudes, a man can not-
unduly enjoy; but in the first manner God alone.1304

In the Hexaemeron, Bonaventure discusses efficient truth which enlightens the

intellect and has a perpetual relationship to “the image of creation, restoration, and making
alike”. In this context, he remarks that “the image is an essential dependency and
relationship”.1305 This latter statement is true of anything in the created order: all that is
created by God depends on Him and is related to Him, and so we can say in very general

1301
I Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (I, 33a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01032.html, (n.d.), viewed 21 September, 2011.
1302
“Dicendum, quod solo bono creato est utendum, quia, si bono increato utimur, semper est abusus, et
abusus talis est mortale peccatum propter perversitatem in finem cum delectatione, et propter voluntatis
inordinationem, quae minus diligit ipsum quo utitur, quam propter quod utitur”. I Sent., d. 1, a. 1, q. 3, concl.
(I, 34b).
1303
“ideo loquendo essentialiter, frui est actus voluntatis”. I Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (I, 36b).
1304
I Sent., d. 1, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (I, 40b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01039.html, (n.d.), viewed September 21, 2011.
1305
“veritas efficiens,…illustrat intelligentiam; et sic format animam, scilicet intellectum humanum et
angelicum, ut sit Deus obiectum intellectus; et hinc est, quod habet rationem perpetui quantum ad imaginem
creationis, reparationis, similitudinis; quia imago est essentialis dependentia et relatio”. Hex., 10, 7(V, 378a).
TWB, V. p. 149.

247
terms that everything and everyone that exists is relational. However man, who is
distinguished by a dignity that comes from being rational, is capable of using and enjoying.
This is relationality on a higher level than the rest of creation. To use and enjoy, man must
know what things are, and be able to discern the good. This places man in a special kind
of relationship to what is below him in the created order, and what is above him in the
created and uncreated orders. As the summit of creation, man is positioned to use every
created good to an appropriately ordered end. As imago Dei, he is destined for perpetual
enjoyment of God. In between these two things, so to speak, man fully expresses himself
as a human being in relation to others. As Zachary Hayes explains it,

humanity is essentially ordered to the supernatural. To

understand this, it is necessary to recall the relational
structure of human nature. The human person is, by reason of
its essential structure, ordered to a life with others. Thus, the
attempt to remain closed in oneself and to exclude others
from one’s life amounts to a rejection of one’s essential
human reality; for it is only in the other that the dynamism of
the human spirit finds its rest.1306

6. 4. Personal discretion and human dignity

Bonaventure approached the problem of personal discretion –– that is,

metaphysical personal difference –– by way of discussing personal discretion among
angels.1307 As we shall see, personal discretion goes beyond individual discretion, which
is the origin of numerical difference as well as accidental properties that allow the
distinction of one from another.

“Individual discreteness” expresses two things, namely

individuation and, consequently, distinctness. Individuation
is from the indivision and appropriation of principles. The
principles of a thing, when they are conjoined, appropriate
each other and produce the individual. But being discrete or
being distinct from another is consequent upon this, and
from this there arises number, and so an accidental property
consequent upon substance. Thus “individual discreteness”
expresses something accidental and something
1306
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 97
1307
“Individuatio igitur in creaturis consurgit ex duplici principio. Personalis autem discretio dicit
singularitatem et dignitatem. In quantum dicit singularitatem, hoc dicit ex ipsa coniunctione principiorum, ex
quibus resultat ipsum ‘quod est’. Sed dignitatem dicit principaliter ratione formae; et sic patet, unde sit
personalis discretio originaliter, in creaturis loquendo, sive in hominibus sive in angelis”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1,
a. 2, q. 3 (II, 109b–110a). Bonaventure quotes Peter Lombard saying “prima consideratio est de substantia”,
and goes on to conclude that “et sub prima consideratione comprehendit personalem discretionem”. II Sent.,
d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2 (II, 105b).

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 substantial...therefore, it should be stated that any individual
discreteness whatever comes from the existence of a natural
form in matter.1308

Individual discretion distinguishes individual beings, since a being is individual in

as far as it is undivided and distinct from others (cat, cosmos, calcium). However,
personal discretion distinguishes individual persons (Tom, Dick, Gabriel). Personal
discretion is not caused only by actual conjunction of matter and form (as a thing), and is
not caused by accidents as in numerical discretion, but is that which makes the individual
personal. As such it has substantial character (“quid substantiale”).1309

An individual person “implies a threefold distinction, namely, one of singularity,

another of incommunicability, and another of super-eminent dignity”. 1310 Since
singularity, incommunicability and super-eminent dignity are inscribed in the nature of a
person, from the moment when the soul is separated from the body, although it retains its
individuality and proper dignity, it loses the fullness of its personality, because it is
disconnected from its particular body to which it is ordered because of its inclination to be
in and with that body.1311

Something can be said to be singular if it is not shared by many but is predicated

only of one being (e.g., “Alice” is said to be an individual, but “human” is not individual).
Something can be said to be incommunicable if it is not a part of a larger whole and does
not enter into composition of any sort (i.e., the principles, body and soul, are
communicable because they go into the composition of a tertium quid, a person, but the
person himself and his unique personality are not communicable). Within the
incommunicability of a personal existence, then, the singular substance is this chiefly
because of its matter, which gives stability to the form, and it is something rational, or
someone, chiefly because of its form. Hence, the incommunicability of a personal

1308
II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 106a–b) as translated in Peter King, “Bonaventure”, in Gracia,
Individuation, pp. 145–146. See also III Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 2 (where the theory is applied to the case of
Christ’s individuality).
1309
“discretio personalis, etsi videatur dicere accidens, quia dicit per modum accidentis, tamen principaliter
dicit quid substantiale; et si aliquo modo importat accidens, hoc est consequenter; illud tamen immediate
habet ortum a principiis substantialibus”. II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 106a).
1310
Colman Majchrzak, “The Human Person According to St. Bonaventure”, in The Mind of Modern Man
(Washington, DC: Franciscan Education Conference, 1958), pp. 21–40, p. 32.
1311
“Ad complementum rationem personae requiritur...distinctio singularitatis et incommunicabilitatis et
supereminentis dignitatis. Quamvis autem in anima separata sit reperire singularitatem et dignitatem, non est
tamen reperire incommunicabilitatem, quia appetitum et aptitudinem habet ut unitatur corpori ad
constitutionem tertii. Et ideo necesse est ipsam carere distinctione personalitatis; quoniam, si completior est
anima dum appetitus eius terminatur quem habet respectus corporis resumendi.... [N]ecessario sequitur quod
personalitate careat, cum est separata a corpore”. III Sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (III, 136b).

249
existence involves a substantial mode of distinction between individuals of the same
nature, or species.1312

However, the key to Bonaventure’s discussion of personal discretion is in his

understanding of super-eminent dignity, which is rooted in the teaching of his academic
mentor, Alexander of Hales. 1313 Bonaventure used “personal property” interchangeably
with “personal discretion”, teaching that “a personal property does not mean more than
[ultra] this, but the dignity or nobility of a rational nature, which nobility is not accidental
to it, nay (is) simply and entirely essential (to it)”. 1314 Thus, as I mentioned above,
personalis discretio is something substantial. 1315 It goes beyond individual discretion,
adding upon it “the dignity of personality. Moreover, this dignity means…the nobility of a
rational nature…” which is “essential to a rational nature”. 1316 Personality completes the
individualization of a man:

Finally, as a person, a man has a unique property of

personality, which completes the being of his singular and
incommunicable nature. Consequently, preventing any
further perfection of that nature in a substantial way,
personality establishes the man in existence both as a
singular thing and as an incommunicable supposit of human
nature, which is thus constituted in a really personal
manner.1317

1312
“Tertia positio est, quod Angelus et anima specie differunt; quae sit autem illa differentia, quaeretur iam.
Nunc autem iuxta communem positionem tenendum est quod essentialiter differant et in genere
substantiae. — Unde concedendae sunt rationes probantes Angelum et animam esse specie differentes, eo
modo, quo licet dicere animam rationaiem esse speciem. Nam, proprie loquendo, potius est forma speciei
sive pars formalis, quam species; extenso tamen nomine potest species appelari”. II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 1,
concl. (II, 48b).
1313
See Principe, Hypostatic Union, pp. 68–71. On Alexander’s understanding of the property of dignity, see
pp. 116–123. In a departure from Hales, for whom dignity was connected to morality, for Bonaventure,
dignity as such has its own ontological value: “Alexander, [Hufnagel] says, ‘in diese dignitas etwas
Moralisches sieht das freilich ontologisch begründet ist,’ whereas for Bonaventure (and Thomas Aquinas)
this dignity is ‘etwas Ontologisches, dem eine moralische Qualität im modernen Sinn dieses Wort nicht
anhaftet, wohl aber ein besonderer ontologischer Wert.’” Principe, Hypostatic Union, p. 68. Cf. A. Hufnagel,
“Bonaventuras Personverständnis”, in J. Auer and H. Volk, eds., Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart
[Festgabe Michael Schmaus] (Munich, 1957), pp. 843–860.
1314
II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 107a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02105.html, 2008, viewed 7 September 2011.
1315
“Personalis proprietas non causatur ab accidentibus, sed ab actuali coniunctione principiorum, et in se
est aliquid substantiale; quod autem ad hoc consequitur, hoc est aliquo modo in genere accidentium”. II
Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 106a).
1316
II Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 106b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02105.html, 2008, viewed 7 September 2011.
1317
Quinn, Constitution, p. 179. The personality of Christ is more dignified than that of man: “Personalitas
cuilibet rei inest ratione eius quod est in ipsa dignissimum — pertinet enim nomen personae ad notabi lem
dignitatem — sed constat, quod dignissimum in Christo non est humana sed di vina”. III Sent., d. 10, a.
1, q. 2, f. 4 (III, 228a).

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 The nobility of rational nature is such that it holds first place among created
natures;1318 the dignity of substantial completion perfects the individual nature, so that it
cannot be ordered to a more perfect form. 1319 From this, Bonaventure was in accord with
other medieval theologians, in holding that the dignity of man resides in part in the fact
that he is the summit of creation. Man is “placed in this world like a king in a
kingdom”;1320 everything is made for his sake, which means man is the creature with the
greatest dignity.1321 However, being the summit of creation is not the ultimate source of
man’s dignity. By locating man’s dignity in his incommunicable personality and rational
nature, Bonaventure finds man’s dignity essentially in the fact that man is made in the
image and likeness of God, 1322 for “omnis proprietas dignitatis praecipue congruit divinae
personae”.1323

Richard Gula explains that to say “the human person is the ‘image of God’” speaks
of the relation between God and man. This revealed truth indicates “that God has so
established a relationship with us that the human person cannot be properly understood
apart from God”:

God sustains this relationship by divine faithfulness and

love. As long as God offers divine love (i.e., grace), humans
will ever remain God’s image and enjoy a sacred dignity
whether in sin or not, whether acting humanly or not.1324

As the summit of creation and made in the image of God, the human person is
ordered to achieve the greatest dignity through his relation with creation (including other
persons) and with God, in a way that is similar to the relations within the divine Trinity and
between God and all creatures. We may say that man’s status as man is, like God’s status
as God, intrinsically relational, and that relationality is not only the status, but the vocation,
the means and the condition for attaining fulfilment as human beings.

1318
“persona importat proprietatem dignitatis...importat fundamentum totius existentiae naturalis”. III
Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 3, concl. (III, 230b).
1319
“Quia vero [sc. homo] per similitudinem natus est in Deum immediante tendere, ideo omnes creaturae
irrationales ad ipsum ordinatur, ut mediante ipso in finem ultimum perducantur”. II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1,
concl. (II, 383a).
1320
“Ut disponat orbem terrarum [Sap. 9:3]; scilicet per sapientiam; est enim homo positus in hoc mundo,
sicut rex in regno” Comm. Sap., 9, 3 (VI, 167a), as translated by Alexander Schaefer, “Position and
Function”, FS 21, p. 316.
1321
Cf. “Dignitas namque hominis tanta erat, ut propter ipsum facta sunt universa”. III Sent., d. 20, a. 1, d. 1,
concl. (III, 417b–418a).
1322
“Dei est imago et creatura dignissima, propter quam sunt omnia mundana creata”. Apol. paup., 10, 13
(VIII, 309a).
1323
III Sent., d. 1, a, 2, q. 1, f. 3 (III, 19a–b).
1324
Richard M. Gula, Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1989), p. 64.

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6. 5. Man’s relation to creation

Bonaventure offers very little in the way of teaching about how man does or should
behave toward creation, for example, as custodian of the environment. Most of what the
Seraphic Doctor wrote about man’s place in the created order is found in the second book
of Sentences and in the Breviloquium, and pertain to God’s creation and man’s Fall. Of
man’s prelapsarian state of harmony and concord with nature almost nothing is said, except
that he lost it. For example, Bonaventure tells us nothing of man’s work in the garden
before the Fall. He only comments on man’s struggle to bring forth fruits from the earth
after the Fall.

We must therefore be careful to consider “man-creation relations” from the

Seraphic Franciscan’s perspective. Bonaventure sees nature as being created as a perfect,
albeit temporary, home for man: everything in the universe works together for the good of
human life; the “natural environment” is decidedly man’s natural environment, created for
and ordered to man. Because of this perspective, Bonaventure is far more concerned with
“creation’s relation to man” than “man’s relation to creation.” This is not to say that the
relationship is one-way. It goes without saying that man depends on his natural
environment to sustain his life, because if his environment were destroyed, man could not
live (and in fact, Bonaventure does not say it). However, Bonaventure would say that
“without man, the created order would not exist”, rather than the opposite.

In chapter three of the Breviloquium, Bonaventure lays out a schema for “the entire
world machine” that consists of “ten celestial and four elemental spheres” “ranging from
the highest rim of heaven down to the very center of the earth”, in “distinct, perfect, and
ordered fashion”. Within this world machine there are “a multiplicity of forms, such as
appears in minerals, plants and animals”. There are three heavens and “seven planetary
spheres, so that a proper connection, harmony and correspondence might exist”. 1325
Bonaventure goes on in chapter four to explain how “the heavens influence the earth and
the elements by dividing time into days, months, and years”. They also stimulate, advance
and bring together contrary elements in varying degrees of harmonization, so that if the
contraries remain distant from equality, lower forms result; when the contraries are in a
state of equality, the highest form results:

Through their harmonizing influence on the contrary

qualities [of matter], but far removed from an equal balance,
they produce minerals; through a harmonization that is less
1325
Brev., 2, 3 (V, 221a). WSB, IX, pp. 66–68.

252
 removed from equality, they influence vegetative life;
through a conciliation that approaches equality, they produce
sentient beings; and finally, through a conciliation that truly
achieves equal balance, they produce the human body.1326

It is important to our topic to note that Bonaventure is not here merely sketching a
hierarchy or positing unrelated forms on different levels of perfection. Rather, “each form
is essentially ordained towards the next higher one”.1327 The final corporeal form, the
human body, “is disposed to receive the noblest form, the rational soul, toward which is
ordained and in which is brought to fulfillment the yearning of every sensible and
corporeal nature”.1328

From this we can draw two conclusions about Bonaventure’s view of man’s
position in and relationship to the created order: first, that man is the end of the entire
corporeal world, the reason for its existence; and second, that since “the lower forms
remain in some real manner in the new composite and continue to be the basis of the
higher form”,1329 all of visible creation is represented by man. Thus man and creation are
intimately bound up in one another:

As a union of the material and spiritual levels of creation,

humanity, in a sense, has something in common with all
creatures. And all other creatures in some way are related to
and are to serve humanity in the pursuit of the ultimate
destiny of creation [i.e., God].1330

As I mentioned above, Bonaventure does not give a full description of what man’s
life was like before the Fall, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions about man’s original
or properly ordered relationship to nature. One principle to bear in mind, however, is that
when Bonaventure speaks of any kind of rupture between man and physical creation
occasioned by the Fall, he speaks in terms of a change in man, rather than a change in
nature itself. Again, this is because Bonaventure’s view of man-creation relations is
focused on man, for whom God prepared the created order “like a dwelling fashioned by
the supreme architect to serve human beings until such time as they arrive at that dwelling
not made with hands…in heaven”.1331

1326
Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b). WSB, IX, pp. 69–70.
1327
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 319.
1328
Brev., 2, 4 (V, 221b). WSB, IX, p. 70.
1329
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 320.
1330
Hayes, “Mystery”, p. 111. Cf. “all corporeal beings were made to serve mankind, so that through these
things humanity might ascend to loving and praising the Creator of the universe”. Brev., 2, 4 (V, 222a). WSB,
IX, p. 71.
1331
Brev., 2, 4 (V, 222a). WSB, IX, pp. 71–72.

253
 One way that man’s relationship to nature has changed is in man’s diminished
ability to find God through creation. As I discussed above, the “Book of Creation” is
designed to help man see the sign of God’s presence in every created thing and thus lead
man to contemplation of God and ultimately to union with God. 1332 Bonaventure teaches
that when man fell, he retained his natural curiosity, but it is no longer oriented toward
God. Rather, man tends to be distracted from God by the created order:

Since, therefore, there remained an appetite without a habit,

for that reason man became solicitous in questioning. And
because nothing created can recompense for the Good that he
let go of [bonum amissum], since It was infinite, for that
reason he desired [appetit], sought, and is never quiet; and
for that reason by turning aside [declinando] from rectitude
he intermingled himself in endless questionings.1333

At the Fall, man’s intellect became darkened, and he could no longer read from the Book
of Creation; it had become unintelligible to him. Scripture was established to “restore the
whole world toward the knowledge, praise and love of God”. 1334 If man reads Scripture,
“in cooperation with faith and sanctifying grace” the “eye of contemplation” will be
revived in him, and he will once more be able to “read the Book of Creation, to receive
the full service of the things below him” and thus to be “their decisive mediator on the
way to God, their ultimate end”.1335

In his explication of the Fall of man in the Breviloquium, the Franciscan Doctor
does not explain how we are to understand Genesis 3:17, in which God says to Adam,
“cursed is the ground because of you”. Apparently he does not read this as a literal
“cursing” of the ground. Rather, Bonaventure again shows us that what has changed is
Adam, and that because Adam has fallen from his natural state of grace, he will now
suffer from indigence, and will have to labour with weariness to get his bread:

As a result of the divine judgment, the man incurred the

punishment of labor and hardship, of hunger and need, of
death and dissolution to ashes, as Scripture says, Cursed is
the earth because of you, etc.1336

Perhaps the most developed treatment of the change in man’s relation to nature
from his prelapsarian to postlapsarian state has to do with his relationship to animals. In

1332
See section 4. 7. 1: “Creation in the light of St Francis’s spirituality”.
1333
II Sent., prooem., (II, 5b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02003.html, 2008, viewed 23 September, 2011.
1334
Hex., 13, 12 (V, 390a). TWB, V, pp. 191.
1335
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 333.
1336
Brev., 3, 4 (V, 233b). WSB, IX, p. 107.

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the original state of nature, the animals were made for man to use. Bonaventure teaches
that even before the Fall, animals were meant “not only to serve man through (their) life,
but also through (their) death”.1337 He apparently reasoned that man killed and ate animals
before the Fall.1338 He also outlines four ways in which both “livestock and the beasts and
flocks” “were ordered to man as their end” while man was still “in the state of innocence”:
they manifested man’s sovereignty by obeying man; they were decorative, contributing to
the earth’s beauty; their diversity would prompt man to ponder “the multiformity of
Wisdom of (their) Founder”; and they were to draw man through his affections to love of
God, when man observed animals “running according to their nature”.1339 After the Fall,
livestock and flocks were ordered to serve man in terms of food, clothing and service
(such as cattle and beasts of burden) and some animals for solace (like small birds or
dogs). If wild beasts can now harm man, it works to his good for punishment of his sins,
and is no indication of a change in animals. It is man, through his sin, who has lost his
sovereign dignity and power over them.

To that which is objected concerning the beasts which are

against man; it must be said, that with man standing, no
animals would offend him, but all would be meek to him,
just as sometimes by the Divine Command the most cruel
wild animal [ferae crudelissimae] have become meek to
God’s Saints, such as the lions (did) to Daniel.1340

Even though the redemption of Christ restored man “in his right and original
relationship to God”, the “disturbance which sin has caused in the created order is still
present”.1341 All is not completely lost, however. According to Bonaventure, the more a
man returns to perfect submission to God, the more man’s kingship over nature is
renewed. Bonaventure clearly cherished Saint Francis as example of someone who had

1337
II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 2, con. (II, 462a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02461.html, 2008, viewed 23 September, 2011.
Bonaventure further teaches that there is nothing offensive in the fact that animals killed and ate one another
before the Fall of man: “Ad illud quod obiicitur, quod homine stante, non debuerunt fieri animalia mortalia;
dicendum, quod sicut animalia sua vita habitationem hominis decorant et ornant, sic etiam morte sua ex
successione faciunt ad universi decorationem. Et sicut animalia se invicem iuvantia sunt ratio sapientiae
excogitandae, sic etiam animalia sese offendentia et de carnibus aliorum animalium nutrimentum sumentia;
quia illa corruptio aërem hominis non inficeret, qui eius odoratum offenderet, sed potius quadam successione
et ordine, dum animalia sibi succederent, universum decorarent, tanquam pulcherrimum carmen, in quo
syllaba succedit syllabae. II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 383b).
1338
In an argument against the notion that animals had immortal souls before the Fall, Bonaventure writes:
“Item, omnia bruta animalia facta sunt propter usum hominis; sed usus hominis est in vescendo eis, et
vescitur eis, dum ea occidit: ergo facta sunt ad hoc, ut non tantum serviant homini per vitam, sed etiam per
mortem; sed hoc non esset, si animae eorum essent immortales”. II Sent., d. 19, a. 1, q. 2, con. (II, 462a).
1339
II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 383a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02382.html, 2008, viewed 23 September, 2011.
1340
II Sent., d. 15, a. 2, q. 1. concl. ad. 3. (II, 383b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02382.html, 2008, viewed 23 September, 2011.
1341
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 326.

255
recovered some of his kingly sovereignty over animals by virtue of his piety. 1342 In the
Legenda Major, he recounts numerous stories of the irresistible attraction the Poverello
had for wild animals, which seemed to delight and take joy in being near the gentle saint.
Francis is held up as an example of one whose piety and virtue is so great that it has
restored him to something like a prelapsarian relationship to animals:

Therefore, we should respond piously to the piety of the

blessed man, which had such remarkable gentleness and
power that it subdued ferocious beasts, tamed the wild,
trained the tame, and bent to his obedience the beasts that
had rebelled against fallen humankind. Truly this is the
virtue that binds all creatures together, and gives power to all
things having the promise of the life, that now is and, is yet
to come.1343

Bonaventure teaches that Saint Francis “reached such purity that his flesh was in
remarkable harmony with his spirit and his spirit with God” and that consequently, “God
ordained that creation which serves its Maker should be subject in an extraordinary way to
his will and command”.1344 However, we must not conclude from this that man can restore
his relationship with creation to a prelapsarian state. We will never re-order creation in
such a way that a state of innocence prevails. On the contrary, “what became disordered
by [our first parents] falling from the order of nature immediately fell subject to the order
of justice”.1345 This means that the state of justice will persist as long as the world endures:
man will always get his bread by the sweat of his brow, woman will always bring forth
children in pain, and all will die. Bonaventure expresses this principle in response to the
question of whether Adam and Eve, having fallen, could have eaten from the Tree of Life
and reversed the punishment of death:

It must be said, that by the same law, by which the Divine

Justice does not suffer, that the innocent be punished and die,
it also does not suffer, that evil remain unpunished. And for
that reason there was a Divine Decree, that, if man sinned by
transgressing the mandate of God and stood forth as one not
obeying [inobediens] his very own Author, that (his) spirit
would lose the dominion of (his) flesh; and just as (his) will
had receded from (his) God, so (his) soul would involuntarily
[invita] desert (his) very body, and, having been dissolved,
return unto its origin, whence it had been taken. And since

1342
“Secundum quod homo plus reformatur et reducitur ad statum innocentiae, secundum hoc magis sibi
mansuescunt huiusmodo creaturae et ipse circa eas maiori pietate movetur, sicut de beato Francisco legitur
iam quod erga huiusmodi creaturas mira pietatis teneritudine affluebat, quia iam quodam modo innocentiam
recuperaverat”. III Sent., d. 28, a. un, q. 1, concl. (III, 622b).
1343
FA:ED, vol. II, p. 595.
1344
FA:ED, vol. II, p. 567.
1345
Brev., 3, 4 (V, 233b ). WSB, IX, pp. 107–108.

256
 the Divine Decree was inviolable, hence it is, that after man
sinned, however so much he would eat of the Tree of Life,
his body would not become unable to be dissolved, such that
he could not evade death.1346

In his postlapsarian state, man has to work out his salvation within the order of
justice. He must learn to prefer the immutable good to the changeable good and good
itself to advantageous good, to put the will of God ahead of his own will, and to exercise
“the judgment of right reason over sensual desire”.1347 Since the Fall, man has become
more attracted to the created good than he is to the Creator; he is distracted from the
Infinite by attachment to the finite. The created world will never satisfy, however, and
paying too much attention to created goods makes us unhappy:

Never let us allow our hearts to be concerned about any

created things except in the case when our concern arouses
our love [and dilectio] for God, because the manifold variety
of things, when given too much attention, distract the spirit
and disturb peace of mind, severely vexing the peace of the
soul with turbulent commotions in the imagination.1348

In the Soliloquium, the Soul asks, “And just what does it mean to live according to
nature?” The answer of the Innermost Self summarises Bonaventure’s view of a truly
ordered relationship to creation: “Strictly speaking, to live according to nature is to live a
celestial life on earth, ‘to return from exterior things to the interior, to rise from the
inferior to the superior’”.1349

6. 6. Relations to other human persons

In the Breviloquium, Bonaventure teaches that when God created man, “he
fashioned for the soul a body so obedient that it was free from all stirring to rebellion”. At
the same time, the body was able “to obey the soul, and also to rebel and rise up against
it”.1350 As we know, man rebelled against God and fell. Bonaventure connects Adam’s

1346
II Sent., d. 19, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 467b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02466.html, 2008, viewed 23 September 2011.
1347
Brev., 3, 8 (V, 237a). WSB, IX, p. 119.
1348
“Nunquam ergo de aliqua re creata, nisi in quantum nostrum excitet divini amoris et dilectionis affectum,
cor nostrum esse sollicitum permittamus, quia multiplex rerum labentium varietas, plus debito ruminata, non
solum animam distrahendo pacatae mentis gratam interrumpit quietem, verum etiam, in animo gignendo
phantasmata turbulentae quassationis molestia importune impellit eandem”. XXV Mem., prol., 2 (VIII, 491b).
Translation mine.
1349
Solil., 2, 2 (VIII, 49a). WSB X, pp. 285–286.
1350
Brev., 2, 10 (V, 239b). WSB, IX, p. 92.

257
particular disobedience and fall with disordered relationships to himself, to Eve and to
God:

By placing too great a value on his association with the

woman and the comfort of their relationship, he shrank from
reproving the woman or restraining his own pleasures. Since
he did not rebuke her when he should have, the woman’s sin
was imputed to him. Because he was unwilling to curb his
own pleasures by driving the woman away, he began to love
himself too much, and thus fell away from the divine
friendship into his own greed and disobedience.1351

In sum, we can say that Adam sinned against proper relationship by failing to correct a
sinner, putting another creature before God and putting himself ahead of God. From the
time of the Fall, then, man’s relationships have been disordered because of disobedience.
This disobedience affected relationships on all levels: between persons, between man and
God, and between man and the lower creatures. Bonaventure teaches that “when Adam
was disobedient to his Superior, he found that all of the subordinate beings that had been
made subject to him rose up against him”. This is a natural consequence of the Fall, since
“a person who is rebellious against his superiors is despised by his subordinates”. 1352 It is
thus through obedience that relationships will be restored to their proper order in earthly
life. To a large degree, this order is restored by obedience to the Ten Commandments
through which all loves are ordered to love of God:

God is namely the proper and principal object of charity; and

this is the reason that love of God is the first and the greatest
commandment; both the neighbor and every person need not
be loved, except for the sake of God or in God by reason of
the divine image and similitude…. However, if someone
loves another not for the sake of God or in God, namely with
affection due to family relationships, the flesh, or some kind
of convenience, it is called a natural act, not the virtue of
charity.1353

The Seraphic Doctor teaches that the Ten Commandments restore man to properly
ordered relations between man and God, man and his earthly superiors, and man and his
fellow man in general. The first three commandments prescribe “our correct ordering to
God”; the fourth commandment prescribes “our correct ordering and kindness with respect
to parents” and the remaining six commandments prescribe “our correct ordering and
blamelessness with respect to our neighbor.”1354 When the commandments are followed,

1351
Brev., 3, 3 (V, 233a). WSB, IX, pp. 105–106.
1352
Decem praec., 5, 8 (V, 523b). WSB, VI, p. 75.
1353
Serm. dom., XVII p. Pent. (IX, 419a). WSB, XII, pp. 469–470.
1354
Decem praec., 7, 7 (V, 530a). WSB, VI, p. 96.

258
man’s nature is rectified, and consequently, something like the order of heaven is restored
to man’s relationships with God and with others.

Now from the observance of the Law a person becomes

respectful, faithful, devout, pious, meek, chaste, generous,
truthful, content with his own things, or of a generous heart
and a pure mind. On the other hand, by transgressing the
Law a person becomes idolatrous, blasphemous, lacking in
devotion, impious, a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, a liar,
covetous and carnal. Therefore one who transgresses the
Law and one who observes the Law are more distant from
one another than hell is from paradise….”1355

One of the most obvious signs of man’s relationality is the division of the sexes, yet
although Bonaventure distinguishes and comments on the particulars of Eve’s and Adam’s
falls and their subsequent punishment, he does not refer specifically to gender differences
when he speaks of the restoration of properly ordered human relations. He does, however,
treat of this topic obliquely in his discussion of violations of the sixth commandment,
against adultery. If, in Bonaventure’s view, Adam was guilty of placing his wife’s
company and the pleasures of their association before God, the remedy for the attendant
disorders that follow is chastity in three kinds: conjugal, common, and privileged. These
three kinds of chastity are based on respect for the proper relations between the sexes.
Conjugal chastity is the licit use of the sexual organs to their natural purpose: mutual self-
giving between one man and one woman in marriage. Common and privileged chastity
respect the dignity of women as subjects, forbidding the use of women as objects (as in
fornication, harlotry, or rape).1356

Bonaventure teaches that “what became disordered by [humans] falling from the
order of nature immediately fell subject to the order of justice”, and that “through the just
judgment of God [Adam and Eve’s] own lower natures became disobedient to them,
especially those parts designed for the union of the sexes”.1357 It is interesting for our
subject of relationality that Bonaventure teaches that when someone sins against the very
basis of the three kinds of chastity, “it is called a sin against nature”. These sins against
nature –– following the common use of the term in the Middle Ages –– offend even more
seriously against ordered relations between men and women than the sexual sins
mentioned above. Sins against nature either completely abjure man-woman relations
(sodomy, bestiality), or turn the sinner entirely away from relationship to any “other”

1355
Decem praec., 7, 9 (V, 531b). WSB, VI, pp. 97-98.
1356
Decem praec., 6, 12, 13 (V, 527b5–528a). WSB, VI, pp. 88–89.
1357
Brev., 3, 4 (V, 233b ). WSB, IX, pp. 107–108, emphasis added.

259
(masturbation).1358 It is apparent that when man fell from “the order of nature” by
disobedience to God, he wounded his own relationality in a most fundamental way, and
that observance of the sixth commandment is thus essential to restoring and preserving
right relations among persons.

One more point concerning Bonaventure’s treatment of the fall of Adam and our
theme of relationality is apropos here. Bonaventure wrote that because Adam did not
rebuke or reprove Eve when she sinned, her sin was imputed to him. This teaching must
seem harsh and unfair to anyone who believes in absolute autonomy, in which each person
is author of his own morality, commander of his own destiny, and free to do whatever he
wishes as long as he does not trample upon the legal rights of others. Contrary to this
view, the Seraphic Doctor teaches that we are so intimately connected to each other that if
another sins and we do nothing to turn our neighbour back to the true good, we will be held
accountable:

There are five ways in which a person can sin: first, by

sinning against a commandment; second, by inciting another
to sin; third, by defending the sinner; fourth, by accepting the
sinner; fifth, by ignoring the sinner, neither arguing with nor
punishing him. And this is the greatest peril, when anyone
neglects to reprove another.1359

Bonaventure concludes that “[o]ne considers a person to be a stranger when one sees him
sinning and says, ‘What is your sin to me?’” 1360 This is why, in Bonaventure’s view, we
are made a partner in that person’s sin: because instead of loving him and desiring his
salvation as much as we desire our own, we treat him as one with whom we have no
relationship.1361 On the contrary, according to the Seraphic Doctor, there is no one to
whom we have no relationship: “we are bound to love humankind”.1362

Our aim in this section is to discuss man’s relations to his fellow man; however, as
we will see, we cannot speak of such relationships without referring to order, hierarchy,
obedience and humility, since all on earth was created as a vestige or image of heaven,
where there is perfect order, perfect hierarchy, perfect obedience and perfect humility.

1358
Decem praec., 6, 13 (V, 528a). WSB, VI, p. 89, especially note 21.
1359
Decem praec., 4, 15 (V, 522a). WSB, VI, p. 68.
1360
Decem praec., 4, 16 (V, 522b). WSB, VI, p. 68.
1361
Cf. “Now a right and ordered love, called charity, bears us principally to that good in whom it finds its
enjoyment and repose. This good itself is our reason for loving…. Now, our neighbor was created to reach
that happiness along with ourselves….” Brev., 5, 8. WSB, IX, p. 201.
1362
Decem praec., 5, 17 (V, 524b). WSB, VI, p. 78.
Cf. “Kindness is commanded with respect to all human beings”. Decem praec., 5, 11 (V, 524a). WSB, VI, p.
76.

260
 In the Gospel of Luke, 10:27, we read that all of the commandments can be reduced
to one: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul
and with your whole strength and with your whole mind”. Bonaventure says that the “total
form of living” is encompassed in these words.1363 He goes on to explain that the
implications of this commandment refer to “the totality of what we are able to do here
below”. The conditions for loving God

deal with the state of the heavenly homeland and strongly

demonstrate that the conditions of the destination obligate
those on their journey there. Therefore, through this
commandment the entire human person is ordained to God in
his entirety, and as a consequence is ordained to himself.1364

As we can see, in this, the sum of all the commandments and the law, a right order of love
is restored. Writing to those in religious life, the Seraphic Doctor explained that “the order
of love that is attained in virtue has this principally, radically, and essentially in view: God
is preferred to the creature”.1365 When God is put in the first place, our love for –– and thus
our relationships to –– other human beings, the world, and ourselves is restored to its
proper order.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That is, from

the source you love yourself, namely, from love that is
affective and effective. Or in whom you love yourself, that
is, in God. Or on whose account you love yourself, scilicet,
on account of God. Or to what end you love yourself, that is,
for grace in the present life and glory in the future. Or how
you love yourself, that is, above material things and your
own body and inferior to God. For the person who loves his
neighbor in such a way, that person is the true observer of
the Law.1366

In the teaching of the Seraphic Doctor, properly ordered relations between human persons
must be modelled on Christ who gave Himself to us, so that we may to give ourselves to
others. In other words, we have to subject ourselves first to God, and then to others, giving
not only from what we have at our disposal, but submitting first our will in obedience to
God and to others.

[S]ince Christ the Lord not only gave us to ourselves, but

also gave himself to us and since he not only made himself
human for our sake, but also was subject to humans, it
follows that it is fitting that we subject ourselves not only to
1363
Comm. Luc., 10, 46 (VII, 267a). WSB, VIII 2, p. 972.
1364
Comm. Luc., 10, 48 (VII, 268a). WSB, VIII 2, p. 976.
1365
Perf. ev., 1, concl. ad. 2 (V, 123a). WSB, XIII, p. 48.
1366
Comm. Luc., 10, 49 (VII, 268a). WSB, VIII 2, pp. 976-977.

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 God, but also to human beings, not only by means of the
members we possess, but also by means of who we are, that
is, our will.1367

Humiliate yourself and consider every man your master;

consider yourself truly the servant of all; and in all human
matters see yourself as a slave. Thus you shall live in lasting
peace and tranquility with all, and you shall be completely
free of scandal.1368

Of course, if our love is properly ordered first to God, we will not obey or serve or
assist another in a matter that is contrary to our conscience or divine law. 1369 In Disputed
Questions on Evangelical Perfection, Bonaventure outlines the correct attitude toward
obedience for those who will profess religious vows. The principle, however, applies to
anyone who finds himself under the authority of another: blind obedience in which one
suspends one’s conscience in submission to the will of another is “reckless and foolish”,
but humble obedience within the context of obeying the will of God assists us on the road
to perfection:

[T]here are two ways in which someone can bind himself to

obey another person: either in every instance and in all things
that are pleasing to that person’s will or in those matters that
are consonant with the evangelical counsels according to
some assured norm of living that has been derived from the
fountain of evangelical law. The first way is not perfect nor
is it consonant with perfection. Rather it is reckless and
foolish. The second way is perfect, for it constitutes,
expedites and crowns perfection, for to vow obedience to a
human being is a constituent part and the preparatory road
and the ultimate completion of perfection itself.1370

A consequence of the Fall is that man is always tempted to place himself and his good or
his advantage before both God and other persons, thus breaking again his relationships
with God and his fellow man. Therefore if a person willingly and humbly submits himself
into the hands of another, he is saved from this kind of temptation and the disordered
relations that follow. In ordered love, “the Creator becomes sweet to the heart” and “the
creature diminishes its worth”. However,

1367
Perf. ev., q. 4, a. 2, concl. (V, 186a). WSB, XII, p. 234.
1368
XXV Mem., 8 (VIII, 494a). TWB, III, p. 255. Cf. “Maximum est quod homo corpus suum in perpetuam
servitutem redigat. Holocaustum medullatum est propriam voluntatem in potestatem alterius ponere. Quando
illud facio propter Deum, valet plus quam totus mundus”. De donis, 7, 17 (V, 492b).
1369
Cf. “sed potius laetus et gaudens de omni consolatione fraterna, eis, si oportet, obsequendo et ministrando
assistas, omni consolatione eos reputans esse dignos, nisi, quod absit, ita tibi in aliquo pateret divina offensa,
quod omni excusatione careret”. XXV Mem., 6 (VIII, 493b–494a). TWB, III, p. 254.
1370
Perf. ev., 4, 2, concl. (V, 185a–b). WSB, XIII, p. 232.

262
 [s]ince the creature that acts most contrary to this order is the
individual person with his private good, it is most fitting that
a person humble himself to preserve the perfect order of
virtue. And this happens when an individual subjects
himself to another and places someone else ahead of himself
for the sake of God….1371

The practice of humility restores broken man to his true nature. It causes him to recognize
his own defect; it brings him back to “a certain integrated littleness” and expels “a divisive
spirit of self-importance and pride” by subjecting and presenting him “to the influence of
heavenly grace”.1372 Man deformed himself and disordered his relations with God and
others by putting himself first. Humility re-forms man, giving him the perfect rectitude for
which he was created:

[T]he perfect rectification of abundant righteousness is

attained through conformity of the will to the truth. Now the
truth humbles each and every person so that he thinks less of
himself than of others. So that person is perfectly and
abundantly rectified who, according to what the truth
dictates, not unwillingly, but willingly humbles his will to
another and in some way leads it captive to a certain type of
servitude. Now this indeed takes place through the
obedience that is shown to another person and most flies in
the face of arrogance and ambition by which a person wants
to exalt himself over others.1373

When a person is so rectified, not only will “the inferior voluntarily subject himself to a
superior and an equal to an equal, but also a superior to an inferior”. 1374 In other words,
right relations will be established among men following the model of Christ, who humbled
Himself to take on human nature, submitted His will to that of His heavenly Father and co-
equal, and also submitted Himself to His own creatures, being obedient to human parents
and even submitting Himself to those who would kill Him. If we are able to love as Christ
loved –– with perfect humility –– we will live in proper relation with all, as Bonaventure
indicates in his commentary on John 13:34:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one

another.” “[S]ince they were imperfect, the Lord gives them
the remedy of love, so that they might love one another and
be sustained by one another…. For Romans 13:8 reads:
“Owe no one anything except to love one another.” And he
gives expression to the manner of love: That as I have loved
you, you also love one another. Now he loved in such a way

1371
Perf. ev., 1, concl., ad. 2 (V, 123a). WSB, XIII, p. 49.
1372
Perf. ev., 1, concl., ad. 1 (V, 123a). WSB, XIII, p. 48.
1373
Perf. ev., q. 4, a. 2, concl. (V, 185b). WSB, XIII, p. 233.
1374
Ibid.

263
 that he loved our salvation more than his own life. So too
each person should love the life of his neighbor more than
his own body. 1 John 3:16 says, “In this we have come to
know the love of God, that he laid down his life for us, and
we should lay down our life for our brothers and sisters.”1375

In his earthly life, man must always strive to achieve the perfect relations that St Anselm
describes among the elect in heaven, “where each loves his neighbor as much as himself
and rejoices in his own joy as much as he loves [the joys of his neighbors]”. 1376 In heaven
there will a restoration of the perfect relations forfeited by the Fall:

All things are common to all, because of him who is all in

all. There the virgin will rejoice over the merits of a holy
widow; there the widow will exult about the privilege of
chaste virginity; there the confessor will be happy about the
triumph of the martyrs; there the martyr will dance because
of the prize [won by] the confessors; there the prophet will
praise the pious life of the patriarchs; the patriarch will
rejoice concerning the faith and the insights of the prophets;
there the apostles and angels will find joy over the merits of
those in the lower orders and there those in the lower orders
will be happy about the glory and the crowns of those in the
higher orders. From all these issue the bonds of perfect and
holy charity, where everyone enjoys in the other what he
does not merit in himself.1377

6. 7. Relations in the community of the Church

In the Hexaemeron, Bonaventure gives a detailed explication of the hierarchical

levels of the Church. Apart from that, we can find various comments on the Church in
diverse Bonaventurian works, but no developed treatise specifically devoted to Church
history or the profound mystery of the Church as sacramentum salutis. In this section I
will show how the Seraphic Doctor’s Trinitarian and familial vision of the Church as a
communion of love is fundamentally relational.

It is impossible to speak of the relations between God and man or of human beings
in the Church apart from the Person of Christ, “insofar as He comprehends the Divine
Nature and the human or the created and the uncreated”. 1378 There is “a kind of
circumincession between the divine and human natures” in Christ. This is extended “to the

1375
Comm. Ioan., 13, 47 (VI, 433b–434a). WSB XI, pp. 7147–15.
1376
Quoted in Solil., 4, 5, ad. 27 (VIII, 67a). WSB, X, p. 343.
1377
Solil., 4, 3, ad. 15 (VIII, 61a). WSB, X, pp. 326–327.
1378
I Sent., prooem., q. 1 (I, 7b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive, http://www.franciscan-
archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon01006.html, 2007, viewed 13 September 2011.

264
Church in the form of a sacramental communion”, bringing about a similar
circumincession between “the human and the divine in the Church”.1379

In His mission ad extra, the Son established the Church, a community of persons
whose relations to one another are analogous to the relations of the Son to the Father and
the Holy Spirit.

The Scriptures call Christ sometimes the Center, sometimes

the Head. He is called the Head because all the senses and
spiritual motions and charismatic graces flow from Him.
This He pours in as being united to the members. For the
head of Christ is God, that is, in so far as He is God; but the
head of every man is Christ, in so far as He is God and man.
Hence He pours the Holy Spirit into the members of the
Church united to Him, not separated from Him. And since in
the human body there is no diffusion from head to the
members unless the members are united to the head, so it is
with the Mystical Body.1380

We cannot compare the Church to purely human communities, since the Church is
unlike any earthly group in which people come together for a shared purpose. The Church
“transcends the world and its history, because she is in a singular way a divine as well as
human community”.1381 For Bonaventure, the Church is united into a community because it
is the heavenly Jerusalem descending from heaven. It was established by Christ who came
down in the flesh and the Spirit who descends to our minds: “Vidi sanctam civitatem,
Jerusalem novum, descendentum de caelo, quia per Christum descendentem in carnem et
Spiritum sanctum in mentem descendit”.1382

In collations 20-22 of the Hexaemeron, the Seraphic Doctor creates an elaborately

detailed schema of the heavenly hierarchy, the hierarchy of the Church militant and the
hierarchised soul. This is more than a neat system of carefully balanced elements and
symbolic numerology, so pleasing to the medieval mind. Bonaventure’s vision of heaven
and earth and the human soul is Trinitarian through and through. Human persons are

1379
Fehlner, Role of Charity, 54.
1380
Hex., 1, 20 (V, 332b–333a). TWB, V, p. 11.
1381
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 16.
1382
Sermo I in festo omnium sanctorum (IX, 599a). In another figure, Bonaventure compares the salvation of
humankind through the wooden ark of Noah and the wood of the Cross of Christ. As Noah built the ark,
Christ built the Church, and the “glue” that holds the Church together is charity. Just as those who were
outside the ark were destined to die in the flood, so those outside the Church will not have life: “Nam sicut
Noe salvavit semen hominum per lignum, sic Christus et per crucis patibulum…. Et sicut Noe fabricavit
arcam, sic et Christus Ecclesiam, quae ad modum arcae de lignis bitumine caritatis contexae aedeficatur….
Sicut etiam qui intra arcam fuerunt salvati sunt, sic qui intra Ecclesiam sunt salvantur per aquam et
baptismum…. Et sicut qui extra arcam fuerunt deleti sunt, sic omnes, qui extra Ecclesiam sunt, per finale
judicium damnabuntur….” Comm. Luc., 17, 46 (VII, 440b). Cf. “Navis est Ecclesia, quae juncta est glutino
caritatis…naufragium vero fuit corruptio et fractio in Adam”. IV Sent., d. 14, dub. 1 (IV, 328a).

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Trinitarian to the core of their being: we live in a Trinitarian world; we find salvation
through a Trinitarian Church; we are destined for eternal happiness with the Trinity. As
John Dourley describes it, Bonaventure’s theology “closely and harmoniously relate[s]
divine Trinitarian life to human life in terms of mutual interpenetration”. 1383 Simply
speaking, we are relational as the Trinity is relational, and the Church is where that
relationality finds its fullest human expression:

All the stages of ethical-religious life are embraced within

this: the stages of wisdom, contemplation, perfection, the
progress of the virtues, the gifts and fruits of the Spirit. All
are particular dimensions of one movement of increasing
conformity between the soul and God, culminating in the
quietatio of the soul in God.1384

We can say that the mystery of the Church is this: in the vast, complex web of
relations that comprise the Church militant, the Church suffering and the Church
triumphant, a human being comes to participate in the life of God as God lives in the
Trinity, so that within the Church, “a soul may receive abundantly, preserve attentively, and
pour out again generously”.1385 “For as soon as the soul has received something through
desire, and perspicaciously perceived it, and calmly judged that what God willed had to be
done, then it commands it to be done”.1386 Thus, “the entire existence of the creature
becomes regulated by the vital relations of the divine persons”. This is what he was created
for; this is what gives meaning to his life. On the supernatural level, “human life has no
meaning apart from the Church, the body of Christ, animated by the Holy Spirit”.1387

Just as the divine and human are conjoined in the Person of the Word, so there is a
“mysterious union in which the members of the Church are united to the Word Incarnate…
to form a living organism….”1388 The Blessed Virgin Mary epitomizes this union, and it
was her fiat that made possible the union between the Church and the Incarnate Word.
Mary is the daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son and the spouse of the Spirit. 1389
As such, she enjoys a union with God that is so intimate that “she is set above all other
creatures in her relations with God”.1390 The Blessed Virgin communicates this relationship
1383
John Dourley, “God, Life and the Trinity in the Theologies of Paul Tillich and St. Bonaventure”, in S.
Bonaventura 1274–1974, vol. IV (Rome/Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1974), pp. 271–282, p. 281.
1384
Hayes, Hidden Center, pp. 209–210.
1385
Hex., 22, 28 (V, 441b). TWB, V, p. 355.
1386
Hex., 22, 32 (V, 442a). TWB, V, p. 356.
1387
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 95.
1388
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 6.
1389
Cf. “‘The kingdom of the heavens is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.’ This
wedding was celebrated in the bridal chamber of the virginal womb…. There was consummated the
matrimony between the divine and human nature and consequently between Christ and the Church….”
Comm. Luc., 14, 16 (VII, 362b). WSB, VII 2, p. 1330.
1390
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 78.

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in a singular way, partaking herself in the fecundity of goodness that flows from the
processions of the Trinity:

Intelligatis, quod beata Virgo dicitur fons ratione

originationis bonorum. Ista originatio principaliter est a Deo,
deinde per Christum, et tertio redundat in beatam Virginem,
et ideo ipsa dicitur fons, et quanto convenit cuilibet personae,
quae habet diffusionem alicuius boni.1391

In other words, the fullness of charity and grace in the life of the Blessed Virgin was such
that she entered into the fecundity of the Father’s goodness. Peter Fehlner writes that
because Mary pronounced her fiat at the Annunciation, “through the temporal generation
of the Word in charity, her Son (and all her children in Christ) might enjoy in his (in their)
humanity the life of the Trinity”, a life that is “perfect charity”. 1392 Bonaventure explains
that “the whole Christian people is begotten from the womb of the glorious Virgin”:

Was not the Church formed from the side of Christ while he
was asleep on the cross? From his side there came “blood
and water”, that is, the sacraments through which the Church
is reborn. Eve was formed from the side of Adam and was
united to him in marriage. As man was formed from the
virgin earth, so Christ comes from the glorious Virgin. And
as the woman comes from the side of the sleeping Adam, so
the church comes from Christ hanging on the cross. And as
Abel, together with his offspring, was formed from Adam
and Eve, so the entire Christian people comes from Christ
and the Church. And as Eve is the mother of Abel and of all
of us, so the Christian people has the Virgin for its
mother.1393

Human persons are born into the divine and human life of Christ in the Church ––
divine in that they “have Good as their Father in a manner analogous to that of Christ”,
and human in that they have “the Church as their mother as Christ has Mary for his
mother”.1394 The Blessed Mother gave birth to Christ, educated Him, lived intimately with
Him and shared in His passion, death and resurrection. The Church, as mother,

gives birth to Christians in baptism, educates and trains them

through the exercise of hierarchical and sacramental powers,
and finally associates them with the culminating mysteries of
Christ’s work in the celebration of the Eucharist, as the
consummation of that which was begun in them in
baptism.1395
1391
Serm. Virg., 4 (IX, 696a).
1392
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 81.
1393
De donis, 6, 20 (V, 487b). WSB, XIV, pp. 136–137.
1394
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 88.
1395
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 88.

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 In the Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Seraphic Doctor
explains that “Holy Mother Church enjoins piety on all” her members. Those in the
Church are to relate to one another as children born of the same mother and father, since
“[t]he Holy Spirit makes us to be children of one father and one mother, and members of
one body” –– the Body of Christ in the Church:

Who is our Father? Certainly, God. Who is our mother?

She is the church. She has begotten us in her womb through
the Holy Spirit, and will give birth to us when we are
brought to eternal light. Do you not see that as one member
of a body suffers with another member, so we ought to have
compassion for one another? We are all members of one
body. We are fed with the same food. We are brought forth
from the same womb. And we are moving toward the same
inheritance.1396

Our relationship to those brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us
continues after their death. The souls in Purgatory “are in a state of misery and can no
longer help themselves through good works and merits”. We continue our loving
relationship with these souls by performing for them the same “works of satisfaction and
expiation to atone for sin” that we perform for ourselves:

There are three such forms of satisfaction: fasting, prayer and

almsgiving; but the honor due to God is best rendered in the
sacrifice of the altar, because of the pleasing quality of the
one who is offered in that sacrifice.1397

The love and unity that characterises the Church reaches down from the heavenly
hierarchy to the Church Militant on earth, and proceeds back again to heaven through our
relationship with those who have entered the Church Triumphant before us. God “wishes
that we pray, not only of ourselves, but also through the saints as through divinely
appointed helpers”, so that “we may gain through their intercession what we are unworthy
to ask of ourselves”:1398

In this way, humility would be preserved in those who pray,

dignity manifested in the saints who intercede, and love and
unity displayed in all the members of Christ, by which the

1396
De donis, 3, 13 (V, 471b). WSB, XIV, p. 77. Using another relational figure for the Church, Bonaventure
writes: “According to the spiritual understanding our brother is Christ…. His wife is the Church…. The
person who died is before the multitude of the faithful, who are the children of God…. ‘Jesus was going to
die for the nation, but not only for the nation, but that he might gather into one the children of God who were
scattered abroad.’ As a brother he accepts the wife of this man and exercises care for the Church, not so that
he might beget carnal, but spiritual children….” Comm. Luc., 20, 37 (VII, 513a). WSB, VIII 3, p. 1934.
1397
Brev., 7, 3 (V, 283b). WSB, IX, p. 274.
1398
Brev., 5, 10 (V, 264a). WSB, IX, p. 207.

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 lower have recourse to the higher while the higher
generously condescend to the lower.1399

We cannot imagine God as He-Who-Is-Alone; neither can we be sanctified in

isolation, apart from our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Church militant, the Church
suffering, and the Church triumphant. The communion of the Church enjoys a unity that
“consists of faith and love, or of grace and truth”.1400 The “social structure of the Church
is sacramental, because the sacraments by which the Church is formed came forth from the
side of Christ”.1401 When a human being is conformed to Christ through the sacrament of
baptism, that person does not enter into a human society, but a divine one, being
incorporated into Christ, “so that the life of the Christian might resemble that of the divine
Person”.1402 In the Sacraments of the Church, the Christian finds a continual outpouring of
God’s grace at every stage of human existence by which he is strengthened for spiritual
battle and conformed to Christ both interiorly and exteriorly:

In the strife of the battle [of this life], spiritual health may be
maintained nowhere but in the ranks of the Church…and this
is because of the armament of its sevenfold grace.

…Baptism is designed for those just entering the fight,

Confirmation for those engaged in combat, the Eucharist for
refreshing their strength, Penance for those rising from their
sickbeds, Extreme Unction for those who are departing,
Orders for those who break in new recruits, and Matrimony
for those who provide these recruits.1403

Thus it is in the Church and through the Church that we find the highest form of
relationality possible for humans, relations flowing from the love of the Trinity, through
Christ the medium, grounded in the love of Christ, love for Christ and love for other people.
In an elegant allusion to the Trinity, Bonaventure states simply that the Church is in love
with each other: “Ecclesia enim mutuo se diligens est”.1404

1399
Brev., 5, 10 (V, 264a). WSB, IX, p. 208. Cf. “[T]heir prayers are beneficial for us”…. Therefore, divine
order has disposed that prayers be offered to the saints of God, that they in turn may intercede for us and
obtain God’s blessings”. Brev., 7, 3 (V, 284a ). WSB, IX, p. 276.
1400
Brev., 3, 11 (V, 240b). WSB, IX, p. 129.
1401
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 57. Cf. “Dormiente Adam, fit Eva de latere; mortuo Christo, lancea percutitur
latus, ut profluent sacramenta, quibus formetur Ecclesia”. IV, Sent., prooem. (IV, 2b).
1402
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 89.
1403
Brev., 6, 3 (V, 267b, 268a). WSB, IX, pp. 220, 221. Cf. “Dicendum quod induere Christum est aliquem
habitum accipere, per quem homo fiat aliquo modo conformis Christo. Conformari autem Christo est
dupliciter; aut exterius aut interius; et interius dupliciter; aut per caritatem unientem et transformantem in
eum qui amatur, et fidem similiter conformantem aut per aliquid gratis datum ad hoc praeparans et disponens.
Dico ergo quod viri sancti, qui caritatem habent et bona opera et conversationem sanctam, et sacramentum
perceperunt et Christum induerunt quantum ad sacramenti susceptionem et conformationem in conversatione
exterius et interius similiter”. IV Sent., d. 4, p. 1, dub. 4 (IV, 105b).
1404
Hex., 1, 4 (V, 330a). In the Delorme edition we find, “[ecclesia est] natio mutuo se diligens”.

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 Peter Fehlner has shown that central to Bonaventure’s views on unity in the
Church is caritas, the “the one bond of love joining heaven and earth”, 1405 “[f]or when
charity is in place, everything meritorious is put in place, and when removed, everything
useful for salvation is removed”.1406 According to Fehlner, the union of the divine and
human in the Person of Christ “reaches its term and fullness in that union of Christ and the
members of His Church in Charity, the very essence of perfection”. 1407 The perfection of
charity is achieved “when the heart is found to be not only willing, but most ready to die
for the salvation of your neighbor”:

The soul cannot attain this perfect love of neighbor unless it

has first attained to the perfect love of God, on whose
account the soul loves its neighbor, who is lovable only
because of God.1408

[L]ove has a delightful partiality in remunerating works,

because it establishes the measure of retribution for works;
for the glory of the homeland will be measured according to
charity during life, such that where there is more love, there
is more of the beatific vision…. Based on this, martyrdom,
which has the greatest reward among all that a person does,
is said to be a work of charity…: Greater love than this does
no one have, that one lay down one’s life for one’s
friends.1409

Of all the communities in the world, the Church is the truest because it has the
highest origin and the highest end: established by Christ, modelled on the processions of
love in the Holy Trinity, the Church draws all back to God through charity.

6. 8. Man’s relations to angels

On the question of the relative order of the “rational or united spirit” (man) and the
“separated spirits” (angels), Bonaventure teaches that we can look at their order either in
terms of the dignity of their nature or in terms of their ends. In terms of the dignity of their
nature, “the Angel is a creature superior to man”. However, much more pertinent to our
theme of relationality is their ordering in terms of their end. Both angels and men “are
ordered to the same end, namely, to eternal beatitude”. This makes them peers, and it is in
this parity that we find the basis of the relationship between men and angels:
1405
Brev., 1, 1 (V, 210b). WSB, IX, p. 29.
1406
Serm. dom., XVII p. Pent. (IX, 419b). WSB, XII, p. 471.
1407
Fehlner, Role of Charity, p. 7.
1408
Tripl. via, 2, 8 (VIII, 10a). WSB, X, p. 110.
1409
Serm. dom., XVII p. Pent. (IX, 420a). WSB, XII, p. 472.

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 For man has an ability to fall down [labendum] frequently,
and the possibility to rise up again; but the Angel standing
(has) a perpetuity in standing, and falling [cadens] (has) an
impossibility in rising up again: for that reason the Angel
standing sustains the man or (his) human infirmity, and the
man, rising up again, repairs the ruin of the Angels; for that
reason in a certain manner the Angel (is) for the sake of man,
and in a certain manner man (is) for the sake of the Angel:
and for that reason in this order they are peers.1410

Because the human soul is “immediately ordained towards God,…there are no

other creatures between him and God”.1411 Nevertheless, when speaking about the angels
and their relation to man, Bonaventure uses the word “medium” in a particular sense,
referring to the role of angels, who “do not in any way participate actively in the
transmission of the divine light, but are only the occasion for its direct transmission”.1412

Since angels act on behalf of men, and since man fulfils an important function in the
return of creation to God, in a certain sense we can say that angels are ordained toward
man. Furthermore, because angels and men are created for immediate participation in God,
they are bound together as citizens of the same heavenly kingdom. “Just as the members of
one body…are bound together by the law of charity to help one another in their needs, so
angel and man are bound together in mutual relationship”.1413

Bonaventure argues that the relationship between men and angels has existed from
the creation of man. From the beginning, man existed “in a state of vertibility and of battle,
in which he could have lost and/or gained”, and therefore even Adam needed a guardian,
since “he alone needs a custody, who can be fought against and (who can) through the
custody conquer and/or without the custody perish”.1414

Since the Fall of man, “the ruling of the universe that is attributed to angels is
grounded in a command of the most high God that relates to the work of reparation”.
Angels are therefore “called ministering spirits sent for the sake of those who are to inherit
salvation”.1415 The angels fulfil this role in accordance with divine charity. “Angels can
help us, in virtue of this that they see, that we need their assistance, and that the evil angels
are unfailingly fighting against us: for this reason the law of angelic charity requires that

1410
II Sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 46b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02045.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1411
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 339.
1412
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 341. See Hex., 3, 32 (V, 348b). TWB, V, p. 58.
1413
Schaefer, “Position and Function”, FS 21, p. 348.
1414
II Sent., d. 11, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (II, 280a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02279.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1415
Itin., 2, 2 (V, 300a). WSB, II-H, p. 65.

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they be sent to us”. Even though God is present to us, our intellects are blind and dark, and
so we perceive God as being absent. The angels, on the other hand, see God face to face (1
Cor. 13:12) and are present to Him. He sends them to us the same way a king can send his
servants out to people who are not in the presence of the king. Bonaventure sees “a decent
and congruent order” in this ministry and action of the angels.1416

The angels assist human beings “either mediately and/or immediately, whether in
ministering revelations, or in delivering and offering our prayers”. Bonaventure credits
angels with interceding for us before God and exposing our petitions to God,

not to instruct God, but to cause our petitions (to be)

accepted by God by the fires of their affections, just as
lawyers defend and ornament the case of others by decorous
orations: they without a doubt proffer great help to us, and
thus do they work for the reparation of their Orders and
assist us more efficaciously than the others fight against
(us).1417

An angel “is more perfectly and more nobly illumined by God than the soul (is)
through nature”1418 and so “an Angel can suggest to the soul what he (himself) conceives”.
The operation is similar to the way a teacher or preacher speaks in an efficacious or
vivacious way exteriorly; similarly, “an Angel can do this interiorly; and thus illumine, not
by infusing a light nor only by offering something…but also by exciting vivaciously” yet
in a more efficacious manner than an exterior teacher. 1419 Thus, through “the manner of
one exciting”, the angels act in respect to the human intellect in three ways: purgation,
illumination and perfection. Purgation “is for the removal of impediments”, illumination
“is for the cognition of truths” and perfection “is for the dilection of goods”. 1420 In a
discussion of the heavenly hierarchies in the Hexaemeron, Bonaventure teaches that we
receive three benefits from the heavenly spirits: “[we learn] what to do, what to prefer, and
what to pursue. The Angels teach what needs to be done, the Archangels, what should be
preferred, and the Principalities what should be pursued”.1421

1416
II Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 1, concl. (II, 261b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02259.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1417
II Sent., d. 10, a. 1, q. 2, concl. (II, 262b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02261.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1418
II Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 266b) Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02264.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1419
II Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 266a) Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02264.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1420
II Sent., d. 10, a. 2, q. 2, concl. (II, 267b) Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02264.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1421
Hex., 21, 32 (V, 436a–b). TWB, V, p. 338. With the support of Scripture, Bonaventure outlines twelve
effects of angelic custody. See II Sent., d. 11, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II 284a–b).

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 According to the Seraphic Doctor, the way angels communicate to man can be
referred to God “mediately” or “immediately”. In “immediate” discourse, the angel speaks
as though God Himself were speaking, and in response to this, the message “leads
principally unto God”, in which case, the angel “can be adored with latria, just as Abraham
adored”. When the angel pronounces his discourse as God’s messenger, this is “a sensible
apparition, because that form leads principally unto the Angel” and in that manner, the
angel “can be adored with dulia”.1422

Sometimes, according to God’s just judgment, a guardian angel may not “restrain a
man from walking in trackless places and abominations and passions of ignominy” that
arise in the man’s heart. However, the angel will never desert man so completely that he
“does not retard (him) from evil in some manner, even though he does not entirely impede
(him)”.1423

[A] sinner is never so converted unto evil, that it is not better

for him that he be guarded, than be deserted; because, even if
contempt aggravates the crime [reatus] of the one sinning,
yet the frequency [frequentatio] of sins, which a man would
incur, if the Angel deserted (him), would aggravate (it) much
more strongly than (his) contempt.1424

The work of the angels on our behalf demands a response from us if their efforts
are to be efficacious in our souls. We are, of course, free to ignore the illuminations of the
angels:

Note that as little as all the stars are of service to a blind

man, so are the angels and all the marvelous illuminations
they send, to a man who does not notice them. Hence the
sinner is greatly reprehensible for neglecting these
illuminations and the means of assistance that the angels
provide.1425

Should the man of whom the angel has custody be damned, the guardian angel feels
no decrease in joy and suffers no punishment or impediment because of that, for “if the
angelic ruin is not repaired out of him whom he guards, it will be repaired out of
another”.1426  Similarly, a guardian angel does not increase in joy or happiness in the sense

1422
II Sent., d. 10, a. 3, q. 2, concl. (II, 272b). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02271.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1423
II Sent., d. 11, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II 284a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02282.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1424
II Sent., d. 11, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II 284a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02282.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1425
Hex., 21, 19 (V, 434b). TWB, V, p. 338.
1426
II Sent., d. 11, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (II, 288b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02286.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.

273
of receiving a substantial reward when the one he guards receives beatification. His
“increased” happiness is accidental in a twofold way:  “he rejoices from the good works,
which he did [and] he rejoices from the salvation of him, whom he guarded”.1427

In the Itinerarium, the Seraphic Master draws an interesting parallel between the
heavenly hierarchy and the soul in whom the image of God has been reformed “through the
theological virtues, the enjoyment of the spiritual senses, and the ecstasy of rapture”. Such
a soul has been “purged, illumined and brought to perfection”, results which, as we have
seen above, are ascribed to the actions of angels. The soul is, in a sense, conformed to the
orders of the angels:

In this way our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels

when within it the following are found in an appropriate
order: announcing, dictating, leading, ordering,
strengthening, commanding, receiving, revealing, and
anointing. These correspond to the nine choirs of angels….
When it has attained these, the soul, by entering into itself,
enters into the heavenly Jerusalem where, as it considers the
choirs of angels, it sees in them God who dwells in them and
works through all their operations.1428

Bonaventure mentions in several places his idea that beatified human souls in some sense
“repair the ruin” of the angelic orders when some of the turned against God and lost
heaven: “just as from each one of the Orders some fell, so also each one of the Orders
through men shall be restored”…. Bonaventure defends this interesting doctrine by the
following logic:

[B]ecause men can be elevated to the eminence of grace and

glory, in which the Angels are, there can be constituted from
men and Angels the same Order, because, though they do not
convene in nature, they are assimilated, however, and
equated in this grace; and through this manner the ruin of the
Angels is repaired.1429

As we see, Bonaventure’s teaching about angels’ relationship to man suggests that

their work for human beings is entirely disinterested in the sense that they neither gain by
man’s salvation nor lose by man’s damnation. Their relationship to man is one-way: the
angels do much for man, but since angels are in a state of perfect happiness, man can do
nothing for angels. However, Bonaventure’s teaching about perfected humans filling the

1427
II Sent., d. 11, a. 2, q. 3, concl. (II, 289a). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02286.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.
1428
Itin., 4, 4 (V, 307a). WSB, II-H, p. 103.
1429
II Sent., d. 9, a. 1, q. 5, concl. (II, 250b). Trans. Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02250.html, 2008, viewed 8 September 2011.

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depleted ranks of the angels suggests a relationship that is at least potentially closer than
merely that of the strong helping the weak.

6. 9. The inter-relations of God and Man

At a very basic level, human consciousness of himself as an “I” tells man that he is
a being who is in relationship: I know that I did not originate myself, and so there must be
some other from which I come. In the theology of the Seraphic Doctor, that “other”, of
course, is God: man’s most fundamental relationship is with the triune God, from whom he
comes and for whom he is destined. In this section I would like to use Bonaventure’s
mystical writings to trace the mutual inter-relations of God and Man, by which man returns
to the Trinity in and through Christ.

Our relationship with God is beautifully expressed by Bonaventure when he

explains the problem of sin. As created beings we depend totally on God –– human esse is
from nothingness –– and therefore sin is always seen as a breaking of this natural
relationship. When through sin we turn away from God and break our relations with Him,
at the same time we commit a self-destructive act, wounding our human nature morally
and ontologically:

Sin being a withdrawal from the first Principle, trine and

one,... distorts the likeness of the Trinity and damages the
soul itself in its three powers: the irascible, the rational, and
the concupiscible.1430

Sin separates us from the life-giving grace of God. We require divine intervention to
resuscitate the soul and bring it back to life. Bonaventure is clear that God first stoops to
man in man’s poverty, and only after God has given preparatory grace, do we have the
strength to turn to Him ourselves:

To that, however, which is first objected unto the contrary,

that it belongs to free will to be converted to God; it must be
said, that lapsed free will would never be converted to God,
if it were not excited by some gift of grace; which because it
is at hand, for that reason the Lord says:  Turn completely
toward Me. For by this (very fact), that He invites and calls,
He exhibits to man some gratuitous gift [donum], through
which he is to be excited, and having been excited, be
converted to Him in some kind of manner, and having been

1430
Brev., 3, 11 (V, 249a), TWB, IX, p. 138.

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 converted be accepted by God through the grace which
makes one pleasing; and on this account God is said “to turn
completely toward him.”1431

The soul that returns to Christ will be received with mercy by “the Lord of unspeakable
pardon”, who, both in forgiveness and assistance, saves us through his gift of salvation
which delights the affective power” and saves us from “miserable punishment”.1432

From this account of the dynamics of man’s sin and God’s mercy, we can see that
from the beginning, God-Who-Is-All and God-Who-Is-Love created man out of nothing
and constantly pours out His life-giving grace.

God first gave humankind the entire universe: namely [God

created] inferior things as submissive, equal things as matter
for merit, and superior things as protections. Secondly, God
gave humanity his Son as brother and friend; he gave him as
ransom; he gives him daily: first in the incarnation, secondly
in the passion, and thirdly in the consecration. Thirdly, God
gave the Holy Spirit as a seal of acceptance, as a privilege of
adoption, and as a ring of espousal. The Christian soul
becomes a friend, a daughter, a spouse.1433

In the Vitis Mystica, Bonaventure expresses quite simply what our response should
be to the abundant love of God: “As for us who are still dwelling in the flesh, let us return
His love as fully as we can”, praying that Christ “may deign to tie our hearts, now so wild
and impenitent, with the bond of love….”1434 A fuller treatment of the soul’s response to
God is found in De regimine animae, in which the Seraphic Doctor outlines the duties of
the Christian who must have “the highest, most pious, and holiest regard for the most high
God”. The soul must believe with faith, reflect attentively on God, and contemplate God
with admiration.1435 To “purge the soul and appease God”, the soul must join sorrow for
sin with “fear of divine judgment and the ardor of internal desire”. In this way the soul
will “recuperate a humble heart by fearing, a devoted heart by desiring, and an unburdened
heart by sorrowing”.1436 Bonaventure reiterates the utter dependence of the soul on God,
and the soul’s response, which is to desire even more sustenance from God in the form of
the charisms of the Holy Spirit:

1431
II Sent., d. 28, a. 2, q. 1, concl. (II, 682b–683a). Trans., Alexis Bugnolo, Franciscan Archive,
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon02681.html, 2009, viewed 26 September, 2011.
1432
Serm. dom., IV p. Epiph., 1 (IX, 190a). WSB, XII, p. 154.
1433
Tripl. via, 1, 2 ad 13 (VIII, 6b). WSB, X, p. 100.
1434
Vit. myst., 3, 6 (VIII, 164b–165a). TWB, I, p. 156.
1435
Reg. animae, 1 (VIII, 128a). WSB, X, p. 201.
1436
Reg. animae, 5 (VIII, 129b). WSB, X, p. 204.

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 [Y]ou must desire divine charisms, the flames of divine love
toward God who has reached down to you, patiently
sustaining you when you were a sinner, waiting for you with
forbearance, mercifully bringing you back to repentance,
pardoning you, giving you grace, promising you the crown
of glory. Nevertheless, since you are so dependent on God
–– or better, since you have received from God that which
you owe back to God ––…you must desire…divine approval
through the bountiful sending of the Holy Spirit. You should
desire more vehemently conformity to the divinity by
expressly imitating Christ crucified.1437

Further, for proper governance of the soul, the Christian should strive after modesty,
justice, and piety, both in divine worship and in the desire to bring other souls to salvation
through prayer, example and by “patiently providing support, by giving friendly
consolation, by rendering humble, joyful and merciful service” to others.1438

In the Soliloquium Bonaventure acknowledges that no one can adequately express

the joy each soul will know when at the heavenly banquet it experiences the “most perfect
humility and simplicity of the patriarchs”, the “charity and great diligence of the apostles”,
the “patience and steadfastness of the martyrs”, the “piety and clemency of the confessors”
and the “continence of the virgins”.1439 The soul that has “bravely conquered [its] own
body with the shield of chastity and continence” will receive “great joy…unbelievable
glory…[and] incomprehensible praise” from those who have been encouraged by the
upright soul’s words and example. Moreover, such a soul “will receive special and eternal
praise for each and every virtuous thought, word, and action”. 1440 And finally, the blessed
will see one another clearly, for who they truly are: our relations with other created beings
will be perfect:

In the eternal homeland the hearts of the blessed will be to

one another both brightly luminous and purely transparent….
There everyone’s face is in full view and one’s conscience
patent…. There the body does not shield the mind of anyone
from being viewed by another.1441

Ultimately, the blessed “will know everything that God has made to be known”; they will
“know God himself, [themselves] and other creatures” and see “The King of heaven in his
splendor”.1442

1437
Reg. animae, 7 (VIII, 129b–130a). WSB, X, pp. 205–206.
1438
Reg. animae, 10 (VIII, 130b). WSB, X, p. 210.
1439
Solil., 4, 3 (VIII, 62a). WSB, X, p. 330.
1440
Solil., 4, 4 (VIII, 64a–b). WSB, X, pp. 334–335.
1441
Solil., 4, 4 (VIII, 63a). WSB, X, p. 332. Bonaventure is paraphrasing Gregory’s Moralia in Iob, XVIII, ch.
48, nn. 77–78.
1442
Solil., 4, 5 (VIII, 65a). WSB, X, p. 336, 337.

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Conclusion

This research was born of two abiding interests: on the one hand, a decades-long
engagement with the writings of Saint Bonaventure, and on the other an intellectual
conviction, reinforced by pastoral experience, that one key to man’s happiness and his
healthy psychological, emotional and moral life is well-ordered relationships with “the
other”: with God, his fellow man, and his environment. The aim of this research was to
demonstrate the relational nature of the human person, made in the image of an
intrinsically relational God One and Triune, through an extensive reading of various
works of St. Bonaventure.

In the course of my research I created a synthesis of Bonaventure’s anthropology,

drawing on original sources, and demonstrated Bonaventure’s conception of how a man
comes into being, how he is composed and how he functions as a rational, moral subject.
I also examined Bonaventure’s teaching about God –– His nature and inner life, His work
of and in creation, His plan of salvation, and the return of all things to Him. Finally, I
drew on Bonaventure’s teachings to present a portrait of man in his diverse relations to
himself through the powers of his soul, to God, his fellow man, to the angels, and the
environment. All of this was done with particular reference to the Son of God, who is the
Image of all that is divine and truly, perfectly human. The purpose of my method was to
bring together the essential facts of the relational nature of the Trinity and the relational
nature of the human person.

Summary of the research

In my introductory chapter, I set out the problem of defining the human person in
contemporary times. As Western thinking about the person has moved away from its
origins in patristic discussions of the Trinity, the idea of the “person” has been diminished
to that of an autonomous, self-defining and self-determining unit, unencumbered by the
demands of interpersonal relationships or questions of self-transcendent spiritual realities.
Our concept about the “person” seems to be regressing, to the degree that some thinkers
warn that if the theological origins of the concept of the human person are not kept in view,
the idea of the person itself may disappear. I posit that the corrective to this trend is a
return to a relational model of the human person, grounded in Trinitarian theology.

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 Because a metaphysics of relation depends on ontology, I turned first to ancient
Greek philosophy. Without a concept of a Creator and a created world, the Greeks could
only conceive of man as a by-product of a mechanistic universe. In this ontology, there
was no room for the concept of an individual, unrepeatable “I”, since the “soul” was
readily transferred from one being to another: the “person” we see has little more
significance than the prosopon-mask worn by actors to indicate the roles they are playing.
A human being is only a nonessential actor, playing a brief role in the theatre of the world.

The Romans made some progress in their concept of the human person, but only
insofar as they recognized man as a “persona” in terms of the function and role (or roles)
he played in society. A man’s “persona” or “personae” described him, but did not attempt
to define who he was as a concrete, ontological person. Furthermore, not everyone was a
“persona” in the juridical sense: some human beings, such as slaves, having no juridical
status, were thus in effect non-persons. Nevertheless, in their concept of a “persona” as a
man’s role in society, the Romans moved closer to a concept of man as a relational being.

In my investigation of the Hebrew concept of person, I found that because the

Israelites believed in a Creator-God, and that man is created in God’s image, a far more
relational view of man is revealed. Man is unique and responsible for his own actions, as
well as a social being. He is intimately related to his kinship group: indeed, outside the
kinship group an individual is not viable socially, economically or juridically.
Nevertheless, this relational view is still limited precisely because the Israelites were only
concerned with their own history in relationship to God. The Old Testament view of the
“person” does not take into consideration, for example, God’s relationship to non-
Israelites, nor does it delve into the meaning of a “person” as such. These deficiencies are
supplied in the New Testament by the Incarnation of Christ, through which a Trinitarian
view of God was revealed. In the Christian vision, all humans are “persons” because
Christ died to redeem all; through Christ, all humans are seen as children of God, and in
Christ, we find restored the likeness of God in man, which was disfigured by the sin of
Adam.

In the early patristic period, Christianity engaged with Hellenistic culture and
struggled to define itself in response to various heresies. As thought about Christian
revelation developed, the concept of relatio became the most important philosophical term
used to describe the unity of the divine nature and the Trinity of Persons. The
Cappadocian Fathers particularly brought about what has been referred to as an ontological

279
revolution in their demonstration of the Trinity as a dynamic communion of love. In their
description of the mystery of the Triune God, relationality is ontologically on the same
level as substance or nature. This conception of the Trinity as a loving communion of
Persons provided a foundation for Christian thinking about the nature of God vis-à-vis the
Christian view of the human person, made in God’s image, whose uniqueness and
particularity derive from and are fully realized in relationship to and with others. Saint
Augustine, while fully in accord with the Cappadocian view of the Trinity, attempted to
illustrate Trinitarian likenesses between God and man through triadic analogies such as
memory, understanding and will, or lover, loved and love. These active and relational
triads reflect the Trinity that is imaged in man while underscoring the constitutive
relationality of the entire Godhead.

In the Middle Ages, theologians turned to the problem of defining what it means to
be a divine Person as such, relying on Latin rather than Greek. Boethius’s most famous
and influential definition, “naturae rationabilis individua substantia” (the individual
substance of a rational nature) relies on Aristotle’s distinction between substance and
accidents rather than the Cappadocian focus on relations. Relations help explain the
otherness of the Divine Persons, but for Boethius, relation was not a substantial
characteristic of the Divine Persons. Boethius’s definition was ultimately rejected on these
grounds and because it opens the possibility of positing three substances in God, seeing
the Trinity as one person, or concluding that the soul is a person.

For Bonaventure, far more useful was Richard of Saint Victor’s definition of the person.
For Richard, a person is “rationalis naturae individua existentia”. The individua existentia
can also be called incommunicabilis existentia. With Richard’s notion of
incommunicability, for the first time we have a definition of “persons” that applies equally
well to human and Divine Persons, as well as providing an enriched notion of the Trinity
as dynamic community of individuals-in-relation and love.

Up to this point, the thesis has traced the development of Western thought about the
person. Chapters 1 and 2 explain the notion of the person in the classical and Hebraic
traditions and indicate where and how these ideas of the person are insufficient. Chapter 2
moves to a discussion of the early Patristic period, and provides a basis for the assertion
that only through Christian revelation, and particularly discussions about the nature of the
Trinity, does Western thinking begin to reach toward a complete idea of what constitutes a
person, whether human or divine. In chapter 3, I showed how continuing refinement of

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ideas about the nature of the Trinity led to more useful definitions of the person as such.
All of the foregoing places Christian thinking about the human person in the context of
Western thought while also providing the reader with a philosophical and theological
context for the teaching of St. Bonaventure.

As I mentioned in the Introduction, Bonaventure touches on aspects of the nature of

the human person in various writings. There does not exist in English any text that
attempts to bring together in one place everything Bonaventure wrote related to the nature
of the human person. Chapter 4 adds to the corpus of Bonaventure scholarship by
presenting a broad synthesis of Bonaventure’s anthropology. This should be a useful
starting-point for scholars interested in Bonaventure’s view of man.

Because the soul reflects the Divine more closely than the body, my investigations
focused mainly on Bonaventure’s notions of the human soul, including his unique view of
the role played by illumination and contuitio in the process of knowledge. In
Bonaventure’s thought, the soul images the Triune God in its intellective and affective
powers: thanks to the anima rationalis, man can know; thanks to his affective power, man
has free will. The person as such is a conjunction of body and soul resulting in a new,
substantial being that may act or suffer. Contrary to Aquinas, Bonaventure insists that both
the body and the soul are composed of matter and form, which marks the difference
between the two scholars’ accounts of the principle of individuation.

My research into Bonaventure’s vision of the human person did not reveal the
relational aspect of man’s nature. Therefore it was necessary to look at God as a relational
being, since the Seraphic Doctor’s entire theological vision –– and consequently his view
of man –– is grounded in his Trinitarian theology.

Using relational terms, Bonaventure explains that there must be three divine
Persons: the Triune God is love which is given (Father), love which is accepted (Spirit) and
love which is both given and accepted (Son). Relationality is thus a property of the divine
essence. As the highest good, who is always communicating himself, God the Father
generates the Son and spirates the Spirit. Moreover, God’s relationality does not only refer
to the inner life of the Trinity, but to all that exists because of God. All of creation is a
diffusion ad extra, and thus has a relationship of complete dependence on the Creator.

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 Having demonstrated the relational nature of the Triune God according to
Bonaventure’s teaching, in the final chapter I turned to Bonaventure’s theology to
delineate a view of the human person as an icon of the Trinity in whose image man is
made. The image of God is evident in man’s powers of memory, intelligence and will, and
through these faculties man is led back to God. Through faith, hope and love, the person
becomes God’s similitude, exercising these virtues in his relationships to God, to other
humans and to creation. Man is distinguished from other earthly creatures by a dignity that
comes from a rational nature. Through the exercise of his rationality, a human person can
make choices in his relationships to God and to his fellow men. Because his nature was
damaged by the Fall, the human person can also choose to break his love-relationship with
God, wounding his own relational nature and damaging his relations with his fellow men.
In this condition, God assists man through the guardianship of angels and the grace-giving
sacraments of the Church. Thus, with the assistance of grace man is capable of
conforming himself more and more to Christ, and ultimately enjoying a relationship of
perfect happiness with the saints and with God in heaven.

In sum, this thesis makes two important contributions to the study of the writings of
Saint Bonaventure. Firstly, it brings together in one place a broad synthesis of
Bonaventure’s anthropology (chapter 4). Secondly, it examines Bonaventure’s Trinitarian
and anthropological writings through the lens of the intrinsic relationality of the Triune
God and the human person who is made in the image of God (chapters 5 and 6). I have
found in Bonaventure’s writings what it means to say that God is relational, and what this
reveals about human relationality.

Intended audience, limitations and wider applications of the research

As the foregoing makes clear, the focus of this thesis is the writings of Saint
Bonaventure. Thus it is of interest primarily to scholars involved in studying his works. It
will be especially of interest to those who wish to explore the Seraphic Doctor’s
anthropology, which is here presented in a more complete form than I have been able to
find in any one article or book published to date.

The field of “relationality” is broad and burgeoning. A simple Internet search

generates numerous references to relational ontology, relational theology, relational
anthropology, relational sociology, relational complexity theory and so on. Scholars
involved in the current discussion of any aspect of relationality will also find this thesis

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useful, particularly those scholars who seek an orthodox Christian view of man as
intrinsically relational.

It was not the intention of this work to present Bonaventure’s anthropology or his
relational view of man in comparison to or dialogue with contemporary philosophers,
theologians or psychologists. However, in the course of my reading and research about
Bonaventure’s anthropology and in the field of relationality, there have been many times
when it occurred to me that Bonaventure’s Trinitarian anthropology and the relational
character of man presented in it, could provide insight into problems that challenge
contemporary man: if the human person is by definition relational, then the quality of his
relations will affect man in every aspect of his existence. As John Dourley has suggested,
“Bonaventure’s theology might…be proposed as a healing influence for certain breaches in
man’s contemporary religious and cultural self-consciousness”.1443

It is difficult to imagine secular intellectuals or international businessmen willingly

engaging themselves in the thought of a medieval Christian theologian. However, it is
quite within the Christian mandate and the Franciscan charism to engage the culture on its
own terms, a culture that at this point is increasingly influenced by a materialistic,
utilitarian view of the person radically at odds with Christian teaching. In this view, I
suggest that my thesis, by contributing a more comprehensive view of relational man from
the perspective of an orthodox Christian theologian, adds to the treasury of thought that
theologians can draw on when addressing current this-world issues. I offer as examples
the Church’s need to respond to postmodernist thought and the phenomenon of
globalization.

If we look at postmodernism as a critique of the failures of modernism, it helps us

to understand why contemporary thinkers question any system of thought that posits a
“metanarrative” (to use Lyotard’s term) that would seek to explain all human history and
behavior. In his Theology of the Body, John Paul II pointed to three such systems of
thought — those of Freud, Marx and Nietzsche — that reduced humanity to a single
dimension (sexual lust and fear of death, economics, the “will to power”) and attempted to
account for the whole of human experience through one system. Other modernist thinkers,
such as Kant, posited man as a wholly “rational agent”, leading to a rationalist
anthropology that is the basis for much scientific thought. In the twentieth century, the

1443
John P. Dourley, “The relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of the Trinity in
Bonaventure’s De Mysterio Trinitatis”, in SBM, II, pp. 41–48, p. 47.

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failures — and in some cases the evils — of these man-made systems of thought became
increasingly apparent. Simplifying a very complex area of thought, we can say that the
postmodern view is suspicious of any system of thought that claims to have “the answer”
to man’s ills or to promise happiness and freedom for every human person, including, of
course, the claims of Christianity.

Postmodernism is right to question and doubt any man-made system of thought that
claims to resolve all the problems of human existence: no man is omniscient, and thus no
man can ever create a system of thought that will encompass the experience of every
person, in every situation, time or place. Saint Bonaventure’s anthropology offers an
alternative to failed modernist theories about man simply on the grounds that it claims to
be divinely inspired, not man-made. Bonaventure would claim that it is not Christianity as
a “system” that has failed, but individual Christians who, in their concupiscence and need
of a Saviour, fail to live up to the divine plan for successfully living out the mystery of
human life. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found
wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried”. 1444 I suggest that a wider reading of
the anthropology of Bonaventure among theologians, apologists and homilists will equip
them better to answer the questions of postmodern seekers and to offer a rich, coherent and
compelling account of who man is, his dignity and his destiny.1445

The process and problems of globalization are subject to heated debate. On the one
hand, globalization holds out the promise of the free exchange of ideas, people and
material goods, which may lead to increased bonding, reciprocation and interdependency
among widely diverse people; one may say simply that globalization brings about
increased relationality, though the quality of those new relations raises concerns.
Economic globalization tends to increase inequality among peoples, as rampant economic
speculation favors the rich while leading to the exploitation of the poor and the
environment. The rapid exchange of ideas is not a neutral phenomenon: false ideas can be
spread as quickly as truth. Mass migration of people leads to frictions. As the global
market becomes more powerful, state authority and local control of people’s lives is
weakened.

1444
G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (Lawrence, KS: Digireads.com Books, 2009), p. 18.
1445
Some homilists and apologists recognize the need to address a specifically postmodernist mindset. See,
for instance, Vincent Cushing, O.F.M., “Preaching Wisdom to a Postmodern People”, in Franciscan Identity
and Postmodern Culture: Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2002, ed. Kathleen A. Warren
(St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2003), pp. 95–108; and Melinda Selmys, “What is
Postmodernism?”, This Rock, vol. 21, n. 6, http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/what-is-
postmodernism, November, 2010, viewed 3 May 2012.

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 Johannes Freyer has argued that the Franciscan charism, with its emphasis on
global mission, “life as an itinerarium” rather than “the monastic stabilitas loci”,1446 has
wisdom to share with the rapidly globalizing world of the 21 st century. In particular,
Freyer stresses the Franciscan tradition and the anthropology and ecclesiology of Saint
Bonaventure, which offer “values expressed in words such as Bonum, Liberalitas, in the
idea underlying the word Communio, the recognition of the unique nature and dignity of
each and every creature….”1447 Acknowledging that “[t]heological reflections have no
immediate relevance for economics,” Freyer points out that with its 2000-year-old charism
of mission to all peoples, Christianity operates from “a position of solid expertise” and
Christian theology is thus in a position to reflect and offer “practical measures that can
well be helpful towards achieving a humane globalization process for our time”. 1448 For
Freyer, the Christian contribution to the problems inherent in globalization is not “a
religious imperialism in the form of Caesaro-Papism”, but a Bonaventurian “vision of a
[Trinitarian] Communio [which] will create attitudes and mechanisms of acknowledged
mutuality, [and] reciprocal appreciation that will conquer an enforced imperialism”.1449

By these two brief and admittedly cursory discursions into the problems of
postmodernity and globalization, I wish only to propose that Bonaventure’s thought is
relevant to the theological discussion of the crises and challenges of our times.

Suggestions for further research

As I explained in the Introduction, my reading of the Bonaventurian corpus was

limited to the works most likely to shed light on my theme. Further reading by other
scholars may add detail to Bonaventure’s anthropology or answer questions raised by my
research. One question, for example, that was not resolved by my reading, concerns the
notion of the “person” after death. Bonaventure claims that when the soul is separated
from the body, it retains its individuality and proper dignity, but loses the fullness of its
personality because it is disconnected from its particular body. In this case, can we posit
any kind of “personality” to souls in heaven who await the Resurrection?

In Soliloquium IV, Bonaventure gives a tantalising glimpse of the life of the

relations of souls in heaven that implies both distinction and unity:
1446
Johannes Freyer, “Bonaventure’s Anthropology and Ecclesiology as a Universal Approach Towards a
Vision of a Globalized World”, Spirit and Life 16 (2011), pp. 123–149, p. 126.
1447
Freyer, p. 149.
1448
Freyer, p. 144.
1449
Freyer, p. 147

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 the plenitude of all goodness is perfect in one and all, and…in that
place each receives in an excellent way according to the diversity
of his merits, nevertheless…nothing in heaven is possessed
exclusively by anyone, because the divine goodness is so
boundless. All things are common to all because of him who is all
in all.1450

This description raises the question of the degree to which the souls in heaven will
participate in the communio of the Trinity. Though the relations of souls after death is
beyond the scope of this paper, it could prove a fruitful field of research for another
Bonventure scholar.

Because Bonaventure’s theology is inescapably Trinitarian, his anthropology poses

a challenge to monotheistic theologies that accept man as the image and likeness of God:
what is the monotheistic response to an anthropology that posits man as an icon of a Triune
Creator? Scholars in the field of comparative religions could use this thesis in research of
the perception of the human person in various religious traditions, whether or not those
religions posit a Creator God (or gods). Man’s essential relationality is an observable
phenomenon, accounted for here in terms of man being an icon of the Triune, Creator God.
Research might be done into how other religions account for man’s relationality.

In my reading I have noted that often, contemporary philosophy — such as the

phenomenological work of Paul Ricoeur1451 and the lesser-known Anna-Teresa
Tymieniecka — either consciously or unconsciously echo observations about the human
person made by Saint Bonaventure seven centuries ago. Tymieniecka, for example, urges
the recovery of a new logos, the logos of life. In her philosophy, this “[l]ogos, the sense of
sense, penetrates All; it encompasses human reality, the entirety of its fulgurating waves,
our new cultural enlightenment, as well as what is to come. IN LOGOS OMNIA!” 1452
Tymieniecka’s penetrating logos is very close to Bonaventure’s eternal Logos (Christ),
who permeates everything that was created by Him, in whom is found the fullness of
human nature and the aeternae rationes, who enlightens human reason and is the fullness
and end of everything that was created. Contemporary philosophers may find their own
insights about the universe, God and the human person reinforced, challenged or amplified

1450
Solil., 4, 3, ad. 15 (VIII, 61a). WSB, X, pp. 326–327.
1451
See, for example, Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: UCP, 1992); The Course of Recognition
(London: Harvard UP, 2005).
1452
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life, Book I: The Case of God in the
New Enlightenment. In Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Volume C
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science + Business Media B.V., 2009), p. xxvi.

286
in the Trinitarian anthropology of Saint Bonaventure presented here. Students of
phenomenology might find it fruitful to consider how contemporary philosopy has
described the human person in terms not far removed from the concepts of medieval
theology.

Finally, in the field of psychology, Lee A. Kirkpatrick has done much interesting
research exploring the practice of religion (any and all religions) as a relationship with
God.1453 Kirkpatrick begins with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s research into
interpersonal attachments,1454 which showed that human beings require secure attachments
to other people for their physical survival, emotional development and social adjustment.
He argues further that the “attachment system is a ‘real’ system in the brain/mind”, and
that this attachment system is fundamental to people’s “thinking, beliefs and reasoning
about God and their relationship to God”.1455 Just as psychology has demonstrated real and
necessary attachments between people, Kirkpatrick’s research indicates that “attachment is
not merely a metaphor for people’s perceived relationship with God, but ‘really’ is an
attachment relationship in every important sense”.1456 To use Kirkpatrick’s language of
evolutionary psychology, our brains have “evolved” a demonstrable capacity and even
need for a relationship to God. As I have demonstrated in my thesis, Bonaventure would
say we were created for and in relationship with God and others. Kirkpatrick’s analysis of
the correspondences between the defining psychological characteristics of an attachment
relationship and the relationship of persons to God provides a rich source for those
exploring relationality and religious experience.



In the more than seven centuries since they died, the Dominican Aquinas has had an
enormous influence not only on Christian theology, but the entire western intellectual
tradition, while the Franciscan Bonaventure has been hidden in Thomas’s vast shadow. It
is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that for most Christian theologians, Bonaventure’s
breadth and depth is unknown and unsuspected. However, my reading and research
1453
See Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Attachment, Evolution and the Psychology of Religion (New York: Guilford
Press, 2005), especially “God as an Attachment Figure,” pp. 52–74.
1454
The seminal works in attachment psychology are John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1 Attachment.
New York: Basic Books, 1969; Attachment and Loss: Vol. 2. Separation (New York: Basic Books, 1973);
and Attachment and Loss: Vol. 3. Loss. New York: Basic Books, 1980. The defining characteristics that
distinguish attachment relationships from other relationships are found in Mary D.S. Ainsworth,
“Attachments Across the Life Span”, in Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 61, 1985, pp. 792–
812.
1455
Kirkpatrick, pp. 55-56.
1456
Kirkpatrick, p. 73. Emphasis added.

287
indicates that much of what contemporary thinkers are “discovering” about the nature of
the human person was already discerned by Bonaventure 700 years ago. It is my hope that
this thesis will inspire other scholars to examine Bonaventure’s teaching as a starting point
for the creation of a new metaphysics in which divine relationality is seen as central to a
vision of the human person as a relational being and true icon of the Holy Trinity.

288
 Selected Bibliography

Primary Sources: The Works of Saint Bonaventure

Critical Editions

S. Bonaventurae Collationes in hexaëmeron et Bonaventuriana quaedam selecta,

Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, vol. 7, trans. Ferdinand Marie Delorme
(Quaracchi 1934)

All references to texts below are from Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia.
10 volumes (Quaracchi [Florence], 1882-1902).

Apologia pauperum contra calumniatorem (VIII, 233–330)

Breviloquium (V, 199–291)
Christus unus omnium magister (V, 567–574)
Collationes de decem praeceptis (V, 507–532)
Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti (V, 457–503)
Collationes in Evangelium Ioannis (VI, 533–634)
Collationes in Hexaëmeron (V, 327–454)
Commentarius in librum Ecclesiasten (VI, 1–103)
Commentarius in Evangelium Ioannis (VI, 239–532)
Commentarius in Evangelium Lucae (VII, 1–604)
Commentarius in librum Sapientiae (VI, 107–233)
Commentaria in I librum Sententiarum (I, 1–861)
Commentaria in II librum Sententiarum (II, 1–1016)
Commentaria in III librum Sententiarum (III, 1–896)
Commentaria in IV librum Sententiarum (IV, 1–1054)
De perfectione vitae ad sorores (VIII, 107–127)
De reductione artium ad theologiam (V, 319–325)
De regimine animae (VIII, 128–130)
De Regno Dei (V, 539–553)
De sanctissimo corpore Christi (V, 553–566)
De triplici testimonio sanctissimae Trinitatis (V, 535–538)
De triplici via (VIII, 3–27)
Epistola de XXV Memorialibus (VIII, 491–492)
Itinerarium mentis in Deum (V, 293–316)
Lignum vitae (VIII, 68–87)

289
Questiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (V, 45–115)
Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica (V, 117–198)
Questiones disputatae de scientia Christi (V, 3–43)
Regula novitiorum (VIII, 475–490)
Sermones dominicales (Sermones de tempore) (IX, 23–461)
Sermones de sanctis (IX, 463–631)
Sermones de beata Virgine Maria (IX, 633–721)
Soliloquium (VIII, 28–67)
Tractatus de praeparatione ad missam (VIII, 99–106)
Vitis mystica sive Tractatus de passione Domini (VIII, 159–189)

English Translations

Breviloquium by St. Bonaventure, trans. Erwin Esser Nemmers (London: B. Herder, 1946)

Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, the Life of St. Francis, trans.
and intro. Ewert Cousins (SPCK: London, 1978)

Bonaventure: Mystic of God’s Word, trans. Timothy Johnson (NY: New City Press, 1999)

The Disciple and the Master. St. Bonaventure’s Sermons on St. Francis of Assisi, trans., ed.
and intro., Eric Doyle (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983).

Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. II, The Founder. Ed. Regis Armstrong, J.A.
Wayne Hellmann, William Short (NY: New City Press, 1999–2001).

What Manner of Man? Sermons on Christ by St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974)

The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, Mystical Opuscula, vol.
I, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960)

The Works of Bonaventure Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, The Breviloquium, vol. II,
trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963)

The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, Opuscula Second Series,
vol. III, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1966)

The Works of Bonaventure Cardinal Seraphic Doctor and Saint, vol. V: Collationes on the
Six Days, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. I: On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, trans., intro.
and commentary Emma Therese Healy (St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan Institute, 1955)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. I: On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, trans., intro.
and commentary Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan Institute, 1996)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. II: Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, trans. Zachary Hayes (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2002)
290
Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. II: Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, intro., trans. Philotheus
Boehner, (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1956)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. III: Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity,
intro. and trans. Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute 1979)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. IV: Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, intro.,
trans. and notes Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. V: Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order, intro. and
trans. Dominic Monti (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1994)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. VI: Collations on the Ten Commandments, intro. and trans.
Paul J. Spaeth (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1995),

Works of St. Bonaventure vol. VII: Commentary on Ecclesiastes, trans. and ed. Robert
Karris and Campion Murray (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. IX: Breviloquium, intro., trans. and notes Dominic Monti
(St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2005)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. X: Writings on the Spiritual Life, intro. and notes F. Edward
Coughlin, trans. Girard Etzkorn, Robert J. Karris, Oleg Bychkov (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 2006)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XI: Commentary on the Gospel of John, intro. trans. and
notes Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2007)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XII: The Sunday Sermons of St. Bonaventure, intro., trans.
and notes Timothy J. Johnson (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2008)

Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. XIII: Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection, intro.
and notes Robert J. Karris; trans. Thomas Reist and Robert J. Karris, (St. Bonaventure,
NY: Franciscan Institute, 2008)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. XIV: Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit,
intro. and trans. Zachary Hayes, notes Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute, 2008)

Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. XV: Defense of the Mendicants, intro. and notes, Robert
J. Karris; trans. José de Vinck and Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute, 2010)

291
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