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INTRODUCTION

Throughout the history of Christianity, theologians and philosophers have had to cope with a tension of opposites. On the one hand, the God of Christian revelation is the Wholly Other, the transcendent Being who created the world out of nothing and who in his revelation has disclosed his power and majesty. On the other hand, God is intimate to the world. He has left his imprint on creation and in the Incarnation has joined himself personally to the world. In Jesus Christ, God and man, the absolute and the relative, being and nothingness are united in one single person.

In their efforts to deal with this tension, theologians - and the community of Christian believers - have often emphasized one or the other pole of these opposites. This was as true in the Middle Ages as it was before and since. For many Christians in the Middle Ages, the God they worshipped was the absolute Master of all things, the transcendent Lord who held dominion over them and who demanded their obedient service. In contrast, they looked upon themselves and the world they inhabited as distant from God - separated from him by a vast abyss. In their spiritual journeys, in their earthly pilgrimages, they felt far removed from the divine majesty.

Then in the thirteenth century a little poor man joined these pilgrims as another had joined the disciples on the road to Emmaus. And that little poor man began to sing a canticle of creatures - to call the sun his brother, water his sister and the earth his mother And he summoned all these creatures to join him in praising his "most high omnipotent good Lord," whom he saw reflected throughout creation, even in a tiny earthworm. Suddenly the eyes of the pilgrims were opened to a new perspective, as if God were made present to them and spoke to them through the flowers along the way. Never before in the history of Christianity, and never since, was God's immanence in creation sung with such depth and such charm as by Francis of Assisi. Among the pilgrims who heard Francis' song was Bonaventure, the eminent theologian and early Minister General of the Friars Minor. As a follower of Francis, he set himself the task of formulating the metaphysics and logic that stood behind this Franciscan song.

But the song of Francis has not always been heard through the centuries, and the metaphysics that explained it has been often obscured. For example, in the nineteenth and twentieth century revival of scholasticism, emphasis was placed on God's power in creating out of nothing and on the dependence of creatures on God. Although the world was seen as participating in existence through God, emphasis was not placed on the world as reflecting God. The metaphysics of separation dominated over the metaphysics of manifestation, and the principle of contradiction was used to reinforce this separation. The logic of contradiction formed a wedge between God and the world, dividing them into different spheres of being. In order to recapture the Franciscan vision in its richness, there was need to rediscover the metaphysics of manifestation, whereby God manifests himself in the world. In order to bring this metaphysics fully to light, there was need to articulate its logic.

This is what Ewert Cousins has admirably done in the present book through a detailed textual and thematic analysis of Bonaventure's thought. He identifies this logic as that of the coincidence of opposites. For him this logic does not reject the principle of contradiction, but rather subsumes it into a larger sphere. Professor Cousins does not claim that Bonaventure developed the coincidence of opposites into a formal logic as Nicholas of Cusa did later. Rather this logic lies just beneath the surface of Bonaventure's thought, awaiting a formal analysis to bring it to light. By providing such an analysis Professor Cousins has made a major contribution to Bonaventure studies and the intellectual history of the Middle Ages.

His analysis of the coincidence of opposites throws light on central aspects of Bonaventure's vision. It allows Bonaventure's thought to be seen on its own terms and with its own distinctive structure. Professor Cousins has not only stressed the importance of viewing Bonaventure's thought in its integrity, but has provided a means for achieving this. From the perspective of the coincidence of opposites, the Trinity and Christology emerge as providing the comprehensive design of his system. Once this is clarified, one can avoid the problem - often encountered in the past - of viewing elements of Bonaventure's synthesis as unrelated to this comprehensive design.

Bonaventure never intended to present to his students a philosopher's God, seen in isolation from the Christian Trinity. Rather Bonaventure's God is the God revealed by Jesus Christ, whose life is manifested in the diffusion of being, life and love - all springing from the plenitude of the Father. Out of his fountain-fulness, the Father expresses himself in one, unique Word, his own personal Word and Son. In generating his Son, the Father expresses all that he is and also all that he can make and do. From the mutual and ineffable love of the Father and the Son there proceeds the Holy Spirit. Thus for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the mystery of God's dynamic fecundity, his eternal self-diffusion that issues in the divine persons, who are united in the most intimate mutuality. This Trinitarian mystery reveals a dynamic inner logic of the coincidence of opposites which, according to Professor Cousins, is the source and archetype of all other forms of the coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure's system.

This Trinitarian dynamism overflows into creation, where according to Bonaventure God is manifested in his vestige, image and similitude. It is here that Bonaventure gives a metaphysical basis for Francis' "Canticle of Brother Sun." All creatures flow out of God's self-diffusing fecundity and through the metaphysics of exemplarism, manifest God and lead men back to God. Once again it is the logic of the coincidence of opposites that helps clarify the issues, for in the mystery of creation there is a coincidence of the eternal and the temporal, the infinite and the finite.

Finally, the metaphysics of manifestation reaches its climax in the mystery of Christ, the greatest coincidence of opposites. Christ is the fulness of the divine manifestation. He is the center of the universe and the medium between God and man. The Word Incarnate is the very expression of God under a human form. By and in the Incarnate Word, and through the Holy Spirit, we come to the Father. Through him and in him, we discover the Franciscan sense of creation; for Christ, the Word Incarnate is the Way, the Truth and the Life, leading us back to the fulness of the Father. Here, in the mystery of Christ, Professor Cousins' analysis of the coincidence of opposites is especially rich and brings to light the climactic role that Christ plays within Bonaventure's total system.

Bonaventure's vision of reality was shaped by three factors: first, an experiential factor, derived from Sacred Scripture, the word of God, which for Bonaventure, as for his medieval contemporaries, was an ever-flowing spring and source of religious experience; secondly, an intellectual factor, that is, the theological-philosophical heritage of the Greek Fathers of the Church from John Damascene and the Pseudo-Dionysius, a heritage which Bonaventure received from his teacher Friar Alexander of Hales; and thirdly, an existential factor, namely, the person of Francis of Assisi, who in his original imitation of Jesus Christ, continually sought to prove his love by concrete action. In the light of Professor Cousins' analysis of the coincidence of opposites, we can see how Bonaventure took elements from these three sources and shaped them into one of the richest visions in the history of Christianity.

Professor Cousins' book has grown out of many years of work on Bonaventure. It is grounded in some five years of painstaking work in translating texts of Bonaventure into English. In fact, it was while translating Chapters Five through Seven of the Itinerariurn, that he discovered the pattern of the coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure's text. This period of textual work was followed by a period of interpretative analysis which culminated in the present book. The development of his thought coincided with and received impetus from the preparations for the celebration of the seventh centenary of Bonaventure's death in 1974. These preparations involved publications and international conferences of specialists. Almost ten years ago, when I was organizing the first of these conferences, the Colloque Saint Bonaventure at Orsay, France, 1968, I asked Professor Cousins to give the inaugural address. In his paper entitled "The Coincidence of Opposites in the Theology of Bonaventure," Professor Cousins presented the basic thesis of this present book to an international group of Bonaventure specialists. The response to his paper was very positive and led him to continue his research on this theme in articles, lectures and papers at other academic conferences.

My asking Professor Cousins to lecture at Orsay in 1968 was the beginning of our deep friendship, a friendship which has expressed itself in mutual collaboration and which has grown continuously through the years. In 1969 we were together again, this time for a meeting at the Collegio San Bonaventura, International Franciscan Research Center, at Quaracchi (Florence) Italy. At this meeting Father Constantine Koser, Minister General of the Friars Minor, approved the establishment of the Commissio Internationalis Bonaventuriana. The purpose of this international commission was to stimulate research in Bonaventure for a scholarly commemoration of the seventh centenary of his death. The work of the commission concentrated on publishing five volumes of scholarly studies entitled 5. Bonaventura 1274-1974.

Appointed one of the nine members of this commission, Professor Cousins had as his chief task to gather articles from scholars in the United States for publication in the five-volume centenary series. As chairman of the commission, I collaborated very closely with him throughout the project. In addition to continued correspondence, we worked together on two occasions at Vezelay, France, and on several occasions at Grottaferrata, near Rome, where the Quaracchi center has been transferred from Florence. We also spent a week together at Assisi doing detailed work on the text of S. Bonaventura 1274-1974. He was for me then - during that period of intense activity - as he is now, a faithful friend and untiring collaborator.

In 1971 at Orsay, France, he presented a paper at the second Colloque Saint Bonaventure. This was followed by a number of lectures on Bonaventure at various universities in the United States at the time of centenary, e.g., Yale, Columbia and Western Michigan University. In 1974 he was awarded an honorary degree for his work on Bonaventure by Siena College, where he gave the major address at its centenary celebration. Throughout these lectures he developed the theme of this book, with its two major implications: the use of the coincidence of opposites for understanding Bonaventure's thought, first within the context of medieval culture and then in relation to twentieth century thought.

In my opinion this theme and its implications are of cardinal importance. As we have seen, Professor Cousins' analysis allows us to see more precisely and coherently the organic structure of Bonaventure's thought and by that very fact helps us situate that thought within the context of medieval culture. But he goes beyond a limited study of texts and even the analysis of thought within its historical context. He has consistently demonstrated the open-endedness of Bonaventure's thought in its relevance to contemporary issues. His research involves a constant dialogue between history and contemporary culture. Paradoxically, it is precisely by entering deeply into historical studies that he has drawn Bonaventure into the Great Dialogue, as he calls it, over issues that transcend a specific historical milieu. But what he sees is not a superficial connection or a facile syncretism; rather it is an encounter in depth which evokes a forthright and challenging dialogue. Such a dialogue can be seen in his nuanced and critical correlations of Bonaventure with process thought and the evolutionary system of Teilhard, two areas of contemporary thought in which he has specialized and published.

These same qualities are evident in his extension of Bonaventure's thought into Christian ecumenism and the dialogue of world religions. In 1972-73 Professor Cousins spent the academic year as a resident scholar at the Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies in Jerusalem. During this period he did research in Islamic religion as a background for medieval Christian theology and philosophy. He also explored the possibilities of Bonaventure's thought for ecumenism within Christianity and for the dialogue of world religions. Jerusalem provided a remarkable atmosphere for ecumenical research. At the Institute he worked with theologians from various Christian traditions and throughout Israel engaged in dialogue with Jews and Muslims. In this context he was able to test out concretely the possibilities and problems of the theme he was developing: Bonaventure's Christology - examined in the light of the coincidence of opposites - as a resource for Christian unity and for the dialogue of world religions. This research led to his paper entitled "Bonaventure's Christology and Contemporary Ecumenism," delivered at the International Congress on Bonaventure commemorating the centenary, in Rome, 1974. Over the last several years, as consultant to the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians, he has been exploring further the resources of Bonaventure's thought for the dialogue of world religions.

As collaborator and friend, I have observed the development of his thought, which he has synthesized in a tightly-reasoned, organic unity in the present book. The result of a slow, constant maturation - through many years of research, writing, lecturing, dialogue and prayer - it now brings forth its fruit. Bonaventure's insights, presented anew to our day, with such scholarly skill and creative originality by Professor Cousins, cannot, I know, but mature into a rich harvest.

January 15, 1978 Jacques Guy Bougerol, O.F.M.

Collegio San Bonaventure

International Franciscan-Dominican Research Center

Grottaferrata, Rome, Italy

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