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CHAPTER IV

The Trinity and Creation

In this stage of our study, we shift our attention from Bonaventure's texts to his system. As described at the outset of our last chapter, our method of studying the coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure involves a twofold approach: (1) an analysis of specific texts where the coincidence of opposites is expressed; (2) an analysis of Bonaventure's system, drawing out of its structure implicit coincidences of opposites. This second approach is also rooted in texts in the sense that we will draw our knowledge of Bonaventure's system from his own writings. But these texts will be selected with an eye to reconstructing his system rather than to obtaining textual evidence for the coincidence of opposites in his thought. Having reconstructed his system from his texts, we will then analyze his system from the standpoint of the coincidence of opposites.

Although different in their starting point and immediate function, these two approaches are by no means unrelated. For example, in our previous chapter we studied Chapters Five to Seven of the Itinerarium as a textual expression of the coincidence of opposites. In our present chapter we will study Bonaventure's doctrine of the Trinity and God's relation to the world from a systematic point of view. However, some of the texts which we will use to reconstruct his system will be drawn from Chapter Six of the Itinerarium and also from the first of the Collationes in Hexaemeron, where the coincidence of opposites is also expressed. These more explicit texts will serve the double purpose of establishing his system and of guiding us into the coincidence of opposites in its structure. Finally, since these two explicit texts gave a comprehensive synthesis of Bonaventure's thought, they can serve as a check and corroboration of our own analysis of the coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure's system.

In our survey of Bonaventure's thought we claimed that there are two major poles: the Trinity and Christocentricity.²⁰⁷ This is true from the standpoint of the design of Bonaventure's system and its major components. However from the standpoint of its structure, the 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. The Trinity constitutes the primordial and archetypal coincidence of opposites, and as such, is the source of the polarities within Bonaventure's system. If God were not Trinitarian, then we would not find the coincidence of opposites as a dimension of reality. Therefore we begin our systematic study with Bonaventure's doctrine of the Trinity and then move into his doctrine of creation. In the next two chapters we will explore the coincidence of opposites in the Christocentric pole of his thought.

The Dynamic Trinity

The most characteristic aspect of Bonaventure's doctrine of the Trinity is that it is dynamic. For Bonaventure God is dynamic not merely in a general way as opposed to being static; nor is he dynamic primarily in the act of creation and his involvement in the world; rather he is dynamic primarily in his inner Trinitarian life. Bonaventure sees the Father in the Trinity as the fecund source of the divinity, the fontalis plenitudo, or fountain-fullness, out of whose plenitude the Son is generated and through the Son the Spirit is spirated. The dynamism of the Trinity is imparted to the world in the act of creation and in the return of all things to the Father.

This notion of the dynamic Trinity shapes the structure of Bonaventure's system and imparts coherence to its components. For example, it lies at the base of such a characteristic doctrine as exemplarism. In Bonaventure's doctrine of universal exemplarism, all creatures reflect God and can provide a path leading the soul into God. Exemplarism, then, is the matrix for Bonaventure's study of the relation of the world to God, of all things emerging out of God and returning to God. Yet exemplarism is not the foundational stratum of Bonaventure's system. Beneath exemplarism and supporting it ontologically lies Bonaventure's doctrine of expressionism. Within his inner life, God is dynamic and expressive: the Father expresses himself in generating the Son, who is his perfect Image and Word. In generating the Son, the Father produces in the Son the ideas or rationes aeternae of all that he can create. These rationes aeternae within the Son are the ontological foundation of creation ad extra and of exemplarism. Without Trinitarian expressionism, then, Bonaventure's system would be incomplete, for it would lack its ultimate ontological grounding.

Furthermore, without an awareness of Trinitarian expressionism, one could easily misinterpret internal elements of his system. For the Trinity does not merely provide a base for creation, but imparts its dynamism to creation. In the light of their Trinitarian foundation, then, Bonaventure's vestiges and images are not static representations of God, but dynamic realities sharing in the Trinitarian expressionism. In view of this, I suggest the following hermeneutic principle for exploring Bonaventure's thought. Using his own method of reductio, one should lead back to their dynamic Trinitarian source all elements within Bonaventure's system in order to grasp them in their depth and organic context.

Bonaventure's doctrine of the dynamic Trinity is the key element for situating him within his specific historical tradition. For example, Bonaventure is usually called an Augustinian to distinguish him from the thirteenth century Aristotelian camp. Although I believe this designation is accurate, it must be nuanced. Bonaventure's Trinitarian theology is much closer to that of the Greek Fathers, which takes its point of departure from the Father as dynamic source of the Trinitarian processions. In contrast Augustine in Books V-VII of the De Trinitate begins with the common divine nature and sees the persons as mutual relations.²⁰⁸ The Greek Fathers' tradition flowed into the West through John Scotus Erigena and his translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius. It passed through the Victorines and Alexander of Hales to Bonaventure. This tradition did not flow in the same way to Thomas, whose Trinitarian theology remains basically Augustinian.²⁰⁹ Thus in the area of Trinitarian theology it is Thomas, and not Bonaventure, who is the Augustinian. Yet Bonaventure integrates into his system the characteristic Augustinian doctrines of Trinitarian vestige and image. It is very important to recognize that Bonaventure is heir to two major traditions: one from Augustine and the other from the Greek Fathers. In him they reach a new synthesis, which has remarkable depth and power. The classical Augustinian doctrines of vestige and image are given a dynamic Trinitarian base. Although the dynamic Trinity is not absent from Augustine, it is overshadowed by his own doctrine of the persons as relations. What Bonaventure has done, then, is to achieve a synthesis of certain Western and Eastern Trinitarian traditions with the dynamic Trinity as the principle of unity.

Bonaventure's dynamic Trinity is the key to understanding his positions in major controversies of the thirteenth century since it stands behind his attitude towards Aristotle. Bonaventure attacks Aristotle because the latter rejects exemplarism and consequently the mediation between God and the world. From this follow Aristotle's major errors: that God does not know particulars, nor has foreknowledge, nor providence, that the world is eternal, and that there is no personal immortality.²¹⁰ Because exemplarism is rooted in Trinitarian expressionism, Bonaventure's ultimate critique of Aristotle is founded in his dynamic doctrine of the Trinity. I believe that Bonaventure saw a specific incompatibility between Aristotle's eternal world and his own doctrine of the dynamic Trinity.

The doctrine of the dynamic Trinity situates Bonaventure in a larger historical current that spans the centuries from Plato to the present. This is the current studied by Arthur Lovejoy in his book The Great Chain of Being under the notion of fecundity. In this current God is seen as the fecund source, who communicates his goodness. As Lovejoy points out, this notion of God contrasts with the notion of God as self-sufficient absolute, unmoved mover, the changeless ultimate reality that stands apart from the world.²¹¹ Although Bonaventure has integrated the self-sufficient absolute into his system, he stands clearly in the tradition of fecundity because of his dynamic doctrine of God. Once we situate Bonaventure there, we can see affinities between him and Plotinus, Hegel, and Whitehead. In this larger context, it is much easier to see how he dealt with the problems of fecundity and God's relation to the world. Although he shares much with others in this tradition, he differs with many on crucial points. As we will see in Chapter Eight, his genius led him to penetrate deeply into the problematics of divine fecundity and to arrive at solutions that not only make his thought relevant to the present, but enable him to make creative contributions to current debates.

Fecundity and Self-diffusion

We shall now examine Bonaventure's dynamic Trinity in detail and bring to light its inherent coincidences of opposites. As we have indicated, the root of Bonaventure's doctrine lies in his conception of the Father as dynamic, fecund source of the Trinitarian processions. In examining the Father, Bonaventure employs two principles: the principle of fecund primordiality and the principle of the self-diffusion of the good. Both of these principles he applies to the divinity in relation to creation and to the Father in the Trinity. The first of these principles he draws from the Liber de causis and the second from the Pseudo-Dionysius. I believe that these are not two distinct principles, but two aspects of the same principle, which can be stated as follows: God as self-sufficient absolute must necessarily be fecund and self-communicating. This principle is Bonaventure's way of uniting the two conceptions of God which Lovejoy judges have been incompatible throughout the history of Western thought: namely, self-sufficiency and self-communication. For Bonaventure God's self-sufficiency and self-communication are so intimately united that his principle can be stated as follows: Because God is absolutely self-sufficient, he is absolutely self-communicating. It is clear that this is an instance of the coincidence of opposites. Since self-sufficiency and self-communication are not merely juxtaposed but require each other, this is an example of the coincidence of mutually affirming complementarity.

In the very early phase of his writing, in the second distinction of the first book of the Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure states this basic principle under the aspect of fecund primordiality: "the more primary a thing is, the more fecund it is and the principle of others."²¹² Having stated this as a universal philosophical principle, he proceeds to apply it first to the divine essence as fecund source of creatures. Bonaventure states: "The divine essence, because it is first, is the principle of other essences."²¹³ In the very next clause, he applies the principle to the Father in the Trinity. Just as the divine essence is fecund because it is first, he states, "so the person of the Father, since he is first, because from no one, is the principle and has fecundity in regard to persons."²¹⁴

Later in distinction 27 of the first, book of the Commentary, Bonaventure examines the fecundity of the Father in greater detail and again applies the same philosophical principle.²¹⁵ This time it is in the context of an analysis of the Father's personal property of innascibilitas. Bonaventure claims that innascibilitas has a negative and a positive aspect: negatively it means that the Father has no source; positively, that the Father is fecund.

When Bonaventure applies the principle this time, he cites Aristotle as his source. The Quaracchi editors point out that Bonaventure is drawing from propositions 1, 16, 17, and 20 of the Liber de causis. Like his contemporaries, Bonaventure thought the Liber de causis was by Aristotle. However shortly after 1268 Thomas Aquinas read William of Moerbeke's Latin translation of Proclus' Elements of Theology and concluded that the author of the Liber de causis was an Arabian philosopher familiar with Proclus' treatise. This opinion has received support from modern scholarship.²¹⁶

Referring to Aristotle, Bonaventure writes:

A further reason for this opinion is found in the dictum of the Philosopher which states that the more primary causes are, the greater power they have, and that the first cause has greater influence and that the cause that is absolutely first has an influence in every respect. Therefore if we see in the order of causes, among which is the order of essence, that primacy involves in a cause the highest influence and a greater influence according to essence; in a similar way, where there is an order of person, primacy in the first person is the reason for the production of other persons. And since innascibility signifies primacy, it follows that it signifies fountain-fullness [fontalem plenitudinem] in relation to the production of persons.²¹⁷

Bonaventure here is operating according to the coincidence of opposites, for he is uniting as opposites two personal properties which tradition has assigned to the Father: innascibility and paternity. Bonaventure interprets these as opposites which not only coexist but which mutually require each other. As innascibilis, the Father is unborn, unbegotten; he has no origin, no source. As unbegotten, he begets the Son so that in the Trinity there are polar opposites: the unbegotten and the begotten. The mediating element between the unbegottenness of the Father and the begottenness of the Son is the paternity of the Father: that is, his power to generate. But does this power to generate flow out of his unbegottenness? Bonaventure answers in the affirmative. In the technical terminology of the schools, innascibility is not merely a negative notion, but includes within it the positive note of generating fecundity. Thus the Father begets precisely because he is unbegotten. Such a mutual interpenetration, which is a mutual affirmation, is an example of the type of coincidence of opposites we described above as characteristic of Bonaventure's thought.²¹⁸

That innascibility and fecundity are related as opposites can be seen from the fact that throughout much of the history of philosophy and theology these two notes have been considered, if not incompatible, at least in tension in God. This is the issue behind the conflict of Neo-Platonism and Arianism with the Christian Trinity. If God is unbegotten, he cannot be begotten, the Arians claimed. The Neo-Platonists contended that the One must be transcendent; lower beings might emanate from the One, but emanation is not an aspect of the One in itself; hence there is not an emanation within the One of another consubstantial with the One. The theme of Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being is the conflict of these two aspects of the divinity throughout Western history: the changeless absolute - which coincides with innascibility - and the divine fecundity.²¹⁹ How can Bonaventure affirm both and actually integrate them? Through the logic of the coincidence of opposites. Since he has opted for the coincidence of opposites as the basic logic of his system, it is completely consistent that his doctrine of the Father should participate in the coincidence of opposites. Actually it would be more accurate to say that the coincidence of opposites which operates throughout his system is ultimately rooted in his affirming the coincidence of innascibility and fecundity in the Father.

Bonaventure continues to develop the theme of fecund primordiality in his other writings of the early period: the disputed questions De mysterio Trinitatis and the Breviloquium.²²⁰ Later he develops the same idea from the standpoint of the self-diffusion of the good in the Itinerarium and the Collationes in Hexaemeron. Drawing from the Pseudo-Dionysius, Bonaventure employs the principle that the good is self-diffusive. This principle applies both to God's diffusion in creatures and to the Father's diffusion in the Trinitarian processions. In the Itinerarium Bonaventure combines the Dionysian principle with Anselm's logic of the Prologion:

Behold, therefore, and observe that the highest good is unqualifiedly that in comparison with which a greater cannot be thought. And this good is such that it cannot rightly be thought of as non-existing, since to be is absolutely better than not to be. And this good exists in such a way that it cannot rightly be thought of unless it is thought of as triune and one. For good is said to be self-diffusive, and therefore the highest good is most self-diffusive.²²¹

Bonaventure then seeks for the highest self-diffusion, which he claims must be "actual and intrinsic, substantial and hypostatic, natural and voluntary, free and necessary, unfailing and perfect."²²² This highest self-diffusion is found only in the Trinitarian processions. Without the Trinitarian processions, we would not find in the divinity the highest good, "because it would not be supremely self-diffusive."²²³

God's Transcendence and Fecundity

Bonaventure's doctrine of God's fecundity brings us to the heart of metaphysical issues. We will examine these briefly here and explore them later in Chapter Eight in Bonaventure's dialogue with process thinkers over God's fecundity in relation to the world.²²⁴ In the Itinerarium and the Collationes in Hexaemeron, Bonaventure examines the metaphysical implications of God's fecundity seen in relation to creation. He claims that the highest good must be self-diffusive in the highest degree. This highest self-diffusion must be realized in the Trinity and cannot be realized in creation. For, as Bonaventure writes in the Itinerarium, "the diffusion that occurred in time in the creation of the world is no more than a pivot or point in comparison with the immense sweep of the eternal goodness."²²⁵

Later in the Collationes in Hexaemeron, Bonaventure analyzes this issue more systematically. The highest diffusion must be eternally actual, which is not the case in the diffusion of creatures. It must be integrally complete, but the full beauty of exemplarity is not given to creatures, for only the Son can say: "All things that the Father has are mine."²²⁶ This diffusion must be ultimate, so that "the one producing gives whatever he can give; but creatures cannot receive whatever God can give." Bonaventure again uses the image of a point: "Just as a point adds nothing to a line, not even a million points, so the goodness of creation adds nothing to the goodness of the Creator, because the finite adds nothing to the infinite."²²⁷ Finally the diffusion must be by way of perfect love. Here Bonaventure draws from Richard of St. Victor showing that God's love in order to be perfectly realized must be realized in the divine persons; for it is implied in Bonaventure, and spelled out in Richard, that God's love cannot be perfectly expressed towards creatures, but only within the Trinity.²²⁸

Bonaventure has penetrated to the heart of one of the most vexing metaphysical problems in the history of thought: How can God be both transcendent and immanent in the world? Following the coincidence of opposites, he has resolved the problem by grounding God's transcendence in his self-diffusion, which is, in fact, the ultimate basis of his immanence. Precisely because God transcends the world through his actualized self-diffusion in the Trinity, he can be immanent in the world without being dependent on the world. Thus since God does not need the world to activate his fecundity, his transcendence and immanence can coincide in his self-diffusiveness.

By liberating God from the world, Bonaventure is able to posit the fullness of fecundity within the inner life of the Trinity and thus establish a balanced coincidence of opposites within the divinity itself. For if God were absolutely self-sufficient in himself and only relatively self-communicating in relation to the world, then there would not be a true coincidence of opposites within God; for his self-communication would not be realized on the absolute level of his self-sufficiency. By establishing a coincidence of opposites within the divinity, Bonaventure has produced a dipolar doctrine of God, to use a term from twentieth century process thought.²²⁹ However, unlike Whitehead's and Hartshorne's dipolar God, Bonaventure's dipolarity is not dependent on God's relation to the world, but is realized within God's inner life. Thus Bonaventure proposes a coincidence of opposites that goes beyond the coincidence of the primordial and the consequent nature of God in the Whiteheadian system. According to Bonaventure, God is dipolar independently of the world; for in the innascibility of the Father there is both a selfsufficient and a self-communicating pole. It is true that the self-communicating pole is the ground of his communication in the world; but even without the world, God's self-communicating pole is actualized in an absolute way in the Father's generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit.

Silence and Speech

Having established the dipolarity of God through Bonaventure's doctrine of the Father, we can now ask a further question: Does the dipolarity of the Father have a mystical dimension? Following Bonaventure's lead, we have examined the innascibility of the Father in the light of metaphysical principles: the fecundity of primordiality and the self-diffusion of the good. And we have brought to light the metaphysical coincidence of opposites in self-sufficiency and self-communication. Does the innascibility of the Father also involve a mystical coincidence of opposites? Does it include the opposites of silence and speech, of darkness and light? Does it involve that aspect of the divinity which theologians, and especially mystics, have designated through silence, darkness, incomprehensibility, the abyss of the divinity, the non-manifesting aspect of God? Although Bonaventure did not formally develop this aspect of God in his treatment of innascibility, which we have been studying, I believe that it is implicity within the logic of his system and in conformity with the tradition he represents. From this point of view, the generation of the Son, the utterance of the Word by the Father, springs from the depths of silence in the abyss of the divinity. Thus the Father has a manifesting side and a non-manifesting side, a side of emanating light, and a side of darkness. If we thus extend Bonaventure's system according to the logic of the coincidence of opposites, we can clarify the nature of the apophatic tradition in which he stands. I would propose that there are two levels of apophatic or negative theology; one which negates the limited aspect of the finite world as commensurate with the infinite; and a second, which goes beyond the manifesting side of the divinity in order to enter into the non-manifesting side. This second form of apophatism is rooted in the Trinity and moves from contact with the Son, as Word and Image of the Father, into the silence and darkness of the Father, seen as the unbegotten abyss of the Godhead. I claim that both forms of apophatism operate in Bonaventure's thought, and that if we bring to light the second stage, we can arrive at a new interpretation of the final chapter of the Itinerarium.

The seventh and final chapter of the Itinerarium brings the reader to the level of mystical ecstacy after contemplating the sense world, the soul, and God himself as being and the good. In Chapter Five Bonaventure contemplates God as one and as being, in Chapter Six as the good and as Trinity. The seventh chapter, as the last stage of the ascent, leads to mystical contemplation. The seventh stage is usually interpreted according to the first form of apophatism; for Bonaventure says here that the mind must, "in beholding these things, transcend and pass over, not only this visible world, but even itself."²³⁰ I would propose that the seventh chapter contains also the second level of apophatism and that the silence encountered there is not merely a subjective state of the mystic, but refers to an aspect of the divinity: to the silence of the Father as the abyss of the divinity.

I propose that the Itinerarium represents a blending of two forms of mysticism: the Trinitarian light mysticism of the Greek world epitomized in the Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine, and the Christocentric mysticism of the early Franciscan milieu. Bonaventure integrates these two currents by seeing Christ as the medium who leads to the Father. More specifically in Chapters Six and Seven of the Itinerarium, Bonaventure integrates the Trinitarian and the Christocentric strands by seeing them as embodying two different types of the coincidence of opposites: the one and the many in the Trinity and the maximum-minimum in Christ. In Chapter Five we contemplate the coincidence of opposites in God as one and as being; in Chapter Six we contemplate the coincidence of opposites in God as the good and as Trinity; and finally we turn to Christ the greatest coincidence of opposites. The mediation of Christ as the coincidence of opposites leads us into the silence and darkness of mystical ecstacy. Chapter Seven begins with Christ as the passage and proceeds to give an extended quotation from the Mystical Theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius.²³¹ Bonaventure closes with the following statement:

Let us, then, die and enter into this darkness. Let us silence all our care, our desires and our imaginings. With Christ crucified, let us pass 'out of this world to the Father,' so that, when the Father is shown to us, we may say with Philip: 'It is enough for us.'²³²

We note that Bonaventure has moved from a consideration of the Trinity as the self-diffusive good into darkness and silence, or we could say, from the Father as self-diffusive good to the Father as the unbegotten silent abyss of the divinity. Although in the Itinerarium Bonaventure does not explore the innascibility of the Father - which he had explored in the first book of the Commentary on the Sentences - if we add to the Itinerarium this other aspect of the Father, we can see that Christ, as coincidence of opposites, functions on a double level of apophatism between Chapters Six and Seven: Christ as the greatest coincidence of opposites leads us beyond the realm of sense, beyond our own selves, beyond the Word and its generation into the unbegotten depths of the silence of the Father.

I realize that the textual evidence in the Itinerarium is not completely suasive and that I had to bring to bear notions developed elsewhere in Bonaventure. Furthermore I developed my interpretation by extending the logic of his system beyond the point that he explored himself. My final framework is frankly a reconstruction of my own - yet a reconstruction which I claim is compatible with Bonaventure's system, implicit within it and even demanded by its logic. If this attempt to complete Bonaventure's system is not unfounded, then it can throw light on Bonaventure's relation to the various strands of the Christian mystical tradition and can raise certain questions on the norms for judging orthodoxy. Seen in the light of our reconstruction, Bonaventure may be in greater accord with the apophatic mysticism of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, and even Gregory of Palamas than is usually acknowledged. And these theologians, in turn, seen in the light of our reconstruction of Bonaventure, may be less out of line with Christian orthodoxy than Latin theologians have been inclined to concede. On the other hand, this reconstruction may provide a framework for delineating similarities and differences between Christian and Oriental mysticism. Once the Trinitarian basis of Christian apophatic mysticism is established, one can more readily see relations with even the extreme apophatism of Zen Buddhism and the monism of non-dualistic Vedanta. In this sense, the Bonaventure system could contribute to the pioneer work that Raymond Panikkar is doing in using the Trinity as a basis for relating Christian and Oriental mysticism.²³³

Coincidence of Opposites in the Son

Having examined the coincidence of opposites in the Father, we turn now to the Son. In the Father we found a coincidence of opposites that can be read in metaphysical terms of self-sufficiency/self-communication and in mystical terms of darkness/ light, silence/speech. This is the most basic coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure's system and the source from which all others flow. Out of the Father's fecundity and self-communicating goodness the Son is generated; out of his silence, the Word is spoken. In fact, it is the Son who actualizes the Father's fecundity and establishes his self-communicating pole. In a special way, then, the Son, and not the Father, is the center of Bonaventure's attention and the focus of his more explicit treatment of the coincidence of opposites. For Bonaventure Christ is the center or medium, the persona media of the Trinity and the dynamic medium of the Father's expression. This is the theme developed explicitly in the first of the Collationes in Hexaemeron.²³⁴ Thus in the case of the Son we have a single text in which Bonaventure deals with the coincidence of opposites explicitly and at the same time systematically. Since we will examine this text in detail in our next chapter, we will merely summarize here the various types of the coincidence of opposites realized in the Trinity through the Son.

For Bonaventure the dynamic Trinity involves a complex pattern of the coincidence of opposites centered in the Son. In a large body of texts Bonaventure studies the Trinitarian processions as the expression of the divine creativity.²³⁵ The Son is the Father's Image and Word, and the Spirit is the breath and love of the divinity. Through the Son the Father's creativity expresses itself and flows back to its source in the unity of the Spirit. Thus the Trinitarian processions issue in a type of dynamic circle of divine creative energy, which remains within the inner life of the divinity and which binds the persons together in a most intimate union. Through 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. In each case the Son is the medium of this going out from and return back to the source.

If this dynamic circle within the Trinity is viewed from a more static perspective, then the Son can be seen as the middle person of the Trinity, uniting within himself the polar aspects of the Trinity: the Father's unbounded creativity and the Spirit's pure receptivity. In a most suggestive text in the first of the Collationes in Hexaemeron, Bonaventure, speaking of the Son as the medium metaphysicum, states:

This must necessarily be the center of the persons: for if there is a person who produces and is not produced and a person who is produced and does not produce, there must necessarily be a central person who is produced and produces.²³⁶

Note that Bonaventure sees the Son as the middle person of a creative process, for he focuses here exclusively on productivity. The Father, as the person who produces, is seen as the opposite pole of the Spirit, who is produced but does not produce. Between the productive and the receptive poles of the divinity, the Son is the center (medium) for he embodies within himself both productivity and receptivity. This touches a crucial issue in Trinitarian theology. Throughout the centuries, many have asked the tantalizing question: If the Father is the unbounded productive source, why does he not produce an infinity of persons, or at least a greater number than two? Bonaventure holds that the unbounded productivity of the divinity must issue in the two Trinitarian processions, for only in this way can there be realized the maximum self-diffusion of the good.²³⁷ This implies that Bonaventure's norm for maximum productivity is not mere production of large numbers, but the greatest expression of opposites. Hence for Bonaventure the Trinity is the archetype of maximum creativity which is realized by the consubstantial production of opposites and not in an infinite series of divine persons or of subordinated emanations within the realm of creatures. Thus the dynamism of this archetype is calculated by its capacity to produce opposites to the maximum degree and not by its ability to produce successive instances that can be counted arithmetically. Within this dynamic archetype the Son is the center, for in and through him the maximum coincidence of opposites is realized.

The Trinity is not only the archetype of maximum creativity, but also the archetype of unity and plurality. In the ltinerarium, after treating the Trinity as the mystery of the divine self-diffusion, Bonaventure points to the coincidence of "supreme consubstantiality with a plurality of hypostases."²³⁸ As heir to Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure studies how self-diffusive goodness demands a plurality of persons. In the first book of the Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure states:

Suppose there is in God supreme happiness. But wherever there is supreme happiness, there is supreme goodness, supreme charity and supreme enjoyment. But if there is supreme goodness, since it is characteristic of goodness to communicate itself supremely and this is especially in producing from itself an equal and giving its own being - therefore, etc. If there is supreme charity, since charity is not private love, but is directed to another, it therefore requires a plurality of persons. Likewise, if there is supreme enjoyment, since there is not enjoyable possession of a good without a companion, therefore for supreme enjoyment companionship is required and therefore a plurality of persons.²³⁹

Bonaventure continues by claiming that God's supreme perfection demands a plurality of persons. Since "it is characteristic of perfection to produce another similar to itself in nature," there must be a multiplication in God.²⁴⁰ But this cannot be realized in the production of another divine essence; therefore it must be in terms of a production of persons. Bonaventure is following out the logic of the self-diffusion of the good. Maximum self-diffusion requires production on the level of the divinity; hence this means that there must be a plurality of persons, who are intimately united in several ways: (1) by their common source from the Father's fontalis plenitude; (2) by their consubstantiality in that each shares the fullness of the divine nature; (3) by their mutual interpenetration of circuminsession. In this way the divine self-diffusion issues in the mystery of the divine unity and plurality.

The mystery of the Trinity, then, is like a precious gem which can be viewed from two sides: From one side it is the archetype of maximum productivity; from the other it is the archetype of the divine unity and plurality. The Greek East has viewed the mystery chiefly from the first perspective; and the Latin West, following Augustine, chiefly from the second. I believe that these perspectives are by no means incompatible but are related as complementary opposites. This is precisely the way in which Bonaventure has integrated them into his system. However, I believe that one must give a certain primacy to the dynamic Trinity, as Bonaventure does, following the Greek tradition. For it is the dynamism of the Father that is the source of the plurality of persons. In the West there has been a tendency to pose the Trinitarian question exclusively from the perspective of unity and plurality and to fail to take into account the entire problematic of the divine fecundity. This has caused not only an ignoring of problems that must be faced, but also a weakening of the doctrine of the Trinity. For the Trinity is not primarily a mystery that challenges the rational understanding of the divine simplicity; rather it is, as Bonaventure has so abundantly declared, primarily the mystery of the boundless creativity of God.

Coincidence of God and the World

Bonaventure's doctrine of God emphasizes the divine transcendence. In view of his self-sufficiency, God does not need the world for his being; and in view of his intra-Trinitarian self-diffusion, he does not depend on the world for the activation of his creativity. Although God is transcendent in both poles of his being, he is immanent in the world. The coincidence of transcendence and immanence is achieved through the Son as medium. Just as the Son is the persona media of the Trinity, so he is the medium between God and the world. Through him is realized a coincidence of the infinite and the finite, the Creator and the creature, the eternal and the temporal, the beginning and the end.

When the Father generates the Son, he generates in the Son the archetypes of all he can make. As Bonaventure says: "The Father generated one similar to himself, namely the Word, co-eternal with himself; and he expressed his own likeness and as a consequence expressed all the things that he could make."²⁴¹ Thus the Father's fecundity which expresses itself in the Word also produces in the Word the rationes aeternae of all that can be made. Creation ad extra, then, is an overflow of this divine fecundity and remains deeply grounded in the Word. The Word, then, is the basis of Bonaventure's doctrine of exemplarism, for through their exemplaristic grounding in the Word, all creatures reflect God and lead man to God. The world is like a mirror reflecting God, a stained glass window in which the divine light is reflected in various colors, like a statue depicting God and a road leading to God. With great precision, Bonaventure divides creatures into various levels of representing God: shadow, vestige, image, and similitude.²⁴²

The crucial issue in Bonaventure's doctrine of exemplarism is the ontological status of the rationes aeternae or divine ideas which are the exemplars of creatures. According to Bonaventure these rationes aeternae are produced by the Father's fecundity in the generation of the Son. They exist within the Son with a twofold reference: insofar as the Son is the Father's Image they reflect the Father's boundless fecundity; insofar as the Son is the Father's Word, they are oriented towards his expression of himself ad extra, outside the infra-Trinitarian life in the production of creatures in the finite realm. These rationes aeternae, then, are the media of the coincidence of God and the world. As rationes aeternae within the Son, they are not distinct from the divine reality of the Son, and are not really distinct among themselves. Hence they provide the divine ground of unity, and at the same time they are the source for extra-divine multiple existence. Thus in the Son, through the rationes aeternae, there is a coincidence of the infinite and the finite of unity and multiplicity.²⁴³

Note that we have here quite a different type of the coincidence of opposites from those in the Trinity, where absolute consubstantiality is found in all cases. The Father's silence is consubstantial with his speech; his self-sufficiency with his self-diffusion. Within the dynamic Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit are con-substantial, as are the two perspectives of the Trinitarian archetype: that of creativity and that of unity/plurality. In the case of God and the world, however, consubstantiality is precisely what is lacking. Since God and creation exist on radically different planes, this radical difference is at the core of the coincidence of opposites. God and the world are related as ontological opposites and not as mere polar opposites within the realm of dynamic spirit. Although it is true that the divine polarities are the source of all the polarities in the universe, we must not merely transpose the paradigms from the Trinity to the relation of God and the world without crucial modifications. Permeating the relation of God and the world, at every stage, is the coincidence of the ontological opposites of the Creator/creatures, infinite/finite, maximum/minimum, eternal/temporal.

Bonaventure's exemplarism can be described as involving three levels. The first contains the most general principle that there exist in the divine mind ideas which are the exemplars of created things. Bonaventure sees God as the great artist or maker who gives form to the things he produces. Hence "if he gives to a certain thing the form by which it is distinguished from another thing or the property by which it is distinguished from another thing, it is necessary that he have an ideal form or rather ideal forms."²⁴⁴

The second level of Bonaventure's exemplarism contains the position that in Cod there exist the ideas not only of generic and specific forms, but of singulars as well. Following Augustine, Bonaventure holds that the singular and the universal must be represented in the divine mind with the greatest actuality:

Because the divine wisdom is most perfect, it knows most distinctly universal and singular things and represents all these things most distinctly and perfectly. Hence it is said to have the forms and ideas of singular things as the most perfectly expressive likenesses of things.²⁴⁵

The third level of Bonaventure's exemplarism draws us explicitly into his doctrine of truth. Not only do things exist actually in their divine exemplars, but they have their greatest reality there. Hence we know them most truly when we know them in the divine mind. Since God represents things preeminently, Bonaventure can say, "I will see myself better in God than in my very self."²⁴⁶ In the disputed questions De scientia Christi, Bonaventure develops this point more in detail when he responds to an objection. Against his position that God knows things in their exemplars, the objection is posed that truth is found more in the thing itself than in its likeness. Hence God should know things better in themselves than in his eternal ideas of things.²⁴⁷ Bonaventure answers by saying that truth can be looked upon in two ways: (1) "Truth is that which is," according to Augustine;²⁴⁸ (2) or according to Anselm, "Truth is rectitude perceptible to the mind alone."²⁴⁹ In relating these two aspects of truth, Bonaventure reveals his fundamental Platonism. For him the first type of truth - the way things are - is remote and removed from their ultimate reality. The second kind of truth touches the ultimate reality of things; for it grasps the rectitude of things, their ideal forms, the way they ought to be. Since the ultimate reality of things is found in their divine exemplars, their ultimate truth resides there as well:

The exemplary likeness expresses the thing more perfectly than the caused thing itself expresses itself. On account of this, God knows things more perfectly through their likenesses than he would know them through their essences; and angels know things more perfectly in the Word than in their own reality.²⁵⁰

The full force of Bonaventure's exemplarism can be seen in this third level, where things have a preeminent existence in the Word. It is this preeminent existence that establishes the intimate coincidence between God and the world and which provides the central element in Bonaventure's speculative articulation of Francis' cosmic religious experience. We can attempt to reconstruct the essential elements in Francis' religious experience by searching through his own writings and the early biographies. From this evidence it would be safe to claim that Francis experienced each creature as a unique expression of God's fecundity. He rejoiced in the variety of creatures; he admired the grandeur of the sun and the simplicity of an earthworm. He reverenced each creature for its individuality, as expressing something unique about God.²⁵¹ We could say that for Francis each individual creature expressed something about God that no other creature could express. It is this profound sense of the interpenetration of the world and God that Bonaventure articulates in metaphysical theological terms in his doctrine of exemplarism, whereby each individual creature has within the Word its own ratio aeterna and its preeminent existence. Thus echoing Francis, we can extend Bonaventure's statement, claiming that I will know each thing better in God than in its very self.

Bonaventure's Epistemology

According to Bonaventure's exemplarism, all creatures are shadows reflecting God as their cause. All creatures are also vestiges of the Trinity, reflecting the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. Rational creatures reflect God in a special way for they are his image, having him as their object in the depths of their memory, understanding, and will. In his doctrine of man as image of God, Bonaventure's exemplarism coincides with his epistemology. In human knowledge, there is a coincidence of God and man, the unchangeable and the changeable, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal.²⁵²

According to Bonaventure, in all certain knowledge, God is present to us as the light that illumines our mind and the ground that supports the truth we discover. When man turns within himself and moves to God, he proceeds not through Aristotelian analogy but through Augustinian image. Man looks into his own subjectivity as into a mirror where the divine light shines. What he focuses on is the light that is reflected and not the mirror itself. God is both the light by which we see and the preeminent source of the forms we discern. He is, Bonaventure says, even more beautiful than the sun. While the sun has the power of radiating light, it does not contain within itself the forms of things, as God does. Hence God is more beautiful than the sun, since he not only radiates light, but has within himself the clear and brilliant forms of things. God, then, is the eternal exemplar, who represents things preeminently and in whom we read true reality.²⁵³ Although we abstract the forms of things from sense objects, these very objects are ultimately grounded in the divine mind so that in some degree we attain in a shadowy way the very archetypes of things in God. Thus our minds are bathed in the divine light and in touch with the eternal forms. God is in our mind and our mind is in God; all things are in God and God in all things. Thus along with his metaphysics of exemplarism, his epistemology of illumination establishes profound intimacy between God and creatures.

For a full exploration of Bonaventure's epistemology, we would have to examine his positions on sense knowledge, abstraction, and the agent and possible intellect; as well as his theory of illumination and knowledge in the eternal reasons. Bonaventure's epistemology is complex because it brings together both Aristotelian and Platonic elements; just how these elements are integrated in his system has been a matter of considerable discussion among his interpreters. Granted this complexity, the point I wish to make here is that in his study of knowledge he takes a path to God through human subjectivity - a path which implies a coincidence of opposites in the human mind. We will examine three series of texts where this is expressed: (1) his proofs for the existence of God in the disputed questions De mysterio Trinitatis; (2) his inner way in Chapter Three of the Itinerarium; (3) and his classical text on knowledge through the eternal reasons in the fourth question of the disputed questions De scientia Christi.²⁵⁴ In each case Bonaventure explores the coincidence of man and God in the processes of human knowledge. I believe that it is especially fruitful to approach Bonaventure's epistemology from the standpoint of the coincidence of opposites; for it can, I believe, clear away some of the false presuppositions that have obscured this area of his thought.

An important series of texts on the coincidence of God and man in knowledge appears in the first question of the disputed questions De mysterio Trinitatis. He divides the question into two articles, the first dealing with the certitude with which God's existence is known and the second dealing with the faith by which the Trinity is believed.²⁵⁵ In the first article, he does not set out to prove the existence of God in the way Thomas does in his Summa theologiae.²⁵⁶ Rather he follows a generic Augustinian approach, asking whether the existence of God is a truth which cannot be doubted. The very statement of the question situates the issue within the sphere of the mind with its subjective states of doubt and certitude. He will arrive at an Augustinian solution which involves a coincidence of opposites: Although the mind is changeable, it has within it infallible knowledge of unchangeable truth.

In order to establish his position, he moves in three directions: first within himself, then outside himself, and then above himself. Bonaventure claims that there is no rational basis for doubting God's existence, "Since if the intellect enters within itself or goes outside itself or gazes above itself, if it proceeds rationally, then it knows that God exists, with certitude and without doubt."²⁵⁷ Although the posing of the question is from an Augustinian perspective, Bonaventure integrates into his perspective the Aristotelian proofs from act and potency based on the contingency of creatures. This is what he means by moving outside oneself. In the third division, in which the intellect gazes above itself, he integrates into the Augustinian perspective also Anselm's ontological argument. For when the intellect looks above itself to the notion of God as that than which no greater can be thought, it must realize that God necessarily exists.²⁵⁸

Although Bonaventure has subsumed all three approaches within an Augustinian perspective, it is the first approach which will command our attention here: namely, through our own subjectivity, since it involves a characteristically Augustinian coincidence of opposites in knowledge. Bonaventure begins this approach by stating that every truth impressed on all minds is a truth that cannot be doubted. But he contends: "Both by authorities and by reasons it is shown that God's existence is impressed on all rational minds."²⁵⁹ He cites John Damascene as saying: "Knowledge of God's existence is naturally inserted in us." He next quotes from Hugh of St. Victor: "God so regulated knowledge of himself in man that just as what he is can never be totally comprehended, so his existence can never be completely unknown." Next he quotes Boethius: "There is inserted in the minds of men a desire for truth and goodness." Bonaventure then reasons that desire presupposes knowledge; hence there is impressed on the minds of men knowledge of truth and goodness and the desire of what is most desirable. But, Bonaventure says, this good is God. He then proceeds to draw from the De Trinitate of Augustine the notion of the soul as image of God. According to Augustine, the image consists in the mind, knowledge and love. The soul, then, by its very nature is the image of God; hence it has knowledge of God inserted within itself. "But what is first known about God is that he exists; therefore this is naturally inserted in the human mind." Then drawing certain principles from Aristotle, Bonaventure interprets them in the same vein. He concludes the section gathering other material from Augustine and by reasoning on the soul's knowledge of itself. He brings his exploration to a climax by saying: "God is most present to the soul itself and through himself is knowable; therefore there is inserted in the soul knowledge of God himself."²⁶⁰

In each of the ten paragraphs where he developed these themes, Bonaventure has moved through the path of subjectivity to knowledge of God as a coincidence of opposites. Knowledge of God is present in man's mind in such a way that he cannot logically doubt God's existence. In the light of this Augustinian approach, Bonaventure can even bring Aristotle into the path of the inner way. The path through subjectivity is more clearly charted in the Itinerarium, where the journey motif is made explicit as the unifying theme of the entire work. Here, more clearly than in the previous texts, the reader is led to see the coincidence of opposites in the depths of man's faculties of memory, understanding, and will.

Subjectivity in the Itinerarium

In the Itinerarium the path of the journey is basically the same as that outlined in the disputed question. Bonaventure conternplates God in the external world, within the soul and in God himself; however the Franciscan contemplation is interwoven with characteristic Augustinian speculation and dialectical self-reflection.

After contemplating the reflection of God in the external world, Bonaventure turns to the soul in the third chapter of the Itinerarium. He says that we are "to reenter into ourselves, that is, into our mind, where the divine image shines forth."²⁶¹ Using the image of entering into the tabernacle of Moses, he says that we are to leave the outer atrium, that is the external world, and enter into the inner realm of the tabernacle, that is into ourselves, where we will see God through a mirror, for the light of truth shines like a candelabrum in our minds. "Enter into yourself, therefore, and observe. . . ," Bonaventure bids us as he leads us on an inner journey into the depths of our memory, understanding and will, where we discover the reflection of God in the soul as image of the Trinity.²⁶²

Bonaventure first explores the memory, moving through its various levels until he comes to the reflection of God in its depths. On one level the memory retains and represents temporal things: "the past by remembrance, the present by reception and the future by foresight."²⁶³ On another level it retains basic mathematical notions such as the point. On a deeper level it retains the principles and axioms of the sciences in such a way that it cannot forget them as long as one uses reason. For when he hears them again, he assents to them, not as though he were perceiving them anew, but rather recognizing them as innate and familiar. On this third level the memory has present in itself a changeless light in which it remembers changeless truths. Bonaventure then concludes:

And thus it is clear from the activities of the memory that the soul itself is an image of God and a similitude so present to itself and having him so present to it that it actually grasps him and potentially 'is capable of possessing him and of becoming a partaker in him.'²⁶⁴

In a similar way Bonaventure explores the intellect, analyzing our knowledge of terms and definitions and our awareness of being. We can know limited being only in the light of unlimited being, since the mind knows negations only in the light of something positive. Therefore our intellect does not arrive at a full analysis of any single created being unless it is aided by a knowledge of the eternal and absolute Being. For, Bonaventure asks, how could we perceive something as defective if we had no knowledge of the Being that is free from all defect? Also the intellect grasps certain truths as changeless and necessary, but this knowledge can be had only in the divine unchangeable light.²⁶⁵

Bonaventure next examines the will or elective faculty. When it inquires of two things which is better, it does so in view of the notion of the highest Good which must necessarily be impressed upon the soul. Furthermore, when we judge that something is right, we do so in the light of the divine law that transcends our minds but nevertheless is stamped on the mind. Finally, when we desire something, we desire it in the light of the highest good, either because it leads to it or resembles it. After making this journey into the depths of subjectivity through the memory, understanding and will. Bonaventure concludes: "See, therefore, how close the soul is to God, and how, through their activity, the memory leads us to eternity, the intelligence to truth and the elective faculty to the highest good."²⁶⁶

Knowledge in the Eternal Reasons

In the fourth question of the disputed questions De scientia Christi, Bonaventure examines the epistemological issue from the standpoint of certain knowledge. He asks whether whatever we know with certitude is known in the eternal reasons. He answers affirmatively, but with certain precisions: "For certain intellectual knowledge even in this life, it is required that we attain in some way the eternal reason, as the regulating and motive reason, but not in all its clarity, but along with our own created reason and as in a glass darkly."²⁶⁷

For proof of his position, Bonaventure analyzes the ontological status of certain knowledge and of the knower. Certain knowledge requires immutability on the part of what is known and infallibility on the part of the knower. But created truth is not immutable and our minds are fallible. Therefore for certain knowledge, we must attain a truth which is immutable and which is known in an infallible light. Turning to his doctrine of exemplarism, Bonaventure observes that things have existence in themselves, in the mind of the knower and in the Eternal Art, that is, in the Word as the expression of the Father. Since created things are mutable in themselves and since man's mind is fallible, certain knowledge demands that we touch, in some way, things as they exist immutably in the Eternal Art.²⁶⁸

This leads Bonaventure to his doctrine of the soul. He distinguishes two portions of the soul: the lower (portio inferior) , which is concerned with temporal things; and the higher ( portio superior), which is turned to the eternal reasons. It is this higher portion that constitutes the soul as image of God, and it is this portion that inheres in the eternal norms (aeternis regulis inhaerescit) .²⁶⁹ These are the norms by which we search for truth and judge that what we have found is true; they are the norms of justice and charity, of fear and love of God - that are reflected even in the souls of evil men.²⁷⁰ In certitude, Bonaventure says, we contact the eternal reason "as the normative and motive reason" (ut ratio regulans et motiva) . This means that we contact the Word as the ultimate source and norm of all truth and goodness.²⁷¹

How do we contact the Word? Certainly not in all his brightness, for Bonaventure is talking here about the lowest level of intellectual illumination. And even in mystical ecstasy, according to him, we do not experience God completely. In the experience of certitude we grasp the Word - in the midst of darkness and obscurity, without consciousness of his presence, precisely as the norm and motive of our certitude. The experience of the divine light is further bound up with our own created light of knowing (propria ratio creata) and the abstract concepts and impressions drawn from the sense world (rerum similitudines abstractas a phantasmate). Bonaventure says that the eternal reason is "contuited" (contuita) , that it is known along with many other elements.²⁷²

"Contuition" is a basic concept for Bonaventure and touches the heart of his Franciscan experience. It means that we see God along with creation - not directly, nor in all his brightness, but in and through our experience: that is, in a Franciscan coincidence of opposites. This does not mean, however, that all of our knowledge is derived from sense data; on the contrary, Bonaventure says:

The soul knows God and itself and what is in itself without the aid of the exterior senses. Hence if at some time the Philosopher says that nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in sense and that all knowledge has its origin from sense, this should be understood about those things which indeed have existence in the soul through an abstracted likeness. And these are said to be in the soul in the manner of writings. And therefore the Philosopher very pointedly says that there is nothing written in the soul, not because there is no knowledge in it, but because there is no picture or abstract likeness in it.²⁷³

Bonaventure sees the soul as a tabula rasa as far as abstract concepts are concerned, but not as far as knowledge of God, the ideals of the virtues, such as justice, charity, fear and love of God, or the norm of the true and the good. These are inborn in the soul, and by reflecting within himself man can come to an awareness of them. But even in our ethical striving, our desire for happiness, our thirst for knowledge, God is "contuited" - he is known along with our human experience, as the ground and the norm of our striving; he is not known directly in all his brightness, but in the coincidence of opposites whereby his light shines in our experience.

An example of "contuition" which includes the process of abstraction would be the first principle: The whole is greater than its part. We have no innate knowledge of this principle, since our mind is a blank tablet, having no pictures or concepts of whole and part. However, when we sense some material thing and abstract the concept of the whole and part, we immediately know that the whole is greater than its part. And we know this not as something new, but as if we always knew it, as something necessary and eternal.²⁷⁴ In this knowledge we have touched the eternal; we know this in the eternal reason, in the divine light. The abstraction from sense data is necessary to give us the material, but in knowing this as a necessary principle, we "contuit" the eternal Word.

Through exemplarism, the epistemology of illumination, and contuition Bonaventure proposes a type of mysticism of knowledge. Through the coincidence of opposites, he draws into consciousness the religious depth that underlies everyday experience. He is typically Franciscan. What could be more ordinary than the statement: The whole is greater than its part? And yet God is present at the moment when we say, Aha! Bonaventure seeks to make God's presence known, to contemplate him in his reflection in our experience and to mount above through the successive stages of illumination he describes in the Itinerarium. Everyday experience leads to a philosophical insight that awakens religious consciousness that may, with God's grace, lead to mystical ecstasy. This is Bonaventure's journey, through the coincidence of opposites, into God.

The Fallen Image

Through Bonaventure's epistemology man is seen as the image of the Trinity, reflecting through the coincidence of opposites the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. But to be an image of the Trinity is both man's glory and his tragedy, for he is a fallen image. The very coincidence of opposites that is the key to understanding man as image is also the key to understanding him as fallen image. Bonaventure uses vivid symbols to paint a picture of man in his tragic state: He speaks of man as having fallen (ceciderit) and lying on the ground, in need of someone to give him his hand to raise him up.²⁷⁵ He describes a strange blindness of the intellect (mixa caecitas) which prevents man from seeing the presence of God. Accustomed to darkness of sensation, man is like the bat in the daylight that sees nothing;²⁷⁶ he is blinded (excaecatus) and bent over (incurvatus), and he sits in darkness and does not see the light of heaven.²⁷⁷ But man still has an appetite for the infinite; the coincidence of opposites still operates within his soul. But because he is not open to God, because he has fallen, the infinite pole of his being is thrust aimlessly into the prison of finitude. In his darkness and confusion he has entangled himself in infinite questions (infinitis quaestionibus). He is filled with anxiety. He desires the infinite; he searches for it; he is never at rest.²⁷⁸

Being an image of God, then, is the cause of man's highest perfection and the reason for his present anxiety. It is also the source of his fall and the root of the suffering of the damned. Satan could tempt man with the premise that "a rational creature should desire to be like his Creator because he is his image - for this reason the punishment in the damned will be extreme, since to be an image is essential to the soul and such a desire will be essential in the damned."²⁷⁹

A major text on the fall of man is found in the preface of the second book of Bonaventure's Commentary on the Sentences²⁸⁰ In the plan of the Commentary the first book deals with God, the second with creation and the fall of man. In his preface, Bonaventure paints in vivid strokes a picture of the ideal from which man has fallen and his tragic groping for God. As Trinitarian image, his faculties of memory, understanding and will should in their depths be open to and rooted in the transcendent power, wisdom and goodness of the Trinity. Instead man is turned from his ultimate rootedness; in dizziness, darkness and uncontrolled desire, he is slave to his infinite desire in its endless and futile grasping after creatures.

Bonaventure begins his preface with a verse from Ecclesiastes (7:30) : "Only this have I found, that God made man right and man has entangled himself in infinite questions." As the editors note, from this short text he draws the outlines of the entire second book of his Commentary and at the same time penetrates deeply into the tragedy of the human situation.²⁸¹ The text gives the two aspects of man: his right creation (recta conditio) and his miserable deviation (miserabilis deviatio). God made man right by making him an image of God and turning him to God. "For man is right when his intelligence coincides with the supreme truth in knowing, his will conforms to the supreme loving and his power is united to the supreme power in acting. Now this is when man is turned to God in his total self."²⁸²

Bonaventure here is using his notion of man as image of Trinity as described above. When man turns to God as supreme truth, goodness and power, then he is right. Bonaventure draws the concept of Tightness (rectitude) from Anselm, who defines truth as "rightness perceptible to the mind alone."²⁸³ Bonaventure observes that "when our intellect coincides with truth, it is necessarily made right."²⁸⁴ He then integrates Anselm's definition with the medieval definition, attributed to Aristotle, that truth is the coinciding (adaequatio) of reality and the intellect. However, it must be noted here that Bonaventure means this not in the sense that the mind is like a blank tablet on which a true concept of an external sense object is delineated. Rather he means it in the sense of man as image of God, with supreme truth reflected in his soul. If man turns to this supreme truth, then he is made true: "Now when our intelligence is turned to truth, it is made true and as a result coincides with truth."²⁸⁵ Bonaventure uses the same approach with goodness: "When the will is conformed to eternal goodness and equity, it is necessarily made right."²⁸⁶

In dealing with power, Bonaventure uses a different aspect of the Latin term rectus. The first meaning of rectus is straight, a meaning which is retained in the English derivative rectilinear. From this basic spatial meaning arises the moral and esthetic meaning of power: A thing is right when it has all that it ought to have. In the preface Bonaventure intends all these meanings. When dealing with man's being united to the supreme power, he begins with the spatial meaning of straight. Man is straight when he is in the straight line of moving without deviation from his first principle towards his ultimate end. God's action is always straight since everything is from God and on account of God; so when man unites himself to God's action or power, he will be made straight, since he will be rooted in his first principle and moving to his final end.

In being created right, man was turned above to God and subjected to him; he was also turned to creatures, but they were subjected to him. He had wisdom and knowledge about the world, and he could use all things for his purposes. "But man has entangled himself in infinite questions." Just as Bonaventure played on the meaning of rectus, so now he plays on the meaning of the Latin quaestio. The primary meaning of quaestio is a seeking or searching, hence an asking or questioning. When Bonaventure says that "man has entangled himself in infinite questions," he understands quaestio in its deepest level as searching and desiring. After the Fall, man is still an image of God; he has lost contact with God because he has turned from him, but he still bears his image stamped on his soul. He still has the desire for God, the appetite for the infinite; for this remains even in hell. He wanders about the world, never at rest, in an infinite search for the infinite good he has lost. He has fallen into the fragmented finite world, with a thousand desires, a thousand questions. "Man," Bonaventure says, "has been made anxious in his searching. And because nothing created can compensate for the good he has lost, since it is infinite, he desires it, he searches for it and he is never at rest."²⁸⁷

Bonaventure then describes man's infinite searching. "His intelligence, made ignorant by turning itself away from the supreme truth, entangled itself in infinite questions out of curiosity."²⁸⁸ He is entangled in controversies and doubt, in disputes and wrangling. There is a touch of irony in Bonaventure's interpretation of man's fall as entangling him in infinite questions, for his preface introduces a commentary containing hundreds of scholastic questions (quaestiones) set in the argumentative form of the disputatio.

Man's will has been made poor by turning away from the supreme good. It is driven by concupiscence and infinite desires, and has become entangled in murder, theft, adultery. His power has become weak and unstable. He feels a kind of metaphysical dizziness, because he has lost his grounding in infinite power; he is like dust driven by the wind. "Since, therefore, dust cannot be at rest as long as there is a wind that whirls it around, so our power cannot remain stable. And therefore it searches and moves through an infinite number of places and begs support."²⁸⁹

This, then, is the state of infinite searching in which man, after having been created right, has become entangled and from which he has need to be redeemed. The coincidence of opposites at the base of his being has become distorted. He must be rescued, brought back from his fallen state by Christ, the greatest coincidence of opposites. As persona media of the Trinity and the medium in whom God and the world coincide, he takes upon himself in the Incarnation the depths of finitude and the burden of sin. Entering into the opposites of evil and death, he brings forth life and restores to its primitive rectitude the fallen image in man. As Incarnate Word, Christ re-establishes man as Trinitarian image and with the Spirit brings him back to the unity of the Father.

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