Bonaventure: philosophy and theology

Bonaventure

Cardinal Bonaventure (1221-74) was a general of Franciscan Order and one of the most famous theologists of the Middle Age epoch. His philosophical works, concerning different moral and ethical questions of religion as well as the works about general concept of religion and philosophy, will always take a favorable place in theological literature.

Being a true representative of his age, Bonaventure supported the official line of Catholic Church teaching, as well as its major views on the questions of religious philosophy and ethics. As we know Franciscan Order was one of the major strongholds of Catholic Church, with a typical organization and rules for the Middle age epoch in Catholic Europe. No wonder Bonaventure criticized and even persecuted the supporters of Roger Bacon's progressive ideas. Still his works had made a valuable contribution to the religious thought and are more than worth to be referred to when studying theology.

His major work "The journey of the Mind to God" is a philosophical literature piece, influenced by mystical and scholastic ideas. Using rich literature language full of allegories, metaphors and comparisons, Bonaventure makes his best to carry reader over to the world of mysticism, as he was convinced only mystics is able to provide a man opportunities to reach the unification with God and assist man in achieving Devine enlightenment. For Bonaventure the highest stage of cognition was supernatural ecstatic illumination when a man was performing union with God. For Bonaventure as well as for many other theologists God was supernatural reasonable creature and is a primary reason of matter and phenomena. Bonaventure supported ontological proof of God's existence. He supported arguments that all people have an image of God as of a perfect creature, but this idea could not appear if God didn't exist in reality. Therefore God exists, as Bonaventure states. Bonaventure argues that God can not be cognized by human reason, the only way to experience God is the Devine revelation or contemplation, as Bonaventure writes: "man was created fit for the quiet of contemplation." (I.7) Bonaventure, having proposed such theory agrees that materialist world we live in, has no possibility to unite God and human, as the world is materialistic and can be cognized just by senses and reason, but instead a human has to use this world as a ladder in order to aspire to God: "The material universe itself is a ladder by which we may ascend to God." (I.2). Bonaventure states that Jesus Christ is the ladder that will take us to God, as he represents that only tiny thread, which unites our world with God's world.

In order to start the journey to achieve unity with God human has to turn to God and give his soul to God completely and fully. According to Bonaventure, journey may be divided into three steps, each is vital in order to achieve the main goal. Bonaventure had outlined those three steps which are: purification or purgation, illumination and the final one is union with God. In order to start the journey the person has to devote his life to God, has to pure his soul of sins and make reevaluation of common values, giving priority to spiritual and religious development of his personality. As Bonaventure writes, the soul is created innocent and is always seeking for God and that's why the spiritual journey to union with God is a natural state and natural feature of human soul:

Now desire tends principally toward what moves it most; but what moves it most is what is loved most, and what is loved most is happiness. But happiness is had only in terms of the best and ultimate end. Therefore human desire seeks nothing except the highest good or what leads to or has some likeness to it. So great is the power of the highest good that nothing can be loved by a creature except out of desire for it. Creatures, when they take the image and copy for the Truth, are deceived and in error."(Bonaventure 84)

To start the purification, the human has to become devoted to God and start praying, because the prayer paves the way to grace and God's mercy. As Bonaventure writes, grace: "comes to those who seek it from their hearts humbly and devoutly; and this means to sigh for it in this vale of tears, aided only by fervent prayer. Thus prayer is the mother and source of ascent in God"(Bonaventure 60).

Besides praying other ascetic Christian practices such as intricate life style, moderate behavior are also essential for achieving spiritual purification:

Whoever wishes to ascend to God must first avoid sin, which deforms our nature, then exercise his natural powers mentioned above: by praying, to receive restoring grace; by a good life, to receive purifying justice; by meditating, to receive illuminating knowledge; and by contemplating, to receive perfecting wisdom."(Bonaventure 63).

So for Bonaventure, purification is not only the purification of soul, but the purification of mind and body as well, because a person has to be ready to accept God and he has to be ready for this act not only mentally, but physically and spiritually. Bonaventure believes that soul is able to perceive and has senses. As he writes:

It should be noted that this world, which is called the macrocosm, enters our soul, which is called the smaller world, through the doors of the five senses as we perceive, enjoy and judge sensible things."(Bonaventure 69). That's why as the soul can perceive it is able to differentiate spiritual part of the materialistic world we live in: "When through these five senses we perceive the motion of bodies, we are led to the knowledge of spiritual movers, as from effect to cause."(Bonaventure 70)

After the soul has finished purification, time for illumination comes as Bonaventure writes. Illumination is the next step to the union with God, as the human's soul is already prepared for changes and prepared for future unity with God. Illumination is complicated process which takes place being divided into three levels:

For in this stage, when the inner senses are restored to see the highest beauty, to hear the highest sweetness, to apprehend the highest delight, the soul is prepared for spiritual ecstasy through devotion, admiration and exultation according to the three exclamations in the Canticle of Canticles."(Bonaventure 89).

Bonaventure writes that a soul experiences different changes through purification and illumination as "reformation of the image, through the theological virtues, through the delights of the spiritual senses and through mystical ecstasies."(Bonaventure 90). After soul's purification comes a time, when the soul is renewed and is given "delights of spiritual senses." This illumination may be achieved through meditation, and Bonaventure writes about it making parallels of prayer with meditation as these two practices have similar effects on one's soul and similar effects on human psychics. Bonaventure also lets us know that illumination of the soul is a mystical process which is over the limits of human reason and of human perception of the world:

if you wish to know how these things may come about, ask grace, not learning; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not diligence in reading; the Bridegroom, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity; not light, but the fire that wholly inflames and carries on into God..." (VII.6)

After the illumination of the soul, after the soul is renewed and has got different essence and different vision of the world, after a person is able to perceive the world around him with love, with joy and with happiness, in a word after the human had become enlightened and had achieved desired clearance in his spiritual world he is ready for the union of God with his soul. For Bonaventure the final step was the core of this journey, or a search for God, as the union of God and soul also covers human mind and human body. The perfection of human soul is a result of these spiritual searches and spiritual practices: "For if an image is an expressed likeness, when our mind contemplates in Christ the Son of God, who is the image of the invisible God by nature, our humanity so wonderfully exalted, so ineffably united, 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 with in and without, it now reaches something perfect. It reaches the perfection of its illuminations on the sixth stage." (Bonaventure, 108).

The views of Bonaventure about the unity of soul and God are very similar to the idea that soul is given by God and returns to God when achieving reunion, because God and soul are the whole and as Bonaventure continues: "Let us, then, die and enter into the darkness; Let us impose silence upon our cares, 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."(Bonaventure 116) Bonaventure's philosophy has experienced a lot of features of mysticism, as for Bonaventure mysticism is the only way to perform a spiritual journey to God. We can also observe it in the work, as he blindly refers to the bible texts:

By Scripture we are taught that we should be purged, illumined and perfected according to the threefold law handed down in it: the law of nature, of Scripture and of grace; or rather, according to its three principal parts: the law of Moses which purifies, prophetic revelation which illumines, and the gospel teaching which perfects; or especially, according to its threefold spiritual meaning: the topological, which purifies one for an upright life; the allegorical, which illumines one for clarity of understanding; and the anagogical, which perfects through spiritual ecstasies and sweet perceptions of wisdom."(Bonaventure 91)