Lydia Schumacher

BONAVENTURES JOURNEY OF THE MIND INTO GOD:

A TRADITIONAL AUGUSTINIAN ASCENT? 1

Bonaventures Itinerarium mentis in deum is widely regarded as the

last and best Medieval account of the ascent to God that Augustine outlines in a number of his works, particularly, De trinitate.2
More generally, the Franciscan is considered to be the ultimate
Medieval champion of the longstanding Augustinian intellectual
tradition.3
These assumptions are founded on the fact that Bonaventure
frequently invokes the authority of Augustine in presenting his
views. Although he made some use of the recently rediscovered
works of Aristotle, this usage was apparently more conservative
1. An earlier, less-developed version of this article appears in French in the journal Etudes Franciscaines , n.s. 4 (2011).
2. C. Carpenter, Theology as the Road to Holiness in St. Bonaventure, Paulist Press,
Mahwah 1999, 76; E. Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites, Franciscan
Herald Press, Chicago 1978, 73; C. Cullen, Bonaventure, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, 87; E. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, trans. I. Trethowan and
F. Sheed, St. Anthony Guild Press, Paterson 1965, 441; D. Turner, The Darkness of God:
Negativity and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, 102;
F. Van Fleteren, The Ascent of the Soul in the Augustinian Tradition, in N. van Deusen
(cur.), Paradigms in Medieval Thought: Applications in Medieval Disciplines, Edwin Mellen
Press, New York 1990, 93-110.
3. For example, see E. Bettoni, Bonaventure, trans. A. Gambateste, University of
Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1964, 19; Carpenter, Theology as the Road to Holiness,
v; Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites, 2; Cullen, Bonaventure; Gilson,
The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure; S.P. Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance: Science
and the Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century, vol. 1, Brill, Leiden 2001; P. Robert,
Le problme de la philosophie bonaventurienne: Aristotelisme Neoplatonisant ou Augustinisme?,
Laval thol. philos. , 7 (1950), 145-163.

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and critical than that of his contemporaries, including the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. In the view of many modern scholars,
in fact, Bonaventures overriding concern was to systematize the
previously predominant thought of Augustine so that it could
withstand the threat Aristotles rising popularity posed to its authoritative status. The decline of the Augustinian tradition towards the end of the thirteenth century would seem to suggest
that Bonaventures labours were in vain.
In this article, I propose to demonstrate that Bonaventures
work is far more innovative and impactful than it has been perceived. I will do this by showing that his understanding of the
minds journey towards God and its cognitive work overall differs
quite significantly from Augustines. On my contention, Bonaventure does not give full and final expression to Augustines views
on human knowledge so much as he codifies an altogether novel
definition of knowledge, which his immediate Franciscan predecessors had developed in the interest of accounting for Francis of
Assisis experience of God and reality.4
Though Bonaventure does indeed appeal at regular intervals to
Augustine, I suggest that he does this in keeping with the scholastic practice of bolstering personal opinions not necessarily those
of any authority by finding them in the writings of authorities
that represented a relevant cause. Since Augustine stood for the
spiritual tradition of the middle ages, and the Franciscans aimed to
cast their scholarly work in the mystical light that guided their
founder Francis, the Bishop of Hippo was the seemingly obvious
choice of sponsor. To sum up: my argument is that Bonaventure
enlisted Augustine in promoting Franciscan thought rather than
the other way around.

4. On Bonaventures relationship to his Franciscan teachers, see S. Matthews,

Reason, Community, and Religious Tradition: Anselms Argument and the Friars, Ashgate,
Aldershot 2001. On his originality as a Franciscan, see O. Todisco, Lo stupore della
ragione. Il pensare francescano e la filosofia moderna, Messaggero, Padova 2003; Id., La libert fondamento della verit. Ermeneutica francescana del pensare occidentale, Messaggero,
Padova 2008.

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Bonaventures reasons for doing this become fairly obvious

when the historical context of his work is taken into consideration. For the better part of the thirteenth century, the intellectual
endeavours of Franciscans were regarded with more than mild
suspicion by members of the university faculty, who charged
them with anti-intellectualism and a variety of other crimes. To
make matters worse, conservative members of the order itself
protested the Franciscan involvement in university life, citing
Francis original call to abandon intellectual pursuits in favour of a
life of poverty and ministerial service.
For Bonaventure, invoking the authority of Augustine was a
way to locate the Franciscan intellectual tradition in relation to his
broader intellectual tradition still respected by academics. Since
this tradition was at once a spiritual tradition, appeals to it posed a
means to persuading the Franciscans themselves that studies could
promote Francis spiritual ends. To summarize, the invocation of
Augustine by Bonaventure promoted the Franciscan intellectual
life and thereby ensured the survival of the order in an increasingly learned society which required learned ministers. The concern
in this was not or at least not merely or primarily to propound
views that were Augustines.
Although this last point might prove difficult to substantiate
through a simple comparison of the forms of argument Augustine
and Bonaventure employ, since these are often comparable, the differences in their thought come into relief on further attending to the
source of the meaning Bonaventure attributed to Augustines words
and which Augustine attributed to his own. This source consists in
the theological doctrines that always underlay and motivated the formulation of philosophical ones, at least in medieval times.
In the case of human knowledge, the relevant theological doctrines include the doctrine of the Triune God and the corollary
doctrine of the human mind as the image of God, which determines the nature of the cognitive work the mind performs. By investigating Augustine and Bonaventures doctrines of God, His
image, and what is involved in re-conforming to His image after
the fall, I will throw into relief the conceptual disparity in their accounts of knowledge and the cognitive ascent to God.

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There are three main reasons why I believe it is important to differentiate Bonaventure from Augustine in this respect. The first is
that doing so highlights the distinctive purposes of the Franciscan
intellectual system which is so often conflated with Augustines
and thus allows for its contribution to be recognized and celebrated in its own right. The second reason I have for undertaking this
project is to reveal the remarkable continuity of thought between
Bonaventure and his famous Franciscan successor John Duns Scotus, who is often supposed to have broken with the early Franciscan school of Bonaventure in favour of a new philosophical way.
In taking this way, Scotus has recently been criticized for laying the
conceptual foundation for modern thought and certain philosophical problems to which it gave rise; on these grounds, his ideas have
been pronounced intrinsically detrimental.5
By highlighting the continuity of Scotus and Bonaventures
thought, I aim to accomplish a third goal of exonerating Scotus of
the accusations that have been made against him. I will do this by
emphasizing that he like Bonaventure was primarily concerned
with articulating a philosophy which would promote the distinctly
Franciscan intellectual and spiritual life, although he did so in some
new forms of argument that were not employed by Bonaventure.
If Scotus intents are practically benign like Bonaventures the implication is that he cannot be blamed for any problematic modern
developments. Those developments should instead be seen as the
by-product of the de-contextualization of Franciscan views, that is,
the use of them for purposes other than those intended, namely,
the furthering of Franciscan faith and life.
This intervention towards the end of the paper in the current
debate surrounding Scotus is made possible by the argument that
constitutes most of this paper which distinguishes Augustine and
Bonaventure, thereby highlighting continuities between Bonaventure and Scotus. That is the argument I will now take up in two
parts. In the first, I will briefly investigate the account of the Triune
God, the image of God, and the process of coming to know God

5. See footnote 88.

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re-conforming to His image or ascending to Him that Augustine outlines in his De trinitate. Subsequently, I will evaluate the
description of Gods Triune nature and His image that Bonaventure gives in his theological writings, which underlie and anticipate
the account of knowledge he outlines in the Itinerarium.
1. AUGUSTINES DE TRINITATE
1.1. The Doctrine of God
In the first half of his De trinitate, Augustine speaks of God as one
being, which is all that is good, all the time. In other words, he speaks
of God as simple. Although he acknowledges that some find the notion of divine simplicity difficult to reconcile with the Catholic
teaching that God is Triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Augustine insists that it is precisely in virtue of the involvement of these
three Persons that there is one eternal and infinite God who always
does one thing.6 That one thing is to know His own glory and make
it known through the Son who expresses the Spirit of God, which is
the divine glory the Father first communicated to Him.7
1.2. The Image of God
In De Genesi ad litteram, a treatise that complements De trinitate
and was composed over the same period of time, Augustine
explains what it means to be made in the image of this God.
On his account, being made in Gods image means being made
to do the one thing God does which is simply to know and
make known the glory of God by means of a capacity to engage in a unifying pattern thinking analogous to His, which is
facilitated by three elements. Augustine calls the first element
or mode of cognition corporeal vision. In this mode, the
mind engages in sense perception.8 The second mode is spiritu-

6. Cf. Aug., trin., I, 4, 7 (CCL 50, 35).

7. Cf. Aug., trin., II, 3, 5 (CCL 50, 85-86).
8. Cf. Aug., Gn. litt., XII, 7, 16 (CSEL 28/1, 388): Primum ergo appelemus corporale, quia per corpus percipitur et corporis sensibus exhibetur .

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al vision or imagination.9 In spiritual vision, the mind makes

mental images (phantasms) of the objects it experiences.
On the basis of multiple images of related objects, Augustine explains, the mind draws up a universal concept in the third mode of
intellectual vision.10 It distinguishes and connects 11 or combines
and separates ,12 the images it perceives, seeking oneness 13 or an
element that unites things that fulfil a related purpose. In this way, it
operates in the unifying mode of cognition that is analogous to that
of God, who thinks one thing Himself in virtue of the plurality
of Persons involved in His cognitive act. The more images the mind
forms through new experiences, Augustine indicates, the more it
has the opportunity to expand and revise the original concept that
helped it make sense of the new experiences in the first place.
Since the mind cannot grasp the infinite, immaterial God so
long as it forms concepts about the realm of finite, material things
He has made, Augustine suggests that the mind knows Him in the
present by thinking in unifying terms about the things it can see in
light of the fact that there is one God who is the ultimate good.
By doing this, it comes to see those things as He does, namely, as
manifestations of His goodness. In thus forming ideas about the
manner and degree to which things exhibit goodness, the mind
forms an indirect idea of the Goodness of God which grows as its
knowledge of reality grows. Through this means, the intellect reflects Gods image while preparing to gaze upon His reality.14

9. Cf. ibid.: secundum spiritale: quidquid enim corpus non est et tamen aliquid
est, iam recte spiritus dicitur et utique non est corpus, quamuis corpori similis sit,
imago absentis corporis, nec ille ipse obtutus, quo cernitur .
10. Cf. ibid.: tertium uero intellectuale ab intellectu, quia mentale a mente ipsa
uocabuli nouitate nimis absurdum est ut dicamus .
11. Aug., ord., II, 11, 30 (CCL 29, 124-125): Ratio est mentis motio ea, quae discuntur, distinguendi et conectendi potens .
12. Aug., trin., XI, 8, 15 (CCL 50, 351-352): Quae autem conciliat ista atque coniungit, ipsa etiam disiungit ac separat, id est uoluntas .
13. Cf. Aug., ord., I, 2, 3 (CCL 29, 90): sic animus a se ipse fusus inmensitate
quadam diuerberatur et uera mendicitate conteritur, cum eum natura sua cogit
ubique unum quaerere et multitudo inuenire non sinit .
14. Cf. Aug., Gn. litt., XII, 26, 54 & XII, 28, 56.

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Prior to the fall, human beings presupposed the ultimate goodness of the invisible God. At the fall, however, they fell prey to the
false notion that there are things more valuable than God to be obtained knowledge in the case of the first woman, and woman, in
the case of the first man. In doing this, they forfeited the knowledge of God as Highest Good and the knowledge of themselves as
creatures made in His image to know Him and make Him known.
As a result, their overriding desire to know God was replaced by a
desire to obtain whatever they thought would bring them immediate happiness. This desire caused them to perceive the images of
reality that were meant to be organized by an intellect cognizant of
an ultimate God tangible things and temporal circumstances as
ultimate realities themselves and thus falsely to esteem them as
things with the power to make or break their happiness.15
Ironically, Augustine observes, the fallen human proclivity for
prioritizing immediate personal happiness tends to lead to great unhappiness, inasmuch as it enslaves humanity to desires for finite
goods that are either hard to find or fleeting in fallen circumstances.
This same tendency to operate on a narrow concept of what is good
creates conflict amongst those with different notions of what brings
happiness. It promotes attitudes like pride, envy, and fear and the
destructive behaviors they engender. To summarize, the fallen habit
of pursuing limited goods as though they are the be-all and end-all
of human existence makes it impossible for people to find what is
good and therefore God in other things and other people,
which makes it impossible for them to find happiness.
In the latter half of De trinitate, Augustine explains how the Son of
God restored the knowledge of God as the Highest Good He originally imparted human beings made in His image.16 Since the scope
of human knowledge was restricted to corporeal beings in the wake
of the loss of the knowledge of the incorporeal Good, the Son of
God took on bodily form.17 In that form, the Son continued His
15. Cf. Aug., trin., X, 6, 87, 9 (CCL 50, 321-322); X, 8, 11 (CCL 50, 324-325).
16. See also Aug., doctr. christ., I, 10, 1118, 17 (CCL 32, 12-15).
17. Cf. Aug., trin., VIII, 1, 2 (CCL 50, 269-720); XIII, 10, 13 (CCL 50/A, 399-400);
XIII, 14, 18 (CCL 50/A, 406-407).

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eternal work of reflecting the Spirit of God, who gestures towards

the Father, His work of being the Image of the Trinity.18 By revealing
the Triune God in the form of a human person, the Son simultaneously revealed that all human persons are made in the image of the
Trinity and are therefore designed to do as He did, namely, to employ the spirit or mind (animus = spirit, mind) they are given through
the creative work of the Son to the glory of God the Father.19
Although initial faith raises awareness that the mind is made in
the image of God and thus for the purpose of considering all
things in the light of the knowledge of His goodness, Augustine
emphasizes that it does not at once break fallen habits and restore
the image in full.20 On his account, it remains for faith to be made
effective through ongoing efforts to re-learn the skill of using the
cognitive powers which were given by the Son in the spirit He
modelled, which glorifies God the Father, until doing so is second
nature and the image is constantly reflected.
1.3. Conforming to the Image of God
The contention I will bolster in what follows is that the seven
psychological analogies to the Trinity Augustine delineates in the
second half of his treatise on the topic and with which he outlines the minds ascent to the knowledge of God are designed
to lead the reader all the way through the process whereby a habit
of reasoning under the influence of faith in the Fathers ultimate
goodness is formed. That habit, of course, is a habit of cognizing
in a manner analogous to Christ, who constantly expressed His
Spirit to the Fathers glory: who consistently bore the image of the
Trinity. Although Augustines analogies have long been subjected
to serious criticisms, recent research has revealed that those criticisms have been based on major misinterpretations of the text,

18. Cf. Aug., trin., XIII, 11, 15 (CCL 50/A, 401-402).

19. Cf. Aug., trin., XII, 6, 77, 12 (CCL 50, 361-367).
20. Cf. Aug., trin., VIII, 3, 5 (CCL 50, 273-274); see also doctr. christ., I, 5, 5; I, 8, 8;
I, 10, 10 (CCL 32, 9; 11-12).

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even while intimating that the treatise is in fact something like a

guide to conforming to the image of God.21
The first psychological analogy of mind, knowledge, love
(mens, notitia, amor) is the way Augustine reinforces the point that
the mind only ever accumulates knowledge it desires or loves to
accumulate. For this reason, the mind that does not exhibit a desire to know God, which is to place faith in Him and His knowability, will never attain knowledge of Him. When Augustine presents his first analogy, it is in the interest of urging his readers to
commit to performing their cognitive work out of an overriding
desire to know and love God.
With the second psychological analogy of memory, understanding, and will (memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas), Augustine elucidates how the mind actually performs that work in the third
mode of intellectual vision.22 On his account, the memory contains all the information the mind has acquired through the three
modes of cognition.23 It preserves the understanding or ideas that
have been attained through intellectual operations and secondhand experience, as well as images of objects that have been taken
in, some without notice or without understanding. The most basic memory the mind has, Augustine emphasizes, is the memory
of what it thinks will bring it the greatest happiness. That memory dictates everything the mind does. In short, it determines the
will, which in turn forms the intellects desire for understanding
and so decides what the mind attends to or ignores.
Whenever the memory becomes aware of something that the
minds current understanding cannot explain but has been predis-

21. Cf. R. Williams, The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De trinitate , in

J.T. Lienhard - E.C. Muller - R.J. Teske (cur.), Augustine: Presbyter factus sum, Peter
Lang, New York 1993, 121-134; L. Ayres, The Christological Context of Augustines De
trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV, Aug. Stud. , 29 (1998), 111-139;
E.T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999;
L. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustines De trinitate , Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2008.
22. Cf. Aug., trin., bk X (CCL 50, 311-332); cf. Gn. litt., bk XII; conf., bk X.
23. Cf. Aug., conf., X, 8, 13 (CCL 27, 161-162).

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posed by the will to desire to explain, Augustine indicates, a will

for new understanding arises. The sense of dissatisfaction or restlessness that accompanies the sudden realization that the understanding is inadequate to the will for understanding incites the
mind to search through the images in the memory that were previously unnoticed or thought unimportant yet which may now
help to render the new experience intelligible.
If the resources needed to come to a conclusion that satisfies the
will cannot be found in the memory, the will may direct the intellect to go in search of new information.24 Since this is often necessary, Augustine points out that the quest for understanding is not
entirely straightforward. The intellect gains understanding not by
obtaining it at the outset of an inquiry but by acknowledging at that
point that it does not already know what it desires to know. This
desire for understanding compels the mind to pursue knowledge of
what holds promise to help it acquire the understanding it desires.
Through this pursuit, the mind gradually gains the desired understanding as it forms provisional ideas about the anticipated object of
knowledge and tests and revises or rejects them through experience
until the object is grasped and the understanding of it becomes a
tool that facilitates further efforts to understand the world.25
When the mind remembers that its desire for happiness is indicative of desire not for any temporal attainment but for God,
Augustine writes that the forgotten thought of Him is reinstated
in the memory.26 This recollection puts the mind in a position to
bring faith in God to bear in every cognitive effort that is cooperatively undertaken by the memory, the understanding, and the
will to think in unifying terms in ultimate terms of the goodness
of God and thus to know God indirectly by finding the good in
or making the best of the circumstances under consideration.27

24. Cf. Aug., conf., X, 11, 18 (CCL 27, 164-165).

25. Cf. Aug., trin., X, 8, 12 (CCL 50, 161).
26. Cf. Aug., conf., X, 20, 29 (CCL 27, 170-171).
27. Cf. Aug., trin., VIII, 4, 6-5, 8 (CCL 50, 274-279).

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The mind that perseveres at performing its work in the Spirit of

the Son who esteems the Father to be the highest good performs
its work in remembrance of Christ and thereby memorizes how
to think after the manner of Christ.28 Each time it cultivates the
habit of seeing things from the perspective of Him who remained
confident in the goodness of the Fathers purposes, even in the
hour of His death, it checks the ingrained habit of operating according to its own norms. It overcomes the limited concepts of
what is good that have no place in the mind of Christ; and it becomes a little more conformed to the image of Him who is the
image of God. To sum up: the human mind becomes an ever better analogy to that of Christ, who never sought to serve Himself
but Father God.
The next analogy Augustine presents that of ability, learning
and use (ingenium, doctrina, usus) is the bishops way of validating
the many different ways of putting memory, understanding, and
will to work. Although he affirms that all people with faith reason
under the influence of belief in God, Augustine emphasizes that
they do this in accordance with individual levels and types of giftedness.29 When they learn to use their abilities in faith, their
learning becomes their venue for knowing Gods glory and making it known.
As the intellect learns to work in accordance with its abilities
from the standpoint of faith, Augustine suggests that it learns to
consider temporal things with reference to eternal things and
thereby acquires knowledge of what is eternal, or God, through
ordinary experiences. As the intellectual faculty is redeemed from
its fallen habit of operating on the belief that the created realities it
images are all there is, in other words, the other two modes of
vision sensation and imagination that previously distracted it
from God are redeemed as well. They serve their originally intended purpose, which is to enable the intellect to discover God

28. Cf. Aug., trin., VIII, 5, 7-8 (CCL 50, 276-279); XIV, 16, 22 (CCL 50/A, 451-454); XV,
2, 2 (CCL 50/A, 460-462).
29. Cf. Aug., trin., XIII, 2, 5 (CCL 50/A, 385-387).

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in the world He has made in preparation to know Him in Himself.30 For this reason, Augustine argues that analogies to the Trinity can be detected in corporeal vision, which consists in the sight
of the eyes, the object seen, and the perceptive faculties attention
to its object;31 as well as in spiritual vision, which involves the
memory of sense perceptions, the internal comparison of perceptions, and the production of an image.32
By way of synopsis, the five psychological analogies that have
been discussed thus far were introduced to help the reader of De trinitate memorize how to operate by faith in Gods ultimate goodness. When the mind does remember, understand, and love God by
forming this habit, Augustine writes, it simultaneously remembers,
understands, and loves itself (meminit sui, intellegit se, diligit se), such
that the sixth psychological analogy becomes apparent upon it.33
This is true because the mind that remembers God remembers that
its purpose is to work for Gods purposes rather than its own.
So long as it operates on the notion that its desires are ultimate, the
mind remains subject to fallen attitudes like envy, pride, and fear,
which caused it to over or underestimate its abilities and thus inhibits its ability to employ those abilities. So long as, and to the extent that it is selfish, in other words, it is prone to the attitudes of
self-absorption or self-deprecation that prevent it from being itself.
A commitment to unlearning the fallen habit of refusing to
give up the things regarded as too important to relinquish to sacrifice the self and to cling instead in faith to the God Christ revealed represents a choice to follow Him figuratively to Golgotha
from Gethsemene, where He gave up the will to do His own will.
Far from a decision to abandon personal identity, Augustine intimates that the decision to traverse this sacrificial path only represents a decision to abandon the enslaving desires that encumbered

30. Cf. Aug., trin., XII, 15, 25 (CCL 50, 379-380).

31. Cf. Aug., trin., XI, 2, 2 (CCL 50, 334-336).
32. Cf. Aug., trin., XI, 3, 6 (CCL 50, 340): Atque ita fit illa trinitas ex memoria et interna uisione et quae utrumque copulat uoluntate, quae tria cum in unum coguntur
ab ipso coactu cogitatio dicitur .
33. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 8, 11 (CCL 50/A, 435-438).

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the free expression of the human spirit.34 As the empty tomb at

the end of Christs own sacrificial path confirms, this loss of the
self is really the resurrection of the self. In the wake of it, the mind
recovers the ability to employ its skills in the proper manner, or in
a manner analogous to that of Christ, who glorified the Father
through every expression of His Spirit to see where it and all
other things fit in His plan to manifest His glory.35
In being thus conformed to Christs image, the intellect is predisposed to grow in its understanding of God through its apprehension of reality. By means of its continual reflection of the image of God, Augustine further affirms, the mind is prepared for an
ultimate encounter with the Reality of God.36 For when Christ returns and the need for faith passes away, the memory, understanding, and love of the self which is the memory, understanding,
and love of the faith one placed in God during life will be transformed into a seventh and final Trinitarian analogue which will
determine the nature and degree to which the mind will know
and love the Triune God for eternity.37 The whole goal of De trinitate, Augustine concludes, is to prepare the reader to make a seamless transition to the beatific vision of the Trinity: to learn to enjoy
Him to the greatest possible extent in the present to as to maximize the experience of Him for eternity.
2. BONAVENTURES ITINERARIUM MENTIS IN DEUM
2.1. The Doctrine of God
For all intents and purposes, Augustines Trinitarian doctrine
went unrivalled in the West until the twelfth century. In the third
quarter of that century, however, Richard of St. Victor developed
a new and original style of Trinitarian reflection .38 Although

34. Cf. Aug., trin., IX, 4, 4 (CCL 50, 297).

35. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 8, 11 (CCL 50/A, 435-438).
36. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 9, 12 CCL 50/A, 438-440).
37. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 2, 4 (CCL 50/A, 425).
38. Z. Hayes, introduction to Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (DQMT)
by Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 2000), 15; M. Calisi,

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Richard not unlike Augustine refers to the Triune God as the

Supreme Good, he looks to the mystic Pseudo-Dionysius to explain what this claim means.39 On the grounds that a Good that is
contained is not genuinely good, Dionysius had argued that God
is self-diffusive by definition.40 For Dionysius, in other words, the
goodness of the Good lies in its active or dynamic nature, that is,
in its power to re-produce itself.
On the basis of Dionysius contention that divine goodness is
fundamentally self-duplicating and self-giving, Richard concludes
that love is the supreme content of the Good.41 This conclusion
founds his effort to argue for a plurality of divine Persons, since
love is something that must be shared by at least two parties. To
Richards mind, however, it is insufficient to affirm along Augustinian lines that the third member of the Trinity simply is the love
exchanged between the first two Persons. In the attempt to establish that the nature and measure of the love in question is exactly
the same and thus supremely perfect, he contends that the first
two Persons of the Trinity must direct their love towards one and
the same third party. Where two Persons love a third in harmony,
he writes, there is not the dilectio of Augustine, but condilectio.42
This Trinitarian doctrine greatly appealed to the first Franciscan
scholars, likely owing to its voluntarist orientation and its emphasis on the totally self-diffusing or sacrificial nature of Gods love.
Such theological emphases were clearly compatible with the Franciscan principles of charity, poverty, and humility. From the time
of Bonaventures teacher Alexander of Hales forward, the Vic-

Trinitarian Perspectives in the Franciscan Theological Tradition, The Franciscan Institute,

St. Bonaventure 2008.
39. Cf. Hayes, introduction to DQMT, 19.
40. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, in Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete
Works, Paulist Press, Mahwah 1987, 639B, ff.
41. Cf. Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate, bk III, ch 1-2 (PL 196, 915-916B);
cf. Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, in Opera omnia, Collegium
S. Bonaventurae, Quaracchi 1882-1902, I, 2, 1, 2, 1.
42. Cf. Hayes, introduction to DQMT, 16.

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torine doctrine was generally adopted in the Franciscan intellectual tradition.43

In elaborating his Trinitarian doctrine along Victorine lines,
Bonaventure speaks of the Father as the first principle of the Trinity, the fontal source (plenitudo fontalis) of divine love from which
the others flow.44 The Seraphic Doctor further affirms the maxim
of the Liber de causis that what is first is most fecund.45 From this
point, he infers that Gods self-communication is perfect and
complete. When He gives Himself, in other words, the Father
holds nothing in reserve.46
The objective expression of the Fathers communication, on
Bonaventures account, is the Son, who is the exact likeness or
mirror image of the Father.47 For Bonaventure, this mirroring
relationship between Father and Son is the primary relation that
becomes the basis for all further relations, above all, the relation
between the Son and the Spirit. According to this Franciscan doctor, the Son receives the fountain fullness of the Fathers love and
passes it on exactly as He receives it. The Spirit simply stands as
the fullest possible manifestation of the love that proceeds from
the Father and the Son.48
Bonaventure summarizes these teachings when he describes
the Father as the Person who produces but is not produced; the
Son as He who both is produced and produces; and the Spirit as
the one that is produced but does not produce.49 Because the Son
has a trait in common with both the Father and the Spirit, who
themselves have nothing in common, Bonaventure concludes that

43. See K. Osborne, Alexander of Hales: Precursor and Promoter of Franciscan Theology,
in id., The History of Franciscan Theology, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure 2007,
28; see also Hayes, introduction to DQMT 13-24.
44. Bonaventure, DQMT, 2, 1, conclusion.
45. Cf. Hayes, introduction to DQMT, 42; Bonaventure, comm. sent., I, 2, 1, 2, 1.
46. Cf. Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in deum (I will quote from the Opera omnia
edition), 6, 2.
47. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 8.
48. On double procession, see Bonaventure, comm. sent., I, 11, 1.
49. Cf. Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron (Quaracchi, Firenze 1938), 1, 14.

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He is the very center of Trinitarian life the one uniquely suited

to make the irreconcilable opposites of Father and Spirit coincide
and thus to Image the Trinity by summing up in His own Person
what the three together are.50
2.2. The Image of God
As the Son reconciles the extremes within the Godhead, so in
His creative work Bonaventure affirms that the Son unites the opposites of creator and created. He work to this end starts with receiving from the Father an infinite number of ideas (exemplars,
forms, or eternal reasons as Bonaventure, following Augustine,
calls them51) for the beings He could create.52 Like all things that
come from the Father, these exemplars are perfect and complete.
The Son instantiates them as such in the created order, to the end
that all beings exactly mirror the divine mind and thus divine
love in some finite respect.53 It is by way of these ideas that
Bonaventure sees the Son as reconciling the diametric opposites
of created beings which are the expression of His Spirit and
their Creator.54
For Bonaventure, consequently, the imaging of the Second Person and implicitly the whole Trinity involves identifying the total
correspondence between a created instance of an idea in Gods
mind and that idea which comes from the Father.55 Like Augustine, Bonaventure speaks of three types of knowing that enact the
possibility of performing this cognitive operation.56 The first, of
course, is sense perception; the second, imagination.57 Yet since
50. See E. Cousins, The Coincidence of Opposites in the Christology of St. Bonaventure,
Franciscan Studies , 28 (1968), 27-45.
51. Cf. Bonaventure, comm. sent., II, 18, 2.
52. Cf. Bonventure, coll. Hex., 11, 1, 15.
53. Cf. Bonventure, itin., 1, 14.
54. Cf. Bonventure, coll. Hex., 1, 11.
55. Cf. Bonaventure, Breuiloquium, 2, 4, 3; 2, 9, 4; 2, 12, 4. 6.
56. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 1, 4.
57. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 2, 3-4 (p. 301): Homo igitur [...] habet quinque sensus
quasi quinque portas, per quas intrat cognitio omnium, quae sunt in mundo sensibili,
in animam ipsius .

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Bonaventure believes that every sense perceptible object is an absolute expression of one of Gods ideas, he does not assume as Augustine does that multiple images of related objects are important
for understanding them. For him, by contrast, forming an image is
simply a matter of stripping the sense perception of all its superfluous variants such as place and time, in order to lay the object
bare as it really is.58
Once such an image has been formed, he insists, it is stored in
the memory, where it awaits the scrutiny of the intellect that
achieves final understanding of its objects by comparing its images
to the ideas in the mind of God, after which the imaged objects
were originally patterned. Bonaventure refers to this act of checking a human idea against one of Gods as the full analysis (plena
resolutio) of a thing or as the contuition (contuendum deum59) of it,
which entails the co-knowledge of the creature and its exemplar in
God.60 From his perspective, such an act of abstraction does not
entail engagement in a unifying mode of cognition that allows for
growth in the understanding of an object as was the case with Augustine. Rather, thinking abstractly means deriving the single, immutable, and infallible abstract concept that is latent in each object
from the experience of it.61
The attainment of such completely certain ideas is possible,
Bonaventure believes, because the memory is impressed with the innate knowledge of Being, which is none other than the Being of the
God who is the source of all beings. That is to say, it is impressed

58. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 2, 6-9 (302): Abstrahit igitur a loco, tempore, et motu,
ac per hoc est incommutabilis, incircumscriptibilis, interminabilis et omnino spiritualis. Diiudicatio igitur est actio, quae speciem sensibilem, sensibiliter per sensus acceptam, introire facit depurando et abstrahendo in potentiam intellectiuam .
59. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 2, 11.
60. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 2, 10-11; 3, 3.
61. Bonaventure derives this idea from his Franciscan teachers who in turn
learned it from eleventh century Arab philosopher Avicenna, as I show in chapter
three of Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustines Theory of Knowledge,
Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford 2011. See also what Dag Nikolaus Hasse suggests in Avicennas De anima in the Latin West, The Warburg Institute, London 2000.

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with His image.62 Although it would appear that the mind knows
the created objects of its knowledge first, the Seraphic Doctor insists
that in point of fact it knows its divine object first, inasmuch as the
intuitive knowledge of Being is the condition of possibility of any
further contuitive ability to make sense of finite beings.63
If the mind loves the divine Being such that its will is oriented
towards Him and implicitly, His ideas, Bonaventure writes, it cannot help but perceive the images of beings that come into the
memory as perfectly as God does and thus achieve absolute understanding of them.64 By impressing on human beings the knowledge
of His own Being, Bonaventure writes, God comes to their continual aid in acts of knowing. He supervises or cooperates with the
human mind in those acts so as to ensure that the thoughts that result from them correspond to His.65 In affirming this, Bonaventure appropriates Augustines Trinitarian analogue of memory,
understanding, and will in the effort to articulate something like a
correspondence theory of knowledge which would account for
St. Francis remarkable ability to comprehend and commune with
all created realities.
Unlike Augustine who had argued that the ability to reflect
Gods image perfectly and constantly through the co-operation of
memory, understanding, and will was lost at the fall and must be
gradually recovered, Bonaventure contends that the image was
never effaced.66 Furthermore, it could not have been, lest the fullness of God Himself be erased, which is impossible. From
Bonaventures perspective, what was lost at the fall was not the in-

62. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 2 (305): Ipsa anima est imago dei et similitudo adeo
sibi praesens et eum habens praesentem .
63. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 3-4 (305): Non uenit intellectus noster ut plene resoluens intellectum alicuius entium creatorum, nisi iuuetur ab intellectu entis purissimi, actualissimi, completissimi et absoluti, quod est ens simpliciter et aeternum, in
quo sunt rationes omnium in sua puritate. Quomodo autem sciret intellectus, hoc
esse ens defectiuum et incompletum, si nullam haberet cognitionem entis absque
omni defectu [...]? .
64. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 5.
65. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 5, 7.
66. Cf. DQMT, qu. 1, 1, conclusion.

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tellectual capacity but the will to love God that makes the intellect
aware of its innate knowledge of the divine Being, which in turn
renders it the perfectly adequate foundation for the perfect
knowledge of beings.67
On Bonaventures account, Christ compensated for humanitys
ignorance of the innate intellectual ability by revealing that and
how human beings were made to love God. He did this by humbling Himself to appear on earth and above all to die a sacrificial
death on the cross.68 Those that love Christ and demonstrate that
love as He did, namely, through humble and self-sacrificial acts of
service, Bonaventure affirms, instantaneously revert to the full
awareness of the image that was always there and to which they
consequently need never be re-conformed. Putting it in Augustines terms, the Seraphic Doctor states that they remember, understand, and love themselves, becoming true likenesses of Christ.69
2.3. Christ-Likeness in the Itinerarium
In the Prologue to his Itinerarium, Bonaventure emphasizes precisely this point, namely, that love for Christ expressed as Christ
Himself expressed love, through humble acts of charity, opens the
door to all knowledge. At the start of the treatise, Bonaventure explains that he came to this realization upon Mount Alverna, Francis of Assisis favorite place for prayer and the site of his famous vision of a fiery, six-winged Seraph nailed to a cross a vision after
which he was marked with the Stigmata or wounds of Christ
from which he eventually died.70
The Seraphic Doctor made his retreat two years into his term as
the Franciscans Minister General and thus far enough along in it
to realize the challenges involved in leading an order that faced
external and internal opposition to its intellectual pursuits and to
the accumulation of the possessions required to undertake them.

67. Cf. Bonaventure, breu., 3, 1, 1.

68. Cf. Bonaventure, breu., 4, 9, 2.
69. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 1.
70. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., Prol.

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With these problems weighing on his mind, Bonaventure says

that he sought peace at Alverna.
As he prayed there, he relates that he suddenly saw that the vision Francis had in that very location illustrates how a vision like
his can be reached.71 The three pairs of wings affixed to the Seraph
one pointing downwards, one folded across the chest, and one
pointing upwards represented the three routes through which
the knowledge of God can be obtained through the exterior world,
through the image of God that is interior to the mind, and through
the contemplation of the superior God Himself.72
The fiery appearance of the Seraph a member of that order of
angels that is closest to God and approaches Him without intermediary73 indicated to Bonaventure that sacrificial love represented by the cruciform posture of the Seraph opens the way to
these three forms of knowledge, inasmuch as love for the crucified gives access to the source of the truth about all things, which
is Christ.74 The heat of that love cleanses the mirror of the mind,
Bonaventure writes, reinstating awareness of the intellects intuitive knowledge of Being the understanding of the true nature
of the self that is the condition of possibility of all genuine understanding of beings, of the self as an image of the divine Being, and
of that Being in its own right.75 It transforms those who become
aware of themselves as images of God into the likeness to Christ,
rendering them competent to comprehend reality with infallible

71. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., Prol., 2 (296): in cuius consideratione statim uisum est
mihi, quod uisio illa praetenderet ipsius patris suspensionem in contemplando et
uiam, per quam peruenitur ad eam .
72. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., Prol., 3.
73. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy, 200D-208C; 300B-305C.
74. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., Prol., 4 (297): Igitur ad gemitum orationis per Christum crucifixum, per cuius sanguinem purgamur a sordibus uitiorum primum quidem lectorem inuito, ne forte credat, quod sibi sufficiat lectio sine unctione, speculatio sine deuotione, inuestigatio sine admiratione, circumspectio sine exsultatione, industria sine pietate, scientia sine caritate, intelligentia sine humilitate, studium absque diuina gratia, speculum absque sapientia diuinitus inspirata .
75. Cf. ibid. (297): Nihil est speculum exterius propositum, nisi speculum mentis
nostrae tersum fuerit et politum .

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certitude, as Christ does76 and thus to study any and all of the
branches of knowledge.77
Since the Being that is known in all three cases is one and the
same, to wit, the Being of a God whose essential nature is Love,
Bonaventure points out that the three-fold knowledge of Him is
eventually bound to lead the one that acquires it to be totally consumed by Gods love as Christ was when He was transported to
the Father after His death. Those that come to know the world so
perfectly as a result of loving God so deeply thus ultimately transcend the realm of knowledge altogether, achieving ecstatic union
with divine love.78 They ascend to God as a result of having descended in humility to the point of losing life completely in Him.
This ascent by descent, Bonaventure indicates, was supremely modelled by St. Francis, who followed in the exact footsteps of
the crucified Christ.79 Once the love of God had brought the little
poor man to the point of achieving the unbroken comprehension
of and communion with creation and God for which he is famous, that knowledge of the ways in which God manifests His

76. Cf. ibid.

77. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 3, 7 (306): Omnes autem hae scientiae habent regulas certas et infallibiles tanquam lumina et radios decendentes a lege aeterna in
mentem nostram. Et ideo mens nostra tantis splendoribus irradiata et superfusa,
nisi sit caeca, manuduci potest per semetipsam ad contemplandam illam lucem
aeternam. Huius autem lucis irradiatio et consideratio sapientes suspendit in admirationem et econtra insipientes, qui non credunt, ut intelligent, ducit in perturbationem, ut impleatur illud propheticum: illuminans tu mirabiliter a montibus aeternis,
turbati sunt omnes insipientes corde.
78. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 7, 1; see I. Delio, The Role of the Crucified in Bonaventures
Doctrine of Mystical Union, Studia Mystica , 19 (1998), 8-20; Crucified Love: Bonaventures Mysticism of the Crucified Christ, St. Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati 1999.
79. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 7, 5 (314): Tu autem, o amice, circa mysticas uisiones
corroboratio itinere et sensus desere et intellectuales operationes et sensibilia et
inuisibilia et omne non ens et ens, et ad unitatem, ut possible est, inscius restituere
ipsius, qui est super omnem essentiam et scientiam. Etenim te ipso et omnibus immensurabili et absoluto purae mentis excessu ; 7, 6 (314): Si autem quaeras quomodo haec fiant, interroga gratiam non doctrinam; disiderium, non intellectum; gemitum orationis non studium lectionis; sponsum, non magistrum [...] non lucem, sed
ignem totaliter inflammantem et in deum excessiuis unctionibus et ardentissimis affectionibus transferentem .

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love brought about union with the Love that supersedes knowledge. By relating Francis vision in this way, Bonaventure made a
brilliant polemical move towards justifying the intellectual endeavours of his order in the presence of the university academics
and conservative Franciscans.80 In describing love of a Franciscan
sort as the way into and the goal of knowing, he implied that the
Franciscan perspective far from opposed to the purposes of academia is a wholly appropriate, if not the most appropriate, context in which to undertake intellectual pursuits.
As he explained how such pursuits culminate in a spiritual experience like Francis enjoyed, moreover, he demonstrated in the
sight of the conservative Franciscans the important part that study
can play in the attainment of Franciscan ends. In the final section
of his treatise, the Seraphic Doctor further reinforces his commitment to accomplishing Franciscan goals by emphasizing that intellectual activities are only useful until they lead to the ecstatic union
with divine love, which is the goal of all Franciscan endeavours.81
Those that opposed the intellectual life of the friars minor could
have no rebuttal to these lines of contention, according to which
intellectual pursuits require a Franciscan perspective for their success, and those who entertain a Franciscan perspective need intellectual pursuits for theirs.
3. ASCENDING TO GOD IN AUGUSTINE AND BONAVENTURE
The description of the ascent to God that Bonaventure gives in
his Itinerarium admittedly sounds in many respects like the one
that is provided by Augustine. For it involves three cognitive levels sensation, imagination, and intellection and Bonaventure
invokes Augustines Trinitarian analogies (to say nothing of ex-

80. Cf. C. Cullen, Bonaventure, 19: Bonaventures work is understood as an attempt to institutionalize the primitive spirit and to preserve the peace of the order in
the face of conflicts over learning and poverty .
81. Cf. Bonaventure, itin., 7, 4 (313): In hoc autem transitu, si sit perfectus, oportet
quod relinquantur omnes intellectuales operationes, ex apex affectus totus transferatur et transformetur in deum .

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planatory devices like illumination) to show how the latter operation occurs. Despite these apparent similarities, there are at
least three levels on which Bonaventures account can be differentiated from Augustines, namely, in terms of the account that is
given of the nature of knowledge, the necessary and sufficient
conditions for knowledge, and the apex of the ascent to the
knowledge of God through the knowledge of reality.
Regarding the first point: Bonaventure conceives the nature of
knowledge very differently from Augustine. Whereas intellectual
activity for Augustine entails engagement in a unifying mode of
cognition in which ideas about entities are subject to growth and
development, Bonaventure conceives it as the simple act of identifying the abstract nature of a thing as it is fully instantiated in
an object through efforts to remove conceptually determining factors such as place, time, and change that obscure that nature.
To strip an object of these elements so as to behold the thing itself is to see it as it compares exactly to an idea in the mind of
God. Such a theory of knowledge by complete correspondence,
I have suggested, follows logically from the Seraphic Doctors
doctrine of God, which implies that imaging God means reconciling created beings with their uncreated exemplars.
On Bonaventures account, the unchangeable, irreproachable,
and indubitable knowledge that is acquired through such acts
is attainable because the knowledge of Gods Being His image
is innately impressed on the mind, rendering it the adequate foundation for the perfect comprehension of beings. Through His
presence in the mind in the concept of Being, God assists the human intellect in its attempt to accomplish its acts. This model according to which necessary conditions for knowledge are satisfied
as a result of Gods co-operation (concursus) with human minds can
be contrasted with that of Augustine, according to whom God
does not bestow any innate conceptual content, such as that of
Being, but an innate capacity for cognizing in unifying terms.
Inasmuch as the mind thinks along unifying lines in terms of the
existence of one God, it thinks in a way that has been enabled by
God, not because He directly intervenes in human cognitive
processes per Bonaventure but because the power to perform cog-

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nitive work is one that flows in from Him through the creative
gift and Incarnate example of His Son.82
In striving to follow that example by grace through faith in
Christ, Augustine implies, the intellect satisfies the sufficient conditions for knowing. As a result of the commitment it makes to
perform its cognitive acts out of an overriding love for God
which is indicative of faith that the desired object may ultimately
be grasped Augustine elaborates, the mind becomes able to bring
faith and love to bear in all its efforts. In doing this, it cultivates the
habit of thinking along the aforementioned lines. The more it does
so, the more it expresses its hope to know God and thereby approximates that goal by degrees, recovering in the process the image of God on the intellect and thus the ability to do all things for
the purpose of recognizing His glory.
Through his efforts to train his readers to memorize how to
glorify God constantly in keeping with individual abilities, I have
shown that Augustine instructs how to express the self freely,
without the inhibitions of narrow-mindedness.83 He teaches how
to form the perspective from which the good and God can be
found in absolutely all things. To maintain this outlook on reality
is for Augustine the climax of the cognitive ascent that can be
reached in this life. From this height, the mind not only sees objects and circumstances but also itself and others in their proper
places with respect to one another. In other words, it learns to operate within the limits of its abilities and to let others do the same.
By these means, it promotes the good of all and thereby realizes
and at once reveals the benefits of adherence to belief in God.84
An incidental point worth noting here is that these conclusions
run counter to certain allegations that have been directed against
the account of the psychological analogies to the Trinity Augustine

82. J. Schmutz distinguishes between what he calls the influential and concursus
model of causality, which was newly introduced by Franciscans in the thirteenth
century, in La doctrine medivale des causes et la thologie de la nature pure (XIIIe-XVIIe sicles),
Rev. thom. , 101 (2001), 217-264.
83. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 5, 7 (CCL 50/A, 429-430).
84. Cf. Aug., trin., XIV, 14, 18 (CCL 50/A, 445-446).

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gives in the latter half of De trinitate for quite some time.85 According to some interpreters, the bishops reflections on the human
mind as the image of God encourage the reader to turn to the self
qua image as the foundation for all knowledge. In doing this, Augustine supposedly instigates a proto-Cartesian turn to the subject that involves turning away from relationships with others and
ultimately with God to gain awareness of and access to a fully actualized power to know, thereby promoting a problematic and typically modern individualism. As I have already intimated, however,
Augustines reflections on the image of God are designed to teach
readers how to recover gradually their lost power to know.
If something anticipating a subjective turn occurs in any context,
it happens in the thought of Bonaventures Franciscan Augustine,
according to whom the presence of the image which contra Augustine was never lost and to which one never need re-conform
predisposes the intellect to be the fully adequate foundation for all
its acts, although its adequacy ultimately comes from God through
the impression of His Being.86 Although many are ignorant of their
competence for perfect knowing, Bonaventure teaches that those
who love Christ as Christ loved humbly, sacrificially regain full
awareness of their fully functional powers to make definitive sense
of all things: beings, human beings, and God.
The point that emerges here is that Bonaventure understands
Christ likeness, that is, the ascent to God, as mainly a matter of the
will to love Him. In this he differs from Augustine who conceived
the process of ascending to God as a matter of transforming the
minds patterns of thinking through the guidance of love for God
and thus as a matter of knowledge and love, intellect and will.
For Bonaventure, love enacts the possibility of obtaining infallible
knowledge; yet the voluntary abandonment of the will out of faith
in Christ is not itself based on what is intellectual. By this account,

85. For an elaboration of this point see chapter one of my Divine Illumination, 56-57.
86. Bonaventures emphasis on interiority is generally taken as a sign of his indebtedness to Augustine by Franciscan scholars like E. Bettoni, Bonventure, 84;
Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites, 45; Z. Hayes, The Hidden Center:
Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure, Paulist Press, Mahwah 1981, 218.

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love and knowledge, will and intellect, are mutually exclusive as

opposed to inclusive, per Augustine. Once love for God has
opened the door to knowledge of realities, which perfectly reflect
Gods love in a finite respect, it paradoxically propels the mind beyond the realm of known realities towards union with a God who
is Love. In obtaining union with God, Bonaventure writes, the
mind transcends the realm of reason, thus abandoning itself.
Such a conception of the apex of the ascent to God stands in
contrast to that of Augustine, for whom human transcendence
in this life does not entail a leap beyond the realm of reason and
the obliteration of the self but the attainment of an overarching
perspective from which to see how to order the created realm in
keeping with personal abilities, the prerequisite for which is the
gradual recovery of the self. In Augustines thought, in summary,
the climax of the ascent does not entail the rejection of the world
but the ability to see it clearly for the first time.
When these points are taken into consideration, it becomes evident that Bonaventure did not promulgate an Augustinian account of the cognitive ascent to God, which is the process of conforming to the image of His Son. For him, becoming like Christ
does not entail gradual conformity to the image but activating the
already functional intellectual capacity through love expressed
through characteristically Franciscan modes of poverty and selfabandoning humility of lifestyle.
By explaining likeness or ascent to God in this way, Bonaventure
articulated an account that was consistent with the Franciscan vision and that reinforced the intellectual legitimacy of that vision.
His tendency to employ traditional Augustinian terms to do this has
masked the fact that he makes a conceptual departure from Augustine. My strategy for highlighting this divergence has involved tracing the accounts of knowledge and the minds journey towards God
that Augustine and Bonaventure give to their theological roots in
the doctrines of Trinity and imago dei. This effort exposed the disparity between the ideas about what it means to image God and
thereby know Him. It threw into relief the discontinuous notions
of conformity to Christ or the ascent to God that Augustine and
Bonaventures Franciscan Augustine entertained.

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4. CONCLUSIONS
At the outset of this discussion, I mentioned three reasons why it
might be important to distinguish Bonaventures views on the nature of the ascent to God from those of Augustine. The first was to
recognize and celebrate the distinctively Franciscan features of
Bonaventures account. Among these are its emphasis so consistent with the Franciscan mission of charitable service on the primacy of love (otherwise known as voluntarism); the notion that
the divine Being is the first object of the intellect, such that the
mind maintains an unbroken intuitive connection with it, best exemplified by Francis of Assisi; and a correspondence theory of
knowledge that effectively explained the saints capacity to comprehend and commune with all created beings.
The virtues of such emphases are manifold. By prioritizing love
over knowledge, for example, Bonaventure rightly stressed that
knowledge amounts to nothing if it is turned to no useful purpose
or even to harmful purposes if it engenders pride as opposed to
humble acts of service. Furthermore, there is a sense in which
positing the intuitive knowledge of Being showed how human beings are both accountable for and able to maintain the intimate relationship with God that would enable them to see things as He
sees them, that is, as expressions of His love, and treat them accordingly. Although Bonaventures emphases may have differed
from Augustines, they enabled the beneficial ministry of the Franciscan order to be intellectually supported and carried forward.
Although John Duns Scotus employs different philosophical
forms from Bonaventure, he arguably upholds in new ways the
very Franciscan principles that he inherited, rather than breaking
from his predecessor as is commonly supposed.87 For instance, the
voluntarist bent in his thought is unmistakeable, as is a proclivity
for a correspondence theory of knowledge.88 Moreover, the idea

87. See chapter six of my Divine Illumination for a fuller account of this argument
concerning Scotus.
88. Cf. L. Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge, Brill, Leiden 2004,
262; K. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham, Brill, Leiden 1988, 64.

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of the intuitive knowledge of Being is fundamental to his thought.

Though Scotus admittedly departed from Bonaventure in defining that knowledge as a purely natural feature of the mind rather
than the result of an ongoing divine intervention, he still seemingly construed the natural life of the mind as operative in the broader scheme of the divine order. That is to say, he did not entirely divorce natural knowledge from the context of knowledge of God
in the way of a modern philosophical thinker.
This is one of the charges that has been levelled against Scotus
by certain contemporary thinkers, who see him as laying the conceptual groundwork for modern thought and all the evils to
which it gave rise.89 Chief among these, it is said, is the modern
tendency to construe human life as fully functional apart from any
supernatural sustenance. This supposition not only renders belief
in God irrelevant for any ordinary matter thus construing it as
irrational but it also eventually gave credence to the Cartesian
and later Kantian notions that human beings can achieve perfection in knowing, and of their own accord. Such a genuine turn to
the subject is purported to result in the individualism and sense
of entitlement to satisfy individual desires that seems to be at the
source of many problems in current society.
Although such trends may indeed be traceable through modernity, the suggestion I have made regarding the likely connection between Scotus and Bonaventure and the fundamentally theological
and positive orientation of their thought would seem to support the
conclusion that Scotus whose philosophical thought was admittedly innovative and radical in many respects is nevertheless not
responsible for setting any problematic modern trends in motion.
t follows from my observations concerning the theological context
of Franciscan thought that Franciscan ideals would have to be removed from their proper context and therefore used for purposes
other than those originally intended resultantly becoming, for all

89. J. Milbank, The Suspended Middle, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 2005, 93-96;
C. Pickstock, Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance, Modern Theology , 21 (2005), 548.

Bonaventures Journey of the Mind into God

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practical purposes, different ideals in order to create the modern

situation about which certain thinkers are concerned.
For their own part, Bonaventure and seemingly even Scotus
simply diverged from Augustine and developed new modes of
thinking for the sake of promoting a Franciscan system of thought
and life which did and still does revolve around entering into the
relationship with God that motivates efforts love and heal and
serve the world He made efforts that would surely go a long
way towards addressing challenges we face in our world today.