Bonaventure Revisited: Companion to the Breviloquium

University

INTRODUCTION

DOMINIC V. MONTI

The Breviloquium of St. Bonaventure has always elicited praise from those who have spent time studying it. In its own day, it became one of the most widely-diffused of Bonaventure’s writings and had a major influence on other authors. Its reputation, if anything, only grew in the later Middle Ages.¹ In a famous passage, the prominent theologian and educational reformer, Jean Gerson (+ 1429), said that it was composed with such a divine art of synthesis that nothing surpasses it.² Such tributes have echoed in our own day. The great medieval scholar Marie-Dominique Chenu described its Prologue as providing the most beautiful program of sacred hermeneutics that the thirteenth century had to offer.³ And looking at the work as a whole, Henri de Lubac judged that in its harmonious density, [it] exhibits an overall synthetic power that was perhaps never equaled.⁴

But for readers some seven hundred and fifty years after it was written, it is precisely this harmonious density and synthetic power that makes the Breviloquium a difficult work for them to enter unprepared. De Lubac made his comment while discussing the medieval goal of integrating Biblical interpretation, systematic theology, and spirituality. Even in the thirteenth century, these disciplines were becoming fragmented; in our own times, they tend to be totally dissociated, especially in the academy.⁵ But in the Breviloquium, Bonaventure was still trying to hold the three perspectives together; this means the work can be approached from several different angles. When I translated the Breviloquium a dozen years ago, I tried to help readers follow the train of Bonaventure’s thought by providing extensive explanatory footnotes,⁶ but it has become increasingly evident among Bonaventure scholars that the work needs to be systematically unpacked for those not familiar with his highly integrated mode of thinking and writing.⁷ When a group of Bonaventure scholars came together several years ago, we quickly reached a consensus that the best project for advancing an understanding of his thought today would be to provide a commentary on the entire Breviloquium to make its riches more accessible to theologians and historians — both professors and students — who are not Bonaventure scholars.⁸

The first two essays in this volume attempt to situate the Breviloquium in its historical context: what kind of work is it and what particular audience was Bonaventure attempting to reach? Stephen Brown begins by examining "The Theological Context: Reflections on the Method of Bonaventure’s Breviloquium." Brown underlines the fact that the Breviloquium is really quite different from Bonaventure’s other works of systematic theology, such as his massive Commentary on the Sentences or his three series of sophisticated disputed questions. The latter employ the dialectical method we most often associate with Scholasticism, that is, by raising a question and then marshalling particular pieces of evidence (Biblical texts, traditional authorities, philosophical opinions) on both sides of the argument which are then logically analyzed to reach a conclusion. Instead, Bonaventure is engaging here in what would later be called declarative theology. He begins each section, not by raising a question, but by proclaiming the truths of our faith revealed in Scripture; these he posits as self-evident axioms and then attempts to understand them as much as possible by demonstrating why they must be true.⁹

In the second essay, Jay Hammond examines the concrete setting of the Breviloquium: who was Bonaventure’s intended audience and how did he design the work to accomplish his aims? Hammond undertakes an extensive study of the medieval manuscripts containing the work; he has discovered that it appears in very diverse collections, not purely academic ones. It is found just as often together with spiritual writings or ones focused on pastoral ministry. This leads him to build on an observation of mine that the Breviloquium has to be situated in the context of Bonaventure’s responsibilities as general minister of the Franciscan Order; … he had become convinced that there was a critical need in the education of young friars, and in this work attempted to supply it.¹⁰ This need was for a much-desired introduction to Scripture and the principle tenets of Christian doctrine. Following a suggestion made by Camille Bérubé, however, Hammond feels it likely that Bonaventure did not write the Breviloquium immediately upon becoming general minister, but after the Itinerarium,¹¹ perhaps in the early-to-mid 1260s. Although Bonaventure probably intended it mainly as an orientation for his brothers entering the lower levels of theological studies, the work also served very well as a meditative tool for personal spiritual formation and as a handy resource for preachers.¹²

The Breviloquium is a marvel of synthesis and organization. The fact that body of the text has seven parts is no accident — this is one of Bonaventure’s favorite architectonic devices,¹³ because he believes the number seven to be archetypal:¹⁴ It is according to it that God organizes the course of this world, and Scripture which describes its progress: and it is according to this same number that it must be handed down and explained.¹⁵ Certainly the number seven immediately calls to mind the Genesis creation account, a divinely orchestrated six-stage process culminating in a seventh state of sabbath rest, but Bonaventure believes this also sets the pattern for God’s other interactions with humanity. As he says, he is convinced this same pattern is reflected in Scripture, and so it is logical that the body of the text of the Breviloquium, which hands down and explains the way God relates with humanity, would also follow it.

Examining this structure more closely, Bonaventure sees that the number seven is centered on the number three, mirroring the Triune God, the First Principle who is the three-fold cause of all things: as their origin, exemplar, and end.¹⁶ And the Trinity itself is centered on one: the central person, the medium — the Word of God — who unites or communicates with extremes.¹⁷ In many ways, the Breviloquium might be called a highly focused, systematic meditation on that Word: the eternal Verbum Increatum, the central person of the Trinity, in and through whom God creates all things; the Verbum Incarnatum, that Word made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, through whom God redeems the fallen world; and the Verbum Inspiratum, Christ dwelling within redeemed human beings through his Holy Spirit, through whom God completes creation by drawing all things back into union with their divine source.¹⁸

A key device Bonaventure uses in the Breviloquium to explain this vision of God’s interaction with the world is to analyze reality in terms of the three-fold causality inherent in all created beings. For if God is truly the First Principle: the origin, exemplar, and purpose of all things, then everything has an ortus (source), a modus or progressus (the way its particular nature unfolds over time), and a status or fructus (the end or goal it is designed to attain).¹⁹

The essays on the various parts of the text of the Breviloquium will make clear the way this triadic device works. Catherine Levri begins by examining the Prologue, which describes the basis of all theological reflection: God’s revelation in Sacred Scripture. She shows how Bonaventure’s opening thematic quotation from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (3:14-19) already captures the source (ortum), procedure (progressum), and end (statum) of Scripture. The source of Scripture — an inflowing of the Most Blessed Trinity into the minds and hearts of human beings — immediately sets it apart from all other forms of human knowledge.²⁰ It was the Triune God who inspired human authors to reveal God’s own self and God’s interactions with the world, summarized in the core Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation²¹ — knowledge that fallen human beings were incapable of achieving on their own. The corollary of this fact demands that those who seek to penetrate the words of Scripture must possess the same Spirit in which they were written. It is only when Christ, the Verbum Inspiratum, dwells in our hearts through faith²² that the mysteries of Scripture are made clear.

Bonaventure continues in the Prologue to describe the progressus or modus of Scripture — its content and method. Its content, designed to meet the capacities of our human intellect and will, describes the breadth and length and height and depth of the entire universe, insofar as it is expedient to have knowledge of it for salvation.²³ And its method is one of authority. Since Scripture has been revealed so that people might achieve salvation (its status or fructus), Bonaventure argues that it was more important for God to motive people’s affections and wills than simply to have proposed logical but abstract arguments. God’s purpose was better achieved through a variety of modes — such as narratives, precepts, and exhortations — that can reach the widest number of people at the deepest level of their being and turn their hearts to desire the good.²⁴

As Levri points out, these two features of the modus of Scripture — its content and method — described in the Prologue will be replicated in the body (modus) of the Breviloquium. With regard to content, its seven parts propose a concise summary of the truth of theology²⁵ — an orderly digest of all God’s words to humanity revealed in Scripture. As already mentioned, for Bonaventure those words are summed up in the Word, the central person of the Trinity: The Word expresses the Father and the things made through him, and he is foremost in leading us back to the unity of the Father who brings all things together… This is the sum of our metaphysics: emanation, exemplarity and consummation.²⁶ This Christ-centered interpretation of the progress of salvation history is reflected in the very structure of the text of the Breviloquium. Part I describes the source (ortus) of the entire process: the fact that the Uncreated First Principle is Triune: a mystery of self-diffusive love. Parts II-VI describe the progressus of creation: how all things flow forth from this all-good God through the Uncreated Word (Part II) but then fall away (Part III); at this low point the Word becomes Incarnate in creation to begin the process of return (the central Part IV), by sending the Holy Spirit to transform humanity (Part V), mediated through the created signs of the sacraments (Part VI). Finally, Part VII concludes the book by describing the end (status) of the entire process, the resolution of all things in God.²⁷ As Joshua Benson brilliantly summarizes these "layers of structural complexity in the Breviloquium":

"When viewed through the structure of ortus — progressus/modus — status/fructus that governs the course of Scripture itself, the Breviloquium can be understood to perform the meanings Bonaventure has ascribed to the incarnate Word… He is at one and the same time the completion of the universe, expressed structurally as the fructus of creation; and he offers healing to humanity, expressed structurally as the ortus of re-creation. The incarnate Word is expansively unifying in both the text and reality. He is that through which the world comes to be, comes to fulfillment, and humanity is healed; he is that through which these actions of the Triune God are communicated in Scripture and expressed theologically. We may now graphically represent the structure of the Breviloquium through the following diagram:"²⁸

The method Bonaventure follows in the Breviloquium also reflects the method of God’s revelation in Scripture: he proceeds from authority. As Stephen Brown’s essay has already mentioned, Bonaventure is following an essentially Augustinian-Anselmian reasoning process: fides quaerens intellectum — that is, a Catholic Christian seeking to understand what he believes.²⁹ Anselm believed that a Christian, upon prayerful reflection, might often find necessary reasons that could demonstrate why a belief must be true.³⁰ Richard of St. Victor, who also influenced Bonaventure greatly, followed Anselm in this, affirming: I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that arguments which are not only probable, but actually necessary, are not lacking to explain anything whatsoever…. even though these may elude our diligent inquiry.³¹ And so Bonaventure too is confident that in giving the reasons for everything contained in this little work… I have attempted to derive each reason from the First Principle, in order to demonstrate that the truth of Sacred Scripture is from God, that it treats of God, is according to God, and has God as its end.³² That is, for Bonaventure, if one truly understands the nature of the self-diffusive God of Love whom we have come to know through faith in Christ, that knowledge can function as a self-evident premise (the First Principle) for demonstrating all the other truths of faith.

And so, Part I of the Breviloquium begins with the Trinity of God. J. Isaac Goff’s detailed essay thoroughly lays out Bonaventure’s truly profound treatment of this topic. Goff makes clear how Bonaventure not only presents a very sophisticated treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity itself, but also tries to establish how all the other topics of theology that will be discussed in Parts II-VII of the Breviloquium are founded in and proceed from the relational dynamics of the persons of the Trinity among themselves (ad intra) and how that relationship spills out ad extra in the missions of the economic Trinity. Bonaventure emphasizes that the First Principle of all reality is precisely a Trinity, and so the Trinitarian imprint is manifest throughout God’s activities of creation and redemption. God is Trinity so God acts as Trinity.

In the next chapter, "Part II: On the Creation of the World, Boyd Taylor Coolman continues to unfold Bonaventure’s pervasive Trinitarianism by describing the God who creates, the act and process of that creation, and the resulting creation itself. Bonaventure emphasizes that the purpose of creation in the first place is to manifest the divine nature, but also to crown his handiwork by forming rational creatures who can enter into a personal relationship with God: The First Principle made this sensible world to make itself known, so that the world might serve as a footprint and a mirror to lead humankind to love and praise God, its maker."³³ As all God’s actions reflect their cause, everything in creation bears a Trinitarian stamp, although in progressive degrees: as vestige, image, or likeness. Although everything in creation reflects God in some way, it is the unique dignity of rational creatures to bear in themselves a natural image of the Trinity that calls them to be transformed into the divine likeness by entering the dynamic of God’s love.

Of course, the tragedy is that human beings have chosen not to respond to God’s love. In "Part III: On the Corruption of Sin," Timothy Johnson explores the painful reality of our present human state. As he makes clear, here Bonaventure basically follows an Augustinian line of reasoning: evil is not a substance in itself, but is a defect in the created will. Human beings bear a natural image of the Trinity in their memory, intellect, and will, but precisely because the will is free, they must choose to respond to the divine initiative written into their very being. Sin is thus a conscious withdrawal from the First Principle that undergirds human existence, a choice of autonomy and lesser goods instead of the Source of life. Bonaventure makes clear that sin does not only affect the relationship between God and humanity, but has cosmic effects as well. As human beings were meant to be mediators between the rest of creation and God, their fall has also corrupted the blessings that the world should offer them. Johnson also points out that Bonaventure’s analysis of sin, its dynamics and consequences, provided a useful pastoral resource for the friars engaging in the ministry of preaching and hearing confessions.

As mentioned above, "Part IV: On the Incarnation of the Word" stands at the center of the Breviloquium. Corey Barnes succinctly but eloquently opens up its riches, showing how Bonaventure’s genius is manifest in the way he can weave together so many disparate themes common to medieval christologies while asserting his own clear, distinctive vision. Bonaventure intimately ties together the role of the Uncreated Word on the cosmic level with the role of the Incarnate Word on the redemptive level, making clear that it is the same First Principle active in both. In order that all things might be led back to the First Principle, it was most fitting that the same Word who exists eternally within the Trinity and through whom all things came into being should enter the world temporally as the mediator between God and creation. In a particular way, Bonaventure stresses that to function as the restorative principle, the Incarnate Word must respect the nature of God’s creation and therefore human free will. Christ, through his self-sacrificing life and death, has become an exemplary cause of human salvation by providing an efficacious pattern for human beings to imitate; by expressing the true capacities of human nature, Christ functions as hierarch, restoring the cosmic order that was broken by sin.

If Part IV of the Breviloquium describes how Christ the Incarnate Word is the beginning (ortus) of God’s work of re-creation, Part V: On the Grace of the Holy Spirit, analyzes its (modus): the way in which that re-creating work becomes effective in human beings. Katherine Wrisley Shelby carefully examines this unfortunately neglected topic in Bonaventure studies, demonstrating how his consideration of the workings of grace carries forward his Trinitarian view of reality, and in a way that has profound implications for spirituality and the Christian moral life. Bonaventure presents grace as a dei-forming presence (a God-conforming influence) of the Trinity within the individual: restoring our capacities of knowing and loving God that have been weakened by sin, and so transforming us into the divine likeness. Precisely because the First Principle is the Trinity, however, Shelby underlines how God’s work of grace follows a Trinitarian pattern. In a particular way, Bonaventure focuses on the human will: his presentation emphasizes how grace restores our rectitude of choice,³⁴ making us capable of loving God and others, bearers of the divine life in the world.

Precisely because we human beings are composed of both matter and spirit, however, the workings of God’s invisible grace are mediated concretely by visible, material signs. In "Part VI: On the Sacramental Remedy, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and Alexander Giltner unpack Bonaventure’s interesting theology of the sacraments, which bears the imprint of all the other topics taken up to this point. What is most striking about it, however, is Bonaventure’s stress on the physicality of the sacramental system. He specifies that it is precisely the Incarnate Word that is the source of the sacraments: just as God’s love was revealed through the real humanity of Jesus, so too material sacraments are the means by which the glorified Christ continues to exercise his restorative activity in the world. In them, natural elements, the product of the Uncreated Word, now become signs awakening human beings to the recreating power of God’s grace; in this way, just as sensible objects had been the occasion of the fall of the soul, they might also become the occasion of its rising."³⁵ In a particular way, Bonaventure focuses on the Eucharist, a mystery that contains what it signifies, visible elements that, through grace, transform believers into the Body of Christ.

With "Part VII: On the Repose of the Final Judgment," the Breviloquium reaches its goal, the status/fructus of creation. As described by Kevin Hughes and Benjamin Winter, this is not simply a chronological ‘end’ to salvation history, but the ‘end’ in a much deeper sense: the status achieved through creation’s returning to its Source, the fullness of divine life. In describing this, Bonaventure does not allude to the speculative apocalyptic imagery so rampant at his time, but concentrates on the essential features of this ‘end’. Here he centers on what he has already said in Parts II and III — the unique created dignity of the human person, made in the image of the Trinitarian First Principle, which includes the gift of human free will. The last judgment is not so much an extrinsic decision of God to condemn or reward people but simply revealing the consequences of the free choices they made during their life. Two books are opened to view: the consciences of individuals and the Book of Life, the Incarnate Word, who embodies the meaning of reality, in whose light people can evaluate what they have made of their lives.³⁶ Again, focusing on the nature of creation, Bonaventure also emphasizes that human beings are a body/soul composite, and so their eternal blessing or punishment, although focused on the heart, must involve the full, embodied human person. Thus, this concise summary of the truth of theology reaches its conclusion.³⁷

Our volume concludes with an essay by Bert Roest: "Bonaventure’s Breviloquium: A Sketch for a Reception History," in which he examines the ongoing influence of this treatise over the past 750 years. As mentioned already by Jay Hammond, we are dealing here with a work that left a very significant manuscript transmission in the later Middle Ages, attesting to its popularity in a wide variety of contexts. Chunks of it were also reworked and incorporated into other authors’ theological handbooks. The fact that in it Bonaventure did not employ dry, involved Scholastic techniques and language perhaps made it even more popular in Franciscan reform movements of the 15th and 16th centuries. And it again was employed a great deal in the Bonaventure revival of the later 16th and 17th centuries. And, as we averted at the beginning of this brief essay, a number of specialists in medieval theology and philosophy have drawn attention to its genius. Our hope is that this volume may help open up even more of its treasures to a new generation of scholars and other persons seeking insight into their faith. That will be the reward for our efforts.

___________________

¹ See the essays by Jay Hammond and Bert Roest in this volume.

² De libris legendis a monacho, 5-6, Opera J. Gerson (Strasbourg, 1515), Fol. 16. G. Gerson’s comment actually was made with reference to two of Bonaventure’s works: the Breviloquium and the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum.

³ M.-D. Chenu, La théologie comme science au xiiie siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1942), p. 54 (le plus beau programme d’herméneutique sacrée qu’ait proposé le XIIIe siècle).

⁴ Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. E. M. Macierowski, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), p. 317.

⁵ De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 3, pp. 311-326.

⁶ Breviloquium, trans. Dominic Monti, Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 9 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2005), pp. ix-xi. This is a translation of the critical text published in the Quaracchi edition: Doctoris Seraphici Sancti Bonaventurae… Opera Omnia, 10 vols. (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1882-1902), Vol. 5, pp. 201-291. Unless noted otherwise, all references to the text of the Breviloquium in this volume, abbreviated simply as Brev., are from this English translation, which uses the numbering system of the text in the Quaracchi edition. References to other works of Bonaventure cited in these essays will be to the Quaracchi edition, referred to simply by the volume and page number within parentheses.

⁷ Joshua Benson blazed a path forward in this regard with his article, "The Christology of the Breviloquium," in A Companion to Bonaventure, ed. Jay Hammond, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and Jared Goff (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 247-287.

⁸ See the Foreword by J. A. Wayne Hellmann for the genesis of this work.

⁹ Brev. prol. 6.5-6, pp. 22-23.

¹⁰ Monti, Breviloquium, Introduction, p. xvii.

¹¹ Camille Bérubé, De la philosophie à la sagesse chez Saint Bonaventure et Roger Bacon (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1976), pp. 117-118.

¹² Bert Roest’s essay on the "Reception of the Breviloquium" agrees in large measure with Hammond’s suggestions.

¹³ Most notably, Bonaventure uses this pattern in the Itinerarium, but also other works, such as the Collationes in Hexaëmeron.

¹⁴ As he states later in the Collationes in Hexaëmeron: The number seven is the number of universality… and contains a grand mystery. For every proportion and proportionality is made according to the notion of the number three and the number four. 16.7-8 (5, 404). The significance of the number seven is explored below by Wayne Hellmann and Alexander Giltner in their essay on the Sacraments.

¹⁵ Hex. 16.10 (5, 404-405).

¹⁶ Hex. 16.9. (5, 404). Bonaventure first mentions the expression First Principle in the Breviloquium in the Prologue (6.4, p. 22), just as he is about to make the transition from explaining the way one should read Scripture to the way he in which he is going to structure and develop the body of the work.

¹⁷ See 3 Sent, d. 19, art. 2, q. 2, resp. (3, 410) and Comm. Jn. (6, 259). On this, see Benson, "Christology of the Breviloquium, p. 253. For a good explanation of the Word as center of the Trinity, see Zachary Hayes, Bonaventure’s Trinitarian Theology," in A Companion to Bonaventure, pp. 224-228.

¹⁸ See also Hex. 3.2: The key of contemplation is a three-fold understanding — that of the Uncreated Word through which all things were made, that of the Incarnate Word through which all things are restored, and that of the Inspired Word, through which all things are revealed (5, 343). See my introduction to the Breviloquium, pp. xli-xlii.

¹⁹ I build here on the insights of Benson, "Christology of the Breviloquium," pp. 253-257.

²⁰ Brev., prol. par. 1, p. 1.

²¹ Bonaventure will later state: that truth, to which we are bound to assent by faith, is divine truth as it exists in its own proper nature or in its assumed human nature. Brev. 5.7.6, pp. 198-199.

²² Ephesians 3:17.

²³ Brev. prol. par. 3-4, pp.3-4.

²⁴ Brev. prol. 5, pp. 17-18.

²⁵ Brev. prol. 6.5, p. 22.

²⁶ Collationes in Hexaëmeron, 1.17 (5, 332).

²⁷ Bonaventure will show how these various topics flow logically from the consideration of God as First Principle in Part I, chapter 1 of the Breviloquium, pp. 27-28. See J. Isaac Goff’s essay on the Trinity below.

²⁸ Benson, "Christology of the Breviloquium," pp. 254-257.

²⁹ Anselm, Proslogion, proem. It is no accident that Bonaventure closes the Breviloquium with a long quotation from the Proslogion. On Anselm’s influence on Bonaventure, see J. G. Bougerol, ‘Saint Bonaventure et Saint Anselme," in Antonianum 41 (1972), 333-361.

³⁰ See René Roques, La méthode du ‘Cur Deus Homo’ de Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry, in Structures théologiques: De la Gnose a Richard de Saint-Victor (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1962), pp. 243-293.

³¹ De Trinitate, 1.4 (PL 196, 892).

³² Brev. prol. 6.6, pp. 22-23. For more detail on Bonaventure’s method, see the introduction to my translation of the Breviloquium, pp. xxii-xxxviii.

³³ Brev. 2.11.2, p. 94.

³⁴ Both of these quotations are from Brev. 5.1.3, pp. 170-171.

³⁵ Brev. 6.1, p. 212.

³⁶ Brev. 7.1.3, p. 268.

³⁷ Brev. prol. 6.5, p. 22.

THE THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT: REFLECTIONS ON THE

METHOD OF BONAVENTURE’S BREVILOQUIUM

STEPHEN F. BROWN

Beginning theologians often dread Sacred Scripture itself, feeling it to be as confusing, disordered and uncharted as some impenetrable forest. That is why my colleagues have asked me, from my own modest knowledge, to draw up some concise summary of the truth of theology. Yielding to their requests, I have agreed to compose what might be called a brief discourse (breviloquium). In it I will summarize not all the truths of our faith, but some things that are more opportune [for such students] to hold.¹

Bonaventure had shown his own modest knowledge of theology in a number of doctrinal works before delivering his Breviloquium. His massive four-volume Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, his Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, his Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, and his Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection followed the traditional scholastic method found in all the medieval Sentences commentaries of the thirteenth century and covered all the subject matter treated in the Breviloquium.

The Breviloquium differs significantly from Bonaventure’s other works dealing with doctrinal questions. His other doctrinal treatises start with quaestiones. They ask questions which present a puzzling challenge, such as the first question of his Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity: Is the existence of God an indubitable truth?² Immediately Bonaventure provides one form of response: There are three ways of arguing in favor of this. These three ways of arguing that the existence of God is an indubitable truth in fact will offer nearly thirty different arguments in favor of an affirmative answer to the question. However, a challenge immediately follows: But on the other hand, the objection is raised that it is possible to think that God does not exist, and that it is a truth that can be doubted. The negative response to the quaestio is not as abundant as the affirmative voice, but there are, nonetheless, fourteen different supporting arguments for the negative side. Bonaventure has much to think about before he can provide his own answer. The many pro and contra arguments leave him with a massive puzzle to solve and a large collection of issues to resolve. Still, he started with a question and is expected to provide an answer. Given all the pro and contra arguments, he might not be able to give a simple answer. Under the various contents of the arguments he has to keep in mind as he answers, he very much may have to say: ‘given this context, I have to answer in this way, but given another context, I have to answer in another way.’ In fact, Bonaventure gives qualified answers to the question: "Therefore, if the term indubitable is taken to mean the absence of doubt because of the process of reasoning, the existence of God is indubitably true, because — whether the intellect turns within itself or outside itself, or whether it looks above itself — if it proceeds rationally, it knows that God exists with certitude and without doubt."³ As he continues:

But if the term indubitable is taken in the second sense, namely, as the removal of that doubt which comes from the deficiency of reason, it can be conceded that, because of human weakness, it is possible that someone might doubt the existence of God because of a three-fold defect in the mind of the knower; that is, a defect in the act of apprehending, or in the act of judging, or in the act of fully analyzing….⁴ In this way, doubt may arise concerning the existence of God from the deficiency of the intellect itself that apprehends or compares or resolves. According to this understanding, the existence of God can be doubted by some intellect if it has not sufficiently and totally understood the meaning of the term God. But for the intellect which fully understands the meaning of the word God — thinking God to be that than which no greater can be conceived — not only is there no doubt that God exists, but the non-existence of God cannot even be thought. Therefore, the reasons given to prove this should be conceded [my emphasis]. ⁵

Therefore, the reasons given to prove this should be conceded. What does this last line tell us? It tells us that the focus in the quaestiones approach to dealing with doctrinal issues is to view them as involving proofs. This tendency has its basis in the way that Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Topics were read as scientific instruments and the influence they had on the deductive method of doing theology. In this view, arguments were seen as starting from acceptable premises or principles and moving on to legitimate conclusions. If the premises were certain and evident, then the conclusions arrived at by proper logic would be demonstrative, that is, they would also be certain and evident. If the premises were weaker, that is, if they were not certain and evident, but only likely or probable, then the conclusions likewise would be at the level of opinion, that is, they would only be probable. Theology was deductive in this way, and it seems that its purpose was to lead to the justification of conclusions — sometimes as certain because of strong principles and sometimes as probable — when they were based on probable sources.

One might wonder if this is the whole story of the quaestio and its structure and goal. Does it explain the role of the negative arguments? For instance, the last negative argument in the first quaestio of the Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity claims that to believe the indubitable is not meritorious.⁶ Does Bonaventure’s response to it simply prove that this argument is false or must be disproved? If the existence of God is indubitable, to believe in God would not be meritorious. Yet, his response to this negative argument is not just a denial of what is said in the objection. It is much more. To help him with his response, Bonaventure chooses Hugh of Saint-Victor, who wrote before Aristotle’s influence regarding methodology had a strong role in medieval theology. Here is Hugh’s response, which forms the last words of Bonaventure’s quaestio:

Wherefore from the beginning, God willed to be neither totally manifest to the consciousness of man nor totally hidden, lest — if He were totally manifest — faith would have no merit and infidelity would be seen to be erroneous because of the evidence, and faith could not be exercised with respect to the hidden. If He were totally hidden, faith could not be helped by knowledge, and infidelity would be excused of its ignorance. For this reason, it was necessary that God present Himself even while remaining hidden, lest if he were totally hidden, He should be totally unknown, so that even as He manifests Himself to be known, He remains hidden lest He be totally manifest; this He does so that man’s mind might be stimulated by what is known and challenged by what is hidden.⁷

This response of Hugh of Saint-Victor is not a proof that the presenter of the last negative argument is wrong; it is rather an essay aimed at bringing understanding. Such attempts at promoting understanding are often found in traditional doctrinal treatises, such as Commentaries on the Sentences and Quaestiones disputatae. This suggests that such works should not be looked at primarily as collections of proofs — even when they follow proof forms or structures.

LATER CLAIMS CONCERNING THE DECLARATIVE CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY

When reading early fourteenth-century Commentaries on the Sentences, one will find that some authors claim that despite many deductive arguments in these doctrinal works, theology is declarative, that is, theological efforts, even deductive ones, are not formally aimed at proving anything; they are aimed at bringing clarity or understanding to the articles of the Creed. The articles of the Creed cannot be demonstrated; nor are they simply opinions grounded by probable arguments: they are accepted on divine authority, not established as true and certain by human proofs or arguments. This declarative theology is portrayed in the first Commentary on the Sentences (1308) of Durandus.⁸ It is even more fully presented in the Scriptum super Primum Sententiarum (1315) and in the later Reportatio in I Sententiarum (1318) of Peter Aureoli.⁹

In the prologue or prooemium to his Scriptum, Aureoli portrays what he considers proper theology:

When you start with some proposition about which it has been determined what has to be believed and held by faith, and then reasons for believing it are brought forth, and then doubts concerning it are dissolved, and terms expressing it have been explained, then you have a habit that is properly theological. Now such a habit is not a habit of science; nor is it a habit of faith, since this was already present. Nor is it a habit of opinion. Therefore, it should be called a properly theological habit, since to the attainment of this habit the conclusions of the doctors of theology are directed, and the Book of the Sentences, and the original writings of the Fathers, and the reading and exposition of the Scriptures are ordained.¹⁰

Aureoli summarizes his portrait of this properly theological habit in four propositions:¹¹

1. From study of this kind where, concerning the things that we believe, probable arguments taken from other sciences are brought in as supports, and where all doubts are resolved, and all terms clarified, and where the Scriptures are explained, that from such a study that is properly theological, we acquire a habit beyond the habit of faith.

2. A theological habit does not make one cling to the faith, nor does it cause any assent in regard to the truths which are believed.

3. A theological habit is only declarative. For, every habit that makes something to be imagined better by the intellect without producing any assent is a declarative habit.

4. The habit about which we are speaking has the character of the intellectual virtue of wisdom, a virtue described in Book VI of the Ethics. It is also called ‘light’ and ‘intelligence,’ about which the Saints make mention and at which they try to aim in their disputations and through the treatises that they compose.

As Peter Aureoli has already suggested, declarative theology is not a fourteenth-century creation. He makes concrete his general statement that declarative theology is not only ‘wisdom’ but also the ‘light’ and the ‘intelligence’ spoken of by the Saints. Quoting Augustine’s First Homily on John’s Gospel, he says that God illumines the little souls in the Church by the light of faith. The lofty souls, who are the mountains, he illumines by the light of wisdom.¹² And in the opening chapter of Book XIV of the De trinitate, Augustine urges the same lofty souls to pursue the kind of knowledge by which our most wholesome faith is begotten, nourished, defended and strengthened.¹³ It is likewise the case with Richard of Saint-Victor. In his prologue to Book I of On the Trinity, he urges his readers:¹⁴ Let us strive always, in so far as it is right and can be attained, to gain a full understanding by our reason of those things we hold by faith, and