1

Faith and Reason: Aspects of Philosophical Trinitarianism in

Aquinas and Bonaventure

Philosophical theology owes a good deal to the seminal works of high Scholasticism’s

two most important theologians, Saints Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Studies of these two Masters of Theology who held

chairs at the University of Paris have predominantly focused on comparisons and

contrasts between the Franciscan and Dominican approaches to the perennial question

of faith, reason and philosophy’s place in theology. In this essay I attempt to narrow

the problem of faith and reason down to the relationship between each of their

scientific, philosophical methods and what is fundamentally unattainable without

faith, the doctrine of the unity and trinity of God in Christian theology.

Unquestionably the Franciscan and the Dominican both approached the doctrine and

study of Trinitarian theology on the basis of Christian faith and divine revelation.

Nevertheless both exhibited an unparalleled confidence in the capacity of reason and

philosophy to explain and defend the Church’s doctrine, albeit with marked

differences that were of enormous significance for the development of Scholastic

theology. In Bonaventure we find a strong use of philosophical reason and theology in

his Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (1255), the Breviloquium (1257),

the Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259) and finally the Collationes in Hexaemeron

(1274), all the works upon which this study is based.1 We turn to Thomas’ early work,

1 Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, Works of St. Bonaventure III, translated and introduced by Zachary Hayes (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 2000). Hereafter referred to as Disputed Questions. This work was written sometime between 1253 and 1257, that is, later than the Sentence Commentary and shortly before his departure from the university of Paris to become Minister General of the Franciscan Order. See Introduction by Zachary Hayes, p. 26. For the text of Breviloquium, see Bonaventure, Breviloquium, translated by Dominic V. Monti (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005). For the text of Itinerarium mentis in Deum, see Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, translated by Philotheus Boehner; edited, with Introduction and Notes by Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993). Hereafter referred to as Itinerarium. For Collationes in hexaemeron, see Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days, The Works of Bonaventure Vol. V, translated by José de Vinck (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970). Hereafter referred to as In hexaemeron.

2

the Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, (his commentary on Boethius’ De

Trinitate., c. 1256-1259), and also to some of his mature works, De potentia and the

Summa theologiae for an understanding of the Dominican’s philosophical

Trinitarianism.2 An important way to critically evaluate the relationship between faith

and reason in these two theologians is to consider how each found ‘evidence’ for the

Trinity in the world of created things. We will also examine the issue of ‘necessary

reasons’ for the Trinity in both, and to attempt an overall view of the connection

between the Trinitarian processions in God and creation.

The Philosophical Trinitarianism of St. Bonaventure

In his most systematic treatise, the Breviloquium, Bonaventure describes theology as

the only perfect science and also “the only perfect wisdom, for it begins with the

supreme cause as the principle of all things that are caused – the very point at which

philosophical knowledge ends.”3 Yet, metaphysics, or the study of the most

fundamental concepts of being and essence, is for the seraphic doctor the first science

from which all enquiry must begin, being as it is the first principle, center and goal of

existence.4 Against the secondary literature that would construe a Bonaventure in

terms of an opposition to Aquinas, or to philosophy per se for that matter, or who

label his outlook a “mystical” theology that treats philosophy as a mere adjunct to

theology, this distinction just quoted needs to be taken into account.5 The implication

2 For the translation of Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate used in this essay, see Thomas Aquinas, Faith, reason and theology, Mediaeval Sources In Translation 32, translated by Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987). Hereafter referred to as In Boeth. de Trin. For De potentia, see Thomas Aquinas, The Power of God, translated by Richard J. Regan (Oxford: OUP, 2012). Hereafter referred to as De potentia. For Summa Theologiae, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, translated the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). Hereafter referred to as Summa Theologiae. 3 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, part I, chapter 1: 3, [p. 28]. Does this put a boundary line on reason, prescribing its scope? See Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, (Cambridge, CUP: 2004), p. 88. Yes, for all sciences and even theology have their limit according to Bonaventure: “they have their evening, for all knowledge shall be destroyed.” (De reductione, VI.) 4 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron., 1: 11-12 [p. 6-7]. 5 Kevin L. Hughes offers a summary of the conventional misconstruals of Bonaventure in his article “Bonaventure Contra Mundum? The Catholic Theological Tradition Revisited,” Theological Studies 74 (2013), 372-398. See also Andreas Speer, “Bonaventure and the

3

of Bonaventure’s own words is that philosophy and theology are indeed two distinct

sciences. In this same context Bonaventure describes theology as the science that

makes “the body of faith intelligible,”6––the task he sets out to accomplish in the

Breviloquium. Quoting St. Augustine, he gives the following reason: “what we

believe we owe to authority, what we understand to reason.” The intelligibility of

Christian doctrine therefore depends on understanding that which has been revealed

by authority––by means of reason. The philosopher or metaphysician is able to rise to

a consideration of the very notion of being from created and particular substances, but

cannot attain to the notion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.7 For Bonaventure, the

metaphysician is only a true metaphysician when he considers being in the light of

that principle which is the exemplary cause of all things. Otherwise his philosophy

remains at the level of physical science or ethics. Christ is not only the centre of

theology, but of the natural or philosophical sciences too: “He Himself is the central

point of all understanding.”8 There is an intentional circularity to the logic of

Bonaventure: If we begin with the first science, metaphysics, first “by reason of

eternal generation,” we can pass through all other sciences to culminate in theology,

the seventh science. “The rational spirit, which emanates from the most blessed trinity

and is a likeness of the trinity, should return after the manner of a certain intelligible

circle...to the most blessed trinity by God-conforming glory.”9

It is possible to take Bonaventure’s metaphor of a book to conceptualize the twins of

faith and reason or theology and philosophy: the “Book of Scripture” would

correspond to faith and theology and the “Book of Creation” to reason and

philosophy. Though we need to be careful in making clear-cut divisions between

them, for though there is a relative autonomy between philosophy and theology in the

writings of Bonaventure, both domains have a single origin in the Trinity of Persons,

and in particular reason is attributed to the Word as Exemplar. So both books must be

taken together as foundations upon which to base belief in the Trinity.10 While

theology and philosophy are distinct disciplines, they are not separate, unrelated Question of a Medieval Philosophy,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997), especially pps. 29-36. 6 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I, 1: 4, [p. 29]. 7 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron, 1: 13 [p.7] 8 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron, 1: 11 [p. 6]. 9 Bonaventure, Disputed Questions, q. 8, ad 7 [p. 266]. 10 Bonaventure, Disputed Questions, q. 1 a. 2, concl.

4

sciences. A third book he describes is the “Book of Life,” and this corresponds to the

ultimate goal or end of philosophy and theology, that is, mystical “union with Him

who is above all essence and all knowledge.”11

The Book of Creation

In the “first book”, the book of creation, we read of the perceptible world of sensory

knowledge and natural things, the natural sciences and philosophy. In his Disputed

Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, Bonaventure says that in the pre-lapsarian

state of humanity, the first book was an efficacious light that bore witness to God as

Trinity.12 The created world is a kind of book reflecting its Maker, the Trinity at three

levels of expression: vestige, image and likeness.13 Vestiges (vestigia: footprints)

mirror God as their single origin in that they have their own unique existence (esse),

and therefore speak to the reader of a threefold efficient, exemplary and final

causality.14 God is the principle, exemplary form and final end or goal of all things

that exist. Vestiges give witness to the Trinity, but only from afar. However much

vestiges mirror their originating cause, the dissimilarity is always greater. They are

unlike the unity, simultaneity, fullness, equality, and substantiality of the Triune God.

Because vestiges imply production and hence an originating principle, they are divine

words expressing and bearing a trace of the Divine Exemplar, the Word through

whom all things are created.

The second level of expression, the image, is a distinct nature which bears a closer

resemblance of its Creator than the vestige in that it mirrors God through the faculties

of memory, intelligence and will. The image ‘grasps’ not only the created essences

below it in the hierarchy of created beings, but “even the creating essence,” above it.

(Here Bonaventure differs from St Thomas).15 Like a mirror, the image receives and

11 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 7: 5 [p. 39]. 12 Q. 1, a. 2. [p. 128]. See also Breviloquium., p. 2, 12: 4 [p. 97]. 13 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, II, 12: 1 [p. 96]. 14 I Sentences, d. 3, p. 1, q. 2, resp. [p. 73] Translated by Alexis Bugnolo, published by The Franciscan Archive with footnotes and scholia, 2007 & 2010), CD Edition. The CD version includes parallel columns of the Latin and English texts and the page numbering of the Quaracchi editors. 15 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Part 2, chap. 9. 1 [p.84]; I Sentences, d. 3, p. 1, q. 2, resp. [p. 73] (Published by The Franciscan Archive with footnotes and scholia, 2007, 2010), CD Edition. [p.73]; see also Zachary Hayes, Introduction, Disputed Questions, 70. This is the subject of one of the major differences between Bonaventure with Aquinas (e.g., In Boeth. de

5

represents within itself all things.16 The threefold imagery of memory, intelligence

and will analogically reflects the Trinitarian Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In human beings, who through intellectual judgment are able to form images, generate

thought, and a likeness of themselves, the book of creation becomes a mirror in which

is reflected “the eternal generation of the Word, the Image and the Son, eternally

emanating from the Father.”17

The Book of Scripture

The Seraphic Doctor uses the metaphor of the book of Scripture to illustrate what

today approximates with faith, revelation and theology. While “Scripture” was the

term Bonaventure often used when he wanted to speak of theology or Christian

doctrine, it should be noted that this did not mean that divine revelation was equated

with the literal reading of the Scriptures.18 Theology involved a study of the

foundational literal sense onto which was built three further spiritual meanings: the

moral, the anagogical and the allegorical interpretations of Scripture.19 Just as the

literal meaning is foundational for the theological, so reason is foundational for good

theology.

According to Bonaventure, a need arises for the book of Scripture due to the fall of

humanity into the “darkness of ignorance” and the loss of the “eye of contemplation.”

This book had been written “in accord with the divine revelation which has never

been deficient nor absent from the beginning of the world to the end,” and which

spreads the light of a more efficacious testimony that God is Trinity.20 With this

universal disclosure of knowledge Bonaventure shows great confidence in the role of

reason in the pre-lapsarian state of humanity. It also manifests the unity of

Bonaventure’s thought on the roles of revelation and reason. But even as Bonaventure

argues that humankind may arrive at knowledge of God through creatures by the

Trin. q. 1, a. 3). Bonaventure maintains in the Itinerarium that pure being is that “which first comes into the intellect,” and that this cannot be analogous being, “for that has the least actuality.” (Itinerarium V: 3). 16 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron 12: 16. [p. 180]. 17 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, II. 7. 18 Christopher Cullen, Bonaventure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114. 19 Bonaventure, On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, V. [p.45] 20 Bonaventure, Disputed Questions, Q. 1 A. 2, concl. [p. 129].

6

natural light of reason,21 he nevertheless draws the line and clearly states that it is not

possible for man to come to knowledge of the Trinity of Persons in the One Divine

Essence through creatures:

The plurality of persons [together] with unity of essence is proper to the divine nature alone, the like of which cannot be found in creatures, nor may it be found, nor thought of rationally: for that reason in no manner is the Trinity of the Persons cognizable through a creature, by ascending rationally from the creature into God.22

That there is a threefold plurality of the one Divine Essence can only be known by

revelation of the Word Incarnate. Bonaventure illustrates this in his Itinerarium with

the analogy of the two cherubim in the Temple sanctuary. By them “we understand

the two kinds or grades (duos modos seu gradus) of contemplation of the invisible

and eternal things of God: the first considers the essential attributes of God; the

second, the proper attributes of the three Persons.”23 The structure of Bonaventure’s

thought is similar to that of Aquinas’ description of Divine oneness and threeness as

what is essential and what is proper to God, but where the Franciscan differs is in

associating the proper attributes with the diffusion of goodness in God. As he

explains, St John Damascene, following the example of Moses who proclaims the

Unity of God in the Old Testament, taught that the more proper name of God is ‘He

Who Is,’ i.e., Being Itself (cf. Ex 3:14). However, it takes a further step to

acknowledge God principally as Good and therefore as the Trinity. For Dionysius

considered God’s name to be more properly Goodness and he followed the example

of Christ who attributed exclusively to God the name Good (Lk 18:19) and revealed

the plurality of God in the New Testament.24

God as subsistent being (He Who Is) may be grasped by the philosopher, yet even this

is only discoverable along the soul’s journey “with the High Priest into the Holy of

Holies.”25 This means that it is only those who are practiced in the way of

21 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2, resp. [p.72] 22 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 4, resp. [p. 76]. Dicendum, quod pluralitas personarum cum unitate essentiae est proprium divinae naturae solius, cuius simile nec reperitur in creatura nec potest reperiri nec rationabiliter cogitari: ideo nullo modo trinitas personarum est cognoscibilis per creaturam, rationabiliter ascendendo a creatura in Deum. 23 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5: 1 [p. 28]. Latin text of Itinerarium accessed 29/10/2014 from the Franciscan Archive www.franciscanos.net/document/itinerl.htm 24 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5: 2 [p. 28]. 25 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5: 1 [p. 28].

7

contemplation, of seeing God ‘above’––and not only ‘outside’ in his vestiges or even

‘within’ in his image––who can approach this level of knowledge. And yet to see God

as He Who Is is manifestly not at the same level as contemplating God under the

aspect of goodness and the plurality of Persons. This takes a further step (gradus).

The soul still needs to be raised from the consideration of God according to His

essential attributes to “the contuition” of God as Pure Goodness also. Here it is not as

evident in Bonaventure as it is in Aquinas that there is such a clear demarcation

between the orders of faith and reason. Just as God’s unity and his triunity are not two

‘things’, so reason and faith for Bonaventure are not so distinct that each be self-

contained. There is an equality represented in the two cherubim facing one another in

the sanctuary, but it would seem that the inequality arises according to the conceptual

order of the knower, who needs to rise from lower to higher knowledge through the

light of Scripture.

Upon reaching the heights of contemplating the communicability and diffusion of the

Good through the Trinitarian manifestations, Bonaventure would have us take a step

back in awe: “But when you contemplate these things, take care that you do not think

you can understand the incomprehensible.”26 It is only through the paradoxical

coincidence of opposites, the “dialectics of dissimilarity”27 that the finite human

creature can understand something of the mystery of the infinite God. This applies

just as much to the knowledge of the essential attributes of God. “If ‘God’ is the name

of the being that is first, eternal, most simple, most actual, and most perfect, such a

being cannot be thought not to be, nor can it be thought to be other than one.”28 We

may come to know of the supreme Being through its opposite, for most pure being

cannot come to our mind except “with the full flight on non-being.”29 We cannot

grasp nothingness (or the non-accompaniment of being) without therefore also

acknowledging pure being having nothing of non-being, both in reality and in our

thinking of it. For Bonaventure, human knowledge does not depend solely on the

active intellect’s abstractions from sensible likenesses, but also on an intuitive grasp

26 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 6: 3. [p. 34]. 27 The description is Timothy J. Johnson’s in his article “Reading Between the Lines: Apophatic Knowledge and Naming the Divine in Bonaventure’s Book of Creation,” Franciscan Studies 60 (2002), 139-158. 28 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5: 6 [p. 30]. 29 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5: 3. [p. 29].

8

of Divine Being.30 Though he does not claim that we are conscious of this reality. We

come to contemplate this only when we transcend our normal ‘phantasmal,’ or

imaginative ways of thinking. Just as the eye sees nothing, or rather is blinded when

looking at the sun, so the mind does not grasp Pure Being even though it is pure

Being that first comes to the mind and through which all other beings are grasped.

To sum up, Bonaventure uses the philosophical tools at his disposal to develop his

analogies of God’s relation to creation expressed in the characteristically symbolic

language ‘vestige,’ ‘image,’ and ‘likeness’ of the Latin Middle Ages to demonstrate

the unknowability of the Divine Trinity. He shows what the human mind cannot know

if only in order that it might recognize its own inability and thereby seek that which is

infinitely more simple, perfect, powerful, wise and good. The darkening of the

intellect is an apophatic means of intuiting an even more splendid Light to be sought

and loved. “This very darkness is in fact the supreme illumination of our mind.”31 His

confidence in reason together with his understanding of the limits of the mind in

respect of the Infinite, and his modesty in regard to what we can grasp of Trinitarian

revelation, are critical to understanding the relationship between faith and reason in

the Seraphic Doctor. As Denys Turner so ably summarizes, reason is a point of entry

into the ‘darkness of God,’ “just as the human nature of Christ is, as Bonaventure tells

us, a transitus into the Deus absconditus of Christian faith.”32

The role of necessary reasons in Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas

The relationship between Bonaventure’s theology and philosophy has often been

studied by way of contrast with the more dominant Thomistic thought of Catholic

theology, and has therefore also been interpreted in terms of St. Thomas. In his

Trinitarian theology, Bonaventure’s daring use of the so-called ‘necessary reasons’

for plurality within the One Divine Essence has been one such area of discussion,

recently in the work of Gilles Emery, O.P.33 Emery’s summary of the Scholastic

treatment of God’s Oneness and Threeness in these two Scholastic theologians is

focused on necessary reasons as constituting the principle difference between the 30 Christopher Cullen, Bonaventure, 61-2. 31 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, V: 4 [p. 29] 32 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 261. 33 E.g., Disputed Questions, Q. 2, A. 2, arg. 10 [p.151]

9

two.34 In fact he claims that Bonaventure “go[es] from oneness to the affirmation of

the Trinity” by means of necessary reasons. Further, he argues that Bonaventure’s

Trinitarian theology does not limit itself to establishing the non-contradiction or

harmony between oneness and threeness (to which Aquinas restricts his study), but

that the very aim of Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity

functions as a “disenvelopment” of Threeness from Oneness “using the resources of

reason,” i.e., necessary reasons.35 Emery’s elaboration on Bonaventure’s true purpose

needs to be weighed against the Franciscan’s conviction that the reasonableness of the

Trinity is rooted in his taking it on faith that God is what he is necessarily, and that

there must therefore be necessary and rational reasons for who He is––apart from our

making sense of the fact that in Bonaventure’s mind there is an obligation imposed by

the Gospel itself and that this does not itself run counter to reason. There must be a

necessary relation between the unity of God’s essence and the Trinity of Divine

Persons, even if we cannot know this philosophically. We can however think about it

with the light of revelation and “by intelligence lifted up by faith.”36 Indeed, there is

no possibility, even in Bonaventure’s confidence in humanity’s pre-lapsarian ability,

that humankind ever possessed knowledge of God as a Trinity of Persons without the

preordained and guiding hand of revelation. As we saw, Bonaventure understood

Divine revelation to be present to humanity “from the beginning of the world.” Yet, to

believe in the Trinity is a “truth beyond reason.”37 No matter how much Bonaventure

speculates as to necessary reasons for generation and procession in the Godhead, this

is always subject to the presuppositions of revealed faith, and they are not, strictly

speaking, the kind of demonstrable arguments that Aquinas taught should never and

cannot be used to ‘prove’ the Trinity.

The only reasons Aquinas would allow were the so-called “adaptations” or “probable

arguments”, which are arguments capable of showing that what is proposed to faith is

34 Gilles Emery, “The Threeness and Oneness of God in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century Scholasticism,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition 1 (2003), 62-65. 35 Gilles Emery, “Threeness and Oneness,” 66 & 63. Perhaps this misunderstanding of Thomas’ structure in the Summa Theologiae (prima pars, QQ. 1-26 and 27-43) of the division representing respectively de deo uno (reason) and de deo trino (faith) has colored the way Bonaventure’s Trinitarian theology is read. 36 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron, 11. 5 [p. 160] ; Zachary Hayes, Introduction, 28-29. 37 Disputed Questions Q. 1, A. 2 concl. [p.130].

10

not unreasonable or impossible.38 All that the so-called necessary reasons really

amount to in Thomas’ thought are probable arguments that do not have the force of

necessity. To attempt to prove that God is a Trinity by natural reason is to derogate

from the dignity of faith. For, as Thomas says, the Catholic faith is firstly concerned

with invisible realities that do not come under the sway of human reason, mysteries

that are in fact hidden or veiled.39 The only way we may use such arguments in

Trinitarian theology is to show that the presuppositions of the faith are not

incongruous or unreasonable, and to bolster the faith against attacks. But these cannot

be considered to be adequate proofs.40 To ‘prove’ supernatural realities by means of

natural reasons is to give unbelievers the impression that we believe because of

reasons that in fact are not cogent or simply unconvincing.

Aquinas outlines two kinds of reasoning by which we investigate matters human or

divine.41 One is demonstrative, the syllogistic argument based on premises and

conclusion and which necessarily compels the mind’s assent. St Thomas is clear that

matters of faith cannot be demonstratively proved in this way, for faith must be

voluntary. The best necessary reasons and demonstrative arguments can offer is to

show that belief in the Trinity is not impossible. And though the matters of faith

cannot be demonstratively proved, “neither can they be demonstratively disproved.”42

The second kind of reasoning is persuasive. Only this kind of argument can fall within

the scope of faith and sacra doctrina in the hope of persuading the truth of faith to the

doubtful or unbelievers. Persuasive reason draws on analogies to confirm the truths of

faith, and this goes to show a further reason why necessary or demonstrative

arguments cannot be legitimately used to ‘prove’ the Trinity: doing so would make

the argument about God depend on creatures, the conclusion would be made subject

to analogies (and therefore in terms of premises that refer principally to created

things). This would be a kind of natural theology in which God and creation are

univocally predicated, thereby reducing the mysteries of faith to the mere shadows of

philosophy reason. That would therefore not be knowledge of the God of Christian

theology.

38 Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ave Maria University: Sapientia Press, 2006), 126. 39 S.T. 1a Q. 32, A. 1, with reference to I Cor 2: 6-7. 40 Thomas Aquinas, S.T., 1a, Q. 32, A. 1, ad. 2 [169-70]. 41 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 2, A. 1, ad 5, [p. 39]. 42 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 2, A. 1, ad 5.

11

For Bonaventure the obligation to believe in what cannot be known without the

authority of revelation is that which is mediated in the so-called book of Scripture,

which bears witness to the truth that God is a Trinity, especially in the sacraments and

teaching of the New Testament. “This testimony is so express and efficacious that it

renders this truth not only credible –– i.e. congruous for belief –– but necessary as

well, since it obliges us and constrains us to believe it.”43 Bonaventure’s necessary

reasons must therefore be seen within the context of faith seeking understanding: that

contemplating God in the “highest and most reverent way” necessitates us to think

that he both understands Himself and wills His Goodness. Nevertheless this reasoning

is

not dictated by the innate light itself, but by the infused light from which ––together with the natural light –– one concludes that God is to be thought of as one who generates and spirates one co-equal to and consubstantial with Himself, and thus one thinks of God in the highest and most reverent way.44

To think of God in the highest and most reverent way for Bonaventure is a fruit of the

meeting of faith and reason. It is faith that moves us to think of God in the most

elevated and loving way, in this way affecting our natural reason to think at a higher

level to believe that God communicates himself in the most complete way,

and it would not be most loving if, believing him so able, we thought him unwilling to do so...faith tells us that God totally communicates himself by eternally having a beloved and another who is loved by both. In this way God is both one and three.45

The necessary reasons in the Disputed Questions are not therefore a derivation of

threeness from oneness as Emery claims ––just as they are not so in Aquinas––but are

the fruit of Bonaventure’s thinking on the close interrelation of being and goodness.

The structure of essential attributes juxtaposed alongside the personal plurality in God

in chapter 5 of the Itinerarium (symbolized by the two cherubim) is consistent with

the literary structure of the Disputed Questions. In the latter, the first seven questions

are divided into two articles each, the first article dealing with God in his essential

attributes, and the second with the distinction of the Persons. The final and eighth

question of the work does not distinguish these two aspects of the doctrine separately.

43 Disputed Questions, Q. 1, A. 2 [130]. 44 Emphasis added. Bonaventure, Disputed Questions, Q. 1, A. 2 [p. 131]. 45 Bonaventure, Breviloquium., Part 1, chap 2. 3 [p.30-1]

12

Instead it brings the essential attribute of primacy and personal properties together as

a distinct synthesis. The Christian doctrines of the Trinity and non-eternity and non-

necessity of Creation are all expressed sympathetically in terms of the resources of

thirteenth century philosophy: the Aristotelian principle of the two modes of

procession by way of nature and will and the neo-Platonic emanation of the One (the

threefold perfection, fontality and fecundity in the one God). So the Father is

described as the original fontal principle of the common fontality of both Trinitarian

inner, necessary life and God’s temporal, creative action. Such a view emphasizes the

single origin of both theology and philosophy, faith and reason. The plurality of the

Trinitarian Persons remains underivable by means of reason alone, but the articulation

of the Dionysian and Victorine self-diffusive goodness and charity in God as

supremely communicable is a flowering of the seed of reason in the light of

revelation’s gift. If for Bonaventure created reality is not properly intelligible without

the philosopher being informed by theological understanding, then, as Gregory

LaNave put it, “created reality is intelligible not in terms of the divine work ad extra,

but in terms of the law of God’s very being. Because God is supremely self-

communicative within himself, the world is intelligible. The logic of the Trinity is the

explanation of being itself. The Word is the basis for all that is.”46

St Thomas Aquinas and Philosophical Trinitarianism

Like Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas held that it is impossible to attain knowledge

of the Triune God by natural reason. Perfect knowledge of “the unity and trinity of the

one God” can only occur “in the life to come” through divine grace and not by

anything due to our nature. 47 Nevertheless, incomprehension does not entail

unintelligibility. Faith provides the presuppositions needed to acquire knowledge of

the Trinity “at the beginning of our belief,” just as the beginner in natural science also

needs to believe certain principles on the authority of a teacher.48 For Thomas, we

study the Church’s Trinitarian doctrine without the presumption of understanding it,

in order to defend the faith against error, and to show that belief in the Trinity is

46 Gregory LaNave, “God, Creation, and the Possibility of Philosophical Wisdom: The Perspectives of Bonaventure and Aquinas,” Theological Studies 69 (2008), 823. 47 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 3, A. 1, reply [p. 67]. 48 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 2, A. 2, ad. 5 [p. 44].

13

reasonably thinkable.49 That there can be no necessary reasons to demonstrate or

prove matters of faith also means no arguments against the faith are compelling. It is

possible, albeit difficult, to attain to the knowledge of God’s existence without the aid

of faith, though entirely impossible to know the Triune God by reason alone.

The structure of Thomas’ analysis of God reflects a faith-based, Christian philosophy

informed by that which reason could not possibly know without the divine

transformation of nature and reason in the ascent of a return (reditus) to God.

Aquinas discusses what is common in God, that is, the essential divine attributes (de

deo uno) and then moves on to what is proper, the Trinitarian processions (de deo

trino). The relationship between God and creation is one of the important fruits of the

framework of exitus and reditus, especially in the Summa theologiae. This conceptual

relationship between the one divine essence and the three divine persons forms a

consistent and lucid pattern, contributing to an intricate and innovative synthesis of

the Church’s ancient teaching with the resources of reason and philosophy. Not less

important is Thomas’ study of the Trinitarian dogma in one of his early (though

incomplete) works, the Expositio of Boethius’ De Trinitate.50

Here he expresses that which human reason is capable of knowing, i.e., that God

exists, but that it is incapable of grasping God’s essence. We can know that God exists

as First Cause and as Being itself. Creatures lead to an analogical knowledge of their

Creator as effects lead to their cause. For “human reason in the development of its

natural knowledge must advance from things that are posterior to those that are prior,

and from creatures to God.”51 Through the light of natural reason obtained through

the senses, the mind can grasp that he is one, that his essential attributes are

simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, immutability, eternity, and unity.52 Here we

see that natural reason can only reduce created effects to a single principle or cause.

Therefore, according to Thomas, the power of creation ex nihilo is common to the one

Divine Essence rather than proper to the Persons. Because divine creative causality 49 De potentia, Q. 9, A. 5 [p. 254]. Thomas says that such rational enquiry is not useless, “since it raises the spirit to capture the part of truth sufficient to exclude errors.” See also Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ave Maria University: Sapientia Press, 2006), 127. 50 Douglas C. Hall, The Trinity: An Analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius, (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1992), 43. 51 In Boeth. de trin., Prologue [p.4]. 52 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, part 1a, questions 3-10.

14

belongs to the whole Trinity, it is the Unity only, and therefore not the Trinity of

Persons that may be knowable to us by divine causality.53

Responding to a question in the Expositio, “Can the human mind arrive at a

knowledge of God?” Thomas replies:

God is known only through the form of his effect. Now effects are of two kinds. One is equal to the power of its cause, and through an effect of this sort the power––and consequently the essence––of the cause is fully known. The other effect falls short of the above-mentioned equality, and through such an effect the power of the agent cannot be fully grasped and consequently neither can its essence: we can only know that the cause exists (quod est). And so knowledge of the effect functions as the principle of knowing that a cause exists (an est), as the essence of the cause itself does when it is known through its form. Now all effects stand in this relation to God. It follows that in the present life we can only come to know that he exists (quia est).54

In the first effect by which God is known as Aquinas describes it, we can assume that

the knowledge that is equal to the power of its cause, and known through the form of

its essence, is the Wisdom that proceeds from the Father’s perfect knowledge, the

Word who is of the same nature as the Father. Because God’s essence transcends

every created form, it is unknowable to the finite human mind without participation in

God through the illumination of faith and the gifts of wisdom and understanding, the

strengthening of the creature’s own natural light.55 Thomas concludes further on in

the reply that the creature “is not competent to penetrate to a vision of his essence.”

Reason demonstrates that it cannot know, and in that unknowing reason is said to

transcend it own natural limits, thereby becoming intellect (intellectus), which is a

participation in the divine light of truth.56 If God is hardly known in his essence, how

much less must he be known in the inner, personal life of the relations of knowledge

and will, those powers by which the human intellect apprehends an analogy of the

Trinity within itself, in whose image it is created.

Aquinas’ apophatic understanding of God gives us further reason to argue that it is

impossible to conceive of the Trinity by deriving the doctrine of the plurality of 53 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 1, A. 4, reply, [p. 32]. 54 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 1, A. 2, reply [p. 21-2]. 55 Douglas C. Hall, The Trinity: An Analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius, (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1992), 65. 56 Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, (Cambridge, CUP: 2004), 84-88.

15

persons from the divine unity and essential attributes. Aquinas’ treatment of the

essential attributes of God is not an account of the One God as distinct from God as

Three. Gilles Emery argues that “this thesis, too little known even today, constitutes

one of the absolutely fundamental traits of St Thomas’s Trinitarian theology.”57 That

God is one and three is a truth that can only be attained through believing the

authority of divine revelation. Nevertheless, “the method used in treating of the

Trinity is twofold, as Augustine says: authority and reason.”58 For the authority of

revelation for Aquinas is not an imposition on human reason. Faith cannot be contrary

to nature. Just as grace does not destroy nature, but rather perfects it, so nature is a

“preamble” to grace and reason the preamble to faith. Both reason and faith are from

God and since “what is imperfect bears a resemblance to what is perfect, what we

know by natural reason has some likeness to what is taught to us by faith.”59 It is

impossible for the light of reason to be contrary to the light of faith, though natural

reason and philosophy fall short of faith and theology. Therefore, a philosophy that

contradicts the contents of faith is simply bad philosophy or the result of faulty

reasoning.60

Relation or Emanation

One of the most important and original insights into the link between Trinitarian faith

and reason in Aquinas is that of the concept of relation in God. Aquinas had adopted

St. Anselm of Canterbury’s rule that “in God all is unity except where there is

opposition of relations,” and made the opposition of relations the principle of

Trinitarian distinction.61 (This contrasts with Bonaventure as representative of the

Franciscan school that would emphasize the Father as ‘fontal plenitude’ and origin of

emanation). Aquinas bases his understanding of relation on Aristotle’s Metaphysics

and this becomes the philosophical key to his systematic treatment of both immanent

Trinitarian theology and the relation of God ad extra, to creation.62 Thomas thus

57 Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ave Maria University: Sapientia Press, 2006), 126. 58 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Prologue, [p. 5]. 59 Aquinas, In Boeth. de Trin., Q. 2, A. 3, reply [p. 48]. 60 Aquinas, In Boeth. de trin. Q. 2, A. 3 [p. 49]. 61 Russell L. Friedman, The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology Among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250-1350, Vol 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 62. 62 Najeeb Awad, “Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of ‘Relation’ and ‘Participation’ and Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” New Blackfriars 93 (2012), 656-57.

16

brings together the common essence and the distinction of the three Persons under the

aspect of relation, constituting the notion of ‘subsistent Relations’.63 The three

Persons are identified by the very relations between them, so that there is no real

difference between God’s unity and his plurality except for a conceptual one on our

part.64 In contrast with other scholastic theologians including Bonaventure, for

Thomas, the relations not only manifest the divine hypostases but also distinguish

them.65

Real relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external processions in God. These processions are two only, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word, and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of these two processions, two opposite relations arise, one of which is the relation of the Person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself.66

This is an opposition according to relation, e.g., active generation from the Father

(paternity), passive generation of the Son (filiation) and the procession of love from

both by passive spiration, constituting the Holy Spirit.67

Aquinas differs from Bonaventure in the order in which he understands origin and

relation in the procession of the Persons. This has implications for the way in which

we understand the application of philosophy in their respective Trinitarian theologies.

Bonaventure sees origin and emanation in the Father rather than the real relations as

the absolutely primary aspect in which to understand order in God. The real relations

in God are distinctions founded in origin, i.e., the Father is the Father because he

generates and generation is the basis of our speaking about paternity in God the

Father.68 Aquinas would admit this on conceptual grounds only, for it is relation

rather than origin that distinguishes the Persons.69 The Father is Father because of the

63 Gilles Emery, “Threeness and Oneness,” 70. 64 Aquinas, De potentia, Q. 2, A. 6 [p. 34]. 65 Aquinas, De potentia, Q. 10, A. 2 [p. 280]. 66 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1a, Q. 28, A. 4 [p. 154] 67 Russell L. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: CUA, 2010), 10. To give modern expression to the scholastic terminology ‘opposition of relations’ Friedman explains them as “mutually implicative” and “correlative opposites.” 68 Russel L. Friedman, Use of Philosophical Psychology, 70. See Bonaventure, I Sentences, d. 27, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2 [p. 469]. 69 Aquinas, De potentia, Q. 8, A. 3 [p. 235]; Q. 10, A. 2 [p. 280-82].

17

relative opposition of paternity and sonship.70 So, the substantial relation of Sonship

constitutes the Son, Fatherhood the Father, and Spiration the Holy Spirit. For the

Father to be unbegotten and to be characterized by the property of innascibility is for

Aquinas a merely negative characteristic simply meaning “not a son.”71 But

Bonaventure, drawing on what he thought was an Aristotelian axiom, “the more prior

a being is, the more it is fecund,” argued that this term also implies an affirmation,

“since unbegottenness posits in the Father a fountain-fullness.”72

Bonaventure’s line of reasoning is well described by Kevin L. Hughes as “a logic of

transformed perception” in contrast with St Thomas Aquinas’ “logic of ordered

relation.”73 And that is the difference between knowledge of things in Christ and

knowledge of things in themselves. Aquinas is known for his ‘common-sense’

approach to reality, as perceived by the senses. Even so, this cannot lead directly to

the knowledge of the Trinity, though by grace and faith in the triune Mystery in its

incomprehensibility but supreme intelligibility, philosophy and reason’s analogies

assist in making the mystery more intelligible.74 Bonaventure would not have

disagreed with Thomas, though he was more inclined to emphasize created things as

patterns analogically reflecting the eternal light given by Exemplaric Word. The

Word is expressive of the Father and the Spirit, and, as Zachary Hayes suggests, is

“the ontological basis for all that is other than the Father, and in it is contained the

basis for all other relation.”75 It is the procession of the Word that is the absolute

centre of the inner dynamic life of the Trinitarian relations. The Word is a middle way

(media) between communicated and communicating, the Son who proceeds from the

Father and sends forth the Holy Spirit, and who both gives and accepts love from

70 Russell L. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: CUA, 2010), 22. 71 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1a, Q. 33, A. 4, Reply Obj. 1, [p. 176]. 72 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Part 1, chap. 3: 7 [p. 35]. See also 1 Sent., d. 2, a. 1, [p. 53] & 1 Sent., 27, p.1, a. 1, q. 2 [p. 471] The quotation is from the Book of Causes, which is now ascribed to the fifth century neo-Platonic philosopher, Proclus. 73 Hughes, “Bonaventure Contra Mundum?” 392. 74 see Derek Simon, “Divine Science in Aquinas’ Expositio Super Librum De Trinitate: Trinitarian Apophatic Theology and the Transformation of Metaphysics,” Science et Espirit, L/2 (1998), 151. 75 Bonaventure, In hexaemeron, 9. 2; Hayes, “Christology & Metaphysics,” 90.

18

both.76 Whereas intra-Trinitarian relation in Aquinas is the cause, the reason and the

exemplar of distinction in creatures, for Bonaventure the focus is on the Word who is

expressive of all that God has created.77 The Father’s fountain-fullness or fontality is

at the origin of the common fontality of the Trinity as the principle of creation. Just as

for Aquinas the real relations are the reason and cause of created existence, so for

Bonaventure the primacy and fontality of the Father as origin of the Son and Holy

Spirit is the overriding logic in our thinking about the production of creatures.78

Aquinas therefore seeks knowledge of the Trinity as the proper methodology for

getting the doctrine of creation right. We understand creation in terms of God

precisely as uncreated, and not God in terms of creation. By making the distinction

between uncreated and created he speaks of all things either in terms of God or as

relative to him as their origin and end.79 The processions within God are then seen as

the cause of every other procession outside of God. Distinction in God produces a

creation of distinct realities, hence the plurality, diversity and multitude within

creation is an exemplum of distinction within unity. Trinitarian faith illuminates

natural plurality within creation. “Plurality is not a falling away from unity, but rather

a participation in the fullness of Trinitarian life.”80 By making the distinction between

uncreated and created Aquinas does not separate God from creation, but rather,

Trinitarian theology is wedded to creation, and by the same token so is created reason,

which is no less than a share in the supreme Wisdom of God.

With this outlook we can account for something of the distinctive rationales of

Thomas’ and Bonaventure’s Trinitarian philosophies. Though the doctrine held on

faith is an unfathomable Mystery, it is nonetheless supremely intelligible. For on the

Thomist view human reason is a participation in God’s very own self-understanding, 76 Quae dat et accipit, in qua est amor permixtus ex utroque. Bonaventure, 1 Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 4, resp. [p. 57]. Cf. Hayes, “Christology and Metaphysics,” The Journal of Religion, Supplement 58 (1978), 89. 77 Gilles, “Threeness and Oneness,” 72. 78 St Thomas says, “The processions of the divine Persons are the cause of creation...” (S.T.,1a, Q. 45 A. 6 ad 1) and Bonaventure: “God the Father through the Son and with the Holy Spirit is the principle of everything created; for if He did not produce them eternally, He could not produce through anything in time.” Bonaventure, Disputed Questions, Q VIII, ad 7 [p. 266] 79 Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, 131-32. 80 Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas, translated by Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 357.

19

and in Bonaventure the one divine essence can be conceived in a light which itself

cannot be seen. There is an intrinsic complementarity in these distinct approaches to

the Trinity that have their source in supreme Unity. The work of Aquinas and

Bonaventure is an old but unsurpassed example of the serious engagement with

intellectually demanding problems that confront the thinking believer. Scripture and

tradition lay at the heart of both theologians, but contrary to the presuppositions of

much of post-Kantian thought, Aquinas and Bonaventure were not fumbling in an

irrational subservience to an imposed authority. Their Trinitarian theology

demonstrates that they did not preclude the new insights that arose outside of

Christian revelation, but embraced them in order to shed light on what they already

took to be true. Their reasoning might be depicted as incredible, but it was neither

unreasonable nor unintelligible, and few have dared to expand on reason’s capacity

with the lucidity of Aquinas and the readiness of Bonaventure. These Scholastics

intuited a Trinitarian structure to the universe because they believed, but this was far

from closed in on itself. It was critically open to the best reason and contemporary

learning had to offer. They are the historical foundations for the insights of today and

the history of thought is the ladder on which we too stand.

‡ A Ω ‡

Bibliography

Primary Sources Aquinas, Thomas, St. Faith, Reason and Theology. Mediaeval Sources In Translation 32. Translated by Armand Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987. –––––. The Power of God. Translated by Richard J. Regan. Oxford: OUP, 2012. –––––. Summa Theologica. Translated the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981. Bonaventure, St. Commentaries on the First & Second Books of the Sentences of Master Peter Lombard. Translated by Alexis Bugnolo. CD Edition. Published by The Franciscan Archive with footnotes and scholia, 2007 & 2010.

20

––––––. Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity. Works of St. Bonaventure, Vol III. Translated and introduced by Zachary Hayes. Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 2000. –––––. Breviloquium. Translated by Dominic V. Monti (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005). –––––. The Journey of the Mind to God, translated by Philotheus Boehner; edited, with Introduction and Notes by Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993). –––––. Collations on the Six Days, The Works of Bonaventure Vol. V, translated by José de Vinck (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970). Hereafter referred to as In hexaemeron. Secondary Sources Awad, Najeeb. “Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of ‘Relation’ and ‘Participation’ and Contemporary Trinitarian Theology.” New Blackfriars 93 (2012): 652-670. Cullen, Christopher. Bonaventure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Emery, Gilles. “The Threeness and Oneness of God in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century Scholasticism.” Nova et Vetera English Edition 1 (2003): 43-74. ––––––. Trinity in Aquinas. Ave Maria University: Sapientia Press, 2006. ––––––. The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Francesca Aran Murphy. Oxford: OUP, 2007. Friedman, Russell L. Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham. Cambridge: CUA, 2010. ––––––. The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology Among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250-1350. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hall, Douglas C. The Trinity: An Analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius, (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1992). Hayes, Zachary. “Christology and Metaphysics in the Thought of Bonaventure.” The Journal of Religion Supplement 58 (1978): 82-96. Hughes, Kevin L. “Bonaventure Contra Mundum? The Catholic Theological Tradition Revisited.” Theological Studies 74 (2013): 372-398.

21

Johnson, Timothy J. “Reading between the lines: Apophatic knowledge and Naming the Divine in Bonaventure’s Book of Creation.” Franciscan Studies 60 (2002): 139-158. Simon, Derek. “Divine Science in Aquinas’ Expositio Super Librum De Trinitate: Trinitarian Apophatic Theology and the Transformation of Metaphysics.” Science et Espirit, L/2 (1998): 127-153. Speer, Andreas. “Bonaventure and the Question of a Medieval Philosophy.” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997): 25-46. Te Velde, Rudi. Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Turner, Denys. Faith, Reason and the Existence of God. Cambridge: CUP, 2004.