Category: Media

We come to our final pair of stages in Bonaventure’s Itinerarium. The first pair of stages considered God as present in created things outside of us (extra nos), and the second pair considered God as imaged within us (intra nos). The last pair of stages considers God as supra nos—above us. The reflections here become even more speculative and theological, while also recognizing the limits of human language in describing God.

Instead of summarizing these stages sequentially, it may be helpful to describe them together. This pair considers God according to his two most proper names: Being (esse) and Goodness (bonum). Bonaventure represents these two names as the two cherubim facing each other atop the Ark of the Covenant. In the Old Testament, the space of the two cherubim was also known as the “mercy seat,” over which the presence of God hovered within the tabernacle. Just as the cherubim were close to yet beneath God, so do the names Being and Goodness represent the closest and most general human descriptions possible for God’s essence. Scripture and tradition use all sorts of metaphors for God; for example, God is described as a rock, a fortress, a warrior, and a king in various parts of the Bible. However, all metaphors limp and eventually fail. When we contemplate God as Being itself (what Thomas Aquinas described as ipsum esse) or as Goodness itself, we are using the most perfect names we have for God which are not subject to limitation and change. That the two cherubim face each other is taken by Bonaventure to mean that these most perfect names of Being and Goodness are meant to be contemplated together in preparation for the final ascent to God.

At the end of the sixth stage, one has ascended as far as possible by a maximum of human effort. However, all these stages remain preparatory in light of true union with God, which cannot be achieved by human effort alone but only received. After six chapters describing six stages of ascent, Bonaventure concludes the Itinerarium with a paradoxical seventh chapter describing the perfect and final ascent which was granted to Saint Francis when he received the stigmata. This involves a recognition that God is beyond anything that human words can adequately describe. It requires humility and self-denial to the point of becoming like Christ—and in the case of Francis, this was manifested in his own wounded body. Bonaventure makes the radical claim that, in this final passing over into God, “we must cease all intellectual operations, leaving behind all created images and earthly cares and desires.” Even contemplating God as Being and Goodness must also be left behind, if we are to truly rise beyond the cherubim and behold the seraphim, as did Francis. Let us close our series on Bonaventure by quoting the end of the Itinerarium’s seventh chapter, where Bonaventure explains what full conformity to Christ entails.

But if you ask how these things should come to pass, seek grace, not doctrine; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not the study of lectures; the bridegroom, not the university master; God, not man; the dark cloud [caliginem], not clarity; not light, but a fire totally enflamed and transferred into God with excessive anointings and most ardent affections. This fire is God, and this path is in Jerusalem, and Christ ignites it in the fervour of his most ardent passion, and he who truly perceives it, says: “My soul chooses hanging and my bones choose death” (Job 7:15). Whosoever loves this death can see God, for it is doubtlessly true: “No man shall see me and live” (Ex 33:20). Let us die [moriamur], therefore, and enter into the dark cloud; let us impose silence on our cares, desires, and phantasms; let us pass over [transeamus] with Christ crucified from this world to the Father, so that, with the Father shown to us, we might say with Phillip: “It is enough for us” (Jn 14:8); let us hear with Paul: “My grace is enough for you” (2 Cor 12:19); let us rejoice with David, saying: “My flesh and my heart fail, O God of my heart, and you O God are my portion always (Psalm 73:26). Blessed be the Lord forever, and let all the people say: let it be, let it be. (Ps 106:48)” Amen.

Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, pray for us.

Following our previous look at Bonaventure’s first two stages of ascent in the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, we now rise to consider the second pair of the seraph’s six wings. Here, noting how the human person is a microcosm of the wider cosmos, Bonaventure explains how the powers of our mind also reflect something of the Creator’s wisdom, but, since we are uniquely made in the image and likeness of God, the similitude between our created faculties and God enjoys a much closer link.

In the third stage, the Seraphic Doctor looks at our process of cognition, or the way we know things. We have, for Bonaventure, the three following faculties. The memory is the faculty which stores and recalls past events. The intelligence or intellect is that by which we understand the nature of things. The will is the faculty by which we choose certain goods and particular actions. Memory precedes and begets intellect; and by remembering things and knowing what they are, we can—by means of the will—choose or not choose certain goods and actions. In this threefold structure of the mind, Bonaventure finds an analogy for the Blessed Trinity. The memory is like the Father, summing up all things in his eternal mind; the intellect is like the eternal Logos or the Son, which is begotten by the memory. Finally, the will is like the Spirit—the love which chooses all things well and in right order. Thus, in the study of the human person’s unique powers—what today we call philosophical anthropology—we discover an even stronger vision of the divine nature.

In the fourth stage, the mind can reflect even more intensely on the beauty of the faith, discovering through its threefold faculties more sets of threefold mysteries which are unfolded with the aid of revelation, scripture, and the Church. For example, let us take a paraphrased quotation from this fourth stage:

The image of our mind must be clothed in the three powers of spiritual wisdom, by which the soul is purified, enlightened, and perfected… So while the soul, believing, hoping, and loving Jesus Christ, who is the incarnate, uncreated and inspired Word—that is to say, the way, the truth, and the life—in faith believes Jesus Christ to be the uncreated Word, which is the Word and splendour of the Father. In hope, [the soul] it yearns to receive the inspired Word. And in love, it embraces the incarnate Word, delighting in Him and entering into Him in ecstatic love.

The significance of this series of threes, rooted in the three powers of the soul which are known by natural reason, is further bolstered by a reflection on the revealed data given through Sacred Scripture and the tradition of the Church. Thus, theology begins to take its place on the ascent to God here, in the fourth stage. “These two middle steps,” says Bonaventure, “through which we enter so as to contemplate God within ourselves, as in the reflections of created images, are like wings, stretched out in order to take flight.” Let us therefore pray for those engaged in the study of anthropology and theology, that in their investigations of things human and divine, they might take flight into a higher knowledge of both man and God. In doing so, may we also come to know the truth about God and man through the one who is himself God-made-man.