Bonaventure

Bonaventure's Journey to God, Seven Centuries Later

By Nathaniel Binzen, November 29, 1999

I do not think that the spiritual path that Bonaventure advocates in Journey of the Mind to God will lead a person in an especially fruitful direction in this day and age. There are more vital paths to follow. I don't mean to knock Bonaventure. More than seven centuries have passed, and I cannot judge his wisdom by my standards. But with the passage of time, the philosophy from which he speaks has been surpassed.
Bonaventure's six steps unfold as follows: first, though burdened with senses distorted by ignorance and sin, the traveller looks for God through the things of the external world (senses); second, she finds the presence of God in the objects of the world themselves (imagination); third, her soul turns inward to gaze upon itself as the image of God, finding its own memory, intelligence and will to be the reflection of the Trinity (reason); fourth, she finds God in her soul in all its beauty (understanding); fifth, she gazes upward to find God as Being in the fullest sense (intelligence); finally, sixth, she reaches highest perfection in realizing the Being of God as The Good (summit).
I like the way he starts by regarding the objects and creatures of the world as mirrors for divinity: "The supreme power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator shine forth in created things…" He finds seven properties of worldly things which "witness to the power": "the origin, greatness, multitude, beauty, plenitude, activity, and order of all things"; and he offers a nice analysis of them (p. 8). But this is only the takeoff, and his detailed regard for the puzzling richness of nature is quickly left behind in his ascent.
To track his departure, I offer a quick list of my three problems with Bonaventure. First, as Bonaventure turns inward and his upward trajectory picks up speed, it becomes clear that his journey is a highly dualistic one, in which the trappings of our material existence are abandoned in the reach to a highly transcendent, spiritualized God. So, in the peculiar way that Christians have always had, he finds a way to cover all the bases, from the smallest snail to "Him Who is above all essence and all knowledge," but there's no doubt where his real interest lies (p.39). I'm not automatically turned off by talk of spiritual hierarchies - they seem to me to fit rather naturally with any effort to mix the earthly and the spiritual. However, whereas he proposes that "we must pass through vestiges which are corporeal and temporal and outside us…to what is eternal, most spiritual, and above us" (p.5-6) - passing beyond the body, through the disembodied mind-soul, and beyond - I think he's leaving this world behind too soon. I believe that there is a great deal of work to be done, and knowledge to be gained, right here, all around us, all of which will only reflect God brighter in the fullness of time.
But the reader might be wondering: why do I offer "three" problems with Bonaventure? I'll explain that in problem number two: whenever an author assigns numbers to principles that are ostensibly divinely given, he starts to lose me. I'm not incapable of believing that things natural or divine come in threes or multiples thereof, but such schemes risk appearing simultaneously arbitrary and too systematic by half. It doesn't help when he teams up with Augustine to explain "reacting numbers," "artistic numbers," "sensuous numbers," and the like - I had to ask myself at that point, are they geniuses? Or nuts? Maybe both? (p. 15)
Finally, reason number three: he's not shy about describing the ultimate transcendent. The more I read, the more I find that intellectual knowledge of God is a rather futile exercise, so I don't find that his habit of transmuting philosophical talk into God-defining talk does much to advance the cause of union with God. And anyone who uses the word "therefore" four times in a single paragraph (while talking about being and non-being in an argument leading, of course, to Divine Being) probably ought to put his pen down and take a long walk (p.28-29).
However, Bonaventure's assurances, at the end of his tract, that no amount of this kind of intellectual striving can bring about a mystical "passing over into God" somewhat assuaged me (pgs. 38, 7). Stephen Brown tells us in his introduction that the Journey is not a prescription for an individual spiritual path such as a guru might provide, but rather more like a sermon or a university lecture (x-xi). It's helpful to know this, because in our day and age, when the contemplation typical of Bonaventure's 13th century European monk has been largely replaced in the popular consciousness by the meditation of the likes of the Hindu or Buddhist practicioner, we tend to expect a little tome like this to provide a step-by-step experiential course to mystical heights. It's not that I'm looking for a better guru to plan my spiritual escape. Rather, I want to recognize that other paths may take us on more vital trajectories without necessarily delivering us straight to the top. As food for thought, I offer one of many examples, this one provided by Rosemary Radford Reuther in "Gaia and God":

Both earth science and astrophysics give us extraordinary and powerfully compelling messages about our kinship, not only with all living things on earth, but even with distant stars and galaxies. A profound spirituality would arise if we would attempt to experience this kinship… (p. 48)

Is there a "journey" to be taken here? That remains to be explored, but I am suggesting that if one were to ignore this and other possible paths, while focusing on the kind of piety and devotion that Bonaventure espouses, one would end up out of touch, likely heading down a blind alley. Bonaventure says, "if this light [of eternal Truth Itself] does not teach, no truth can be grasped with certitude" (p. 20). So, let us ask, where is the light cast today? Where can we learn?
I admire his intentions and his effort. The history of Christianity shows a relentless need to speculate on the meanings of the original gospel message, to gain a better understanding. As long as human beings exist, we will pursue journeys as Bonaventure did, and the reason to be hopeful that these ventures will in fact grow ever closer to the truth is precisely that we are able build upon or reject the findings of those who preceded us on the way.

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