IV. “The Consideration of God in His Image Reformed through Grace” by Bonaventure

Introduction to step 4:  The claims made by Bonaventure in the previous chapter of the Itinerarium on behalf of the powers of our minds are nothing if not utterly fantastic:  he claims our minds are structured in such a way that we can discover the presence of God in our consciousness when we trace back to its fundamental source the manner in which we “recollect” our awareness of basic principles or the process whereby our “reason” judges something to be so or, finally, our ability to “will” or “choose” anything. [We read only Bonaventure’s last set of reflections on the will (§4) and did not directly consider his reflections on memory (§2) or intellect (§3).]  If human beings really are the “image” of God in this sense, then why is it the case that so few people actually come to a reflective awareness of the presence of the divine within their “minds” or discern such a presence within others?

This is one way of getting at the crux of the issue addressed by Bonaventure in this chapter.  He reflects here, not on what we are ideally as “created in the image of God,” but what we have actually become as “fallen” human beings.  Our minds are distracted by ordinary cares, overwhelmed by attractive sensations, and drawn to selfish pleasures.  In short, he believes we are all sinners.  He uses an instructive metaphor, derived from his Augustinian intellectual heritage, to describe this situation.  He says we are all “bent over” (incurvatus) in the sense that our actual mode of apprehension is to focus “down” on mundane things instead of being “upright” (he speaks of being “hierarchic”) to notice the more important “higher” things in life like truth, wisdom, beauty.  What this means, then, is that as we actually exist the image of God is distorted and functioning improperly within us.  We need some means of “healing” this flaw, of overcoming our fallen condition so that our minds may become properly ordered or hierarchic.  This restoration occurs for Bonaventure through our reception of divine grace mediated by Christ and the church.  As our minds undergo this process, they are purified, illumined, and perfected so that, thanks to the grace of Christ, we become more and more like what we were originally created to be.

Note that the overall title of this step is “The Person in Society: Reconciliation and Transformation.”  Clearly this is pointing to an understanding of the need for reconciliation and transformation in light of the social patterns that shape human existence.  The insight that our lives were affected by such social patterns was not much developed in Western cultural consciousness before the 19^th century.  Bonaventure, consequently, would not have been aware of the social dimension that is often involved in the need for reconciliation and transformation, and his focus would have been on individual or personal transformation.  Hence keep in mind that this social dimension extends Bonaventure’s explicit analysis of this issue, so that the readings go beyond his own position.  A question you may raise here, though, is whether his position is compatible with this sort of extension of the issue.  Does the selection from Gaudium et spes provide some clues for you?

Click here to view the complete text of Chapter IV of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum according to Philotheous Boehner’s translation.

Questions for discussion:

How does Bonaventure take into account the difficulty that the claim he made in his previous chapter, namely that the divine is present to the powers of our conscious life, is so seldom recognized (§1) by human beings?  To what does he attribute this phenomenon?  How does he claim human beings might overcome (§2) the obstacles which he identifies?  What do you think of this analysis of the situation?  Does it make any sense in our world today?

What does Bonaventure mean when he claims that Sacred Scripture is concerned principally with “reparation”? (§5)  What does he mean when he claims that the Apostle [=Paul] makes charity the end of the commandment or the fulfillment of the law?  To what does the series of dual titles applied to Jesus Christ refer?  How do they relate to the overall theme of this chapter in Bonaventure?