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

Preliminary note: the title of this section of the course considers the question 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 before the 19^th century. Hence this social dimension extends Bonaventure’s explicit analysis of this issue.

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?