Bonaventure's Threefold Way to God. - University of St. Thomas

BONAVENTURE’S THREE-FOLD WAY TO GODR. E. HouserThough he became Minister General of theFranciscan Order in 1257, Bonaventure’s heart neverleft the University of Paris, and during his generalate hedelivered three sets of “collations” or universitysermons at Paris. On 10 December 1270 ItienneTempier, bishop of Paris, had condemned certainerroneous propositions. Bonaventure ruminated overthese matters, and in the Spring of 1273 delivered hismagisterial Collations on the Hexameron. 1 Left1For Bonaventure’s dates see J.G. Bougerol,Introduction a l’étude de saint Bonaventure 2 nd ed.(Paris: Vrin, 1988); J. Quinn, “Bonaventure” Dict. ofthe M.A. 2: 313-9. On the circumstances of theCollations, one friar noted: “But oh, no, no, no! Sincethe reverend Lord and Master who gave out this workhas been elevated to a sublime position, and is leavinghis way of life [as a friar], those attending his sermonshave not received what was to follow [the missing lastthree collations]. . . . This work was read and composedat Paris, in the year of our Lord 1273, from Easter toPentecost, there being present Masters and Bachelors ofTheology and other brothers, in the number of 160.”Bonaventure, Opera Omnia (ed. Quaracchi) 5: 450 n.10; Coll. in Hex. ed. F. Delorme (Quaracchi: 1934) 275.

92unfinished owing to his elevation to the cardinalate, in them he read the firstchapter of Genesis spiritually, distinguishing sevenlevels of “vision” corresponding to the seven days ofcreation. The first level is “understanding naturallygiven” or philosophy, divided into logic, physics, andethics. Physics includes all three areas of Aristoteliantheoretical philosophy: metaphysics, mathematics, andnatural philosophy. Metaphysics focuses on causalrelations between God andcreatures, and here “the philosophers—the finest andthe ancient philosophers—came to this conclusion:there is a beginning and end and exemplar cause” of theuniverse. 1 The moderns at his beloved University,however, had split into factions. The problem was oneof emphasis. Which kind of cause has priority of placefor the metaphysician: God as efficient or final orexemplar cause of creatures?I. Metaphysics and the Existence of GodAn integral metaphysics conceives of God ascause in all three senses, to be sure; but God’s efficientcausality serves mainly to connect metaphysics tophysics, while his final causality connects metaphysicswith ethics. The “true metaphysician” centers hisscience on exemplar causality; focusing elsewherebetrays the discipline. 2 The Philosopher himself haderred in the direction of final causality andconsequently denied exemplar causes altogether, 3 whileAristotle’s Parisian followers erred in the direction ofefficient causality. When he delivered this part of hissermon, the names of certain members of the Universitycorporation—Master Siger of Brabant, but also Br.Thomas of Aquino—likely passed through the MinisterGeneral’s mind.The metaphysical approach to the existence ofGod taken in the Collations, Bonaventure had devel-1Coll. in Hex. 6.1 (following the numbering of thereportatio in the Quar. ed.); 5: 360.2Coll. in Hex. 1.13; 5: 331. Cf. Andreas Speer,“Bonaventure and the Question of a MedievalPhilosophy,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6(1997) 30-1: “the proper subject of metaphysics is tothink about being as the cause in an exemplary mannerof all that exists.”3Coll. in Hex 6.2-5; 5: 360-1.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 941) The first begins withcreatures outside the mind and proceeds from effect tocause. Kant called such arguments “cosmological,” butto include any reasoning moving from real effects toGod as cause the broader term aitiological argument ismore accurate. While Aristotle had focused on theproximate causes of the motion of the heavenlyspheres, 1 aitiological arguments of neoplatonicinspiration moved in the line of formal causality and,because highly abstract, concluded to God as universalcause.2) The second route alsoproceeds from effect to cause, but starts inside thehuman mind. Seeking the cause of intellectual truthpresent in his mind led Augustine to scout out this routein his illumination argument for God. These twopathways find their ultimate beginnings in the Platonicdoctrines of participation and recollection respectively,and both proceed argumentatively from effect to cause.3) 3) It is obviouslyimpossible for an argument for God’s existence toproceed in the opposite direction—from cause to effect,if its starting point is some creature outside the mind.But the neoplatonic movement from exterior to interioropened up the possibility of yet a third route to God,one which starts inside the mind, like the illuminationargument, but rather than ask ‘Where do mental notionscome from?’ this argument asks ‘Where do theylogically lead?’ Such an argument proceeds from causeto effect, but at the conceptual level. So initiallyunpromising that Kant named it the “ontological”argument after the fallacy he thought it commits—treating existence as a predicate—this route might lesspejoratively be called the noetilogical argument, basedon how its proponents like Bonaventure thought it1Aristotle, Met. 12.6 (1071b3-27); 7 (1072a18-36); 8(1073a14-1074b14). The argument in the Physics, 8.6(259b27-260a5 and 8.10 (267a23-b7), seems to addefficient causality to the final causality of the Met.,which has led commentators either a) to import efficientcausality into the Met. argument or b) to separate theentities to which the two arguments conclude.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 95proceeds: through devel-oping the logicalconsequences of a notion. 24) Once thenoetilogical argument was first devised by Anselm, thefullest development of the neoplatonic approach to Godstood ready to be realized if all three routes could bedeveloped together by one and the same philosophicalmind. That was not the mind of Plotinus, or Augustine,or Anselm himself; it was the mind of Bonaventure.For the first time in the history of metaphysics heattempted to realize the full potential of the neoplatonicapproach to God.It is not obvious, however, that all three routescan be pursued together. Did not Anselm abandon theMonologion for the Proslogion and Aquinas thinksound aitiological arguments require him to abandonAnselm? Modern students of Bonaventure have notbeen any kinder.Interpreting Bonaventure as anAugustinian, in contrast to Aquinas’s “ChristianAristotelianism,” led I. Gilson to reduce Bonaventure’sother two routes to the one way of illumination. InBonaventure’s aitiological argument Gilson thought theworld of sense serves only to “bring into play notionsbelonging to the intelligible order which imply God’sexistence,” so that the “idea itself must of necessity beour real, if unrecognized, starting point.”Consequently, “the second [aitiological] way reducesus to the first [illuminationist]” way. The noetilogicalargument underwent a similar reduction. The “closelyarticulated, dialectical process” of Anselm’s argument“is now simplified by St. Bonaventure to the point ofvanishing altogether.” Consequently, “St. Anselm’s2Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A598/B626: “allexistential propositions are synthetic”; “Logically,[being] is merely the copula of a judgment.” tr. KempSmith. This fallacy occurs when one takes is, whichKant thought merely the copula of a proposition such asS is P and reasons about it as though it were a predicateterm P with content above and beyond its linkingfunction. This “fallacy” is but one part of Kant’s widerclaim that the only possible evidence for S is would beexperience of S.

96 R. E. Houserargument from the idea of God is practically identicalin St. Bonaventure’s eyes with St. Augustine’sargument from the existence of truth.” Theillumination argument to which he reduced the othersGilson thought simply a quest for the efficient cause ofthe innate idea of God: “An idea which comes neitherfrom things nor from ourselves can come from noneother than God.” The net result is that “the proofs ofGod’s existence as St. Bonaventure states them . . .seem so closely related one to another that neither we,nor even he, can easily make any rigorous separationbetween them.”Having reduced Bonaventure’s three routes toone, Gilson then undercut their philosophical value,concluding that Bonaventure’s arguments alwayspresuppose faith and that “the very idea of a proof ofGod’s existence” in Bonaventure is different from thepurely philosophical proofs of Thomas. Bonaventure’sroutes to God were never meant to be philosophicallyrigorous proofs, but practical aids for the believer touse in returning to God. 3F. van Steenberghen foundBonaventure’s argu-ments as little convincing as Gilsonand drew even harsher conclusions: Bonaventure mayhave intended his ways to God to be philosophical, buthe treated them “in summary fashion,” a sign of hisgeneral philo-sophical superficiality. In saying theexistence of God is evident to all Bonaventure madephilosophical arguments for God superfluous. 43I. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, tr. Trethowan andSheed (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild, 1965) 110-126; from 3 rdFr. ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1953) 103-118.4F. van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, 2 nd ed.(Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts, 1970) Bonaventure’sphilosophy was “an eclectic Aristotelianism with neo-Platonic tendencies, put at the service of an Augustiniantheology.” 162. Cf. 159: “The difference between thetwo lies in this: St. Thomas had meditated deeply onphilosophical problems and had carved out a solidsystem of philosophy before using it in theology; whileSt. Bonaventure did not do this to the same extent.” Cf.La philosophie au xiiie siècle (Louvain: PublicationsUniversitaires, 1966) 268-271.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 97If Gilson’s Bonaventure was toofideistic an Augustinian, and van Steenberghen’s afailed Aristotelian, J. Seifert has recently attempted torestore the philosophical cogency of Bonaventure’snoeti-logical argument, though at the price of shapingBonaventure too much in the image of Scotus andAquinas. 5All these interpreters succumb to acommon temptation: reductionism. The author of theDe reductione certainly was not averse to reductionism,but of a positive kind, where analysis of one thingopens the mind to another, not the negative reductionwhich eliminates one in favor of the other. The liberalarts he so loved, for example, open the mind totheology and God, but Bonaventurean reduction doesnot destroy the liberal arts as distinct disciplines. 6The same thing holds true for the threeroutes to God. Reducing each argument to exemplarcausality means merely that each takes the notion ofexemplar cause as a principle; it does not mean that oneroute collapses into another. The way Bonaventureranked them shows how different they are: Illumination(focusing on the human knower) makes us “certain” ofGod’s existence; aitiological arguments (employingAristotelian demonstration) give us “more certain”knowledge of this truth; and noetilogical arguments(focusing on the known object) show that God’sexistence is “a truth that is most certain in itself, in asfar as it is the first and most immediate truth.” 75J. Seifert, “Si Deus est Deus,Deus Est,” FranciscanStudies 59 (1992) 228-9: “[T]he ‘(si) Deus est Deus’must not be interpreted as a mere analytic propositionbut rather as an expression of that identity with itselfwhich only a meaningful, non-contradictory, andnecessary essence possesses. [Avicenna/Scotus]. . . [I]nGod alone essentia and esse are inseparably one.[Aquinas]. . . Such a ‘having the ground of his ownbeing within himself,’ which is the arch-form and theultimate embodiment of the sufficient reason for being,is only possible in God because He alone is infinitelyperfect. [Scotus]”6On reduction, see Bougerol, Introduction 140-5.7De mys. trin. 1.1c (ed. Quar.) 5: 49; tr. Hayes 116.

98 R. E. HouserIn an effort never before even attempted,Bonaventure self-consciously tried to hold together allthree routes to God. To do so, he turned to Aristotle.According to the canons of Aristotelian science, wecome to know principles through insight coming out ofinduction, while we demonstrate conclusionsdeductively. 8 These two modes of argument providedBonaventure with two different models for mountingarguments to prove God exists. He construed bothillumination and aitiological arguments as properlydemonstrative. Since Anselm’s argument does not fitwithin the constraints of Aristotelian demonstration,Bonaventure re-interpreted it as an argument for aprinciple. In this way, he tried to hold together whatmight seem inconsistent: God’s existence is an axiomknown to all humans, but it also can be provennoetilogically, and can be demonstrated empirically.II. Bonaventure’s Illumination ArgumentThe demonstrative model requires middle termsto connect the subject and predicate of the demonstratedconclusion. Bonaventure’s illumination and aitiologicalarguments are demonstrations of the fact (quia),moving from effect to cause. The kind of causalityboth employ is formal, and both are based on theformality of truth, which has two senses: Theontological sense of truth exists in things, as atranscendental attribute “convertible with being” andserves as the starting point for his aitiological argument.The epistemological sense of truth, which exists inminds, is the foundation for his illumination argument. 9The illumination argument starts from “affirmative”(and true) propositions:All true understanding proves and concludes to the truthof the divine being, because knowledge of the divine truthis impressed on every soul, and all knowledge comesabout through the divine truth. Every affirmativeproposition proves and concludes to that truth. For everysuch proposition posits something. And when something8Post. Anal. 1.4 (71b16-22); 2.19 (99b34-100b17).9In I Sent.d. 8. 1.1. ad contra 1, c (ed. Quaracchi) 1:150-151.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 99is posited, the true is posited; and when the true is posited,that truth which is the cause of the true is also posited. 10This reasoning moves from “the true (verum)”as effect to its cause, “truth (veritas).” Propositions are“true” when they correspond to reality, but being true inthis way is an effect dependent on a higher cause:“divine truth.” Here Bonaventure reduced to plainsyllogisms the kind of stirring “dialectical meditations”(to use E.A. Synan’s apt phrase) 11 which sprang to themind of Augustine along his inward route to God:And admonished by all this to return to myself, I enteredinside myself, Thou leading and I able to do so, becauseThou had become my helper. And I entered, and with theeye of my soul, such as it was, I saw above that eye of mysoul, above my mind, an unchangeable light. . . . Whoeverknows the truth knows this light. . . . O eternal truth andtrue love and loved eternity, Thou art my God; to Thee doI sigh both night and day. 12Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics showed Bonaventurethat to make such reasoning demonstrative requiresmore precision and less affection than Augustineoffered.In his Commentary, Bonaventure took the first steptoward demonstration by limiting himself to “trueunderstanding (intelligentia recta),” which involvesabstract concepts, general propositions, theircorrespondence with reality, and their certainty.Bonaventure’s argument is that at least one feature of“true understanding” depends on God. He did notisolate this factor in the Commentary but did identify itin On the Knowledge of Christ 4. There he said thatcertainty comes from God, while the other threefeatures of “true understanding” come from createdsources. To argue for this conclusion he distinguishedthree types of illumination theory.In Platonism, to achieve “certain knowledge, theevidence of eternal light concurs as the total and solecause of understanding.” The problem is that Platoturned knowing the world into knowing God, by10In I Sent. d. 8. 1.2; 1: 155.11“Augustine,” Dict. of the M.A. 1: 657.12Augustine, Conf. 7.10; CCSL 27: 103.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 101efficient cause, the essence of creatures as formal cause,and epistemological truth as end. 15“Eternal reason,” however, is responsible forcertainty, the one feature of “true understanding” nocreated cause could ever produce:[I]f full knowledge requires recourse to a truth which isfully immutable and stable, and to a light which iscompletely infallible, it is necessary for this sort ofknowledge to have recourse to the heavenly art as to lightand truth: a light, I say, which gives infallibility to the[created] knower, and a truth which gives immutability tothe [created] object of knowledge. 16To understand this argument, we need to see theproblem to which illumination is the answer. In themental acts of abstracting universals and arguinginductively, the human mind generalizes well beyondthe data of our experience. It is one thing to be able soto generalize, quite another to know one has succeeded.Aristotle had recognized this difficulty and followed theprocess of inductive generalization with “understanding,”a distinct mental act whereby principles arefinally understood with certainty, through intuitiveinsight. 17 One sees the importance of nous in those whodeny it. Empiricist Aristotelians from Hume to Barneshave denied that intuition can move the mind all theway to eternal truths 18 because they refuse to recognizethe transition from induction to intuition. Aristotleasserted that intuition is a fact, the question is how itcomes about. Here Aristotle’s texts were silent, soBonaventure turned to Augustine.15In II Sent. d. 24. 1.2.4; 2: 567-571. cf. J. Quinn, TheHistorical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy(Toronto: PIMS, 1973) 345-352.16De sci. Chr. 4; 5: 23; cf. Hayes tr.135.17Aristotle, Post. Anal. 2.19, where he distinguishesthree mental acts involved in knowing principles: 1)induction from sense experience to universal concepts(99b34-100a13); 2) generalizing from logically inferiorto logically superior concepts (100a13-100b5); 3)understanding (100b6-17).18Cf. J. Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, 2 nd ed.(Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 267-271.

104 R. E. Houserhuman mind (which would make God’s ideas the objectof human knowledge) but as providing the formality ofcertitude to human knowledge. As motive cause the“heavenly art” is a proximate efficient cause directlyinfluencing the created mind by producing certitude init. 20 On Bonaventure’s view, then, the“eternal rea-sons” illuminating the human mind areexemplar causes, because certainty in humanknowledge comes by way of participation in thecertainty of divine knowledge. Consequently, hisillumination argument lives up to his own requirementthat a metaphysical proof of God’s existence involveexemplar causality.III. Bonaventure’s Aitiological ArgumentThe aitiological argument for God fitsAristotle’s model of demonstration even better thanillumination, because it begins with real effects outsidethe mind. This seems to be the reason Bonaventureranked it higher. He was familiar with earlierneoplatonic aitiological arguments. Though Boethius’sConsolation contained no argument for the existence ofGod, Lady Philosophy did present an aitiologicalargument for the existence of perfect beatitude, on the20Cf. In II Sent. d. 3. 2.2.2 ad 6m; 2: 124.Bonaventure’s cognitio innata of God is not a Cartesianinnate idea present from birth, but comes fromDamascene, De fide orth. 1.3: “Cognitio existendiDeum naturaliter nobis inserta est.” When emphasizinghow illumination is caused by God, Bonaventure usesimpressa as a synonym for inserta; when focusing onhow universal knowledge of God is, he uses innata as asynonym for naturaliter, both words having the sameroot. Natural knowledge of God, then, does not comefrom innate ideas, the Platonic form of which heexplicitly rejected. When Bonaventure (De mys. trin.1.1 c; 5: 49) says “there is inserted in the rational minda natural desire and knowledge and memory of that inwhose image it is made,” Hayes (116) mistranslatesinsertus est as “is innate to,” giving the text amisleading Cartesian meaning.

106 R. E. Houserthought that metaphysics is the science of substance,Avicenna transformed it into a science of transcendentals.Scholastics before Bonaventure recognizedfour major transcendentals: being, one, true, and good. 23By using transcendental truth Bonaventure placed hisargument squarely within metaphysics.All truth is relational, butepistemological and ontological truth involve differentrelations. Episte-mological truth is the correspondencebetween a finite mind and reality, while the certaintytruth sometimes attains concerns that mind “in relationto its principle,” as we have seen. Ontological truth isaltogether different. It is limited to the “subject itinforms,” and consists in an internal relation within thatbeing. Contrary to what one might expect,Bonaventure does not define ontological truth as arelation between creature and creator but as “theindivision of act and potency” within a being.Comparing creatures and God clarifies the point: In“God alone there is true indivision mixed with nodiversity,” while “in a creature there is indivisioncombined with difference between act and potency.” InGod ontological truth is a function of divine unity,divine truth is pure truth, and, since truth is convertiblewith being, God is pure being. By contrast, in creaturesontological truth is sullied by multiplicity, the creaturebeing a mixture of truth and falsity, a combination ofbeing and non-being as Augustine had said.Further analysis of ontological truth increatures leads to the center of Bonaventureanmetaphysics. Unlike Aquinas, Bonaventure held thedistinction between act and potency to be coextensivewith that between form and matter. Bonaventure tookAristotle’s definition of prime matter as pure potency tomean that everything containing potency, even angels,must contain matter. Consequently, the truth ofcreatures is incomplete because they are hylomorphiccomposites. Hylomorphism, in turn, leads to23Avicenna, Met. 1.5, 8. See J. Aertsen, MedievalPhilosophy and the Trancendentals: The Case ofThomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 25-70, for thescholastic doctrine of the transcendentals beforeAquinas.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 107Bonaventure’s doctrine of being: “Matter givesindependent existence (ex-istere) to form, while formgives the act of being (essendi actum) to matter.” 24 Theact of being Bonaventure invokes here is not theThomistic act of being which comes from an externalefficient cause and only makes the creature to be;Bonaventure’s act of being comes from an internalformal cause and gives the creature its nature.Consequently, every created being (ens) is anontological composite of independent existence(existere) and being (esse), where esse signifies thenature or essence of the thing. From rocks to angels, allcreatures exist as individuals different from all others,yet sharing natures with them. Sheer existence,however, is no guarantee that a creature will possess agiven nature well. All creatures are true to the extentthat they actualize the potential perfections of theirnatures, and they are false to the extent that they fail todo so. The difference between existence and esse increatures, then, is the metaphysical basis for the gapbetween potency and act which is the hallmark ofcreated ontological truth. The first level of actualizingthe nature of a creature is produced by substantial form.Just being a human makes one truly a human, but onlyin a minimal way. One becomes more truly human bydoing the kinds of thing that produce an outstandinghuman, that is, by adding accidental forms whichincrease the level of ontological truth present in a givencreature. Since no creature does this perfectly, allcreatures are but partial actualizations of the truth ofwhich they are capable. This is the full account of thesad fact about “every truth and every created nature”which Bonaventure’s empirical premiss presents.His participation premiss is stated withtechnical precision: “If there is being by participationand from another, there must exist a being due to itsown essence and not from another.” Participationshows the inference moves from effect to cause withinthe line of formal causality. As Bonaventure uses theterm, participation is not limited to relations betweencreatures and God, but can also describe relations24In II Sent. d. 3.1.2.3c; 2: 110. Existere dat materiaformae, sed essendi actum dat forma materiae.

108 R. E. Houserwithin creation. From another adds that the attribute inquestion is due to some extrinsic cause. Bonaventure’spremiss, then, means that a necessary condition for theexistence of any attribute by participation is that thesame attribute is present in its exemplar essentially, thatis, due to an intrinsic cause. Although he offers noexamples, they are not hard to imagine. A statue orcomputer can have certain human attributes, such asshape, color, size, or computational skill, all of whichare caused by the artisan creating them. Absent a livinghuman, in whom such attributes are part of its nature, toserve as model, no such statue or computer could everbe made. Consequently, Bonaventure thought participationworks within the created order.To move the argument beyond creaturesto God, Bonaventure turned away from categorical totranscendental attributes. 25 While everything fallingunder the categories is inherently imperfect, thetranscendentals do not necessarily imply imperfection.The real identity of all four transcendentals with eachother allowed Bonaventure to change terms in themiddle of the argument, from truth to being. Truth,however, has the advantage of setting up an analogybetween creatures and God which avoids attributing toGod any of the imperfections inherent in creatednatures. Inherently imperfect attributes (like white orhorse or dirt) do not imply the existence of perfectexemplars in God, but participation in transcendentaltruth means that creatures imperfectly realizing theiressences, whatever those essences might be, can onlydo so if there exists another being which perfectlyrealizes its essence, and as such is truth itself. WithoutGod as the exemplar of this transcendental perfectionno creature could be true at all.In his aitiological argument, then, aswith illumination, Bonaventure focused narrowly on aparticular attribute which requires divine intervention:the attribute of ontological truth. Every creature is butpartially true, since it incompletely realizes its ownnature. Incomplete realization of categorical attributesimplies that those attributes also exist in some othercreature per essentiam. Transcendental attributes be-25Cf. Aquinas, ST 1.2.3, the fourth way.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 109have the same way: there should be exemplars for themas well. But no creature could be such an exemplar.This is especially clear for transcendental truth,because, no matter how great its essence, every creaturerealizes its own essence imperfectly. The sign of thisfact is change, the hallmark of creatures, which isdirected toward development and further perfection ofcreated essences. The exemplar for ontological truth, aswell as for the other transcendentals, must be God, whoperfectly realizes his own essence, which is to say thatGod is true per essentiam. God’s perfect realization ofthe divine essence, then, makes God’s transcendentaland ontological truth the only possible exemplar for thetranscendental and ontological truth of creatures.Bonaventure’s aitiological argumentbears out his claim that exemplar causality is at thecenter of metaphysics. Just as illumination requiresGod as formal and efficient cause, so the aitiologicalargument requires God as cause of truth in creatures.God possesses the formal perfection of truth and assuch exercises formal and also final causality indrawing all creatures to himself. Even more,Bonaventure’s aitio-logical argument offers a transitionto his noetilogical argument, for the one ends just wherethe other begins, with a divine being described asperfectly and exem-plarily realizing all the potentialitiesof its own essence. For what does a noetilogicalargument do but peer into the inner logic of such anexemplar essence and try to capture the logicalconsequence that such an essence must exist?IV. Bonaventure’s Noetilogical ArgumentBonaventure took up the noetilogical argumentthree times: in his commentary on the Sentences (1250-2), the Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity(1256-7), and the Journey of the Mind to God (1259-60). Each treatment shows certain developmentsbeyond Anselm, although Bonaventure never felt theneed to rehearse the argument at full length or assembleall his innovations in one text. He seems to havethought of himself as simply fine-tuning Anselm’sargument, but such humility can be deceptive. Thearguments pro in De mysterio Trinitatis 1.1 can serve to

110 R. E. Houserdocument Bonaventure’s innovations. After ten illuminationand ten aitiological arguments, the last ninearguments for God’s existence are broadly noetilogical.Three Anselmian (21-23) and three Augustinian (24-6)arguments are succeeded by three arguments whichchart the areas where Bonaventure moved beyond hisillustrious forebear: Arg. 27 presents God’s existenceas an axiomatic truth; arg. 28 changes the terms of thenoetilogical argument; while arg. 29 focuses on themethod of arguing noetilogically.A. Axiomatic TruthThe same proposition can never be bothprinciple and conclusion in a given argument, andnormally the principles of an Aristotelian science, ifdemonstrable at all, are only proven in another science.But God’s existence is an exception to many rules.Albert and Aquinas said that God exists is both aprinciple of theology (as an article of faith) and aconclusion rationally demonstrated in theology as wellas philosophy. 26 Bonaventure’s variation on this themeis that within the purely rational realm of philosophyGod’s existence is both principle and conclusion.Though perhaps anomalous this view is not impossible,as long as God can fall under different descriptions.The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is known toexist by the light of faith, while Bonaventure hasalready argued that the God of transcendentalperfection, the illuminator of the human mind, can alsobe proven to exist through rational demonstration. Whycould still another description of God not show God’sexistence to be an axiom in the technical Aristoteliansense: a truth obvious to all?This thesis is implied by the very questionBonaventure raised in his Commentary, for he askednot “Does God exist?” but “Is the divine being so truethat it cannot be thought not to be?” Among principlesonly axioms are indubitable. By putting the question interms taken from Proslogion 3, Bonaventure indicated26Albert, In I Sent. d. 1. 2; d. 3.6 (ed. Borgnet) 25: 15-17, 97. Thomas, In I Sent. prol. 1; d. 3. 1.2 (ed.Mandonnet) 1: 6-8, 93-5.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 111that God’s existence is indeed an axiom. Two of thearguments pro reinforce the point: In the first,Anselm’s formula for God is called a “commonconception of the mind,” a Boethian term for‘principle’; and the third argument likens knowing Godexists to knowing the axiom (dignitas) ‘the whole isgreater than its parts.’ 27In the responsio Bonaventure says: “The truthof the divine being, however, is evident both in itselfand in proof (evidens et in se et in probando).” 28 Thedistinction here is not between the divine reality as suchand our knowledge of it (as for Aquinas) but betweentwo different ways in which God is evident to thehuman knower. Evident in proof means the evidenceconnecting God with is comes from a creaturefunctioning as middle term in a demonstration, ashappens in aitiological and illumination arguments.God’s existence is also evident in itself. Here theevidence connecting God and is comes from the verymeaning of the terms. This distinction, then, is nothingother than the difference between knowingdemonstrated conclusions and knowing principles. Bysaying that God’s existence is evidens in se, Bonaventuremeans first and foremost that this truth is anaxiom known to all.In addition, however, the claim sets up ananalogy between knowing other philosophicalprinciples and knowing God. In the Commentary,Bonaventure based his own version of the noetilogicalargument on this analogy:We know principles to the extent that we understand theterms which make them up, because the cause of thepredicate is included in the subject. This is whyprinciples are self-evident. The same thing is true aboutGod. For God, or the highest truth, is being itself, thanwhich nothing greater can be thought. Therefore, Godcannot not be, or be thought not to be, for the predicate isalready included in the subject. 2927Dignitas translates axioma at PA 1.2 (72a18), in theLatin translations of James of Venice (ca. 1150) andWilliam of Moerbeke (ca. 1269).28In 1 Sent. d. 8. 1.2; 1: 155.29In 1 Sent. d. 8. 1.2; 1: 155.

112 R. E. HouserThe conclusion here could not be clearer. Objectively itis impossible for God not to exist (as Anselm said inProslogion 2), while subjectively God cannot even bethought not to exist (cf. Proslogion 3). Since Bonaventuremoves from knowing philosophical principlesto knowing the existence of God, he implies that someparticular principle provides the basis for seeing thatGod exists. Though not identified in the Commentary,in On the Mystery of the Trinity Bonaventure showedthat the principle in question is the first principle ofdemonstration:As a union of things in the greatest degree distant fromeach other is entirely repugnant to our intellect, becauseno intellect can think that one thing at the same time bothis and is not, so also the division of something entirelyone and undivided is entirely repugnant to that sameintellect. For this reason, just as it is most evidently falseto say that the same thing is and is not, so also it is mostevidently false to say at the same time that the same thingin the greatest degree is and in no way is. 30The first principle of demonstration (or noncontradiction)says that a given subject cannot at oneand the same time have contradictory attributes.Denying existence to creatures never contravenes thisprinciple, even when the denial is false, because theessence of a creature is open to existence and nonexistence.But logic constrains our thoughts about Godmore rigorously than about creatures. Though theagnostic cannot run afoul of the principle because heneither asserts nor denies anything about God, theatheist does judge that God is not. This proposition isnot only false; it violates the principle of noncontradiction.Defining its subject shows why: SinceGod “is in the greatest degree (summe esse),” theproposition God is not asserts that what is in thegreatest degree also in no way is, a manifestcontradiction. In short, Bonaventure thought the atheisticproposition a substitution instance violating theprinciple of non-contradiction.Its opposite—the theistic proposition—he sawas “a completely evident truth.” However, it is not a30De mys. Trin. 1.1; 5: 49.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 113mere substitution instance of the principle of noncontradiction,for the simple reason that the principle isnegative. The principle says what cannot be; it does notprove what must be. Nonetheless, Bonaventure’s mindmoved from non-contradiction to the existence of Godas easily as it had moved from knowing certain truths toknowing God in the illumination argument, andseemingly for the same reason. If intuition of necessarytruths was the occasion for contuition of God’sexistence in the illumination argument, here the mentalact of intuiting the first principle of demonstrationseems to be the occasion for a second mental act,contuiting the existence of God.Such was the first effect produced byBonaventure connecting his noetilogical argument withthe principle of non-contradiction in a way Anselmnever had; but it was not the last. If this connectionshowed the first principle of demonstration morefecund than heretofore recognized, it also changed thenoetilogical argument itself.B. The Method of Noetilogical ProofBonaventure was a meticulous student of thenoetilogical argument, who had read the sources inwhich we can trace its development. He knew theConfessions where Augustine had described God interms of our inability to think of something better,thereby inventing the formula for describing God whichAnselm would make famous. Augustine had assumedthat God exists and that God is good, and used hisformula to deduce, through a reductio ad absurdum,that God must also be incorruptible. For if God werecorruptible one would “be able to think of somethingbetter.” 31 Bonaventure was also familiar withBoethius’s Consolation, where Lady Philosophyassumed that God exists but used Augustine’s formulato prove his other assumption: that God is good: “Thecommon conception of human minds shows that God,31Augustine, Conf. 7.4. The sentence containing theseed of Anselm’s formula is: neque enim ulla animaumquam potuit poteritve cogitare aliquid quod sit temelius, qui summum et optimum bonum es.

114 R. E. Houserthe first principle of all things, is good. For, sincenothing can be thought of better than God, who woulddoubt that that than which nothing is better is good?” 32Then came Anselm. If Boethius could use theformula to prove one of Augustine’s assumptions, whycould not Anselm use it to prove the other: theexistence of God? Anselm’s argument was deductiveand took the form of a reductio ad absurdum: Belief inGod gives the mind the peculiar notion of “somethingthan which a greater cannot be thought.” Now realbeing is greater than existing merely in thought, asAugustine had said that the incorruptible is greater thanthe corruptible and Boethius that good is greater thanbad. Assuming as a hypothesis that God does not existproduces a contradiction: For one can think of somethinggreater than a “God” existing only in the mind;while the original notion of God was of something thanwhich a greater cannot be thought. Sincecontradictions cannot hold in reality, any more than inthought, to avoid asserting a contradiction theassumption which led to it, namely, the assumption thatGod is not real, must be withdrawn. This seems toamount to asserting that God truly exists. 33It was completely clear to Bonaventure thatwithout achieving a contradiction Anselm’s argumentwould lead nowhere; but what was not so clear is howfar beyond contradiction Anselm could go. In particular,does his final step truly succeed in achievingpositive knowledge that God exists? Here Bonaventure’sstudy of Aristotelian philosophy in his Artscourse made him more sensitive than Anselm to thelimitations of reductio arguments. Positive insight intoprinciples is more than negative reductio leading up toprinciples. 34 Snaring the atheist in a contradiction isstill one step away from truly understanding that Godexists.To make the noetilogical argument morethan a negative reductio requires that it be recast, andmeditating on God’s existence as a principle showed32Boethius, Cons. Phil. 3. pr.10.33Anselm, Proslogion 2.34Cf. Aristotle’s reductio against Parmenides in Phys. 1and against those who deny non-contradiction in Met. 4.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 115Bonaventure how to rework it. Since principles are“self-evident (se ipsis sunt evidentia),” we come toknow them through themselves (per se) and not throughsomething else (per aliud) as we know demonstratedconclusions. 35 This sense of per se is true only ofprinciples. To understand it, however, Bonaventuremade use of Aristotle’s wider sense of per se, whichincludes all scientific truths—principles andconclusions. Here per se means there is an intrinsic andnecessary connection between subject and predicate, asdistinct from incidental matters of fact (per accidens).Aristotle had said there are four modes of per se in thiswider sense, the first two of which Bonaventure used tounderstand the narrow sense of per se. The first modeof per se are those propositions whose predicates helpdefine their subjects, such as triangles are made oflines; while the reverse is true of propositions per se inthe second mode, whose subjects fall into the definitionof their predicates, such as lines are straight or curved,or humans are risible. 36 Now a definition is simply aformula describing the essence of something, and anessence is a formal cause. Interpreted causally, in thesecond mode of per se the subject causes the predicatein the way an essence causes some attribute. This modethus provided Bonaventure with an ingenious explanationof why principles are self-evident: “We knowprinciples to the extent that we understand the termswhich make them up, because the cause of the predicateis included in the subject.”If essence is what connects the two terms inself-evident principles, this also should hold for Godexists. Since one can argue for other principles byappealing to the meaning of their terms, Bonaventurethought the same thing should hold for God.Consequently, he modeled his noetilogical argument onsuch arguments for principles, focusing on the divineessence as a means of connecting God and is. This newfocus demanded a new formulation of the argument,which Bonaventure rendered memorable: “If God isGod, God is.”35Cf. Aristotle, Topics 1.1 (100a31-b21).36Aristotle, Post. Anal. 1.4 (73a34-b3).

116 R. E. HouserThe premiss If God is God is not an emptytautology, as J. Seifert has shown, 37 because the termGod is not used univocally. As subject of both premissand conclusion, God gives reference, while as predicateof the premiss it gives meaning. Reference is to thatentity Bonaventure already knows by faith but whicheven the non-believer can entertain as a possiblyexisting thing. In the predicate of the premiss,however, God signifies the divine essence. The premissconsequently means ‘if the entity to which the termGod refers truly possesses the divine essence’; whilethe conclusion means that such an entity must exist.Interpreted this way, the inference to the existence ofGod runs through the divine essence. For Bonaventure,this formulation of the noetilogical argument shows thatthe way to understand God exists is to read thisproposition like other metaphysical principles, wherethe subject of the proposition causes its predicate.What unites the subject God with the predicate exists isthe essence of the subject, that is, the essence of God,not some extrinsic cause, for the divine essence entailsthe divine existence.The elegance and power of Bonaventure’sargument were immediately recognized. No less thanBr. Thomas of Aquino, writing his own Commentary(1252-6) shortly after Bonaventure’s (1250-52), readilyadmitted its truth, as far as the objective reality of Godis concerned: “Speaking about God in himself(secundum ipsam rem), his existence is self-evident,and he is understood through himself (per se).” 38While the noetilogical argument does in fact capture thereality of God, Aquinas found it an argument unconvincingto us.In his Commentary Aquinas held that tounderstand the conclusion of the noetilogical argumentwe would need to have comprehensive knowledge ofthe divine essence. In On the Mystery of the Trinity(Paris, 1256-7) Bonaventure 39 replied to Aquinas by37J. Seifert, “Si Deus est Deus, Deus est” 216-217.38Aquinas, In 1 Sent. d. 3. 1.2 (ed. Mandonnet) 1: 94.39Bonaventure answered Aquinas in the course ofdealing with two skeptical objections. De mys. trin.1.1 sed contra 13; 5: 49: No one knows that God is

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 117distinguishing three different levels of knowing whatthe term God means, the “full, fuller, and perfectly full”understanding of the divine essence that is had bywayfarers, the blessed, and God, respectively. ToAquinas’s view that only comprehensive understandingof the divine essence would be enough toallow the noetilogical inference to go through, Bonaventurereplied that partial apprehension of the essenceof God is sufficient. This reply seems to have struckAquinas deeply. He chose not to dispute Bonaventure’smod-erate claim that partial knowledge of God’sessence is sufficient to ground the noetilogicalargument, but struck off in a considerably moreagnostic direction. If minimal knowledge of the divineessence might open the way for the noetilogicalargument, one way securely to shut the door on it wasaltogether to deny positive knowledge of the divineessence. 40C. The Terms of the Noetilogical ArgumentThus far we have seen that construing God exists asan axiom known rationally to all led Bonaventure toconnect this proposition with the first principle ofdemonstration, which in turn led him to think Godexists has the same formal structure as other principleswhich are propositions whose subjects cause theirpredicates. Even more, the formal structure of thisproposition led to Bonaventure’s understanding of theformal structure of the noetilogical argument. InBonaventure’s hands, Anselm’s negative reductio thusbecame a positive deduction of the existence of God outof the divine essence. Perhaps the most telling advantagethis reworking enjoys is that it shows thenoetilogical argument is really a general argumentativestrategy or schema, which can incorporate a number ofparticular arguments, diversified by how they describethe divine essence. Ever eager to embrace truth in allwithout knowing what God is (quid sit deus). cf. sedcontra 9; 5: 48: Since “God is hidden in the greatestdegree. . .therefore there is the greatest degree of doubtabout what concerns him.”40ST 1.3.prol.

118 R. E. Houserits manifestations, this approach allowed Bonaventureto develop his own formulae for the argument while notturning his back on Anselm’s.Bonaventure did not hesitate to formulate theargument in Anselmian terms when appropriate. 41 ButAnselm’s middle term—the brilliant but obscure quomaius formula—presents two problems: The firstconcerns the inference to is in the conclusion God is.Anselm had chosen his formula so that denial of God’sexistence would generate a contradiction. But describingthe divine essence purely in terms of our inability tothink of something better gives no positive informationabout what God is. If the core of the argument is notjust avoiding contradiction but drawing an inferencefrom the divine essence to divine existence, asBonaventure thought it was, then positive insight intothe existence of God needs to be grounded in the divineessence positively described. 42 Bonaventure thereforechose new formulae to describe the divine essence,which we might call the properly inferential middleterms of the argument.The second problem concerns the connectionbetween the middle term and God. Anselm believedthe quo maius formula signifies God, but Bonaventurewas unwilling to leave the matter at the level of belief.The connection between the inferential middle,especially Anselm’s quo maius, and the God ofChristian belief and common acceptance, is notobvious. Another kind of middle term is needed toconnect God with the inferential middle, therebyensuring that the reasoning runs all the way from Godto is. We can call such a term an axiomatic middleterm, since it is designed to show that the conclusion ofthe noetilogical argument is an axiomatic truth. In thisway, Bonaventure replaced Anslem’s single, complicatedmiddle term with two simpler middle terms,according to the following schema:41Cf. Itin. 6.2.42Itin. 3.3 (ed. Quar.) 5: 306: “privations and defectscan in no way be known except through somethingpositive (positiones).” cf. Averroes, In III de anima(ed. Crawford) 462, who is less adamant on the point.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 119God axiomatic middle inferential middle isMost descriptions of the divine essence areinappropriate for the noetilogical argument, for thesimple reason that most terms used to describe God,even in Scripture, necessarily connote imperfection.But defining such terms opens a passage to properterms the argument can use. Rigorous definitions resortto more and more universal terms, as set out classicallyin Porphyrian genus-species trees. Bonaventure acceptedAvicenna’s argument that such trees are limited inheight and that the process of uncovering higher generaends with the transcendentals. While all ten categories,and the multitude of notions fitting under them,necessarily connote imperfection, the four transcendentalsdo not. These notions, then, are the rightterms for the noetilogical argument. They do not implyimperfection, can be predicated non-metaphorically ofGod, and are primordial, the “first notions falling intothe mind.” 43 And it is fitting that the most fundamentalterms be used to argue for “the first and mostimmediate truth.”All more specific concepts presuppose transcendentalnotions, and Anselm’s own formula is noexception to this rule. Consequently, in order to makehis argument clearer than Anselm’s, Bonaventurereduced the quo maius formula to the transcendentals itpresupposes, because they are terms more obvious to allminds. The first transcendental is not far to seek:Greater, which is actually a qualitative term not aquantitative one, depends upon the root notion of good.How to reduce the other central notions in theformula—that than which (quo) and nothing—is lessobvious, but in the end they both depend for theirintelligibility upon being. Consequently, Bonaventurechose formulae for the divine essence based on thetranscendental notions of goodness and being.D. The Noetilogical Argument from Goodness43Itin. 3.3; cf. Avicenna, Met. 1.5.

120 R. E. HouserBonaventure’s argument based on goodness seemsto have been what first led him to his peculiarformulation of the argument.No one can be ignorant of the fact that this is true: thebest is the best; or think that it is false. But the best is abeing which is absolutely complete. Now any beingwhich is absolutely complete, for this very reason, is anactual being. Therefore, if the best is the best, the bestis. 44The basic notion of goodness is not by itself sufficientto mount a noetilogical argument. It cannot serve as anaxiomatic middle because it is not limited to God, noras an inferential middle, since the bare notion ofgoodness does not imply the existence of that which isgood. But Bonaventure remembered that Boethius hadused the superlative “best (optimum)” to argue noetilogicallythat God is good, and that Anselm had used itto argue aitiologically that God exists. What was toprevent Bonaventure from using “best” to argue noetilogicallyfor the existence of God? Optimum couldserve as an axiomatic middle term for this kind ofargument. When taken without qualification andabsolutely (as here), that which is “the best” appliesonly to God. It is a truth about God all humansunderstand, as Boethius had noted, 45 for only God isunqualifiedly and in every respect “best.” For hisinferential middle term Bonaventure again relied on histraining in Arts, where he had learned to think ofgoodness teleologically, as that which completes orperfects something. This approach to goodness allowedhim to define that which is “the best” as “a beingwhich is fully complete (ens completissimum).”Uniting the axiomatic middle with the inferentialmiddle ensured that the conclusion is really true of God.What is unqualifiedly the best is also unqualifiedly or44De mys. Trin. 1.1 fund. 29; 5: 48. Item nullus potestignorare hanc esse veram: optimum est optimum, seucogitare ipsam esse falsam. Sed optimum est enscompletissimum. Omne autem ens completissimumhoc ipso est ens actu: ergo si optimum est optimum,optimum est.45Boethius, Cons. 3. pr. 10; Anselm, Mon. 1.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 121absolutely complete, that is, it must possess all possibleperfections. Now existence is not just a factor in suchontological completeness, but is the most fundamentalfeature of such completeness. Consequently, such anabsolutely perfect being must exist. In sum, thisversion of the argument begins with the term God, addsan axiomatic middle term and then the inferentialmiddle term which implies real existence:Deus optimum ens completissimum estBonaventure was well aware of criticisms of thenoetilogical argument, beginning with Gaunilo’s retortthat on this line of reasoning the greatest of all possibleislands should also really exist. His reply to this sort ofcritique took advantage of putting the argument interms of the transcendentals. The reason such objectionsare misplaced is that the analogy between Godand the island breaks down. An island by nature isconfined within the categories and therefore is aninherently imperfect being (ens defectivum); but enscomple-tissimum is clearly a transcendental notion, andconsequently not inherently imperfect. 46 Anselm hadmade a similar reply to Gaunilo, but it was not aseffective because not put with precision in terms of adeveloped doctrine of the transcendentals.E. The Noetilogical Argument from BeingThe argument from goodness shows thatnoetilogical arguments, as Bonaventure employedthem, proceed by analyzing a conclusion (God exists)already accepted rather than synthesizing a conclusionpreviously unknown. Bonaventure recognized thatintellectual analysis (intellectus resolvens)can happen in two ways: Either the intellect achieves fulland complete analysis, or the intellect’s analysis isdeficient and partial. When the intellect analyzespartially, we can understand something to be (esse)without understanding the first being (ens). But when the46De mys. Trin. 1.1 ad 6; 5: 50.

122 R. E. Houserintellect analyzes completely, we cannot understandsomething without understanding the first being (ens). 47Bonaventure’s noetilogical argument from goodnessproceeds by analyzing the notion of goodness in a wayappropriate for describing the divine essence.Substituting other definitions of God as middle terms inthis argument schema produces other noetilogicalarguments. Even more revealing than the argumentfrom goodness is one based on being, the first of thetranscendentals.The participle ens is a term of art early used totranslate the Greek present participle. 48 Concrete andnormally a substantive, ens is perhaps best translated “abeing,” since it refers to anything which can exist. Aswas true about bonum, a noetilogical argument cannotbe built on ens alone, and for similar reasons: Enscannot be an axiomatic middle term because there arebeings other than God. Nor can ens be an inferentialmiddle term, since this notion by itself does not entailexistence. Created beings do not have to exist. SoBonaventure searched the notions allied to ens for anappropriate description of the divine essence set out inthe language of being.As has been seen, every created being (ens) iscomposed of two ontological principles: esse andexistere. Bonaventure followed Albert’s etymology inconstruing existere as sistere ex, meaning to stand as aneffect apart from its cause. 49 Since God is not aneffect, Bonaventure eschewed existere and turned to theother component of ens, the notion of esse. As is trueof ens, when taken without qualification the notion ofesse is not limited to God, nor does it entail realexistence. However, there is a difference between thetwo. Ens includes both potency and act, the possibleand the actual, but esse, the active infinitive of the verbto be, signifies act alone, not potency. 50 Since to be isto be something, the actuality signified by esse is47Bonaventure, In 1 Sent. d. 28 dub. 1; 1: 504. cf.Scholion; 5: 314.48Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 2.14.2. cf. 8.3.33.49Albert, In 1 Sent. d. 5. 6 (ed. Borgnet) 25: 184.50Cf. Itin. 5.3.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 123quidditative, as distinct from the sheer independentexistence caused by matter (existere). To go further,however, and use esse as a middle term implying thereal existence of God, Bonaventure needed to qualify itin some way.In his Commentary, Bonaventure simply addedipsum to esse and substituted ipsum esse for Anselm’sformula: “For God, or the highest truth, is being itself(ipsum esse), than which nothing greater can bethought.” 51 Here he neither justified nor explained hisnew middle term, though the reflexive itself seems tofocus on esse, as distinct from ens and existere. If so,the phrase ipsum esse could also be translated “justbeing” or simply “being.” In the Commentary, then,Bonaventure clearly offers ‘being’ as a new middleterm, but fails to clarify exactly what it means.Beginning with Gilson, however, and perhapstoo influenced by their reading of Aquinas, modernscholars have stepped in to clarify what Bonaventuredid not and have used Exodus 3:14 to justifyBonaventure’s insertion of ipsum esse in place ofAnselm’s quo maius. P. Boehner, for example,thought “[t]hese metaphysical speculations, therefore,are made by the essentially Christian mind, which . . . isexhorted to fix its gaze on the ipsum esse . . . as knownfrom revelation.” 52 More recent commentators havepressed the point even further, moving God to theforefront of our notions. Updating Boehner, S. Brownhas said, “God, then, is the first thing known, eventhough we are not conscious of it.” And A. Speeragrees: “The mind’s first concept is the esse divinum;the divine being is an a priori condition for the entirepossibility of knowing.”The difficulty with turning to Exodus is thatusing a datum of revelation to justify the middle termipsum esse has the effect of undermining the rationalityof the argument, a consequence Boehner was willing toaccept. Bonaventure himself, however, employed thenoetilogical argument as a rational argument51In 1 Sent. d. 8. 1.2; 1: 155.52P. Boehner, St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis indeum (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1956)127.

124 R. E. Houserthroughout his writing career. Using being as a nameof God is consistent with revelation, but the notion neednot be taken from revelation. The fact that the reality ofGod is an objective condition of our knowing anything,as the illumination argument makes clear, does notmean that the mind’s first concept is the concept of Godor of esse divinum. In point of fact, Bonaventure didnot reason from Exodus 3:14 to the conclusion that Godis the first notion in the mind or that God must beconceived as esse. His thought moved in precisely theopposite direction. Because being is what first entersthe mind, as Avicenna had taught, it follows that thefirst name of God is being, as Exodus 3:14 says it is:Therefore, the first point of speculative enquiry is God’sexistence. For the first proper name of God is being;since it is completely manifest and perfect, therefore it isfirst. For the first thing a created mind comes to know isbeing. Since whatever is said of God is reduced to being,therefore the proper name of God is being. 5353In Hex. 2.3.11 (ed. Delorme) 129-130: Primum ergospeculabile est Deum esse. Primum nomen enim Deiest proprium esse, quia est manifestissimum et quiaperfectissimum, et ideo est primum. Primum enimmenti creatae innotescit esse. Quia quidquid de Deodicitur, reducitur ad esse, unde esse est proprium nomenDei. (with changes in punctuation) Cf. 10.10 (ed. Quar.)5: 378. S. Brown, The Journey of the Mind to God(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993) 61 n. 99. A. Speer31, working from the other reportatio (ed. Quar., 10.6;5: 378), bases his view on: Esse enim divinum primumest, quod venit in mente. He takes divinum with esse:“For divine being is the first thing which comes into themind.” However, Bonaventure immediately adds:“Unde, Moysi quaerenti, quod esset nomen Dei,respondet Deus: Ego sum qui sum.” Nomen Dei in thesecond sentence indicates it is better to take divinumwith primum in the first: “For being is the first divine[name] which comes into the mind. Therefore, whenMoses asked what is the name of God, God responds: Iam who am.” On esse as name of God, cf. In I Sent. 1,d. 22, 1.3c, referring to Damascene, De fide orth. 1.9;PG 94: 825; and Albert, In I Sent. 1 d. 8. 15 (ed.Borgnet) 25: 242.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 125In the Commentary Bonaventure offered nofurther clarification about the sense of ‘being’ thenoetilogical argument requires. On the Mystery of theTrinity offers no more help on the point, because inpresenting the noetilogical argument in the responsioBonaventure there focused on God’s existence as a selfevidentaxiom rather than an inference. 54 In TheJourney of the Mind to God 5.3, however, Bonaventuredeveloped his noetilogical argument from being farbeyond anything previously done. Here for the firsttime he clearly distinguished axiomatic from inferentialmiddles, finally bringing his argument based on beinginto line with the one based on goodness. To do so hequalified esse in two different ways, producing asaxiomatic middle esse divinum, and esse purissimum asinferential middle. Since his argument uses both terms,it is more complicated than earlier versions, and dividesinto four parts: 1) a preliminary statement of thenoetilogical inference, 2) using esse purissimum as aninferential middle term, 3) defending esse purissimumas a component of transcendental ens, and 4)connecting esse purissimum with esse divinum tocomplete the argument. The first two parts of the textuse the new inferential middle term (esse purissimum)to deduce the real existence of God; while the last twouse the axiomatic middle (esse divinum) to ensure thatit is God who is so proven to exist. Consequently, theschema of this argument closely parallels that of theargument based on goodness:Deus esse divinum esse purissimum est54“It is a truth most certain in itself, because it is thefirst and completely immediate truth, in which not onlyis the cause of the predicate included in the subject, butalso it is just being (omnino esse) which is predicatedand which is the subject” of the proposition God is.Esse is seen here as both subject and predicate of theproposition, which is what makes this proposition anaxiom. Consequently, esse is not conceived as a middleterm at all.

126 R. E. Houser1) Bonaventure began by sketching the basicnoetilogical argument in a cursory way:Now whoever wants to contemplate the invisible things ofGod, as far as unity of essence is concerned, first focusesattention on being itself, and sees that being itself is socompletely certain in itself that it cannot be thought not tobe. 55This introduction simply repeats the essentials of theargument as sketched in Bonaventure’s Commentary:replacing Anslem’s formula with being itself; usingbeing itself as a description of the divine essence inorder to infer that God exists; holding that this conclusionis certain and certain to the highest degree, as isappropriate for a rational principle. Bonaventure thenmoves well beyond the Commentary in each of thethree following sections of text. He proceeds by way ofconceptual analysis, using different ways of dividingboth ens and esse.2) Next Bonaventure appeals abruptly to hisnew middle term (esse purissimum), a term designed tomake it easier to see the inference from being to the realexistence of God:For completely pure being itself occurs only in full flightfrom non-being, just as nothingness is in full flight frombeing. Therefore, complete nothingness contains nothingof being or its attributes, so by contrast being itselfcontains no non-being, neither in act nor in potency,neither in reality nor in our thinking about it. 56At the outset quia clearly shows this section ofthe text is designed as an argument to buttress the55Itin. 5.3; 5: 308: Volens igitur contemplari Deiinvisibilia quoad essentiae unitatem primo defigataspectum in ipsum esse et videat, ipsum esse adeo in secertissimum, quod non potest cogitari non esse.56Itin. 5.3; 5: 308: quia ipsum esse purissimum nonoccurrit nisi in plena fuga non-esse, sicut et nihil inplena fuga esse. Sicut igitur omnino nihil nihil habet deesse nec de eius conditionibus; sic econtra ipsum essenihil habet de non-esse, nec actu nec potentia, necsecundum veritatem rei nec secundum aestimationemnostram.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 127“completely certain” conclusion that God exists.Focusing on the inferential aspect of the argument,Bonaventure here introduces his inferential middleterm, defends its power to imply real existence, andnotes in closing (contrary to Aquinas) that we know thisinference to be true.If ipsum esse refers to the esse of a creature,as distinct from its independent existence (existere),adding the superlative completely pure to esse is simplya way of mentally isolating the positive attributes ofesse, that is, of essence, while abstracting from anyprivations which might also accompany the notion ofthat essence as it actually exists in creatures. Pure,then, means pure from non-being, and esse purissimumis the notion of an essence which by definition does notinvolve non-being in any way: a completely pure orperfect essence. The fact that Bonaventure here avoidsthe terms esse divinum and esse creatum is the strongestindication that he thinks he is offering a purely rational,deductive argument for the existence of God. 57 Thenotion of esse purissimum does not presuppose the realexistence of God, though it does imply that realexistence. At this point in the argument, however, itmay not yet be clear why the notion of completely purebeing actually entails the real existence of God, so57Following van Steenberghen, Boehner (128) andBrown in his revision of Boehner (67) thought the selfevidenceof God destroys the noetilogical inference: “itis obvious that the ‘reasons’ or proofs which St.Bonaventure offers for the existence of God, in so far asthey infer the existence of God, are not considered byhim as proofs or reasons which first make known theexistence of God, since the existence of God is evidentin itself, and is immediately known in the proposition‘God exists’.” While the noetilogical argument did nottake Bonaventure from a state of ignorance to a state ofknowing that God exists, this fact in no wayundermines the argument’s probative force. Rather, theargument shows why God’s existence, which allhumans in some way know, must be true. Thesecommentators assume that God’s existence must beeither self-evident or provable, whereas Bonaventuresees it as both self-evident and provable.

128 R. E. HouserBonaventure devotes the rest of this section of his textto this clarification.What follows is his substitute for Anselm’snegative reductio. Bonaventure modeled it on the wayAvicenna had argued for the principles of metaphysics.At the outset of his Metaphysics, Avicenna had usedthree correlative notions—necessary, possible, andimpossible—as differentiae dividing being. Sinceimpossible esse is a contradiction in terms, this divisionof being produced as a framework for ontology twodifferent levels of being: necessary being (necesseesse) and possible being (possibile esse). 58 Bonaventurefollows Avicenna’s mode of argument, analyzing being(esse) into its parts by using the Augustinian notionpure and its correlatives, rather than Avicenna’snecessary. This yields three divisions of being: essepurum, esse mixtum, and nihil de esse. These notionsrefer respectively to God, creatures, and nothing.Created beings exist contingently; and sinceeach is a composite being, its essence (esse) does notentail that it exists (existere). Since such intermediarythings are only a backdrop to Bonaventure’s presentconcern, he bypasses them. In contrast with creatures,which are mid-level on this scale of being, the notionsof complete nothingness (omnino nihil) and completelypure being (esse purissimum) do have implications forexistence, absolutely opposed implications. “Completenothing-ness” is logically inconsistent with realexistence. Consequently, there is a perfectly validinference from the notion (or quiddity) of nothing tonon-being (non-esse). It is true to say nothing does notexist; and equally it is false to say that nothing exists.By a kind of analogy, Bonaventure uses the truth aboutnothing to open the mind to the opposite truth aboutcompletely pure being. If the nature of nothing entails58Avicenna, Met. 1.6 (ed. Van Riet) 1: 43.8-13.Dicemus igitur quod ea quae cadunt sub esse possunt inintellectu dividi in duo. Quorum unum est quod, cumconsideratum fuerit per se, eius esse non estnecessarium; et palam est etiam quod eius esse non estimpossibile, alioquin non cadet sub esse, hoc est intermino possibilitatis. Alterum est quod, cumconsideratum fuerit per se, eius esse erit necesse.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 129its non-existence, the nature of its opposite, completelypure being, entails real existence. Bonaventure thinksthat making use of the categories of his ownmetaphysics in this comparative and positive wayshows more effectively than merely backing the mindinto a contradiction (as Anselm had done) why thenoetilogical inference is valid.As we have seen, Bonaventure knew thatAquinas admitted the divine essence entails theexistence of God, but also held that humans do notknow the divine essence and consequently cannot drawthe noetilogical inference with certainty. The finalpoint Bonaventure makes in this section, then, is simplyto note that the noetilogical inference holds both inreality (as Aquinas admitted) and for our thought aboutreality. The reason he is confident we can understandhis noetilogical argument is that its very terms areprimordial notions all humans understand.(3) The next section of text Bonaventureseems to have written with Thomistic agnosticism inmind. The basis for his argument thus far is not anotion of God, but the notion of an essence completelypure of non-being: esse purissimum. One might askfrom where Bonaventure takes this notion, seeminglydrawn from thin air. His reply is that conceptualanalysis of the first of all notions—transcendental being(ens)—reveals that this notion does not depend onrevelation, but is a metaphysical and purely rationalnotion all humans have:Now since non-being is the privation of being, it does notfall into the mind except through being; while being doesnot fall into the mind through something else. Foreverything which is thought of is either thought of as anon-being, or as a being in potency, or as a being in act.Therefore, if a non-being is intelligible only through abeing, and a being in potency is intelligible only through abeing in act, and being denominates the pure actuality of abeing, it follows that being is that which first falls into theintellect, and that this being is that which is pureactuality. 5959Itin. 5.3; 5: 308: Cum autem non-esse privatio sitessendi, non cadit in intellectum nisi per esse; esseautem non cadit per aliud, quia omne, quod intelligitur,aut intelligitur ut non ens, aut ut ens in potentia, aut ut

130 R. E. HouserTo show what may not be immediately obvious,that all humans do have the notion of esse purissimumin their minds, Bonaventure begins this conceptualanalysis with what Avicenna had said is obvious to all:the notion of transcendental being (ens). From thebottom to the top of the ontological hierarchy, oneunderstands everything using the notion of being (ens).This opens up a new threefold division—non ens, ens inpotentia, and ens in actu—because each individualcreature is understood in terms of one or more of thesenotions. To understand nothing one must use thepositive notion of a being (ens), and then mentallynegate it, resulting in the notion non-ens. Within therealm of being, one understands a being in potency byreference to a being in act. But what makes a being inact intelligible to us? Here Bonaventure peers into thenotion of a being (ens) and finds it has two componentprinciples: independent existence (existere), whichgives the being the potential to have a certain essence;and being (esse), the actuality of such an essence. It isesse rather than existere which “denominates the pureactuality of a being.” Here actuality (actus) means ‘thatwhich makes the being actually intelligible, by giving itthe actual essence it has.’ This movement of conceptualanalysis opens the mind to see that we canunderstand the kind of being (ens) a creature is only byreferring to the notion of an act of being which is purefrom non-being (esse purum), indeed, which is purefrom any non-being (esse purissimum). Containedwithin the very notion of transcendental being (ens),and a presupposition of our understanding the notion oftranscendental being, is the notion of being with no hintof non-being (esse purissimum). Even if only implicit,this notion must be present in the mind of anyone whounderstands being (ens), that is, everyone who understandsanything at all.ens in actu. Si igitur non ens non potest intelligi nisi perens, et ens in potentia non nisi per ens in actu; et essenominat ipsum purum actum entis: esse igitur est quodprimo cadit in intellectu, et illud esse est quod est purusactus.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 131(4) Once it has been shown that essepurissimum is a notion which implies real existence andthat we all possess this notion as a component of thefundamental notion of a being (ens), it remains only toidentify esse purissimum with God. Bonaventuremakes this final connection by resorting to yet a thirdconceptual analysis of being, this one involving hisaxiomatic middle term: esse divinum:But this is not particular being, which is limited beingbecause mixed with potency, nor is it analogous being,because that has the least actuality, since it is to the leastdegree. Therefore, the result is that this being is divinebeing. 60Waiting until the end of his argument to introduce thedivine essence (esse divinum) seems to have beenBonaventure’s way of replying to Aquinas’s criticismthat the noetilogical argument is circular because itpresupposes the real existence of the divine essence inbeginning with that essence. Bonaventure’s answer isthat the inference to existence is based on the inferentialmiddle term, the notion of completely pure being, anddoes not assume in its logic the real existence of God,divine being, or the divine essence. Only after provingthe real existence of esse purissimum does he go on toidentify the being so proven to exist with God. Whilethe notion, and therefore the reality, of God is lurking inthe notion of being (ens) from the beginning, a processof analytic and deductive thinking is required to showwhy God was there all along.The final step in this reasoning assumes yet anotherthreefold division of being (esse). Avicenna haddistinguished the absolute consideration of essen-ces,without regard to the kind of being (esse) they enjoy,from existing essences, and he had further distinguishedessence enjoying real being from essence having theintentional being which concepts have in the mind.Further distinguishing the real being of God from the60Itin. 5.3; 5: 308-9: Sed hoc non est esse particulare,quod est esse arctatum, quia permixtum est cumpotentia, nec esse analogum, quia minime habet deactu, eo quod minime est. Restat igitur, quod illud esseest esse divinum.

132 R. E. Houserreal being of creatures yields three kinds of being: essedivinum, esse particulare (the real being of individualcreatures), and esse analogum, Bona-venture’s term forintentional being in the mind, so called because themental concept is only analogous to the real essence itsignifies. The concept has a formal likeness to thatessence but is not really identical with it, since it ismental while what it signifies is real. Bonaventure’sargument in this last section is that if esse purissimumreally exists, as has been proven, it must exist in one ofthese three modes. Since particular and intentionalbeing cannot be completely perfect, as esse purissimummust be, it remains that esse purissimum must beidentical with the divine being, making this term butanother name for God.The starting point, then, for Bonaventure’snoetilogical argument in the Itinerarium is the notion ofesse purissimum, taken not in its subjective mode ofexistence as a concept in a human mind, but in itsobjective meaning, 61 that is, as signifying a certain kindof quiddity or essence. At the outset of the argument,this essence had not yet been proven really to exist,even if it is already thought or even known to exist61Cf. J. Seifert, “Si Deus est Deus, Deus est” 218, forwhom the argument takes its “starting point in theobjective essence and not in a mere concept of God.” Aconcept has merely intentional existence but signifiesthe essence of a certain kind of object. When based onthe kind of existence in the mind the concept of Godhas, the noetilogical argument takes the form of arguingthat, since real being is better than intentional being, aquo maius with real being must be better than a quomaius without real being, and therefore must reallyexist. This construction of the argument does notproceed to the conclusion by way of a contradiction, butconceives of existence as simply one among manyperfections which such a being must have. It must berejected, as Seifert says. Correctly interpreted, thenoetilogical argument is based on the content of acertain kind of essence, content which is reallyindependent of the mode of existence concepts enjoy inthe mind. This content necessarily implies the realexistence of God.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 133through some other means of cognition, such as faith orcommon sense. The achievement of the noetilogicalargument, as Bonaventure saw it, is twofold: it showsthat this essence must really exist, and it shows that thisessence is none other than God.For those like Aquinas who demand that God’sexistence be demonstrated in strictly Aristotelianfashion, Bonaventure has two answers. First, heoffered his illumination and aitiological arguments,which have securely empirical starting points. Aristotlehimself, however, had recognized that principles cannotbe demonstrated; they are acquired through a differentkind of argument, one he called dialectical. In bothmodes of argument, one knows the conclusion throughinsight, but with this difference: The formal, deductivenecessity in demonstrative arguments forces the mindto the conclusion and thereby to insight into theconclusion; while dialectical arguments do not ‘coerce’insight in the way demonstrations do. Although Bonaventurenever applied the term dialectical to hisnoetilogical argument for God’s existence, the argumenthas this one feature in common with dialecticalarguments for principles: There is no substitute forintellectual insight (intellectus) into the real existenceof God; and no argument modeled on the way oneargues for principles could avoid the need for intuitionto follow on the discursive reasoning of the argumentitself. Bonaventure thought this was true of Anslem’sargument, and of his own. His second answer, then, tothose like Aquinas who find the noetilogical argumentunsatisfying was that they ask it to do more than anargument for principles possibly could do. Such anargument cannot wring concessions from the mind inthe way demonstration does, and asking it to do so is akind of ignoratio elenchi.* * *As is appropriate to Bonventure’s conception ofmetaphysics, each of his routes to God involves a kindof exemplarity. In the illumination argument, God isan exemplar because the proximate efficient causewhich injects certitude into human knowledge. Weparticipate in a divine certainty which is beyond our

134 R. E. Houserinnate cognitive powers. Bonaventure’s aitiologicalargument starts with the ontological truth found inevery creature. Each creature is true to the extent that itrealizes its own essence. But every creature imitatesonly imperfectly God’s perfect realization of the divineessence. Consequently, the truth of the creature is aparticipation in the truth of God.Finally, exemplar causality enters into Bonaventure’snoetilogical argument because God’s esse isthe exemplar for how esse entails certain attributes.The esse, that is, the essence of a creature necessarilyimplies certain attributes. The esse of triangles entailstheir having three angles equal to 180 degrees; the esseof humans entails risibility. But no creature has essewhich requires it to exist (existere). Since creatures aremade to exist by another, they must have matter whichallows them to ‘stand apart’ (existere) from their cause.Since existence in creatures is a function of their matter,no creature actually exists due merely to its form. Butthis is precisely what happens in God, the only pureform in the universe. Consequently, the divine form,which causes the divine essence (esse), must be thesource of God’s existence, for there is no otherprinciple which could cause God to exist. Since esse isbut the actuality given by form, it follows that thedivine esse entails in God real existence. Consequently,the divine esse is an exemplar for the power of all esseto necessitate real consequences. By thus resorting tothe proper principles of his own metaphysics,Bonaventure succeeded in making the noetilogicalargument more strictly scientific.We see here a profound point of comparisonbetween Aquinas and Bonaventure. Both agree thatGod’s nature should most properly be described as esseand that esse is a component principle in a createdbeing (ens). Further, both agree that God is thatprinciple as subsistent. For Aquinas, the essence ofcreatures is the source of knowledge of them, whiletheir esse is obscure to us and we do not even have aproperly formed concept of it. 62 It is no wonder that theGod of St. Thomas—subsistent esse—is hidden from62I. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2 nd ed. (Toronto: PIMS,1949) 190-215.

Bonaventure’s Three-fold Way to God 135the human mind. For Bonaventure, God is also mostproperly described as esse. But for him, esse increatures is the principle making them intelligible,different from the matter which clouds ourunderstanding of them. Their esse is their form, orspeaking more precisely it is caused by their forms.How could a God who is subsistent esse, in ametaphysics where esse is the source of intelligibility ineach thing, be anything but supremely intelligible, bothin itself (as even Aquinas admitted) and to us?Center for Thomistic StudiesUniversity of St. ThomasHouston, Texas