The Christology of Bonaventure

Abstract

Scholarly discussion on Bonaventure’s Christology has tended to favor its Trinitarian, historical, and epistemological dimensions. Of note is Bonaventure’s notion of Christ as medium metaphysicum: the very depth and center of history according to knowing, learning, and mystical desire. What is perhaps less considered with respect to these topics, but nevertheless evident in contemporary scholarship, is the extent to which Bonaventure’s Christological structure informs an essential relation between creation and glorification. This essay explores these topics with attention to contemporary Bonaventure scholarship to offer insights on the ongoing importance of Bonaventure’s Christology for posterity, especially as it relates to a Bonaventurian theology of creation.

1. Introduction

Christology is the doctrinal study of Jesus Christ: his work, his teachings, and his person. For Bonaventure (1217/1221–1274),1 Christ is the wisest redeemer of man from the guilt of sin and the wisest restorer of God’s honor, for through God’s most creative principle, he brought the entire universe to full perfection by uniting the Word of God and human nature (see Bonaventure 2005a).2 Bonaventure’s thoughts on Christ are rich and considerably complex. Bonaventure’s thought is easier to approach than it is to master. But if we are to understand the dynamics at work in Bonaventure’s Christology, special attention should be given to the height, center, depth, and width of his teachings. The first concerns the Trinity; the second concerns Christ in history; the third concerns the union of disparate natures and Christ’s the knowledge thereof; and the last concerns the effects of Christ’s atonement, passion, and resurrection upon creation.

2. Trinitarian Framework

According to Bonaventure, God is one Spirit and one Nature having distinction (Bonaventure 2014).3 Put another way, God is one Hypostasis and one Essence distinguished by relational attribution of “nominal” properties such that the things (res) of God are referred to the One Essence so to confer a distinct manner of Being on the Persons (Bonaventure 2014; Bonaventure 2000a, pp. 147–57).4 Power is to the Father, Wisdom is to the Son and Goodness is to the Holy Spirit, and yet “One is the Essence of the Three Persons” (Bonaventure 2014, p. 583).5 Bonaventure holds a traditional view—found elsewhere in theologians such as Alain of Lille—that God is “the intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere” (Bonaventure 1993, p. 31).6 Bonaventure bases his doctrine of God7 on scripture, which is one book comprising three books—or three mirrors—of the soul. These books are the Book of Creation, the Book of Life, and the Bible—each of which consists of unity and plurality. The Book of Creation is the book without (i.e., the visible or external creation as the writing (scriptura) of God); the Book of Life is the book within (i.e., the “writing of God” as the interior, generating Word in the intellectual–spiritual creature, which is of memory/everlasting enjoyment, will/goodness and delight, and intelligence/understanding), and lastly the Bible, which is the book restoring our knowledge of the other two (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 102–4, 240–1).8 For Bonaventure, scripture is no dusty tome—no unnourishing husk; rather, it is an immense theological–metaphysical structure of emanation, exemplarity, expression, and consummation that belongs uniquely to the “true metaphysician” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 80; Bowman 1975; Johnson 2016).9 It a structure subsistent with the infinite infinities of the nature or essence of the First Principle—of, in other words, eternal being having eternal terms of production through consummation of the Divine ‘to Be’: Deum esse et trinum (Goff 2015, p. 228).

For Bonaventure, every infinite in potency—each of which is an infinite of created operation and duration—depends upon the uncreated infinite in act, and this infinite act is not of duration per se, but of Divine Power or Strength, the Virtue of virtues (Bonaventure 2014, p. 776).10 Accordingly, the First Cause of the Divine Art instantiates the substance, power, and operation of the Triune God by power, wisdom, and goodness such that creatures represent—according to their own way of being in matter, form, and composition (or bond)—the triune God (Bonaventure 2018, p. 103).11 But quite unlike creatures, God is an actual infinite unity, an infinity of infinities. Employing a commonly accepted principle from Pseudo-Aristotle, Bonaventure says that “a power or cause, the more it is united and simple, the more it is infinite” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 113; Goff 2015, p. 236).12 Hence, God is most infinite as Being most united and supremely simple. In this respect, God’s divine will operate by a principle of diffusive good that is effective only, or perhaps only primarily, on account of an end—namely, salvation (Bonaventure 2014, p. 805).13 The logic of the Trinity is the logic of salvation.

The power of the Trinity impresses contingent beings with the expressions of exemplarity—the ideal, infallible causes of, and reasons for, the being of species—which conserve or preserve beings in such a way that creatures represent the spiritual and everlasting (Bonaventure 2018, p. 231).14 This mode of being, which is a permanent and infallible mode upon an otherwise contingent being, is so powerful that if the substance of the creature were consumed or went extinct, it would still subsist as a principle (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 280–81).15 In other words, the permanent mode is so powerful that even extinct creatures would remain a part of the divine operation in the intrinsic cause of creating (Bonaventure 2018, p. 230).16 According to Bonaventure, “every creature lives in eternal forms” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 229).17 While creatures are not eternal, by their generative properties of diffusion, expression, and propagation the finite intellect can rise to partial apprehension of the ‘to Be’ by contuition (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 220–21; Goff 2015, p. 170)18 of the intelligibility latent in creaturely activity—i.e., the “given” of nature according to faith (Copleston [1974] 1994, p. 282)—along with the eternal reasons as their support: the fundamenta fidei that “tests all things” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 135).19 The foundation of faith, the First Principle, is God, who is Spirit.

The mind ascends to the First Principle by means of an essentially ordered series, which has God as its ultimate justification. There is, first, the relation of creature and nature, which concerns among other things the creature’s properties. Then, there is the relation of creature and shadow (i.e., a certain indirect representation of the creature’s causal dependency on God), vestige (i.e., a certain direct representation of the creature’s causal dependency on God), as well as form and image. Lastly, there is the relation of creature and similitude, exemplar, or the divine art, by which the creature apprehends or knows its quintessential being in the light of God (Goff 2015, p. 162). The rational creature first knows itself according to the activity of the soul as a rational principle (i.e., the creature knows itself by nature), and through understanding of its nature, the rational creature can transition to a deeper consideration—namely, the consideration of the vestige, image or form, which harbors the meaning of unity and distinction in the divine ‘to Be’ in the creature’s intelligible acts. From here, the mind can be drawn to the recognition of a superior light, the light of exemplarity, which recognizes the dependence of all things upon the Triune God. These levels or grades of ascent constitute Bonaventure’s great “leading-back” (“reduction”, reducere) of the soul to God, which he maps out in his famous Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. As one commentator, J. Guy Bougerol, relays:

The reduction is not merely a technique—it is the soul of the return to God; and since all knowledge depends on principles, and principles are born within us under the regulating and motivating action of divine ideas, the certitudes which seem most capable of being self-sufficient are necessarily linked, by means of the first principles, with the eternal reasons and their divine foundation. To reduce, then, the truth of any judgment amounts to bringing back this judgment, from condition to condition, to the eternal reasons upon which it is established

(Bougerol 1963, p. 76).

However, the intellect and affect must be purified to grasp such truth (Bonaventure 2018, 95, p. 162).20 Moreover, even if the cleansed soul of the rational creature assents to the nature of the First Principle by intellectual apprehension, there is yet no fully resolving intellect concerning the inner life of the Divine Being (Bonaventure 2014, p. 76).21 Furthermore, as creatures lack certain conditions to be “pure vestiges”—i.e., an absolute rational-spiritual representation of eternal generation—nothing in creation could evince the entirely reality of the Triune God, as no vestige in creation meets the necessary condition to satisfy, for example, equality (as in the case of brightness from light), intimacy (as in the case of heat from fire), simultaneity (as in the case of a river from a spring), and integrity (as in the case of rain from a cloud) (Bonaventure 2018, p. 221).22 However, if one could join these conditions “in one diffusion”—as in, splendor having equality with light, heat having intimacy and substantiality with fire, a stream or font having simultaneity with its object, and rain having integrity with its processing source—“then”, Bonaventure says, “you would have a pure vestige of eternal generation” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 221).

Bonaventure regards speculation about the Trinity as always having some enigma, at least in this life, “because, if it would be seen without enigma, a person would be blessed (beatus)” (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 214–15).23 Even so, for Bonaventure the rational creature is capable of something called contuition: a kind of shared-radiant insight and judgment of necessary reasons (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 219–30)24 that the Divine Essence could produce the substantially same in Being, by means of Creation, without creatures thereby becoming something other than what they are. Nevertheless, the division between creature and Creator holds for Bonaventure for various reasons (Fehlner 2023a, pp. 593–97).25 One reason is that diffusion “is not utterly complete in a creature, because God does not give to a creature the complete beauty (decorum) of exemplarity” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 219).26 And yet, that a basic division holds should not be taken to mean no form of unitive relation can be obtained between creature and Creator. The division is for Bonaventure an analogical division, and it serves the notion of a subliminal principle by which the perfective–quidditative immensities of Divine Power and Goodness are instantiated. Thus, with respect to creaturely knowledge (but not only with respect to knowledge), it is evident for Bonaventure that creatures must meditate about, and be mediated by, the nature of the First Principle via some center, a middle, a person who truly represents God and humanity (creation) in fullness. This center, middle, and person is Christ Jesus, whom, by virtue of a superdignified hypostatic union of created and uncreated, human and divine, expresses the complete beautiful truth of the Eternal Wisdom while also limiting it to the substance, power, and operation of creaturely being.

3. Christ in the Trinity

Christ is the medium metaphysicum of the Divine Art, the Word incarnate, the depth of Divine Wisdom in the Power of the Father, the sublime exemplar of the uncreated primacy of the “Father of lights”, which the philosophers, despite their noble theoretical achievements, missed (Bonaventure 2018, p. 175).27 For Bonaventure, Christ is the soul—the Word hidden and yet evident (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 164; Hayes 2000)28—of the return to God, due to an essential relation God has with the image of creation (Bonaventure 2018, p. 207).29 Christ is for Bonaventure the central exemplary image and person of vestige (the noble concept of the mind) and similitude (the nobility of experience itself) in the truth of the Created and Uncreated Being.

Bonaventure articulates his Trinitarian and Christological doctrine according to principle (principio). Just as “[W]illing (voluntas) reduces (reducit) a principle to act” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 361)30 and “The end imposes a necessity on those things that pertain to the end” (Aristotle 2011)31, the most actual principle—which consists of all the ways “by which the mind knows (mens cognoscit) and judges that which could not be otherwise, that is: that the supreme principle must be supremely venerated; that the supreme truth must be supremely believed and assented to; that the supreme good must be supremely desired (desiderandum) and loved (diligendum)” (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 97–98)32—is essentially bound up within the sublimity of a purely immanent, synderetic act in the desiderata of the human person. Thus, creation as “the emanation of the entirety of being by way of a universal cause, which is God” (Aquinas 2018)33 is such specifically through the uncreated Word exemplified in the subliminal dignity of a “New Creation”—i.e., the efficient, restorative, saving Word—who, as the Incarnate Word and as the microcosmic heart of the Father’s will, expresses the various modalities of the love sent-over (Bonaventure 2014)34 in the Trinitarian life to the ends of salvation. God as Son expresses the Father’s relationship to the world; God as Word expresses the Father’s relationship to the Word (Bonaventure 2007)35 ‘Word’ means the emanation of eternal generation in intimate union. Bonaventure uses various biblical passages to illustrate the meaning of the Word in the Trinitarian life. For example, Sirach 24:5: “I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn of all creatures.” Here, “Most High” refers to the origin or source of generation; “out of the mouth” refers to generation itself; and “I came out” refers to distinction in source and generation (Bonaventure 2007, loc. cit.).

All creation returns to its source by the inspiring Word, the Holy Spirit, who is the consummator of grace and sanctification through an infinite act wrought by the gift of the Father to creation: that is, by the Son, the incarnate Word (Goff 2015, p. 310; Schumacher et al. 2020).36 Through the generation of philosophical wisdom and the wisdom of “true metaphysics” (i.e., Trinitarian theology), speculation about the most actual principle (in history) furnishes the mind with a production of binding love (Bonaventure 2018)37 and the greater the production of binding love, the greater the need for the generation of a word, and the greater the need for the generation of a word, the greater the need one has for God (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 219–21). More active than any other intellective act or principle (like those of mathematics) is the active principle of the understanding in the uncreated Word, which “disposes all things and expresses all things in its likeness (similitudine)” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 114).38 The fulfillment of the act of the production of love is merited exclusively by the person of Jesus Christ, who represents the complete beautiful truth of exemplarity in the revelation of God-made-man. Here, then resides Bonaventure’s considerably unique notion of Christ as the medium metaphysicum, which, at its lowest point, is the depth of humility and represents a unique historical center.

4. Historical Christology

In general, the medium metaphysicum is about the knowledge of Christ as the center of all science. Put succinctly, Christ as center is the knowledge that Christ came in the fullness of time and fulfilled the mysteries of the ages (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 146).39 Historically then, medium metaphysicum means that all creation is directed ultimately to Christ, the wisdom of God, via the Word as the perfect, interior expressive likeness of God (Cullen 2006, p. 35). However, because Bonaventure does not place Christ, who came in the “fullness of time”, simply at the end of history, but at the center of it, consideration of the scientific-metaphysical center as a universal center of history is appropriate (Hayes 2000, pp. 192–214; Costa 2020, pp. 393–404).40

Much scholarly discussion exists on the historical dimension of Christ as metaphysical or universal center. For example, some scholars have suggested that Christ as a metaphysical–historical center is unique to Bonaventure and that this view implies a diachronic–synchronic “history as first philosophy” (Boulter 2022). Other scholars, following Ratzinger’s Bonaventure, have argued that Bonaventure’s doctrine implies a kind of social inspiration model of interpretation that is mystical, subject-inclusive, and historically cumulative (Pidel 2015). In any case, if the central historical thesis of Bonaventure’s Christology is true, it nevertheless requires some clarification. If Christ is the metaphysical–historical center of history, it is necessary to understand this center according to (a) the essence of time (in contrast to the being of time) (Gilson 2020, p. 149ff)41 (b) learning, and (c) mystical desire.

Ratzinger understood the exitus and reditus of Christ in history not as a series of “accidental infinities”, but as the Word (re)centering time, in creatures, in the sense of time as one of the four principal realities created by God, who spoke all things into being (Ratzinger 2020, p. 131). Just as the angels are obedient to the will of God, so even time is obedient to the will of God. Hence, the return to Christ as medium metaphysicum according to (a) would have to include an understanding of, for example, aeviternity (i.e., angelic natura as it relates to the essence of time), natural philosophy and the speculation and contemplation of Christ’s passion (i.e., learning), and mystical desire (i.e., yearning for union with God). The “essence of time”—viz., the instant at which time is created, whose source is the instant, as contrasted from the being of time, which has a terminus of the past—also requires an understanding of how the three fundamental emanations created by God—i.e., nature, glory, and grace (Bonaventure 2018, p. 190)42—find agreement in the historical consummation of the universal Principle of wisdom, which requires, among other things, a solid understanding of the teaching of Jesus. As Bonaventure states:

The universal Principle of things, being supremely wise, observes the order of wisdom in all its works, but should do so especially in those matters related to their consummation. In this way, the beginning will be in harmony with the intermediate stage, and the intermediate stage with the end; thus, in the perfectly fitting order of all things, the ordering wisdom, the goodness, and the loftiness of that first supreme Principle will clearly be seen

(Bonaventure 2005a, p. 278).43

If the historical thesis is true—i.e., if God deigned to restore an understanding of the essence of time through, specifically, the figurae sacramentales (Bonaventure 1993; Ratzinger 2020)44 and the witness of St. Francis of Assisi as alter Christus (Vloebergs 2016, pp. 1–29)— any thesis of “doctrinal development” inferred from such a thesis would have to, on one hand, give careful attention to the historical situation of Bonaventure (viz., the Joachimite controversy over the Eternal Gospel, which claimed a new Age of the Holy Spirit and abrogated the Age of the Son), and, on the other hand, it would have to be properly and assiduously faithful to the concept of revelation deepening across time. In this latter sense, one would have to concede at the very least that whatever understanding of Scriptural revelation there will be in the end times, it would have to be one of supreme wisdom such that nature, grace, and glory are all in agreement. Indeed, whatever this understanding is, Bonaventure says by means of it “the monsters of heresies will flee from the use of wisdom” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 238).45

As for (b), Bonaventure stipulates that Christ is the center according to a sevenfold center of learning, where each center occupies a distinct subject of theology (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 75–91).46 And as for both (b) and (c), Bonaventure’s historical view must be understood according to its integral, ecclesial nature (Fehlner 2023b, pp. 194–224) and according to the “hierarchized soul” of contemplative excess, which concerns both symbolic and sacramental theology (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 379–99).47 If one removed the intellective-affective dimension, the ecclesial dimension, and the mystical dimension—all of which are pertinent to certitude in statu viae—from Bonaventure’s notion of Christ as medium metaphysicum, this would lead to a misrepresentation of Bonaventure’s thought. In any case, as the “lowest point” of the Divine Action, who “became earth for us in humility” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 85),48 Christ as medium metaphysicum is for Bonaventure the fundamental threshold, the fundamental convergence, of finite and divine reality in history: he is the purest expression of created existence, as it leads back to uncreated being; he is dynamic reality itself, “directed in its inner core to a fulfillment and completion which is to be the mysterious fruit of its history” (Hayes 2000, p. 13). The question of the medium metaphysicum is a question about whether one’s historical knowledge is fruitful (frui, “to enjoy”) and dynamic.

5. Christocentric Epistemology

In the Collationes in Hexaëmeron, Bonaventure regards Christ as the knowledge of God according to the descent and the ascent of God-made-man, and as eternal wisdom according to the produced power of the uncreated Word (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 187–92).49 In this way, Christ may be understood as the principal expression of the diffusive love of God. As for Bonaventure, all knowledge and wisdom leads ultimately to the summit of love and affective union (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 105, 203–4; Ratzinger 2020, p. 83).50 Christ as representative of both knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia) is a common theme in the works of Bonaventure, such as in his decisive treatise on the knowledge of Christ, Quaestiones Disputate de Scientia Christi. The way Christ, as Incarnate Word, expresses the will of the Uncreated Word, the Father, in creation is what marks an important transition in Bonaventure’s Christology.

If the knowledge of Christ and the knowledge in Christ is the exemplary knowledge by which finite intellects rise to satisfactory knowledge of the divine life, then an understanding of the nature of this knowledge is essential to understanding the nature of that satisfactory knowledge. Generally, Bonaventure assumes a twofold knowing: one philosophical, the other theological. That knowledge, which attains to knowledge of the eternal foundation of certain knowledge, is philosophical (ut scrutabilis notitia certa); but knowledge that attains to the mode of created and uncreated knowledge is knowledge by faith through piety (ut credibilis notitia pia) (Speer 1997, p. 32ff). The distinction between the two is important for reasons not always sufficiently disclosed. As Bonaventure suggests in his Hexaëmeron, philosophical knowledge can acquire knowledge of the nature of beings via the eternal support of the foundation of knowledge generally, but as philosophical knowledge tends to remain at the level of nature, and one rationale for theological or pious knowing is that it enhances or “seasons” (condimentum) natural reason (Bonaventure 2018, p. 131).51 One must have recourse to something of the light of faith (illuminatio) in natural knowledge (Copleston [1974] 1994, pp. 280–82).52

A large amount of scholarly works on Bonaventure’s Christology have focused primarily on its epistemological dimension. This makes sense considering that Bonaventure’s Disputates Quaestiones de Scientia Christi is concerned with the manner or mode in which Christ is said “to know” (scire) or “to be” (esse). The primary focus of Bonaventure’s Christological epistemology concerns the nature of the finite intellect in relation to the eternal reasons (Noone 1999; Scarpelli 2007; Goff 2015). In de Scientia Christi, Bonaventure undertakes two sets of questions: the first set (q. 1–4) examines the metaphysical–epistemological structure of exemplarity, and the second set (q. 5–7) examines the specific manner or mode of Christ’s knowledge. To briefly summarize the first set: Bonaventure holds with Aristotle that science must be based on an eternal foundation (Bonaventure 2005b, 120).53 Thus, certain knowledge consists of the finite intellect attaining to the eternal reasons in some manner. However, for Bonaventure, certain knowledge is not solely eternal reasons, nor is certain knowledge a mere influence of eternal reasons. Certain knowledge as solely eternal reasons is an exaggerated (transcendental) realism that brings about the error that all intelligibility is hidden which ends up, ironically enough, shattering instead of restoring confidence in reason (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 132ff).54 As for the idea that certain knowledge is merely an influence of eternal reasons, Bonaventure accepts the authority of Augustine that certain knowledge has to be more than an influence of such (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 132ff). The question, then, is as follows: If certain knowledge is more than an influence of the eternal reasons, what is “more-than-the-influence”? In short, it is ecstatic participation in a quidditative reality of the eternal reasons. For Bonaventure, certain knowledge is ecstatic knowledge: the very reality of the eternal reasons as regulating and motivating causes and reasons for things. It is a knowledge that does not make the eternal reasons the sole principle of knowledge (for even in ecstatic knowledge, created and uncreated wisdom work together or in tandem), nor a knowledge of eternal reasons attained in full clarity, but a knowledge of eternal reasons truly known, albeit it obscurely and in a mirror (Bonaventure 2005b, loc. cit.). From Bonaventure’s exemplary-epistemological structure, questions about what the soul of Christ knows are easier to handle.

Christ knew in five distinct ways: (i) according to divine nature, (ii) according to glorified human nature, (iii) according to grace, (iv) according to integral human nature, and (v) according to sense experience (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 150–51).55 In the Passion, a convergence and harmony of (i) and (v) was achieved. The divine nature itself knows through knowledge of approbation, knowledge of vision, and knowledge of intelligence (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 77.56 Knowledge of approbation “refers to things that are good and finite”; knowledge of vision is “a knowledge of both good and evil, and of finite things in as far as they are realized in time [i.e., past, present, future]”; and knowledge of intelligence is “knowledge of infinite objects in as far as, by this knowledge, God knows not only future realities, but possibilities as well” (Bonaventure 2005b, loc. cit.). This last form of knowledge includes both finite and infinite possible series and is the fully comprehensive divine knowledge. As the person of Christ is of two natures—and, likewise, two wills—Bonaventure’s task is to show how each relates to the two different forms, or two different modes, of wisdom’s fullness in knowledge, i.e., created and uncreated, imitative and exemplary. To frame it as a question: how does each aspect of knowledge in the divine nature relate to sense-experience?

As “creative exemplar” the soul of Christ is drawn to divine wisdom by comprehensive knowledge (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 186),57 and as expressive exemplar, the soul of Christ is drawn to divine wisdom by ecstasy (Bonaventure 2005b, loc. cit.). For Bonaventure, this means that the soul of the whole Christ relates to an infinite number of things in an ecstatic mode, but in terms of his comprehensive knowledge, it relates only to finite things (Bonaventure 2005b, loc. cit.). Christ remained limited in substance, power, and action, and so although the divine nature in Christ knew all things with an actual and comprehensive knowledge, this was yet adjudicated by Christ’s other ways of knowing and by the created mind (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 150–53).58 Hence, the human intellect of Christ knows the whole Godhead immediately, but as created, it cannot comprehend its full reality.59 Hence, in the soul of Christ, the reality apprehended is that of the eternal reasons, and through this apprehension, the soul of Christ relates to infinite things ecstatically, but this reality is not truly comprehended if this word is taken to mean Christ comprehends the Intelligence that knows in the most perfect, eternal, and infinite act.

But even the loftiest creature is limited in its substance, power, and action. Furthermore, the human mind, though it does not find rest except in the infinite Good, cannot comprehend that Good—since, to use the term ‘comprehension’ in its full meaning, the infinite cannot be comprehended by the finite. And so it follows that in the second way of knowing, that is by virtue of his glorified humanity, the intellect of Christ grasps everything within the reach of finite nature beatified by the infinite Good to which it is supremely united. Hence, the intellect of Christ knows the finite by actually comprehending it; but the infinite it does not know except perhaps through a knowledge that is due to an infused habit or even ecstatic. For neither in its knowing nor in any other way can the created mind be equated with the Word

(Bonaventure 2005a, p. 152).60

One of the benefits of Bonaventure’s theory is that it tidily explains why Christ in the Gospels does not know everything the Father knows.61 While the soul of Christ is super excellent and super dignified in its unity of created and uncreated and is supremely graced by a beholding of divine wisdom in ecstasy, and communicates the Father’s will as the Father communicates it, still the comprehensive knowledge of the soul of Christ is limited and so sense-experience plays an important role in the divine plan (Bonaventure 2005a, 2005b, pp. 171–72).62 How then shall one understood the whole soul of the knowledge of Christ? Some scholars have introduced the concept of “unibility” for acquiring an understanding of the operative mode of unity between created (body) and uncreated (soul) (Osborne 1999, pp. 227–50). A few other theories may be considered (see

Table 1. A.63

	Temperance	Prudence	Fortitude	Justice
Father (Producing Power)	To Cleanse	To Enlighten	To Strengthen	To Perfect
Son (Wisdom of Produced Power)	Cleansing Mind	Enlightening Intention	Strengthening Resolve	Perfecting Law
Holy Spirit (Goodness Proceeding in Love and Desire of Wisdom)	Imparting Subtlety of Spirits	Imparting Liveliness of Senses	Imparting Strengthening Power	Imparting Discretion of Qualities
	Material	Formal	Efficient	Final

).

For one, the knowledge of the whole soul of Christ is a dynamic relimiting in ecstatic knowing. In short, this means that the soul of Christ knew in his human nature why creaturely understanding was limited, and in his divine nature, Christ knew how creaturely limitations could be satisfied and elevated. Accordingly, the knowledge of the whole soul of Christ is an exemplary model of knowledge for accomplishing the will of God—i.e., the will by which a creature draws near to God, by a sign of the creature’s senses, according to the comparison of an object to God’s pleasure or displeasure (Bonaventure 2014).64 Hence, Christ’s knowledge serves the will or command of the Father in a particular way. With respect to the command to be pure,65 the knowledge of Christ cleanses the mind. With respect to cleansing the mind, the knowledge of Christ enlightens intention. With respect to enlightening intention, the knowledge of Christ strengthens resolve. With respect to strengthening resolve, the knowledge of Christ perfects the law. Another theory is that the knowledge of the whole soul of Christ is an implicit supposition of hypostatic union (Hayes 2000, p. 89, fn. 121). The implicit supposition is itself a mystery of superdiginified union in the relation (ratione) between created (human) and uncreated (divine). Bonaventure seems to favor this view, and some scholars have taken it in interesting philosophical directions (White 2008, p. 190).66 In any case, it is clear in Bonaventure’s Christology that the hypostasis of Word and human nature expresses “the full art of all the living and unchanging reasons of things” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 83),67 and that this union transcends in dignity all other types of union.68 But what is the salvific significance of such a union?

6. Christ as Mediator, Redeemer, and Restorer

Through consummation of the love of God in Christ’s incarnate substance, an honor that had been lost by Adam could be restored to God. All creation could now receive recompense, redemption, and pardon for their guilt by means of a sanctifying, atoning grace of the human and divine union. Christ’s knowledge of grace—“by virtue of which he knew all things related to the salvation of the human race” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 150)69—expressed particularly in the humility of his sense knowledge, by which he learned obedience through what he suffered,70 was to uniquely bring about redemption for the human race.

According to Bonaventure, the saving knowledge of Christ was the work of the First Principle, which saw the Incarnation as a rightful and fitting remedy for the contraction of universal contamination by sin and for the “final completion of the universe” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 131; Hunter 2020, pp. 181–84; Cullen 2006, p. 142).71 The Incarnation was also fitting in the sense that it accorded with the manner of human freedom, which is part of the sublimity of the remedy for the contamination of sin (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 133).72 The human Christ, the New Adam, was able to gain through the freedom of his will what was lost by the freedom of Adam’s will. By choosing a passion all-embracing, Christ provided an antidote to the universal infection of sin; by choosing a passion most bitter, he provided an antidote to lust; by choosing a passion most ignominious, he provided an antidote to pride; and by choosing to suffer “a death undeserved but freely willed”, he gave the antidote to a death “deserved but unwilled” (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 162–63).73 In short, for Bonaventure the knowledge of Christ exemplified in his passion, atonement, and resurrection satisfied every condition necessary for remedying the contamination of sin.

Christ, the incarnate Word, of one supposit with the uncreated Word, through his excellent union of divine and human nature, and by the fullness of grace and truth and wisdom in him and his meritorious actions, was the fitting mediator for establishing whatever suited the good pleasure of the Father in the Divine Art: “Thus, ‘having both transient mortality and everlasting blessedness,’ Christ could lead humanity from its present misery back to a blessed life” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 158).74 As Bonaventure states:

Since it was proper that Christ the mediator possess innocence and the bliss of enjoying the vision of God while still being mortal and capable of suffering, he had to be at one and the same time a pilgrim on earth and one possessing the beatific vision. Something of both states existed in him: thus, it is said that he assumed the sinlessness of the state of innocence, the mortality of the state of fallen nature, and the perfect blessedness of the state of glory

(Bonaventure 2005a, p. 158).75

The reason why it was necessary—though not “absolutely” so—that a redeemer redeem humankind is due mainly to the corrupting penalties of sin, the “universal infection”, which is incompatible with the blessed life and cannot be remedied by natural power alone (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 158–59, 285; 2018, pp. 175–78).76 However, the contamination of original sin conveys the fault of creatures, not God. Humans could have freely chosen not to sin, as they were created capable of choosing good. As Bonaventure clarifies: “[I]f God had created humankind in such wretchedness from the very beginning, he would have violated his own love and righteousness by oppressing his own handiwork with such miseries through no fault of its own” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 110).77 Hence, if God had created humans in a state of misery, it would have violated the First Principle as utterly good.

But why must a redeemer suffer punishment to rid creation of its contamination? According to Bonaventure, it was necessary for a redeemer to suffer punishment to obtain for humanity an antidote to their malady and open the gate to glorification, and this is so because the honor that was lost through sin had to be repaid in a most fitting and supererogatory way—just as contraries are healed through their contraries (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 162).78 Hence, “There could therefore be no better way to restore that honor than through humiliation and obedience by one who was not bound to render it” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 162).79 So, as the pride and rebellion of free choice erased honor due to God, the humility and obedience of free choice was to restore it, and this restoration could only occur through one who was not bound to render it. And as it would be contrary to divine justice if an innocent mediator underwent punishment unwillingly, for that reason it was necessary for Christ to willingly and knowledgeably accept punishment (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 159).80 Only someone having such willingness and knowledge of the remedy and cause of contamination could accept this punishment, and so it was necessary that the redeemer be a divine person.81

And so, choosing to enjoy the fruit of the forbidden tree, [Adam] sinned, yielding to his own lust and rising up in pride; through his sin, the whole human race was infected, forfeiting immortality and incurring inevitable death. And so, to heal humankind by an appropriate remedy, God-made-human willed to be humiliated and to suffer on a tree. As an antidote to universal infection, he willed to suffer a passion that was all-embracing; as an antidote to lust, a passion most bitter; as an antidote to pride, a passion most ignominious; as an antidote to a death deserved but unwilled, he chose to suffer a death undeserved but freely willed

(Bonaventure 2005a, p. 162).82

The effects of the passion of Christ, the Mediator and Redeemer, brought about an “entirely sufficient” restoration, “for it embraced those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 165).83 To those under the earth, the satisfaction of Christ’s passion granted pardon; to those on earth, grace; and to those in heaven, glory (Bonaventure 2005a, loc. cit.). Christ’s passion granted pardon to those on the earth through grace, and as grace is directed to glorification—viz., because “[It] is the function of grace (gratia) to order our mind to due worship of the First Principle” (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 197, 282)84 and the glory of the mind is in the worship of the First Principle—so the pardoning by grace is directed to the glorification of worship. This is why Bonaventure regards both the passion and resurrection of Christ as essential to pardon and its effects: as justice demands reward (or punishment) in soul and body together—just as matter seeks or is inclined towards form (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 96, 351)85—so too “the restoration of grace demands that the entire body be likened to Christ, whose dead body had to rise again because it was inseparably united to his Godhead” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 283).86

The Incarnation and Passion of Christ restored things to a vast extent, but it was the Resurrection that opened the gate of glorification and allowed humans to properly worship God. This is because the resurrection of the body into a new being satisfied “the sweetness of divine mercy”, which “dictates that [people] should also be lifted up and given assistance and comfort” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 274).87 However, for Bonaventure, divine mercy also meets “the requirements of the creation of nature, the infusion of grace, and the retribution of justice—the three works that regulate the government of the universe” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 283).88 Divine mercy meets the creation of nature in that nature, unassisted, cannot rise above itself. Divine mercy meets the infusion of grace in that the gift of faith bestows hope, and hope is ultimately inseparable from the gift of faith. And divine mercy meets the retribution of justice in that divine mercy safeguards the dignity of suffrage, the dignity of God’s honor, the government of the universe, and the rectitude of justice (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 274).89 All these works are regulated, in the first place, by proper grace, the radical root of merit (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 173–78).90 This grace (gratia, “gift”) precedes all merit while making an increase and advancement into meritorious deeds possible, and it accords with the will of God’s good pleasure in the knowledgeable satisfaction of the Son (Bonaventure 2014; Goff 2015, p. 270).91 As it relates to the creation of nature in particular, proper grace is the reason of God’s loving munificence which, as it “brought all creation into being out of nothing”, stands as the principle by which the creature draws its being and the reason for its being from (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 175).92 As Bonaventure says, “[T]he creature was made in such a way that, because of its own deficiency, it would always stand in need of its Principle, and that this Principle, because of its benevolence, would never cease to sustain the creature” (Bonaventure 2005a, loc. cit.).93 This sustaining power of God for the creature is one of infusing, augmenting, and perfecting the original, proper grace “according to the cooperation of our will and according to God’s own purpose of the good pleasure of eternal predestination” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 175).94 The rational creature cannot do anything to make God indebted to itself in this regard—quite the opposite. This is partly why it was not “absolutely necessary” for God to redeem humankind. Still, the importance of identifying the root of merit as proper grace must do precisely with leading all things back to the good pleasure of God, who as supremely good and wise, loves to act—via the condescension of the Uncreated Word into the Incarnate Son—according to the dependence of creatures upon himself.

7. Christ and Creation: A Bonaventurian Perspective on Animals in the New Creation

Part of the difficulty with Bonaventure’s thought is that, on the one hand, there is real doubt concerning whether it is capable of an independent philosophy (Copleston [1974] 1994, pp. 245–46),95 and on the other hand, Bonaventure does not always state his doctrines ex professo; rather, much is presupposed or implicit in his writings (Reynolds 2004, pp. 219–55; Gilson 2020, pp. 273–74). It is as though the Seraphic Doctor desires his readers to peer deep into God and creation to find those traces, similitudes, and enigmas that can speak to the true sublimity of life in God. Given modern developments on the theology of creation, a follower of Bonaventure faces the task of working through the current historical situation of Bonaventure’s Christology. We may examine this in greater depth and width in the following.

Recent scholarship suggests that Anselm’s atonement theory could accommodate a theory of collective atonement (Thurow 2017, pp. 431–46). On the assumption that Bonaventure followed an Anselmian satisfaction theory of the atonement, Bonaventure’s Christology might also accommodate a “collectivist” (i.e., a creationist) theory of the atonement, especially given its historical and ecological elements. On the topic of creation, the central question concerning the possibility of the restoration of all things in Christ is whether Christ’s satisfactory atonement extends to all creation in a meaningful and intelligible way, and how so. Consider the well-known passage of St. Paul:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.96

Various topics are presented in this passage: glory, hope, creation, freedom, futility, will, adoption, and so forth. The hope presented is a “hope-for” the glory of creation in God. The glory presented is that glory, which is to be revealed by means of some revelation of the children of God, and in this glorious revelation, which involves the redemption of bodies, “creation itself will be set free from its enslavement.” Elsewhere, in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ …”.97 Numerous other biblical passages refer to the concept of a “new creation” or of God making “all things new” in Christ.98 But what does all this mean for, say, animals?

Some background is necessary. On the one hand, the futility and corruptibility of creatures is not the glory of creatures. Hence, in Bonaventure’s thought, grace and faith are necessary for the glorification of nature, as the sickness of sin is not only in the sensitive part of the soul, but in the intellectual part as well (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 175–76; 2005a, p. 285).99 On the other hand, the view that creatures were created in a state of “pure nature” ignores the Christological reality of redemption (Cullen 2011, pp. 161–76). With the former view, animal activity remains a signifier (a sign) for the (unruly) affections of the soul, and as animate nature in this way lacks the likeness and image necessary for being a rational power, it is without immortality. In this way, animals are “shadows”, i.e., signs useful for expressing creaturely dependency on God, albeit indirectly. However, with the latter view, animate nature is seen rather romantically, but not according to an everlasting manner because nature is still subjected to fallenness and corruptibility. In this way, animals are “vestiges” (vestigio, “footprints”), i.e., positive signs or traces pointing the rational creature directly to God. But in theory, vestiges can have “the character of sacrament” through some supernatural institution (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 211),100 the conveyance of angelic operation (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 154–55),101 or prophetic prefiguring.102 Thus, while only rational creatures can conform directly to the divine will and thus become a true likeness of God, it seems Bonaventure leaves open the interesting possibility of an animal’s indirect conformity to the divine will by conforming to the likeness of God in humanity as a vestige.

The prior statement makes sense given many things Bonaventure says. For example, in Part Seven of the Breviloquium, entitled “The Repose of Final Judgment”, Bonaventure writes the following:

Vegetative and sensitive beings do not possess the power of perpetual life and eternal duration that is reserved to the higher state, and so their whole substance will be consumed. However, they will be preserved as ideas; and in a certain manner they will survive also in their likeness, humankind, who is kin to creatures of every species. And so one can say that all things will be made new and, in a certain sense, rewarded in the renovation and glorification of humanity

(Bonaventure 2005a, p. 281).103

And elsewhere, in the Itinerarium, Bonaventure writes the following:

[C]reatures of this visible world signify the invisible things of God: partly, because God is the Origin, Exemplar, and End of every creature,—and every effect is a sign of its cause; every example is a sign of its exemplar; and every way a sign of the end to which it leads,--partly by their own power of representation; partly because of their prophetic prefiguring; partly because of angelic operation; partly also by virtue of supernatural institution. For every creature is by its very nature a figure and likeness of eternal Wisdom, but especially a creature that has been raised by the Spirit of Prophecy to prefigure spiritual things in the book of Scriptures; and more especially those creatures in whose figures it pleased God to appear through the ministry of the angels; and, finally, and most especially, any creature which He chose to institute for the purpose of signifying, and which not only has the character of sign in the ordinary sense of the term, but also the character of sacrament as well

(Bonaventure 1993, p. 16).104

In the above passage from the Itinerarium, Bonaventure is suggesting that God decreed that creatures represent (spiritual) things according to a variety of senses (sign, effect, figure, likeness, etc.), for various reasons (prophetic, angelic, ecclesial), and all for the sake of drawing creation into Christ (eternal Wisdom). If we take both passages together in the context of a “new creation”, animals preserved merely as ideas, or as concepts or principles, seems appropriate. After all, “a proper act must be accomplished in its proper matter”, and as only the nature of the rational and immortal soul demands such, only this soul would require a body in the necessity of nature.105 But what about animals surviving, “in the renovation and glorification of humanity”, according to a “certain manner” of likeness? This is not in the order of natural necessity, but it nevertheless seems fitting (congruous) for animals to survive in, by, or through humans according to some manner of likeness. But by which manner of likeness?

For Bonaventure, “likeness” (similitudo) performs a specific intellectual and spiritual function: it helps complete the act of sense perception. As Bonaventure says, “Indeed, no sense object can stimulate the cognitive faculty except by means of a similitude which proceeds from the object as a child proceeds from its parent” (Bonaventure 1996, p. 47).106 However, the similitude does not complete the act of sense perception “unless it is brought into contact with the sense organ and the sense faculty” and once this cognitive act is established, “there results a new perception” (Bonaventure 1996, p. 47).107 This new perception comes about through the knowledge of Christ so that our minds are led back to the Triune God. Thus, the “certain manner of likeness” Bonaventure is speaking of is a similitude of relation between human and animal, and yet the truth of this similitude is established not by the relation itself, but by a kind of unitive contact with Christ’s satisfaction in the divine Art. The intellective contact is either “by reason of [a thing’s] beauty as in sight, or by reason of its sweetness as in smell or hearing, or by reason of its wholesomeness as in taste and touch” (Bonaventure 1993, p. 12).108 The reason for the senses in this way is the “abstracted similitude” found in the leading-back to Christ. But what about animals incapable of rational abstraction?

Two different works of Bonaventure allude to how the abstracted similitude perfected in Christ expresses itself through the Incarnation. In his Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Bonaventure notes that the space outside the inn (diversorium) was so constricted and humble that Christ could say, with the animals in the fullness of time, the words of Psalm (72:23): “I have become a beast among you, and I am always with you” (Bonaventure 2001, p. 149).109 More emphatically, in one of Bonaventure’s sermons, he states the following:

[A]fter [his birth], [the Virgin] perhaps wrapt Him in her veil, and placed Him in the manger. And now the ox and ass, with bended knees, and with their heads placed over the manger, breathed upon Him, as if they were gifted with reason, and knew that their warm breath would be of service to an infant so slightly protected from the severity of the season

(Bonaventure 1881, p. 22).

Because of Christ, sensitive beings can become proper objects of the hope of glory for the freedom of creation by participation in an emanation of God through a medium (humans) in substantia, in corporeitate, in animalitate (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 132–33, 207–8, 390; Bonaventure 1993, p. 25; Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 280–81; Gracy 2024).110 By sight, Christ made a way for animals to draw near to the form of beauty in humanity; by smell or hearing, he made a way for them to draw near its sweetness; and by taste or touch, he made a way for them to draw near its wholesomeness. Animals do not know this intellectually, but by sense, will, and a generic power of imagination.

At any rate, the status of animals in Bonaventure’s Christology is difficult to pinpoint. One can discern in Bonaventure an implicit supposition of a new creation: a kind of “phantom-consummation” of reformed substance (Sokolowski 1974, p. 95).111 Given Bonaventure’s understanding of Christ’s ecstatic knowledge, and that any reception of grace via Christ’s satisfaction is directed ultimately to the consummation of heaven in beatitude, it seems reasonable to hold that a rational creature’s knowledge of animals ought to include a vision of them sub specie aeternitatis. Bonaventure would seem to agree: viewing and ecstasy are the modes of knowledge positioned before God’s perfect knowledge of comprehension and these modes of knowledge are of greater dignity than knowledgeable forms of faith, reasoning, and wonder (Bonaventure 2005b, p. 171).112 Hence, the final consummation of the virtues in the rational (and mystical) soul is a reward in an eternal type of repose: a definitive gift of a new form, a new being, a new creation. Far more than an answer in the negative to the question of whether one will see their pet in heaven, from a Bonaventurian lens, what one will behold in resemblance will be a most sublime perfection, greater than one can ask or think (Bonaventure 2005a, pp. 296–301).113 Hence, the new creation of animals may be understood as a gift or grace given through Christ’s atonement—the efficient cause of humanity’s renovation and glorification and the very possibility thereof—apprehended and received as an articulable being sub specie aeternitatis.

Using the diagram from the section on Christocentric epistemology and other insights in this article, it is possible to draw out more meaning from the structure of Bonaventure’s Christology. As the revelation of proper grace awakens the rational mind to the command of the Father, through the teaching of the Son, the mind is cleansed enough to look to the first principle. As this principle is in the Son, the rational mind is drawn to a yearning for wisdom, and by wisdom and humility, the creature is further drawn into an ordinate love for individuation. By observing the discipline of justice and propriety, God imparts discretion to the mind, which allows for further impartations of subtlety of spirit. Through grace in the senses and faculties by the union of created and uncreated, liveliness is imparted with the strength of resolve to discern the powers and operations of things and come to an understanding of the ultimacy, the ultimate form of satisfaction, of those things. This is, in a sense, a “process” of searching for truth in Son. As Christ teaches: “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”114 Presumably, the difficulty with recognizing a “new creation” is due not to the fancifulness of the idea but to the fact that the renewal of creation, the world, and the earth comes through a renewal of humankind (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 280).115 Thus, any renewal of creation would have to occur first in the intellect by the divine Art of living forms renovating human minds by the regulating and motivating causes of power (operation and presence), wisdom (highest and deepest knowledge passing into the affect), and goodness (desirability for perfecting things) of the first principle—of things highest and deepest. If humans are corrupt, so is creation. But the creationist-satisfaction theory outlined in this article places the imperative on an end-realization: the speculative truth that creation hopes for glory precisely because glory is given and will be given in the awakening, the revealing, of the children of God. How will all this come about?

“[A] thing cannot be recast into a new form unless it has lost the old, and is, in a certain way, prepared through receiving a new disposition” (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 280).116 Christ knew this truth, taught it, and made the new disposition possible.117 The process of purification and of consummation by which a new disposition is received, which is necessary for the renewal of creation, is by a certain conflagration of fire—partly of natural power, and partly of a power higher than nature, as Bonaventure says (Bonaventure 2005a, loc. cit.). In other words, things must be purged for glory to be revealed. Even the power of indwelling grace has to be assisted by external punishment to effectively cleanse the soul, according to Bonaventure (Bonaventure 2005a, p. 272).118 And yet, insofar as this conflagration is tied to an object of love, it still permits a taste of divine consolation that is mystical and most secret, “which no one knows except him who receives it, and no one receives it except him who desires it, and no one desires it except he who is penetrated to the marrow by the fire of the Holy Spirit, Whom Christ sent into the world” (Bonaventure 1993, p. 38).119 Thus, the process of purification or sanctification has elements of punishment (“sweet scourges”) and consists of a certain conflagration of the mind or soul (Bonaventure 2018, p. 316).120 But all of this begins in none other than (mystical) desire for God. And as for how this desire can be cultivated in a soul, Bonaventure offers the following recommendation:

If you wish to know how these things may come about, ask grace, not learning; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not diligence in reading, the Bridegroom, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity; not light, but the fire that wholly inflames and carries one into God through transporting unctions and consuming affections. God Himself is this fire, and His furnace is in Jerusalem…

(Bonaventure 1993, pp. 38–39).121

8. Conclusions

Christ is for Bonaventure the principal glory of creation. In him is the work, the reward, and the fruit in which “we shall see, we shall love, and we shall praise” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 321).122 Bonaventure’s entire Christology centers on the rational desirability of eternal Wisdom in the Incarnate Word, who by his passion and resurrection wrought for humanity pardon, redemption, and the reward of a dynamic, new reality in a sublime union of creature and Creator. The entrance of the soul into the whole sphere of Christ’s atoning sacrifice begins in a desire for God, a desire to be cleansed from the old, from sin. Every human has natural exigencies for making sense of this, for every human in one way or another desires perfection of their being. However, for Bonaventure it is only through the merit of Christ’s satisfaction, the grace of the “light of life”,123 that such perfection can be achieved. Historically speaking, this grace or reward of Christ is subject-inclusive and mystical, the very fullness of the ages; epistemologically speaking, it is a regulatory and “motivational” structure of exemplification leading the soul or mind in the wayfaring state to its supreme end; and eschatologically speaking, it is the repose of consummation: an apprehension, perception, and reception of new being.

Bonaventure’s Christology conveys the hope (anagogia, “to lift up”) of glory for the freedom of creation, which is honoring to God. Subjected to futility, creatures are now capable of something greater than their fallen nature: they are capable of a graced nature, of being reconfigured, of new being in a reformed substance. The satisfaction of Christ means the good pleasure of God given through gain of Christ’s obedience, assured to us through his resurrection, and bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit, who imparts the vigorous root of life. Stated succinctly: the gift of Christ’s meritorious victory is a gift of divine enhancement. It is the gift of the “radical root potential” (potentia radicali) of creaturely being to have added to its being a modification of its mode of being (Bonaventure 2018, p. 134).124 The grace and truth of Christ cannot be wrought by human might, even as effort helps to separate one as far as possible from the world (Bonaventure 2018, pp. 105–6).125 Rather, it is a gift freely given through knowledge of God’s loving wisdom (sapientia amorosa), which separates one from the vanity and pride of the earthly, sensual, and devilish (Bonaventure 2018, p. 328).126 In Christ, one is raised up in loving wisdom and taught that all things are fashioned and guided by God. By obedience, Jesus Christ satisfied human yearning for the treasury of knowledge, and by recognition of proper grace and the effects and signs of exemplarity upon creation, every rational creature can ascend, from condition to condition, to the repose and enjoyment of final consummation in divine love, “the end and the form of all the virtues” and “the root of all the affections” (Bonaventure 2018, p. 177).127