III
The
light is always given from God (or that center of light and life) to a
creature, but it is used differently for different kinds of understanding and
corresponding activity. That is why the scriptures, the true spiritual teachers,
and spiritual philosophy are important. It is because without this category of
light there is no that category of data and even serious thinking about that
dimension of life.
Bonaventure
emphasizes:
That by which
we have certain knowledge is immutable because it is necessary truth. But our
mind is mutable. Therefore, that by which we know is superior to our mind.
But there is nothing above our mind other than God and eternal truth.
Therefore, the divine truth and the eternal reason is that by which
knowledge comes to be (17).
He does not see
any other way to explain the existence of the corruptible intellect, changeable
world as its regular object, and at the same time the existence of truth by
which that corruptible intellect knows something with certainty. And referring
to different modes of knowledge he writes:
That by which
we know excels every created truth. Therefore, it is uncreated truth (21)
We know only by
the truth, which is not a created one (or from this world), but the eternal
truth itself. The truth is a category of the intellect. Hence, we know only by
the eternal mind when it illumines our mind, and in this way we participate in
the eternal. But how is it possible? It is because we are created in likeness
of that divine mind itself on the first place, and that divine mind therefore
is the closest thing to our mind. That is why Bonaventure considers the
knowledge of God the most natural kind of knowledge to the human being. Other
kinds of knowledge depend on it.
As God is the
cause of being, so the divine reality is the principle of knowing and order of
living. But God is the cause of being in such a way that nothing can be done by
any cause unless God moves that cause in the action by means of the divinity
itself and by the eternal divine power. Therefore, nothing can be understood
at all unless God immediately illumines the subject of knowledge by means
of the eternal, divine truth (24).
This is the
most straight forward and absolute statement, and all other arguments revolve
around it just providing different hues and shades to this major picture, this
philosophical intuition which is very well supported and expressed in detail.
Accordingly, that part of our intellectual activity “is called higher in as far
as it turns to the eternal laws. It is called lower in as far as it is
concerned with the temporal things” (27).
It is obvious
which one is preferable. Hence, it constitutes an ethical foundation for the
pursuits in the area of philosophy and the lifestyle in general. This maxim
could be expressed in the following manner: Love God, know God and act with and
for God. And this style of life is suitable for all who understand this
doctrine. It will be developed even further in the Itinerarium, but in
the Disputed Questions (IV) Bonaventure gives the last argument for the
God’s participation in the human knowledge (summarizes his position on the
illumination) in the following way:
According to
the Saints, God is said to be master of all knowledge. This is the case because
God cooperates in general with every intellect, or because God infuses the gift
of grace, or because - in the act of knowing – the intellect attains to the
divine. If God cooperates in general, then we would be lead to say that
the divine being teaches the senses as well as the intellect. But this is
absurd. If it is because God infuses the gift of grace, then all knowledge
would be gratuitous or infused, and non would be innate or acquired. But this
is most absurd. Nothing remains, therefore, except to say that our intellect
attains to the divine as to the light of our minds and the cause of the knowledge
of all truth (34).
Here the ideas
of cooperation and grace are understood as having only limited
application and not in general, while the preference is given to the idea of attaining
of the intellect to the divine in the general case of knowing.
The
arguments for the negative position are considered in their turn. They do not
break the Bonaventure’s conviction that God does participate in all our
knowledge and that the latter is ultimately based on the illumination, but they
oblige him to explain the complications and restate his positive position
carefully in the Conclusion:
For
knowledge with certitude, even in the state of wayfarers, the intellect must
attain to the eternal reasons as that reason which regulates and motivates. It
is not the sole principle of knowledge, nor is it attained in its clarity; but
together with the proper created reason it is known obscurely and as in a
mirror.
Bonaventure clarifies this
conclusion explicitly on the next four pages, but I would
emphasize a few important points:
1.
In the case of certain knowledge the mind must be regulated by
unchangeable and eternal rules which operate not by means of habit of the mind
but by means of themselves as realities which are above the mind in the eternal
truth (p.133).
2.
For certain knowledge, the eternal reason is necessary involved as a
regulative and motivating principle, but certainly not as the sole principle
nor in its full clarity (134).
3.
But along with the created reason, it is continued by us in part as is
fitting in this life.
4.
A creature is related to God as a vestige (as to its principle), as an
image (as to its object), and as a likeness (as to an infused gift) (p.135).
Bonaventure proclaims divine cooperation
“in any work accomplished by a creature”:
as far as it
is a vestige. . . as the creative principle
as far as it
is a likeness. . .in a manner of an infused gift
as far as it
is an image . . . as the moving cause (136)
The difficulties with the
opposition are resolved in the following paragraph:
Since certain
knowledge pertains to the rational spirit in as far as it is an image of God,
it is in this sort of knowledge that the soul attains to the eternal reasons.
But because it is never fully conformed to God in this life, it does not attain
to the reasons clearly, fully, and distinctly, but only to a greater or lesser
degree according to the degree of its conformity to God. . . . . it always
attains to the reasons in some way (136).
So the mysterious existence of
certainty in our seemingly contingent minds is explained
with this doctrine of light. The
fact that we can doubt sometimes even the very existence
of God and his light is explained
by the lesser degree of conformity of the image to the
exemplar. The latter is due to
the deformity of gift and glory and could be mended. The
observable fact that we do learn
from the world of sense is also explained:
Since the soul
is not an image in its entirety, together with these eternal reasons it attains
to the likeness of things abstracted from the sense image. These are proper and
distinct principles of knowledge, and without them the light of the eternal
reason is insufficient of itself to produce knowledge as long as the soul is in
this wayfaring state.
But at the same time mysterious
cases of knowledge by saints an prophets which
seem to break the rule are also
explained in the following lines:
. . . unless
perhaps because of a special revelation, it transcends this state. This happens
in the case of those who are drawn up into ecstasy and in the case of the
revelations of certain prophets (p.136).
We can see that the theory does
explain natural kinds of knowledge as well as the
supernatural
ones and gives it a real metaphysical perspective. Aristotle’s knowledge and
Plato’s wisdom find their reconciliation, and the teachings of the Fathers are
paid homage, the theology is confirmed by the philosophy. Doesn’t it look like
an ideal picture? To me it is very attractive, and it gives me a great pleasure
to continue the investigation of the theory, going through more and more
details. So let us also look at the Itineraruim.
As
we have seen in the On the Reduction of Arts to Theology and the Disputed
Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, there are various kinds of knowledge
and the knowledge of the eternal reasons or the divine mind is the highest of
them all. While all of them naturally desirable to the human beings – as
Aristotle writes in his Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to know.”
(I:1) – the knowledge of God is the most desirable. I have also shown that
Bonaventure believed that this knowledge depends on the degree of mind's conformity
to God, and those degrees differ in different human beings. Therefore, the
question arrives: “How to get there?” Bonaventure attempts to answer this in
his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. He wants to show how this conformity
can be increased in the mind, and the model for the project (Saint Francis) is
chosen not accidentally.
The saint was
that ecstatic soul who perceived the world pure and beautiful and loved every
creature in it as an expression of his Beloved, the Creator of them all. This
pure love, so common among saints, is understood by Bonaventure as the most
important precondition for that spiritual journey of the mind to perfection. It
is not by accident Bonaventure calls “upon the Eternal Father through His Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, that through the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin
Mary, Mother . . . . and through that of blessed Francis. . . . He may
enlighten the eyes of our mind…” (Prologue 1, p.31.) Jesus had such love, that
he sacrificed himself for the sake of men. His Mother Mary had such love to her
Son, and St. Francis had such love and deep respect to Jesus and Mary.
It
is interesting to me that a Russian Saint Seraphim Sarovsky (1754 – 1833) also
loved and worshiped the Mother of God, constantly remembered her and often was
visited by Mary and her Blessed Son Jesus. The Saint even died before the icon
of the Mother of God standing on his knees in his final prayer. He was
extremely like St. Francis, and also many great miracles happened in his life. The
Saint’s ecstatic love to all creatures and God, their source, was constantly
felt by all people who ever met him and received multiple blessings from that
encounter. May be there are also other means to conform the mind to God, but
pure love surely is the most commonly mentioned by great Saints condition, and
they know it from their own experience. The latter is not easily understood by
those empiricists who speak of “impossibility” of spiritual knowledge.
Thеy
do not have the necessary precondition for sufficient conformity of their minds
to the divine mind, therefore, they do not have the spiritual experience, hence
, for them the theory like Bonaventure’s cannot be easily verifiable. It is
very much like when people who were told about certain observable facts do not
want (or incapable) to go to the laboratory and see for themselves. Those are
usually indifferent to the achievements of science or very often even hostile
to the whole enterprise, because they feel that the talk about that knowledge
of others reveals their ignorance, laziness or other infirmities and
incapability, which is not flattering to their egos. Modern psychologists call
it defense mechanisms, and denial in particular, when the truth
when painful for the psyche is denied explicitly but at the same time is driven
into sub-consciousness implicitly causing other trouble. But the itinerary of
the mind into God leads the soul to the ecstatic peace, as Bonaventure
puts it, and this very peace people of all ages and nations observe in the
characters of those saints and sages who are conformed to their exemplar.
This peace and extreme happiness are usually felt like physically emanating
from those wise men and women, and they do not depend on anything material but
on rather something extremely subtle. Saint Seraphim of Russia described that in
following words:
Fast, prayer,
vigilance and all other Christian deeds are very good in themselves, but not
only observing of those constitutes the purpose of our Christian life. Those
are only means of the latter. The true purpose of our Christian life is
accumulation of the Holly Spirit of God. (Reverend Seraphim Sarovsky,
p.26-27, my translation).
I
quote this Saint as well as some other enlightened teachers of different times
and places here only in order to show the universal appeal of those ideas
expressed by Bonaventure in XIII century, which constitute the object of my
investigation. When we read the descriptions of lives and teachings of real
Saints and sages, it becomes obvious that they possess certain extraordinary
knowledge and powers. It is also obvious that they live extraordinary style of
life. One is connected with the other. So, it is not just about theories we
have to learn in school in order to acquire similar intuitions and other
abilities, but we have to consider also the lifestyle variable in this
experiment. I believe that in this way we have much better chances to receive
the data, so to speak. It is precisely on this account Bonaventure writes his Itinerarium,
where besides another theoretical representation of his doctrine of light he
also emphasizes the desirable character of the soul which might be successful
in this journey to God, so in the process she might see for herself the light
from above together with the eternal archetypes this light might reveal to the
soul. Of course, as students of philosophy we are interested mostly in the
doctrine expressed there, but would those really speak to us if the intuitions were
nor ours? Is not it the reason why any doctrine seems appealing to some and
crazy to others? People often say: “It may be clever, but it is not real”. As
we remember, Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason: “Concepts
without intuitions are empty…” We can consider mere concepts only on the basis
of their internal consistency, but the mind unenlightened by intuitions can still
think about any of them as possible dreams of a logician. It is not the case
with Bonaventure’s concepts in the Itinerarium, because they refer to
the real experiences of light by Saints and others being on their way to become
Saints. I see that it is, without a doubt, also an experience of Bonaventure
himself. Having said this, let us gather some more information on illumination
presented in seven consequent steps but looking at the theory expressed only in
Chapter II:
We may behold
God in the mirror of visible creation, not only by considering creatures as
vestiges of God, but also by seeing Him in them; for He is present in
them by His essence, His power and His presence. And because this is the higher
way of considering than the preceding one, it follows as the second level of
contemplation, on which we ought to be led to the contemplation of God in every
creature that enters our mind through the bodily senses (1).
It is not that
Bonaventure suddenly becomes a pantheist here speaking of essential presence of
God in creatures, but creatures get their reality only because of that presence
of God (the only true, and not merely superficial reality!). They are real and
could be known as real only through this kind of contemplation
and not by sensual contemplation with abstraction. Still he says that those
creatures on this stage enter our mind through the bodily senses.
This is one of the legitimate categories of knowledge Bonaventure does not want
to ignore (being in this an Aristotilian), so he repeats:
It should be
noted that this world, which is called the macrocosm, enters our soul,
the microcosm, through the portals of the five senses in so far as
the sense objects are apprehended, enjoyed and judged. (2)
I would notice
also that this kind of knowledge heavily depends on the connection of the
mind to the senses and looses its secondary reality as soon as the mind
gets disconnected from the senses in the case of those saints who meditate in
isolation for a long time. And who still sometimes show their knowledge of this
physical world; and not just a confused knowledge, but sharp and precise. Here
I will give a description by witnesses of one of those cases:
Once a
peasant from the nearby village came to us when we were visiting to Saint
Seraphim in his retreat place a few miles in the forest from the Sarov
monastery. He asked: “Who is the man of God?” We pointed at the old man working
in his small garden. The peasant ran to the Saint and fell face down before him
embracing his feet: “Help, my horse got stolen – and now all my family will
surely die!” St. Seraphim lifted the man and embraced him pressing his forehead
against the man’s one. Then he said: “Go to the village so and so, enter the second
fenced property on the left. There you will find your horse tied to the fence
behind the house. Quietly untie it and take it home without talking to anyone”.
The peasant
left in a hurry. On the next day he came back and thanked the Saint heartily:
“You saved us all”. The saint answered: “Go and thank God who helped you and
not the humble Seraphim who is nothing”. The man returned to his family (My
translation by memory).
Having mentioned
the existence of the Intelligences (angels) and that they receive power from
the first cause, God, which they in turn dispense in the work of
administration . . . , i.e., the work which is assigned for them by God
(like also in the case of those great Saints with miraculous powers) sent
for service, for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation, Bonaventure
continues to present in detail the regular kind of knowledge of the
physical things:
Man . . .
. has five senses, which serve as five portals through which knowledge of all
things existing in the visible world enters his soul . . . Through these
portals . . . enter also common sense objects, such as number, form, rest
and motion. And since everything that is moved is moved by another . . .
.we are led, when we perceive bodily motion, . . . . to the knowledge of
spiritual motions, as through the effect of the knowledge to the knowledge of
causes (3).
In this common
mode of acquiring knowledge the sense perception in connected with the active
intellect, which forms an immediate idea of an object in passive intellect by
means of abstraction. The knowledge of super-sensual but real is deduced in a
manner of philosophical speculation. Again:
The whole of
the visible world enters the human soul through apprehension. . .
Yet things
enter not through their substances, but through similitudes generated in the
medium, and through the medium they pass into the organ and thence into the
apprehensive faculty. Thus the generation of the species in the medium, and
from the medium they pass into the organ. From the external organ they pass
into the internal organ, and the directing of the apprehensive faculty upon it
leads to the apprehension of all those things which the soul apprehends outside
itself (4).
When does the
divine light belong in this doctrine? For Bonaventure it is the certainty
of knowledge even of sensibles constitutes the ground for deduction of the
existence and even the necessity of that light in the process of knowing. As C.
M. Cullen mentioned of the theory: “The mind is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for the attaining of truth”. And I would add that
the mind could be in different modes depending on different degrees of its conformity,
therefore, the above portion of the theory applies only to the empirical mode.Bonaventure
following Aristotle (in his Metaphysics) continues with the notion of “the
delight we take in our senses” (A I,1):
From this
apprehension, if it is a suitable object, pleasure follows. The senses are delighted
in an object, perceived through the abstracted similitude . . . , proportion
is observed in the similitude in so far as it has the character of the species
of form, and then it is called beauty, because beauty is nothing other then
numbered equality, or a certain disposition of parts, together with a suavity
of color. Again, proportionality is observed in so far as it has the
character of power or strength, and then it is called sweetness, when the
active power does not disproportionally exceeds the recipient sense. For the
senses are pained by extremes and delighted by moderation . . . . Thus
through pleasure, external delights enter the soul by means of their
similitudes… (5).
Where does the
beauty come from? It comes from the Good, or the ordering aspect of the First Principle,
which is reflected in nature and the human soul. Many goods, or those mini
reflections, become possible for the soul because of the constant participation
in the Good, or “contuition of God, and the divinely given signs wherein
we can see God” (11).
Explaining
further judgment as “an action which, by purifying and abstracting the sensory
likeness received sentiently by the senses, causes it to enter into the
intellective faculty” (6), and repeating that “this whole world must enter the
human soul through the doors of the senses”, Bonaventure says:
“Yet these
activities are vestiges in which we can see our God. For the perceived species
is a similitude generated in the medium and then impressed on the organ itself,
through this impression it leads us to its starting point, that is to the
object to be known. Hence, this process manifestly suggests that the Eternal
Light begets of Himself a Likeness or a co-equal, constubstantial, and co-eternal
Splendor; that He who is the image of the invisible God and the brightness
of his glory and the image of his substance, Who is everywhere by His first
generation like an object that generates its similitude in the entire medium,
is united by the grace of union to the individual of rational nature as the
species is united with the bodily organ, so that through this union He may lead
us back to the Father, as to the Fountain-head and Object” (7)
In this formula
the explanation of the regular knowledge finds its teleology and transcends the
empirical knowledge itself forming the true metaphysics.
Here the big
question: WHY? finally may be answered. The final cause of this kind of knowing
finds its explanation, and it is inseparable with the notion of the Eternal
Light.
If, therefore,
all knowable things must generate likeness of themselves, they manifestly proclaim
that in them, as in mirrors can be seen the eternal generation of the Word, the
Image, and the Son, eternally emanating from God the Father (7).
Bonaventure
emphasizes this final cause in his theory of knowledge again and again. He
follows Aristotelian logic but shows that the philosopher stopped short and
never actually became a true metaphysician. That is why he also needs Plato,
whom he also attempts to correct, taking him as having proclaimed the
impossibility of empirical knowledge at all. There is the way of knowing by
abstraction and the way of knowing by ascending directly to archetypes into the
divine mind. There is also a midground where the regular knowledge is judged by
the eternal, which is never completely absent from the human mind. That is
what Bonaventure says about judgment, which speaks for “beholding of eternal
truth”:
For judgment
has to be made by reason that abstracts from place, time, and change, and hence
it abstracts from dimension, succession, and transmutation by a reason which
cannot change nor have any limits in time or space. But nothing is absolutely
immutable and unlimited in time and space unless it is eternal, and everything
that is eternal is either God or in God. . . .
All things
shine forth in this light. . . . Therefore, those laws by which we judge
with certainty about all sense objects that come to our knowledge, since they
are infallible and indubitable to the intellect of him who apprehends, since
they cannot be eradicated from the memory of him who recalls, for they are
always present, since they do not admit of refutation or judgment by the
intellect of him who judges, because St. Augustine says, No one judges of
them but by them, these laws must be changeless and incorruptible, since
they are necessary. . . . eternally in the Art (9).
As I
see it, the theory is consistent, broad, has many levels, answer many questions
and reconciles different positions. It is realistic and highly speculative,
includes empirical considerations but also transcends their artificial
limitations. It entails the moral theory and calls for a certain type of
action. These actions are seen in efforts of self-perfection in the traditional
Christian mode where the highest respect is shown to the First Principle, the
Word and the Holy Ghost. The final destination of all efforts to know
invariably lies there, and our minds being created and in this sense
unsubstantial are still grounded in the divine source and in this way
participate in the divine light of this source. It could be considered more
and more but now is the time to stop at this point leaving the rest for the
future investigation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.
Works of Saint Bonaventure: 1) Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, The Franciscan
Institute, 1956; 2) Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, 1992;
3) Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 1979; 4) On the
Reduction of the Arts to Theology, 1996; 5) On the Eternity of the World,
Marquette University Press, 1964
2. Aristotle: The Basic Works, Random
House, New York 1941: 1) Phyisica; 2) De Anima; 3) Metaphysica;
4) Ethica Nicomachea
3. Plato: Complete
Works, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997: 1) Timaeus.
4. The Holy
Bible, the New King James Version, 1990
5. Cullen C.
M. , Bonaventure, Oxford University Press 2006.
6. Gilson E., History
of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Random House< New York, 1954.
7.
Великие Святые России, Преподобный Серафим Саровский в воспоминаниях
современников, Сретенский монастырь, 2000.
8. A
Buddhist Bible, edited by Dwight Goddard, Beacon Press, Boston 1994.
9. Upanishads,
the principle texts selected and translated from the original Sanskrit by Swami
Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester, © 1975.
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