The Holy Spirit. ;
INTRODUCTION
way, they can be seen to reflect the orderly life of the triune God in whom there may be seen an analogous structure.
The theme of the center would become ever more crucial in Bonaventure's thought, finding its most consistent and compact expression in the Hexaemeron'°5 where we find it applied to all levels of the mystery of Christ.
The eternal Son who is the center of the trinity, and who mediates all the divine works of creation and illumination, in becoming incarnate assumes His place as the center of the created universe and its history. Thus, theology,
Christology, anthropology, creation, illumination, revelation are brought together tightly around the one universal center of meaning.
Not only does all emanate from the Father through the Word; but the return of all things back to the Father can take place only through the same Word who stands at the very center of reality.
And through the whole of the divine economy, the Seraphic Doctor can see a common principle operative which reflects the universal mediatorial significance of the Word: "It is the law of the divinity that lower beings be led to the highest beings by means of beings that lie in the middle between the extremes.'
Together with the Father, the Son may be designated by the notion spirator; for both together constitute one principle of a common spiration. Since the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, the Son also may be called principle; but to distinguish Him from the Father, it is necessary to qualify this as principle from another. The term expresses both His relation to the Father as well as His relation to the Spirit; He is totally from the Father; and together with the Father, He is the principle from which the Spirit comes.
ViGTHE HOLY SPIRIT
"The Holy Spirit proceeds as love; He is the Gift in whom all gifts are given." 1 Sent. d. 6, a.u., q. 3, eres (leas 20).
It is above all in the emanation of the Holy Spirit that we discover Bonaventure's personal appropriation of the Victorine tradition.
While it was possible to use the Dionysian argument from the good to arrive at a plurality springing from the dynamism of the divine nature, it was not only possible but necessary to augment this by the personal and psychological dimensions present in the Victorine analysis of love. Corresponding to the natural emanation of the Son,
105 FYex. 1, 10-39 (V, 330-335).
POS Brevtl 2. 9) (V, 226):
BONAVENTURE'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
the full perfection of God requires that there be also a voluntary emanation proceeding from pure liberality; for God is not an impersonal good, but the primal good existing precisely as supreme personal good. But the perfect actuality of personal being is to exist as love, and love is an act of the will from which flows all liberality.
If, then, God is to be conceived as a personal God, there must be in Him liberality as well.1°? For Bonaventure, this is the question of the procession of the Spirit who proceeds per modum voluntatis ;)°® since the divine nature which is supremely fecund can do no other than produce a person, so also the divine will which is supremely liberal can do no less.19
, The argument from love first appears in the Sentence Commentary as one of the arguments for a plurality in God. It appears there in a simple form: "'Caritas non sit amor privatus, sed ad alterum.''!1°
It is used later to argue for limiting the number of persons to three since love exists in three primary modalities. In treating the question of the emanation of the Spirit, it becomes necessary to give greater precision to the meaning of the term /ove.
In Bonaventure's view, love is the first of all the affections and root of all the others.1!2 Love is the gift in which all other gifts are given, and without which nothing else is truly a gift. Love is the most noble of the affections because it involves true liberality and generosity.
As the term is applied to God, it is understood at three levels:
1) love as essential; 2) love as notional; and 3) love as personal.1!8
Essential love designates that love which is found in all three persons by reason of their nature as God, by which they love themselves; it is divine love in the absolute sense. Notional love is that which is common to the Father and the Son; the act by which each is turned to the other in mutual love. This is the summit of love, for nothing is more delightful than mutual love; and without love, nothing else is truly enjoyable. Yet, if love is directed to another, then the mutual love of two directed to each other would become a sort of mutual narcissism if they did not mutually turn their love to a 107 T Sent. d. 10, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (I, 195).
108 T Sent. d. 6, a.u., q. 2, resp. (I, 128): "Processus per modum voluntatis concomitante natura."
109 T Sent. d. 10, a. 1, q. 1, resp. (I, 195).
110 T Sent. d. 2, a.u., q. 2, fund. 1 (I, 53).
11 T Sent. d. 2, a.u., q. 4, resp. (I, 57).
12 I Sent. d. 10, a. 1, q. 2, resp. (I, 197). Cf. also, R. Prentice, The Psychology of Love according to St. Bonaventure (N.Y., 1957) p. 80-81.
118 T Sent. d. 10, a. 2, q. 1, resp. (I, 201).
INTRODUCTION
third who could share it.4 It is this mutual love between the Father and the Son which is called concord1® and from it proceeds the Spirit. Bonaventure clarifies this with the following example.4* The love between a husband and wife by which they intend to live together is called social love, and may be taken as an analogue for the essential love in God. Their conjugal love by which they love each other with a view to begetting a child corresponds to the concord between the Father and the Son. If their mutual love were to bring forth only a spiritual emanation between them, that emanation
— their spiritual offspring — could justifiably be called amor. When, in fact, such love finds its fruit in the begetting of a child, the child is called not amor, but amatus; it is not love itself, but is the loved one. Applying the analogy to the trinity, Bonaventure concludes that that which proceeds in liberality from the concord between the Father and the Son is truly and properly amor. He is love because
He proceeds from perfect liberality; He is person because, though He is distinguished from those who produce Him, yet He cannot be distinguished from them in essence. The distinction, therefore, must be one of person.1!7 It is in this sense that the Spirit is called personal love; and His procession is designated as an emanation per modum voluntatis, concomitante natura.8
This sheds light on the question of the relation of Father and Son to the Spirit. The Spirit is personal love that proceeds from the mutual love between the Father and the Son who, as one principle, breathe forth the Spirit. Fully aware: of the Greek position on this question,"° Bonaventure expounds his thesis quite fully, presenting
114 T Sent. d. 10, a. 1, q. 1, fund. 1 (I, 194-195). "Perfectior est dilectio mutua quam reflexa, et perfectior adhuc mutua communicata quam non communicata, quia talis scilicet non communicata, videtur sapere amorem libidinosum."
SSS eni da LOL ay 2 Cmte respa (ieee Or): mei brds AE Vt 8 | Sent. d. 6, a.u., q. 2, resp. (I, 128). Other terms used by Bonaventure are procedens per mutuum amorem; and per modum liberalitatis.
119 T Sent. d. 11, a.u., q.
1(1, 209-213); Stohr, op. cit., p. 56 ff. Bonaventure's response is given totally to the discussion of the Latin-Greek controversy. He sees the Greeks to be using analogies that are more material and therefore less apt than the analogies used by Latin theology. In doing so, the Greek position limits the understanding of Scripture to the temporal procession of the Spirit and thus leads to a distortion in the understanding of the doctrine. Concerning the actual profession of faith in the Greek understanding, Bonaventure's judgment is harsh, seeing the error to proceed from ignorance, pride, and stubbornness and leading to heresy and schism. Bonaventure stands in close relation to the Summa Halensis (1, q. 43, m. 4); none of the content of Bonaventure's position is original to him, though it is presented in a more compact and orderly way.
To what degree this understanding of the Greek position is an accurate reflection of their own theology remains a disputed question.
BONAVENTURE'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
arguments both from Scripture and from theological reasoning. The Scriptural arguments are drawn from John 15,16; John 16,14; and Galatians 4, 6; texts which indicate that the Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. The arguments reflect Bonaventure's economic trinitarian style clearly in as far as each is based on the factual correspondence between the mission of the Spirit in the history of grace and the eternal emanation. Accordingly, one who is sent by the Father and Son in history is the one who proceeds from the Father and Son eternally.
The first three theological arguments are drawn from titles commonly used to name the Spirit; gift, love, and bond.!2° Scripture designates the Spirit as the gift given us by the Son, and both the Greeks and the Latins agree on this. But the gift is given only by a person from whom the gift proceeds; therefore, if the historical mission corresponds to the eternal emanation, the Spirit must proceed from the Son. Since it is theologically undisputed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, it follows that He must proceed from both the Father and the Son. It is commonly held that the Spirit proceeds as love; but love is not in the Father alone but in the Son as well. If love proceeds from the Father, it proceeds from the Son as well. A third commonly used title for the Spirit is bond; for He is the bond between the Father and the Son. But He would be a bond in a more perfect sense if He stood in an immediate relation to both of the other persons than if He stood in an immediate relation to one and in a mediate relation to the other.
The understanding of bond may be further clarified by the argument from germanitas. The relation between two productive persons is more intimate if, in the act of production, they are not independent of each other, but mutually related in the productive act. Such an intimate interrelation would include a greater degree of unity between them, and consequently a greater degree of bliss. The final theological argument clearly reflects what was said earlier concerning the Son as the Image of the Father. The Son would be a more perfect Image of the Father if He reflected the Father not only in terms of His divine nature but in terms of His personal property, if that be possible without negating the identity of the Father. As Image, the Son shares in the positive dimension of the mystery of the Father, that aspect which designates the Father as fecund source of others.
Thus, without sharing in the negative dimension of innascibility, the Son, like the Father and together with the Father, is the source of another to whom, with the Father, He communicates the divine nature.
180 [ Sent. d. 11, a.u., q. 1 (1, 210-211) for all the following arguments.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout, Bonaventure sees the Father and Son in terms of the greatest intimacy. So great is their intimacy that the Spirit proceeds from them as from one principle in as far as they are one in the fecundity of the divine will.12 Again the notion of primacy appears in the argument. Both the Father and the Son are logically prior to the procession of love and therefore possess the full fecundity of the divine will. Since this fruitfulness is but one and is found in both the Father and the Son, they must be seen as one unified principle of the Spirit. Corresponding to the property of the Father, in whom the fullness of primacy resides, He is prior to both emanations. The Son, on the other hand, is Himself generated but is prior to the second emanation. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son not precisely in as far as they are different, but in as far as there is one fecund will in both of them.!"*
Though the Father and the Son are together involved in the act of spiration, yet a distinction must be made between them since the Father is the source of the Son. Consequently, the Son's ability to spirate is a power which He receives from the Father. This must be understood to refer strictly to priority of origin and in no way to a priority in duration or causality.!2° In this sense, it is possible to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father principaliter et per se.4 From this perspective, it is possible to say that the Spirit proceeds both mediately and immediately. He proceeds mediately in as far as He proceeds from the Sqn who Himself proceeds from the Father, But He proceeds immediately in as far as He proceeds from the Father, who proceeds from no other source.!?°
The emanation of the Spirit is from the most perfect act of will.
Yet the liberality from which He proceeds must be clearly distinguished from the freedom by which God creates the world. The liberality by which the Spirit emanates is a necessary quality of the mystery of divine love while the freedom by which God creates involves an emanation which can in no way be qualified as necessary.
As in treating the emanation of the Son, Bonaventure distinguishes that which necessarily proceeds from God as the exemplar of all reality and is therefore the very ratio exemplandi from that which proceeds as exemplatum; so also here, he distinguishes between the emanation of the Spirit as the very ratio volendi from the volitum,
Ue Sent. d. 11, aww, q. 2) resp.
(1, 215) 122 Tbid.
: ee 18 T Sent, d. 12, a.u., q. 1, resp. (1, 220-221). tA T Sent. d. 12, au., q. 2) resp. (1, 222).
125 T Sent. d. 12, a.u., q. 3, resp. (I, 223).
BONAVENTURE'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
or created reality as an actual object of the divine will126 Viewing the two emanations together, we can conclude that the created world is known by God in the knowledge whereby He generates the Son and is loved by Him in the love by which He spirates the Spirit. But while the inner emanations are intrinsic to His very nature as supreme goodness and love, the actual projection of the world as an external expression of His knowledge and love remains always a non-necessitated act. God does not need the world in order to exist as God, for the full and necessary self-communication of goodness and love resides in God Himself prior to any further self-communication.
It is precisely this which allows the act of creation to be radically free on the part of God and which accounts for the radical contingence of the present world-order.
In the light of the above, we can now understand Bonaventure's understanding of the traditional phrase which states that the Father and the Son love each other by the Holy Spirit.127 In no way does the Spirit exercise an active role with respect to the Father and the Son. If He is called the bond between them, this is to be understood not in an active sense as though He did something to join them, but in a passive sense; namely, in the sense that He proceeds from each of them in as far as they are actively united with each other in love
(= notional love). The Spirit is the bond not because He gives something to the other persons, but because He is fully receptive. If we were to put this in the language of cause-and-effect, Bonaventure sees the Spirit as more similar to an effect than to a cause. Therefore, the ablative case found in the phrase "by the Holy Spirit'? must be applied to love as notional which refers to the fecundity of the will found in only the first two persons whereby they are able to produce a third person. The Father and Son are said to be joined in the Holy
Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit, not in the sense that they receive something from Him, but in the sense that there is something in them
(= notional love) whereby they are the principle of the Spirit.
The two immanent emanations are distinct not only logically but in reality, since they are different both in terms of their origin and in terms of the relations which are involved.!28 Emanations exist
126 T Sent. d. 6, a.u., q. 3, resp. (I, 129). To proceed from liberality can be taken in two ways: 1) that which proceeds is itself not liberality but something that comes from liberality. In this way, the world comes to be; 2) to proceed as the very ratio liberalitatis. This is to proceed as love. He who proceeds in this way is the gift in which all gifts are given. Also, I Sent. d. 10, a. 1, q. 1, ad 1 (J,
195) expresses the difference by using the terms vo/itum and ratio volendi, or donatum and ratio donandi.
127 T Sent. d. 10 (1, 194 ff.) and I Sent. d. 32 (1, 555 ff.). The question has been studied closely by W. Principe, cf. foot-note 47 above.
128 T Sent. d. 13, a.u., q. 3, resp. (I, 235).
INTRODUCTION
in God because God exists as most perfect and fecund being in whom are found the two perfect modes of production; that of nature and that of will.12® But it is not sufficient to say that there are emanations; it is necessary to show how they differ from each other.
For Bonaventure, this is done most adequately in terms of the differences in the point of origin and in the relations corresponding to each. Generation is from one person, while spiration is from two.
Hence, they differ in origin. The active generation of the Son in itself does not necessarily imply a third person; active spiration, on the other hand, does, since the love of the Father and Son is directed to a third without whom it would not be perfect love; hence, the Spirit proceeds as that which can be given as gift.!8° In brief, the first emanation is per modum naturae, concomitante voluntate, while the second is per modum voluntatis, concomitante natura.
Tue TITLES OF THE THIRD PERSON
The names which Bonaventure favors as designations of the third person are: Love, Bond, Holy Spirit, and Gift, all of which help to express the relation of the third person to the other divine persons as well as to creation.!*!
Love. As we have seen above, the term /ove is to be understood in three ways: essential, notional, and personal.!°* The first refers to the divine essence itself, that love whereby the divine persons love themselves and all of creation. The second refers to the concord of will between the Father and the Son, or their reciprocal love from which the Spirit emanates. It is called notional to indicate that it is this love by which the second procession becomes known. As distinct from these two understandings of love, the Spirit is the hypostatic or personal love which proceeds from the perfect liberality of the divine, fecund will found in the Father and the Son.
He who proceeds per modum amoris is Himself Amor.
Bond. The meaning of this title is clear from the discussion in the preceding section. It signifies that the Father and the Son are most intimately joined in the common possession of the one fecundity of will and thus, though distinct as persons, are but one principle in ta9NTeoc. cit. (1, 236).
130) Tbid.
181 Brevil. 1, 3 (V, 212). asset Penta. 10,.a5 2, qu 1h) respa (Ly 201):
BONAVENTURE'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
the emanation of the Spirit. The Spirit joins the Father and the Son in the sense that He proceeds from the concord of their will and from their perfect liberality.133
Holy Spirit. While the term spirit can be used in various ways and can be applied both to creature and to God, it has a particular relevance with respect to the third divine person.84 The act of breathing in our bodily life is a continuous, internal, life-giving act that arises from the warm depths within the body. It can, therefore, serve as an apt analogy for our understanding of the third person as a spiration of love. Love proceeds from the warm depths as a continuous, life-giving act; and since love is the form which human life should take, a human person is more perfect to the degree that that such love is realized. Thus, love appears as spiritual warmth, and only love is said to emanate spiritually.!%5
Thus, while at one level, the whole of the trinity is called spiritual being since it lacks all materiality, at another level, the term spirit has a special appropriateness in reference to the third person who proceeds as love from spiration, since in spiritual beings spiration atises only from love. And since the love that is the Spirit is most pure, perfect, and ordinate, He is called not only Spirit, but Holy
Spirie.
2° Gift. The title Gzft is deeply rooted in the Augustinian tradition and provides the basis for a rich theology of grace. As a title, it is proper to the Spirit,'8' expressing first of all His relation to the Father and the Son as the fruit of their mutual self-giving.13* In that is contained the fact that it is the Gift in whom all gifts are bestowed on us, but not in the sense that every gift we receive includes an unfailing communication of the Spirit Himself.18° While it is possible that we may possess a created gift without thereby receiving the Spirit within ourselves, it is not possible that there
SB RTO Sen tides LOwas 2qav2etesp. (i202).
WaT Sent, d. 10, a. 2, q. 3, resp. (1, 204).
135 Ibid.
136 Ibid. In as far as the terms /o/y and pure have particular relevance to the will's act of love rather than to an act of nature, they are not used to designate the natural generation of the Son.
| Sent, d. 18, a.u., q. 4, resp. (I, 328). Bonaventure distinguishes three levels of predication. 1) The whole of the trinity may be said to give itself. This is an essential predication. 2) In as far as both the Son and the Spirit are sent, they can be said to be given. This is a personal predication. 3) In the proper sense, the Holy Spirit is said to be Gift since the title expresses both His relation to the Father and the Son as well as His relation to creatures.
188 Brevi]. 1, 3 (V, 212). He is Gift as the one who is given through the will.
189 T Sent. d. 18, a.u., q. 1, resp. (I, 323).