The Son as center
BONAVENTURE'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
tiva). Thus He holds a middle place, as it were, between the Father and the world, and it is through the Word that the Father Himself is operative (= similitudo operativa).1%
THE SON as CENTER
Already in the Sentence Commentary, Bonaventure conceives of the second person as the center of the life of the trinity thus establishing a motif which would eventually assume far-reaching significance in his later writings. In the text just cited above, Bonaventure sees the Word to hold a middle place between the Father and the world.
But as regards the inner life of God Himself, the person of the Son is placed at the very center of the divine reality.
This appears first in the derivation of the divine emanation from the analysis of love. Following the Victorine tradition, Bonaventure distinguishes a love which is totally gratuitus and another which is totally debitus ; between them is a modality of love which is ab utroque permixtus +°2 one which gives, one which receives, and one which both receives and gives. The same type of structure appears if we view the persons in terms of the mystery of origin. There is one person who is origin alone; there is another who comes forth but is in no way origin of another; there is a third who both comes forth and is principle of another.1°% The underlying structure may be seen in the following schema:
Totally active First receptive | Totally passive and > and then a and communicative communicative receptive These conform fully to Bonaventure's understanding of the three persons and the mystery of the eternal emanations. Here also is the metaphysical basis for the Bonaventurean esthetics of order.'% In viewing the world, he sees the beauty of its order to consist in the fact that all things have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In this
101 T Sent. d. 27, p. 2, a.u., q. 2, resp. (I, 485): ""Verbum, quod est similitudo
Patris imitativa et similitudo rerum exemplativa et similitudo operativa; et ita tenet quasi medium, et dicitur Pater operari per Verbum..."
102 J Sent, d. 2, a.u., q. 4, resp. (I, 57); Itin. 6, 2 (V, 311).
£03) Tbid, 104 Cf. A. J. W. Hellmann, Ordo: Untersuchung eines Grundgedankens in der Theologie Bonaventuras (Schoningh, 1974). The whole of this study is devoted to the concept of ordo and its far-reaching significance in the total thought of the Seraphic Doctor. Hellmann has succeeded admirably in elaborating the metaphysical and Christological grounding of the concept.