CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
THE THEORY OF THE "REDUCTIO"
The term circulus is interesting. The reductio is not a one-way process1. Everything perfect travels in circles; the end of all things must in some way get back to their beginning. The Saviour
Himself is quoted to set forth this fundamental principle: "I came forth from the Father, and I came into the world: again I leave the world and I go to the Father" (Jn. 16:28). The soul which came from God must one day go back to God. Hence the Seraphic
Doctor recommends to his students: Sic dicat quilibet: "Domine, exivi a te summo, venio ad te summum, et per te summum." The way is pointed out in an opening paragraph of his Collationes in Hexaemeron which states that the Verbum is the medium faciens scire, scilicet veritas2. This Truth alone is salutary and ''unto life".
Incidentally, the Saint seizes this opportunity to clinch in one brief sentence the entire system of Bonaventurian Metaphysics and Epistemology when he writes: Hoc est medium metaphysicum reducens, et haec est tota nostra metaphysica: de emanatione, de exemplaritate, de consummatione, scilicet illuminari per radios spirituales et reduci ad summum. Et sic erit verus metaphysicus3.
It will be observed that every argument, explanation, or analysis in the Reductio is built up on this line of thought. The circle is always completed: there is the emanation from the Highest, the exemplar or similitude, and lastly the return to the source. As the true metaphysician places exemplarism above the purely material world of Aristotle, so does St. Bonaventure, as a true logician, place Christ at the center of all His reasonings4 5.
In Christo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae Dei absconditi, et ipse est medium omnium scientiarumh. With Christ and the faith
1 The idea of the circle is important for St. Bonaventure. Cf. In Hexaem. XXII. 40, t. Y, p. 443. For "reductio" cf. Antonellus Engemann, O. F. M., M. Gladbach, "Erleuchtungslehre als Resolutio und
Reductio nach Bonaventura, " Wissenschaft und Weisheit, Nov. 1934, p. 21X-242.
2 Coll. I. 17, t. V, p. 332. 3 Ibid.
4 "Haec est logica nostra, haec est ratiocinatio nostra, quae habenda est contra diabolum, qui continuo contra nos disputat. . . Tamen ad hoc est tota ratiocinatio nostra, ut simus similes Deo." In Hexaem., I.
30, t. V, p. 334.
5 In Hexaem., I, n, t. V, p. 331.
120 DE REDUCTIONE ARTIUM AD THEOLOGIAM
which He has revealed as the minor term, all our acts of knowledge cannot fail to give rise to many corresponding analogical pro portions, for if the law which controls the essences of material and spiritual beings is that of conformity, so all reasoning must point out a certain correspondence between the created and the Uncreated. In Revelation, analogy is necessary, since God cannot reveal the mysteries to men except through conceptions intelligible to the human mind, and therefore analogical. After Revelation, analogy is useful to give us certain knowledge of the mysteries, either by comparison with natural things and truths, or by con sideration of the mysteries in relation with one another and with the destiny of man. St. Bonaventure's method, then, is reasoning by analogy of proportionality by which method he reduces all knowledge to a knowledge of Sacred Scripture.
Alexander of Hales, the Master of St. Bonaventure, says:
Anagogicus ad Patrem, allegoricus ad Filium, moralis refertur ad Spintum Sanctum6 7. Evidently his distinguished pupil is imbued with the same idea. At all events, his mind is genuinely trinitarian.
Whether by mystical design, spiritual inclination or objective necessity, his every line of argument naturally rounds itself out in a threefold process and imparts to all his works a harmony which seems to re-echo the music of another world.
Time and time again he calls the attention of his readers to the fact that in every form of secular knowledge continetur occulte divina sapientia. Beginning with scientific knowledge in its lowest form, the seven mechanical arts, and proceeding on through empirical knowledge and the philosophical sciences, he points out in the structure, process or mechanics of each branch three fundamental factors or elements, and with marvelous ingenuity and astounding vision he sets forth in a manner peculiarly Bonaventurian their conformity and correspondence to the threefold spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture: scilicet allegoricus, quo docemur, quid sit credendum de Divinitate et humanitate: moralis, quo docemur quomodo vivendum sit; et anagogicus, quo docemur, qualiter est
Deo adhaerendum1. As a result, each of the arts and sciences is made to bear (i) on the eternal generation of the Word and His
Humanity, (2) on the Christian order of life, (3) on the union of the soul with God. The first interpretation pertains to faith and concerns the Dogmatists; the second pertains to morals and concerns the Moralists; the third reaches into the province of ascetics and demands the attention of the Mystics8. By way of diversion and for the benefit of the schoolmen present, he briefly
6 Summa Theologica., I, q. 1, a. IV, p. 12.
7 De Reduc. art. ad Theol., 5, t. V, p. 321. Cf. supra p. 26.
8 Ibid.
THE THEORY OF THE "REDUCTIO"
X2I tells in which of these three departments the great theologians of the past have distinguished themselves. From the Patristic period, he selects the great Doctor, Augustine; the powerful Preacher,
St. Gregory; and the supreme Mystic, Dionysius. Then coming down to a generation near his own, he singles out from the Bene dictine School St. Anselm, a man of creative intellectual powers and deep piety who is always guided by faith and reverence for authority, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the saintly orator of the twelfth century; from the school of Victor, the mystic Hugh in whom is found a happy balance of intellectual and devotional piety.