Chapter Viii-
CHAPTER VIIISt. Bonaventura
THE ASSIMILATION OF ARISTOTLE AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
by Christians, Muslims and Jews in the tenth to thirteenth centuries may be compared—all other things being unequal—with the assimilation, in the twentieth, by Christian and non-Christian philosophers, of such scientific systems as those of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939), and Albert Einstein (1879-), in that it was not a single idea that had to be incorporated, but a whole system, a total view of God and the universe.
The Christian assimilation of Aristotle, which was gradual, cumulative, and total, was a process in which every medieval writer, consciously or unconsciously, took part, although of course the angles, attitudes and emphases varied greatly from country to country. There is as much difference, for example, between English Aristotelianism— as evinced by Robert Grosseteste (c. 1169-1253), the chancellor of Oxford University, and his even more brilliant student, the Dorsetshire Franciscan, Roger Bacon
(71214-1294) —and Belgian, as exemplified by, say, David of Dinant (flourished around 1200), as between a German existentialist of today, such as Karl Jaspers, and a French, such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Also, just as contemporary literature takes its tone and theme from the prevailing philosophic attitude (e.g., the novels of Albert Camus, André
Malraux and John Hersey, the paintings of Picasso, Rivera or Rouault), so, too, in the Middle Ages, the poetry of Dante (1265-1321) and the later Chaucer (1340-1400) reflect the philosophic postulates and concerns of their time. In fact, Dante's Divine Comedy has been called the Summa Theologica in verse, as its divisions and descrip-
ROBERT GROSSETESTE
tions can be traced to the Secunda Secundae of the Summa.
Robert Grosseteste affirmed that by praying that all might be one in Him, Jesus Christ had included all creatures, not men only, and that all derive from His one unity and return to It. In his On Light or the Beginning of Forms he discusses light as the very form of matter itself, whose function is to multiply, propagate, and diffuse itself.
{ The first corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion light. For light of its very nature diffuses itself in every direction in such a way that a point of light will produce instantaneously a sphere of light of any size whatsoever, unless some opaque object stands in the way.
Now the extension of matter in three dimensions is a necessary concomitant of corporeity, and this despite the fact that both corporeity and matter are in themselves simple substances lacking all dimension. But a form that is in itself simple and without dimension could not introduce dimension in every direction into matter, which is likewise simple and without dimension, except by multiplying itself and diffusing itself instantaneously in every direction and thus extending matter in its own diffusion. For the form cannot desert matter, because it is inseparable from it, and matter itself cannot be deprived of form.—But I have proposed that it is light which possesses of its very nature the function of multiplying itself and diffusing itself instantaneously in all directions. Whatever performs this operation is either light or some other agent that acts in virtue of its participation in light to which this operation belongs essentially. Corporeity, therefore, is either light itself or the agent which performs the aforementioned operation and introduces dimensions into matter in virtue of its participation in light, and acts through the power of this same light.
But the first form cannot introduce dimensions into matter through the power of a subsequent form. Therefore light is not a form subsequent to corporeity, but it is corporeity itself.
Furthermore, the first corporeal form is, in the opinion of the philosophers, more exalted and of a nobler and more excellent essence than all the forms that come after it. It
THE AGE OF BELIEF
bears, also, a closer resemblance to the forms that exist apart from matter. But light is more exalted and of a nobler and more excellent essence than all corporeal things. It has, moreover, greater similarity than all bodies to the forms that exist apart from matter, namely, the intelligences. Light therefore is the first corporeal form.
Thus light, which is the first form created in first matter, multiplied itself by its very nature an infinite number of times on all sides and spread itself out uniformly in every direction. In this way it proceeded in the beginning of time to extend matter which it could not leave behind, by drawing it out along with itself into a mass the size of the material universe. This extension of matter could not be brought about through a finite multiplication of light, because the multiplication of a simple being a finite number of times does not produce a quantity, as Aristotle shows in the De Caelo et Mundo. However, the multiplication of a simple being an infinite number of times must produce a finite quantity, because a product which is the result of an infinite multiplication exceeds infinitely that through the multiplication of which it is produced. Now one simple being cannot exceed another simple being infinitely, but only a finite quantity infinitely exceeds a simple being. For an infinite quantity exceeds a simple being by infinity times infinity. Therefore, when light, which is in itself simple, is multiplied an infinite number of times, it must extend matter, which is likewise simple, into finite dimensions.
It is possible, however, that an infinite sum of number is related to an infinite sum in every proportion, numerical and non-numerical. And some infinites are larger than other infinites, and some are smaller. Thus the sum of all numbers both even and odd is infinite. It is at the same time greater than the sum of all the even numbers although this is likewise infinite, for it exceeds it by the sum of all the odd numbers. The sum, too, of all numbers starting with one and continuing by doubling each successive number is infinite, and similarly the sum of all the halves corresponding to the doubles is infinite. The sum of these halves must be half of the sum of their doubles. In the same way the sum of all numbers starting with one and multiplying by
ROBERT GROSSETESTE
three successively is three times the sum of all the thirds corresponding to these triples. It is likewise clear in regard to all kinds of numerical proportion that there can be a proportion of finite to infinite according to each of them.
But if we posit an infinite sum of all doubles starting with one, and an infinite sum of all the halves corresponding to these doubles, and if one, or some other finite number, be subtracted from the sum of the halves, then, as soon as this subtraction is made, there will no longer be a two to one proportion between the first sum and what is left of the second sum. Indeed there will not be any numerical proportion, because if a second numerical proportion is to be left from the first as the result of subtraction from the lesser member of the proportion, then what is subtracted must be an aliquot part or aliquot parts of an aliquot part of that from which it is subtracted. But a finite number cannot be an aliquot part or aliquot parts of an aliquot part of an infinite number. Therefore when we subtract a number from an infinite sum of halves there will not remain a numerical proportion between the infinite sum of doubles and what is left from the infinite sum of halves.
Since this is so, it is clear that light through the infinite multiplication of itself extends matter into finite dimensions that are smaller and larger according to certain proportions that they have to one another, namely, numerical and non-numerical. For if light through the infinite multiplication of itself extends matter into a dimension of two cubits, by the doubling of this same infinite multiplication it extends it into a dimension of four cubits, and by the dividing in half of this infinite multiplication, it extends it into a dimension of one cubit. Thus it proceeds according to numerical and non-numerical proportions.
It is my opinion that this was the meaning of the theory of those philosophers who held that everything is composed of atoms, and said that bodies are composed of surfaces, and sufaces of lines, and lines of points. This opinion does not contradict the theory that a magnitude is composed only of magnitudes, because for every meaning of the word whole, there is a corresponding meaning of the word part. Thus we say that a half is part of a whole, be-
THE AGE OF BELIEF
cause two halves make a whole. We say, too, that a side is part of a diameter, but in a different sense, because no matter how many times a side is taken it does not make a diameter, but is always less than the diameter. Again we say that an angle of contingence is part of a right angle because there is an infinite number of angles of contingence in a right angle, and yet when an angle of contingence is subtracted from a right angle a finite number of times the latter becomes smaller. It is in a different sense, however, that a point is said to be part of a line in which it is contained an infinite number of times, for when a point is taken away from a line a finite number of times this does not shorten the line.
To return therefore to my theme, I say that light through the infinite multiplication of itself equally in all directions extends matter on all sides equally into the form of a sphere and, as a necessary consequence of this extension, the outermost parts of matter are more extended and more rarefied than those within, which are close to the center.
And since the outermost parts will be rarefied to the highest degree, the inner parts will have the possibility of further rarefaction.
In this way light, by extending first matter into the form of a sphere, and by rarefying its outermost parts to the highest degree, actualized completely in the outermost sphere the potentiality of matter, and left this matter without any potency to further impression: And thus the first body in the outermost part of the sphere, the body which is called the firmament, is perfect, because it has nothing in its composition but first matter and first form. It is therefore the simplest of all bodies with respect to the parts that constitute its essence and with respect to its quantity which is the greatest possible in extent. It differs from the genus body only in this respect, that in it the matter is completely actualized through the first form alone. But the genus body, which is in this and in other bodies and has in its essence first matter and first form, abstracts from the complete actualization of matter through the first form and from the diminution of matter through the first form.
When the first body, which is the firmament, has in this
ROBERT GROSSETESTE
way been completely actualized, it diffuses its light (lumen) from every part of itself to the center of the universe. For since light (Jux) is the perfection of the first body and naturally multiplies itself from the first body, it is necessarily diffused to the center of the universe, And since this light (lux) is a form entirely inseparable from matter in its diffusion from the first body, it extends along with itself the spirituality of the matter of the first body. Thus there proceeds from the first body light (lumen), which is a spiritual body, or if you prefer, a bodily spirit. This light (lumen) in its passing does not divide the body through which it passes, and thus it passes instantaneously from the body of the first heaven to the center of the universe. Furthermore, its passing is not to be understood in the sense of something numerically one passing instantaneously from that heaven to the center of the universe, for this is perhaps impossible, but its passing takes place through the multiplication of itself and the infinite generation of light.* }
ROGER BACON,
AN OMNIVOROUS
NATURAL
SCIENTIST,
first "postulated a theory of science as a means of discovering reality and truth" (A. Crombie, Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, Oxford, 1953). Roger
Bacon used both geometry and arithmetic in "some simple physics," and for him mathematics, or more simply numbers, rather than light, were the primal matter. Language, for men such as St. Anselm and Abelard the central mystery of the intellectual life, and logic, which for them was dependent on language, were for Roger Bacon subservient to mathematics. Observation, he insisted, was required for certification in mathematical physics, and, like
Robert Grosseteste (of whose "circle" he was a member from 1249, and to whose manuscripts he had access), he begins from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. In Part VI of his Opus Majus (translated by Robert Belle Burke for the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1928) he insists that he * Grosseteste, On Light, trans. by Clare Riedl (Marquette University Press). Copyright, 1942, by Marquette University Press.
THE AGE OF BELIEF
{ .
. now wishes to unfold the principles of mathematical science, since without experience nothing can be sufficiently known. For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the method of experience; for many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful, nor follow what is good. For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reason that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied thereby, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But, when he has had actual experience of combustion, his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore, reasoning does not suffice, but experience does ..
. therefore all things must be verified by experience.
. And, if we turn our attention to the experiences that are particular and complete and certified or wholly in their own discipline, it is necessary to go by way of the principles of this science which is called experimental. }
ROGER BACON WAS A_
FRANCISCAN,
VERY MUCH influenced by Avicenna, who for him was the greatest of Aristotle's imitators. Bacon sets himself up against the "moderns" who say that the intellect, which works in our soul and illuminates it, is a part of that soul, so that the soul is divided into two, an intellect that is agent, and an intellect that is passive. The intellectual agent must be distinct from the soul, must be God Himself, Roger Bacon insisted, and all philosophy arises from a divine illumination. He too, praised the Ancients: "Nothing is better calculated to invite us to live as we ought, we who are born and raised in the life of grace, than to see men deprived of grace reaching such incalculable dignity through the holiness of their lives."
ANNE FREMANTLE
Roger Bacon saw that in the proof of mathematical physics there was something beyond argument, i.e., experience. Arguments can bring us to concede their validity, but they cannot certify their own truth: the soul needs to rest in the intuition of truth, and for that, truth must be experienced. Christian truth is experienced in Christian society by behavior.
In the Christian individual it is experienced by mystical illumination and proved by powers. Roger Bacon comes near to claiming for astrology, alchemy and magic a religious, even a divine, sanction. He is more completely convinced of the reality of individuals than of that of universals. "One individual has more reality than all the universals joined together," he said.
In Paris another great Franciscan, Alexander of Hales, was the first medieval philosopher actually to quote Aris-= totle as an authority. His Summa Theologica (which Roger
Bacon rudely said would need more than one horse to carry it) was an early attempt to reconcile philosophically
Aristotle and St. Augustine.
The greatest of all the Franciscans was St. Bonaventura, who, with the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, provides the perfect flowering of medieval philosophy. St. Francis
(1182-1226) himself distrusted books and intellectual pursuits, and wished his followers to avoid them, to flee the schools and disputations. But his innocence of learning and ignorance of argument were as individual as Mo- -hammed's and fared as badly; within twenty years of the foundation of his Order his followers were filling University chairs, and disputing with the best.
John of Fidenza, called Bonaventura, was born in 1221 at Bagnorea, became Minister General of the Franciscans in 1257, and died in 1274. His most famous book, the Journey of the Mind to God, is a philosophical whodunit, following the traces of God through the created universe, and ending with a proclamation of His evident existence.
The natural human will to goodness present in each human being, the consciousness of each human being of and by itself, in turn, St. Bonaventura said, lead naturally to an awareness of God, who is present in every soul. These all are proofs of the Divine existence. The problem of the ~~
THE AGE OF BELIEF
active and the passive intellect, of love as both eros and agape, has today been discussed at great length by such eminent theologians as the Swedish Lutheran Bishop Nygren, the English Jesuit Father M. C. D'Arcy, and the Swiss Protestant Denis de Rougemont. It was a problem also for the medieval philosophers, and is, of course, another aspect of the perennial dichotomy of grace and free will. God is indeed the "light that lighteth every man" but St. Bonaventura would not have the soul as merely passive, an object illuminated. For what is to know? To be certain, to reach certainty. And such certainty supposes immutability in the known, infallibility in the knower. Here we have neither. For here all truth, being created, is relative, and the creature that knows, for the same reason, cannot be infallible. Only the Creator can give both infallibility to the knower and immutability to the known. And the distinction between Creator and creature is one that must at all times be kept clear.
Nicolas de Malebranche (1638-1715) accused St.
Bonaventura of ontologism. Ontologism is a theory which claims that all intellectual ideas and principles are innate in man, and that even the idea of God in man's mind is antecedent to any experimental knowledge of Him. But St.
Bonaventura clearly stated that the Divine Light is inaccessible to the powers of every created nature on account of its pre-eminence, and goes on to discuss the six illuminations that man is given here below: the light of mechanical art, the light of sensitive knowledge, the three lights of natural, rational, and moral philosophy and the light of Holy Writ (or revelation). The seventh illumination, which will be only hereafter, is the light of glory.
In part he says:
{ The first light is the light of mechanical art, which illuminates artificial figures. The second light gives us the illumination from the apprehension of natural forms in the light of sensitive knowledge. It is rightly called lower, because sensitive knowledge begins with the lower and exists by the aid of the bodily light. And it is divided according to the five senses. For the sensible spirit has
ST. BONAVENTURA
the nature of light, whenever it dwells in the nerves and it is multiplied in the five senses, according to the greater or less degree of its purity.
The third light which gives illumination from the examining of intelligible truths is the light of philosophic knowledge.
It is accordingly called inward because it searches into the inward and hidden causes and does this through the principles and the disciplines of natural truth which are implanted naturally in man. And it is divided in three ways, into rational, natural, and moral. And its sufficiency can be shown thus. For there is the truth of speech, the truth of things and the truth of actions. The rational way considers the truth of speech; the natural the truth of things; and the moral the truth of action. Or, in another manner, as in the highest, in God Himself, there is to be~ considered the reason of the efficient, formal and final cause (because He is the cause of subsisting) the reason of understanding and the order of living, the case is the same in the illumination of philosophy, since it gives illumination either from knowing the cause of being, and then it is physics, or the reasons of understanding, and then it is logic, or the order of living, and then it is moral or practical. In the third way thus it is that the light of philosophical knowledge illuminates intellective reason.
This, however, can take place in three ways, either in so far as it rules the motive of reason, and then it is moral, or n so far as it rules itself and then it is natural, or in so far as it rules the interpretative and then it is dialectical. And ull this is to the end that man may be illuminated for the uth of life, the truth of science and the truth of docrine.
* }
T. BONAVENTURA WAS ALSO CONCERNED WITH THE PROB-
em of time. He denies the eternity of time by saying that yeing caused implies a beginning. If time—or any other natter—were eternal, God would not be the sole absolute eing, for a process, such as God would be if He were creaion, instead of creator, would not be being, it would only
St. Bonaventura, De Reductione Artium Ad Theologiam, trans.
Sister Emma T. Healy (Franciscan Institute).
THE AGE OF BELIEF
have being from moment to moment. Further from St.
Bonaventura's On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology.
{ A man's will is as simple or as composite as his love.
By the will being simple we mean that its affective energies are without division or dissipation, because they are concentrated on one or a few objects. Now love is the principle of such simplicity, because with every act of love we unite ourselves with the object and with every union there comes about a further composition in the soul, and with that a further scattering of energy. } IN His Journey of the Mind to God, WRITTEN ON MOUNT
Avernia, where his master, St. Francis, had received the Stigmata, St. Bonaventura wrote:
{ For, inasmuch as, in our present condition, this universe of things is a ladder whereby we may ascend to God, since among these things some are God's footprints, some
God's image, some corporeal, some spiritual, some temporal, some eternal, and, hence, some outside of us, and some inside, it follows that if we are to attain to the contemplation of the First Principle and Source of all things, in Himself altogether spiritual, eternal, and above us, we must begin with God's footprints which are corporeal, temporal and outside us and so enter on the Way that leads to God. We enter in within our own souls, which are images of the eternal God, spiritual and interior to us, and this is to enter into the Truth of God. Finally, we must reach out beyond and above ourselves to the region of the eternal and supereminently spiritual and look to the First Principle of all...
In direct relation with this threefold progress of the soul to God, the human mind has three fundamental attitudes or outlooks. The first is towards corporeal things without, and in this respect it is designated as animal or simply sensual; the next is where it enters in within itself to contemplate itself, and here it ranks as spirit; the third is where its upward glance is beyond itself, and then it is designated
'mens' or mind. ...
ST. BONAVENTURA
Unless we know, therefore, what Being as Being is, we are not in a position fully to understand the definition of any particular substance. Nor can Being as Being be known unless it is envisaged in its most general conditions, which are unity, truth, and goodness. Being may be considered in many ways: as complete and incomplete, perfect and imperfect, actual and potential, simple and conditioned, as a whole or in part, as static and dynamic, as from itself and as caused, as pure Being and as composite, as absolute and conditioned, as prior and posterior, as immutable and mutable, as simple and composite. But it is a general principle that the imperfect and that which is privative or negative may be understood only in terms of something positive.
So the human reason cannot reach a full and final explanation of created things unless it is aided by an understanding of the most pure, actual, complete and absolute Being, in other words, unless it reaches out to the utterly simple and eternal Being of God in whose mind are to be found the ultimate ground and reason of all things. How indeed could the human mind surmise that the particular things with which it comes in contact are defective and incomplete did it not possess some knowledge of a Being who is utterly devoid of imperfection? And the same argument applies to the other conditions of created things above specified. The human intellect may be truly said to know the meaning of propositions when it knows with certainty that they are true. It may then be said really to know since in such an assent it cannot be deceived, and since the object of its affirmation cannot be conceived to be otherwise, the truth of its judgment must be something immutable.
Being so certainly exists that it cannot be conceived as not existing. Only in a perfect flight from nothingness is
Being to be found in all its purity, for Being and nothingness are absolutely opposed. Even, therefore, as pure nothingness contains naught of Being or its conditions, so, on the contrary, Being contains naught of non-being, either actually or potentially, either ontologically or according to our modes of apprehension. Moreover, non-being must be regarded as a privation of Being, and as such it cannot be known except by reference to Being. Being, on the other