Bonaventure

Introduction

Bonaventure was born in the year 1221 in Italy. The period of Bonaventure's life, (1221-1274), is known as the high Middle Ages in the history. Bonaventure's spiritual leadership within the Franciscan community, spiritual teachings, and intellectual contributions on the relationship of philosophy to Christian theology, eventually led to his canonization as a saint of the Catholic Church in 1482 and his being named in 1588 by Pope Sixtus, a Doctor of the Church. Bonaventure's ability to give the mystical movement begun by St. Francis of Assisi a solid theological and psychological basis gave rise to the additional names of the Seraphic Doctor and Doctor Devotus.

The intention of this paper is to present some reflections on the relationship philosophy-theology in the thirteenth century, particularly through the texts of San Bonaventure. The discussion will shed light on the position of Bonaventure as a Master of Theology at the University of Paris. In this regard, the discussion will contribute to the literature that pertains to Bonaventure's approach to desire, sensory experience, observation/empiricism and reason.

Discussion and Analysis

The Soul's Journey into God: The Tree of Life

As the great themes of theology are definitely God and man, Bonaventure aims to understand and has tried to make it understandable how the schedule system of human soul to God regarded as its ultimate goal. When any part of the issues included in its treatment of faith as its starting point, the reason may nevertheless continue to accompany the speculative task. The conclusions that are drawn in this way will not have relevance to philosophy. Conversely, when natural reason can tell their own strength of a particular object of study, then this object, even if that is the case it is revealed to man as credible is located under the right formal intelligible and shared by both the formal reason for all those objects from rational speculation (Tierney, 105).

Bonaventure anticipates a possible evasion. Those who assert that the infinite series of past events have not been traversed because there is no first event; they must know that the infinite series of past events could be traversed during an infinite period of time (Wilks, 157). If none did all past events are separated from the present by a finite distance. Therefore, the series of past events would have a beginning. However, if some of the past events are infinitely distant from today, then what about the one that immediately followed it and the one that immediately followed upon that one. In this case, one past event would not be further distant from another for they are all infinitely distant and they would consequently all be simultaneous. The infinite series of past events cannot be traversed not even in an infinite time, and so it must be concluded that the world has had a beginning (Watt, 423).

The Life of St. Francis

Bonaventure raises the question of an eternal world, and he does this as a further explication of his idea of creation of Exnihilo. The core of this question consists of ...