The One and the Many in Bonaventure Exemplarity Explained

Abstract

The category of exemplarity, which holds a central place in Bonaventure’s thought, is in many ways a certain type of solution to the problem of the many and the one. Bonaventure’s account of the relationship between the created many and the uncreated original on which they are all based is in many ways like the account that Augustine gives; but he both greatly expands upon the Augustinian account and expands it in directions that prepare for the Christocentrism that will mark the rest of his theological work. This article will explicate Bonaventure’s treatment of this issue on the basis of his two most extended conversations, in the first book of his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences and in the Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ.

The Middle Ages inherited a Platonism filtered through Augustine, which both infused it with greater authority and subtly changed it in an Aristotelian direction. But through Augustine, a Platonic notion of form was preserved, with it grounding certain intuitions that would have been hard to develop from Aristotle. For Bonaventure, this is especially evident in his treatment of the question of divine ideas, and the related question of the relationship of the derived many to the original unity of divine being. This question unfolds as a question of exemplarity, that is, of the relationship between the divine being as archetype and created being as image.

This question is of central importance for Bonaventure, because it is the relationship of creatures to the Creator that will be determinative for every subsequent understanding of the creature and that will ground any possible paths for the creaturely mind to ascend to knowledge of the Creator. Thus, both theological anthropology and the historical possibility and shape of revelation stand upon the prior truth of the nature of the relationship between God and creatures.

Classically, this could be understood as a version of the problem of the many and the one, in the following way: supposing the first principle to be one (which can be variously proven from passages in Plato and Aristotle), how is it possible that it be the source of the sort of variegated multiplicity we find in the created world? This can be variously motivated: every cause is ordered to a particular effect, and so a singular cause ought to produce a singular effect1. Or, something cannot give what it does not have; yet the first principle is not the same in form as the derived many; therefore it cannot be their source. The problem is not without solution in Plato2, but for a theologian like Bonaventure it is important to insure that the solution to this problem is consonant with prior theological commitments concerning the nature of this divine-creature relationship.

Accordingly, Bonaventure does not come to the problem with a clean slate, but having already accepted that the category of image—and indeed, exemplarity—is central for understanding this primary relationship. And, while Bonaventure is not the only theologian to discuss exemplarity in the divine-human relationship3, he does emphasize it to an unusual degree, and the idea undoubtedly takes on a peculiar tonality in his hands4. The problem of the many and the one is thus a problem to which he already knows the answer, but that requires explication if exemplarity is to be shown to be in accord with philosophical reason.

It is marginally interesting that Bonaventure should be interacting with the Platonic version of this argument when he did not have access to the key texts; however, the point of this article is not to analyze Bonaventure’s interpretation of Plato, but rather to examine his relation to an argument that is transmitted to him through the Platonist stream (his proximate source is Augustine, as will be seen shortly). What is at work here is not the text of Plato, but the logic of Plato, encountered at some remove. As a result, I will highlight a few places where the reasoning is well-rooted in Plato by pointing to a few passages that Bonaventure never read: these are to be taken as establishing that these ideas, well-founded in Christian Platonism as evidenced by Augustine’s use of them, are well motivated by the Platonic text; such references do not constitute a claim that these Platonic texts are the sources of Bonaventure’s thinking.

This question will be discussed from two key passages in Bonaventure: the first is in distinction 35 of his commentary on the first book of Peter Lombard’s Sentences5, and the second is question four of the Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ [9]6. The former is explicitly a question about causality, and is concerned with the ability of the divine ideas to be the cause of the created many. The latter is concerned with establishing the conditions necessary for certain human knowledge, in service to a larger point about the nature of both the divine and human knowledge in the Incarnate Christ7. However, the two will be shown to paint a seamless picture of the ontology of exemplarity, precisely because it is the exemplary relationship mapped in I Sent., d. 35 that comes to the rescue of human cognition in DQKC [9], qu. 4 in order to provide the conditions necessary for certain knowledge8. These ontological pre-conditions form the dimension that opens the path to the excesses of rapture and ecstasy for which Bonaventure is so famous.

1. Exemplary Ideas and God

1.1. Augustine and Divine Ideas

The background for the discussion of the relationship between the exemplary ideas and God is Christian Platonism. Essentially, the question is whether the forms of things (taken in a Platonic sense) are to be taken as creatures apart from God or as themselves a part of God. The classic discussion of this is question 46 of Augustine’s Eighty-Three Different Questions, which treats explicitly of the things that Plato calls ideas [12]9. Augustine begins by stating that Plato was the first to use the name ideas for these things, but he denies that Plato could have been the first person to believe in them, because he considers them to be so important that no one who doesn’t understand them could be considered wise [12]. Indeed, he asserts that no one trained in true religion could deny that such things as exemplary ideas exist10, and that it would be sacrilegious to think that they exist anywhere but in the mind of God11. And because a human cannot be created according to the same idea as a horse, there must be ideas specific to the different types of reality. Augustine concludes that given the existence of eternal ideas, participation is a necessary postulate in order that there be anything else at all12.

Augustine further describes the relation between the existing thing and its divine exemplar in Tractates on the Gospel of John [13]. There he describes the idea existing in the mind of God as life, while that which is made from the idea is not life (lest a Manichean affirmation that inanimate things have souls follow)13 Importantly for Bonaventure, Augustine deduces that there must be some such divine idea corresponding to each thing, “for if he did not have the chest in his creative knowledge, from what source would he produce it in constructing it?”14

In Augustine, therefore, the problem was primarily ontological: while it is true that the forms or ideas are necessary for knowledge of particulars, Augustine focuses on the necessary role they have in the creation of particulars, namely as a divine template that guides the creative act. They are required for proper knowledge in a sense that is derivative upon the fact that they are necessary preconditions for creation. In essence this is to underscore that the type of idea he has in mind is a Platonic one, for it does not depend on the singulars to exist; rather, they depend on it.

1.2. Bonaventure and Divine Ideas

Bonaventure’s discussions, by contrast, begin with the epistemological dimension, and specifically with the question of how God knows things. He is concerned to know what type of thing could be noble enough to be a worthy object of the divine intellect, and how the divine could ever stoop to looking on things outside the divine in order to know them15. While ideas or forms might seem to provide a means of knowing for God that would not involve God in the imperfection of having to gaze on the creatures, if the ideas are themselves creatures, one has not really solved the question, only pushed it back a step. Thus, although I Sent. dist. 35, art. un., qu. 1 asks whether ideas are to be posited in God, what is actually at stake is whether or not God knows things by means of ideas or by some other means16.

To take the objections first, the arguments collectively suggest that the claim that God knows by means of ideas limits the divine nature:

(1)

If God were to know things by means of an idea, then God would not know through Godself, but through something else17. That would mean that God is dependent on something else in order to know, which is a sign of weakness and imperfection.

(2)

An idea is a likeness18, and wherever there is a likeness, there must be a suitability (convenientia) between the two terms of the likeness. But on account of the great distance between God and creatures, either there is no likeness, or it is very small (minima). Therefore, either there is nothing like an idea in God, or it is imperfect; but there can be no imperfection in God, therefore etc.19.

(3)

The most noble mode of knowing is to be attributed to God; but it is more noble to know a thing through its essence than through a likeness. Therefore God knows through an essence and not through a likeness20.

Because the premise that it is more noble to know things through essence than through likeness will be taken up in the conclusion, even though this objection will be to some extent rejected, it is worthwhile to pause here and examine the claim more closely. At the very least, it does not seem self-evident that it is better to know through essence than through a likeness. The claim can be multiply motivated: in the Platonic tradition, the nature of Plato’s argument in the Republic against art is relevant. There, art is denigrated as a copy of a copy, and therefore multiple steps removed from reality ([15], Book X, 595a1 ff.). Imitation, therefore, is necessarily deficient. It would not take much to conclude that, in like fashion, knowledge based on shadows is not as good as knowledge based on the things that cast the shadows21.

The same intuition can be motivated from Aristotle. One example would be Aquinas’ discussion of Posterior Analytics II.7, where he allows that the existence of something must be known through something outside the essence or something pertaining to the essence. But as that which pertains to the essence (such as that thunder is a sound in the clouds) is nevertheless not the essence (for not every sound in the clouds is thunder), the thing is more fully known through its essence than otherwise, for only through the essence does one arrive at a proper definition22.

Interestingly, though the argument to which this premise belongs is rejected, the response to the objection does not clearly settle the question whether it is more noble to know by essence. What it actually states is that it is more noble to know by essence than by a likeness caused by the thing; it then goes on to say that there is another likeness not caused by the thing, and that knowledge according to this likeness is the most noble kind. Bonaventure appears to be taking the word “essence” in a different sense than was intended in the objection: I think he is taking essentia in the same way that veritas rei was used in the second argument for the affirmative position: that is to say, to mean the actual existence of the object. It is not clear that this is what essentia was intended to mean in the objection, however; nor is it necessary to make such an equivocation, because the concluding statement of the objection, “but the idea is a likeness, not the essence of the thing,”23 is one that Bonaventure will certainly deny, as we will see shortly.

All this allows a reading of his response to this question not as a denial of the claim that it is more noble to know by means of essence, but rather as an explanation of the way in which God’s knowledge through exemplary forms is in fact knowledge through essence. This premise becomes an important step on the way to the conclusion.

(4)

Ideas are only necessary for directing and regulating; but only those things that are capable of wandering need direction and regulation. God is not of this sort, therefore God does not require ideas24.

All of the preceding arguments against ideas in God are concerned with the perfection and loftiness of the divine nature. Thus, the concern that seems to push in the direction of denying ideas in God is a need to preserve the majesty of God. This is indeed a strong concern theologically, for any failure in majesty will make God fail to be that than which no greater can be conceived25. The arguments in favor of divine ideas could seem prima facie not to possess the same weight, drawn as they are from logic and psychology. However, the first argument is the very argument from Augustine’s Eighty-Three Different Questions that we detailed earlier, placing the discussion explicitly in the context of Augustine’s development and resolution of the problem. Given that Augustine had argued that knowledge of the divine ideas is required for true wisdom and true religion, the ensuing conflict between the theological concern and the logical ones is shown not to be an instance of reason exceeding its bounds, but rather a deeper concern rising from what might in other contexts be called “right reason”. Thus, to prefer the objections because one prefers to defend the majesty of God would turn out to be to defend the majesty of God at the expense of the rationality of God.

• The first argument considers the ways in which an agent may act, namely by reason, by chance, or by necessity. Chance or necessity as the source of divine agency in the act of knowing are quickly dismissed, and it is not hard to see why: chance would imply imperfection in God, and necessity would imply compulsion. Therefore God acts according to reason. In this article, this seems to mean that God acts on the basis of knowledge. That is to say, the agent must know the effect it is going to produce before that effect exists.
  Now, everything known is known either through its reality or through a likeness. But nothing exists when God first knows it, for God must know it in order to be able to create it (as was just shown). Therefore things cannot be known through their reality in God. Therefore they must be known according to a likeness26.
• The second argument is based on the logic of signification: If X leads determinately to the knowledge of Y, then X must either have within itself some likeness of Y or be itself the likeness of Y. The protasis of the conditional may be explained as follows: leading determinately is to be opposed to leading accidentally. Therefore, only that which leads to Y by something essential to itself (rather than something accidental) leads determinately to Y. Further to lead to the knowledge of Y requires that X be a likeness of Y, for it is the recognition of an existing likeness that causes one to move mentally from X to Y. Thus, in order to move the mind determinately to knowledge of Y, X must possess an essential likeness to Y.
  Now, those who look upon God are led to the knowledge of all creatures27. Therefore there must either be some likeness of creatures in God, or God must be this likeness. Further, since these likenesses do not just represent things to others, but also to Godself, they are in God as in a knower. But to represent an object to the mind of a knower by means of a likeness is basically the definition of an idea; therefore there are ideas in God28.
• The third argument is a bit odd. The first step in the argument is that (i) because things are produced by God, they are in God as in their efficient cause, and God is most truly efficient cause. It is this last claim that is difficult to understand: namely, what are we to understand the relationship to be between the fact that things are in God as in their efficient cause and the fact that God is most truly efficient cause? The most likely answer is that we are to understand this as being two ways of expressing the one result: God has produced things, therefore they are in God as in their efficient cause, which is to say that God is most truly efficient cause. The unstated assumption is that in efficient causality effects are in their causes to a significant degree. This claim in itself is not controversial29; it is in effect the guiding intuition behind Augustine’s entire deduction of ideas in God.
  Next, the argument asserts that (ii) because things are brought to completion by God, God is most truly final cause. This argument appears to parallel the first argument, with the only change being that now we are considering the final cause and not the efficient cause. However, there is an important asymmetry between the two arguments: Bonaventure does not say that things are in God as in their final cause (a claim he did make about efficient causality). This is a reasonable omission: given that final cause is that to which things tend, it would not make sense for things to be contained within that final cause in any straightforward sense. However, the omission does not seem entirely justified given that at the end of the Itinerarium, when the mind reaches at last its final cause (God), it comes to rest in that cause, and so is contained within it. Nevertheless, it is not contained within the final cause from the beginning, and most importantly, not at the time the causation is active, but only once that causal activity is complete. Union is the outcome and not the means of final causality.
  The argument continues that (iii) in the same way, because things are known and expressed by God, God is most truly exemplar. One might expect the conclusion to be that there must be an exemplar in God; instead, the surprising conclusion is that God must be the exemplar. This argument, presented at this point in the proceedings, is not yet as strong as it will be later; but of all the arguments, it is the most like Bonaventure’s eventual reply, and as such it is anticipating much of the substance of his answer. The missing argument required to get from “God contains an exemplar of all things” to “God is the exemplar of all things” will be elucidated in the response.
  Finally, the argument claims (iv) that there is no exemplar unless there are ideas of the exemplified things; therefore there must be ideas in God30. This fourth premise, that there is no exemplar unless there are ideas of the exemplified things, amounts to a claim that the exemplified must be in the exemplar in an ideal form. It is presented as being entailed by the definition of the word “exemplar”. Thus, in addition to what is explicitly argued here, we also have a claim about the nature of exemplarity and, ultimately, exemplary causality. It is, Bonaventure implies, much more like efficient causality than it is like final causality.

Having thus laid out the arguments on both sides, Bonaventure has to try to satisfy both the theological concern (the majesty of God) and the logical concerns. He first mentions the opinion of some theologians who claim that God does not know by means of ideas, but rather knows things by being their cause. Their idea is explained by means of two analogies: that of a point and that of unity. If a point were cognizant of its potentialities, it would know not only itself, but the lines and circumferences of which it is a necessary part. Unity, if it could think on itself, would know all numbers because it grounds them all31. What these two examples have in common is that both the point and unity are a necessary part of the more complex realities that they ground, and so in some sense are the cause of the subsequent realities.

Bonaventure denies this on three grounds: first, it would mean that God reasons from one thing to another, namely, by extrapolating from the divine being to all other beings. This is false, because God knows all things by one simple gaze32. Secondly, he denies that knowing something and producing something are the same type of process, which removes the ground of the analogies offered in favor of this position33. Lastly, he argues that God knows some things that are not derived from God34, which could not be the case under the proposed model.

Instead, Bonaventure’s conclusion is that God does indeed know by means of ideas35. But because everything known is similar in some way to the knower36, “therefore [God] has a likeness of [the thing known], or he is himself the likeness.”37 This affirms the middle conclusion of argument (b). Furthermore, by accepting the premise of argument (3) that it is better to know by essence than by a likeness, Bonaventure can conclude that the likeness in question must be an essence.

This likeness cannot, however, be the essence of the creature. The logic that underlies this conclusion is the following:

(1)

Whatever God knows, God knows by means of a simple gaze (See note 32).

(2)

In all knowledge, there is an assimilation of the knower to the thing known. This similarity is grounded on a likeness of the object known in the mind of the knower.

(3)

God has knowledge.

(4)

Therefore there must be some such likeness in God (from 2 and 3).

(5)

These likenesses must either be caused by the things of which they are the likeness, or not.

(6)

In the case of God, they cannot be caused by the objects themselves for many reasons, not least of which is that in that case God would not know by means of a simple gaze, but by multiple likenesses caused by multiple things and received through some process38.

(7)

Therefore they must not be caused from outside, but already exist in God (from 5 and 6).

(8)

It is more noble to know by means of essence than by a likeness39.

(9)

God is most noble.

(10)

Therefore in God these likenesses must belong to the category of essence (from 8 and 9).

(11)

But the divine essence is simple;40 therefore there cannot be multiple essences in God, nor a division within the essence.

(12)

Therefore these ideas cannot be other than the divine essence (from 10 and 11).

(13)

But if they were the creaturely essences, it would follow that creatures and the Creator have the same essence, which is absurd ([9], q. 2, resp.).

(14)

Therefore they cannot be the essences of things.

If they are not the essences of things, then they can only be the ideas according to which things were made, the formae exemplares. These forms always existed in God: “for all the exemplary reasons are conceived from all eternity in the womb or uterus of eternal wisdom” (Hex. col. 20, no. 5)41. For this reason also they express more truly what a creature is than any idea the creature could cause of itself: “There is another likeness that is the very expressive truth of the thing known, and a likeness to that by which it is true; and this likeness expresses the thing better than the thing expresses itself, because the thing receives its method of expression from that likeness.”42 The conclusion, therefore, is that these forms are not other than the divine essence.

Now, this is a surprising conclusion. The most obvious objection, that this would blur the distinction between God and creatures too much, has already been dealt with by the denial that these likenesses are the essences of creatures. In fact, the reason they cannot be the creaturely essences is because that would entail pantheism, which Bonaventure calls “absurd”. But there surely remain other possible infelicities that result from such a claim. One such would be the following: if the likenesses of creatures are not other than the divine nature, would it not follow that the creaturely likenesses are necessary?

Bonaventure’s answer to this objection is also perhaps surprising: he would respond that yes, it is in fact necessary that the creaturely likenesses exist. However, one must bear in mind that in this instance what exists is the divine essence, with which the likenesses of creatures is identical, and not the creaturely essences. In fact, the divine essence existing as the exemplary forms of creatures is just the divine essence as expressive of the whole power of God; that is to say, it is the second person of the Trinity, the Word, who is in fact necessary. Therefore, the exemplary likenesses of not just actual things but also possible things must necessarily exist; that is to say, the exemplary likeness as much of Peter as of a unicorn. It does not follow, however, that either Peter or the unicorn must exist.

With this conclusion of the identity of the creaturely ideas with the divine essence Bonaventure has successfully avoided the original problematic: he has grounded divine knowledge in a way that does not require God to be dependent on created realities for that knowledge. The arguments have established the existence of ideas that are exemplary, although they have drawn upon a notion of exemplarity that is not fleshed out in this question of the Sentences. And yet, a dimension of the original problem remains, namely, how is one to account for the multiplicity of creaturely ideas, given that the divine essence is one and simple? This is the next question Bonaventure considers, along with the sense in which the ideas can be said to be plural. However, this point will be better pursued from the parallel discussion in DQKC.

2. Exemplary Ideas and Knowledge

2.1. Plurality of Ideas

The Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ opens with questions that pick up where the last argument from 1 Sent. began. Accordingly, question 1 is concerned to establish premise 1, that God knows by means of a simple act of understanding ([9], qu. 1, resp., p. 78). What is actually proven is that God knows an infinity of objects; on the way to proving this, however, Bonaventure asserts that God knows them through an “intrinsic act”.

I call it intrinsic not only because it emerges from within, but also because it has an intrinsic object, an intrinsic principle, and an intrinsic mode. I say it has an intrinsic object because, in the act of knowing, the divine vision does not look at objects outside the divinity itself. Rather, it knows all truth in as far as it gazes upon the divinity itself precisely as truth.

([9], qu. 1, resp., p. 78)

Question 2 seeks to know whether God knows creatures by likenesses or their essences. This question, it can now be seen, is really asking whether the eternal ideas are the essences of creatures. The arguments on both sides seem to miss this point, precisely because they are both working with a strong opposition of likeness to essence: The two are seen as mutually exclusive. Therefore, the affirmative position, in arguing for likeness, constantly rejects essence, and the negative position, in arguing for essence, constantly rejects likeness. In the end, the arguments that God must know by a likeness are affirmed, but only after likeness has been redefined. This redefinition of likeness serves as a clarification of premise 4 above, and it is worth closer examination.

Bonaventure argues that “likeness” is able to be understood in two different ways: either as a meeting of two terms in a third, or when one thing is a likeness of another (without a third term mediating). The second type of likeness itself is of two kinds: an imitative likeness (the type of likeness a creature is relative to the Creator) and an exemplary likeness (the type of likeness of the creature that exists in the Creator). Knowledge, it turns out, requires both imitative and exemplary likeness43.

Further, knowledge is also of two kinds: that which is caused by things, and that which causes things. It is this that specifies the claim that knowledge requires both imitative and exemplary likenesses, for the knowledge caused by things requires an imitative likeness while the knowledge that causes things requires an exemplary likeness. The first of these, the knowledge caused by things, causes composition and addition in the knowing intellect by the introduction of a likeness that comes from outside the intellect, and therefore is imperfect. But the knowledge that causes things is not of this sort. It is based upon a likeness that does not come from outside the knowing intellect, and is in fact the divine intellect, the highest light, the full truth, and pure act44.

As a result, the stark opposition between knowledge by essence and knowledge by likeness with which the objections began is overcome, for God knows through likenesses that are themselves essence, the divine essence. They are not the essences of creatures, but they are still in the category of essence.

This brings us to Question 3, which resumes where the discussion in 1 Sent. left off. This question is a consideration of an objection to the common conclusion of question 2 and 1 Sent., dist. 35, art. un., qu. 1: how could the divine essence be the exemplary idea of all creatures, given that Augustine says that there must be distinct ideas according to which a man and a horse are created, but there can be no such distinction in God?

Bonaventure’s response is twofold. His first claim is that the divine essence is one in itself, but is able in that unity to fully express all other things. This is reduced to the divine power, which is no less powerful in expressing than in creating. But if God was able to create all things with one simple act, so God can express and therefore know all things with one simple act ([9], qu. 3, resp., pp. 105–6). This might seem to run afoul of Bonaventure’s claim in I Sent. dist. 35, art. un., qu. 1, resp. that producing and knowing are not the same type of process, but there is a relevant distinction to be made: while the mechanisms of producing and knowing are disanalogous, it is not the mechanisms that Bonaventure is drawing on here. Rather, he is referencing the divine ability to produce and to know, and these are in fact comparable, because identical (by simplicity).

The other part of the answer, which must deal with the problem of how it can be the case that a human and a horse are not created according to the same idea, leans on simplicity. “Something which is one in form,” Bonaventure says, “can be assimilated by beings that are materially many—as is clear in the case of whiteness in a man and in a stone.” ([9], qu. 3, resp., p. 106). In Bonaventure’s example, there is one form of whiteness, and even though it is present in numerically distinct particulars, it is not multiplied. This is meant to be made possible by the fact that the essence in question is simple, and therefore can share itself without diminution or multiplication.

There is an obvious Aristotelian objection to this example: the whiteness of a man is not the whiteness of a stone, or more precisely, the whiteness of A is not the whiteness of B. Whiteness is an accident that comes into being when instantiated, and is therefore multiplied in the individuals in which it inheres. But note the relation of this Aristotelian argument to Bonaventure’s argument: it is not a counter-example, it is a denial of Bonaventure’s premise, in the same way that it was originally meant to be a denial of Plato’s premises about forms. For Aristotle tends to immanentize all forms to particulars, which is a denial of divine ideas. But Bonaventure has already accepted divine ideas: his aim here is to assert that there are at least some forms that don’t work as Aristotle says that they do, a claim that will be of importance to Bonaventure’s notion of participation.

Thus, he concludes that “the expression of diverse objects in or by the divine truth is not diverse in itself” ([9], qu. 3, resp., p. 106). However, from the standpoint of the object, it will be judged to be diverse, because to express a human is not the same as to express an ass. He gives two more examples to motivate the point, bringing together the divine power and the divine simplicity: the first is the example of predestination. It is not the same, he says, to predestine Peter and to predestine Paul. This is demonstrable, as the result of the first is the salvation of Peter, and the result of the second is the salvation of Paul. Yet an action that is one and the same in all respects cannot issue in different results. Therefore these two acts are not entirely the same.

The second example is even clearer: it is not the same thing to create a human as to create an angel. And yet, since the divine essence is simple, it is simple also in its actions, which means that in one act it created matter and space, humans and angels, donkeys and cats. The divine creativity is an act that is one in itself, but many in its effects; one in its source, many in its relations to things.

Of course, relations themselves, if they are taken to be real, cause distinction; it is the way the persons of the Trinity are distinguished within the Godhead.45 Therefore, these relations cannot be real in God, for if God were really related to anything outside the divinity, simplicity would be destroyed46. Therefore these relations are merely logical or conceptual in God, but real in the creatures47.

2.2. The Influence of the Exemplary Ideas on Cognition

It was at this point that Augustine made the claim that in order that things exist, they had to participate in the ideas. But since Bonaventure is talking about knowledge, his next question is whether it is necessary to see things in the eternal ideas in order to know things with certitude.48 The relation of the two concepts may be described as follows: Augustine is arguing that in order for things to be firmly established in the ontological order, they must participate in the divine ideas; Bonaventure is arguing that in order for things to be firmly established in the epistemological order, they must participate in the divine ideas. Like Augustine, Bonaventure will turn to the notion of participation at this point.

Bonaventure trots out an impressive number of arguments on both sides of this position: thirty-four for the idea that certitude is only possible in the eternal reasons and twenty-four against. Among the arguments in favor, Bonaventure offers eleven passages from Augustine, none of them the passage from Eighty-Three Different Questions. Then, after adding arguments from the authority of Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Anselm, Origen, the Psalms, and Aristotle, at the point when he is turning from arguments from authority to arguments from reason, he lists another five places in Augustine from which more arguments could be drawn. This is an exceptional number of passages from Augustine for Bonaventure to be citing, and shows how deeply grounded in Augustine’s doctrine Bonaventure finds the divine ideas to be, and how much he sees his own take on the question to be in continuity with Augustine’s understanding.

The number of questions on each side may be taken as evidence of a wide variety of opinions on the subject; accordingly, the possible solutions Bonaventure considers are also wide ranging, though he reduces them to basically three views: (1) that the ideas are the sole and total cause of certain knowledge; (2) that they provide an influence that is necessary for certain knowledge; and (3) the middle position, that they must be present as a partial cause of knowledge, but are only present in this life without clarity.

Bonaventure rules out the first view, that the eternal ideas are the sole causes of knowledge, on the basis that it would level a whole range of distinctions usually made among different types of knowledge: between knowledge in this life and the next (obscure, partial knowledge versus face-to-face knowledge, following 1 Corinthians 13:12), knowledge in the Word and knowledge of things in themselves, science and wisdom, nature and grace, reason and revelation ([9], qu. 4, resp., pp. 132–33). This view is, in Bonaventure’s opinion, too strong.

The second view, that the eternal ideas merely provide an influence, is too weak. For even though on the surface it seems to assert something like participation, it doesn’t account for the need the created mind has to be regulated by something unchangeable and eternal if it is to reach certitude. At this point, an interlocutor might have responded to Bonaventure that the influence of the eternal ideas provides this unchangeable, eternal stability. But Bonaventure would say that this is to misunderstand influence: the influence is not itself eternal, or unchangeable. Influence is something that proceeds, that can only be a creature, and that may come or go. It will not be strong enough to ground certain knowledge.

Therefore, Bonaventure thinks that what is required is something that is between these two. It has to be like the first position in that the eternal ideas themselves have to be involved as a cause of knowledge; but unlike the first position, they cannot be the total cause. Likewise, like the second position, these ideas cannot be present in their fullness or with clarity; but unlike the second position, they must themselves be in play in some way. Thus, the eternal reason is “involved as the regulative and motive principle, but certainly not as the sole principle nor in its full clarity.” ([9], qu. 4, resp., p. 134).

So far this accords with the noted parallel between Bonaventure’s epistemological argument and Augustine’s ontological one. Bonaventure goes on to offer a second set of reasons why our minds, whether in this life or the next, must attain to the eternal ideas if we are to have certain knowledge. And with this second set of concerns, the distance between the ontological and epistemological orders in Bonaventure’s exposition begins to shrink, revealing that his discussion has in fact also been primarily concerned with ontology all along.

The first of the additional arguments is an argument concerning the nobility of knowledge, which means that there can be no certain knowledge without an immutable object and an infallible knower49. Certain knowledge turns out to be something like a stable correspondence between the knower and the object known. This correspondence cannot be stable if the object can change, and it is not a correspondence if the knower is mistaken.

However, no creature is immutable and no created power is infallible. Thus, certain knowledge, as much of creatures as by creatures, is impossible unless these conditions can somehow be met by reference to a third thing. This is where the eternal ideas come in as light and truth: light insofar as they loan infallibility to the knower, and truth insofar as they loan immutability to the object. While it is easy to see how they do the latter (for when one sees things along with their eternal reasons, one is seeing what is necessarily and therefore immutably true about them), it is harder to see how the ideas make the created reason infallible; the intuition is probably that they bring it about that the process of reasoning proceeds from necessary principles, and therefore error is not possible.

Bonaventure’s second reason why our minds need the eternal reasons is concerned with the nobility of the knower. To expound this, he turns to his division of creatures into vestiges, images, and likenesses50. This is meant to help explain that it is the higher part of human reason that is at work in certain knowledge, and that attains to the eternal reasons.

He points out that in any action of a creature, whether it be vestige, likeness, or image, God cooperates. In the acts of vestiges, which image God as being, God is the creative cause (Bonaventure probably has seminal forms in mind here). In the acts of likenesses, which image God by a conformity only possible by the possession of grace, God is the infused gift, that is, the one who indwells the soul by grace. In the acts of images, which image God by being rational, God is the moving cause, that is, the final end as well as the necessary medium51. With the middle claim, which in fact describes the highest state possible for creatures, Bonaventure crosses two boundaries at once. On the one hand, he crosses from epistemology into the prior ontological conditions that must ground it. On the other, he enters the forecourts of participation, for the likeness has God as the infused gift precisely as a created grace that is a participation in the divine being.

It is the ontological move that immediately comes to the fore in the next part of the argument, for it is as the image of God that the rational soul attains to the eternal ideas. However, we are fallen images, and so there must be a failure in our ability to attain the eternal reasons. But, because the image is never fully destroyed in us, we must attain them to some extent. Therefore our access to the ideas must be only preliminary and partial, varying in strength according to the degree of our conformity to God52. In the next life, when we will have lost the deformity of sin and gained the deiformity of God, we will see fully and clearly53.

Bonaventure thinks that what this question has established is the necessity that the divine being indwell the rational mind: “It is clear from the previous question that the influence of the eternal light without its presence is not sufficient for certain knowledge.” ([9], qu. 5, resp., p. 153). That is, he grounds the possibility of epistemological participation in the divine ideas in a prior ontological participation, the presence of God within the thinking creature.

Thus, the substantialization of the exemplary ideas not just as extra-mental realities but also as a hypostasis (the second person of the Trinity) transforms the entire discussion of exemplarity from one about knowledge into one about being. Plato’s forms become not just objects of contemplation or explanatory necessities, but now causes in a sense that is as efficient as it is final. This will have consequences for how we read much of the rest of Bonaventure’s corpus. Consider the Itinerarium, for instance: While it remains first and foremost about the elevation of the intellect in contemplation, it is also now seen to be mapping the progress of the human creature in every aspect of its reality towards God. The word “mind” in the title turns out to be metonymous.

The ramifications of this ontological move also rebound on the exposition given here, underscoring the ontological dimensions present in what was said and requiring the expansion of these key texts in Bonaventure beyond their explicit terms. The problem of the many and the one thus indeed belongs to the doctrine of creation, and its ideal dimension (that is to say, the dimension according to which it has to do with divine ideas) is secondary and illustrative of fundamental truths about the relation between God and creatures.

Once this is recognized, the question then stretches beyond its situation in the doctrine of creation to its proper situation in Christology. For, since Christ as the eternal ideas is the concrete ideal world, the ideas themselves are shown to pre-exist creation, and to be the very first plurification of the one. Thus the procession of a creaturely many from God is embraced in the prior generation of the Son. It is here that Bonaventure’s doctrine of exemplarity comes into its own and does the work that he attributes to it in the Hexaemeron of grounding all metaphysics54, for now both the divine first principle and the creaturely first principle are found to coincide in the Son by reason of the exemplary relation of the former to the latter. Read closely, the question of the many and the one leads to the heart of Bonaventure’s metaphysical and theological thinking, the one who in the divine and creaturely orders sums up the full possibilities of the One as the definitive and unsurpassable expression of every possibility.