Bonaventure's Soul's Journey in a contemporary note: Part Three

In previous posts I discussed the first four days in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. While I planned on discussing days 5 and 6 in one post, I found that this discussion on day 5 became longer than expected. Thus, I will post, hopefully in the near future, a discussion on day 6. If you have not read my posts on the previous days, you can find them here: Days 1 and 2; Day 3 and 4.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

~ Isaiah 55:8-9

God is a mystery. No matter how hard one strives to understand the nature of God, one ultimately will fall short (an understatement if there ever was one). However, on day 5, Bonaventure wants to attempt to look directly at who God is. Bonaventure wants to push our minds as far as possible, even to the breaking point.

In the previous two days (3 and 4) we were guided by Bonaventure to look within ourselves, seeking the divine in our inner selves. Now we are encouraged to look, not outward, into the world, of which days 1 and 2 preoccupied us. Now we are directed to look above us, that is, into the transcendent world where God abides. For heuristic purposes, Bonaventure locates the world of God above us.

Bonaventure begins his discussion of day 5 looking back at where we have journeyed from. As memory plays an important role in Augustinian psychology (Bonaventure was deeply Augustinian), remembering where we have travelled is important to understanding where we are going. When looking back at the first two days of the journey, reflecting on the vestiges of God in creation, we learn to associate creation with the Father, who, for Bonaventure, is primarily experienced in creation as power and energy, a creative force.

In days 3 and 4, in exploring the natural powers of the human person and the effect of grace in us, we associate this with the Son, or the Word, because it is the Son who is the model for our humanity – the Word becomes flesh. By this point we can anticipate that days 5 and 6 will be associated with the Holy Spirit, the one who is enlightening, warming the heart, kindling love within us.

In his discussion of these days, Bonaventure has used the analogy of the temple in Jerusalem. The forward journey is taking us from outside the temple, into the sanctuary, until finally into the Holy of Holies. Along with the metaphor of the temple, Bonaventure is going to also recall the image of the Seraph and its six wings – two touching the earth, two wrapped around the body, and two raised to the heavens. The first two wings represent the world of creation, the second represent the meditation on the human person. Now we are directed to contemplate the third set of wings that, while raised above, also cover the face of the Seraph-like being. This covering obscures the identity of the angelic creature.

We now are drawn towards the most sacred of realities. In the Holy of Holies resides the very name/presence of God. We are in dangerous land at this point. We can imagine the fear and awe of the high priest as he prepares to enter the presence of God. This is nothing to trifle with. In the first two days we were at a bit of remove from the direct presence of the divine in our reflection on the vestiges of God, found in the beauty of nature, order, pattern, and the predictable cycles of birth and decay and rebirth in nature. In days 3 and 4, the middle of the journey, when we looked at the human person, we gained a stronger sense of who God is because we saw an image, which is more than a vestige, a footprint. Yet, the image is still not the reality itself, but it is a closer approximation. Now, in day 5 we are going to begin looking, we might say, at the real thing. We are going to attempt to look directly at God now. Needless to say, this will be difficult.

Bonaventure has us look at the scripture passage Exodus 25. 

On the ark you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold, two cubits and a half in length, a cubit and a half in width. You shall make two cherubim of gold. Make them if hammered work, at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make on cherub at one end and one cherub at the other; of one piece with the mercy seat you shall make the cherubim at its two ends. The cherubim shall spread our their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. They shall face one another; the faces of the cherubim shall be turned toward the mercy seat. You shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the covenant that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.

God will communicate with the people from this place. The presence of God in this place makes it holy, a sacred place. Bonaventure sees in this passage a metaphor for how we can come to have a deeper knowledge of the divine nature. He sees in the two cherubim two aspects of God’s nature; God’s unity and God’s trinity. Day 5 exams God’s unity.

For Bonaventure, God is Being – large B Being. We have a hard time conceiving of Being. Our experience is small b being, that is, things in the world that have existence/being. These things participate in Being, but are not Being in itself. Bonaventure’s choice of seeing God as Being comes from his reading of the account in scripture in which God reveals Godself to Moses as I AM. When asking what Being is, Bonaventure is not just asking a scriptural question; he is asking a question that comes from philosophy and from theology. It has something to do with ‘essence’. What does it mean to have being? To be Being? What is Being itself? Bonaventure tells us, If we want to contemplate the invisible things of God let us look at unity of Being. The mind must first fix in its vision on what Being itself is. Being is certain – things are. Being cannot be thought not to be. Pure Being is the exact opposite of non-being, nothingness. So, you’ve got Being and you’ve got nothingness.

Being, for Bonaventure, is like light. Light illuminates the world for us. While we cannot see light directly, we see the effects of light on that which light makes visible. However, we know that though we cannot see the light that radiates from its source, we can postulate that it is present nonetheless even though we cannot see it directly in itself. Being is analogous in this way for Bonaventure. Though Being cannot not be observed directly, we can postulate its presence in the things it illuminates, that is, existence. Bonaventure states that

we see that absolute Being is the first and the last, it is the origin of all things, and it is the end or the goal of all things. Being is eternal, but it is present in every moment. It is the center and the circumference of time; it is the center of time. It is completely with all things, and it is completely outside them. This Being is an intelligible sphere.

In other words, God is not bounded. Pure Being has no boundaries.

          Obviously, Bonaventure has been relying upon his very well-educated understanding of philosophy as it was taught in the thirteenth century. As he was writing for friars who were also educated, moderns may find his categories a bit abstract, elusive even. However, I believe the concept of Being can be helpful, especially from a human identity needs perspective, as well as from a mimetic perspective.

          When it comes to human identity needs, I have maintained that each person has at least five needs that must be sufficiently satisfied in order to have a sense of wellbeing, a positive self-esteem. These are: meaning, security, belonging, recognition, and action. We are meaning makers, and cannot survive emotionally, spiritually, or psychologically without meaning, or purpose. Meaning satisfaction requires that we feel a certain level of security in our locale, our environment. To gain such meaning and security, we need to feel a sense of belonging, a connection with others. This need for belonging stems from the fact of our social nature. Belonging includes being loved, and the awareness that our love for the other is cherished. In order to belong, we need to be recognized as worthy of belonging. And finally, we need the freedom to act in ways that ensure the obtaining of these identity needs.

          In our journey to form and grow in our identity, there is an underlying desire that we tend to be unaware of. That is, we are searching for greater being. Girard calls this metaphysical desire. A self, though seemingly an abstraction, is something. I am a ‘something’. While I may not be able to articulate what this something is, I know that I am, and that I desire to be. However, the being of my identity is dependent on others in order to become a self. I am not complete; I am not Being in itself. I am a being in search of more being. As a being, I am a creature, that is, I have been created. My creation is not sui generis. However, in our present individualistic world, I tend to be under the illusion that I am in fact my own creation.

          As creatures in search of being, we look to others for guidance, imitating these models as pedagogues of being. However, our models who are creatures themselves are as limited as we are when it comes to understanding the goal of our search for being. In many cases we elevate these models to a position of godlike status, and we create idols out of these models.

          Bonaventure’s reflection on the unity of God, that is, God’s oneness, allows us to reflect on how God as Being can lead us to realize that the search for being in the formation of our ‘selves’ is ultimately a search for God. The sin of Adam and Eve has been interpreted by some as a desire to be their own creators; the illusion that they are the creators of their own being. It is this idolatrous illusion that we moderns continue in our constant delusion that Being can be obtained through our own efforts. The Adam and Eve myth gives light to the fact that neglect of God’s commandments is at the heart of our delusions. We play god and live by our own ‘sense of morality’, as one cad has stated, to the detriment of people’s wellbeing.

          The greatest of God’s commandments is twofold. Love God and love neighbor. To love another is both to share one’s being with the other, while also receiving being from the other. As God has no need for our love, as God is deficient in nothing, to love God is a profound exercise in the reception of the very Being of God. As ‘God is Love’, God’s gift of love is pure grace, pure gift. Though we cannot add to God’s Being by a reciprocal gift of our love, our acquisition of God’s Being, God’s love, calls us to imitate God in God’s fons plenitudinis of love showered upon us in our love of neighbor. It is in fulfilling the second love commandment – love your neighbor – that we can begin to reflect on the trinitarian nature of the Godhead. 

    In this journey to God, we begin to enter a paradox. As God is one, we begin, in our imitation of God, to become one, both with God, and with others. However, in our reflection on the triune nature of the divine, we see that our journey to unity with God and others does not eliminate our own personal existence/identity. In this journey, we become more and more conformed to the triune God, who is one and three, source and communion. In day 5 we must come to a profound recognintion in God's oneness, that God is the ultimate source of our being, and the search for being outside of God is ultimately futile. It leads only to suffering, loneliness, and resentment. 

    In my next post I will exam Bonaventure's description of day 6, and the trinitarian nature of God.