Статья: Illumination in Bonaventure’s Epistemology

Bonaventure emphasizes:

That by which we have certain knowledge is immutable because it is necessary truth. But our mind is mutable. Therefore, that by which we know is superior to our mind. But there is nothing above our mind other than God and eternal truth. Therefore, the divine truth and the eternal reason is that by which knowledge comes to be (17).

He does not see any other way to explain the existence of the corruptible intellect, changeable world as its regular object, and at the same time the existence of truth by which that corruptible intellect knows something with certainty. And referring to different modes of knowledge he writes:

That by which we know excels every created truth. Therefore, it is uncreated truth (21)

We know only by the truth, which is not a created one (or from this world), but the eternal truth itself. The truth is a category of the intellect. Hence, we know only by the eternal mind when it illumines our mind, and in this way we participate in the eternal. But how is it possible? It is because we are created in likeness of that divine mind itself on the first place, and that divine mind therefore is the closest thing to our mind. That is why Bonaventure considers the knowledge of God the most natural kind of knowledge to the human being. Other kinds of knowledge depend on it.

As God is the cause of being, so the divine reality is the principle of knowing and order of living. But God is the cause of being in such a way that nothing can be done by any cause unless God moves that cause in the action by means of the divinity itself and by the eternal divine power. Therefore, nothing can be understood at all unless God immediately illumines the subject of knowledge by means of the eternal, divine truth (24).

This is the most straight forward and absolute statement, and all other arguments revolve around it just providing different hues and shades to this major picture, this philosophical intuition which is very well supported and expressed in detail. Accordingly, that part of our intellectual activity “is called higher in as far as it turns to the eternal laws. It is called lower in as far as it is concerned with the temporal things” (27).

It is obvious which one is preferable. Hence, it constitutes an ethical foundation for the pursuits in the area of philosophy and the lifestyle in general. This maxim could be expressed in the following manner: Love God, know God and act with and for God. And this style of life is suitable for all who understand this doctrine. It will be developed even further in the Itinerarium, but in the Disputed Questions (IV) Bonaventure gives the last argument for the God’s participation in the human knowledge (summarizes his position on the illumination) in the following way:

According to the Saints, God is said to be master of all knowledge. This is the case because God cooperates in general with every intellect, or because God infuses the gift of grace, or because - in the act of knowing – the intellect attains to the divine. If God cooperates in general, then we would be lead to say that the divine being teaches the senses as well as the intellect. But this is absurd. If it is because God infuses the gift of grace, then all knowledge would be gratuitous or infused, and non would be innate or acquired. But this is most absurd. Nothing remains, therefore, except to say that our intellect attains to the divine as to the light of our minds and the cause of the knowledge of all truth (34).

Here the ideas of cooperation and grace are understood as having only limited application and not in general, while the preference is given to the idea of attaining of the intellect to the divine in the general case of knowing.

The arguments for the negative position are considered in their turn. They do not break the Bonaventure’s conviction that God does participate in all our knowledge and that the latter is ultimately based on the illumination, but they oblige him to explain the complications and restate his positive position carefully in the Conclusion:

For knowledge with certitude, even in the state of wayfarers, the intellect must attain to the eternal reasons as that reason which regulates and motivates. It is not the sole principle of knowledge, nor is it attained in its clarity; but together with the proper created reason it is known obscurely and as in a mirror.

Bonaventure clarifies this conclusion explicitly on the next four pages, but I would

emphasize a few important points:

In the case of certain knowledge the mind must be regulated by unchangeable and eternal rules which operate not by means of habit of the mind but by means of themselves as realities which are above the mind in the eternal truth (p.133).

For certain knowledge, the eternal reason is necessary involved as a regulative and motivating principle, but certainly not as the sole principle nor in its full clarity (134).

But along with the created reason, it is continued by us in part as is fitting in this life.

A creature is related to God as a vestige (as to its principle), as an image (as to its object), and as a likeness (as to an infused gift) (p.135).

Bonaventure proclaims divine cooperation “in any work accomplished by a creature”:

as far as it is a vestige. . . as the creative principle

as far as it is a likeness. . .in a manner of an infused gift

as far as it is an image . . . as the moving cause (136)

The difficulties with the opposition are resolved in the following paragraph:

Since certain knowledge pertains to the rational spirit in as far as it is an image of God, it is in this sort of knowledge that the soul attains to the eternal reasons. But because it is never fully conformed to God in this life, it does not attain to the reasons clearly, fully, and distinctly, but only to a greater or lesser degree according to the degree of its conformity to God. . . . . it always attains to the reasons in some way (136).

So the mysterious existence of certainty in our seemingly contingent minds is explained

with this doctrine of light. The fact that we can doubt sometimes even the very existence

of God and his light is explained by the lesser degree of conformity of the image to the

exemplar. The latter is due to the deformity of gift and glory and could be mended. The

observable fact that we do learn from the world of sense is also explained: