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Br. Paul M. Nguyen, OMV

Medieval Church History, Orlando
November 4, 2014
On the Trinity in the Itinerarium of St. Bonaventure
In this classic Medieval work, St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, describes with piercing
precision a way for the soul to approach God. Along the way, he offers an angle from which man
can attain natural knowledge of the Triune God, or at least corroborate what has been revealed
about our God in Three.
The first two chapters focus on the (human) souls powers to take in externals, and then
to comprehend them abstractly, both of which entail some contact with the God who made them.
In the third chapter or step of the metaphorical ladder, Bonaventure looks at man's spiritual
powers simply: loving, knowing, and remembering. Having established that memory leads to
eternity, intellect to ultimate Truth, and the elective power to the Most High Goodness (III.4),
Bonaventure proceeds to associate each with a person of the Trinity, and to show a parallel
dynamic in how each of those powers interacts within the soul. He claims that memory begets
intelligence, and that from both is spirated love as the connection between them. And, he argues,
because God has these three powers, not by essence or accident, but personally (non
essentialiter, non accidentaliter, ergo personaliter, III.5), they correspond directly to the three
persons in God (Trinitatem beatam Patris, Verbi et Amoris, trium personarum, III.5), which
are, as in the powers of the human soul, united.
Bonaventure goes further to say that the division of philosophy, as it was known in those
days, also corresponded to the powers of the soul and to the Trinity. He showed that natural
philosophy seeks the cause of existing, which belongs to the Father; that rational philosophy
seeks reasons for understanding, which belongs to the Word, and that moral philosophy seeks the
order of living, which belongs to the Spirit (III.6). In this way, Bonaventure showed a way to

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come to knowledge of the Trinity through the light of natural reason of a soul reflecting on itself.
The Trinity features most prominently, however, in the sixth step of the ladder, in which
the so-called Ontological Argument comes to the fore (optimum quod simpliciter est quo nihil
melius cogitari potest, VI.2). Bonaventure explains the necessity of the Trinity of persons in the
one God who is the only One who exceeds our capacity to imagine, following the philosophical
axiom that good diffuses itself (bonum dicitur diffusivum sui). He argues that such a supreme
good must be diffusive supremely, and that this entails it have all the divine attributes, and that
there be, from eternity, persons in God according to the language of beloved (as in the Third
Step), and of generation and spiration: dilectus et condilectus, genitus et spiratus, hoc est Pater
et Filius et Spiritus sanctus (VI.2).
After this, the soul that has climbed to this height is so consumed mentally and mystically
that it passes totally into God and finds its rest (cf. VII.1). The surprising mark of this whole
exposition is that the soul comes to know and approach God precisely through reflection on
itself, beginning with how it interacts with external things, and then how it functions internally,
always pursuing what logically follows, all the way up into God, but the most surprising aspect
is that natural reason can attain, by this method, an understanding of the distinction of persons in
God, a mystery which the Church has said comes from revelation alone. Certainly the vocabulary
necessary for such an understanding to coincide with the revealed terms and Magisterium over
the centuries requires that revelation. Thus, this philosophical methodology demonstrates clearly
and concisely, while maintaining a marvelous breadth and comprehension of its own science, the
rationality of the yet-ineffable mystery of the Blessed Trinity.