Trinity and Creation
Bonaventure sought to understand the nature of God at work in the life of Jesus Christ and looked to Scripture. In the Old Testament, he writes, God reveals himself as Being: "I am who Am" (Exod. 3:14). In the New Testament, however, God reveals himself as good: "No one is good but God alone" (Luke 18:19).[1] Bonaventure identified goodness as the name of God and looked to other theologians such as the Pseudo-Dionysius and Richard of St. Victor to understand God as ultimate goodness. According to the Dionysius, the highest good is self-diffusive and gives rise to being.[2] Richard states that the highest good is love, and love is personal and communicative.[3] Bonaventure, therefore, uses the notion of self-diffusive goodness and personal love to distinguish the persons of the Trinity as a communion of persons in love. The Father, he writes, is without origin and thus the source or fountain fullness of goodness; thus, the Father is primal and self-diffusive.[4] The Son is that person eternally generated by the Father's self-diffusive goodness (per modum naturae) and, as such, is the total personal expression of the Father as Word, and ultimate likeness to the Father as Image.[5] The Son/Word is both generated by the Father and together with Father generates the Spirit who is that eternal bond of love between the Father and Son. While the Son/Word is the divine exemplar, the Spirit expresses God's freedom in love. The Spirit proceeds from Father and Son in an act of full freedom (per modum voluntatis), his procession being the act of a clear and determinate loving volition on the part of Father and Son. [6]
In analyzing the trintarian dynamic as one of love, Bonaventure follows Richard of St. Victor in arguing that the three persons represent three modalities of love. The first is a love that is totally communicative and gratuitious (amor gratuitus). At the other extreme is a form of love that is totally receptive and responsive (amor debitus). And between these is a modality of love that is both communicative and receptive (amor ab utroque permixtus).[7] Viewing the Trinity in terms of love allows the idea of a center to emerge. There is one person who lives at the center of the Trinity in whom lives the fundamental structural law of all that is other than the Father. This person is the Son or Word who is the perfect expression of the Father in one other than the Father. Bonaventure favors the title Word to express the second divine person's relation not only to the Father but to creation, history and Incarnation. [8]
Bonaventure posits an integral relation between the Trinity and Incarnation. It is God's nature as the primal, fecund mystery of self-communicative, loving goodness that makes possible all of God's works ad extra. The Son for Bonaventure is the one who is conceived from the depths of the divine goodness; as Image he is the perfect likeness of the Father and as Word he is the cause of all expression and manifestation.[9] The Son is the one who, from all eternity, receives the Father's love and is totally responsive to it. Because the relationship between the Father and Son is the ontological basis of all other relations, it appears that created reality will bear the stamp of Sonship in its deepest core of its being. As the Son is pure receptivity with respect to the Father, so created existence is, at root, the reception of being. And just as the Son responds to the Father and in his response together with the Father breathes forth the Spirit, so all created reality is destined to return to the Father.[10] As the Word is the internal self-expression of God's fecund goodness, so the world is the external objectification of that self-utterance in that which is not God. And the humanity of Jesus is the fullest embodiment of that self-utterance within the created world. The one who became incarnate is the perfect, personal likeness of the Father, the fecund source of all. Thus he holds a middle place between the Father and the world, and it is through the Son that the Father communicates to the world at all levels.
It is precisely as Word and center that the Son is the exemplar of all creation. While at one level, the whole of the Trinity is exemplary with respect to the world, at another level the mystery of exemplarity is concentrated in a unique way in the Son, for the triune structure of God himself is expressed in him. [11] Thus as the Word is the inner self-expression of God, the created order is the external expression of the inner Word. The created universe, therefore, possesses in its inner constitution a relation to the uncreated Word. Since the Word, in turn, is the expression of the inner trinitarian structure of God, that which is created as an expression of the Word bears the imprint of the Trinity as well. [12]
For Bonaventure, the Trinity is marked by the order of love which is dynamic and inexhaustible. Love within the Trinity is always going out to an other for the sake of the other. If we ask the question, "why does God create," we would have to say that God creates because God is love. When we say that God is love, we are saying that God is personal and relational because by the very nature of being love, God is other-centered. Thus, any "action" of God must correspond to the Trinity of persons who "act" as a unity of persons-in-love. [13] According to Bonaventure, the relationship between the Father and Son is the basis of all other relationships.[14] The Father, the fountain fullness of love, is always moving towards the Son in the sharing of love, and the Son is always loving the Father in the Spirit. If the Father is first in the most primal sense, the Son, reflecting the productivity of the Father and the receptiveness of the Spirit, is that person who anticipates all that is other than the Father. This includes the mystery of the inner-trinitarian Spirit and the reality of the created cosmos. [15] Creation is caught up in the mystery of the generation of the Word from the Father and is generated out of the fecundity of God's love. Creation's fecundity, therefore, is a limited expression of the infinite and dynamic love between the Father and Son united in the Spirit. In this respect, creation is not a mere external act of God, an object on the fringe of divine power; rather, it is rooted in the self-diffusive goodness of God's inner life and emerges out of the innermost depths of trinitarian life.[16] Since creation emanates out of and is a limited expression of divine goodness, we may think of creation as unfolding "within" the trinitarian relations of divine love rather than being radically separate from God.[17] To say that the universe shares in the mystery of the Trinity means that the universe is caught up in the dynamic process of self-transcendence and self-communication of inter-penetrating relationships and creative love.
The Humility of God
If creation ultimately arises out of the eternal fecundity of the Trinity and is an overflow of that fecundity, it is possible to speak of a divine kenosis whereby God communicates his love to creation. The idea of kenosis (kenoo) or self-emptying is used here to describe God's overflowing goodness or self-communicative love. [18] Bonaventure writes: "Because the whole is communicated and not merely part, whatever is possessed is given, and given completely.” [19] Thus just as goodness is completely diffused within the Trinity, that same goodness is freely given to creation.[20] The nature of the good to give itself away to another characterizes God's humility.
The idea of a divine kenosis in creation is consistent with the idea of God who is self-communicative love. Contemporary theologians such as John Haught argue for a metaphysics of humility as the basis of divine action in an evolutionary world. A theology of divine humility, according to Haught, makes room for true novelty to spring spontaneously into being--a feature logically suppressed by deterministic materialist interpretations.[21] The image of divine humility has been resisted theologically up until now because it implies that God has too little power or perhaps no power at all to act in nature.[22] Such a vulnerable and defenseless God, Haught indicates, does not seem capable of provoking an adequate foundation for our hope in redemption, resurrection and new creation. Yet, it is precisely a God who is kenotic, self-giving love who can impart freedom to creation and guide it towards its purpose.
The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann states that the logic of creation is the logic of love. Creation is not a demonstration of God's boundless power, it is the communication of God's love which knows neither premises nor preconditions. God's almighty power is demonstrated only inasmuch as all the operations of that power are determined by his eternal nature itself.[23] Similarly, Walter Kasper describes divine omnipotence in the cross of Jesus Christ as the divine capacity for love beyond all human comprehension. He writes: "It requires omnipotence to be able to surrender oneself and give oneself away; and it requires omnipotence to be able to take oneself back in the giving and to preserve the independence and freedom of the recipient. Only an almighty love can give itself wholly to the other and be a helpless love.” [24] Kasper's insight offers a radically Christian view of divine action by indicating that God brings about the new creation through helpless love.
Power and helplessness are opposites and it is precisely the coincidence of opposites that marks the Christian God of love. For Bonaventure, the humility of God's love in creation is related to the fact that God is an infinite source of love. God is eternally fecund and self-communicative. As a coincidence of opposites, God's transcendent fecundity is God's immanence as self-giving love. [25] This means that God can fully communicate love to creation (even if we describe this as self-emptying or kenotic love) without risk or vulnerability because God is an infinite mystery of love. The divine fecundity in creation is a limited expression of the infinite mystery of God who is love. As a coincidence of fecundity and kenosis, God can be completely present to creation as humble love without diminishing God's transcendent fecundity or omnipotence, or interfering in nature's own ability to self-organize. Rather, the divine coincidentia oppositorum means that God's omnipotence is God's humble love.
The notion of an infinitely loving and humble God at work in the universe certainly overturns the image of God as a tyrannical force who dictates the events of the universe. Creation is not the amusement of a lonely deity. [26] Rather, creation is the expression of an infinitely loving God in whom the nature and will to create is already realized within the divine nature itself, in the eternal generation of the Son and Spirit. Thus God neither has to create nor is creation purely divine desire; rather it expresses in a finite way the infinite love of God. Just as freedom is integral to God's nature, so too God's fidelity in love allows creation to follow its own internal laws and designs. The notion that the humble love of God comprises the inner force of the created universe underscores the notion of a self-organizing universe, one that can entertain chance, randomness, complexity and chaos, and give rise to beauty and order that can be intelligibly perceived. This divine self-restraining character is fully compatible with God's love which, rather than being rigidly deterministic, is total self-giving in freedom and creativity for the sake of the good which both gives rise to created being and, essentially, is being.
Extending Bonaventure's theology to the contemporary scientific world allows us to posit a theological ground of divine goodness that sustains a world of chance and complexity. [27] The intertwining levels of chaos and complexity throughout nature can follow the internal rhythms of chance and law without compromising God as the ground of creation, since all creation is related to God and participates in divine goodness by the very nature of its existence. God's gift of freedom to creation is God's fidelity in love.[28] The triune God commits himself to create simply because the Father, the fountain source of goodness, is by nature turned toward the Son/Word and with the Son loves in the single breath of the Spirit who permeates the universe as freedom in love. Whatever we say about God as Creator, in Bonaventure's view, must correspond to the humility of God and to the nature of the Trinity as self-communicative love.
Notes:
1. The comparison between John Damascene and the Pseudo-Dionysius on the names of God as being and good are discussed by Bonaventure in his classic Itinerarium Mentis in Deum . See Bonaventure Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (Itin.) 5.2 (V, 307). The critical edition of Bonaventure's works is the Opera Omnia ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 10 vols. (Quaracchi, 1882 - 1902). Latin texts are indicated by volume and page number in parentheses.
2. Pseudo-Dionysius De divinis nominibus 4.1 (PG 3, 694). For an excellent discussion of the tradition see Ewert H. Cousins, "The Notion of the Person in the De Trinitate of Richard of St. Victor," (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1966).
3. Richard of St. Victor De trinitate 3.14-19 (PL 196, 924-27).
4. Bonaventure I Sentence (Sent.). d. 27, p.1, a. un., q. 2, ad 3 (I, 470). The idea that the Father is innascible and fecund underlies the dialectical style of Bonaventure's thought. It also provides the basis of Bonaventure's metaphysics as a coincidentia oppositorum. The Father's innascibility and fecundity are mutually complimentary opposites which cannot be formally reduced to one or the other; the Father is generative precisely because he is unbegotten. See Zachary Hayes, introduction to “Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity”, vol. 3, Works of Saint Bonaventure, ed. George Marcil (New York: The Franciscan Institute, 1979), 42, n. 51.
5. Bonaventure I Sent, d. 5, a. 1, q. 2, resp. (I, 115); I Sent. d. 2, a. u., q. 4, fund 2 (I, 56); Hayes, introduction, 34, n. 10. Bonaventure uses the terms per modum naturae and per modum voluntatis to designate the two trinitarian emanations. The terms are inspired by Aristotle's principle that there exist only two perfect modes of production; namely, natural and free.
6. Bonaventure I Sent. d. 6, a. ul., q. 2, resp. (I, 128). "Processus per modum voluntatis concomitante natura"; Keane, "Why Creation?, 115. Keane writes: "It is noteworthy that Bonaventure's reason for attributing creation to the divine will is quite different from Thomas's. Where Thomas is in the main concerned to protect the divine perfection and radically free will, Bonaventure is at pains to elucidate how only through will can an act be truly personal-both free and expressive of the outward dynamism of goodness, an act spontaneous yet substantial."
7. Zachary Hayes, "Bonaventure: Mystery of the Triune God," in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed. Kenan B. Osborne (New York: The Franciscan Institute, 1994), 58.
8. Bonaventure Commentarius in Joannis c. I, p. 1, q. 1 (VI, 247).
9. Bonaventure I Sent. d. 27, p. 2, a. u., q. 3, resp. (I, 487 - 488).
10. Bonaventure I Sent. d. 2, q. 2, ad 4 (I, 54).
11. Bonaventure Collationes in Hexaemeron (Hex.) 9, 2 (V, 373); 3, 7 (V, 344).
12. Zachary Hayes, The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure (New York: The Franciscan Institute, 1992), 60.
13. In the first book of his Sentence commentary (I Sent. d. 2, a. u., q. 2, ad. 4 [I, 54]) Bonaventure indicates that the Father is the source and goal of all created reality; in him is found the status in which the entire created process finds its fulfillment. He writes: "In personis divinis est una persona, a qua sunt aliae et ad quam, et in illa est status originis, quia illa a nullo; et haec est persona patris.” However, while the Father's fecundity corresponds to the primacy of the Father, it is precisely because the Father is fecund that the generation of the Son is necessary. Hence, there is in God one in whom resides the fullness of divine fecundity with respect to the persons. But since whatever God is in himself he is in act, it follows that the divine fecundity with respect to God himself must be in act, and hence there must be a plurality of persons in God [in act]. See Hayes, introduction, 36. According to Keane ("Ordo Bonitatis," 58) this position is quite different from that of Thomas for whom the goodness of God is seen as purely passive ad extra, becoming active only insofar as it is freely taken as goal for imitation by the divine will, which alone is efficient cause of creation.
14. Hayes, introduction, 47.
15. Hayes, "Bonaventure," 58.
16. Ilia Delio, Simply Bonaventure: an introduction to his life, thought, and writings (New York: New City Press, 2001), 54.
17. Edwards, God of Evolution, 30.
18. For background on the word kenosis see Sarah Coakley, "Kenosis: Theological Meanings and Gender Connotations," in Work of Love, 193-97. Hayes (introduction, 65) notes that for Bonaventure God communicates himself in history as he is in himself.
19. Itin. 6.3 (V, 311). Engl. trans. Ewert Cousins, Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Major Life of St. Francis (New York: Paulist, 1978), 105. Hereafter referred to as Bonaventure.
20. Keane, "Why Creation?," 116 - 17. Keane states that, for Bonaventure, "goodness is not only the source of created reality, the reason for and impulse toward creation, but also the substance, participated, of that creation-the order, beauty, substantiality of created being-and the goal or end of creation, the theophany that will mark creation's full achievement."
21. Haught, Science and Religion, 54.
22. John Haught, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 47 - 56.
23. Moltmann, God in Creation, 75 - 6.
24. Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Matthew O'Connell (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 194 - 95.
25. In the sixth chapter of his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (Itin. 6.5) Bonaventure describes the mystery of the Trinity in terms of opposites: first/last; eternal/present; simple/boundless; one/all inclusive, and then proceeds to show how the mystery of God as opposites in contained in Christ. See also Ewert Cousins, "The Coincidence of Opposites in the Christology of Saint Bonaventure," Franciscan Studies 28 (1968): 27 - 45.
26. Thomas O'Meara, Thomas Aquinas: Theologian (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,1997), 97.
27. Bonaventure's metaphysics of the good allows us to suggest that the dynamism of creation, emphasized today by theories of evolution and chaos, is not due to the inherent properties of nature but to the nature of God as fecund goodness and the source of reality. See Ewert H. Cousins, "God as Dynamic in Bonaventure and Contemporary Thought," American Catholic Philosophical Association 48 (1974): 136 - 48.
28. Keane, "Why Creation?," 119.