Next, as to the illumination of mechanical art, which is concerned with the production of the works of craft. Herein likewise may be observed analogies with the light from Holy Scripture, which reveals the Word, the order of living, and the union of God and the soul. No creature proceeds from the great Artificer, save through the Word; and the human artificer works to produce a beautiful, useful, and enduring work; which corresponds to the Scriptural order of living. Each human artificer makes his work that it may bring him praise or use or delight; as God made the rational soul, to praise and serve and take delight in Him, through love.
By similar methods of reasoning Bonaventura next “reduces,” or leads back, Logic, and Natural and Moral Philosophy to the ways and purposes of Theology, and shows how “the multiform wisdom of God, which is set forth lucidly by Scripture, lies hidden in every cognition, and in every nature. It is also evident that all kinds of knowledge minister to Theology; and that Theology takes illustrations, and uses phrases, pertaining to every kind of knowledge (cognitionis). It is also plain how ample is the illuminating path, and how in every thing that is sensed or perceived, God himself lies concealed.”[549]
Ways of reasoning change, while conclusions sometimes endure. Bonaventura’s reasoning in the above treatise is for us abstruse and fanciful; yet many will agree with the conclusion, that all kinds of knowledge may minister to our thought of God, and of man’s relationship to Him. And with Bonaventura, all his knowledge, his study of secular philosophy, his logic and powers of presentation, had theology unfailingly in view, and ministered to the satisfaction, the actualization (to use our old word) of his religious nature. He belongs among those intellectually gifted men—Augustine, Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor—whose mental and emotional powers draw always to God, and minister to the conception of the soul’s union with the living spring of its being. The life, the labours of Bonaventura were as the title of the little book we have just been worrying with, a reductio artium ad theologiam, a constant adapting of all knowledge and ways of meditation, to the sense of God and the soul’s inclusion in the love divine. No one should expect to find among his compositions any independent treatment of secular knowledge for its own sake. Rather throughout his writings the reasonings of philosophy are found always ministering to the sovereign theme.
The most elaborate of Bonaventura’s doctrinal works was his Commentary upon the Lombard’s Sentences. In form and substance it was a Summa theologiae.[550] He also made a brief and salutary theological compend, which he called the Breviloquium.[551] The note of devotional piety is struck by the opening sentence, taken from the Epistle to the Ephesians, and is held throughout the work:
“‘I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled in all the fulness of God.’ The great doctor of the Gentiles discloses in these words the source, progress, and state (ortus, progressus, status) of Holy Scripture, which is called Theology; indicating that the source is to be thought upon according to the grace (influentiam) of the most blessed Trinity; the progress with reference to the needs of human capacity; and the state or fruit with respect to the superabundance of a superplenary felicity.
“For the Source lies not in human investigation, but in divine revelation, which flows from the Father of lights, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, from whom, through His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit flows in us; and through the Holy Spirit bestowing, as He wills, gifts on each, faith is given, and through faith Christ dwells in our hearts. This is the knowledge of Jesus Christ, from which, as from a source, comes the certitude and understanding of the whole Scripture. Wherefore it is impossible that any one should advance in its knowledge, unless he first has Christ infused in him....
“The Progress of Holy Scripture is not bound to the laws of reasonings and definitions, like the other sciences; but, conformably to supernatural light, proceeds to give to man the wayfarer (homini viatori) a knowledge of things sufficing for his salvation, by plain words in part, and in part mystically: it presents the contents of the universe as in a Summa, in which is observed the breadth; it describes the descent (from above) in which is considered the length; it describes the goodness of the saved, in which is considered the height; it describes the misery of the damned, in which consists the depth not only of the universe itself but of the divine judgment....
“The State or fruit of Holy Scripture is the plentitude of eternal felicity. For the Book containing words of eternal life was written not only that we might believe, but that we might have eternal life, in which we shall see, we shall love, and all our desires shall be filled, whereupon we shall know the love which passeth knowledge, and be filled in all the fulness of God....
“As to the progress of Scripture, first is to be considered the breadth, which consists in the multitude of parts.... Rightly is Holy Scripture divided into the Old and New Testament, and not in theorica and practica, like philosophy; because since Scripture is founded on the knowledge of faith, which is a virtue and the basis of morals, it is not possible to separate in Scripture the knowledge of things, or of what is to be believed, from the knowledge of morals. It is otherwise with philosophy, which handles not only the truth of morals, but the true, speculatively considered. Then as Holy Scripture is knowledge (notitia) moving to good and recalling from evil, through fear and love, so it is divided into two Testaments, whose difference, briefly, is fear and love....
“Holy Scripture has also length, which consists in the description of times and ages from the beginning to the day of Judgment.... The progress of the whole world is described by Scripture, as in a beautiful poem, wherein one may follow the descent of time, and contemplate the variety, manifoldness, equity, order, righteousness, and beauty of the multitude of divine judgments proceeding from the wisdom of God ruling the world: and as with a poem, so with this ordering of the world, one cannot see its beauty save by considering the whole....