Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation Part III

My third reflection in this series on Saint Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God" focuses on chapters 3 & 4 and what appears to be a miscalculation which has led many astray by narrowing our notion of what constitutes a person.

After revealing how to "see" God in all that is around us, now in chapters 3 & 4, St Bonaventure challenges his own premise of writing this book, which is based on the revelation that Christ reveals, with a meandering into human reason tied to Plato and then adopted by St Augustine, as he gives thought to: What does it mean to be human? Or how might we best understand what a human being is? In this third step on the journey to God, St Bonaventure, consistent with St Augustine and Richard of St Victor, brings us to a precipice where he has us "reenter" ourselves. Bonaventure warns that there are risks, sighting how the mind, memory and intellect (the 3 powers we possess within ourselves) can obscure God, to the point of deception, saying that, "you will be able to see God through yourself as through an image, indeed, to see through a mirror darkly." [I Cor., 13, 12]

To grasp how treacherous a reentry can be check out this clip as the news commentator explains the degree of difficulty facing the crew and control center.

G. K. Chesterton observed how important it is to account for the trajectory (looking both ways) of an idea; "If some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness."  One only needs to see the sad reality of our personal and social world today to notice that we have made those huge blunders, due in part by our justification of a turn inward.  St Bonaventure's reentry by way of reason, following in the footsteps of St Augustine's notion of entering into yourself, inadvertently lent itself to what has turned out to be a bankrupt concept of what constitutes a "person" in the modern day world of psychology and counseling, thus emptying the reality of "personhood" revealed by Christ of its original grounding in dialogue and relationality.

In a 1990 article that appeared in Communio titled, "Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger writes:

"... God who is in dialogue, stimulated the concept 'person'... In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something super-added to the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation."

The article continues:

"I believe a profound illumination of God as well as man occurs here, the decisive illumination of what person must mean in terms of Scripture: not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being. The point is thus reached here at which there is a transition from the doctrine of God into Christology and into anthropology."

Cardinal Ratzinger continues:

"... if it is true, however, that Christ is not the ontological exception, if from his exceptional position he is, on the contrary, the fulfillment of the entire human being, then the Christological concept of person is an indication for theology of how person is to be understood as such... In Christ, in the man who is completely with God, human existence is not canceled, but comes to its highest possibility, which consists in transcending itself, ... Christ is the directional arrow, as it were, that indicates what being human tends toward... and implies "being on the way" in the manner of human history."

Romano Guardini’s observation in his book, "The End of the Modern World" is apropos bringing us back to revelation and 'a calling' that conquers reason and is analogous to St Bonaventure's meditation on St Francis receiving the stigmata on Mt Alverno:

With the coming of Christ man’s existence took on an earnestness which classical antiquity never knew simply because it had no way of knowing it. The earnestness did not spring from human maturity; it sprang from the call which each person received from God through Christ. With this call the person opened his eyes, he was awakened for the first time in his life.

In a presentation that my friend Gil Bailie made at the 2005 Vatican conference: The Call to Justice: The Legacy of Gaudium et spes 40 Years Later he shared this about Augustine's inward turn:

For all the confusion to which it inadvertently contributed, the saving feature of Augustine's (and Bonaventure's) inward turn was that, like Trinitarian interiority, it was premised on communal, not a self-contained subjectivity... Where Augustine (and Bonaventure) turned inward in order to find God, the Western thought turned inward in search of a self-sufficient source of knowledge, truth and identity.

The slippery slope of the inward turn, as it attempts to locate the concept of person at some place "in" the psychic inventory, has proven to be a major hurdle to what is the most essential, radical and counter-intuitive element in Trinitarian thought - the relationality of God revealed by Christ. Though both Augustine and Bonaventure fashioned 3 'powers' (memory, intelligence, and will) to the human mind paralleling the relation of the three Persons to the divine essence, their inward turn unfortunately brought with it an implosion and 'self-centeredness' that we in the Western world find ourselves buried under today.

Christ unveils self-sufficiency as a myth revealing humans as interdividuals like mosaics: we are beings that are fashioned in and by diverse relationships. The difference between the romantic myth of 'individual' and the anthropological revelation of 'interdividual' revealed by Christ is like the difference of someone hiding a light under (or in) a bushel versus someone placing a light on a stand. Another way of saying it is if you look at a stained glass window of an old cathedral from the street - from outside, you will only see pieces of dark glass held together by strips of black lead (the turn inward). But if you cross the threshold and view it from inside (embracing yourself as creature, God's instrument), allowing the light to shine through, you will see a breathtaking spectacle of colors and shapes.

The appropriate inward turn, revealed by Christ, provides an ever expanding view of God's love and sacrifice for us.  I thought this video clip apropos to help visualize the saving feature of Augustine's and Bonaventure's turn inward seeking God rather than conceiving of a subject as contained within itself.

The Journey of the Mind to God was born out of Bonaventure's meditation on the stigmata of St Francis. Bonaventure saw the imprinting of the wounds of the Crucified on St Francis as his union with Christ - a final emptying or dying of his self - thus like St Paul, he could say: "With Christ I am nailed to the Cross. It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me." [Gal. 2:20]

So the seeking of God through yourself is not about any self-help, self-love, self-esteem or self sufficiency, rather, reentry is the sacrifice of the very self we cling to "revealing your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." [Col. 3:3-4]

 I re-post Bonaventure's words as he meditated on St Francis receiving the stigmata:

Living for the "SOMETHING GREATER"

If you should ask how these things come about,

question grace, not instruction;

desire, not intellect;

the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study;

the Bridegroom, not the teacher;

God, not man;

darkness, not clarity;

not light, but the wholly fire

which inflames and carries you aloft to God

with fullest unction and burning affection.

This fire is God,

and the furnace of this fire leads to Jerusalem;

and Christ the man kindles it

in the fervor of His burning Passion,

which he alone truly perceives who says,

"My soul chooses hanging and my bones death" [Job, 7, 15].

He who chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true:

"Man shall not see me and live" [Exod., 33, 20].

Let us then die and pass over into darkness;

let us impose silence

upon our cares, our desires, and our phantasms (imaginings).

Let us pass over with the crucified Christ

from this world to the Father [John, 13, 1],

so that when the Father is shown to us

we may say with Philip:

"It is enough for us" [John, 14, 8];

let us hear with Paul:

"My grace is sufficient for thee" [II Cor., 12, 9];

let us exult with David, saying:

"My flesh and my heart have grown faint; Thou art the God of my heart, and portion forever" [Ps. 73, 26].

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say:

So be it, so be it! Amen! Hallelujah!" [Ps., 106, 48].