Bonaventure's Itinerarium: A Respondeo

I would like to begin by thanking Gregory LaNave for his analysis of Bonaventure's Itinerarium. His interpretation has helped me clarify my own understanding of that rich text. I would also like to thank the editors of Franciscan Studies who invited this response. It focuses on LaNave's misreading of "symbolic theology," his own "scientific" interpretation of the Itinerarium, and the relationship between scientific and symbolic theology as explained by Bonaventure. Accordingly, I divide my response into three parts: (1) Clarifying the Meaning of Symbolic Theology, (2) Critique of Dr. LaNave's Analysis, and (3) Scientific and Symbolic Theology.

Clarifying the Meaning of Symbolic Theology

In Divine and Created Order in Bonaventure's Theology,¹ I employ the term "symbolic theology" to help the modern reader approach and appreciate Bonaventure's profuse use of symbols in the Itinerarium.² Dr. LaNave acknowledges that such an accommodation is valuable: "The symbolic reading of Bonaventure has undoubted merits, not least of which is its attempts to do justice to his deft use of an array of symbols in his theology."³

In my "attempts to do justice" to the ubiquitous symbols throughout the Itinerarium, I describe "symbolic theology" in two ways. First, I claim that Bonaventure:

does not employ symbols to prove anything, rather, he resorts to the effusive nature of symbols to demonstrate ineffable mysteries that elude easy description … symbolic thinking, in its most authentic form, is not a second-best mode of grasping reality but a penetration of its most profound metaphysical structure and dynamics.⁴

LaNave seems to have two concerns. On the one hand, since symbols do not "prove anything" he deems them as rather inadequate in describing metaphysical realities. For LaNave, symbols can not be "merely symbolic" if "they are in fact ways to penetrate the real metaphysical structure of the realities in question."⁵ The "merely" points to the need for something more, which LaNave identifies as the "objectivity of sensation"⁶ according to the "canons of a scientific theology (in the Aristotelian sense),"⁷ In effect, he emphasizes by a threefold repetition that the "objectivity of sensation" can better examine "what is really there."⁸ It seems that symbols are less equipped for such a task.⁹

On the other hand, LaNave's contrast of "symbolic" with "scientific" seems to confuse what I identified as a general characteristic ("symbolic theology")¹⁰ for the actual methodology I employed to analyze the Itinerarium: an analysis of the analogical triads produced by the threefold method of doubling.¹¹ Like LaNave, I base my interpretation upon the dialectic of seeing God through and in a mirror (Itin. 1.5).¹² Hence, I disagree that I employ a "symbolic approach to theology." Rather, my approach primarily examines the text's analogical triads.

Second, I also comment, "Bonaventure uses symbols to provide the imagination with powerful images with which one may ponder the deepest and highest levels of knowing."¹³ As an example, I provide the two symbols of the Seraph (height) and Temple (depth) from Isaiah 6:1-2.¹⁴ However, LaNave does not comment on this second description of Bonaventure's "symbolic theology." Instead he states:

the mystery revealed in any such symbol points to the whole of the mystery, never to any one part in isolation. For example, one may speak about creation and its relationship to the single creative activity of the Creator; but one must at the same time know that Creator to be the Trinity, and see the analogous presence of the Trinity in the creature. Analytical thinking might try to separate these elements; symbolic thinking always strives to see them implied in each other.¹⁵

To justify his claim, he cites pages 228-29 of Divine and Created Order.¹⁶ These pages do not treat or even mention "symbolic theology." Rather, they explain the terms principium, primum, and primitas, and their relation to the notion of ordo. These three terms concern foundational concepts that shape the ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology of Bonaventure's theology. In effect, LaNave correctly identifies the most important principles of my analysis...