Care of Souls and the Rhetoric of Moral Theology in Bonaventure and Thomas, The

Part 3 Bonaventure's Moral Pedagogy in the Collationes in Hexa

Part 3 Bonaventure's Moral Pedagogy in the Collationes in Hexaëmeron I ended my depiction of the Summa by suggesting a contrast between the presuppositions of Bonaventure's structure and the presuppositions of Thomas'. I said that while Thomas proceeds more confidently as a moral theologian than as an interpreter of philosophical morality, he never surrenders the Aristotelian conviction that all moral discourse labors under strict limitations. It is limited by the inevitable distance between general formulations and the concrete circumstances of action, as by its own separation from other parts of philosophy. There is more. Moral discourse is decisively limited by the historical darkness of original sin and by the disparity between our natural capacities and the happiness that God offers in grace. These limitations are summed for Thomas in a scepticism about the capacity of moral language to capture its object. The scepticism expresses itself in Thomas' insistence on keeping a plurality of technical terminologies for moral matters, in his refusal to treat disagreements about moral questions as instances of bad faith, and in his willingness to leave certain important parts of moral discourse incomplete. 48 / Mark Jordan I turn now from this picture of Thomas' moral discourse to Bonaventure's last and most remarkable experiment in moral construction. It provides in its structure an alternative to Thomas' negative theology of moral life. 1. The Intention of the Collationes There is some doubt about the exact title of Bonaventure's experiment. Two likely titles are Collationes in Hexaëmeron (or Conferences on the Account of Creation) and the Illuminationes Ecclesiae (or Illuminations of the Church). There is much less doubt about the circumstances of its composition. Bonaventure delivered these conferences or collations in the Spring of 1273 at the Franciscan house in Paris. They were preserved as sets of notes taken by some of those listening. One long set of notes may have become something like an official transcript of the proceedings.91 Another, shorter set of notes has also been preserved; it claims for itself strict fidelity.92 The comparison of the two versions is important for any reading of Bonaventure's moral teaching. (It is certain that the short notes articulate more precisely Bonaventure's structural intentions). Bonaventure was prevented from completing the series of conferences by his elevation—or exile—to the College of Cardinals. We must regret the incompleteness of the Collations just as bitterly as we regret the incompletion of Thomas' Summa. We must be glad in both cases that we can see at least something of the magisterial design of the whole work. 91 See the editors' remarks in the Quaracchi Opera omnia 5:xxxvi-xli and 10:11, as well as Jacques-Guy Bougerol, O.F.M., Introduction, 185-188. 92 Ferdinand M. Delorme, O.F.M., S. Bonaventurae Collationes in Hexaëmeron (Quaracchi, 1934). Bonaventure's in the Collationes in Hexaëmeron/ / 49 Much has been made of the intellectual tumult in the University of Paris at the moment that Bonaventure began his conferences. Conflicts between the Faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Arts had been been growing in intellectual violence for years. Some of them were now expressed as a contest between proponents and opponents of certain Christian uses of Aristotle. Thomas had been recalled from Italy to Paris, in the middle of writing the Summa, partly to defend the commitment to the qualified use of Aristotle that was increasingly associated with him. Bonaventure's Collations are often construed as the statement of the opposing position—the critique of naive appropriations of Aristotle, the rehabilitation of the Augustinian appropriation of Plato.93 There are certainly many passages in the Collations that treat of Aristotelian errors; there are many other passages that assert the limitation of even the best pagan philosophy.94 Yet to say that the Collations were delivered in order to attack heterodox Aristotelianism is to reduce and even to caricature the intention evident in them. We often abuse works in this way, by ignoring what they intend and using little bits of them as evidence for our historical narratives. Scholars scour the Collations in search of information about the Parisian conflicts of the 1260s and 1270s. 93 See, e.g., Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), pp. 404-405; Joseph Ratzinger, Die Geshichtstheologie des heiligen Bonaventura (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1959) pp. 136-161; Bougerol...