Trinitarian Perspectives in the Franciscan Theological Tradition

Part I: Bonaventure’s Trinitarian Theology

16 Part I: Bonaventure’s Trinitarian Theology Eastern and Western Trinitarian Theologies Much of Bonaventure’s highly developed trinitarian theology is arguably about God in Godself, i.e., about the precosmic and eternal processions, relations, and unity within the inner life of God. This had been part of the scholastic theology that was done at the University of Paris, especially by Thomas Aquinas, during Bonaventure’s lifetime in the thirteenth century. However, Bonaventure’s theology is not just about God in Godself; this would have led to an understanding of the Trinity that is locked up within itself and unrelated to us and all of creation.17 The Seraphic Doctor strives to understand all of God’s activity in the world as the work of the Trinity; that is, creation, Incarnation, redemption, 17 This Augustinian-Thomistic trinitarian theology has dominated in the Western Church (the Catholic and Protestant Churches) to the extent that the doctrine of the Trinity became divorced from the other Christian teachings such as Christology, soteriology (theology of salvation), theological anthropology, ethics, spirituality, and the doctrine of creation. Karl Rahner’s lament is often repeated in trinitarian discourse that the whole doctrine of the Trinity could be eliminated “as false [and] the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.” Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970), 11. Walter Kasper is another theologian who thinks we should reunite the doctrine of the Trinity with its Christological origins. Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1984). 17 sanctification, and salvation are the work of the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. He does not separate his understanding of who God is as a Trinity of Persons from these central Christian teachings. It is on the basis of what Christ revealed in history, especially that God is infinitely overflowing love, that Bonaventure then speculates on the inner life of God and contemplates why God is three Persons: God is tri-Personal because God is love and interpersonal relationship is necessary for the perfection of love. The centrality of God’s love is at the heart of all Franciscan theology and all Franciscan insight. The love of God sets Francis ablaze in following Christ, and this love permeates his whole life and radiates beyond himself to generations of followers. A follower of Francis himself, Bonaventure never loses sight of the central truth of God’s love for us and it resonates in all his theology, no matter how speculative or philosophically sophisticated it becomes. Bonaventure’s approach to discussing the Trinity is, for the most part, to begin with the person of the Father, rather than with the divine “substance” or divine being. To begin with the divine substance is a somewhat more abstract and impersonal approach. A “substance” may be defined as “a thing in itself.” A “person” may be defined as “one toward another.” This is the way that Augustine and Thomas begin their trinitarian discourses, and then they proceed to discuss the divine persons as mutual and opposite relations within the Godhead. It is important at the outset that we recognize this difference between beginning with the Father and beginning with the notion of substance. To be “personal” is to be essentially capable of relationship. To start talking about the Trinity in terms of personhood, rather than substance, is immediately to say that relationality is the nature of God, that the nature of God is love. While almost the entire Western Church understood the doctrine of the Trinity in terms of “substance,” is it any wonder that the Franciscan would gravitate to an 18 understanding of the Trinity that starts with interpersonal love? Bonaventure’s starting point of relationality immediately places him in continuity with the Eastern approach to Trinitarian theology. Whereas the Latin Western theology begins with the divine substance, Eastern Orthodox theology or Cappadocian trinitarian theology also begins with the Father. Now considered the classic difference between the Greek and Latin models of the Trinity, these generalizations were devised by Theodore de Régnon18 over a hundred years ago. Besides the question of starting points, the models offer different emphases: the Greek model emphasizes personhood more than substance and trineness more than unity, while the Latin model emphasizes the divine substance more than personhood and unity more than trineness. This starting point of relationality, which Bonaventure shares with the Greek tradition, has...