Bonaventure's Theory of Resemblance

BONAVENTURE'S THEORY OF RESEMBLANCE By PHILIP L. REYNOLDS In what ways can two different things be alike? One way, which is perhaps the easiest to explain, involves the sharing of a common nature, or tertium quid, such that two different things are the same in a certain respect. For example, Socrates and Plato are alike in being human, cats and dogs are alike in being animals, and swans and snow are alike in being white. Scholastic theologians believed that no creature could be like God in this way, whether in this life or in the next. In a strict sense, in their view, God and creatures have nothing in common, for God has no accidental qualities to share and does not belong to any genus. Nevertheless, God created human beings "to our image and likeness" (Gen. 1:26); the heavens "tell of the glory of God, and the firmament declares the work of his hands" (Ps. 18:1); the Creator is seen and known through "the greatness of beauty and of creation" (Wisd. of Sol. 13:5); and Christians hope that as children of God they will be "like him," when they see God as he is (1 John 3:2). Thus Bonaventure (ca. 1217-1274) observes: "because a cause is reflected in its effect, and the wisdom of a craftsman is made manifest in his work, therefore God, who is the craftsman and cause of created things, is known through them."1 Clearly, the theologian must posit other modes of resemblance. Bonaventure characterizes resemblance through the sharing of a common nature as univocal. He posits two other modes, which he characterizes as analogical. I shall refer to the analogical modes as relational and simple resemblance respectively. Relational resemblance involves an identity or equivalence of relations, such that A is like C inasmuch as A is to B as C is to D. For example, a sailor is like a teacher inasmuch as a sailor is to a ship as a teacher is to the schools.2 Again, the water of baptism is like the 1 Bonaventure, In I Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2, resp. (1:72a): "Dicendum, quod, quia relucet causa in effectu, et sapientia artificis manifestatur in opere, ideo Deus, qui est artifex et causa creaturae, per ipsam cognoscitur." References to Bonaventure's works in this paper, unless otherwise stated, are to the Opera omnia edited in ten volumes by the Fathers of the Collegium S. Bonaventurae (Quaracchi, 1882-1902). For this paper, I have drawn exclusively on works edited or composed while Bonaventure was regent master of the Franciscan Studium in Paris, especially Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarium magistri Petri Lombardi (1254-56), Quaestiones disputatae de scientia Christi (1254), and Breviloquium (1256-57). 2 In I Sent., d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, resp. (1:443a): "sicut modus regendi communis est nautae ad regendam navem, et doctoris ad regendas scholas, quia uterque debet esse non sorte, 220traditio grace that it confers, for just as water cleanses the body, so grace cleanses the soul.3 In simple resemblance, one thing simply is a likeness of another thing. Bonaventure characterizes the three modes numerically, thus: univocal resemblance is agreement or participation in a third thing (in tertio); relational resemblance is agreement between two things and two other things (duorum ad duo); and simple resemblance is agreement between one thing and another (unius ad unum).4 The non-univocal, analogous modes do not necessarily entail a common nature, and they can and do obtain between God and creatures. Although God and creatures have no nature or absolute reality in common, they can be said to have something analogous in common.5 Simple resemblance, according to Bonaventure, is the likeness that is essentially implicated in exemplarity (whereby a creature imitates God as its archetype) and in the ordination of something to God as to its end. Relational resemblance too has some role in exemplarity and teleology, but a subsidiary one. The three modes form the basis of Bonaventure's theory of resemblance, which one might call his "homeology." (There is some precedent for the term in the biological sciences.) Although Bonaventure uses terms such as "analogous...