Book Review: Commentary on the Sentences: Philosophy of God. Works of St. Bonaventure, Volume XVI

Abstract

Commentary on the Sentences: Philosophy of God. Works of St. Bonaventure, Volume XVI. Bonaventure Texts in Translation Series. Translation, introduction, and notes by R. E. Houser and Timothy B. Noone. Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 2013. Ixxii + 344 pp. $49.95 (paper).This volume presents annotated translations of selections from books 1 and 3 of Saint Bonaventure's Commentary on the Sentences. Bonaventure wrote his Commentary on Peter Lombards Sentences from 1250 to 1252 and revised it after becoming a Master of Theology. It remained his major philosophical and theological work. In these selections he discusses the nature and knowledge of God, drawing extensively on the philosophy of his day, particularly Aristotle's categories.The volume begins with an excellent introduction by editors R. E. Houser and Timothy B. Noone, which sketches the life and career of Bonaventure and gives an overview of his intellectual context. The editors briefly explain Bonaventure's understanding of the relationship of faith and reason, then summarize and comment upon the chief arguments in his attempt to develop an understanding of God on the model of an Aristotelian science. In addition to this well-written and informative introduction, Bonaventure's texts are excellently annotated, so that the reader has ready access to information on his sources, summations of his key arguments, and an understanding of the intellectual heritage upon which he drew.Topic 1 discusses the subject of the book, the relationship of faith to scientific knowledge, and the nature of faith as a form of knowledge. Bonaventure uses his method of reduction, tracing sense objects back to their first cause in God, to argue that God is the subject of this book, as the principle to which everything can be reduced. Christ, as the integral whole, is the subject to which all conclusions are reduced. The subject as a universal whole is the object of belief. With the aid of philosophical reasoning, Bonaventure seeks to make this object more intelligible, thus taking up Anselm's program of theology as faith seeking understanding.Topic 2 discusses whether God can be known. For Bonaventure, people are wayfarers, who in this life can only have a partial knowledge of God. This will be perfected with the coming of the eschaton. In regards to knowledge of God, reason can clarify the knowledge of faith so that it becomes wisdom, but reason remains dependent upon faith. Topic 3 treats philosophical arguments for the existence of God and introduces a crucial distinction in Bonaventure's metaphysics between the simplicity of God and the nature of creation as a mixture of being and non-being. …