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THE SCHOOLMEN In Bonaventure’s writing, as in Grosseteste’s, the notion of light plays a central role There are four diVerent lights that illumine the soul The Wrst, inferior, light consists in mechanical skill This appears to be ‘light’ only in metaphor Next, there is the light of sense-perception: and here we go beyond metaphor Each sense is a recipient of light at a diVerent degree of intensity: sight takes it in pure, hearing takes it in mixed with air, taste takes it in mixed with Xuid, and so on Thirdly, there is the light that guides us in the search of intellectual truth: this light illumines the three domains of philosophy: logic, physics, and ethics Finally, the supreme light enables the mind to understand saving truth: this is the light of Scripture Like Augustine, Bonaventure is fond of number symbolism, and he points out that if one counts each branch of philosophy as a separate light, then the number of these lights adds up to six, which corresponds to the six days of creation ‘There are in this life six illuminations, and each has its twilight, for all science will be destroyed: for that reason too there follows a seventh day of rest, a day which knows no evening, the illumination of glory’ (PMA 461–7) Only in another life, when the blessed see God face to face, will the human mind be directly acquainted with the eternal reasons, the Ideas in the mind of God But in the present life we acquire knowledge of necessary and eternal truths through their reXected light, just as our eyes see everything by the light of the sun though they cannot look on the sun itself We acquire knowledge of a kind through the senses and experience, but the created light of the human intellect is not suYcient to reach any certainty about things To attain the real truth about anything whatever we need in addition a special divine illumination (II Sent 30 1; Sermo IV 10 V) Knowledge and faith can reside alongside each other in the same person.1 Bonaventure is familiar with the work of Aristotle, but he engages with him principally in order to refute his errors It was impossible, he thought, to accept both that the world was created and that it had existed from all eternity: accordingly, he proposed a series of arguments, similar to those used by Philoponus and the Kalam theologians, to prove that the world had a beginning in time (II Sent 1 1–3) Bonaventure accepted Aristotle’s distinction between the agent and the receptive intellect but Bonaventure’s teaching on the relation between faith and reason is described in more detail below in Ch 62
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