Where Have You Hidden, Beloved?

I've been a bit busy of late working on my dissertation, teaching, and making videos; I have a few things I want to soon write upon for the blog, but the inspiration has not been there just yet.

For this week, I thought I would provide one of my spirituality-related videos, and the one which has had the most positive response by its viewers. The song by John Michael Talbot, based upon a poem of St John of the Cross, is about the longing of the soul for Christ.

Alexander Men Quote

Today's world crisis shows that there is no future for hostility, or defensive isolationism, or eclecticism, but that dialogue can be fruitful for all participants. The followers of the religions of the world have something to say to mankind. Christianity brings the gospels, its service, its love. Of course, it is not so easy to learn tolerance and openness while remaining true to one's fundamental principles. Christians, though, have never thought that spiritual life was an easy matter, but rather an ascetic and heroic deed. The whole earth now needs this deed. On the eve of the two thousandth anniversary of the foundation of the Christian church, the world has reached a critical frontier. That is why dialogue has become not a luxury for intellectuals but a necessity of life.

---Alexander Men, "Christianity: The Universal Vision," in Christianity For the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Elizabeth Roberts and Ann Shukman (New York: Continuum, 1996).

Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part II)

III. Trinity and History[i]




Theological thought about the progression of history had been taking place in Christendom at least since the time of Augustine. However, in Bonaventure’s age, there was no theologian of history as influential and controversial as Joachim of Fiore. The abbot Joachim borrowed from Augustine’s analysis of history the scheme of the seven ages corresponding to the seven days of creation. But he broke with Augustine insofar as, for Joachim, the seventh and final age takes place in history, rather than beyond it in eternity. The sixth age is marked by the passion of Christ, and the seventh is the age of the Spirit and of a worldly, contemplative peace.

For Joachim, history and the cosmos exhibit an essentially Trinitarian structure. The procession of history is the milieu in which the interpersonal relationships of God are reflected. The seven ages, like the Trinity, have “inner relations that give history an organic dynamic and character of its own.”[ii] Thus, because of the Trinitarian relations, history takes the shape it does.

The abbot divides his account between multiple patterns within history: most notably the
“prima diffinitio” and the “secunda diffinitio.”[iii] The prima diffinitio is the pattern of three unfolded in the social structures of the church that progress through the ages. Each of three ages is characteristically associated with a social vocation (married life, clergy, and monasticism) and a Person of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively). In the final age, the age of the Spirit, the climax of history will issue in the perfect communion of spiritual men in an order of monks, living in contemplative peace. The goal of which is a society that in its communitarian love, images the Trinity socially.

The secunda diffinitio begins with two tempora of history (Old and New Testaments) beginning with Adam to the end of history, dividing the periods at Christ, who stands between as the turning point. The perfection of the New Testament time, as with the third age of the prima diffinitio, is found in a world dominated by the “viri spirituales” who derive from both periods (essentially monastics). The Trinity is exhibited in this second schema insofar as each tempora is formed by the double procession of the Holy Spirit: the first (Old Testament) from the Father’s sending of the Spirit; the second (New Testament) from the Son’s sending of the Spirit. Here, one can see that the image is imperfect, because the spiration in the immanent Trinity is one and eternal from Father and Son together. But as some scholars like E. Randolph Daniel argues, the final age for Joachim can be considered Christ’s insofar as the Spirit (who is unquestionably the dominant player in it) perfects the mystical body of Christ by uniting the various orders within the Church into a plurality in unity, thus forming the perfect image of the Trinity.[iv] In any case, one can see that for Joachim, the Spirit plays the primary role in revealing the Trinity within history: “As one who is sent by two, he could complete the self-revelation of God within history.”[v] And as the one who forms the viri spirituales, he can be seen to function with a primacy in the ascent of man and history to God. The Son, on the other hand, marks a turning point in the process of history, and rather than fully express the Trinity in His Person, He cannot Himself come to full expression in History until the Spirit completes His mystical body in the final age.

For Bonaventure, history and the cosmos exhibit a much more Christocentric structure. But as I mean to show: they are Trinitarian just insofar as they exhibit the Son. Daniel argues that Bonaventure breaks definitively with Augustine’s approach to history, and adopts a theory that closely resembles Joachim’s secunda diffinitio.[vi] Indeed, such an argument is convincing, and even Bernard McGinn suggests that Bonaventure, despite his criticism of the Joachite Trinitarian views (not insignificant for this discussion), displays an “original rethinking of the Joachite tradition” which fused “Joachite eschatology, Franciscan spirituality, and Scholastic passion for order.”[vii] Bonaventure’s two major influences with regard to his theology of history are no doubt Augustine and Joachim, and the degree to which each impacted his thought is difficult to fully realize. He follows Augustine in adopting the seven-day structure[viii]; he follows Joachim in 1) restricting the seventh age to an eschaton realized within history; 2) seeing the process of history in light of a Trinitarian exemplar; and 3) views the final age as one of a contemplative peace brought about through “spiritual understanding.”[ix]

Yet, unlike Joachim, Bonaventure’s account is unapologetically Christocentric. The whole of the world’s history is oriented to and centered on the Incarnation of the Son. Christ is the “center” of Scripture, time, and history: and therefore the consummation of everything within the course of the cosmos is found in Christ. Thus, the cosmos itself is brought to the completion of its creation only through its relationship to the Incarnation: “The first principle acting as restorer brought about the final completion of the universe.”[x] Here one can see the principle of the Son’s exemplarity, and the world’s dynamism through Him, shaping the relation of history to God.

We have seen that just as the Son contains within Himself the actuality of all creaturely perfections, both the world and the individual soul find their consummation in and through the Son. Because of this, scholars like Daniel and Delio have argued that one must view Bonaventure’s theology of history in the light of the mystical ascent of the Itinerarium. As Daniel has held, the Itinerarium is essentially a commentary on the theology of history found in the Hexaemeron (even though it predates it by 14 years).[xi] From the union in Christ of all worldly perfection, both whole and individual, God establishes a relationship of the soul to the world: the soul is a “microcosm” of the world, because both are ordered to Christ as the center.[xii] The destinies of the soul and of history intertwine, and can be seen in light of each other. One can see the structural similarities: in the journey of the soul, one ascends through six levels of purification and illumination (wings of the seraph) before the mystical peace that is union with Christ, while history flows through six ages (six days) before the seventh age of mystical peace; the soul’s ascent is to Christ, the Son, crucified before the believer, while history lusts for Christ as the fulfillment of all time; and the progress of the soul’s ascent is marked by levels of knowledge issuing in a love that exceeds knowledge, while the peace of the seventh age will be marked by a transition from knowledge to “spiritual understanding.” As Delio notes: “Because the journey of the soul recapitulates the journey of the world, Bonaventure indicates that both the soul and the world are destined for spiritual marriage with Christ.”[xiii]

Thus, for Bonaventure, the destiny of history is essentially Christocentric but also essentially mystical. It is the ascent of the spiritual men in Christ that ushers in the final age and thus facilitates the fulfillment of time. But while following Joachim in emphasizing the contemplative nature of the final age, Bonaventure reinterprets the concept of the viri spirituales: for Joachim, the peace of the seventh age comes by way of a future order (or orders) of contemplatives sent by God into time, which he associates with the angel of the sixth seal from Revelation 7: 2; for Bonaventure, the spiritual man is in fact Francis. Thus, the inhabitant of the final age of mystical peace is the poor mendicant who was struck with the stigmata and taken into holy ecstasy. This means that, in light of the overpowering spiritual influence of Francis, Bonaventure’s “spiritual man” is a state realizable now, not in a future age.[xiv] The seventh age takes on a parallel place in history, not a successive one. Francis, in his wounds and his exemplary Christian life, shows that the final age of mystical peace is attainable in the present. Thus, one’s mode of access to this state is not one’s place in a divinely ordained monastic order, or waiting on a future action of the Holy Spirit, but mystical union with the crucified Christ. Here, Bonaventure’s novelty is recognizable: he goes beyond Joachim in attributing the attainment of the future age to a mystical union with the Son. This, as shown in Francis’ spirituality, meets the criteria set out by Bonaventure’s Trinitarian meditations: that one’s progression toward God will be marked with an essential Christocentric element.

Because union with God (as union with Christ) becomes the hermeneutic through which the process of history comes to fulfillment, and because it also marks the immediacy of the final age for spiritual men (such as Francis), the progression of both the soul and history will be realized in the image of Christ: in other words, the signs of such progression become the signs of conformity to the crucified Christ. The perfection of the final age is no longer simply an image of a social Trinity (as with Joachim), but rather the comprehensive conforming of oneself to the Cross of Christ: meaning also the embodiment of God’s love unto death, and even the physical sign of the stigmata (which the age of the Spirit cannot itself usher in). Body and spirit are joined to Christ, and the final age is now marked by the suffering humanity of Christ. The glory of history is reinterpreted as crucifixion with Christ, just as in the Itinerarium the final stage is an ecstatic love only achieved through abandoning oneself to the Cross of Christ.[xv] All of these examples exhibit what occurs for Bonaventure’s spiritual man: such signs show one’s re-orientation in the image of Christ.

It is the concept of the image that, for Delio, marks the underlying difference between Joachim and Bonaventure. For Joachim the revelation of the Trinity in history is exhausted in the community of spiritual men and does not depend upon a fundamental Christocentricity. For Bonaventure, any image of the Trinity can only truly come by way of the image of the Son. As was shown earlier, the Son is given primacy not only as exemplar (all return through Christ) but also as the expression of the Trinity. While the vestiges of the Trinity abound in the world, not even these can ultimately be taken or understood apart from the infinite expression of the Son, and in the end the Trinity is only perfectly revealed by and in the Son. “The appearance of Christ in the final age means the realization of the kingdom; unity in the body of Christ, who is in union with the Father, will bring all those united to Him into the oneness of the Father and Son.”[xvi]

Thus, as noted earlier, the two functions of the Son as exemplar and expression shape the progress of history toward its destiny as well as the revelation of the Trinity within history. The former constitutes the necessarily mystical character of the cosmos as it moves toward its fulfillment in Christ, while the latter establishes the centrality of Christ (even Christ crucified) as the truest image of the Trinity in history. One can argue that these two, as united in Christ, are themselves intertwined: one can only come to the fullest revelation of the Trinity that comes by Christ when one is in ascent toward Christ, remade in the image of Christ, and thus mystically united to Him (since union with Christ is also union with the Father and Spirit to whom He is united, beyond any “knowledge”).[xvii] One might argue that the truest revelation of the Trinity as Trinity within history is found only in one’s participation in the destiny of that history: Christ reveals the Trinity all the more in uniting us to “It,” by uniting us to Himself (even on the Cross). Ultimately, the Christocentric character of history and the cosmos can only end in union not just with Christ (who is the rightful exemplar), but with the entire Trinity, thus revealing even more the Trinitarian structure of history.

In the end, (as Delio argues convincingly), and as I’ve attempted to show, the different accounts of history found in Joachim and Bonaventure respectively derive from two distinct understandings of the Trinity. Delio suggests that while Joachim employs a fundamentally Augustinian conception of the Trinity and views history as “a multi-dimensional pattern of relationships that reaches its consummation in perfect unity-in-diversity,” it is Bonaventure’s preference for the eastern model and the self-diffusive Good that allows him to view Christ as the mediator between Father and Spirit and the center of history, “the center of emanation and return in creation.” She concludes: “The two distinct theologies of the Trinity, therefore, may give rise to two distinct eschatologies, one prophetic in nature and Trinitarian in image, the other mystical in nature and Christoformic in image.”[xviii] Bonaventure’s account of the Trinity allows not only for the expression of the Trinity as Trinity externally, but also allows for the Son’s unique place as the mediator of that revelation. And this function of the Son is united in Christ with His role as exemplar of creation, producing an intriguing complementary relationship between the soul’s (and history’s) ascent to God (in Christ) and the revelation of Triunity (in Christ). It is this interplay that seemingly protects Bonaventure’s “eastern” account of the Trinity from being overly economic in nature, such that problems of subordinationism and tri-theism would become problematic. For there is no pure “diffusion” of the three Persons in history to the human intellect, no unqualified revelation. For Bonaventure, any revelation of Trinity in the economy, in a sense open to metaphysical speculations and judgments, is always continuously purified and surpassed until they are succeeded altogether by the paradigm of union. Because Christ is both telos of creaturely ascent and expression of the divine, there is no revelation of the Trinity that does not accompany a transformation in the receiver via union, in love that surpasses knowledge. Thus, the preference for the economic (as three) does not exclude or disregard an understanding of the immanent Trinity, but is only ever revealed in/through the believer’s mystical ascent: because the milieu in which revelation occurs is always in a world and to a soul that are both already dynamically progressing toward God the Son (in their very being). Thus the Trinity’s economic revelation cannot be seen outside of the mystical progress of men towards God, and ultimately, cannot be properly conceived apart from the “burning love of the crucified.”


[i] For this section, I am greatly indebted to the work of Ilia Delio in her “From Prophecy to Mysticism: Bonaventure’s Eschatology in Light of Joachim of Fiore” in Traditio. vol. 52, 1997: p. 153
[ii] Delio, p. 154
[iii] Ibid. p. 156
[iv] Cited in Delio, p. 156
[v] Delio, p. 158
[vi] Ibid. p. 159
[vii] McGinn, Bernard. “The Abbott and the Doctors : Scholastic Reactions to the Radical Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore” in Church History. vol. 40. 01. 1971: p. 43
[viii] Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Trans. de Vinck, Jose. Paterson, N.J. St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963: IV, chap. 4
[ix] McGinn, p.43
[x] Breviloquium. IV, chap.4: p. 154
[xi] Cited in Delio, p. 160
[xii] Ibid. p. 160; cf. Hexaemeron. I, 11
[xiii] Delio, p. 162
[xiv] Ibid. p.164
[xv] Itinerarium. Chap.7
[xvi] Delio, p.173
[xvii] Itinerarium. Chap. 7. 5
[xviii] Delio, p. 176

Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part I)

This is the first part of a paper I did a few semesters back for Cyril O’Regan’s class on the Trinity

I. Introduction:

Bonaventure, as a Trinitarian thinker, can be seen in many lights; as a champion of the Augustinian tradition, with ample regard for divine simplicity, unity, and the problem of appropriations; in another sense, as a unique integrator of eastern Trinitarian views into the western mindset, having been exposed to the rich Greek heritage “emanating” westward from such bountiful “fonts” such as Denys, Maximus, and the Cappadocians (through Eriugena)[i]. One may note as well his notably Franciscan spirituality: emphasizing poverty, humility, and Christ crucified, all likely deriving from the very wounds of his spiritual father Francis. And as a thinker interested in the ends of history, the great doctor shows signs not only of Augustine but even of the controversial vision of Joachim of Fiore, whom he (and the Church) criticized.
From this considerably rich deposit, consisting of some of the most intriguing and central issues to his theology, we can draw out two factors that definitively characterize his theology of history and its relation to the rest of his thought: his unabashed devotion to Christ and the fundamental relationship he draws between the Trinitarian processions and the created world. From these, one can see the role that the revelation of the Trinity has in relation to the unfolding of finite history. First we shall examine some foundational principles of Bonaventure’s Trinitarian thought (deriving key features from Neo-Platonic sources) that come to affect the status of the world and of history; and by then analyzing some notable characteristics of his vision of history in comparison to Joachim’s, one can see more clearly how his conception of the Trinity weighs upon and shapes the direction and path upon which the cosmos progresses toward its end; ultimately revealing not only the Christocentric aspects of the world and history, but also its fundamentally Trinitarian orientation.

II. Trinity and World:

The Triunity of God is revealed in Christian Revelation, and nowhere is Bonaventure so bold as to reduce the richness of that Revelation to a preambula fidei, that the intellect should have stumbled upon on its own. The Trinity does however express itself within human reasoning, weds itself to the rational, in the principle that the perfection of being entails a bringing forth of that which is of the same kind. Being in its height is ecstatic. The highest being requires the highest form of self-communication (which in Christian terms takes the form of an infinitely selfless love). Thus, Bonaventure’s “dynamic” vision of the Trinity, flowing from the “emanation tradition” of the Eastern Fathers: God is supremely dynamic insofar as the generation and diffusion of being from the Father (fontalis plenitudo) amount to eternal processes: generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit. And yet Bonaventure (the good westerner that he is) does not shirk the unity of the Divine essence in favor of a Greek infatuation with Persons: he notes that because of God’s absolute simplicity, the self-communication(s) of this highest being must in some sense be compatible with divine unity. Both simplicity and the principle of a self-diffusive perfection of being characterize Bonaventure’s speculation upon the Trinity, and it is because of the former that one establishes an absolute uniqueness of God from other beings; and because of the latter that one can say the Trinitarian emanations are in a real sense “intrinsically necessary.”[ii] And as von Balthasar points out, it is the combination of Biblical Revelation and the Neo-Platonic principles that draws the self-diffusion of being up into the divine Being before all else: “The old Platonic axiom bonum diffusivum sui now in the light of Christian revelation no longer refers simply to God’s relationship with the world but to his absolute being itself…” He continues, drawing out the consequences of this move: “and this opens the way for an explanation of the structure that belongs to the natural kinds in the world, makes it possible to trace them back to their origin without absorbing them monistically into the rays of the light that is their source.”[iii]

In this application of the self-diffusion principle and its connection with the perfection of Being, one can see not only the “intrinsic necessity” of the Trinitarian relations, but also the necessity of the Trinity as foundation of the world and its relations. Because God is diffusive of created being only insofar as He is (as Father) diffusive of eternal emanations, there is no possibility of considering God’s relation to the world outside of or prior to God’s internal relation to Himself in the Trinitarian Persons. This is also evident in that, for Bonaventure, diverging from Augustine, the Greek preference for Persons commands an essentially un-Augustinian understanding of God’s relation to the world.[iv] God acts toward the world as He is in se, as Trinitarian. While for both Augustine and Denys, the Triunity of God is in many respects restricted to a divine height beyond expression in the world, for Bonaventure real expression occurs: “Rather, the Trinity is truly revealed in its overflow into the world (in creation and the Incarnation of Christ), and shows itself thereby to be the a priori ground of everything that exists in the world.”[v] The places of the Persons are preserved externally just as they are in the heart of God’s Being, and appropriation comes to signal the propria of the Persons in God’s communication of Himself: “This means nothing less than the grounding of the act of creation in the act of generation in the Godhead…”[vi] Bonaventure attempts here to forge a middle-way between subordinationism (the danger always lurking about the emanation tradition of the Greek Fathers) and a conflation of natural and supernatural.

The emanations within God, then, as eternal and infinite, become the exemplars which all external expressions image (i.e. creation). Bonaventure even holds that the many finite processions within creation all point to eternal processions. But for the Seraphic Doctor, the emanation of the Son is given a primacy as exemplar. In the generation of the Son, the Father expresses Himself: fully and completely, in all His power and capacity. In the Son the self-diffusion is relentlessly self-abandoning (yet not to the Father’s dissolution): for the Son is the perfect realization of the Father and His power in a way that no creature could achieve. And because the Father’s capacity in diffusion includes the capacity of everything real and possible, it includes all of creation as well. In the Son, the Father’s infinitely possible capacity becomes actualized perfectly. As von Balthasar writes: “If the Father has really given expression in the Son to His whole being and capacity, then in the Son everything that is possible through God has taken on reality: if anything else outside God is realized through God, it can have possibility and reality only through and in the Son.”[vii] For Bonaventure the second Person of the Trinity is therefore the archetype of the world, the exemplar of all creatures: to put it in Neo-Platonic terms (from which Bonaventure likely drew for much of his analysis of God’s relation to the world) the realm of the eternal or divine ideas of the created order is essentially swept up into the reality of the Son, such that all ideas of the creatures are eternally actual in the Son’s Being.[viii] Thus, as for Neo-Platonic philosophy (broadly speaking), the realm of these ideas contain a greater ontological density than the created “shadows,” the Son as perfectly embodying all of the Father’s capacity in creation marks a unique “place” in the divine being of exemplarity: such that, as emanation of creatures implies a certain “falling” in degrees of reality from the ideas, so too do creatures in their being descend from the (infinitely) ontologically richer reality of the Son. And as there is a built-in dynamism of reditus in the imperfect creature toward the ideal, there is thus an essentially Christocentric element to the dynamics of all creaturely being. There is an energetic eros in creatures to seek their perfection, their ideal; and this can only be found in the Son, in whom all of the perfections of creatures exist in actu. The Neo-Platonic cyclical “flow” is baptized here and shines forth the undeniable relationship that all creation has with the Son as exemplar; and thus the undeniable relation the Son has to all progression of creation toward God (including the mystical one).

The process of the world’s history is for the great doctor one such dynamic that is ultimately only conceivable as destined to the Son: “…we can affirm that the highest and noblest perfection in the universe is not attained until such a time as the nature that contains the germs that make for the spirits (rationes seminales) and the nature that contains the concepts of reason (rationes intellectuals) and the nature that contains the archetypical designs of the world (rationes ideales) are united to form one single person: and this happened at the Incarnation of the Son of God.”[ix] As we shall see, from this concept Bonaventure draws the conclusion that Christ is the “center” of all history.

A certain primacy is also given to the Son by Bonaventure with reference to the world in revelation. The Son, the Word, is the universal expression of the Father. The Holy Spirit is construed as the Father’s giving. Insofar as these notions are distinguishable, one can see how the primacy of second Person functions with regard to revelation. The Son is God as He is perfectly expressed, and thus this “manner” of being within the Godhead affords the Son’s appropriation of “truth” in its most fundamental sense. The Word is the dynamic revealing of the Father, and thus the entire substance of God perfectly outpoured (within Himself). And as we have seen, because He contains the fullness of the Father’s infinite capacities, the Son is at one and the same time the universal expression of all that is created. For Bonaventure, there is no expression or revelation of anything apart from the primal and eternal revelation of the Father in the Son. All created expressions can only express themselves because of that Original expression.

And the Son is not only the perfect “representing” of the Father, but also of the Spirit’s relation to the Father. In this sense, the Son is Himself the perfect “revelation” (if revelation has meaning within God) of the Trinity within the Godhead. And in terms of gracious revelation of God as three Persons, the perfect “witness” to the Trinitarian relations can only be He who is Himself the infinite expression of the three: “this witness (of the Father, Son, and Spirit) is expressed only by the Word, for the Word gives expression to the Father and to itself and to the Holy spirit, and to everything else.”[x] The Son gives expression to His begottenness from the Father as well as His spiration of the Spirit with the Father. No doubt here the notion of the “filioque” plays a key role in Bonaventure’s positioning of the Son as “unifying center between Father and Spirit”: who leads back to the Father and in that “leading back” (love) constitutes the spiration of the Holy Spirit. The Son, insofar as He is “God as truth” and thus is the expression of the Trinity itself, renders all revelation of the Trinity in history, covenant, economy, etc. of an intrinsically Christocentric nature. The fullest expression and revelation of the Trinitarian Persons, insofar as (following the Greek paradigm) they are expressed in the world as they are Personally, nevertheless are only so revealed through the second Person, and thus through Christ. The image of Christ, as we shall see, will function for Bonaventure as the truest image of the Trinity. Revelation of Trinity and its meaning for history centers around Jesus Christ.

The two complementary Christocentric notions of 1) the Son as exemplar of creaturely reality (rendering all reditus toward God inherently through Christ) and 2) the Son as supreme expression of the Trinity (rendering all Trinitarian revelation ultimately through Christ) are what give Bonaventure’s account of history its radically Christocentric flavor while at the same time and only in this way characterizing the fullest expression of the Trinity in relation to the destiny of the world. As will be illustrated, in Bonaventure’s account of history, the two “poles” of ascent through Christ and revealing through Christ intertwine and are joined in the one Person of Christ who, for Bonaventure, is the dramatic “center” of all history. By a brief examination of some features of Bonaventure’s theology of history, one will be able to see how these Trinitarian principles shape the theological account of the process of the world.



[i] Woo, Esther. “Theophanic Cosmic Order in Saint Bonaventure” in Franciscan Studies: vol. 31 annual IX. Franciscan Institute. St. Bonaventure, NY. 1971
[ii] Bonaventure. Interarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind to God). Trans. Boehner, Philotheus O.F.M. Indianapolis. Hackett Publishing, 1990. Chap. 6. 2
[iii] von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics vol. II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Style. Trans. Louth, Andrew. San Francisco. Ignatius Press, 1984. p. 285
[iv] This is not to suggest an incompatibility between a rich Trinitarian view of God’s relation to the world and Augustine’s “preference” for divine unity in the economy. Any way of phrasing the difference in the thinkers seems to fail in articulating their continuity…
[v] Ibid. p.261
[vi] Ibid. p.291
[vii] Ibid. p.292
[viii] Woo, p.308
[ix] Bonaventure. De Red. Art. 20: V 324b. cited in: von Balthasar, p. 309
[x] von Balthasar, p.290; cf. Bonaventure. Collationes in Hexaemeron: 9. 2

Memory and the Beauty of Lent

In his widely unknown exploration of the various aspects of sound and rhythm, aptly entitled De Musica (Libero VI), Augustine examines a great number of elements to which the memory relates. He presents us with a notion of memory that goes well beyond viewing it merely as a passive faculty whose only task is to receive images for storage, which are then sifted by the intellect during recall. Although memory does have some aspect similar to this, for Augustine, memory is as active as it is passive. On the active side, every moment of sense perception, which includes every waking moment, the memory performs an indispensable role.

The context in which he explains this role is introduced by explaining how time and space are two components of reality that are divisible unto infinity. Since time and space constitute the very possibility of appearing, all material reality is mediated through these two most fundamental “intuitions” (to borrow a characterization from Kant). This creates a paradox of sorts with respect to the material world – a paradox illustrated by Xeno’s javelin thrower: how can a javelin be thrown, Xeno asked, if the act of throwing requires the movement of the arm from point A to point B, which in turn requires the movement from point A to point .5A, which requires movement from A to .25A, and A to .125A and so on to infinity. All material entities embody this same paradox, since as matter, they can potentially be divided an infinite number of times.

Augustine reflects on this in light of the act of sensation, recognizing that to hear or to see something, which always occurs in time and space, requires a power without which the seen and the heard would simply pass away into that infinite abyss. This power he recognized, for the most part, in the memory.

When the ear hears music, he explained, it can never hear the whole piece at one time. Does this not mean that all music is only heard in fragmented sound bites? So how is it that music is so pleasing in its unity? His answer was that in all acts of hearing the memory is actively engaged as that power which holds before the judging faculty that which, in a musical piece, has passed into and then out of the existence of the present moment. Consider a three note melody: the first note sounds, and in order for the second note to sustain the melody line, this first note must pass out of existence to make room in the melody for the second note to perform its function. The same goes for all subsequent notes. Yet the memory is that which allows those notes, which seemingly have ceased to exist, to remain present precisely in the constitution of the melody as a melody. The memory actively participates in the very constitution of a melody, insofar as the melody is heard.

The same can be said for that which is seen. The faculty of sight has a very limited range, and, because it must focus on a point, it cannot take into the soul the vision of an entire entity. Peripheral vision notwithstanding, the memory still performs a vital function in the act of seeing insofar as it holds before the judging faculty the image of what has passed from the sight’s view as the sight expands in order to allow the fullness of a vision into the soul.

So what has all this to do with Lent? Well, the memory’s indelible partnership with the senses has a negative side insofar as degrees of pleasure are concerned. Pleasure may be spoken of in many ways, ranging from the lowest carnal pleasure to the highest spiritual pleasures. The senses participate in the mediation of all of them at least to some degree, a truth which Augustine recognized despite his Platonic influences. In the fallen state, most pleasure that a person experiences comes from the flesh, taken in by the senses, which are aided by the power of memory. Thus, just as a particular musical piece, or vista, is taken into the soul by a partnership between the senses and the memory, so too are the pleasures of eating, drinking, touching etc. And like everything that is heard and seen, carnal pleasure, once it is received, is stored away in the storage area of memory, or what we might call the storehouse of the soul. Considered so far, there is nothing too alarming or exceptional here.

However, let us consider pleasure as it occurs in its various degrees from the lowest to the ever-higher. Let us further equate the ever-higher pleasure as that which is most pleasing to the soul at a given point. This would enable that ever-higher, or always-greater, pleasure to correspond to the beatific vision; for what could be more pleasing to the soul than union with the Triune God, which is always increasing? (Thus, I do not say ‘highest pleasure’ since this too easily tends to indicate a limiting closure contrary to the infinite good). Let us further purge from our mindset a strict dichotomy between highest and lowest pleasures as if there were only two categories. Perhaps we might be aided if we think of it in the way one’s taste is said to develop (cf. 1Cor 3:2, Heb 5:12-13, 1Pet 2:2 ): a young infant can in no way enjoy the “higher” pleasures of meat, fine wines and other such things, since the faculty for enjoying such things must be acquired over time. But the development for such acquisition may often involve denying one’s immediate impulses and trusting in one’s intellectual judgment that these are indeed pleasures worth acquiring a taste for. My first taste of Guinness was not accompanied by the overwhelming pleasure that I now derive from it. Rather, in the beginning, I trusted those people who seemed to derive pleasure from it that there was indeed a pleasure in it - and a great deal. Now, after opening myself to its pleasure by weaning myself off a distaste for the bitter, I have discovered that delight and enjoy it often. It is in fact one of my greatest pleasures.

In an analogous way, it is a worthy pursuit for one to aspire to elevate his or her ‘taste’ for the higher, spiritual pleasures. Such an ascent necessarily involves ‘weaning’ oneself off of carnal pleasure: “For such a pleasure violently imprints in our memory what it draws from the deceitful senses” (Talis enim delectatio vehementer infigit memoriae quod trahit a lubricis sensibus – De Musica, Lib VI, xi, 33). Augustine should not be misunderstood here; he is not making a claim about the inherent deceit of sensuality, but the way that an ‘overdose’ of carnal pleasure can reduce the power of memory, preventing the growth and maturity necessary for it to represent the delight of higher, spiritual pleasures.

This brings us to the point of this post. Designated times when the Church as a body universal practices a withdraw from the carnal pleasures – as in Lent – are very much times that concern memory. Denial of pleasures are good, but they must be complimented with opening the opening to higher spiritual delights. For should a long enough duration of time occur during which one goes without a particular pleasure, the memory, unless it is fed by higher pleasures for which it must acquire a taste, will inevitably re-present (literally dig into its storage and present again) the images associated with these lower, carnal pleasures enticing the person to the lower realities they embody and subsequently away from its ascent. Lent, then, should not be seen merely as a time of denial, but rather as a time of denial of the lower pleasures in order to continue to acquire a taste for the higher spiritual pleasures. Indeed, this is precisely what the beauty of Lenten time allows: not only does it ask us to step back from our all too easy intake of carnal pleasures (and for many of us, we might even add vices), but it enables us to store up spiritual pleasures in our memory so that we might acquire the taste for higher, spiritual pleasures.

We might close by pointing out the eschatological and soteriological dimension involved here. Lent prepares us not only for Christ’s resurrection, but also for his passion and death. Part of this preparation involves reflecting upon death itself, which the tradition designates as the experience when the soul separates from the body. It would not be a great speculative claim, then, to suggest that death marks the moment when the soul necessarily withdraws from material reality and thus from all carnal pleasures (assuming of course that the ‘carnal pleasures’ as used here indicate the mediation of pleasure through the senses). Thanks to our Lenten practices, along with a great many others, we can cling with greater faith to the hope that this final withdraw at death will not bear the horrifying shock of a ‘cold turkey’ experience, but instead present the step – final even as it is first – of a Way toward that for which we were always already aspiring.