So Who Was Bonaventure, Anyway?

Aquinas is the philosopher's theologian. Bonaventure is the mystic's. They were contemporaries—both teaching in Paris in the 1250s, both eventually Doctors of the Church—but they represent genuinely different ways of doing theology. Understanding Bonaventure helps you see the Catholic intellectual tradition isn't monolithic. More than one way to be rigorously Catholic.

Bonaventure lived 1221 to 1274. Franciscan. That already tells you something. Sometimes called the "Seraphic Doctor"—seraphic because of burning love associated with the highest angels, and because of his connection to Francis, who received the stigmata from a seraph. Nickname captures something real. Bonaventure's theology runs hot. Not cold analysis. A journey of the soul toward God.

What makes him distinctive?

Start with epistemology. Like Augustine, Bonaventure emphasized divine illumination—we know truth because God enlightens our minds. Aquinas went Aristotelian: abstract knowledge from sense experience. Bonaventure didn't reject sense experience, but thought it wasn't enough on its own. The light of eternal reasons has to shine on our intellects for us to grasp truth. Gives his whole approach a more explicitly God-centered feel. Can't even think properly without God's ongoing activity in your mind.

Then there's his signature work. Itinerarium Mentis in Deum—Journey of the Mind to God. Short text. Written while meditating on Mount La Verna where Francis received the stigmata. Maps out six stages of the soul's ascent to God, moving from external world to interior life to heights of mystical union. Theology as spiritual exercise. You don't just read it for information. You read it as a guide for actually making the journey.

Key difference from Aquinas here. For Bonaventure, theology isn't primarily about getting concepts right—though he cares about that. It's about transformation. Goal isn't just knowing about God. It's knowing God. Being united with him. Having your affections reordered by love. Why Bonaventure gets grouped with the mystical tradition rather than the scholastic one. Even though he was a rigorous scholastic thinker in his own right.

He also emphasized primacy of the will. Augustinian theme. Aquinas says intellect leads—you have to know the good before you can love it. Bonaventure says love can outrun knowledge. You can love God more than you understand him. Have to, actually, because God exceeds what any intellect can grasp. Will reaching out in love takes you further than intellect analyzing concepts. Doesn't make Bonaventure anti-intellectual—he was a university professor. But the intellect has limits only love can transcend.

Then there's his Christocentrism. Everything in Bonaventure's theology circles back to Christ. Creation bears vestiges of the Trinity, but it's all ordered toward the Incarnation. Christ is the center of reality. The medium through which everything was made and through which everything returns to God. His thought has a shape, a narrative arc, that makes Christ the hinge of history and key to understanding everything else.

His mystical orientation speaks to people spiritually hungry but skeptical of institutional religion. Lot of that going around these days. People who want transcendence but are wary of doctrine and hierarchy. Bonaventure shows Catholic Christianity isn't just rules and rituals. It's a path to union with God. Mystical tradition is part of the Catholic patrimony. Bonaventure is one of its greatest guides.

And his Christocentrism keeps everything anchored. Unlike mystical traditions that drift toward vague spirituality, Bonaventure's journey always goes through Christ. Incarnation isn't a problem to be transcended. It's the way up. You don't leave Jesus behind as you advance. You go deeper into the mystery of who he is.

For reading: start with the Itinerarium. Short. Read it in an afternoon. Good English translations available. His Breviloquium is a theology summary that gives you his systematic thought. Want to go deeper? His commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences is where the technical theology lives. More for specialists though.

Bonaventure reminds us the Catholic intellectual tradition has room for both cathedral and cloister. Disputatio and meditation. Rigorous argument and burning love. Don't have to choose. Helps to know both are there.

He was also the founding figure of a broader Franciscan intellectual tradition that developed over following centuries. Covering that separately.

The Faith of Children. The Doctrine of Theologians. TheCatholicForge.com