Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
1221-1274 · Scholasticism · Known
Bonaventure was a Franciscan theologian who ran the order as its minister general while he wrote. Every creature is a footprint and image of God, so the visible world reads as a book pointing past itself to the eternal Word it mirrors. He charts the climb to God in stages: up through visible things, then inward through your own soul, then above yourself into a union where thinking gives out.
Signature
The position Bonaventure is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence
- Highest Good
- Union with God
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (91 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (96 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable (44 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (84 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (93 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (100 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (90 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (79 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Bonaventure refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Indirect Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?