Pars 1, Cap. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/5/d/1/q/bon-brev-p1-c2
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### Chapter II. *What is to be held concerning the trinity of persons and the unity of essence.*

First, then, concerning the Trinity of God three things are to be considered: namely, how the unity of substance and of nature stands together with the plurality of persons; second, how it stands with the plurality of apparitions; third, how it stands with the plurality of appropriations.

Concerning the plurality of persons in the unity of nature, then, right faith dictates that this is to be held: namely, that in the unity of nature there are three persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, of whom the first is from none, the second from the first alone by generation, the third from the first and the second by spiration or procession;

so that the trinity of persons does not exclude from the divine essence the highest *unity, simplicity, immensity, eternity, immutability, necessity*, and also *primacy*; but rather includes the highest *fecundity, charity, liberality, equality, kinship, conformity*, and *inseparability* — all of which sound faith understands to be in the most blessed Trinity.

Now the reason for this truth is this: since faith, being the principle of the worship of God and the foundation of that *doctrine which is according to godliness*, dictates that of God we must think *most highly* and *most devoutly*. But it would not think *most highly*, if it did not believe that God could communicate himself in the highest degree; it would not think *most devoutly*, if it believed that he could and would not; and therefore, that it may think *most highly* and *most devoutly*, it says that God communicates himself in the highest degree, eternally having a beloved and a co-beloved, and through this that God is one and three.

Now to this faith, insofar as it dictates that of God we must think *most devoutly*, the whole of sacred Scripture bears witness, which is called *doctrine according to godliness*: for it confesses that God has an offspring whom he loves in the highest degree, a Word coequal to himself, which « he begot from eternity, in which he disposed all things »; through which he produced and governs all things; through which also, having been made flesh, out of the highest kindness he redeemed man by his most precious blood and fed him once redeemed; through which also at the end of the world, imparting the highest mercy, he will free him from all misery, so that through Christ all the elect may be sons of the most high Father — in which will be the whole consummation of godliness, both of God toward us and conversely.

But insofar as faith dictates that of God we must think *most highly*, not only does sacred Scripture bear witness to it, but also every creature, according to what Augustine says in the fifteenth book On the Trinity, chapter four: « For not only does the authority of the divine books proclaim that God is, but all that surrounds us, to which we ourselves also belong, the very universal nature of things proclaims that it has a most excellent Founder, who gave us a mind and natural reason by which we judge that living things are to be preferred to non-living, things endowed with sense to things without sense, things with intelligence to things without intelligence, immortal to mortal, powers to things powerless, just to unjust, beautiful to deformed, good to evil, incorruptible to corruptible, immutable to mutable, invisible to visible, incorporeal to corporeal, blessed to wretched. And through this, since without doubt we set the Creator above created things, it must be that we confess him both to live in the highest degree and to perceive and understand all things, and to be unable to die or be corrupted or changed, and not to be a body, but a spirit most omnipotent, most just, most beautiful, best, and most blessed ». — Behold, in these twelve are included the highest nobilities of the divine *being*. But afterward, as he himself shows, these twelve are reduced to three: namely, *eternity, wisdom*, and *beatitude*; and these three to one, namely to *wisdom*, in which are included the generating mind, the Word as offspring, and the love binding both together — in which faith dictates that the most blessed Trinity consists. And since the highest wisdom posits the Trinity, it nonetheless posits also all the most noble conditions held previously, namely unity, simplicity, and the rest that follow; therefore it must be that all the aforesaid nobilities of the divine *being* stand together with the most blessed Trinity.

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