Dist. 3, Part 1, Art. 1, Q. 3
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/1/d/3/q/bon-sent-I-d3-p1-a1-q3
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### Question III. *Whether the human being in every state knows God through creatures.*

Thirdly it is asked, whether the knowledge of God through creatures belongs to the human being in respect to every state. That it belongs to the human being in respect to the first state, is shown thus.

1. The human being in the state of innocence did not know God face to face: therefore if he knew God, he knew through effect, therefore through vestige, therefore through creature.

2. Likewise, in the human being in the state of innocence sensible knowledge was not an impediment, but an aid to intellective knowledge; but intellective knowledge, on account of which the human being was made, is the knowledge of God: therefore all sensible knowledge in the first human being was ordered to this; but knowledge of God through the aid of sensibles is knowledge through creature: therefore etc.

Likewise, that it belongs to the human being in respect to the state of beatitude, is shown:

1. Because the Blessed know the creature, but do not rest in it, but refer it to God: therefore they know God through the creature.

2. Likewise, blessed souls praise God through creatures; but to praise God through creatures is to know through creatures: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:** that it does not belong to the human being as instituted [in the state of innocence], is shown thus.

1. Knowledge through vestige is knowledge through a medium; «but the mind, as Augustine says, is formed immediately by truth itself»: therefore such knowledge does not befit human nature in respect to that state, nor even in respect to another.

2. Likewise, it is not a right order, that what is nearer should reach the end through a more distant medium; but the human being in the first state was nearer to God than other creatures: therefore it did not befit him to attain the knowledge of God through other creatures.

Likewise, that such knowledge does not belong to the human being in respect to the state of beatitude, is shown.

1. Because knowledge through vestige is knowledge through leading-by-the-hand: therefore it is not perfect knowledge, therefore it is in part: therefore it does not remain in the Blessed, because in them what is in part shall be done away.

2. Likewise, the vestige or creature is like a ladder for ascending or like a way for arriving at God; but when the terminus is reached, there is no further use of the way: therefore likewise, since the human being is above, he does not need a ladder; but the knowledge of the Blessed is immediately into God: therefore it is not through creatures.

### Conclusio.

> God is known in creatures by the comprehensors perfectly, by the wayfarers half-fully; but he is properly known through creatures by the wayfarers, otherwise however before, otherwise after the fall.

**I respond:** For the understanding of the foregoing it must be noted, that it is one thing to know God *in* a creature, another *through* a creature. To know God in a creature is to know his presence and influence in the creature. And this indeed belongs to the wayfarers half-fully, but to the comprehensors perfectly; whence Augustine says at the end of the book *On the City of God*, that then God will be expressly seen, when God will be all in all. But to know God through a creature is to be elevated from the knowledge of the creature to the knowledge of God as it were by an intermediate ladder. And this is properly of the wayfarers, as Bernard says to Eugenius.

Otherwise however it befits the human being in the state of instituted nature, and of fallen nature: because in the first state he knew God through a creature as through a clear mirror; but after the fall he knew as through a mirror and in a riddle, as the Apostle says in First Corinthians thirteen, on account of the clouding of the intellect and the worsening of things.

Therefore to that which is objected concerning the state of beatitude; it must be said, that, as has been said, it does not belong to the Blessed to know through creatures, but rather in

creatures. And the reasons which seem to prove the contrary, do not prove it, but rather that he is known by them in creatures.

1. *To that* which is objected concerning the state of innocence, that the mind is immediately formed etc.; it must be said, that the medium is twofold, namely efficient and disposing. Of the first medium that which Augustine said must be understood, but not of the second; because God is the efficient medium and the object of the mind itself. But Augustine speaks that word against the philosophers, whose opinion was, that the mind was not first joined immediately, but mediated by some intelligence.

2. *To that* which is objected, that it is not a right order; it must be said, that the human being can be considered in two ways: either as a being in itself, or outside [itself]. In the first way he does not arrive through creatures from himself into God, but as a being outside himself through the knowledge of creatures he is gathered back into himself and elevated above himself.

Or it must be said, that other creatures can be considered as things, or as signs. In the first way they are inferior to the human being, in the second way they are media in the journeying or on the way, not at the terminus, because they do not arrive, but through them the human being arrives at God, they being left behind.