Dist. 36, Art. 2, Q. 1
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/36/q/bon-sent-I-d36-a2-q1
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### Question I.
#### *Whether all things are in God as life.*

That all things are in God as life appears [thus]:

1. John, chapter one: *That which was made, in him was life*; but every creature is made: therefore every creature is in him as life.

2. Likewise, Augustine, on Genesis according to the letter, book five: "All things are said to have been in him as life, not in their own nature, since he knew all things before they came to be."

3. Likewise, by reason it appears [so], since the divine essence is life, therefore that which is the divine essence is also life; but the creature in God is the divine essence, since whatever is in God is God: therefore it is life. And this is what Anselm says in the *Monologion*: "that the creature in God is the creating essence."

4. Likewise, *to understand* is one differentia of *to live*, since *to live* is said in four ways according to the Philosopher: if therefore *to understand* is *to live*, then every ground of understanding is a ground of living. But things are in God according to their grounds of understanding, therefore they are living in God; but not by participation: therefore they are life simply.

**On the contrary:**

1. Acts, chapter seventeen: *In him we live, and move, and are*. Therefore if [from the fact] that we live, we are in God as life, then also [from the fact] that we move, we are in him as motion; but this is not said: therefore neither ought that to be said.

2. Likewise, if things are said to be in God as life, then it is either by reason of power, or of knowing, or of will. Not by reason of power, since a thing, by the fact that it can be produced through creation, before it is produced is altogether nothing, since it is produced according to the whole; if it is nothing, then neither is it life. Nor by reason of knowing, since then, since evils are known by God, evils would then be in God as life; which is absurd. If by reason of will: but the will of God is only of future things: therefore future things alone would live in God. But things other than future are in God by an idea: therefore not everything that is in God, is in him as life.

3. Likewise, this appears, since the eternal exemplar represents things most expressly, according as they are and proceed from him: therefore since some things live and some do not, [and] he represents some after the manner of living things, others after the manner of non-living things: therefore some things are in God as life, others not.

4. By reason of this it is asked, why things are said to be in God as life rather than as wisdom, or essence, or intelligence.

### Conclusion.

> *All things which are in God as in an exemplar, in him are life.*

**I respond:** To this some have wished to say that not all things which are said to be in God are in him as life, but only those which are so in God as disposed to come to be. And the reason of this is that *word* and *life* state act and disposition. And therefore Anselm says that the word is only of those things which are, or are to be; and therefore those alone are in God as life. And therefore they say that to the account of speaking *life* it necessarily concurs that things be in God as to the power, the knowing, and the will of producing.

— But this cannot stand according to Augustine. For the Son, as he himself says in *On the Trinity*, book six, "is an art full of all the living accounts"; but it is established that it is not filled save with infinite accounts: therefore infinite accounts of things live in God, therefore not only of beings or of future things, but also of all possible things. And again Augustine, in the book *Eighty-three Questions*, says that "an account [*ratio*] is, even if nothing is ever made through it"; but it is established that the account in the mind of the artificer lives, not because the thing is produced outside: for it lives even if the thing is corrupted, and the outward being makes nothing at all to [its] life. And therefore it is clear that not only present or future things live in God.

And therefore it must be said otherwise, that things are in God in three ways, namely as in a producing principle, and thus they are in the account of power; as in an expressing exemplar, and thus they are in the account of knowing; and as in a conserving end, in the account of will. In the first mode — namely as in a producing principle — since God produces the whole from nothing, [things] are altogether nothing, neither life nor anything. But because they are in God as in a conserving end, since they are conserved according to the being which they have, in this way some are life, others not. Whence some merely *are*, some *are and are moved*, some, like men, *both are and are moved and live*. But because they are [in God] as in an expressing exemplar, in this way they are in him as life. And since not only beings are expressed in that exemplar, but also all things knowable to God, therefore all things which are in him are in God as life. And therefore the blessed John says: *That which was made, in him was life*. And thus it is clear that being-in-God is attended to according to a threefold kind of cause; and likewise it is clear how [it is so] by reason of power and of knowing, and of will; and that question is solved, according to which kind of cause, or according to which of the three conditions, things are said to be in God. It is also clear which [things] are called *life* in God, namely all those which are in him as in an exemplar.

1. To that, then, which is objected, that in God *we are moved* etc.; it must be understood as to the third mode of being-in-God, namely through conservation. For God conserves in us life and operation and essence; and as to this is that saying [of the Apostle] understood.

2. To that which is said: by reason of what are things called *life* in God etc.; it must be said, by reason of power and of knowing together, since these two concur to the account of an exemplar; for God is exemplar only of those things which he knows and is able [to make].

3. To that which is objected, that things are represented in that exemplar as they are; it must be said that this is true; yet it is not necessary that the account of representation be altogether such as that which is represented, as was shown above: and therefore, just as the idea of corporeal things is spiritual, so [the idea] of non-living things is living.

4. To that which is asked lastly, why things are said to be in God as life rather than as something else; it must be said that, although the aforesaid word [*Quod factum est in ipso vita erat*] has many expositions, by which it is said: *That which was made, in him was life*; yet specially around this word the truth of what is said and the reason of saying it must be considered. The truth of what is said, as Augustine says, is that all things, made by God or even possible to be made, have grounds [*rationes*] in God, through which they are understood; which grounds indeed are said *to live*, since they are in a living substance, insofar as it is living, and they are also a ground of understanding, which [understanding] is an act of life: and therefore in the created artificer they are said to live, but in God they are said not only to live, but [to be] life itself, since the very ground of knowing in God is the very intelligence. — But the reason for the [manner of] saying was this. For since things have being in God and also in the universe and in different ways, since they have certain properties according to [their] existences in the world which do not belong to them as they are in God: therefore [the Evangelist] did not say only: *That which was made, in him was*, but *life*, that all those conditions might be excluded. For creatures in the world have a being corporeal, variable, and corruptible. For since "life is a spiritual and continuous act, flowing from a being at rest and everlasting", it has been perfectly said that things are in God as life, so that by *spirituality* corporeality may be excluded, by *rest* variability, by *everlastingness* corruptibility.