Dist. 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/2/d/1/q/bon-sent-II-d1-littera
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### *Part I.*

### Chapter I. *That there is one principle, not many.*

"Scripture, in introducing the creation of things, shows from its very outset that God is the creator and the beginning of time and of all visible or invisible creatures," saying: *In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth*. "By these words Moses, inspired by the Spirit of God, reports that the world was made by God the creator in one principle," refuting the error of certain men who held that there were many principles without beginning. "For Plato proposed three beginnings — namely God and the exemplar and matter, and held this matter to be uncreated and without beginning, and God to be as it were an artificer, not a creator." For a creator is one who makes something out of nothing.

### Chapter II. *What it is to create, what to make.*

And to create properly is to make something out of nothing, while to make is not only to work something out of nothing, but also out of matter. Hence even man or an angel is said to make some things, but not to create, and is called a maker or artificer, but not a creator. For this name belongs properly to God alone, who both makes certain things out of nothing and certain things out of something. He, then, is creator and worker and maker; but the name "creator" he reserved properly for himself, while he communicated the others also to his creatures. In Scripture, however, "creator" is often taken in the sense of "maker," and conversely "to make" in the same sense [as "to create"], without distinction of meaning.

### Chapter III. *In what sense the verbs "to act," "to make," and the like are predicated of God.*

Nevertheless it must be known that these words — namely *to create*, *to make*, *to act*, and others of this kind — cannot be predicated of God according to the same account by which they are predicated of creatures. For when we say that he makes something, we do not understand any motion to be in him while operating, nor any passion in laboring, such as is wont to befall us;

but we signify some new effect of his eternal will — that is, that something newly exists by his eternal will. When therefore he is said to make something, it amounts to saying that according to his will, or through his will, something newly comes to be or to exist, in such a way that nothing new comes to be in him, but something new — just as it had been in his eternal will — comes to be without any motion or change of himself. We, on the other hand, are said to be changed in operating, because we are moved; for we do not make anything without motion. God therefore is said to act or to make something because he is the cause of things newly existing, when by his will new things begin to be which were not before, without any agitation of himself; so that the word "act" cannot properly be said of him, since clearly every act consists in motion, and in God there is no motion. As, therefore, from the heat of the sun certain things come to be without any motion or change wrought in itself or in its heat, so by God's will new things have being without any change of the author, who is the one and only principle of all things. Aristotle, however, held two principles, namely matter and species (*form*), and a third called *operatorium*; and he held also that the world always was and always has been.

Refuting therefore the error of these and similar men, and handing down the discipline of truth, the Holy Spirit signifies that God created the world in the beginning of times and existed eternally before times, commending his eternity and omnipotence; for whom *to have willed* is *to make*, since, as we have said, by his will and goodness new things come into being. "Let us believe, then, that the cause of created things, heavenly or earthly, visible or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness of the Creator, who is one and true God. So great is his goodness that, supremely good as he is, he wills others to be partakers of that blessedness wherein he is eternally blessed; which goodness he sees both can be communicated and can in no way be diminished. That good, then, which he himself was and by which he was blessed, he willed to communicate to others not from necessity but by goodness alone — because it belonged to one supremely good to will to do good, and to one most omnipotent not to be unable to do [it]."

### *Part II.*

### Chapter IV. *Why a rational creature was made, that is, man or angel.*

"And because no one can be a partaker of his blessedness except through understanding — which, the more it is understood, the more fully is possessed — God made a rational creature which should understand the supreme good, and understanding should love, and loving should possess, and possessing should enjoy. And he distinguished her in this manner: that one part should remain in its own purity and not be united to body — namely the angels; the other part should be joined to body — namely souls. The rational creature is therefore distinguished into incorporeal and corporeal; and the incorporeal is called *angel*, while the corporeal is called *man*, subsisting from a rational soul and flesh. The condition therefore of the rational creature had as its first cause the goodness of God."

"Hence if it be asked why man or angel was created, the answer can be given in a brief word: because of his goodness. Whence Augustine in the book *On Christian Doctrine*: *Because God is good, we are; and inasmuch as we are, we are good*."

"And if it be asked for what the rational creature was created, the answer is: for praising God, for serving him, for enjoying him; in which things the creature itself profits, not God. For God, being perfect and full of supreme goodness, can neither be increased nor diminished. That a rational creature was therefore made by God must be referred to the goodness of the Creator and to the utility of the creature." "When, therefore, it is asked why or for what end the rational creature was made, it can be answered most briefly: for the goodness of God, and her own utility. For it is useful to her to serve God and to enjoy him." "Angel therefore, or man, is said to have been made for God's sake — not because the creator God, supremely blessed, had need of the service of either, since he *does not need our goods*, but that the creature might serve him and enjoy him, for whom to serve is to reign. For in this the servant profits, not the one served." "And as man was made for God's sake — that is, that he might serve him — so the world was made for man's sake, namely, that it might serve him. Man therefore was placed in the middle, so that he might both be served and serve, that he might receive from both sides, and that the whole should flow back to the good of man — both the service which he received and the service which he performed. For God so willed himself to be served by man that, by that servitude, God should not, but man serving should, be helped; and he willed that the world should serve man, and that from this man should likewise be helped. The whole good was therefore man's, both what was made for his sake and that for which he himself was made. For *all things*, as the Apostle says, *are ours* — namely those above, those equal, and those below. Those above are ours for full enjoyment, namely God the Trinity; those equal for fellowship, namely the angels, who, even though for the present they are above us, in the future shall be our equals; and they are even now ours, because they are for our use, just as the master's things are said to be the servants' — not by dominion, but because they are for the servants' use. And in certain passages of Scripture the angels themselves are said to serve us, when they are sent into ministry on our account."

### Chapter V. *In what sense man is said to have been made for the repair of the angelic fall.*

"Of man also it is occasionally found in Scripture that he was made for the repair of the angelic ruin. This is not to be understood as if man would not have been made had the angel not sinned; rather, it is that among the other causes — namely the principal ones — this also stood as some sort of cause." Therefore those things above are ours, and those equal; ours too are those below, because they were made to serve us.

### Chapter VI. *Why man was so instituted that the soul is united to the body.*

It is also customarily asked: since the soul would seem to be of greater dignity if it had remained without body, why is it united to body? — To which it can first be said: because God so willed, and the cause of his will is not to be sought. Secondly, it can be said that for this reason God willed it united to a body — that in the human condition he might display a new example of that blessed union which is between God and spirit, in which [God] is loved with the whole heart and seen face to face. For the creature would have supposed that it could not be united to its Creator with such closeness — that it should love and know him with the whole mind — unless it saw a spirit (which is the most excellent creature) united in such great love to a thing so lowly — namely to the flesh, which is of the earth — that it cannot be constrained even to wish to leave it, as the Apostle shows when he says: *We would not be unclothed [from the body], but clothed over*; by which it is shown that a created spirit is united to the uncreated Spirit with ineffable love. "As an example, therefore, of the future society which was to be perfected between God and the rational spirit in his glorification, [God] coupled the soul to bodily garments and to earthly habitations, and made the clayey matter quicken to the sense of life — that man might know that, if God could join into one federation and into so great a friendship natures so unlike as body and soul, it would in no way be impossible for him to raise the humility of the rational creature, however far lower, to the participation of his own glory. Because, then, for the sake of [this] example the rational spirit was for a part [of itself] humbled to the society of the earthly body, lest perhaps in this it should seem too greatly depressed, God's providence added that afterward — together with that same body, now glorified — it should be raised to the company of those who remained in their purity, so that what the creature had received less in [his] creation by the Creator's dispensation, he might afterward receive [in fuller measure] by the same Creator's grace, when glorified. So therefore our maker God, disposing the rational spirits by varied lot at the choice of his own will, gave the ones whom he had left in their own purity a dwelling above in heaven; and to those whom he had joined to earthly bodies he gave a dwelling below on earth; imposing on both the rule of obedience, in such a way that the former should not fall from him there where they were, and the latter should ascend from him where they were to that where they were not. So therefore God made man from a twofold substance, fashioning his body from earth and making the soul from nothing." For this reason also souls are united to bodies — that, while serving God in them, they may merit the greater crown.

### *Epilogue.*

From the foregoing it appears that the rational creature was divided into the angelic and the human, of which the former is wholly spiritual, that is angelic; the latter is partly spiritual and partly corporeal, that is human. Since therefore we must treat of these — namely of the spiritual and the corporeal creature, and of the rational and the non-rational — it seems that we ought first to treat of the rational and spiritual, that is, of the angels, so that our reason may stretch out from the contemplation of the Creator to the cognition of the worthier creature; then descend to the consideration of the corporeal — both that which is rational and that which is not rational — so that the sacrament of the uncreated Trinity may be followed by the document of the tripartite creature and of the things concreted and contingent that belong to it.

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