Dist. 18, Dubia
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/18/q/bon-sent-II-d18-dubia
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### DOUBT CONCERNING THE TEXT OF THE MASTER.

Someone might however wish to raise a doubt about what he says, namely that *the woman was made from the rib by that miracle by which [the multiplication occurred] of the five loaves*, and so on. For he seems to say that the formation of the woman was miraculous; and on this occasion the question *concerning miracles* might be introduced. But because of its prolixity, and because it pertains little to our present purpose, it must be omitted for the present. Let it suffice to have said only this: that the woman is said to have been made from the rib *miraculously* not because it was done *contrary* to the customary course of nature or against nature, but because it was done by divine power operating *above* nature.

*An incidental question is appended.* If anyone, however, should ask whether He performed this work *above* nature with angelic power ministering to Him, Augustine on Genesis according to the letter, book nine, replies as follows: «What ministry the Angels performed in that formation of the woman, who would dare to assign? Most certainly, however, I would say that the supplementing of that flesh in the place of the rib, and the body of the woman herself and her soul and the configuration of her members, all her viscera, all her senses, and whatever it was by which she was both *a creature* and a *human being* and a *female* — none of this was done save by that work of God which God performed not through Angels but through Himself». — *Six reasons for the unity of the human race.* But the most weighty reason why God formed [the woman] in this way is, first, because that mode of forming was above the power of nature; and second, that man in either sex might directly turn toward Him and love with his whole self Him by whom he knew himself to have been immediately made.

Now the reason why God willed to produce all from one man, even though He did not do so in other kinds of animals, can be drawn from *order* and *connection* and *signification*. — From *order*, indeed, in two ways: *Reason 1 and 2.* first, from the order of *the body to the soul*, so that just as all rational souls proceed immediately from one principle, so all human bodies might come forth immediately from one; secondly, from the order of *the whole composite to other creatures*. For since man holds a middle place between the angelic nature and the brutal, and since the Angels were produced by God *singly*, and brute creatures in *a twofold sex*, namely in male and female: man had to be produced in *a middle way*, and so the female from the male.

From *connection*, likewise, a twofold reason is taken: *Reason 3 and 4.* first, with respect to the whole *species universally*, that every man may love every man as a brother; secondly, with respect to *his wife specially*, on account of which *a man leaves his father*

*and mother, and clings to his wife, and they are two in one flesh*.

From *signification*, too, a twofold reason is taken: *Reason 5 and 6.* first, from *allegorical* signification, by which we understand through the man and the woman Christ and the Church; secondly, by *anagogical* [signification], by which through the man, who was the principle of all men, we understand God, who was the principle of all things.

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