Dist. 18
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-littera
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# DISTINCTION XVIII.

### Chapter I.
### *On the formation of woman.*

In this same paradise, too, God formed woman from the substance of man, just as Scripture appends, after paradise had been planted and the man placed in it, and after all the animals had been led to him and designated by their names: *God sent a deep sleep upon Adam. And when he had fallen asleep, he took one of his ribs and formed it into a woman.*

Here it must be noted why he did not create man and woman together, as he did the angels, but first the man, and then the woman from the man. *Augustine.* « Namely, in order that there might be one principle of the human race, so that in this both the pride of the devil might be confounded and the humility of man might be exalted by the likeness of God. For the devil had desired to be a principle other than God; therefore, that his pride might be beaten back, man received this as a gift, which the devil perversely wished to seize but could not obtain. And through this the image of God appeared in man, since, just as God exists as the principle of creation for all things, so man is the principle of generation for all human beings. For this reason also God willed that all should come from one man, so that, while they recognized that they all come from one, they might love one another as if one ».

### Chapter II.
### *Why she was formed from the side of the man, and not from another part of the body.*

But since for these reasons « woman was made *Augustine.* from the man — formed not from just any part of the man's body, but from his side, in order to show that she was created for the partnership of love; lest, if she had been made from the head, she might seem to be set over the man for dominion, or, if from the feet, to be subjected to him in servitude. Therefore, since she was prepared for the man neither as mistress nor as handmaid, but as companion, she had to be produced neither from the head nor from the feet but from the side, so that she might know that she was to be placed beside him whom she had learned was taken from his own side ».

And by this the reply to the objections is clear, except for the first, because it is not a parallel case. For to forbid *evil* is good, since no one can perpetrate evil without sin; but to forbid the *good* is not so much an evil, since a man can abstain from it without sin; for to abstain from a beneficial good falls within the genus of honourable good. The rest are sufficiently clear from what has been said.

### Chapter III.
### *Why the rib was taken from the man while he was sleeping, and not while he was awake.*

Not without cause was « the rib also taken from *Hugo.* the man rather while he was sleeping than while he was awake — the rib from which woman was formed for the man as a help for generation — but in order to show that he felt no pain in it, and at the same time that the marvellous work of the divine power might be displayed, which opened the side of the sleeping man and yet did not wake him from the rest of his slumber ». « In which work also the sacrament of Christ and the Church was prefigured; for just as woman was formed from the side of the sleeping man, so the Church is formed from the sacraments which flowed from the side of Christ sleeping on the Cross, namely blood and water, by which we are redeemed from punishments and washed from guilt ».

### Chapter IV.
### *That she was made from the rib multiplied in itself, without the addition of any extrinsic thing.*

It is also customarily asked whether « the woman was made from that rib without the addition of any extrinsic thing. — Which some have not approved. But if, for the perfecting of the woman's body, God had added an extrinsic increase, that addition would have been greater than the rib itself. Hence the woman would have to be said to have been made rather from that added thing than from the rib itself, since from it she would have received the greater portion of her substance. It remains, therefore, that one should say that the woman's body was made from the substance of the rib alone, without any extrinsic addition, by divine power multiplied in itself — by that very same miracle by which afterwards, when the five loaves were multiplied by Jesus's heavenly *Sole dubium.* blessing, five thousand men were filled ».

This too ought to be known: that, although the formation of woman was carried out through the ministry of angels, the power of creation is not to be attributed to them. *Augustine.* « For angels can create no nature, and therefore neither can they form a rib

into a woman, nor any supplement of flesh in the place of the rib; not that they do nothing toward bringing something into being, but they are not creators on that account — any more than farmers are creators of crops or trees. God alone, that is, the Trinity, is Creator ». Woman, therefore, was made by God, even if the rib was supplied through the ministry of angels.

### Chapter V.
### *On the higher and lower causes.*

But it is asked whether the *ratio* which God concreated in his first works contained this, that according to it woman had necessarily to be made from the side of the man, or only this, *Hugo.* that she could be so made. — « To which it must be known that the causes of all things are in God from eternity. For that man should be made thus, or horse and the like, was from eternity in the power and disposition of God. These are called *primordial causes*, because no others precede them, but they precede the others, which are causes of causes. And although the divine power, disposition or will is one — and therefore one principal cause of all things — yet on account of the diverse effects Augustine speaks in the plural of *primordial causes* of all things in God, drawing the likeness of the craftsman, in whose disposition it lies what shape the ark is to have. So too in God the cause of each future thing precedes. But in creatures there are causes of some things, though not of all, as Augustine says, because God *seminal causes.* implanted *seminal reasons* in things, according to which some things come from others — that from this seed comes such a grain, that from this tree comes such a fruit, and the like. And these too are called *primordial causes*, though not so properly, since they have before them an eternal cause, which is properly and universally first. They, however, are called primary in relation to certain things, namely the things which proceed from them. They are also called *primordial* because they were implanted by God in the first establishment of things. And just as creatures are mutable, so these causes too can be changed »; but that which is a cause in the immutable God cannot be changed.

### Chapter VI.
### *On the causes which are at once in God and in creatures, and on those which are in God alone.*

The causes of all things, therefore, are in God; but of some the causes are both in God and in creatures, while of others the causes are in God alone; and the causes of these things are called *hidden in God*, because it is so in the divine disposition that this or that should come to be, even though it is not in the *seminal* reason of the creature. And those things which come about according to a seminal cause are said *Note.* to come about *naturally*, because in this way the course of nature has become known to men; but others come about *beyond nature*, whose causes are in God alone. These, however, Augustine says, are the things that come about by grace, or which, for the sake of signifying these, come to pass not *naturally* but *miraculously*. Among these he places the making of the woman from the man's rib, saying as follows: That the woman should be made thus was, of necessity, not founded in things but hidden in God. Every nature's course has its natural laws. Above this natural course, the Creator has it in his power to do otherwise concerning all things than their natural reason holds — as that a dry rod should suddenly bloom and bear fruit, that a barren woman in her youth should bear in her old age, that an ass should speak, and the like. He has indeed given to natures the capacity that these things can come about from them, but not that they should have it in their natural course. God therefore has within himself the hidden causes of certain future things, which he has not implanted in created things; and he fulfils them not by the work of providence whereby natures subsist that they may be, but by that whereby he administers them as he wills — those things which he established as he willed. Of all things, therefore, which were done for the signifying of grace, not by the natural motion of things, but miraculously, the hidden causes were in God — one of which was that woman was made from the side of the sleeping man. The first establishment of things did not have it that woman should be so *made*, but only that she *could be made*, lest he should be thought to do something against the causes which God voluntarily instituted, by a mutable will.

### Chapter VII.
### *On the soul of the woman — that it is not from the soul of the man, since souls are not by traduction.*

« Just as the body of the woman was drawn from *Three opinions.* the body of the man, so some have thought that her soul also was propagated from the soul of the man, and that all souls except the first are *by traduction*, as bodies are ». Others, however, have thought that all souls were *together* created from the beginning. But the Catholic Church teaches that souls are made neither *together* nor *by traduction*, but are infused into bodies seminated and formed by intercourse, and by their being infused are created. Hence in the *Ecclesiastical Dogmas*: « We say that the souls of men were not born from the beginning among the intellectual creatures, nor created all together, as Origen feigns; nor that they are seminated with bodies through intercourse, as the Luciferians and Cyrillus and certain Latin presumers affirm. But we say that *the body* alone is seminated through marital union, that the creation of *the soul* the Creator alone knows, and that by his judgment the body is coagulated in the womb, and is composed and formed, and that, once the body is formed, the soul is created and infused, so that there should live in the womb

a man composed of soul and body, and that he should issue alive from the womb, full of human substance ». Jerome also condemns with the bond of anathema those who say souls are *by traduction*, citing the authority of the Prophet: *Who fashioned their hearts one by one.* This, he says, sufficiently intimates that God does not make a soul from a soul, but creates souls one by one *out of nothing*.

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