Dist. 22, Art. 3, Q. 2
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/4/d/22/q/bon-sent-IV-d22-a3-q2
----------------------------------------
### Question II. *Whether penance has the character of a plank.*

Secondly, inquiry is made concerning this — about penance under the character of a plank. And first it seems that these two do not go together in the case of penance, namely *plank* and *foundation*:

**For the opposite.**

1. Since it belongs to a foundation to lie beneath, and to a plank to be borne up on top: therefore if penance is rightly called a *foundation*, it is improperly called a *plank* by the Master.

2. Likewise, Jerome, on that text: *Their sin like Sodom* etc.: "The second plank after shipwreck is the hiding of sin"; but penance consists in the disclosure of sin: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, a foundation is first: therefore if penance is a foundation and is a plank, then it is the *first* plank: therefore Jerome speaks wrongly in saying that it is the *second* plank. — For these seem incompossible, that it be a foundation and that it be second. *If you say* that it is a *plank* insofar as it is a Sacrament, and a *foundation* insofar as it is a virtue; *on the contrary*: if it is a plank insofar as it is a Sacrament, then it is the *second* Sacrament: therefore it ought to be treated of immediately after baptism.

4. Likewise, it is called a plank because it frees from shipwreck; but penance frees from shipwreck insofar as it is a virtue: therefore it is a plank insofar as it is a virtue.

**Incidental question.** It is asked, then, according to what trope it is called a plank.

### Conclusion.

> *Penance, according to its diverse acceptations, is rightly called a foundation insofar as it is a virtue, and a plank insofar as it is a Sacrament.*

**I respond:** It must be said that penance, whether it be called a *foundation* or a *plank*, is said tropically, yet according to one and another acceptation, according to which a twofold transferred sense arises. For penance is a virtue, and thus the character of a *foundation* belongs to it; penance is a Sacrament, and thus according to this the character of a *plank* belongs to it.

Now the ground of this is that a virtue, as Augustine holds in *On the Greatness of the Soul*, is nothing other than "an equality of the mind everywhere consenting to reason"; whence it is a kind of squaring, by which the soul is set in place in the spiritual building. And since in this setting-in-place the virtue of penance *first* occurs in the building-up; therefore the character of the first part of the building belongs to it, and this is the foundation; and therefore to the virtue of penance the name and property of *foundation* is most rightly fitted.

But the name and property of *plank* belongs to penance as a Sacrament. — To understand which, one must know what the *sea* is, what *shipwreck* is, what a *ship* is, and what a *plank* is. The *sea* is the present world, according to that text of the Psalm: *This great sea* etc. — The *ship*, which leads to the harbor of salvation, is ecclesiastical unity, of which it is said in Wisdom, chapter fourteen: *Those crossing the sea by a raft were freed*; and Acts, chapter twenty-seven: *Unless you remain in the ship* etc. — *Shipwreck* of the ship is by the separation and rending of the members, according to that text of Jude: *These are they who separate themselves* etc. — A *plank* is some aid bestowed, by which he who is in the peril of shipwreck may be lifted up from the peril of sin; and this is the Sacrament. — And since the peril of sin is twofold, the shipwreck too is twofold; there is a twofold Sacrament freeing from the twofold shipwreck, namely from the shipwreck of the *original* [sin], and this is *baptism*; and because original sin is first, therefore baptism is the *first plank*. And the second shipwreck is by *actual* [sin], and because penance frees from this, therefore it is called the *second plank*.

1. And thus it is plain that it is rightly called a *foundation*, and rightly called a *plank*, according to diverse acceptations; and rightly, insofar as it is a virtue, it is called a *foundation*, and rightly, insofar as it is a Sacrament freeing from shipwreck, it is called the *second plank*.

3. And thus that argument is plain: it is the second plank: therefore the *second* Sacrament. And the objection about the incompossibility of these two is likewise plain in the second place.

2. To that, then, which is objected concerning the hiding, it must be said that there is a hiding through *hypocrisy* and through *true penance*, which remits all. And Jerome is speaking of the second hiding, which comes about through disclosure, not of the first.

4. To that which is objected — that penance frees insofar as it is a virtue — it must be said that, just as faith supplies the place of baptism where one cannot be baptized, so penance-as-virtue supplies the place of the Sacrament; yet, because this holds only in a case of necessity, so as to be able to free from shipwreck, whereas the Sacrament has this of itself: therefore the character of *plank* ought to be attributed to the Sacrament, not to the *virtue*. Moreover, the Sacrament regards deliverance from evil or from peril, not so the virtue; and because "plank" sounds toward the notion of refuge and of deliverance from the evil of shipwreck and the peril of sin: therefore it belongs more to the Sacrament than to the virtue. — And thus the response to all the objections concerning the opposite side is plain. Only this must be diligently attended to: that as long as we are in this sea, we should clutch the plank on account of the peril to be avoided in the great sea.