Cap. 7, Vers. 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/15/d/7/q/bon-eccl-c7-v1
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### Chapter VII.

(Vers. 1.). *What needeth?* Here he calls us back, thirdly, from *searching into lofty things* and inquiring into them, and this since he has enough to do in knowing his own evils, or the common ones. Therefore he says: *What needeth a man to seek things that are above him?* as if to say, there is no need; Ecclesiasticus, the third chapter: « Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability »; and to the Romans, the eleventh chapter: « Be not highminded, but fear ». And he adds the reason why he ought not to seek greater things: *Whereas he knoweth not what is profitable for him in his life,* that is, what is useful to him; Wisdom, the ninth chapter: « Hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us. But the things that are in heaven, who shall search out »? He is ignorant indeed of what is useful in this momentary life; whence he adds: *In the number of the days of his pilgrimage;* Genesis, the forty-seventh chapter: « The days of the pilgrimage of my life are few and evil »; the second epistle to the Corinthians, the fifth chapter: « While we are in this body, we are absent from the Lord ». *And the time that passeth like a shadow;* the first of Paralipomenon, the last chapter: « We are sojourners before thee, and strangers, as were all our fathers. Our days upon earth are as a shadow, and there is no stay ». And so he cannot inquire by himself; nor even learn from another; therefore he adds: *Or who can tell him what shall be after him under the sun?* For man does not know future things, unless the Lord reveals them through grace. Therefore man ought not to extend his thought to this; Isaias, the forty-eighth chapter: « Before the day thou heardest them not, lest thou shouldst say: Behold I knew them. Thou hast neither heard, nor known, neither was thy ear opened of old »; below, in the eighth chapter: « Man is ignorant of things past, and things to come he cannot know by any messenger ». Hence God alone knows future things and reveals them.

### Questions.

I. But it is asked concerning what he says: *It is better to see what thou mayest desire, than to desire what thou knowest not.* Therefore it involves no contradiction that someone can desire what he does not know.

**On the contrary:** 1. Augustine says that « we can love things unseen, but things unknown by no means »; thus, therefore, in order that something be loved and desired, it is necessary that it be known.

2. Likewise, affection follows understanding: therefore where understanding does not go before, affection does not extend itself; but understanding does not extend itself to the things it does not know: therefore neither does affection desire them.

**I respond:** It must be said that cognition is twofold, namely of *certitude* and of *estimation;* so also, by the opposite, ignorance is twofold: one through the privation of any *certitude* whatever, and the other through the privation of any *estimation* whatever. I say, therefore, that in order that something be desired, it is not necessary that cognition of *certitude* go before; for desire follows estimation alone; but it is necessary that some cognition of *estimation* go before. Here, however, he speaks of ignorance through the privation of certitude.

II. It is asked concerning what he says: *What needeth a man to seek things that are above him?* From this it seems that man ought not to search into anything or to know *by labour* what is above him. — This same is proved by that word of Ecclesiasticus, the third chapter: *Seek not the things that are too high for thee.* This same, to the Romans, the eleventh chapter: *Be not highminded, but fear.*

**On the contrary:** 1. Man is in the middle between visible creatures and God; but Augustine says that the soul of man is darkened when it fixes its eye on these earthly and lowest things, but is illumined when it is turned to the eternal goods: therefore it ought always to seek these. But these are higher things: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, the soul is never perfected with complete perfection except in the things that are higher than itself; but each perfectible thing ought to tend toward and seek that in which it is perfected: therefore it ought to seek higher things. — *If you say* that he does not mean that one ought not to seek or consider higher things according to their substance, but that one ought not to consider the things that exceed the possibility of one's consideration; *it is objected* then: because all things that are of faith are above our understanding: therefore according to this our understanding ought not to raise itself to believing the things that are of faith.

3. Likewise, then those would be most of all reprehensible who wish to discuss the articles of faith: therefore all are reprehensible who dispute about faith.

**I respond:** It must be said that the force is to be laid on what he says: *above him;* and on what he says: *to seek. Above him* he calls those things that exceed our consideration, insofar as they exceed it. *To seek* he calls to inquire and to discuss, as if to say that it is foolish to wish to track down those things to which our inquiry does not reach, as to those things for which our consideration does not suffice. For there are some things that are manifest to us about God; and those are not above us; whence he does not dissuade from considering God.

2. 3. To what he objects concerning faith, it must be said that he does not dissuade *from believing,* but *from seeking.* — Further, although the things that are of faith are above our understanding *bare* in itself, yet they are not above the understanding *illumined* by the grace of faith; whence to seek those things and to believe and to track them down as far as that to which the lumen of faith extends itself, is not to extend oneself to greater things; and thus every sober disputation of the articles themselves is. But if it exceeds, unless it be from God, then it is a reprehensible excess.

III. It is asked also concerning what he says: *Who can tell him what shall be after him under the sun?*

**On the contrary:** In our soul there is a power which is *to become all things* and *to make all things*; but the *possible* can receive in itself all things present, all things past and all things future: therefore if the *agent* can reduce it to act, then man can by himself know things to come.

**I respond:** It must be said that, although the *agent* can form or abstract cognition in the *possible intellect,* yet its operation depends both on the certitude of the thing outside and, within, on sense; because « when the thing fails, knowledge perishes »; and « when a sense fails, it is necessary that one knowledge fail according to that sense ». Since, then, future contingents do not generate a likeness of themselves in sense, neither *through themselves* nor *through a determinate antecedent cause;* and they do not have in themselves the stability that is required for cognition: therefore our understanding, which receives from things, cannot by

itself come to the cognition of them, except through him whose cognition does not depend on things.

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