Appropriating Apocalypse in Bonaventure's Breviloquium
- Appropriating Apocalypse in Bonaventure's Breviloquium
This essay argues that in his Breviloquium Bonaventure expands the doctrine of trinitarian appropriation beyond its fixed scholastic frame; that he applies this expanded grammar of appropriation across the text both synchronically and diachronically, or formally in its literary structure and narratively throughout its account of salvation history; and that Bonaventure does so, or at least there are good reasons for so thinking, in response to the Joachite controversy that embattled the Franciscan Order of his time, to whose benefit he composed the Breviloquium.1 This is, then, an essay whose central task it is to investigate how a highly technical idiom of the scholastic mastertext features within Bonaventure's particular iteration. The results are striking. There is scarcely a depth in the Breviloquium that trinitarian appropriation does not reach.2
I write with an eye to certain question marks drawn by Bonaventure scholarship. First among these questions concerns the deeply trinitarian character of Bonaventure's thought. It's a feature many think sufficiently obvious to be regarded as a truism.3 But it's axiomatically true, too, as [End Page 99] nearly every scholastic thought, that the universal exists only in the particular. So determining whether the truism about Bonaventure's trinitarianism be true entails narrow attention to the particular. If it's true, that is, that the architecture of Bonaventure's theology is "thoroughly trinitarian,"4 it will be true somewhere. I show the doctrine of the Trinity as the Breviloquium construes it to be pervasive—indeed, to be the doctrine upon which all others hang—and that this depends in large part upon trinitarian appropriation.5
A second and "as yet unresolved" question asks after the specter of Joachim of Fiore in Bonaventure's thought,6 especially his early theology.7 Was even the early Bonaventure "a Joachite malgré lui"?8 How? I cannot accommodate that line of inquiry in full. What follows meets the question of Bonaventurean apocalyptic within the Breviloquium only where [End Page 100] it touches the doctrine of appropriation. There are interesting reasons for thinking these convergences are many, though, as the final section shows.
The Grammar of Appropriation
The proximate context for Bonaventure's theory of appropriation in the Breviloquium is a discussion of the Trinity.9 Though in truth "the First Principle—God, three and one"10 offers the subject matter for the entire text, only the first part of seven treats the Trinity proper. Within that part Bonaventure gathers his trinitarian theology under three headings. The first concerns the plurality of persons, the next the plurality of manifestations, and the last the plurality of appropriations.11 Bonaventure's notes under the first offer a tight prospectus of the Trinity ad intra. He ornaments it in scholastic patois concerning first the "right understanding" of the Trinity and next its "right expression." The second heading breaks the seal of the Trinity ad extra. There Bonaventure first describes the plurality of divine manifestation, or how God variously indwells, appears, descends, and sends/is sent.12 Last, fixed hard between the divine manifestations and his doctrine of creation, comes trinitarian appropriation.
Appropriation for the scholastics names a highly idiosyncratic way of speaking about the Trinity, which is to say a grammar. And constitutive of every grammar is a syntax and a lexicon. The lexicon provides the non-negotiable terms of art by means of which appropriation happens, and the syntax provides the rules of combination in terms of which the lexicon is deployed. This section shows that Bonaventure adopts the syntax of appropriation, broadens its lexicon, and finally expands its grammatical application.
The Breviloquium assumes a syntax of appropriation that it never fully describes.13 Still, it offers some hints: [End Page 101]
Regarding the plurality of appropriations, Holy Scripture teaches us to hold the following: that even though all the essential attributes apply equally and without distinction to all the persons, yet oneness (unitas) is appropriated (appropriari) to the Father, truth (veritas) to the Son, and goodness (bonitas) to the Holy Spirit… Now, these are said to be appropriated, not because they are proper (propria) <to these persons>, since they are always common...
