Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Goff, Jared I

Titel

Caritas in Primo: A historical theological study of Bonaventure's "Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Ss. Trinitatis"

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In the mid-1250s, shortly after becoming a master of theology at the University of Paris, Bonaventure wrote a series of disputed questions on the Mystery of the Trinity: Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Ss. Trinitatis. This disputation, however, fell out of memory shortly after Peter John of Olivi last mentioned it in 1298. The text was rediscovered in the early 1870s by the Franciscan scholar Fidelis a Fanna, within a historical context quite different from Bonaventure's. Subsequent scholarship has not produced a single study focusing upon the entirety of the text, and, where the text is discussed, historical context is only a marginal concern. This dissertation attempts to begin to fill both of these lacunae. It first establishes the historical background and context in which the De Mysterio Trinitatis was composed. Then, on this basis, it offers an interpretive analysis of the entirety of the text, paying special attention to the theological and philosophical matters that would have motivated Bonaventure. This dissertation argues that in the De Mysterio Trinitatis, Bonaventure was responding to the promulgation of a new Aristotelian arts curriculum, mandated in March 1255. Bonaventure understood how this new curriculum had implications for how one should understand the relationship between reason and faith, philosophy and theology, and knowledge and love. While incorporating Aristotelian methodology and concepts, in the De Mysterio Trinitatis Bonaventure outlined a synthesis of faith and reason, which deepened, clarified and, at times, corrected Aristotle. This dissertation shows how Bonaventure worked out his synthesis in the De Mysterio Trinitatis and was able avoid certain apparent 'naturalistic' tendencies in Aristotle by allowing the doctrine of the Trinity—with its implications for the understanding of perfect personhood and freedom—to illumine metaphysics. For Bonaventure, a full resolution of the questions arising out of the interplay between Aristotelian science and Christian wisdom is ultimately found in the notion of Primacy: a primacy that implies a Trinitarian order of being, originating in the spontaneous, yet necessary, charity of the Father.