In approaching Bonaventure’s texts on the sacraments found in Book Four of his Commentary on the Sentences, one immediately notices that St. Augustine continues to speak. As seen above, Bonaventure discovered Augustine’s voice in his study of The Sentences of Peter Lombard and in his study of 12th-century Victorines. They were all indebted to St. Augustine. Bonaventure brings Augustine forward. In his treatment of sacraments, this is especially true for the way he understands the Church, the ecclesia. Formed by St. Augustine (as well as other earlier Christian teachers), he utilizes the patristic vision of the Church as the Body of Christ to which its members are mystically united. Bonaventure’s theology of sacraments thus flows out of Augustine’s notion of mystical and spiritual communion. Sacraments are healing remedies by which the members of the Body of Christ reintegrate themselves into the unity and charity of mystical communion with and within the Body of Christ. Individually and collectively, all become more deeply united and thereby imbued with the gift of the Spirit. They, as the Body of Christ, become the Spouse of the High Priest offering himself on the cross out of obedience and to the praise and glory of his Father.
Yves Congar nicely articulates the earlier patristic tradition, as inherited in the early Western Middle Ages: “The church is considered as the Body of Christ and as such is united to him. She is thus understood more in her mystical reality than in her social constitution….”1 In this received patristic context, Bonaventure moves the theological tradition forward. Sacraments are of the ecclesia, and they thereby flow out of and draw one into the mystery of the Body of Christ, which embraces both heaven and earth, enabling the faithful to become more and more perfectly the Church, more perfectly integrated into the Body of Christ, and ultimately more and more empowered by the charity of the Holy Spirit that unifies and produces spiritual fruit. Again, Yves Congar articulates this vision clearly:
For Augustine, someone can belong to the church insofar as it is a means of grace, communio sacramentorum, but that will be spiritually “useful,” bear fruit spiritually, and offer salvation only if (through these means [of sacraments] or beyond them) he or she participates by way of caritas in the unitas of which the Holy Spirit is the principle. This is the aspect of the church as communio sanctorum – the communion of saints, where the faithful orientate themselves toward ecclesial unity by a “social love,” living by the Holy Spirit in both caritas and unitas….The Holy Spirit is actually the principle of our communion with Christ and, in Christ, among ourselves.2
Congar here explains Augustine’s thought concerning the connection of the “communion of the sacraments” with the “communion of the saints.” Both are about the vivifying power of the Holy Spirit operative in the unity of charity. In reading Bonaventure’s texts on the sacraments carefully, it becomes clear that Bonaventure understands sacraments from within the mystery of the “communion of saints.” This communion both constitutes and expresses the power of the Spirit vivifying the Mystical Body, the ecclesia.
Again, as Congar writes, “…the church is seen above all as the community of the faithful given life by the Holy Spirit.”3 Sacraments are about spiritual communion. And so, when Bonaventure writes about the reasons for sacraments, he asks not what Christ did, but he rather ponders the mystery and life of the Church. For the sacrament of Order, for instance, Bonaventure’s concern is to ponder the beauty and order it brings to the Mystical Body so that the ecclesia may celebrate Eucharist. Similarly, Marriage is developed as a spousal mystery within the Body of Christ, the Spouse of the High Priest.
Bonaventure also understands the Eucharist within the context of the mystery and life of the Church. The ultimate res, or the deepest meaning of the Eucharist, is the Mystical Body, not the true body of Christ present sub sacramento. This “true presence” of the body of Christ as res et sacramentum becomes another sign. The true body of Christ points toward a deeper, more important reality: the unitas and caritas of the Mystical Body, that is, deeper and greater unity within the communio sanctorum. In other words, the body of Christ, truly present sub sacramento, is not an end but rather a means leading toward the ultimate reality (res), incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ.
Thus, Bonaventure’s use and development of the rich patristic tradition he received offers a refreshing approach to understanding the sacraments. Unlike in his later works such as De mysterio Trinitatis, written after Aristotle’s works were introduced into the theological curriculum in the studium at Paris in 1255,4 Bonaventure’s use of Aristotle in his circa 1250 writing of Book Four of his Commentary on the Sentences is limited. In his writing on the sacraments he does not focus on emerging philosophical questions such as causes, substances, accidents, etc. as subsequent medieval theologians would do. Neither does Bonaventure’s work, at this point in his life, deal with anti-ecclesiastical or anti-hierarchical developments, which “required a clarification of the conditions for the church to exist as a historic organization instituted by Christ.”5 Furthermore, Bonaventure’s work is also free from the polemics that developed during the Reformation of the 16th century and the resulting magisterial teaching of the Council of Trent that began an unprecedented emphasis on the “institutional aspect” of the Church, moving sacraments away from the spiritual communion of the Mystical Body into more external “institutional” questions.
In this historical and theological context, it is not surprising therefore that Bonaventure, although he accepts the number of seven to be the number of sacraments, as he inherited from Peter Lombard, never identifies all seven as “instituted by Christ.” Rather, in the tradition of Hugh of St. Victor, he argues the institution of sacraments flows from the development of the ecclesia through its phases of salvation history: “…they were instituted differently at different times.”6 They are simply the marvelous signposts of God’s ordered plan of salvation, beginning with creation itself and continuing unto the work of the Spirit within the Church itself.
Bonaventure writes that institution of sacraments was “fitting for God and advantageous for us.”7 Sacraments are “advantageous for us” because “the sacraments are a help to grace”8 and thus they are most fitting. They are not, however, necessary because “God does not bind his power to the sacraments.”9 Ultimately incorporation into caritas of the communio sanctorum, and therefore into the Mystical Body of Christ, is a completely and totally free gift of grace.
Sacraments are therefore invitations to accept and enter into the mystery of the life of grace found in the communio sanctorum as realized in the Mystical Body of Christ. Through visible signs sacraments dispose members of the Body of Christ toward reception of grace and cultivate their desire for deeper faith: “The movement of faith is aroused through the delivery of the sign.” Bonaventure here further argues that these signs are “figurative and significative.”10 In this sense, he will argue that sacraments fill a teaching, contemplative, and even mystical role, cultivating and actually revealing the deeper mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ where the Spirit gives life and heals.
Following Hugh of St. Victor that “a sacrament is a material element that represents by likeness and signifies by institution,”11 Bonaventure argues that the fallen person needs visible signs in order to be drawn into and to accept the invisible reality of God’s mercy, justice and wisdom. These sacramental signs have their “capacity for signification from nature.” So the specific signs effective in each of the sacraments are not arbitrary. The first instance of signifying is rooted in a material created element. All created elements reveal something of the mystery of God. The word spoken in the celebration of a sacrament builds on the natural sign and specifies further the sacramental grace to be received.
The grace connected to any sacrament either “cleanses or anoints inwardly, just as it is signified exteriorly in the visible sign.”12 This means that although grace goes forth from God directly into the soul, it is nevertheless grace given according to what is specifically signified by the signifying external element. In speaking of the Eucharist, Bonaventure explicitly demonstrates this. Although the Eucharist contains the author of all grace, the grace given in this sacrament is not just any grace, but rather only the grace that is signified, that is, “the grace for the particular effect of a meal.”13 Bonaventure consistently argues that “it is necessary that a sacrament have an explicit likeness”14 to the grace given in any of the sacraments, and only according to these external likenesses is the grace of a particular sacrament to be understood.
This is an important point because, in this, Bonaventure here makes clear that the reality of the sacraments is rooted in the reality of creation. All elements are creatures that speak of the Creator, as signs or vestigia of the glory of God. Certain of these created elements have refreshing, nurturing, or healing components. They speak of God in different and unique ways. When the word of institution or blessing, inviting one to contemplation and mystical union, is joined to active use of those natural elements, they are empowered to speak of the ways God’s grace refreshes, nurtures, or heals the interior life of the human person. Thus, these elements through the expression of the word acquire “dispositive influence toward reception of grace.”15 They are therefore called sacraments. All created elements speak of God’s presence among us. Some of these, the sacraments, do so in unique, specific, and powerful ways.
So the sacraments are exterior realities that signify, again by the power of the word that corresponds to the natural significance of the external sign, drawing thereby one’s heart and mind into the interior working of healing grace within the Body of Christ. Hence, a fountain of life-giving water signifies rebirth in Christ, not the other way around. The Eucharist, which not only signifies but also contains the internal reality it signifies, the Body of Christ, is first understood by the significance of food, of a meal. Not the other way around.16 Why? Because, “grace is higher than our senses, and the corporeal is nearer to us. Therefore, grace is rightly signified through the latter (the corporeal and the nearer) and not vice versa.”17
Sacraments, in Bonaventure’s thinking, continue the emphasis on the reality of the Church as the work of the Holy Spirit drawing the faithful into the mystical unity and charity of the Mystical Body of Christ. The sacraments are the external realities that in various ways through the history of salvation draw the People of God into contemplation of and desire for the communio sanctorum. Visible things bring people to the invisible. As Bonaventure states, “because humanity had taken the fall from visible things…, it befitted divine wisdom to find remedy through the same visible things.”18 And so, visible sacraments are given for education and training because the spiritually blind need “to be able to consider things rightly.”19
Sacraments therefore teach, humble, and draw persons to mystical contemplation and union with Christ in the dynamic of his Mystical Body. Sacraments draw persons to comprehend and embrace the Mystery of Faith. Sacraments are not simply institutional actions of the People of God to externally express the Body of Christ. Rather, they are external signifying natural elements in action that, by the power of the Word joined to them, identify a specific grace that opens the way for the heart to enter into internal, invisible and spiritual communion within the Body of Christ. The emphasis in understanding sacraments cannot be, according to Bonaventure, simply a manifestation of the institutional life of the Church, and they cannot narrowly be understood as “instituted” by Christ. It is true that sacraments flow from the general principle of the Incarnation, but they nevertheless, and because of that same principle, begin in the mystery of creation (signum) itself. They lead into the mystery of God, into participation in the grace God chooses to pour directly into the hearts and souls of those who desire him.
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1 Yves Congar, “The Ecclesia or Christian Community as a Whole Celebrates the Liturgy,” in At the Heart of Christian Worship: Liturgical Essays of Yves Congar, Paul Philibert ed. and trans. (Collegeville, Minnesotta: Liturgical Press, 2010), 34.
2 Congar, 37-38.
3 Congar, 43.
4 J. Isaac Goff, Caritas in Primo: A Study of Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015.
5 Congar, 39.
6 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 2, a. 1, q. 2, res.
7 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1,. a. un., q. 1, res.
8 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, a. un., q. 1, ad obj. 2.
9 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, a. un., q. 1, res.
10 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, p. 1, a. un., q. 2, res.
11 Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis, I, p. 9, c. 2 (PL 176, 318: Corpus Victornium, 209-10). Cf. Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 2.
12 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 3, res.
13 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 2, a. 1, q. 3, ad obj., a 2.
14 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 2, a. 1, q. 3, ad obj. 2, c.
15 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad obj. 2, 1-2.
16 The reality of transubstantiation, thus, cannot be the starting point for understanding the Eucharist.
17 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, a. 1, q. 2, ad obj. 2.
18 Bonaventure, Sentence Commentary, IV, d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, res.
19 Ibid.