in much more detail in the following chapter, but here it demonstrates Bonaventure’s attention to the “facts” of the observable world, as well as to the meaning of the structure of the cosmos.
While it might seem that Bonaventure is traveling fairly far afield from Genesis, it is quite clear that he understands Genesis to lead to and perhaps require a natural philosophic analysis. Reading the Book of the World to find the vestiges of God requires examining the world in detail, not simply overlooking the physical in favor of the spiritual. Perhaps sensing this objection, he turns in the fifth chapter of the Breviloquium to a discussion of how we arrive at a discussion of natural philosophy even if the Bible itself does not tell us about “the distinction of the spheres, nor the heavens, nor the elements.”50 While he goes on at some length to answer the question, the basic upshot is that scripture ought to be understood in comparison to the Book of the World. Scripture, for Bonaventure, is about the revelation of Christ and his teaching. It is redemptive or repairing. The Book of the World, namely creation, is a book about the Father, the Creator. Thus, scripture includes only what readers need to know about redemption, and should not be seen as somehow closing off knowledge of the world. Scripture is sufficient, but not all-encompassing.51
The Book of the World, however, is mostly closed, according to Bonaventure. While the order of the created world might once potentially have led human beings to the divine (as it did in the Garden), postlapsarian human beings are not so fortunate.52 In his Collations on the Six Days, a treatise where creation serves a metaphorical purpose, Bonaventure is quite clear that people cannot simply observe nature and know God, that is, there is no sense of any kind of natural religion.53 Bonaventure argues, then, that the role of scripture is to begin to repair what was lost to human beings at the fall, namely, their “eye of contemplation (oculum contemplationis)” as Hugh of St. Victor called it.54 God endowed humanity at creation with an eye of flesh, an eye of reason, and an eye of contemplation. The eye of flesh allows people to see around them; this is the literal function of an eye. The eye of reason is what allows one to see inside oneself, that is, to think. The eye of contemplation, however, is what allows the other kinds of eyes to look heavenward in an anagogical sense. With the contemplative faculty damaged after the fall, the physical world can be seen, described, catalogued, and theorized, but it does not ultimately lead, as it should, to the manifestation of God.55 Through recalling the beauty and goodness of God, scripture (along with grace) aids in the repair of the senses, so that the science of creation reveals its author.56
What Bonaventure adds to the Franciscan understanding of nature is a sense that the kind of immediate sacrality felt by Francis in his apprehension of God in creation can also emerge through reason, philosophy, and theology. It is implied that the saintly Francis was able to read the Book of the World, and immediately see its truth. Bonaventure’s path is more deliberate, but it embraces every kind of knowledge about the natural world that leads to the divine. The four elements and three heavens are not biblical in origin, yet to the Christian who also reads the scriptures, they can be seen to refer to the seven days of creation, or (in the case of the heavens) to the Trinity. That said, natural philosophy is not an end in itself. Even when it leads to knowledge of the Creator, it is not the highest kind of knowledge. Bonaventure reserves that for the kind of mystical union discussed in the earlier part of this chapter. Bonaventure’s distinct celebration of the natural world, however, would resonate in the next generation of Franciscan scholars. We turn now to one of those, Peter Olivi.
Creation as a Mirror of the Trinity: Peter of John Olivi
Peter of John Olivi’s reputation has grown recently, thanks to a great deal of scholarly work that has more firmly established the context of his life and thought. In particular, scholars such as David Burr, David Flood, O.F.M., and Kevin Madigan have read Olivi in the context of his era rather than through the lens of later Spiritual Franciscans and fraticelli who appropriated his views. Olivi is now considered one of the premier intellects of the Franciscan Order at the end of the thirteenth century. The marginalization of his ideas was a product of historical contingency rather than a reflection on their relative merit. Olivi’s allegiance to the exegetical methods (and apocalyptic fears and hopes) of twelfth-century abbot Joachim of Fiore certainly had much to do with opposition to his ideas in his own period, but he was far from the only Franciscan to suffer on account of his attachment to Joachism. The apocalyptic strains of Joachism will be tackled in more depth in Chapter 3, but to understand Olivi’s views on creation, it is necessary to outline a few of the salient details of Joachim’s mode of exegesis which Olivi adopted.
Discussion of Joachite exegesis often highlights its more radical and apocalyptic features. Olivi’s fidelity to this exegetical strategy, however, displays the more subtle aspects of its inventiveness, especially the principle of concordia. Like traditional typological readings of scripture, concordia argues for intertestamental links. It does not, however, stop there, as the intertestamental relationships could also describe future events. According to Joachim, the two testaments are a complete work of scripture that cannot be superseded, but they record a history of an age of the Father (identified with the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament), and the beginning of an age of the Son. By understanding the parallels between the two testaments one can use them to intrepret history since the age of the apostles and thus deduce the structure of the remaining age of the Son and the third age of the Holy Spirit. Concordia highlights the numerical patterns of the Bible as particularly instructive, as they can be found in a wide variety of places. We saw this to a degree in Bonaventure, who adopted some of the exegetical strategies of Joachim, but opposed the Joachite idea that the books of the Bible could be used to see the order of the future.57 Olivi, however, is sympathetic to this view, and in his commentary on Genesis puts special emphasis on patterns of three that mirror the Trinity. In the prologue to the commentary, Olivi puts concordia front and center. Again, the principle of concordia relies on earlier biblical typology, and its novel aspects are not always immediately obvious. For instance, citing Genesis 18:4–5, when Abraham greets the three angels, Olivi tells his readers that these three angels signify the three persons of God.58 This Trinitarian formulation is at the heart of Olivi’s Genesis commentary, but was already a longstanding typological interpretation. Yet, in the friar’s view, there is no aspect of creation that fails to reveal the Trinity and enrich one’s understanding of it.
Genesis, Olivi tells us, is like a tree. Its roots are the six days, its trunk is the line of patriarchs, and its branches are their descendants, divided into the twelve tribes of Israel. Its leaves are the laws, and its flowers the wisdom literature and the prophets.59 Again, Olivi’s tree metaphor is not new. The tree long served exegetical thinkers as a means of mapping the genealogies beginning in Genesis (and concluded in the Gospels). Yet, for Olivi the story of Genesis does not—and should not—stand on its own. “Under the tree,” he says, “is the entire Trinity of God, the threefold hierarchy of angels, and the three types of existence of men: under the law of nature, under the law of Scripture, and under the law of grace” (emphasis mine).60 The italicized portion at the end of this passage communicates Olivi’s understanding of concordia, that the Hebrew Bible prefigures not only the events and persons of the New Testament, but events throughout the whole of salvation history, here divided into yet another pattern of three.
Olivi’s discussion of human existence may not, at first blush, seem entirely novel. It looks something like the usual binary between law and grace, but, as Burr rightly shows, it emerges from Jewish exegesis and had been employed by Christian authors prior to Olivi as a a typical means of “citing Judaism against itself.” Olivi himself likely was drawn to the idea because the threefold structure is suggestive of its compatibility with Joachite apocalyptic thought, a point that is underscored by his employment of the same phraseology in his commentary on the Apocalypse.61 Olivi, like Joachim before him, conceived of sacral history as unfolding in three ages—those of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The schematic rendering of a threefold history by Jewish sages was simply more evidence that Joachim and Olivi were correct.
Olivi likely believed himself and his fellow Christians to be on the cusp of a transition to the third and