Soul and Celestial Hierarchy in ST - Bonaventura
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Matthew Del NevoSoul and Celestial Hierarchy in ST - Bonaventura
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Matthew Del NevoSoul and celestial hierarchy in St.
Bonaventura
This is not an original theory of Bonaventura, but a reflection of tradition. The idea of celestial hierarchy is most often said to originate with St. Dionysius who took it from the neo-Platonist Proclus. My own view is that St. Dionysius Celestial Hierarchy reflects in Christian terms a Jewish tradition. This tradition is in the Bible according to the rabbis, and it is mainly from this tradition that St. Dionysius is most likely to have taken it up I would say. These ideas were taught by the Masters of the Schools in the Medieval times not just because of St. Dionysius, as is frequently claimed, for the celestial hierarchy was a principle known in Arabic philosophy too, through both Platonic and Semitic sources. If there is consonance with this Catholic schema of inner life and neo-Platonism, or Proclus in particular, which I think it is true to say is the case, then it does not therefore mean there is textual borrowing on the Catholic side (the sort of thing modern university academics do), rather, and more to the point, it is indicative of the consonance of inner experience; that is to say, both Platonic and Jewish and Christian traditions, in their different idioms, discover the same facts about the soul and the principle of hierarchy that governs it. What this chart shows is that the entire celestial hierarchy is divinely human or in other words, Christological, and so, in our being, are we. Note how the threefold hierarchy follows the order of the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways that every Catholic writer on inner experience rediscovers for themself. This is not a consecutive ordering (i.e. not linear) as they also vouch. In modern times Pre Garrigou-Lagrange sets this out in his Les trois ges de la vie intrieure: prlude de celle du ciel, (1939) The Three Ages of the Interior Life: Prelude of Eternal Life (1948) which is a Thomist (abstract) treatment. This book was based on a course Garrigou taught for over 20 years at the Angelicum in Rome where he taught for 50 years altogether. One of the doctoral theses he supervised in that time was of a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla, who was working in this area. The logic of this hierarchy can be seen to underlie his life-long work on the human person as an agency and his so-called theology of the body.
1. In the first Hierarchy: evoked by the utterance of prayer, work of the Angels; heard in study and reading, work of the Archangels; announced through example and preaching, work of the Principalities and powers. 2. In the second Hierarchy: joined with as place of refuge and place of indulgence, work of Powers; apprehended through zeal and emulation, work of the Virtues; conjoined with in self-deprecation and mortification, work of Dominions. 3. In the third Hierarchy: worshipped through sacrifice and praise,
work of the Thrones; admired through ecstasy (going out of oneself) and contemplation, work of the Cherubim; embraced in kiss and dilection (amplectanda per osculum et dilectionem), work of Seraphim. Note diligently what I say here, Because this is the fountain of life. (St. Bonaventura, De triplici via, iii, 14)
