Bonaventure’s I sentence argument for the trinity from beatitude
Abstract
Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary provides the most comprehensive set of trinitarian arguments to date. This article focuses on just one of them, the one from beatitude. Roughly, beatitude can be thought of as God’s enjoyment of his own, supreme goodness. After a brief rationale of Bonaventure’s speculative project, I assay the concept of beatitude and exposit his four-stage argument. Bonaventure reasons: (i) for a single supreme substance; (ii) for at least two divine persons; (iii) against the possibility for an infinite number of divine persons; (iv) for at least three, and against the possibility of four (or more) divine persons. I show how this line of reasoning is significantly more complex than Bonaventure’s terse summaries initially indicate. My main goal is to explicate the four steps and unpack their main support. Along the way I attend to the argument’s sources, logical progression, and I respond to several concerns.
Citation
Bray , D 2021 , ' Bonaventure’s I sentence argument for the trinity from beatitude ' , American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly , vol. 95 , no. 4 . https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq2021728234
Publication
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1051-3558Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq2021728234.
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