The Basic Concepts of Bonaventure’s Mystical Theology (The Triple Way)

Abstract

In this paper I present a summary of Bonaventure’s treatise The Triple Way (as it often called, a sum of mystical theology). The main aim of this presentation is to analyze the synthesis of the previous spiritual and mystical tradition, proposed by Bonaventure in the treatise. I argue that Bonaventure laid in the foundation of his synthesis the scheme of the hierarchy of celestial beings of Ps.-Dionysius (purification – illumination – perfect union). The two other schemes are resting on this one: practice of divine reading (meditation – prayer – contemplation), and the way of monastic progression (beginners – progressing – perfect ones). Justifying the synthesis of these schemes, Bonaventura is building a kind of guide to the mystical ascent to God. Thus, in the treatise Bonaventure summed up the Western Christian spiritual traditions that existed before the 13^th century, which he reworked into a new spiritual direction, the source of which was the type of spirituality that was laid by St. Francis of Assisi. The core of the new direction was Bonaventure’s idea of theology as a true wisdom.