Bonaventure

Bonaventure
John of Fidanza or Bonaventure was born in Italy on the 13th century. He was a leader of the Franciscan order and a mystic. Mystic refers to a really hard type of experience to get; people can only reach it when their souls and the Holy Spirit get together during life.
San Bonaventure was perfectly loyal to the spirit of San Francisco. He considered the union with God like the mostimportant meaning of life. He clearly realized that it was going to be extremely hard to reach that goal without the knowledge of God. This knowledge of God will never build an impediment for the union between a soul and God; it will do the opposite by giving a closer relationship. After all, he encouraged and often practiced the studies of the scripts and theology. He did not look for answers toquestions that did not have anything to deal with God. San Agustin distinguished the difference between faith and reason, and San Buenaventura followed him by citing San Agustin words constantly. San Bonaventure makes a clear distinction between theology and philosophy. He exposes that theology comes with its data straight from God, while philosophy begins with the visible and goes back to God ascause. San Bonaventure was a theologian and was not interested in being a philosopher.
When San Bonaventure was studying the real existence of God, he tempted to have two evidences to support his belief. The idea of God being imperfect presupposes the idea of the perfect God. The idea of imperfection implies the idea of ​​perfection, so the idea of ​​perfection or perfect cannot be obtainedsimply by way of negation and abstraction. The consideration of the creatures in their finitude and imperfection and dependence merely serves to remind the soul. Not even for a moment, he denied the existence of God can be proved from the creatures. San Bonaventure says that God can be known from the creatures, as the cause from effect, and proceeds to say that this mode of knowledge is natural to manto the extent that sensible things are for us the means to reach the knowledge. The existence of God is undoubtedly truth implanted in the human mind naturally. A second way to show that the existence of God is an undoubted truth. This second way is to show that what every creature proclaims, is an undoubted truth, and at that point is in presenting a succession of tests or, rather, indicationsthat any creature really proclaims the existence of God. Although San Bonaventure did not run a clear and explicit of God in every human being, and even less experience or vision of God, certainly ran a confused human being God-consciousness, implicit knowledge cannot be completely denied and that can become a clear and explicit by one internal reflection, although it may need to be supported by areflection on the sensible world. San Bonaventure understood by more implicit knowledge, is a virtual knowledge of God, a confused consciousness that can be converted into explicit without resorting to the sensible world. No representation or doctrine says that the soul sees God in an instant, what it means is that the soul, to recognize his dependence, he acknowledges, on reflection, she is theimage of God, and sees, and God in his image. It is a known necessarily to God, at least in an implicit manner. To contemplate itself can become explicit the implicit knowledge without having to refer to the outside world.
Thus the act of knowledge of God is infinite and eternal, so that all things are present to God, even future events, there is no succession in the divine knowledge, and if wespeak of God's foreknowledge of futurity we must understand as relative to the objects themselves (in the sense that they follow each other in time, and God knows which succeed each other in time), not on the divine knowledge itself. God knows all things by a single eternal act, and no temporal succession in the act, neither before nor after, but God knows eternally, for that one act, things...