Bonaventure

English

I respond: It must be said that, as was touched on at the outset, there is a twofold mode of speaking here: one according to the Greek doctors, namely Basil and Gregory and Damascene; the other according to the Latins.

Opinion of the Greeks. For Basil and Damascene said that that light made day and night by emission and contraction of rays; and this they said was in the power of the light itself — not by its own power, but by the divine command. And we read of something like this in Scripture, Exodus 10: Moses stretched out his hand to heaven, and there were horrible darknesses in all the land of Egypt for three days. For it is clear that in that three-day period the sun was in the hemisphere of our habitable earth, and was emitting the rays of its light into the land of Goshen and into other habitable regions, and was drawing back the rays of the same light from the land of Egypt. Something similar perhaps occurred at the Lord's passion, where the sun is said to have been darkened: and this whole was done not by nature, but by divine command. And in this manner the Greek doctors understood [the light] to have been in that first three-day period; and on this account the reasons earlier adduced from natural power in no way harm them. The authorities of sacred Scripture also do not seem to be against [them], because that division of light from darkness is not understood as regards local position, but as regards formal distinction, just as a habit is distinguished from its privation. And because from this habit into privation there was both a progress and a regress; as regards the regress into habit, it is said to have made morning, and this indeed came about by emission of rays; but as regards the progress into privation, it is said to have made evening, and this indeed came about by contraction of rays.

Opinion of the Latins. Conclusion. Another mode of speaking is that of the Latin doctors, which seems to be more reasonable, because more possible to natural power — namely that that light made night and day by its [own] motion, just as the sun does by its [own] action. For that light is understood to have been made where the sun now is — for from it the sun is believed to have been formed — and it was produced over that part above which is our hemisphere, and by illuminating that hemisphere it made day, and going forward it reached the setting and made evening, and finally going back to the rising it made morning. Hence with respect to one and the same hemisphere it made night and day in succession; but with respect to our hemisphere and the other [hemisphere] it made day on one side and night on the other at the same time — by the obstruction of that dense nature which was in the middle of that matter, which, although it was not yet in [its] complete form, was nevertheless so densified in that part that it could project a shadow, just as in the upper part, on account of its rarity and a certain subtlety, it could receive the influx of light. And so, intimating both of these, Scripture says: God divided the light from the darkness, as regards the existence of light in one hemisphere and darkness in the other; and evening was made and morning, as regards the withdrawal from our hemisphere and the return.

Wilson Pruitt · wroot-bonaventure · published at bonaventure.wrootpress.com (bonaventure.wrootpress.com, In II Sent. d.13 a.1 q.2). This page quotes it; that is its home.

Latin

In II Sent., d. XIII, a. 1, q. 2 (Quaracchi 1885, II.315) · pd

Notes

Added at Phase 6. The one witness on either daf that draws the line this site draws, and draws it inside the Latin tradition rather than across it: there is a twofold mode of speaking here, one according to the Greek doctors — Basil, Gregory, Damascene — and the other according to the Latins. The Greeks have the first light make day and night by emitting and drawing back its rays, on the model of the three days' darkness in Egypt, and by divine command rather than by nature; on that reading the division of light from darkness is formal and not local, evening is the progress into privation and morning the regress into habit. The Latins have the light make day and night by its own motion, where the sun now is and out of which the sun was afterwards formed, so that the division is a real one between two hemispheres. Bonaventure prefers the Latins on the ground that it is more possible to natural power. What makes the passage worth its space is that both parties are made to read the same two clauses: Divisit Deus lucem a tenebris and factum est vespere et mane — which are the whole of K9 and the whole of this crux, allotted between the two schools sentence by sentence. ⚠ Anchor note: the argument is on Gen 1:4-5 throughout and quotes both clauses; it is anchored on 1:5 because that is where its conclusion lands.

Threads

• → cites · Basil of Caesarea
  Bonaventure quotes this sentence by name — 'Et Basilius in Hexaëmero' — as the Greek doctors' position, and quotes it with a variant that decides its sense. Quaracchi prints non solaris corporis motu, 'not by the motion of the solar body'; the Patrologia column reads non solum corporis motu, 'not only by the motion of the body'. The first makes Basil deny that the first light moved as the sun does, which is the whole ground of Bonaventure's division into Greeks and Latins; the second makes him concede motion and add diffusion to it, and so dissolves the division. Basil's own context favours Quaracchi — the sentence has just distinguished what happens after the sun's creation from what happened then, when there was no solar body to move — and the same TEI column carries two plain OCR faults within six lines. Reported as a divergence, not adjudicated: neither the Greek nor a second Latin witness was consulted.
• → cites · Bede
  The Latin half of Bonaventure's division is Bede, named and quoted: 'Beda autem et alii expositores Latini dicunt, quod diem et noctem faciebat sua revolutione; et hoc habitum fuit in auctoritate prius posita, quae inducitur in littera: Occidente luce paulatim' — the opening words of the Bede witness on this daf. What Bede argued from the behaviour of light, the schools have by the thirteenth century filed as the position of the Latins.
• → parallel · Bonaventure
  Phase 6. The same judgement twice, one distinction apart, and both times against the more spiritual reading on the same ground. At d.12 he grants Augustine's simultaneous days are 'multum rationabilis et valde subtilis' and declines them because Scripture would have to be twisted; at d.13 he grants the Greek doctors their emission and contraction of rays and declines it because the Latin account is 'rationabilior, quia virtuti naturali possibilior'. Reasonableness in the first case is fidelity to the letter, in the second what nature can do — and both times the literal, physical day wins.