1248–1273

Bonaventure on the Trinity: the relational nature of God and "fontal fullness"

Osborne: Bonaventure (1217–1274) set out his theology of the Trinity in the Commentary on the Sentences (lectures at Paris, 1248–1257), the Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (late 1256 to early 1257), the Brief Discourse (Breviloquium), the Journey of the Mind to God (1259) and the Lectures on the Hexaemeron (1273). He starts from the claim that the very nature of God is relational and from the Dionysian principle that "the good is self-diffusive"; according to González de Cardedal (1966), he constructed a "third" theology of the Trinity, different from that of Augustine, Richard of St Victor and Thomas.