Bonaventure, the Body, and the Aesthetics of Salvation

In his Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, Etienne Gilson proposed that Bonaventure thought the spiritual reality that Francis felt.2 My own offering – the book at hand – attempts to synthesize and apply Franciscan thinking and feeling to a very specific set of human hopes and anxieties. Resting at its heart is the Neoplatonic metaphysics of emanation and return structuring Bonaventure’s soteriological vision.3 While the Christological and Trinitarian framework of Bonaventure’s metaphysical system has been explored by many, few have considered it in light of particular aspects of the human condition, asking what it might look like for this or that worldly reality to be caught up, through participation with Christ, in Bonaventure’s “return.