Tuesday, March 11, 2014

In this modern age we like to believe that along with technology we have invented new theological ideas. The realities are that most of the same "modern" issues of society were thought about and deeply discussed centuries ago.  I read about what St. Bonaventure wrote and it seams progressive or "new age". He lived from 1221 to 1274.

According to medieval scholar St. Bonaventure we perceive with three eyes: Eye of Flesh, Eye of Mind, and Eye of Contemplation

St. Bonaventure, the great Doctor Seraphicus of the Church and a favorite philosopher of Western mystics, taught that men and women have at least three modes of attaining knowledge—"three eyes," as he put it (following Hugh of St. Victor, another famous mystic): the eye of flesh, by which we perceive the external world of space, time, and objects; the eye of reason, by which we attain a knowledge of philosophy, logic, and the mind itself; and the eye of contemplation, by which we rise to a knowledge of transcendent realities.


The mind in contemplating God has three distinct aspects, stages or grades—the senses, giving empirical knowledge of what is without and discerning the traces (vestigia) of the divine in the world; the reason, which examines the soul itself, the image of the divine Being; and lastly, pure intellect (intelligentia), which, in a transcendent act, grasps the Being of the divine cause.

All my eyes are turned to God this lent season.

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