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Questioning Bonaventure's Augustinianism?: On the Noetic Effects of Sin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Recent scholarship suggests that Bonaventure breaks with the Augustinian tradition, in part, by affirming that the mind's cognitive powers remain fully activated even after the fall. I suggest that this claim concerning Bonaventure's denial of the noetic effects of sin should be reconsidered. I provide evidence to show that Bonaventure did, indeed, affirm that the intellect was heavily damaged by the fall and that Bonaventure affirmed two at first seemingly paradoxical propositions: (1) the intellect is indeed damaged by the fall, and (2) that God remains the first thing known by the intellect. It is precisely Bonaventure's coupling of these two seemingly paradoxical propositions that have led some to underplay Bonaventure's affirmation of the noetic effects of sin. In other words, Bonaventure's model opens up the possibility of affirming that the results of the noetic effects of sin consists not in ignorance of God simpliciter, but in a paradoxical state of knowing-yet-not-knowing God, akin to Paul's account of Romans 1.
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- Copyright © 2019 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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