Compendiosum principium in libros Sententiarum

(From the Vatican edition. Published by the Quarrachi Collegium Fathers, Tome VI)

What each of the books of the Sentences contains, Saint Bonaventure sets forth summarily, briefly, and artfully in this little work¹, having used the words of Ecclesiasticus: I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, etc. But since in the first book of the Sentences the treatment of God proceeds according to a threefold circuit, as he himself says — of which one circuit he affirms to be that concerning God according to the circumincession of the persons — it seemed worthwhile to note the concept of the name circumincession², and its force, both among the Latin scholastic doctors and among the Greek theologians. Circumincession is therefore the same as the Greek περιχώρησις [perikhōrēsis], which word, as is evident from Dionysius, On the Divine Names, ch. 9, and from Damascene, third book of the Orthodox Faith, chs. 5 & 7, signifies a mutual passing-through of certain things, or a going-into one another. This word was perhaps adopted by some Latin scholastic professors on the ground that they had come upon some ancient translation of Damascene which rendered the Greek word by circumincession. For not all the ancient scholastics made mention of this term: Saint Thomas nowhere, so far as comes to mind, makes mention of it, although, in I, q. 42, a. 2, and in I Sent., d. 19, he insists upon that very question, whether the Father in the divine realm is in the Son, and conversely. But among Saint Bonaventure the use of this word is frequent, as may be seen in this little work, and in Sermon 21 of the Hexaemeron, and in I Sent., d. 19, and in many other places. Moreover, among the more recent scholastics — namely Scotus, Gabriel, Ockham, Durand, and others — the word circumincession is found. Yet the force attributed to this name by the Greek theologians our own scholastic doctors interpret differently, turning the eyes of the mind toward the thought of Sts. Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine, whom the Master of the Sentences in the same 19th distinction of the first book brings forward in explanation of that passage of John 14: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me: these Fathers held that what is simply signified by this word of the Lord is that the persons are consubstantial with one another. For this reason, the scholastic doctors, perceiving that circumincession had been introduced by the Greeks on account of this Johannine text and similar ones, explained it as the relation of one person to another, or as the mode of inexistence whereby certain things inexist through participation or communion of nature. Hence among them the circumincession of the persons in God is nothing other than one person's being in another, and conversely. The Greek theologians, however, wished by this name to signify not only the consubstantiality of the divine persons, but rather their inseparability, their mutual and close embrace, and a kind of mutual penetration and marvellous and stupendous entry into one another — yet without any confusion or mixture. Whence it comes about that the divine persons are one, or even one God, by circumincession, because through it they are united, they indwell, they circulate around one another, and they pass into one another. For since the Father is immense, the Son immense, the Holy Spirit immense, they cannot be outside one another. And so, in order to mutually contain and measure one another, it is necessary that they do so without any confusion or mixture. This is called in Greek περιχωρεῖν [perikhōrēin], and in Latin to circumincede, or to pass freely back and forth. If you desire this matter to be explained more fully, read, among the more recent authors, Gilbert Génébrard, the Parisian theologian most skilled in the use and knowledge of languages, in his second book On the Trinity, and in his Apology against the fourteenth and fifteenth blasphemy of the heretic Schechi.