Disputation — Bontempi, Palladium Theologicum V · from Schola Thomistica
Disputation VIII: On Charity
ON CHARITY, the Seraphic Bonaventure left monuments of his divine nature indeed brilliant and worthy, written as if with solar rays, that they might gleam in the eyes of all, everywhere in his Opuscula, and in other books; but especially in the Diaeta salutis, tit. 5. c. 2. he illustrates it with various comparisons, by which he symbolically epitomizes whatever he has said of it more fully elsewhere, reducing the whole to its figurative Type, its virtual act, and its final fruit.
De Charitate.
DE CHARITATE, Seraphicus Bonaventura praeclara quidem, et digna, quod solaribus radiis exarata, omnium in oculis rutilent, in Opusculis passim, aliisque in libris, Divinae suae indolis monumenta reliquit; praecipue vero in Diaeta salutis, tit. 5. c. 2. variis eam comparationibus illustrat, quibus Symbolice epilogat, quicquid alibi de ea fusius dixerit, totum autem reducit ad Typum eius figuralem, actum virtualem, et fructum finalem.
TRULY, since these things serve more for inflaming the affections than for Scholastic erudition, I refer the reader to that place, where he will admire Charity as gold proved, most precious; as burning iron, everywhere Ductile; as wine seasoned, always sweet. He will also behold it as a noble bird, ever flying upward and touching the earth only by necessity of sustenance; as a laden ship, sailing over the sea of this world by the breath of the Holy Spirit alone; as, finally, death slaying the wicked sense of the flesh, or Carnality. But here, as the gift of the school, we shall discourse on Charity, as the Seraphic Doctor handed it down in the various distinctions, on the books of the Sentences.
VERUM haec cum magis inflammando affectui, quam Scholasticae inserviant eruditioni, eo lectorem remitto, ubi Charitatem, tanquam aurum probatum, maxime pretiosam; tanquam ferrum ignitum, ubique Ductilem; tanquam vinum conditum, semper dulcem admirabitur. Eam etiam ut nobilem avem, sursum semper volantem nec terram, nisi necessitate victus, tangentem; ut navim onustam, solo Spiritus sancti flatu in huius mundi Pelago navigantem; ut denique mortem, Carnis improbum sensum, seu Carnalitatem suspiciet perimentem; hic vero pro munere scholae de Charitate disseremus, pro ut eam Seraphicus variis distinctionibus, in libros Sententiarum, tradiderit.
Within this disputation
- Question I: What charity is
- Question II: What the object of charity is
- Question III: Whether charity is properly the friendship of God
- Question IV: Whether charity is a created habit
- Question V: Whether charity is one special virtue
- Question VI: Whether charity is of a most special species
- Question VII: Whether charity is the most excellent of the virtues
- Question VIII: Whether charity is the form of the virtues
- Question IX: Whether besides infused charity there is another charity, acquired by our own acts
- Question X: Whether charity can be formless
- Question XI: Whether charity increases, and how
- Question XII: Whether charity can be increased without limit
- Question XIII: Whether, and how, charity in this life is perfect
- Question XIV: Whether charity can be diminished
- Question XV: Whether charity can be lost, and how
- Question XVI: What is the proximate subject of charity
- Question XVII: Whether God alone is to be loved out of charity, or the neighbor also
- Question XVIII: Whether charity is to be loved out of charity
- Question XIX: Whether all gratuitous gifts are to be loved out of charity
- Question XX: Whether irrational creatures are to be loved out of charity
- Question XXI: Whether a man ought to love himself out of charity
- Question XXII: Whether a man ought to love his own body out of charity
- Question XXIII: Whether sinners are to be loved out of charity
- Question XXIV: Whether it is necessary to love enemies out of charity
- Question XXV: Whether we are bound to show the effects of charity toward enemies, and which
- Question XXVI: Whether angels are to be loved out of charity
- Question XXVII: Whether demons, and the damned, are to be loved out of charity
- Question XXVIII: Whether it is fitting that four things to be loved out of charity are enumerated
- Question XXIX: Whether God, and the neighbor, are loved with the same habit of charity
- Question XXX: Whether there is order in charity
- Question XXXI: Whether God is to be loved more than the neighbor
- Question XXXII: Whether a man ought out of charity to love God more than himself
- Question XXXIII: Whether nature inclines more to loving God than to loving ourselves
- Question XXXIV: Whether a man ought to love himself more than his neighbor
- Question XXXV: Whether the eternal salvation of the neighbor is to be loved more than our own life
- Question XXXVI: Whether one neighbor is to be loved more than another
- Question XXXVII: Whether a son is to be loved more than a father
- Question XXXVIII: Whether a man ought out of charity to love his mother more than his father
- Question XXXIX: Whether a man ought to love his spouse more than his parents, and children
- Question XL: Whether the order of charity is considered in the affection, and in the effect
- Question XLI: Whether the order of charity remains in heaven
- Question XLII: Whether it is more proper to charity to love than to be loved
- Question XLIII: Whether love is the same as benevolence
- Question XLIV: Whether God ought, and can, be loved in this life with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole mind, and all one's strength
- Question XLV: Whether some measure is to be kept in divine love
- Question XLVI: Whether charity ought to be enlarged in heaven
- Question XLVII: Whether it is more meritorious to love an enemy than a friend
- Question XLVIII: Whether a man established in however small a charity is bound to undergo death for Christ
- Question XLIX: Whether those having perfect charity are bound to fulfill the things that are of perfection
- Question L: How, and when, the precept of the love of God binds
- Question LI: Whether a man is bound at the first instant of the use of reason to turn to God
- Question LII: How, and when, the precept of the love of the neighbor binds