Bonaventure Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The Global Compact for the common home can be understood as proposing anew the "lex naturae," traceable to the "Noahite Alliance." This is the original pact, the most universal one, stipulated, not only with the whole of humankind, but also with every living being together with humankind. Humankind, "God's vicar in the work of creation," is tasked with renewing this alliance. "Home" is a relative concept: "the usefulness of the home is in its non being," namely in its being endowed with rooms, doors, and windows; wherefore nature is a home because it is a space available, not only for some thing but for for someone. Outwith the privileged perspective of a place of abode, the ecological question does not exist, given that evolution, on its own, is blind, and is indifferent to any result. Yet who are the dwellers in this home? In eschatological perspective, the created order is to become "the dwelling place of God with human beings." The feeling of emptiness that we perceive in a secularised world may be understood also as a need for God. Inhabiting (from the frequentative of the Latin habere, to have) the common home means, not only being there, but having-being, namely making a habit of it, using it, being accustomed to it. Yet, in order for it to be inhabited, and inhabited together, the common home that is the world must be managed with oikonomía, on three levels: the natural (ecology), the man-made (technology and the economy), the cultural and religious (ecumenism and dialogue). The emptiness that we find in the world points to a fulness, the absence to a presence; just as a footprint points to a tread (vestigium). In this manner, the finitude of the world itself is a "trace" of the "passing through" of the Creator. Searching for Wisdom (Sapientia) means retracing His vestigia, both by abduction and by imitation or following. The "invisible" traces of God in History and in Nature are revealed to Christian faith to be vestigia Trinitatis: As Bonaventure says, the metaphysician considers God as the originating principle, the exemplary centre, and the fulfilling end of all things; the believer contemplates Him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the vestigia are the void that in every thing refers to the fulness, then every thing is, not only in relationship to every other thing, but is, most of all, in relationship to the Creator, acknowledging Whom leads to thanksgiving.. Knowledge without acknowledgement and thanksgiving is Luciferian; it is to presume, to demand without waiting for an answer, it is taking for oneself the fruit of the tree of knowledge, rather than accepting the fruit of the tree of Life.