BONAR, HORATIUS (1808-1889), Scottish Presbyterian divine, was born in Edinburgh on Dec. 19 1808, and died there on July 31 1889. He was appointed parish minister of Kelso in 1837, and at the disruption of 1843 became minister of the newly formed Free Church, where he remained till 1866, when he went to the Chalmers memorial church, Edinburgh. In 1883 he was moderator of the general assembly of his church. Bonar's best work was done in hymnology, and he published three series of Hymns of Faith and Hope between 1857 and 1866 (new ed., 1886).
Bonaventura combined the character of a man of action with that of a philosopher, theologian and mystic. In philosophy, con trary to his friend St. Thomas, he strongly adhered to the Augus tinian school with its Platonic elements, and, mindful of the Paris condemnations, accepted Aristotle only in so far as his teaching was compatible with revelation and tradition. Hence, like his Franciscan predecessors, he attributed to primary matter an im perfect actuality, and held that it was endowed with rationes semi nales or aptitudes for the forms which it receives during the proc esses of becoming. Not matter alone, but the union of matter and form is the principle of individuation. Likewise in psychology, his Franciscan training is evident. Man, like all other beings, has a plurality of forms corresponding to the grades of perfection in him, but his unity is preserved by the subordination of the lower forms to the highest form, the rational soul. The most important of the lower forms is the forma corporeitatis (like Grosseteste, he regards it as lux) which, by giving actuality to the human body as to all bodies, preserves the independence of the soul and ensures its spirituality and immortality. Bonaventura also supports the hylo morphic composition of the soul, and regards the faculties as dis tinguished from its essence in a manner between the real distinc tion of St. Thomas and the identity theory of Alcher of Clairvaux. The soul's knowledge of the corporeal world is produced by the action of the active and the passive intellect on the material de rived from objects by the senses. To acquire certitude this knowl edge must be conformed, with the aid of Divine illumination, to the rationes aeternae, the ideas in the Divine mind, wherein the fullness of all sense objects is contained. In addition to this knowl edge, we can have a knowledge of spiritual beings through innate species which enable the soul to know itself and in so knowing itself to know God, of whom it is the image. The existence of God is also provable by a posteriori arguments, by Anselm's onto logical argument and by Augustine's argument from the nature of truth.
To complete philosophical speculation, which in its concern for all things leads to God, we need the imperfect but certain knowl edge of God given in faith, for the soul's faculties of knowing and loving, though of Divine origin, have been contaminated by its union with the body. Faith, in its turn, is the foundation of the mystical contemplation of God, which Bonaventura regards as the glorious end of man and develops at great length after the inspira tion of the pseudo-Dionysius and the Victorines. This contempla tion, which requires the restoration of the image of God in the soul and the practice of prayer, meditation and the theological virtues, especially charity, by Divine grace originates in the dis cernment of the traces of God in the corporeal world and passes through the recognition of His image in the soul to an apprehen sion of His being and His infinite goodness. The perfect beatific vision is reserved for the next life.
The best known of Bonaventura's works are the commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard, Itinerarium Mentis aq Deum, Breviloquium, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, Soliloquium, De Triplici Via, De Septem Itineribus Aeternitatis, Hexaemeron, and a life of St. Francis. Of the several editions, the best is that by the Franciscans of Quaracchi, Opera Omnia, io vols. (1882 1902).