Thesis advisor: Stephen F. Brown / The dissertation explores Bonaventure’s understanding of the doctrine of image and likeness in terms of analogy, spirituality and the beatific enjoyment of God. The concept had a patristic background, and there were two trends in interpreting the concepts of image and likeness: one which distinguished the concepts of image and likeness, and one which identified both. Irenaeus made a distinction between the image and likeness of God, whereas Augustine identified them. The monastic authors such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, and Richard of St. Victor contributed to develop the doctrine of image and likeness. In this period, monastic theologians constructed the idea that the image is a natural and inseparable endowment from God, while likeness is a supernatural gift. In his De sacramentis, Hugh articulates an important and influential statement: Imago pertinet ad figuram, similitudo ad naturam. Many of the medieval theologians, including Bonaventure, considered Hugh’s concept useful to interpret the distinction between image and likeness. Also, the affective reading of Dionysius by Hugh and Richard inspired Bonaventure to construct the spiritual theology in terms of affective ideology: Assimilation to God is more a matter of love than knowledge. Peter Lombard’s composition of The Book of the Sentences opened the possibility to talk about the image-likeness doctrine in terms of ‘uti’ and ‘frui,’ and of ‘res’ and ‘signa.’ Bonaventure further developed Lombard’s ideas, and he explicitly connected the idea of uti and frui, i.e., fruitio Dei, with the doctrine of image and likeness, i.e., the doctrine of analogy. In the scholastic era, the doctrine of image and likeness of God nuanced a new tone in that the schoolmen discussed the doctrine in terms of causal similarity between Creator and creatures, or of the metaphysics of causation. In this theological atmosphere, Bonaventure now relates visio beatifica to the theological argument of whether there is any convenientia between radically unlike things, such as God and creatures. According to Bonaventure, there is a convenientia between God and human beings in terms of comparatio duorum ad invicem. God as the formal object of the human soul “expressed/imprinted” God’s divine nature in the created order, that is, similitudo expressa. This divine likeness is the efficient cause for the human beings’ aspiration/capacity for God. It is important to notice that Bonaventure’s doctrine of analogy is a ‘theological instrument’ that plays between the doctrine of analogy and the spiritual life. Itinerarium is a fine theological and spiritual treatise that shows how Bonaventure sketches the course of the soul’s journey in terms of the godlikeness in the order of creation: vestige, image and likeness. For Bonaventure, St. Francis, a vir hierarchicus, is an ‘exemplar’ of a person who completes this assimilative/ascending process of the journey into God, and he becomes a ‘divine exemplar’ or a ‘similitudo expressa,’ benefiting others to ascend the ladder into the enjoyment of God. As an angelic person, Francis “descends” to the created order reality and participates in God’s providential care for the well beings of creatures including human beings. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Eileen C. Sweeney / Francis Mayronis was a Franciscan friar and one of John Duns Scotus’s primary students; he became a master of theology in 1323. His Commentary on the Sentences is preserved in more than 100 medieval manuscripts. In recent literature, Mayronis’s work has received considerable attention, especially in his cognitive theory and metaphysics. However, his ethical work has generally received very little attention. Mayronis occupies an important place in the early fourteenth century’s Franciscan intellectual tradition, particularly in the onset of the Scotist tradition. Mayronis not only creatively explicated and developed Scotus’s thoughts in his writings but also actively engaged in conversation with Peter Auriol and William Ockham as the “first” Scotist.My dissertation is organized to present Mayronis’s relational teleology in his notion of beatitude as the enjoyment of God. While generally maintaining a volitional agent-centered perspective that an agent or efficient cause is not determined to seek the good, Mayronis argues for the certitude of the ultimate end of the blessed and sees God, i.e., the final cause, as the total cause of the end. Mayronis harmonizes these seemingly contradictory causal powers of the final and efficient causes with the notion of habitus. First, Mayronis affirms the traditional view of habitus as an active power. In the present life, the free will gradually acquires a habitus toward the good through its own actions, and in heaven, grace or charity, i.e., supernatural habitus, is infused in the will of the blessed so that the will is eventually necessitated by the good. However, he could not maintain this position, i.e., the will’s habitus determines the will’s character, without abandoning Scotus’s emphasis on the will’s free aspect over its natural aspect since habitus is natural, though it is second nature. Hence, he develops a novel story of relation that completely replaces the role of habitus: God freely accepts someone due to a relational change to the person, rather than because the person has a supernatural habitus that is ‘acceptable’ to God. I begin by presenting Mayronis’s metaphysics of final causality in its historical context. For Plato and Aristotle, the end is formal. Plato considers the end as the form externally given by the divine craftsman, and Aristotle depicts nature’s motion toward the end as matter’s internal desire for its form. Then, Avicenna, while defining the final cause as the cause of causes, develops two ways the efficient cause can be central: the intellect can see something other than the good as its end, and the will can seek something not as determined by its goodness. I treat Averroes, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Mayronis in developing Avicenna’s notion of the final cause and the relationship between the final and efficient causes. In medieval teleology, we see fully developed agent-centered perspectives. In his unique rendering of Avicennian final causality, Mayronis shows that, although the final cause is the primary and necessary cause, it potentially causes our relations with God; then, we, as the efficient cause, contingently actualize the relations. Then, to situate Mayronis’s ethical teleology as a continuation of Scotus’s voluntarism, I argue for Duns Scotus’s ethical teleology against Thomas Williams’s view that sees Scotus’s ethics as proto-Kantian. I then present Mayronis’s notion of our intellect’s vision of God and our will’s enjoyment of God according to his metaphysics of final causality. First, I examine Mayronis’s cognitive theory that holds the vision of God, i.e., intuitive cognition, as a relation. I then argue for his relational teleology based on the premise that Mayronis views our enjoyment of God as a relation. For Mayronis, our ultimate end is our beatific enjoyment of God; it is neither our beatific act nor the object of the act, i.e., God, but the relation between the act and the object. Happiness is the relation to the Supreme Good, and misery is the lack of the relation. The purpose or goal of our life is neither merely internal nor external but relational. Finally, I present how Mayronis translates the role of habitus that grants the certitude of the enjoyment of the blessed into divine acceptance. For Mayronis, our moral life is not a long journey of accumulating habitus or virtues until we finally reach our destination; it is an everyday journey of love where we actualize the final cause, which potentially orders us to the Supreme Good. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.