Mind’s Road To GOD (St. Bonaventure) + Of Shows (Tertullian) & Spiritual Maxims (Brother Lawrence)

Many historians, theologians, and philosophers consider Bonaventure’s essay a masterpiece among the shorter works of medieval philosophy. It contains Bonaventure’s interpretation of a vision St. Francis of Assisi had. In the vision, St. Francis receives the wounds of Christ from a six-winged seraph. As Bonaventure saw it, the six wings symbolized six steps along the road to perfection and the divine. The steps or stages he details integrates the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being with Christian doctrine concerning God’s relationship with his creation.
Saint Bonaventure (Italian: San Bonaventura; 1221 – 15 July 1274),[1] born Giovanni di Fidanza, was an Italian medieval Franciscan, scholastic theologian and philosopher. The seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, he was also Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was canonised on 14 April 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and declared a Doctor of the Church in the year 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. He is known as the “Seraphic Doctor” (Latin: Doctor Seraphicus). Many writings believed in the Middle Ages to be his are now collected under the name Pseudo-Bonaventure.
Bonaventure was formally canonised in 1484 by the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV, and ranked along with Thomas Aquinas as the greatest of the Doctors of the Church by another Franciscan, Pope Sixtus V, in 1587. Bonaventure was regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages.[11]
His works, as arranged in the most recent Critical Edition by the Quaracchi Fathers (Collegio S. Bonaventura), consist of a Commentary on the Sentences of Lombard, in four volumes, and eight other volumes, including a Commentary on the Gospel of St Luke and a number of smaller works; the most famous of which are The Mind’s Road to God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), an outline of his theology or Brief Reading (Breviloquium), Reduction of the Arts to Theology (De reductione artium ad theologiam), and Soliloquy on the Four Spiritual Exercises (Soliloquium de quatuor mentalibus exercitiis), The Tree of Life (Lignum vitae), and The Triple Way (De Triplici via), the latter three written for the spiritual direction of his fellow Franciscans.
The German philosopher Dieter Hattrup denies that Reduction of the Arts to Theology was written by Bonaventure, claiming that the style of thinking does not match Bonaventure’s original style.[12] His position is no longer tenable given recent research: the text remains “indubitably authentic”.[13][14] A work that for many years was falsely attributed to Bonaventure, De septem itineribus aeternitatis, was actually written by Rudolf von Biberach (c. 1270 – 1329).
An essay from an early Christian on why Christians should not attend gladiatorial games, circuses, or the very bawdy Roman theater. Tertullian points out that these are not neutral secular events, but deeply tied to pagan religion — and in the case of gladiators, ancient practices of human sacrifice. He also gives broad scriptural and doctrinal reasons why Christians should stay away. In the process, Tertullian admits his own struggle with the attraction to the savagery of the arena.
Tertullian (/tərˈtʌliən/), full name Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, c. 155 – c. 240 AD,[1] was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa.[2] Of Berber origin,[3][4][5][6][7] he was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism.[8] Tertullian has been called “the father of Latin Christianity”[9][10] and “the founder of Western theology.”[11]
Though conservative in his worldview, Tertullian originated new theological concepts and advanced the development of early Church doctrine. He is perhaps most famous for being the first writer in Latin known to use the term trinity (Latin: trinitas). According to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Tertullian’s trinity [is] not a triune God, but rather a triad or group of three, with God as the founding member”.[12] A similar word had been used earlier in Greek,[a] though Tertullian gives the oldest extant use of the terminology as later incorporated into the Nicene Creed at the 2nd Ecumenical Council, the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, or as the Athanasian Creed, or both.[13] Other Latin formulations that first appear in his work are “three persons, one substance” as the Latin “tres personae, una substantia”, (‘ consubstantial ‘, in English), itself from the Koine Greek “treis hypostases, homoousios”).[11] Influenced by Stoic philosophy, the “substance” of Tertullian, however, was a material substance that did not refer to a single God, but to the sharing of a portion of the substance of the Father (the only being who was fully God) with the Son and, through the Son, with the Holy Spirit.[12] He wrote his understanding of the three members of the trinity after becoming a Montanist.