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The passion as paradoxical exemplarism in Bonaventure’s Commentary to the Gospel of John

Summary: Bonaventure was a notable biblical exegete. His Commentary on the Gospel of John was widely disseminated throughout Europe and this is evident by the large numbers of copies that survive today. This article explores Bonaventure’s doctrine of Christological exemplarism within his exegesis of the Johannine Passion narrative and other, related, texts in the Gospel and Bonaventure’s writings. Based on the mystery of the hypostatic union, Christological exemplarism and its subsequent mediation to humanity assumes a paradoxical aspect. Throughout the Commentary, Bonaventure describes a three-fold itinerarium of certitude, understanding, and love mediated by Christ, which leads humanity back to its divine source. Bonaventure and the author of the Fourth Gospel seem to concur that humanity’s road to ‘union’ with the divine is also the ‘way of the cros’.