As Hans Urs von Balthasar has put it, "nothing is more typical of [St. Bonaventure] than the prologue to the whole commentary on the Sentences." 1 This remark is the inspiration for the following rereading of Bonaventure's inaugural lecture. Not only does the Commentary succeed to a remarkable degree in unifying scholasticism and mysticism, but it also contains the seeds of a descriptive theological method that is original in ways that parallel contemporary phenomenological thought, despite the risk of anachronism inherent in such a claim.Profunda fluviorum scrutatus est, et abscondita produxit in lucem (Job 28:11). 2 This verse from the Book of Job, with which Bonaventure opens his Proemium, should be interpreted first as a "a crystalization of all that constitutes the significance of theology," that is, a searching of the depths and a bringing of hidden things to light. 3 On the one hand, then, we have the hiding place of the mytery that remains veiled in the four books of the Sentences (the rivers of the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation, and the sacraments). On the other hand, we have the theologian's role sanctified-or, better, consecrated-by the Holy Spirit as a "searcher of secrets and of the depths" (perscrutator secretorum et profundorum), a formulation that explicitly *Most recent publication:

This paper was originally presented at a colloquium on Michel Henry’s book Incarnation at the Institut Catholique Paris. Michel Henry’s response to the present study can be found in “À Emmanuel Falque,” in Phénoménologie et christianisme chez Michel Henry, ed. Ph. Capelle  (Paris: Cerf, 2004): 168-182. This response was reprinted recently in Michel Henry, La Phénoménologie de la vie, vol. 5 (Paris: PUF, 2015).

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