Christian theology has traditionally spoken of creation as a book, a means of revelation that can be metaphorically read by human creatures for a variety of purposes. The thirteenth century theologian Bonaventure takes up this tradition, giving the book of creation a significant place in his theology. He understands revelation to be the purpose of creation, “so that the world might serve as a footprint and a mirror to lead humankind to love and praise God, its Maker” (Brev. 2.11.2).
Within the tradition, the focus on revelation dominates the theological language. This paper takes a different approach, considering more specifically the implications of the metaphor of creation as text. To do this, Bonaventure’s theology of the book of creation is considered in conversation with the concept of the hospitable text, articulated by Rowan Williams. This paper picks up Williams’s concept and employs it in reference to a different text: that of the book of creation. Read in this way and along with Bonaventure, creation becomes a text that invites the reader to pray.
Bonaventure speaks repeatedly of creation functioning as a means for humans to ascend to God. According to Timothy Johnson, in the medieval world, this ascent or return to God is impossible apart from prayer. For Bonaventure, Johnson argues, “[p]etition and contemplation together form the pillars of his teaching on prayer and are inextricably bound to one another. As he points out in the Journey of the Soul into God, the contemplative ascent into God is impossible without asking for divine assistance.” Read as a hospitable text, the book of creation invites the perceptive reader to these pillars of petitionary and contemplative prayer.
This paper argues that creation’s invitation to petitionary prayer calls on human creatures to fulfill their priestly role in relationship to creation, even as it grounds humanity in humility. To read the book of creation faithfully entails reading the corruption to which it has been bound through human sin. Creation thus invites human creatures to plead with God on its behalf as it groans under the curse, to recognise their complicity in the cause of its groaning, and to seek creation’s redemption. Prayer thus is conceived as an activity that moves us both towards God and towards creation.
This paper concludes by considering Bonaventure’s exemplar of Francis as one who reads creation as a “hospitable text.” In his response to creation’s invitation, Francis models a life of prayer that integrated contemplation and action. He demonstrated that a faithful use of creation as a means of contemplation does not treat creation simply as a means to humanity’s union with God, but involves a recognition of the “cosmic fraternity,” to use a phrase from Manuel Lázaro Pulido and Esteban Anchústegui Igartua, that unites human and non-human creatures, a recognition which carries with it priestly responsibilities.