“St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas use in large part a common vocabulary and handle several philosophical themes common to the thirteenth century. But the meanings of many common terms and the understanding of particular themes are so different in the Bonaventurean and Thomistic syntheses that, as original compositions of philosophical doctrines, they really cannot be reduced fundamentally to a common frame of metaphysical principles. This fact is very evident in the different meanings of act and potency in the two syntheses . . .” For Thomas the former is being and the latter essence; for Bonaventure the former is the act of being given by form where the latter is the foundational existence given by matter. “These different uses of act and potency by the two theologians make their syntheses irreducible not only to a common frame of metaphysics, but also to a common ground in the metaphysical principles of Aristotle. Although the metaphysical insights of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas are expressed in Aristotelean terms, nevertheless, their personal insights are no more Aristotelean than the metaphysical insights of Aristotle himself are Platonic, and Aristotle expresses his personal insights in many Platonic terms. In our view, therefore, St. Thomas has not corrected a Neoplatonizing Aristoteleanism by deepening the epistemological and metaphysical bases of St. Bonaventure's theology. Though the Thomist reformation of philosophy was not a stage in the discovery of Aristotle by Latin theologians, the transformation acheived by St. Thomas was accomplished on the metaphysical level before it had its effect on the theological level of his thought. St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure approach the truth of the created universe, and of its dependence on God, from the two different bases on which they have built their philosophical edifices. Both theologians, in their philosophical reflexions, have transformed in their own way the Aristotelean principles of act and potency . . ."
--J.F. Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy, 882-883.
