Exemplar

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Definition. Exemplar is the eternal intelligible reason in God according to which creatures are known, produced, ordered, manifested, and directed to their proper ends.^1 In classical Christian usage, especially in the Augustinian, Dionysian, Bonaventurian, and Thomistic traditions, exemplar does not mean a model outside God, a second realm above God, or a merely mental abstraction. It means that creatures are made according to divine wisdom and therefore possess determinate intelligibility, order, and teleological direction.^2 In this sense, exemplar names not merely likeness but productive intelligibility: the creature is what it is because it proceeds according to a divine reason.

Expanded definition. Exemplar names more than resemblance. It names an intelligible pattern that both grounds being and directs it. A thing has an exemplar in God because it is not only caused by God but caused according to a divine reason that gives it its form, proportion, order, and place within the whole.^3 Exemplar therefore joins ontology and intelligibility. It explains why a creature is this kind of being rather than another, why creation is ordered rather than random, and why creaturely reality can truthfully disclose divine wisdom without sharing the divine essence by nature. In this respect exemplar stands at the intersection of causality, manifestation, and teleology.

Moral sense. In moral and pastoral discourse, exemplar can mean an immediate model for imitation. In this register an exemplar is a concrete life that displays a norm in lived form and so instructs others directly. This is the sense in which Job functions for Ambrose. Job is exemplary not primarily as a figure to be decoded typologically, but as a human pattern of patience, fortitude, and faithful endurance under suffering.^4 An exemplar in this sense is a present form of life capable of shaping conduct.

Analogical sense. In scholastic theology, especially in Aquinas as interpreted by Adam M. Willows, exemplar also has an analogical meaning. An exemplar need not share the exact mode of life of the learner in order to instruct. Aquinas can therefore treat non-human creatures as exemplars because exemplars operate by likeness and analogy, not only by strict sameness. Willows describes Aquinas’s position by noting that an exemplar is “a likeness towards which something proceeds; a kind of prototype,” and also “an idea in the image of which things are made” and toward which they aim as their perfection.^5 On this basis, created things can direct human beings toward moral understanding analogically, even when they are not themselves moral agents in the human sense.

Christological and soteriological sense. In Christology, exemplar means more than moral example. Christ is exemplar not merely because he teaches by word and deed, but because in him the way of return to God is opened, enacted, and mediated. In discussions of Abelardian exemplarism, Christ’s life and death function exemplarily by awakening humility and love; in Bonaventure, however, exemplar assumes a stronger sense. Christ is not simply one exemplary figure among others. He is the mediating form in whom divine truth, created intelligibility, and the pattern of return are concentrated.^6 Thus exemplar, in its highest Christological use, names not merely a model to imitate but a mediating center in whom the truth of God and the destiny of creatures are personally disclosed.

Bonaventurian concentration. In Bonaventure the term becomes architectonic. Exemplar is one of the master concepts by which Bonaventure explains emanation, intelligibility, mediation, and consummation. Lance H. Gracy summarizes this by writing, “This center, middle, and person is Christ Jesus,” and again, “Christ is for Bonaventure the central exemplary image and person.” He also writes, “Christ as center is the knowledge that Christ came in the fullness of time and fulfilled the mysteries of the ages.”^7 These formulations show that, in Bonaventure, exemplar reaches its highest concentration in Christ as medium metaphysicum. Christ is exemplar not merely because he is the best model, but because he is the center and personal mediation in whom created patterns have their origin, truth, and fulfillment.

Metaphysical sense. In its strongest metaphysical sense, exemplar names the Word himself as eternal Art, eternal Wisdom, or divine Idea. Here exemplar no longer means merely a practical pattern for conduct. It means the principle according to which all things are made and known. Creatures are exemplary because they express the Exemplar. They bear derivative likeness because they are caused according to divine wisdom. This is why exemplarism can explain not only morality but creation, providence, sacramentality, contemplation, and return. The world is not a brute aggregate. It is a patterned order proceeding from God and ordered back to God.^8

Scientific role. The scientific role of exemplar is to explain intelligible derivation from God. It states that what comes from God is not merely dependent but patterned. Exemplar is therefore one of the chief terms by which theology can account for the determinacy of creatures, the knowability of the world, the meaningfulness of signs, and the possibility of ascent to God through creatures.^9 It allows theology to say that reality is legible because it is caused according to wisdom. In Aquinas, true exemplars are found in God, and creatures are called exemplars analogically insofar as they bear likeness to that divine source. In Bonaventure, the same logic expands into a full metaphysical and contemplative architecture centered on Christ.

Relation to other terms. Exemplar is closely related to example, image, source, manifestation, participation, and return, but it is not identical with any of them. Source answers from whom something comes. Exemplar answers according to what intelligible reason it comes. Image answers how likeness is borne. Participation answers how the creature possesses what it has derivatively. Manifestation answers how the creature can disclose what exceeds it. Return answers the end toward which the creature is ordered. Exemplar therefore occupies a central place because it joins origin, intelligibility, likeness, and teleology without collapsing them into one another.^10

Doctrinal exclusions. Properly understood, exemplar excludes brute fact ontology, unintelligible creation, and any account of reality as mere arbitrariness. It excludes a second realm of forms above God, because the exemplar is in God. It excludes pantheism, because creatures are patterned by divine wisdom without becoming divine by nature. It excludes necessitarian emanationism, because being exemplarily patterned does not entail necessary overflow. It excludes univocity, because the creature resembles its exemplar derivatively and according to measure, not by identity of mode.^11 It also excludes reducing Christ to a merely external teacher, because in the highest Christian use the exemplary order is concentrated personally in the incarnate Word.

Strong synthetic definition. Exemplar is the eternal intelligible and productive reason in divine wisdom according to which creatures are known, caused, ordered, signified, and directed to their ends. In moral discourse it names the pattern that forms imitation. In analogical discourse it names the likeness that instructs without requiring sameness of mode. In Christology it names the mediating form in whom the way of return is opened and disclosed. In metaphysics it names the Word as eternal Art, the source and center in whom all created patterns have their origin, coherence, and fulfillment.^12

Why it matters. Exemplar matters because it is one of the strongest terms for saying that theology concerns a world that is created, knowable, meaningful, and ordered to God. It secures the claim that what is is not brute, that likeness can be real without collapse, and that the creature’s end is already latent in its divine pattern. In its highest Christian form, the term also says that this intelligible order is not left at the level of abstraction. It is centered, mediated, and fulfilled in Christ.^13

Footnotes

1. Adam M. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” New Blackfriars (2017): 336–37.
2. Leonard J. Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” The Journal of Religion 55, no. 2 (1975): 181–98; Lance H. Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” Religions 16 (2025): 606.
3. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–37.
4. J. R. Baskin, “Job as Moral Exemplar in Ambrose,” Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981): 222–31.
5. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–37.
6. Liran Shia Gordon, “The Doctrine of Exemplarism: A Symbolic Attempt to Escape the Pelagian Heresy,” Religions 14 (2023): 1494; Thomas Herbst, “The Passion as Paradoxical Exemplarism in Bonaventure’s Commentary on the Gospel of John,” Antonianum 78 (2003): 209–48.
7. Lance H. Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” Religions 16 (2025): 4–5 in the uploaded pagination context; article no. 606. Quotations: “This center, middle, and person is Christ Jesus”; “Christ is for Bonaventure the central exemplary image and person”; “Christ as center is the knowledge that Christ came in the fullness of time and fulfilled the mysteries of the ages.”
8. Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” 181–98; Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” 606.
9. Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” 181–98; Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–39.
10. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–39; Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” 181–98.
11. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–37; Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” 606.
12. Willows, “The Role of Non-Human Exemplars in Aquinas,” 336–37; Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” 606.
13. Gracy, “The Christology of Bonaventure,” 606; Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of Bonaventure,” 181–98.