  To Bonaventure’s mind, the creationist view of the universe alone accounts for the total being of the universe in the sense of explaining both its structure and the fact that it exists; the view of the ancients only explains the order and the pattern of the universe without reaching the depths of accounting for why the universe exists at all. A sign of this shortcoming is to be seen in the shared presupposition of Plato and Aristotle that matter is unoriginated. Furthermore, to the extent that the ancient pagan views of the universe involve the infinity of past time, with all the philosophical difficulties that the eternity of past time entails, natural reason would seem capable of arriving, in principle, at the conclusion that the world was created, even though, historically speaking, the greatest of the ancient philosophers failed to do so.