Feser on Cross on Scotus

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Boehner on Logic and the Decline of Scholasticism

Philotheus Boehner, Medieval Logic, 92-93:

Medieval Logic in its stage of maturity in the 14th century has become an essentially consequential logic. A consequential logic, however, is a highly formalistic logic.

Unfortunately, this peak of the development of medieval logic was reached at the beginning of a rapid decline of scholastic philosophy in general. To interpret this chronological coincidence as a causal relation, and to blame the high standard of 14th-century logic for the ruin of scholastic metaphysics, appears to us extremely ironical. We are not convinced that scholastic metaphysics has to be afraid of an inexorable logic. On the contrary, scholastic metaphysics, in contrast with modern metaphysical systems, has called for logical rigour and has always been averse to any kind of intuitionism. We are rather convinced that scholastic logic in the 14th century finally reached a stage by which it was in a condition to justify its basic metaphysical inferences. For it is a fact that the proofs of the existence of God developed during the Middle Ages, and definitely the proofs of St. Thomas, cannot be sufficiently developed and justified with a logic content with syllogistics. This has been shown by Salamucha as regards the first of the five ways of the Common Doctor. It was likewise stated already in the Middle Ages as regards the proof of the existence of God advanced by Scotus. Petrus Thomae, an immediate disciple of the Subtle Doctor, expressly states that consequences holding in virtue of an extrinsic means, and hence not reducible to syllogisms, are used the construction of his proof.

Historically speaking, then, medieval logic had finally caught up with metaphysics, when, for well-known exterior reasons, a general decline of scientific culture began.

Gonsalvus Hispanus on the Principle 'Everything that is Moved is Moved by Another'

Gonsalvus Hispanus was the Franciscan regent master while Scotus was lecturing on the Sentences at Paris ca. 1302-4 and who recommended him for promotion. Scotus apparently even shows up in some of Gonsalvus' disputes, which I am currently reading.  Here is the description from the 'Franciscan Authors' website:


Gonsalvus Hispanus de Balboa (ca. 1255, Galicia - 13. 04, 1313, Paris)
Theologian and minister general. Studied theology in Paris and became baccalaureus sententiarum in 1288. Provincial minister of Santiago. Master of theology in Paris, ca. 1297. Regent master in the general studium of Paris (1302-1303). Became minister general in 1304. Active as a reformer of the order: promotion of studies, and suppression of the spirituals. Active in the council of Vienna.

Here I have translated some comments on the principle 'omne quod movetur ab alio movetur' which figures in Aquinas' first proof for the existence of God.

Gonsalvus, QQ disputatae, q. 2-3, ad arg. princ. 5 (BFS IX, 28, 47):

[arg. princ. 5] Again, it also seems unfitting on account of some particular; if we do not know to avoid it, we ought not to deny a principle known per se, of the sort whichs that nothing at once is in  act and in potency with respect to the same.

[...]

To the fifth, that it is not a principle that everything that is moved is moved by another, because that is not a principle of which there is a doubt concerning a particular, nor is it manifest to sense. So it is here, because it is certain that heavy things are moved; by what, however, they are moved, whether by themselves or by another, is doubtful, nor is it manifest to sense.

Again, Thomas, in IaIIae denies that principle, saying that the will in act moves itself through the end (per finem) to those things which are for the end.

Again, it is a principle among the philosophers that an accident is not without a subject. If therefore by Scripture it is implied that an accident is without a subject, as in the sacrament of hte altar, will we deny that principle? But will we deny scripture?

God as Being

The second paragraph of Scotus' De Primo Principio reads as follows (trans. Wolter):

O Lord our God, true teacher that you are, when Moses your servant asked you for your name that he might proclaim it to the children of Israel, you, knowing what the mind of mortals could grasp of you, replied: "I am who am," thus disclosing your blessed name. You are truly what it means to be, you are the whole of what it means to exist [or: you are true being, you are whole being]. This, if it be possible for me, I should like to know by way of demonstration. Help me then, O Lord, as I investigate how much our natural reason can learn about that true being which you are if we begin with the being which you have predicated of yourself.

In The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy Etienne Gilson comments on this passage:

Nothing can surpass the weighty fullness of this text, since it lays down at once the true method of Christian philosophy, and the first truth whence all the others derive. Applying the principle of St Augustine and St Anselm, the Credo ut intelligam, Duns Scotus, at the very outset of his metaphysical speculation, makes an act of faith in the truth of the divine word; like Athenagoras, it is in the school of God that he would learn of God. No philosopher is invoked as intermediary between reason and the supreme Master; but forthwith, after the act of faith, philosophy begins.

Gilson has a number of favorable remarks about Scotus in the present book. Here is another one, from an endnote: "Duns Scotus' proofs of God's existence should occupy a prominent place in any history of Christian philosophy, for they are immediately based on the idea of being and its essential properties, causality and eminence."

Theoremata Scoti, Pars V

Part five of Bl. Duns Scotus' Theoremata is a kind of deconstruction of natural theology. In it he attempts to find the fundamental principles upon which natural theology rests and shows how the whole edifice comes tumbling down if those principles are not sufficiently rigorously established.

The context in which we should understand this part seems to me to be clarified by a remark Allan Wolter makes in the Preface to his edition of Scotus' De primo principio, namely that this latter work "may be the most carefully thought out attempt of any schoolman to prove the existence of God within the epistemic norms for demonstration laid down in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics." Anyone familiar with that work will appreciate the justice of that remark, as well as the nature of Scotus' project in proving God's existence and attributes. For the subtle doctor is not satisfied with providing "reasons" to accept God's existence or "ways" by which it can be proved; he wants to provide a really rigorous demonstration, one which if properly grasped will give the human mind certain knowledge.

The fifth part here is jumbled. It is clearly divided into three parts, but the parts seem to have been mixed up, with the apparent beginning only coming in around paragraph 70 in the critical edition, and the final third seeming to be put first. Paragraph 70 is where I start.

Assumption 1: In essentially ordered things one must posit a first, which is unique in that ordered series, and cotemporal with it.

Assumption 2: There is an essential order in every kind of cause.

These are called "assumptions" here, because the ability to prove them is precisely what is called into doubt in this part, although it is on these principles that, for Scotus, natural theology--knowledge about God which cam be proved from natural things and insofar as he is the cause of things known to us--rests. Of course they are not "assumptions" for Scotus absolutely, because he spends a lot of time in other works trying to prove them. But here he says, "These two propositions are assumed, of which the first has three parts [i.e. that God is 1) first, 2) unique, 3) cotemporal with his creation], [but] the second is simple. But although either of these parts, namely 'first', 'unique', [and 'cotemporal'], may be probable, still it would be difficult or perhaps impossible for us to prove it simpliciter by necessary argument and by purely natural [reason]."

Conclusion 1: In the genus of efficient cause one must posit a unique first efficient [cause], which exists now in the nature of things.

This follows from the two assumptions, and this cause is called God.

Conclusion 2: Every efficient [cause] is more perfect than its effect or equally perfect, because nothing acts to a greater extent than it is in act.

Conclusion 3: God is more perfect than every effect.

From Conclusions 1 and 2. If God is the cause of everything else he must be at least as perfect as everything else.

Corollary: And so [God] is the most perfect of all and the highest in every difference of being, which simply implies a perfection, among which are one, true, good, necessary etc., because whatever is such is simply a perfection in some way . . . Put here the boundary of wha tis knowable about God by natural necessary reason; and this is supposing those first two assumptions.

This is classic scotism, showing that natural theology is developed by showing that God must contain in a supereminent way all pure perfections. But the conclusions are only as solid as the ground they're built on, and Scotus now begins to explore the difficulty with providing true demonstrations of natural theology's foundations.

How can the first part of the first [assumption] be proved, namely [that God is] "first" more in essentially ordered causes than [in] accidentally [ordered ones] [since in accidentally ordered causes there is no first cause simpliciter]? How can the second part by proved, [that God is] "unique"? How can it be proved [that God is] "cotemporal?

A primary difficulty that Scotus brings up here is how can it be proved by demonstrative arguments that the God who created the world--the temporally "first" cause--is the same as the principle which stands at the head of the chain of essentially ordered causes in the world now? How do you prove that the creaturely order of secondary causes need to be conserved in being by the first cause, even after their initial creation? Scotus sees that the Big Bang does not prove that God exists now, but only that there was an first cause in the sense of an initial one. Our impulse, of course, is to appeal to God's eternity or immutability, but if the foundations of natural theology haven't been secured yet, we can't appeal to its posterior conclusions. And if we can't prove that the initial cause is identical with whatever is the current "first" [in the ontological, not the temporal sense], then what happens to our natural certainty that God is "one" and "unique"?

The second assumption does not seem to be proved necessarily. For if many effects are so coordinated among themselves, so that none of them has the character of an effect with respect to another--as with a cow and an ass--why are all causes so ordered, that the first [in one causal chain] is always the cause of another [causal chain]? If this name "God" is given to some numerically identical first efficient [cause], it follows from this that it cannot be proved that God exists in the real world now, because if he no longer existed the coordination [of causes in the world] would remain through another [first cause, another God] univocal with him.

Again, remember that Scotus has not yet made his argument for the incompossibility of two first causes, because in this work the conceptual apparatus with which to do so hasn't been developed yet. From comments he makes later on it seems that what Scotus is showing what kinds of problems a thinker proceeding along Aristotelian lines, with principles and arguments from the Physics, is going to run into.

Beyond this, Scotus continues, the second assumption does not prove that any God exists, even a new one like the first, if it cannot be proved that conservation of the created order is needed as much as the original act of creation. Otherwise we can only conclude that a first cause is necessary for the world's becoming, not for its being. Whence it follows only that either exists or did exist once, as from a house it can be proved that a builder exists or did exist once.

Therefore these things, which it seems cannot be proved by necessary arguments from merely natural [reason], are laid out in order in the conclusions, as well as some others which cannot be proved.

That is, if these primary propositions of natural theology turn out to be unprovable, so are whatever less know propositions which follow from them and depend on them.

I omit any detailed discussion of the rest of Part V, in which Scotus lays out the "unprovable" conclusions systematically. It's rather horrible reading, a kind of anti-Contra Gentiles in which Scotus insists at great length that unless he who builds metaphysical systems builds his house upon the rock, he labors in vain that builds it.

In any case, the problems that he lays out here are not solved here. The reader must go to the De primo principio or other theological writings to see how Scotus deals with them. As I said yesterday, what seems to emerge is that the Theoremata is a kind of testing-ground where Scotus is working out the consequences of different approaches before giving them a more authoritative treatment elsewhere.

St Thomas on Existence/Essence and Identity

Mr Jones at Energetic Processions offers the following from St Thomas:

“Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.” - ST Ia. Q.3 A.4

“Therefore “suppositum” and nature in them are identified. Since God then is not composed of matter and form, He must be His own Godhead, His own Life, and whatever else is thus predicated of Him.” - ST Ia. Q.3 A.3

“The truth of this question is quite clear if we consider the divine simplicity. For it was shown above (Question 3, Article 3) that the divine simplicity requires that in God essence is the same as “suppositum,” which in intellectual substances is nothing else than person. But a difficulty seems to arise from the fact that while the divine persons are multiplied, the essence nevertheless retains its unity. And because, as Boethius says (De Trin. i), “relation multiplies the Trinity of persons,” some have thought that in God essence and person differ, forasmuch as they held the relations to be “adjacent”; considering only in the relations the idea of “reference to another,” and not the relations as realities. But as it was shown above (Question 28, Article 2) in creatures relations are accidental, whereas in God they are the divine essence itself. Thence it follows that in God essence is not really distinct from person; and yet that the persons are really distinguished from each other. For person, as above stated (29, 4), signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature. But relation as referred to the essence does not differ therefrom really, but only in our way of thinking; while as referred to an opposite relation, it has a real distinction by virtue of that opposition. Thus there are one essence and three persons.” - ST Ia. Q.39 A.1

He doesn't here actually make an argument, but the implications, he thinks, are clear. In his comments he writes:

The whole thomistic tradition says that the persons of the trinity are identical to the divine essence. What does that amount to? Chicken scratch? Goody for you if you can prove that some Franciscans don’t make this mistake, bad for you that you commune with heretics that do. . . . Oh so when Aquinas says that essence and existence are identical in God it means they are not something other but actually the same thing, but when he says that one of the person’s of the trinity is identical to the essence that use of identity means something different. Okay…more Roman Catholic sophistry to document.

Respondeo: Yes, the identity of essence and existence in God and the identity of person and nature in God are not exactly the same. The quotes in Mr Jones' latest post show this clearly.

The identity of essence and existence, due to God's simplicity, is such as to make each of God's essential attributes really identical with each other and only notionally distinct (for Thomas, let's be clear, not for me). God's existence, goodness, eternity, are all really one and the same "item".

The identity of the persons with the essence is not the same. They are identical in the sense that there is in one sense one "item" and in another sense three "items". In no sense are there four "items": essence, Father, Son, and Spirit, such as there would be if any or all of the divine Persons were *really* distinct from the essence in any way. This is in fact precisely Thomas' denial of E.P.'s "God in general" accusation--the divine essence is not a universal property to which is added an individuating difference, i.e. Divinity+Paternity=God the Father. Thomas denies this. Rather, the Person who has God's Paternity=God. In that sense, God the Father (the supposit) is the same "thing" or "reality" (rem) as the divine existence/essence. There is no actually existing reality in God other than the divine ousia--God the Father is not something other than God, more, less, or different. There is no composition of personal properties with nature in God which would produce an additional something.

BUT the divine existence/essence and God the Father are NOT identical in the sense that referring to the single divine nature refers to a single divine supposit or person. God the Father is God (the existence/essence, ousia), God the Son is God, but God the Father is not God the Son. The Persons are really distinct from one another, not notionally. Because of this we have to say that the identity of the persons with the nature is not the identity of the = sign, as is the case (for Thomas) with God's essence and existence and essential properties.

God the Father cannot be really distinct from the divine essence because he is wholly God and in no way something other than God. There is no reality in God the Father which is not God. Nevertheless, it is not the case that, simply, Divinity=Paternity, the way that Divine Immensity=Divine Eternity, because God the Son is God, he has all Divinity, but he has no Paternity. There are two related but distinct senses of identity in play. All three Persons are identical with the essence (and with each other) in the sense that there is only one SOMETHING. There are, however, really three SOMEONES. All three persons are really distinct from each other, because the Father is not the Son is not the Spirit. To the extent, then, that Father/=Son, or Paternity/=Filiation, and yet Father=God and Son=God, there is a difference between the *kind* of identity Thomas postulates between the Person(s) and the essence and that between the existence and the essence/attributes.

I think this is clear enough in Thomas, although it could be clearer. And it is not my position--I don't think Thomas has the conceptual tools to adequately express the different kinds of identity he has in mind, which makes him a bit confusing and occasionally sounds almost contradictory--but I don't think it's heretical and I don't think it falls prey to Mr Jones' objections. Rather, I think he misunderstands and misconstrues Thomas, because he gives him the least possible sympathetic reading. He's looking for heresy and so he finds it. But everyone should know how easy it is to apply the same trick to any of the Fathers.

In any case, it's easy to call something sophistry when one makes no attempt to understand it on its own terms and shows no inclination or ability to think through difficult distinctions.

This will be my last response to Mr Jones.

Duns Scotus on the Existence of God

Here is an interesting bit on the proposition "God exists" (Deus est); as we all know, Scotus, like all the other scholastics, argues from effects to a cause in his proof for the existence of God. While the following quote will surprise no one, it is interesting as it sheds some light on what he thinks can be known about this proposition. From Reportatio IA d.2 pars 1 q.3 n.10:

As far as the first question is concerned (Whether some being is simply first), I say that, as was said before, according to no concept possible to us in the wayfaring state per se known [Wolter translates per se nota as "self-evident"] about his existence by a demonstration propter quid, because the middle term for demonstrating existence of him is unknown to us, namely the essence of God as this or deity under the aspect of deity. And therefore this proposition "God exists" is not known per se by us nor known propter quid, nor should we despair of knowing him [I suppose...haec propositio Deus est non est per se nota nec nobis nota propter quid, nec est desperatum a nobis cognosci]. Therefore by a demonstration "quia" alone can he be known by us now, as the middle term is taken from an effect. Relational properties are more immediately known by us in a cause than are absolute properties, because according to relative properties we say that he relates [respicere] to every effect according to the properties of causality and productability; and therefore from properties of this sort we must first establish our thesis [I've paraphrased wolter a bit here...sometimes there just aren't enough verbs!]