Scotus on the Relation of Metaphysics and Various Branches of Logic.

Fun times with the Doctor subtilis. From the QQ. super librum Elenchorum, q.1 (Opera Philosophica II, 271-3):

To the question it should be said that logic is of common things as is first philosophy, but in different ways. For first philosophy considers being insofar as it is being, whence it considers a thing according to its quiddity. And because the quiddity of a thing is per se the entity of a thing, therefore first philosophy considers a thing according to its entity. And because it considers a thing according to its quiddity, and many things follow upon a thing according to its quiddity, therefore the first philosopher can consdier the attribute of a subject and about whatever other. For although by understanding being insofar as it is understood in common and inasmuch as it comprehends under itself being of this kind, something cannot be shown, nevetheless many things can be shown about being according to its quiddity; for many things follow a thing according to quiddity, as to be perfect and imperfect, and many others.

Likewise, logic is about common being, or it considers it. But being is double, namely of nature and of reason. Being of nature, insofar as it is such, is the being which does not depend on the soul. But being of reason is said of certain intentions which reason finds in things themselves, such as genus, species, definition, and others of this kind. Being however said in that second way is equated according to its community to being said in the first way. For there is not some being of nature that cannot fall under being of reason, that some intention can be founded over it, as genus or species or property or individual, or at least of cause and caused. Because therefore lgoic is of intentions of this kind, which are applicable to all thihngs, therefore logic is said to proceed from common things.

Further it must be understood that although logic as far as its doctrine is from common things, nevertheless the doctrine handed down in dialectics and demonstration is a diverse use. For dialectic is from common things and in particular sciences argues from common elements to proper conclusions. For it shows that love and hate are receivable in the same thing, not by considering the property of love or hate but this medium that "contraries are made around the same". Whence from common things it does not argue to common, but from common things it argues to proper conclusions. That part of logic which is demonstrative, even if the docrine is handed down from comon things, as for example of a syllogism, nevertheless in special it argues by its proper medium. For the geometer uses the demonstrative art, and thence he receives the first causes of a conclusion, and per a proper medium he argues to a proper conclusion. But one arguing dialectically can show another and another conclusion in another and other science by the same medium. Whence in natural philosophy and medicine there can be shown a diverse conclusion by the same medium.

De disputationis scholasticae utilitate

Crede mihi: multi, qui et voce et scripto et editis voluminibus putant se aliquam opinionem defendisse aut aliquem adversarium confutasse, si adduci possent, ut quaecumquae disputarunt, ad syllogisticam formam exigerent, statim animadverterent, se forte eloquenter declamasse, erudite scripsisse, eleganter descripsisse, at simul scopo aberrasse, nihil demonstrasse, nihil refutasse, immo forte nec quid demonstrandum aut refutandum sibi esset, clare percpisse.

Crede iterum mihi: si haec disceptandi ratio in rebus praesertim subtilioribus et implexis aut in iis, quae adhiberetur, multae quaestiones, quae hinc inde agitantur, non agitarentur; multae nullo negotio solverentur; multae, quae solutae putantur, insolutae atque adeo insolubiles agnosceretur; multi errores statim ac orti sunt extabuissent; praefidentia, clamores, irae concertantium vix locum haberent.

--Philosophiae Scholasticae Summa vol. I, p. 198

A Brief Introduction to the Works of Scotus

This post will be updated from time to time. For a published article on this topic, see Thomas William's introduction to the Cambridge Companion to Scotus.

LECTURA. Scotus's first set of lectures on the Sentences. The date of this work is unclear, the genre is probably that of notes. That is, they may not directly reflect the classroom lectures. Lectura I-II are a discrete work, Lectura III may not actually be part of the same sequence at all and could be a Reportatio.

ORDINATIO. An Ordinatio is the official version of a work prepared by a master for publication (from "ordinare). Scotus' Ordinatio incorporates the Lectura text, and was begun in 1302. It covers books I-IV. The order Scotus lectured was probably I-IV-II-III; and books I and IV contain a great deal of revisions that Scotus indicated be included in the final copy (these are the "extra's"). Scotus never finished this work, so in the strict sense it is not an Ordinatio at all. He was probably working on it at Paris as well as Oxford, which means that the interpolated passages from the Reportatio might be there at Scotus' direction (the Vatican edition normally excises these). This work has been commonly seen as the "summa" of Scotus, that is, where one can get Scotus' standard or normative opinion of things. This may not be the case.

REPORTATIONES. A Reportatio is a student report of a lecture, based on the oral presenation in the classroom. There are several sets of Reporationes associated with Scotus. For example, there is one allegedly from Cambridge, and a set from Paris. These cover all four books, and were probably delivered 1302-1305 (1305 was the year of Scotus' regency, in 1303-4 he was exiled) The "A"set is generally seen as the best of the reports, and it is indeed fairly polished. If one were to read a work of Scotus all the way through, I would recommend this one. Book I was apparently examined and approved for publication by Scotus himself; this is not true of the other books. Their exact doctrinal weight is thus somewhat ambiguous.

COLLATIONES. A set of conferences Scotus held with his students. There is both an Oxford and Parisian set. They are probably from later in his career. The format is a series of pro and con arguments, without any magisterial determination. So one would probably not cite one as evidence of Scotus' opinion's on a subject. Collatio 23, for example, is about analogy. It is the only passage in Scotus' writings where he analyzes arguments from Aquinas (taken from the Summa contra gentiles). But while he does criticize the arguments themsevles, he does not give a final answer to the problem. A few have been critically edited, no critical edition of the whole is even on the table at this point (well, it's listed as part of the Brepols series; but no one is actually going to start work on it for at least thirty years).

QUAESTIONES SUPER LIBRUM ISAGOGE PORPHYRII.

QUAESTIONES SUPER PRAEDICAMENTA ARISTOTELIS.

QUAESTIONES IN LIBROS METAPHYSICORUM ARISTOTELIS. A question-commentary rather than a literal one, as readers will be familiar with from Aquinas. Only books I-IX are genuine. This work is traditionally seen as early, but parts of book VII postdate the Lectura, and book IX at least has the appearance of a finished treatise. There are also some "extra's" and "additiones" that show that Scotus did spend some time revising the work. It has been edited as vols. 3-4 of the Opera Philosophica series from St. Bonaventure University.

QUAESTIONES DE ANIMA. This covers books II-III of the De anima. It has the appearance of a compendium for students of common franciscan positions with replies to standard objections to the franciscan positions. It is commonly seen as early, and Parisian, but I think the editors are begging the question on this. My co-blogger Michael showed in his dissertation that the editors screwed up a bit on the spiritual matter question, which is dependent on Gonsalvus of Spain's Quodlibet (disputed ca. 1302-4). When I read the work, the final questions on univocity and the object of the intellect seemed to me to be simply abbreviations of the Ordinatio rather than the first breakthrough of a new position (though this might be hard to prove). Further research on this matter is required.

QUAESTIO DE FORMALITATIBUS/LOGICA SCOTI. This is a fragmentary question disputed by Scotus at Paris (all of which info was proven by Dumont; Balic had thought the text to be one of the Collationes) on the subject of certain inferences that could be allowed when the formal distinction is at play. One issue is whether formal distinction can be derived from formal non-identity, which Scotus allows here; he had denied it in the Ordinatio.

TRACTATUS DE PRIMO PRINCIPIO. A treatise proving the existence and essential properties of God; there has been some debate of its relation to the commentaries on the Sentences. It appears that the majority of it is derived from the Ordinatio. Scotus gave the work over to a socius, who did not understand Scotus' directions clearly for there are some errors and irrelevant material thrown in. This treatise was cited early on by Scotists like Petrus Thomae and Antonius Andreae.

THEOREMATA. This treatise is modelled on Euclid and consists of a series of propositions and conclusions on various topics. Noone has described it as an unfinished notebook. There has been some controversy concerning the work, as passages appear to contradict Scotus' genuine writings. But these could also be explained as examples of positing impossible hypotheses in order to study what follows; for example, if univocity is not true, what does natural theology look like. My co-blogger Michael has written on this here.

The Fifteenth-Century Shift

Another philosophical shift, though much more pernicious than Levering's. From Zenon Kaluza, "Late Medieval Philosophy 1350-1500" in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Marenbon, p. 443:

"... Indeed, strange to say, round about the year 1400 philosophers decided that they would no longer do philosophy on their own account and no longer take any personal responsibility for their philosophical positions. Rather, they spent the whole of the fifteenth century fighting among themselves, with prescriptions and prohibitions as their weapons, not in order to impose on everybody their own thought, but that of their distant models: Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Duns Scotus, Giles of Rome and Buridan. Universities passed statutes to remove undesirables and to close themselves to new ideas. None of these decisions rose above the level of factional in-fighting.

This upholding of traditions and the related and unceasing conflicts (especially in the German universities) were institutional rather than doctrinal in their basis. Historians describe them by the German word Wegenstreit. Sometimes by their violence and length these conflicts turned universities into a battleground where scholars fought to re-establish one of the old schools, whether realist or nominalist. The courses in these universities were limited to the revival of the thought of one or another great master of the past. Likewise, the practice of teaching centered on the great names of the past. In England, Wyclif was attacked in the name of St. Thomas. In Paris, a predominantly Thomist realism became the established doctrine by the last quarter of the century. In Germany, the choice of doctrine was regulated by the statutes of the different universities. Since this return to old scholasticism was the first of a series of such deliberate returns, it is certainly right to call it the first neoscholasticism. In Italy alone this type of institutional conflict had no place: there philosophers at once followed the English tradition of 1300-50 and the Parisian traditions of Averroism and Buridanism, as well as the traditions of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

The Fourteenth-Century Metaphysical Shift

Today’s entry will discuss Matthew Levering’s book, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, which seeks to restore a view of “reality as participatory-historical (providential and Christological-pneumatological) as well as linear-historical” [p.16] to its rightful place in theology. Now, a disclaimer: I am not concerned with Levering’s concern, reconciling theology and biblical interpretation. I am only interested in the role he assigns to Scotus in the unravelling of the above-mentioned view of reality. Levering is one of the lesser sons of the Cambridge Phantasists, a member of the american neo-thomist biblicists. These folks don’t read primary sources (other than Aquinas) with any more care than their parent across the water, however, though this is not so uncommon today. I say lesser, because he participated in the 2005 congratulatory volume of Modern Theology devoted to Pickstock, in which in a footnote he claimed that the abandonment of Thomas’ participation metaphysics is what got the Great Whore from Revelation thrown into the lake of fire, and knowing what such people usually say about Scotus’ role in said abandonment, one can draw the obvious conclusion. Yet another example of the age-old Thomist trick of forcing everying to bow the knee to Thomas by means of some authority other than the strength of Thomas’ own arguments. So I think I rank Levering slightly above Fr. Barron and Brad Gregory as far as accuracy, truth, and general scholarship is concerned (for in some of his notes he cites genuine scholarship on Scotus’ ethics, even if it is not reflected in the text of his book), but slightly below them as far as fantastical and ungrounded claims are considered.

My previous entry that contained the lengthy quote from A.D. Trapp was supposed to be the first part of a series on the fourteenth century, which was inspired by this post here, but this will probably be the final entry. I will follow my usual practice of quotes with comments.

“The Catholic exegete and theologian Francis Martin has shown that biblical interpreation requries an account of historical reality informed by a scriptural metapysics rooted in relation of “participation” that is creation. [...] Conversely, certain metaphysical presuppositions are inadequate to Christian biblical interpretation. It seems to me that Catherine Pickstock describes just such a set of presuppositions in recounting the impact of Duns Scotus’ thought.” [there follows a long, stupid paragraph from Pickstock]

So, okay. The thought of Scotus is incompatible with Christian biblical interpetation. We’re off to a good start.

“Although the positions of the theological movement in which Pickstock is a prime mover have been criticized for historical sloppiness, her central claims here—that the fourteenth century marks a shift away from the patristic-medieval understanding of “participated-in perfections” and that Scotus, although not a nominalist in the twelfth-century sense, plays a crucial role in this development—find broad scholarly agreement among experts on late medieval thought.”

Hmm. Nice move. He both distances himself from the Cambridge Phantasists and deflects the criticism directed at them, and yet manages to still affirm their conclusion: Scotus=bad. Note that he only denies Scotus is a twelfth-century nominalist, leaving open the idea that he is a fourteenth-century nominalist—which he is not. This paragraph is followed by a page-long endnote of citations. But the experts cited are to a man post-modern theorists; there is not a medieval scholar among them. Perrier might count as a pomo thomist, but that’s hardly an unbiased wordview, and his essay in the Pickstock congradsfest is quite hostile to Scotus. Oddly, in the note on the critics of the Cambridge Phantasists, the articles of Richard Cross are not mentioned; these are quite devastating as far as the representation of Scotus is concerned.

“Olivier Boulnois, the preeminent contemporary interpreter of Scotus’s work, refers to “the Scotist rupture”. The human will for Scotus mirrors the freedom of the divine will, and Scotus denies that the will is an appetite that seeks its fulfillment or perfection. Scotus also rejects the telological framework of “final causality” as “a flight into fantasy (fugiendo finguntur viae mirabiles).” The patristic-medieval tradition prior to Scotus intepreted reality in terms of participation (Platonic) and teleological nature (Aristotelian).”

I would rather characterize Boulnois as the most prominent french post-modern theorist who is the least hostile to Scotus. He certainly isn’t the top Scotist scholar, unless Levering means the top scholar who interprets Scotus through a post-modernist lense. I would say the German Honnefelder is far more prominent, and indeed, so are various scholars from other countries. I assume the following characterizations are derived from Boulnois, and if they are, he is certainly undeserving of the praise heaped on him here (perhaps a subject for a later post). Scotus does not deny the will is an intellectual appetite, only that taken in this sense the will cannot be said to be free. Don’t ask me where this bullcrap about final causality comes from. I’ve read literally thousands of pages of Scotus, and never seen this before. As to participation, well, I’ve come across maybe one paragraph on participation and Scotus did not rule it out. I suspect, however, it is rendered irrelevant by Scotus’ doctrine of intrinsic modes, just like a few other underdeveloped and primitive theories like spiritual matter, and essence-existence composition.

“In contrast to Aquinas, who unites these two approaches [of course!] through a metaphysics of creation, Scotus brings about a “strange fragmentation” in which goodness no longer has its Platonic participatory character. For Scotus, too, God does not know creatures in knowing himself (the strong sense of participation), but rather knows creatures as a conceptual object of the divine mind. While participation remains in Scotus, it does so in a deracinated form: representation rather than exemplarity.”

I’m really not clear on how God’s self-knowledge counts as participation, which I take is how Levering interprets Aquinas’ view that divine ideas are God’s knowledge of his own essence as imitable. And in any case, God does know creatures in knowing himself; the whole bit in Scotus about instants of nature in which the quiddities of created things are generated by the divine intellect, comes about through God’s act of knowing his own essence. I don’t see how this can be an either/or situation; creatures are objects of the divine mind because God knows himself. Aquinas and Scotus are actually quite close on this issue. The last bit is more interesting. Scotus does seem to leave out exemplarity in his account of the divine ideas (though in any case I don’t think this is properly related to participation); but this is precisely the aspect of this theory that was rejected by his immediate and otherwise most enthusiastic followers: Francis of Meyronnes, Petrus Thomae, and William of Alnwick, and in the 18th century, Mastrius. So how can this be the seeds of bad things to come if he was not followed here by the members of his own school?

“Lacking a rich account of participation and analogy, reality is “desymbolized”: human time is no longer understood as caught up in a participatory relationship with God, and history becomes a strictly linear, horizontal, intratemporal series of moments. After Scotus, human freedom may submit to the divine will, but thereafter on the grounds of God’s obligating power rather than on participatory-teleological grounds.”

I don’t think any of the scholastics thought of time and history in this way, nor does there seem to be a necessary connection between time, participation, or voluntarism. Nor does Scotus reject analogy, as I’ve said many times. But I suppose it’s “weak” if he never talks about it. Point to Levering.

p.20: “Does the shift toward understanding human freedom and history as a non-participatory reality—the “rupture’ identified by Boulnois—begin, therefore, with Duns Scotus? That question must be left to medievalists, but it does seem that we can identify in his work certain metaphysical patterns that remain influential today. The question for us is how to assess the theological effects of those patterns.”

More sleight of hand. Maybe it was really st. Francis, or Bonaventure that leads to Scotus that leads to nominalism that leads to humanism that leads to protestantism that leads to Hitler (or whatever. Abortion, The Secular, etc.). But this minor question is the terrain of the medievalist. Hmm. But the mere medievalist does not supply any of the interpretation of Scotus, O no precious. Just the question of where onto-theology begins. Maybe the medievalist can also tell us what these “patterns” are? And where might these ideas be influential today? If Scotus leads to Ockam, then it’s Ockham’s views that are influential today, not Scotus’.

p.37: “Aquinas belonged to the last generation of high-medieval theologians. After the deaths of Aquinas and Bonaventure in 1274, and Albert the Great six years later, theological rationalisms [note the plural] gained ascendancy in the late-medieval universities. As a result, whereas before 1274 the leading theologians had all commented on the Bible, afterward this practice became rare. Describing this situation... [long Hans urs von Balthasar quote, universities allegedly running back and forth between averroism, and nominalism laying the ground for the break of protestantism, blah blah blah] ... It is telling that the greatest theological minds of the period, Scotus and Ockham, did not write commentaries on the Bible, and their formal theological writings relatively infrequently appeal to Scripture or the Fathers.”

This is the first time I’ve seen 1274 as the end of high-medieval theology. And Scotus was born before 1274, in any case. Levering could use a dose of history here. University requirements did not change in the 14th century. To become a master one had to spend a year lecturing on the Bible. One can imagine that when one has to get through the whole bible in a year, one sticks to the literal sense and probably isn’t going to publish the results. But it depends what one means by “leading theologian”; there were numerous 14th century biblical commentaries as well, even from among the dominican nominalists at Oxford like Holcot. So that’s something of a bogus claim. There are records that Scotus wrote several biblical commentaries, but these were probably all destroyed by the prots inspired by Scotus’ evil nominalism. I’m not sure about this “infrequency” claim. The fathers and scripture show up as authorities all the time. But, and perhaps this is what Levering is getting at, the office of the theologian wasn’t primarily seen as reconciling contradictory statements of the fathers and scriptures and forging a harmony between them. It was rather answering the question at hand. Augustine, Hilary, and Damascene are among Scotus’ favorites, but he is not primarily trying to provide exegesis of them. It is also interesting to point out that Scotus and Ockham had very different careers than Aquinas. Aquinas became a master in the mid-1250’s, and died in 1274; so he had a twenty-year career as a master, teaching in various places and writing commentaries. Scotus became a master in 1305 and died in 1308. He had no time to write anything other than Sentence-commentaries. Ockham never became a master, but became embroiled in controversy with the pope and ended his days writing polemical treatises. So Scotus and Ockham might easily have written biblical commentaries had their personal circumstances been different, on top of their evil univocalist voluntaristic ontologies (and Scotus probably did).

Final Summary:

Doctrinal claims:

1. Scotus denies the will is an appetite (false)
2. Scotus denies final causality (false)
3. Scotus denies analogy (false)
4. Scotus favors representation over exemplarity in the divine ideas (true)
5. Scotus didn’t write biblical commentaries, and cited the bible and fathers “infrequently” (needs qualification)

Historiographical/interpretive claims

1. Scotism is incompatible with Christian biblical intepretation (yawn)
2. Scotus causes the fourteenth century shift away from participation (one would have to examine an actual text of Scotus to prove this)

So there you have my thoughts on Levering’s book. To be fair, this material is in his initial chapters, where he is summarizing the results from other pomo theologians, and not the main point of the book. But he is a fairly popular guy for an academic, and since the book is probably read by academics and armchair theologians alike, I thought the view of Scotus should be noted for its errors. And it is quite common among this set to lay out their “narrative” of how Scotus ruined the world before going on to the issues they really want to discuss. But if their foundation is false, their results are questionable as well; since academics aren’t willing to discuss these false foundations, I will do it myself.

This, however, leads the initial question still open: was there a metaphysical shift in the fourteenth century? There does seem to have been one, probably in the 1290’s. When one reads Aquinas and Bonaventure, one rarely comes across them citing contemporary opinions. But later, the main point of the exercise is criticism of contemporary opponents and advancing one’s own views. Rather than “aliqui” or the nefarious “quidam”, we get authors who name names. I suspect a lot of this comes from the correctoria controversy, in which specific arguments were made against Thomism, whether by William de la Mare, or Giles of Rome, which were refuted by close citation and rather acrimonius argumentation. The climate after the 1277 condemnations was then very combative, and the lines were fairly clearly delineated of who was on what side. But none of this has much to do with Scotus, though he may be more extreme than most in his endless attacks on poor crazy Henry of Ghent who never met a platonist he didn’t like. The Trapp article is relevant here, for in the fourteenth century itself the division was seen as between Bonaventure, Aquinas and Scotus (the via antiqua) and Ockham and his followers (the via moderna). As I’ve written many times, it is rather hard to determine the “responsibility” to be assigned to Scotus for Ockham, as the latter generally rejects all of Scotus’ arguments. Ockham as well is looking back to the twelfth century, and as such is rather reactionary. Indeed, I cut him from my dissertation for being too conservative; his theory of divine attributes is basically just the common opinion of the twelfth-century. Ockham saw himself as restoring the tradition interrupted by the radical innovations introduced by Aquinas and culminating in Scotus. So the historiography is far from clear, and our post-modernist theorist friends are not interested in the reality of the situation, being content with the polemical and politically-motivated nineteenth-century thomist theory of the rise and fall of philosophy understood as co-extensive with thomism.

James of Ascoli on Consecutive causality

Consecutive causality, a rough, probably highly inaccurate translation of "consecutive" appears to mean only the causal dependence something has on something else. I hesitate to use the word "cause", however, as the only locus I have seen it come up is in the discussing the divine ideas. In this context, it refers to the essences of creatures as are eternally related to the divine essence. They are also logically prior to the divine act of thinking. This theory was held by few scholastics, though the more I study the issue, the more the number grows. Peter Thomae holds it as an alternative to Scotus' view, and he appears to have derived it from James of Ascoli. The carmelite John Baconthorpe discusses it and attributes it to his confrere Gerard of Bologna, though I haven't tracked this down yet. Avicenna latinus appears to be the ultimate origin of the idea, though since he is dependent on Alfarabi it may be in the latter's works as well. In any case, the passage below attempts a definition of the term, which I found somewhat interesting and useful, perhaps even worth sharing.

Iacobus de Aesculo, Quaestiones ordinariae, q. 4 (Cambridge, UL, Ms. FF.3.23, f. 126ra): Utrum notitia actualis creaturae praesupponatur in Deo notitiae habituali eiusdem.

Secundo sciendum quod aliquid potest habere esse intelligibile sub alio dupliciter: vel effective vel consecutive. Effective, sicut quidditates rerum creabilium habent esse intelligibile effective ab intellectu agente in quantum intellectus agens causat eas effective in esse intelligibile, secundum ymaginem Philosophi et Commentatoris(p hi et 9iiieris) Consecutive vero habent esse intelligibile ab ipsa specie causata ab intellectu cognoscente. Posita enim specie intelligibili ipsius lapidis in intellectu, consequitur naturaliter esse intelligible lapidis, sicut oppositum corellarium ipsius speciei sine omni causatione effectiva. Species enim lapidis non causat effective proprie lapidem in esse intelligibili, sed solum esse intelligibili lapidis consequitur ipsam spieciem per motum cuiusdam coreins necessarie.

Ad propositum dico quod quidditates in illo priori in quo habent esse intelligibile ab ipsa essentia divina antequam sunt actu immediate non habent esse intelligibile effective ab ipsa essentia quasi ipsa esset eas effectivas in esse intelligibili, quia posita essentia ipsa necessario resultant in esse intelligibli sicut obiecta coreva ipsius essentie, non ad que ipsa essentia referatur, sed magis que ad ipsam referantur sicut posita specie lapidis s ap resultat in specie intelligibili.

Translation:

Second, it should be known that something can have intelligible being from another in two ways, either effectively or consecutively. Effectively, as the quiddities of creatable things have intelligible being effectively from the agent intellect, insofar as the agent intellect causes them effectively in intelligible being, according to the image of the Philosopher and the Commentator. But consecutively they have intelligible being from the species caused by the knowing intellect. For if it be posited that there is an intelligible species of a stone in the intellect, there naturally follows the intelligible being of the stone, just as the opposed ...? of the species without all effective causation. For a species of a stone does not cause effectively the stone in intelligible being, but rather the intelligible being of the stone follows the spcies by a necessary motion.

To the question at hand I say that the quiddities in that prior [instant] in which they have intelligible being from the divine essence, before they are immediately in act, they do not have intelligible being effectively from the essence as if it would [cause] them effectively in intelligible being, because with the essence posited, necessarily they result in intelligible being, just as objects correlative of the essence, not to which the essence is referred, but more rather they are referred to it [the divine essence], just as with a species of a stone being posited [in the intellect immediately the stone results in intelligible being...?]

Hugo de Novo Castro on the Threefold Distinction

Hugo was another Parisian Scotist, who got his degree sometime in the 1310's. He also took a doctorite in law. Enjoy the following quote, which I mostly post to keep somewhere for when I need it 15 years down the road.

Hugo de Novo Castro, I Sent. d. 9 q. 1 ad 4 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. lat. 15864, f. 14vb)

Ad quartam dico quod relatio ex se non est infinita ex propria ratione set si est infinita, hoc est propter ydemptitatem cum essentia. In creaturis enim videmus triplicem distinctionem. Una est rei et rei et voco hec rem sive suppositum individuum sive partes reales individuum ut facit(?) materia et forma sive substantialis sive accidentalis. Alia est distintio in eadem re realitatis et realitatis parcialis. Voco autem hic realitatem parcialem perfectionem formalem limitatam extra intellectum in eadem re simplici ut in albedine ubi extra omnem intellectum perfectio coloris et albedinis distinguitur et hoc vocatur(?) ab aliis distinctio perfectionis intentionis et illa distinctio est in omni re citra primum quia in omni re citra primum est distinctio generis et differentie sicut patet de sensitivo et intellectivo in homine que quantumcumque essent in eadem re simplici cum dicunt perfectiones distinctas realiter. Tertia distinctio est non rei et rei nec realitatis et realitatis sed modi et modi realis quam quidem aliqui vocant distinctionem rationis realis. In Deo autem numquam est prima distinctio nec secunda propter infinitatem omnium perfectionum...

To the fourth I say that a relation is not of itself infinite from its definition, but if it is infinite, this is because of its identity with the essence. For in creatures there is a triple distinction. One is of thing and thing, and I cal this thing or individual supposit or real individual parts, such as mater and form, or substantial and accidental (parts). Another is a distinction in the same thing of reality and partial reality. I here call a partial reality a formal, limited, perfection outside the intellect in the same simple thing as is the case with whiteness, where outside of all intellectual operation the perfection of color and whiteness is distinguished. And this is called by others a distinction of perfection-intention, and that distinction is in every thing beneath the first, because in everything beneath the first there is a distinction of genus and difference, just as is clear concerning the sensitive and intellective (parts) in man, howsoever they are found in the same simple thing since they are really distinct perfections. The third distinction is not of thing and thing nor of reality and reality but of mode and real mode, which some call the distinction of real reason. In God however are found neither the first nor the second distinction, on account of the infinity of all perfections...

Christus Unus Magister Personarum

[a belated sermon for St. Bonaventure's day]

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” our Lord said, “for I am meek and humble of heart.”

It is practically undeniable that Franciscan thought and affection is eminently personal. Franciscans don’t look to an ideal to understand their way of life; they love a man, a particular one, the man who took off his clothes in front of his father, who embraced a leper, who made the first living crèche, who bore the stigmata.

This personal way of thinking and loving holds firmly true for St. Bonaventure, as is evidenced in his theological works. Perhaps most obviously, St. Bonaventure did not just discourse on poverty, he wrote a life of St. Francis. He did not simply expound theological ideas, he always made them beautiful and directed toward enflaming his reader’s charity. Similarly, when St. Bonaventure spoke about learning, he said that we must above all learn from Christ.

“Learn from me,” Christ said. St. Bonaventure’s most famous sermon, Christus Unus Omnium Magister, is about how our Lord is the One Teacher of All — the exemplar of all Teachers, the one from whom we all can learn in order to be united with the Trinity forever.

We learn from Christ, St. Bonaventure says, because Christ is the fount of all wisdom; he is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the way of wisdom by faith which he gives through his sacraments; he is the truth of wisdom as the very light which illumines our mind, and he is the life of the soul as the Teacher of contemplation. Therefore Christ ought to be honored, heard and questioned by us.

Christ ought to be honored, because, according to St. Bonaventure, “he wanted to reserve the dignity of the Magisterium to himself,” as when he said, “You call me Master and Lord; and . . . indeed I am.”

Christ ought to be heard by us “through the humility of faith,” which is why Jesus said to the crowds, “Let him who has ears to hear, hear!” “For Christ teaches us not only by word, but also by example; and for that reason, one is not a perfect hearer unless he conform his understanding to his deeds,” just as Jesus did.

Finally, Christ ought to be questioned by us — not because we are curious or want to trick him, as the Pharisees often did, but because we want to learn from him, as Nicodemus did when he asked about the nature of baptism. In this way, we follow the example of the disciples, who often asked or demanded knowledge from their teacher: Peter: How many times should we forgive? Philip: show us the Father.

There is much more that St. Bonaventure says about how we can learn from Christ as teacher, but we must conclude with a word. Beginners, he says, look to Christ and compare the knowledge that he gives us with the knowledge that man gives and it could seem that man’s knowledge is better because it seems more organized, clearer, and easier to remember. But once it seems this way to us, the Seraphic Doctor insists, we have the obligation to penetrate the surface of Christ’s teaching and enter into the depths of theology — and we do that above all through an intimate conversation and union with a person, our supreme teacher: Jesus Christ, the Truth Incarnate.

Churchill on the English

In between bouts with the Ordinatio I've been reading Churchill's Marlborough: His LIfe and Times, in many ways a great book, and even greater when considered in the context of its author's life and place in history. This passage struck me as particularly ironic, or even prescient:

[The English] rejoiced in peace and clamoured for freedom. The dangers were past; why should they ever return? Groaning under taxation, impatient of every restraint, the Commons plunged into a career of economy, disarmament, and constitutional assertiveness which was speedily followed by the greatest of wars England had ever waged and the heaviest expenditure she had ever borne. This phase has often recurred in our history. If fact, it has been an invariable rule that England, so indomitable in peril, should at the moment when the dire pressures are relaxed and victory has been won cast away its fruits. Having made every sacrifice, having performed prodigies of strength and valour, our countrymen under every franchise or party have always fallen upon the ground in weakness and futility when a very little more perseverance would have made them supreme, or at least secure. Now after Ryswick, as at Utrecht, as at Paris in 1763, as after the Napoleonic wars and Waterloo, and as after Armageddon, the island mainspring of the life and peace of Europe broke; and England, amid a babel of voices, dissolved in faction, disbanded her armies, and sought to repay the spites and hardships of war-time upon the men who had carried her through.

She was, indeed, though she could not know it, in an interval between two deadly wars . . .

When this was written, in the early 1930s, England was again of course in an interval between two deadly wars, and almost the only one who knew it was Churchill, who could see it in part because of the history he was studying and writing. The parallels here are tremendous. Just as John Churchill participated in the first of the earlier set of wars but was to be the supreme and victorious leader in the second, so his descendant participated in World War One but was to rise above all the world in World War Two. He could already see the war coming; could probably see the part he was to play; and could already see how it would end and what the aftermath would be. And indeed, more or less as soon as WWII was over England, having performed prodigies of strength and valour, cast away the fruits of victory and cast out of office the man who had carried her through. Twenty years after his Marlborough book Churchill could entitle the last volume of his memoirs of WWII Triumph and Tragedy: How the great democracies triumphed, and so were able to resume the follies which had so nearly cost them their life. The later chapters are filled with unhappy reflections on how Russia was allowed to dominate the post-war map and snatch up the spoils England had fought so hard to keep from the Nazis, producing the Cold War.

Trappist Historiography

From: Damasus trapp, OESA, "Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century: Notes on Editions, Marginalia, Opinions and Book-Lore," in Augustiniana 6 (1956), 146 ff.

For the sake of convenience history has been divided by centuries. The genesis of historical events is not affected by the large time-element of a century. But the modern reader who has studied and learned his history by centuries, psychologically cannot avoid thinking in categories of centuries and tends to separate the chain of cause and effect by the century mark. Thus our tools become our masters.

When we discuss the history of theology in the 13th and 14th century the importance of the year 1300 is only fictitioius; 13th and 14th century theology can safely be compared to one another only if this psychological handicap is kept in mind.

A worse psychological impediment arises if one century -- in our case the thirteenth -- follows a line of progress which we spontaneously compare to a proud curve soaring up to a highest apex; because we instinctively continue the parabolic line in our mind, and identify the following century -- the fourteenth -- with the descending curve. How often the evaluation of the 14th century has been victimized by such an instinctive comparison to a falling curve descending from an apex somehwere in the 13th century can only be left to an intelligent surmise.

We should not compare progress to one vertical parabolic curve but to many horizontal halves of successive curves. The line of progress ascends and seems to, or actually does, come close to the ideal; but then it stops at a point which ignores the century mark altogether. Some of the new curves start successively on a lower or higher level, and rise and also stop: progress is not to be identified with any one in particular as all contribute their greater or lesser share.

With these reservations in mind I want to contribute a few notes on the 14th century Augustinian theology. I indicate here only the outlines of a larger study which could not be printed here...

History above the level of simple chronography needs categories to present many facts under a few headlines. If in the following I attempt to give a preliminary description of two historical categories which to my mind are characteristic of the 14th century theology I am not unaware of the persent situation. Only more research in the neglected 14th century can show whehter the two proposed categories come close to the facts of reality.

I would like to call the 13th century the great century of speculation, the 14th the great century of criticism, a criticism moving along two lines, the historico-critical and the logico-critical.

The 13th century created the great systems of Augustinianism, Thomism, and Scotism. When the first generation of Augustinianists, Thomists, and Scotists ascended the magisterial chairs they soon clashed violently and were forced to examine the positive premisses of their patristic sources, and the theoretical premisses of their theory of knowledge.

I am led to believe that the examination of the positive premisses brought about a historical -- and therefore -- historico-critical attitude; with the examination of their theories of knowledge the gensesis of a logico-critical attitude, I think, was in some way connected.

On the one hand much more attention was now paid to the exactness of quoting from the Fathers and to quoting in general; quotations from Fathers and past theologians furnished material for a critique of the preceding days and ways.

On the other hand the priority, not primacy, of the cognitio universalis gave way to the priority, not primacy, of the cognitio rei particularis. This cognitio rei particularis as such did not question the possibility of reaching universal knowledge; criticism only tried to build a new road to the heights of universal knowledge, along a more toilsome ascending trail which, if longer, was believed to be safer.

The description of the logico-critical attitude is, of coruse, not yet complete. A sum of compelx features enters into the true picture of the two attitudes. What follows affects alrgely the critical group but to a certain degree also the historical one.

A dialecticasl element must be considered as the prediominant factor in the logico-critical attitude, togher witha maximumd emand for mathematical evidence and apostulate of such simplicity as to reduce the traditional distinctions -- the mountain-jhigh accumulations of realities, formalities, and modalities -- to the barest minimum.

Maximum and Minimum are concepts in vogue. Algebraic symbols are applied to handle complex entitites of the syllogism; pure algebraic reasoning replaces the long and flowing phrase. Is it only a time-saving device or is it a typical logico-critical, a quasi-mathematical manifestation?

Geometry becomes an ideal for theology. The Commentaries are arranged more geometrico; among the quoted authors those are preferred who reason more geometrico. The 14th century introduceres the arabic numbers into wide circulation. A new mathematical consciousness is all-pervading although it does not rise beyond the level of algebra. The theologians accept a new shorthand symbol for instans, the zero of time, from the zero sign of India.

Ontology gives way to description; the old problem of "degree" is treated not as a fact to be explained but as a phenomenon to be described. It is a consequence of the new theory of knowledge. Among the Moderni one finds a frenzied interest in the degress of perfections which, with the reader's forbearance, I compare to the Jacob's ladder of old reaching from the finite to the infinite. The modern theologians (Moderni) climb this ladder up and down; they count the rungs of the ladder (finite or infinite), they try to establish the relative importance of the two ladder ends (recessus a summo gradu, recessus a non-gradu). Here our pretended critical Moderni demonstrate an unexpected love and flair for an innate human tendency, speculation. Square-yards of parchment and lakes of ink are sacrificed for treatises on Maximum and Minimum as well as on the problem of degree.

The new shorthand symbol for the individual point of time, the instant, is symptomatic of a greater interest in the individual. In philosophy we have the cognitio rei particularis, in moral theology we find a greater reverence for the individual conscience, even the erroneous one. The 14th century discovers the individual; a breath-taking freedom prevails in the intellectual field. Freedom of conscience in the moral field is treated on a scale never to be attempted again.

One might seriously consider whether the 14th century was more interested in moral theology than in dogmatic theology. English theology especially deals with moral problems. A delight in casuistry is the result; a new English essay-style is born, quite different from the old Quaestio-style. Chillington, Rodington, Rosetus, Osbertus, Ulcredus Dunelmensis, inflate the few Contra of the old Quaestio into a long series of problems; they reduce the old corpus articuli to a few lines (sed his non obstantibus dico) and then solve the initial problems with an even longer series of loosely connected small treatises.

Casuistry takes over also in the field of dogma and leads a few, the Modernists among the Moderns, to aberrations. The disquiting thought of the potentia dei absoluta, already prominent in Anselm, for whom the Moderns and the Modernists have so much affection, makes the revolutionary Modernists in particular lose sight of all perspective and of all horizons. On a ever-increasing scale allowances are made for a possible divine intervention liable to suspend the created order; ingenious but very doubtful "cases" are invented and uncritically adduced to invalidate the general rule.

It is really puzzling to note that the cognitio rei particularis which prides itself on a critical treatment of pure concepts is accompanied by an uncritical and conceited proclamation of non-contradictions between all kinds of admittedly imperfect concepts. Worse, these our "critics" blunder into the bland assupmtion that the non-contradiction between imperfect concepts guarantees the real possibility of very complicated facts. The 14th century knows far too much about the possibility of elephants with a thousand tails.

The description of the two attitudes which I propose as categores to encompass the 14th-century complexities is naturally still problematical. Simple is the characterization of the historico-critical one: a new historical consciousness which stresses the importance of the sources more than had been done before. Complex in the extreme is the delineation of the logocio-critical attitude.

[...]

The condemnations of 1347 fell upon their extremism. From Peter Ceffons we know that the mains issue of 1347 was subtilitas and cosnequently evidentia. By subtilitas we must understand the neglect of the fathers and a logico-theological abuse of the doctrine of possible divine intervention. From the abuse of this premiss flow all the errors of 1347, errors in Christology, errors in the doctrine of grace, errors about causality and about evidence.

With the daring freedom theologians enjoyed in tthose days some extremists abused the premiss of possible divine intervention with the dexterity of magicians. De potentia dei absoluta, some pointed out, God might accept the sinner without grace: and joined the Pelagians fo old. Under the same presmiss they allged the ppossiblity that the Second Person of the Trinity might assume, dismiss and reassume a sinning nature: and so produced a monstrous Christ. While modern unbelievers are afraid of one singer miracle lest the created order become unstable these audacious extremists admitted the possiblity of infite miracles: and thus cast effective doubts upon the principle of causality. Under the same magic premiss of possible divine interference withour sensations a conclusion was reached which did away with the last remnant of evidence in our knowledge.

This mania of the logico-critical attitude had to be checked and condemned; but the doctrine of possible divine intervention could obviously not be censured. Only common sense in the application of this theological principle had to be restored. The condemnations therefore fell upon an audacity which overshot the mark of pure criticism and ventured on a road that inevitably had to lead to a denial of common sense and of dogma.

Response to Benedict XVI Audience on Scotus

The pope's recent audience devoted to Duns Scotus was quite a surprise, especially the umistakeabe positive remarks he made. He praised both the doctrine of the immaculate conception and that of the primacy of Christ; on this latter topic, apparently, according to other blogs, he has even changed his mind in endorsing Scotus' opinion. So there is much to be thankful for. We have moved away from the purely negative, Cambridge phantasist-inspired portrayal found in the Regensburg address to a more nuanced approach. I was personally impressed by the fact that he cited actual works of Scotus, an unusual departure from the usual pomo/thomist line, and even appears to know the difference between the Ordinatio, Reportatio, etc. All in all, quite impressive.

But he is still dead wrong on the will, I'm sad to say.

"Finally, Duns Scotus developed a point to which modernity is very sensitive. It is the topic of liberty and its relation with the will and with the intellect. Our author stresses liberty as a fundamental quality of the will, initiating an approach of a voluntaristic tendency, which developed in contrast with the so-called Augustinian and Thomistic intellectualism.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, who follows St. Augustine, liberty cannot be considered an innate quality of the will, but the fruit of the collaboration of the will and of the intellect. An idea of innate and absolute liberty placed in the will and preceding the intellect, whether in God or in man, risks, in fact, leading to the idea of a God who would not even be linked to the truth and to the good. The desire to save the absolute transcendence and diversity of God with an affirmation about his will that is so radical and impenetrable fails to take into account that the God who revealed himself in Christ is the God "logos," who acted and acts full of love toward us.

Certainly, as Duns Scotus affirms, in line with Franciscan theology, love surpasses knowledge and is increasingly capable of perceiving thought, but it is always the love of the God "Logos" (cf. Benedict XVI, Address at Regensburg, Teachings of Benedict XVI, II [2006], p. 261). Also in man the idea of absolute liberty, placed in the will, forgetting the nexus with truth, ignores that liberty itself must be freed of the limits imposed on it by sin."

Here we still have Scotus initiating some bad stuff, beginning a "tendency" to voluntarism. The actual tendency is locating freedom as a quality of the will. But Scotus doesn't do this; if freedom were a quality, it would have to be a habit (the only qualities that inhere in the will, after all), and habits are generally generated by repeated acts. Obviously, freedom isn't like this at all. According to Scotus, freedom actually consists in the affectio iustitiae, affection for justice, which is not a habit or an accident, but the ability to will something for its own sake, against the advantage of the willer. And ironically, the position that Benedict attributes to Aquinas, that liberty is the fruit of both the will and the intellect, is actually similar to that of Scotus; not as far as liberty is concerned, but as far as what actually generates acts of volitions. I post here again the text from Lectura II.26 that details this essential cooperation between the intellect and will:

Lectura II d. 25 q. un n.69-70 (ed. vat. 19, 253-55):

"Therefore I respond to the question that the effective cause of willing is not only the object or phantasm (because this in no way preserves freedom), as the first opinion claimed – nor also is the effective cause of the act of willing only the will, just as the second extreme opinion claimed, because then all the conditions which are subsequent to the act of willing would not be prserved, as was shown. Therefore I hold the middle way, that both the will and the object concur for causing the act of willing, so that the act of willing is from the will and from the object known as from an effective cause. But how can this be from the object? For the object has abstractive being in the intellect, and it is necessary that the agent is this-something and in act. Therefore i say that the intellet concurrs with the will under the aspect of effective cause – understanding the object in act – for causing the act of willing, and so, briefly, ‘natura actu intelligens obiectum et libera’ is the cause of willing and not-willing and in this consists free choice, whether this be said of us or of the angels."

Perhaps needless to say to anyone versed in scholastic philosophy, Benedict's claim that liberty is in the will prior to the act of the intellect is false. Or at least, requires further clarification. Yes, the will is free in that it can will against the suggestion of the intellect, and is the metaphysically "superior" power, but volition always follows intellection. The operation of the intellect is what supplies the objects for the will to will. Basically, as Scotus puts it, the intellect is an apprehensive power, apprehending, understanding, grasping, and so on, the object outside the knower in reality. The will is not such a power, but is only able to act on the basis of objects supplied to it by the intellect.

Benedict also implies that Scotus' motivation here is to preserve divine transcendence and impenetrability. This is ironic in that the Cambridge Phantasists et al. generally accuse Scotus of destroying transcendence by means of his doctrine of univocity. But since Benedict's view of the relation between intellect and will is so erroneous, his further comments about how the divine will is thereby divorced from truth and goodness do not apply to Scotus.

A further issue is how Scotus can both be initiating troubling new voluntaristic tendencies but also following the standard tendencies found in the Franciscan tradition. The Franciscans were voluntarists long before Scotus, and as far as voluntarism is concerned, he's quite a moderate.

Another passage of interest from the lecture:

"Liberty, as all the faculties with which man is gifted, grows and is perfected, affirms Duns Scotus, when man opens himself to God, valuing that disposition of listening to his voice, which he calls potentia oboedientialis: When we listen to divine Revelation, to the Word of God, to accept it, then we have been reached by a message that fills our life with light and hope and we are truly free."

Scotus certainly does not define the potentia oboedientialis like this. See rather QQ. in Met. Lib. 9 q. 12 n. 11: "'Oboedientia' enim proprie significat subiectionem respectu agentis potentis de oboediente facere quod vult." and n. 13: " So obediential potency is a potency of being subject to an agent, namely a perfect agent. Elsewhere, and I couldn't find it, Scotus relates this specifically to a potency that created things have towards being acted on by God. But note this is a metaphysical potency, and has nothing to do with spirituality, or "listening" to God in any way.

So to sum up, Benedict is showing increasing interest in Scotus, even changing some of his previous views under Scotus' influence; perhaps he just might canonize him next. He is quite happy to praise Scotus' views on the immaculate conception and the primacy of Christ, but remains critical, and uninformed, as to Scotus' actual doctrine on the will.

Benedict XVI on Duns Scotus

Pope Benedict's wednesday audience of July 7, 2010 was about Duns Scotus; translation by Zenit:

Dear brothers and sisters,

This morning -- after a few catecheses on several great theologians -- I wish to present to you another important figure in the history of theology: John Duns Scotus, who lived at the end of the 13th century. An ancient inscription on his tomb summarizes the geographical coordinates of his biography: "England received him; France instructed him; Cologne, in Germany, keeps his remains, he was born in Scotland." We cannot overlook this information, because we have very little information on the life of Duns Scotus.

He was born probably in 1266 in a village, which in fact is called Duns, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Attracted by the charism of St. Francis of Assisi, he entered the Family of the Friars Minor and was ordained a priest in 1291. Gifted with a brilliant intelligence geared to speculation -- an intelligence that merited him by tradition the title of doctor subtilis, "subtle doctor" -- Duns Scotus was directed to the study of philosophy and theology at the famous Universities of Oxford and Paris. Having concluded his formation successfully, he undertook the teaching of theology at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and then Paris, beginning his commentary, as all teachers of the time, on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The main works of Duns Scotus represent, in fact, the mature fruit of these lessons, and take the title of the places in which he taught: Opus Oxoniense (Oxford), Reportatio Cambrigensis (Cambridge), Reportata Parisiensia (Paris).

Duns Scotus left Paris when a serious conflict broke out between King Philip IV the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII, preferring voluntary exile rather than signing a document hostile to the Supreme Pontiff, as the king had imposed on all religious. Thus -- out of love for the See of Peter -- he left the country together with his Franciscan Brothers.

Dear brothers and sisters, this fact invites us to recall how many times in the history of the Church believers have met with hostility and even with persecutions because of their fidelity and their devotion to Christ, to the Church and to the Pope. We all look with admiration to these Christians, who teach us to guard faith in Christ and communion with the Successor of Peter, and thus with the universal Church, as a precious good.

However, relations between the king of France and Boniface VIII's successor soon became friendly again and in 1305 Duns Scotus was able to return to Paris to teach theology with the title of magister regens, today we would say ordinary professor. Subsequently, his superiors sent him to Cologne as professor of the Franciscan Theological Studium, but he died on Nov. 8, 1308, when only 43 years of age, leaving, however, an important number of works.

Because of his fame for holiness, devotion to him soon spread in the Franciscan Order and Venerable Pope John Paul II wished to confirm him solemnly blessed on March 20, 1993, describing him as "singer of the Incarnate Word and defender of the Immaculate Conception." Synthesized in this expression is the great contribution Duns Scotus made to the history of theology.

First of all, he meditated on the mystery of the incarnation and, as opposed to many Christian thinkers of the time, he maintained that the Son of God would have become man even if humanity had not sinned. In the Reportata Parisiensia he affirms: "To think that God would have given up such work if Adam had not sinned would be altogether irrational! I say, therefore, that the fall was not the cause of the predestination of Christ, and that -- even if no one had fallen, not angels or man -- in this hypothesis Christ would still have been predestined in the same way" (in III Sent., d. 7, 4).

This, perhaps, rather surprising thought is born because for Duns Scotus the incarnation of the Son of God, projected from all eternity by God the Father in his plan of love, is the fulfillment of creation, and makes it possible for every creature, in Christ and through him, to be filled with grace and give praise and glory to God in eternity. Duns Scotus, though aware that, in reality, because of original sin, Christ has redeemed us with his passion, death and resurrection, confirms that the incarnation is the greatest and most beautiful work of the whole history of salvation, and that it is not conditioned by any contingent fact, but is the original idea of God to finally unite the whole of creation with himself in the person and flesh of the Son.

Duns Scotus, faithful disciple of St. Francis, loved to contemplate and preach the mystery of the salvific passion of Christ, expression of the immense love of God, who communicates with enormous generosity outside of himself the rays of his goodness and his love (cf. Tractatus de primo principio, c. 4). And this love is not only revealed on Calvary, but also in the Most Blessed Eucharist, to which Duns Scotus was most devoted and which he saw as the sacrament of the real presence of Jesus and as the sacrament of the unity and community that induces us to love one another and to love God as the supreme common good (cf. Reportata Parisiensia, in IV Sent., d. 8, q. 1, n. 3).

Dear brothers and sisters, this theological vision, intensely "Christocentric," opens us to contemplation, to wonder and to gratitude: Christ is the center of history and of the cosmos; he it is who gives meaning, dignity and value to our life! Like Pope Paul VI in Manila, I also would like to cry out to the world today: "[Christ] reveals the invisible God, he is the firstborn of all creation, the foundation of everything created. He is the Teacher of mankind, and its Redeemer. He was born, he died and he rose again for us. He is the centre of history and of the world; he is the one who knows us and who loves us; he is the companion and the friend of our life. ... I could never finish speaking about him" (Homily, Nov. 29, 1970).

Not only the role of Christ in the history of salvation, but also Mary's [role] is the object of the reflection of the doctor subtilis. In Duns Scotus' times, the majority of theologians offered an objection that seemed insurmountable to the doctrine that Most Holy Mary was free from original sin from the first instant of her conception. In fact, the universality of the redemption wrought by Christ, at first glance, might seem compromised by such an affirmation, as if Mary had no need of Christ and of his redemption. Because of this theologians were opposed to this thesis.

To make this preservation from original sin understood, Duns Scotus then developed an argument which later would also be adopted by Blessed Pope Pius IX in 1854, when he defined solemnly the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. And this argument is that of the "preventive redemption," according to which the Immaculate Conception represents the masterpiece of the redemption wrought by Christ, because in fact the power of his love and of his mediation obtained that the Mother be preserved from original sin. Hence Mary is totally redeemed by Christ, but already before her conception. The Franciscans, his brethren, accepted and spread this doctrine enthusiastically, as did other theologians who -- often with a solemn oath -- committed themselves to defend and perfect it.

In this regard, I would like to highlight something, which it seems to me is important. Valuable theologians, such as Duns Scotus with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, enriched with their specific thought what the People of God already believed spontaneously about the Blessed Virgin, manifested in acts of piety, in the expressions of art and, in general, in Christian living. Thus faith in the Immaculate Conception or in the bodily assumption of the Virgin was already present in the People of God, while theology had not yet found the key to interpret it in the totality of the doctrine of the faith. Thus the People of God precede theologians and all this thanks to that supernatural sensus fidei, namely, that capacity infused by the Holy Spirit, which qualifies us to embrace the reality of the faith, with humility of heart and mind.

In this sense, the People of God is "magisterium that precedes," and that later must be deepened and intellectually accepted by theology. May theologians always be able to listen to this source of faith and have the humility and simplicity of little ones! I made this reminder a few months ago saying: "There have been great scholars, great experts, great theologians, teachers of faith who have taught us many things. They have gone into the details of Sacred Scripture, ... but have been unable to see the mystery itself, its central nucleus. ... The essential has remained hidden! On the other hand, in our time there have also been 'little ones' who have understood this mystery. Let us think of St. Bernadette Soubirous; of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, with her new interpretation of the Bible that is 'non-scientific' but goes to the heart of Sacred Scripture" (Homily. Holy Mass with the Members of the International Theological Commission, Dec. 1, 2009).

Finally, Duns Scotus developed a point to which modernity is very sensitive. It is the topic of liberty and its relation with the will and with the intellect. Our author stresses liberty as a fundamental quality of the will, initiating an approach of a voluntaristic tendency, which developed in contrast with the so-called Augustinian and Thomistic intellectualism. For St. Thomas Aquinas, who follows St. Augustine, liberty cannot be considered an innate quality of the will, but the fruit of the collaboration of the will and of the intellect.

An idea of innate and absolute liberty placed in the will and preceding the intellect, whether in God or in man, risks, in fact, leading to the idea of a God who would not even be linked to the truth and to the good. The desire to save the absolute transcendence and diversity of God with an affirmation about his will that is so radical and impenetrable fails to take into account that the God who revealed himself in Christ is the God "logos," who acted and acts full of love toward us.

Certainly, as Duns Scotus affirms, in line with Franciscan theology, love surpasses knowledge and is increasingly capable of perceiving thought, but it is always the love of the God "Logos" (cf. Benedict XVI, Address at Regensburg, Teachings of Benedict XVI, II [2006], p. 261). Also in man the idea of absolute liberty, placed in the will, forgetting the nexus with truth, ignores that liberty itself must be freed of the limits imposed on it by sin.

Speaking to Roman seminarians last year, I reminded that "[s]ince the beginning and throughout all time but especially in the modern age freedom has been the great dream of humanity" (Address to the Pontifical Major Roman Seminary, Feb. 20, 2009). However, modern history itself, in addition to our daily experience, teaches us that liberty is authentic, and helps the construction of a truly human civilization only when it is reconciled with truth. If it is detached from truth, liberty becomes, tragically, a principle of destruction of the interior harmony of the human person, source of malversation of the strongest and the violent, and cause of suffering and mourning. Liberty, as all the faculties with which man is gifted, grows and is perfected, affirms Duns Scotus, when man opens himself to God, valuing that disposition of listening to his voice, which he calls potentia oboedientialis: When we listen to divine Revelation, to the Word of God, to accept it, then we have been reached by a message that fills our life with light and hope and we are truly free.

Dear brothers and sisters, Blessed Duns Scotus teaches us that what is essential in our life is to believe that God is close to us and that he loves us in Christ Jesus, and therefore to cultivate a profound love of him and of his Church. We are witnesses of this love on earth. May Mary Most Holy help us to receive this infinite love of God that we will enjoy fully for eternity in heaven, when our soul will finally be united for ever to God, in the communion of saints.

[Translation by ZENIT] [The Holy Father greeted the people in several languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our catechesis on medieval Christian culture, we now turn to the distinguished Franciscan theologian, Blessed John Duns Scotus. A native of Scotland, he taught at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. Duns Scotus is best known today for his contribution to the development of Christian thought in three areas. First, he held that the Incarnation was not directly the result of Adam's sin, but a part of God's original plan of creation, in which every creature, in and through Christ, is called to be perfected in grace and to glorify God for ever. In this great Christocentric vision, the Incarnate Word appears as the centre of history and the cosmos. Secondly, Scotus argued that Our Lady's preservation from original sin was a privilege granted in view of her Son's redemptive passion and death; this theory was to prove decisive for the eventual definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Finally, Duns Scotus paid great attention to the issue of human freedom, although by situating it principally in the will, he sowed the seeds of a trend in later theology that risked detaching freedom from its necessary relation to truth. May the teaching and example of Blessed John Duns Scotus help us to understand that we attain happiness, freedom and perfection by opening ourselves to God's gracious self-revelation in Christ Jesus. I offer a warm welcome to the members of the General Chapter of the Congregation of Holy Cross, together with my prayerful good wishes for the spiritual fruitfulness of your deliberations. Upon all the English-speaking visitors present at today's Audience, especially the groups from Wales, Ireland, the Philippines, Canada and the United States of America, I invoke God's abundant blessings.

Sokolowski on Deconstruction

From his Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 225:

"Deconstruction should also be mentioned in a survey of the phenomenological movement, albeit with some embarrassament, the way a family might be forced to speak about an eccentric uncle whose antics are known to everyone but whom one tries to avoid mentioning in polite society. Jacques Derrida's first writings were translations and interpretations (highly questionable interpretations, to be sure) of short works by Husserl, but he soon abandoned Husserl and moved into wider philosophical fields.... I would also claim that Husserl has a much more subtle treatment of absence and difference than Derrida gives him credit for, one that recognizes these phenomena but does not fall into the extremes of deconstruction. One of the most appropriate comments I have heard about deconstruction was made in a lecture by the Scottish literary theorist Alasdair Fowler; he observed that deconstruction in moderate sips provides a welcome correction to traditional literary theory, which might have become a bit too tidy and rationalist, but that in the United States it became absorbed into a political ideology and hence developed beyond all proportion."

Vol. XII

I got my box from Quaracchi yesterday with all the edited Ordinatio volumes I didn't have yet, including the just-released volume 12, which is 500 pages all about the Eucharist - the Scotistic Commission claims it's the longest and most comprehensive treatment of the subject in all the middle ages. Not even Faber has this one: ha ha, chew on that!

I'd love to get to it, but I have several volumes before that I need to get to first. Getting the box reminded me how hard it is to learn about Scotus without being a scholar with access to a top-notch library. These books are really really expensive, and there are no translations, and the scholarship on Scotus is still scanty at best, except on a few popular topics. So The Smithy will have to continue its mission of reading it for you and reporting on occasional bits.

Sorry about the collapse of Ockham month. No fancy excuses: I've been reading and doing other things, and I got bored with it.

Scotus and the Global Jihad

Ripped from today's headlines comes a mention of the subtle doctor in conjunction with radical Islam (or whatever else you wish to call it). I was perusing a book by Robert Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, which argues that the victory (by means of violence) of the ash'arite school over the mut'azilite school has had catastrophic effects in Sunni islam, indeed, the effect described by the title. The reference to Scotus comes on p.56:

"The early Christian thinker Tertullian questioned what relevance reason could have to Christian revelation in his famous remark 'What does Athens to do with Jerusalem?' The antirational view was apparent in Duns Scotus's and Nicholas of Autrecourt's advocacy of voluntarism. It was violently manifested in the millenarian movements of the Middle Ages, and somewhat within the movement that was known as fideism-faith alone, sola scriptura. In its most radical form, this school held that the scriptures are enough. Forget reason, Greek philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas."

There is a footnote, but the note refers only to an edition of Averroes, which mentions Nicolas of Autrecourt as the "medieval Hume". Scotus is not mentioned. Indeed, the only source I could find is Pope Benedict's Regensburg address, in which he accuses Scotus of voluntarism that unmoors society, etc. So we have the pope to thank for this one. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to contrasting the rationality of Christianity embodied in Aquinas, with the irrationality of the fideists of Islam, the ash'arites. These theologians reduce everything to divine will, and allow that the will can cause other divine attributes and the divine essence, that human knowledge of the natural world is impossible because there is no natural causality, only the divine will willings things in and out of being, that there are 99 divine attributes (+ the eternal koran that exists on a divine tablet "next" to the divine essence) but one should not inquire as to their relation to each other or the divine essence, and so on.

In the popular mind, then, Scotus is the origin of the word "dunce" because he was stupid or because his followers resisted the enlightenment, or, now, Scotus becomes part of the negative backstory of contemporary political punditry. This particular author, is not deserving of the term, as the book contains much theological and philosophical discussion, but it is marketed as part of the "current events" genre.

The numerous stereotypes should be clear to even new readers. Aquinas is the pinnacle of the harmony of faith and reason, Scotus their dissolution. Intellectualism is good, voluntarism is bad. Eithe with Aquians, or against him with deleterious consequences. I'm not sure such a remark is worth refuting, and even less that anyone will care, but here goes:

On the authority side, Benedict himself seems to have revised his views; in his letter to the archdiocese of Cologne and the congress held there during the 700 anniversary of Scotus's death, he praised Scotus for having a harmonious view of faith and reason. Regarding the will, Scotus never held anything near to the ash'arite view, nor indeed, did any other medieval thinker I've ever read. To claim that the divine will constitutes other divine attributes would compromise divine immutability, to which all the medieval scholastic authors adhered. Scotus was indeed a voluntarist, but such terms need to be clarified. In Scotus' case, the divine will and the divine intellect are related as two essentially-ordered causes of the act of volition, leaving no room for the "capricious" charge, for God is not simply pure will nor does his ever will except in conjunction with the intellect. I would supply texts, but as I examined Bonnie Kent's book on the will, I realized that the usual places that get cited for this are all problematic. This is common in Scotus, though especially annoying at the moment; there may be something in Qq in met. IX that is clear, but the other passages all rely on Reportationes and Additiones, none of which have been edited and their level of authority and authenticity determined. So no direct quotes to back up my claims, but one can easily consult the host of scholars who have written on these issues.

UPDATE!!!

Here is an unproblematic text from a genuine work.

Lectura II d. 25 q. un n.69-70 (ed. vat. 19, 253-55):

Therefore I respond to the question that the effective cause of willing is not only the object or phantasm (because this in no way preserves freedom), as the first opinion claimed – nor also is the effective cause of the act of willing only the will, just as the second extreme opinion claimed, because then all the conditions which are subsequent to the act of willing would not be prserved, as was shown. Therefore I hold the middle way, that both the will and the object concur for causing the act of willing, so that the act of willing is from the will and from the object known as from an effective cause.

But how can this be from the object? For the object has abstractive being in the intellect, and it is necessary that the agent is this-something and in act. Therefore i say that the intellet concurrs with the will under the aspect of effective cause – understanding the object in act – for causing the act of willing, and so, briefly, ‘natura actu intelligens obiectum et libera’ is the cause of willing and not-willing and in this consists free choice, whether this be said of us or of the angels.