FAITH
Magazine January-February 2008
The theology of John Duns Scotus places Christ at the centre of a universe
ordered by love. Christ is presented as the basis of all nature, grace and
glory – the most perfect model of humanity. He is at the beginning, the
centre and the end of the universe.
Lack of Appreciation
In this writer’s opinion Scotus has been greatly misjudged and
misunderstood. The learned Jesuit, Father Bernard Jansen, once wrote that
“rarely has the real figure of an eminent personage of the past been
defaced as has that of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus.”[1]
The philosopher Etienne Gilson, wrote “Of a hundred writers who have
held Duns Scotus up to ridicule, not two of them have ever read him and
not one of them has understood him.”[2]
There are several reasons why Duns Scotus has been so misunderstood and
maligned. One of them is his own self-effacement that led him to shy from
the limelight and work modestly and humbly in the background. Another is
the subtlety of his thought, which sends teachers into despair as they try
to mediate his ideas to their students and leads many to abandon the
attempt as too difficult. This very subtlety which is the strength of his
theology and philosophy fights against the diffusion of his ideas. A third
reason is his passion for the truth that led him to oppose error wherever
he found it and approach each question with an intense objectivity – an
attitude that gained him enemies in his own day and has continued to gain
him opponents down the ages whose pet theories are attacked by his
penetrating intellect. But perhaps the chief reason why he has been so
attacked, and the saddest to recount, is because he is not St. Thomas
Aquinas and indeed his system of thought disagrees with that of
St. Thomas
on some key points. Among those who refuse to admit of the possibility of
a number of orthodox ways of expressing the mysteries of our faith, to
affirm the greatness of Aquinas has all too often seemed to require
denigrating the thought of Scotus.
The Rise of
St. Thomas
At the end of the 19th century the Church was beginning to recover from
the persecutions and suppressions of the Enlightenment, the French
revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the liberal revolutions throughout
Europe
. Not one country had been spared these ravages in one manner or another
and it was only when a relative peace between the Church and the world was
established towards the end of the 19th century that the Church could
begin once more to reconstruct its intellectual and physical structures.
Pope Leo XIII surveyed the intellectual landscape and sought a Catholic
system of thought upon which this renewal could be based. He found the
system of
St. Thomas
to be eminently rational, defensible and proclaimable. In the encyclical
Aeterni Patris Leo XIII wrote that “a fruitful cause of the evils which
now afflict, as well as of those which threaten us, lies in this: that
false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in
the schools of philosophy, have crept into all the orders of the State,
and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses.”[3]
He went on in detail to describe the way that Christian philosophers, with
reason guided by faith, have down the ages opposed the errors of their
time. As a remedy for the errors of the nineteenth century Pope Leo
recommended above all St. Thomas, saying “among the scholastic doctors,
the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan
observes, because ‘he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church,
in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of them all.’ The
doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body,
Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order,
and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and
deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic
faith.”[4]
Leo supported his recommendation of the teaching of
St. Thomas
with an impressive list of sponsors of the Angelic Doctor. Corporate
sponsors included the Dominicans, of course, but also the Benedictines,
Carmelites, Augustinians, the Society of Jesus and many others who bound
their members in their statutes to follow the teaching of
St. Thomas
. To these endorsements he added a list of Popes who have recommended
St. Thomas
: Clement VI, Nicholas V, Benedict XIII, Pius V, Clement XII, Urban V,
Innocent XII and Benedict XIV are all quoted as supporting the teaching of
St. Thomas
. Leo finally quotes the testimony of Innocent VI who says “His teaching
above that of others, the canons alone excepted, enjoys such an elegance
of phraseology, a method of statement, a truth of proposition, that those
who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who
dare assail it will always be suspected of error.”[5]
Not only Popes but councils have held
St. Thomas
in singular honour, with the Council of Trent even keeping a copy of the
Summao n the altar along with the scriptures and the decrees of the Popes,
to consult for enlightenment.
Buttressed by such a phalanx of support Leo XIII ended his encyclical with
a ringing exhortation, “We exhort you, Venerable Brethren, in all
earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it
far and wide for the defence and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the
good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences”[6]
It was an exhortation that was welcomed and followed by many in the Church
so that it has been written “We are accustomed to consider
Saint Thomas
, Thomism, and Aristotelianism as the predominant points of orientation
and the most favourable
to the Church.”[7]
Given such a series of endorsements it is not surprising that many who
naturally look for certainty in their faith and seek a rock on which to
build that certainty, look to St. Thomas and see in him not only a
guarantee of orthodoxy, but almost the only guarantee of orthodoxy,
raising Innocent IV’s suspicion of those who disagree with St. Thomas,
almost to a declaration that they are outside the bounds of faith.
A Different Emphasis
Now it is well known that within the Church there has been for centuries a
series of disputes between the
school
of
St. Thomas
and that of Blessed John Duns Scotus. At a certain point the disputes
became so acrimonious that the Pope had to impose silence on the two
schools, forbidding them to speak of each other. At the root of the
dispute lies the philosophy of the two masters. For while Aquinas embraced
the philosophy of Aristotle and rendered it Christian, Scotus sought a
synthesis of Aristotelianism with the traditional Augustinian philosophy
of the Church Fathers. Scotus calls
St. Paul
the Christian philosopher and seeks in his philosophy to find a balance
between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism in such a way that he often
agrees with Aquinas but sometimes disagrees where the rigour of his
thinking leads him in other directions.
Perhaps one could sum up the differences in this way. Where the genius of
Aquinas was to distinguish and make divisions, the genius of Scotus was to
unite and order. Where Aquinas has each angel a separate species, Scotus
has the angels united in several species but distinguished numerically.
Where Aquinas made a distinction between the soul and its faculties,
Scotus refused to admit such a division. Where Aquinas taught that in
every human conception there are three souls, the vegetative, the
sensitive and the rational, Scotus would have but one rational soul with
virtual distinctions. Where for Aquinas justification is explained by two
distinctive forms in the soul, grace and charity, Scotus would have the
form consist only of charity. So while in Aquinas we find clear
distinctions, in Scotus we find a luminous unity. You will find in Scotus
a consistency throughout his doctrine that gives witness to that sense of
unity in all things.
Blessed John Duns Scotus is famous in medieval thought for the ruthless
application of the principle that entities are not to be multiplied
without necessity. For him it was better to have a minimum of realities
that ennoble the nature of a thing than to multiply realities when they
are not necessary and do not ennoble nature – or as we might say today
“keep it simple” and elegant! So even the universe has one universal
order and one first cause. Scientists today are still following his
intuition as they seek the grand unifying principle that will unify
quantum theory with the theory of relativity to give one overarching
explanation of the nature of the universe.
In this article I want to try to express why it is that I feel Scotus’
theology and philosophy are attractive, but, in the light of the some who
find its unfamiliarity suspicious, I also want to allay those doubts.
Synthetic Theology
In his theology Scotus seeks to build everything on his Christology – a
Christology that is at the same time Pauline, Johannine and Franciscan.
Pauline, because it develops the insight that Christ is the “image of
the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For in him were
created all things... through and unto him” (Col. 1: 15-17). It is
Johannine since it sees love at the root of God and of creation. “I say
therefore that God first loves himself”, Scotus says in the
Paris
commentary. Finally it is Franciscan in that it seeks to harmonise all
things in Christ according to the divine plan so that the bond between all
creatures is recognised with each being assigned its own place in God’s
loving creation.
Scotus’ theology, like his character, is that of the via media, treating
all opinions with respect and then seeking a synthesis that draws out the
best from each one examined. Often does his summation of an outline of
different doctrines begin with the words “I hold the middle course.”
His theology was not merely theoretical. He lived what he believed. In
1303 the King of France forced the
University
of
Paris
to accept his convocation of a Council to judge the Pope and declare the
King’s right to administer church property. Scotus’ signature was
tenth on the list of those opposed – earning for himself exile from
Paris
and the foremost university of the day. So he was willing to risk life and
reputation to defend the primacy of the Pope. For his defence of papal
supremacy Scotus later was given the epithet “Hercules Papistarum”
(Hercules of the Papists).[8]
In this defence of papal authority he followed and contributed to a
Franciscan tradition espoused by Bonaventure and Olivi. Scotus’
teachings in turn helped inspire the Franciscans who outlined a theology
of papal infallibility in the decades that followed.[9]
Once the Pope and King had been reconciled Scotus was permitted to return
to Pairs and resume his teaching.
The Immaculate Conception
During his time at Paris Scotus took his well known stand on the
Immaculate Conception of Mary. It was a risky doctrine to defend,
especially for a young theologian early in his career. For in defending
the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception Scotus was defending a doctrine
that the most eminent theologians of the age from St. Bernard of Clairvaux
to St. Thomas Aquinas had declared to be suspect. Even the Franciscan St.
Bonaventure, while recognising that the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception was not contrary to Scripture, had opposed it as being less
safe, reasonable and common than the maculist position. There were some
200 objections to the doctrine raised by theologians. However, while the
learned objected, the people of God, with their inspired sense of right
doctrine, continued to promote the doctrine of Mary’s singular
privilege. This was especially true of the Church and the faithful in
England
. There were theologians who defended the immaculist position, St. Anselm
was thought at the time to have done so, although now we know that the
defence was written by his biographer Eadmer and not by Anselm. William of
Ware, Scotus’ teacher at Oxford, devised the argument “it was
possible, it was fitting and therefore God did it” in order to defend
the Immaculate Conception (an argument sometimes erroneously attributed to
Scotus himself) but it is not certain whether this was before or after his
pupil had so brilliantly defended the doctrine in public disputation in
Paris. In John Duns Scotus, the faithful masses found a theologian who
could articulate their faith and show to sceptical intellectuals the truth
of their intuition.
John Duns Scotus dealt with the objections of the theologians in a
masterful manner. In essence the objections were based on concern to
defend the redemptive nature of Christ’s passion and resurrection. For
it was felt that to accept that a human being had been conceived without
sin was to deny that all redemption came through Christ. Thus, argued
opponents of this Marian privilege,to affirm Mary’s Immaculate
Conception was to belittle the redemption won by Christ. So Scotus set out
to prove before the Masters of Paris that this objection had no
foundation. He began by affirming “If it is not contrary to the
authority of the Church or of the Scriptures, it seems that what is more
excellent is to be attributed to Mary.” The objection was raised that
scripture did indeed oppose this Marian privilege for in the letter to the
Romans St. Paul says “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through
one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because
all have sinned.” (Rom. 5: 12). This apparently irrefutable text, Scotus
argued, proves nothing against the Marian privilege. All agree in
universal redemption in Christ, but why should this universal redemption
necessarily rule out the Immaculate Conception of Mary? In fact it follows
from Christ’s universal redemption that Mary did not have original sin.
The most perfect mediator ought to have the most perfect act of mediation
in regard to the person in whose favour he intervenes. Mary, his mother,
is the person in whose favour Christ intervenes the most as mediator of
grace. This wholly perfect act of mediation requires in the one redeemed
preservation from every defect, even from the original defect. Therefore
the Blessed Virgin was exempted from every stain of sin. Instead of
belittling Christ and circumscribing his power, Scotus argues, the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception exalts him, attributing to Jesus the
most perfect and sublime redemption. This redemption is most perfectly won
for Mary, because of her role as the Mother of God, the one through whom
the Incarnation would occur. So Mary, far from being outside the realm of
redemption, is more indebted than the rest of us to our Saviour Jesus
Christ for she has received a more radical redemption.
By this argument Scotus won over the
University
of
Paris
, which decreed that from thence forward the 8th December would be a feast
day in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and every student at the
university would have to swear to uphold the Immaculist thesis before
taking their decree.
The Primacy of Christ
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which the Church definitively
approved and declared infallible in 1854, was predicated upon the primacy
of Christ. For it is precisely because Christ is the summit of creation
and the first-born among creation that it is fitting that his mother
should be preserved from all stain of sin. It is only fitting that the one
for whom creation was made should be born of the holiest of the saints,
indeed anything less is scarcely conceivable.
But to understand the primacy of Christ and the novelty of what it means,
we should first contrast with it the doctrine that is more familiar. The
doctrine that the deacon proclaims in the Exultet on Easter night is what
we might call the anthropocentric doctrine of the Incarnation. Adam and
Eve were created good, but sinned and fell into the grip of the devil.
Their sin cut them off irrevocably from God and so God decided to repair
the damage done by sending his Son to take that sin upon himself and so
restore human beings to righteousness. But the redemption won by
Christ’s death was greater than the original state of innocence for it
brought humanity to an intimacy with God that they had not known in
Eden
, for in the person of Christ humanity was brought into union with God.
This is the doctrine that Anselm proclaimed and Aquinas followed. It is a
doctrine that is perfectly orthodox.
But there is another manner of looking at the Incarnation, that is also
permitted by the Church, although you will find it less widespread. It is
a Christocentric thesis, which includes creation and Incarnation in one
great theory of the love of God that underlies all existence. This is the
theory proposed by Blessed John Duns Scotus in which everything that is is
viewed through the lens of the primacy of Christ, the freedom of God and
the contingency of the world.
The Purpose of Creation
God is absolutely free and therefore if he creates it is because he wants
to create. He wants to create in order to reveal and communicate his
goodness and love to another. So creation is a freely willed act of our
God who loves and who,
St. John
tells us, is love. Only a Christian can say that God is love, none of the
other religions, monotheistic or other, could possibly make such a claim.
But a Christian can, and in order to be true to revelation, must affirm
this about God. For God to be love he must be more than one person, for
love requires a lover and a beloved. In Scotus’ theology God is the
Trinity in a communion of love – an eternal movement of the lover (the
Father), the beloved (the Son) and the sharing of love (the Spirit). This
Trinity who creates is the model of all reality and especially of human
relationships.
God’s love is the cause of creation and it is also at the root of all
creation. Because God loves, he wills that the creation he makes should
also be infused by love. Since love must go out to another, it is only
right and good that the highest object of creation’s love should be God
himself, for nothing within creation could be a more fitting object of
love than the God who lovingly created.
So God made creation in such a way that it should love, and above all love
the divine nature that is the object of love of all the persons in the
Trinity. Now for creation to be able to love to the highest extent, there
must be at least one created thing capable of the highest love. That
created thing is the human nature of Christ. The human nature of Christ
was predestined by God to that highest glory of the beatific sharing in
the inner life of the divine persons. Once God had decided upon this
predestination of Christ’s human nature, then he willed the union of
Christ’s divine nature with his human nature in the person of Christ
since only a human nature united to the divine nature in one person could
love to the highest extent, the extent to which God loves.
St. Paul
tells us that Christ was the first-born of all creation, and Scotus’
theology makes sense of this affirmation. Scotus did not believe that the
acts of creation and Incarnation were separate, but part of one divine
plan. So rather than the Incarnation being a sort of “Plan B” to
rescue humanity after the fall, in Scotus’ theology it is the whole
purpose of creation. Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a
creation designed for love, rather than a divine plumber come to fix the
mess of original sin. Thus the Incarnation is placed by Scotus in the
context of creation and not of human sin.
Since all of creation is made for Christ, then for the coming of Christ
there had to be within creation a nature capable of understanding and
freely responding to God’s love. Humanity is free to love and has the
capacity to understand God, precisely because such a nature is desired by
God to be united in Christ to the divine nature of the Son. Creation is a
preparation for the Incarnation which is the outcome that God willed from
the very outset. St. Paul puts it like this “We know that the whole
creation has been groaning in labour pains until now” (Rom 8:22)
Christ and Creation
Aquinas emphasised the material and formal causes in creation, but Scotus
placed his emphasis on the final cause as determining the work of the
artist. In other words it is the purpose of creation that determines its
form. Since creation is created to love, it is ordered to allow it to
fulfil the role for which it was created. So we find ourselves in a
universe united around its purpose – which is to reflect in love the
loving God who created it.
The highest expression of this purpose is the one who loves most
perfectly, Christ who is the goal of creation and to whom all of creation
tends. For Christ is the meaning and model of all that is created and
every creature is made in the image of Christ. Every leaf, stone, fruit,
animal and person is an expression of the Word of God, spoken in love.
Christ’s entry into creation is not then an entry into an alien
environment, but the culmination of all that creation is and means. The
Incarnation completes creation rather than supplementing it, as the
anthropocentric view of creation would have us believe. Scotus’ theology
is an expression of the insight that St. Francis of
Assisi
expressed in his poem the “Canticle of the Creatures”: God is praised
through creatures, precisely because all creatures have life through
Christ, in Christ and with Christ. For Christ is the Word through whom all
things were made.
This Christoform theology of creation presents Christ as the blueprint for
creation. In Christ the divine-human communion reaches its culmination and
so in Christ the meaning and purpose of creation reaches its highest
point. In Christ, what all of creation is ordered towards, that is the
praise and glory of God in a communion of love, finds its centre and its
highest meaning. With the Incarnation at its centre, creation becomes a
cosmic hymn to the Trinity, in which the universe, bound together in and
through the cosmic Christ, offers praise and glory to God.
One Order of Being
So we know God through the created world, but we have not yet looked at howw
e know God through the created world. Scotus teaches that the path to
knowledge of God runs through our being. For our being and God’s being
are of the same order. That is to say that there is a common meeting
ground between the Creator and his creatures since all possess being. This
doctrine is called that of the univocity of being. For Aquinas God’s
being and created being are of a different order and so while we can in
some way participate in God’s being we will always be separate from it.
Thus, for Aquinas, created reality can teach us what God’s being is like
but can never show us what God’s being is. Scotus teaches, by contrast,
that there is only one order of being. The first principle of being is
one, true and good and all beings are related to it in a way that brings
out the unity of all that is. So it is not that there is God on one side
in His state of being and creatures on the other in a separate order of
being. Instead all being is related in the order of being of which God is
the first principle but is not inherently separated from created being.
Scotus does not teach that God’s being and created being are one and the
same thing but God’s being and created being are two different modes of
being. God’s being is infinite and created being is finite. We can see
the sense of this intuitively – for the most surprising thing about
existence is that there is anything. What is striking about all that is is
that it exists at all, that it “has being”. The only alternative would
be for there not to be anything. So it seems reasonable to say that being
is one concept.
Because things are, because there is being, we seek to know. What we get
to know when we know being, is not just being as created but, because
there is but one concept of being, we get to know the first principle of
being, God Himself.
Thus our seeking to know creation is not something separated from our
seeking to know God. All created things have a dignity in that they all
share being not only with one another but with God. So the ineffable being
of God is made known through the known existence of creation. In this way,
through our contemplation of creation we can apprehend the divine mystery
– it is no longer beyond reason. Although of course, since God’s being
is infinite and created being finite, the fullness of the mystery still
lies beyond reason. Thus in Scotus’ theology creation is endowed with a
light that is of the same order as the light that shines in God. Just as
looking at a fire we understand what light is so that when we see the sun
we can know that it is light that we see – so by looking at creation we
can see a spark of life that radiates something of God’s life. Or as
Ilia Delio puts it “Creation is not a window but a lamp, and each unique
created being radiates the light of God.”[10]
It follows from the essential univocity of being that the divine mystery
can be perceived from within the created order. In the Incarnation what is
true in the basic created order of things (that God is at the root of all
that is and all that is shines forth with the light of God) becomes even
more explicitly expressed when a created nature becomes united in one
person to the divine nature of the Word. In this way creation reaches its
fulfilment.
The Specificity of Being
But if Christ is the pattern of everything in creation, does this not make
creation too uniform, too bland, too samey? In Scotus’ philosophy each
particular being has its own intrinsic, unique and proper being. Thus
everything has an inherent dignity, an essential “thisness”[11]
that makes it itself and not something else. So while univocity of being
provides a philosophical basis for the unity of all created things his
understanding of “thisness” ensures that within that unity each
created thing has its own place, a place that can be taken by no other. We
tell one thing from another by perceiving the “thisness” that each
thing possesses.
When we combine the notions of the primacy of Christ with those of
univocity of being and the essential thisness of each thing then we can
see a powerful ecological message emerging for the people of our day. For
if all things are rooted in a being which is of the same order as the
being of God, if all things are predicated on Christ as the first-born of
all creation, and if each thing expresses this in a unique, and uniquely
beautiful way – then we are forced to contemplate our created order with
awe and reverence. For each creature shines with something of God that can
be expressed by no other. Each sun, star, proton, grape and grain is
charged with a divine meaning – a meaning that no other can express. And
each creature speaks to us of Christ who is the first among creatures.
Poetic Inspiration
The significance of this doctrine has not been lost on poets and
theologians, and especially on one of the greatest of English religious
poets Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Hopkins
, writing in
Oxford
in the 19th century, considered it a privilege to be in the city in which
Duns Scotus had lived six hundred years earlier.
“Yet ah! This air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace.
Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival
Italy
or
Greece
;
Who fired
France
for Mary without spot.”[12]
Scotus’ theology inspired some of my favourite lines from
Hopkins
. In this extract from the Wreck of the Deutschland we hear
Hopkins
expressing the univocity of being in his poetic language of
“instressed” meaning:
“I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west;
Since tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when
I understand.”[13]
In “God’s Grandeur” we hear
Hopkins
telling of the manner in which we perceive something of God in those
moments in which we are open to the reality of nature.
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like
a shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of
oil.”[14]
And from the first poem I ever loved, Hopkins delights at the majesty of a
windhover in the early morning skies and perceives the fire of Christ in
the beauty of the creature’s actions:
“Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle!
AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier,
more dangerous, O my chevalier!”[15]
In this poetry we discover that when a grain of sand is being a grain of
sand, it is doing what it is. And if we enter closely enough into what it
is doing/being (
Hopkins
called it do-being) we see Christ. Trying to express it in prose is
difficult and so it is not surprising that it is the poet Hopkins who best
interprets it for us. Nor is it surprising that many theologians, numbed
from the effort of trying to figure out what this subtlest of scholars is
on about, retreat with gratitude to the clarity and simplicity of
Aquinas’ assertion that whereas God has true being, we have being only
by analogy. One who has stopped and stared at a cloud or a tree or a brick
or a stone or a twig or a bird or anything – and felt that in doing so
he was in touch with God, might understand better Scotus’ philosophy of
univocity of being. It provides a key to understanding the fascination we
have for nature and the relationship between our scientific curiosity and
our faith that few other theologies can deliver.
The Jesuit palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had just such a
moment when the Franciscan scholar Fr. Allegra explained to him Scotus’
doctrines of univocity of being and the primacy of Christ, for these were
insights that Teilhard’s own intuition had led him to. He declared
“Voila! La theologie de l’avenir.” (There it is! The theology of the
future.)
Synthesis with Science
It is not just theologians and poets who benefit from exposure to Scotus’
theology. For the physicist who searches for a unifying principle for our
universe can find his insight reflected in his faith and so nourish his
relationship with God by understanding that his science is intimately
connected to it. The biologist who looks with fascination at the structure
of a beetle can see in the thisness of each beetle the glory of Christ
peeking through. The child watching with fascination as the ant carries a
leaf 50 times its size is undergoing a moment of contemplation. This
should not really surprise us for Scotus was raised in the same
intellectual milieu of Franciscan Oxford that had produced Roger Bacon,
the father of modern scientific methodology.
We can grasp the attractiveness of such a theology, but its unfamiliarity
sometimes puts us off. Is there not something of pantheism in this? Does
Scotus not devalue Christ’s saving work by positing that the Incarnation
is not a result of the need to rescue us from the folly of our sin? Is it
really Catholic?
Church Teaching
Well, one could justify the orthodoxy of Scotus’ doctrine from patristic
and biblical sources and there are books that do so. One could also
subjectively point to the conformity of Scotus’ theology with personal
experience of God and observation of creation. I could say, and it would
be true, “Scotus speaks to my soul as he spoke to Hopkins and Teilhard
de Chardin and as he has spoken to so many down the ages.” But such a
justification for following his theology lays one open to charges of
subjectivism. Fortunately, there is an objective authority that urges
Catholics to look to Scotus as a source of orthodoxy: the magisterium of
the Church.
Down the ages much has been written and preached to discredit Scotus in
the eyes of the faithful, largely in the misguided view that to do so was
to protect the authority of Aquinas. But there has never been a need for
this, and the Church has never approved it. Instead in our day we have
seen a great affirmation of the value of Scotus’ teaching by the
ordinary magisterium of the Church. On 20th March 1993 Pope John Paul II
beatified Blessed John Duns Scotus, whose cult has always been observed in
Cologne
,
Edinburgh
and Nola. In his sermon on that day the Holy Father invited “everyone to
bless the name of the Lord whose glory shines forth in the teaching and
holiness of life of Blessed John, minstrel of the Incarnate Word and
defender of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.”[16]
He also quoted his predecessor Pope Paul VI who said that the doctrine of
Blessed John Duns Scotus “can yield shining arms for combating and
chasing away the dark clouds of atheism which casts its shadow upon our
era”, and continued to state that the doctrine “energetically builds
up the Church, sustaining her in her urgent mission of the new
evangelisation of the peoples of the earth.”[17]
In 2003, when the Scotus commission presented to the Pope the 20th volume
of a critical edition of the Opera Omnia of Blessed John, John
Paul was fulsome in his praise of the subtle Doctor saying:
“Duns Scotus, with his splendid doctrine on the primacy of Christ, on
the Immaculate Conception, on the primary value of Revelation and of the
Magisterium of the Church, on the authority of the Pope, on the
possibility of human reason to make, at least in part, the great truths of
the faith accessible, of showing the non-contradictoriness of them,
remains even today a pillar of Catholic theology, an original Master and
rich in ideas and stimuli for an ever more complete knowledge of the
truths of Faith.”[18]
If we look at his predecessor’s declaration which Pope John Paul quotes,
we get an even more explicit affirmation of the doctrine of Blessed John
Duns Scotus and its truly Franciscan nature.
“Saint Francis of
Assisi
’s most beautiful ideal of perfection and the ardour of the Seraphic
Spirit are embedded in the work of Scotus and inflame it, for he ever
holds virtue of greater value than learning. Teaching as he does the
pre-eminence of love over knowledge, the universal primacy of Christ, who
was the greatest of God’s works, the magnifier of the Holy Trinity and
Redeemer of the human race, King in both the natural and supernatural
orders, with the Queen of the world, Immaculate Mary, standing beside him,
resplendent in her untarnished beauty, he develops to its full height
every point of the revealed Gospel truth which Saint John the Evangelist
and Saint Paul understood to be pre-eminent in the divine plan of
salvation.”[19]
Supported by such eloquent and authoritative statements I have no
hesitation in affirming that the theology of Blessed John Duns Scotus is
not only attractive, but eminently sound and worthy of study and
proclamation – for in it we find answers to many problems of our times.
A British Vision
As an Englishman and a Franciscan I would dare to go further. The English,
like
Hopkins
, instinctively warm to Scotus’ theology because it grew and was
nourished in the English thought of the Oxford Franciscan school. This
school, the only orthodox theological tradition to have originated in this
country, drew not only from the mystical insight of Saint Francis but also
from the pragmatic Anglo-Saxon theology of its first lecturer Robert
Grosseteste, whom Richard Southern describes as “an English Mind in
Medieval Europe”.[20]
It originated in the aftermath of and under the influence of the Magna
Carta which underlies so much of the modern political development of
Britain
. The Oxford Franciscans, with their links to the barons’ party, were
among the keenest promoters of this constitutional settlement that led to
our current Parliamentary democracy.[21]
Similar ideas are also present in the Declaration of Arbroath, the
founding document of Scottish nationhood. Scotus’ philosophy and
theology dominated the pre-reformation Scottish church.[22]
The
Oxford
school produced figures such as Roger Bacon and Scotus himself who are
crucial to the development of English and Scottish thought. Given the
solid English and Scottish pedigree of scotistic thought, it is arguable
that the loss of the scotistic tradition in Catholic theology has
contributed to the alien feel of Catholic thought to many in these
countries. It is, perhaps, not the fact that our theology is Catholic that
makes it feel alien to many of our compatriots, but the fact that it
derives from a continental tradition (Parisian/Italian Thomism) that is
uncomfortable with our traditions of individualism and pragmatism. If this
is correct then the recovery of Scotus’ theology into mainstream
theological discourse in this country can make a crucial contribution to
an evangelisation that does not require abandonment of our national
heritage but instead taps into the deepest intellectual and cultural
instincts of the English and Scots. Now there’s a prize worth running
after – a Catholic, orthodox theology that appeals to both English and
Scots culture.
NOTES
[1]
B. de Saint Maurice. John Duns Scotus A Teacher for Our limes. Franciscan
Herald Press:
Quincy
II, 1958. p. 12.
[2]
Quoted in A. Wolter and B. O’Neill. John Duns Scotus Mary’s Architect.
Franciscan Herald Press:
Quincy
II, 1993. p. 1.
[3]
Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter. Aeterni Patris, 4 August 1879. In John Wynne
(editor) The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII. Benziger Brothers:
Chicago
, 1903, p. 35.
[4]
ibid., p. 48.
[5]
lnnocent IV, Serrn de St. Thomas. In ibid. p. 51.
[6]
Leo XIII. Aeterni Patris. p. 56.
[7]
B. Jansen quoted in: B. de Saint Maurice. op. cit. p. 13.
[8]
Histoire religieuse de la nation frangaise.
Paris
, 1922. p. 274. Cf. E. Longpré. “Pour le Saint Siège et contre le
gallicanisme.” In
France
franciscaine 11 (1928) 145.
[9]
Cf. B. Tierney. Origins of Papal Infallibility1150-1350 A Study on the
Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages.
Brill:
New York
, 1988.
[10]
l. Delio. A Franciscan View of Creation: Learning to Live in a Sacramental
World. Vol. II. The Franciscan Heritage Series. The Franciscan Institute:
St. Bonaventure NY, 2003. p. 36.
[11]
Scotus invented the Latin word “haecceitas” which translates literally
as “thisness” to express his insight.
[12]
Gerard Manley Hopkins. “Duns Scotus’
Oxford
.” In:
W. Gardner
. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. OUP:
Oxford
, 1948. p. 84.
[13]
“The Wreck of the Deutschland”. Ibid. p. 57.
[14]
“God’s Grandeur.” Ibid. p. 70.
[15]
“The Windhover: To Christ our Lord.” Ibid. p. 73.
[16]
John Paul II. Sermon. Con queste parole. In The Pope Speaks 38 (July/Aug
1993) 245.
[17]
lbid. 246.
[18]
John Paul II. Discourse. With lively joy.
Vatican
, 16th February 2002. Cf. http://www.ofm.org/01eng/news/0216NeO84.html
[19]
Paul VI. Apostolic Letter.
Alma
parens.
Rome
: St Peter’s. 14th July 1966.
[20]
cf. R.W. Southern. Robert Grosseteste The Growth of an English Mind in
Medieval
Europe
. 2nd Edition.
Oxford
: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1992.
[21]
Grossteste excommunicated those in his
Lincoln
diocese who repudiated the Magna Carta and his friend and successor at the
Franciscan school Adam Marsh was on good terms with Simon de Montfort.
Little describes the Oxford Franciscans as “The spokesmen of the
constitutional movement of the thirteenth century.” cf. A.G. Little. The
Grey Friars in
Oxford
.
Oxford
: Clarendon Press, 1892. p. 32-33.
[22]
ln his 1994 Gifford lectures, the philosopher Alexander Broadie described
Scotus as “
Scotland
’s greatest philosopher” and outlines the influence of his philosophy
on pre-reformation Scottish philosophy. Cf. A. Broadie. The Shadow of
Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation
Scotland
. T&T Clark:
Edinburgh
, 1995. p. 1
From http://www.faith.org.uk/Publications/Magazines/Jan08/Jan08ThePrimacyOfChristInJohnDunsScotus.html
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