Duns Scotus

[Music] in this lecture we're looking at dun scotus and his reaction in his development of the Scholastic movement after the time of aquinus and scotus is one of these pivotal transitional figures in the high to latter Middle Ages scotus has not always been appreciated by those in the modern World in fact the honorific that's given him as one of the doctors of the church is that he is the subtle doctor now when the Catholic Church names him as the subtle doctor of course they're not using it as a sort of backhanded compliment but in the

modern world it is often taken as this scotus his name in fact teachers always like to point out is where we get the name dun whenever we use the word dun we always have in mind the poor child in the corner wearing the dun cap being punished for being so dense and there is something of an analogy here to what the dunce word was in the Middle Ages dun in its historical meaning actually refers not to Dun scotus himself but to those who followed him the so-called dunman and what's meant by this is dun scotus

himself was very subtle hence the name the subtle doctor he had lots of different distinctions and lots of different categories that he applied to the Scholastic method well those that came after often got a little ham-handed in their use of the anal IES or the subtle distinctions that scotus had come up with but historical Jokes Aside jokes about dun scotus being a bit too obtuse and hard to understand what we want to do in this lecture is talk about the ways that he is important the ways that he shapes the late medieval world and ushers

in some changes to the ways that we talk about Scholastic Theology and we can begin by just looking at Scot's life in general actually compared to others in the Middle Ages we know very little we know that he was Scottish in fact the name scotus just simply means the man from Scotland it's not actually part of his original name his name is actually John duns and the name duns too follows a medieval pattern of naming a man according to where he comes from John was born in the village of duns which is in berwickshire in

the country of Scotland he later becomes a member of the Friars minor in dumre he is thought to have studied at Oxford though there is no evidence as to what college he was a part of or with whom he really studied in terms of historical record scottus comes onto the scene for the first time in 1302 when he is suddenly lecturing at the University of Paris and he is eventually kicked out of Paris as a result of the fight between bonifas VII and Philip the fair or the king of France scottus as a good Catholic

had sided with the Pope and of course if you're there in the heart of Paris and you're going against the king you are not going to last very long let's just put it that way he is eventually restored though in 1304 he returns to Paris though just a few years later in 1307 he is sent to the University of cologne in Germany and it is shortly thereafter that he dies and his tomb is there in the city of Cologne ever since now there is one myth that's often associated with this it is not the case

it is not true that scotus had laed into a coma and that he was actually buried alive that's one of these urban legends that always arises around important figures and this is simply not true but as in keeping with the high Middle Ages scotus was a man of multiple countries in fact on his tomb to this day it says quote Scotland brought me forth England sustained me France taught me cologne holds me and it speaks to something of the Cosmopolitan multinational ways that these Scholars would travel from country to Country and since their main language

of Engagement was Latin they could do so without much trouble at all well when we transition to scotus ideas to his theology we have to understand the context aquinus of course had the lion sheare of the attention amongst all those who were Scholastic ever since his life and his death the writings of aquinus are simply Supreme in terms of understanding The Sweep of medieval Scholastic theology not everyone was happy though with the teachings of aquinus aquinus seemed to dabble a bit too much in the rational method he seemed to rely on Aristotle just a bit

too much and we've seen this back and forth there is a trend towards rationalism and then a reaction back that usually comes with the expression of concern that theologians are rying too much on men like Aristotle and not enough on the scriptures or on the teachings of the church and this is pretty much what happens here with aquinus aquinus himself is not condemned however there are a number of condemnations that come about in the mid to late 1200s one in particular the condemnations of 1277 by the bishop of Paris and the condemnations of 1277 hold

219 theological and philosophical teachings that are considered to be suspect the condemnations overtly mention that quote some Scholars of Arts are teaching certain things that are now believed to be problematic and that line is one of the problems of the interpretation of this because aquinus was not a teacher of the Arts per se he was a theologian he was in the higher categories still though it does seem to be the case that these condemnations in particular are meant to stop the application of those who are reading aquinus from over Reliance on philosophical or extra biblical

categories the 219 condemnations stress the importance of revealed Doctrine in the scriptures as it is taught by the church over against dialectical or rational theological method and the central thrust of these condemnations is that there are those who are appealing to the independence of the intellect over against anything else again in the dialectic method there is a privileging of the intellect or of The Logical systems that we can think through and the allegation here is that those who rely too much on the dialectical or the rational method aquinus being one and of course abord being

a pretty extreme case of this these men it is alleged go too far in The Binding of God they make God subject to the system rather than God as the creator of anything like logic or whatever it might be and so one of the stresses that comes out of the area of Paris in particular as a reaction to this method is an appeal to the omnipotence of God this idea that God is Not subject to the system that he is not subject to logical forces per se but that he is omnipotent he is above any

of our rational Concepts or our rational methods and so again without condemning aquinus without throwing him out in condemning his Works in general or with any specificity we see here in the late 1200s which is right when scotus is writing and working a real concern for the ways of dialectical Theology and for some of their excesses and so it is in the context of this that scotus steps onto the scene and as we'll see scotus in particular is trying to find a way to both be positively associated with the Theology of aquinus he's not a

reactionary he's not overthrowing aquinus rather you might say he is tweaking in an effort to perfect the general trajectory as to where aquinas's thinking was taking us he tries to put in some Brak pedals that stop us from over Reliance on putting God within a box or putting him within a system that may very well be the product of our own categories still though as we'll see scotus actually still relies on many of the same categories or many of the same assumptions that ainus himself held so the way to understand scotus is you have to

see that he is trying to stop some of the problems associated with too much Reliance on logic in the intellect without simply overthrowing the system so he's going to apply break pedals in some areas ways that he thinks will stop too many conclusions going down the wrong path and on the other hand he's going to add some things add some discussions to the mix that he believes will open up some new Vistas some New Horizons for Scholastic thinking and so when we begin to look at Scot's ideas the most important idea that he really is

going to tout again as a break pedal to the teachings of aquinus is that scotus is going to stress that the will is superior to the intellect now the reason he does this is relatively obvious and he's not the only one to do it by the way in this day and age but what he does is he's saying essentially that the intellect matters that our rational thinking matters however the will the volitional part of our identity the thing that drives us is Superior in the sense that it can overrule our intellect you see with ainus

the belief was always there that if you just get the intellect right if you develop the proper thinking and the proper categories you can actually penetrate into the complexities of God you can understand him in his Essence not fully by any means aquinus is not going to say that but rather ainus will say that you need to get the intellect shaped in the proper dialectical method and he believed flowing out of that that the will will always follow suit scotus comes onto the scene and very quickly he says no the will actually can override our

intellect he doesn't want our Wills in other words to Simply Be passive instruments he doesn't like the idea that our choices are based simply on logical thought patterns rather there's something more fundamental that drives us and of course this is a view that is shared by just about everybody in the modern world we always talk about somebody who wants to lose weight or quit smoking or stop bad habits as needing to get their will in shape not as an idea of getting different facts doesn't matter how many diet books someone reads how many quit smoking

campaigns or pamphlets they read or any of these other kinds of things the modern person of course assumes that it's not a matter of getting new facts into the person's head that's going to change them but rather it's a product of the will how the will the volitional side of us can almost act impulsively to override what we know to be true well a lot of the Wellspring of this does come from scotus here well what's the implication of what he's saying well in large part what he's stressing here is not so much a relationship

to us though it obviously has implications for how we view the human soul how we view the will rather what he is playing here is a move that again separates God from the created order we'll often refer to this in the modern world as the Creator creature distinction that is to say there is only one Creator and everything else is created well by stressing the will over the intellect scotus believes he has a method for describing how God created what EX exists how he created the rational structures of the world and how he came up

with these things in a way that doesn't make him bound to them you see because if you say that logic or the dialectical method or the categories of creation all these very interesting things are simply the product of an intellectually conceived idea well what ends up happening is you believe that the system itself is almost a software or an operating system that God himself really needs to abide by you get some of this actually in aquinas's teachings on ethics issues related to the moral law or issues related to God's process of understanding the law in

relationship to sin ainus doesn't actually take us to this point but what the implications are as to what he's saying is that it seems as if God is bound by the system of this world again if you go to aquinas's teachings on ethics there is often the implication and occasionally a more expressed reality the more expressed belief that God must always do what is right and good well again the problem here is you have to be careful because if you say that there is a standard that God must live up to what scotus is sensitive

to and others are sensitive to is that you've essentially bound God to assist them there's some standard above him that he must abide by well the way scotus gets out of this problem is again he stresses the will of God God's will is superior to the categories of thinking he then transitions into a discussion about the power of God and this is an important one because it's one that we still talk about to this very day and the question is one of is God Bound by creation itself when God creates things is he more or

less creating things that must exist by necessity or is he creating things by the sheer power of His will and the question here is often described as the problem of the absolute will or the absolute power of God and there's a very concrete way of thinking about this when God decided that he was going to create the world and he was going to make a moral law or a moral code in which let's just say murder and adultery are considered to be evil things they are sins well scotus holds out the possibility that God could

have created something entirely different before he actually created he had absolute power hence the word omnipotence he is utterly free before he creates to create a system system or a world that is entirely different from the one that you and I know Creation in other words is essentially arbitrary not arbitrary in the sense that it's chaotic but arbitrary in the sense that God was not bound to create what he did create rather it's an expression of what he wanted to create God is absolutely free now scotus is not here trying to argue some type of

relativism as if there is a moral code that is different for each and every one of us he affirms that once the world world is created this is the world that we know and this is assumed we have this world and the law of it and the logic of it and all these things all the dialectical method that aquinus loved scotus is going to affirm all those things he's going to want to continue them in the s that aquinus wanted them to continue however for scotus again he applies a break pedal he says don't think

that you have some Grand blueprint by which both God and creation both have to live up to your dialectical meod is important but God is not bound by it beyond the fact that he chose this world to be the way it is and therefore it is simply by the will of God notice again scotus you might say salvage or recovery efforts here to make sure that the teachings of aquinus and others on dialectical method have a break pedal they have a stop Gap but that they can continue within the limits that he places on them

and there are others as well scotus very famously attempts to reassert a more positive or A more optimistic description of who God is in this sense you might say to keep the analogy going that scotus is applying more of a gas pedal to theistic system Thomas as we mentioned had a great deal to say about the slipperiness of words how we have to be careful that our words are not simply assumed to always be connecting to God in the most direct sense ainus expressed a number of concerns about how we all equate our language with

the existence of God so that when we describe things as being good well how do we know that our concept of good is equivalent to who God is well scotus wants to actually make sure that we always have a positive whatever we're discussing God scotus in particular attacks something that is called the Via negativa or the negative way and the Via negativa is an idea or a tactic that was employed by aquinus in which he said that sometimes you come to the conclusion as to what God is Not By positive affirmation but by whittling away

the other options that don't fit and again this is called the Via negativa so to go back to the idea of God being good well the way that we understand who God is in his goodness is we say well is he good the way a slice of cake is good well no that's a goodness in relationship to taste what is a good in relationship to my goodness or to the goodness of creation itself well no because there's sin there's limitations there's finiteness all these kinds of things and so what you do in the Via negativa

is you work through all the things that are not implied by a certain word or a certain description of God and then eventually come down to a more precise conclusion as to what you mean well scotus has a great response to this he says quote negation is not the object object of our love but that's a very perceptive Point describing God as good and then simply getting at the definition of goodness through a negative limitation as to what he is not when we say that he's good doesn't actually give us a great deal of here's

that word again volitional willful love directed towards God it rather makes the goodness of God something of a mental gymnastic game now that's not the intention of aquinus but what scotus is highlighting here is that there has to be some positive connection of our words to who God is in order for him to be the object of our love and the word that scottus uses here is a new one he refers to something called the univocity of being now this always creates a bit of a heads scratcher for students what in the world is the

univocity of being well again let's go to this problem of our words and how we describe God the problem in the Middle Ages prior to scotus was that they really only had two categories for how our words work either our words are equivocal or they're unequivocal so in the case of a word being equivocal it means that whenever we say that God is good we're saying that there is an equivalence between his goodness and the word that I'm using to describe him at times though on the other side we're using analogies to describe God words

that are not equivocal so if I say that God is a rock that he is my rock and my redeemer of course the implication here is not that he is some type of stone that he's made of a granite or something like this that's unequivocal language the problem with both sides though is neither fully connects what we're describing God as being to who God is in and of himself and Scot stresses this on both sides of these equations whether you're using an analogy or whether you're using equivocal language both have implied this idea that our

words don't quite sync up perfectly with who God is even the word equivocal it means that God is on one side and our meaning of what goodness is is on this side and there's no ultimate fundamental connection between the two scotus of course is going to feel that this is very much alarming it's going to feel as if our language does not fully describe who God is and if we love him if we desire him if he is the object of our love then having that separation is a problem well in the The Gap here

scotus asserts a new idea the idea of the univocity of being the idea here is is that though God is the creator though he is far away and he is not to be bound by our system still though the very creation of things like us in His image and like the creation itself means that there is a connection I'm actually inclined to say there's almost a DNA association between what we're saying what we know what we experience and who God is in and of himself now it's refracted through all types of things in creation it's

never as perfect as it's going to be when we're describing God but the answer that scotus gives here what he's referring to the univocity of being is he wants to say that when we're describing things when we're experiencing things when we use the word goodness that there is a univocal connection they are the same thing one is the goodness that the creatures know and one is the goodness of God which is of course perfect and eternal but they're not simply two things far apart and our language is simply trying to jump the Gap to describe

who God is rather scotus argues because we are the creatures because we are created by Him the very nature of the creation itself the very things that we know and experience have some univocal connection to God there is an equal sign between our concept of goodness and the ultimate goodness in God himself and scotus drives this point home mostly again out of the concern that the over Reliance on logic and the over Reliance on this description of the problem of language was leading us down the wrong path and so with scotus what we see is

a couple of new Ventures that as they lead into the latter Middle Ages begin to bring about a number of changes in how the church approaches the problem of theology scotus attempts at his very best to put brake pedals and as I said put gas pedals on different sides of the elastic method on the one hand he wants to separate God and make sure that we do not believe that God is bound to the system however on the other hand he doesn't want God to be far off locked up in heaven and that all we're

doing is trying to describe god with our fumbling words rather instead he is omnipotent he is the creator he's not bound by our system but nevertheless because the system is a product of his will and he created it because because of that our language can truly describe who God [Music] [Music] is [Music]