PART 1
Séamus Mulholland OFM
It is not unreasonable to suggest that all Franciscans today would know of or about Duns Scotus. They might realise and acknowledge that this mediaeval thinker did not get his soubriquet of ‘Subtle Doctor’ for nothing and they would recognise the complexity and extraordinary depth of his thought and as a result of this shy away from him. However, they would also recognise the importance of his contribution to the debate on the Immaculate Conception; such was the strength of that argument that Scotus’ thought on the Immaculate Conception paved the way for the 1854 infallible proclamation. This has led to another soubriquet being given to Scotus, i.e., ‘Mary’s Champion’. And if we are honest, the theological thought behind the Immaculate Conception, though complex, is a little easier to grasp and understand than say, Scotus on the ‘formal distinction’, or the ‘univocity of being’, or ‘sensation and abstraction’ or even the widely known ‘principle of individuation’ which is sometimes named as ‘thisness’ (I shall return to this in a future post), and his understanding of freedom in his ethical teaching through what Scotus scholars call ‘synchronic contingency’. And, of course, there is his striking and unusual theological theory on the Incarnation which is variously known among Franciscans as the ‘Primacy of Christ’, ‘the Absolute Primacy of Christ in the Universe’ or ‘the Reason for the Incarnation in Scotus’.
Scotus’ detractors have him responsible for ‘nominalism’ (the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels); the ‘destruction of the divine transcendence’ (a frequent complaint of the conservative theological movement known as ‘Radical Orthodoxy’, but see Etienne Gilson’s observation in the quotation below) where in fact Scotus preserves it; or reducing God to the same status as creatures in his doctrine of the ‘univocal concept of being’. Studies by scholars such as Prof. Mary Beth Ingham, Prof. Dan Horan and Prof. Thomas Williams have shown that the basis for these detractions are unfounded, unfair misinterpretations of Scotus and are, at best, misunderstandings of his thought, or, at worst, they just plain and simple do not understand him at all but pretend they do. As the great Etienne Gilson noted:
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.[1]
If one were to pick up any book on Scotus today, it would in the main deal with his philosophy. It might refer to Scotus as being a Franciscan but the impact of this Franciscanism on his thought would be largely skated over. Few, if any references would be made to his sanctity of life, his mystical spirituality and his profound unity with St Francis in his thinking (the exception to this being Mary Beth Ingham who has done extraordinary work in emphasising Scotus’ Franciscan spirituality and mysticism and how it undergirds his thought). One may raise a querulous eyebrow at this; indeed, it was once said of Scotus that he had ‘lost the spirit of St. Francis’. We need not dwell on this ignorant nonsense for a second. It is certainly true that if we wanted to examine and explore how the meaning and significance of St Francis after his death is to be understood then we would go to St Bonaventure, who, we might argue, cannot be understood without St Francis, who permeates the very soul of Bonaventure’s theology and spirituality. Bonaventure is indeed a towering master of medieval spirituality and mysticism. Scotus, however, never mentions St Francis and wrote nothing on St Francis, so it would be fair to say that Scotus can be understood without St Francis. Alas, such is not the case, and while this might suit those who read Scotus’ Franciscanism as incidental to his metaphysical thought, it removes the very soul of Scotus’ motivations for all he does.
This post might take the opportunity to engage in some online Franciscan pedagogy by giving understandable (ha! ha!) explanations of Scotus’ thought around univocity of being, intuitive cognition, universals and individuation, moderate realism and the formal distinction, and already I suspect some readers might be reaching for the paracetamol for their headache. But I shall not do that. Instead I would like to concentrate on the Primacy (ah, say some readers, yes, Incarnation, Jesus, the primacy of love – this we can tune in to!).
That Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee is a historical fact; that he walked those roads as the Incarnate Son of God is a matter of faith. That Jesus died under the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in about ad 36 through crucifixion is a historical fact. That Jesus died for humanity as its redeemer to save it from sin is a matter of faith. So, was it to suffer death on the cross and thereby redeem humanity from sin that the Incarnate Word became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who did indeed barefoot walk those dusty Galilean roads?
The classical, traditional answer is yes. That humanity needed to be saved from the consequences of Adam’s sin is the central crux of the plan of salvation (in one vision). An imperfect human person (Adam) was the source of humanity’s sinfulness; only a perfect human person, Jesus, the God-Man, could be the source of humanity’s liberation and salvation from sin. If humanity had not sinned in Adam, then there would have been no need for redemption, and thus, it follows logically that there would have been no need for a redeemer. Since there was no need for a redeemer, there would be no reason for the Word to have become incarnate in Jesus. And this is a perfectly acceptable doctrine and true but limited.
Humanity indeed needed to be redeemed but to say that this is the reason that the Word became incarnate is to say that the greatest work God ever undertook (and ever will) outside Himself/Herself/Itself i.e., the Incarnation of the Divine Word, Son of God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, only occurred because of the need to repair the damage done by something infinitely less than God (sin), which is the direct result of an evil act freely willed by a creation of God who by very dint of being a finite creature is infinitely less than the Creator. In other words, the Incarnation only happens as a response to undo sin.
This does not seem to sit right at a number of levels. No one doubts the fact of Adam’s sin and its consequences (at least in the traditional Augustinian interpretation of ‘original sin’ which doctrine is quite rightly undergoing something of a rethink). No one doubts the need for redemption. But one may legitimately doubt the rationale which suggests that Adam is free to sin but God is not free in his response to that sin since God must act if humanity is to be saved from its own sinfulness. In other words, God’s great plan in its freely willed conception is undone by humanity’s wilful selfish disobedience and in order for God’s original plan to be restored God needs to implement ‘contingency plan B’, that is, the Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth whose death is necessary for the redemption of the sinful human condition.
If this is the case, then this is a God who is not free at all and is held hostage not only by the terrible determination of the tyranny of fate but also by one single element of His/Her/Its creation who wields unimaginable power because it manages to undo everything in the blink of an eye in one self-centred act. This is humanity as Thanos in Avenger’s Infinity War who wipes out life in the universe by a reach of his hand (accepting the imagery of the Eden mythology that Eve offered the fruit to Adam and he took it. (And further acknowledging that Thanos wiped out half of all living things with a snap of his fingers but the cultural reference was too good to miss) and leaves its unselfish, loving, generous Creator dumbfounded and scrambling for a response.
This is not a healthy, life-giving and life-enriching vision of either God in his loving freedom, or of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus since it places the divine love, mercy and justice in thrall to Adam’s sin and so it is sin which is at the centre of the universe and not Christ.
Scotus proposes a different way of approaching these problems which acknowledges the freedom of God, the love of God, the true reason for the Incarnation, the truth as to why there is a creation in the first place and the need for redemption, all of which makes the Incarnate Christ the centre of the universe and which argues that this was always God’s intention; or to put it in Scotus’ terms, this was the first intention in the divine mind and the divine vision of creation.
How does this work from Scotus’ point of view then, and why is it so novel even today, and why do so many still find it difficult to accept? We shall attempt to answer these questions in part 2.
Séamus Mulholland OFM
[1] A. Wolter and B. O’Neill, John Duns Scotus: Mary’s Architect (Il, Quincy: Franciscan Herald Press, 1993), 1.