Understanding John Duns Scotus: Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller

By Mary Beth Ingham

In this ninth volume of the Franciscan Heritage Series, Mary Beth Ingham introduces readers to the Franciscan vision and values of Blessed John Duns Scotus (1266-1308). Framed within the context of Franciscan spiritual values, chapters focus on creation and the dignity of each individual being, on cognition and the powers of human knowing, on the proof for God's existence, on the nature of Theology, on the central role of freedom for conversion and the love of friendship, on moral goodness and beauty, on practical decision making, and on salvation history. In order to highlight the particularly Franciscan approach to these topics, each chapter offers helpful points of comparison and contrast with the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Throughout, the poetry of Scotist-inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins sets the artistic backdrop for a vision of reality informed by Franciscan values and Franciscan optimism. Hopkins praised the hope and intricacy of Scotist thought, naming him 'of realty the rarest-veined unraveller'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Release date: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781576594148

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INTRODUCTION: FRANCISCAN COMMITMENTS

In Gerard Manley Hopkins famous poem, Duns Scotus’ Oxford, he identifies the Franciscan Master as a man who was ‘of realty the rarest-veined unraveller’. Few medieval thinkers could match the logical and metaphysical insights of this great thinker, known to history as the ‘Subtle Doctor’. Despite his importance and prominence in the 14th and 15th centuries, very few people today are familiar with his fundamental insights and Franciscan intuitions.

Why is this case? Why is Scotus so unknown? The reason is fairly simple. In the important 19th century encyclical Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII identified Thomas Aquinas as the ‘common doctor of the Catholic church’. This meant that Thomistic thought was to be taught in every seminary, even those that were part of other Catholic spiritual traditions. Seminarians, whether diocesan or religious, were schooled in Thomistic philosophy and theology. Franciscan seminarians, in particular, who studied in the last century frequently knew Thomistic thought better than they knew their own spiritual tradition.

Remarkably, some students and scholars, like the 19th century Jesuit Hopkins, had access to Scotus in their studies. They were deeply transformed by his Franciscan way of viewing the key elements of our Catholic Christian tradition. And, in 1951, the first volume of the Vatican edition of Scotus’ Opera Omnia appeared. Since then, a remarkable renaissance in interest has emerged around the thought of this Scottish friar. Several international conferences have celebrated his thought. The International Scotistic Commission continues to complete the Opera Omnia, and the final volumes are now approaching publication. In the last 25 years, scholars from the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University and the Catholic University of America have also completed the critical edition of Scotus’ Philosophical works.

Finally, with the 2013 election of Pope Francis, a Jesuit greatly influenced by Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan spiritual tradition, there is renewed interest in the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition and in particular, in the thought of this famous Franciscan philosopher-theologian.

In this present volume, we shall unpack the philosophical and theological vision of this great Franciscan master, Blessed John Duns Scotus. We shall do so for a general audience and for a readership not necessarily familiar with key philosophical insights. Each chapter will include a more technical section whose purpose is to help the reader understand why Scotus’ position has both philosophical and theological significance.

WHO WAS JOHN DUNS SCOTUS?

John Duns Scotus was born in Duns, Scotland, in 1266. He lived and taught in Oxford, Paris and Cologne during the final decades of the thirteenth century and the first decade of the fourteenth. He died at the height of his teaching career (at the age of 42), and is buried in Cologne, Germany, at the Franciscan church, not far from the cathedral. He was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1993.

Scotus’ philosophical vision is extremely important for the Franciscan family today. He captures the vision of St. Francis and casts it in a coherent whole, emphasizing love, beauty, divine generosity and the human journey as pilgrimage. Both a scholar and teacher, Scotus brought to bear the wisdom of the Franciscan spiritual tradition, the insights of Aristotelian philosophy, and the aspirations of the developing science of theology (sacred doctrine). Duns Scotus used all three sources to weave together the tapestry of his thought. The result is an original re-casting of the common medieval project, known to historians as fides quaerens intellectum: faith seeking understanding.

Scotus wrote in a context of his own faith and spiritual tradition. His thought is based on five significant Franciscan commitments that are important to what follows. These five elements help us understand the particular Scotist vision, one voice in the rich and varied Franciscan Intellectual tradition.

SCOTUS’ FRANCISCAN COMMITMENTS

THE DIGNITY OF ALL THAT EXISTS

The Franciscan tradition is deeply committed to the dignity of creation. Each person, each being has inestimable value in the eyes of a Loving Creator. All created beings attest to God’s great love and to divine abundance and generosity. Human dignity holds a central place in this vision, as attested by St. Francis’s Admonition 5:

Attend … to the wondrous state in which the Lord God has placed you, for He created you and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His likeness according to the spirit. And yet all the creatures under heaven, each according to its nature, serve, know and obey their Creator better than you.¹

This Admonition reveals three important insights. First, each person is created according to the image of Christ and according to his likeness in the Spirit. Together, image and likeness are present in each human person. The journey from image to likeness is the path for our spiritual and moral development. As Bonaventure held, we are each born with the image and we grow in likeness throughout our lives. The end of this journey is christification, or our transformation into Christ.

Admonition 5 reveals as well how body and soul unite in a single image of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit. This dynamic ‘divine indwelling’ gives reason for our respect and awe in the presence of each person. Each one of us carries within a dynamic reflection of divine being and divine life. In imitation of divine life, we are called to live in relationship of love and generous self-gift.

Finally, this admonition reminds us of our fallen and fragile human condition. Indeed, although we carry within us the image of God, we do not choose to serve, know and obey our Creator as well as other, lesser beings. We are gifted with freedom to respond to divine love and divine friendship. This gift of freedom is at once the source of our dignity and the source of our own undoing. We are created to love and serve God freely. Yet we often choose to turn away.

This foundational Franciscan insight on human dignity as grounded in freedom led John Duns Scotus to the affirmation of divine and human rational freedom as a centerpiece to his philosophical and theological vision. In our rational freedom, we uncover both the source of our inestimable dignity and the reason for our foibles and failures. We are free to love God above all things. We are equally free to turn from God. In our realization of this do we find our great joy and our even greater sadness.

THE BEAUTY AND CONTINUITY OF THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT

A second Franciscan commitment relates to the way that this world and our present life is connected to the next life and to eternal bliss. Franciscans capture this insight through the meditation on the centrality of beauty. The path of life is truly a via pulchritudinis, a way of and through the beautiful.² Quite simply, the world of nature and human interaction is the beautiful path that leads to God.

This Franciscan commitment to beauty reveals the profoundly Augustinian dimension of the tradition, along with the emphasis on affectivity, or emotions, in our journey toward God. No one captures this more clearly than St. Bonaventure in his Life of Francis:

Aroused by all things to the love of God, he rejoiced in all the works of the Lord’s hands and from these joy-producing manifestations he rose to their life-giving principle and cause. In beautiful things he saw Beauty itself and through his vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable.³

Creation is the ladder: a continuous path to the divine. By means of our experience of beauty around us, we discover the beauty within us and above us. In God we discover the source of all beauty. Throughout our lives, divine transcendent beauty draws us and attracts our love. We are like homing pigeons; we have an inner sense of the divine. This inner sense is our transcendent compass. We possess it in this life, and will carry it with us into eternity.

For Scotus, such an affirmation of beauty and continuity results in the affirmation that we have, now and in this life, all we need to love God above all things. By this he means that our perfection in heaven will be the perfect fulfillment of our natural human capacities. This commitment to beauty and continuity reaffirms the dignity of the created order and emphasizes its connection to the next life.

Finally, the natural world is connected to the transcendent, divine world by means of an established path of continuity rather than discontinuity. Such an insight is extremely important: it grounds the particular way that grace and nature work together in Scotist texts. Grace is not so much added on to nature, but rather grace is embedded within nature, unfolding and revealing love. This way of seeing the mystery of divine life within us opens to an immanent eschatology: the affirmation that the Reign of God is very close at hand.

ALL HUMAN LIFE IS PILGRIMAGE

If you have ever taken a long journey, you know how important it is to find a welcome, to discover hospitality and feel safe. Franciscans see all life as a journey, a pilgrimage from where we are to our eternal and lasting home. We are always on the way, never perfect, never arrived. This sense of pilgrimage means that we are all travelers on a journey of ongoing conversion into love. Because of this, we depend always on God’s love and on the kindness of one another. Our invitation is to notice one another, to help one another, especially those who carry heavy burdens. Travel lightly, do not take more than you need. Here is the Franciscan sense of poverty.

Francis tells us in his Rule:

The brothers shall not acquire anything as their own, neither a house nor a place nor anything at all. Instead, as pilgrims and strangers in this world who serve the Lord in poverty and humility, let them go begging for alms with full trust (LR 6:1).⁴

In Scotus’ texts, we see that our human experience is really more about our condition, rather than about our human nature. He explains this by means of three different phases or states. We can think about them through the lens of salvation history:

Many times Scotus refers to what he is explaining with the terms pro statu isto. By this he means ‘in our present condition’, ‘according to the way things are at this time’. It also refers to our condition after the Fall of our first parents. The division of history into different states and phases enables him to distinguish our present experience from how God intends us to be. It affirms that nature is not fallen. By this division, Scotus distinguishes between our human nature and our human condition. In this way, Scotus reveals his deep Franciscan optimism about us and about our world.

The division of history also points to the future, echoing Paul’s affirmation: Now we see as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. (1 Cor. 13:12) Here is the insight of an ‘already, but not yet’ theology. Our experience is always incomplete; we are always on the move, always being invited to go more deeply into love.

The historical division based on salvation history also helps Scotus speak about the reason behind the Incarnation, and the nature of the divine plan prior to any consideration of sin or human fallenness. Here again, as a Franciscan, Scotus emphasizes divine immanence rather than divine transcendence. Salvation history, the narrative we encounter in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, is the record of God’s presence to human experience and divine actions in human history. For Scotus, theology is the science (the thoughtful reflection and understanding) of God’s divine activity recorded in Scripture. Although ‘natural theology’ (reflection on God without access to revelation) may consider divine perfections and attributes (such as divine omnipotence, omniscience, etc.), sacred doctrine focuses on the sacred texts and authors. What’s more, our historical experience of God recorded in Sacred Scripture teaches us a great deal about our search for the good. This search teaches us to value love and freedom.

THE CENTRALITY OF THE WILL FOR POVERTY

Poverty is an essential attribute for Franciscan living. Duns Scotus identifies the rational will as key to the possibility of living poorly and simply in this world. The term will was technical for medieval thinkers: it pointed to the source of our desire for the good. Will referred to our human ability to desire and choose the good. As rational beings, our will functions in tandem with our intellect (our power for knowledge). Both intellect and will were called powers (or faculties) of the soul. The will is also, explains Scotus, the source of rational freedom.

Scotus explains a complex description of our rational will, both as it is constituted and as it is drawn to love the good. Scotus’ description presents a pair of metaphysical orientations or innate inclinations toward the good, understood as the object of desire and love.

The first, natural inclination is the orientation toward my good. This inclination is drawn toward goods that I view to be possessed and used by me. Their possession ensures my happiness, my own flourishing. It is natural for me to want them and to want to possess them. The second inclination is higher and, Scotus affirms, rational. It is my inclination toward the good in itself. This inclination focuses on the good in terms of its intrinsic value and dignity. It does not belong to me alone. Indeed, such intrinsic goods, like virtue and truth, belong to everyone. They can be called goods of value.

Such a good of value can lie beyond my personal good or my own flourishing. There are times when my love for a good of value might come into tension or conflict with a good I might possess. So, for example, while truth is a good of value, the truth can sometimes hurt! Telling the truth to someone I love may rupture the friendship. Which is more important to me: the good of truth or having this person as a friend?

In these examples, we see how the two innate inclinations can come into tension in my life. The true exercise of freedom, Scotus argues, is found when both are present and when both are interactive. Scotus holds that these two inclinations toward the good constitute rational freedom. My higher inclination toward goods of value functions in such a way that it counters and moderates my natural inclination toward my own good. In this interaction, the two inclinations demonstrate how it is possible for me to control or restrain my natural desire to possess and consume.

Grounded on the innate and dynamic interaction of these two inclinations, the exercise of rational freedom improves over time. It moves along a continuum from the foundational capacity for self-control to mature self-mastery and, ultimately, generous self-gift. Because all life is a pilgrimage, the journey into rational freedom takes practice over a lifetime. With its two internal inclinations, my will, my ability to restrain and master my own behavior, moves toward the fullness of freedom, the love of friendship.

For Franciscans, our will is our highest faculty, our most perfect gift. It is superior to our intellect. This means, quite simply, that for Franciscans, understanding God is not as excellent as loving God. By means of my will I am able to love God with a love of friendship. By means of my will I am able to love the Good and to sacrifice my petty desires and needs in light of a greater good. Our human perfection is found in loving God, rather than knowing everything I can know about God.

We find this type of insight in the earliest Franciscan texts:

… that they should go and sell all that belongs to them and strive to give it to the poor. If they cannot do this, their good will suffices. And let the brothers and their ministers beware not to become solicitous over their temporal affairs, so that they may freely dispose of their good as the Lord may inspire them (LR 2:6).⁵

The rule and life of these brothers is this: to live in obedience, in chastity, and without anything of their own (sine proprio), and to follow the teaching and the footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ who says: If you wish to be perfect, go and sell everything you have a give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me (ER 1:1-2).⁶

Sine proprio, with nothing of one’s own, here we find the core of Franciscan poverty. Living in this way requires a heart that is steadfast in its devotion to the good. It requires a will that is able to restrain all self-centered and possessive inclinations. Here is the task of conversion: the journey of a lifetime.

THE CENTRALITY OF CHRIST

Scotus’ philosophical and theological vision is radically Christocentric. That is, Christ is the root (radix) of all of his insights, the source of his optimism and his commitment to love. Christ is at the center of Scotist thinking, and everything he says comes back to the person of Jesus Christ, God’s love incarnate, Risen and alive today. Scotus was the Franciscan who articulated the tradition’s position that the Incarnation was primary to the divine plan from all eternity. He affirmed quite clearly that human sinfulness was not the primary reason that God became human. In fact, even if Adam and Eve had never sinned, God would have become incarnate in Jesus.

The Franciscan commitment to the dignity of creation relies on this central Christian affirmation that God so loved the world, as to send the Son (John 3:16). For Franciscans, the Incarnation belongs to the divine plan prior to Original sin, prior to the fall of Adam and Eve. As we shall see at the close of this study, Scotus’ commitment to what is called the Absolute Primacy of Christ has profound transformative implications for his overall theological vision and for the grace and glory to which we are all invited.

THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THIS FRANCISCAN VISION

For anyone familiar with other traditions in the history of Christianity (such as Thomist, Salesian, Benedictine, Ignatian), many of these Franciscan characteristics may seem very much a part of your own. You might argue: these characteristics are not at all particular to the Franciscans! They belong to the Christian and Catholic visions of the world, the