• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Scotist Theology

The great school of the Scotists takes its name from John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar, and it has been the pride of this order to maintain his distinctive doctrines both in philosophy and in theology against the rival school of the Thomists, to which the Dominican order gave its allegiance. In Scotus the opponents of Thomism found a champion. From this time forth the Franciscan teachers follow the leadership of Duns Scotus, while the Dominicans range themselves behind St. Thomas. In the Nominalistic controversy the Thomists were for the most part Conceptualists; the Franciscans adhered to rigid Realism. In the Free-will question the Franciscans strenuously resisted the Thomist doctrine of 'predetermining decrees.' Indeed, all the greatest names of the early Scotist school are the Franciscans, St Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, and William of Ockham, the latter two, like Scotus himself, British theologians. The single name of Roger Bacon, the marvel of medieval letters, the divine, the philosopher, the linguist, the experimentalist, the practical mechanician, would in itself have sufficed to make the reputation of his order, had his contemporaries not failed to appreciate his merit.

Scotus is frequently described as the Kant of Scholastic philosophy. He certainly resembles Kant in his refusal to accept without criticism any theory, no matter how universally received or how strongly supported by the authority of great names. The resemblance is accentuated by the fact that both Scotus and Kant are voluntarists, both maintaining that will is superior to intellect, and that human reason cannot demonstrate the truths which most vitally affect the destiny of man. But, remarkable as the resemblance is, no less striking is the contrast between the two philosophers. Kant appeals to the moral consciousness to prove the truths which reason cannot demonstrate: Scotus, on the contrary, appeals to revelation. Scotus places the supernatural order of truth above all philosophical knowledge, and consequently his criticism is partial and relative to the natural order of truth, while Kant's is radical and absolute. For Kant there is no court of appeal superior to the moral consciousness; for Scotus the supreme tribunal before which all truth is judged is divine revelation. A fundamental conception of God lay at the basis of the whole Scotist theology. God, it maintained, could best be defined as Dominium Absolutum; man as set over against God they described as an individual free will. If God be conceived as simply Dominium Absolutum, we can never affirm that God must act in any given way; we may not even say that He is bound to act according to moral considerations. He is high above all considerations of any kind. He does not will to act in any way because it is right; and action is right because God wills to act in that way. There can be neither metaphysical nor moral necessity in any of God's actions or purposes. This Scotist idea, that God is the absolutely arbitrary one, is expresssd in the strongest language in the Racovian Catechism. "It belongs to the nature of God that He has the right and supreme power to decree whatsoever He wills concerning all things and concerning us, even in those matters with which no other power has to do; for example, He can give laws, and appoint rewards and penalties according to His own judgment, to our thoughts, hidden as these may be in the innermost recesses of our hearta".

If this thought, that God is simply Dominium Absolutum, be applied to explain the nature and meaning of the work of Christ, of the Atonement, it follows at once that there can be no real necessity for that work; for all necessity, metaphysical or moral, is derogatory to the Dominium Absolutum, which is God. If the Atonement has merit in it, that is only because God has announced that He means to accept the work of Christ as meritorious, and that He will therefore free men from the burden of sin on account of what Christ, the Saviour, has done. It is the announced acceptation of God which makes the work of Christ meritorious. A meritorious work has nothing in its nature which makes it so. To be meritorious simply means that the work so described will be followed by God's doing something in return for its being done, and this only because God has made this announcement.

God could have freed men from the guilt and punishment due for sin without the work of Christ; He could have appointed a human mediator if He had so willed it; He might have pardoned and accepted man as righteous in His sight without any mediator at all. He could have simply pardoned man without anything coming between His act of pardon and man's sin. This being the case, the Scotist theologians argued that it might seem that the work of Christ, called the Atonement, was entirely superfluous; it is, indeed, superfluous as far as reason is concerned; it can never be justified on rational grounds. But, according to the dogmatic tradition of the Church, confirmed by the circle of the Sacraments, God has selected this mode of getting rid of the sin and guilt of man. He has announced that He will accept this work of Christ, Atonement, and therefore the Scotist theologians declared the Atonement must be believed in and seen to be the divinely appointed way of salvation.

Erasmus satirised the long arguments and hypotheses of the Scotist theologians when he enumerated among the questions which were highly interesting to them: "Could God have taken the form of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a stone? How could a gourd have preached, done miracles, hung on the Cross?"