Duns Scotus

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The Old Catholic Encyclopedia lists the following as teachings of Duns Scotus. I was wondering if people could explain the following to me. THANKS!

“The angels can of themselves know things; they do not need an infused species though in fact they receive such from God”

“that the relationes teinitariae are not a perfection simpliciter simplex”

“that the merits of Christ are not simpliciter et intrinsece, but only extrinsece and secundum quid, infinite”

“that transubstantiation makes the Body of Christ present per modum adductionis”

“the dotrine of the univocatia entis”

“that mortal sin, as an offence against God, is not intrinsically and simpliciter, but only extrinsically infinite”
 
Scotus was called the “Subtle Doctor” for a reason… he was very difficult to follow.

He also got that whole analogy thing wrong… which screwed up a lot of stuff.

I’m unfamiliar with some of the language, though the first sentence is about the means of angelic knowledge… Must God directly illumine the mind of an angel with a form, or do angels have the capacity to find knowledge on their own power? Scotus takes the latter position, though allows for illumination as a possibility as well. This jives with the scholastics.

That’s what I see at least.
 
thinkandmull said:
The Old Catholic Encyclopedia lists the following as teachings of Duns Scotus. I was wondering if people could explain the following to me. THANKS!

“The angels can of themselves know things; they do not need an infused species though in fact they receive such from God”

“that the relationes teinitariae are not a perfection simpliciter simplex”

“that the merits of Christ are not simpliciter et intrinsece, but only extrinsece and secundum quid, infinite”

“that transubstantiation makes the Body of Christ present per modum adductionis”

“the dotrine of the univocatia entis”

“that mortal sin, as an offence against God, is not intrinsically and simpliciter, but only extrinsically infinite”
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There’s quite a lot going on here and a number of different concepts covering a lot of ground. I’m happy to work through them with you, unless there’s something in particular you’re after? Is it a general grasp of Scotus, or a particular topic you’re interested in?

In general, a few of your points relate to the same topic: Scholastic metaphysics, and in particular, mereology–the study of the relation between wholes and parts. Scotus held, in opposition to Abelard and Ockham, that wholes were ontologically different from the sum of their parts. For example a man is not simply a collection of flesh and bones, but a substance “simpliciter simplex” i.e. that cannot be reduced to something less than a man. I think he was right on this…a fascinating discussion in its own right. However, while all humans collectively constitute “humanity”’ th divine persons in the Trinity do not collectively constitute God. In other words, the perfection of God is not a composite of relations (Father, Son & Holy Spirit).

It’s a brief start on rather deep and complex stuff, but happy to go deeper if you like.👍
 
Hmm, do you know what the last three mean? I’m getting the others I think (that Christ’s sacrifice, for example, was a human sacrifice made into an infinite sacrifice by His divinity)
 
thinkandmull said:
The Old Catholic Encyclopedia lists the following as teachings of Duns Scotus. I was wondering if people could explain the following to me. THANKS! …
“that transubstantiation makes the Body of Christ present per modum adductionis” …
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St. Thomas Aquinas does not admit of any change in the Body of Christ with consecration; a substance is a reality in which accidents inhere. Duns Scotus did not accept that idea that upon the disappearance of a substance the accidents require a substance in which to inhere. Instead he had the idea of adduction, that the body and blood is accepted into the bread and wine.
 
I don’t think he was a consumstatiationalist (sic) though. The encyclopedia says he believe in the reality of the accidents, as did Cardinal Ratzinger
 
thinkandmull said:
I don’t think he was a consumstatiationalist (sic) though. The encyclopedia says he believe in the reality of the accidents, as did Cardinal Ratzinger
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The dogma of faith is:
Christ becomes present in the Sacrament of the Altar by the transformation of the whole substance of the bread into His Body and of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood.

Since Transubstantiation is a mystery, no dogmatic definition exists for a specific methodology, such as those of Aquinas or Scotus.
 
thinkandmull said:
So what is the doctrine of univocatia entis?
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There were, basically, three arguments in Scholastic philosophy about how we can talk about God: equivocal (Ockham), univocal (Scotus) and analogical (Aquinas).

Ockham etc argued that the word “being” as used to describe God and creatures was totally equivocal, or unrelated. His reasoning was that if “being” could be applied to God and creatures univocally (with the same meaning) then this would make God a being like us, just a greater version of created being…a being on the scale of being from rocks all the way up to God. But God, he argued, is not a being in the same sense that we are beings. He is totally other, and so the word “being” has non relevance when applied to God.

Scotus rejected the equivocity of being in favour of the univocity of being (univocatio entis): the word being, as it applies to God and creatures, is the same. His reasoning was that if we accept the equivocal notion of being, then to call God a being is totally meaningless: we would have no way of speaking about God with any reference to our own experience. Being, he taught, is the most fundamental concept and so has to be univocal if we are to do philosophy and theology at all.

Aquinas rejects both the equivocal and univocal theory of being and taught instead that being is an analogical term: somewhere in the middle, neither totally equivocal or univocal. To put it simply, Aquinas says that there is a connection, or likeness, between cause and effect. For example, there is a connection between a footprint in the sand and the foot that made it. The footprint and foot are not the same, but neither are they totally unrelated. God is not a being in the sense that creatures are beings. God is beyond-being, super-being. But as the Cause of all being, there is a connection between us as between the sculptor and sculpture.
 
Ok. As for the last proposition I listed, I don’t see how a sin could be finite but made into an infinite sin by God
 
Wait I think i get it. A mortal sin is infinite because it offends God and not in itself. But it still deserves hell. I think that makes sense. Sin is sin
 
But sin then wouldn’t seem to be as bad as in other system besides Scotus’s. Thoughts??
 
thinkandmull said:
Ok. As for the last proposition I listed, I don’t see how a sin could be finite but made into an infinite sin by God
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In Scholastic philosophy, a distinction is drawn between types of relations (based on Aristotle’s Categories). Intrinsic relations are necessary; extrinsic relations are contingent, or dissolvable. Scotus’ uses the example of similarity as an example of something intrinsic: two white things are similar in virtue of being white, and as long as they are both white, they are intrinsically similar. Substance and accidents are extrinsic; substances can be separated from their accidents.

Sin is extrinsic, because we can be separated from it through grace (confession) and because we do not sin of necessity but of choice. All mortal sin is, however, an eternal offence against God and someone dying in a state of mortal sin remains in an eternal state of exclusion from God.
 
thinkandmull said:
But sin then wouldn’t seem to be as bad as in other system besides Scotus’s. Thoughts??
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I think most of the main Scolastics (Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, etc) would hold similar views on the infinite offence of sin, though perhaps according to different methods. There were heresies afoot which questioned sin and freedom and their impact; Aquinas, for example, is often at pains in the Summa to refute Pelagianism. In th decline of the Scholastic era, around the time of John Wycliffe, we start seeing more and more variations on theology and rejection of Catholic dogma. Interestingly, some of the early Protestant theologies were very harsh and downplay the forgives and mercy of God that Scotus upheld, and insist instead on predestinarian theologies that have most of us condemned to hell regardless of how many times we go to confession.
 
What is the differences between form, essense quiddity, and hypokeimenon?
 
thinkandmull said:
What is the differences between form, essense quiddity, and hypokeimenon?
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Form is the actualisation of a thing; it is contrasted with matter, which is the potency of a thing (the principle of change in a matter/form compound).

Quiddity is the Latin translation of Aristotle’s to it en einai (what it is/was to be a thing) and is usually synonymous with essence. Duns Scotus contrasts quiddity (“what-ness”) with haeccity (“this-ness”).

Hypokeimenon is the Greek term for subject, and is contrasted with kategoroumenon, or the predicate (that which is said of the subject).

I think some helpful distinctions make sense of the notoriously difficult metaphysical terminology:

First, I advise my students to keep the Latin-derived terms (substance, essence, form, etc) and Greek terms (Ousia, hypostasis etc) separate. In Our Catholic tradition, the Greek terminology was adopted in the 4th and 5th centuries to clarify Trinitarian and Christological theology (for example, at Nicaea). Also, there is considerable confusion in the history of philosophy where the two languages become conflated. Aristotle’s meaning of the Greek terms is not always clear, and later commentators, such as Boethius, translate them in different–and shifting–ways.

Secondly, metaphysics is as much about how we talk about ontology or the nature of being as it is the ontology itself. Aristotle dedicates a lot of time in his metaphysics clarifying the use of language, as does Aquinas. Some of the terms in metaphysics are terms about language. For example, essence denotes what is said of a substance: how we describe it. Aristotle speaks a lot about subjects and predicates: what is said of a subject and what can’t be said of a subject. For example, primary substance (this particular person) is a subject but not a predicate. “Man” or rational animal can be both a subject (hypokeimenon) and a predicate (kategoroumenon). The terminology, both Greek and Latin, is often about how we make metaphysical reality intelligible, which we do through language.
 
Back to Scotus, wikipedia says “In 1914, Pope Pius X acted by ordering, though the Sacred Congregation of Studies, the publication of a list of 24 philosophical propositions, propositions summarising the central tenets of neo-Scholasticism to be taught in all colleges as fundamental elements of philosophy, which was intended to promote a purer form of Thomism”. Does anyone have this list of propositions, and do they apply to the school of Scotus? Art Sippo (Catholic apologist) said that some in that era wanted to suppress supporters of Scotus and Suarez in favor of Aquinas. I want to know more about this. THANKS YOU 🙂
 
thinkandmull said:
Back to Scotus, wikipedia says “In 1914, Pope Pius X acted by ordering, though the Sacred Congregation of Studies, the publication of a list of 24 philosophical propositions, propositions summarising the central tenets of neo-Scholasticism to be taught in all colleges as fundamental elements of philosophy, which was intended to promote a purer form of Thomism”. Does anyone have this list of propositions, and do they apply to the school of Scotus? Art Sippo (Catholic apologist) said that some in that era wanted to suppress supporters of Scotus and Suarez in favor of Aquinas. I want to know more about this. THANKS YOU 🙂
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catholicapologetics.info/catholicteaching/philosophy/thomast.htm
 
Interesting. I know this is not infallible, but I notice that Descartes teachings are disapproved of. I have a couple of issues though. It says that reason is a power of the soul, while Scotus says they are one and the same. It says that matter nor form have being of themselves, although Scotus says that prime matter can exist on its own. Proposition 7 also says that angels have accidents. I dont understand that.
 
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