John Duns Scotus

Blessed John Duns Scotus (c. 1265/66-1308) was the leading theologian at the transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century.  He is believed to have been born in Duns, on the Scottish borderlands. He entered the Order of Friar Minors and studied at Oxford, where he lectured from 1298-1302. In 1302 he transferred to Paris, but he and eighty-two other Franciscans were forced to leave the city in 1303 when they sided with Pope Boniface VIII against Phillip IV of France. He returned in 1304 and was appointed the Franciscan Regent Master at the University of Paris. In 1307, he was transferred to the Franciscan house of studies at Cologne and died there the following year. The epitaph on his tomb in Cologne reads, “Scotland begot me, England took me in, France taught me, Cologne holds me.”

Scotia me genuit,
Anglia me suscepit,
Gallia me docuit,
Colonia me tenet.

In this interview, Thomas M. Ward discusses Scotus and the best ways of approaching his writings.

Thomas M. Ward is UNSC Assistant Director and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. His research is on the history of philosophy (especially medieval), the philosophy of religion, and metaphysics. He is the author of John Duns Scotus on Parts, Wholes, and Hylomorphism (Brill), Divine Ideas (Cambridge University Press) and Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus (Angelico Press).

1. Ordinatio (online translation)
   by John Duns Scotus, translated by Peter Simpson
2. Treatise on the First Principle
   by John Duns Scotus, edited and translated by Thomas M. Ward
3. John Duns Scotus: Selected Writings on Ethics
   translated and edited by Thomas Williams
4. Duns Scotus
   by Richard Cross
5. Understanding John Duns Scotus
   by Mary Beth Ingham CSJ
6. Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus
   by Thomas M. Ward

What drew you to study the writings of Blessed John Duns Scotus?
Originally, I was interested in the medieval reception of Aristotle, particularly with respect to natural philosophy. Hence, I was very interested in hylomorphism, teleology, essentialism and drawn first to Thomas Aquinas.

Then, in graduate school, I had to select a dissertation topic. I realized that quite a lot had been written on Aquinas's natural philosophy, but comparatively little on that of Duns Scotus. In a sense, therefore, I came across Scotus by accident when exploring dissertation subjects.

I had not been formed within the Catholic intellectual tradition and was unaware of some of the battlelines that existed between different schools of thought in the Middle Ages. I was just an eager Catholic intellectual who had not been formed in a particular school. The more I read about Scotus, the more interested I became in his natural philosophy and his pluralistic approach to hylomorphism. So, I settled on that as a dissertation topic.

During my doctoral studies on Scotus, I read a wide range of his writings and was oftentimes sympathetic to what he said, always intrigued by it. I have just kept at this for twenty years now.

"Scotus considers all theology to be a practical science. It is ordered not to the perfection of the speculative intellect, but to action and, above all, to loving God. "

Why should anyone who is neither a trained philosopher nor theologian bother to read John Duns Scotus?
Of course, Scotus is most honoured within the Catholic Church for his teaching on the Immaculate Conception. Among the medievals, there was a broad consensus that Mary, by the time she was born, had been cleansed of all original sin and so had received a very special grace. Scotus pushed that idea a bit further and argued that at no moment whatsoever was Mary with original sin. At first, this was controversial within the schools. Eventually, of course, it was dogmatized.

Blessed John Duns Scotus' veneration for the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the main reasons why Catholics should honour him.

Now, that does not quite get to your question: why we should read him? Unfortunately, Scotus is an extremely abstruse writer. He lacks the lucidity of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is one of the main reasons why he is so neglected. That said, modern translations—such as Peter Simpson's recent efforts to translate the whole of the Ordinatio—do make his writings more accessible to English readers.

My hope is that the more his writings are made accessible, the more he will be read by theologians.

That said, while Flannery O 'Connor, who was neither a theologian nor a philosopher, read a bit of the Summa Theologiae at bedtime, it is hard to imagine that any of Scotus’s will ever occupy a similar place in a lay Catholic's intellectual or spiritual life. Further on, however, I shall suggest ways into Scotus that can generate something of the appeal that people like me find in him.

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Scotus has attracted the attention of several writers. Some, such as the nineteenth-century Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, wrote about him favourably. However, there are also satirical send-ups of Scotus in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books and Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, a mock epic dedicated to Scotus.
Yes, he has. Of course, ‘dunce’ comes from Duns Scotus. Everyone recognized that Scotus was a philosophical genius, but dunce became the name of one engaged in irrelevant intellectual pursuits. In the Swiftian send up, the point is that no matter how intelligent Scotus might have been, he was engaged in pointless intellectual hair-splitting. This criticism is in the same spirit as that of Aristophanes, who in The Clouds criticises Socrates. Aquinas himself makes very fine distinctions but has not received the derision that Scotus has.

Like any master at the universities at that time, Scotus lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. His major works are his commentaries on the Sentences: the Lectura, the Ordinatio, and the Reportatio examinata. Can you explain the chronology and status of these essays?The Lectura is his first go at the Sentences. He completed it in Oxford, before moving to Paris.

The Ordinatio—which means carefully edited or ordered for publication—is considered his most thorough commentary on the Sentences. However, significant portions of it were never finished. The editors of the Vatican critical edition of his works, therefore, have made attempts to supplement them so that it stands as a complete commentary on the Sentences.

Third, there is his Parisian Reports or Examined Reports. These are transcriptions students made of his late Parisian lectures and over which he had some sort of editorial oversight. They were never finished but in some cases they offer the most advanced or sophisticated expression of his views on various topics.

The Ordinatio is the home base for students of Scotus, who, whenever necessary, then look back to the Lectura or forward to the Paris Reports to fill in his overall view on a topic.

Why is Scotus known as the ‘subtle doctor’ (doctor subtilis)?
For introducing various distinctions, which are sometimes difficult to grasp, to explain his philosophical and theological theories.

The most famous one is the so-called formal distinction, that is a distinction between formalities. It lies somewhere between a real distinction and a mere distinction of reasoning. Two things that are really identical but nonetheless susceptible of different definitions or descriptions are formally distinct.

The most important context in which Scotus deploys this distinction is to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity.

There is one divine essence and then the personal properties: paternity, sonship, being spirated. Now, if there are three distinct persons in the Godhead but only one essence, what kind of relationship exists between the Father’s paternity and the divine essence? The doctrine of simplicity requires us to say that these are identical. However, if identity is transitive, as many metaphysicians believe, then the Son appears to be identical with the Father. Of course, that cannot be the case. So, Scotus argues that it is a case of formal distinction. The personal property of paternity and the divine essence are really identical with each other but also distinct in some way. There is no real distinction between them. That would imply non-identity. Rather, there is a formal distinction between them.

Such difficult metaphysical reasoning is quite subtle. It is hard to understand and articulate. Such metaphysical rigor is all over Duns Scotus's writings. Spending much time with them and following all the fine reasoning he offers for his various views can be exhausting. Hence, the subtle doctor.

"The primacy of love, both as applied to the divine nature and to human beings, is a good way into some of Scotus's primary concerns."

From what you have already said, it is apparent Scotus writes at a high level of abstraction, but he must have concrete theological, spiritual, and pastoral concerns. What are his main such concerns?