This is an excellent article, and I enjoyed skimming it, as I am only faintly familiar with Blessed John Duns Scotus or his work. I've spent more time around the Dominicans, and so I adopted a Thomistic outlook and studied the Angelic Doctor more than the others.
This controversy that Blessed Duns participated in is only the tip of the iceberg. The Dominicans and Franciscans are contemporaries, both founded in the early 13th Century, and the Jesuits, though they came around 300 years later, joined in a very vigorous, sometimes brotherly, rivalry among the three.
The three orders often had debates regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was not defined as dogma until the 19th Century, and which is basically rejected by the Eastern Churches, unless you can reformulate it carefully in Greek.
They also had debates about missionary activity and the "Chinese Rites Controversy" was a huge factor in how East Asia would be evangelized, and how they would worship, and whether indigeneous peoples worldwide are able to contribute their faith practices to Roman Catholic liturgies at this late stage of development.
There's an old joke they have, which goes: "The Dominicans were founded to combat the Gnostic heresy of the Albigensians. The Jesuits were founded to combat the heresy of Protestantism. Who was more successful? Have you met any Albigensians lately?"
If I recall correctly from my studies there is some fundamental but esoteric dispute ongoing for hundreds of years now, and every time it has come up in front of a Pope the ruling has been “neither side can call the other side heretical, now go away”.
But I can’t recall the exact dispute but I believe it’s one of the Thomists vs Scotists ones, perhaps around grace.
Predestination in the hands of the Calvinists became one of the worst Christian doctrines I've seen, especially in conjunction with the perseverance of the the saints.
A system of thought that made it easy dismiss people who disagree with you as going straight to hell and unworthy of consideration, and turned rather nasty in South Africa.
There's a good and very biblical way of resolving esoteric disputes over theology, and that is to ask what fruit the tree has brought forth.
Maybe the pope could call a competition, "OK, fifty years from now we're going to see which of you has brought most good into the world, and settle this pointless dispute once and for all!"
"Ye shall know them by their fruits" is mostly advice against false prophets. These orders aren't led by false prophets, they're simply disputing minutia where it is determined that neither side is wrong, but perhaps has a different POV or formulation. They're not preaching a false gospel.
Furthermore, knowing someone by their fruits is not necessarily straightforward. There are good fruits (and bad) that can be hidden, unseen, or slow to manifest. We won't rightly know who has "done the most good" until the world ends.
At any rate, I believe that 1 Cor 1:10-17 is most applicable here. Can you see those religious orders saying "I follow Dominic!" and "I follow Francis!"
I think that modern social communications has magnified and exacerbated the issues of esoteric theological dispute. These things are easily placed in the public square, where they do not belong. These disputes are mostly good for giving topics for Master's Theses when these proto-priests finish their seminary education. Rank-and-file Christians do not need to concern ourselves with thinking about Molinism, or whether the Orthodox accept the Immaculate Conception, or how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin.
It starts off with some lovely historical scene setting. Then we get to the "discussion about the first principles". It's been a while - my Latin is a bit rusty.
"He was confident that we can know God’s existence by the unaided work of natural reason"
"One dogma that he thought philosophy could demonstrate was the existence of God. ... but he also thought that philosophy, or natural reason, could demonstrate that there is a supreme nature"
If you start off with the presumption of something existing, there is a very high probability that you will prove its existence, to your satisfaction.
If you believe in a particular God there is no need to subvert other doctrines or philosophies. You already have your proof, in your beliefs and faith. That is literally the definition of faith. You don't even need dogma (unless you do because you believe you do).
Faith is faith. If you start messing deity existence around with philosophy and science then things may get a bit sticky.
Scotus seems like a really clever lad in the 1300s who had some superb philosophical ideas. If only he hadn't wasted his intellect on theology! However, we would probably not know of him outside of theology if he hadn't been a priest. Thank the Lord for small mercies.
Don't you think that an intellectually gifted philosopher is able to start with a null hypothesis, and avoid begging the question?
Perhaps you don't understand what faith is, or its relation to reason, or how "science" was understood by scientists of the 13th century.
Faith is empty and useless without reason. Likewise, reason is useless and empty without faith. They are intertwined and interdependent. See what Pope St. John Paul the Great wrote in Fides et ratio about wings.
There have been some amazing applications of formal logic and other scientific methods in service to the Christian faith. It seems like rubbish to someone who rejects their purpose or foundation, but nevertheless, priest-scientists laid all the foundations for modern engineering, discovery, genetics, astronomy: you name it, and that tradition of inquiry is still honored today, mostly by Catholic laypersons.
"Perhaps you don't understand what faith is, or its relation to reason, or how "science" was understood by scientists of the 13th century."
Well, that is pretty damning! How on earth can you pontificate on the nature of my understanding of faith?
I may take a peek at ... (I studied Latin 40 odd years ago) ... Faith and rationality (Reason is probably a better translation) about wings. However, I'm pretty sure it isn't going to involve solving special cases of Bernoulli equations or Finite Element Analysis.
You have your notion of faith and I have mine. I would never dream of describing your notions of faith as false or misled or misguided or anything else. I respect your faith and your right to have as such. I'd be grateful if you would extend the same courtesy to me and anyone else who has a difference of opinion to yourself.
Your elements of engineering, science etc list seems to have missed out rather a lot of the world. For starters: algorithms are named after an Arab bloke. Our "alphabet" is named after the first two letters of Hebrew, our numbers are famously Arabic. Nought/nowt/null/zero/nothing as a mathematics concept largely comes from Islamic scholars. What we now call India and China also have a massive input to the basics - too much for this comment 8)
This is just comfortably outside your bubble. Or maybe it's just more in my bubble than normal HN discourse... ok, it's pretty uncommon discussion.
Interestingly, I normally see references in Duns Scotus in works by Nouvelle Theologie Christian Platonists, where Duns Scotus is quite strongly condemned for his univocity eventually precipitating nominalism in medieval consciousness. Prominent theologians from that movement, like de Lubac and Balthasar would influence Wojtyła and Ratzinger, influencing at least interpretation of Vatican II.
The Orthodox celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos already. It is not a big leap from that to the Assumption of the Virgin, and then you’re most of the way to the Immaculate Conception, especially because it’s moot anyway if you don’t accept Augustine’s formulation of Original Sin.
If there were otherwise a will for unity between East and West (and there definitely is not), I don’t think the Immaculate Conception would be the thing to stand in the way. The bigger problems are ecclesiastical and cultural.
What are you talking about? The Eastern Orthodox reject giving Mary's birth special status, you're just hand-waving doctrines with no explanations, entirely from a Catholic perspective.
I think “reject” is too strong. They don’t accept it. There are polemics by individual Orthodox who reject it. But I am not aware of any dogmatic rejections, especially since they haven’t had an ecumenical council at which to reject things.
There's no need for an ecumenical council to reject every single doctrine other confessions come up with. The Orthodox believe that the Fall changed human nature, which means that every human after Adam was affected. Since Mary was also a human, she was also affected. It was the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Exaltation which allowed human nature to exalt itself back to regaining communion with God. So the Immaculate Conception is rejected by the mainstream Orthodox faith and there is no need to have a council about it.
Yes, Catharism teaches that the flesh is evil, and that humans are spiritual souls trapped in a prison of impure flesh.
The Dominicans needed to very much address this by teaching that the flesh is good, that humans are meant to enjoy our lives and all that entails: marital sex, good food and wine, recreation time, sensual pleasures in moderation.
In fact, the American Shakers took a page from this book and, like the Albigensians, they renounced marriage, and renounced sexual congress altogether, and vowed never to touch one another. My pastor was known to remark that this is why they were known as "Shakers", because they were so repressed that they vibrated. Anyway, "Simple Gifts" is a lovely legacy that the Shakers left; while there is still one village extant today, the Shakers only reproduced when dissenters rejected celibacy and left the community.
An allied heresy is Jansenism: it teaches that there's nothing humans can do to cooperate in our salvation, and in fact salvation is really, really difficult; so difficult that only a few may be saved, and that even though there's nothing you can do about it, you should try really hard and purify yourself excessively. Jansenism was ravaging the French landscape when Saint Thérèse of Lisieux came on the scene, and so her "Little Way" of love was, in part, an answer to this nasty heresy, and she is regarded as a Doctor of the Church.
Blessed Duns is similarly regarded as a Doctor of the Church, unofficially for now, but he is known as Doctor Subtilis already, and so many pious people like me think it would be awesome if the Church acknowledges that title for his canonization.
My understanding is that modern academics studying Catharism take these claims with a large rock of salt. We have no Cathar writings, just the writings of those of their enemies. These enemies saw them as being in the mold of ancient heretics, with strange Christologies and Gnostic beliefs. But more likely they were just a run of the mill anticlerical movement.
The Cathars were regarded as local rabble-rousers, and in this era, heresies were considered tantamount to treason against the state and her established Church. Having failed at diplomacy and evangelism, Pope Innocent III preached a Crusade, and had the Albigensians definitively exterminated by overwhelming military force.
The victorious chief military commander, Simon de Montfort, was rewarded with fame and (increased) fortune, mostly because of this Crusade.
This controversy that Blessed Duns participated in is only the tip of the iceberg. The Dominicans and Franciscans are contemporaries, both founded in the early 13th Century, and the Jesuits, though they came around 300 years later, joined in a very vigorous, sometimes brotherly, rivalry among the three.
The three orders often had debates regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was not defined as dogma until the 19th Century, and which is basically rejected by the Eastern Churches, unless you can reformulate it carefully in Greek.
They also had debates about missionary activity and the "Chinese Rites Controversy" was a huge factor in how East Asia would be evangelized, and how they would worship, and whether indigeneous peoples worldwide are able to contribute their faith practices to Roman Catholic liturgies at this late stage of development.
There's an old joke they have, which goes: "The Dominicans were founded to combat the Gnostic heresy of the Albigensians. The Jesuits were founded to combat the heresy of Protestantism. Who was more successful? Have you met any Albigensians lately?"