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Fides et Ratio: The Harmony of Philosophy and Theology in Duns Scotus

Summary: A recent analysis of the theological contribution of Duns Scotus includes the following: God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted [by Duns Scotus] that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which – as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated – unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Now, it is admittedly the case that the author’s specific target was the alleged voluntarism of Duns Scotus – a topic on which there is already considerable scholarly literature, and to which I do not wish to add here, beyond making the brief observation that Scotus’s ethical voluntarism – even if it be correctly described in this way – is designed to allow for God’s unconditioned freedom while yet not entailing that God could command humans to act in a way incompatible with their achieving their teleological goal of the vision of God. And in any case, as I have suggested in a different context(...)