John Duns Scotus and Henry of Harclay on the Non-Necessity of Opposed Relations

1 Michael Servetus, De trinitatis erroribus libri septem, 679 (Miguel Servet, Obras completas II-2: Primeros escritos teológicos, ed. Ángel Alcalá[Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2004]; translated by Earl Morse Wilbur, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity: On the Errors of the Trinity, Seven Books. Dialogues on the Trinity, Two Books. On the Righteousness of Christ’s Kingdom, Four Chapters [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932]). I have cited Alcalá’s edition by page number, followed by Wilbur’s translation (with slight modifications). Servetus, 680; Wilbur, 66. On Servetus see Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus (1511-1553) (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1953); Jerome Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case Study in Total Heresy (Geneva: Droz, 1978); Gordon A. Kinder, Michael Servetus (Verlag: Strasbourg, 1989); Vincent Schmidt, Michel Servet: De bûcher à la liberté de conscience (Paris: Les Éditions de Paris, 2008). 419 The Thomist 77 (2013): 419-51 JOHN DUNS SCOTUS AND HENRY OF HARCLAY ON THE NON-NECESSITY OF OPPOSED RELATIONS JOHN T. SLOTEMAKER Fairfield University Fairfield, Connecticut T HE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY Spanish polymath Michael Servetus predicted in his anti-Trinitarian work De trinitatis erroribus that with respect to the Scholastic distinctions and categories of Trinitarian theology, “at present we have grown accustomed to them, but future generations will judge these things amazing” (“Nunc sic sumus assuefacti, sed futurae generationes stupenda haec iudicabunt”).1 This prediction comes at the end of book 1 of his anti-Trinitarian work and follows Servetus’s critique of the Trinitarian language of Peter Lombard, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Robert Holcot; in particular, Servetus is harsh in his ridicule of Ockham’s language regarding certain “notionibus, relationibus, formalitatibus, quiditatibus, et filiationibus of which Paul [the Apostle] knew nothing [de quibus Paulus JOHN T. SLOTEMAKER 420 2 Servetus, De trin. error., 679 (Wilbur, trans., 66). 3 The arguments of Servetus anticipate those of Adolf von Harnack, in that Servetus argues that with respect to Trinitarian theology the simple message of Jesus Christ and the gospel was corrupted by Greek philosophy. Servetus writes, “And this plague of philosophy was brought upon us by the Greeks, for they above all other men are most given to philosophy; and we, hanging upon their lips, have also become philosophers” (‘Et haec philosophica pestis est nobis a Graecis illata, nam illi prae caeteris sunt philosophiae deditissimi, et nos ab eorum ore pedentes, facti sumus etiam philosophi”) (Servetus, De trin. error., 680 [Wilbur, trans., 67]). See Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, 7 vols., trans. Neil Buchanan (New York: Dover Publications, 1961). 4 K. Rahner, The Trinity, trans., Joseph Donceel (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005), 47. 5 Rahner argues, immediately following the quotation above, that “if the critical reader gets the impression that the following explanation does not seem to come up to the conceptual subtlety of the classical theology of the Trinity (from Thomas up to, for example, Ruiz de Montoya), he is invited at least to consider the possibility that such a greater poverty and ‘lack of precision’ has perhaps been adopted on purpose” (Rahner, The Trinity, 48). nunquam cogitavit].”2 While it is tempting to dismiss the heretical theologian—who was condemned to death in Catholic Vienna for Trinitarian heresy, and eventually burned at the stake in Calvin’s Geneva (October, 1553)—he was certainly correct that future generations would find the language of notions, relations, formalities, quidditites, and filiation to be amazing, fantastic and decadent.3 As Servetus predicted, the Scholastic distinctions of Trinitarian discourse were rejected by even some of the most Scholastically trained twentieth-century Catholic theologians. Servetus’s prediction regarding the decadence of medieval Trinitarian theology is evidenced in Karl Rahner’s claim that “traditional [medieval] discussions as to whether in God a person is constituted by the ‘relation’ or by the ‘procession’ are quarrels about subtleties which can in fact no longer be distinguished one from the other.”4 It would seem that Servetus was correct in his prediction that the distinction between processions and relations, or disparate relations and opposed relations, would be viewed by future generations as stupenda. Further, from the perspective of Rahner such discussions...