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Chapter 6 - John Duns Scotus: Retrieving a Medieval Thinker for Contemporary Theology
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93 Chapter Six JOHN DUNS SCOTUS: RETRIEVING A MEDIEVAL THINKER FOR CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY Mary Beth Ingham, C.S.J. In his short monograph on Thomas Aquinas, 1 Anthony Kenny noted that the value of this thirteenth-century Dominican lay not so much in the answers he offered for certain questions, but rather in the questions he raised and the way in which he raised them. Today, I would like to make something of the same argument for John Duns Scotus. As you consider the value of your own spiritual and intellectual tradition, I suggest that you look at Scotus not so much for original and new answers to contemporary questions (although there are certainly original insights in Scotus, as I will note later), but rather for the manner in which Scotus viewed all that exists. As the third millennium opens before us, it is important to recognize the way in which contemporary reflection (whether philosophical or theological) recognizes its limits and searches for another model or paradigm. The cold war is over. Modern thought has been superceded by the so-called post-modern. Models of scientific objectivity and rationality no longer appear to help us deal with contemporary issues. Spiritual yearnings express themselves in New Age religion. In addition, the postrenaissance notion of science has done violence to creation. Technology dominates our societies, threatening human dignity and values. The world’s goods are not shared equally; indeed the gap between rich and poor widens. In short, we are at a global turning point. We cast about for other ways of seeing our reality, hoping to find a way to integrate a world that has become too complex, too fragmented for us to bear. Medieval thinkers hold a key for us today. I do not mean that we must return to a time in history that is long gone. Rather, I think that by taking a 1 Past Masters Series, Cambridge University Press. 94 Mary Beth Ingham closer look at their intellectual legacy we might discover principles to help us integrate the scientific with the religious, the intellectual with the spiritual. We do not need to return to a triumphalist notion of religion to take advantage of the legacy of medieval thinkers. They can help us precisely insofar as they were religious and spiritual thinkers who saw the world in which they lived as a coherent whole. Therefore, the value of a person like Scotus today stems from his Franciscan vision of reality, as he articulates his intellectual insights to form a coherent whole where scientific, intellectual, and spiritual values are all present. In other words, the coherence of Scotus’s intellectual insights (both philosophical and theological) stem from his spiritual vision, precisely insofar as he is a Franciscan. My paper serves, then, both as an example of the contemporary relevance of the Franciscan intellectual tradition and a call to you to continue that tradition today in your own reflection on contemporary issues. This you must do from the perspective of your religious and spiritual heritage. If you hold (as I think you would) that the insights of Francis of Assisi are relevant today and that the Franciscan life has a witness for our world, then you must conclude that the intellectual formulation of those insights can be a powerful influence at a time in history when we need new intellectual models, new conceptual paradigms to understand our place in the world, our relationship to God and to one another, and ways that we might promote the Reign of God in our own day. In my own case, Scotus offered a series of interesting philosophical insights until I recognized the spiritual point behind it all. I had struggled for years to make sense of it and then, one day, it all fell into place. That was the day I realized the centrality of beauty for him as a Franciscan, along with the role of love and creativity. Creativity, love, and beauty are the foundation of his intellectual vision because of the particular spiritual tradition to which he belongs. I find that where scholars misread or misunderstand Scotus they have not taken adequate account of his spiritual vision precisely as a Franciscan. This vision is grounded in the power of ordered loving as central to a correct understanding of human nature as rational, on the Trinity as model both for reality and for human relationships, and on an aesthetic perspective that is the basis for his discussion of moral goodness. [44.213...