The Franciscan View of the Human Person: Some Central Elements

PART FOUR HUMANS–UNIQUELY GOD’S IN MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP

45 PART FOUR HUMANS–UNIQUELY GOD’S IN MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP SOME CENTRAL ELEMENTS IN BL. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS INTRODUCTION John Duns Scotus is known as the “Subtle Doctor” for a reason. His thought frequently combined philosophical ideas and theological notions, integrating them to form a new understanding. Yet, he is a true son of St. Francis and St. Clare.At the heart of his thought stands a free, generous and loving God, who from the moment of creation delighted in the uniqueness of each human being. Duns Scotus sees God as the creative artist who affirms humanity from the beginning by envisioning the Incarnation, who accepts human goodness, and draws each person into the divine “Beatific Embrace.”96 Throughout his work, Scotus is concerned to understand all reality as a whole, from both human and divine perspectives. No doubt his most important contribution to the Franciscan understanding of the human person is that he demonstrates how both the human and divine partners are able to choose a dynamic reciprocal relationship that leads to the optimal thriving of humanity, while protecting the ultimate freedom of God. The suggestion of a relationship, named by modern feminists as “mutuality,”97 can be found in Scotus’s metaphysical commitment to the univocity of being,98 to the essential order and to his definition of moral goodness as the harmony of circumstances under the direction of right reason. These metaphysical constructs work in tandem with the paradigms of divine mutuality that he draws from divine revelation. Scotus’s metaphysical ideas are grounded in his perception of the nature of God, the divine essence that is expressed as person in the communion of the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity conveys 46 Dawn M. Nothwehr, O.S.F. God’s essence, but the three persons together reflect the divine in a way not possible for the single person. Divine revelation discloses several paradigmatic relationships between God and humankind that suggest mutuality. These are the life of the Trinity, the Incarnation , imago Dei, Covenant (Decalogue) and acceptatio in the order of merit. HUMANS IN CONTEXT: CREATION AND THE CREATOR Contingency and the Necessity of God In order to understand how John Duns Scotus perceives humanity, we need first to understand his view of God’s relationship to creation and the value he places on the created world in general and on the dignity of creation overall. Scotus began with empirical observation of the created world in its totality. As a Christian, he realized that there was nothing that remained forever and that everything was ultimately dependent on God for its life and existence. He expressed this insight in the metaphysical notion of contingency, that is, the reality that things or situations do not have to exist at all nor do they need to exist as they exist; they are utterly dependent on something or someone else to bring them to life or make them happen. For example: A rose could be red, yellow or pink. If the gardener does not water the rosebush, it will die. The gardener might care for the rose so well that it wins a prize at a garden show. On the other hand, there is only so much the gardener can do to make the rose grow in a particular way; all else depends on its God-given capacity to live and grow. Scotus reasoned that if something exists (a stone, for example), that means it is somehow possible for it to exist under the right conditions (lava from a volcano cooled into obsidian, for example). He traced backward through a series of causes that could make something exist or happen in order to reach the ultimate point of origin where a being existed that itself had no cause but yet had the potential to cause other things; and he ended up with only God. For Scotus, the only being that is not contingent, but uncaused and necessary, is God. God is necessary simply because there is nothing that could bring 47 The Franciscan View of the Human Person about God or “make God happen.” The Divine Being exists because God chooses to exist, and creation exists because God artistically, freely and lovingly calls it into being in the act of creating it. That God is love was most important for Scotus, as it is for us.99 Because God is absolutely free, God is absolutely loving; and this love...