The Harmony of Goodness: Mutuality and Moral Living According to John Duns Scotus

Chapter Six: Living in Love: Mutuality with God

ChaPTer six living in love: muTualiTy wiTh god As we have seen, Scotus’s presentations of moral living and the perfection of our rational nature are framed in love and founded on loving relationship. It is no wonder that his vision culminates in the supreme act of charity: love for God. This act, whereby God is not only loved from afar, but with the love of friendship, fulfills the movement which began with divine initiative in creation and self-revelation. We respond to God’s free choice to enter into a covenant relationship by our choice to live out of love and gratitude. Previous aspects of the moral order now come together: the balance of internal affections in response to the good, the demands of the Covenant (the Law), the harmony among the several aspects in the morally good act, insight and prudential discernment. These elements are unified in the act of love for God. The intricacies of previous chapters also come together in human praxis, as the present moment reveals moral living as a whole, each part uniting with the others in a single manifestation of beauty. Aspects that might have appeared disjointed or fragmented, when considered alone, now take their appropriate place within a larger order, a bigger vision of the human moral journey as part of the spiritual path, the Franciscan via pulchritudinis. From this vantage point we see the wind chime in its totality. Here human praxis refers to the life lived by a person fully capable of rational loving, of voluntary self-revelation and generous self-gift to another. It is a life of relational love, in imitation of the Trinity. In this activity of generous love we discover true rational fulfillment, THE HARMONY OF GOODNESS 182 the completion of our return to God, Triune Communion and Fullness of Love in whom all reality finds its source. The circle closes and the pilgrimage is brought to completion. If love for beauty and harmony began the moral journey, love for God as Absolute Love is now revealed to be the highest and most perfect moral act. In love for Absolute Love, all other acts are intensified, finalized and integrated. In other words, in telling the truth out of love for God, in doing a good deed out of that same love, and in sacrificing for another out of such love, then these otherwise morally good acts (truth telling, good deeds, sacrifice) are intensified in their goodness. What’s more, the actions associated with these deeds are themselves intensified in their motivation. In this way, love for God deepens and fulfills the natural desire of our human heart, for we continually seek to love the good to a greater and greater degree. In addition,our love is returned,reciprocated to an eminent degree, creating the bond of friendship (amor amicitiae). This mutual love with God in friendship reveals that ‘ecstatic’ or supernatural communion which the human heart desires naturally and for which it is naturally constituted. Grounded in praxis, this loving communion is not so much an otherworldly ‘mystical’ or disembodied experience;1 rather, it is an immanent encounter with the Living God, an embodied and incarnate experience of divine presence. We can, and in this life, experience the fullness of divine presence: here is the goal of human and moral living.2 Although it is naturally constituted, such friendship can only be achieved by means of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. The greatest of these, of course, is charity. 1 We might think here of Bernini’s famous Ecstasy of St. Teresa, where the mystical union is captured in a loss of consciousness. 2 In no way does this experience deny the fuller experience of beatific communion. Rather, it emphasizes the Franciscan commitment to the continuity between this life and the life to come. LIVING IN LOVE: MUTUALITY WITH GOD 183 franCisCan PRAXIS: love PerfeCTs moral living If love for God is the highest moral act of which the will is naturally capable, then how do we achieve it? Which virtue corresponds to it? Do we strive for it or wait for a divine inspiration? It is in Scotus’s discussion of this question that we uncover the intricacy of nature and grace at the heart of his vision of human activity. For Scotus, there is no dramatic rift between the domain of divine activity and that of human life. There...