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

Introduction

inTroduCTion The Franciscan moral vision is grounded in the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi. It is, at heart, a vision based upon the primacy of love in imitation of the Trinity : God who is one in being, yet Trinity of persons equal in majesty. Such relational love can be understood as mutuality, the harmonious and equal self-gift of one person to another, strengthening and expanding love beyond itself. Divine love pours forth into the world as source of being (creation) and source of wholeness and redemption (incarnation). A significant spokesperson for this moral vision of relational love and generous living is the man known as the Subtle Doctor, John Duns Scotus. A Franciscan friar whose life bridges the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Scotus will be our guide in this study of mutuality and moral living. Throughout his teaching career, Scotus worked to understand and articulate the philosophical and theological dimensions of this Franciscan moral vision. His arguments, though often complex and involved, reveal a fundamental insight : that the God whose name is Love invites each of us to enter more deeply into the reality of love, with God and with one another. To this task, Scotus brought the breadth and depth of philosophical reflection, informed by the reality of Christian tradition. Born in 1265/66, John Duns Scotus belonged to the second generation of philosopher-theologians who worked to integrate Aristotelian insights with Christian revelation (sacra doctrina). Writing after the Condemnations of 1277 (Paris ) and 1284 (Oxford), Scotus pursued a relentless analysis of the legacy of Greek thought available to Latin thinkers at THE HARMONY OF GOODNESS 8 the close of the thirteenth century, thanks to the translations of such scholars as Robert Grosseteste and William of Moerbeke . This analysis required the appropriate understanding and separation of Aristotelian thought from that of the Arab commentaries, such as those of Avicenna and Averroes, whose interpretations of the Stagirite (Aristotle) fueled the developing autonomy of the Masters in the Faculty of Arts and threatened the primacy of theology at the University of Paris.1 Before his untimely death in the autumn of 1308, Scotus succeeded in effectively rethinking the relationship between philosophy and theology in light of a deeper understanding of Aristotle as well as of a concern to safeguard key elements of Christian revelation: the possibility for free choice in the will, the contingency of creation and the value of theology as a scientific discipline. This rethinking involved a serious and critical rejection of the naturalist and necessitarian worldview which had emerged from the Arab philosophers and a clear defense of the centrality of freedom, both divine and human, as the cornerstone of the Christian understanding of reality.2 Had Scotus lived beyond his forty-second year, he surely would have produced the sort of synthesis for which Thomas Aquinas is famous. Why would anyone want to read or study Duns Scotus today? What has a medieval thinker to contribute to our contemporary moral discussion? While there are many aspects of medieval culture I would not want to re-introduce into con1 Extensive historical studies have explored this dynamic period in the history of philosophy and theology. See, for example, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, ed. A.S. McGrade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Of particular note is the article included in this volume by Steven P. Marrone, “Medieval Philosophy in Context,” 10-50. 2 For more on this and its influence on Scotus, see Roland Hissette, Enqu ête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Louvain-Paris, 1977); Fernand van Steenberghen, “La philosophie à la veille de l’entrée en scène de Jean Duns Scot,” in De Doctrina I. Duns Scoti, I:65-74; Paul Vignaux , “Valeur morale et valeur de salut,” in Homo et mundus, 53-67. I discuss a direct influence upon Scotus’s ethical discussion in “The Condemnation of 1277: Another Light on Scotist Ethics,” in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, 37 (1990): 91-103. INTRODUCTION 9 temporary moral or social discussion, one aspect possesses enormous value for us today. This is the conscious effort at integration, the medieval predilection for a vision of the whole. This conviction that all reality possesses a fundamental unity underpins the medieval optimism about human nature and moral living. It points toward a life which fosters mutual interaction of nature and grace, of inner and outer spheres...