Notes on Scotist Aesthetics in Light of Gilbert Narcisse’s Les Raisons de Dieu

Pour Scot, l’océan de perfections formellement distinctes dans la simplicité absolue de l’Infini subsistant n’est autre chose que la Beauté sans limites.

Edgar de Bruyne

Gilbert Narcisse’s Les Raisons de Dieu is one of the more substantial theological works of recent memory, especially among those drawing primarily upon medieval sources.¹ Inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar’s appeal to the “unsurpassable fittingness” of New Testament arguments for Christ’s divinity, the Dominican theologian has written a comprehensive theological aesthetics built upon the unlikely foundation of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of convenientia. Starting with Aquinas’s remark that “all things agree in being” (omnia in esse conveniunt),² Narcisse offers fresh interpretations of the standard Thomist dicta about grace and nature, which he encapsulates in the motto esse capax convenientiae.³ Because the aesthetic harmony of which all being is capable has God as its cause, the analogy that obtains between God and creation is a kind of convenientia; indeed, that the Word should become flesh to redeem humankind is convenientissimum, and all convenientiae in history are harmonized in a cosmic exitus-reditus that is “super-determined” by the advent and second coming of Christ.⁴ A veritable cascade of particular convenientiae flows from God’s “nuanced composition” of efficient, exemplary, and final causality.⁵ “The fittingness of a means,” Narcisse says, “reaches its maximum in a rich plurality of realities that concur in the same end. Now in the Incarnation, God’s work reaches a wonderful maximum density.”⁶ and The “encompassing character of Christocentric exemplarity” (le caractère englobant de l’exemplarité, centre sur le Christ) consequently unifies the metaphysics of the transcendentals with a “speculative-aesthetic” theology sensitive to the particularity of persons and events, to the contingency of the world, and—most importantly—to the practice of Christian theology.⁷

Unfortunately Les Raisons de Dieu, which is otherwise a model of philological, philosophical, and theological research, is marred by all-too-predictable polemic against John Duns Scotus. Narcisse accuses Scotus of an “essentialist reduction” (la reduction essentielle) that prevents any further study of the ontological foundations of convenientia.⁸ Scotism, the Dominican theologian warns his readers, ensures that reflections on fittingness will never return to the “truly theological level” they had attained in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.⁹ Truth be told, such charges must grate upon the ears of any theologian who possesses a passing familiarity with the writings of the Subtle Doctor, whose marked emphasis on final causality imbues his theology and metaphysics with a strongly aesthetic character. Indeed, this very emphasis might well convince the impartial judge to associate the motto esse capax convenientiae not with Aquinas, but rather with Scotus, for many of the Subtle Doctor’s distinctive theses make use of explicitly aesthetic arguments in a way that the standard Thomist dicta do not. With this in mind, I would like to offer a few notes towards a constructive Scotist aesthetics based upon the Subtle Doctor’s own varied uses of convenientia, with special attention given to three topics: 1) the notion of integritas convenientiae in Scotus’s aesthetics; 2) its relationship to the formal distinction in unifying the “science of the transcendentals”; and 3) the Subtle Doctor’s arguments ex convenientia. As I hope to show, Duns Scotus has all the resources necessary to construct a “practico-aesthetic” metaphysics of the transcendentals governed by the “encompassing character of Christocentric exemplarity.”

I. Integritas Convenientiae: Beauty and Fittingness

The general parameters of Scotus’s understanding of beauty are well-known, having been outlined in classic surveys by Edgar de Bruyne and Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, as well as more specialized treatments by Francis J. Kovach, Mary Beth Ingham, Hans-Joachim Werner, and Gérard Sondag.¹⁰ For John Duns Scotus, God is beauty itself, even the supreme beauty, and God’s beauty is the source and goal of all creaturely beauty, which participates in His beauty through the species that they receive from Him.¹¹ Scotus thus sees beauty in both the natural and supernatural orders as well as in the corporeal and spiritual orders; not only does he see beauty in bodies considered in themselves, he sees beauty in the resurrected bodies of the saints,¹² in morally good acts,¹³ and in the soul that acts under the influence of divine grace.¹⁴ Scotus also sees beauty in the ordered progress of Scripture,¹⁵ in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation,¹⁶ in music,¹⁷ and in the universe in general.¹⁸ The embarrassing wealth of such comments in Scotus has led Mary Elizabeth Ingham to argue that Scotus generally prefers artistic metaphors over medical ones for his discussions of moral excellence, a judgment with which I concur.¹⁹

For Scotus, then, beauty is a formal perfection of being that delights the person who perceives it and that “perfects” his senses.²⁰ Indeed, the more beautiful an object is, the more desirable and delectable it is.²¹ Beauty, however, is not an absolute quality in the beautiful body but the sum of all those things that are fitting in bodies, such as magnitude, shape, and color, as well as the sum of all the relations among themselves and among the body and themselves.²² This definition, which Edgar de Bruyne did not hesitate to call a “new interpretation of Beauty,” is generally Augustinian and more particularly Franciscan in character.²³ As both Francis Kovach and Gérard Sondag have pointed out, Scotus’s definition shows remarkable similarity to the Stoic understanding of beauty as a convenientia partium inter se et ad totum found in Alexander of Hales.²⁴ For our purposes, it is noteworthy that Sondag also points out the relationship between Scotus’s definition of beauty and convenientia:

Scotus, had a conception of beauty which is precise, simple, and unified, and perhaps represents a progress with respect to the idea he inherited from the tradition and especially from Augustine. At the core of that concept is the notion of integritas convenientiae, a notion which originates not in aesthetics but in ethics, and that Scotus transposed from ethics to aesthetics.²⁵

In fact, there is hardly a single question of Scotist metaphysics —the univocity of the concept of being, the formal distinction, ens as the natural object of the intellect—that is not saturated with aesthetic considerations of convenientia, proportio, and consonantia. As Narcisse’s work amply demonstrates, medieval doctors even couched their most rarified discussions of predication in terms of convenientia, and Scotus is no exception to this general rule.²⁶

The varied aesthetic considerations encapsulated in Scotus’s integritas convenientiae are governed by Augustine’s socalled psychological analogy of the Trinity—a point that has been overlooked in most studies of Scotus’s aesthetics. While Sondag and other treatments of Scotist aesthetics have documented Scotus’s indebtedness to and transcendence of the tradition he inherited, as well as the formal connections between his scattered remarks on beauty, they generally overlook one text, namely the question on Trinitarian vestiges from Ordinatio I, distinction 3, part 2, that explicitly ties his understanding of beauty to the Holy Trinity.²⁷ This text, which follows the general parameters of Augustine’s De Trinitate, provides a useful summary of the previous theologies of Trinitarian vestiges based on Wisdom 11:21.²⁸ Scotus thus discusses Trinitarian vestiges in terms of the triads unity-species-order, origin-beauty-operation, one-true-good, and measure-number-weight, each of which he assigns by appropriation to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scotus’s remark that created species represent the highest beauty, which is said of the divine Son by appropriation, is of particular importance for our considerations.²⁹ The parallel passage in Reportatio I-A, distinction 3, question 3, makes the Trinitarian analogy more clearly. “Number and unity can be attributed to the Father,” Scotus says, “and beauty (species) can be attributed to the Son, since beauty and comeliness (pulchritudo) arise from the conjunction of many fitting things (ex coniunctione multorum convenientium), as we see in bodies, and beauty cannot be as fittingly attributed to the Father, since the Son is primarily the beauty (decor) of the Father. Order signifies goodness by way of the limited creature’s analogy (per modum proportionis) to the Holy Spirit, to whom the goodness and proportion (commensuratio) of any well-ordered thing is attributed.”³⁰

If nothing else, these passages should demonstrate that Scotus employs a full range of aesthetic concepts (species, pulchritudo, decor, convenientia, proportio, commensuratio) in a “truly theological” manner. Conversely, these passages forestall any attempt to discuss Scotist aesthetics solely in the metaphysical or phenomenological terms of the modern aesthetician; at the very least, the modern aesthetician who hopes to understand Scotus while ignoring the Trinitarian context of his own writing risks severely distorting the thought of the Subtle Doctor. In this respect, the contrast Sondag draws between Scotus, on the one hand, and Augustine, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, on the other, is somewhat artificial. I am not inclined to think that Augustine, Bonaventure, and Aquinas have “quidditative” notions of beauty, for the definitions of each—Augustine’s aequalitas numerosa, Bonaventure’s modus, species, ordo, and Aquinas’s integritas, consonantia, and claritas—imply that beauty always involves a convenientia partium inter se et ad totum and so cannot be an “absolute” quality.³¹ Kovach is more to the point: what Scotus contributes to the development of aesthetics is a strong emphasis on proportio rather than claritas as the formal element of beauty. This may well be a difference of emphasis rather than a real point of contention. Indeed, substitute convenientia for consonantia and Scotus’s definition of bodily beauty seems in remarkable accord with Aquinas’s now-classic definition. What Kovach does not point out, however, is how this emphasis on proportio allows Scotus to trace his varied aesthetic considerations back to the Holy Trinity.

Sondag’s own examples bear this contention out. If pulchritudo, decor, or species is said of the Son by appropriation, and ordo or proportio is similarly said of the Holy Spirit, each of Sondag’s examples displays an underlying Trinitarian analogy: the Bible manifests its beauty (decor) in its ordered progress (ordinatus progressus);³² the beauty of the universe is manifested in the order that obtains between the dissimilarity of species and the similarity of individuals within the species;³³ and the integritas convenientiae that imbues the morally good act with beauty includes the entirety of all which is duly proportioned to it.³⁴ In each case, beauty and proportion are intimately related, indeed as intimately as the Son and the Holy Spirit themselves. It should come as no surprise, then, that all such acts, and indeed all corporeal beauty, should be ordered to God as a final cause. “Since a well-ordered choice,” Scotus says, “is one that possesses right circumstances which are in harmony with right reason, it follows that enjoyment is well-ordered if it has circumstances which are in harmony with one’s ultimate end. Thus its object is that object of enjoyment that is appropriate in all its circumstances. That object is God, who is the ultimate end and is appropriate in all His circumstances and appropriately proportionate [to all things].”³⁵

II. Theological Aesthetics and the Formal Distinction

Perhaps an avalanche of Scotist citations is beside the point. For Narcisse, the real reason that Scotus cannot offer a “truly theological” account of convenientia is that he does not have a properly Thomistic metaphysics of the actus essendi. ³⁶ Not surprisingly, Scotus’s supposed denial of the real distinction between essence and existence gives particular offense to the Dominican theologian.³⁷ Attentive readers will have already noted that de Bruyne’s lapidary assessment of Scotist aesthetics that served as the epigraph for this essay highlights the importance of the formal distinction in the Subtle Doctor’s account. After all, the metaphysical question that exercises Scotus in the two passages I highlighted above is how Trinitarian vestiges, which depend upon the harmonious relationship of their bodily parts, can represent God, Who has no parts whatsoever.³⁸ Scotus not only has an ingenious answer to this question, his answer lays the groundwork for exactly the sort of theological aesthetics that Narcisse mistakenly believes can only be found in Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Scotus, of course, recognizes a formal distinction in six instances: 1) between transcendentals; 2) between a generic perfection and the specific difference; 3) between the soul and its faculties; 4) between the divine persons and the divine essence; 5) between the individuating difference and the common nature; and 6) between the attributes of God.³⁹ To my mind, precious little has been said about how these six instances relate. In light of Narcisse’s concerns, I would like to suggest that they form an ascending scale of harmonious convenientiae.

Like his predecessors, Scotus taught that God alone is the efficient, exemplary, and final cause of our being;⁴⁰ that God alone is the infinite coincidence of the transcendentals; and that created beings are true, good, and beautiful only to the extent that they participate in God’s own being, truth, goodness, and beauty.⁴¹ Unlike his predecessors, however, Scotus defined metaphysics as the “science of the transcendentals” (transcendens scientia), a definition not without some importance for theological aesthetics.⁴² For an aesthetics ad mentem Scoti, one could well say that metaphysics treats pulchrum in quantum pulchrum just as it treats ens in quantum ens.⁴³ Precisely because a formal distinction obtains between the transcendentals, beauty cannot be reduced to a merely noetic entity as it often is in modern Thomists; rather, it is a genuine formal perfection.⁴⁴ In fact, the Dionysian notion of “unitive containment” necessitates a formal distinction between transcendental perfections, and such a distinction implies the coexistence, even co-inherence, of diverse formal perfections in simple substances. God, as super-essential being, contains all perfections infinitely and eminently. He is verum esse, totum esse, indeed verum pulchrum, totum pulchrum. But creatures also contain the perfections appropriate to their natures in an analogous fashion, so that these perfections, which are unitively contained in their own essences, mirror God’s own limitless perfection.

Once we recognize the importance of the formal distinction for the “science of the transcendentals” in this first instance, we can see how it unifies the various orders of reality into an aesthetic whole. In the second instance, for example, we can recognize bodily and spiritual beauty as distinct formal perfections, precisely because a formal distinction obtains between the generic perfection and the specific difference in any given substance. So just as physical beauty is the harmonious sum of the plurality of forms and formalities suitable to a specific being, spiritual beauty is the harmonious sum of the concrete choices made in conformity with right reason. As the sum of perfections in the material and spiritual orders, human beauty thus offers both an image and a likeness of the beauty of the Word.⁴⁵ Thus the first instance of the formal distinction serves as the bridge between the second and the third instances, at least insofar as we are considering rational natures, which is related to the fourth instance by way of a rich aesthetic rendering of the so-called psychological analogy of the Trinity.⁴⁶ Just as the formal distinction between the faculties and soul in men and women mirrors the formal distinction of the persons from the divine essence, so too the formal co-inherence of a plurality of beautiful forms mirrors the formal co-inherence of perfections in the divine essence, since our souls present us with images of the Trinity insofar as they are exercised in acts of intellect and will.⁴⁷ In this regard, the integritas convenientiae of the soul governed by charity gives us the clearest image of the Trinity. Such a conclusion also has felicitous aesthetic ramifications, for it implies that knowledge is as much about the creation of forms as their passive communication; rather than being merely informed or actualized, the intellect actively creates a representation of the known object, which is a partial efficient cause rather than a formal cause per se. This esse repraesentatum, as a singular representation of the singular, is not merely a phantasm, an image whose intentionality is reduced to its resemblance to its original, but a formal similitude that allows the singular to represent the universal.⁴⁸

This leads to the fifth instance of the formal distinction, between the individuating difference and the common nature. I think Scotus intuited a profound artistic paradox here, a paradox both ancient and modern, that a particularly profound artistic representation of an individual has the ability to manifest the depths of the universal. The pre-eminent example of this, of course, is Christ Himself. As the Word, Christ is the decor Patris; He represents the Father perfectly in the free play of the Holy Spirit. As man, as a singular existing human nature, He represents God with the greatest formal perfection of which a human nature is capable. Just as the formal distinction between Christ’s faculties and His human soul perfectly expresses the formal distinction of the persons from the divine essence, so the formal coinherence of all beautiful forms in Christ’s unbroken human nature, his natura atoma, expresses the infinite harmonious coinherence of formally non-identical attributes in the simplicity of the divine essence—the sixth instance of the formal distinction.⁴⁹ In sum, Christ for Scotus is an active artistic representation of both God and humankind, and so the Subtle Doctor does not hesitate to call God an artist or to note that He creates the world “artfully.”⁵⁰ God the Father is the divine artist, whose perfectly fecund knowledge eternally generates God the Son, his very self-expression, in Whom perfect beauty and perfect art coincide.⁵¹ The Son is the Father’s art just as he is the Father’s wisdom and the Father’s light. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. He is art from art, and one art with the Father.⁵² The Son does not spring from the Father unthinkingly, as fire from fire, or passively, as our understanding is generated by external objects, but rather as His free, sovereign expression.⁵³ As Scotus notes, “the Word is the Father’s art, full of every living idea.”⁵⁴

Scotus’s formal distinction is a triumph of extreme realism in the history of philosophy and theology. The Subtle Doctor resolves the ancient Platonic problem of the methexis of the forms with a profound Christian metaphysics of the infinite that preserves the reality of beauty in the mind of God, the mind of man, and the world around us. In this respect, the multitude of beautiful forms that we perceive in one being are neither arbitrary nor artificial, because they inhere together distinctly, as it were, and are so preserved in their radiance, intelligibility, and peaceful co-inherence in God’s own light. Moreover, if a rich plurality of distinctly beautiful forms inheres in every beautiful substance, the order of substances in creation itself speaks of the beauty of God, the first and final cause of their own beauty. But as the humanity of Christ is pre-eminent in the order of substances, and so it lacks no formal perfection whatsoever, in Him all convenientiae reach a wonderful maximum density indeed.

III. Christ and Convenientia

We have seen that Scotus’s understanding of beauty is governed by the notion of integritas convenientiae; moreover, we have seen how these various convenientiae are united by the formal distinction in Scotus’s “science of the transcendentals.” If our discussion of the formal distinction proceeded as an ascending scale of convenientiae, a brief discussion of the importance of arguments ex convenientia in Scotus’s theology will allow us to reverse the flow, as it were, and see convenientia as a descending scale from heaven to earth, from God to creatures. The Subtle Doctor’s own treatment of the “fittingness of means” implies a greatly nuanced composition of efficient, exemplary, and final causality, such that the aesthetic harmony of which all being is capable finds its place in the greater harmony of Christ, the Alpha and Omega of both the natural and the supernatural orders.

Generally speaking, arguments ex convenientia stand midway between arguments ex ratione and arguments ex auctoritate.⁵⁵ The fittingness of the position one attempts to establish by such arguments is decided by an appeal to the relationship between sacred mysteries or, in some cases, to one of God’s attributes, usually perfection or omnipotence. As such, they depend on the means a free agent takes to obtain certain ends, and the resulting argument often displays a particular elegance or aesthetic logic. For example, Pope Pius XII cited one of Francisco Suárez’s arguments ex convenientia when he defined the dogma of the Virgin’s Assumption into heaven: “Keeping in mind the standards of propriety,” he wrote, “and when there is no contradiction or repugnance on the part of Scripture, the mysteries of grace which God has wrought in the Virgin must be measured, not by ordinary laws, but by the divine omnipotence.”⁵⁶

Scotus, of course, uses a similar argument in his famous treatment of the Immaculate Conception when he argues that it is fitting that a most perfect redeemer redeem someone in the most perfect way. The Subtle Doctor establishes the Virgin’s redemption through preservation by appealing neither to a Scriptural or Patristic authority, nor to natural reason, but rather to the perfection of the Holy Trinity’s actions ad extra. Surely Father Narcisse will concede that Scotus’s potuit; decuit; ergo fecit—arguably the most famous argument ex convenientia—attains a “truly theological” level? Even the great Garrigou-Lagrange was not so churlish as to deny this obvious fact. In any event, when Scotus makes arguments ex convenientia, he assumes that we should always conceive God acting as a master craftsman or artist according to the aesthetic axiom primum in intentione est ultimum in executione. In this the Subtle Doctor is not so different from his contemporaries, except perhaps in the gusto with which he applies the axiom. The Subtle Doctor’s insistence that what is first in the order of intentionality is final in the order of execution is the red thread running through his widely divergent metaphysical and theological speculations. It is also the key to unifying them into a practico-aesthetic theology firmly rooted in the encompassing character of Christocentric exemplarity.

Indeed, there is no clearer model of an argument ex convenientia than Scotus’s famous argument for the motive of the Incarnation. While Scotus was not the first theologian to argue that the Word would have become incarnate even if men and women had not sinned—such was part of the memorabilia of the Oxford Franciscans—he was the first to address it as a question of convenientia in the actual historical order. In its simplest form, Scotus’s argument is as follows: God is love. He exhausts the very idea of love and loves Himself infinitely. It is unfitting, however, that an infinitely perfect love not have others to love. Insofar as he creates rational beings who are capable of returning His love, God wishes to be loved supremely. For God to be loved supremely, with the very love that He has for Himself, human nature must be elevated to the hypostatic union. Consequently, if God’s love is most perfect, it is supremely fitting that the Word become Incarnate even if men and women had not fallen.⁵⁷ Students of Trinitarian theology will undoubtedly recognize that the Marian Doctor has transposed one of the “necessary reasons” that Richard of St. Victor used to establish the Trinity of persons into an argument ex convenientia for the creation of rational beings.⁵⁸ In this, too, Scotus is not entirely unlike Aquinas, who also feels that it would be unfitting for a rational Creator to create a world without rational beings to contemplate Him. The Subtle Doctor does not hesitate to add, however, that God does not merely create rational beings, but rather rational beings that might return His love. In this respect, Scotus’s approach highlights the Augustinian analogy between the Trinitarian processions and the faculties of the human soul more readily than Aquinas’s does, but Scotus’s argument is more than a voluntaristic recasting of an intellectualist commonplace. Rather, Scotus’s argument is an explicitly Trinitarian account of the relationship between the Incarnation and creation expressed in terms of aesthetic convenientia. Because God loves in a most perfect manner, it is fitting that He will men and women in the very order in which they conform to His love’s first intention. In other words, since God’s own infinite essence is the first and adequate object of the divine intelligence and will, it is supremely fitting that the primary intention of the Holy Trinity ad extra be the Incarnation itself. Or, to state the argument negatively: it is most unfitting that the Word come into the world as a mere occasion, or for an end that surpasses Him.

At least in this one instance, we can detect a subtle difference in the ways the two great theologians make their Christological arguments ex convenientia. Aquinas and Scotus both believe the Incarnation to be convenientissimum: Aquinas thinks the Incarnation of the Word supremely fitting as a remedy for sin, but Scotus thinks the Incarnation to be supremely fitting for created being in general. So, too, Aquinas felt that he had to make an argument ex convenientia because he was discussing a hypothetical order, namely, a world in which man had not fallen; in contrast, Scotus thinks that evil, being a mere privatio boni, cannot determine God’s intention ad extra, which necessarily remains the same regardless of any contingent order, our own included. In this regard, convenientia for Scotus is not a notion to which one resorts when the Scriptural auctoritas is inconclusive, but rather an encompassing aesthetic sensibility, even a particular theological “style.” Scotus’s insistence that God always acts in a maximally perfect way—that He acts with a maximally rational and maximally ordered will—allows one to consider fittingness on a truly theological level, as a dynamic and nuanced composition of efficient, exemplary, and final causality that is altogether free of Neo-Platonic schemes of necessity. From a Scotist perspective, then, the Thomist account of convenientia offered by Father Narcisse does not grant the motto esse capax convenientiae its fullest meaning. It fails to present the Incarnation as convenientissimum and consequently cannot penetrate the deepest mystery contained in Aquinas’s wonderfully rich sentence, omnia in esse conveniunt.