Duns Scotus' Parisian Proof for the Existence of God

DUNS SCOTUS' PARISIAN PROOF FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD For over three decades now the Scotistic Commission has been working on the difficult and monumental task of preparing a critical edition of that most important source book of Scotus' theological and philosophical doctrines, known as the Ordinatio or revised commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Of the four books that comprise it only Bk. I and those questions contained in the first three distinctions of Bk. II have been published so far by the Vatican Press. Independent evidence of Scotus' presence at the Oxford friary in the year 1300, as well as the explicit mention of this date in the second question of the Prologue, indicates he had begun work on his Ordinatio and had probably finished a considerable portion of it before going to Paris to begin his lectures on Lombard in the fall of 1302. Since John's Oxford lectures as a bachelor "sententiarius," given before the turn of the century, provided the ground plan for this "Ordinatio," the editors of the Vatican Opera omnia wisely chose to edit the parallel passages from Bk. I and Bk. II, distinctions 1 to 3 under the title of the Lectura before attempting the edition of any reports of his later lectures on Bk. I given at Paris. Though Luke Wadding had intended to edit the latter under the title of what he called the "reportata parisiensia," we know from the pioneering study of Auguste Pelzer, "Le premier Livre des Reportata Parisiensia de Jean Duns Scot," Annales de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie 5 (1923) 449-491, and from the "Adnotationes" to vol. VII of the Vatican edition (p. 4*) that for the first book, Wadding made use of the greatly abbreviated report of William of Alnwick, known as the Additiones magnae found in Codex V (Vatican lat. 876) instead of longer "Reportatio magna" examined by Scotus himself. Known as Reportatio I A this longer "examined report" of the "lectura Doctoris subtilis in universitate parisiensi" unquestionably deserves to be treated with special respect as a primary or reliable source of Scotus' own thought in contrast to the other "reports" of Duns Scotus' Parisian Proof for the Existence of God249 lectures on Bk. I mentioned in the introductory "disquisitio historicocritica " to volume I of the Vatican edition (p. 145*). This "report" also seems to be the source of a great many of the embeUishments added later to the original "liber Scoti" and cited as "textus interpolati " in the critical apparatus of the Vatican edition of the Ordinatio. Of the remaining four "reports" in Bk. I, Rep. I B (found in cod. F. 69 of Worcester Cathedral Library was edited at Paris, 1517), Rep. I C (cod. 12 of the public library of Todi) is a report of Scotus' Cambridge lecture, Rep. I D is a shorter "reportatio fratris H. de superiori Alemannia" found in codices Borgh. lat. 50 and 89 of the Vatican library. Rep. I E, on the other hand, is the report of a lecture by Henry of Harclay, a contemporary of Scotus who later became chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1311 and died at Avignon 1317. (Cf. Vatican edition, vol. IV, p. 3*-i5*). Scotus' proof for the existence of God remained essentially the same throughout the several revisions he gave it after its initial presentation at Oxford. Hence this seemed to be a suitable portion of his Paris lectures to present to scholars interested in tracing a possible development of his thought or in reconstructing the probable time sequence of his discussions on this or other topics of Bk. I of his Sentences commentaries. Since the Vatican edition of the Ordinatio version of the proof makes frequent footnote references to Rep. I A, we have tried to number the paragraphs of our text in such a way as to correspond to the explicit sections referred to there. Inasmuch as the parallel texts of the proof in the Lectura, Ordinatio , and De Primo Principio are also available in English translation, it seemed useful to add Wolter's translation to the present Latin edition of Scotus' Parisian discussion of this topic. Of the five manuscripts used...