Per Caritatem

Given the “crisis” state described in the previous section, Oberman seeks in this section (“The Search for New Security”) to focus on one aspect of the late medieval attempt to find “new forms of security, namely, the bridging of the distance between the sacred and the profane” (pp. 25-26). As Oberman explains, late medieval scholasticism’s own self-understanding—it’s views on the world, human beings, society etc.—are still largely unknown territory. However, late medieval scholasticism represents the high point of Franciscan thought.

Oberman goes on to say that he prefers the labels “nominalism” and “via moderna” for this period as they are more comprehensive categories and help us to see how far-ranging (both as to people groups and to its influence beyond the 14th and 15th centuries) these ideas were. The following constitute key elements of the nominalist movement as discussed in this context. First, there is the always-present connection between potentia ordinata (that which God has in fact decreed but which could have been otherwise) and potentia absoluta (the infinite possibilities available to the absolutely free God). With this dialectic we are reminded of the absolute contingency of our world based solely on God’s (free) decree (p. 27). Second, contingency must be properly understood. In other words, contingency should be understood both vertically (God-world-human beings) and horizontally (world-human being-future). Oberman adds that contingency here is not to be taken as that which is unstable and constantly threatened by potentia absoluta. Rather, “[t]he contingency of creation and salvation means simply that they are not ontologically necessary. The point is that in the vertical dimension our reality is not the lowest emanation and level in a hierarchy of being which ascends in ever more real steps to the highest reality, God” (p. 27). Third, nominalism insists that our world is not a shadowy reflection of higher levels of being, but instead has its own “full reality.” Fourth, nominalism issues a protest against “wild speculation” and “vain curiosity,” particularly against claims of reason that are not verified by tests of experience. Here you have nominalism providing the setting for modern science, “replacing the authority-based deductive method with the empirical method” (p. 28). One can also view the underlying intention of nominalism as a rejection of meta-categories that obfuscate reality. “Just as it rejected metaphysics to establish physics, so nominalism ventured to strip theology of her distorting meta-theological shackles, with the result that the Scriptures and the prior decrees of God were emphasized at the expense of natural theology” (p. 28). Fifth, we have an emerging new image of God as a result of the stress on God’s potentia ordinata. Here God is understood as the covenant God who has made a pactum with his creation (which includes salvation history and everything that entails) and human beings are seen as “contractual partners” with God in this covenant (p. 29). Here we should add that this emphasis on God as a “contractual partner in creation and salvation,” (p. 29) is intimately connected with the Pelagianist teaching facere quod in se est, a teaching which is here interpreted as God having determined in eternity “past” (in his decree) to accept and reward certain human moral efforts apart from a prior movement of grace. Thus, in the nominalist view, human beings are now seen as representatives or partners of God who are responsible for their own lives, society and the world – all of course based on and within the limits of God’s decree (p. 29).

Wrapping up the section, Oberman says that with all of the above points we can see nominalism’s “new vision of the relationship between the sacred and the secular by presenting coordination as an alternative to subordination and partnership of persons instead of a hierarchy of being.