Per Caritatem

Scotus recognized that an existential application of natural law, and particularly natural law in the extended sense, requires the proper exercise of practical reason. On the one hand, “Scotus insists upon the primacy of God’s will for an objective moral order”; on the other hand, Scotus emphasizes “the centrality of the human will in self-determination.”[1] In our lived experience, moral goodness becomes manifest in the creative interplay between these two wills. This is not to say that humans via their volitional choices and actions “define goodness,” as that is the prerogative of the divine will, which the Subtle Doctor emphatically claims is the objective standard for moral goodness.[2] Elsewhere Scotus describes in detail two affections intrinsic to the human will, the affection for justice and the affection for advantage.  The former moderates the latter and makes possible freedom from or freedom beyond natural appetite. However, as Ingham brings to our attention, a Scotistic view of ethics involves much more than an explanation of the inner workings of the two affections. Scotus’s analysis of moral goodness stresses “the relationship of goodness to beauty. It presents the moral act as a work of art and the moral agent as an artisan.”[3]

The use of an artistic model and artistic analogies to explicate moral theories is not foreign to the Western philosophical tradition. Aristotle, for example, employs musical analogies (as well as medical analogies) in his Nicomachean Ethics.[4] Thomas Aquinas references both types of Aristotlean analogy; however, his preference is to cite and develop the Philosopher’s medical images.[5] Scotus, in contrast, turns frequently to artistic and musical analogies and terminology in his reflections on ethics and the moral goodness of an act. In light of the Subtle Doctor’s preference for freedom over natural necessity,”[6] his choice of artistic, creative freedom as his preferred explanatory model is, as he might put it, fitting.

Given my current research, I want to engage in a slight digression that brings Foucault into the conversation. In what I have called elsewhere, Foucault’s “ethico-aesthetic turn,” he too describes ethical acts and ascetical practices as akin to works of art in which the agent, through self-disciplinary technologies acquires practical skills and a certain degree of self-mastery, enabling him or her to live a beautiful life—a life which itself is an ethopoietic work of art.[7] Like Scotus, Foucault values freedom and stresses repeatedly the contingent character of our world. Foucault’s discussion of creative self-elaboration, subject-formation, and his notion of power relations presuppose free subjects with rational capacities. However, unlike Scotus Foucault offers no explanation as to why humans are able to engage in such self-directed, uncompelled activities so that they might define themselves and pursue an authentic, beautiful life. Moreover, Foucault’s reticence to address directly the metaphysics of human being or what makes a human person a person worthy of dignity and respect is a weakness in his account not unrelated to his reticence to affirm at least some transhistorical, transcultural ethical norms. If there is nothing at all stable or unchanging about the ontology of human beings, then there is nothing upon which one might base a doctrine of universal human rights.[8] That is, rights will remain—and this seems to be the case for Foucault—epistemai-specific or tied to a particular cultural and historical period, not only socially constructed “all the way down” but in no way grounded in a universal, shared human nature or universal, essential capacities or features constituting the human person as such.

Returning to Scotus’s use of artistic and musical images to explicate ethical themes, Ingham observes how the Subtle Doctor’s strategy of bracketing reference to complete human fulfillment in God in the hereafter—that is, eschatological perfection—allows him, while not denying that our ultimate union with God is our telic destiny and happiness, to concentrate his attention on the concrete act in all its particularity as morally beautiful. The morally good act appears not as a means to a pre-determined end, but as an artistic whole within which harmony and proportion among several elements exist.”[9] By foregrounding the concrete act and the circumstantial aspects and context in which it must be considered for a proper assessment of the act’s moral value, Scotus opens the door for dialogue about ethics across religious and non-religious boundaries.  None of this is meant to downplay Scotus’s theology and its role as a source and influence for his philosophy. It goes without saying that Scotus’s theological commitments make him, like Augustine, skeptical about philosophy’s ability to deliver one to a life of complete human flourishing.[10] For the Subtle Doctor and the North African Saint, the human heart finds its ultimate repose and contentment in loving union with the Triune God. Nonetheless, because Scotus “rejects any natural or necessary connection between knowledge of an objective moral goal such as [Aristotle’s] eudaimonia [or beautific vision] and the human ability to attain it in this life (pro statu isto), he can without compromising his own theological beliefs, bracket talk of those aspects requiring a commitment to divine revelation, and discuss a theory of moral acts which, presumably, someone like Foucault or Fanon would find worthy of a hearing and perhaps even find appealing.

In Ordinatio I.17, Scotus describes the moral goodness of an act as a kind of comeliness, elegance, or ornamentation (quasi quidam decor) analogous to an indefinable yet perceptible embellishment beautifying a work of art. Describing the décor of a morally good act, Scotus writes:

it can be said that just as beauty is not some absolute quality in a beautiful body, but is the sum of all that is in harmony [convenientium] with such a body (for example, size, magnitude, figure and color), and also the sum of all its aspects [omnium respectuum] (which are those of the body and those of one another), so the goodness of a moral act is a kind of décor of that act, including the sum of due proportion to all to which it has proportion (for example to the power, to the object, to the end, to the time, to the place and to the manner), and this especially as those things which right reason says must harmonize [debere convenire] with the act: so that regarding all these things we can say that harmony [convenientia] of the act with right reason is that by which the act has been considered [posita] good, and that by which it has been considered [posita]—in whatever manner it might harmonize [conveniat] with other aspects—not good, since whatever act, if it is not in accord with right reason when performed [in operante] (for example, if it does not exhibit [habeat] right reason when performing it [in operando]), then the act is not good.[11]

In this passage, Scotus employs the term convenire or some version of its noun variant convenientia four times. I have chosen to translate convenire as “to harmonize” and convenientia as “harmony,” in keeping with Scotus’s preference for musical analogies. Here the idea seems to be that the morally good act, similar to a beautiful work of art, will exhibit just the right balance among its various aspects. Thus, the morally good act will be performed in the right manner, at the right time, in the right location and circumstances, among the appropriate people, with the proper end in view, and so forth.  For example, telling the truth, while typically a good act, can be told in an inappropriate manner, to an inappropriate conversation partner, and with an end in view which actually intends to harm an individual.

Scotus’s emphasis on the circumstances and context of the act, of course, sounds with Aristotelian echoes, as the Philosopher makes comparable statements in the Nicomachean Ethics.[12] In both Aristotle and Scotus’s account of morally good or virtuous acts, practical reason plays a prominent role. As the passage from Ordinatio I.17 demonstrates, Scotus lays stress upon right reason’s ability to perceive a fitting or harmonious combination of the various elements surrounding the act in question. If the act and its, as it were, harmonic background do not form a consonant whole—a consonance determined by the agent’s prudential reason, itself an intellectual virtue developed within a tradition as a musical skill is developed within a tradition—, then the act is not considered morally good.

In addition to his emphasis on the circumstantial context of an act, Scotus also underscores the objective dimension of the action. As Ingham explains, by the term “objective,” Scotus has in view the “object of the action. For example, in the directive ‘tell the truth,’ truth is the object of the action. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is an objectively good act because persons (both you and your neighbor) are worthy of love.”[13] Although Scotus claims that every moral act has an objective dimension discernable by right reason, the moral beauty of an act is not reducible to this dimension. The agent’s freedom in choosing a particular act also factors into Scotus’s account.  For example, one might tell the truth about a particular person’s illegal financial activities—not because it is the right thing to do given the deleterious consequences such activity has brought on others, but because one’s boss has demanded that the truth be told. There is a sense in which the act is objectively good because truth was the object of the action; however, the person uttering the truth is not brought into a better moral condition as a result of the action; his or her character is not made better. In contrast, when a person chooses freely to live a life of truth-telling and has not only one’s own good but the good of others’ in view, his or her actions “take on a free and rational quality which enhances their natural objective goodness.”[14] When this is the case, one’s truth telling is not only a morally good act (objectively speaking), but it is also an act that makes one a better person.[15]

Moral objects, or the objective dimension of an act, as we have seen are not, for Scotus, the final word, ending all moral discussion. Given what humans are—free, rational beings, Scotus argues that goodness and truth are fundamental moral objects well-suited to our nature and thus proper human goods, aimed at our fulfillment and perfection.[16] Because we are beings with rational powers, we seek reasonable, coherent explanations for our own actions, the actions of others, and for events occurring in our world. Likewise, because we are beings with volitional powers, we desire what is good, even if we are often mistaken as to what is in fact good for us. In short, whether real or apparent, truth and goodness “are significant moral objects; they are human goods. Indeed, truth and goodness are the two most fundamental moral objects; they respond to our human aspirations which express themselves in activities of knowing and loving.”[17]

Of course, Scotus differentiates between morally good acts and morally neutral or indifferent acts. For example, curling my hair in the morning, or tying my right shoe before my left shoe are morally neutral acts. Although both acts are chosen and performed freely, neither are morally significant, as the objects of the action—curly hair or tied shoes from right to left—are morally insignificant and do not augment or diminish my moral character.

In sum, for Scotus, a morally good act is multi-faceted, involving conscious intent, proper motive, a harmonious circumstantial context such as the proper manner, end, time, place, and so forth, and it is an act that perfects or improves the agent’s character. A morally good act, as Ingham states, “resembles not simply a whole, but a beautiful whole thanks to the developed ability of the moral expert in identifying significant data in light of principles, objects and circumstances.”[18] The moral expert not only acts “out of the appropriate moral motivation,” but she also “has a developed eye for beauty and seeks to create beauty in each act and moral judgment.”[19]

Given the significance placed on the dialectic of the two powers (potentia absoluta et potentia ordinata Dei) by the moderni (mentioned in the previous post), it would be helpful to spend some time discussing this distinction, its historical background, and its use by the theologians of the via moderna. The distinction of the two powers can be traced back to Peter Damien and Anselm of Canterbury.[1] St. Thomas Aquinas also recognized the distinction; however, he employed it as a limiting concept rather than making it a central focus.[2] For example, St. Thomas taught that from an initial set of possibilities God freely chose to actualize a particular subset. God, being both free and omnipotent (limited only by acting such that the principle of non-contradiction is upheld), could have willed to actualize a different subset. However, given his choice, God abides by his decision and the unrealized possibilities must be regarded as only hypothetically possible.[3] As McGrath explains, the initial set of possibilities open to God refers to his potentia absoluta, whereas the actualized subset refers to his potentia ordinata. This distinction enabled theologians to provide a defense against any charge of necessatarianism. As McGrath explains,

God cannot be said to act out of absolute necessity (neccessitas consequentis), in that he was free to select any possibilities he cared to for actualization, subject to the sole condition of non-contradiction (that is, God is unable to construct a triangle with four sides). Nevertheless, having selected which possibilities to actualize, God imposes upon himself a certain degree of restriction, in that he has freely chosen to be faithful to a certain ordering of his creation. The significance of the distinction between the two powers of God lies in the concept of necessity involved: how can God be said to act reliably, without simultaneously asserting that he acts of necessity?[4]

In other words, the dialectic provided a way to affirm the reliability of God’s actions, while rejecting that God acts necessarily. God in a sense freely limits himself and commits himself to that which he has ordained. The ordained order is a contingent consequence of God’s free decision in which he acts not by absolute necessity but by a “conditional necessity (necessitas coactionis or necessitas consequentiae).[5] So long as the dialectic of the two powers remains a dialectic and functions as a limiting notion, it can be a useful theological tool.

Notes
[1] Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), p. 55.
[2] See, ST I, q. 25, a.5, resp., “God does not act from natural necessity, but that His will is the cause of all things; nor is that will naturally and from any necessity determined to those things. Whence in no way at all is the present course of events produced by God from any necessity, so that other things could not happen. […] when the end is proportionate to the things made for that end, the wisdom of the maker is restricted to some definite order. But the divine goodness is an end exceeding beyond all proportion things created. Whence the divine wisdom is not so restricted to any particular order that no other course of events could happen. Wherefore we must simply say that God can do other things than those He has done.”
[3] Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), p. 55.
[4] Ibid., p. 56.
[5] Ibid., p. 56.

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.

This series will be a multi-part presentation of chapters 1-2 of Heiko A. Oberman’s book, The Dawn of the Reformation. Oberman divides chapter one, “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” into seven sections. This post will cover sections 1-3. The first section serves an introduction in which Oberman spells out his intentions for this chapter. Desiring both to avoid artificial categories employed by many historians, as well as atomizing tendencies, Oberman intends to show the “pregnant plurality of fourteenth-century thought” (p.1). In order to do this, a new perspective must be opened because our current perspective on fourteenth-century thought has been more or less determined by preceding scholarship (e.g., as a result of the excellent work of Martin Grabmann and Etienne Gilson). Grabmann and Gilson focused their work on the 13th century with St. Thomas Aquinas as the central reference point. Consequently, the tendency was to compare and evaluate the 14th century on the basis of Thomas’ system. In contrast, Oberman contends that St. Bonaventure and the Franciscan tradition (rather than St. Thomas) was the main source of inspiration for the 14th century and that Bonaventure above all “determines the questions asked and the answers given” (p. 3).

In section two, “The Myth of the Thomist Phalanx,” Oberman de-mythologizes the myth that Thomas unequivocally reigned supreme in the fourteenth century. Though not denying St. Thomas’ stature and the influence of his works in the universities, Oberman claims that the thesis of Thomist supremacy in the 14th century does not stand up under closer scrutiny. In fact, there was a good deal of opposition during this time to Thomas’ teaching. For example, the Dominican General Chapter had to defend Thomas four times in a period of 25 years before the ruling to teach Thomas “singularitur” was put into practice. One result of these decrees was “the lectura thomasina, the commentary on the Sentences of Lombard according the young Thomas” (p. 4). Secondly, in the 1320’s, because the opposition outside the Dominican order had become so strong, a group of early disciplines of Thomas called the defensores arose. When a selection of 230 errors of Aquinas (mainly dealing with metaphysical issues) was drawn up, the defensores in their attempt to address these concerns actually ended up “transmitting a metaphysical Thomas, without paying equal attention to Thomas as the interpreter of the Fathers and of the Scriptures” (p. 5). The emphasis on a metaphysical Thomas enabled a caricature of an Aristotelian, anti-Augustinian Thomas to take hold (p. 5). In addition, “the lectura thomasinaencouraged a stress on the young Thomas of the Sentences commentary [which Oberman claims is more semi-Pelagian] rather than on the mature Thomas of the Summa theologiae” [the mature Thomas sheds the semi-Pelagian aspects and adopts an Augustinian view of justification by grace alone] (p. 5). Oberman ends the section by suggesting that the metaphysical Thomas presented by the defensores perhaps explains in part why Aquinas did not appeal to philosophers and theologians well into the 15th century.

In the third section, “The Franciscan Hegemony,” Oberman discusses some of the effects of the anti-Averroist condemations of 1270 and 1277. First, we might point out that the anti-Averroist condemnations created difficulties for the “organic development of Thomism” and evoked the “Franciscan alternative” (p. 5). A second result of the Parisian condemnations was the appeal to the ruling that no theology should be taught in the philosophical faculty. This in turn allowed for a study of the “pure” Aristotle (i.e., an unbaptized Aristotle) by Duns Scotus and Ockham and the nominalists in contrast to St. Thomas’ synthesizing tendencies (i.e., his presentation of an Aristotle more easily “swallow-able” for Christianity). However, this “pure Aristotle” was significantly less (if even possible at all) harmonizable with the faith. This clear tension then with Christianity then evoked a reaction by the Franciscans and opened up what Oberman calls the “Franciscan Alternative.” The Franciscans viewed Averroism with suspicion and were (1) particularly alert to any association of God and necessity and (2) particularly welcoming of accounts of God as a freewilling Person. One of the main emphases of the Franciscan alternative was the Augustinian concept of promissio. God’s promissio or pactum (or eternal decree)—his “reliable commitment”—which precedes history (taking place in eternity “past”) and which when enacted initiates or underlies creation and redemption (historia salutis). Hence, it is rightly termed a metahistorical conception[1] and is set in contrast to the metaphysical ontology of St. Thomas. Oberman then highlights the total “otherness” of these two conceptions. “Whereas in Thomas’ metaphysical ontology the natural and the supernatural realms are organically joined by the Being of God in whom we participate by reason and faith, the metahistorical alternative retraces nature and supernature, creation and redemption, to the Person of God, and points to God’s will as […] the ‘ceiling’ of theology” (p. 6).

Oberman then goes on to discuss and relate the above findings to the 14th century use of the dialectics of the potentia absoluta (absolute power) and the potentia ordinata (ordained power). Here the potentia ordinata speaks of the domain of theology which finds its subject matter in God’s revealed will,[2] i.e., in what God actually does in time/history (according to his eternal decree) in creation and redemption (p. 7). Going beyond the potentia ordinata is to move into speculative territory and to engage in hubristic activity. In contrast, “[p]otentia absoluta marks the realm where speculative reason is no longer guided by faith. It is the domain of God’s unlimited freedom abstracted from his commitments de potentia ordinata” (p. 7). One should not, however, interpret or equate the anti-speculative affective thrust of the Franciscans with anti-intellectualism or intellectual laziness (p. 8).

Notes
[1] The nominalists of course considered themselves the more consistent advocates of the metaphysical conception of theology.
[2] I.e., in Scripture, the Fathers, and the doctrinal decisions of the Church.

It is commonly argued that the young Luther was a mystic, but then later, after dealing with the radical elements of the Reformation, he changed his position. Heiko Oberman, however, disagrees, pointing to numerous works of Luther over a large span of years and showing a continuity in his thought regarding mysticism, though of course with changes here and there. For example, Luther did not rule out “high mysticism” as impossible but rather cautioned against its dangers. For Luther, drawing from his spiritual (not “literal”)[1] exegesis of Leah and Rachel, accessus has priority over raptus—i.e., justification by faith through the incarnate and crucified word has priority over raptus by the uncreated word (the latter being that which was characterized by dangerous speculations not tethered to the Word). Commenting on 2 Cor 12:2 which reads, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows” (ESV), Luther writes, “who would consider himself so clean, that he would dare to pursue this, unless he is called, and like the Apostle Paul, lifted up by God.” As Oberman observes, “there is here transition here from ‘rare’ to ‘dare,’ […]; yet this transition is not so unexpected and is understandable in the light of the fact that in the prologue of the most important nominalistic Sentences commentaries, the Apostle Paul is introduced on the basis of II Cor. 12 as an exception to the rule de potentia ordinata according to which the status of the viator is contrasted with that of the beatus in that he is not yet a comprehensor, not yet face to face with God, and hence without immediate knowledge of God. Though Luther employs the concept of the potentia ordinata of God, so characteristic for nominalistic theology; in his commentary on Genesis, he gives it a Christological point instead of its primary epistemological meaning: the potentia ordinata is here not primarily the order established by the inscrutable free God who could as well have established another order, but it is clearly the order of redemption in Jesus Christ, established out of God’s mercy to provide sinful man with a refuge from danger” (The Dawn of the Reformation, p. 139)

Notes
[1] As Oberman notes, to insist on the literal sense (sensus litere) is for Luther to read Scripture as an unbeliever (consider Spinoza as a case in point)! Reading Scripture with the understanding of faith (sensus fidei) excels the sensus litere (p. 147).