Per Caritatem

Per Caritatem’s first annual Augustine Blog Conference is now underway! Below is the first of a series of posts bringing Augustine into conversation with philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, Reformation, Modernity, and Postmodernity. The format of the conference is as follows: an essay will be posted for a two days, then a short commentary on the essay will be posted and will remain on the site for two days or as long as (good) discussion continues.

AUGUSTINE AND THE MIDDLE AGES

Henry of Ghent and the Waning of the Divine Light

By Shane Wilkins, doctoral student of philosophy, Fordham University

The thirteenth century was a time of intellectual revolution. Many of the central debates of the middle and late 13th century focused on how to incorporate the intellectual riches of Aristotelian learning into the traditional framework of Augustinian theology. Of course, there was a wide range of views about how this should be done. On the one hand, were the radical Aristotelians like Boethius of Dacia and Siger of Brabant who believed Aristotle to have proven some claims of received dogma false. On the other hand were the radical anti-Aristotelians like Bernard of Clairvaux who asserted the truth of revealed dogma regardless what the pagan philosophers might have foolishly imagined themselves to have proven.

Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent were two figures who took the middle path. Both attempted to harmonize Aristotle with Augustine, holding on to the key doctrines of the Church while exploiting the intellectual riches of Aristotle. One central concern they both share is to show how Christian theology can be a scientific inquiry along the lines of the Aristotelian sciences (See Marrone Ch. 1). This methodological concern led to questions about the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and the process of cognition which creates knowledge (noetics). The most important disagreement between Thomas and Henry is the place they assign to the traditional Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination. Thomas severely revises Augustine’s theory of divine illumination in a naturalistic, Aristotelian direction. Henry, however, supports Augustine against Thomas, trying to find a more substantial role for illumination within the general Aristotelian explanation of cognition.

Heraclitus to Augustine

One important and interesting way to tell the history of philosophy is to describe it a a story about the nature and possibility of knowledge. Heraclitus famously observed that “everything flows”, a view which we can take as the claim that all the objects of sensation are permanently changing in such a way that there are no sufficient criteria to identify them. And if things have no criteria of identity, then they are not knowable, since how can you a know a thing that is never the same?

Parmenides accepts the Heraclitean claim that the senses are unreliable guides to the truth, but argues that one can, by the light of reason discover the truth of the matter. For instance, the senses tell us that there is change, but through reason we know change to be impossible. (Here’s a brief sketch: suppose x can change to not-x. In order for this to happen at the instant of change both x and not-x would have to be true. But this is impossible, therefore change is an illusion of the senses.)

Plato, too accepts the Heraclitean maxim about the untrustworthiness of the senses, but postulates a second world of supersensible entities, the forms. A thing here in the observable world is what it is in virtue of participating in a form and that form is the principle of intelligibility that allows one to have knowledge.

But how in the world is one supposed to have cognitive access to a supersensible world? Plato has to tell a sort of philosophical fairy-tale about how the immortal soul learns about the forms in between successive reincarnations and then subsequently forgets upon birth. “Learning” is merely the process of sensations jogging the soul’s memory, so to speak.

Augustine picks up this general line of thought about the untrustworthiness of the senses in his treatise On 83 Disputed Questions:

Everything that the bodily senses attain, that which is also called sensible, is incessantly changing…. But what is not constant cannot be perceived; for that is perceived that is comprehended in knowledge. But something that is incessantly changing cannot be comprehended. Therefore we should not expect pure truth from the bodily senses (qtd. in Pasnau).

Augustine does believe knowledge is possible, of course. Augustine thinks that Plato had essentially the right idea: knowledge is possible only by the intellect considering abstract universals separate from the objects of ordinary experience. The difference between Augustine and Plato’s position is that Augustine locates the “forms” not in some supersensible world of experience, but rather in the divine mind as the exemplar ideas by means of which God created the world.

But this raises the question how one is supposed to have access to these ideas in the divine mind? Augustine’s answer is that God shines his divine light into the mind of the individual, illuminating him and giving him access to these ideas. Just as grace is a gift of God to help the will, so too divine illumination is a special act of God’s by means of which he gives knowledge to the intellect.

In his earlier career, Augustine seems to claim that all knowledge as such required such illumination.  “The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth. You will light my lamp, Lord.” (Confessions IV, qtd. in Pasnau)

Augustine’s theory of illumination was the received tradition for the scholastics before the Aristotelian revival. Indeed, all the early Franciscan thinkers like Bonaventure had illuminationist explanations of cognition. However, Augustine himself recognized at least one serious problem with the doctrine, in his Retractions. If knowledge comes only through a special gift of God’s and God presumably does not give his gifts to the wicked, then it would follow that no pagan ever “knew” anything, strictly speaking. But this seems absurd.

Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas

Aristotle, of course, took a different path than Plato in attempting to explain how human beings have knowledge. The fundamental maxim of Aristotle’s theory is that all knowledge comes through the senses. The contrast between Aristotle’s position and that of the philosophical tradition beginning with Heraclitus is enormous. This difference in epistemology is also connected to a difference between Aristotle’s metaphysics and that of Plato. For Aristotle, the forms are the still principles of intelligibility, but Aristotle believes these forms inhere within the things of which they are forms rather than subsisting in some separate realm.

In the De Anima, Aristotle outlines a theory of cognition to explain the claim that all knowledge begins in the senses. On Aristotle’s theory, a sense like sight receives a likeness (L. species) of the form of the external object, then a faculty called the “common sense” assembles these species into a sort of composite mental picture called the phantasm. Then the active intellect abstracts the form from the phantasm and impresses that form in the passive intellect. According to Aristotle, the cognition of a tree is simply the result of a causal process that begins in sensation and ends with the intellect receiving the form of the tree. To be sure, there are still a few black boxes here which need further explanation, but what is remarkable about Aristotle’s theory is that it seems quite naturalistic.[1]

Thomas accepted Aristotle’s theory of cognition, but Pasnau argues that Thomas still tried to make a little room for illumination by identifying God’s gift of divine light with his bestowing the soul with the agent intellect. Here is the relevant passage which Pasnau cites:

The soul forms in itself likenesses of things inasmuch as, through the light of agent intellect, forms abstracted from sensible objects are made actually intelligible, so as to be received in the possible intellect. And so, in a way, all knowledge is imparted to us at the start, in the light of agent intellect, mediated by the universal concepts that are cognized at once by the light of agent intellect. Through these concepts, as through universal principles, we make judgments about other things, and in these universal concepts we have a prior cognition of those others. In this connection there is truth in the view that the things we learn, we already had knowledge of (De veritate 10.6c)

Even if Pasnau is correct that this passage constitutes Thomas endorsing illuminationism, it is clear that the theory is present in a sense very much restricted from the one which Augustine gave it. Whereas Augustine (and the early Franciscans) suggested that the process of illumination was an ongoing occurrence, Thomas seems to say that the illumination happens all at once “at the start” of life.

Henry of Ghent

Henry of Ghent’s Summa quaestionum ordinariarum begins with a long series of questions about the nature of knowledge and what is required for theological knowledge specifically. He is the first scholastic author I know of to begin his treatise with an epistemological prolegomenon in this way. Like Thomas, Henry attempts to weld Augustinian illumination into the Aristotelian picture of cognition. Henry, however, has a much more robust understanding of illumination than Thomas.  Although Henry’s theory is not absolutely consistent and his view develops over the course of his career, Marrone has shown that Henry never gives up the view (cf. Marrone, ch 1.).

The basic move behind Henry’s position is to draw a distinction between (i) the truth of the thing and (ii) the thing’s truth. There are also two different sorts of cognition corresponding to these two different kinds of truth, which we can call simple cognition and cognition through an exemplar.

Simple cognition of (i) is thoroughly naturalistic and Henry believes that through this kind of cognition Aristotle and the other pagan philosophers were able to acquire knowledge. This is knowledge based on the senses-I see the tree, and by means of the cognitive process more-or-less as Aristotle laid out, I gain knowledge of “the truth of the tree”, namely a veridical likeness of the tree in the mind. Henry thinks we have to allow that this level of knowledge can occur naturalistically because to claim otherwise is derogatory to the goodness of God’s creation (Cf. SQO a. 1, q. 1) and leads to the absurd consequences which Augustine had to retract that no pagan ever knew anything.

Nevertheless Henry thinks that there is good reason to believe that this kind of knowledge, though important, still falls short of the “pure truth” (syncera veritas) or the knowledge of “the thing’s truth”. Knowledge of the “pure truth” of the tree is knowledge of the eternal, unchanging exemplar in the divine mind by means of which God created the tree, and obviously, as Augustine says in the quote from 83 Questions, that sort of knowledge is not available through the senses, but rather through illumination. (SQO a. 1, q. 7). Indeed, without illumination, there would be no truly scientific knowledge (SQO a. 1, q. 2, responsio).

The actual process of illumination, on Henry’s view, goes like this. First, through the ordinary process of cognition, I attain a veridical exemplar in my own mind of the object I’m cognizing. Then, through the light of divine illumination, I can see the divine exemplar in the mind of God and conform my own mental exemplar to that divine one. Only in this way can one obtain the certain, clear and indubitable knowledge of truth required for a science of theology.

Scotus responds to Henry’s view

Henry’s view was immediately subjected to intense criticism. The later Franciscan thinkers Peter John Olivi and John Duns Scotus found much to fault in the position. Scotus, interestingly argues that there is something fallacious in Henry’s idea about how the divine illumination is supposed to cooperate with the fallible human intellect to produce certain knowledge.

When one of those that come together is incompatible with certainty, then certainty cannot be achieved. For just as from one premise that is necessary and one that is contingent nothing follows but a contingent conclusion, so from something certain and something uncertain, coming together in some cognition, no cognition that is certain follows (Ordinatio I.3.1.4 n.221, qtd in Pasnau).

If Scotus’s argument here is correct, then if the human intellect is so fallible as to be unable to have knowledge without divine illumination, then it cannot even have knowledge with divine illumination, since the combination of fallible (human mind) and infallible (illumination) still yield fallibility. On the other hand, Scotus argues, if you accept that the human mind is of itself able to attain certain knowledge, then illumination is simply an extraneous hypothesis.

Scotus’s arguments against Henry seemed to put the last nail in the coffin of the Augustinian theory of illumination. However, the way in which Henry provokes these questions-raising epistemology and skepticism as foundational issues-set the agenda for theology in the 14^th century.

Bibliography

Henry of Ghent, Summa Quaestionum Ordinariarum, Ed. Badius, Paris, 1520.

Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge in Henry of Ghent, Speculum Monographs, 1985.

Pasnau, “Divine Illumination” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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[1] Alexander of Aphrodisias and some of the Islamic neoplatonists tried to make the ‘agent intellect’ somehow separate from the soul, but this seems not to have been Aristotle’s own intention, cf. Pasnau.

Commentary on Williams’s Essay by Garrett Smith

Mr. Williams has given us some weighty food for thought in his essay on divine memory in the thought of three of the most difficult of Christian thinkers, and for this we must thank him. He has discussed an interesting link, perhaps even one heretofore unnoticed. Especially useful (at least to me, an avid reader of the scholastics but not of scholarship on them) was his note towards the end about the different models of the Trinity found among Franciscans and Dominicans regarding the explanatory role played by opposed relations and emanations.

Of course, such a brief essay leaves one wanting more; just how does Henry preserve divine simplicity when the divine intellect seems to be composed of a potential and actual principal? I can’t say such a move from Henry terribly surprises me, as nothing really surprises me about Henry after learning that the divine essence is “quasi-matter.” Also, Scott points out that Scotus errs in his interpretation of Henry, somehow because Henry also describes the divine intellects composition of actual and potential as having the ability to reflect on a “prior” act; again, how does Henry preserve divine simplicity while positing priority and posteriority in divinis? Does he develop some version of what in Scotist thought are the signa naturae? I have heard rumors that he does, at least with respect to the immaculate conception.

Regarding Duns Scotus, questions also arise; Scott writes in his conclusion “the persons as such are positively distinct such that when the Father produces an act of thinking, it is his, but when the Father generates the Son/Word, he generates a (formally) distinct entity who nevertheless is constituted by numerically the same divine essence that constitutes the Father”; now, I am a little confused by this. Is Scott here referring to the distinction between that by which the Father produces the Son and innascibilitas as being a formal distinction (if he is, then I believe he is correct), or is he rather referring to the difference between the Father and the Son (in which case, I think he may be mistaken)? The latter cannot be the case as the persons themselves are really distinct from each other while being formally distinct from the divine essence. But the rationes formales of the processions are only formally distinct from each other and the divine essence. That is, the products are really distinct, the processions are not. Indeed, Scotus’ argument against Godfrey on this issue is that a principle distinct only in reason cannot produce an effect that is really distinct.

A final question: it seems a commonplace in the literature to say as Scott does “Scotus views the divine essence as akin to an ‘immanent universal’”; by this are we to understand that the relation between supposit and nature is one of singular and universal? This is puzzling because Scotus himself explicitly denies this in both the Lectura and the Ordinatio (I d.2 pars 2 q.1-4 n.378:
“Ubi notandum quod natura non se habet ad suppositum sicut universale ad singulare”), offering a long series of arguments in the former work. Perhaps some qualification is usually given, such that this does not apply, and Scott for reasons of space did not make it.

All in all, an engaging, illuminating read and a great entry.

Per Caritatem’s first annual Augustine Blog Conference is now underway!  Below is the first of a series of posts bringing Augustine into conversation with philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, Reformation, Modernity, and Postmodernity. The format of the conference is as follows:  an essay will be posted for a two days, then a short commentary on the essay will be posted and will remain on the site for two days or as long as (good) discussion continues.

AUGUSTINE AND THE MIDDLE AGES

Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on Divine Memory:
Pillagers of Augustine’s De Trinitate 15.4.25-26

By Scott M. Williams
Oriel College, Oxford University

In this short essay I wish to take a look at a brief section of Augustine’s magisterial work De Trintate. Anyone who has read Augustine’s De Trin. knows that it is in large part a (hermeneutical) meditation on Holy Scripture and a speculative exploration that aims to find the most suitable imago Dei in human creatures as a model for understanding the unity and plurality of the Trinity of divine persons. One such imago Dei that Augustine seriously considers is a psychological analogy of memory, understanding and will (love). Of course, as Augustine quickly points out, this analogy has a heavy limp because if we were to assert that the Father is analogous to divine memory, the Son is analogous to divine understanding, and the Holy Spirit is analogous to divine love, then it would follow that each divine person in se does not have what the other two divine persons have, except by being related to that person. Augustine finds this consequence unacceptable because then e.g., the Father could not love except by means of the Holy Spirit. But the Father as such can and does love e.g., the Son as such. So this psychological analogy limps badly. Nevertheless, suppose we don’t assert that the Father just is divine memory, but that divine memory is the precise power by which the Father ‘generates’ the Son/Word; and, that each divine person in se ‘has’ divine memory, understanding and love, it is just that the Word proceeds from the Father because the Father ‘generates’ the Word by the generative power of memory. In De Trin. 15.4.25-26 we find Augustine nearing the end of his discussion of what it means for God the Father to ‘speak’ or ‘generate’ or ‘produce’ God the Son by the generative power called memory which is like a storehouse of knowledge. Prior to this discussion in De Trin. 15.4.25-26 Augustine has laid out some basic claims that we must heed if we are to understand his discussion of the Father’s ‘generating’ the Son/Word by the generative power of memory. First, God is entirely simple and not composed of parts like matter, time, potentiality and actuality (cf. Book 1). Second, God necessarily and timelessly is a Trinity of persons. Third, we can say ‘the Father is God, the Father is wise’ not precisely because the Father is related to the Son, but precisely because the Father is identical with the divine substance, and likewise for the Son and Holy Spirit (cf. Books 5-7). With these preliminaries in mind, I can now get to the issue at hand, namely what does Augustine say about the Father’s ‘generating’ the Son in De Trinitate 15.4.25-26?

Augustine: De Trinitate 15.4.25-26

When I look at this passage I see that Augustine suggests (at least) two ways we can consider what is sufficient for the Father’s ‘generating’ or ‘speaking’ the Son/Word. He presumes that the Son/Word is knowledge from knowledge (notitia de notitia). He counts the first notitia as divine memory, and the second notitia as the generated Word. But just how are we to think of the Father’s having generated his Son/Word?

On the first view (15.4.25 para.1) suppose that memory is like stored knowledge which you are not right now thinking about. Next, the Father’s act of thinking (directed at what is stored) generates the mental word, and that the mental word as such is not strictly identical with the Father’s ‘thinking’ but is a product dependent on the Father’s act of thinking. So, the Father’s act of thinking is like an instrument as it were that is sufficient to generate the Son/Word. In this first consideration of the Father’s generation of the Son/Word, the Father’s act of thinking by the generative power of divine memory is necessary and sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word.

However, after considering this way of characterizing what is necessary and sufficient for the Father’s generation of the Son/Word, Augustine considers a second view (15.4.25 para. 2-3).  With his doctrine of divine simplicity in mind, Augustine advocates that we ought to deny that the Father’s act of thinking is either necessary or sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. He doubts the need to postulate the Father’s act of thinking for the generation of the Son/Word because he is worried that by asserting this we would assert some sort of composition of potentiality and actuality in God. Suppose divine memory is the potentiality to think of something, and actually thinking of something is the actualization of memory. But if we wish to deny that God is constituted by the composition of potentiality and actuality, even if this potentiality is eternally actualized, then we should deny that a potentiality (divine memory) and an actuality (the Father’s act of thinking) would be sufficient to explain the Father’s having generated the Son/Word because we don’t want to suggest or imply a composition of potentiality and actuality in God. This last point about ‘suggesting to our readers’ is important because it shows that Augustine sees his readers as possibly misunderstanding what he has said in option one, and so he backs off being certain about the precise nature of the Father’s intellectual generation of the Son/Word. On this second view, the Son/Word is somehow generated by the Father’s memory, but we don’t know what it means to have generated the Son/Word other than meaning that the Son/Word has his origin from the Father’s memory.

As a result Augustine leaves options one and two open to his readers, just so long as they don’t commit particular errors that he has pointed out, like supposing that option one assumes a real composition of potentiality and actuality in God or that the Son/Word just is the Father’s act of thinking. It seems that Augustine fails to find an explanation which satisfies him as an account of the Father’s generation of the Son/Word that would be able to avoid misleading his readers into error. But, is there any theological explanation, or any explanation in general, that could guarantee that some reader would not misunderstand it? Augustine has a bit of anxiety over what Paul Ricoeur identifies as the ‘distanciation’ between author, text and implied readers. But Augustine’s De Trin. is not alone; all texts are cut adrift from the safety and security of their human author’s arms and preventions.

In summary, Augustine mentions (at least) two options for how to construe divine memory and the Father’s eternal generation of the Son/Word. The first view holds that the Father has the power (memory) to generate an act of thinking, and the Son/Word is somehow a by-product of this act of thinking such that the Son/Word is not precisely the Father’s act of thinking but a result of his act of thinking. And, the second view is that it is inappropriate given divine simplicity (no compositions in God) to suppose that the Father’s act of thinking has anything to do with the Father’s generation of the Son/Word because this might suggest to an implied reader some composition in God.

Henry of Ghent: How about Option One?

When Henry was teaching at the University of Paris from 1276-1292 much had changed in ‘speculative theology’ since Augustine’s time. Scholastic theologians like Henry of Ghent benefitted from various dialogue partners, most especially Plato, Aristotle, and arabian Commentators’ on Aristotle like Avicenna and Averroes. There were many other middle men too. Nevertheless, Augustine was a great authority too and greatly admired by folk like Henry of Ghent. In Henry’s hands were some rich sources by which he could put forth an account of the Father’s generation of the Son/Word. What then does he say of the Father’s generation of the Son/Word?

To read and study Henry of Ghent’s philosophical psychology is a very long and winding path. What follows is my interpretation of his take on Augustine’s two options mentioned above. Henry holds that memory is a necessary for the Father’s generation of the Son/Word, but does not see it precisely as a power generative of the Son/Word. Instead, Henry re-defines what ‘divine memory’ is; he denies that it is like a store house of knowledge because that would be an active potentiality in God. He suggests that the Father’s memory just is the Father’s act of thinking about the divine essence, and that the Father’s act of thinking is necessary for his generation of the Son/Word; however, the Father’s act of thinking is not sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. Henry develops the view that any intellect, created or divine, has a passive power and an active power. The passive power is the power to receive an act of thinking (caused by a present intelligible object); and, the active power can produce some intellectual product (e.g., a proposition, a syllogism, an intellectual habit, and the mental word) that is similar to a greater or lesser extent to what was thought about just beforehand. When the Father (eternally) passively receives the divine essence as an object for thought, he has an occurrent thought directed at the divine essence. And supposing he has this eternal occurrent thought, only then (as it were) does the Father generate an intellectual ‘copy’ of what he ‘was’ thinking about. So, the Father’s act of thinking is necessary but not sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. The Father’s generating the Son/Word by the active power of the divine intellect, which presupposes the Father’s occurrent thought, is sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. There are many more details in Henry’s philosophical psychology (e.g., Henry’s critique of ‘intelligible species’)  that brings him to hold this view about what is sufficient for the Father’s generation of the Son/Word, but there is no space for those here.

What Henry retains from Augustine is the idea in option one that the Father’s act of thinking is at least necessary for the generation of the Son/Word; but Henry rejects the assertion that this is also sufficient. What needs to be added is that the divine intellect has two powers: a passive power to have an occurrent thought, and an active power to generate a ‘copy’ of what was thought about beforehand. Of course, ‘copy’ needs to be explained but to do this I would need to discuss Henry’s category theory of substance and relation, his ‘material constitution’ model of divine persons (where the numerically one divine essence is the foundation of all personal properties, i.e., paternity, passive generation, and passive spiration), and his general account of passive and active powers. Suffice it to say, when I say that the divine Word is a ‘copy’ this should not entail that the Son/Word is numerically distinct from the singular divine substance/essence. Instead, it entails that the Son/Word is really distinct from the Father, but numerically identical with the divine substance/essence. There is math here that needs to be explained; but this math problem is in no way peculiar to Henry’s Trinitarian theology.

Before moving on to Duns Scotus I should mention that in recent years it has been discovered that Henry’s Trinitarian theology was somewhat innovative in the late 13^th century. By ‘innovative’ I don’t mean something like a revolution– but an organic branching out of the Christian tradition. Henry’s account may not ‘work’ in the end, nevertheless it provoked much discussion in the late 13^th century. What was unique to Henry is that he brought Augustine’s psychological analogy to the heart of Trinitarian theology, which is what Russell Friedman argued in his 1996 unpublished PhD. dissertation and what Jos Decorte has argued in various journal articles over the last 15 years. On the one hand Dominicans like Thomas Aquinas held that Augustine’s opposed relations account was the explanatorily prior account, and that stacked on top of it was an emanations account, and on top of that a psychological account. On the other hand Franciscans like Bonaventure had reversed the explanatory order such that the emanation account was first, and the opposed relations and psychological accounts were secondary. But Henry, who was a ‘secular priest’ that dabbled in Dominican, Franciscan and Victorine theological sources, argued that a psychological account is first in the explanatory order, then the emanations account and lastly the opposed relations account. Consequently, in the late 13^th century various Franciscan theologians championed Henry’s psychological cause, including John Duns Scotus. Of course, Scotus was no slack, he more often than not critically expanded Henry’s initial insights.

One caveat: although I do not mention it here, Henry has a critically developed Victorine Trinitarian theology. This comes to the fore in two ways. First, he intends to give ‘necessary reasons’ for why God is a Trinity of persons just as Richard St. Victor did by arguing from the nature of perfect love; although unlike Richard, Henry argues from divine intellect and will (love). Second, his account of the Father and Son’s volitional production of the Holy Spirit requires their mutual love. But for our purposes here, I have focused entirely on divine memory and the Father’s intellectual generation of the Son/Word.

John Duns Scotus: How About Option Two?

Duns Scotus disagreed with option one above, and went with something like option two. He denies that the Father’s act of thinking is necessary for the Father’s generation of the Son/Word. Like Augustine, Scotus agrees that divine memory is like a storehouse of knowledge and it is a generative/productive power. But even more, divine memory can produce two kinds of things, an operation (i.e. an act of thinking) and a product (i.e. the Son/Word). So, when God the Father uses the divine memory he does two things by two kinds of action. By memory the Father quasi-produces his own act of thinking. And, by memory the Father generates/produces the Son/Word. These two actions are causally unrelated to one another. Whereas Augustine and Henry (in option one) supposed that the Father’s act of thinking was at least necessary for the Father’s generation of the Son/Word, Scotus rejects this claim in favor of something akin to Augustine’s option two that denies the Father’s act of thinking has anything to do with the generation of the Son/Word.

If one finds Scotus’s position on this question generally amenable, there is a catch to be noticed. What are we to make of the claim that the Father ‘quasi-produces’ his own intellectual operation? I do not know what to make of it for the following reason. In his account of human cognition, Scotus argues that human memory is a productive power, and what it can produce is an act that is intellectual operation directed at some intentional content in the memory. So for example, suppose I know that JFK and C.S. Lewis both died on November 22, 1963 but am not right now thinking of this knowledge. Then at some later time, I will to produce an act of thinking that is directed at this knowledge. Consequently, if this account were true of humans, and this were part of the imago Dei in humans, why suppose that divine memory can have two kinds of productions, namely the Father’s production of his own act of thinking directed at knowledge in his memory, and the Father’s generation of the Son/Word. (By the way, Scotus defines divine memory as the ‘presence of the divine essence to the divine intellect’.) I’m sure Scotus has a subtle response to my worry, but I’ve yet to figure out what it is.

Conclusion

In De Trin. 15.4.24-26 Augustine discusses two ways to explain the Father’s generation of the Son/Word. In the first option he considers that the Father’s act of thinking is sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. But in the second option he denies that the Father’s act of thinking is causally related to the generation of the Son/Word because Augustine is worried about rejecting divine simplicity. As we saw above, Henry agreed with Augustine’s option one to the extent that the Father’s act of thinking does have to do with the Father’s generation of the Son/Word; although Henry denies that this is sufficient for the generation of the Son/Word. What needs to be clarified is that (a) the divine intellect has a passive power to have an act of thinking and an active power to generate the Word; and that (b) the Father’s act of thinking is presupposed for the Father’s generation of his Son/Word because the Son/Word must be a ‘copy’ of a prior ‘actually thought about object (i.e. the divine essence as occurrently known by the Father)’. Even more, on Henry’s view the Son/Word is not the Father’s own act of thinking (which is a view that Duns Scotus and some contemporary readers of Henry have attributed to Henry). There has been doubt about what Henry’s position is because Henry often described the divine intellect’s ‘active/productive power’ as the power ‘to reflect’ on a prior act of thinking of some object. But if one were to read far and wide enough in Henry’s massive Quodlibets and Summa, she should come to the conclusion that Henry’s rhetorical style sometimes obscures his teaching; with too many synonyms comes many obfuscations. On my view Henry does in fact follow Augustine’s prohibition against saying the Father in se does not know the divine essence except by means of the Son/Word. In one passage Henry outrightly denies that the Father is wise by being related to the Son/Word (cf. Augustine’s De Trin. Books 6-7; Henry’s Summa 39.6-7; 40.6-7).

Scotus rejects option one, and favors a version of option two. Scotus supposes that the Father’s act of thinking is causally unrelated to the generation of the Son/Word, even though divine memory is the same power productive of the Father’s own act of thinking of the divine essence, and the generated Son/Word. So, Scotus too follows Augustine’s prohibition against saying the Son/Word is the Father’s own act of thinking.

One reason Scotus rejects Henry’s position has to do with Scotus’s rejection of Henry’s (‘Latin’) teaching that the Father and Son (and Holy Spirit) are numerically one positive entity. Scotus thinks of the divine persons as analogous to Peter, James and John. These humans have the same kind-nature, although numerically distinct instances of this kind-nature; but divine persons have the same kind-nature (divine essence) and numerically the same instance of this kind-nature. Nevertheless, the persons as such are positively distinct such that when the Father produces an act of thinking, it is his, but when the Father generates the Son/Word, he generates a (formally) distinct entity who nevertheless is constituted by numerically the same divine essence that constitutes the Father. (Scotus views the divine essence as akin to an ‘immanent universal’.) Putting Scotus’s view in such curt terms is not a technically pristine presentation of his account of divine simplicity because I have not elaborated on his ‘formal distinction’ and theory of individuation; still we can get near the bookshelf even if limping. In effect, Scotus’s dispute with Henry’s psychological claims rests in large part on a dispute over metaphysical claims regarding a very (very) particular ‘existential’ distinction between Father and Son.

If I were preaching, I would say that Henry read one paragraph of Augustine’s De Trin. in support of his own view, and Duns Scotus read the next paragraph in support of his own view. Of course, this is but one instance of many when scholastic A and scholastic B had opposite views on a given matter but had equal support from Augustine. I conclude that not only did Augustine pillage the Egyptians, so too did scholastics like Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus pillage their’s and our beloved saint.

This is the first part of a multi-part post focusing on Duns Scotus’ teaching on the univocity of the concept of being. I have to say up front that I am quite sympathetic to certain aspects of Radical Orthodoxy’s critique of Scotus; however, in this series, I am simply attempting to understand Scotus’ teaching and clearly explicate the doctrine as understood by Scotus himself. Perhaps a second series might involve a summary of RO’s critique of Scotus. I would, however, be interested in receiving critical comments from Thomists and RO advocates in regard to perceived problematic aspects of Scotus’ teaching. I would also be interested in hearing from Scotists, as to whether or not I have accurately explicated Scotus’ position. Lastly, I want to stress that I am no Scotus expert–in fact, this semester has been my first exposure to reading a number of Scotus’ texts, and frankly, I find Scotus’ arguments to be incredibly complex.

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As Stephen D. Dumont explains, Scotus was well aware that his teaching on the univocity of being would generate controversy, as the medieval tradition up to his day held to an analogical doctrine of being in regard to predications between God and creatures (or substance and accidents). Scotus, however, rejects any form of the doctrine of analogy that does not rest on univocity. In terms of historical context, it is important to note that Scotus is “in dialogue” with Henry of Ghent whose teaching on analogy has its own specifics that distinguish it from other teachings on analogy (e.g., St. Thomas’ doctrine).[1] According to Henry, “there can be no real concept of being univocally common to God and creature because they communicate in no reality which could serve as the objective foundation for such a concept.”[2] Moreover, in Henry’s doctrine, because there is no concept common to both God and creatures, one ends up with two concepts that are completely distinct from one another—one proper only to God and the other to creatures.[3] In other words, if we predicate “being” of both God and creatures, the unity of this analogous concept is actually a disjunction because “being” is only properly predicated of God who (is) “possesses” being primarily and infinitely, whereas, creatures have being secondarily by relation of dependency, participation, or causality, and hence, necessarily enjoy a limited degree of being. Scotus finds Henry’s doctrine unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. First, the unity described is a kind of pseudo-unity. That is, the unity seems to result simply from two terms being included in the same set. Second, Scotus is concerned with scientific understanding and discourse, and this does not harmonize well with Henry’s disjunctive formulation. In other words, because the way in which God is “good” and a creature is “good” has no univocal point of contact, we seem faced with the problem of equivocation when predicating anything of both God and creatures. Third, Henry claims that the two discrete concepts of being “can appear to form a single, univocal notion.”[4] As Dumont explains, Henry contends that the reason for this appearance of a univocal notion is due to the fact that in both cases being is understood as undetermined.

“As proper to creatures […] being is conceived as undetermined by those limitations to which it is by nature subject. This is a universal concept formed by abstracting from creatures all determinations with which they are actually found. This concept of being is proper to creatures since the divine being cannot be conceived as a universal open to some advening determination. Rather, the being proper to God is undetermined in the sense that it is repugnant to any limitation. Being undetermined in this sense is infinite. In Henry’s technical language, being conceived as proper to creatures is undetermined privatively, as proper to God undetermined negatively. The first is the absence of determination in act alone, the second in act and potency. These two modes of indeterminacy are so similar, claims Henry, that the intellect fails to distinguish between them and conceives them as one. That is, when the intellect first abstracts from creatures the general concept of being, it appears to have a unified concept of being as absolutely undetermined, equally applicable to God and creature. In this the intellect is deceived, for there is no positive concept of being as absolutely undetermined apart from its proper modes of negation and privation. Instead the intellect has conceived in a confused fashion two proper and distinct concepts, one applicable only to God, and the other only to creatures.”[5]

Though it is the case that for Henry we end up with two discrete concepts of being (one proper to God and the other to creatures), he claims that the unity of the concepts are found both confusedly (as described above) and through intrinsic attribution due to the creature’s participation in divine being.[6] The metaphysician then has the task of analyzing and discerning these two disparate notions.

With a basic understanding of Henry’s view sketched, we now turn to the various ways in which Scotus articulates his teaching on univocity in response to Henry’s doctrine, as well as the creative ways in which Scotus attempts to overcome problems associated with theological predications (given God’s simplicity). In the final section, we shall discuss Scotus’ argument for being as the primary adequate object of the human intellect, which will include sections on his quid/quale distinction in connection with the primacies of commonness and virtuality.

Notes:
[1] As Dumont is quick to point out, “it is worth stressing that the debate is over the univocity of the concept of being. Both Henry and Scotus hold that being is not a single reality (res, realitas) common to God and creatures but two wholly diverse realitates proper to each. At issue is whether any concept which is positive and real, as opposed to a mere second intention, can be applied univocally to these two diverse realitates” (“The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century,” n. 6, p. 3).
[2] Ibid., p. 5.
[3] Ibid., pp. 5-6.
[4] Ibid., p. 6.
[5] Ibid., pp. 6-7.
[6] Ibid., p. 8.

Gilson has a brief but dense section in his Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages on the very interesting figure, Henry of Ghent. According to Henry, the divine ideas are not created and are themselves God. They have no subsistence of their own and no actual being besides that of God (p. 450). Yet, “since an Idea represents a possible creature, it can be said to be distinct from God at least to the extent that it is in him a distinct object of cognition” (p. 450). We may also say that (1) “God first knows his own essence in itself;” (2) “in the very act by which God knows his own essence, he knows all creatable things according to the being they have in his own knowledge of them;” (3) “God knows the being which possible creatures have in themselves and as distinct from his own being” (p. 450). Being that is “proper to the creature considered in itself,” Henry calls “essence.” An Idea then is the combination of the “essence of each possible creature” with the “content which defines it.” An Idea “represents a possible imitation of the divine essence. As such, this ideal essence has a being of its own; otherwise it would not be the idea of a possible creature; it would be the self-knowledge of God qua God. Its being, however, is not an actual being added to that of God. It is the being that belongs to a known essence precisely inasmuch as it is known. The being of an essence taken precisely qua essence is what Henry calls ‘being of essence’ (esse essentiae)” (p. 450). As Gilson explains, Duns Scotus will strongly criticize this doctrine. Gilson also notes that Henry rejects Avicenna’s understanding of the actualizing of essences (a necessitarian conception). “In the doctrine of Avicenna, God has a will, but his will cannot not consent to the consecutions of Ideas which eternally unfold themselves in the divine mind. While God is thinking the intelligible order of all the possibles, they come to be according to the same order; the eternal speculation of God is eternally being actualized by his will” (p. 451). In contrast, Henry’s view claims that God freely creates certain possibles. In addition, “the fact that God freely chooses from amongst an infinity of possibles does not affect the content of their essences; it simply turns their being of essence into a being of existence, which is the proper effect of creation” (p. 451).

Also, according to Henry, the act of creation and the divine being are in God not distinct. “In creatures, creation is nothing more than their relation to the cause of their actual being. What we call existence is nothing else than being itself taken as an effect of this causal relation. There is therefore no such thing as a distinction or composition of essence and existence.”[1] […] To Henry of Ghent, an existent is simply a possible being actualized by its cause. Once actualized, it is an individual in its own right; each created form is in a fully constituted subject (suppositum) which is distinct from all the other ones in virtue of its very unity. A being is distinct from the others because it is one; it is one because it is not divided from itself; consequently, every actual being is individual in virtue of a ‘twofold negation’: a negation which denies of every being all difference with respect to itself, and a negation which denies of every being all identity with any other one. As can be seen, Henry answers the problem of the cause of individuation by a description of its effects (p. 451).

Questions:
(1) What is Scotus’ criticism of Henry’s doctrine of esse essentiae? Any other relevant Henry of Ghent contrasts/comparisons with Scotus are quite welcome (Garrett, where are you? : )
(2) What is the ultimate telos of the Divine Ideas—actual existence as distinct from God’s own being? If so, does that cause difficulties in regard to creation being a “free” creation of God?

Notes
[1] In a footnote, Gilson further elucidates Henry’s position: “In God, every creature has its own being of essence, but, naturally, not its being of existence, so it can have no composition of essence and existence in God. In itself, it has the same being of essence which God eternally knew he would create outside of his own intellect. Its actual existence precisely consists in being a created essence; in other words, its existence is its essence after it has been created. […] Consequently, there is no distinction of essence and existence in created beings. ‘Esse’ is not ‘res aliqua super essentiam creaturae.’ If esse is added to essence, is it a substance or an accident? It cannot be an accident because, before its creation, there is no essence to receive existence. In fact, existence is not an extrinsic participation by mode of inherence, it is produced by creation. Strictly speaking, only God is his own existence. Creatures are not their own existence in the same sense; what is true is that creatures are not really distinct from their own esse. Their existence does not happen to their already existing essence (in God, it has no existence of its own); it is ‘an effect of the creator in that which receives being.’ Nevertheless, since an essence as such is something else than an existing essence, their distinction in our mind is not only of reason, it is that of two notions (non solum ratione differunt sed etiam intentione). This means that it takes two distinct conceptions to signify as essence and an existent” (note 44, p. 761).