Johannes Duns Scotus, was b. in 1260 or 1274, according to Matthæus Veglensis and Dempster, at Duns, in the southern part of Scotland; according to Leland and others, at Dunstane, in Northumberland; according to Wadding, in Ireland; d. at Cologne, 1308. He early became a Franciscan, and studied theology at Oxford, under William de Vuarra (Varro). When the latter went to Paris, Duns succeeded to his chair, and taught in Oxford with great success. He is said to have had three thousand pupils. It was especially his keenness and subtlety which impressed people; for which reason he received the title of doctor subtilis. While in Oxford he wrote a commentary upon the Sentences of the Lombard,—“Opus Oxoniense.” About 1301 he went to Paris, and there he also lectured on the Sentences; which lectures afterwards were published under the title “Reportata Parisiensia.” In 1305 he obtained the degree of a doctor. After the order of Clement V. he held a grand disputation with the Dominicans concerning the immaculate conception of Mary. He came out victorious. Even the marble statue of the Virgin, standing in the disputation hall, bowed to him when he descended from the cathedra; and it became a rule in the university, that he who obtained a degree there should take an oath to defend the doctrine of the immaculate conception. In 1308 Duns was sent to Cologne, by the general of his order, to contend with the Beghards, who were numerous in those regions, and with the Dominicans, who refused to accept the new dogma. He was received with great honors, but died in the same year from apoplexy. The best edition of his works is that by Wadding, Lyons, 1639, in 12 vols. fol.
Hitherto all School-men were (like the World before the building of Babel) “of one language, and of one speech;” agreeing together in their opinions, which hereafter were divided into two Regiments, or Armies rather, of Thomists and Scotists, under their several Generals opposing one another. Scotus was a great stickler against the Thomists for that “sinful opinion, that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin;” which if so, how came she to rejoyce in God her Saviour? He read the Sentences thrice over in his solemn Lectures, once at Oxford, again at Paris, and last at Colen, where he died, or was kill’d rather, because, falling into a strong fit of an appoplexy, he was interred whilst yet alive, as afterwards did appear. Small amends were made for his hasty burial, with an handsome Monument erected over him, at the cost of his Order (otherwise, whether a Scot, Scholar, or Franciscan, he had little wealth of his own), in the Quire before the High Altar. On his Monument are inscribed the names of fifteen Franciscans, viz. three Popes, and two Cardinals on the top, and ten doctors (whereof six English) on the sides thereof; all his Contemporaries, as I conceive.
Less of a moralist than Saint Thomas, he was a greater dialectician.
Not that we have found that language so entirely rugged and uncouth as it is often represented to be. Aquinas is in many ways less difficult; all who desire to have their intellectual food cooked for them will resort to him. Those who like to prepare it, and even now and then to hunt it for themselves; will find their interest in accompanying Duns.
Duns Scotus is an Aristotelian beyond Aristotle, a Platonist beyond Plato; at the same time, the most sternly orthodox of Theologians. On the eternity of matter he transcends his master: he accepts the hardy saying of Avicembron, of the universality of matter. He carries matter not only higher than the intermediate world of Devils and Angels, but up into the very Sanctuary, into the Godhead itself…. God is still with him the high, remote Monad, above all things, though throughout all things. In him, and not without him, according to what is asserted to be Platonic doctrine, are the forms and ideas of things. With equal zeal, and with equal ingenuity with the Thomists, he attempts to maintain the free will of God, whom he seems to have bound in the chain of inexorable necessity. He saves it by a distinction which even his subtlety can hardly define. Yet, behind and without this nebulous circle, Duns Scotus, as a metaphysical and an ethical writer, is remarkable for his bold speculative views on the nature of our intelligence, on its communication with the outward world, by the senses, by its own innate powers, as well as by the influence of the superior Intelligence. He thinks with perfect freedom; and if he spins his spiderwebs, it is impossible not to be struck at once by their strength and coherence. Translate him, as some have attempted to translate him, into intelligible language, he is always suggestive, sometimes conclusive.
Between his Scholasticism and the Romanic Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, there is, indeed, this distinction: that in the former, clearer traces are discernable of the ethical tendency which characterizes the Germanic mind. Scotus presents to us the picture of a vigorous wrestling mind, in which a new principle travails unto birth, still struggling with the chains imposed upon it by the antagonistic principle which had held sway. Whereas, previously, the theoretical and physical, necessity and nature (essence), had held almost undisputed sway, he now puts forth the claims of free will, though his mode of doing so is marked by abruptness and exclusiveness.
As an opponent of Thomism he founded the philosophical and theological school names after him. His strength lay rather in acute, negative criticism of the teachings of others, than in the positive elaboration of his own. Strict faith in reference to the theological teachings of the Church and the philosophical doctrines corresponding with their spirit, and far-reaching skepticism with reference to the arguments by which they are sustained, are the general characteristics of the Scotist doctrine. After having destroyed by his criticism their rational grounds, there remains to Scotus as the objective cause of the verities of faith only the unconditional will of God, and as the subjective ground of faith only the voluntary submission of the believer to the authority of the Church. Theology is for him a knowledge of an essentially practical character.
If the disputed question, as to whether Duns Scotus was an Englishman, a Scotchman, or an Irishman were to be decided by asking which land was the most devoted to the extension of his fame, he belongs unquestionably to Ireland.
He was rightly named by the crowds that flocked round him in Paris and Cologne the Subtle Doctor; he made distinctions and definitions until he seemed to bewilder himself, but his erudition, his patience, his industry, and his dialectic skill, have not had a compeer altogether in European literature. The services he rendered to the cause of psychology and theology have never been fairly acknowledged; by giving extreme and undue prominence to one principle, which had been almost entirely overlooked by his predecessors, he banished others equally as important into the shade, and thus vitiated his whole system as a system, but he undoubtedly drew attention to some points which have never since lost their hold in philosophy or dogma, and which have tended to give increased richness and fulness to each of them. Had his genius been less critical and more philosophic, less merely microscopic and more comprehensive, he might have exercised an influence in no degree less mighty than his great Dominican rival.
His chief service is that by his unmatched logical faculty he was able to erect a battery of criticism against the dominant school of thought which saved it from the perils of absolutism. The controversies for the moment cleared the air and gave room for reflexion.
Scotus was appropriately named “doctor mirabilis.” So far did he push the process of hair-splitting analysis that he was driven to invent many new terms. His style, compared with that of his Scholastic predecessors, is marked by its barbarous latinity. A sincere Christian believer, and standing in his own day within the lines of admissible orthodoxy, he yet lacks the religious depth of Aquinas. In philosophy, he did not stop with Aristotle, but was more Platonic in his Realism. In his theology, he was Semi-Pelagian. The effect of the teaching of Scotus was to begin the work of undermining the Scholasticism of which he was so famous a leader. This effect was produced, partly by his critical treatment of the arguments drawn from reason for the propositions of the creed. Very little space was conceded to possible demonstration.
