Ordinatio
John Duns Scotus (1266–1308)
John Duns Scotus's Ordinatio (also called the Opus Oxoniense) is his revised, authorially prepared commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences. Scotus began arranging it for publication around 1300 after lecturing at Oxford and continued revising material associated with Paris until his death in 1308; the work therefore remains unfinished and textually layered. Its disputations on God, creation, individuation, freedom, grace, and the Incarnation helped establish Scotism as a major alternative within late-medieval scholastic theology. Schola uses the Vatican critical-edition tradition for the Latin and a separately sourced English translation.
✦ This work is being completed — add a section.
Prologus I: Prologus Totius Operis
Pars I: Pars 1 - On the Necessity of Revealed Doctrine
Quaestio I: Single Question: On the Necessity of Revealed Doctrine - Whether it be necessary for man in this present state for some doctrine to be supernaturally inspired
Articulus I: 1. Controversy between Philosophers and Theologians
Section I: A. Opinion of the Philosophers
Section II: B. Rejection of the Opinion of the Philosophers
Articulus II: II. Solution of the Question
Articulus III: III. About the Three Principal Reasons against the Philosophers
Articulus IV: IV. To the Arguments of the Philosophers
Articulus V: V. To the Principal Arguments
Pars II: Pars 2 - On the Sufficiency of Revealed Doctrine
Quaestio I: Single Question: On the Sufficiency of Revealed Doctrine Whether the supernatural knowledge necessary for the wayfarer is sufficiently handed on in Sacred Scripture.
Articulus I: I. On the Truth of Sacred Scripture
Articulus II: II. Principal Response to the Question
Articulus III: III. To the Principal Arguments
-
To the principal reasons. To the first reason [n.95]. To the minor I reply that the law of nature was content with fewer things, which came down by memory through fathers to sons. Those men were also more endowed in natural powers, and therefore a modicum of inspired doctrine could suffice them. Or it should otherwise be said to this and to that about the law of Moses, that the ordered progress of Scripture shows its dignity. It is plain from Augustine, 83 Questions q.53 n.4.
-
To the second [n.96] I say that that is more sweetly grasped that is hid under some literal statement than if it were said expressly; and therefore the fact that what is express in the New Testament was veiled under figures in the Old contributes to devotion, and this as to the ceremonies; but as to the histories, both are examples declarative of the law. Likewise, from the whole process of Scripture is made plain an ordered government with respect to man and the whole creation.
-
To the third [n.97], Origen in his homily On Noah’s Ark [Homilies on Genesis, hom. 2 n.1]: “In Scripture an opportune silence seems to have been held on this point, about which the nature of the consequence itself would sufficiently teach.”1 Hence many necessary truths are not express in Sacred Scripture, although they be virtually contained there as conclusions in the principles; about the investigation of which was the labor useful of doctors and expositors. If you object that many things in human acts are doubtful as to whether they are mortal sins or not, even after one supposes all the teachings of the doctors and expositors, – I reply: the way of salvation is not doubtful, because a man ought to guard himself from such things as from dangerous things, lest, while he exposes himself to danger, he fall into sin. But if someone wants to seek salvation but by not caring2 expose himself to the danger where perhaps from the kind of act there would not be mortal sin, yet he will sin mortally by exposing himself to such danger, as will be touched on elsewhere [4 d.5 q.3 n.2; d.30 q.1 nn.4-5].