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.
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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
Pars III: Pars 3 - On the Object of Theology
Quaestio I: Question 1: Whether theology is about God as about its first object.
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The question is whether theology is about God as about its first object. And that it is not is argued in two ways: [Argument from the First Way] – The first is that something else is the subject of theology, therefore not this. The antecedent is proved in several ways:
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First thus, from Augustine On Christian Doctrine 1 ch.2 n.2: “All Scripture is of things or of signs;” therefore things or signs are the subject.
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Again, Scripture has four senses: the anagogical, the anagogical, the tropological, the allegorical, and the historical or literal; but to each of these senses there corresponds some first subject, just as to any other science having only one sense there corresponds a subject in accord with that sense; therefore here there are four subjects.
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Again, that man is the subject is proved by the authority of the Commentator [Eustratius, Explanations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Morals] on Ethics bk.1 in the prologue, because, according to him there, moral science is about man as to his soul, medical science is about man as to his body. From this is taken the proposition: ‘all practical science has for first object that for which the end of the practical science is acquired, and not the end itself’; but the end of this science is acquired for man, not God; therefore, man is the subject of this science and not God.
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Again in another way, though it comes as it were back to the same: the end of a science is to attain through its act its first object by inducing into it the form principally intended by the science, namely, as in speculative science, to induce into it ‘being known’, because knowledge is there principally intended, in practical science to induce the form to which its action is ordered; now the end here intended is moral goodness, which is not intended to be induced in God but in man; therefore man is its first object.
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[Argument from the Second Way] – The second way to the proposed conclusion is to show that God is not theology’s first subject. This is proved first by the authority of Boethius On the Trinity ch.2: “A simple form,” he says, “cannot be a subject.”
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Again, matter does not coincide with the other causes, neither in the same thing in number nor in the same thing in species (Physics 2.7.198a24-27); but God is the end and efficient cause of this science; therefore he is not the matter of it.
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Again, from Posterior Analytics 1.28.87a38-39, the subject of a science has parts: principles and properties. But God does not have integral parts, since he is altogether simple, nor subjective parts, since he is singular of himself; nor does he have principles, since he is the first principle, nor properties, because a property is present in a subject in such a way that it is outside the subject’s essence; in this way is nothing present in God.
132: To the Contrary: Augustine City of God VIII ch.1: “Theology is discourse or reasoning about God.”