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
Pars III: Pars 3 - On the Object of Theology
Quaestio I: Question 1: Whether theology is about God as about its first object.
Quaestio II: Question 2: Whether Theology is about God under some Special Idea
Quaestio III: Question 3: Whether Theology is about All Things from the Attribution of them to its First Subject
Articulus I: I. Preliminary Remarks
Articulus II: II. About Necessary Theology
Section I: A. To the First Question, speaking of Theology in itself
Section II: B. To the Second Question, speaking of Theology in itself
Section III: C. To the First Question, speaking of Our Theology
- To the first question about our theology [nn.124, 141] I say that when a habit exists in some intellect having evidence from the object, then the first object of that habit, as it belongs to the habit, does not only contain the habit virtually but as known to the intellect itself it contains the habit in such a way that the knowledge of the object in this intellect contains the evidence of the habit as it is in this intellect.1 But in a habit not having evidence from the object but caused from elsewhere, one must not grant that its first object has its two stated conditions; rather one should not grant either condition, because it is just like a habit, as it is in this respect, as if it were about things contingent that in neither way have the first object. To such a habit, then, not evident from the object, there is given a first subject about some first known thing, that is, some most perfect first thing, that is, in which the first truths of the habit immediately inhere. – Our theology is a habit not having evidence from the object; and also the theology that is in us about necessary theological matters does not, as it exists in us, more have evidence from the known object than the theology that is about contingents things does;2 therefore to our theology, as it is ours, one should only give a first known object about which the first truths are immediately known. That first object is infinite being, because this is the most perfect concept that we can have about what is in itself the first subject,3 which subject, however, has neither foresaid condition, because it does not virtually contain our habit in itself, and much less does it, as known to us, contain the habit itself. Yet because our theology about necessary things is about the same that theology in itself is about, therefore a first object is assigned to it to this extent, which is to contain the truths in themselves, and this is the same as the first subject of theology in itself; but because it is not evident to us, therefore it does not, as known to us, contain those truths, indeed rather it is not known to us. When you argue, then, that “therefore it is not the first object of our habit” [n.146], I reply: it is true that it is not the first object giving evidence to us, but it is the first subject containing all the truths in itself, and of a nature or able to provide evidence sufficiently provided it were known. These things are said to the question, or to the two questions, about the theology of necessary things [nn.124, 133, 141, 151-168].