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.
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
Articulus III: III. On Contingent Theology
Articulus IV: IV. On Christ as First Object
Articulus V: V. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question
Articulus VI: VI. To the principal Arguments of the Second Question
Articulus VII: VI. To the Third Question
Section I: A. Opinion of Others
Section II: B. Scotus’ own Response
Articulus VIII: VII. To the principal Arguments of the Third Question
Pars IV: Pars 4 - On Theology as a Science
Quaestio I: Questions 1 and 2 - Whether theology in itself is a science, and whether it is subalterning or subalternate
Articulus I: I. To the First Question
Articulus II: II. To the Second Question
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To the second question [n.208] I say that this science is not subaltern to any science, because although its subject would be in some way under the subject of metaphysics, yet it does not receive any principles from metaphysics, because no theological property is demonstrable in it through the principles of being or through reasoning taken from the idea of being. Nor too does this science subaltern any other science to itself, because no other science takes its principles from it, for anything else in the genus of natural knowledge has its resolution ultimately to some immediate principles naturally known.
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On the contrary: resolution does not stand at knowables save at the most perfect knowable, nor stand on the same, save at it as most perfectly known; line is more perfectly known in the Word than through its own movement; therefore, the resolution of conclusions about line does not stop save at the quiddity of line, or at the principles of it as seen in the Word. But the resolution is had through the Word seen. Therefore, the resolution of any conclusions and principles whatever stops at the vision of the Word. Therefore, that vision subalterns to itself the other knowledges, to all of which it gives evidence.
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To this I reply that although a metaphysician who knows distinctly the quiddity of a line or a whole would more perfectly know some immediate principle about a line or about a whole than a geometer who knows line and whole only confusedly, yet to the geometer is that immediate proposition per se known. Nor is it proved through the metaphysician’s proposition, if from a confused concept the truth of the combination or connection of the terms is evident, but only the metaphysician knows the same per se known truth more perfectly; this would be all the more so if it was only through diverse motives that line were known by diverse people and equally distinctly on the part of the object, albeit not with equal clarity. So it is in the proposed case. An immediate principle about line can be evident to an intellect moved by a line, and more clearly evident to an intellect moved by the Word to knowledge of line as line is more clearly seen; yet a principle known in one way does not prove itself known in another way, but in each way it is per se, although more clearly this way or that. But subalternation would require that the knowledge of the principles of a higher science be the cause of knowledge of the principles of a lower science, etc.1