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
Pars V: Pars 5 - On Theology insofar as it is a Practical Science
Quaestio I: Question 1 - Whether theology is a practical or a speculative science
Quaestio II: Question 2 - Whether a science is called practical per se from order to action as to its end
Articulus I: I. What Action [Praxis] is
Articulus II: II. How Practical Knowledge is Extended to Action
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From this article [nn.228-235] the second [n.227] is plain, for this extension consists in a double aptitudinal relation, namely of conformity and natural priority; as to priority, the thing is plain from what has already been adduced from the Ethics [nn.231, 233]; about conformity there is what is had in the same place, when he says that “truth of practical consideration is being confessedly disposed to correct appetite.”
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I said ‘aptitudinal’ because neither relation is required to be actual. For the fact that an action actually follow the consideration that is conform to the consideration, this is altogether accidental to the consideration and contingent;1 for if it were called action from actual extension, no action would be necessarily practical, but the same action would sometimes be practical, sometimes theoretical, which nothing is; therefore a double aptitudinal extension or aptitude for extension is enough.2 This is made clear because practical knowledge is commonly conceded to be extended to action as directive to directed or as regulative to regulated. But knowledge’s being naturally prior to action and conformed to it is not its being conformed to action as to something prior, but its being conformative of action as of something posterior, or its being what action must be conformed to, which is for knowledge to direct and rule in action. And as to whether thus directing or conforming action to itself is some efficacy in knowledge with respect to action, see Ord. II Suppl. 25 q. un.
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From this second point it is plain that the practical and speculative are not essential differences of habit or science or knowledge in general, because ‘practical’ asserts a double aptitudinal respect of knowledge (which is as it were something absolute) to an action as to its term, and the speculative takes away that double respect; but neither the respect nor its privation are of the essence of the absolute, but is as it were a division of the genus through the proper properties of the species, just as if number were divided into odd and even, and line into straight and curved. For to one knowledge the practical per se in the second mode belongs from the intrinsic cause of the predicate in the subject, and to another the speculative.3