The Christology of John Duns Scotus

Abstract

The subtle Christology of John Duns Scotus has been the focus of intense study and dispute since his death in 1308. Of note are the Scottish theologian’s positions on the predestination of the Incarnation, his definition and metaphysical account of personhood, and his understanding of the status of the existence of Christ’s human nature. Each of these has bearings on his understanding of grace and atonement. This essay provides an introductory and summary overview of Scotus’s characteristic positions on the Incarnation and redemption in the light of his theological context and influences, arguing for the coherency and importance of his distinctive Christology.

1. Introduction

John Duns Scotus (1263/6-1308)1 roots his Christology in the doctrine of the Trinity (see Kennard 2022, pp. 3, 218–25; see Vos 2018b, p. 101). For Scotus, there is a real and most orderly or “fitting” (Fehlner 2023b) logic to the Incarnation that both reveals and mirrors ad extra the essential perfection of God in a Trinitarian idiom (Kennard 2022; Serafini 2022, pp. 228–33). Antonie Vos observes: “in classical theology [which includes Scotus]… Christology is an extension of the doctrine of God” (Vos 2018b, p. 109), as creation itself is a manifestation of his power, wisdom, and love.2

This article intends to present a theological overview of the theological (and philosophical) insights found in the Christology (De verbo Incarnato: theological metaphysics) and soteriology (Soteriologia: redemption and salvation) of John Duns Scotus. Given its limits and scope, this paper will provide only minimal historical and theological contextualization for Scotus, nor will it attempt to provide much critical and comparative analysis between Scotus and his theological contemporaries.3 Because this paper is included in a special issue of Religions—Christology: Christian Writings and the Reflections of Theologians—I trust that a good deal of such auxiliary information will be present in other articles of this special issue. Moreover, this study does not intend to “break new ground”; instead, we aim to present a clear, accessible, and accurate overview of Scotus’s thought rooted in primary texts. In terms of both this essay’s structure and content, we focus particularly upon how Scotus’s Christology coherently moves from considerations on divine freedom, framed within a Trinitarian theological context, through the creative purposes of the Trinity, into the Subtle Doctor’s understanding of the nature and mission of the eternal Son of the Father as an incarnate mediator, redeemer, and savior.

The six following sections deal with Scotus’s metaphysics of the Incarnation (Section 2, Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5) and then with how grace operates in and through Jesus Christ in the economy of salvation. The order of topics is intentional. Section 2 considers Scotus’s position on the motive of the Incarnation in terms of the divine will, emphasizing his understanding of the unconditional election of the Incarnation, with or without sin. Section 3 discusses Scotus’s understanding of the person that possesses a nature and the nature that terminates (i.e., exists as incommunicable) in or as a personal existence. In the case of Jesus Christ, one person possesses or subsists in both the divine nature and human nature, which raises questions of how one ought to understand the unity and duality of Jesus Christ, implied in asserting a single person, yet two distinct natures. This topic is discussed in Section 4. Section 5 presents the then-minority position Scotus took, following John of Damascus on the two real filial relations of Jesus Christ to his Eternal Father and the Virgin Mary. Section 6 transitions from Scotus’s metaphysics of the Incarnation to his soteriology. First discussed are the conditions, nature, and types of graces that the man, Jesus Christ, possesses, which have implications regarding the mission of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. Section 7, building upon Scotus’s theory of grace, treats the Subtle Doctor’s understanding of the conditions and causes of the redemption of fallen humanity through the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. This paper’s structure is intended to manifest the fitting order of Scotus’s thought and insights into Christology and the way his metaphysical principles, rooted in the creative will of the Trinity, ramify into his theology of grace and the atonement.

Scotus’s Christology topics were common in his day and were derived from Peter Lombard’s third book of Sentences, the volume that addressed Christology and theological virtues. On the topic of Jesus Christ, Scotus’s most important discussions are found in his several commentaries on Lombard’s third book of Sentences: Ordinatio III (1302–1303), Reportationes Parisiensis III (1302–1303), Lectura III (1303–1304), as well as, his late Quodlibetal, question 19 (1306–1307) (cf. Dumont 2022, pp. 42–43). This paper will focus mainly—although not exclusively—upon the Lectura and Ordinatio, for there are remaining scholarly questions regarding the Reportationes and the Quodlibetal questions—a very important text that contains one disputation on Christology. Lectura III, in this context, is indispensable because Ordinatio III was left incomplete by Scotus and lacks distinctions 18–25, which cover key soteriological topics. The later Lectura III contains all 40 distinctions from book 3 of Lombard’s Sentences and “is Scotus’s only complete commentary on the third book of the Sentences in any version” (Dumont 2022, p. 34).

Theologically trained at Oxford and Paris, Scotus’s Christology was framed in the generation that followed his Franciscan forebear Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, the Dominicans Albert of Cologne and Thomas Aquinas, as well as, the secular priest Henry of Ghent, and many other lesser-known figures. Scotus carried out his theological project in dialogue with and response to the monumental theological accomplishments of such figures (for historical contextualization and comparison, cf. Cross 2002; Hunter 2020). A second important contextualizing aspect of Scotus’s theological project and contribution is that he conceived his theology against the backdrop of the 1277 condemnations issued by the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier (cf. Emery and Speer 2013; Bianchi 2003; De Mowbray 2002). These condemnations were formulated in response to several theological and metaphysical claims that either explicitly or implicitly shaded towards necessitarianism, placed limiting conditions upon God’s creative power, and, arguably, denied the radical contingency of both the creative will of God and the created order itself. The importance of Scotus, therefore, for Christology, is not primarily in the topics he treats. Rather, Scotus’s importance is rooted in his retrieval of classical and, to him contemporary, theological and metaphysical themes and doctrines and the way he systematically clarified and explained the Incarnation and redemption within a framework of metaphysical contingency. Scotus, perhaps more than any other figure in theological history, upholds both the necessity of the Trinitarian creator while at the same time articulating a theological metaphysics of creation and the economy of salvation that is ontologically and radically contingent, all the while pursued within a broadly Aristotelian academic context. As we shall discover, Scotus at several places in his Christology takes what were in his day minority positions, or, in other cases, strengthens one side of a disputed question against its competitors, while distinguishing points of necessary conditions from their contingent realizations in terms of a theology and metaphysics of love. For Scotus, Jesus Christ manifests a “most fitting” and, therefore, perfectly rational created and salvific order as opposed to a “natural” or “cosmic” order with its own necessary exigencies which supervene from within upon divine freedom. Scotus sought, therefore, to articulate a Christology that was perfectly ordered and infused with rationality, while recognizing that the Trinity’s work of the Incarnation and Jesus Christ’s work of redemption and salvation are unconditioned by any reasons save to the loving reasons of God’s infinite and perfect will.

The success of Scotus’s development and application of his theological and metaphysical insights to age-old disputed questions is suggested by the widespread acceptance, development, re-purposing, and proliferation of his thought in his Franciscan order almost immediately after his death, as well as his impact upon the broader theological community. A broadly Scotistic school of thought formed within a couple of decades after Scotus’s death, thereby effectively integrating (or supplanting, depending upon one’s point of view) the earlier Franciscan theological synthesis of Bonaventure in the Franciscan order. His thought also entered every theological school flowing out of the Middle Ages (e.g., Thomist, Nominalist, Suarezian, eclectic Jesuits, Augustinians, and even Lullist) through both opposition and incorporation or simply because of the way Scotus determinately reframed Christological questions. Commentaries and manuals of Scotus’s theological and philosophical thought, including his Christology, abounded in European and, later, American universities, seminaries, and academies. Scotistic chairs existed in European universities right up to the end of the Early-Modern period, and Scotus’s thought flourished until the French and Italian Revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The only other Medieval Latin thinker with comparable (historical and ecclesiastical) influence and importance is Thomas Aquinas, whose star, with Scotus’s, faded in the institutional disruptions caused by political and social upheaval. Interest in Aquinas was revived (unfortunately, due to the relative neglect of Scotus, Bonaventure, and other important scholastic thinkers) in 1879 by Leo XIII in his encyclical, Aeterni Patris. In sum, Scotus’s insights into Christology were recognized early on. The Subtle Doctor’s influence, even when now mostly unrecognized, persists to the present day (cf. Calkins 2018; Carol 1986). Trent Pomplun, summarizing his account of Scotus’s impact on Catholic theology, especially Christology, describes developments in Christology post-Scotus as a centuries-long “great drift Scotus-ward that continued into [the] nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (Pomplun 2021, pp. 165–66).

2. The Divine Will as Ordered Love: Creation and Election

Moving now to the roots of Scotus’s theology of the Incarnation, we begin with the divine, creative will. For Scotus, the interrelated orders of creation, redemption, and salvation are founded on three key metaphysical premises. First, God is necessarily a most orderly willer, and hence, God loves according to a fitting and perfect order (see Ward 2020; Hoeres 1976, pp. 96–130). Second, God possesses perfect knowledge of his own essence as well as an infinite number of possible, finite, intelligible entities (that God could create) (see Vater 2022, pp. 191–92; Serafini 2022, pp. 225–35). Third, any action on the part of God ad extra is both free and contingent (see Scotus 1994, Lect. I, d. 39).

Because God elected to create in a contingent yet ordered manner, what is meant by order in this context? With respect to God’s will to create order, Scotus is bound up with the question of divine election, also termed predestination (see Vos 2018b, pp. 278–79).

[F]or every being rationally willing first wills the end, and second immediately wills that which attains the end, and third the other things that are more remotely ordered to attaining the end. Thus too does God, in the most rational way, although not by diverse acts, yet by a single act as far as it tends in diverse ways over ordered objects.

(Scotus 2007, Ord. III, d. 32, q. un., n. 21, p. 136, trans. Simpson modified)4

Although no possible being compels the divine will, nevertheless, in terms of logical order, the divine will elects “the end before that which is related to that end” (Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 19, q. un., n. 22, p. 33).5 Therefore, in any created order, regardless of its actual contents, the divine will acts for the sake of a true and real end that is freely chosen by God. The intentional order of the divine will, therefore, precedes and structures the execution of the divine plan for creation as it terminates in creation.

Given creation, in which God willed to include the influence of grace, the glory of beatitude, and the Incarnation, Scotus speaks of this order in terms of “signs of the divine will” or “signa rationis” (see Bonnefoy 1965, pp. 11–16; Carol 1986, pp. 135–46; Pomplun 2014). This (quasi-)arrangement of the contingent objects of the divine will is simultaneous to the eternity of God, yet it bears, within the divine decree of creation, an intentional order or rationality. According to Scotus, God’s will with respect to his activity ad extra is, therefore, most clearly understood as follows:

First, God loves himself. Secondly, he loves himself for others, and this is an ordered love. Thirdly, he wishes to be loved by him who can love him with the greatest love—speaking of the love of someone who is extrinsic to him. And fourthly, he foresees the union of that nature that must love him with the greatest love even if no one had fallen… [I]n the fifth instant God saw the mediator coming, suffering and redeeming his people. And he would not have come as a suffering and redeeming mediator unless someone had first sinned; nor would the glory of the body have been delayed unless there were people to be redeemed, but immediately the whole Christ [i.e., Jesus Christ along with all the elect] would have been glorified.

(Scotus, Rep. Par. III, d. 7, q. 4; trans. Carol 1986, pp. 126–27)

Desiring to maintain both the rationality and intelligibility of God’s creative actions within an order that is genuinely contingent, Scotus holds that God is perfectly free to create anything that is possible (non-contradictory) or to never have created. In the event, however, that God wills to create, Scotus argues, there is a logic to God’s intentions with respect to the act of creation that can be read from the metaphysics governing creation. The logic of the divine will is simply: whatever is best, and as best most loveable, in creation is that which the divine will intended first as the end or purpose of creation. All else in creation is ordered to that primary end.

On the basis of his understanding of the dogmatically affirmed reality of the Incarnation and the three graces of Jesus Christ (discussed below, Section 6), Scotus applies his understanding of God as the most orderly willer (or, better, lover). He identifies Jesus Christ as the first aim/end of creation and, therefore, the first-willed term and final purpose of God’s creative act. Scotus argues the Incarnation is just this act because the union of a created nature to a divine person is the uniquely unmerited, greatest possible grace, as well as—as the most perfect act of a creature—reaching the absolute limit of created obediential potency. The Incarnation establishes a personal identification of God and creation (see Fehlner 2023d, pp. 431–40). This act of electing Christ in the Incarnation is, therefore, because of its supreme goodness, unconditioned by any other potential or actual creature or creative action. Christ, for Scotus, is the apex of the created order, ordering all creation to himself.

3. What Is a Person?

3.1. How Is the Assumed Human Nature Not in Itself a Person?

Scotus provides a compelling metaphysical account of the hypostatic union between the eternal Word and the created human nature. His account builds upon his insistence on the primacy of the Incarnation. Framed within his consistent application of contingency metaphysics, Scotus articulates his explanation of the union between the divine person of the Word and the full reality of the created human nature the Word assumed.

In Ordinatio III, d. 1, p. 1 q. 1, Scotus first asks: “Whether it was possible for Human Nature to be United to the Word in a unity of supposit” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 1, p. 1). Accepting the revealed fact of such a unity, Scotus believes that a coherent account requires an answer to how we can understand an intellectual nature as a person in comparison to as an individual (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 31, pp. 14–15). This first question requires an answer, for Scotus, in order to explain why an individual human nature is not also, by that fact, necessarily a human person. Citing John of Damascus (John of Damascus 1958, The Orthodox Faith, bk. 3, ch. 11, pp. 289–92), Scotus asserts that person and individual are not the same. In the case of Jesus Christ, to affirm the mutual entailment between individual nature and individual person would imply a denial of the dogma of Chalcedon 451 and instead require Christ to be either merely a human person or to be two persons: one divine and the other human. Hence, Christian doctrine requires that being an individual does not equal being “this created person” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 32, p. 15). The Word, therefore, must have assumed an individual nature but not that nature in a person.

Scotus next asks: what then is that “by which the nature is a person” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 31, p. 15)? If an individual’s human nature does not imply being an individual human person, distinct from the individuation and real existence of a human nature, what makes a human nature also a human person? This question must be answered by providing a plausible distinction between real human existence and human personal existence to make room for the individual human nature of Jesus Christ to be a divine person. Scotus argues there are two possible solutions to this difficult question. The first type holds that this person-causing property is something positive in nature: a personal or hypostasis-causing perfection essential to the subsistent existence of an individual nature but not identical to nature itself (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 34, p. 15). Scotus explains this position as holding: “there is some proper reality by which a nature is a ‘this’ (haec) over and above that by which it is a nature, and that the latter is not formally the former, so over and above each of these there [also] would be some reality by which it is a person; and so neither of these would be formally the same as person” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 34, p. 15).6 Scotus rejects this opinion.

The second solution type, which Scotus affirms, asserts that the created person is constituted by the addition of mere negation (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 35, p. 16).7 For Scotus, the key to understanding this solution is to grasp how “negation” and its referents are understood. In any created person, we find three ways or modes in which a created nature can depend upon a higher supposit and two negations that are required for a created rational nature to also be a created person. The three types of possible dependence are as follows: actual dependence; obediential dependence; and aptitudinal dependence.8 Only actual and aptitudinal dependence can be negated of a creature because an ontological potency for obediential dependence is essential to any creature (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 46, p. 20). For Scotus, the negation of actual dependence alone does not suffice for a there to exist a created person. The negation of aptitudinal dependence is also required for there to exist a created person as actually in an intellectual nature and in a created supposit (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 46, pp. 20–21). Nor, for Scotus, is aptitudinal independence contrary to actual dependence because, as just noted, there always remains the obediential potency of the creature (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 47, p. 21).

Scotus, here, applies Richard of St. Victor’s definition of person, which is based upon incommunicability of existence rather than Boethius’s better-known individuality of substance (subsistence). For Scotus, Richard’s definition was more amenable to clearly distinguishing person from nature than Boethius’s, especially in the context of Trinitarian theology (three persons, one nature) and Christology (one person, two natures). While natures are inherently communicable, persons cannot but be incommunicable, whether that person possesses a finite or infinite nature or, as in the case of Jesus Christ, both. Scotus believed that a metaphysical conception of personal existence that unambiguously specifies a person as an incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature rather than an individual substance, as in Boethius, avoids the necessity of the further distinction between substance and subsistence that Boethius’s definition requires with respect to the Trinity and the Incarnation. Here, therefore, the person is taken as the incommunicable, existing terminus or existence of an essentially rational kind of nature that is either existent of itself (the eternal Father), possessing a rational nature, or has received its nature and hypostatic existence in the mode of being communicated to that person from another (every other person). For Scotus, incommunicable with respect to a person excludes, therefore, a double communicability inherent to every nature: (a) what (quod): a nature that is singular by a singularity; (b) by what (quo): incommunicable by a negation of actual and aptitudinal communication and, hence, dependence upon another person for its own hypostatic existence (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 49, pp. 21–22).

This double negation, Scotus believes, is univocal to God and rational creatures. This is because, in both cases, actual and aptitudinal dependence are excluded—the nature exists as incommunicable to another person; the nature terminates or exists as an independent and, hence, incommunicable person. However, in a divine person, there is an absolute repugnance to any communication and dependence. The divine person, for Scotus, is the perfect person. However, absolute exclusion of communication and dependence on the part of the creature is impossible because, as just mentioned, the creature (personal or not) is always necessarily in obediential (as opposed to actual or aptitudinal) potency to be communicated at least to a divine person. The repugnance, Scotus argues, in the case of a divine person can only come about through some positive entity, while a created person has no such positive entity beyond the nature itself (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 50, pp. 22–24). Here, Scotus is attempting to avoid the implications of the first type of solution mentioned above, wherein the person-causing property is something positive added to a rational nature that makes it both a person and a real, individual (haec) human nature. This is important for Scotus because he believes that if the person and “this” (haec) human nature are identical and the person-making property includes the addition of something beyond nature, in the case of Christ, two doctrinal errors regarding the Incarnation would follow. First, since Christ is a divine person, the divine person of the Word would function as this person-making perfection while also making Christ’s human nature qua human nature a real “this” by adding something beyond and, therefore, other than the human nature common to all other human beings. Second, since the person of Word adds or is this person-making perfection in the case of Jesus Christ, something of human nature, namely, real, created “thisness”, would be lacking in the Incarnation, and, therefore, the Incarnation would fail in assuming the fullness of human nature. This is precisely because there would be no human nature to assume (cf. below, Section 4). For Scotus, this leaves only the second type of solution wherein person and “thisness” are not identical, nor is the person an added perfection to the nature as such, but rather the mode of the existence of a rational nature as incommunicable due to its independence.

The difference between perfect incommunicability and independence and relative incommunicability and qualified independence, Scotus explains, can be understood if one rightly distinguishes “bare negation of act and negation of aptitude [as distinct from] negation that requires repugnance” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 50, p. 23).9 The created person entails the bare negation of both actual and aptitudinal dependence upon another person, while only the divine person is repugnant to any dependence. Finally, every creature depends upon God as its cause but can also depend upon the uncreated in terms of the unique dependence that characterizes the hypostatic union (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 52, p. 24).

Based on his argument that created personhood is not through some positive entity over and above nature but rather through the de facto negation of actual and aptitudinal dependence upon another hypostasis or nature, Scotus concludes, therefore, that human nature is not made individual by the same entity as it is constituted a person by created personhood. Moreover, while the created person does not actually exist by any positive entity beyond human nature itself, human nature per se exist and is a “this” by a created positive existence (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 51. p. 24). Here, for Scotus, per se can be understood as the denial of the “existing in another”, as in the distinction between a substance existing through itself and an accident inhering in a substance (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 67, pp. 31–32).

Per se, in this sense, pertains to the created human nature assumed by the Word in two ways. First, Christ’s human nature as a substance exist per se as a created, complete substance of an intellectual nature. Scotus has already explained that created personhood is established by a two-fold negation of actual and aptitudinal dependence upon another, higher nature or person. Hence, it does not follow that the created, perfect nature of Christ is also a person. The created nature of Christ, however, with its proper per se existence, never existed apart from or prior to its union with the eternal Word in a relation of hypostatic dependence. Christ’s created human existence, for Scotus, therefore, always subsists in actual dependence upon the prior, absolutely independent person of the Word (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 68, p. 32).

The relation of accidents to a per se substance, therefore, is not to be understood universally of every possible kind of per se existence. Scotus here distinguishes per se in terms of substance and hypostasis. While the human nature of Christ has per se existence or being because it is a substance and, therefore, is not united to the Word as a real accident of the Word, the union between the eternal Word and the assumed human nature is per se on the level of subsistence or hypostasis (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 68, pp. 31–32). Hence, the created nature, by the creative action of the Trinity, is a “this” (haec) by something positive and formally distinct from the entity of the nature itself. This is “because repugnance to being divided does not belong to created nature save through some positive entity” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 69. p. 32).10 In the event that this singular nature is assumed and rendered actually dependent in its subsistence upon the divine person of the Word, that created intellectual nature terminates in the divine person. God becomes man, and man truly becomes God because of the personal, hypostatic existence of the Word in that nature and that nature in the Word. If this human nature had not been assumed, or, contrary to fact, the union ceased, the human nature would remain complete and numerically identical in its per se substantial existence and haecceity, while actual and aptitudinal dependence upon the Word would be negated and by that fact, the same human nature would be(come) a created person.

3.2. Who Is the Person Assuming the Human Nature and How Is This Accomplished?

A common opinion in Scotus’s day allowed only a distinction of reason between essence and person. For Scotus, this would make it impossible for a single divine person to assume a created nature without the other two persons, and the divine nature also assumes the same created nature. Against this, Scotus argues for “some positive distinction between nature and personal property” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 69. p. 32).11

Another common opinion held that the divine person terminates the dependence on a created nature as an efficient or formal cause.12 For Scotus, if as an efficient cause, this would entail that the person of the Word in the case of the hypostatic union has a proper operation beyond that which is common to the Trinity (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 71–76, pp. 33–36). Against this, Scotus argues that “form” and “formal cause” are being used improperly. Scotus believes this account because operation follows essence, and the operation of the Trinity ad extra is unified and also implies more than one God (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 77–79, pp. 36–38). Scotus counters, “formal” in the proper sense cannot apply to God with respect to any creature, nor is any divine person “informing” or “informed” by any other divine person (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 77–78, pp. 36–37). Each divine person terminating and possessing the divine nature, rather, is identical to divinity itself. The divine Word, therefore, cannot “inform” a created entity in any proper manner, nor is any created substance in any potency to being informed by the uncreated (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 79, p. 37).

What can Scotus offer after he has blocked the formal and efficient causal routes to explaining the action on the part of the assuming person of the Word? Scotus argues that in one sense, “the Word is the formal cause for the reason that he [the Word] terminates formally” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 72, pp. 34–35). The Word in Scotus’s reckoning “terminates insofar as he is a relative person, such that the relative property [as of Son of the Father] is the reason for terminating” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 72, p. 34).13 On this basis, the Word, also reasons Scotus, should not be understood “to be the formal cause… [as] the other part of a composite, or… [as] a formal cause supervening on a composition, or… [as] the exemplar because this is common to the whole Trinity” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 72, pp. 34–35).14 Rather, Scotus restricts “formal cause” to “formally terminating … the form specifically to the distance that is between the nature united and himself as term” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 72, pp. 34–35). With this restriction in mind, Scotus reminds his readers that a “person does not add any absolute entity over and above the singular nature, and therefore neither does supposit in general do so, just as neither does person in an intellectual nature”. (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 79, pp. 37–38).15

In the case of the assumption of human nature by the Word, the Word is not the form with respect to a “quasi-composite person”. The person of the Word is not composite with respect to the created assumed nature but rather should be understood in terms of the “person in the nature when compared to the nature”. Hence, the “Word was incarnate as form but not as formal cause” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 79, p. 37). In fact, by analogy, if the “entity of the supposit and of the nature with respect to the whole created entity is considered absolutely, the proper entity of the supposit is not formal with respect to the nature [assumed], but rather material” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 79, p. 38). This provides the key to correctly understanding common theological expressions describing the action of the Word in assuming a created nature—e.g., “to take”; “to oneself”; “to descend”. “To take” as an efficient causal action with respect to the human nature is common to the Trinity. “To oneself” signifies the term of the action. And, “to descend” as an efficient cause is common to the Trinity. As terminal or terminating, “to descend” refers to the dependence of the created nature upon the person of the Word (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 80, p. 38). Hence, this “descending” is not “any efficiency but is a priority of an altogether different idea” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, n. 81, p. 38). Hence, for the termination of dependence, any entity that can be a supposit is sufficient. The divine person is such a supposit. Therefore, the divine person can be the hypostatic term of a created assumed nature.

4. Unity and Duality in Jesus Christ

Because Jesus Christ is truly one divine person, simultaneously and everlastingly possessing two natures, is he one reality, two realities, neither, both? Scotus, addressing this question that follows from the doctrine of the Incarnation, asks: “Whether in Christ there is some existing other than Uncreated Existing” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 1, p. 223)? Scotus, of course, answers affirmatively, and how he explains his answer will have, by way of anticipation, very important implications for his soteriology (see Section 6 and Section 7 below).16

The common opinion17, as described by Scotus, held that if the singular-individual human nature of Christ “existed in its own supposit there would be the same existence for the nature as for the person; therefore now too, if ‘this person’ supplies for the nature’s proper personhood as to the existence of the person, then it does so also as to the existing of the nature” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 11, p. 235).18 Scotus thinks this account opposes the full reality of the Word’s assumed humanity in two ways. First, the human nature that Christ assumed would have lacked the perfection of being, and hence reality itself, making it less real than an unassumed human nature. Second, the person of the Word would have supplied a form that completed the human nature of Christ in the manner of a real composition.

Scotus counters by reaffirming that union supplies the termination of the human nature in the person of the Word, but it does not imply any real identity of composition. Likewise, the common opinion’s mutual implication of existence and supposit is incorrect. For Scotus, a finite person is constituted not by nature or individuality as such, both of which are positive perfections but by the double negation of actual and aptitudinal dependence upon another supposit. Hence, if created personhood is removed from the created individual nature, this does not take away either the nature or that nature’s individuality. Put simply, to deny the double negation theory, for Scotus, implies that the Word did not assume a perfect human nature (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, nn. 12–15, pp. 236–37).

Against the single existence theory of the hypostatic union, Scotus provides six arguments (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, nn. 16–20, pp. 238–39):

• There was a true generation of the Son of God [according to his human nature] in time from Mary.19 But the term of generation is being of existence (esse existentiae) or something possessing such being;
• To live means to have life, but to have life means to have being. If Christ had only uncreated being, he could not have died. Therefore, he had created being;
• Christ’s soul was created. But to be created is a passive making, terminating in actual existence. Therefore, Christ had created being;
• The Trinity is the efficient cause of Christ’s human nature. Efficient and conserving causality terminates at something existing. Therefore, Christ had existing created being;
• If the human nature of Christ were to be let go by the Word, the existing human nature would not require a new generation or creation. Nor would such a “letting go” entail the annihilation of that nature. Nor would that nature acquire a new existence qua nature in becoming a created person because nothing new would be posited. Rather, only actual and aptitudinal hypostatic dependence on the Word would be negated;
• The foundation of a relation in the order of nature (here logical, not chronological) precedes the relation. Hence, actual being precedes actual relation (logically, not chronologically). The union of the nature to the Word is an actual relation. Therefore, the human nature must have in the order of nature (not chronologically) preceded the relation in the order of nature.

Scotus concludes that the created human nature united to the Word, therefore, has its own proper and actual existence, just as it has its own quiddative being. It does not, however, have its own subsistent existence. It has, rather, the independent subsistent existence of the Word. Therefore, there is only one subsistence in Christ (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 31, pp. 241–42). The Word subsists in human nature as a supposit in that nature. The Word, therefore, is properly called man, “existing with the existence of that [created] nature”(Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 36, p. 243).20 The existence of the created nature of Christ insofar as it is a substance is simple (i.e., undivided) existence rather than a relative or accidental mode of existence. This simple substantial existence of a created human nature is “the sort that the existence is in itself is [also] the sort that it gives [human nature] to whatever exists through that existence; the Word exists with that [human substantial] existence, namely through the human nature” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 37, pp. 243–44).21

Because the person does not imply any added formal perfection to human nature, the nature through or in which the supposit exists will also, in that case, determine the existence of the supposit itself insofar as it actually exists in that nature. While the Word is eternal and divine, it nevertheless exists with the existence of subsistence in the assumed human nature; and, while the human nature is created and exists with its per se substantial existence, it exists in actual dependency of subsistence upon the eternal person of the Word. The following passage well captures Scotus’s line of reasoning: “the existence of human nature is the existence of substance, since the divine Word is man simply by that existence [of substance], he exists simply by that existence” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 36, p. 243). In confirmation of this strong conclusion of a double substantial, per se existence in Christ, Scotus again appeals to John of Damascus22 that there are two willings and, therefore, two wills in Christ. But existence is much more immediate to essence than willing is to will. Therefore, “there is a greater necessity for existing to be multiplied in accord with the plurality of natures” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 1, n. 42, p. 245).

Critics might object that Scotus has divided Christ à la Nestorius. Scotus’s response is simple: “Christ is nothing but God and man, and these are not two, because God is man; therefore, Christ is not a two. [A]nd every predication is made in respect of some unity, whether per se or simply or per accidens; therefore [there is] no duality” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 2, n. 56, p. 249). Going on, Scotus writes: “I concede that in Christ there are numerically two natures; but it does not follow that Christ is numerically two because Christ is not [the] other of the two natures” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 6, q. 2, n. 68, p. 254, trans. modified). By his strong identification of the person of the Word with the assumed human nature through his affirmation of the subsistence of the Word through and in the human nature, according to the analogy of person-matter and nature-form, Scotus concludes that Jesus Christ is simply one subsistent existence because the eternal person of the Word is truly man while simultaneously eternal God.

5. Christ’s Dual Filiation

Having established that Jesus Christ is truly and simply man through the eternal Word’s subsistence in the assumed human nature, while truly God because he possesses the divine nature, eternally communicated to him from the Father, the question of Jesus Christ’s status as Son arises. Clearly, Christian doctrine required the affirmation of the eternal divinity and divine sonship of Jesus Christ. However, in the Incarnation, doctrine also dictated that Jesus Christ received his assumed human nature in a miraculous, virginal manner from Mary, who both conceived and gave birth to him. Because Jesus Christ is from eternity a person and a son, how should his temporal origins be understood with respect to his eternal personal, filial identity and to his human Mother? Is he one and the same son? Do his conception and birth entail a second distinct sonship or even his being a second, distinct son? In what sense can a person who is already a Son become Son again, through a temporal birth, given that sonship or filiation seems a property that is fully realized in its very instantiation? Is Mary truly the Mother of God (Theotokos), as Ephesus 431 proclaimed? How can she be truly Mother if the person she is giving birth to is not conceived and constituted as a person by her maternal agency? Is then Mary’s maternal relation to Jesus Christ different from all other human beings, or, conversely, does Jesus Christ have a real, true filial relation to Mary as her real, personal Son?

A member of a religious order with its own very strong Marian emphasis and devotion, and hailing from the British Isles whose inhabitants’ Marian piety, during Scotus’s day, tended to push the boundaries of Marian doctrine beyond their continental co-religionists, Scotus was for personal, cultural, religious reasons pre-disposed towards a resolution of the question of Jesus Christ’s filiation/s in terms that would both emphasize the full humanity of Christ, while, at the same, exalt his Mother. Against this personal background, Scotus was also genuinely concerned with the revealed truth behind the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s divine sonship and true humanity, as well as the doctrine’s theological clarity and coherency. For Scotus, the resolution to the question of Jesus Christ’s filiation/s requires a correct account of the basis or principle that explains real sonship or filiation.

Most of Scotus’s close antecedents and contemporaries, including Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, perhaps strangely, denied a relation of real filiation between Jesus Christ and Mary.23 This is because, for these theologians, filiation is tied to the subject of filiation and not to the nature in/through which filiation occurs, and Jesus Christ was from eternity (by implication exclusively) the person of the Son. Here, Scotus bucks this trend and, once again, appeals to the Damascene, who affirmed two real filiations as his patristic authority (cf. John of Damascus 1958, The Orthodox Faith, bk. 3, ch. 7, pp. 281–84). Scotus, contrary to both the great Dominican and his Franciscan forebear, argued that in Christ, there are two real filiations, tying filiation to the nature that is communicated rather than the subject of the communication. The first communication of the nature was eternally from the Father; the second was temporally from the Blessed Virgin Mary. Against a single filiation, Scotus poses a counterfactual: “If the Father had been incarnate, he would have been son; not by eternal filiation, therefore by temporal”. Hence, “the Son now does not have, by eternal filiation, a relation to the Mother such that, on account of it, he may be called her son-therefore he has it by some other filiation” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 8, q. un., n. 8, p. 296). For Scotus, then, Christ’s filiation with respect to the Father is different from that to his Mother, and, nevertheless, “both are real” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 8, q. un., n. 31, p. 305). This is because filiation is “the condition of something naturally produced like the producer in an intellectual nature” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 8, q. un., n. 32, p. 305).

For Scotus, therefore, nothing in the description of filiation “has regard per se and first to a supposit” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 8, q. un., n. 34, p. 305). Christ’s filiation to the Blessed Virgin Mary is real because “that relation is real which from the nature of the extremes [of the relation] when they are posited without an act of intellection [i.e., they are in themselves prior to an act of a knowing subject], is consequent to the extremes; but when a generating Mother is posited and a supposit having through generation the generated nature, filiation from the nature of the extremes without act of intellect follows in the latter just as maternity follows from the former” (Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 8, q. un., n. 38, p. 306).

6. The Graces of Christ24

Having established the unity of Jesus Christ and his dual real filiation, Scotus then considers the graces of Christ and the necessary conditions, if any, for the presence and operations of these graces in and through his human nature. Here, again, Scotus will forge his own path, based upon his contingency metaphysics, turning away from theological accounts that situate the graces of Jesus Christ upon hypothetically necessary disposing of causes or conditions for the graces he possessed, rooting the privileges of Christ, instead, in the order of “fittingness”. Scotus, with his contemporaries, affirms in Christ (a) personal grace, (b) capital grace, and (c) the grace of union. The grace of union denotes a hypostatic union. Personal grace indicates Christ’s created and infused supernatural habit (for Scotus, formally charity) that “beautifies” the soul in its being and renders the person in a rational nature acceptable to the Trinity, along with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (the divine, personal bond of charity). Capital grace refers to Christ as the source and head of all grace/s overflowing into the members of his mystical body. Scotus rethinks these three graces’ intentional order and grounding. In such, and consistent with his entire approach to Christology, Scotus untethers the graces of Christ from any necessity on either the part of God or the humanity of Christ. Here, the distinguishing characteristics of Scotus’s approach will be seen to move directly from Scotus’s position on the motive for the Incarnation through his analysis of the metaphysics of the Incarnation into his articulation of the graces of Christ.

6.1. Christ’s Personal and Capital Grace

While Scotus frames the grace of our redemption and salvation in terms of the “necessity” of Christ’s grace for our participation in the grace of the Holy Spirit, he stipulates that this necessity is neither absolute nor hypothetical (see Kennard 2022, pp. 155–59, 169–75; Fehlner 2023a, pp. 334–38). Rather, predicated upon the absolute election of the Incarnation and of the elect in Christ independently of sin, the personal grace of Christ also includes the capital grace of Christ as head of the Church. As head, Christ is the source of all grace, ordering the Church as his mystical body. In Scotus’s soteriology, grace and glorification are situated because of the election within the grace of Christ and flow from Christ to his mystical members.

If Christ is predestined as the head and source of all created grace in the economy of salvation, then Christ as the source must possess the highest possible grace. Two points about this capital grace. First, while God can immediately bestow grace apart from a created source of that grace (cf. Scotus 1975, Quodl. q. 7, n. 56, p. 275; see Kennard 2022, pp. 11–14)—because of the election of Christ—the most fitting and, therefore, the perfect influence of grace is precisely the grace of Christ as the head of the elect. Second, because grace, for Scotus, is formally the created habit of charity along with the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit (see Fehlner 2023d, pp. 416–30), the actual economy of grace most perfectly manifests the nature of grace, as such. Charity is, in the first place, a just or ordered love of the good above all else for its own sake. Its purpose is enjoyment and union with that good. This good is God, and the person to whom charity is appropriated is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Christ as head of the mystical body and source of supernatural charity enfolds the temporal mission of Holy Spirit within a single community of persons characterized by the love between the Father and the Son. Scotus writes:

It is fitting that what has the ratio of influentia in others in the being of grace should have the ratio of the highest being of grace (just as that which flows into others in the being of nature is the first in nature); since, therefore, Christ, who is Head of the Church, flows into the members of the Church in the being of grace, it is fitting that He should have the highest [grace] (although finite).

(Scotus 2003, Lect. III, d. 13, n. 61, p. 290)25

Scotus, importantly, notes that this highest grace of Christ is finite. Christ’s personal grace and his grace of headship are created and qualify his human nature. Hence, as created, such graces cannot be formally infinite. Only God is infinite. Scotus, therefore, distinguishes between grace as formally infinite and as highest. Highest here, however, can be taken to mean infinite in an improper sense as maximal or immeasurable because the measure pertains to God. Scotus drives this point home:

“God does not give the Spirit by measure”, and this is understood of Christ, for “of his fullness have we all received”, etc. Grace that is not ‘by measure’ is the highest possible grace; also, a fullness that can be shared in by another grace according to a certain measure seems to be found only in the highest grace.

(Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 13, q. 2, n. 17, p. 390)

Hence, for Christ to be the source of grace (capital), he must possess the highest grace. Because grace is perfect and unitive, the one who possesses the highest grace will influence all those participating in that grace.

Can there be multiple possessors of the highest grace? Scotus does not think so:

It seems [Christ] could not: For no other nature could be head of those who have grace, for there cannot be two heads, just as there cannot be two things that are highest in the same order…. Here one could say that although God could by his absolute power confer the same amount of grace on another nature…, yet he could not do so by ordained power because (according to the laws already set down by divine wisdom) there will be only one head in the Church, from whom graces will flow into its members.

(Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 13, q.4., nn. 50–52, p. 406)

The upshot of this is that God could have achieved otherwise, but this would have entailed an unfitting equality in grace between Christ and another. Such a lack of fittingness would arise because God had already elected Christ first as the sole head of his mystical body. Here, Scotus reversed the order of election from an Incarnation that was conditioned upon Adam’s sin to one in which our grace is entirely ordered by Christ and his mission to send the Holy Spirit into the Church.

6.2. Christ’s Personal and Unitive Grace

At this point, Scotus turns to Christ’s first and primary grace—his grace of union—in relation to his personal and capital graces. Scotus argues that the grace of union is immediate (i.e., it is both unmediated by another grace and, therefore, requiring no antecedent, dispositive grace): the Word assumes directly the created nature without any mediating graces disposing of that nature for the union. Furthermore, Scotus holds that the union itself, because there is no formal or efficient causality exercised by the Word in the union, cannot be the cause of either personal or capital grace in Christ. Hence, there is no necessity for these other graces implied by the grace of union alone. Mitchell Kennard, in his outstanding study of Scotus’s theology of grace and the divine missions, identifies four points, framed in necessitarian terms, variously held by Scotus’s contemporaries that imply some sort of causally necessary relationship between Christ’s personal grace and his grace of union. The causality can move either from grace to union or vice versa, yet in both, the relation between union and grace is seen as being essential:26

• The fullness of grace is causally necessary for hypostatic union;27
• The fullness of grace is causally sufficient for hypostatic union;28
• The hypostatic union is causally necessary for the fullness of grace;29
• The hypostatic union is causally sufficient for the fullness of grace.

Scotus denies each of these and, instead, argues that it is Christ’s election to glory as head of the Church (and all creation) as a divine person that fittingly, but not causally, grounds Christ’s highest personal and capital graces (see Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 2, q. 1., n. 38, p. 135). With respect to the dignity of the grace of union, it must be remembered that human nature possesses the existence of subsistence as the person of the eternal Word. Hence, the eternal Word subsists simply in the created nature, possessing both the fullness of divinity and humanity. This establishes, for Scotus, the quasi-infinite and divine dignity of the human nature.

Scotus’s denial of any necessary connection between the union and the other graces allows him to more sharply ask “why God has contingently willed the connection between Incarnation and fullness of grace” (Kennard 2022, p. 169). God could have bestowed either the grace of union or the highest grace upon a pure creature. In the latter case, that pure creature would have been the head and source of grace. Considering the non-necessity of the relation between union and grace, Scotus, as Kennard notes, makes the seemingly startling assertion that while it is possible that God bestows the highest grace upon a pure creature, nevertheless, it would been unfitting for God to have bestowed this highest grace upon any but a created nature with the grace of union, i.e., a divine person (Kennard 2022, p. 169).

Given its possibility, how can Scotus consistently hold that it would have been unfitting for God to have bestowed the highest grace upon a pure creature? Here, the question of God’s absolute and ordained power in relation to his unconditioned election of the man Jesus to glory must be clarified. God could have willed any or no order of creation and/or glory: absolute power. Given that God did so ordain glory for Christ and for the elect in Christ, this carries implications for the order of natures within that creation: ordained power. Commenting on the election and its order, Scotus writes:

God first wills some non-supreme [sc. non-angelic] nature to have supreme glory, showing that he need not confer glory according to the order of natures, and then secondly, as it were, he willed that that nature exist in the person of the Word (so that the angel would thus not be placed beneath man).

(Scotus 2006, Ord. III, d. 7, q. 3., n. 69, p. 289)

This passage qualifies Scotus’s ascription of unfittingness in the bestowal of the highest grace to a non-divine person in terms of the election of Christ within an order that includes separated, personal substances. Hence, unfittingness here is not absolute in that unfittingness does not restrict the scope of God’s freedom. It refers, rather, to God’s ordained power, wherein his infinitely good and ordered will establish the very conditions for fittingness in any created order. In Christ, we see that both union and highest grace are present and that creation within the order of grace is most perfect in Christ, even though contingent.

Charity by nature is corporate and ordered to the highest good, the latter attainable by any created power or act of love (Scotus 2007, Ord. III, d. 28, q. un., n. 11, pp. 85–86). The Holy Spirit is the divine person whose personal property is interpersonal love. In the glory of Christ’s soul, the most lovable and loving of God’s creation is foreseen precisely because the Spirit immeasurably fills Christ’s soul to overflowing. But this glorious soul is foreseen precisely as informing a human nature in which that same eternal Son, simply subsisting with and through that nature given him virginally by Mary through the overshadowing of the Spirit, is a concrete human reality in space and time. By the Spirit, for Scotus, this same grace flows through and out of Christ into his members, establishing a bond in the Spirit and a common likeness to the “one and the same Son” of the eternal Father and of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In and because of this fraternal corporate unity in the Spirit of Christ, humanity is raised, as adopted sons, into the company of Christ’s eternal Father, precisely as natural brothers of Mary’s Son.

7. Scotus’s Soteriology—Theory of Redemption

The key text of Scotus is Lectura 3, d. 20. Herein, Scotus critiques Anselm’s Cur Deus homo (Anselm 2008, Cur Deus homo, pp. 260–356)30 while not rejecting its doctrinal conclusions. Scotus, again, intends to provide a theology of redemption that attain justice to the freedom and contingency of the order of salvation rooted in his conviction about the absolute election of the Incarnation. Scotus’s solution stems from the way he addresses Anselm’s assumptions about (1) the nature and necessity of satisfaction that (2) undergird his resolution of the contraries of Adam’s “infinite” offense and “infinity” as the necessary condition for the satisfaction offered by Jesus Christ.

Scotus summarizes the four essential conditions for redemption found in Cur Deus homo (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. nn. 13–24, pp. 43–48):

• It was (hypothetically) necessary that God redeem humankind after the fall;
• Humankind could not be redeemed apart from (what for Anselm is infinite) satisfaction;
• Only the God-man (because of the infinite God) could offer adequate satisfaction;
• Only the death of a perfect man (because man committed the infinite offense) could provide perfect satisfaction.

Scotus sees problems in each of these statements. First, appealing to Augustine’s De. Trinitate, 13.4, Scotus counters: God could have redeemed man in any way he chose (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 27, p. 48). In fact, there is neither an absolute nor hypothetical necessity that humankind be redeemed at all (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. nn. 28–29, pp. 48–49). For Scotus, redemption, like the Incarnation and creation, is always contingent upon the will of God. Therefore, any necessity of redemption or its conditions could only be a necessity of the consequent (as opposed to consequence)—what God has, in fact, willed (see Fehlner 2023a, p. 338). Hence, for redemption, any requirement of satisfaction is because God, in fact, will our redemption in and through the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, as an act of perfect satisfaction (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 31, pp. 49–50; cf. Scotus 2011, Ord. IV, d.15, q. 1).31 This removes the necessity condition of each of Anselm’s above claims regarding the atonement.

In Scotus’s telling of Anselm, nothing under God, i.e., all of creation, could have justified Adam’s sinful act. Perfect satisfaction requires an offering of “something greater than every creature made or able to be made” (Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 19, p. 45). Therefore, unless man offers to God something greater than all that has or can be created, i.e., is infinite, there cannot be perfect satisfaction. No human person can offer such an infinite act. Therefore, neither can he or she achieve satisfaction for sin (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. nn. 20–22, pp. 45–46). Because of its infinity, sin can only be repaired through an act of satisfaction that is also infinite. This infinite act is, for Anselm, necessary for perfect satisfaction.

Scotus observes that Anselm “wants altogether to have infinity where there is none from the formal idea of the object of the thing. [act or offense]” (Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 31, p. 50). Against this, he notes: any action carried out by a finite agent, in this case, Adam’s sin, is necessarily finite, although, in Adam’s case, it bears upon the infinite dignity of God, connoting a measure of exceeding blameworthiness (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 31. pp. 49–50). Scotus also denies the idea that satisfaction for sin must exceed the entire created order and possess a character of infinity (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 31, pp. 49–50). Rather, for Scotus, any good greater than the evil of sin would have been, had God so willed to accept it, sufficient satisfaction with respect to the offense and the act which brought it about (Adam’s sin) (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. nn. 32–33, pp. 49–50).

Scotus thinks that the love of God for God’s own sake is, wherever it occurs, objectively greater than the love of any creature. He proposes that if Adam, through charity, had performed one or more acts of loving God for God’s own sake, with greater effort of free choice than he put forth in sinning, this could, had God so willed, have been a sufficient satisfaction. Here, Scotus allows for possible degrees of fittingness in acts of satisfaction rather than restricting it to a mistaken notion of infinite satisfaction. Whether such a possibility is realized in this created order is not Scotus’s concern. Scotus’s concern is to remove false or misleading assumptions that impinge upon divine freedom and love and to clarify the divine motives of the actual redemption. Scotus’s key insight here is that the mode and the agent of satisfaction are determined by God; exigencies of a hypothetical metaphysics of redemption cannot impose themselves upon God.

Scotus also insists that God did not will to accept anything other than a most fitting and perfect satisfaction (see Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. nn. 36–39, pp. 51–52).32 Applying this insight, Scotus notes that Christ could have made satisfaction through any good act if God had so willed (Scotus 2004, Lect. III, d. 20, q. un. n. 36, p. 51). These insights, for Scotus, provide a clearer understanding of the actual redemption and perfect satisfaction, drawing the mystery of redemption back into the mystery of election, rooted in the mission of the Son to become incarnate and through that Son to send the Holy Spirit. For Scotus, divine freedom and love centered upon Christ and manifest most fully in his mystical body are the leading premises of his soteriology. The counsels of the divine will regarding our redemption and deification are indeed most fitting and rational precisely because they are rooted in Christ and, in fact, most expressive of divine glory as the ne plus ultra of divine love ad extra.

Scotus was aware his account ran counter to the more common approach found in Anselm, which took perfect satisfaction through the death of the God-man as essential to both the possibility and fact of fallen humanity’s reconciliation with God and salvation. Scotus, however, resists the inference that his account is a radical departure from the traditional affirmation of the requirement for perfect satisfaction. He affirms that perfect satisfaction of and by Jesus Christ, in the only real economy of salvation, is required for redemption. The difference is that Scotus transfers the discussion of the redemption-satisfaction from a set of (unreal) hypothetical necessities, couched in a calculus of contrary infinities, to a consideration of redemption and perfect satisfaction as already conditioned by the predestination of the Incarnation and all the elect in and for Jesus Christ.

8. Conclusions

John Duns Scotus’s Christology, though rooted in the theological and metaphysical principles of his time, continues to hold significant relevance on account of his rethinking of virtually every major topic of Christology in terms of his understanding of and consistent application of a theological metaphysics that affirms the radical contingency of the orders of creation and redemption, his insistence on the primacy of the fittingness of the actual creation and redemption rooted in divine love, and his insistence on the primacy of the election of the Incarnation as the unconditioned condition for all else. Scotus’s approach, characterized by a deep engagement with the doctrine of the Trinity, also offers perennial insights into the nature of God, the personhood of Christ, and the order of creation. Scotus’s distinctive positions on the predestination of the Incarnation, his definition and metaphysical account of personhood, and his understanding of the existence of Christ’s human nature are all seamlessly woven into his understanding of grace and atonement. Scotus’s emphasis upon the primacy of the Incarnation as the first aim and final purpose of God’s creative act shifts theological focus from a redemptive response to sin to a proactive assertion of God’s love. Scotus, in his soteriology, which emphasizes divine freedom and love as centered on Christ and manifested in his mystical body, while a critique of Anselm’s theory of atonement, still affirms the necessity of perfect satisfaction by Jesus Christ for redemption. However, Scotus reframes redemption within the context of the Spirit of the eternal love of the Father for his Son as this love enfolds creation within the Father’s delight in his Son, who through Mary has become our brother.