Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T16:49:40.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Duns Scotus on Natural Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Thomas Williams
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Get access

Summary

Scotus’s natural theology has the following distinctive claims:

  1. That we can reason demonstratively to the necessary existence and nature of God from what is actually so but not from imagined situations or from conceivability-to-us; rather, only from the possibility logically required for what we know actually to be so.

  2. That there is a univocal transcendental notion of being.

  3. That there are disjunctive transcendental notions that apply exclusively to everything, like 'contingent/necessary', and such that the inferior cannot have a case unless the superior does.

  4. That an a priori demonstration of the existence of God is impossible because there is nothing explanatorily prior to the divine being; thus, reasoning must be a posteriori from the real dependences among things we perceive to the possibility of an absolutely First Being (The First Principle).

  5. That such a being cannot be possible without existing necessarily.

  6. That the First Being (God) is simple, omni-intelligent, free (spontaneous), omnipotent, and positively infinite.

  7. That there is a formal distinction, which is more than a distinction within our concepts or definitions, among the divine attributes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×