The Washington Post called Francis "A Franciscan Jesuit for pope."
Did certain problematic ideas within Franciscan theology such as "voluntarism" (that the will comes before the intellect in God) help bring about the loss of natural law and help bring about Francis's Amoris Laetitia?
Edward Feser's book, The Last Superstition,on pages 167, 168, and
170 seems to say that the Franciscan theologians John Duns Scotus's and William of Ockham's "tendency toward voluntarism" may have helped bring about the present denial of natural law and ethics:
- "John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308) and William of Ockham (c.
1287-1347), who, though scholastics, rejected Aquinas's synthesis of
Aristotelianism and Christian theology. Their reasons for doing so
anticipate certain key themes of modern philosophy . . . [these ]
led to the undoing of the Scholastic tradition, which had reached its
apex in Aquinas's thought."
- "Both Scotus and Ockham denied the
possibility of the sort of knowledge of God Aquinas claimed could be had
through reason..."
- "The motivation for Scotus's skepticism
was an excessive emphasis (as Thomists see it) on God's will over His
intellect. Aquinas, in Scotus's estimation, makes God and His actions
too comprehensible, too rational, too open to our puny philosophical
investigations. So radically free is God's will, in Scotus's view, that
we simply cannot deduce from the natural order either His intentions or
any necessary features of the things He created, since He might have
created them in any number of ways, as His inscrutable will directed."
- "Meanwhile,
Scotus's and Ockham's tendency toward voluntarism (i.e. their emphasis
on will over intellect), and the related idea that morality derives from
arbitrary divine commands, became secularized in the notion that all
law rests ultimately on the sheer will of a sovereign, rather than in a
rationally ascertainable natural order. Combine these themes and you are
not far from Thomas Hobbes's view that man's "natural" condition is to
be at war with his fellowman, and that this unhappy situation can be
remedied only by agreeing to submit to the will of an absolute ruler."
Moreover, the pro-Amoris Laetitia website Where Peter Is apparently supports certain ideas of Scotus:
"Duns Scotus and his Franciscan school of theology successfully defended
the Absolute Primacy of Christ. God did not send His Son into the world
as a consequence of sin but “by reason of His very great love”. (Eph. 2:4)" [https://wherepeteris.com/who-art-thou-o-immaculata/]
The independent scholar James Larson explained to me in an email exchange the problem with this and other ideas of Scotus:
I am very far from being an expert on Scotus, and have no desire to be so. But I would offer the following:
Employing
"univocity" in relation to any terms used of both God and His creation
necessarily terminates in some type of pantheistic-gnostic mush.
Strictly speaking God is the only Being, in the sense of possessing
Being of Himself. It is true that, in relation to created things, we do
distinguish the category of substantial being from all the categories of
accidental being by saying that it is something suited to exist "in
itself". But this is a definition necessary to distinguish the category
of relative, created, substance from accidens, which are suited to
exist only as inhering in substance. Without understanding the principle
of analogy between all created things and God, we necessarily
end up confusing the Thomistic concept of creative "participation" in
being with the idea that creative things are somehow "part" of God. In
other words, we destroy Catholic ontology (and all that is contained in
the concept creation ex nihilo), and ultimately everything which
is intimately connected to this ontology. Even sanctifying grace, and
the entire concept of possessing the life of God in our souls, must be
considered a created gift of God.
In regard to the so-called Franciscan doctrine which is usually now termed the "Absolute Primacy of Christ".
St.
Thomas, while certainly being clear that the question has not been
given final determination by the Church, yet declares his tentative
opposition to this notion because Holy Scripture never offers any other
reason for Christ's Incarnation other than that supreme Divine Love
which "bends over" towards man in order to merit our redemption from
sin. Christ Himself says, "Greater love than this no man hath, that a
man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). To attempt to
assert therefore that through the proposed doctrine of "Absolute Primacy
of Christ"(the notion that Incarnation would have occurred even without
sin) they somehow possess a greater and deeper understanding of the
primacy of Christ and the greatness of His love is indeed a "walking on
thin ice".It smacks ultimately of placing some sort of "necessity" in
God in relation to His creation.
Interestingly enough, Mary of Agreda (herself a Franciscan Conception), in the City of God, claims
endorsement of this Franciscan theory as a private revelation from
Christ (Vol. I, p.77). But even more interesting, she places "necessity"
in God in relation to creation. Thus, she writes:
"The
Majesty of God, beholding the nature of his infinite perfection, their
virtue and efficacy operating with magnificence, saw that it was just
and most proper, and, as it were, , a necessity, to communicate
Himself, and to follow the inclination of imparting and exercising his
liberality and mercy, by distributing outside of Himself with
magnificence, the plenitude of the infinite treasures, contained in the
Divinity. For, being Infinite in all things, it is much more natural,
that He communicate gifts and graces, than that fire should ascend, or
the stone should gravitate toward its center, or that the sun should
diffuse light." (ibid. p. 52)
So much for the total gratuitousness and freedom of God in relation to all of His gifts to man.
You might also be interested in reading my two-part fictional work The Mind of Antichrist, which is here:
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