Love, Power and Consistency: Scotus' Doctrines of God's Power, Contingent Creation, Induction and Natural Law
Sophia 49 (4):557-575 (2010)
| Abstract | I first examine John Duns Scotus’ view of contingency, pure possibility, and created possibilities, and his version of the celebrated distinction between ordained and absolute power. Scotus’ views on ethical natural law and his account of induction are characterised, and their dependence on the preceding doctrines detailed. I argue that there is an inconsistency in his treatments of the problem of induction and ethical natural law. Both proceed with God’s contingently willed creation of a given order of laws, which can be revoked and replaced with a new order of laws. In the case of ethical natural law God promulgated the Decalogue, for example; in the case of nature, there are physical laws that can be known by induction. Scotus exalts the freedom of God and the mutability of ethical natural law in order to explain exceptions to it disclosed by revelation (for example, the Old Testament command to Abraham to kill Isaac). Yet he treats ethical natural laws as (mostly) not universal and immutable. In contrast, he holds that we can arrive at knowledge of the universal and immutable laws of nature, except for those regularities that result from free will. Finally, I present several ways of characterising this tension between Scotus’ doctrines | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesStephen John Grabill (2006). Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics. William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co..
John Foster (2004). The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God. Oxford University Press.
John Foster (2001). Regulatities, Laws of Nature, and the Existance of God. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (2):145–161.
Michael P. Levine (1986). The Role of Reason in the Ethics of Maimonides: Or, Why Maimonides Could Have Had a Doctrine of Natural Law Even If He Did Not. Journal of Religious Ethics 14 (2):279 - 295.
Amber L. Griffioen (2007). “In Accordance with the Law”: Reconciling Divine and Civil Law in Abelard. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2):307-321.
C. Fred Alford (2010). Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law: From Aquinas to International Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan.
Stephen Mumford (2004). Laws in Nature. Routledge.
Cruz Gonzalez-Ayesta (2012). Duns Scotus on the Natural Will. Vivarium 50 (1):33-52.
Jacqueline A. Laing (2012). Law. In George Kurian (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Christian Civilisation. Blackwell.
B. H. Woo (2012). Pannenberg's Understanding of the Natural Law. Studies in Christian Ethics 25 (3):346-366.
Henrik Syse (2007). Natural Law, Religion, and Rights: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Natural Law and Natural Rights, with Special Emphasis on the Teachings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. St. Augustine's Press.
Danny Frederick (forthcoming). A Puzzle About Natural Laws and the Existence of God. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-12-26Total downloads13 ( #87,888 of 549,065 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,065 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
