Tag Archives: Duns Scotus

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#007: Your Guardian Angel [Podcast]

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Your Guardian Angel has been with you since you were conceived in your mother’s womb. We should always revere these angelic beings and even ask their prayers. Today we discuss everything you need to know about your Guardian Angel and whether you’re allowed to name your Guardian angel.

{The original blog post “You’re not allowed to Name Your Guardian Angel” was shared yesterday 3,674 times! I thought I had better record something more on it! Here it is.}

Guardian Angel

Angel of God, my Guardian Dear

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“Should You Name Your Guardian Angel?”

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1) Proverb of the Week:
Proverbs 17:12

2) Tip of the Week: 
Don’t prioritize or overstuff your “critical task” list in your daily Molskine pocket journal.

Here’s the link to the Moleskine notebook that I use and that I highly recommend to you.

Here’s a photo of my tasks in my Moleskine journal for today:

photo (12)

Here’s my “Critical Tasks” for today. It’s really this easy. This is how I do lots of big stuff every day.

I do a heck of a lot more than just this. But these items MUST be done or the day is a failure. These are non-negotiable.

3) Featured Segment:
“What You Should Know about Your Guardian Angel”

According to the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, 216 (under the heading about Devotion to the Holy Angels):

The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.

4) Latin Word of the Week:
amicus
sociennus
amator

Record a Question for Taylor!

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PS:  The new podcast is still doing great on iTunes. We’re #1 on Apple’s iTunes for Podcasts in “New and Noteworthy” in “Christianity” and we’re now #1 in “New and Noteworthy” in all religion categories! Pretty cool.

A huge “THANK YOU” to everyone who has written amazing 5-star reviews. Y’all are the ones that pushed it up to the top. I’m grateful to you all. Again, thank you so much. If you’re new, you can rate this podcast on by clicking here and then “View in iTunes.” From there you can leave a review.

I appreciate you for this!

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Potuit Decuit Ergo Fecit: Four Latin Words You Should Memorize for the Immaculate Conception

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St Anne, St Mary, Christ our Lord
Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary – one of the most glorious days of the entire year. We celebrate that the Blessed Virgin Mary, by a singular privilege, was conceived in her mother Anne’s womb without original sin. From her first moment, she was filled with grace and made worthy to bear the only begotten Son of God. 
Our Blessed Lady was the greatest creature every created by God. When God considered of the created universe, she was at the height. She is now higher than the Cherubim and Seraphim – only lower to her Uncreated and Divine Son. In the hierarchy of creation, Mary is at the pinnacle. 
The difficulty, of course, is how Mary could be conceived without original sin, since Romans 5:12 seems to indicate a universal application of original sin to all without distinction. We have discussed how Christ is the Savior of Mary in a different post (see If Mary Had No Sin, Is Christ Still Her Savior?). Today, however, I want to focus on those four famous words that were used to defend the Immaculate Conception of Mary:
Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit!
“He could; it was fitting; therefore, He did it!”
  • The Son of God was able to make Mary without original sin.
  • It was fitting and decent that the Son of God would honor His Mother this way.
  • Therefore, God did make his Mother without original sin.

The blood in my veins is almost entirely Irish, Scottish, and English and I am glad to say that this argument originated in these lands. It was Saint Eadmer of Canterbury (d. 1124),* I believe, who first uttered the “Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit” argument, and it was at Canterbury that we find some of the first articulated defenses of the Immaculate Conception. Of course, Blessed John Duns Scotus (“the Scot”) in the 14th century was also a stalwart defender of the Immaculate Conception and also used the “Potuit – decuit – ergo fecit” argument.
The argument is useful for the simple reason that it disarms opponents that deny the Immaculate Conception. It is still useful today in sharing your faith with Protestants.
Simply ask, “Could God make a person without original sin?” (potuit)
Next ask, “Would it have been decent or fitting for the Son of God to have his mother 100% pure and loyal to him?” (decuit)
Then follows the conclusion, “Well then, if He could doit and it was fitting, then He did do it. Mary was conceived immaculately (conceived without stain – macula is Latin for “stain”).
So “Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit!” Memorize these four Latin words and you will defend Our Lady with honor.

Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata. 


Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos.

* See Eadmer of Canterubury’s De Conceptione Sanctae Mariae.
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John Duns Scotus – Our Next Saint and Doctor of the Church!

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Scotus turning away from Aquinas’ Summa 
and toward the Immaculate (gasp!)

People may throw rotten tomatoes at me for this, but I’m going to say it any way: “Blessed John Duns Scotus should be declared a Saint and Doctor of the Church!” I’m a trained Thomist, so I don’t say this lightly: Scotus is a genius when it comes to Christology and Mariology.

All the great defenders of Catholic dogmas are both saints and doctors of the Church:

  • St Athanasius manfully defended the deity of Christ
  • St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzus, St John Chrysostom, and St Hilary defended the dogma of the Holy Trinity
  • St Basil, in particular, defended the deity of the Holy Spirit
  • St Jerome manfully defended the perpetual virginity of our Lady
  • St Cyril manfully defended Mary as “Mother of God”
  • St Leo manfully defended the humanity of Christ and the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ
  • St John Damascene manfully defended the images of Christ, Mary, and the Saints
But where’s the love for Scotus? John Duns Scotus manfully defended the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception…but he is not honored as either a saint or a doctor…
The reason for this is that he causes theological embarrassment for some Catholics. In the theological scheme of things, Scotus contradicted St Anselm, St Bernard, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure – just to name a few – on the subject of Mary’s salvation. Each of these holy and venerable doctors of the Catholic Church explicitly taught that Mary had original sin, but that God immediately made her immaculate after she was conceived. They agree that Mary never sinned and that she was rendered immaculate in the womb of her mother St Anne. However, they are dreadfully incorrect in positing original sin to Mary in the first moment of her conception. In other words, they generally teach that Mary was conceived in original sin, and then that a moment later she was made immaculate and free from original sin.
The difficulty centers on the Church’s universal teaching that Mary was “saved” as she herself states in Luke 1:46-47:

“And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

Previous theologians (e.g. Bernard, Thomas, Bonaventure) concluded that “salvation” required a “saving from a state of sin.” Thus, brilliant minds like Bernard and Thomas Aquinas believed that Mary had original sin for just a moment so that she could be “saved” from it.

John Duns Scotus, inspired by the Holy Spirit and cognizant that Our Lady was being dishonored, taught that salvation could entail “preservation from sin.” In other words, since humanity was collectively in original sin, God could intervene by saving Mary in a preservative way. God put out His hand and prevented inherited stain (more correctly, the lack of sanctifying grace) from extending to Mary.

Whereas most humans are born in the grime pit of sin, in the case of Mary, God reached out and prevented her from falling into this grime pit at the very moment of conception. He saved her by not allowing original sin to touch her. He created her fully righteous and full of grace. She was fully justified and sanctified at the first moment of conception.

For example, you can save a child from a car wreck in two ways: 1) Call 911 and have the medics to perform CPR and other measures to save the child’s life OR 2) jump out into the street and push the child away from the oncoming car.

In both cases, the child is “saved.” In the first way, the child is saved from wounds. In the second way, the child is saved from receiving wounds. If the “car wreck” is original sin, then we can see that Mary was saved in the second way. God prevented her from the harm of original sin.

In this way, Mary was “saved” and “without sin.” Scotus solves the difficulty. He formulates what the Church of Rome has always taught and believed.

In fact, we might even say that Christ is Mary’s Savior more than the rest of us, because He saved her so absolutely and perfectly. More grace went into saving her than anyone else because she is the Immaculate Conception.

So John Duns Scotus is absolutely brilliant. What Bernard, Thomas, and Bonaventure couldn’t see, Scotus did see. This reveals that Scotus had an intimate love for Christ and that his soul was quiet enough to perceive the mysteries of God.

Tradition also states that Mary once appeared to Scotus on Christmas and allowed him to hold the Christ Child for a moment. This further confirms that Scotus was a great mystic and saint. Recall that Scotus was persecuted in his era even called a heretic. Yet he persevered in his conviction that Mary was without blot. He was also a great lover of poverty and the poor.

The feat of the Immaculate Conception is the great vindication of Scotus. Let us pray to him. Our Lady loves him so much. He stood up for her when other great saints could not.

Blessed John Duns Scotus, pray for us to she who is without stain.

ad Jesum per Mariam,
Taylor Marshall

PS: I like to think of Thomas Aquinas waiting for Scotus at the pearly gates. When Scotus enters, Thomas gives him the fraternal kiss of peace and says, “Thank you kind friar. You corrected my mistake. I have been praying from Heaven for someone to do so.”
PPS: I’m now bracing myself for all my brother Thomists who will attempt to show that Scotus wasn’t so special after all.

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Patron Saint of Computer Crashes (John Duns Scotus)

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Today is the memorial of Blessed John Duns Scotus.

This past summer I was hanging out with some Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in Steubenville, Ohio. We were discussing that stalwart defender of the Immaculate Conception of Mary – Blessed John Duns Scotus.

“How can we get poor Scotus canonized?” That was the question. I noted that those saints with useful intercessory skills, are the most popular saints among the laity. For example, Saint Anthony is one of the most popular saints because he is associated with “lost things.” Shoot, even Protestants pray to Saint Anthony when they lose their car keys, right? Likewise, Saint Jude (one of the most obscure Apostles) is well-known since he’s the patron of desperate cases.

So the key to popularizing Scotus would be to promote him with a popular cause. But what cause fits Scotus?

So I suggested “dry cleaning” since he defended that Mary was “without stain of sin.” Patronus Macularum. You get a stain on shirt and you pray to the patron against stains…the Friars of the Renewal shot this down as too lame.

Then Friar Pius says, “No, it has to be something that people really need. Something desperate. How about Patron Saint of Computer Crashes. There’s nothing more stressful than computer crashes.”

All the friars liked that suggestion. And so we decided to promote it: “John Duns Scotus, Patron of Computer Crashes.”

Well, a few weeks after that, my Macbook laptop crashed. I was very stressed because it had the latest version of my new book The Catholic Perspective on Paul and I hadn’t had a chance to back up the file. I was sweating bullets. So I began to ask Blessed John Duns Scotus for his prayers concerning my computer crash. My wife also started asking for Scotus’ prayers.

The hard drive crashed, but the Mac genius was able to get everything off the computer. They replaced the hard drive and my computer was great. No lost documents. I didn’t even have to buy a new computer.

So there it is folks. If your computer crashes, ask Blessed John Duns Scotus for his prayers!

Blessed John Duns Scotus, pray for us (and our computers!)

Have a blessed Blessed John Duns Scotus day.

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Who is Blessed John Duns Scotus?

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Duns Scotus, Blessed Johannes (c.1265–1308), ‘Doctor Subtibilis’ or ‘Doctor Marianus’, medieval philosopher and theologian. Little is known of his life. He was prob. born near Duns in Berwickshire. He took the Franciscan habit, perhaps at Dumfries c.1280, and was ordained priest in Northampton in 1291. He was then apparently studying in Oxford, where he read both arts and theology and lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, prob. in 1298–9. He is known to have been in Oxford in 1300–1. It is possible that he lectured in Cambridge (1301–2), but the evidence is weak. Though the idea that he studied in Paris c.1293–6 is improbable, it is certain that he completed his doctoral requirements there and became regent master in 1305. In 1307 he moved to *Cologne, where he died the following year.

His principal work is the commentary on the Sentences. This survives in three forms: copies of his own lecture notes (Lectura) for the Oxford commentary; copies of students’ notes (Reportatae) taken from the various lectures; copies of his own final revision of the various notes. This last and most important version (the Ordinatio) was left incomplete at his death. His other writings include commentaries on some of *Aristotle’s and *Porphyry’s works on logic, a set of quaestiones on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a Tractatus de Primo Principio, and *Quodlibeta.

Writing after the condemnation of a number of Aristotelian positions (including some opinions of St *Thomas Aquinas) by the Abp. of Paris in 1277, Scotus attempts to mediate between Aristotelianism and the Augustinianism associated with his main opponent, *Henry of Ghent. Scotus definitively rejects the Aristotelian principle of plenitude (no genuine possibility can remain forever unrealized), and posits instead the radical contingency (non-necessity) both of created entities and of God’s action. He believes that for human will to be genuinely free, it must be really able to will what it does not in fact choose to will. The intellect offers a strong guidance to the will, inclining it to the right act; but the will is able to go against the suggestion of reason. Thus, Scotus denies the universal applicability of Aristotle’s principle, ‘everything which is moved is moved by some other agent’, on the grounds that the will is freely capable of moving itself to an action. God’s will is free in the sense that God can freely desire opposite objects and effects: thus, human actions are given moral value only if God commands them. The exception is the act of loving God. It is impossible to understand the word ‘God’ without also understanding that God should be loved. For this reason, God cannot will that creatures hate Him.

Scotus’ proof of the existence of God attempts to show that one necessary cause is required in order to explain the existence of contingent entities. Creatures do not exist necessarily, and have essentially only the possibility of existence. But if the existence of some creature is really possible, then the creature must be capable of being caused; and if a creature is capable of being caused, there must be some agent able to cause it. Thus, in order to explain the existence of creatures, it is necessary to posit some being that exists necessarily.

Scotus rejects St Thomas Aquinas’s position that individuation is by matter, and holds instead that the unity and individuality of each created thing is given by its own form of individuality (haecceitas) added to its matter and form. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he does not think that all substances—including God and the *angels—are material. He also believes that not every complete individual thing is a person: Christ’s human nature is a complete individual thing that is not a human person. Individuals are properly called persons by virtue of the negative qualification of not being united to a divine person. Scotus rejects the Aristotelian position that the intellect can know only the universal ideas that it abstracts from sense data, and allows instead a certain intuitive knowledge of individual things. On the other hand, he rejects Henry of Ghent’s Augustinian position that certitude follows only from divine illumination, and holds, like Aquinas, that certitude derives from necessary principles that are known naturally by the intellect.
In his theology Scotus lays stress on the primacy of Christ as the supreme manifestation of God’s love; it follows that Christ’s coming was not conditioned by any other historical events, and in particular that the Incarnation would have taken place irrespective of the *Fall. For Scotus this also entailed the doctrine of the *Immaculate Conception of the BVM, a doctrine that he was the first well-known theologian to defend.

The thought of Scotus exercised a profound influence in the Middle Ages and beyond; in particular it was the principal element in the Franciscan theological tradition well into the 18th cent. Though the rise of *Nominalism in the 14th cent. reduced the impact of Scotus’ *Realist metaphysics in the later Middle Ages, in modern times there has been renewed sympathy with his appreciation of the non-intellectual elements in man. The word ‘dunce’, used by humanists and the Reformers to ridicule the subtleties of the Schools, is a curious testimony to his popularity. He was beatified in 1993.

F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev., 516 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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Pope B16 commends Bl. John Duns Scotus as a Great Christian Theologian

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See video above for details.

Blessed John Duns Scotus is finally getting the recognition he deserves. I’ve conspired with some Franciscans and we’re hatching a plot to get John Duns Scotus canonized as a saint – Maybe B16 is the man to do it. The plan is comical and provocative. Check back for details!

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Would Christ Have Become Man If Man Had Not Sinned?

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Happy feast day of Annunciation. Today we remember and celebrate how the angel Gabriel came to Our Lady saying, “Hail full of grace!”

Our Lady pronounced her “fiat” or “amen,” and the divine Word of God was made flesh in her holy and immaculate womb. God became man. He who was rich became poor so that we might become rich.

A common question in scholastic discussions centered on whether the Divine Logos would have become man, even if Adam had not sinned.

Saint Thomas Aquinas discusses this at Summa theologiae III, q. 1, a. 3: “Whether, if man had not sinned, God would have become incarnate?”

Saint Thomas follows Saint Augustine in stating that God would not have become incarnate had man not sinned:

“Therefore, if man had not sinned, the Son of Man would not have come” 

– St Augustine, De Verbo Apost. 8, 2.

Thomas also cites the traditional blessing of the Paschal candle, which we still recite, as evidence of a conditional incarnation: “O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!” Both sources suggest that human sin occasioned the incarnation of Christ.

However, Thomas also adds this: “And yet the power of God is not limited to this; even had sin not existed, God could have become incarnate.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas thus grants that God could have become incarnate regardless of sin. However, it is Thomas’ position that that sin occasioned the incarnation.

I was recently challenged to reassess this on account of something written by Saint Albert the Great – the master and teacher of Aquinas. Saint Albert teaches that the Divine Logos would have become man even if man had not sinned:

“I believe that the Son of God would have become man even if there had been no sin…Nevertheless, on this subject I say nothing in a definitive manner; but I believe that what I said is more in harmony with the piety of faith.” 

“Credo quod Filius Dei factus fuisset homo, etiamsi numquam fuisset peccatum…tamen nihil de hoc asserendo dico : sed credo hoc quod dixi, magis concordare pietati fidei.”

– St Albertus Magnus, III In Sententiarum d. 20, a. 4

Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Lawrence of Brindisi (both official doctors of the Catholic Church) also held to the thesis that the Incarnation of Christ would have occurred even if man had never sinned.

They reason there is nature, grace, and glory. God’s assumption of a human nature entails that Christ’s created soul beholds the beatific vision from the moment of its existence. By participating in this reality – the participation of the created in the beatitude of God – angels and men are also able to participate in the divine beatitude.

In this scenario, glory and beatitude depend on the Incarnation. Now if sin was the sole occasion of the incarnation, then sin was necessary – yet this is blasphemy. This also entails that Christ’s humanity is conditioned by rebellion and sin.

We must also ask a few more questions.

Is the light of glory granted to us in and through the created soul of Christ or not? If the light of glory for beatitude is granted to us in and through the soul of Christ, then it seems that the incarnation of Christ is necessary for the beatitude of the angels and the beatitude of humans. If that is the case and if God willed to share His divine beatitude with angels and humans, then the incarnation would have happened whether there was sin or not.

Creation is contingent. The Incarnation is contingent. However, might the creation be ordered to the incarnation? Is not creation created in and through and for Christ? So then, might the goal and purpose of creation be the incarnation and the sharing of beatitude with creatures?

My mind is about to explode. These things are beyond my weak intellect.

Have a happy and holy feast of the Annunciation,

Sincerely in Christ through Mary,

Taylor Marshall

PS: If Albert, Scotus, Lawrence, and Francis de Sales are correct about the unconditional incarnation of Christ (that Christ would have become man even if men didn’t sin), then the creation of a human mother of the Divine Word (“Theotokos”) is also something not occasioned by sin. This further elevates that status of the Blessed Mother and highlights her place in the eternal plan of God.

PPS: The “happy fault” or “felix culpa” formula of the Paschal candle blessing may be interpreted as referring to meriting the the incarnate Christ as “Redeemer” – not necessarily the incarnation of Christ as man per se. Some may not find this satisfactory, but it certainly doesn’t do violence to the text of the Exultet.