§ 110. DUNS SCOTUS. 689
The ultimate questions why God permitted evil, and how He could foreknow evil would occur without also predeter mining it, find their solution only in God's absolute will. God willed, and that must suffice for the reason.
The infinite value of the atonement likewise finds its explanation in the absolute will of God. Christ died as a man, and for that reason his merit of itself was not infinite. An angel, or a man, free from original sin, might have made efficient atonement if God had so willed. Nothing in the guilt of sin made it necessary for the Son of God to die. God determined to accept Christ's obedience and, in view of it, to impart grace to the sinner. Duns follows closely Anselm's theory, whose principles he carefully states.1
In his treatment of transubstantiation, Duns vigorously attacked the view of Thomas Aquinas as a transition of the body of Christ into the bread. He argued that if there were such transition, then at celebrations of the eucharist during the three days of Christ's burial the elements would have been changed into his dead body. To avoid this diffi culty he enunciated the theory that the body of Christ, as of every man, has more than one form, that is, in addition to the rational soul, a forma mixti sive corporeitatis, which is joined to matter and constitutes it a human body. Into this corporal form of Christ, corporeitas, the elements are trans muted and this form remained with Christ's corpse in the grave. Duns declared that the doctrine of transubstantiation cannot be proved with certainty from the Scriptures, nor at all by the reason. He then argued that it is more probable than any other theory because the Church has accepted it, and the dogma is most in keeping with God's omnipotence. The dogma must be accepted on the authority of the Church.2
The doctrine upon whose development the Subtle doctor
1 He concludes his account of Anselm's exposition by acknowledging his indebtedness to Anselm, in the words hcec veraciter, ut potui, ex dictis ejus, collegi. Seeberg, p. 283. Seeberg's full discussion of Duns' theory of the atonement, pp. 275-296.
2 For quotations see Schwane, pp. 656 sqq. Seeberg finds in Puns' defini tion the doctrine of consubstantiation,
2Y
690 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
had altogether the most influence is the doctrine of the immaculate conception, which he taught in the form in which it was proclaimed a dogma, by Pius IX., 1854. Departing from the statements of Anselm, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, arid Bonaventura, Duns taught that Mary was conceived without sin. His theory is presented at length in the chap ter on the Virgin Mary. The story ran that, in championing this theory, at a public disputation at Paris, he controverted Thomas' position with no less than two hundred arguments.1 Duns' frequent attacks upon Thomas' statements were the sufficient cause of controversy between the followers of the two teachers, and this controversy belongs to the number of the more bitter controversies that have been carried on within the Roman Catholic communion. It was a contest, however, not between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, but between two eminent teachers equally in good standing, and between the two orders they represented.
Dollinger expressed the opinion that the controversy was turned into a blessing for theology by keeping it from " stagnation and petrifaction," and into a blessing for the Church, which took under its protection both systems and kept each from arrogating to itself the right of final authority.
The common view in regard to the place of Duns Scotus in the history of doctrine is that he was a disturber of the peace. Without adding any element of permanent value to theological thought, he shook to its base the scholastic structure upon which Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians had wrought for nearly two centuries. The opin ion will, no doubt, continue to prevail that Duns was a master in intellectual ingenuity, but that his judgment was unsound.2 It is fair to say that Seeberg of Berlin, in his recent elaborate
1 Dollinger regards the story as open to grave suspicion because, at the time at which the disputation is set, there was no conflict between the two orders. Wetzer-Welte, X. p. 2129.
2 This is the view of such experts in the history of mediaeval theology as Schwane, p. 78, etc., and Stockl. Stockl, II. 868, declines to compare Duns with Thomas as a trustworthy teacher, and says that Duns1 only service to theology was through his polemics, which started an impulse to search for a firmer basis of certainty for doctrinal truth in reason and revelation.