Duns Scotus

=Background=

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05194a.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus/

=Texts=

Oxford Commentary on the Four Books of the Sentences

Book I, Distinction III

Whether God can be naturally knowable by the wayfarer?

"The sense of the question then is this: whether the intellect of the wayfarer can naturally have a simple concept in which God is conceived" (Walsh 561)

vs Maimonides

"I say first of all that not only can a concept be naturally had in which God is conceived as it were accidentally, as for instance in some attribute, but also in which God is conceived intrinsically and definitionally" as Henry of Ghent argued that the conception of wisdom joins a quasi-property to a quasi-subject and some reference to God must be intended by the question itself, that we are talking about God not something else (Walsh 561)

vs Aquinas

"Secondly...God is conceived not only in concept by analogy...but in some concept univocal to Himself and a creature (Walsh 561)

"Thirdly...God is not naturally known by the wayfarer properly and in particular...under the characteristic of this essence as this and in itself..."(Walsh 563)

"Fourthly...we can arrive at many concepts proper to God which do not belong to creatures. Such are the concepts of every perfection...[such as]...unqualifiedly infinite being" (Walsh 563)

"Fifthly...what is known of God is known through the species of creatures...for the imagination can make use of the species of different sensibles in order to imagine something composite, as is obvious in imagining a golden mountain" (Walsh 564)

http://www.franciscan-archive.org/scotus/

http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/GODASFIR.HTM