William of Ockham

Scripture with the Fathers and the Church — the ordinary medieval position — but held with a qualification he pressed harder than anyone before him. In the polemical works against John XXII he argued that a pope can fall into heresy, that a general council can err, and that what cannot fail is the faith held by the universal Church, to which Scripture is the witness.

WORTH CORRECTINGScholars genuinely disagree about where that leaves him, which is why this cell is `contested` rather than `established`. Reading him as a proto-Protestant on Scripture is a well-known overreach — his argument is about who can err, not about Scripture standing alone — but so is treating the polemical works as though they made no difference to his doctrine of authority. The tier records the dispute rather than picking a side.

Not located in this pass. The medieval West used the wider canon in practice while Jerome's distinction between canonical and ecclesiastical books stayed in circulation, so period practice is not evidence about him — the honest answer needs a text of his own.

Nicene. He holds the doctrine while arguing that several of its formulations cannot be established by natural reason and are held on revelation — a pattern that runs through his theology.

Chalcedonian two natures in one person.

Not framed. The divine-council question belongs to a much later reading of the Hebrew Bible and does not arise in his work.

Justification through infused grace in the ordained economy, with the doctrine of divine acceptation pressed further than Scotus pressed it: a created offering is worth precisely what God accepts it for, and absolutely speaking God could accept a soul apart from the created habit of grace. He couples this with the insistence that God is a debtor to no one, so that merit is constituted by God's free covenant rather than by the intrinsic worth of the act.

WORTH CORRECTING`contested` because the accounts disagree about what this amounts to. The Reformation-descended reading is that freeing acceptance from infused habits made God's acceptance turn instead on what a person can do in a purely natural state. Whether that is Ockham's own position or the later via moderna's — Gabriel Biel's above all — is exactly what is disputed, and the literature consulted here groups the two rather than separating them.

Original sin as the privation of original justice, on the common Franciscan account, held together with an unusually strong doctrine of the will's freedom: the will can choose otherwise than it does, and can knowingly choose against its own ultimate good.

WORTH CORRECTINGDo not read the Pelagianism charge straight onto this cell. What Luther attacked under the name of Ockham was the maxim that to the one who does what is in him God will not deny grace, and that maxim reaches Luther through Biel and the later via moderna. How much of it is Ockham's own is disputed, and this pass did not settle it — hence `contested`. The stance is the account of original sin; the note is the argument about what his voluntarism does with it.

Not located in this pass. He wrote a treatise on predestination, foreknowledge and future contingents, but its concern is the logic of how God can know contingent futures without necessitating them rather than the basis on which the elect are chosen. Nothing consulted here states his answer to this locus's question, and the logical treatise does not supply it.

Not located in this pass. The sufficient-for-all, efficient-for-the-elect formula was the common teaching of his period, but assigning it to him on that basis would be inference from his tradition rather than a reading of him.

Not located in this pass. Faith formed by charity was the standard account and he is not known to depart from it, but that is period practice rather than a position read off his text.

Not located in this pass. Perseverance as a distinct gift is what both Aquinas and Scotus hold and was the common scholastic account, but nothing consulted here states Ockham's, and the position of a school is not evidence about one of its members.

Transubstantiation, held on the Church's definition. Like Scotus he grants that the scriptural words do not by themselves exclude the alternative, and unlike Aquinas he does not think the doctrine is established by reasoning from the text.

WORTH CORRECTINGHis account of the accidents remaining without a subject is where his nominalism and the received doctrine press hardest against each other, and it is the part later readers most often mistake for a denial of the doctrine.

Anachronistic. The continuationist and cessationist positions are shaped by a post-Reformation argument about whether the miraculous gifts ceased with the apostles; the question is not put in these terms in his period.

Not located in this pass. Same reason as the other sacramental blanks: the period default is clear, and the period default is not evidence about him.

Eternal conscious punishment, the settled Western position in his period.