John Duns Scotus

Scripture together with the Fathers and the teaching of the Church. His Eucharistic argument is the clearest worked case: he grants that consubstantiation is not inconsistent with the words of Scripture and holds that it is ruled out by the authority of the Fathers and the Church's definition rather than by the text alone.

WORTH CORRECTINGThat reasoning is the opposite of Aquinas's on the same question. Aquinas argued the text itself disproves consubstantiation; Scotus located the decisive authority in the Church's definition. Two scholastics reaching the same doctrine by different routes is the disagreement this locus exists to show.

No stance fits. He has one of the most elaborate natural theologies in the tradition — the argument of De Primo Principio moves from efficient and final causality and pre-eminence to a first being, and the doctrine of univocity is what makes him think the argument reaches God at all. But the three stances here are shaped by a Romans 1 debate about whether clear revelation is culpably suppressed, and that is not his question. His question is what unaided reason can demonstrate, and he pairs a high answer with an insistence that supernatural revelation is still necessary for knowing our end.

WORTH CORRECTINGWorth not forcing. Assigning `clear-suppressed` here would report a moral claim about suppression that he does not make, on the strength of a confidence about reason that he does.

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 the honest answer needs a text of his rather than an assumption from period practice.

Nicene. His distinctive contribution is the formal distinction, used to hold the divine simplicity and the real distinction of persons together without collapsing either.

Chalcedonian two natures in one person. He is better known for a thesis about the Incarnation's motive: Christ was willed first and absolutely in the divine intention, so the Incarnation would have occurred without the fall. Redemption is then the occasion of the Incarnation rather than its cause.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe primacy thesis is not a christological heterodoxy and does not move him off two-natures. It is a claim about the order of the divine decrees, and it is the single most influential thing he is cited for outside technical philosophy.

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

Original sin as the privation of original justice — the loss of a supernatural gift rather than a positive corruption of nature. He treats concupiscence more lightly than the Augustinian tradition does, since on his account what is missing is the ordering gift, not something added to nature.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is the standard Franciscan reading and it sits noticeably lighter than Aquinas on the same locus, even though both land on `wounded`. The stance label hides that difference; the reason it matters is that it leaves the will's natural freedom more intact for Scotus than for Aquinas.

Predestination of the elect before any foreseen merit, on God's free choice. The account is asymmetrical: election is prior to foreseen merit, while reprobation takes account of foreseen demerit.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe asymmetry is the point and is easily flattened. Recording him as simply `unconditional` alongside Calvin would obscure that he does not treat the two decrees in parallel.

Faith formed by charity — the medieval account, on which unformed faith is real assent but does not justify until charity informs it.

Justification through infused grace in the ordained economy. He adds the doctrine of divine acceptation: what makes an act or a soul acceptable is God's free acceptance of it, so that absolutely speaking God could accept a soul without the created habit of grace, even though in the order he has established he does not.

WORTH CORRECTINGAcceptation is what later gets read back as the root of nominalist voluntarism. In Scotus it qualifies how infused grace works rather than replacing it, and reading it as a denial of infused grace is a misreading.

Sufficient for all, efficient for the elect — the common medieval formula. His distinctive move is about the ground rather than the extent: against Anselm he denies that satisfaction was strictly necessary or that Christ's merit has infinite intrinsic worth, holding instead that its value rests on God's free acceptance of it.

Perseverance as a distinct gift rather than something guaranteed to everyone in a state of grace.

Grace, and with it the Spirit's indwelling, given through the sacrament in the ordained economy.

Infant baptism, conferring grace and remitting original sin.

Transubstantiation, as defined at the Fourth Lateran Council. He holds it while conceding that the alternative is philosophically available and not excluded by the scriptural words — the Church's definition is what settles it.

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.

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

Amillennial by inheritance — the Augustinian reading of Revelation 20 was the unexamined Western default in his period and he does not reopen it.