Studies in Reformed Theology 34. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xii + 455. Pb. $79.00.

Many know Gerard Manley Hopkins’s (1844–89) love of John Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308), but few realize the profound interest that other Jesuits had in the Subtle Doctor. Alfonso Salmerón (1515–85), for example, supported the Scotist view on the motive of the incarnation, even as Francisco Toledo (1532–96) believed Scotus’s position on the issue to be heretical. Everyone knows of the importance of Luis de Molina (1535–1600); almost no one understands that his celebrated contribution to the de auxiliis controversy was an attempt to rescue Thomism from unnecessary concessions to Scotus. Gabriel Vázquez (1549–1604) was among the fiercest critics of Scotus’s Christology, but accepted several of his positions in Eucharistic theology. Now-forgotten Jesuits like Tomás Muniesa (1627–96), Juan de Ulloa (1639–1723), Juan Marín (1654–1725), and Juan Campoverde (1658–1737) even developed creative syntheses inspired by the Subtle Doctor. In fact, most Jesuit Christologies and Mariologies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were broadly Scotistic. To understand the history of Jesuit theology, then, it is as necessary to understand Duns Scotus and his followers as it is to understand Thomas Aquinas and his.

Studies of Scotus’s theology, though, are few and far between. Richard Cross has written one very good introduction and several monographs on specific aspects of Scotus’s theology. Tobias Hoffmann has published several excellent articles on the Subtle Doctor’s angelology. With chapters on Scotus’s life and career, the Triune God, Jesus Christ, creation, ethics, justification, predestination, and the sacraments, Antonie Vos’s The Theology of John Duns Scotus is the first attempt at a truly comprehensive overview. As one might guess from the selection of topics, Vos’s Scotus is strongly ecumenical. A lecturer in systematic theology, church history and medieval thought for the Netherlands Reformed Church at the University of Utrecht from 1984 to 2009 and currently professor of historical theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven, Belgium, Vos stresses the biblical character of Scotus’s theology and often casts it in a modern light. Vos’s Scotus bears little resemblance to the Subtle Doctor known to the theologians of the Society of Jesus—to say nothing of the Subtle Doctor known to Franciscan tradition—but The Theology of John Duns Scotus is not without interest.

Vos is strongly committed to the continuity of Scotus’s thought. In his estimation, the Subtle Doctor remained an “Oxford man” to the end, and the topics and texts he chooses to illustrate Scotus’s thought support this emphasis. Parisian influences and themes are minimized accordingly; Vos leans heavily on the early Oxford Lectura, but rarely explores Scotus’s Reportatio and Quodlibeta. Vos’s use and application of philosophical terms is also highly personal, and it is sometimes hard to pin his Scotus to easily identifiable positions. Be that as it may, The Theology of John Duns Scotus comes alive when Vos discusses Scotus’s understanding of synchronic contingency, which, for Vos, is Scotus’s signature contribution to theology. For Vos, synchronic contingency is the red thread running through the whole of Scotus; it provides unity and consistency to his thought and serves to distinguish it from the thought of other theologians and philosophers. Vos does not hesitate to argue that Scotus’s notion solves problems that theologians up to and including Aquinas could not. Nor does Vos shy away from insinuating that Reformed theologians might benefit by adopting it.

There are strengths and weaknesses to this systematic approach. Vos refreshingly ignores tired genealogies that see the origins of modernity in John Duns Scotus. Aquinas routinely appears as Scotus’s foil, but the Subtle Doctor’s real dialogue partners in The Theology of John Duns Scotus are Martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Barth, and Hans Küng, with Alasdair MacIntyre and Alister McGrath included for good measure. Not surprisingly, Vos frequently compares Scotus to Calvin (360, 377, 418) and presents Scotus’s theology in terms of the loci theologici of Reformed dogmatics, especially election, justification, and regeneration (237–38, 303–11). When Vos strays from the themes of freedom and contingency, however, his arguments become somewhat unfocused. When he describes what he calls Scotus’s position on the “structure of election,” for example, he oddly neglects to outline the obvious parallels between Scotus’s signa rationis and their later use in debates between supralapsarians, infralapsarians, Amyraldians, and Arminians. Vos’s arguments can seem a tad too jaunty at times. He argues that Scotus’s open Trinitarian notion of God is opposed to the closed, merely monotheistic, conception of Thomas Aquinas (163, 177, 395–96); in doing so, though, he insists that Aquinas denies God’s freedom to create (396–97). Surely this is unfair to Aquinas. Vos consistently exaggerates the differences between Aquinas and Scotus, and The Theology of John Duns Scotus is the worse for it.

Theologians of the Society of Jesus sometimes made the same mistake. As often as not, they noticed that Aquinas and Scotus were speaking at cross purposes. In some cases, though, they took what was best from both doctors and synthesized their teachings. One gets almost no sense of this in Vos’s study of Scotus’s theology, and readers of The Journal of Jesuit Studies might not find it helpful for this reason. Vos, in short, presents Scotus’s theology for a modern, ecumenically-minded audience of Reformed theologians. His Scotus is not a Protestant, but neither is he the theologian who proved so influential to later Catholic theologians, especially in the Society of Jesus.

DOI:10.1163/22141332-00601012-12