A recent article published made a claim that I couldn’t help but look up briefly. Discussing divine simplicity in Scotus, the authors remark that they are the first to argue that ultimately Scotus’s doctrine concerning the formal distinction between the divine attributes is much more than a “mere tweaking” of the traditional Anselmian / Augustinian teaching but, instead, is a rejection.
I bristled immediately upon reading that they are the “first” to do so. I’ll just post the two quotes that I randomly chose.
Gonet, Clypeus theologiae thomisticae , De deo uno, disp. 3, a. 2, sect. 1 : "Ibi enim agens de distinctione quae est inter sapientiam et bonitatem in Deo, sic [Scotus] loquitur: 'Est ergo ibi distinctio tertia, PRAECEDENS INTELLECTUM OMNI MODO; e test ista, quod sapientia est in re, ex natura rei, et bonitas est in re, ex natura rei, sapientia autem in re, formaliter non est bonitas in re.' Ex quibus verbis, aperte constat, Scotum inter bonitatem et sapientiam divinam admittere distinctionem tertiam, praecedentem intellectum omni modo, ac proinde realem, et actualem a parte rei, et non solum virtualem, et fundamentalem, quae fit actualis per intellectum, qualem ceteri Theologi admittunt. Et licet haec Scoti sententia, a multis gravi censura notentur 'Et absurda, vel erronea, et a communi Patrum doctrina penitus aliena,' appelletur, ut videir potest apud [Adam?] Tanner, [Universa theologia scholastica?] hic disp. 2, dub. 5 ab his tamen censuris et verborum aculeis abstinendum, solaque ratione et argumentorum vi cum discipulis Scoti § sequenti disputandum."
And relatively strongly as well in Billuart, De deo, diss. 2, art. 3, §4: "Nota praecipuas objectiones Scotistarum, si quid probent, nedum distinctionem realem formalem, sed realem entitativam probare, ut patebit ex sequentibus, quod cum salva fide admitti non possit, consequenter rationes illorum admitti non possunt, utpote nimium et contra fidem probantes."
I JUST ASK: Don’t make such broad historical claims! This doesn’t help at all. Presentism (i.e., only citing what Richard Cross wrote in the past 20 years) really isn’t honest to the long history of the hurly burly debates of Catholic (and non-Catholic) thinkers. But, we live in an age of utter discontinuity with this past. I suppose that we should accept it in our post-modern sensibility and just be glad that no “overarching narrative” dominates us….. (Nah. A bit of continuity would be truthful.)