Abstract

In 1277, Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, drafted the famous Condemnation of 219 articles in theology and natural philosophy. This Condemnation was a reaction against a group of theologians, led by Siger of Brabant, who were accused of holding that truths of reason could contradict those of revelation. Writing before the Condemnation, which impugned reason's autonomy, Thomas Aquinas critiqued Siger and his followers, and argued that reason could never generate truths that contradict revelation. As a consequence, Aquinas sometimes dwells on reason's limits, terming our knowledge of God 'equivocal' or 'analogical'. Sitting on the other side of the Condemnation, around the turn of the fourteenth century, John Duns Scotus was concerned to secure for reason a portion of its lost dignity. Accordingly, he explores what we can know of God, and lays claim to 'univocal' knowledge of him. Some scholars hold that Scotus's claim to univocal knowledge of God puts him at odds with Aquinas. In this dissertation, I argue that this is not the case, that this apparent discord is largely the result of their different enterprises rather than their basic beliefs about our natural knowledge of God, that Scotus's discussion of univocity is targeted not at Aquinas, but rather at Henry of Ghent---the leading light of the University of Paris at the time that Scotus studied there---and that Scotus does not believe that our knowledge of God is univocal in a strong sense, such that he would claim that it is wholly accurate. Rather, Scotus believes that, in this life, our knowledge of God must comprise abstract concepts that can never do justice to their source. This being the case, he has more in common with Aquinas than some would allow