Duns Scotus on Natural Theology

Abstract

Scotus’s natural theology has the following distinctive claims: That we can reason demonstratively to the necessary existence and nature of God from what is actually so but not from imagined situations or from conceivability-to-us; rather, only from the possibility logically required for what we know actually to be so. That there is a univocal transcendental notion of being. That there are disjunctive transcendental notions that apply exclusively to everything, like 'contingent/necessary', and such that the inferior cannot have a case unless the superior does. That an a priori demonstration of the existence of God is impossible because there is nothing explanatorily prior to the divine being; thus, reasoning must be a posteriori from the real dependences among things we perceive to the possibility of an absolutely First Being (The First Principle). That such a being cannot be possible without existing necessarily. That the First Being (God) is simple, omni-intelligent, free (spontaneous), omnipotent, and positively infinite. That there is a formal distinction, which is more than a distinction within our concepts or definitions, among the divine attributes.