Abstract
AbstractMany studies criticise John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) for reducing the atoning sacrifice of Christ to a merit of finite worth and making its atoning power completely dependent on the accepting will of God, such that if it pleased God, even a purely creaturely sacrifice of an angel or a saint would have sufficed to redeem the elect. This article discredits this sort of criticism by demonstrating that Scotus situates his argument for a finite worth of Christ's merit within the framework of his larger argument for the infinite sufficiency of Christ's merit. A cogent examination of the ways in which Scotus posits a merit of finite intrinsic worth and arrives at its infinitely sufficient atoning power reveals that only the merit of a God-man can achieve this sort of sufficiency and that the nature of Scotus' voluntarism that underlies his concept of divine acceptation is nowhere as radical as it is usually portrayed.
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