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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Few issues have received as much attention and achieved as little consensus among historians of late medieval theology during the past several generations as the debate over the character of “nominalism.” One thrust of the research from this debate has focused on the theological dimensions of this scholastic tradition: building on the work of Erich Hochstetter, Paul Vignaux, and others, Heiko Oberman discussed this development in the North American arena of scholarship by describing theological concerns as “the inner core of nominalism.”1
1. See his “Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism with Attention to its Relation to the Renaissance,” Harvard Theological Review 53 (1960): 49;Google Scholar see also idem, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel arid Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 4. For a discussion of the historiographical development, see William Courtenay, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Thought: A Bibliographical Essay,” and “Late Medieval Nominalism Revisited: 1972–1982,” both reprinted in Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984), chaps.12, 13; see also idem, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkaus (Leiden, 1974), pp. 26–36.
2. See Oberman, , “Some Notes,” pp. 48, 51–56,Google Scholar and Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 4.
3. Delauruelle, Etienne, L'église au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliare, vol. 14/2,Google ScholarHistoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu' à nos jours, ed. Fliche, A. and Martin, V. (Paris, 1964), p. 837.Google Scholar
4. To speak of this group of “moderate nominalist” theologians—that is, William of Ockham, Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson, and Gabriel Biel—as a “school” seems too ambitious a characterization for two reasons: first, because facets of Ockham's thought were used by theologians of widely differing perspectives during the fifteenth century, and second, because these theologians did not owe a primary allegiance to the Venerable Inceptor and were deliberately eclectic in their use of modern auctoritates other than Ockham. On this point Courtenay has persuasively argued that “‘partyism’ or ‘schoolism’ seems to be a child of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that should not be read back into the fourteenth century,” though he reluctantly concedes that “Ockhamism” is “the least undesirable term to describe this loose configuration of theologians”; see his “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” p. 53. This caveat is particularly appropriate for Gerson, since his opposition to any “school” loyalties that acquired priority over a simple allegiance to “the gospel” is well known; see, for example, Contra vanam curiositatem, in Oevres completes, vol. 3, L'oeuvre magistrale, ed. Glorieux, P. (Paris, 1962), pp. 240–242.Google Scholar All further references to Gerson's work are cited from this edition and noted with “G” followed by volume and page number.
5. Taking exception to this view, Michael Shank has recently argued that “given the inevitable ambiguities of these terms in current historiography, it has seemed preferable to describe the positions of individual thinkers rather than to give them labels that only spread confusion”; “Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand”: Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna (Princeton.,1988), p. xiii.Google Scholar
6. In the opening elegy of this work, Gerson laments; “Hail, Sweet land of my birth, O favored France!/Famed Paris, noble guardian of our land./ Alas! What is this that I see [in France]? A goddess, raging/ In cruel civil strife, filling all with gore./ In their midst a spirit of upheaval roams;/ They slay themselves in turn with their own swords.…/ All are strangled like sheep by a maddened mob.” See G 4, L'Oeuvre poétique, p. 135. On the question of Gerson's pessimistic view of the effectiveness of preaching for reform, see my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’ (1418): The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology fora Disordered Age (Tübingen, 1990), pp. 139–143, 256–263.Google Scholar
7. Gerson begins and ends this treatise with “Quaecumque scripta sunt … ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt ut per patientiam et consolationem scripturarum spem habeamus,” a stylistic point which suggests that he might have been aware of Johannes of Dambach's earlier and widely circulated piece of the same name since Dambach opened his work with the same biblical reference; see G 9, pp. 185, 245. For further discussion of the placement of Gerson's text within the literary tradition spawned by Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, see my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’, pp. 41–42, 61–62 nn. 1,4.
8. See C 9, p. 188.
9. See my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’, pp. 15–19, where I explore this point in closer detail; for his correspondence, see G 2, “L'oeuvre epistolaire,” pp. 216–217.
10. The question of the influence of this treatise remains to be explored. We do know that this treatise exists in at least forty-three manuscripts, according to Glorieux's investigation (see G 9, p. xiii; G 1, p. 41); it was also reprinted, in addition to inclusion in the six incunabula of the Opera omnia, as a freestanding book at least three times before 1500. For details of these publications, see G 1, pp. 71–72, 74–75.
11. G 9, p. 200: “Sed neque audiendus est Cicero, qui ut libertatem in hominibus statueret, abstulit a Deo providentiam; neque rursus ex adverso recipiendus alter, qui divinam providentiam sic instituere voluit ut arbitrio nostro necessitatem imponeret, proh nefas! etiam in peccatis dicens Deum velle et facere nos peccare in manifestationem gloriae suae. Porro viam mediam et regiam tradit theologia revelata fide subnixa.”
12. That is, “facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam.” Oberman argues that this argument reached theologians of the later Middle Ages primarily through the “old Franciscan school”; see Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 131–134.
13. Thus, for example, Bradwardine opposed as Pelagian those who argued that “homines ex solis propriis viribus gratiam Dei mereri de congruo, non autem de condigno”; De causa Dei contra Pelagium I, ch. 39. In similar style Gregory argued that “nemo potest mereri primam gratiam de condigno; nec etiam de congruo contra aliquorum sententiam modernorum”; II Sent. d. 28, q. 1, art. 1.
14. For further discussion of this point, see Oberman, , Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 169–172;Google Scholar see also Hägglund, Bengt, The Background of Luther's Doctrine of Justification in Late Medieval Theology (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 20–21.Google Scholar The logic of this doctrine delineated viatores' responsibility to accomplish at least a “semi-merit” coram Deo, thought the psychological effect this had in the late medieval church was often devastating. In his earlier treatises Gerson often brought these two arguments together, accentuating the facere quod in se est doctrine because of the human propensity toward scrupulosity. On this point, see Brown, D.Catherine, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 69–72;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, for a broader discussion of the problem in late medieval theology, see Werbeck, Wilfred, “Voraussetzungen und Wesen der scrupulositas in Spätmittelalter,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 68 (1971): 327–350,Google Scholar and Tentler, Thomas, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), pp. 68–70, 75–78.Google Scholar On self-humiliation, see Douglass, E.Jane Dempsey, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching: A Study of John Geiler of Keisersberg (Leiden, 1966), pp. 166–167,Google Scholar where this facet of Gerson's thought is cited as an influence upon Geiler. Yet, as Douglass later points out, the important question is not whether this theme is present—she argues that this theme is “part of the common medieval tradition and will be found in the writing and preaching of men holding very different theological positions” (ibid., p. 176)—but how this theme is situated in the broader theological context.
15. Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae V, pr. 6; CCSL 94, 105.
16. G 9, p. 199.
17. G 9, pp. 232–233. In an earlier treatise, his De remidiis contra pusillanimitatem (1405), he argued against scrupulosity, urging penitents to rely on God's mercy and thus alleviate their anxiety (that is, scrupulosity) about confessing sins; see G 9, pp. 374–386. For a discussion of this point, see Tender, , Sin and Confession, p. 77.Google Scholar
18. G 9, p. 233. Gerson also cites Rom. 5:20 in this passage, insisting with Paul that “where sin increased, grace may abound even more.”
19. This terminology derives from Oberman's analysis; see his explanatory remarks in Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 128–129.Google Scholar Francis Oakley also utilizes this language; see his The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979), p. 136.Google Scholar This language is not entirely satisfactory, however, since those theologians embracing a more severe Augustinian doctrine of grace, such as Gerson in this treatise, did so with deliberate pastoral intentions in mind, just as Ockhamists intended to safeguard the “confessional” emphasis upon grace; a better formulation might be to speak of a “merit soteriology” in contrast to one emphasizing “radical grace.”
20. Oberman uses both phrases to characterize Gerson's and, later, Gabriel Bid's doctrine of justification, since both, he argues, represent an “oscillation between ‘mercy’ and ‘justice’“; see Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 183, 231.
21. G 9, pp. 189–190. This citation is often found in later medieval preaching as a warning against presumption; on this point, see Douglass, , Justification in Late Medieval Preaching, pp. 149, 176,Google Scholar and Oberman, , Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 182–183.Google Scholar See G 9, pp. 189–190; the biblical reference which he applies is Rom. 5:5, “spes autem non confundit.”
22. Thus Oberman, , Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 196.Google Scholar Oberman is certainly also correct in suggesting that this doctrine stands as “a most revealing indicator of the understanding of the doctrine of justification”; ibid., p. 185. G 9, p. 196.
23. Ibid.
24. For a thorough discussion of this point with regard to the technicalities of Gerson's epistemology, and thus in terms of the specific categories of nominalist/realist, see Kaluza, Zénon, Les querelles doctrinales à Paris: Nominalistes et realistes aux confins du XIVe et du XVe siècles (Bergamo, 1988), pp. 14–15, 50–60, 127–144.Google Scholar Kaluza also notes, however, that Scotus himself represented a special case for Gerson because of the church's earlier approbation of his teaching; ibid., p. 50 and compare Contra vanam curiositatem, G 3, p. 244.
25. Wolfhart Pannenberg—apparently alone among modern interpreters of this period— recognized this, identifying Gerson together with Pierre d'Ailly as proponents of a Scotist doctrine of predestination; see Die Prädestinationslehre des Duns Scotus im Zusammenhang der scholastischen Lehrentwicklungen (Göttingen, 1954), pp. 145–147.Google Scholar Brown also recognized the shift in Gerson's theology on this point, though without any further clarification of the larger context—literary or historical—in which he expressed this theme; see Pastor and Laity, pp. 114–115.
26. G 9, p. 193; see also ibid., p. 198, where he argues that both the elect—in this case, Paul as the “chief” sinner (1 Tim. 1:15)—and damned derive from the same “mass of sin” (ex eadem peccati massa).
27. G 9, pp. 190–194. Pesch has rightly argued that Scotus's foundational claim that “nihil creatum formaliter est a Deo acceptandum”—a thesis anticipating Ockham's “Deus nulli debitor est,” which stands directly behind Gerson's argument—elicits the “controlling characteristic” of the late scholastic doctrine of God, that is, the emphasis upon divine freedom. See his Einführung in die Lehre von Gnade und Rechtfertigung (Darmstadt, 1981), p. 113.Google Scholar
28. Pannenberg discusses this theme as developed by Gregory of Rimini; see Prädestinationslehre, pp. 143–149. In contrast to such an extreme formulation of the doctrine of election, Gerson insists that viatores produce their acts “not by necessity but contingently,” a formulation remarkably similar to the balanced position adopted by Thomas Aquinas; on the latter, see Summa theologiae Ia, 22, 2–4, and for the former, G 9, p. 212. Gerson defends this position by arguing that all deserve damnation and those elected are saved “not without grace”: “Nihilominus fatendum est quod nemo sine culpa damnabitur, sicut absque gratia salvabitur nullus”; G 9, p. 194.
29. G 9, p. 194; the biblical allusion is to Rom. 11:6, “If by grace, then not by works.”
30. Oberman clarifies this point, following Paul Vignaux in Nominalisme do XIVe siècle (Paris, 1948), p. 22,Google Scholar in his “Some Notes,” pp. 60–61. See also Pesch, , Gnade und Rechtfertigung, p. 113.Google Scholar The question at hand was not whether salvation depended upon grace, but whether it was a matter of grace alone (sola gratia); on this point, see Froehlich, Karlfried, “Justification Language in the Middle Ages,” in Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue IV, ed. Anderson, H. G. et al. (Minneapolis, 1985), pp. 160–161.Google Scholar
31. Auer, Johann, Die Entwicklung der Gnadenlehre in der Hochscholastik, vol. 2, Das Wirken der Gnade (Freiburg i.B., 1951), p. 51:Google Scholar “Es war der religiöse und vielleicht seelsorgliche Bedürfnis, aus der Güte Gottes die Möglichkeit einer wirksamen Vorbereitung auf die Gnade zu erweisen.” The rest follow his lead: see Oberman, , “‘Wir sein pettler. Hoc est verum.’ Bund und Gnade in der Theologie des Mittelalters und Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Kirchensgeschichte 78 (1967): 256–257,Google Scholar and idem, “Duns Scotus, Nominalism, and the Council of Trent,” reprinted in The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 212–213; Douglass, , Justification in Late Medieval Preaching, pp. 141–147, 160–161;Google Scholar and, finally, Brown, , Pastor and Laity, p. 101.Google Scholar
32. Thus Oberman, , Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 189.Google Scholar
33. G 9, p. 196. In the dialogue preceding this citation Gerson does concede that God has ordained “innumerable appropriate means of various kinds” to attain final beatitude; he does not, however, specify these in any more definite manner, and his suggestion that these are sine numero should discourage us from seeing this as a sacramental reference. The contrast of Gerson's view to that of Aquinas is instructive on this point. Aquinas identified God as the “efficient cause,” Christ as the “united instrument,” and the sacraments as the “separate instruments” of grace; he does not, however, speak of faith in a causal manner; see Summa theotogiae IIIa, 61, 1 and 5.
34. As he here argues, “ut intelligo Volucer, ita se res habet quod apud vere humilem quanto minus est in se spei, minus in ope aliena fiduciae, minus denique vult constituere iustitiam suam, tanto plus spei, plus fiduciae de Deo concipit, plus quoque iustitiae Dei Sit subjectus”; G 9, p. 195.
35. Ibid. Gerson extends his consideration of this theme throughout this and the next prose section (that is, I pr. 4).
36. See G 9, p. 228; and, for a discussion of this text in the hands of German preachers, see Zumkeller, Adolar, “Das Ungenügen der menschlichen Werke bei den deutschen Predigern des Spätmittelalters,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 81 (1959): 265–305.Google Scholar
37. G 9, p. 190.
38. Pannenberg discusses nominalist theology after Scotus in terms of this dilemma: “Die Spaltung der nominalistichen Schule des 14. Jahrhunderts über der Prädestinationsfrage muss als ein Zurückfallen hinter den bei Duns Skotus schon erreichten Grad der Klärung dieses Problems angesehen werden. Die von Skotus als falsch erkannte Antithese zwischen Determinismus und Synergismus trat wieder hervor”; Prädestinationslehre, p. 144. Gerson attempts to recover this sense of a “falsely conceived antithesis,” which forced a choice in emphasis between divine and human initiative, perhaps by interpreting the latter within the divine covenant de potentia ordinata.
39. Again, see Pannenberg, , Prädestinationslehre, pp. 118–119.Google Scholar: “Erst wenn man das Dilemma zwischen Determinismus und Synergismus als innerhalb der scholastischen Diskussion des Prädestinationsproblems unentrinnbar erkennt, wird man die Grosse der geistigen Leistung Duns Skotus darin würdigen können, dass er diesem Zwang nicht unterworfen hat.”
40. This represents a neat reversal of the position attributed to the members of the “Ockham/ Biel circle”; see Oberman, , Forerunners of the Reformation, p. 130:Google Scholar “The theologians of the school of William of Ockham … and Gabriel Bid rejected Scotus's doctrine of predestination while retaining his understanding of the merit de congruo.”
41. This passage occurs at several key points in the opening book; see G 9, pp. 188, 189, 197.
42. See Commentaria in Epistolam ad Romanos, in Ambrose, Opera Omnia, Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, J.-P., vol. 17, p. 79.Google Scholar Oberman has argued that this text, imbedded within the Glossa ordinaria to Rom. 3:22, lies behind the facere quod in se est doctrine; Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 132.
43. G 9, p. 199. Gerson defends such a covenant against the apparent contradiction lodged in the nominalist conviction that “God is debtor to no one” and thus “cannot be obligated by rational creatures” (ibid.). This approach confirms Ozment's interpretation of nominalism as “a science of the potentia Dei ordinata,” according to which “man's salvation depends upon God's fidelity to his promises, on the trustworthiness of the word behind the ‘system.’” See “Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent,” in Pursuit of Holiness, pp. 68, 80.
44. G 9, p. 196. Elsewhere, he comments that theologia leads us “miraculously, as it were, to our embracing through love the God of all consolation, to whom we also cling as if to a place of sure refuge [velut in locum refugii].”
45. As one measure of this thesis, see Gerson's correspondence with the archbishop of Prague, Conrad de Vechte, in which he confronts this problem with vigorous polemic; G 2, pp. 157–166; I address this in my larger study, Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae,’ pp. 263–269.
46. For a detailed discussion of this trial, see Hefele, , Histoire des conciles, vol. 16 (Paris, 1874), pp. 445–476, 487–531.Google Scholar An eyewitness account also survives in the Relatio de Mag. Joannis Hus Causa of Peter Mladoňovice, as included in John Hus at the Council, ed. Matthew Spinka (New York, 1965), pp. 89–234.Google Scholar
47. See also Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae,’ especially chaps. 2, 5, 6. And see G 9, p. 216–217: “Proinde multos invenimus ex haereticis, etiam hac tempestate, quos fefellit talis zelus,” and so on.
48. Hus emphasized “present righteousness,” following Gratian, as necessary for salvation and follows Augustine's rejection of the claim that any person with “present righteousness” must necessarily be among the elect: “Nam si quis predestinatus est ad vitam eternam consequentur infertur, ergo est predestinatus ad iusticiam. Et si consequitur vitam eternam, ergo consecutus est iusticiam, sed non convertitur, multi enim sunt participes in presenti iusticie, sed propter defectum perseverancie non fiunt participes vite eterne”; Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. S. H.Thomson (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 16–17;Google Scholar see also Depenitentia 4.7–12; Friedberg, 1:1229. Peter Chelčický carried this argument to a further extreme, claiming that “in the saints, the righteousness commanded by God and predestination go together, and if a predestinated person keeps the righteousness commanded by God, he is then a member of the holy church”; cited in Pelikan, , The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol.4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700) (Chicago, 1984), p. 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49. On this point, see also above, n. 40. Hus argued that the true church remained hidden from us and thus was finally unknowable in this life: “sancta mater ecclesia sit sibi tantum incognita hic in via, quia super isto stat meritum fidei christiane”; Tractatus de ecclesia, p. 37.
50. Gerson expressed this concern in an earlier letter; see G 2, p. 163. Pelikan confirms this interpretation, suggesting that pastoral concerns underlie Gerson's opposition to Hus; see Reformation of Church and Dogma, p. 92.
51. In this treatise Gerson applies the language of union found among medieval commentaries to the Song of Songs to describe justification: “At last I now seem to understand more of what I read in the writings of the devout. These authors speak of the entrance of the bride into the bridegroom's chambers, of her kiss of his mouth after having kissed his hands and feet, and of the dwelling place in the help of the most high [rather than] in an empty dwelling place of future punishments [or] in the timid, uncertain dwelling of one's own achievements”; G 9, p. 195. Others have described Gerson as an example of a “mystical nominalism”; Oberman, for example, suggested that for Gerson “mysticism and nominalism are ideal partners in a wholesome ‘mystical marriage’” (Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 360), while Ozment prefers to speak of his thought as “nominalistic mysticism” (see “Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent,” pp. 67–77). See G 9, p. 190: “constituisset nobis justusjudex Deus, per sacramentum reconciliationis unigeniti Filii sui Dei curiam primam et alteram, in quibus gratiam et misericordiam judices collocavit.” Froehlich has pointed Out that those late medieval theologians who “followed Scotus in his strong emphasis on predestination as the necessary safeguard of God's sovereignty over the ordained order of salvation … were immediately drawn into a consideration of the place of Christ in this contingent plan and thus in the justification process”; see “Justification Language,” p. 161.
52. As Froehlich has pointed out, “late medieval mystics added [to the scholastic discussion of justification] a strong sense of paradox: mine, yet not mine; it understood the righteousness of God reaching human beings as an utterly divine reality, superior to anything the human virtue of justice may mean”; “Justification Language,” p. 156. Hägglund also addresses this point, noting that mystics spoke of justification as consisting in “man's becoming nothing and God's becoming all in man,” such that “the terminology of justification is … interchanged with the terminology of unity with God”; Luther's Doctrine of Justification, p. 10.
53. Leff, Gordon, The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on the Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century (New York, 1976), p. 119.Google Scholar
54. Gerson closes On the Consolation of Theology with this language, merging two Pauline phrases with his own gloss: “Fiat ita precor, et pax Dei quae exsuperat omnem sensum, custodiat corda et inteiligentias nostras in caritate Dei, et patientia Christi, ut per patientiam et consolationem scripturarum spem habeamus. Amen”; G 9, p. 245.