Ever since the establishment of the International Scotistic Commission and its project to provide a critical edition of John Duns Scotus's Opera Omnia, students and scholars alike have awaited a complete English translation of the third distinction of Scotus's first book of his magisterial Ordinatio, known as Ordinatio 1.3. Published as volume three of the critical Opera Omnia in 1954, the importance of this text lies in its extended treatment of the various doctrines for which Scotus is well‐known: the univocity of being, abstractive and intuitive cognition, and his critique of divine illumination. The need for an English translation of this important, yet little‐read, text has been made all the more pressing in recent decades by the critique of Scotus's theology by ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ and those who seek to locate the genesis of ‘onto‐theology’ within the early Franciscan, Scotist school of thought. The publication of John van den Bercken's complete translation of Ordinatio 1.3 in his On Being and Cognition: Ordinatio 1.3 is, thus, a welcome and timely contribution to the somewhat vexed debate which has come to dominate so much of the scholarly literature concerning Scotus's thought, both historical and systematic.
As those interested in Scotus's thought will know, Scotus produced three commentaries on Lombard's Sentences during his short academic life: the relatively early Lectura, and the slightly later Ordinatio and Reportatio Parisiensis. Of these, the Ordinatio, closely followed by the Reportatio Parisiensis and the late Quaestiones Quodlibetales, is generally accepted as offering Scotus's fullest treatment of his key theological and philosophical convictions, particularly with regards to human cognition. Situating the Ordinatio within its broader intellectual context, van den Bercken's translation begins by offering a thorough introduction into the shape, content, and argument of Ordinatio 1.3, as well as its place within Scotus's wider literary corpus. Taking each of the text's different sections in turn, van den Bercken carefully situates Scotus's thought in relation to his principal opponents ‐ Henry of Ghent, Thomas Aquinas, and Godfrey of Fontaines–whilst offering the reader an accessible introduction to key aspects of Scotus's thinking.
Following this, the translation of Scotus's text is offered with extensive footnotes and helpful cross‐references to other scholastic and patristic authors, as well as several pertinent earlier works of Scotus, most notably, the Quaestiones supra libros de anima and Lectura. Scotus divides Ordinatio 1.3 into three parts. The first, addresses the possibility of our ‘having knowledge of God’ and consists of four questions. Namely, whether God is naturally knowable to the intellect of the wayfarer? Whether He is the first thing that is naturally known by the intellect in its present state? Whether God is the first natural and adequate object of the fallen intellect? And finally, whether the intellect can achieve certainty without any divine illumination? It is in the first and fourth of these questions, that Scotus's doctrine of the univocity of being and his critique of the illuminist epistemology of Henry of Ghent is most elaborated. The second part consists of only one question: whether there is an image of the Trinity within every creature? Whilst the third part considers the soul's status as an image of the Trinity. It is within this last section, consisting of four separate questions, that Scotus offers what is perhaps his most mature discussion of the mechanisms of human cognition, focusing particularly upon the ontological status of intelligible species and the role of the intellect in generating cognition of external objects.
Highly readable and clearly presented, van den Bercken's translation is both faithful to Scotus's original Latin, whilst honest about the limitations of rendering complex scholastic language into modern English. As is well known, Scotus is by no means an easy, nor indeed accessible, scholar to read. The density of his thought and his tendency to use long, stately sentences, subtle in both language and argument, makes him a daunting figure with whom to engage. As van den Bercken puts it, Scotus is not ‘brimming with compassion for the reader’. This makes the current translation all the more praiseworthy and significant. It offers a translation which is both clear and faithful to Scotus's original meaning. The occasional misprint disrupts the flow of the text, such as ‘on’ instead of ‘one’ on p. 127 and a missing ‘to’ on p. 169. These disruptions are, however, very few. Van den Bercken's translation is a much‐needed contribution to contemporary Scotus studies and will be valued by scholars and students alike. It is hoped that when coupled with some of the recent secondary literature on Scotus's psychology, most notably Richard Cross's Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition (2014), which draws heavily on Ordinatio 1.3, it will do much to clarify Scotus's historical significance and his relevance for contemporary thought.
