FOUR QUESTIONS ON MARY - Franciscan Institute Publications

John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary
the part of creatures was based on some seminal reason the
creator had built into their natures. Scotus could not accept
this theory any more than he could that of Aristotle. Hence,
he presents his own account as to why Mary was as truly
a mother as any other human parent. For those concerned
with the history of the feminist movement it might be interesting
to note that it was devotion to Mary more than anything
else that brought the medieval theologians a long way
towards realizing something of the symbolic implications of
Paul’s statement (Gal. 3:28): “There does not exist among you
Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All are one
in Christ Jesus.”
We have omitted the even more philosophically complicated
Mariological question Balic includes in his collection of
Scotus’s writings on Mary. It stems from the fact that Christ
was the son of a divine Father and a human mother. This
caused university theologians to raise the question of whether
there were two real relationships of filiation or sonship in
Christ. Suffice it to say that Scotus, contrary to many of his
contemporaries, insisted on the distinct reality of both filial
relationships in Christ. 56 Though the question might still be
of some interest to a philosopher discussing the nature of
relations, or one concerned with proper theological discourse,
to include it in its entirety seemed inappropriate for the present
book.
56 Duns Scotus, Ordinatio III, dist. 8, quest. unica: Utrum in Christo
sint duae filiationes reales? ... Ad quaestionem dico quod alia est filiatio in
Christo ad Patrem, et alia ad matrem, et utraque est realis. Balić, Theologiae
Marianae Elementa, 127, 140.
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