Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1997 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

ARE GOD AND HUMAN CREATURES FREE? 123
one in terms of exclusively future propositions: Every truth regarding
2000 is necessarily a 'fore-truth' regarding its truth in 3000.
4.5.5 Most thinkers unfortunately do not define the terms
of their basic theories and the scholastics do not either. However, they
give their reader a hand and usually lay down some necessary
conditions of their usage. Nevertheless, we have to discover the
implicit definitions of their key terms in order to be able to interpret
them adequately. So the third objection is a misguided one.
4.5.6 It is true that many thinkers between Anselm and
Duns Scotus do not think that 'always' and 'necessarily' in its
ontological meaning are equivalent. On Knuuttila's side it is only a
contingently historical error. However, this time-theoretical thesis is
not at all the decisive component, because it is not the kernel of what
is at stake in the struggle between ancient non-Christian philosophy
and Christian thought. Instead the question is where the theory of
synchronic contingency is held before Duns Scotus. Why do I state the
problem in this way? Because the author introduces Duns Scotus
without any constructive function in the structure of his book and this
type of explicit conceptualization is typical of the whole of Duns'
thought and makes the whole of the patrimonium fidei explicitly
consistent in retroaction. Of course one does not pay heed to such a
claim, but the simple historical question is to point out phases in the
'Vorgeschichte' . I do not think that Simo Knuuttila succeeded in
pointing out the concept of synchronic possibility and synchronic
contingency in the twelfth century. Forerunners are Grosseteste and
Henry of Ghent. The notion is discussed by Richard Rufus, but still
rejected as it is in the Tractatus Emmeranus de falsi positione which is
perhaps the oldest substantial contribution to the ars obligatoria. 16
The broader context of the history of this ontology is the
independent development of Christian thought in the three centuries
before Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus and that is simply main
stream theology. This thought moves away from the structures of
Leibniz, Bern 1990, 169-236.
16 L.M. de Rijk, "Some thirteenth century tracts on the Game of
Obligation", Vivarium 12 (1974) 112-114 (94-123). Regarding. its date De
Rijk thinks of the twenties of the thirteenth century (op. cit., 102).