Flacius and Strigel Revisited

The question between Flacius and Strigel in 1557 was this: How deep is sinfulness in human beings? Flacius thought it was so profound that it determined the very substance of human being. Strigel did not go that far, believing that sin while inevitably present, was nonetheless merely accidental to human being. Much has been written about this controversy over the years. The Formula of Concord attempted to follow the spirit of Flacius, if not the letter of his claim, declaring: 

That original sin (in human nature) is not only this entire absence of all good in spiritual, divine things, but that, instead of the lost image of God in man, it is at the same time also a deep, wicked, horrible, fathomless, inscrutable, and unspeakable corruption of the entire nature and all its powers, especially of the highest, principal powers of the soul in the understanding, heart, and will, so that now, since the Fall, man inherits an inborn wicked disposition and inward impurity of heart, evil lust and propensity. (SD, I) 

The question as to the profundity of human sin, and the attempt to claim that it is of the very substance of human being, involves us quickly in modal claims -- claims about necessity, possibility and contingency. Aristotle famously held a "two tiered" notion of substance. Accordingly, there are certain properties the substance has which are necessary and sufficient for it to be the substance it is, and others that the possess that they might not have.

Unfortunately, the phrase "necessary and sufficient for it to be the substance it is" is ambiguous, trading between the following:

• Necessarily, it is the case that for any x, x is identical to individual i if and only if i instantiates a particular property group A.
• Necessarily, it is the case that for any x, x is a member of kind k if and only if x  instantiates a particular property group B.  

The first claims that there is an individual essence A which is instantiated just in case a particular individual i obtains; the second declares that a general essence B is instantiated when some individual or other of kind k obtains.  While Aristotle clearly held that an individual substance has a general essence, most believe he did not countenance individual essences.  Thus, while it is necessary and sufficient for the individual Socrates to possess the essence man, it is more dubious that the individual Socrates possesses an essence of Socrativity.  While more could be said about this, I will not say it here.  

In addition to the essential properties that make a substance the kind of substance it is, there are also properties of the substance that are not necessary for it to be the substance it is. While properties of the first type are essential to the subject, properties of the second type, are contingent and do not constitute the substantiality of the substance.  While the substance Socrates must have the property of being a human being or not be Socrates, Socrates can either be pale or not pale and yet still be Socrates.  Using the language of Aristotle's de Categoria,  'man' is "said of" Socrates, paleness is "present in" Socrates.  'Man' is thus essentially predicated of Socrates while 'pale' is only accidentally predicated.

But this is not the end of the matter.  According to Aristotle, since 'man' is "said of" Socrates, 'mammal' and 'animal' must be "said of" him as well.  These secondary sayings about Socrates form transitive relationships: If the general essence of Socrates is to be human, then in being human Socrates must also be a mammal, be an animal, be a living being, etc.  That is to say, Socrates could not be at all if Socrates were not a living (as opposed to non-living) being. Flacius was arguing, in effect, that sin is essentially predicated of man (human beings), that is, that any substance having the general essence of being human must also instantiate the property of being sinful.  Strigel, on the contrary, claimed that sin is only accidentally predicated of any individual that is a man.  That is to say, the property of being sinful is "present in" primary substances having the essence of being human, but is not "said of" those substances.  'Sin' is accidentally predicated of a particular human being, not essentially predicated. 

While Flacius was trying to emphasize the inevitability of sin in our actual world, his claim that sin is essentially predicated of man (human beings) actually denies the existence of a possible world in which humans do not sin. Since there is no possible world in which a human being does not sin, the notion of 'man' (human being) contains within itself the notion of sin. Thus, just as the notion of square excludes the notion of circle, so too does the notion of 'man' exclude the notion of not sinning. Just as it is inconceivable that a square could be a circle, so it is inconceivable that a man could not sin. None of this can be countenanced, of course, by the Christian holding that God's creation is good. 

But the contrary position that sin is accidental, seemingly suggests a superficiality to sin, as if human beings might not sin because they are not determined metaphysically to do so. The problem in the debate, as I see it, is simply that neither Strigel nor Flavius yet had the notion of a physical law which, on any non-Humean interpretation, determines the distribution of physical properties universally within nature without this distribution holding in all possible worlds.  Human nature is fixed and, as Luther declares, human beings inevitably sin.  Yet this determinate human nature need not obtain in all possible worlds. There are worlds in which human beings do not sin. This, in fact, is necessary for claiming that God's creation is good, and necessary as well for being able to imagine an original paradise from which man and women fell.  One might say, that Flacius' views presuppose the impossibility of the Fall, because they make impossible the existence of a state from which human beings have lapsed.  

The Christian story is that human nature which was made good -- contingently, not metaphysically so -- contingently became a determinately corrupt nature contingently fixing the spectrum of human behaviors and responses.  Just as the acceleration of earthly objects downward is 9.8 m/sec2 universally under standard conditions, so too is human nature universally sinful and cannot (physically or through human agency) free itself.  However, just as there are possible worlds with different laws of motion, so are there worlds in which human nature is not corrupt. The depravity of man is metaphysically contingent, but physically (or agentially) necessary. Total depravity does not extend to all possible worlds.

These simple distinctions show that Strigel was correct, no matter how much Flacius may have fumed otherwise.  Somebody might argue, of course, that the modal distinction I am drawing here is still somehow practically unimportant, that Flacius was right in spirit because he was rightly pointing out that for all x, if x is human, then x is sinful.  He was arguing that human beings are inescapably and inevitably sinful, and this physical necessity of each x to sin is the important matter.  So what if Flacius somehow used the language of essentiality.  Was this not all that he had at the time, and would not other language suggest that human beings might proudly somehow escape sin?  

I aver, however, that modal difference makes all the difference.  We now have a clear notion of physical law; we understand determinate causal chains underlying universal regularities in the actual world.  We now know that for something to be contingently so does not mean that it is somehow capriciously so, obtaining sometimes and not other times.  Simply put, we understand that necessities are of different kinds: There are logical necessities, conceptual necessities, metaphysical necessities, physical necessities, etc.  Just because something is physically necessary does not mean that it is metaphysically necessary.  While we may cringe at calling human sin a "physical necessity," it is indeed so: Each and every human being h has a set of dispositional properties such that were conditions x, y or z to obtain, h would act in u or v fashion, where u and v are instantiations of what theology has always identified as sin.  Since it is a fact of our world that conditions x, y, or z obtain, it is not possible for a human being to exist having the set of dispositional properties he/she has and not sin.  The fact that this dispositional properties do not hold in all possible worlds should not obviate the obvious: This dispositional set does indeed obtain in the actual world.  Thus, each and every human being necessarily sins given the metaphysically contingent fact of the universal human proclivity to sin.  That we all necessarily sin given this metaphysical contingency should be enough confidently to proclaim, "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.  We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone."  What more is needed?  If the creation of the universe is a contingent fact given the freedom of God, surely the existence of a fallen universe is contingent as well.  

Sin Essential and Contingent

I must admit that I have always thought Augustine fundamentally correct when saying, "My heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in thee, O Lord."  We denizens of the finite are not completed by the finite.  We search inescapably for "more-than-ness."  The problem is that while we search for this "something more than the finite," we look for it in the only place seemingly we can look: in the finite.  So we arrive at the dilemma of human being: An inhabitant of the finite looks for the infinite, but can only apprehend the finite.  Such a situation in which an infinite grasping connects to a finite object or meaning -- "connects" in being prima facie satisfied -- produces the phenomenon of sin.  And so Calvin could claim that the human mind is a factory of idols, for it is of the very being of our being, it seems, to "elevate the conditioned to the level of the unconditioned," to use Tillich's trenchant phrase.

Now all of this is pretty standard fare for the theologian, particularly the Lutheran theologian.  We know that the human mind is a factory of idols -- though we Lutherans don't often employ these words -- and that it is of the nature of human beings that we turn away from God in unbelief, pride, idolatry and concupiscence.  While we have an "ontological thirst" towards God, towards that Infinite which can only satisfy our thirsting after completion, we find ourselves a'whoring (using the traditional language) after false gods, after those seemings within the finite that seemingly satisfy.  In so doing we turn away from the horizon of the infinite, believing that a finite bird in the hand is worth the entire bevy of the infinite.  This is unbelief.  As we turn towards the finite, we realize that the turning is ours.  It is a matter now of our identification of that within the finite that can satisfy our ontological search.  This identification is pride.  That which is not infinite, but is now to satisfy the drive towards the infinite is an idol; it is something conditional now elevated to the level of the unconditional.  And the a'whoring is something done with an almost infinite zest, an excitement of the finite beyond what the finite can support.  Such an excitement is concupiscence, a desire to devour and dominate the infinite as one's own religious and erotic ecstasy.

I have always been fairly comfortable claiming that this is the basic condition of human being.  Although I have read many things about our getting over of transcendence -- Bonhoeffer probably first -- I never seriously thought human beings could or would do it.  The imprint was just too strong. "We are but a little lower than the angels," I thought, "and surely the complexity of our consciousness, of its hopes, aspirations, motivations, reasonings, rationalizations, fears, etc., witnesses deeply to this."  As the years have churned by, it seems, I have not really lost the sense of the striking difference between human self-consciousness and the consciousness of animals.  "There is something different," I tell myself, "and this something different is the divine imprint."  But lately I have been wondering if what I tell myself is accurate, or even of much significance.  Charles Taylor's A Secular Age lays out our western plight pretty well, and there is nothing in the macros of his diagnosis of the human problem that seems to me fundamentally inaccurate.

It seems like human beings in the old North Atlantic world just are quite different now.  Many I meet appear not at all to have an ontological thirst.  While I can always satisfy myself with the hope that they do retain this nonetheless -- even though they don't know it -- this interpretation is getting more difficult to sustain.  When people look with blank eyes when one attempts to uncover the hidden religious dimension of their secularity and/or atheism, the philosopher must take a step back and at least question his assumption.  What if these people don't have an ontological thirst at all?  What if they don't try to satisfy it in all of the wrong places?  What if their seeming drive for pleasure is not prideful concupiscence grounded in idolatry, but merely a drive for pleasure?  What if human beings aren't who we theologians have always assumed them to be?  What then? 

Charles Taylor attempts to show that the ambiguity of our present situation -- there still is some haunting of transcendence, after all -- can strike a significant counterpoise to exclusive humanism, that reveling in the immanent as if the question of transcendence could be jettisoned completely.  He tries to display how certain trajectories within the immanent are cross-pressured by the question of transcendence, though now of a post-modern and "excarnational" type.  So for him, at least, the ontological thirst is still somehow present, though perhaps not directly experienced as thirst.  It is as if one had a physical malady that disallowed the experience of thirst, so that one would identify one's states by certain of one's actions.  So the traditional strategy is not fundamentally different for Taylor.  One still has the condition, after all, even if one is not experiencing it.  So we are left with the question:  What if there is no ontological thirst at all?  What if the having of it was merely a stage in the history of consciousness, and not an element in the structure of consciousness?

I am enough of a philosopher to know that I can't really pull a rabbit out of the hat.  If there is no ontological thirst as an element in the structure of consciousness, then the transcendent fall into sin is problematic.  If this is the case, then the paradise story is not an exemplification of a timeless condition, a story that is true because it states in narrative form what deeply is: We temporal voyagers are existentially not somehow who we essentially are, and the gap between our existence and our essence is manifest as sin.  If there is no universal ontological thirst, even an unexperienced universal ontological thirst, then our sin and salvation, our capacity to thirst, to wander into idolatry, unbelief, pride and concupiscence, is a thoroughgoingly contingent, historical-conditioned state of affairs.  It does not have to be that way, and, indeed, it is becoming less so.  So what then?

At this time all that is left is preaching.  Preaching does not uncover the structures of consciousness so that they are accordingly recognized, but changes the contour of consciousness.  It creates.  Verbum dei manet in aeternum not because of the underlying structures it brings to expression, but because of the new realities it creates, realities of sin and salvation.  Accordingly, preaching the law really does create sin -- or at least what we denizens of the North Atlantic countries have traditionally identified as sin.  (There is much that needs to be said here, but I am not saying it now.)  That there are very sizable tensions here with traditional theological assertions goes without saying.  But theological tensions are nothing new.  Since the time of the Enlightenment, it has been extraordinarily difficult to provide a coherent theological account of God and world.  Tensions abound; it is a question for the theologian of what one can live with.  If one wants to take seriously the possibility that exclusive humanism may become the dominant ethos in our part of the world, and that this humanism is not delusionally occluding a more profound ontological structure, then we have to talk seriously about the contingency of that which we once thought essential.  That this places even more importance on the reality of the preached Word both in law and gospel is not something that Lutheran theologians will find surprising.

Propositional Content, Truth-Conditions and Existential Empowerment

For a very long time I have puzzled over the relationship within theology among the notions of syntax, semantics and existential empowerment.  A proposition is uttered and has meaning.  A person hears it and orients himself in a different direction in the hearing.  The pastor utters, "Christ is risen." The parishioner hears the assertion and is seemingly empowered by it: She feels otherwise than she likely would have felt, thinks otherwise than she likely would have thought, and behaves differently than she otherwise would have behaved.  While all this seems clear, it is not.  In this brief article, I want to reflect upon this unclarity.

Preachers proclaiming the Word of God to hearers say such things as, "You are forgiven," "Christ died for you," "God hears your prayers," "God knows everything in your heart," "God demands that you help the poor," "God wants you to love your neighbor even as Christ has loved you," "The Holy Spirit in you is praying through you," and "God's gracious love makes all things new."  Obviously, in the course of any sermon, a preacher utters many statements like these.  As you look closely at them, it is clear that many really do prima facie have the form of statements; they seem to be claims about God, God's will for us, and God's gracious love of us.

If such statements were made in the presence of philosophers, there might erupt a discussion as to the truth-conditions (or lack of the same) of such statements.   What makes true the statements, 'Christ died for you', or 'God's gracious love makes all things new'?  What precisely must be the case for the statement 'Christ died for you' to be asserted as true?  Is it made true by the psychological properties of the utterer?  Is it made true by some set of events, entities, properties or states of affairs, the presence of which determines the statement's truth and the absence of which determines its falsity?

Or is the statement not true at all?  Perhaps it is a saying of the group that one must say to be part of a group.  Or perhaps it is merely an expression of one's own subjectivity, one's feelings and existential orientations.  Maybe the statements are really not statements at all, but rather pseudo-statements masquerading as statements with truth values.  Without a truth-value, a sentence cannot be a statement, it cannot state rightly or wrongly what is in fact the case.   It can, of course, be language that is nonetheless doing something.  For instance, it might make a promise or a command, express a feeling or hope, or give thanks or praise.  But without a truth-value, the statement cannot in principle make a claim rightly or wrongly about the way that things are.

Theologians, particularly Lutheran theologians, have recently displayed a penchant for disparaging ontology.  ('Recent' here connotes the last 225 years or so.)  They seemingly assume that the discipline having to do with being is not a discipline properly relatable to theology, the discipline having to do with logos or Word.  Perhaps they believe, or are somewhere on the trajectory of believing, with the Neo-Kantians that while the categories of 'being' and 'cause' are  appropriate for die Natur, they are out of place in the realm of der Geist (spirit), the region pertaining to 'value'.  Accordingly, theological ontology is misguided because it is an investigation which would locate God in an inappropriate region.  God would be, at best, a being among other beings -- albeit the highest of those beings.  But how could a being among beings be a being that fulfills the primal condition of God being God: the condition that God is infinitely qualitative different than creation, that God is totaliter aliter than all that is?

Maybe they simply think that ontology is metaphysics and that interest in metaphysics is symptomatic of a theology of glory.  Instead of God revealing Himself in weakness and vulnerability on the Cross, human beings search for God on the basis of the created order, locating God at the apex of truth, goodness and beauty.  But is not such a metaphysical inquiry an attempt to build a bridge to the infinite by standing in the finite?  Is not that attempt a proud seeking after the glory of God in strength and impassibility?  "We must search for God where is revealed," they say, "We must find it in is in His Word, not search to unmask the hidden God!"

But these ways of thinking are simply confusions, most often perpetrated by those who have imperfect understandings of what ontology is and does.  Ontology is concerned with truth-conditions, with those conditions that must obtain to make true those statements we regard as such.  Whatever events, objects, properties and states of affairs which make such statements true are precisely those events, object, properties and states of affairs we hold exist.  Simply put, all of our statement utterings have ontological commitments.  Just as some state of affairs makes true the statement 'the cat is on the mat' -- presumably the existence of a cat, a mat, and a particular dyadic relation of "onto" such that the cat is onto the mat -- so some state of affairs would make true the statements 'Christ is resurrected from the dead', and 'Because Christ lives, you shall live also'.  But what might these be?

Now enters the traditional problem of religious language.  What exactly does 'Christ lives' mean and what would 'I live' mean in its wake? Clearly, we know what it is for something to live.  A being lives if it fulfills certain biological conditions.  But would Christ's living fulfill those conditions?  Perhaps, if we are thinking about Christ's living alongside Peter's living.  But is the Christ who lives alongside Paul's living a Christ who lives in the same way that Christ lived alongside of Peter's living?  What would a post-resurrected living be?  A fortiori what would a post-Ascension living entail?  Would a human living that is not a biological living be a living?  Perhaps one says, "yes," but it is not altogether clear what one is saying when saying it.

Everything I have said so far connects to the problem of the assertion of propositional content and the effect of such asserting on existential empowerment.  Pastor Roy goes to see parishioner Mary who has been battling cancer, and now appears to be rapidly losing the battle.  The doctors say she may have only weeks to live.  Pastor Roy says to Mary that death has not ultimate victory over her because Christ has conquered death and through His resurrection, she will be resurrected as well.  Mary thinks about this a moment and says, "Pastor, is that true, or are you just saying that to make me feel better."  Pastor Roy considers her statement and replies, "It is true, Mary, you will be resurrected with Christ."  Mary, always the skeptic, follows up, "But in what sense will I be resurrected?  Will I have a body and will I know myself to be the same person I was before I died?"  Pastor Roy deliberates a moment and then hazards the following: "Mary, I don't know if you will have a body that is like the body you now have, nor a psychology like that which you now have, I just know that you will be resurrected."  Mary is silent a moment and then returns to her original statement, "Pastor, is that true, or are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

Mary is concerned with the semantics of Pastor Roy's assertions.  What do the statements he is proclaiming mean, and are they true?  To know if they are true it seems, she must know what they mean.  But Mary knows that locating meaning logically prior to truth cannot ultimately explain what it is that 'meaning' means.  Mary grasps that for a statement to mean x rather than y, one must know the conditions under which x is true and y not.  Whatever these truth-conditions are, are what makes an assertion's meaning mean.  She knows that when Pastor Roy says to her, "Death does not have ultimate victory over you because Christ has conquered death and through His resurrection, you will be resurrected as well," it makes all the difference in the world to the assertion's meaning what must obtain in order for the sentence to be true.   What makes true Christ's conquering death and being resurrected such that she will be resurrected as well?  Moreover, is it not clear that whatever makes that true makes all the difference in the world as to how she feels, thinks and behaves in the hearing, over and against how she otherwise would have felt, thought and behaved?

A theological statement's semantics, its truth-conditions and truth, is intimately related to its ability to existentially empower.  What I am saying is that it makes a deep existential difference to most people in the face of impending death what it is about which they might legitimately hope.  But is this not merely a baseless assertion?  Why think that Mary's empowerment in the face of death depends upon some fact of the matter about Christ's life after death?  Is not the Word enough?  Is not the proclamation of the Word enough to empower?  Why get into semantics and philosophical discussion when none is clearly needed?

But it is clearly needed; this is the point.  The mere uttering of words cannot empowerment produce.  But is not the Word external?  Is that not enough?  It is only enough, I would say, if one were Zoroastrian and had to have all of the words right in order to produce the correct result.  It is enough only if one believes that words are magical bringing about effects without means.   Lutherans believe in the real presence, after all.  For the external Word to be really present demands that the Word appear in, under, around and beyond the words which bear it.  But in order for the Word to be present, it must mean.  Without meaning the Word remains in bare externality; it remains incapable of connection to fallen structures in need of salvation.  Blessed are they that know their need of God.

What I am suggesting is that a mature Lutheran theology of the Word can indeed connect to truth-conditions.  They are the means by which our hopes are fanned and fears quelled.  While the argument is difficult, is it not self-evident that Mary's fears about death and her hopes for a future beyond it are linked inextricably to what she thinks really is the case with regards to these things?  The Holy Spirit is carried by the Word and is ever related to the Word, and the Holy Spirit works through means.  Is not the Spirit's ability to deliver the Word through human words related to the empowerment of the hearer of the Word, an empowerment that depends upon the hearer knowing the meaning and truth of what is said?  Perhaps one might even say the Spirit forms the link between the proclamation of words, and the Wording of the Word in the salvation of its hearer.

So Mary went out and listened to the voice of Pastor Roy and her spirit was calmed, for Pastor Roy spoke a truth that she could not invent.  To have understood Roy in the flesh would have meant that she understand his remarks figuratively, for denizens of nature can only speak the spirit as an as if.  But because of God's Spirit she did not need to spiritualize the brutal facts of nature. Because of His Spirit, she knew in her spirit that Nature was a far bigger thing than ever she had realized.

Metaphysics and Ontology V

The Question of Demonstrative Science

Like all medieval theologians, Luther was well-educated and very interested in logic.  He knew his Aristotle very well, lecturing on the great philosopher when in graduate school.  It is thus important that we know something about Aristotle's views on demonstration if we are to get clear on what Luther is doing in his more technical work where he thunders against "a logic of faith."

Aristotle argued in the Posterior Analytics that the deepest scientific knowledge of a thing required that thing to be grasped in terms of its necessitating causes.  Accordingly, the demonstrative syllogism produced the deepest knowledge (Eileen Sirene, "Demonstrative Science," in Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 497).  Through such a syllogism knowledge of the fact was established (demonstratio quia) as well as knowledge of why this fact must obtain (demonstratio propter quid).

Toward the end of the first quarter of the 13th century, Robert Grosseteste became the first in the Latin west to comment on Aristotle's entire Posterior Analytics.  While he agrees with Anselm and others that the truth of a thing is its conformity with the rationes in the divine mind, he holds that the truth of a proposition is found in the conformity between what the proposition asserts and what is the case (Sirene, p. 502).  Grosseteste's commitment to a theory of divine illumination affects his interpretation of the Posterior Analytics.  While Aristotle indicated that experience and induction lead to an intuitive grasp of first premises in demonstrative proofs, Grosseteste grounds first premises in a "direct or indirect irradiation of his mind by divine light" (p.503).  Without such illumination no certainty is possible.

Aquinas downplays illumination as a necessary epistemic feature of this life, claiming with Aristotle that we can grant first principles and definitions through experience.  As it turns out, Aquinas assigns to the role of demonstrative science a small subset of the set of all truths, for most of what we claim to know is opinion, not scientia.  The latter demands both demonstratio quia and demonstratio propter quid, something lacking in the former.

Scotus relaxes the Aristotelian requirement that knowledge of something demands that one know why it necessarily happens.  Because of his commitment to the potentia dei absoluta, Scotus denies that knowing x presupposes that we know why x must be what it is.   The fact that it is an x is completely consistent with the possibility God could have willed ~x.  Scotus thus changes the nature of demonstrative science from the project of discerning what is necessary in nature to finding instead what is possible or compossible within it.  This has repercussions for his theory.  While demonstrative science could establish the connections among general truths, it is incapable of explaining why this particular was instantiated at this particular time.  This cannot be proved because God could always have changed his mind and not brought that particular into being. Here as elsewhere, voluntarism seems to push towards nominalism and the contingency of the individual.  

The great architect of the via moderna, William Ockham follows Aristotle in claiming that better known premises provide warrant to affirm the truth of those propositions entailed by them.  But, he realizes that "the resulting sciences are collections of true propositions, and not necessarily a mirror of the inner constitution of nature" (p. 513).  They can be only contingent propositions because God is the only necessary being.  Ockham does say that knowledge acquired by demonstration is not different in kind from knowledge by experience (p. 514), but understands this to mean that demonstrative knowledge needs to presuppose experience, not the other way around.  Jean Buridan follows Ockham on the difficulties of establishing an Aristotelian demonstrative science of nature, holding instead that such reasonings must allow for linking propositions which are almost always true with others of the same kind (p. 517).

Metaphysics and Ontology IV

E. What is the Role of the Senses in Acquiring Knowledge?

We have been surveying some of the metaphysical issues of the fourteenth century, issues that were still of concern when Luther was studying for his M.A. at Erfurt. We have discussed the question as to the proper subject matter of metaphysics, the relationship between the essence and existence of a thing, the issue of actuality and potency in incorporeal beings, and the question of the ontological status of universals with concomitant inquiry into the nature of individuation and identity.  Another important issue for 14th century theologians concerned itself with the metaphysics of knowing and the reliability of sense perception in acquiring knowledge.  Since the development of Christianity presupposed an Augustinian standpoint in which philosophy is in conformity with the revealed tenants of the christian faith, the task was to retain the harmony of faith and reason while still allowing empirical  access of, and affording general ontological status to, the external, non-divine world.

It is important to recall that Augustine and much of the Christian tradition presupposed the doctrine of divine illumination, holding that the mind confronts not its own concepts or ideas, but ideae, rationes, forms or species.  These were trans-subjective entities, not "subjective mental features" (Owens, "Faith, Ideas, Illumination and Experience," in The Cambridge History of Latter Medieval Philosophy, p. 442).  As Aristotle was rediscovered in the West, however, it became more important to give an account of the possibility and limits of knowledge gained through sensation, an account that sometimes produced considerable tension with the older illumination theory.  The problem was how to proceed in producing such an account, when knowledge was thought to be an incorporeal affair.  In other words,  how could the realm of the corporeal cause the suitable movements in the incorporeal assumed necessary for knowledge?  Whereas the Neoplatonic illumination starting point privileged the ontological status of ideas over material objects, (and in so doing assumed that secondary substance had more reality than primary substance), the Aristotelian focus on the ontology of primary substances seemingly reversed the situation entirely, affording no real existence to ideas -- and demoting secondary substance to a matter of the conceptual.

In the early part of the thirteenth century William of Auxerre tried to reconcile the older view of the divine illumination of religious faith with Aristotle's notion that we can attain knowledge through the senses.  He did this through developing Aristotle's assertion in De Anima that "the soul is in a way all things" (p.445).  William reasoned that although the thing known is potentially in the knower, the material intellect nonetheless had to receive its species from corporeal objects (p. 446).  The material intellect must receive the form abstracted from sensible things, forms called by his time species.   Owens writes: "the existence of things in the Augustinian intelligible world was being aligned with their potential existence in the soul's material intellect, and in each case 'existence' was regarded as metaphorical" (446).

William, however, rejected the Aristotelian notion of the active intellect, believing instead that the material intellect could itself know singulars and universals, and make true judgments about them.  (His view might be regarded as a precursor to the positions assumed by Hobbes, Locke and the other empiricists, for the object itself somehow impresses its species upon the thinker thereby forming an idea.)   Albert the Great, however, writing in 1245 advocates that an agent intellect is clearly needed in order to get the species into the material intellect.  He writes, "".  .  . unumquodque phantasma set particular determinatum: et ideo neccese est ponere agem universale in intellectu" (Summa de creatione II, 55, 1, ad 2m; Owens, p. 448).   The light of the active intellect, supplemented by the light of the uncreated intelligible light, abstracted the species from the sense particular and "lit" up the material intellect by so doing.   In combining the Aristotelian idea of abstracting the species and  forming the potential intellect with the notion of light, Albert attempted to retain Augustinian-inspired illumination theory even while moving towards an Aristotelian position on knowing the objects of the senses.   Roger Bacon, however, rejects what he sees as Albert's concession to Aristotle, holding instead that the operation of the potential and active intellect can be wholly understandable from the standpoint of Augustinian illumination theory.

As is well-known, Thomas Aquinas wholly rejected illumination theory, holding knowledge depended upon an identity in difference between the human knower and the object known.  He writes:  "Secundum autem quod intelligit res alias, intellectum in actu fit unum cum intellectu in actu, inquantum forma intellecti fit forma intellectus, inquantum est intellectus in actu, non quod sit ipsamet essential intellectus . . . quia essentia intellectus manet uno sub daubus formis secundum quod intelligit res duas successive" (Aquinas, Sent., 49, 2, 1, ad 10m; Owens, p. 452).  While Aquinas spoke of universals existing in the thing, this way of speaking was derived from the actual existence of universals only in the mind (453).

Three more thinkers deserve comment, Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus and William Ockham.  While we mentioned all three before, we did not connect any of the three to the question of illumination and the intellect.   As we discussed earlier, Henry spoke of the intentional object having a type of existence (esse essentia) that could be distinguished from the actual existence of the thing (esse actualis existentiae).  Henry thereby explicitly connects the possession of true sense knowledge with the doctrine of divine illumination (Owens, 454).  Scotus rejected illumination theory, claiming that the divide between particulars that really exist and universals that are mere abstractions from particulars is too sharp, and accordingly there must be some common nature by virtue of which Socrates and Plato are common to men and not Socrates and a tugboat.  Some type of unity and commonness must exist outside the mind, grounding the human mind's abstraction of a common nature among objects.  This nature was thought to be formally distinct from the haeccity (or individuating nature) of a thing.  Scotus held that this nature could be known either intuitively as existing or abstractly without regard to existence.  In a tipping of the hat towards illumination, Scotus admitted that considered abstractly an object's common nature could be seen to lie before the gaze of the mind illuminated by the divine.  William of Ockham rejected the notion of illumination entirely, however, claiming that special divine intervention could cause intuitive cognition in a subject even in the absence of an object.  Accordingly, it was not the character of the object that distinguished abstract and intuitive knowledge, but the nature of the acts themselves (p. 457).

Since there was rich discussion of intuitive and abstractive cognition in the fourteenth century, it might be useful to reflect more deeply on the distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition.   Scotus held that the fundamental distinction between abstractive and intuitive cognition is modal: the latter deals with what is possible or necessary, while the former deals with what is actual (John Boler, "Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 465).  Ockham understands intuitive cognition to concern the apprehension by which contingent propositions are cognized, and abstractive cognition simply as a cognition that is not intuitive.  For Ockham, intuitive cognition is "caused by this one rather than that one" (Bohler, p. 468).  Yet, pace Scotus, the object need not exist for Ockham to have an intuitive knowledge of it.  The distinction between the two can be understood this way: Scotus believes that the proper place for an act of knowledge to begin is in the object, Ockham holds that it properly commences in an act of unconditional beginning.  God causing an intuitive act of cognition in the absence of an object nonetheless forms an unconditional beginning to the act. Indeed, God can cause apparent intuitive knowledge of all kinds of non-existents through His potentia dei absoluta, the absolute power of God whereby he can do anything that does not involve a contradiction.  Interestingly enough, however, appeal to potentia dei absoluta did not seem to spur development of skeptical thinking in the 14th century as did Descartes' analogous appeal to the "evil demon" two centuries later.

It is intriguing to contrast Ockham, Scotus and Thomas on knowledge of singulars.   For Ockham, knowledge occurs through the application of the concept to the individual; for Scotus, through the apprehension of unity of the individual represented by a set of characteristics; for Thomas, by means of the "construction" of the object by the intellect through the organization of sensory data (Boler, p. 476).  The intellect, according to Thomas, provides the form by which the sensory manifold is constructed.  While Aquinas' view might have some similarities with Kant, the trajectory of Scotus and Okham is definitely toward the ontology of the individual assumed at the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Metaphysics and Ontology III

C.  The Question of Potency and Actuality in Incorporeal Creatures and the Possibility of Universal Hylomorphism 

While those defending a real distinction between esse and essentia regarded the latter as in potency to actualization by the former, those rejecting it simply conceived potency as all of that which God could have brought about, even though He had perhaps not done so.  Accordingly, those in the first camp could speak of a "subjective potency" (potentia subjectiva) of the essentia toward existence, while those in the second claimed there was only an "objective potency" (potentia objective) of the nonexistent esse/essentia complex toward existence (Wippel, p. 407).  While subjective potency presupposes there is a subject which could either have existence or not, objective potency simply asserts that while a substance with its qualities in fact does not exist, it nonetheless could.  Thinking of existence E as a predicate, the first claims that there is an x such that Ex, while the second that there is not an x such that Ex.

Universal hylomorphism approached the question by claiming that the form/matter distinction applies to all of created reality, even the realm of the incorporeal.  Advocates included Roger Bacon, Bonaventure and Gonsalvus of Spain.  Critics were legion, including William of Auvergne, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Godrey of Fountains.  Those of the first camp generally regarded Avicebron or Augstine as adumbrating their own views, while thinkers of the second group appealed to Aristotle in substantiating their position.  Thinkers divided on the notion of prime matter, with advocates of universal hylomorphism tending to opt for a realm of pure potentiality, e.g., Albert, Thomas, Siger and Giles.  The Franciscans, on the other hand, seemingly advocated that any definite matter whatsoever had some degree of actualization, because actualization is necessary for matter to be definite and particular. Representatives included Richard of Middleton, Scotus, Henry of Ghent and William of Ockham.

D.  The Question of Universals 

 Plato had famously held that universals such as 'man' and 'whiteness' exist part from their instantiation in existent objects.  Those committed to such a view in the Middle Ages are generally termed "realists," asserting that universals are real regardless of their worldly exemplification and  their relationship to the thinker.  Moderate realists, on the other hand, claimed to be following Aristotle in holding that natures really do exist in individual things of which they are their natures.  If a bovine nature exists in Gertrude, Bessy and Bossie -- a general nature by virtue of which each of the three is a cow -- what is it that ultimately individuates Gertrude from Bessie and Bossie?   Is it the accidents of Gertrude that make her not Bessy?  But this seems wrong on Aristotelian grounds because the primary substances which Gertrude and Bessy are must individuate apart from any accidents.  But what could be a metaphysical constituent of a substance that individuates particular cows?  If not an accident, then perhaps it could be an individual nature.  Yet if such a nature exists, what is its relationship to the general nature by which each of the three individuals are cattle?  These issues dominated metaphysical discussion in the fourteenth century.

Duns Scotus famously argued the general nature common to each individual, must someone exist in each individual without a possibility of existing apart from some individual or other.  If Jack is going to be more similar to Jill than a tugboat, then there must be something common to Jack and Jill that is not found in Jack and the tugboat.  This common nature, which exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, is nonetheless not numerically one.  Marilyn McCord Adams writes that for Scotus, "human nature is numerically one in Socrates and numerically many in numerically many distinct particulars, or thisnesses, that are numerically one and particular of themselves and that contract the nature, which is common of itself, rendering the nature numerically one and particular as well" (Adams, "Universals in the Fourteenth Century," Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 413).  Just as Socrates is particularly white by virtue of the inherence of whiteness in him, so is he particularly Socrates by virtue of the particular contraction of the general nature in him.  Accordingly, human nature cannot be universal in re because it is not numerically one and particular in itself.  For Scotus, it is simply axiomatic that nothing predicable of many can be numerically one and particular.  But while the universal cannot exist in re because it is neither numerically one and particular, Scotus admits that it can exist in mente as an object of thought.

Scotus' position is that the nature which is one from the standpoint of what it denominates, is nonetheless many in numerically distinct particulars.  So what is the relationship of this one and many?  Here Soctus introduces his notion of a formal distinction: "The nature and contracting difference are formally distinct, or not formally the same" (Adams, p. 414).  While Scotus offers different metaphysical accounts of how this is possible, he seems to settle on discriminating between a distinctio simpliciter and a distinctio secundum quid.  While every man is an animal, and man is not metaphysically distinct from animal, they are formally distinct in that animal has "more perfection" than man because it can be predicated of more things (Adams, p. 416).  

William of Ockham took a very dim view of Scotus' metaphysical machinations stating, in fact, that Scotus' position is internally incoherent.  He has a number of arguments that I won't rehearse here.  Maybe the best of his arguments is the following:

• Scotus holds that the principle of individuation (e.g., what makes Socrates Socrates) or contracting difference is numerically one and particular, and thus cannot be common to numerically distinct particulars.  (Assumption 1)
• He also assumes that the nature and contracting difference are formally distinct, that is, not formally the same.  (Assumption 2)
• According to Ockham, however, on assumption 1 it is not metaphysically (or logically) possible for the humanity of Socrates to exist without Socrateity.  This is the case, even though it is logically possible for Socrates to exist without a particular whiteness existing in him.  
• More generally, no contracting principle that operates on a general nature to particularize it is contingently instantializable; e.g., the humanity in Socrates can only be Socrates' humanity and the humanity in Plato can only be Plato's humanity. Therefore, it is not possible that one and the same nature can exist in many things.  (Contradicting Assumption 2)

There are a number of other positions in the fourteenth century that deserve at least some mention.  Walter Burley attempts a moderate realism claiming that "the whole universal (secundum se totum) exists in each of its particulars and is not numerically multiplied by its existence in numerically distinct particulars" (Adams, p. 423).  Henry of Harclay, along with Ockham, attacked Burley's views, the former holding that "everything that exists in reality is essentially singular -- i.e., logically incapable of existing or, as a constituent of, numerically many simultaneously" (429).   Henry believes that individual substances act on the intellect in two ways, either confusedly or distinctly: "The universal is a thing confusedly conceived, and a particular is the same thing distinctly conceived" (430).   A universal and particular are thus the same thing, although they are distinct in reason.  (One might say, they could be described differently.)  Throughout the 14th century nominalism gained strength, even if it was not always able to show that its realist opponents were committed to explicit contradiction.  At some point, the attempt to save realist vocabulary seemed to many disputants simply obscurantist with regard to the underlying metaphysical facts.

Metaphysics and Ontology II

B.  The Question of the Distinction between the Essence and the Existence of a Thing

It is important to realize that medieval philosophers assumed a very large ontological domain.  They needed not only to account for the metaphysical constitution of the material objects encountered in the world, but also incorporeal beings like God, angels and human souls. While God's metaphysical simplicity and His necessary, uncaused character presented a unique challenge to general metaphysical principles, created entities such as angels seemed to cry out for a metaphysical framework of the created order wide enough to include their constitution. The medieval question of the relationship between essentia (essence) and esse (existence) in created beings arose because of the need to cast a metaphysical account broad enough to include both corporeal and incorporeal created beings.

Boethius first suggested that entities had two aspects: essence and existence.  In Axiom II of his De Hebdomadibus, he writes, Diversum est esse et id quod est . . .   In Axiom VIII he opines, Omni composito ilid est esse, aliud ipsum est (Wippel, 392, fn. 38).  These comments seemingly conform with Avicenna's view that existence and existence are robustly distinct. Averroes and followers demurred, arguing that if an object has real being only by virtue of that which is superadded to essence, then why not claim there is something else superadded to existence making it even more real (393)?  Boethius' comments and the differing interpretative traditions of Avicenna and Averroes set the stage for this metaphysical controversy.

Aquinas advocated the real metaphysical constitution of essence and existence, suggesting in his youthful De ente et essentia that essence or quiddity is the potency of any created being which can be actualized into existence by God.  While the first is necessary for understanding of the thing, the second is not, coming, as it were, from outside the thing's quiddity and uniting with its essence in composing the real thing.  In the Summa contra Gentiles Thomas writes, . . . et sic in quodlibet creato aliud est nature rei quae participat esse, et aliud ipsum esse participatum (SCG I, q. 13).  The participating nature is in potential to the actuality of the participated nature. As Wippel points out, over and against Avicenna, for Aquinas, since "existence has no quidditative content in addition to that of the essence which it actualizes," . . . "neither essence nor existence can exist independently of each other"(395).  Thomas writes: Unde patet quod hoc quod dico esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfection omnium perfection (q. 7, a. 2, ad 9).  To say that existence (esse) "is the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections" is to claim that ens (a being) participates in esse (to-beness).  Essentia both receives and limits esse and thereby produces ens. Real composition is necessary in a being in order to account for the quidditive limitation of that being.

While Aquinas held to the real distinction of esse and essentia, he did not employ the infelicitous language of Giles of Rome who asserted in his Theoremata de esse et essentia that esse et essentia sent duae res (th. 19, p. 127), and that since res ergo ipsa quod est esse est in genere substantiae, it is per consequens intelligitur quod esse sit alia res ab essentia (Giles, q. 9 & q. 11, in Wippel, p. 392).  Giles clearly is trying to account for all of created being in analogy with the form/matter distinction for material entities: Dicemus ergo sicut generatio facit scire materiam aliud esse a forma, sic creatio facit nos scire essentiam esse aliud ab esse (th. 5, q. 9).  Giles' use of res in characterizing both esse and essentia suggests a very robust, real esse/essentia distinction, and it was his formulation of real distinction that was severely criticized by Siger of Brabant, Godfrey of Fontaines and William of Ockham.

Siger admitted that ens was composite, but instead of construing this composition along the form/matter analogy, he suggested that the analogy between substance and accident is better.  Godfrey claimed the distinction was only secundum rationem (according to reason) and not due to the metaphysical composition of the thing.  Godfrey, in fact, argued for a real identity between esse and essentia, for whatever can be said truly of the first can be said truly of the second and vice versa (Wippel, p. 401).  Essentia has only potential being prior to God's bringing it to be.  Since the significatio of essentia and esse are the same, the two must be identical.  Ockham mounted ingenious philosophical arguments against the real distinction of esse and essentia, claiming that if former were really distinct from the latter, then it would have to be either a substance or accident.  But it is neither an accident because esse is not a quality or quantity, nor a substance because esse is neither a matter, form, their composite, or a separate entity (Wippel, p. 402).  His modal argument precedes thusly:  If a and b are distinct then it is possible for a to obtain without b, or for b to obtain without a.  But it is not possible for God to create essentia without esse or esse without essentia, therefore esse and essentia are not distinct.

Henry of Ghent, James of Viterbo and Duns Scotus sought to establish a position between a real ontological distinction between esse and essentia, and their ontological identity which possesses only a distinction according to reason (secundum rationem).  Henry of Ghent's views, though not widely affirmed in the subsequent tradition, are nevertheless quite interesting.  Anticipating Meinong, he affords a type of being to essences (esse essentiae) that is not existential.  Because God exists and has knowledge of all possible and existing entities, essential being has a type of existence prior to actual existential instantiation.  The divine will thus communicates actual existence (esse existentiae) to a subclass of esse essentiae entities.  Henry ingeniously opts for a new type of distinction, one of intention, in sorting esse and essentia.  While the existence of a thing does not add to its essentia, the external relation of actually being efficiently caused by God in creation marks a third path between a real distinction and real identity.  Esse essentiae is sorted from esse existentiae) by the fact that God has actually created the second.

James of Viterbo apparently tried to distinguish between essentia and esse semantically, according to primary and secondary significance.  While the modus significandi (mode of signification) of an abstract term signifies only the thing's essence, that of a concrete term, while signifying essentia primarily, signifies secondarily the thing having esse.  So existentia signifies essentia primarily and secondarily it signifies that which is conjoined with essentia in an existing subject (Wippel, p. 405).  Finally, and most famously, Duns Scotus searched for an intermediate position by admitting that while esse and essentia are not separable in contingent fact, they are not identical in all possible worlds.  Although oftentimes referred to as the "formal distinction," Scotus scholars have differed on what precisely is meant.  Scotus also opines that while abstract cognition has essentia as its proper object, intuitive cognition has existentia.  Whether either this epistemic point or the modal point legitimately establishes a formal metaphysical distinction between things never found apart is, of course, open to further debate.

Metaphysics and Ontology I

Addressing the issue of “Luther and ontology” requires clarity first on what ‘ontology’ is.  Within Luther scholarship, unfortunately, there has sometimes been confusion on this basic issue.  Thus it is that I will first get clear on the nature of ontology and how it relates to metaphysics.  Only then will I review some of the secondary literature on Luther and ontology, pointing to areas within Luther’s theology where the question of ontology is deeply important for his theology.  Finally, I will suggest areas of continuing research.  For both Luther’s theological predecessors and Luther himself, ontology and semantics are closely related.  Interpreters of Luther sometimes have forgotten this, ignoring ontological aspects of his own thinking, and thus projecting their own ontological assumptions upon the theology of the great Reformer.  

1.1 The Meaning of Ontology and its Relationship to Metaphysics

Many mistakenly believe that the terms 'metaphysics' and 'ontology' are coextensive, referring to the same set of philosophical issues. This is not so.  Both terms have a long and rich history that must be untangled in order to grasp the nature of their connection.  As it turns out, while the term 'ontology' ('ontologia', 'ontology', etc.) generally applies to a sub-region within metaphysics that specifically concerns general questions of being, the discipline of metaphysics is much wider, investigating the general (or universal) features (or principles) of reality presupposed by concrete experience as such.   

Historically, the term 'metaphysics' derives from the collection of 14 books by Aristotle appearing in his corpus after the Physics.[1] Andronicus of Rhodes probably titled these books "Ta meta ta phusika," perhaps thereby warning students that these texts should only be undertaken after mastering the books of the Physics, all dealing with the principle of change.  Metaphysics, on the other hand, connotes the study of those things that do not change. It is the discipline dealing with first causes, with God and the Unmoved Mover.  

Inwagen and Sullivan provide the following list of "metaphysics" according to Aristotle's conception.[2]

• Being as such
• The first cause of thing
• That which does not change

Aristotle, however, also famously believed that metaphysics is concerned with being qua being.  Accordingly, it is not just a study of first causes and unchangeable things, but examines objects "from a particular perspective, from the perspective of their being beings or things that exist.  So metaphysics considers things as beings or existents and attempts to specify the properties or features they exhibit just insofar as they are beings or existents."[3]    Considered in this way, metaphysics is a universal discipline, studying notions such as identity, difference, similarity, dissimilarity, and the categories that grant the possibilities of for being to be.   

Inwagen points out that what we mean by "metaphysics" greatly expanded in the seventeenth century, thereby confusing matters even more.  While older metaphysics dealt with traditional questions of being as such, categories of being, universals and substance, metaphysics since the 17th century became increasingly concerned with questions of modality, space and time, persistence and constitution, causation, freedom and determinism, and the mental and the physical.            

Bruce Aune clarifies the relationship between general and special metaphysics that developed with the expansion of metaphysical questions in the seventeenth century. 

General metaphysics includes ontology and most of what has been called universal science; it is concerned, on the whole, with the general nature of reality: with problems about abstract and concrete being, the nature of particulars, the distinction between appearance and reality, and the universal principles holding true of what has fundamental being. Special metaphysics is concerned with certain problems about particular kinds or aspects of being. These special problems are associated with the distinction between the mental and the physical, the possibility of human freedom, the nature of personal identity, the possibility of survival after death, and the existence of God.[4]

Oftentimes scholars claiing that Luther is unconcerned with metaphysics or ontology are conceiving metaphysics in the later seventeenth century sense of the term, and not according to the concept present in Luther’s own time.

The word ontologie actually develops much later than “metaphysics,” occurring first in the German language only in the work of Rudolf Goeckel (1547-1628) and Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609), and is later defined more fully by Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775) in his Philosophische Lexicon as follows: 

Ontology concerns the doctrine of being, and is understood as a name of a new philosophy of science that treats being in general and its properties (l.c., s.v. Ontologie 1. A. 1726, 2. A. 1733, ND dieser Thoemmes 2001).

Ontology is thereby the study of being insofar as it is possessed by any kind of entity. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) famously distinguishes ontology as metaphysica generalis (inquiry into the general categories of being) from the metaphysica specialis dealing with God (natural theology), the soul (natural psychology), and the world (natural cosmology).[5]  

So in what did the subject of metaphysics consist in the High and Late Middle Ages?  The following is my own (rather incomplete) list of traditional metaphysical questions of the period: 

•           In what does metaphysics consist?  Does the question of God fall under metaphysics broadly conceived, or is it a question of a "divine discipline" (scientia) falling outside of metaphysics proper? 
•           What is the relationship between the essence and existence of a thing, and what is the ontological status of the distinction putatively separating them? 
•           How can the distinction between actuality and potentiality be conceived in spiritual matters where the distinction between form and matter fails to obtain?  
•          Do universals exist and, if so, what is their ontological status?  
•          How is individuation possible without matter, and how should identity, distinction and similarity be conceived? 
•          What is the role of the senses in acquiring knowledge, and can this role be squared with the notion of illumination stretching back to Augustine?  
•      Can knowledge of God be "demonstrated," and what precisely is the nature of such a demonstration.   

John Wippel points to the two traditions developing after the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics.  In Book IV Aristotle talks of a discipline concerned with being as being and not with questions about particular attributes of being characteristic in the various other disciplines.[6] In Book VI, however, Aristotle mentions a "divine science" concerned with immovable and separate entities. Presumably, it is precisely because there is a domain of separate, immobile entities that physics cannot be considered the first science.[7]  Reconciling these two conceptions of metaphysics -- first science dealing with being qua being and first science dealing with separate and immobile entities -- spurred lively philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages as to precisely what metaphysics is. 

Wippel points out that Duns Scotus in his Questions super libros Metaphysicorum asks the question as to the proper subject matter of metaphysics by contrasting the approaches of Avicenna and Averroes: 

Is the subject of the Metaphysics being insofar as it is being (ens inquantum ens) as Avicenna holds?  Or is it God and the intellectual (Intelligentiae) as the commentator Averroes suggests? [I. I(1891-5, v. 7, p. 11)]  

After discussing the question of whether metaphysics can have God as its subject, Avicenna concludes that since God's existence can be demonstrated, and since no particular discipline can demonstrate its own subject matter, then only metaphysics broadly conceived, as the study of ens inquantum ens, can establish divine existence. 

While Avicenna placed God under the metaphysics of being qua being, the other great Islamic commentator Averroes disagreed, holding that one does not need to establish God as the subject matter of a unique discipline, for the existence of God can be established by physics.  Accordingly, the subject matter of metaphysics, ens inquantum ens, concerns substance primarily, not God.  Metaphysics properly studies substance, but includes that "separate substance which is the first form and the end or final cause of all other substance" (387).  Physics establishes that there is such a separate substance, and metaphysics examines that substance as well as all other substances.  Most 13th and 14th century thinkers followed Avicenna: Metaphysics concerns ens inquantum ens, not divine being. 

While Sigar of Brabant and Duns Scotus both include the question of God within metaphysics, the latter explicitly denies that God can be its subject matter since metaphysics deals with the universal and the question of God is particular (389).  Scotus writes: 

Even though God, however, is not the first subject of metaphysics, God is nevertheless considered in that science in a most noble way (nobilissimo modo) in terms of which [God's being] can be considered as acquired naturally in another discipline (sciential) (Ord. Pros., pars 3, q. 2, n. 193).  

Is is well-known Aquinas differs from Scotus in his notion that the being of God cannot be included under the idea of ens communes (being in general).  However, despite the controversy on whether metaphysics or metaphysics + physics can establish that the cause of the ens communes, Thomas is certain that the question of God is properly included within metaphysics (390-91).  Ockham differs from all of these thinkers, holding that metaphysical propositions have different subjects, accordingly both ens inquantum ens and God are proper subjects of the objective propositions of metaphysics.         

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[1] Aristotle did not call these books by this term, but named the discipline at work in it either 'first philosophy' or 'theology', calling the knowledge to which it aims, 'wisdom'.  See Michael Loux, Metaphysics.  A Contemporary Introduction, 3rd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2ff.    

[2] van Inwagen, Peter and Sullivan, Meghan, "Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

[3] Loux, 4.

[4] Aune, Metaphysics: The Elements (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 

[5] The preceptive reader will recall that Kant subjects all of these three (rational theology, psychology and cosmology) to merciless attack in his Critique of Pure Reason.  As the domain of metaphysics was expanding in the seventeenth century, the term 'ontology' gained currency in dealing with select metaphysical questions directly pertaining to being.  Elisabeth Maria Rompe's Die Trennung von Ontologie und Metaphysik: Der Ablösungsprozess seine Motivierung bei Benedictus Peterius und anderem Denkern des 16. u. 17. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Universität Bonn, 1967 diss.) provides a valuable insight into the process of the separation of the two terms.  

[6] John  Wippel, "Essence and Existence," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edts. Kretzmann, Kenny & Pinborg,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 385-410. 

[7] Ibid., 385.