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Moral theology undoubtedly reached its high point with the Second
Part of St. Thomas's Summa. This crowning achievement should not
make us forget, however, the importance and richness of the Franciscan
school-exemplified by Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Duns
Scotus-which was the self-styled guardian of the Augustinian tradi-
tion. The Dominican school took shape and grew in self-awareness for
two reasons. First it had to respond to the attacks launched against St.
Thomas's theology by the Franciscans, who considered him innovative.
Next it had to reply to the condemnation of certain Thomist theses by
Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, who was supported by the Franciscans
and even by some Dominican masters, such as Robert Kilwardby of Ox-
ford. The Franciscans reacted against St. Thomas's Aristotelianism,
which they thought exaggerated and dangerous, even though they them-
selves made use of Aristotle to some extent. The split went deep. Re-
garding the central point of Christian moral theory, the Franciscans and
Dominicans took opposite stands. Where St. Thomas affirmed the pri-
macy of the intellect, defining the first and formal element of beatitude
in terms of this faculty, as the vision of God, the Franciscans maintained
the primacy of the will and made love the essential element of beatitude.
These struggles between the two schools, prolonged for several cen-
turies, should not, however, obscure the positive side of the common
The Late Middle Ages
theological research that was being carried on. The theological works
produced represented the attempts of Christian minds to express the
riches of the mystery of salvation, which surpass all understanding in
this life and admit of multiple approaches. These schools could be com-
pared to mighty branches issuing from the one trunk of scholasticism
in its creative age, united in their origin and spreading out in opposite
directions. We should note, too, that the struggle was not limited to two
particular religious families, to a struggle between chapels and forts. It
turned on the concept of theology as a whole and concerned the entire
Church, in which at the time these orders played a predominant role. It
was the Christian mind that was at work, that was in question.
Clearly we cannot go into all the details of the debate here. We shall
focus on a decisive stage in the development of moral theology in the
fourteenthth century, the appearance of nominalism.
Freedom of Indifference
For Ockham all moral reality was concentrated in free choice thus
defined. The free act springs forth instantaneously from a decision that
has no other cause than the power of self-determination enjoyed by the
will. From this it followed that each of our voluntary acts becomes a
single reality, isolated in time by the very power that enables us to choose
between contraries. We could not be bound by a past action or obliged
to a future one without losing the radical freedom that is ours at each
moment. Thus human conduct became a succession of individual ac-
tions, drawn as it were with perforated lines, the dots being the unre-
lated moral atoms. Any connection between them would remain outside
the sphere of freedom and dependent upon its decision.
Consequently, the notion of finality lost much of its relevance. For St.
Thomas it had been the basic element of voluntary action, which he de-
fined as the properly human power to act in view of an end. This is why
the study of moral theology in the Summa began with a treatise on our
last end, presented as the principle of the unity of all our actions. This
was extended potentially to all persons and even to all creatures. Ock-
ham did not accept these views, which gave a universal significance to
finality. In his concept of human action, separation was more important
than unity. He did attach real importance to the end, which he called
the principal object of the free act. But he considered that the end existed
within the individual act and could not therefore establish essential
bonds with other acts. In the case of a person willing a thing in view of
an end willed for its own sake, he saw two perfectly distinct actions.
The act directed to the thing would have as its end a "partial object"
and would be distinct from the act that directly sought the end and
grasped it as a "total object." 2
Human action then would be made up of a succession of free decisions
or independent acts-cases of conscience as they would later be called-
having only superficial relation to one another. Each would have to be
studied in isolation. Like each individual person, each act became a kind
of absolute, like a small island. Hence the note of insularity that has
been attributed to Ockham's thought and that evokes his English back-
ground. With his concept of freedom and of the human act he laid the
foundations of what was to become casuistry.
ultimate end, the will can reject this end. My proof runs as follows:
because the free power is capable of contrary acts, it can determine itself
in any one direction or another. The will, as a free power, can will or
not will any object whatsoever. If, therefore, it is capable of choosing
God, by the same token it can reject God." 3
For St. Thomas the natural inclinations to goodness, happiness, being,
and truth were the very source of freedom. They formed the will and
intellect, whose union produced free will. According to him we are free
not in spite of our natural inclinations, but because of them. For Ock-
ham, on the contrary, freedom dominated the natural inclinations and
preceded them, because of its radical indetermination and its ability to
choose contraries in their regard. From this point of view, it could be
said that freedom is more apparent when it resists natural inclinations.
In his rejection of all natural inclination outside of the will, Ockham
outstripped his master, Duns Scotus, and was led to a stronger form of
indeterminism, as Garvens notes (Ethik von Ockham, 256).
As a consequence, natural inclinations, no longer included within the
voluntary act, were something short of freedom and were relegated to
a lower level in the moral world, to the order of instinct, sensibility, or
to a biological ambience. Ockham and his followers could no longer
understand that in the human person there was a higher natural spon-
taneity, of a spiritual order, inspiring freedom itself.
As with natural inclinations and the concept of finality, the free action
of habitus and virtues, seen as stable dispositions for acting in a deter-
mined way, also had to be toned down. Habitus and virtues could doubt-
less help to facilitate the execution of a free decision and overcome
obstacles. But if these dispositions were determining, they would di-
3. Sed ultra dicta ibi dica quad valuntas pro statu ista patest nolle ultimum finem sive
ostendatur in generali sive in particulari. Quad probatur sic. lllud potest esse nalitum
quad intellectus potest dictare esse nolendum. (Hoc patet de se.) Sed intellectus potest
credere nullum esse finem ultimum sive beatitudinem, et per consequens dictare finem
untimum sive beatitudinem esse nalendum. Secundo sic. Quicumque patest nolle ante-
cedens potest nolle et consequens. Sed aliquis poatest velle non esse. lgitur potest beati-
tudinem nalle quam credit cansequi ad suum esse.-Secunda dico quad intellectu
iudicante hoc esse finem ultimum, potest voluntas illam finem nolle: quad probatur. Quia
potenria libera est receptiva actuum contrariorum: qua ratione potest in unum et in re-
liquum. Sed voluntas tamquam potentia libera est receptiva nolle et velle respectu cuius-
cumque objecti. Si igitur potest in velle respectu Dei: eadem ratione potest in nolle
Dei ... " (IV Sent. q. 14 D).
246 HISTORY OF MORAL THEOLOGY
minish the power to choose between contraries, which was the very def-
inition of freedom. An act performed under the impulse of a habitus
seemed less free than if it had proceeded from a purely voluntary de-
cision. Habitus and virtues came to be ranked below freedom and were
considered tendencies of which freedom could make use or not, at will.
They thus lost their proper moral value and became simply psychological
mechanisms, or habits in the contemporary sense. As Father Vereecke
has written: "Freedom means total indetermination. For an action to be
good and meritorious, the will must have absolute freedom to respond
to the obligation or not. Anything that can restrict our freedom-bodily
dispositions, sensible inclinations, or psychic dispositions, restricts the
scope of morality also. Nominalist moral doctrine will not be a moral
theory of being that adapts itself more and more to the good [which is
precisely the role of virtue, I would add], but a moral theory of action,
freedom assuming at each instant the obligation being imposed upon
it" (De Guillaume d'Ockham a saint Alphonse de Liguori, 134-35).
I should add that Ockham did subscribe to the teaching on virtue that
was held unanimously in scholastic tradition. But he interpreted it in his
own way. He recognized virtue only in the action of the will. "The ha-
bitus of the will alone is the seat of virtue, properly speaking," he af-
firmed (III Sent., q 10, D). Acts arising from the sensible powers or, in
the case of prudence, from the intellect, could be called virtues only in
an extraneous sense. by extension. In any case, for him the inclination
to virtue was neither a habitus nor an act but a simple potency, as matter
is to form. In his opinion the act absolutely outweighed any inclination
or habitus. As can be seen, if Ockham made use of the traditional teach-
ing on virtues, he reinterpreted it within the context of his conceptions
of voluntary action and the freedom of indifference, which is to say that
he did away with virtue's central role in moral theory as the necessary
determination for assuring the perfection of human acts.
by nothing other than itself, the divine will could at any instant change
what we considered to be permitted or forbidden according to the com-
mandments, notably the Decalogue. God could even change the first
commandment, and, for example, pushing it to the limit, command a
person to hate him, in such a way that this act of hatred would become
good. "Every will can conform to the divine precepts; but God can com-
mand the created will to hate him, and the created will can do this
(thereby refusing its own happiness and ultimate end). Furthermore, any
act that is righteous in this world can also be righteous in the next, the
fatherland; just as hatred of God can be a good act in this world, so can
it be in the next." 4
Similarly, hatred of our neighbor, theft, and adultery could become
meritorious if God commanded them. Ockham did not recognize in hu-
man nature any law or order whatsoever that might determine the divine
freedom and omnipotence. Undoubtedly there was a customary order
of things, "communis cursus rerum," in morality and in nature, and
this developed conformably with the laws we know. This fact enabled
Ockham to find some meaning in classical expressions such as the nat-
ural law, but he believed we had no guarantee that the divine will might
not change tomorrow.
Moral Obligation
Thus divine and human freedom were conceived as two absolutes, but
with this difference: God was omnipotent in regard to his creatures and
could, consequently, impose his will upon us. Having removed from
both divine and human wills all dependence upon their respective na-
tures, Ockham could no longer find any links between man and God,
as with other freedoms, except those issuing from the divine will and
power: such would be the law, the expression of the divine will, acting
with the force of obligation. Law and obligation thus held the central
position in Ocham's moral theory; they became its inmost core. Obli-
gation was for him the very essence of morality. "The significance of
goodness and malice is that an agent is obliged to a given action or to
its contrary." 5 The concept of morality implied nothing more than a
4. "Prcterea omnis voluntas potcst sc conformarc prcccpto divino: sed Ocus potest
prccipcrc quod voluntas crcata odiat cum, igitur voluntas crcata potcst hoc faccrc. Prc-
tcrea omnc quod potcst cssc actus rcctus in via ct in patria: scd odirc Dcum potcst cssc
actus rectus in via ista si prccipiatur a Dco: ergo ct in patria" (ibid., dictum quintum).
5. Bonitas moralis ct malitia connotant, quod agens obligatur ad illud actum vcl cius
oppositum" (II Sent. q. 19 P).
2.48 HISTORY OF MORAL THEOLOGY
6. Malum nihil aliud est quam facere aliquid ad cuius oppositum faciendum aliquis
obligatur" (II Sent. q. 4 and s H).
The Late Middle Ages 2 49
Having established the divine will and law as the sources of obligation,
Ockham needed to show how the human person might become aware,
subjectively, of these objective rules. This would be the work of the prac-
tical reason and prudence. Here Ockham was following the terms and
categories of Aristotle, which had influenced theology since the time of
St. Thomas. He also used the terms 'practical reason' and 'prudence'
rather than 'conscience', which was a part of the Christian tradition and
later prevailed.
Here again, however, while apparently holding to the classic doctrine,
Ockham transformed it and adapted it to his own views.
For Ockham, only the will could have a properly moral value, could
be good or evil, and could be called virtuous. All morality thus depended
on freedom. Nevertheless, in order to act well the human will had need
of right reason, for, in contrast to the divine will, it was not its own
final court of appeal nor the adequate source of its own goodness. It had,
then, to conform to a rule external to it. This was why right reason
intervened in the action of the will, to make known to it what the divine
will was, to apply the moral law to it, and in this way to exercise a partial
causality on the voluntary action.
However, according to Ockham it was no part of the practical reason's
function to discover, found, or justify moral laws in view of man's and
creation's relationship to God. He no longer spoke of a natural habitus,
of the first principles of the moral law, or of synderesis, as treated in the
scholastic tradition. The function of the practical reason was basically
to show to the will the commandments of God, as they were expressed
chiefly in revelation, and then to apply these commandments to partic-
ular, concrete actions by means of deductive reflection aided by expe-
rience. This would be the proper work of prudence.
Practical reason and prudence were, then, simply intermediaries be-
tween law and free will. Their function was to transmit precepts and
obligations. We should also recall here that all this work had value only
"stante ordinatione divina, quae nunc est," that is, only so long as the
present order of things as willed by God was in effect, it being under-
stood that God could change it all at any moment. Yet in spite of this
ever-present mental reservation of Ockham's, right reason was indeed,
moment by moment, the interpreter of the demands of the divine will.
The will that opposed right reason was by that fact opposing the will
of God. The will should normally therefore conform itself to right rea-
son; without this obedience it could not be virtuous.
It is very revealing to see how Ockham defined the relation between
right reason and the will. For him, right reason contributed nothing to
the value of the voluntary act when presenting it with an object having
in itself some moral quality, such as the love of parents, for example.
The fact was that right reason itself became the object and cause of the
goodness of the voluntary act, insofar as it transmitted the divine will.
What happened was this: an action was virtuous when the will tended,
through its action, to what reason commanded, precisely because it
commanded it and for no other motive such as the pleasure that might
accompany it. For an act to be fully virtuous, it had to be dictated by
right reason and willed precisely because right reason so dictated. 8
Such a formula inevitably calls to mind Kant's categorical imperative.
It shows, in any case, the extent to which Ockham identified obligation
with moral value. For the will to be good, it was not enough for it to
8. "Quia hoc est clicerc conformitcr rationi rectac: vellc dictatum a rationc rccta prop-
tcr hoc quod est dictatum" (Ill Sent., q, 12. DDD).
The Late Middle Ages 251
Conclusion
It remains for us to show the logic of Ockham's system and the struc-
ture of the resulting moral theory, for that logic insured its success. It
seems to me that the original tenet of the system, which affected all the
rest, was the concept of the freedom of indifference, or freedom's def-
inition as a purely voluntary choice between contraries. Freedom be-
came a kind of absolute in action, implying the rupture, the dissolution,
of all bonds of dependence between the will and whatever was external
to it, at the very root of action. Ockham defined both man and God in
light of this freedom. Using it as a foundation, he established their mu-
tual relationship and reconstructed the moral theory linking them.
God was for Ockham the absolute realization of freedom, because of
his omnipotence. God was subject to no law, not even the moral law.
His free will was the sole cause and origin of the moral law. Man also
enjoyed complete freedom of will. Yet, as a creature, he was subject to
the divine power and his freedom came into direct confrontation with
the will of God, which acted upon his freedom and limited it by the
divine power of obligation. Morality was born from this encounter be-
tween divine and human freedom and marked man's dependence upon
God. It focused on obligation, which was the only possible meeting place
of the two freedoms thus conceived.
The new moral structure arose from this concept. Its two poles, as
we have seen, were divine and human freedom. Moral law was a con-
crete expression of God's will, receiving from him the power to oblige.
Man possessed freedom of action, conceived as a series of voluntary,
independent decisions. The function of practical reason and prudence,
or conscience as later moralists would call it, was to transmit the com-
mands and obligations issuing from the law. We could say that the es-
sential elements of the .. atom" of nominalist morality were freedom and
law, practical reason or conscience, and free actions or cases of con-
The Late Middle Ages
science, with obligation at the core. We can recognize here the subjects
of the main treatises in later moral manuals. Only sins are missing; these
claimed the special attention of ethicists after the Council of Trent, from
the pastoral viewpoint of the sacrament of penance.
Other elements of earlier moral theology were treated according to
the logic of the system thus constituted. They were either reinterpreted
and cut down or passed over and excluded from the moral domain. Ock-
ham had already criticized the theme of man's desire for happiness; his
criticism led to the subsequent neglect of the treatise on beatitude. He
reduced virtue to the will's conformity to obligations prescribed by
practical reason and the law. He subjected charity to obligation and held
that even the command to love God was relative. The gifts of the Holy
Spirit, defined by St. Thomas as spiritual "instincts," obviously had no
place in this moral system. In brief, all the later developments of moral
theology, particularly in its casuistic form, were contained in germ in
Ockham's morality of obligation.
With nominalism, a chasm was fixed between modern moralists and
patristic tradition. Nominalist categories, and in particular what might
be called the "obligationist" conception of morality, became so deeply
rooted in men's minds that it seemed impossible that things could have
been otherwise. Even the adversaries of nominalism frequently came to
accept its notions and the problems it posed. In the end, St. Thomas and
the Fathers began to be read through "nominalist lenses." The differ-
ences that had been established, and their consequences, were no longer
perceived.
This was one of the most basic problems facing Christian morality. It
had vast historical and systematic repercussions. Nominalism stirred up
a veritable revolution in the moral world and its ideological structures.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
In particular, morality's relationship to Scripture was subtly modified
with the advent of nominalism. Even if Scripture as a whole was con-
sidered the expression of God's will, nevertheless, only passages reveal-
ing strictly legal obligations were of interest to ethicists, who had a
tendency to interpret them quite literally in a materialistic way, as one
would interpret juridical texts. Under this influence, the bond between
moral theology and Scripture diminished more and more.
II
few who sought perfection; this was the terrain of asceticism and mys-
ticism.
This distinction meant a veritable separation between morality, based
on the constraint of law, and mysticism, seen as an extraordinary phe-
nomenon. The split was accentuated by a mistrust of spontaneity. On
the sociological plane as well there was a separation within the Church
between ordinary Christians, who were expected to conform merely to
ordinary moral standards, and religious, who were dedicated to a higher
way of life.
The phenomena just described took very concrete shape. The devel-
opment of scholasticism in the universities gave rise to a new function
in the Church, that of the theology professor. His principal work was
teaching and research. He was a theologian in the current sense of the
word. Little by little he was distinguished from the spiritual leader and
the mystic, and equally from the pastor of souls, whether bishop or