ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I should like to consider Scotus’s teaching on the precise identity of the personal properties. The standard Western medieval view has it that the properties are, respectively, paternity, filiation, and passive spiration, and that these properties are all relations. Thus what distinguishes the divine persons from each other are their relations to each other. Scotus accepts this account. But he does so only with a certain caution, and under some very precise understandings. For example, Scotus famously considered the view that the persons could be constituted of essence and absolute (non-relational) property, and, at least early in his life, regarded it as preferable to the standard view that the persons are constituted by relations. At the end of this chapter, I shall spend a little time discussing this issue, along with Scotus’s changing views on the matter. In terms of the standard properties (paternity, filiation, and passive spiration), Scotus seems to think that the distinction between these properties is founded on something more basic, that is to say, on the different modes or manners in which the persons are produced. This view is associated in particular with certain Franciscans, and I shall briefly discuss the background below.
