ABSTRACT
Grosseteste’s teaching on the doctrine of God has received little attention by scholars, leaving the impression that he had made no extensive foray here.1 There are indications, however, that he had spent some time as a master of the sacred page reflecting on God’s nature. In his Tabula, the thirty-four topics that comprise the first distinction (de Deo) betray a thorough knowledge of the general scholastic treatment of the doctrine of God. The list begins with ‘Whether God exists’ (an Deus sit), followed by the topic of God’s nature (quid Deus sit), a sequence that became standard for scholastic theology in disputations and summist literature. Throughout the listing, Grosseteste interweaves the essential attributes that speak of God in himself (unity, trinity, eternal generation of the Son and so on), with other essential attributes that contribute to an understanding of God’s agency (omnipotence, providence, will, mercy, anger and so on).2 However, the Tabula is simply a list of possible topics for discussion: they do not reveal what Grosseteste said about them. For the content we must turn to his theological writings, and there his observations reveal a more limited focus in this area of theological reflection. A careful reading of Grosseteste’s theological writings in fact yields three major loci. The first is a letter Grosseteste wrote just before he became a master of the sacred page, where he addresses major aspects of God’s nature in response to questions posed by a former student. The second is De libero arbitrio, where God’s knowledge forms the necessary backdrop to Grosseteste’s account of free will. Finally, there is the Hexaëmeron, where Grosseteste discusses the doctrine of the Trinity. I shall examine these sources in sequence, and then I will conclude with a discussion of how Grosseteste perceived man’s capacity to know God at all.
