How does Duns Scotus deal with the problem of contradictory properties being predicated of the single person of Christ? We should begin by understanding his semantics of qua-propositions:
“‘Qua’... properly denotes that that which follows it is the formal reason for the inherence of the predicate: such as ‘a human being, qua white, or qua coloured, is seen’.” (Duns Scotus, Reportatio Parisiensis, 3.6.2, n. 3)
In the same context of discussing whether it is true and proper to say that “Christ is a creature” without any qualification, Scotus offers more insight into his view of christological semantics.
Scotus does not accept the traditional reduplication strategy that we see in Thomas Aquinas. Rather, he says we must add a “specificative” qualifier:
“When some affirmative proposition is false from repugnance of the extremes [sc. the terms], whatever reduplication or determination is added that does not take away the repugnance of them does not take away falsity from it; now reduplication properly taken does not diminish either extreme, because it is the determination of extreme to extreme; therefore it does not make true any false proposition that was false without reduplication. However, if there be added to one of the two extremes, as to the predicate, something specifying or qualifying it, so that the thing qualified is not repugnant to the other extreme as the thing non-qualified was repugnant before, then a proposition with such qualifying determination can be true, and not [true] without it.” (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.11.2)
If we say that “Christ according as He is a man is a creature”, Scotus rejects this on the grounds that the qualifier “as He is a man” is modifying a concrete subject term (“Christ”). To make it true, we must instead add the specificative qualifier to the predicate term so as to say, “Christ is a creature, according as He is a man.”
One of Scotus’ points in refutation of the strategy of qualifying the subject term (“Christ according as He is a man is a creature”) is that this type of proposition would entail saying something like “this man is a creature”, which is false since “this man” names the concrete person of Christ, which is divine and therefore uncreated.
“If ‘according as he is man’ he is a creature, then according as he is ‘this man’, because he is not another man than ‘this man’; but if ‘according as he is this man’ he is a creature, ‘this man’ is a creature. Proof of the consequence: because a predicate can be enunciated absolutely of that which follows a reduplication, as: ‘if man according as he is colored is seen, a colored is seen’; therefore, if ‘according as he is this man’ he is a creature, truly this man is a creature…….because what is enunciated of a supposit with reduplication of species is enunciated of the same supposit simply, as ‘if Peter is insofar as man, therefore Peter is simply’; and so in the matter at hand; therefore etc.” (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.11.2)
Scotus does nonetheless accept cases in which the properties of a part are predicated of a whole to which the part belongs:
“If ‘healthy’ is naturally or principally in a human being according to the chest, that is, according to the heart (which is what I understand by ‘chest’ here), the animal can then be said to be unqualifiedly healthy if the chest is healthy. But if this property or its opposite is naturally in another part [of the animal], then the [whole] animal is not said to be [unqualifiedly] healthy in so far as the property denominates this part, since then two contradictories could be simultaneously said of the same thing.” (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.11.2)
However, this can’t entail the truth of the statement “Christ is a creature”:
“To the matter at hand I say that ‘creature’, if it is not of a nature to be asserted of a whole by reason of a part (except perhaps by reason of that part by which the whole has first being, or by reason of the total being of the whole), and humanity or human nature in Christ is not the first being in Christ nor his total being, this which is ‘creature’ cannot be asserted of Christ – by reason of created nature – either simply [sc. ‘Christ is a creature’] nor with reduplication [sc. ‘Christ as man is a creature’].” (Ordinatio, 3.11.2)
In summary, the way Scotus deals with this issue of christological consistency and avoiding contradictory predications is by making ‘qua’ refer to the predicate term rather than the subject term. For example, we would interpret “The Ethiopian is white qua teeth” to mean “The Ethiopian is white-toothed.” This would mean interpreting “Christ qua man is passible” to mean something like “Christ is a passible-man”.
Richard Cross objects to this Scotist model on the grounds that it would seem to imply that Christ is not properly said to be passible at all, thus risking the true humanity of Christ and invoking the Docetist heresy:
“But [saying “Christ is a passible-man”] avoids contradicting ‘Christ is impassible’ only at the price of denying that being a passible-man or being passibly-hominized is an instance of being passible at all.” (Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus [Oxford University Press, 2002, pg. 204)
Now, how does Scotus ground the truth of christological predicates? Take the case of Christ's existence and statements like "Christ is created" (which is true only of the human nature).
“It remains that the whole issue concerns the predicate: whether ‘beginning’ implies a beginning according to the first esse of the thing of which it is said, or [merely] according to some esse that belongs to it simply speaking (simpliciter). If [read] in the first way, the proposition [‘Christ began to exist’] is false, just like ‘Christ was created’ is. If [read] in the second way, Christ began to exist simply speaking, since any esse of a substance is esse simply speaking, and Christ began to be according to his human esse, which is the esse of a substance. The second [reading] is more in accord with the sense of the words, because just as, in the case of those things like Christ that have more than one esse, second esse means esse simply speaking, and not (from the sense of the words) the first esse of the thing of which it is said, so ‘beginning’, determined by second esse, seems to mean beginning in esse simply speaking, though not [beginning] in the first esse of the subject. Simply speaking, then, from the sense of the words it can be conceded that Christ, as it implies the thing which is the Word-man, began to be, that is, had some esse simply speaking which he did not have before.” (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.11.3, n. 3)
“Scotus argues that ‘Christ began to be’ is true under a certain understanding of the sense of the predicate, where the sense of the predicate is determined by the reference of the subject term to a whole that includes a person (and its essential nature) along with a further kind-nature (individual substance) as parts.” (Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus [Oxford University Press, 2002], pg. 129)
“The difficulty is . . . whether the beginning said by such a predicate [‘Christ began to be’] signifies the beginning of the whole in virtue of its whole, or in virtue of a part; and if in virtue of a part, of which part.” (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.11.3, n. 2)
In Ordinatio 1.2.2, nn. 379-80, Duns Scotus distinguishes two different types of communication in the context of dependence relations:
[1]. Communication ut quod - the relation that exists between a whole individual essence and the suppositum of which it is an essence.
[2]. Communication ut quo - that by which something is a being in a quidditative way (ex: accidents being communicated or predicated of a substance).
If an accidental property is communicated to and predicated of the human nature, and the human nature is predicated of and subsists in the Word, does it follow that the accidental property depends on the Word?
Scotus does grant that the dependence relation is transitive, meaning that the accidental human properties depend on the Word since the human nature to which these properties properly belong subsists in the Word:
“While the dependence of an accident [of Christ] is somehow upon the singular substance [viz. Christ’s human nature], it only ends with the singular as incommunicable [viz. the divine person]. For if it depends on the singular substance as communicable (since this substance is the being of that to which it is communicated), the dependence only ends with the letter.” (Duns Scotus, Quodlibet, q. 19, n. 13)
There are other passages in which Scotus seems to explain this in such a way as to make it the basis for christological predication as well as “dependence” statements:
“How therefore is the Word called ‘willing’? I say that just as the Son of God is called ‘colored’ because the body of Christ is colored, so He is called ‘willing’ because the soul is willing, and because the nature subsists in the Word, who is for this reason thus denominated.” (Duns Scotus, Reportatio, III, d. 17, q. 1, n. 4)
“The important thing to note is that the predication does not require any ontological communication of the property — the activity of willing — to the divine person either. The property is ontologically communicated to the human nature, and the human nature is ontologically communicated to the Word. But there is no ontological communication of the human accident to the divine person, and the linguistic predication relation is grounded simply in the pair of ontological communications from the human nature to the Word, and from the human accident to the divine person.” (Richard Cross, “Dependence and Christological Predication,” Carthaginensia 36, no. 70 [2020], pg. 413)
Communication, then, is Scotus’ truth-making relation for predicating various human properties of Christ the divine Logos.
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