What the two
Viae shared:
However
different they may appear, the Realist and Nominalist positions shared some
fundamental assumptions regarding soteriology. When one looks at the Thomistic
view, one finds "a progressivee enhancement of human nature through loving
activity (fides infusa caritate formata), which is empowered by
the impartation of a supernatural forma accidentalis to the soul (gratia
infusa and gratia gratum faciens)."[1]
Thomas seems to support the idea that
God is a debtor to His system of salvation, comprised of the Holy Church and
the sacraments. Undoubtedly, this is a result of Thomas's commitment to
Aristotelianism. In his theology, Thomas incorporated Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic assumptions about the world or cosmos; namely, that it is bound
together (the chain of being idea) and that it is understood causally.
Aristotle is behind the idea that God and man are bound together as First Cause
and secondary cause and that there is an ontologically fixed relationship
between God and man; ie., God as first Cause to creature as secondary Cause.
Neoplatonism is behind the assumption that nature (the world and all the
creatures in it) is inalienably oriented to God as the Form or principle and
end of natural good.
The result of these assumptions is amazing.
Aristotelianism provides the assumption that human nature is naturally and
necessarily directed to God as its proper end or final Cause. Ironically, this
has the result that Thomists may argue that God, as first Cause, takes the initiative
in salvation (an anti-Pelagian stand) through the cause-and-effect world He
created, while at the same time, man has the natural ability to know and to
seek to please God (a Pelagian stand).[2]
In much the same way, the nominalists such
as Occam and Biel (and one might include John Duns Scotus in this group) also
made God a debtor because of His covenant with man. The nominalists, we
remember, thought that God was so pleased with man when man did his best to
obey God, that He accepted them. This meant that the nominalists held that man
could, purely out of his natural proclivities (ex puris naturalibus)
and with a special blessing of God's love (the sacraments) love God above all
things. In other words, there was a kind of 'natural' covenant between God and
man that defined their relationship. This natural covenant could be thought of
as the synteresis or the ground of the soul, as the mystics (Tauler and Gerson)
called it.[3]