SOURCE: Dumont, Stephen D. “The Propositio Famosa Scoti: Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Possibility of a Science of Theology.” Dialogue 31, no. 3 (summer 1992): 415-29.

In the following essay, Dumont considers Scotus's contention that theology is a science in a verifiable, Aristotelian sense, and contrasts this view with William of Ockham's repudiation of Scotus's argument.

Duns Scotus's famous proposition was first attacked in a short polemical treatise attributed to Thomas of Sutton.¹ By the time of Ockham, the proposition was known as the propositio famosa, so called by Walter Chatton,² Ockham's colleague at Oxford and London, who defended it against Ockham's lengthy critique.³ At Paris, during the same period, it was called the propositio vulgata and was used approvingly by Francis of Meyronnes,⁴ Peter of Navarre⁵ and Durandus St. Pourçain.⁶ This “famous proposition” was so controverted because on it depended the acceptance, with Duns Scotus, or the rejection...