Read more
Critical edition of
De scientia Dei by John Wyclif, one of the most brilliant teachers at Oxford after the Great Death. The tract deals with important theological questions about God's knowledge and human free will. A detailed introduction contextualises the tract within Wyclif's own theological and philosophical development.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1: The Place of the De scientia Dei in the Summa de ente
- 2: The Manuscript Tradition and Editorial Principles
- 3: Presentation of the Text
- 4: The Main Themes of John Wyclif's De scientia Dei
- 5: Bibliography
- DE SCIENTIA DEI
- Index Locorum Scripturarum
- Index Auctorum
- Index Nominum
- Index Rerum Potiorum
About the author
Luigi Campi (PhD 2011) is Research Fellow in History of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Milan. His areas of research are in medieval theology and philosophy, with particular interest in the thought of John Wyclif and his legacy in Central Europe. He is also interested in the study of doctrinal and textual influences across literary traditions (philosophy, theology, canon law). He is actually working on a volume devoted to philosophical debates at the Prague Faculty of Arts around 1409, also including some hitherto unedited texts of Bohemian Wycliffites.
Summary
De scientia Dei (On God's Knowledge) is one of the few major texts by John Wyclif that has not already been published. According to John A. Robson, the De scientia Dei is 'in some way, the most important of all the treatises' of Wyclif's so-called Summa de ente. It was probably written in 1372, when the editorial project of the Summa de ente was in its final stages, and when Wyclif was at the peak of his academic career. In it he deals with God's knowledge as a divine attribute, presents his peculiar view of God's knowledge as a relation of reason, distinguishes between God's knowledge of creatures in their intelligible being and in their actual existence, and argues in favour of a compatibilism between God's foreknowledge of future events and the liberty of human will. In this connection, a long section is also devoted to questions about the doctrine of salvation, and to the first elaborated exposition of Wyclif's doctrine of grace.
The edition is preceded by a historical and doctrinal introduction, enabling the reader to situate the tract within the framework of Wyclif's own production and to appreciate the relevance of some of the topics faced in the text in the light of the development of Wyclif's theological and philosophical thought.
