Under the influence of both these elements, a quietistic mysticism and
an antagonism to reason in matters of faith, his scorn for all natural
works grew. This made it easier for him to regard the natural order
of human powers as having been completely upset by original sin. More
and more he comes to recognise only an appearance of natural virtues;
to consider them as the poisonous blossoms of that unconquerable
selfishness which lies ever on the watch in the heart of man, and is
only to be gradually tamed by the justifying grace of God. The denial
of all freedom, under the ban of sin, little by little becomes for
him the principal thing, the “_summa causa_,” which, as he says in so
many words, he has to defend.[397] Beside the debasement of reason and
the false fancies of his mysticism, stood as a worthy companion the
religion of the enslaved will; this we find present in his mind from
the beginning, and at a later period it obtained a lasting monument in
the work “_De servo arbitrio_,” which Luther regarded as the climax of
his theology.[398]
But there are other connecting-links between Occamism and the errors of
the young Monk.
According to Occam’s school the purely spiritual attributes of God
cannot be logically proved; it does not consider it as proved merely
by reason that God is the last and final end of man, and that outside
of Him there is no real human happiness, nor even, according to
Occam himself, that “any final cause exists on account of which all
things happen”;[399] not only, according to him, must we be on our
guard against any idea that reason can arrive at God as the origin
of happiness and as the end of salvation, but even His attributes
we must beware of examining philosophically. God’s outward action
knows no law, but is purely arbitrary. Thus Occamism, with its
theory of the arbitrary Divine Will, manifesting itself in the act
of “acceptation” or imputation, was more likely to produce a servile
feeling of dependence on God than any childlike relationship; with this
corresponded the feeling of the utter worthlessness of man’s own works
in relation to imputation, which, absolutely speaking, might have been
other than it is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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