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The Franciscan scholastic tradition begins with Alexander of Hales' lectures on Peter Lombard's Sentences--long the standard text for theological courses. Richard of Middleton and his later contemporary, John Duns Scotus, were the effective founders of Franciscan scholasticism; see H. O. Taylor's The mediaeval mind, 1951, II.542). Its early form is Scotism, but since William of Ockham carried a number of Scotist views to their conclusions, we term Franciscan scholasticism Scotism-Ockhamism--or, Nominalism or the via moderna. This school steadfastly maintained that "will is the noblest power in the soul" and that "will is simply nobler than the intellect." This Semitic view was due not least to the obvious causal efficacy of will--an "energy" in Eastern thinking. Duns Scotus made the divine will the norm and ground of righteousness or justice. He came near to making foreordaining the basis for foreknowing, though he insisted that God is contemporaneous with every present moment in time; his followers took the step of making divine foreknowledge contingent on predestinating what was to happen, though they emphasized predestination to Salvation more than reprobation--predestination to perdition. Though the Thomists held that the allegëd "indelible Character of the Sacraments" inheres in practical reason [i.e. wisdom], the Scotists held that it inheres in the will. Important figures in later Nominalism were Gregory of Rimini--a slightly later contemporary of Ockham's, a member of the Augustinian Hermits and a scholar of a strongly Augustinian outlook--and Gabriel Biel, a member of the Brethren of the Common Life and co-founder of the University of Tübingen whose view of Grace is reported by those who know to have been at the opposite pole from that of Gregory of Rimini.

at http://www.orlapubs.com/ORLAPUBS-R/R28.html

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