Although he didn’t sign on to everything proposed by this philosophy, his theology in the main reflects nominalistic thought.įor example, according to Luther, God makes us right with himself through a purely external means-namely, God legally calls us righteous even though we remain sinners. Nominalism comes to us today through the mediation of Protestantism, whose most famous founder, Martin Luther, was a self-admitted nominalist. If God calls it sufficient to atone for the sins of whole world, it is. He could have become “incarnate” in stone, or wood, or even as a different species. God taking to himself our human nature is arbitrary because “human nature” doesn’t exist outside our mind. The only thing that matters is what God calls it.Īccording to Ockham’s thinking, the Incarnation becomes a kind of fiction. The nature or essence of a thing-its constitution and properties-doesn’t matter. Then, later on, he would call them the opposite. In the Poverty Dispute, a nominalist would argue that God didn’t call material possessions good because they are by nature good rather, “good” was just a name that God temporarily called certain things. There are only similar individuals that our minds group together, and we put the label of “humanity” on them. For example, humanity doesn’t exist outside the mind. Ockham argued that only individuals exist and that we tend to group these individuals together under a name. Nominalism gets its name from the Latin word for “name,” nomen. Ockham’s idea was later refined and transformed into a philosophical system known as nominalism. What truly matter is God’s will, which isn’t bound by anything-even God’s nature. What matters isn’t whether a thing is intrinsically good or evil. He could have established material possessions as a good in the Old Testament and then later decreed that the same things are evil. Ockham’s solution was that God could change his mind. Indeed, in the Old Testament, God legislated the proper use of property and possessions. Pope John XXII countered that such was impossible because God saw material possessions as a good. These Franciscans were called “poor” because they believed that Christ renounced all worldly goods-even his kingdom and worldly dominion-and that those who truly follow his gospel must do likewise. Ockham was asked by his superior to defend the case of the “poor Franciscans” before the papal court in Avignon, France. One of these errors dates back to the Middle Ages, with an English Franciscan named William of Ockham (1285-1347), better known simply as Ockham, famous for the principle of Ockham’s razor.
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