New Edition of Wyclif’s De scientia Dei

A critical edition of Wyclif’s De scientia Dei, edited by Luigi Campi, was published recently by Oxford University Press.

Scientia dei

From the publisher: “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.”