Did the Council of Trent rule out The Subtle Doctor on Justification? Some have been arguing that Scotus's own text in Ordinatio IV, d.16, q.2, teaches (1) that remission of guilt is prior to infusion of grace in the order of execution and nature, and (2) that neither is a cause of the other in any sense and that Mastrius, Dupasquier, Krisper and the rest of post Trent Scotists depart from Scotus on both points. the usual text used from The Ordinatio IV, d.16, q.2 is n.91. God wills grace first in intention, but "he wills execution to be the converse to the intention... so he first wills in order of nature that guilt not be in this person than that grace be in him." Now read alone, this definitely favors them, but Scotus actually does not leave it alone. In the very next sentence, n.92, he offers an explicit alternative. "Or if it be said that by 'to be in' or 'not to be in' nothing is posited in this person externally, but only as he is an object of divine volition, it can consequently be said that these secondary objects... have a certain order, as the divine will tends toward them, but according to causality and generation they have no order." So on this second construal the entire intention/execution apparatus concerns only the internal ordering of objects within the divine will and not any real sequence in the sinner at all. Krisper draws exactly this distinction. Scotus, "speaking of the order of intention and execution... is not speaking of them as they are two mutations integrating one justification" but only as secondary objects of the divine will. This is not merely a modern countermove or novelty. Dupasquier states such objection almost verbatim as his own Objection I, then answers it directly. "This is against the express mind of Scotus... where he teaches that the remission of sin is prior in nature to the infusion of grace, because it is posterior in the order of intention; therefore the conclusion is not truly derived from Scotus." His reply "I deny the antecedent, first, because the Doctor does not say this assertively but doubtfully... He likewise teaches that there is no order of physical causality here, since neither physically causes the other, but only morally... And so because Scotus reduces the whole to the order that these things have in the will of God, who wills the infusion of grace prior to the remission of sin, it follows that we hold the better view according to the mind of the Doctor." Dupasquier's "doubtfully, not assertively" is defensible once nn.87–92 are read as a unit rather than as isolated verses. Within that short span Scotus (1) states as uncertain whether infusion formally entails expulsion (n.87), (2) proposes an ordering via the merit/glory analogy (n.91), and (3) immediately proposes an alternative that empties that same ordering of extramental force (n.92). I will support this with a simpl syllogism. Major: A passage that advances a claim, then in the same breath offers an alternative construal that empties that claim of its force, is more accurately described as unsettled than as the author's fixed and assertive teaching.
Minor: But nn.91–92 do exactly this: n.91 proposes an ordering, and n.92 immediately offers a construal on which that ordering is only among objects of will, not any real sequence.
Conclusion: Therefore Dupasquier's characterization of nn.91–92 as Scotus speaking "doubtfully rather than assertively" is a fair synthetic judgment of the passage as a whole, not a mireading confined to n.87 alone. Now even granting n.91 its full force, the analogy underwriting it is an imperfect one. Merit and glory are both real, positive terms while guilt and grace are not really parallel in kind. Scotus's own second conclusio holds that guilt after the passing act "is not anything real in the soul... but is only a relation of reason in the object willed as willed," while infusion "is a real change, because between privation of real form and real form."