More on Nominalism

Michael Allen Gillespie has written an interesting book called The Theological Origins of Modernity (Amazon) in which he takes up the Realism/Nominalism controversy and traces its significance for early modern thought and culture. This is a passage from early in the book:

Drawing on the work of earlier proto-nominalist thinkers such as Roscelin and Abelard, and the work of Henry of Ghent and Scotus, [William of] Ockham laid out in great detail the foundations for a new metaphysics and theology that were radically at odds with scholasticism. Faith alone, Ockham argues, teaches us taht God is omnipotent and that he can do everything that is possible, that is to say, everything that is not contradictory. Thus, every being exits only as a result of his willing it and it exists as long as it does only because he so wills it. Creasion is thus an act of sheer gracee and is comprehensible only through revelation. God creates the world and continues to act within it, bound neither by its laws nor by his previous determinations. He acts simply and solely as he pleases, and as Ockham often repreats, he is no man's debtor. There is thus no immutable order of nature or reason that man can understand and no knowledge of God except through revelation. Ockham thus rejected the scholastic synthesis of reason and revelation and in this way undermined the metaphysical/theological foundation of the medieval world.

This notion of divine omnipotence was responsible for the demise of realism. God, Ockham argued, could not create universals because to do so would constrain his omnipotence. If a universal did exist, God would be unable to destroy any instance of it without destroying the universal itself. Thus, for example, God could not damn any one human being without damning all of humanity. If there are no real universals, every being must be radically individual, a unique creation of God himself, called forth out of nothing by his infinite power and sustained by that power alone. To be sure, God might compley secondary causes to produce or sustain an entity, but they were not necessary and were not ultimately responsible for the creation or the continued existence of the entity in question (22).