Christ, "centre of history and the cosmos"

In his General Audience address today, the last before his summer break, the Holy Father returned to the figure of the Blessed John Duns Scotus, commenting that "in this great Christocentric vision, the Incarnate Word appears as the centre of history and the cosmos." Such an affirmation from the Holy Father is always music to the ears of those of us in the Faith Movement who promote just such a vision of Christ as centre and Lord of history and of the cosmos.

As Sandro Magister has commented in his Italian language blog Settimo Caelo, the question of the primacy of the will in Scotist theology raises the question which the Holy Father himself brought up with regard to Islam in his Regensburg lecture. An absolute and innate freedom opens up the possibility of a God who is not tied to the true and the good. However, Pope Benedict points out that the desire to preserve an absolute transcendence of the impenetrable will of God does not take account of the fact that God is revealed in Christ as "Logos". The Holy Father continued (my translation):
Certainly, as Duns Scotus affirmed within the line of Franciscan theology, love exceeds knowledge and is capable of perceiving more than thought, but it is always the love of God "logos". Even in man, the idea of absolute liberty, located in the will, forgetting its link with the truth, ignores the fact that the same liberty must be liberated from the restrictions that come from sin.
I expect that an English translation of the address will be online soon (and perhaps an English translation of Sandro Magister's article - look out on his blog Chiesa.) In the meantime, here is a link to a summary from Vatican radio.

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