Question Three. Whether the Children of Jews and Infidels are to be Baptized against their Parents’ Wishes

166. About the children of Jews and Infidels, whether they are to be baptized against their parents’ wishes.

I. Opinion of Others and Rejection of It

167. It is said that they are not to be baptized, because either they would be returned to the parents and their baptism would be to the reproach of the Christian faith since they would afterwards be nourished by their parents in their parents’ error; or they would not be returned, and then an injury would be done to them, because parents have right over them while they are children.

168. But this reason, though perhaps it might be conclusive about some private person (because a private person could not rightly take children from such parents and baptize them), does not however seem conclusive about a prince, to whom, in rule of the republic, such parents are subject. For the Lord has greater right of lordship over a child than the parents do; for in the case of ordered powers universally, a lower power is not binding in things that are against a superior power, as Augustine teaches, On the Words of the Lord, sermon 62 ch.8 n.13 (and it is in Lombard’s text, Sent. II d.44 ch.2 n.2), “If a power commands that which you ought not do, surely despise here that power, fearing a higher Power;” and he gives an example about a procurator, and a proconsul, and an emperor. Therefore, he who has to rule a republic should compel everyone to be more subject to the superior lord than to the inferior one - indeed to be subject to the superior with contempt of the inferior when the inferior in such lordship resists the superior. Just as, if an emperor should decree that someone must obey the proconsul, to the contempt of the precept of the procurator, that is, of one inferior to the proconsul if he were contradict the proconsul - so too, if there were ordered lordships under the same lord, namely that someone were servant of Titius and Titius of Peter, the emperor should compel the servant rather to serve Peter (because Peter is superior to Titius) than to serve Titius if Titius wanted to use the servant against the lordship of Peter. Therefore, the prince should most of all be zealous for keeping the lordship of the supreme Lord, namely God.

169. And consequently the prince not only may but also should take children from the lordship of parents who want to educate them against the cult of God, who is the supreme and most honorable Lord; and he should attach them to the divine cult.

II. Scotus’ own Opinion

170. I say briefly therefore that if the prince were to do this with good precaution, namely lest the parents (knowing that this was in the future) were to kill the children, and that he would make the baptized to be educated religiously - it would be done well. Indeed, what is more, I would believe it religiously done if the parents themselves were compelled by threats and terrors to receive baptism, and to keep afterwards what they had received, because let it be that they would not all be truly faithful in their heart, yet it would be less bad for them not to be able with impunity to keep their illicit law than to be able to keep it freely. Again their sons, if they were well educated, would be in the third and fourth generation truly faithful.

171. If you say that, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, 10.21-22 (which Paul repeats to Romans, 9.27), “a remnant of Israel will be converted in the end,” and therefore the Jews should not be wholly compelled to receive baptism and to leave their own Law - I respond: I do not doubt but that the prophecy of Christ is true, which Christ states in John 5.13, “I have come in the name of my Father and you have not received me; if another come in his own name, him you will receive.” Therefore at least from the word of Christ they are going to have to be made perverse, because they will adhere to that most evil Antichrist, whom Christ’s aforesaid statement was about.

172. And if you say that, when they have seen Antichrist’s destruction, those who adhered to Antichrist will be converted - I say that for those who are so few and so tardily to be converted (because the fruit for the Church will be slight and there will be no propagation from them of sons in the Christian Law), there is no need for so many Jews, in so many parts of the world, to persist in retaining their Law for so great a length of time; but it would be sufficient for some few, sequestered in some island, to be permitted to keep their law, and about them the prophecy of Isaiah would at length be fulfilled.

173. Now this point about infidel parents being compelled by threats and terrors [n.170] seems proved because the Council of Toledo, referred to above [n.74], commends the like thing saying, “Those who long ago were compelled to Christianity, as was done in the times of the most religious prince Sisebut;King of the Visigoths in Spain (died 621), see Isidore, History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals, and Swiss n.60. About the Council of Toledo, Decretals III tit.42 ch.3, Gregory IX, “He who is drawn violently by terrors and punishments and, lest he incur loss, has received the sacrament of baptism, such a one, as if being conditionally willing, is to be compelled to the observance of the Christian faith. In which case must be understood the decree of the Council of Toledo, where it is said that those who long ago were compelled to Christianity, as was done in the times of the most religious prince Sisebut.must be compelled also to maintain the faith, which by necessity they undertook.” ²⁶” therefore in this the Council approves of him as a religious prince, because he compelled the infidels to the faith.Two other cases are reported in ms. A of the Ordinatio, about monstrous births or an infant born with two heads. They are brought forward by Henry of Ghent Quodlibet VI qq. 14-15. Scotus however deals with these cases below in d.6 nn.61-67. ²⁷