On the Polity of God: the Ecclesiology of Duns Scotus

The Church consists of those configured to Christ in baptism. In opposition to Aquinas, this configuration or character is conceived of not as a real quality of the baptized, but merely as a relation to God's will, such that God will in appropriate circumstances give grace to a person with the disposition. The community of the Church thus consists of people like each other only in the sense of sharing the same relation to God's will. On this relation supervenes a relation of obligation to Christ, analogous to the similar obligations in a secular polity.