CEVAP:

John of Paris brings the traditional distinction between ownership and rulership (dominium) to the agenda again. The fact that a ruler having right to judge on how to use property disputes does not make him the supreme owner of the property, on his view. A community (a state, or the Church, or particular communities) acquires property only from individuals, and the head of the community is the administrator of the community’s property, not its owner.

John of Paris’ assumption that original appropriation is by individuals, and his idea that individuals acquire property by “labour and industry”, seem to have a lot in common with Locke’s theory of property. However, John of Paris indicates that individuals acquire property under human law, which is the traditional view among medieval theologians, following Augustine. Though property is acquired under human law, it is acquired by individuals, not directly by rulers.

In John of Paris’ thought, the basis of the distinction between the two powers is not subject matter or ends, but only a means: Each power is limited to its own appropriate means of action; the secular power uses natural means, the Church uses supernatural means. This reminds us of Thomas Aquinas’s picture of two powers leading mankind toward the goals of human life in an ordered hierarchy, one using supernatural means while the other natural.

Last but not least, John of Paris is strictly in opposition with Aquinas’ inference that the pope ought to direct the secular ruler, from the fact that the Church is concerned with the highest end.