It was in the 14th century that philosophy began to disintegrate, this was due to many factors, such as the public scandals of the Church, the 100 years war, and the Black Death. One mark of the destructive forces of the Church was the revival of nominalism, for which William of Ockham is mainly responsible.

The great revival of philosophical and theological study, which the thirteenth century witnessed, was conditioned by the influence of both Aristotle and Plato. St Augustine agrees with Plato's account of the universals: that they are forms and exist in their own spir

The absolute freedom of God is the characteristic trait in the theology of Ockham. The entire scheme planned by the voluntas ordinate, the possibility of God's doing anything whatever which does not involve a contradiction in terms, is based on no inner necessity, but is determined by the fact that it pleased God. In fact, to please God and nothing else. The distinction of the two aspects of the divine power comes in here. The merits of the saints, for example, are accepted as valid only because it pleases God to accept them - but since it has pleased God to establish this system, merit is absolutely necessary. God and his grace do all, but the cooperation of man is required.

Like Duns Scotus, Ockham talks about a hypostatic union, consisting in a "relation", the human nature being assumed by the divine. The special result of Christ's work is to be seen in the institution and operation of the sacraments. The operation is described in a manner usual in Franciscan theology; grace does not reside in them, but they are signs that God, in accordance with his institution, will accompany their administration with His grace. Grace is taken in a twofold sense, and infused quality of the mind by which man is enabled to act according to God's will, and divine acceptation, "the gratuitous will of God". Under the head of the sacraments, his fullest treatment is given to the Eucharist, where he follows the consubstantiation theory that after Scotus was becoming common. Neither Scripture now reason contradicts the possibility of the substance of bread, not merely the accidents, remaining together with the substance of the body of Christ; nor is transubstantiation taught in Scripture. He goes at considerable length into the question of the possibility of the presence of Christ in the sacrament. For him as a nominalist, quantity is a thing that has no existence in itself, but only the res quanta. Quantity can diminish or increase, and thus a thing may be without quantity; this is the manner in which the body of Christ exists in the sacrament of the altar. In this way, he comes to agree with Thomas Aquinas, that the body of Christ is present "after the manner of substance, not after that of quantity".

One of Ockham's arguments for nominalism is based upon a principle of simplicity, known as the law of parsimony or Ockham's celebrated razor, as it is continually at hand throughout his works. He argues that plurality is never to be posited without need, "To employ a number of principles when is possible to use

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