6. Natural will and natural volition
The WiU and Its Inclinations hope a theological virtue distinct from faith and charity {"Utrum spes sit virtus theologica distincta a fide et caritate"}? Hope may be a virtue distinct from faith, but since it, like charity, resides in the will as subject, one can legitimately ask: Is hope also distinct from charity?
Scotus argues that since the formal subject of hope is the will as inclined to self-perfection, whereas the formal subject of charity is the will as inclined towards justice, the virtue of hope will be distinct from that of charity, since these affections represent specifically distinct innate inclinations. In the supernatural order, the infused virtue of hope perfects the will's inclination for the advantageous, whereas the infused virtue of charity perfects its higher inclination or affection for justice.
6. Natural will and natural volition The sixth selection is taken from Scotus' question: Were there only two wills in Christ {"Utrum in Christo fuerint tantum duae voluntates"} ? The Second and Third Councils of Constantinople had settled the monophysite and monotheletite heresies by insisting that hypostatically united in the person of Christ, as the God-man, was not only the uncreated divine nature and will the Word shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also a complete and perfect human nature endowed with intellect and will. In Scotus' day this doctrine was no longer in question. Peter Lombard's comments on Christ's agony in the garden, where he prayed to his Father, "Take this cup away from me; but let it be as you would have it" {Mark 14:36}, however, had raised another question in the minds of the scholastics. Did Christ's prayer, expressing as it did both his natural revulsion to bodily suffering and death as well as his willingness to accept such as the will of his
Father, imply a dual will in his human nature?
Scotus begins by calling attention to the fact that in an extended and improper sense of the word, "will" could also refer to the nonrational sensitive appetite, found in human nature and falling under the classification of "nature" as opposed to "will" in the sense of the distinction he had made in our second selection. In this extended sense, then, one could speak of more than one human will in Christ.
Scotus notes, however, that psychologically speaking man has not just a single sense appetite but many, one corresponding to each of the senses whereby he apprehends things.
But there are also three other meanings one could give to the expression "natural will" or "natural volition" that are more directly connected with the human will as such. As a self-determining rational potency the will has a twofold aspect, one active, whereby it elicits its