16. God's absolute and ordained power
Introduction gives us the best insight into why he did not consider God free to act whimsically or irrationally.
It is clear, says Scotus, that God has justice in Anselm's sense, for "he has rectitude of will; indeed a will that cannot be gainsaid, because it is the rule or norm," as it were, both for himself and for us.
The Latin source is a revision of the Wadding edition based on Codex A, f. 270ra-va.
16. God's absolute and ordained power Peter Abelard (d. 1142) first raised the question: Could God have created otherwise than he did? He came to a solution, much like that of Leibniz, that God being the good and rational creator that he was, he could only have made things the way he did and at the time he did
(Theologia Christiana V, nn. 29-58; PL 178, 1324-30). This seemed logically equivalent to saying creation had to be what it was and hence was necessary, and not contingent. Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), St.
Bernard (d. I 153), and others promptly challenged this novel view in the name of tradition, and the Council of Sens condemned it along with other errors that Abelard saw fit to retract in his Apologia seu Fidei confessio (PL 178, 107).
Peter Lombard devoted dists. 42-44 of Bk. I of his Sentences to the refutation of Abelard's views, thus insuring a discussion of this question by the bachelor theologians, who used his work as their basic textbook from the time Alexander of Hales introduced its study at Paris. With the advent of Averroism in the latter part of the thirteenth century, Abelard's necessitarianism reappeared as a philosophical challenge to the views of the theology faculty at the University of Paris. At the instigation of the theologians, this with other necessitarian views was condemned as "erroneous" by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, first implicitly in the Parisian condemnations of 1270 and explicitly in those of 1277.
Since Scotus' "voluntarism" with its stress on the contingency of creation and God's freedom to do otherwise than he did was part and parcel of the common reaction of theologians of his day to these earlier condemnations, it is not surprising to find him raising this question in both the Lectura (Vatican ed. XVII, pp. 535-36) and the Ordinatio (VI, pp. 363-69). As with other theologians of his day,
Scotus' answer to the question centers on clarifying the meaning of God's absolute and ordained power (potentia Dei absoluta et ordinata).
The brief discussion in the Lectura is expanded considerably in the Ordinatio, where it is tied in with the juridical distinction of what one can do de jure and de facto.
The Moral Law in General
Scotus' solution is not greatly different from that of Aquinas, Ockham, and others (Gal, 1976; Pemoud, 1972) for whom "potentia absoluta" had the meaning of "power" considered simply and absolutely without any restriction or qualification. In the case of God, whose omnipotence was considered to be limited only in terms of what implied a contradiction, it was usually defined in terms of what
God could or might have done without contradicting himself, in short, what was possible for him in virtue of his omnipotence. Hence,
Scotus' counterargument in the present question, which sets the stage for his own position, reads: "That things could have been made otherwise is not self-contradictory, neither is the world necessary." "Potentia ordinata" was not always uniformly defined, since "ordinata" could be translated in several ways. The commonly accepted meaning referred to what God has de facto ordained, which is the basic juridical sense Scotus refers to. But acting "ordinate" and "ordinatissime" can also have the meaning of acting "orderly" and "most methodically," terms Scotus applies to God as "ordinatissime volens." And hence the suggestion that God's absolute power de jure extends beyond what he has de facto ordained suggests to an unnamed opponent in the opening argument of the "Pro and Con" that if God could have created otherwise than he did, he could only have done so by acting inordinately, a point Scotus rejects vehemently. For whatever God does by his absolute power, he does de jure and in a manner that does justice to his own goodness. For though God is free to create otherwise, he is not free to do violence to his own goodness or act contrary to the inclination or affection for justice that is part of the pure perfection of the "innate liberty" of his will, as described by Anselm and Scotus
(Wolter, 19;72).
As this point must ,be kept in mind in reading Scotus' answer to this question, it is well to review what I said in answer to Anthony Quinton's statement that "things are good because God wills them and not vice versa, so moral truth is not accessible to natural reason" (Wolter,
1972).
The Latin source is in the Vatican edition VI, pp. 363-69.
PART v: THE MORAL LAW IN GENERAL
I7. Natural law and divine positive law Scotus has a short but excellent treatment of natural law and divine positive law in Ordinatio IV, dist. 17, where he discusses the sacrament of penance and the reason why there is an obligation to confess a person's serious sins orally to a priest.
Introduction Here, as in the following selection, he distinguishes between what belongs properly to the law of nature and what can be called "natural law" only in a secondary or extended sense. To be a law of nature in the proper sense, the proposition expressing such must be either (I) self-evident or analytic, i.e., known from an analysis of the meaning of its terms, or (2) a conclusion that follows logically from one or more such propositions. That God is to be loved and shown no irreverence would be an example of the first; that deliberate perjury is always gravely wrong would be an instance of the second sense, since it follows logically from the precept that God's name should not be taken in vain, i.e., God should be shown no irreverence.
In an extended sense, natural law would be "a practical truth that is immediately recognized by all to be in accord with such a law." In the following selection he points out that the second table of the decalogue, i.e., the last seven of the ten commandments, is of the naturallaw in this secondary or extended sense. The same would be true of the example he gives here when he says: "I grant that we know by the natural light of the mind that a guilty person must be judged" and that "no sin should be left unpunished anywhere if there is one ruler of the universe and he is just."
Note what he says of practical or moral truths that express "natural law" in this extended sense. They are "immediately recognized by all" to be very much in accord with natural law in the primary sense, and hence they represent conclusions that any reasoning person can readily know or infer. No special revelation, in other words, seems to be required. However, in the subsequent selection, he clarifies this somewhat in answer to an objection based on St. Paul's remark in his letter to the Romans ("It was only through the law [i.e., the revelation of the Old Testament Scriptures] that I came to know sin. I should never have known what evil desire was unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet"'). By way of reply, Scotus admits two points. One, that "although God's existence could have been inferred by natural reason from principles known in themselves, nevertheless, for the ignorant people unskilled in intellectual matters, it would be known only from revealed law." The same conclusion, then, would seem to apply also to moral truths that are ascertained only after a certain amount of reasoning. Secondly, Scotus concedes that sinful habits could blind the intellect and hence "to corrupt men it would not be known that their lusts were against the natural law, and therefore, it would have been necessary to explain-either by the law that was given, or in some other way-that sins of lust are prohibited by the second table. One could concede that such things are not known per se." Hence, one could interpret this "recognition by all" in one of three ways. (I) It
The Moral Law in General
refers only to the more general aspects of the moral law, rather than the finer details. Thus Scotus admits in discussing the indissolubility of marriage that this is something that pertains only to natural law in the second or extended sense and that "those things that pertain to the law of nature only in the second way are not manifest to all, and therefore, it was necessary that this precept of the natural law be determined by divine positive law" (Ord. IV, dist. 26, n. 9i Codex A, f. 248vb: "But even if the law of nature were to obligate a couple to the indissolubility of their bond, which they entered into in virtue of their marriage contract, this would not be the law of nature of the most evident kind, but rather that of the second sort. Whatever is not manifest to everyone is not a law of nature, except in the second sensei and it therefore requires that the necessity of the precept be determined by positive law.") Or (2) it could refer to the generality of mankind, rather than to each and every individual. Or finally (3) it could refer to the possibility, rather than the actuality, of what can be recognized by the light of natural reason, particularly by someone who is not "unskilled in intellectual matters" and whose ability to reason objectively has not been blinded by emotional attachments or who has not become so corrupt that he no longer recognizes that his "lusts were against the natural law." Scotus here seems to be referring to St.
Paul's earlier remarks in Romans 1:18-32 on those "who have stultified themselves" and "their senseless hearts are darkened," and "in consequence God has delivered them up in their lusts to unclean practices." For any or all of these reasons, then, Scotus would say it was fitting for God to have revealed the entire decalogue or ten commandments, even though the precepts pertaining to natural law in the strict sense, or to the more general aspects of natural law in the secondary sense, could have been known naturally.
Because the precepts of "the law of nature" -whether this be understood in the strict or extended sense-stem implicitly from human nature being what it is and God being what he is, Scotus can say: "If it
[Le., confession to a priest] were a matter of natural law, the obligation would have held for any state of law." That it did not hold for the "state of innocence," L e., the state mankind was in before the fall of Adam and Eve from grace, and did not oblige the Jews before the coming of Christ, says Scotus, is indicative or proof of the fact that confession to a priest is a matter of natural law in neither the primary nor the extended sense. He will make the same point in the subsequent selection when he writes: "I say that in every state all the commandments have been observed and should be observed."
Though Scotus does not do so here, perhaps one ought to distinguish also between positive divine law in a strict and in a more ex-