2. How divine free will differs from ours
General Remarks
Duns will point out, God never acts contrary to what right reason or prudence would dictate, for God is always ordinatissime volens.
2. How divine free will differs from ours Equally certain to Scotus was the experiential fact that we possess free will (see selection 2) and that contingency exists in the world around us. He considered the latter to be a "primary truth not demonstrable a priori." Those who deny such manifest things, he says, quoting Aristotle, "need punishment or senses," not argument.
For as Avicenna puts it ... "Those who deny a first principle should be beaten or exposed to fire until they concede that to bum and not to bum, or to be beaten and not to be beaten, are not identical". And so too, those who deny that some being is contingent should be exposed to torments until they concede it is possible for them not to be tormented. (Wolter, 1962, p. 9)
From the existence of our free will and the fact of contingency in the world, he believed we could prove that God also has free will and that this fact is a necessary condition, though not a sufficient reason, why something is contingent. His proof for this was in the aforesaid metaphysical argument for God, but is repeated in summary fashion in dist. 39 of his lectures on the first book of the Sentences, where he goes on to analyze in some detail how God's will must differ from ours. This discussion appears in several forms, including that of the original Lectura (XVII, pp. 481 - 513) and a substantially revised and expanded form that follows the plan of the Lectura, but depends upon the Reportatio examinata I, dists. 38-4°' The editors of the Vatican edition think this later version, though expressing the most mature thought of Scotus, may have been completed by a disciple using materials from Scotus' notebooks and other sources no longer extant. Since it is found in all the principal manuscripts in substantially the same form, the editors believe they all depend upon a single apograph, and they have prepared a critical edition of this text in Appendix A of volume
VI, pp. 401-44. Scotus' argument there runs as follows.
Granted contingency exists, what must we presuppose about God, the first cause, as a necessary condition for the possibility of such contingency? We must assume that he does not create, conserve, or cooperate with the causes he creates in any necessary way. There must be some positive cause or reason, which cannot be his intellect as such, but must have its roots in his free will. To understand how we can ascribe will to God we must first analyze what our own freedom involves. It has a triple aspect. First, we are free in regard to opposite acts. This refers to what Scotus described in some detail in selection 2, namely, that our will is an active potency, and as such can do some-
IO Introduction thing, i. e., it can determine itself in opposite or contrary ways. Second, as the root cause of such opposite acts of volition, it can also tend to opposite objects and, third, produce opposite effects. The first sort of freedom, as it exists in us, involves a certain imperfection, for we are not only the cause of our volition, but the recipient of this immanent action as well, and in causing it, we are changed from a state of not willing to willing. Passivity and mutability, then, are imperfections associated with this first sense of freedom. It will require further analysis, Scotus explains, to extract from this amalgam of positive perfection, passivity, and mutability what is a matter of pure perfection and hence could exist in God. Scotus finds this kernel of unqualified perfection to be what is implied in the will's peculiar character as an active potency or causal principle, namely, the positive or superabundant indeterminacy that enables the will to act in opposite or contrary ways. The second and third aspects of freedom, the will's ability to tend to opposite objects and produce opposite effects, is the sort of freedom required for artistic creativity and is also a matter of pure or unqualified perfection. The two aspects are separable, however, for one can love or hate something without necessarily producing or destroying it. Scotus describes the second aspect, as characteristic of our freedom, in the following way:
I maintain that one obvious power for opposites is associated with this freedom, for although it does not include the power to will and not will simultaneously (since this is nothing), it still includes the power to will after not willing, or a power for opposites in succession. This power for opposite acts in succession, however, is not peculiar to the will, but is characteristic of all mutable things. Nevertheless, the will has another, less evident power for opposites apart from any succession. For suppose that a created will existed for but one instant and had this particular volition at that instant, it would not have it at that moment in a necessary manner. Proof: If it did, then since it is a cause only at the instant it causes that volition, the will would cause it then in a simply necessary fashion. (For the present situation would not obtain, where the will is said to be a contingent cause, because prior to the instant it causes, it could either cause or not cause. Just as this being, then, when it exists, is necessary or contingent, so too a cause, when it causes, does so then either necessarily or contingently.) At this instant, then, [this cause which exists but for an instant] causes contingently, and hence has at that moment, in the absence of any succession, the power for the opposite of what it actually causes. And this real power (as first act [i.e., as actually existing)) is a power that is naturally prior to those opposites, which (as second acts [Le., as its actual volitions)) are naturally posterior. For the first act [Le., something as existing), considered in its natural priority to second act, gives to its effect, as contingent, its existence in such a way that, as naturally prior, it could just as well have done the opposite.