3. God's voluntary self-love as both free and necessary
General Remarks II Concomitant with this real active power that is naturally prior to what it produces is a logical power, which is a compatibility of terms. For even when the will produces this particular volition, the opposite volition is not inconsistent with the will as first act [i.e., as an actually existing causal power]. The reason is twofold, first because the will is a contingent cause with respect to its effect, and second, insofar as the will is also the recipient subject of its immanent act, it is related to what informs it only contingently, because no subject is opposed to what inheres in it only as an "incidental accident."
Therefore, both a power for opposites in succession and a power for opposites at the same instant, are associated with the liberty of our will; or to put it another way, either of these real powers could exist without the other.
But it is this second real power-as naturally prior to the concomitant third, or logical, power-that is the real cause of the volitional act. But the "fourth power"-viz., to have opposite acts simultaneously-is not associated with the will, because this represents no power whatsoever.
Using the logical tool of the distinction between the composite and divided senses, Scotus goes on to show both in what sense the ambiguous statement "When the will wills A, it can also not will A" can be both true and false and why Aristotle's controversial statement in De interpretatione II, ch. 9 (19a23-24), that "whatever exists, when it is, must necessarily exist" needs qualification. Since Duns' detailed explanation is covered by what he says in selection 2, we need not go into the matter further. Suffice it to say that just as we-at the instant we freely decide and will one alternative-have both a real and a logical potentiality for the opposite, so too does God. For this is what the essential perfection of free will implies. And while such coexists in us only with the imperfection associated with passivity and mutability, this factual mutability is lacking in God, who from all eternity freely decides to create, conserve, and cooperate with the free actions of his creatures in a contingent way. For despite the steadfastness of his free will, it always has at root its potentiality to have caused the opposite of what it de facto causes. This point will be treated in selection 16, which deals with the absolute and ordained power of God.
3. God's voluntary self-love as both free and necessary In selection 4 we have Scotus' interpretation of the twofold "affection" St. Anselm of Canterbury ascribes to the created will. The first is its affection for the advantageous (affectio commodi). This makes it a rational or intellectual appetite that seeks what the intellect shows is advantageous to the creature, particularly what makes it happy (selection 6). Under the aspect of its inclination for the advantageous we can speak of a "natural will" (selection 5). This refers primarily not to an elicited action of the will, but rather to an inclination or bias the
I ntrodu.ction will has as a "nature." For like all natures, according to Aristotle, it seeks or "loves" -whatever perfects its nature. This affection for the advantageous is also characteristic of all human sense appetites. Hence it is not something proper or peculiar to a rational creature possessing intellect.
It is the second inclination that is proper to a rational being whose mind is governed by right reason, namely, its "affection for justice."
This is essentially an inclination towards something intrinsically good (bonum honestum). By reason of this affection, the will is invited to love or tend towards that good "for its own sake." We experience such an objective attraction where beauty is to be found. There we are drawn out of ourselves, as it were, and are involved with and absorbed by the beautiful object itself. We "love it for its own sake" with a "love" that is neither private nor jealous, but rather one that inclines us to invite others to admire and share it with us. Richard of St. Victor was to develop this notion to explain the inner life of the Trinity
(Richard de Saint-Victor, 1958, pp. 136ff), wherein he was followed by St. Bonaventure (Hayes, 1979, p. 23f). Scotus uses it primarily to show the rationale behind God's creativity (Wolter, 1980, p. 157)'
As Richard conceives of this "love," it has an aspect of necessity.
Indeed, because this inner divine life is as necessary as is God's nature itself, Richard is convinced that he can give not just "probable but necessary reasons" why God is the sort of being he is (p. 89). Anselm's original approach is to stress the other aspect, the inner freedom or essential "liberty" of God's will-act or "love" of what is intrinsically good about himself. He had earlier corrected a common misconception about human liberty, viz., that our will is free because it has the capacity to sin, a potestas peccandi that permits it to depart from justice or what right reason dictates. As such, will cannot exist in God; neither is will in any unqualified sense a perfection (perfectio simpliciter).
Hence, Anselm's revolutionary definition of freedom as a pure perfection, viz., as the capacity to preserve justice for its own sake (potestas servandi rectitudinem propter seipsum) and his definition of justice itself as "rectitude-of-will served for its own sake" (iustitia est rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata), cited by Scot us in selection 15. Under this aspect, freedom is not opposed to necessity, for "necessary" and "necessity" are terms with many meanings, as we shall shortly see.
But before going into that, however, let us note that the rectitude and justice Anselm apparently had in mind was that supernatural or "gratuitous grace," something infused by God which so sanctifies the soul as to make it capable of sharing in the inner life of the Trinity in the hereafter. As such it liberates us from the need to seek God only as our ultimate perfection and happiness, and permits us to love him
General Remarks
honestly for his own sake and above all else (see selection 25). Scotus seemingly carried this notion of liberation even further than Anselm, for he described this "affection for justice" as "libertas innata," i. e., something inborn, native, or congenital to the human will. In fact he goes still further; not only is it an essential component of the will, but it represents what an Aristotelian would call the "ultimate specific difference" that elevates a "rational appetite" and transforms it into an appetite that is "free." He refers to this "affectio iustitiae" either as "innata libertas" (which I have translated as "native liberty") or as "ingenita libertas," which could be translated literally more properly as "unbegotten liberty" (but which I have translated, as characteristic of creatures, and man in particular, as "congenital"). Though it is a bias and an inclination, like the affection for the advantageous, and hence is not an elicited act as such, the affection for justice already introduces a measure of freedom from nature. For nature, according to Aristotle, always seeks its own perfection, either as concretized in the individual or as characteristic of the species. But liberty comes to its full perfection when the human will (which is physically free to elicit an act in regard to either inclination) freely determines itself in accord with this higher inclination and elicits an act that tends towards a good in an objective and honest manner, namely, in accord with the intrinsic value or goodness of the object as such. Where the human will is well ordered, its first act of love of any good, then, will be in accord with this affection for justice. But since man is finite in perfection and tends to perfect himself by actively acquiring what he needs to be perfect, he must also-to be true to himself and his God-given nature-will what is to his advantage as well as what is good in itself.
Hence, secondarily, persons with well-ordered wills will love what most accords with their own perfection, namely, what fulfills their personal needs and thus brings happiness and contentment. Happiness itself can thus become a sort of reflex object of well-ordered love (see
Klein, 1916, p. 157, and selection 25).
In the supernatural order, man is destined to be perfected by union with the Trinity, because God, as a perfect lover, wills that what he loves be loved by others, "willing others to love with him the very object of his love" (Wolter, 1980, p. 157). Hence the will's affection for the advantageous (affectio commodi) is perfected supernaturally by the infused theological virtue of hope, whereas its affection for justice is perfected by the theologically infused virtue of charity or sanctifying grace (selection 25). In selection 25, art. 2, Scotus will explain how a well-ordered love can regard God under all three aspects, (I) as a good in himself, (2) as our good, and (3) as a source of happiness, and in that order of priority of values.
Introduction According to what was said in the previous section, God possesses whatever is a matter of pure perfection in our human will. Hence, the full conception of God's free will must include not only his ability to will opposites or to produce contrary effects (something Scotus thought was well described by Aristotle; see selection 2), but also what St. Anselm considered to be a pure perfection, i.e., the will's affection for justice (see selection 5; also Haeres, 1958, 1962). Mutability, as we noted in the previous section, is an imperfection of the will, like the potestas peccandi that permits a finite agent to "depart from justice" and to will some finite good immoderately in one of the several ways
Scotus explains that Lucifer might have sinned (selection 29). Mutability in this sense must also be lacking in God, where it would imply that he could cease to love his infinitely lovable divine nature with the objectivity that the affection for justice demands. If we can, and right reason dictates we should, love our own nature and whatever perfects it and makes us happy (selection 27), something we are already inclined by nature to do in virtue of our affectio commodi, then God too-in some analogous way-must also love this aspect of his infinitely lovable nature, namely, that it is a good for him, and also a source of infinite happiness. For, according to our way of thinking, this dynamic unselfish love for what is intrinsically good also perfects his will and makes God happy in much the same way as our wellordered love of God for his own sake has two other accompanying sorts of love for him, one because he loves and perfects us, the other because he is our ultimate happiness. Now, in the aforesaid selection on Lucifer's sin, Scotus explains how the blessed in heaven can love their own happiness that results from the beatific vision and the love it engenders, and do so out of an affection for justice. In the same way
Anselm explains that God could have necessarily loved what pertained to the perfection of his nature and satisfied his will, as it were, making it happy and content, with no compelling need to seek further perfection. For this is something that becomes his nature, and to fail to love himself, or to have the capacity we have of turning away from what we are most inclined to love by reason of our affection for justice, would imply an "infirmity" or weakness in God's essence, something metaphysically incompatible with the infinite perfection Scotus ascribes to it.
If such mutability is also lacking in God, then by the same token his will must have the pure perfection we call "firmness of purpose" or a "steadfast will." It is under this aspect that Scotus admits that, where
God is concerned and with respect to his inner love-life, the freedom associated with his "unbegotten liberty" (ingenita libertas) must also be associated with a certain immutability or necessity. It is this notion
General Remarks
that he proposes in his Quodlibet, q. 16. We are indebted to William A.
Frank for a critical reading of a portion of that text which has been erroneously transcribed in all of our presently available editions. For "firmitas est perfectio" they have substituted "libertas est perfectio" where Scotus is explaining how "libertas voluntatis et necessitas naturalis possint se competi in eodem respectu eiusdem actus" (Frank,
1982, p. 215). The important passage from Frank's edition, based on three of the earliest manuscripts (described in Alluntis-Wolter, 1975, pp. xxxii-iii), reads as follows:
Dico quod cum necessitate ad volendum stat libertas in voluntate ... Probatur idem "propter quid." Et hoc primo sic: Actio circa finem ultimum est actio perfectissima; in tali actione firmitas in agendo est perfection is; igitur necessitas in ea non toUit sed magis ponit iUud quod est perfectionis; si est libertas.
This necessitates the following change in the Alluntis-Wolter translation, God and Creatures (16.32, p. 378), which should read:
Action that has to do with the ultimate end is most perfect. But firmness pertains to the perfection of such an action. Therefore, the necessity that is to be found there does not do away with, but rather demands, what is needed for perfection, namely, freedom.
The context in which the relevant passage occurs is as follows.
Scotus has first shown that the act by which God loves himself is necessary in an unqualified sense, for "God is necessarily happy, and hence beholds and loves the beatific object." John Duns then undertakes to prove that this is not inconsistent with the essential freedom associated with every elicited act of God's will. No pure perfection excludes another pure perfection, says Scotus (Wolter, 1949, p. 167). This need to love what is infinitely lovable, if we may call it a "need," is also a matter of pure perfection. Hence it is per se compatible, according to Anselm, with perfect liberty. Anselm explicitly tells us such, says Scotus, in ch. 1 of Free Choice: "Whoever has what is appropriate and advantageous in such a way that it cannot be lost is freer than he who has this in such a way that it can be lost." From this Anselm concludes:
"The will then which cannot cease to be upright is freer" (AlluntisWolter, 1975, p. 378). Augustine too could be quoted in confirmation, but-says Scotus-we can give rational proofs as to why this is so, the first of which is the one based on the notion of "firmitas." We might note that Scotus considers it a self-evident fact that "firmness pertains to the perfection of such an action," because he speaks of the proof based on this notion as "propter quid." This is the sort of proof
Aristotle says is not just a demonstration of the simple fact, but rather a proof that gives the essential reason why this fact is true.