Franciscan Studies

DUNS SCOTUS' CONCEPT OF WILLING FREELY: WHAT DIVINE FREEDOM BEYOND CHOICE TEACHES US The claim that God enjoys a volition that is simultaneously free and necessary challenges the standard meaning of wilUng freely that is anchored in the condition of a choice between alternatives.1 It has been claimed before that Duns Scotus' assertion of the compatibility of freedom and necessity in volition proves critical to a proper understanding of his voluntarism. Alluding to this teaching is one way of fulfilling the obligation encumbent on a reader of Duns Scotus to counter an entrenched tendency in the received history of philosophy that sees in Scotus' doctrine of the free will the origins of a prevailing modern notion of liberty as a fundamental arbitrariness, a radical freedom of indifference.2 What is accomplished in this analysis of certain Scotistic teachings is a demonstration of the core meaning of willing freely. This is an account of the univocal meaning at work in an understanding of any operation of the free wiU. The contrast in the compatibility of seemingly contradictory properties signals an analysis of free will that must be enlarged beyond the benchmark case of choice so familiar to ordinary human affairs. Seven sections foUow. First, Scotus' argument that certain of God's voûtions are necessary is presented. Secondly, we examine the 1 Much of the work on this paper was done through the support of a NEH Summer Seminar at Purdue University, 1982. A version of it was read at the 7th International Conference on Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Villanova University, 1982. 2 Others have discharged this burden differently. See for instance Bernardine M. Bonansea, "Duns Scotus' Voluntarism," in John Duns Scotus, 12651965 , ed. John K. Ryan and Bernardine M. Bonansea, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy (Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 1965), pp. 83-121; Walter Hoeres, Der Wille als reine Vollkommenheit nach Duns Scotus (Munich: Pustet, 1962); and Allan B. Wolter, "Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of Scotus," in Deus et Homo ad mentem I. Duns Scoti (Romae: Societas Internationalis Scotistica, 1972), pp. 359-70. Duns Scotus' Concept of Willing Freely69 reason why necessity must pertain to these acts of will. Thirdly, the rationale for restricting necessary volitions to the divine will is developed . The first three sections, then, deal with the necessity of certain divine volitions, and in the process we encounter the critical role of divine infinity. The next two sections deal with the theme of freedom: In the fourth we develop the sense of freedom relevant to acts of the will. The fifth part is devoted to speculations on how the general sense of freedom is univocal with the special case of God's necessary volitions. With this the thesis of the paper is completed. The final two units are largely of the nature of appendices, though they do present important formulations of this study on Scotus' concept of freedom. The sixth presents a summary of what I call Scotus' firmitas doctrine, a teaching that is little noted among Scotist scholars and yet proves critical in the argument of part five of this essay. The seventh poses and answers objections to the Scotist teaching. I In line with standard medieval theory, Duns Scotus held that God loves himself and that the Trinitarian persons of the Father and the Son, in a common act of love, spirate the Holy Spirit. Equally uncontroversially, he maintained that both acts, self-love and spiration , are simply necessary. Simply necessary items exist, are eternal and uncaused. So understood, necessity is predicated as a mode of being.3 Further, and in this claim there was much controversy, Scotus insisted that both of the acts are primarily acts of will. With these preliminary observations in mind we turn to Scotus' initial arguments.4 8 Ordinatio I, d. 38, pars 2 et d. 39, qq. 1-5 (Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis et Mariant Opera Omnia, Vol. VI (Vatican edition), p. 438): ..nécessitas autem simpliciter privat absolute possibilitatem huius oppositi... See Hoeres, Der Wille als reine Vollkommenheit, pp 75-76; Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the...