Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

60
Paul L. Manata © 2011
avoid deterministic conclusions given this coupled with RT. Thus, the two main
contingency desiderata needed for Reformed orthodoxy (epistemic contingency
and secondary causes) are completely consistent with determinism.
E.3.1.3 Whose contingency?
There are numerous kinds of contingency compatible with RT and determinism;
the only kinds of contingency incompatible with the above would be libertarian
kinds. So when Reformed theologians claim that Reformed theology is not
deterministic because it affirms contingency, then they must have in mind the
contingency libertarianism gives. That is, it must be that given identical past
conditions, a human person could choose either X or not-­‐X. It’s simply not clear
that this is compatible with RT. Moreover, this kind of contingency does not
seem to be exactly what Scotus wanted to preserve. In Lectura I, 39 Scotus says,
“the divine will, although it cannot have opposite acts (because his will is
identical with its volition), yet wills in eternity a stone by one single volition and
can will in eternity that there is not a stone or can not-­‐will that there is a stone.
So the divine will, as far as it is internally operation and so prior to its effect, can
produce and not-­‐produce an object” (Lect. I.39.54). 76 This is nothing more than
the doctrine that God’s decrees are free and that he could have decreed
otherwise. But the Reformed theologians who argue for Scotus’ view of
contingency as the Reformed view want a contingency that allows a real
possibility to do otherwise, to be able to will X at t and not-­‐will X at t, and since
these are identical times, it comes with the same prior decrees. 77 How can a
76 John Duns Scotus, Contingency and Freedom. Lectura I, 39, eds. A. Vos Jaczn., H.
Veldhuis, A. H. Looman-­‐Graaskamp, E. Dekker and N. W. den Bok (Springer 1994).
77 A. J. Beck and A. Vos say precisely this in “Conceptual Patterns Related to
Reformed Scholasticism,” in Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift vl. 57 (2003), p. 28,
where they affirm that “the entire history of the universe, up to the point of our
choice, is consistent either with our performing that action or refraining from it.”