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

As Christopher Kosciuk notes,
66
Paul L. Manata © 2011
[G]iven this view of things, I think Scotus must conclude that the
relationship of essentially ordered co-­‐causality between the human will
and the divine will in producing a particular human volition is of the
second, participative kind, that of instrumental cause to first cause. In
other words, God must be seen as causing the very act of causality by
which the human will produces its volition. The problem with this solution
is that it renders impossible the libertarian view of human freedom. 92
We saw libertarians rejecting this view as inconsistent with ultimate sourcehood
in section 3. And since God is co-­‐causing things in accord with his unchangeable
purposes for all things, it is hard to see how we get alternative possibilities either.
One resort might be to appeal to the Boethian solution, but that will be subject to
the traditional responses. 93 An unchangeable timeless knowledge that Penny will
eat pizza tomorrow seems just as troublesome for Penny’s ability to avoid this
action.
Regarding Scotus’s saving of contingency, Douglas Langston writes,
According to Scotus, not only must God directly will the existence of the
actions of agents who are not free, but he must also directly will the
actions of free agents . . . God determines what acts of free agents are
actual, and these actions are contingent because God could will other
actions than those he in fact wills. Nevertheless, these actions would not
seem to be free since no free agent can act otherwise than as God wills.
gets “incomprehensible,” Medieval Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2007), p.
245.
92 Christopher Kosciuk, Human Freedom, in a World Full of Providence: An Ockhamist
Molinist Account of the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will, (U
Mass-­‐Amherst, diss. 2010), p. 137.
93 For example, see David Widerker, "A problem for the Eternity Solution,"
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Volume 29, Number 2 / April, 1991.