That the Franciscan tradition, and Duns Scotus in particular, lay especial emphasis on love and the will is a commonplace of the history of theology. Here the Utrecht University ‘Research Group Duns Scotus’ presents a series of texts and translations, with very helpful commentaries, focused on God's goodness and love. The Group includes some highly respected Scotus scholars (most notably Antonie Vos), and works through the Scotist texts with great care and deliberation. A previous publication (Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I 39(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994)) centred on the question of Scotus's modal theory in its relation to freewill, and the present volume, while freestanding, could usefully be thought of as a companion volume, continuing further the exploration of Scotus's account of action and ethics. The central claim of the earlier volume was that the notion of ‘synchronic contingency’ is the hermeneutical key that unlocks Scotist thought. Contingency is basically to be conceived of in terms of alternative logically possible states of affairs. This is the foundation of Scotus's libertarian or ‘contra‐causal’ theory of freedom: the will has it in its power at one and the same time to freely to choose between alternative possibilities. This theory covers all will, divine and human, and grounds Scotus's assertion that quite literally everything other than God is (logically) contingent.
The selections and commentaries in the present volume bring out very effectively what is distinctive about Scotus's position on the various ethical and theological issues discussed. After a preliminary section on necessity and contingency, the authors present two long selections on the relation between these notions and ethics. The precept that we should love God above all is, according to the authors, the ‘cornerstone’(p. 8) of Scotus's treatment of ethics, since love of God entails that we love both ourselves and our neighbour. But Scotus holds that the ethical precepts governing our love for things other than God are contingent. The authors argue against the recent interpretation of Thomas Williams, according to which Scotus is a thoroughgoing ethical voluntarist or positivist. The authors maintain that God's nature, as maximally good, acts as a kind of check on the range of things that God can will: ‘Every possible divine act is ethically [sic] good, because all possible decisions of God are situated within the range constituted by his best possible nature’(p. 61). I suspect that the jury is still out on this debate. What is certainly clear is that Scotus does not want God's will to be restrained in any way specifically by the contents of his intellect. But this is perhaps consistent with positing that the divine nature is the relevant restraining factor. God's will, after all, could be non‐consciously restrained, such that God's freedom does not range over every logically possible state of affairs.
All but the very final selection – about one half of the whole book – consider the question of God's goodness in relation to human salvation: merit, election, and God's permitting reprobation. The authors take a distinctive view on this interpretatively problematic subject. Scotus wants to reject the view that reprobation is undeserved, and to do this he develops a complex theory of divine permission, according to which for God to permit something is for God to will that he abstain from an act of will that would prevent the thing. Reprobation is permitted in this sense: not willed per se, but not willed to be prevented. Election and salvation are not like this, however: these are actively willed by God. This position is designed to avoid the view that God actively wills both election and reprobation prior to foreseen merits. What is not clear is how seriously we are supposed to take the asymmetry. Scotus asserts that God gives to the reprobate ‘natural gifts and the right laws, and common assistance, sufficient for salvation’(p. 169). But if God's active will is required for salvation, these things cannot be ‘sufficient’. According to the authors, God's failure to will (say) Judas's salvation results from Judas's free choice to persist in sin. But Scotus is elsewhere quite clear that making divine knowledge and activity contingent on anything external to God ‘demeans the divine intellect’. These are hard texts, but it would have been helpful to see how the Research Group would build this into their reading.
The final selection is on the procession of the Holy Spirit – an infinite act of divine self‐love. The selection shows how God's will is constrained to love the supreme good (i.e. himself), and how it is that love is at the heart of Scotist theology as well as of his ethics. Overall, a very helpful selection of texts and commentaries, written in a style that will make it useful not only to specialists but also to undergraduates and others interested in an accessible presentation of this distinctive Franciscan theology.
