The Difference Between Scotus And Turretin In Their Formulation Of The Doctrine Of Freedom

By B. Hoon Woo

[B. Hoon Woo is Professor of Dogmatics and Dean of the Department of Theology at Kosin University in Busan, South Korea.]

In their contribution to The Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology, E. Dekker, A. J. Beck, and T. T. J. Pleizier contend that although Turretin is not an innovator among Reformed thinkers on the doctrine of freedom, he contributes two things to the discussion: first, Turretin expands the discussion on necessity; second, he introduces a multi-layered concept of indifference. Their assessment of Turretin is basically correct, but more can be said regarding Turretin’s differences with Scotus on the concepts of necessity and indifference. The authors fail to show where Turretin differs from Scotus in the doctrine of freedom and even appear to regard Turretin’s position as the same as that of Scotus on this issue.[1] The present article, however, will argue that Turretin’s explanation of freedom differs from that of Scotus, and that Turretin accomplished his aim by developing the concepts of necessity and indifference. It will show that the difference between Scotus and Turretin can be observed clearly in their reception of Aristotle’s work regarding this issue.

This study will proceed chronologically. The first section will examine Aristotle’s conception of freedom in Int. 9, which is cited in Scotus’s Lect. 1.39, and in Eth. nic. 3 and 6, which are quoted in Turretin’s Institutes, Tenth Topic.[2]

Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde are inclined to think that Aristotle only argues for “diachronic contingency,” which means “a contingency with change and a necessity with changelessness.” They seem to regard Aristotle as a determinist. This article shows, however, that Aristotle also holds to “synchronic contingency,” which implies that “for one moment of time, there is a true alternative for the state of affairs that actually occurs.”[3] The second section, after a short survey of the reception of Aristotle in the Middle Ages,[4] will deal with Scotus’s reception of Aristotle in his formulation of the doctrine of freedom. Antonie Vos argues that Scotus created the concept of synchronic contingency in western intellectual history.[5] Knuuttila also points to a very similar view.[6] Harm Goris, however, argues that Vos and Knuuttila’s interpretations of Aristotle and Scotus are flawed at several points.[7] An assessment of this issue exceeds the scope of this article and needs further research. Rather, the present study will focus on Scotus’s reception of Aristotle in his formulation of the doctrine of freedom, and will explain the definition of synchronic contingency. The third section will deal with Turretin’s reception of Aristotle in his formulation of the doctrine of freedom. Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier endorse Vos’s idea and apply it to their study of Turretin. They argue that Turretin’s doctrine of freedom is the same as that of Scotus in that both of them explain the doctrine with the help of the concept of synchronic contingency. They contend that “Turrettini utilizes the scholastic distinction between in sensu composito and in sensu diviso in the synchronic, Scotist reading.”[8] Turretin, however, seems to say more than that. This article will show that Turretin’s doctrine of freedom cannot be fully explained by the synchronic, Scotist reading.[9] It will also demonstrate that Scotus and Turretin differ in their reception of Aristotle as they formulate their respective doctrines of freedom, and that because of this difference, Turretin’s view on freedom differs from Scotus’s formulation.

I. Aristotle’s Understanding Of Freedom In De Interpretatione 9 And Ethica Nicomachea 3 And 6

1. Aristotle: Determinist Or Indeterminist?

Aristotle’s conception of freedom can be observed most clearly in Int. 9; Eth. nic. 3 and 6; Metaphysica, 6.2, 3 and 9.5; De generatione et corruptione, 2.11; De partibus animalium, 1.1; and Physica, 2.9. There have been heated exchanges concerning whether Aristotle was a determinist or not. In Cicero’s De fato 39, Aristotle is considered, in a certain sense, a determinist. Cicero holds that the ancient philosophers are divided into two parties on the doctrine of fate. Some philosophers maintain that everything is made by fate so that fate exerts a necessary force over everything (omnia ita fato fieri, ut id fatum vim necessitatis adferret). Other philosophers hold that fate has no influence whatsoever over the voluntary acts of the soul. Aristotle belongs to the former party. Cicero lists Aristotle with three pre-Socratic philosophers (Democritus, Heraclitus, and Empedocles), who were well-known determinists in ancient times. Cicero argues that for Aristotle the movements of the soul are caused by external forces which amount to fate. That is why he regards Aristotle as a determinist. Donini argues that Cicero’s main source is not the work of Antiochus but the work of Carneades via Clitomachus. He also holds that Cicero might have added Aristotle’s name without referring to his works.[10] However, Cicero’s sources, by which he classifies Aristotle as a determinist, are still debated. There are other ancient scholars who depict Aristotle as an indeterminist. In the third century AD, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias labeled him an indeterminist. In his De fato 10 and 11, Alexander classifies Aristotle as an indeterminist, based on Aristotle’s Eth. nic. 3.3.1112a21ff.[11]

The issue of whether Aristotle is a determinist still occupies scholars. Loening lists nineteen modern commentators who provide an indeterministic interpretation.[12] However, Loening himself and Gomperz support the deterministic interpretation.[13] In a more recent contribution to the discussion, Hintikka, the main proponent of the so-called Helsinki school, provides a modified deterministic interpretation.[14] There are extreme indeterminist interpretations such as those offered by Preus, Kullmann, Wieland, Düring, Sambursky, Weiss, Balme, and Ross.[15] Sorabji deals with the views of these scholars and concludes that Aristotle is an indeterminist.[16] The notion of determinism itself is varied among scholars. Some scholars tend to define it with reference to causation; others define it with reference to necessity.[17] Considerable work needs to be done to compare the views of modern scholars before a conclusion can be reached regarding whether Aristotle was a determinist or not. In keeping with the stated purpose, this article will be limited to the study of Int. 9, cited by Scotus in his Lect. 1.39, and Eth. nic. 3 and 6, cited by Turretin in his Institutes, Tenth Topic. The study of these passages of Aristotle will show to some extent how this theme is being unveiled. It should be noted, however, that Int. 9 and Eth. nic. 3, 6 are concerned with very different matters, which will be explained below.

2. Aristotle On Freedom In De Interpretatione 9

In Int. 9, Aristotle deals with future contingent events (contingentia futura). He seems to refute here the Megarian philosophers, Diodorus Cronus (d. c. 284 BC) and Philo the Dialectician (fl. 300 BC), who deduced determinism from the law of contradiction.[18] De interpretatione 9 is divided into three parts.[19] In the first part (18a28–34), Aristotle argues that “with regard to what is and what has been it is necessary for the affirmation or the negation to be true or false” (18a28–29).[20] In the second part (18a34–19a6), he proves that if the previous law is applied to “particulars that are going to be,” one cannot help but fall into determinism.[21] In the third part (19a7–19b4), he rejects the determinism of the second part and presents his own explanation about this subject matter. This third part is the kernel of Aristotle’s argument in Int. 9. Aristotle holds:

What is, necessarily is, when it is; and what is not, necessarily is not, when it is not. But not everything that is, necessarily is; and not everything that is not, necessarily is not. For to say that everything that is, is of necessity, when it is, is not the same as saying unconditionally that it is of necessity. Similarly with what is not. And the same account holds for contradictories: everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.[22]

This passage is Aristotle’s most famous treatment of determinism, and many commentators have studied it.[23] Hermann Weidemann devotes one third of his commentary on De interpretatione to this chapter, and Richard Gaskin has presented the most detailed analysis of the whole debate on the text.[24] There are four interpretations of this passage.[25] The first interpretation is called “traditional” or “standard” (Hintikka), “orthodox” (Rescher), “oldest” (Kretzmann), or “anti-realist” (Gaskin). This view claims that Aristotle affirms unconditionally that every proposition is either true or not true (the law of excluded middle). In this view, however, Aristotle limits the validity of the idea that every proposition is true or false (the law of bivalence) because he knows that there would be another possibility in the case of sentences about future contingencies. This view maintains that Aristotle either accepts a valued logic with the truth values “true,” “false,” and “neuter” or admits that sentences about future contingencies have no truth value at all.

The second interpretation is labeled “non-standard” (Hintikka), “medieval” (Rescher), “second oldest” (Kretzmann), or “realist” (Gaskin). It holds that Aristotle identifies the law of excluded middle with the law of bivalence, claiming that he saw both as universally valid. In this view, however, Aristotle denies some kind of necessity to the truth value of sentences about future contingencies. Sentences about future contingencies are true or false, but not necessarily; they are only contingently true or contingently false.

The third interpretation is the so-called “statistical” interpretation, represented by Hintikka and Knuuttila.[26] This view holds that Aristotle is speaking about the temporally indefinite sentences in Int. 9. The reference of the temporally indefinite sentences depends on the moment the sentence is uttered. Thus their truth value may change over time. For Hintikka and Knuuttila, Aristotle maintains that contingency is sufficiently assured when the temporally indefinite sentences are not supposed to be always true. Hintikka and Knuuttila argue that the strategy of the Aristotle of their interpretation is philosophically unconvincing.[27]

The fourth view is suggested by Harm Goris. He stresses the role of temporal indefiniteness, which is endorsed by the third view.[28] He argues that the sentence, “There will be a sea battle on Saturday, November 8, 2014,” uttered on Friday, November 7, 2014, differs both linguistically and logically from the sentence, “There is a sea battle on Saturday, November 8, 2014,” uttered on Saturday, November 8, 2014. Both sentences must express or signify different propositions. Each of the two temporally indefinite sentences becomes relatively temporally definite with regard to the other because their truth value is decided by the time when the sentence is pronounced. The sentences, “There will be a sea battle tomorrow” and “There will not be a sea battle tomorrow” are contradictory only if they are uttered at roughly the same moment. Goris argues that Thomas Aquinas implies this idea when Thomas claims that the sentence, “It rained yesterday, and it doesn’t rain today,” does not constitute a contradiction.[29] Sentences about the future can have a different truth value according to the time of utterance. Goris is convinced that this interpretation shows most clearly what Aristotle means.

Each of these four interpretations has strengths and weaknesses.[30] It is noted, however, that none of the four interpretations definitively refutes the notion of future contingency. The first and second views were endorsed by the ancient interpreters and the medieval interpreters respectively. Both of them stress the concept of future contingency in their interpretation of Int. 9. It seems that Aristotle clearly assumes the notion of future contingency when he holds:

I mean, for example, it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, nor for one not to take place—though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place. So, since statements are true according to how the actual things are, it is clear that wherever these are such as to allow of contraries as chance has it, the same necessarily holds for the contradictories also. This happens with things that are not always so or are not always not so. With these it is necessary for one or the other of the contradictories to be true or false—not, however, this one or that one, but as chance has it; or for one to be true rather than the other, yet not already true or false. 

Clearly, then, it is not necessary that of every affirmation and opposite negation one should be true and the other false. For what holds for things that are does not hold for things that are not but may possibly be or not be; with these it is as we have said.[31]

With the help of the terminology of medieval theology, it can be argued that Aristotle distinguishes here between the necessity of the consequent [thing] (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae).[32] The necessity of the consequent means the absolute necessity of something that cannot be other than what it is. The necessity of the consequence means a logical necessity which applies to the implication between two events. It explains the connection of necessary causes from which the effects must follow. Aristotle appears to refute determinism which denies future contingency. He argues that “there would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble,” if everything is and happens of necessity (18b30–31). For him, “not everything is or happens of necessity” (19a18–19).[33]

3. Aristotle On Freedom In Nicomachean Ethics 3 And 6

Aristotle’s Int. 9 involves not merely logico-grammatical or logico-epistemological issues, but implies metaphysical (the open future), ethical (free choice), and theological (divine foreknowledge and prophecy) questions. Its main focus, however, is on the logico-epistemological and metaphysical issues. By contrast, Aristotle’s Eth. nic. 3.2 (1111b4–11112a17), 3.5 (1113b3–1114b25), and 6.2 (1139a17–b13), which are cited in Turretin’s Institutes, are more concerned with ethical problems.

In Eth. nic. 3.2, Aristotle speaks about decision (prohairesis)[34]: what it is not (1111b4–1112a13); and that decision is reached through deliberation (1112a13–17).[35] Aristotle argues that “decision is clearly something voluntary, but is not the same thing as the voluntary, for the voluntary is a wider type” (1111b7–8). This means that what is decided-for is voluntary (hekousion). For Aristotle, both children and animals are voluntary, but they do not decide their actions. Every responsible act is voluntary, but not conversely. Things done on the spur of the moment are voluntary, but not done from decision. Actions that have been decided-for, or responsible actions, are a subclass of the voluntary. Decision is reached after all things are considered, and this happens most obviously through deliberation (bouleusis). Thus decision is, at any rate, what has been reached by prior deliberation (probebouleumenon, 1112a15).[36] Aristotle claims that even the name (prohairesis) indicates that what we decide to do is chosen (haireton) before (pro) other things (1112a16–17). In any decision, deliberation is presupposed. For Aristotle, deliberation precedes decision, and actions that have been decided-for are a subclass of the voluntary. Deliberate actions, therefore, can also be voluntary. The main aim of Eth. nic. 3.5 is to show that persons of poor character are not just passive recipients of their dispositions. He holds:

Thus, excellence depends on us, and similarly badness as well. For when acting depends on us (eph’hēmin), not acting does so too, and when saying no does so, saying yes does too; so that if acting, when it is a fine thing to act, depends on us (eph’hēmin), not acting also depends on us (eph’hēmin) when it is shameful not to act, and if not acting, when it is a fine thing not to act, depends on us (eph’hēmin), acting when it is a shameful thing to act also depends on us (eph’hēmin).[37]

For Aristotle, ethical dispositions are voluntary because they depend on us (eph’hēmin), which means that we do not just acquire something regardless of our voluntariness. He argues that voluntary actions have an internal origin (archē en hēmin) and are up to us, or are in our power (eph’hēmin). It is notable that Aristotle stresses the phrase “up to us” (eph’hēmin) in order to claim that we have moral responsibility.[38] Aristotle’s arguments progress as follows: good actions depend on us (1113b3–6); then if the good ones depend on us, so must the bad (1113b6–14); therefore, it depends on us whether we are good or bad; further, if we deny badness to be voluntary, we imply the absurdity that we are not the source and begetter of our actions (1113b16–21); that this is absurd is shown by the practices of punishment and reward (1113b21–30).[39] From these arguments, it seems reasonable to conclude that, for Aristotle, not only is the future contingent, but the present is also contingent at least in moral issues.[40]

Aristotle argues in Eth. nic. 6.2 that one must understand the characteristic of something in order to know the excellence of that something. He claims:

In the soul, the things determining action and truth are three: perception, intelligence, and desire. But of these, perception is not an originator of any sort of action; and this is clear from the fact that brute animals have perception but do not share in action. What affirmation and denial are in the case of thought, pursuit and avoidance are with desire; so that, since excellence of character is a disposition issuing in decisions, and decision is a desire informed by deliberation, in consequence both what issues from reason must be true and the desire must be correct for the decision to be a good one, and reason must assert and desire pursue the same things.[41]

Practical truth turns out to be nothing other than a right decision (prohairesis), since it is the function of practical thinking or deliberation to arrive at this. In a good or right decision the thought and the desire are each as they should be, respectively, true and right.[42] Decision is either desiderative thought or intellectual desire, and human beings are originators of this sort of decision (1139b4–5).[43] Aristotle argues that decision is a combination of either thought (dianoia) or intelligence (nous) with desire (orexis) concerning the same thing. Thus he calls decision the appetitive intelligence (he orektikos nous) or the intelligent appetite (he orexis dianoētikē, 1139b4–5). In the subsequent passages, Aristotle holds that “nothing that happened in the past is subject to decision —e.g. no one decides to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but rather about what is to come and contingent, whereas it is not possible for what has happened not to have happened” (1139b5–9, emphasis mine). For Aristotle, what is future is contingent, but what is past is not contingent. He believes, like the fifth-century tragedian Agathon, that it is not possible even for a god to undo things that have once been done.[44] It should be stressed, however, that for Aristotle what is future is contingent.

II. Scotus’s Reception Of Aristotle In His Formulation Of The Doctrine Of Freedom In Lectura 1.39

1. The Purpose Of Scotus’s Lectura 1.39 And The “Synchronic Contingency”

The translations of the entire works of Aristotle were completed and became available to scholars by the year 1200.[45] Aristotle, among philosophers, was the greatest of the auctores.[46] The word philosophus is used by Scotus to denote Aristotle,[47] as is his practice with other terms of denotation like Commentator (=Averroes), Apostolus (=Paul), and Veritas (=Christ).[48] Scotus deals with Aristotle’s Int. 9 in his formulation of the doctrine of freedom in Lect. 1.39. The Lectura is a lecture note prepared for a course, and it is a text not yet given as opposed to one already delivered. Scotus gave the lecture, Lect. 1.39, during 1297–1299 to refute the view that everything is necessary and immutable.[49]

Scotus claims that the aim of this lecture has two points (Lect. 1.39.31): first, to consider the contingency in what is (de contingentia in entibus); second, to consider how God’s certain knowledge is compatible with the contingency of things. To argue his assertions, Scotus develops, as A. Vos puts it, the idea of “synchronic contingency.”[50] Scotus tries to defend the validity of Christian theology against the attack of ancient philosophers. The main argument is unpacked in Lect. 1.39.49–53.[51] Scotus argues that a necessary being (God) is able to have contingent knowledge, and that although this knowledge is contingent, it is not necessarily mutable and temporal by that very fact.[52] Vos and other scholars claim that Scotus’s notion of synchronic contingency is “the splendid discovery,” “logical and ontological innovations,” and “a radical alternative” in history.[53] This notion, however, seems to be found even in Aristotle’s works. The passages in which Scotus deals with Aristotle’s Int. 9 will prove its presence in Aristotle.

2. Scotus’s Reception Of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9 In His Lectura 1.39

In Lect. 1.39.1, Scotus asks “whether God has determinate knowledge of things according to every aspect of their existence, as according to being in the future.”[54] He presents a counterview which claims that God cannot have determinate knowledge of the future. To support this counterview, Aristotle’s Int. 9 is presented as follows:

[§1] For according to the Philosopher in his book Peri hermeneias there is no determinate truth in contingent propositions about the future. Therefore, there is no knowability either which requires determinate truth. [§2] And this is confirmed by the following argument of the Philosopher: if there were determinate truth in those [propositions about the future], “there would be no need to negotiate or to deliberate.” Therefore, no intellect has certain knowledge of contingent propositions. [§3] Furthermore, one component of a contradiction concerning propositions about the future is as indeterminate as the other. Therefore, if God knows that one component of a contradiction is determinately true, then He knows that the other is true too, for his knowledge would be limited, if He had certain knowledge of one component only and so no knowledge of the other.[55]

Aristotle’s Int. 9 is cited here as an auctoritas. In the following arguments, Scotus does not attempt to contradict Aristotle. He does not affirm or reject the ideas of Aristotle. The only issue he argues against is the proposition that God cannot have determinate knowledge of the future. Scotus appears to try to demonstrate fully that Aristotle’s text is not contradictory to the Christian doctrine of God.

In Lect. 1.39.55, Scotus presents Aristotle’s idea in the objection as follows:

[Objections]—But against this position it is argued that it is not possible that the will can not-will something for that moment and at that moment at which it is willing it, because the Philosopher says in Peri hermeneias I: “Everything which is, when it is, is necessary.”[56]

This objection is composed from Aristotle’s thesis in Int. 9.19a23–24. As stated above, there are four major interpretations about Int. 9.19a23–24. Scotus also tries to explain it in Lect. 1.39.58, and his explanation is very similar to the second interpretation among the four interpretations. Scotus distinguishes between the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae), which is parallel to the distinction between the necessity of the concomitant and the necessity of the concomitance. He also endorses the modal logic of in sensu composito and in sensu diviso. The analysis of modal sentences such as one sees in Scotus’s Lect. 1.39.58 was a very common method in the Middle Ages. The distinction between in sensu composito or in sensu diviso is also called the distinction between de dicto (or de sensu) and de re. This modal logic originated from Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi, 166a22–30. For Aristotle, the meaning of a statement can change according to whether its elements are understood in a conjoined or a divided meaning.[57] The sentence, “a sitting man can run,” is false when the possibility is understood to qualify the conjunction of two mutually exclusive predicates with the same subject at the same time. It can be true, however, that a man who is sitting can run after he stops sitting. Aristotle argues that a temporally unqualified modal sentence can be true or false according to a temporal distinction between the action at the same time (in sensu composito) and the action at different times (in sensu diviso).[58] Scotus endorses Aristotle’s distinction between the simultaneity and non-simultaneity of the actualization of two predicates. He develops the notion with both logical and temporal connectives, but his conception is essentially the same as that of Aristotle.

In Lect. 1.39.49–53, Scotus explains the so-called synchronic contingency. There he shows how the meaning of a statement changes according to readings in sensu composito or in sensu diviso. Scotus claims:

[§51] We must distinguish the composite and the divided sense (Et est distinguenda secundum compositionem et divisionem). It is false in the composite sense, as we understand the predicate to be attributed to this whole: the will willing at a, together with the possibility operator. The proposition is true, however, in the divided sense; not because we understand the terms for different times (that sense is relevant because there is succession in acts), but it is true in the divided sense because there are two propositions, because it implicitly includes two propositions. In one proposition the will is said to have the act of willing, and in the other one the will is said to have the opposite act taken on its own with the possibility operator, and then the meaning is: The will is willing at a and The will can be not-willing at a. This is true, for the will willing at a, freely elicits an act of willing, which is not its attribute.[59]

This argument is typically Aristotelian and basically coincides with the argument of Aristotle’s Int. 9. After saying that “what is, necessarily is, when it is; and what is not, necessarily is not, when it is not” (Int. 9.19a23–24), Aristotle directly added, “but not everything that is, necessarily is; and not everything that is not, necessarily is not” (Int. 9.19a24–25). If the opponents of Scotus support their claim with the passage of Int. 9.19a23–24, Scotus himself argues against them with the passage of Int. 9.19a24–25. In doing so Scotus applies Aristotle’s notion of the future contingency to explain the will of God about future events. Scotus is not inventing a totally new concept here; he is applying an old concept to a new subject matter. Moreover, Scotus himself introduces diachronic elements into his contingency theory. He holds:

[§53] [How God’s will is the cause of contingency]—But let us now proceed to the divine freedom. 

The divine will is free to produce opposite effects. However, this freedom is not the prime one, but requires another which is prior. The divine will, however, cannot have the prime freedom (prima libertas) which is in us (the one with respect to opposite acts), because this one has some imperfection and involves mutability. The divine will can only have one single volition and therefore it can will opposite objects by one single volition (voluntas autem divina non potest habere nisi unicam volitionem, et ideo unica volitione potest velle opposita obiecta). For this single volition prevails over all created volitions with respect to diverse [objects], just as his single act of knowing prevails over all acts of knowing of creatures. Hence, his one volition prevails over all volitions which tend to diverse objects, because any volition of ours is limited to its object. Therefore, if one unlimited volition, which is the divine one, is assumed, then that can be related to opposite objects. Therefore the freedom of the divine will can relate to opposite objects by one and the same volition and is infinitely freer than we are with diverse volitions.[60]

Scotus argues that God wills with one single volition (unica volitione) whatever he wills. God has one volition ad intra, but this one volition can be related to many opposite things ad extra. God can simultaneously will one thing at time 1 and the opposite thing at time 2. Thus, Scotus’s theory of contingency has a diachronic aspect as well as a synchronic aspect.

In light of this observation, it is hard to agree with Vos’s description of Aristotle and Scotus. He calls Aristotle’s theory of contingency “diachronic contingency.” He argues that in Aristotle’s model, contingency means “nothing other than change through time.” In the contingency of Aristotle, as Vos puts it, “things that change are not contingent at all.”[61] Along these lines, van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde also hold that in Aristotle’s theory of contingency “on each moment, only one state of affairs occurs without any alternative.”[62] Vos argues that a theory of real contingency was not fully formulated until Scotus’s Lect. 1.39. He contends that real contingency, which was conceived by Scotus, implies that “the opposite is possible for the same moment,” and he calls this contingency synchronic.[63] Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde also agree with Vos. They argue that only Scotus’s idea of synchronic contingency can account for real freedom of choice, both on God’s part and on our part.[64] Vos, van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde sharply distinguish the idea of contingency in Aristotle from that of Scotus. Along similar lines, Knuuttila argues that the modal theory of Duns Scotus is incompatible with the Aristotelian modal paradigm which he calls “the statistical interpretation of modality.”[65] In his recent article, however, Knuuttila says that there are various possible interpretations of Aristotle’s Int. 9.[66] He even concedes that John Buridan (ca. 1300–1362) thought that the Scotistic contingency theory was an Aristotelian view.[67] Buridan’s judgment is all the more possible because of at least four reasons: (1) Aristotle’s Int. 9.19a23–25 can be interpreted like the Scotistic contingency theory; (2) Scotus himself does not refute Aristotle’s Int. 9 in Lect. 1.39.49–53; (3) Scotus, rather, tries to formulate his contingency theory with the help of other works of Aristotle in Lect. 1.39.51, 54; (4) Scotus introduces the diachronic feature of God’s volition to his contingency theory as well as the synchronic feature. Thus, Vos’s reading of Scotus seems unconvincing. Furthermore, it is quite improbable that, as Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier state, Turretin’s doctrine of freedom is a Scotist view. The following section will demonstrate this assessment.

III. Turretin’s Reception Of Aristotle In His Formulation Of The Doctrine Of Freedom In Institutes Of Elenctic Theology, Tenth Topic

1. The Content And Purpose Of Turretin’s Tenth Topic

The Tenth Topic of Turretin’s Institutes presents the doctrine of freedom.[68] Turretin deals with human freedom in relation to sin which is the subject of the Ninth Topic.[69] He delves into the question of how the human will was affected by the fall. Turretin examines the change in the relationship between God and humans after the fall.

Turretin unpacks this doctrine in five major questions: he argues that free choice belongs to both the intellect and the will (Question 1); against the papists and Remonstrants, he contends that not every necessity is repugnant to freedom of the will (Question 2); against the papists, Socinians, and Remonstrants, he argues that the formal definition of free will consists not in indifference but in rational spontaneity (Question 3); against the papists, Socinians, and Remonstrants, he holds that the free will in a state of sin is so a servant of and enslaved by sin that it can do nothing but sin, and that it does not have the power to incline itself to good, not only regarding civil and external morality, but also internal and spiritual good (Question 4); against the papists, he denies that the virtues of the heathen are good works from which the power of free will to do good can be inferred (Question 5).

Along the lines of Reformed theology, Turretin argues that after the fall human beings did not lose the faculty of will itself. “The inability to do good is strongly asserted, but the essence of freedom is not destroyed” (Inst. 10.2.9). They still have liberty which is not repugnant to certain kinds of necessity. Turretin distinguishes six kinds of necessity (Inst. 10.2.4–9): physical necessity, necessity of coercion, necessity of dependence on God, rational necessity, moral necessity, and necessity of event. The first two among these six necessities are incompatible with freedom, whereas the latter four are not only compatible with freedom but perfect it. For Turretin, freedom does not arise from an indifference of the will. No rational beings are indifferent to good and evil. The will of an individual human being is never indifferent in the sense of possessing an equilibrium, either before or after the fall. Turretin defines freedom with the notion of rational spontaneity (Inst. 10.2.10–11).

2. Turretin’s Reception Of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics In Institutes, Tenth Topic

Turretin cites Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics four times in his Tenth Topic.[70] In Inst. 10.1.4, Turretin argues that the subject of free choice is both the intellect and the will. The subject of free choice belongs to the intellect with regard to the choice or decision (prohairesis), and it belongs to the will with regard to freedom. Turretin calls the subject of free choice a mixed faculty or a wedlock (connubium) and meeting of both the intellect and the will. However, it is not appropriate to say that it consists in both faculties, because as the choice of the intellect is terminated in the will, so the freedom of the will has its root in the intellect (Sicut enim arbitrium intellectus terminatur in voluntate; Ita libertas voluntatis radicem habet in intellectu). In search of a basis for his argument, Turretin is led to Aristotle. He believes that for this reason the philosopher [Philosophus, Aristotle], leaving this an open question, calls decision either the appetitive intelligence (he orektikos nous) or the intelligent appetite (he orexis dianoētikē) in Eth. nic. 6.2.1139b4–5.[71] Turretin cites Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics positively, and endorses it as an authority.

Turretin advances his argument and asserts that the intellect and will are mutually connected and never can be separated from each other (Inst. 10.1.5). It seems to him that there is no real and intrinsic distinction between the intellect and will, but only an extrinsic distinction with regard to the objects. It is called “intellect” when it is occupied in the knowledge and judgment of things, but “will” when it is carried to love or hatred. Here Turretin quotes Eth. nic. 6.2.1139a21–22, where Aristotle says, “What affirmation and denial are in the case of thought, pursuit and avoidance are with desire.” With these arguments, Turretin offers a basis for his discussion about indifference (Inst. 10.3).

In Inst. 10.2.4, Turretin deals with six necessities. The fifth is a moral necessity or necessity of servitude, which arises from good or bad habits. Turretin holds with Aristotle’s Eth. nic. 3.5 that when our will is imbued with moral habits, our moral habits cannot be trained nor be laid aside ([sc. habitus morales] neque non exerceri neque deponi possint). In Eth. nic. 3.5, Aristotle tries to show that persons of poor character are not just passive recipients of their dispositions. Ethical dispositions are voluntary because they are “in our power” (eph’hēmin). We do not just acquire or find ourselves with one regardless of what we voluntarily do. Aristotle argues that good and bad actions are in our power (1113b3–14).[72] Along the lines of Aristotle, Turretin is convinced that the will, which is free in itself, is determined either to good or to evil, and that it cannot but act either well or badly.

The fourth passage in which Turretin cites Aristotle is in Inst. 10.3.10. Turretin claims that the formal definition of freedom (ratio formalis libertatis)[73] is not placed in indifference (indifferentia) and should be sought only in rational willingness (lubentia rationali). Thus both the decision (to prohairetikon) and the willingness (to ekousion) must be joined together to constitute the formal definition of freedom. What is freely done is not done by a blind impulse, but by decision. It is done without coercion. Turretin appeals to Aristotle (Philosophus), who calls decision “a prior deliberation” (probebouleumenon, 1112a15). In so doing Turretin refutes the notion of active indifference and argues that the formal reason of free will consists not in indifference but in rational spontaneity. In the four passages in which Turretin cites Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he endorses Aristotle’s ideas to support his argument. He rightly understands Aristotle’s theses and appropriately applies them to formulate the doctrine of freedom.

3. Turretin’s Reception Of Aristotelian Logic In The Tenth Topic

Besides the above four passages Turretin endorses Aristotelian logic twice in Inst. 10.2.10 and 10.3.4. Turretin holds in Inst. 10.2.10:

Fourthly, the necessity of event [does not destroy freedom of choice]. For although whatever that is, necessarily is, when it is, so that it could no more not be; still it is said to happen no less freely or contingently as depending upon free or contingent causes. For the certainty and truth of the existence of a thing cannot change its essence.[74]

Turretin cites here the first part of Aristotle’s sentence in Int. 9.19a23–24: What is, necessarily is, when it is; and what is not, necessarily is not, when it is not. His subsequent explanation is typically an Aristotelian distinction between the necessity of the consequent [thing] (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae).

Turretin elaborates his definition of indifference (indifferentia or adiaphora) with the help of Aristotle’s distinction between in sensu diviso and in sensu composito. He holds in Inst. 10.3.4:

Hence it is evident that it is not inquired here concerning indifference in the first act or in a divided sense, i.e., with respect to the simultaneity of potency (simulates potentiae), which is called passive and objective indifference. [So the question is not] whether the will, considered absolutely in its natural constitution and the requisites for acting being withdrawn, is determinable to various objects and holds itself indifferently towards them. For we do not deny that the will of itself is so related [to its objects] that it can either elicit or suspend the act, which is the freedom of exercise and of contradiction or can be carried to each one of opposite [acts], which is the freedom of contrariety and of specification. We also confess that the will is indifferent as long as the intellect remains doubtful and uncertain whither to turn itself. 

But the question is about indifference in the second act and in a composite sense, i.e., with respect to the potency of simultaneity (potentia simultatis), which is called active and subjective indifference. [So the question indeed is] whether the will, all requisites for acting being posited; for example, the decree of God and his concourse; the judgment of the practical intellect, etc. is always so indifferent and undetermined that it can act or not act. This is pretended by our opponents in order that its own freedom may be left to the will. We deny it.[75]

Turretin endorses Aristotle’s modal logic which became a paradigm in medieval and early modern theology. He adopts only the first meaning of indifference, which is defined in the divided sense, and rejects the second meaning of indifference. Turretin argues that in the divided sense of indifference the will can be carried to each one of the opposite acts. Thus, the notion of indifference in the divided sense implies the so-called synchronic contingency. It is not appropriate, however, to call Turretin a Scotist regarding this issue, as Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier do.[76] Turretin takes no heed of Scotus in this passage. He follows the basic logic of the Aristotelian tradition. He appears to be a Scotist just because he endorses the typical Aristotelian logic. Rather, Turretin is not a Scotist for various reasons as evidenced below. As Paul Helm points out, the idea of Scotus here is not so different from Thomas’s idea in Summa Theologiae, 1a.14.9.[77] There Thomas argues that “it is not necessary that all that God knows should exist at some time, past, present or future, but only such things as he wills to exist or permits to exist. And again, it is no part of God’s knowledge that such things should exist, but that they could exist.”[78]

IV. The Difference Between Scotus And Turretin In Their Doctrines Of Freedom

1. The Difference Between Scotus And Turretin In Their Understandings Of Necessity

The main concern of Scotus in his Lect. 1.39 lies in the question about whether God has determinate knowledge for the future. Scotus’s opponents appeal to Aristotle’s Int. 9, which seems to claim determinism about the future. Scotus argues, with the help of Aristotelian logic, that God can have determinate knowledge for the future. By contrast, Turretin deals with the function and limitation of the free choice of an individual human being in a state of sin. He begins by arguing that freedom of choice belongs to both the intellect and the will. He differentiates the six kinds of necessity and argues that human freedom of choice can be compatible with the four necessities as he defines them. Turretin’s argument about necessity makes a striking contrast to Scotus’s doctrine of freedom. Turretin develops this argument because his major concern is not the freedom of God but the human freedom of choice.

Question 4 deals with the freedom of humanity in the state of sin which is to be considered as the second state according to the Augustinian tradition. In his Enchiridion, chapter 118, Augustine distinguishes the four states of humanity: the first state in which humans were able to sin and not to sin (posse peccare et non peccare); the second state after the fall and before conversion in which humans are not able not to sin (non posse non peccare); the third state after the fall and after conversion in which humans are able not to sin (posse non peccare); the fourth state of glory (status gloriae) in which humans are not able to sin (non posse peccare). Turretin argues that human beings cannot please God in the second state.

2. The Difference Between Scotus And Turretin In Their Understandings Of Indifference

Along these lines Turretin refutes the conception of indifference in the Jesuit, Socinian, and Remonstrant theology. It should be noted that the Jesuit, Socinian, and Remonstrant view as described by Turretin looks remarkably like that of Scotus as evidenced by his Ordinatio 2. In Ord. 2, Distinction 41, Scotus discusses the issue of indifferent acts. He concludes:

There are many indifferent acts, therefore, which are such not merely because of the being they have as a specific nature, but also according to the being they have as something moral. And there are also acts that are indifferent as regards the goodness that is meritorious or the evil that is demeritorious, for one individual good can be of this sort and another of that sort. Many individual elicited acts can also be indifferent, because they are neither the meritorious sort nor the other, and we are not speaking here of nonhuman acts, such as stroking the beard or brushing off a bit of straw and suchlike, acts which originate with the sense imagination and not from any free impulse, for freely elicited acts can also be indifferent.[79]

Scotus’s idea of indifference contrasts strongly with that of Turretin. In Inst. 10.3.5, Turretin argues:

First, such an indifference to opposite [acts] in no free agent, whether created or uncreated: neither in God, who is most freely good indeed, yet not indifferently, as if he could be evil, but necessarily and immutably; nor in Christ, who obeyed God most freely and yet most necessarily because he could not sin; nor in angels and the blessed, who worship God with the highest willingness and yet are necessarily determined to good, nor in devils and reprobates, who cannot but sin, although they sin freely neither the constancy and immutability of the former in the good destroys, but perfects their freedom.[80]

The difference between Scotus and Turretin in understanding the idea of indifference leads them to think differently about the doctrine of salvation. In Lect. 1.40, Scotus is convinced that the salvation of humanity is totally contingent. He argues that it is contingent whether a chosen person can be damned (utrum praedestinatus posset damnari).[81] In Ord. 39, Scotus holds that Judas Iscariot could have been saved by God’s ordained power in another order he might have set up.[82] Turretin, however, is convinced that only the grace of God determines the salvation of a human being, as can be seen in Inst. 10.4.10 (3):

That servitude does prevent man from being able to shake off the yoke of sin by his own strength, but does not hinder him from being able to be freed from sin by free will with the assistance of grace. We answer that it is said ambiguously that man is able to be freed by free will with the help of God. For either it is understood of passive liberation, that the free will itself may be delivered by grace (which we grant); or of active liberation, by which the free will applies itself to the assisting grace of God and by its own powers (although not alone) cooperates with it (which we deny).[83]

The salvation of a human being is determined by the grace of God at least in the initial stage of the work of salvation. It is not a contingent matter whether an individual human being is saved or not. Turretin argues that “the work of our conversion is a creation, resurrection, regeneration and the production of a new heart by which God not only gently persuades but powerfully effects in us to will and to do” (Inst. 10.4.21). In his description of the initial stage of salvation, therefore, Turretin’s theology does not leave any room for either contingency or synergism.

V. Conclusion

Turretin’s doctrine of freedom appears to be similar to that of Scotus in that both of them endorse Aristotelian logic: the distinction between the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae); the distinction between in sensu composito and in sensu diviso. It is not Scotus’s notion of synchronic contingency but Aristotle’s modal logic that is incorporated into Turretin’s doctrine of freedom. Moreover, the Scotistic ideas about necessity and indifference differ greatly from those of Turretin. Turretin develops the discussion on necessity and relates it to his argument about human freedom of choice. His careful rejection of the notion of indifference in the doctrine of freedom creates a big gap between his doctrine and that of Scotus. Turretin’s teaching of contingency emphasizes the sovereign act of God in the process of conversion, whereas Scotus’s contingency theory blurs it. Turretin is not a Scotist, but a Reformed theologian standing in a more “generic Aristotelian tradition.”[84]

Notes

1. Eef Dekker, Andreas J. Beck, and T. Theo J. Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference: An Elenctic Locus on Free Choice by Francesco Turrettini (1623-1687),” in The Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology, ed. Willem J. van Asselt, J. Martin Bac, and Roelf T. te Velde (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), ch. 6, here pp. 195-200.
2. The literature related to Aristotle’s conception of freedom includes Lambertus Marie de Rijk, Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Michael Frede and Gisela Striker, eds., Rationality in Greek Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Roderick T. Long, “Aristotle’s Conception of Freedom,” The Review of Metaphysics 49 (1996): 775-802; Gisela Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Timothy D. J. Chappell, Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom: Two Theories of Freedom, Voluntary Action, and Akrasia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Pamela M. Huby, “Review: Aristotle and Determinism,” Classical Review, n.s., 41 (1991): 370-71; Michael Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Gail Fine, “Aristotle on Determinism: A Review of Richard Sorabji’s Necessity, Cause, and Blame,” Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 561-79; Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980); Michael J. White, “Aristotle’s Temporal Interpretation of Necessary Coming-to-Be and Stoic Determinism,” Phoenix 34 (1980): 208-18; Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji, eds., Articles on Aristotle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).
3. Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 41.
4. Burgess Laughlin, The Aristotle Adventure: A Guide to the Greek, Arabic, and Latin Scholars Who Transmitted Aristotle’s Logic to the Renaissance (Flagstaff, AZ: Albert Hale, 1995); Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100-1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Fernand van Steenberghen, Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980); Lambertus Marie de Rijk, Middeleeuwse wijsbegeerte: Traditie en vernieuwing (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977); Fernand van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIe Siecle (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1966); Lambertus Marie de Rijk, Logica Modernorum: A Contribution to the History of Early Terminist Logic (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1962); René Antoine Gauthier and Jean Yves Jolif, eds., L’éthique à Nicomaque: Introduction, traduction, et commentaire (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1958); Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism (Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts, 1955); Fernand van Steenberghen, The Philosophical Movement in the Thirteenth Century (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1955).
5. Duns Scotus, Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I 39, ed. Antonie Vos (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 5-6, 20-33, and passim; Antonie Vos, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 39-40; Antonie Vos and Andreas J. Beck, “Conceptual Patterns Related to Reformed Scholasticism,” NedTT 57 (2003): 223-33; Antonie Vos, Kennis en Noodzakelijkheid: Een kritische analyse van het absolute evidentialisme in wijsbegeerte en theologie, Dissertationes Neerlandicae 5 (Kampen: Kok, 1981); Joachim Roland Sölder, Kontingenz und Wissen: Die Lehre von den “futura contingentia” bei J. Duns Scotus (Münster: Aschendorffsverlag, 1999).
6. Simo Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1993); Simo Knuuttila, Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories (Hingham, MA: D. Reidel, 1981).
7. Harm J. M. J. Goris, Free Creatures of an Eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on God’s Foreknowledge and Irresistible Will (Leuven: Peeters, 1996); Harm J. M. J. Goris, “Reception of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9 in the Latin West: Boethius and the Scholastics,” Verbum 6, Yearbook of the Center of Studies of Medieval Culture at St Petersburg State University (2002): 63-70.
8. Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference,” 195.
9. The main thesis of this article sides in essence with Paul Helm’s idea concerning synchronic contingency, although this article, unlike those of Helm, will demonstrate the thesis from a more fundamental perspective based on a close reading of Aristotle’s works. See Paul Helm, “Synchronic Contingency Again,” NedTT 57 (2003): 234-38; Helm, “Synchronic Contingency in Reformed Scholasticism: A Note of Caution,” NedTT 57 (2003): 207-22; Helm, “Reformed Thought on Freedom: Some Further Thoughts,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4, no. 3 (2010): 185-207.
10. Pierluigi Donini, Ethos: Aristotele e il determinismo (Alessandria: Dell’Orso, 1989), 134-35.
11. R. W. Sharples, trans., Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate: Text, Translation, and Commentary (London: Duckworth, 1983), 53-57, 134-42.
12. Richard Loening, Die Zurechnungslehre des Aristoteles (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1903; repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2010), ch. 18, nn. 2, 3, 4.
13. Theodor Gomperz, Greek Thinkers: A History of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Laurie Magnus and George Godfrey Berry (New York: Scribner, 1912), vol. 4, chs. 10, 16.
14. Jaakko Hintikka, Time and Necessity: Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), chs. 5, 8, 9; Jaakko Hintikka, Unto Remes, and Simo Knuuttila, Aristotle on Modality and Determinism, Acta Philosophica Fennica 29, no. 1 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1977).
15. Anthony Preus, Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Biological Works, Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Kleine Reihe, 1 (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1975), ch. 4; Wolfgang Kullmann, Wissenschaft und Methode: Interpretationen zur aristotelischen Theorie der Naturwissenschaft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), 292-93, 337; Wolfgang Wieland, Die aristotelische Physik: Untersuchungen über die Grundlegung der Naturwissenschaft und die sprachlichen Bedingungen der Prinzipienforschung bei Aristoteles (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 264-66; Ingemar Düring, “Aristotle’s Method in Biology,” in Aristote et les problèmes de méthode: Communications présentées au Symposium Aristotelicum tenu à Louvain du 24 août au 1er septembre 1960 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1961), 215; Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 71-73; Helene Weiss, Kausalität und Zufall in der Philosophie des Aristoteles (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1942), 75-93; Helene Weiss, Der Zufall in der Philosophie des Aristoteles (London: Wyndham Printers, 1942), 75-93; D. M. Balme, “Greek Science and Mechanism: I. Aristotle on Nature and Chance,” ClQ 33, no. 3 (1939): 134; William David Ross, Aristotle’s Physics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), 43.
16. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause, and Blame, x. Sorabji argues that Aristotle believes that causal necessity and teleology are compatible, but he denies that Aristotle believes that causal necessity and responsibility are compatible.
17. Ibid., ix.
18. Concerning the history of the interpretation of Int. 9, see Aristotle, Categories and De interpretatione, translated with notes by J. L. Ackrill (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 138-42; Aristotle, Peri hermeneias, ed. Hermann Weidemann (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), 300-324.
19. The critical editions of De interpretatione and Nicomachean Ethics used here are Aristotle, Aristotelis Categoriae et liber De interpretatione, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956) and Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. Ingram Bywater, Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1894).
20. Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 28; hereafter cited as Works. The translations of Aristotle’s works are quoted from this book except where noted otherwise.
21. Ibid., 28-29.
22. Ibid., 30 (19a23-29).
23. For an annotated bibliography for this passage, see Vincenza Celluprica, Il capitolo 9 del “De interpretatione” di Aristotele: Rassegna di studi, 1930-1973 (Rome: Il Mulino, 1977).
24. Weidemann, Peri hermeneias; Richard Gaskin, The Sea Battle and the Master Argument: Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus on the Metaphysics of the Future, Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie 40 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995).
25. I owe the following explanation to Goris, “Reception of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9, ” 8-9.
26. Hintikka, Remes, and Knuuttila, Aristotle on Modality and Determinism; Simo Knuuttila, “Medieval Commentators on Future Contingents in De Interpretatione 9, ” Vivarium 48 (2010): 75-95.
27. Many scholars do not accept the statistical interpretation of Hintikka and Knuuttila (see Goris, “Reception of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9, ” 66, 68).
28. For modern philosophy of time, see L. Nathan Oaklander and Quentin Smith, eds., The New Theory of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Quentin Smith and L. Nathan Oaklander, Time, Change, and Freedom: An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Routledge, 1995).
29. Aquinas, In I Peri herm. lect. 9, no. 117 (lines 149-150 in the Leonine ed.).
30. Concerning the weak points of the first three views, see Goris, “Reception of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9, ” 65-66.
31. Aristotle, Works, 30 (19a30–b4) (emphasis mine).
32. Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 34-38; Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 342-81; Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 200.
33. Thus, the compatibilistic interpretation of Fine, who distinguishes between absolute necessitarian determinism and the determinism of her Aristotle, is unconvincing (Fine, “Aristotle on Determinism,” 571-72, 575). She argues that Aristotle is a compatibilist who sees no incompatibility between freedom and necessity and between voluntariness and necessity (p. 575).
34. Other translators have used “choice,” “rational choice,” “purpose,” for Aristotelian prohairesis. See Broadie’s article on “Decision” (prohairesis) in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, commentary by Sarah Broadie, trans. Christopher Rowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 42-46.
35. For the division of sections and commentary, see ibid., 314.
36. This sentence is expressed as a question, but it shows Aristotle’s view (ibid, 315).
37. Aristotle, Works, 1758; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 129-30 (1113b6-12).
38. Sorabji emphasizes rightly the importance of this “up to us” (eph’hēmin) (Sorabji, Necessity, Cause, and Blame, 235).
39. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 319.
40. Antonie Vos says, “According to Aristotle only the future is contingent” (Scotus, Lectura I 39, 45). However, Eth. nic. 3.5 shows that for Aristotle both the present and the future are contingent.
41. Aristotle, Works, 1798 (1139a17-31) (emphasis mine); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 177.
42. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 361-62.
43. Broadie comments on the last sentence that “there may be an implicit contrast not only with brutes, but with god. If god is an efficient cause, then god’s effects are necessary (cf. Eudemian Ethics II.6, 1222b20-3), and they are unmediated by discursive thought” (Broadie’s commentary in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 364).
44. Fine writes, “Aristotle does sometimes say that the past is necessary; but he never, to my knowledge, explicitly says that this is a type of absolute necessity. And at one place (De Int. 19a23-26) he seems explicitly to deny that it is” (Fine, “Aristotle on Determinism,” 569). In these passages (Eth. nic. 1139b5-9), however, Aristotle appears to believe the past belongs to a type of absolute necessity. De interpretatione 19a23-26 also should be interpreted, as the present study puts it, with the distinction between the necessity of the consequent thing (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae). The passage (Int. 19a23-26) does not support Fine’s idea.
45. On the translation and commentary of Aristotle in the Middle Ages, see van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West, 62; Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 74-79.
46. Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Les ‘Philosophes’ dans la philosophie chrétienne médiévale,” RSPT 26 (1957): 27-40.
47. On auctoritas (authority) and auctoritates in the Middle Ages, see §§ 4.3-4.8 (AN AUCTORITATES CULTURE) in de Rijk, Middeleeuwse wijsbegeerte; Lambertus Marie de Rijk, La philosophie au moyen âge (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 87-105; Vos, Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, 530-33.
48. Vos, Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, 512. When Scotus uses the plural noun philosophi, it denotes a specific group of thinkers. In Lect. 1.8, Scotus explicitly includes Aristotle, Plato, Avicenna, and Averroes among philosophi.
49. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 5-6, 11.
50. For this idea, see ibid., 23-33.
51. In his comment on Lect. 1.39 (p. 28), Vos says that the idea of synchronic contingency is unfolded in Lect. 1.39.49-52, 54; in Vos, Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, p. 4, he mentions that the notion is found in Lect.1.39.49-53. It is notable that Scotus deals with diachronic contingency in Lect.1.39.53. I will return to this issue below.
52. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 22; van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 41.
53. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 6; Vos, Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, viii; van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 41.
54. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 44-45. The translation of Scotus’s work is quoted from this book except where noted otherwise.
55. Ibid., 44, 46.
56. Ibid., 130.
57. Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 347, 355-57; Knuuttila, Reforging the Great Chain of Being, 221; Hintikka, Time and Necessity, 139, 145; Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 84-86, 167-75.
58. Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 347.
59. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 118.
60. Ibid., 124.
61. Ibid., 24-25.
62. Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 41.
63. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 25.
64. Van Asselt, Bac, and te Velde, eds., Reformed Thought on Freedom, 41.
65. Knuuttila, Reforging the Great Chain of Being, 221.
66. Knuuttila, “Medieval Commentators on Future Contingents,” 76-77.
67. Ibid., 75-76, 92.
68. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), 659-85; Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference,” 171-200. Herein the translations of the Latin Institutio (Geneva, 1679) are quoted from the above two works with some corrections of mine.
69. Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference,” 173.
70. For “Christian Aristotelianism” of early modern Reformed theology, see Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 1:360-82; Richard A. Muller, “Reformation, Orthodoxy, ‘Christian Aristotelianism,’ and the Eclecticism of Early Modern Philosophy,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 81 (2001): 306-25. Early modern Reformed theologians opted for philosophical eclecticism and regarded traditional “Christian Aristotelianism” as relevant for theological studies. They did not, however, adhere to the philosophy of Aristotle himself. For them Aristotelianism was not a fixed body of doctrines, but a collection of methods and contents that was passed on by tradition. Thus their Aristotelianism belonged to a “generic Aristotelian tradition.” See B. Hoon Woo, “The Understanding of Gisbertus Voetius and René Descartes on the Relationship of Faith and Reason, and Theology and Philosophy,” WTJ 75 (2013): 55-56; Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History 26 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 36, 54.
71. Turretin, Institutes, 715. Turretin mentions “Ethi. l.5.c.2, ” but it denotes Eth. nic. 6.2.
72. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 319.
73. Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference,” 192n36: “The formal or essential definition differs from a notification of all essential properties of a certain object; ‘able to laugh,’ for instance, is an essential property of a human person, but does not belong to its formal definition.”
74. Turretin, Institutes, 664 (emphasis mine).
75. Ibid., 665-66 (emphasis mine).
76. Dekker, Beck, and Pleizier, “Beyond Indifference,” 195.
77. Helm, “Synchronic Contingency in Reformed Scholasticism,” 210-11.
78. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, trans. Thomas Gilby (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1969), 34.
79. The selection is a translation of a revision of the Wadding ed. (1639) based on Codices A, V, and S; cited from William A. Frank, ed., Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, trans. Allan Bernard Wolter (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 53.
80. Turretin, Institutes, 666.
81. Scotus, Lectura I 39, 27n53.
82. Frank, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, 193-94.
83. Turretin, Institutes, 671-72.
84. For the conception, see n. 70.