According to Scotus, the term ‘‘law of nature’’ has a strict sense and a broad sense. In the strict sense, the laws of nature include practical principles known from their terms (nota ex terminis) and conclusions that can be inferred evidently from those principles. In a broad sense, the laws of nature include practical truths that are consonant (consonans) with the law of nature in the strict sense (Wolter 1986:262-263; on what Scotus may mean by ‘‘consonant’’ see Ragland). Laws of nature in the strict sense hold always, for whatever state or condition human beings may live in (pp. 264-265). They are prior to any act of will, even God’s - the divine intellect must recognize their truth and the divine will must will in accordance with the intellect’s recognition of their truth. They admit of no exceptions; not even God can dispense from them. What they command is good in itself apart from the command, what they prohibit is wrong in itself apart from the prohibition.
Scotus distinguishes between commandments of the first table of the Decalogue, which formulate duties we have toward God Himself, and commandments of the second table, which regulate our conduct toward other human beings. The command to keep holy the Sabbath day is not part of natural law in the strict sense, and the other two commandments ofthe first table belong to strict natural law only if given a negative formulation, as precepts not to hate God and not to love as supreme any but the true God. (Scotus holds that only negative commands belong to natural law in the strict sense.) The commandments of the second table are natural law only in the broad sense, and God has power to set them aside. God’s power is limited only by the impossibility of his doing anything self-contradictory (p. 256). To set aside a practical truth nota ex terminis, or one evidently inferred from such a truth, that is, a natural law in the strict sense, would involve self-contradiction. But God can without any contradiction revoke any of the commandments relating to the good of our neighbors.
Against this it might be argued that love of God implies love of our neighbors, since if we love God we must wish others to love him, and wishing for that is to love them; the commandments of the second table
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Therefore follow evidently from natural law in the strict sense and are therefore natural laws in the strict sense. Scotus rejects this argument for several reasons (pp. 282284): first, because the duty to love God is affirmative and therefore not part of strict natural law - the strict duty is not to hate God, and we can fulfill this duty without wishing anyone else to love God. Second, because God may not wish to be loved by everyone, for example, not by those whom he has not predestined to salvation. Third, because even if we do want our neighbor to love God, that does not imply any of the commandments of the second table - for example, we can want our neighbor to love God without having any duty not to kill our neighbor. God has revealed that he wills us to love our neighbor in ways that go beyond anything that can be strictly inferred from the natural law obliging us to love God; the second table expresses that will, it does not spell out strict implications of natural law.
These are arguments for rejecting Thomas’ doctrine that not even God can dispense with the commandments of the Decalogue. Whether God has in fact done so is another question. Thomas referred to a number of occasions on which God apparently dispensed with one or another of the commandments (ST 1-2 q.94 a.5 obj. 2). Scotus repeats these examples, and argues that they show that God has in fact dispensed. To the objection that the command ‘‘thou shalt not kill’’ does not fully express the intention of the legislator, that is, that it is only an approximate statement of the obligation, Scotus answers that precision is not the issue. Granted that the commandment does not intend to forbid every killing, the question remains: Can God’s permission in a particular case makes licit an act that, apart from this permission, would be really forbidden, by the commandment precisely formulated? If so, then God can dispense from the Decalogue, just as he replaced the Old Law with the New, just as a legislator can replace one positive law with another; if not, then He cannot dispense. If Abraham had killed his son that would really have been a violation of a commandment in its true intention, which proves that God has dispensed from the commandment ‘‘thou shalt not kill.’’
God also revoked the law that prohibited appropriation in the state of innocence (pp. 280-281, 312-315.). (The law against appropriation does not belong to the Decalogue, but according to Isidore (above) natural law includes ‘‘the common possession of all things.’’) After the fall God revoked the prohibition against appropriation; some time after that, human law established the institution of property, and God’s law then prohibited theft. Scotus explains (pp. 312-313) that the original prohibition and later permission of appropriation served the same ends, namely peace and sustenance, under different circumstances. In the state ofinnocence community of goods served those ends best, in the fallen state appropriation does; if goods had remained common in the fallen state, the physically weak would have suffered from the greed of the powerful. That the physically weak should be protected, that people should live together peacefully, and that there are many morally weak persons who care mostly about themselves and not much about others, all seem obvious. The institution of property in the fallen state is very consonant with those suppositions, though not implied with strict necessity. Scotus comments that perhaps it is thus with all positive laws: they do not follow with strict necessity from the underlying principles, but only as very consonant with them (p. 281).
Unlike Thomas, Scotus in his account of natural law makes no reference to natural human inclinations. An appeal to natural inclinations would have been inconsistent with Scotus’ view of freedom of the will and the contingency of creation. According to Scotus, the will is free in the sense that it has an instantaneous ‘‘power of opposites,’’ that is, when the will chooses something, it simultaneously has full power to choose the opposite (Ordinatio 1, dist. 38-39; Scotus, Opera omnia, vol. 6, pp. 417-419). According to Scotus, human decisions, and God’s, are not determined by thoughts, dispositions, or other causes. This implies that God is not bound by any rules or laws in His decisions about creation. God is free to create human beings with certain natural inclinations, without being bound to issue them with any commandments, and without being bound to command them in ways that further their natural inclinations. Human will, according to Scotus, has two “affections”, an affectio commodi, which is a tendency to seek objects of natural inclination, and an affectio iustitiae, a tendency to choose to do what is right and good because it is so (Wolter 1986:178-179). It is the affectio iustitiae that constitutes human freedom. It sets us free to disregard our natural inclinations and to choose to follow God’s commandments instead, whatever they may be, even if they do not suit our inclinations.
World History
