In his Summa Theologiae (1a.25.5) Thomas Aquinas exploits the Distinction to answer the question: Can God do what he does not do? If God acts as though from natural determinism (as Maimonides, Avicenna, and Averroes maintained), then the present order proceeds from God as a necessary effect. But then God is not even free to refrain from creating, much less free to create a different world from the actual one, so he cannot do what he does not do. Similarly, if God’s wisdom and justice entail the present order (as Abelard maintained), then (if God creates) God will not be able to do what he does not do. But Thomas rejects both of these suppositions. Although the present order is established by divine wisdom and reflects God’s goodness, neither entails that an act of divine creation (even if free) must result in an order that is identical with actual world. God’s wisdom, not to mention goodness and justice, could have found expression in some other state of affairs. More fundamentally, God’s will is the cause of all things and there is no natural drive that makes his will produce anything. Thomas’s affirmative answer rests on the conception of absolute power.

What 13th century theologians were getting at was a conception of what we might call God’s free and bound power, not two different powers but one power viewed from two different perspectives. God’s power is free or unrestricted when considered in itself, independent of the actual created order, but it is bound when considered in relation to the actual created order or pre-ordained plan. Put that way, the Distinction can be understood as illuminating a peculiar ambiguity in theological discourse. Can God redeem the world by the death of Elvis Presley? Yes and No. If redeeming the world by the death of Elvis is included within the set of initial possibilities we can say, “Yes, God can do it,” even if in fact he doesn’t and never will because it finds no place in his actual intention. On the other hand, if redeeming the world by the death of Elvis Presley is not included in the subset of possibilties that God actualizes, we will have to say “No, God can’t do it.” Given that God immutably (though freely) wills to bring about this particular world, he is no longer free (de potentia ordinata) to bring about a different one, though he could have done things otherwise (de potentia absoluta). God binds himself by his eternal decree. So to ask “Can God do this?” may be to ask “Is this the sort of thing God has done, is doing, or will do?” or “Is this the sort of thing God could have done?” In other words, divine power can be viewed relative to conditional necessity (grounded in the divine will) which renders some things now impossible and unconditional possibility which affirms the ultimate contingency of what has been, is, or will be actual.

An important modification of the Distinction emerges in the later medieval period in thinkers such as Pierre d’Ailly, Gregory of Remini, and Gabriel Biel.There is considerable dispute as to how exactly the late medieval variant of the Distinction is to be understood, as well as to what extent the modification has its origin in John Duns Scotus. The basic idea is that there was a fundamental shift in how absolute power was construed. Instead of being viewed as a type of power vis-a-vis initial possibilities open to God but now no longer possible, it was increasingly construed as a type of (intervenient) action presently open to the divine will.[4] In his Sentences Commentary, Pierre d’Ailly distinguishes between two senses of potentia ordinata: God’s power to bring about all things (i) which he has ordained to occur and (ii) which do not conflict with some established physical or moral law or with Scripture.[5] D’ Ailly favors the latter understanding. As a result, absolute power is construed as the suspension or alteration of features of the present order (e.g., miracles or God’s issuing moral commands contrary to those he has already issued).[6]

This move reflects the progressive extension of “contingency” to more and more aspects of the created order, specifically its extension to the moral order and order of redemption by the late 14th century. God is de potentia ordinata obliged to follow the present order only insofar as he chooses. De potentia absoluta God could have acted otherwise and still could! Although some exploited this to explain the occurrence of miracles (as acts of absolute power temporally altering existing physical laws that reflect God’s ordained power), others applied it to the moral order. Scotus, for example, maintains that de potentia absoluta Dei existing moral laws can be and in fact are sometimes altered by God. God does not thereby act inordinately or unjustly because whatever system of law God institutes is right or just because He has chosen it. The very act of altering an existing law constitutes a new law and thus is right. This theological voluntarism was an essential feature of late medieval extensions of the Distinction.[7]

II. Calvin’s Rejection of the Distinction

The connection between late medieval voluntarism and the Distinction is an interesting one, especially since Calvin is typically thought to be a voluntarist, as evidenced in his stress on the transcendence and sovereignty of God.

For his [God’s] will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are. For if it has any cause, something must precede it, to which it is, as it were bound; this is unlawful to imagine. For God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous.[8]

Since the latter part of the 19th century, a host of scholars have seen Scotus (and/or Ockham) as the source of the voluntarism apparently exemplified here.[9] What God does is just or right because and solely because God does it. God’s act of willing something is what makes it right, so if God had willed the opposite, then that would have been right. Later I will argue that this interpretation of Calvin is incorrect, but - for the moment - assuming that it is correct, one wonders why and how Calvin could reject the Distinction since it is a obvious deductive entailment of medieval voluntarism. If voluntarism is true, then there will be a distinction between God’s exercised power (his will or ordained power) and his potential will (his absolute power). But Calvin apparently rejects the notion of absolute power. Calvin writes: “What the Sorbonne doctors say, that God has an absolute power, is a diabolical blasphemy which has been invented in hell.”[10] “Therefore, with reference to the sentiments of the schoolmen concerning the absolute, or tyrannical, will of God, I not only repudiate, but abhor them all, because they separate the justice of God from his ruling power.”[11] And again: “That Sarbonic dogma, therefore, in the promulgation of which the Papal theologians so much pride themselves, ‘that the power of God is absolute and tyrannical,’ I utterly abhor.”[12]

Calvin goes as far as to link voluntarism with the Distinction:

Therefore, since God assumes to himself the right (unknown to us) to rule the universe, let our law of soberness and moderation be to assent to his supreme authority, that his will may be for us the sole rule of righteousness and the truly just cause of all things. Not, indeed, that absolute will of which the Sophists babble, by an impious and profane distinction separating his justice from his power--but providence, that determinative principle of all things, from which flows nothing but right, although the reasons have been hidden from us. (Institutes, 1.17. 2).

The Reformed theological tradition has typically not rejected the Distinction per se, and several Reformed theologians have argued that Calvin himself did not reject it.[13]

Francis Turretin wrote:

Some of our theologians appear to reject the absolute power of God as a profane and detestable invention (as Calvin. . . .). They understood this not absolutely, but relatively, with regard to the abuse of the Scholastics who deduced from it monstrous doctrines. The latter suggested that the nature of absolute power consisted in this - that God could do whatever can be imagined by us whether good or evil, contradictory or not: for instance, that he could lie and sin. . . .Calvin rightly denies this absolute power because it would not belong to power and virtue, but to impotency and imperfection. But he was unwilling to deny that God (by absolute power) can do more things than he really does by his actual power.[14]

In Calvin in Context (1995),[15] David Steinmetz argues - contra Turretin - that Calvin rejects the Distinction as such. Steinmetz understands the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power to be a distinction between “God’s unlimited ability to act” (excluding what is inherently self-contradictory) and “what God has done, is doing, or will do” (CIC, p. 40). Steinmetz introduces three reasons why Calvin rejected the Distinction, the second of which is the heart of his argument: “Calvin’s principle objection to the distinction is that, in his judgement, it separates the power of God from his justice.” (CIC, p. 49). Therefore, Calvin will not, Steinmetz argues, even consider a hypothetical separation of God’s power from his justice.

Steinmetz’s main argument is as follows:

Because the distinction, even rightly understood, invites speculative reflection on God outside revelation and allows a hypothetical, if not actual, separation of God’s power from his justice, Calvin’s rejection of the distinction must, I think, be understood as a rejection of the distinction as such and not as a protest against its abuse. At no time does Calvin suggest that there is a licit use of this distinction or that it can be salvaged for Christian theology. Calvin reads the distinction between the potentia absoluta and the potentia ordinata, not as a distinction between the absolute and ordained power of God, but as a distinction between "ordered" and "disordered" power. What the scholastics call the absolute power of God is a disordered power because it disjoins God's power from his justice. In that sense all power of God, realized and unrealized, actual and potential, is potentia ordinata, power ordered by God's justice. (CIC, p. 49)

By “rightly understood” in the first sentence Steinmetz seems to be referring to the majority 13th and 14th century understanding of the Distinction that he contrasts with the 15th and 16th century understanding of divine power (as intervenient action). Steinmetz surveys the history of the Distinction and concludes that since all forms of it minimally involve a hypothetical separation of God’s power and justice, all versions of it involve a hypothetical exercise of divine power in a disordered, inordinate, or unjust fashion. But since Calvin rejects the theological soundness of the latter, he rejects the Distinction on which it is based.

Another recent analysis of Calvin’s view of divine power is presented by Anna Case-Winters in her book God’s Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges (1990).[16] Case-Winters begins by carefully noting “the legacy of the Middle Ages”: (a) omnipotence understood as “the ability to do whatever is doable” and (b) the Distinction between “divine power in itself” (absolute power) and “divine power in connection with divine willing” (ordained power) (GP, pp. 42-43). She argues that Calvin rejected both (a) and (b) on the basis of what she calls the “primacy of the divine will” in Calvin’s thought.

First, for Calvin “it is the divine will that determines what is possible, not metaphysical necessities. Calvin was unwilling to admit metaphysical limitations to divine power. God’s personal will defines God's power” (GP, p. 43). For this reason, omnipotence cannot be defined as “the ability to do whatever is logically possible,” but rather as “God’s ability to do whatever God wills” (GP, p. 48). Hence Calvin rejects (a). But although there are no “metaphysical” limitations on God’s power, there are “moral” limitations or determinations. God’s power is an expression of his moral character. God has a nature and acts (by virtue of an inner necessity) in accord with that nature. Since what God wills is determined by the divine nature, (b) is also rejected. Like Steinmetz, Case-Winters thinks that absolute power would be God’s power independent of his moral character. Calvin thought that “one could not speak of divine power apart from divine willing. . . .God’s power is coterminous with God’s will” (GP, p. 43). It is important to note that after distinguishing between the earlier and later versions of the Distinction, she emphasizes that “Calvin is rejecting both of these ways of using the distinction” (GP, p. 43, no. 8). Case-Winters’ concludes: Calvin rejects “the settlement of the Middle Ages with its limitation of the scope of the divine power to that which is logically possible and its accompanying distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘ordained’ power” (GP, p. 63).

The arguments presented by Steinmetz and Case-Winters depend on two important premises: (1) “absolute power” is divine power (considered) independent of the divine essence (i.e., God’s justice, wisdom, and goodness) and (2) If God’s power is restricted to the logically possible, the divine will is limited by metaphysical necessities outside of or external to God.

III. The Scope of Absolute Power and the Metaphysics of Possibilia

The critical discussions of Steinmetz and Case-Winters share a common weakness which renders their arguments unsound. Steinmetz defines absolute power in terms of God’s ability to do whatever he chooses “excluding, of course, what is inherently self-contradictory” (CIC, p. 40). Case-Winters speaks several times of absolute power as the ability to do whatever is “doable” or “logically possible” (GP, pp. 42-43). Both accounts operate with this popular account of the scope of absolute power, but the account is seriously inadequate, especially for the purposes of their arguments. Medieval philosophers held different views about the nature and scope of possibilia. The failure to develop this is an egregious error since it bears directly on the question of the relationship between God’s nature and power.

In Thomas Aquinas’s account of absolute power we have reference to the notion of “absolute possibilities” where such possibilities would be expressed by statements whose terms are not self-contradictory. Thomas says that “since power is relative to what is possible, divine power can do everything that is possible, and on this account God is called omnipotent. . . .He is almighty because he can do everything that is absolutely possible” (Summa Theologiae, Ia.25.3). But for Thomas the domain of conceivability is not a realm of autonomous possibilities, merely linguistic or logical in nature. It is determined by all the ways in which the divine essence can be imitated by finite forms. Thomas writes: “The divine being, on which on the notion of divine power is founded, is infinite existence, not limited to any kind of being, but holding within itself and anticipating the perfection of the whole of existence. Whatever can have the nature of being falls within the range of things that are absolutely possible, and it is with respect to these that God is called omnipotent” (Summa Theologiae, 1a.25.3).

For Thomas “absolute possibilities” are to be taken as ontologically real, as ideas or rationes in the mind of God, some of which (i.e., exemplars) will have actual existence. But nonexistent possibles are located in the eternal intellectual life of God himself, and so modality is given an ontological foundation.[17] Under this Christian variant of the ancient view of modality as moments of being, considerations of the divine nature play a significant role in determinations about what is possible. As Simo Knuuttila has pointed out,[18] for Aquinas absolute possibilities are circumscribed by God’s eternal intellectual act which is the primary conceptualization of what can be thought - of what is possible. Knuuttila writes: “Aquinas thought that what is coherent or incoherent between a subject and its attributes is determined by metaphysical forms which are the possible modes of imitating the divine being. So absolute possibilities are not metaphysically prior with respect to being” (MMP, p. 132).

If there is only one way that the divine essence is capable of being imitated by finite forms, then the actual world is the only possible world. Peter Abelard, for instance, rejected discussions on what God might have done or could do according to absolute power because considerations of God’s nature were thought to rule out a realm of hypothetical possibilities. God’s actions conform to the divine nature, but the attributes of wisdom, goodness, and justice require the present order if God creates. Therefore, although it may not be necessary for the divine essence to be imitated by finite forms, if God wills to create God could not have created a world different from the one he did create. Albert, Bonaventure, and Richard Rufus tended (in varying degrees) to identify God’s wisdom, goodness, and justice with the present order. For Bonaventure and Rufus “if the divine wisdom was identical with the present order, arguments de potentia absoluta would imply that God has the capacity to act in a disorderly, irrational, perhaps sinful way.”[19] Alternatively, if there are many ways in which finite forms can imitate the divine essence (as Thomas and others thought) then the conformity of God’s actions to his nature is logically consistent with God’s being able to have created worlds different from our own.

Moreover, Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity logically tethers all talk about what God could have done to God’s essence. In humans “power’ and “essence” are distinct, as are “will “ and “justice.” For us there can be things within our power which are not in a “just will” or “wise intellect.” Power can be exercised in an unjust or unwise manner. But since God is wholly simple (i.e., lacks all metaphysical composition), no such distinctions can be found in God (except as rational distinctions). Divine power is the substance of God and so God’s power cannot be separated from his goodness and wisdom, even in potentia absoluta Dei. Thomas would say that divine absolute power is always ordered by God’s justice and wisdom, but it is not on this account potentia ordinata.

One of the significant consequences of grounding possibilia in the essence of a simple God (and viewing it as God’s perception of the ways in which his essence can be imitated by the creature) is that the domain of the possible may be restricted in a way it would not be on a non-ontologically-based conception of modality. The ontologically based conception of modality receives substantial criticism by Scotus and Ockham, and Knuuttila has argued that their criticisms facilitated the development of the modern conception of logical possibility. For Scotus, “the domain of possibility is an a priori area of what is intelligible and as such does not have any kind of existence” (MMP, p. 138). Consequently, “when ‘possible being’ is applied to what God can do, the content of this intentional correlate of divine omnipotence is determined neither by the executive power nor by any ontologically given realm of esse intelligibile” (MMP, p. 140). By freeing modality from its ontological foundations, Scotus establishes absolute possibility as a category of the transcendental conditions of all thinking. Necessity and possibility is an area of conceivability that is independent of any intellect, human or divine. Any omniscient intellect (presumably including Descartes’ demon) would comprehend the same domain of possibility, the same relations of compossibility, and the same necessary and contingent states of affairs. The significance of this way of viewing modality, is that absolute possibility is detached from considerations of God’s nature. The possible is metaphysically prior to being, and so the content of (absolute) divine power is not determined by God’s essence. Oberman, then, correctly describes the late medieval understanding of absolute power: “It’s limits are not defined by his will, justice, or goodness, but by the law of non-contradiction, accessible to, and indeed the basic axiom of, human reason.”[20]

Accounts of the Distinction such as found in Steinmetz and Case-Winters typically use the language of “logical possibility” and “non-contradiction” to explicate God’s absolute power. It is clear why this is inadequate and how it can be seriously misleading. “Logical possibility” in most of the modern senses is easily detached from considerations of God’s nature.[21] It is for this reason that many philosophers and theologians define omnipotence in terms of what is logically possible and whatever is consistent with God’s nature. Theologians such as Anselm, Bonaventure, Henry of Ghent, and Thomas sought constraints on divine power beyond what some today would consider the broadly logically possible.[22] On an ontologically-based modality these constraints would be subsumed under the logically possible, since the logically possible supervenes on the essence of God. Either way, to speak of absolute power constrained only by what is logically possible is a significantly misleading claim about the distinction in its traditional employment.

IV. The Distinction and the Primacy of the Divine Will

Case-Winters makes the claim that the primacy of the divine will in Calvin’s thought leads him to reject the medieval restriction of divine power to what is doable and thus also to reject the Distinction. By “primacy of the divine will” Case-Winters is not referring to the theological voluntarism discussed earlier. Interestingly, she refuses to attribute that view to Calvin. Rather, primacy of the divine will is understood to mean: “it is the divine will that determines what is possible, not metaphysical necessities. Calvin was unwilling to admit metaphysical limitations to divine power. God's personal will defines God's power” (GP, p. 43 ). The crucial premise here appears to be: if God’s power were restricted to what is logically possible, then God’s power and will would be limited by metaphysical necessities external to God.

There are, however, several problems with this argument. First, it is not clear how God’s will can determine what is possible (metaphysically speaking) and yet God can be limited by moral necessities. It seems that the ability to determine what is possible trickles down to the moral realm as well. Secondly, if the moral necessities that determine God’s will are not external constraints, why should metaphysical limitations or logical necessity be external contraints? I have already argued that the earlier medieval tradition typically takes what Case-Winters refers to as “logically possible” and “metaphysical necessities” as dependent on the essence of God. This point should be emphasized because many are pushed into a false bifurcation between something being dependent on God’s will or being independent of or external to God. But as the medievals understood possibility and necessity, these can be independent of God’s will but not independent of or external to God. They can be dependent on the essence of God. It is wholly unclear how this would constitute an external metaphysical limitation. Since the medieval tradition is not accurately represented by Case-Winters, her argument at this point is simply irrelevant to distancing Calvin from that tradition. Also, her point is at best unnecesary. Given that the whole motivation for the argument Case-Winters is presenting is Calvin’s objection to separating the will and nature of God, all that is needed is a theory which entails the negation of Calvin’s complaint. Solution: assume an ontologically-based modality.

There is also Case-Winters’ related claim that God’s will and power are coterminous.[23] Again the motivation here is to avoid separating God’s power from his justice.

For Calvin, God’s power is coterminous with God’s will. The freedom (power) of that will is freedom to act in congruency with the divine nature. The divine will, it should be remembered, is not being understood in some abstract sense but in a personal mode. It is not a neutral, blind force of nature; it is a personal will, and, like the will of any person, it is, to some extent, determined. It has a certain characteristic. In the case of God is has the character of goodness and justice which are part of God’s nature.

I assume that to say that God’s will and power have the same boundaries or extent is to say, or at least it entails, something like: (necessarily) everything included in the set of what God can do is included in the set of what God in fact wills. And why think this? Case-Winters points out that the power or freedom of God’s will is delimited by God’s nature as good and just, so God can do only what is consistent with divine justice and goodness. Nothing I have argued denies this, but I don’t see that it follows that God’s will and power are coterminous. For that to be true we would have to assume that God’s goodness and justice somehow entail (or are identical with) the actual world. Then, and only then, would God’s acting consistently with his nature make his power and exercised will coterminous. But this seems to bite off a bigger piece of the theological pie than is really necessary if the only motivating reason for the position is to ensure that God’s power will always be connected with divine justice. Certainly if God’s will and power are coterminous, then his power cannot be separated from his justice and goodness. But the latter does not entail the former. Although Calvin believes that God’s will is determined by his character, Case-Winters has done nothing to show that Calvin also thinks that God’s just or good will is either identical with or entails the present order. And although Calvin believes that we should not separate the power of God from his justice, Case-Winters does not show that Calvin holds this because he thinks God’s will and power are conterminous.

As Thomas explained, the present order does in fact reflect the wisdom and goodness of God, and it could not have failed to reflect the divine essence, but God’s wisdom and goodness could have found expression in another order, even if not in just any order. In fact, since God’s power and essence and will and justice are the same, it is not possible that God act inordinately. So necessarily any world he makes will reveal his goodness and justice. That exercised power be consistent with God’s justice and goodness is a necessary truth, but the particular (good and just) effect of divine power when exercised consistently with God’s justice and goodness describes a contingent truth. It is for this reason that Steinmetz is incorrect when he says that “the distinction, even rightly understood. . .allows a hypothetical, if not actual, separation of God’s power from his justice” (CIC, p. 49). Unfortunately, this important point is also substantially obfuscated in Case-Winters’ exposition since she takes Calvin’s view of divine power to be solely the power of governing/controlling, as opposed to the power of creating/causing, thereby leaving little room for the idea of unactualized possibilities. Calvin certainly emphasizes exercised power, but it is a mistake to infer from that that he does not assume or articulate any sense of power construed otherwise.

V. Calvin, Voluntarism, and the Distinction

The failure of Steinmetz and Case-Winters to state and develop absolute power as grounded in the essence of a wholly simple God, as well as the confusion about the relationship between God’s essence, will, and power, has important consequences for the effectiveness and soundness of the critiques they each present. They both draw attention to Calvin’s main reason for rejecting the Distinction: it separates God’s power from his justice and wisdom. But this is hardly an adequate reason for rejecting the Distinction in its earlier medieval form, only for rejecting a particular, late medieval version of it. As argued above, once we divorce “possibility” from its ontological foundations in the essence of God, we are in a position to have a notion of absolute power (as a capacity for action) which needs no reference to the divine nature, only an apriori area of logical possibility which will be identical for all being. If we then push divine freedom, we will have the possibility of God acting outside the parameters of the divine nature, and so acting inordinately. This is exactly one of the consequences the late medieval voluntarists are stuck with when they follow the Scotist path of divorcing “logical possibility” from the metaphysics of the divine essence.

I believe that there is an important connection between voluntarism and Calvin’s stance on the Distinction. These two facets of Calvin’s thought can shed light on each other.

Calvin writes:

That Sarbonic dogma, therefore, in the promulgation of which the Papal theologians so much pride themselves, “that the power of God is absolute and tyrannical,” I utterly abhor. For it would be easier to force away the light of the sun from his heat, or his heat from his fire, than to separate the power of God from His justice. Away, then, with all such monstrous speculations from godly minds, as that God can possibly do more, or otherwise, than He has done, or that He can do anything without the highest order and reason. For I do not receive that other dogma, “that God, as being free from all law Himself, may do anything without being subject to any blame for doing so.” For whosoever makes God without law, robs Him of the greatest part of His glory, because he spoils Him of His rectitude and justice. Not that God is, indeed, subject to any law, excepting in so far as He is a law unto Himself. But there is that inseparable connection and harmony between the power of God and His justice, that nothing can possibly be done by Him but what is moderate, legitimate, and according to the strictest rule of right. And most certainly, when the faithful speak of God as omnipotent, they acknowledge Him at the same time to be the Judge of the world, and always hold His power to be righteously tempered with equity and justice.[24] (Emphasis mine)

Perhaps more than any other single passage in Calvin this statement is crucial to understanding Calvin’s position on both voluntarism and the Distinction. What is striking about this passage is that in it Calvin clearly denies that God can do just anything without being subject to blame for doing so. Similarly he denies that God is exlex or super legem (beyond law). Furthermore, Calvin is explicit that God has reasons for what He does, and they are just reasons, but they are simply hidden from us in this life. These points set definite moral constraints on what God can do. I take this to be evidence against the voluntarist reading of Calvin alluded to earlier (in section II). For the voluntarist, God cannot act inordinately because whatever God does is just by virtue of his doing it. The divine act makes the moral fact. Calvin, however, following theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, maintains that God cannot act inordinately because of the consistency of the divine nature. God’s being righteous may be epistemically mysterious in many respects, but it is not ontologically vacuous.[25]

It is true that Calvin says: “His will is and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are. . .for God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever He wills, by the very fact that He wills it, must be considered righteous” (Institutes, III.xxiii.2). The context here, though, is the human enquiry into the causes of God’s will. Calvin insists that we should not ask why God wills what He wills for no such reason can be found by us. He follows this, though, by denying that God is a law unto Himself. Calvin seems to be making epistemic, not ontological, statements about justice and the will of God. He is saying that God’s willing something ought to be a sufficient condition for us to regard the thing as just, not that God’s willing it is what makes it just.[26] Why should we regard as just what God wills? Because we presuppose that God is just and acts for just reasons. God’s willing something reveals that it is right. It does not necessarily make it right (as if anything would be right if God willed it). Nor does Calvin’s insistence on God as the cause of all things and His will being caused by nothing imply voluntarism. Calvin is merely restating Augustine and Aquinas: “Nothing is greater than God’s will. Therefore, no cause for it should be sought” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a.19.5).

Calvin’s polemic against the Distinction should be read in relation to late medieval voluntarism. Although Calvin was positively influenced by that movement in some respects, his stance on the Distinction shows that he opposed what he thought to be one of the dangerous implications of the voluntarism of some of the Sorbonne theologians. The whole argument in turn helps explain Calvin stance on the Distinction itself. It’s not the conception of potentia Dei absoluta per se which Calvin opposes. He rejects construing such power in isolation from the other divine attributes, leaving us with a nuda potentia absoluta.[27] I take this to be one of the consequences of the Scotist reduction of the possible to an a priori category of intelligibility with no ontological foundation. Therefore, Calvin’s polemic against the absolute power of the “Schoolmen” is a statement against expanding the concept of divine omnipotence by means of attributing various possibilities to God which are not in conformity with his nature, especially as God’s character is revealed to us in the actual exercise of God’s power in the Biblical narrative. Calvin, then, objects to any construal of divine power which does not take the essence of God as supplying internal constraints on that power and accordingly delimiting the realm of the genuinely possible.[28]

Calvin’s understanding of the Distinction was no doubt shaped by his theological influences, especially those contemporary at the University of Paris in the early part of the 16th century. His opposition to the Distinction must be taken as part of his polemic against theologians of the Sorbonne (i.e., via moderna theologians, nominalists, or whatever title one chooses to give them).[29] Calvin himself contrasts these “Sophists” with the “sounder Schoolmen” (who include Aquinas and Abelard) (Institutes, II.ii.6). In his critique of the Distinction he usually refers to a specific target: the theologians of the Sorbonne. This provides a partial explanation for why Calvin does not grant any licit use of the Distinction. Such a use was either not current or not the dominant view at Paris when Calvin was there, and he is concerned to deal with theological abuses which are contemporary. That Calvin has in view the late medieval variant of the Distinction may also be inferred from his explicitly contrasting an ordinate will and absolute will on several occasions, thereby suggesting that the dialectic to which he is objecting distinguishes between two kinds of divine action. This is also confirmed by the contexts in which Calvin always introduces the Distinction. It is always when Calvin is discussing divine action of some sort: miracles, providence, or predestination. In each instance, Calvin is opposing construing what God has done, is doing, or will do as inordinate or tyrannical.[30] It is clear that Calvin rejected a particular version of the Distinction, the late medieval version. But this is not to reject the Distinction in its earlier medieval form. Turretin was correct. Steinmetz and Case-Winters are not.[31]

But more can be said - in the positive. There is considerable textual evidence in Calvin which suggests that Calvin did assume the traditional version of the distinction which distinguishes between unactualized possibilities and God's actual exercised will in creation and providence.

In his Commentaries[32] Calvin distinguishes between God’s exercised power (or power in action) and his unexercised power or mere ability. In discussing Acts 20:32, Calvin discusses the meaning of “is able” in the statement: “I commend you to God. . .who is able to build farther, and to give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” Calvin distinguishes between two senses of divine power God and so two uses of “is able.” There is “that which is commonly called actual” and that which “as we used to imagine it, as without effect” (CC, p. 262, vol. 19). In Romans 4:21, discussing the phrase “that which he hath promised” Calvin notes two arguments: (a) the argument of doubt according to which we wonder whether God will do something and whether he can do it and (b) the argument of faith according to which God will do it, because he has promised; and he can do it, because he is omnipotent” (CC, p. 180, vol. 19). He further notes that all men acknowledge God’s power. No one denies that God can do all things. But when things appear to go against God’s promises, we fall into unbelief. We think that though God can do all things we disbelieve that God is active now working in our lives. Faith fixes upon “his power in continual exercise” (CC, p. 181, vol. 19). These points suggests a distinction in Calvin’s mind between the divine will and power. Discussing the clause “according to the working [efficacy] whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21), Calvin says: “Nor does he [Paul] simply make mention of power, but also of efficacy, which is the efficacy, or power shewing itself in action, so to speak” (CC, p. 111, vol. 21). Again, his comments assume a distinction between power and will.

In the Institutes Calvin suggests unactualized possibilities. For one, Calvin rejects the Stoic doctrine of necessity and emphasizes the free divine decretive ground for the present order and providence as the execution of the divine decree (Institutes, I.xvi.8). “What God has determined must necessarily take place, even though it is neither unconditionally, nor of its own peculiar nature, necessary” (Institutes, I.xvi.9). Although one might read this as implying only that God did not create the world out of necessity (not that he could have created a different world), we might also see here Calvin’s Augustinian commitment to God’s freedom in creating the kind of world he did. Calvin explicitly recognizes unactualized possibilties by virtue of allowing many things God could have done but did not do. Hence, God’s power extends beyond the scope of what he does in fact. Specifically, Calvin claims that God could have redeemed the world in some manner other than the way he does in fact - a theme deeply imbedded in the history of the development of the Distinction. He says that the incarnation and redemptive of Christ was not absolutely necessary (invoking the terminology of the schoolmen by his own admission), but that it stemmed from an heavenly decree: “If someone asks why this [the incarnation] is necessary, there is no simple (to use the common expression) or absolute necessity. Rather it stemmed from a heavenly decree, on which man’s salvation depended” (Institutes, III.xii.1). Elsewhere Calvin writes: “God was well able to rescue us from the unfathomable depths of death in another fashion, but he willed to display the treasures of his infinite goodness when he spared not his only Son.”[33]

Although Calvin does not use the explicit language of the Distinction, he does assume the essential propositions of the Distinction in its traditional employment: a distinction between power and will, and its correlate, a distinction between unactualized possibilities and God’s power as revealed in the created order. Calvin’s focus on God’s de facto power and revealed derives from his emphasis on providence as an essential part of the meaning of God is Creator (Institutes, I.xvi.1). In a very Thomistic spirit, Calvin wants to draw attention to God as the sustaining cause of the Universe (in all its details, especially redemption), not merely a generative cause. This emphasis leads Calvin away from an interest in alternative possibilities, except insofar as such a consideration supports the human reverence for the greatness of God. Therefore, although he does not speculate on what sort of possible worlds God could have actualized, he certainly recognizes that God could have actualized a world very different from the one that is actual. Faith, however, clings to the revealed promises of God, God’s reliability in the actual world as manifested in divine providence. For Calvin, separating God’s power from his justice and goodness, as Calvin perceived the Sorbonne theologians to do in their notion of absolute power, undermines the reliability of God’s promises which are executed by his exercised power. This in turn undermines faith. This is perhaps Calvin’s most important and compelling reason for labeling the doctrine “diabolical blasmphemy.”

VI. Conclusion

Calvin has no adequate ground for rejecting the Distinction in its earlier medieval form, since his main reason for objecting to what he calls “absolute power” is inapplicable the understanding of God’s absolute power such as we find in Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, there is no adequate ground in the text of Calvin for thinking that he rejected the Distinction as such, though he may very well have rejected the only form of it he knew. But Calvin’s acceptance of a distinction between unactualized possibilties and God’s actual exercised will is the traditional medieval power Distinction. Even if Calvin’s theological interests lead him to focus on exercised power, his theological consistency prevents him from denying that divine power is exhausted in the present order. In a time when Calvin scholarship seeks to understand the influence of late medieval philosophy and theology on the Reformation, it is important to recognize that Calvin’s thinking was also influenced by the earlier medieval tradition. A better understanding of the “sounder Schoolmen” remains an essential program for Calvin studies, especially as it illuminates the French reformer’s theology of God’s power.[34]

ENDNOTES

[1]Alister McGrath, “John Calvin and Late Medieval Thought,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 77 (1986) and Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), pp. 81-84, 128; Bernard Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation (London: Longman, 1981), pp. 187-88; and Francois Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, tr. Philip Mairet (London: Collins, 1963), pp. 127-129.

[2]Some recent work on this includes: Gijsbert van den Brink, Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1994), p. 89; Anna-Case Winters, God's Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990); David Steinmetz, “Calvin and the Absolute Power of God,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988). Heiko A. Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark LTD, 1992), pp. 255-258.

[3]For discussions on the historical development of the Distinction, see G. van den Brink, Almighty God, pp. 68-92; Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), ch. 3; William Courtenay, “The Dialectic of Divine Omnipotence” in Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), IV, pp. 1-37; M.A. Pernoud, “The Theory of the Potentia Dei according to Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham,” Antonianum 47 (1972), pp. 69-95; and most recently, Lawrence Moonan, Divine Power: The Medieval Power Distinction up to its Adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

[4]On the use of the term “operationalization” to describe absolute power as intervenient action, see Heiko Oberman , “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought” in Studies in Church History, Vol. 5, From Ockham to Wycliff, ed. Hudson and Wilks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Courtenay also notes “the tendency to interpret potentia absoluta as a type of action rather than a neutral sphere of unconditioned possibility was. . .aided by Duns Scotus’s treatment of the distinction” (“The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Pubishing Company, 1985), p. 253).

This construal of absolute power probably arose in part because of an ambiguity in locutions of the form <de potentia absoluta God can do X>. The proposition is in the present tense, but is it God’s eternal present or the creature’s temporal present? On the classical view of God’s eternity, the past, present, and future of the created order are seen all at once from the divine perspective, so it was natural for theologians to use the present tense when expressing propositions describing God’s power. So <de potentia absoluta God can do X> must be understood as bracketed with a divine perspective modifier, [from the divine perspective <de potentia absoluta God can do X>]. However, when such propositions are viewed from the temporal present of the created order, the past tense is more correct, since what God can do from the divine perspective de potentia absoluta is from the present occupied by any created being a matter of what God could have done but did not and thus cannot do. If, however, the divine perspective modifier is dropped from <de potentia absoluta God can do X>, absolute power will be understood to refer to God’s potential intervenient action. For further discussion on the development of the Distinction in this direction, see Courtenay, “Dialectic of Divine Omnipotence” in Divine Omniscience, p. 249 and G. van den Brink, Almighty God, pp. 75-78.

[5]Pierre d’Ailly, Quaestiones super libros sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjustis (Lyon 1618, reprint; Minerva, 1964), I. 13. ID.

[6]On d’Ailly, see Francis Oakley, “Pierre d’Ailly and the Absolute Power of God: Another Note on the Theology of Nominalism,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963), pp. 59-73. On Biel, see Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 38.

[7]For a consideration of the Distinction in the Scotist tradition, see Eugenio Randi, “A Scotist Way of Distinguishing between God’s Absolute and Ordained Powers” in From Ockham to Wycliff.

[8]Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeill, Library of Christian Classics, vols. 20 and 21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), III. xxiii. 2. Hereafter references will be cited parenthetically in text.

[9]Albrecht Ritschl, “Geschichtliche Studien zur christlichen lehre von Gott,” Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie, vol. 13 (Gotha, 1868), p. 107; A.V.G Allen, “The Continuity of Christian Thought” 1884, p. 302.; Williston Walker, “John Calvin,” 1906, pp. 149, 418.; C.H. Irwin, “John Calvin,” 1909, p. 179.; Francois Wendel, Calvin, p. 128; Bernard Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation (London, Longman, 1981), p. 187-89. Among these Wendel, though associating Calvin with Scotus, softens the interpretation of Scotus.

[10]Calvin, Sermon on Job 23:1-7.

[11]Calvin, “Replies,” in A Doctrine of the Secret Providence of God (1558) in Calvin’s Calvinism: Treatises on the Eternal Predestination of God and the Secret Providence of God, tr. Henry Cole (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1987?), p. 266.

[12]Ibid., p. 247.

[13]For some Reformed accounts of divine omnipotence which utilize the Distinction, see Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Vol. II (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), pp. 12-13; John Gill, Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (1871; reprint, Paris, Ark: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1984), p. 55; William Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 1 (n.d.; reprint, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980) pp. 359-60; Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology (1871; reprint, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985), p. 161; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 (1873; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), p. 409; A.A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (1860; reprint, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1983), p. 150; Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology (1907; reprint, Valley Forge, PA: Judson press, 1979), pp. 286-287; Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, pp. 244-245; and Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (1939; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 79-80.

[14]Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George Musgrave Giger and ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992), p. 245 (3.21.5).

[15]Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). The chapter which discusses Calvin and the medieval power distinction was previously published as “Calvin and the Absolute Power of God,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988), so Steinmetz’s work was published prior to Anna Case-Winters (to be discussed below). Hereafter citations from Steinmetz will appear parenthetically in text by page number prefixed by the abbreviation CIC.

[16]Case-Winters, God's Power. Citations appear parenthetically in text by page number prefixed by the abbreviation GP.

[17]For a consideration of the ontological foundations of modality in medieval theology, see John Wippel, “The Reality of Nonexisting Possibles According to Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent,and Godfrey of Fountaines,” Review of Metaphysics 33 (June 1981), pp. 729-58.

[18]Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (Routledge: 1993), pp. 103-104, 131-32, 139. References hereafter are given parenthetically in the text by page number with the abbreviation MMP.

[19]Courtenay, “The Dialectic of Divine Omnipotence” in Divine Omniscience, p. 250.

[20]Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation, p. 256.

[21]There is an important exception here. Suppose (i) the proposition <God exists> is logically necessary, (ii) God is essentially good and (iii) God’s goodness is logically incompatible with some Nth degree of evil. It will follow that there is no possible world which has that Nth degree of evil, for by virtue of being a logically necessary being God exists in every possible world, and his existence is not compatible with the Nth degree of evil.

[22]This is I think the point which Courtenay has in mind in contrasting 13th and 14th century notions of absolute power: “the area of things that God cannot do because they imply contradictions is larger in the thirteenth century than in the fourteenth. Stated another way, a larger number of aspects of the created order are absolutely necessary for Thomas than for Ockham.” Courtenay, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion” in Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought, XI, pp. 39-40.

[23]G.van den Brink also makes this move: “in Calvin's theology God's power wholly coincides with his will. . . .” (Almighty God, p. 88). Interestingly enough, van den Brink admits (p. 90) that Calvin would not have disapproved of “the distinction’s authentic meaning as it functioned in Aquinas.” But this could only be true if Calvin did not think that God’s power wholly coincides with his will.

[24]Calvin, The Secret Providence of God in Calvin’s Calvinism, p. 248.

[25]There are several important passages in which Calvin claims that God has just reasons for doing what he does: Institutes I.xvii.2; The Eternal Predestination of God in Calvin’s Calvinism, pp. 121, 122-124; and The Secret Providence of God in Calvin’s Calvinism, pp. 247, 266-267.

[26]I take this to be compatible with affirming that God’s commanding human persons to do certain actions places obligations on them to comply. It does not follow, of course, that God could command anything.

[27]This point is raised by Heiko Oberman in response to David Steinmetz’s conclusion that Calvin altogether rejects the notion of absolute power. See Oberman, Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1991), pp. 17-18. However, elsewhere Oberman states, incorrectly in my opinion, that for Calvin “the potentia absoluta does not indicate what God could have done but what he actually does” (Dawn of the Reformation, p. 256).

[28]The Reformed tradition has been fairly consistent with this. Non-contradiction and inconsistency with the divine nature are not included as objections of divine power. See references in no. 13.

[29]That Calvin’s polemics were often directed at late medieval scholastics and not the earlier medieval tradition of which Thomas is a representative is argued by Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985).

[30]See Calvin, Institutes, I.xvii.2; The Eternal Predestination of God in Calvin’s Calvinism, p. 118; “Replies” in The Secret Providence of God in Calvin’s Calvinism, p. 266.

[31]In addition to Turretin, my conclusion here is also shared by B.B. Warfield, “Calvin’ Doctrine of God” in Calvin and Calvinism, p. 161; Francois Wendel, Calvin, pp. 128-129; Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, p. 245; and most recently by G. van den Brink, Almighty God, p. 90.

[32]The quotations from Calvin’s Commentaries that are to follow in the text are taken from Calvin’s Commentaries, 22 Vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979). The Acts of the Apostles, tr. Henry Beveridge; Romans, tr. John Owen; and Philippians, tr. John Pringle. References appear parenthetically in text by page and volume number with the abbreviation CC.

[33]Ioannis Calvini opera supersunt omnia, 46, col. 833

[34]I was helped considerably in the writing of this paper by comments and criticisms from Richard Swinburne, Alister McGrath, Paul Helm, Richard Cross, Mike Griffin, David Burrell, and Tom Flint.

Michael Sudduth

I. The Medieval Power Distinction

II. Calvin’s Rejection of the Distinction

IV. The Distinction and the Primacy of the Divine Will

V. Calvin, Voluntarism, and the Distinction