The debate between Aquinas and Duns Scotus on whether intellect or will has primacy in God is not merely academic: it determines whether God's commands are grounded in the rational nature of the good (Aquinas) or in God's free sovereign choice (Scotus), with profound implications for natural law, divine freedom, and the arbitrariness of moral norms. Aquinas held that the divine intellect apprehends the eternal reasons of things and the will necessarily follows (intellectualism); Scotus argued that God's will is the ultimate explanation of why things are as they are. Ockham radicalized Scotus's voluntarism, opening the possibility that God could have commanded the opposite of what he did.
On God's will and how it relates to the divine intellect and goodness — Aquinas argues that God necessarily wills his own goodness, and wills creatures freely in relation to that goodness, so divine commands are grounded in what is genuinely good.
'The efficient cause which is first by this triple primacy is of itself necessarily existent...it is completely incapable of being caused' — Scotus's demonstration of necessary being as the foundation of contingent existence, showing how his metaphysics grounds the primacy of divine will: God's uncaused nature is the only thing not contingent, making all created moral orders dependent on divine free choice.
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