The voluntarist/intellectualist debate has always seemed sterile, but it’s worth asking why it was so important for the medievals. Where’d it come from? It appears to me to come from a faulty understanding of creation, in which creation/nature has a semi-independent status.
Consider:
There is an object: How does God evaluate it? Intellectualists say that God recognizes the inherent value of the thing, and judges it accordingly. Voluntarists that God imputes whatever value he pleases.
The intellectualist assumes that the object has a value, an existence, that does not entirely depend on God’s creation and preservation of it. He fails to recognize that the object is created to manifest God’s glory, and that God, as it were, values it because it mirrors His majesty. The existence of the object in this particular shape is a decision of God’s will.
The voluntarist assumes that the object does not actually have any particular shape, and that God can, at a later moment, determine how he will value it. The voluntarist forgets creation has an integrity of its own, and that it does in fact manifest the eternal glory of God.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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