Scott Hunt’s Reviews > Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought > Status Update

in actu primo, apart from any operation and prior to any determination of an object, the will can be identified as indifferent inasmuch as it possesses simultaneously potencies to different effects. in actu secundo or operation as determined toward a particular object, the will is no longer indifferent and, having acted upon one of its potencies, has excluded the opposites from its present operation.

“We have also seen Aquinas teaching that God was free to create or not create the world, that there are possibles known to God that will never be actualized, that God necessarily knows contingents, specifically future contingents, with certainty, and that this necessary knowing does not overthrow the contingency of the futures known to God.”

Per Muller, Aristotle recognized two forms of necessity:
I. Necessity of the consequent thing (de re)
II. Necessity of the consequence (de dicto)

If true, this would recognize contingency in Aristotle’s thought and thus help elucidate ongoing discussions of Reformed thought on freedom and contingency.