What Can God Command? Early Franciscans on Divine Power

The medieval Franciscan John Duns Scotus has sparked consider-able debate in recent years on account of his view that God can contravene the commands he himself inscribed on the second table of the Decalogue, which con-cern human relations. In this light, some scholars have interpreted Scotus as a kind of voluntarist, while others seek to highlight how the variation in the commands still accords with reason or the dictates of human nature. This article intervenes in the debate by examining the work of Scotus' predecessors, the founders of the Franciscan school at Paris, who collaboratively authored a massive Summa which served as the basis for the education of later Franciscans, including Scotus himself. The arguments presented by Scotus are found in a preliminary form in this Summa, which clearly affirms that any variation in the second-table commands is not merely arbitrary and thus irrational but facilitates the relation of human beings to God