What Makes the Difference? Thomist Interactivity of Will and Intellect in Select Reformed Accounts of Freedom

In debate with Richard Muller over the account of freedom and necessity given by early modern Reformed authors, Paul Helm has argued that Reformed thought is consistently a species of compatibilism. Helm defends this by pointing to an absence of references in such authors to the will having a causal effect on the intellect, suggesting an irreducible intellectualist core to their framing of free choice. In this article, I explore this theme of the interactivity of intellect and will in selected early modern Reformed authors, demonstrating that there is evidence for bi-directional interactivity in these sources. This, however, may stem from similar themes in Thomas Aquinas and is consistent with a Thomist construal of the priority of the intellect, as distinct from a Scotist emphasis on the will as the location of alternativity. This calls into question whether intellectualism functions in Reformed thought to undergird the compatibility of the divine decree with free human acts as Helm suggests, though his characterization of such Reformed authors as compatibilist may be supported by their general contention that acts may be free in circumstances where the will is necessitated to one effect.