 In criticizing extensional modal theories, Scotus redefined a contingent event as follows: ‘I do not call something contingent because it is not always or necessarily the case, but because its opposite could be actual at the very moment when it occurs’ (Ord. I.2.1.1–2, 86). This is a denial of the traditional thesis of the necessity of the present and the temporal frequency characterization of contingency. In Scotus’s modal semantics, the meaning of the notion of contingency is spelt out by considering simultaneous alternatives. What is actual is contingently so if, instead of being actual, it could be not actual. This conception of simultaneous contingent alternatives is part of an argument that the first cause does not act necessarily. According to Scotus, the eternal creative act of divine will is free only if it could be other than it is in a real sense (Lect. I.39.1–5, 58). For Scotus’s modal theory, see also Honnefelder 1990; Vos et al. 1994; King 2001; Hoffmann 2002; the thesis of Scotus’s innovativeness is criticized in Pasnau 2020.