CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Those, therefore, who to the study of philosophy unite obedience to the Christian faith are philosophizing in the best possible way; for the splendor of the divine truths, received into the mind, helps the understanding and not only detracts in no wise from its dignity, but adds greatly to its nobility, keenness and stability. (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Aeterni Patris)
The main focus of this dissertation is the late medieval doctrine of Concurrentism. More precisely, it is a systematic introduction to the philosophical and historical debate out of which the doctrine of concurrentism arises. This debate has many facets, all of which can be traced to one central question: What is the extent of God’s causal involvement in the ordinary course of nature?
Contemporary Providential Concerns
Traditional adherents of the three great monotheisms––Judaism, Christianity and Islam––all claim that God is, first and foremost, the transcendent, sovereign, and provident Lord of the universe. God is transcendent insofar as He is “above” nature, exists independently of nature, and yet is the causal source of all that exists in the natural universe. God is sovereign, in that His creative activity is said to be limited by nothing and extends over everything, including both the range of all substances and of all events which those substances participate in. God is provident, in that He is intimately involved in the workings and operations of His creatures, directing them with care towards their ends.
I will refer to the aforesaid description as the traditional or strong view of divine providence. This pre-theoretical doctrine of providence is manifest in the spiritual writings of each religious tradition, and is expounded upon in their particular doctrinal and creedal statements.[i] Considered in itself, the strong view of divine providence is taken to be non-negotiable for theistic belief. For it emphasizes quite clearly the hierarchical relationship between Creator and creature which is prevalent in the scriptures and religious writings, and confirms the theistic worldview that the goings-on in the universe are not random, but are guided by the capable hands of an interested God.
Philosophically, this strong view of providence is thought to be upheld by at least three components pertaining to the nature of God: omniscience (specifically with respect to God’s foreknowledge of events), omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.[ii] Given the etymology of the word “providence,” this is not surprising. The word “providence” comes from the Latin providentia, which is the nominative form of the verb providere. Providere [pro-video] has two basic meanings: 1. to forsee, or see at a distance; and 2. to provide for, prepare, or to make ready. The first definition expresses the more common-sense, teleological aspects of providence: that God has a fore-knowledge about every thing and every event that will occur, and employs his sovereignty wisely and morally to accomplish some end.[iii] The second definition is thought to capture the power that God has in executing His providence. For example, Thomas Aquinas argues that
It seems that providence pertains to power. For Boethius says: “Providence has given to the things it has created the greatest reason for enduring, so that as far as they are able, all things naturally desire to endure.” Providence, therefore, is a principle of creation. But since creation is appropriated to God’s power, providence pertains to power.[iv]
God not only knows what will happen and has some plan for creatures, but also has the power to make good on that plan. In sum, a provident God is thought to actively provide the means by which things are directed towards their ends in such a way that His will simply cannot be frustrated.
When this strong view of providence is cast in a broader light, however, contemporary theologians and philosophers have found it difficult, if not impossible, to render this doctrine consistent either with scientific explanation or other non-negotiable theistic beliefs. For underlying the traditional doctrine of providence is a certain principle regarding God’s agency in the world, namely that God is the universal, immediate efficient cause of every contingent thing. This principle of agency, when coupled with the teleological aspects of God’s sovereignty noted above, implies that God continuously acts––and with particular intent––in the world. Such a view seems to ride roughshod over our “well-established” scientific descriptions of the universe, as Thomas Tracy summarizes:
Although talk of God as an actor in the drama of human history is deeply entrenched in the texts and traditions of Christianity, this language has had an uncertain career in modern theology. The sources of this problematic status are various and complex, but it is safe to say that a persistent ingredient has been worry that the notion of particular divine action is at odds with ways of describing the world that have proved their success in the natural and social sciences.[v]
God’s providential activity in history is often seen as inconsistent with the existence of a “scientifically describable” world––one that, appearances withstanding, is governed solely by natural laws. Tracy continues,
It is often pointed out that we can and do explain events without appeal to otherworldly or supernatural agencies. And it also is said, sometimes without further argument, that if we adopt these modern modes of description and explanation, we cannot also speak of divine action in the world.[vi]
In view of modern science and its “successes,” if God is to be thought of as existing and involved in nature at all, the “more intelligible” view to posit is for God to create a world that runs on its own, requiring infrequent––if any––miraculous interventions. So if one is to be a theist, she must in some way loosen the restraints of the traditional view of providence. Rudolph Bultmann expresses this now popular sentiment:
we now inevitably share a scientific world-picture that leaves “no room for God’s working” either in the events of the natural world or in the lives of human beings. Any divine action that affects historical events, therefore, must take the form of an intervention that disrupts the intelligible structures of the world around us or threatens the coherence and integrity of our lives.[vii]
Contrary to St. Augustine’s once famous dictum, God is not thought to be “more within us than we ourselves,” but just another player (albeit a really powerful one) in the cosmic scheme of things. In many ways, God is best described as semi-disconnected from the world, and His providential control consists of His minimal interference with the world from an extrinsic point of view: God is on-the-outside-looking-in.
This approach to the problem leaves little to be desired for the traditional theist. Either she must regard her theism as epistemically implausible given the “success” of modern science, or be resigned to a narrow, almost deistic view of providence, where God is “hands-off” with regard to nature. From a traditional theistic standpoint, both religiously and philosophically, this approach is simply unacceptable. Such a view not only diminishes God’s transcendence––His “other-worldliness”––by bringing God down to the level of creatures, but also detracts from His providential involvement. It is as if science has found a way not only to extract God from the ordinary events of nature, but also to reject the whole notion of a hierarchical relationship between God and creature; “modern” science seems to reject the very concept of creation itself.
There are two fundamental ways to explain what may be meant by a rejection of the concept of creation. In the first way, one might be saying something about the nature of God, akin to the Aristotelian notion that the mode of God’s transcendence is to be absolutely contrasted with the natural world, such that God cannot be understood as the causal source of anything at all. God then turns out to be nothing more than a disinterested and uninvolved observer. To reject the concept of creation in this way is tantamount to rejecting traditional theism itself.
In the second way, however, one might be saying something about the actual relationship that holds between creatures and the Creator, which lies at the heart of the notion of providence. As I see it, the fundamental attitude, if not mistake, of the modern age is to analyze the human condition as abstracted from its metaphysical ground––which is Creation––and hence to deny, if not fully realize, the role and lot of creatures qua creatures. Many theists seem to have forgotten, misunderstood, or flat out denied what it fundamentally means to be a creature, which is to be a wholly dependent thing; a radically contingent thing; something that relies on God’s providential assistance at each moment that it exists.
It is clear in the literature that this notion of divine supremacy and its corollary of creaturely dependence is looked down upon as a philosophical starting-point. Some contemporary theologians even appear ashamed to acknowledge humans (or anything else, for that matter) as creatures––things that are beholden to the Creator in a deep metaphysical way. Some “modern” theists even use words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘dominance,’ ‘persecution’ and ‘bondage’ to talk about traditional notions of creaturely dependence. They explain that a God who is ‘sovereign Lord’ in the traditional sense is manipulative, inaccessible, or even misogynistic:
If we start with a basic disjunction between an active [Creator] and passive [created] partner, and allot a massive metaphysical privilege to the former, we end up associating technocratic humanity, masculinity, and distancing or dominating rationality with God. The result is the mess in which this planet now lives, as well as a model of God that signally fails to offer any good news (least of all those historically at the receiving end of manipulative dominance). Our crisis demands new models…[viii]
With some of this in mind, in her appropriately titled book, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment?, Kathryn Tanner tries to recast the traditional notion of providence or sovereignty in a different light. She notes that the contemporary problem of divine providence lies in the attempt “to aggrandize human autonomy and achievement at the cost of the creature’s absolute dependence on God…a basic surrender of either divine sovereignty or the dignity of the creature.”[ix] Accordingly, she sets out to establish the “logical consistency” of three claims:
1. A radically transcendent God exercises a universal and unconditional agency,
2. Created things possess their own power and efficacy, and
3. Human beings are free and therefore responsible for the character of their own lives.[x]
Central to her project is claim 1, which can be interpreted as another way of describing the strong view of providence that I characterized earlier. The modern response to reconciling these claims, Tanner contends, is for theists to find claims 1-3 inconsistent, and resolve them by weakening one or more, with the claim of choice usually being 1. However, Tanner argues that 1 is non-negotiable, and must be understood in the strongest sense. So with regard to God’s universal and immediate agency,
A created cause can be said to bring about a certain created effect by its own power, or a created agency can be talked about as freely intending the object of its rational volition, only if God is said to found that causality or agency directly and in toto––in power, exercise, manner of activity and effect.[xi]
The dependence of created things upon God is in toto and direct, not only for their existence but for their causal activity as well. The consequences for rejecting this, while still trying to maintain a theistic worldview are severe, as Tanner astutely observes:
In an attempt to make talk about God and world coherent, the philosophers (and those theologians who accept the philosophers’ critique) either limit the power and extent of divine agency, or deny that divine and created operations are ultimately distinct. In the first case, a space is cleared for creatures to operate apart from divine interference. In the second, the capacity of the creature to act and the scope of its activity cannot be reduced by the intensity and magnitude of God’s power since God’s work becomes in some sense the creature’s own.[xii]
That is to say, depending upon which aspect you loosen, something else falls by the wayside: either divine providence or genuine creaturely action.
At least, that is how one would interpret things were this a philosophical tract. Yet throughout her work, Tanner tries to make clear that at bottom, what all of these issues will boil down to is not a corruption of philosophical principles or theological impropriety, but “a curious forgetfulness about the rules for proper Christian talk on the part of the Church itself as a whole.”[xiii] So the inconsistency that Tanner sees is not truly metaphysical—as dealing with the object(s) or referents of theological discourse, e.g., God and creatures—but rather pertains only to theological discourse or statements. At one point, Tanner actually contends that theologians (and I suppose philosophers) who attempt to gain “metaphysical” mileage from their claims,
simply assume that what they say about God is meaningful and true: they have no way of actually specifying what they are talking about (the res significata of their statements) apart from the meaning of the terms they use and it is just those meanings whose applicability to God they admit to failing to understand.[xiv]
Is this all the philosophical theist can hope for? So much, then, for actually proposing a solution to the contemporary problem of providence. If the contemporary problem arises because theologians have not developed proper “rules” for theological discourse, then I think it is fair to say that we can leave the theologians to themselves, to argue about their rules of discourse and language games, and throw out the problem right alongside their so-called “solutions.”
A Fresh Step Back
Despite the tendencies of modern theology and its tactics, the fact remains that there is much to be gained by attending to these questions on the traditional, philosophical playing field. Many theists who are unwilling to take the contemporary theological approach seriously attempt to explain and defend the traditional view of providence by focusing on the teleological aspects of providence. By drawing God closer to His creatures, particularly by emphasizing His foreknowledge of all events, a case can be made for God’s intimate involvement with nature that does not compromise the established observations of science. For example, in a well-known essay titled, “Two Accounts of Providence,” Thomas Flint explains that the traditional notion of providence is really a view about God’s active control of “what will happen,” and that this active control is qualified in some sense by God’s foresight of the events in nature. Flint’s project, then, for explicating providence turns out to be an extended treatment of God’s knowledge from the Thomistic and Molinist points of view.[xv]
Jonathan Kvanvig & Hugh McCann have also argued for a teleological view of providence, where
Theists believe not only that God is responsible for the existence of the universe, but also that He providentially cares for all of His creation. At the very least, this implies divine control over the direction of history. The world is not left to its own devices…Rather, God Himself has prescribed the goal of history, and His providence ensures that events in time interact so as to achieve that goal.[xvi]
These two examples are characteristic of the general trend in the philosophy of religion when treating the concept of divine providence. Yet concerning this approach, an extensive debate still rages in the contemporary literature over many of what I take to be the “secondary” issues involved with providence: the compatibility between foreknowledge and human free will, particularly, whether there is such a thing as libertarian free will in light of God’s strong providence; whether there are such things as counterfactuals of freedom (i.e., do they have truth values, or are they “ungrounded?”); alongside the deep and vexing problem of evil.
On a whole, there appear to be no common principles employed among opponents, and no agreement appears forthcoming. What I want to suggest is that approaching the concept of divine providence from its teleological aspects is slightly misleading, because it seems to espouse either the view that God’s control or providence arises because of His omniscience––such that if God’s omniscience were limited in some respect, then limiting His providence would follow suit––or directly deflates God’s sovereignty, by situating the purpose of God’s creation (as opposed to the creation itself) as “outside” the divine nature. To approach the concept of providence from this angle, I think, creates pseudo-problems because it immediately begins with a paradox––one that doesn’t immediately rest on certain non-negotiable beliefs about the nature of God or creatures.
So I would like to take a fresh step back. With respect to the issue of providence, I believe that the proper starting point for the traditional theist is the Creator/creature divide. It is a non-negotiable theological fact that the God of Western monotheism owes nothing to His creatures. The relationship of creature to God is fundamentally one of servant to Lord, and far from putting God on the same metaphysical level with the world, the theist should speak rather with the subdued attitude of Job:
I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.
I have dealt with great things that I do not understand;
things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.
I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you.
Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.
(Jb 42:2-6)
This attitude can be translated back to the following philosophically robust claim: God is the transcendent, sovereign, and provident Lord of the universe. But in order to make sense of God’s providence and what it entails, we must recognize the underlying presuppositions that the doctrine brings with it. Clearly, to say that God is provident requires ‘something’ which God is provident over, and for the theist, that ‘something’ is related to God in a very fundamental and profound way: God is the Creator of the universe. And as a transcendent being His universal and immediate agency implies that the things God creates are immediately and completely dependent upon Him in every way.
Even for those theists who recognize this, the notions of creation and creaturely dependence are usually passed over in silence in discussions of providence, presumably because most philosophers consider them simply too obvious to mention. And yet I believe not mentioning them (much less not clarifying them) opens the door to a great many philosophical paradoxes and problems. God creates nature; nature is thoroughly constituted by God. As such, how can science––which is supposed to observe and describe nature––have anything to say in the affirmative or negative about what God’s providence consists of?
We cannot repeat it too often: What happens “by nature” happens “by virtue of creation”; that is, on the one hand it springs from the creature’s inmost and most personal impulse; on the other hand, the initial momentum for this impulse does not come from the heart of this same created being but from the act of creatio that set in motion the entire dynamics of the universe.[xvii]
At first glance, there seems to be something more central to an understanding of the notion of providence than merely outlining the necessary attributes of God that drive it, which is at the heart of the teleological view. Clearly those attributes are important, but only insofar as God decides to exercise them, and create something at all. Though the doctrines are not identical, the concept of divine providence has little or no meaning for creatures independently of the doctrine of creation. So in accord with the second definition of providence posed above, I contend that the traditional view of providence is logically grounded in the fact that God causally provides for or makes ready His creatures by actually creating them in the first place. So the defender of the Strong-View of Providence (SP)—which I will argue is absolutely non-negotiable for the theist––must claim that God is provident first and foremost because He is responsible for the being of everything.[xviii]
On this note, the SP will be treated more as a thesis about God’s proper causality in relation to its effects, particularly the depth of God’s causal involvement in creation, and less about His rule or governance. It may turn out, given our limited perspective of the universe, that we come to recognize God’s causal providence only after experiencing His teleological “guiding hand.” Yet since creation is logically prior to the governance we experience as creatures, we cannot fully understand what it means for God to be truly sovereign unless we come to discern the metaphysical extent and depth of His causal providence.
So the observation I am making is that the SP presupposes a bit more about the nature of God than initially suggested: That is, not only (1) that God is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being who has existed for all eternity; but also, (2) that God is in some way––either directly or indirectly––causally responsible for the existence of every contingent thing, and (3) that there is no other being that is beyond the scope of or competes with God’s providential power. In sum, (1)-(3) suggest that the primary condition for God’s providence is that He is (a) the sole Creator of the universe and everything in it.
That is not all. In contrast to theists, deists are wont to contend that God’s initial act of creation is sufficient for the existence and subsequent persistence of the universe and its denizens.[xix] However, more traditional theists believe that the nature of created things is radically contingent, such that “if the ruling power of God were withdrawn from his creatures, their form would at once cease and all nature would collapse.” (DP 5,1) On this view, nothing that God creates is capable of sustaining its own existence from one moment to the next. Providence of the theologically significant sort requires that creatures be metaphysically dependent upon the Creator. Any degree of existential independence on the part of the creature makes trivial the kind of sovereignty God exercises over the universe. Thus traditional theists often add a fourth claim to the three mentioned above: (4) God’s continual and immediate sustenance is required for the universe’s subsequent existence and maintenance. Hence theological orthodoxy appears to demand not only (a), but further that (b) God must conserve everything that He creates. This divine conservation is said to take place through God’s direct and immediate activity on creatures and their effects, not via some transitive, mediate causality, or some far-reaching causal sequence initiated at a distinct but remote moment (e.g., the big bang theory).
Thus creation and conservation are thought to be the minimal conditions necessary to ground a theory of God’s providential activity––or divine agency, as it is sometimes referred to––and together these two conditions draw out the unique hierarchical relationship that holds between creature and Creator. Once this hierarchical relationship is acknowledged, the question of whether some account (if any) of God’s further non-miraculous activity in nature becomes more apparent, because without it a coherent account of creaturely causation is impossible. That is to say, secondary (creaturely) causation can only be properly explained against the backdrop of primary (God’s) causation, particularly in light of the depth of divine providence.
There is one last issue to consider with regard to the causal aspect of divine providence that I have attempted to characterize. Given a more extended picture of what is at stake in the belief that God is the transcendent, sovereign Lord of the universe, some theists have contended that creatures are radically dependent upon God not only for their existence, but even their causal activity in the world. These theists attempt to offer compelling reasons for thinking that God’s intimate involvement in nature really is ubiquitous: God does have His hands in absolutely everything, given His creative and conservative role in nature. So these theists posit a final condition for God’s providential activity: (5) that God’s power is so “deep” in creation that He must be actively involved in the events that occur in nature, i.e., (c) God acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and/or in the production of their effects.
This third condition for God’s strong providence was employed and mostly taken for granted during the late medieval period, but has been a source of controversy and dissent ever since the early modern period. At bottom, the disagreement among theists is not over God’s primary causation, but over God’s immediate involvement in secondary causation. Alfred Freddoso highlights the central problem in this way:
Given the fundamental theistic tenet that God is the provident Lord of nature, the First Efficient Cause who creates the universe, [and] sustains it in being … how exactly do the actions of secondary (i.e., created) causes fit in with God’s own activity in the ordinary course of nature?[xx]
The real worry that should be attended to, I believe, concerns God’s strong providence and whether or not it is compatible with the theistic belief that God has created beings that are genuine and free causal agents. Most orthodox theists strongly endorse some positive view about genuine causal agency (hereafter GCA) in order to account for the existence of sin and moral responsibility. For example, if God is all-good, then it would seem that God can in no way contribute causally to sinful human actions. Yet if God is immediately involved in the operations of creatures, then the theist committed to (c) seems to place God right at the causal locus of sin. Further, how can creatures be said to truly act if they cannot do so without God’s immediate aid? Does it make sense to talk of creatures having causal powers at all?
Historically, there have been many attempts to reconcile the SP with GCA. It is on this matter that theists have chosen to set up camp and primarily affirm or loosen the traditional restraints of divine providence. For depending upon how deep one believes God’s providence is in nature, one’s view about how creaturely freedom can be reconciled with it (if at all) becomes apparent. So on the basis of the two claims noted earlier––SP and GCA––three distinct philosophical views about God’s non-miraculous causal activity in nature have emerged: Mere Conservationism (CON), Occasionalism (OCC), and Concurrentism (CUR).
Mere Conservationism
While deism in all its various forms seems to be part of the pre-reflective belief system of most non-academics, CON appears to be the theory of choice for the contemporary theologian or theistic philosopher, and not without good reason I think. The appeal of CON lies in its simple affirmation of the SP and GCA. First, mere conservationists argue that creation and conservation alone are enough to secure God’s strong providence. God is said to be provident in the sense that He contributes to the ordinary course of nature by creating and continually conserving every natural (contingent) substance with its accidents (including their active and passive causal powers) throughout its existence. So God’s power is necessary and sufficient for the existence and character of everything in the natural universe.
Given God’s creative and sustaining power, however, created substances are claimed to be genuine, transeunt (i.e., inter-substantial), secondary causes. Mere conservationists explain that the claim “God operates in nature” really means that God is only mediately involved in the acts of creatures by giving creatures their proper powers to act, and by conserving the powers of creatures at each moment they exist. Once created and conserved, the powers of creatures themselves are causally necessary and sufficient for the obtaining of their own natural effects. So if God is said to be mediately involved in creaturely acts, God does not also thereby operate directly or immediately on nature, for that would render those acts superfluous on the part of creatures. In this way, CON denies that condition (c) is implied by God’s strong providence.
Occasionalism
If mere conservationists can be said to weaken the traditional notion of the SP in favor of GCA, occasionalists go to the opposite extreme: OCC strictly maintains the strong view of providence at the complete expense of GCA. Occasionalists argue that God’s providence is so ubiquitous that God’s causal activity alone can ensure the relationship between causes and effects in nature. Hence there is literally no creaturely or secondary causation. Natural substances neither possess their own active causal powers, nor can they contribute causally to any natural effect which is external to their substance. Certain variations of OCC seem to allow for the possibility of intra-substantial causation (e.g. for angels or humans), which then accounts for the change in the internal states or inclinations of the creature, but at best such activity is extremely limited. All occasionalists agree, however, that true secondary transeunt action is impossible.
What follows from this view is that there are no logically necessary connections between natural causes and natural effects. God alone provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for the obtaining of any genuine inter-substantial event whatsoever. Indeed, most occasionalists contend that God is metaphysically unable to grant creatures any causal efficacy, because to do so would require God to relinquish His providential control in some way, and as hinted at above, God simply cannot fail to be absolutely sovereign in creation. So on this interpretation, the SP implies that God is really the only true cause of natural events.
Concurrentism
CUR provides a middle ground between OCC and CON by seriously affirming both the SP and GCA. In agreement with occasionalists, concurrentists claim that God is immediately involved in the operations of His creatures. But contrary to occasionalists, concurrentists claim that although such activity is necessary, it is not sufficient for the obtaining of any particular natural event. In the execution of an ordinary act of efficient causality God and creature co-operate, or act concurrently, both employing their causal powers in such a way as to act by the same action, so as to produce one unitary (not partial) effect. So in agreement with CON, creatures make a genuine causal contribution to their effects. Yet this only occurs if God wills to cooperate immediately with the creature, over and above His creation and conservation of the creatures causal powers. So both creature and God are required for the obtaining of a concurrent cause,[xxi] contrary to CON, and were either to withdraw their contribution, no effect at all would ensue. Concurrentists explain that only on this general model can the SP be made consistent with GCA, especially free action, while avoiding the extremes that arise for the other two theories.
The Project
The purpose of my dissertation is to explain the theological and philosophical motivations behind the theory of CUR, as well as offer a model by which to make sense of its “radical” position with respect to CON and OCC. So first and foremost this is a dissertation about God’s proper, primary causation, and the implications it has on whether or not there is creaturely/secondary causation in nature. It is an attempt to carve out the historical and philosophical landscape regarding the doctrine of God’s causal providence “from the top down.” My overall argument will be that CUR is a serious contender as an explanation of God’s non-miraculous activity in nature, and that on analysis it is probably the only position compatible with traditional theism.
The path I take to developing and defending this view is as follows. In chapter 2, I offer a traditional interpretation of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, one that sharply distinguishes it in kind from ordinary, natural efficient causality or production. Since all traditional theists believe that God is the ex nihilo Creator of the heavens and the earth––that is, of every contingent thing in existence, I argue that on the basis of this traditional interpretation, the doctrine of creation logically commits the theist to the further belief that God is the divine Conserver of everything that exists. In chapter 3, I attend to the doctrine of divine conservation. Given the metaphysical depth of God’s creation and conservation of all things, I argue that it follows that God must operate immediately in the production of creaturely effects and in the operations of creatures. These three views about God’s activity in the world––creation, conservation and immediate operation in nature––constitute what I am calling the SP.
In chapter 4, I employ the SP as a model by which to evaluate the various theories of secondary causation available. Of the three possible contenders—Mere Conservationism, Occasionalism, and Concurrentism—I argue that only the latter two are compatible with the SP. I then attend directly to the theory of occasionalism, and object to it by showing how the theory either undermines its commitments to both divine providence and human agency––so is philosophically and theologically unacceptable––or is better categorized as a partial-version of one of the other two theories. Since the mere conservationist-type view is ruled out, simply given the conditions of the SP, it follows that the most plausible view for the traditional theist to hold is some version of concurrentism. I then conclude the dissertation with a defense and positive analysis of the doctrine of concurrentism. In Ch. 5, I offer a more thorough explanation of why God must concur with creatures, and attend to several objections to the view. Lastly, in Ch. 6 I explain what God’s concurrence amounts to, and offer a model for how God concurs with both natural and free creatures.
Notes
CHAPTER 2: THE STRONG VIEW OF PROVIDENCE (PART I)
In the beginning of Book III of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas Aquinas presents a summary of the results of Books I & II which nicely highlights the conditions leading into his discussion of God’s providence:
We have shown in the preceding books that there is one First Being, possessing the full perfection of all being, whom we call God, and who of the abundance of His perfection, bestows being on all that exists, so that He is proved to be not only the first of beings, but also the beginning of all. Moreover He bestows being on others, not through natural necessity, but according to the decree of His will, as we have shown above. Hence it follows that He is the Lord of the things made by Him: since we dominate over those things that are subject to our will. And this is a perfect dominion that He exercises over things made by Him, forasmuch as in their making He needs neither the help of an extrinsic agent, nor matter as the foundation of His work: since He is the universal efficient cause of all being. (SCG III.1; my emphasis)
Throughout his works, Aquinas emphasizes the fact that a complete understanding of divine providence consists of more than just the “simple” claim that God is lord over all creation. Given a traditional understanding of divine providence, the creative act implies an order of perfection, and to institute such an order is to govern from a transcendent point of view. Yet God’s ruling power should not be seen or characterized as something merely extrinsic to creation.[xxii] To say that God has “perfect dominion” over all things, according to Aquinas, means that God’s power is immanent in creation: God Himself acts in or through the causal operations of creatures. So for Aquinas, God’s providence implies a deep and intimate involvement of a metaphysical sort in ordinary natural, creaturely affairs: there is nothing that goes on in the universe which God does not, in some way, directly and immediately provide for.[xxiii]
As explained in chapter 1, this traditional theistic position––which I call the Strong View of Providence (SP)––is seen in contemporary philosophical circles as tenuous, if not downright false. What I will propose in this and the next chapter is that the SP is the minimal position that the orthodox theist should hold concerning God’s causal involvement in nature. For orthodox theism brings along with it the traditional view that God creates ex nihilo, and given that, it follows that whatever God creates turns out to be radically dependent upon Him, such that He must contribute in some active, immediate way to every causal event in nature, over and above His creative and sustaining activity. Simply in virtue of being an orthodox theist, then, one is thereby committed to the SP.
My analysis of the SP will be split up into two chapters. In this chapter I will investigate:
A. The necessary conditions for the Strong View of Providence (SP), and
B. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo (CEN).
In chapter 3 I will discuss the doctrine of divine conservation, and what that further implies for God’s causal involvement in nature.
A. The Strong View of Providence (SP)
Philosophers of the Western monotheistic tradition––particularly Christian theists––all believe that God has providential control over every contingent thing in existence. This general belief about God’s providence seems intuitively to follow from the more basic belief that God is responsible for the existence of every contingent thing. God is first and foremost hailed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, “of all that is seen and unseen.”[xxiv] Further, the Creator is said not only to create every contingent thing, but to conserve or sustain the existence of the objects of His creation. Lastly, as a wise and just Creator, God is believed to be causally involved in creation––periodically maintaining and making His presence known through various events of a miraculous character––for the physical and spiritual well-being of His creatures. This, I contend, is the extent of the ordinary view of providence that most philosophical theists hold.[xxv]
In contrast to the ordinary view, the Strong View of Providence consists of the following three theses:[xxvi]
(a) God is Creator in the strongest possible sense, i.e., God creates things ex nihilo.
(b) God is responsible for sustaining or conserving His creatures in the strongest possible sense, such that if He withdrew His conservative activity, everything “would at once cease and all nature would collapse.”[xxvii]
(c) God’s non-miraculous activity in nature is not exhausted by creation and conservation, i.e., God also acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and/or in the production of their effects.
When I say that someone holds or is committed to the SP, what I mean is that s/he believes or is committed to theses (a)-(c); theses (a)-(c) are necessary conditions for the SP. In contrast, I will characterize the Weak View of Providence (WP) as implying a commitment only to (a) and (b).[xxviii] What makes the SP strong, then, is thesis (c), for it suggests that God is not “hands-off” with respect to nature––e.g., by only making Himself known through periodic miraculous doings or revelation––but is immediately present by contributing to the acts of creatures and/or their effects. The defender of the SP contends that God is not simply a creator, but The Creator: God bestows being-as-such to everything that He creates, which implies the in toto production of the creature. Further, God is not simply the sustainer of creation, but is metaphysically required to sustain and maintain the existence of everything He creates. Everything that He creates essentially depends upon Him for its existence and continued sustenance at each moment it exists. Creatures are simply not capable of sustaining their own existence, or of even preserving their own properties and/or powers. Lastly, given God’s role as implied by (a) and (b), there is nothing that happens such that the being of it is not contributed to and sustained by God in some immediate way. If the effect of a cause has being, then defenders of the SP claim that God can be said to have operated in that effect in some way. If events in nature have being, then God contributes to the being of those events in some way, and so on. Though there is sharp disagreement about the how (c) ought to be interpreted,[xxix] whatever the degree of God’s contribution in nature, it is clear that the defender of the SP maintains that God’s non-miraculous involvement in nature is not exhausted by His creative and conservative activity.
Through much of the medieval period the SP was the predominant view concerning the causal aspect of God’s providence in nature. For example, this view of providence is what Aquinas goes on to defend in Part III of his Summa Contra Gentiles. Luis de Molina employs the SP in his Concordia, and Francisco Suarez has a fairly extensive treatment and defense of it in his Metaphysical Disputations.[xxx] However, for a variety of reasons this view was mostly abandoned during the early modern period, one of the more significant factors being, I think, the prevailing of science over metaphysics as the proper discipline for offering the ultimate causal explanations of things.[xxxi] Since then the trend in philosophy of religion has been for orthodox theists to contend that the WP is sufficient to account for God’s non-miraculous activity in nature. What I intend to show in the next section is that simply in virtue of being an orthodox theist––particularly, by being committed to creation ex nihilo––one appears to be thereby committed to the SP.
B. Theistic Motivations for the SP
As I am characterizing it, the SP should be considered more a thesis about God’s proper causality, particularly the depth of God’s causal involvement in creation, than a thesis about His rule or governance. The motivation for such a position is simple. As noted in chapter 1, “providere” has two basic meanings: 1. to foresee, or see at a distance; and 2. to provide for, prepare, or to make ready. Historically theists have often preferred to focus on the first definition, for it emphasizes the more common, teleological aspects of providence, and draw to mind God’s essential goodness, power, and knowledge.[xxxii] However, these aspects of God’s essential being and His relation to creatures are better represented, I think, by definition 2. How better to ground one’s view about providence than in the claim that God provides for or makes ready creation, particularly in virtue of the fact that it is through a preparatory act––a directed execution of His power––that there is a creation in the first place? With regard to the creative act, the activity described by definition 2 is the metaphysical ground for the activity described by definition 1.[xxxiii]
God is the “Lord of the things made by Him,” because first and foremost He has bestowed being on all that exists in the most impressive way possible: ex nihilo. This concept of ex nihilo creation is the chief motivating factor for the SP, and when properly understood helps establish the conditions under which a certain interpretation of God’s causal activity in nature can be further developed.
B.1. Creatio Ex Nihilo (CEN)
“Properly speaking there is but one God Who is Being,
and beings, which are not God.”––Etienne Gilson
Most traditional Christian theists accept as a part of doctrine that God created the universe and everything in it ex nihilo, or from nothing. The ecumenical creeds clearly accept and expound upon this theological position, and Christian philosophers from Augustine onward have consistently explained that the opening line of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth [In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram],” properly should be understood as an affirmation of God’s creation without the need for any pre-existing matter.[xxxiv]
To speak of a weaker or “another kind” of creation, it appears, would be a misuse of the term itself. To put things into a wider perspective for just a moment, this notion of a creator God––a God that can bring things into existence from “mere nothingness” by a simple utterance––would have been completely foreign to the ancients. To be sure, many of the Hellenists believed that there were “immortal” beings of a certain sort, but no single one of those beings would have ever been touted as the infinite, perfect, absolute, a se creator and sustainer of the universe––the “being than which none greater can be conceived,” as Anselm of Canterbury described.
For example, Plato’s Demiurge of the Timaeus doesn’t even come close to meeting the criteria for the concept “Supreme Being,” at least, as it was understood by the scholastics. First, the Demiurge is not the ex nihilo creator of the universe and everything in it––the Demiurge merely enforms the pre-existing matter, and must do this in accordance with the laws of the forms and not in accord with its own self-efficacious volitions. Secondly, the Demiurge is not wholly supreme, for it has rivals in the intelligible order of Ideas. Though Plato describes it as the first of the gods, nonetheless, it is but one among many. Some have tried to represent the Demiurge as “almost analogous to the Christian God,” but on proper reflection this is simply not acceptable. Either there is one God or there are many, and a god who is described as “almost analogous” to the Christian God is not the Christian God at all––In fact, it is infinitely unlike Him. For the Christian or traditional theist, there are and can be no degrees of divinity: God, and God alone is divine.[xxxv]
Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover (UM) fares no better. For the UM is not unique either; it is just the first among many “beings as being,” akin to Plato’s Demiurge. Furthermore, the UM participates in pure act only in the order of thought, “thought thinking itself;” it is not the source of existence for anything, and is not a creator at all, i.e., the UM is not pure act in the order of being, as Thomas Aquinas would say. The UM cannot be an infinite being either, for as Aristotle understood the concept of infinity, infinity is that outside of which there is always something. If that is true then nothing at all could possibly be infinite, not even the gods. But for the medievals, the concept of infinity takes on an analogical, qualitative aspect when used as a predicate for the divine substance, and so the infinite for someone like Aquinas turns out to be that outside of which there can be nothing. For the medievals, God is Being Itself––not just some being or other––Who possesses eminently all the perfections that can possibly be possessed, which makes Him Infinite Being.[xxxvi]
That being said, we now have a dim beacon by which to direct our discussion concerning the concept and act of creation: the notion of Infinite Being, or more specifically, infinite power. What I intend to do in this section is briefly assess the question of whether or not Creation Ex Nihilo, hereafter abbreviated as CEN, requires infinite power, and what the answer to that question implies for both God and creatures. The first step will be to offer a traditional interpretation and analysis of CEN, one that sharply distinguishes it from ordinary, natural efficient causality or production. Next, I will argue that this interpretation affords us a distinction between the mode or manner by which creation effects things, and the possible objects of creation. Given that distinction, I argue that the power to create is of an order wholly unlike natural production or creaturely power, yet can also be considered absolutely infinite on a scale commensurable with it. Taken together, these conclusions provide grounds for the traditional claim that CEN-power, or the power to create ex nihilo, cannot be communicated to creatures. This claim will be of some importance when I go on to defend theses (b) and (c) of the SP.
B.2. An Analysis of CEN
CEN is best understood as a special type of transeunt, efficient causality or production that has at least three distinguishing characteristics: (i) it does not involve a material cause or pre-existing “patient,” (ii) it does not imply movement or change in the object created, and hence (iii) is instantaneous.
To explain each of these characteristics, I’ll begin with a terse definition of CEN from Thomas Aquinas, which was generally accepted and expounded upon by the late scholastics: “to create is nothing else than to bring something into being without prejacent [praeiacenti] matter.” (SCG II.16)[xxxvii] By prejacent matter Aquinas means “pre-existing” matter or material of some sort, or the existence of matter prior to some modification or other in the act of creation. Thus in an act of creation, as Aquinas defines it, it is not the case that some matter or other is modified by the introduction of a form, whether substantial or accidental. Absolutely nothing is presupposed on the part of the effect in CEN. Lest there be any confusion about what that implies, I shall further say that in order for an entity produced by God to truly count as a creature, neither that substance nor any of its constituents or accidents can have existed prior to its creation.[xxxviii]
Minimally, then, characteristic (i) implies that an act of creation is the bringing about of a substance de novo.[xxxix] Further, CEN implies that the entire patient is brought about de novo. That is, for God to create something ex nihilo is for God to bring that thing into existence thoroughly and completely, or in toto.[xl] CEN is literally the giving of being-as-such to a thing, its whole substantial being. For this reason, the medievals sometimes refer to creation as the universal cause or origin of something. To speak of creation as the universal cause or origin of something does not thereby mean that creation is the general (as opposed to particular) cause of being. Rather, for CEN to be the universal cause of a thing means that it is the “all-pervasive cause-of-being, whose proper effect is the bestowal of existing [to that thing].”[xli] In short, CEN is the original and complete (whole) production of a thing directly by the action of the creator or agent, hence the qualification ex - nihilo, or from nothing at all.
Next, if the effect of CEN is a substance in toto, then the effect of CEN just is the patient and, as noted, not a mere modification of something that pre-exists the act of creation. Therefore since CEN presupposes absolutely nothing on the part of the effect, we get characteristic (ii), which means that there is no change or movement implied by an act of CEN, for quite literally there is no patient or subject prior to the act to be moved or changed. That is, there is nothing acted upon in creation.
Lastly, if there is no patient acted upon in CEN, and hence no change or movement implied by the act, then no temporal succession or duration can be implied by CEN either.[xlii] For without change or movement, there can be no state of becoming in an act of creation. In CEN, the only relevant contrast that one could experience is between there being nothing, and then later there being something. So we get characteristic (iii): CEN is instantaneous.
When looked at carefully, we can see how (ii) and (iii) are actually special consequences of (i), and jointly they illustrate several differences between CEN and ordinary efficient causality or production as understood by medieval Aristotelians. Every example of ordinary or natural (creaturely) causality, they say, must involve both an agent and a patient, where the agent in question either generates a substance from some pre-existing matter (i.e., it educes or “draws out” some substantial form from matter)––e.g., when a parent begets a child––or alters some pre-existing substance (i.e., it introduces or removes an accidental form)––e.g., when a parent cuts her child’s hair. In both cases, contra (i), either some matter or a discrete substance is presupposed by and remains through the activity, and so contra (ii), must involve a movement or change, i.e., a succession of states, in some patient or other. Lastly, with regard to characteristic (iii), although it is not apparent that the succession of states involved in ordinary production must always be temporal (though in most cases it is) as opposed to merely logical, it should be clear that a proper understanding of creation involves no succession whatsoever, whether temporal or logical. So although an Aristotelian might contend that there are cases of instantaneous change (the Scholastics even had a word for it: mutatio), contra (iii), there is no room to speak of a temporal creation.
Another distinguishing feature of ordinary causality is that natural agents do not determine the scope of their effects absolutely. First, there are limitations on the scope of an agent’s acting which are introduced by the patient. I will call these extrinsic limitations, since the source of the limitation is extrinsic to the agent. No matter how powerful an agent is, there is only so much that can be done with any given patient or material cause in an act of ordinary production. For example, a block of wood determines what can or cannot be made from it just as much as the carpenter does, for wood admits of only so many forms. We can call this feature of the wood its passive potentiality (or passive power), to distinguish it from the active power of the carpenter. In every act of ordinary production, the passive potentiality of the patient delimits the range of effects of the agent in some way or other, i.e., it delimits the forms that might be generated or altered in it when it is acted upon by the agent. Hence, from the perspective of the agent, anything that is naturally produced (i.e., not created) is brought about by a power the scope of which is extrinsically limited by the potentialities of its patient. Conversely, from the aspect of the patient, those same passive potentialities can be considered as active and necessary causal contributors to the natural acts of production that they participate in.[xliii]
Secondly, there are intrinsic limitations on the scope of an agent’s activity, which are introduced by the agent itself. An intrinsic limitation is a limitation on the agent insofar as it has the capacity to act as an efficient cause, that is, it is a factor determinative of an agent’s causal power that is derived solely from the nature of the agent without influence from anything distinct from the agent. Finite natural agents are always limited with respect to what they can produce simply in virtue of the fact that their natures are finite and hence limited in some way, whether in respect of power, knowledge, or other natural capacities.
It should be clear that these two forms of limitation––extrinsic and intrinsic––also distinguish ordinary causality from creation, which is not per se limited in either of these ways. Creation clearly has no extrinsic limitations, since by definition there is no pre-existing causal patient which possibly could delimit the range of its effects. The only candidate that might formally qualify as an extrinsic limitation on CEN-power––the power to Create Ex Nihilo––is whatever is contrary to or delimited by the nature of being itself, that is, whatever is metaphysically impossible.[xliv] So the per se theoretical scope of creation turns out to be whatever is metaphysically possible (with impossibility, then, being not much of a limitation). In agreement with Aquinas, we can say that God is the cause of being simply:
Agents [other than God] are the causes, not of being simply, but of being this, for example, of being a man, or of being white. But being simply is caused by creation which presupposes nothing, since nothing can pre-exist outside being simply. By other makings this or such a being is made: because this or such a being is made from an already existing being. (SCG II.21)
Further, on the assumption that God is an absolutely perfect being, His nature exemplifies no intrinsic limitation which could narrow the theoretical scope of His power to create.[xlv] Consider, e.g., the two most plausible intrinsic limitations that could be applied to God’s nature, namely that God is either
(1) Deficient in knowledge and is hence incapable of directing [His] creative intention to more than just a limited range of creatable entities; or
(2) Acts by a necessity of nature and is limited by nature to a single effect or range of effects.[xlvi]
Both are simply non-starters for traditional Christians, and most traditional theists in general. The very nature and concept of God precludes the possibility of either (1) or (2) applying to Him, given the plausibility of the claims that (1’) necessarily, God has perfect knowledge (God is omniscient) and (2’) necessarily, God is free to create the particular things He in fact does.[xlvii]
As I see it, (1’) and (2’) are true, so it follows that if God has CEN-power then He cannot be limited to any range of perfections per se––any particular determinations of being or other. Of course, anything that is in fact created receives a determinate sort of being. But the point here is that to be able to cause being simply implies the ability to bring about any being of any specific sort.[xlviii] So although CEN-power is terminated at something––i.e., it brings about a finite effect––it does not follow that CEN-power is terminated by anything at all (other than itself). Another way of saying this is that CEN-power is just the per se cause of being:
Now God’s power is the per se cause of being, and being is its proper effect… therefore it extends to all that is not incompatible with the notion of being: for if His power were confined to one effect alone, it would be the cause of a being, not as such, but as this particular being. (SCG II.22; my emphasis)
So whatever is the cause of a “this being,” but not also the being simply, is not the per se cause of that being, and so by implication must be limited either to a certain range of perfections, or cannot produce the whole substance of the thing in the act. Whereas CEN-power, as extending to “all that is not incompatible with the notion of being,” can thus bring into existence anything, the creation of which is metaphysically possible.
In short, if God has CEN-power then He can bring about any range of perfections, i.e., any particular determination(s) of being or other that can possibly be created. The per se depth and scope of CEN-power is not limited to any way that being can be determined, i.e., CEN-power, in its employment, covers every possible aspect or way that being can be participated in, for it (1) brings things into existence in toto, or “from the bottom up,” and (2) is not limited to any particular determinations of being or other. Let us call these features the intensive and extensive aspects of CEN, respectively.
Given this, we should recognize that the power to create is for God a proper (or principal) power, one that is perfectly commensurable with His nature––it not only flows directly from His nature, but is indeed proportionate with it.[xlix]
B.3. Incommensurability and the Mode of Creation
We are now in a position to focus in on a twofold distinction pertaining to the act of creation: first, there is the mode or manner in which the effect of creation is brought about; and second, there are the possible effects of creation. The latter is to be distinguished from the terminus ad quem of any particular act of creation, which pertains to the actual effect(s) or object(s) of creation. We will see in the next section why this is an important clarification. My contention is that this twofold distinction will help us understand how to further contrast and compare CEN-power with natural creaturely power, and explain how CEN-power is both incommensurably great as well as absolutely infinite in degree.
First, when we consider the mode or manner of creation, it follows that CEN-power is incommensurable with natural creaturely power. This simply follows from characteristic (i), or the fact that CEN brings about its effects without a material cause, i.e., ex nihilo. If CEN brings about its effects without a material cause, then there is no scale or proportion relative to its mode in which it can be commensurate with natural creaturely production. For insofar as an act of creation produces an effect in a manner or mode wholly unlike that of creaturely power, it is clear that creation is in no way like natural creaturely power at all––and this is what it means to say that it is “in-commensurable,” or not capable of being measured with it.[l]
The incommensurable character of CEN-power was a theological cornerstone for the scholastics. For example, given the incommensurability of CEN-power, Aquinas attempts to argue for the traditional claim that the power to create is unique to God. Aquinas defends this position in several places, with the most succinct argument being in the Summa Theologica:
The power of the maker is reckoned not only from the substance of the thing made, but also from the mode of its being made; for a greater heat heats not only more, but quicker. Therefore, although to create a finite effect does not show an infinite power, yet to create it from nothing does show an infinite power: which appears from what has been said (ad 2). For if a greater power is required in the agent in proportion to the distance of the potentiality from the act, it follows that the power of that which produces something from no presupposed potentiality is infinite, because there is no proportion between no potentiality and the potentiality presupposed by the power of a natural agent, as there is no proportion between not being and being. And because no creature simply has an infinite power, any more than it can have infinite being, as was proved above (7, 2), it follows that no creature can create. (ST I.45.5.ad3; my emphasis)
In its simplest form, Aquinas’s argument appears to be as follows:
(1) CEN-power is incommensurable with natural, creaturely power.
(2) If CEN-power is incommensurable with natural, creaturely power, then CEN-power must be infinite.
(3) If CEN-power must be infinite, then no creature can create.
( (4) No creature can create.
Let’s flesh out this argument—or the crucial premise (2)—a bit. In the beginning of the passage, Aquinas emphasizes that with regard to the act of producing or making, we ought to distinguish between what is made (“the substance of the thing”) and how that thing is made (“the mode of its being made”). From either of these vantage points, Aquinas contends, can the power of the maker be “reckoned,” or determined. Of course, the method of determination will be different, depending upon which part of the distinction one considers. He then introduces the following principle:
P: The greater the degree of difference between (or “distance” of) the potentiality and the act, the more power is required to produce the act (i.e., the effect).
What Aquinas has in mind here is quite interesting. When an agent produces something––i.e., is an efficient cause––that agent acts so as to bring about an effect. With regard to natural creaturely power, such an act always presupposes some patient. If so, some degree of difference of being or perfection always obtains between the patient and the effect to be produced. This proportion or “distance,” then, reflects the amount of power required by the agent to bring the patient from potentiality to act. For example, consider a lump of clay. If an agent were to mold the piece of clay into a sphere, it would take a certain amount of power, which would be reflected by the degree of potentiality––the degree of difference of complexity, as it were––between the “shapeless” lump and the subsequent sphere. Similarly, if an agent were to mold the clay into a human figurine, still more power would be required, given the greater complexity of the act to be obtained in comparison to the sphere. Seemingly, this kind of analysis can go on ad infinitum, given greater and greater degrees of complexity or distances of the potentiality from the act to be obtained. So in general there is a proportion or relation that holds between the potentiality of the effect and the power required to manifest it.
Thus, instead of trying to prove that God’s power is infinite because God can create (or has created) infinite substances––which would be to prove the power of the maker “from the substance of the thing made”––Aquinas takes a different route. The reason for this is that Aquinas seems to accept the claim that “all created being is finite,” hence when one applies principle P to any particular substance, at best, one will demonstrate really, really great power, but never infinite power.[li] Thus, Aquinas approaches the problem from the second part of the distinction, which is to prove the power of the maker “from the mode of its being made.”
At this point, we get Aquinas’s main premise: What it takes to bring about something ex nihilo––to produce something “from no presupposed potentiality”––is to have a power that is radically different in degree from natural creaturely power, which always has some potentiality presupposed by it: In fact, it’s infinite. By examining principle P, we can determine that such power, which is executed from no presupposed potentiality, cannot be proportioned to the potentiality which is necessarily presupposed in any act of ordinary, creaturely production, no matter how great.[lii] Now this lack of a proportion cannot imply that no power is required in order to produce the effect, but rather the opposite: infinite power is required.
This lack of a proportion in power between creation and natural production is likened to the metaphysical ground of the effect, which is that there is absolutely no ontological “distance” or proportion between non-being (not being) and being. [liii] At first, this may (or may not) sound contrary to one’s intuitions, because it appears that there is at least as much ontological “distance” between being and non-being as there is in the finite being itself, if such things can be quantified over, that is. Francisco Suarez seems to think so, for on this matter he observes that
A given being is distant from nothingness only in proportion to the degrees of being that it has within itself. This is why, in Sentences 4, dist. 5, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5, St. Thomas likewise denies that there is an infinite distance, on the part of a given being, between itself and non-being except when the being in question is infinite. (DM XX.2.37; my emphasis)
At first glance, this observation appears to impugn Aquinas’ earlier remarks. However, we need to keep in mind that Aquinas is claiming primarily that the lack of proportion comes in on the side of the power––viz., the mode of that power––required to produce the effect, and not “on the part of [the] given being” or object of production itself.[liv]
And yet, even if we were to focus on any given creature (or being), even though it has a finite, particular degree of being within itself––its “distance from nothingness,” as Suarez calls it––there really is no finite degree of potentiality to be analyzed between its non-existence and its subsequent existence. When something is created, a thing is brought into existence in which there literally was no potentiality presupposed. Each thing that God creates is such that prior to its creation “it” had no positive disposition or per se tendency to exist. Prior to its creation, a creature is not such that it both has the potentiality to-be and potentiality not-to-be, for a non-existent thing does not possess any characteristics whatsoever, potentialities included. If a non-existent thing could be said to have any potentialities at all, then at most it would have the potentiality to exist per aliunde, that is, through another, where that “another” is the Creator Himself.[lv] Hence the contingency of the creature is said to be a radical contingency, not pertaining at all to the creature itself, thereby eliminating talk of there being any proportion at all between the non-being of a thing and its subsequent existence with regard to its mode of production.[lvi]
Therefore, with regard to the mode or manner of acting, if CEN-power is incommensurable with creaturely power, it must be infinite. Since no creature has infinite power, because no creature has infinite being, then it follows that no creature can create.
B.4. Infinity and The Possible Effects of Creation
One of the real lessons to be learned from Aquinas’s argument is that if God’s CEN-power is examined solely with regard to its terminus ad quem, that is, from the perspective of its actual effect(s) or “the substance of the thing made,” then nothing is demonstrated, strictly speaking, about whether the scope of God’s power is actually infinite. Indeed, the ability to cause being simply does not suggest anything about the degree of God’s power. William Ockham, for example, also considers the following objection:
Even if one presupposes that God is an efficient cause of all things, it cannot thereby be sufficiently proved that God is infinite in strength. For the infinity of the cause cannot be proved from a finite effect…But every effect producible by God is finite…Therefore…[lvii]
Further, after assessing a wide variety of objections from Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, Suarez also concludes that CEN-power cannot be demonstrated to be infinite “on the part of the object,” or the terminus ad quem. So it appears that Aquinas has initially hit upon the right way of approaching the problem, which is to focus not on the substance or measure of the thing made, but on the mode of creation, and to demonstrate the connection between the incommensurability and infinity of CEN-power.
Although I find Aquinas’s strategy compelling, there appears to be a fly in the ointment, particularly with regard to the main inference. To see this, I turn to Francisco Suarez, who offers one of the most penetrating objections against Aquinas’s argument for the infinity of CEN-power. After carefully evaluating each premise, Suarez concedes that Aquinas’s argument “aptly proves that a creative power, by the very fact that it is creative, is incommensurable with a power that educes [a form] from the potentiality of matter.” (DM XX.2.39; my emphasis) Yet he goes on to observe that
It is wrong to infer from this [incommensurability] that it will be an absolutely infinite power. For it will be enough if it is a power of a different order––likewise often called “infinite,” relatively speaking––which is not absurd to countenance. And this suffices for its being the case that the power in question is incommensurable with any power that can operate only through the eduction of a form from the potentiality of matter; for commensurability is present only between things that are of the same type or quantitative order. (DM XX.2.39; my emphasis)
Suarez’s point, I think, is straightforward: Although CEN-power is clearly incommensurable with––or of a wholly different order than––the finite power exemplified by creatures in ordinary acts of natural production, such a difference in kind does not imply the requisite difference in degree to be considered absolutely infinite:
Therefore, one cannot conclude that a power which produces something ex nihilo is greater––or infinite––because of a surplus of eductive power (as I will put it); rather, one can conclude only that a power that acts in this way––namely, [by producing something] ex nihilo––is of an order different from, and superior to, any merely eductive power, even an eductive power that can educe a form from a maximally remote real potentiality…the powers are incommensurable. (DM XX.2.39)
So according to Suarez, Aquinas is entitled to say that the power to create is only incommensurable, even superior, and hence only relatively (as opposed to absolutely) infinite. But Aquinas needs the stronger claim in premise (2) to get the conclusion he is after.
I take this observation to be decisive. Still, I think there is an independent way to demonstrate the quantitative infinity of CEN-power. So at the outset, let us agree with Suarez and others that by focusing merely on the terminus ad quem of creation, we will only be able to say that God is extremely powerful––that God has the ability to bring about a whole host of finite objects or effects. This, admittedly, tells us very little about the quantitative scope of God’s power. Further, if Suarez is correct, then by considering the mode of creation we can only claim that the power to create is incommensurably great, and so is at least relatively infinite. These two considerations by themselves do not give us the requisite quantitative order required to show that the power to create is absolutely infinite.[lviii] Is there another way to approach the problem? That is, what would count as a good criterion for determining absolute infinity?
Ironically, Suarez himself provides a suitable groundwork for responding to his objection. Concerning CEN-power, Suarez explains that:
All these principles [employed in the arguments under consideration] boil down to the claim that any power to create must necessarily be such that it extends to every creatable thing. But this claim does not seem to be adequately proved by what we have said thus far and by just concentrating on the terminus ad quem of creation. (DM XX.2.35; my emphasis)
Here, Suarez confirms something that he had stated previously in §2.4-5 of DM XX. The power to create, as a principal power, must be such that it extends to every creatable thing, or as Suarez also puts it, “is adequate to the object creatable being.”[lix] In other words, Suarez claims that if some being has the power to create as a principal power, then it has the ability to bring about anything that falls under the concept “creatable being.” And if the power to create has “creatable being” as its adequate object, then it can be considered absolutely infinite, and not merely infinite “relatively speaking.” What makes this observation a source of tension for Suarez, as we have seen, is that he does not think that such a claim has been “adequately proved,” especially by Aquinas’s argument.
Now given that the power to create––although unique in many respects––is a productive power, when we consider the possible objects of its effect (as opposed to its terminus ad quem), I think we then have an independent, quantitative, common ground for comparing the power to create and creaturely power, namely, the quantitative order of creatable being, or producible objects. Given this order, we can see how the power to create is infinite on a scale commensurable with creaturely power––that is, absolutely infinite. I think it is obvious that, at least qua God, the power to create can bring about anything that creaturely power can bring about, and a whole lot more. As noted earlier, God’s power is delimited by nothing other than His nature, so He can bring about anything, the creation of which is metaphysically possible. So when we consider what it is that the power to create can produce––the possible objects of creation––and realize that God’s power extends to everything that falls under that concept, then Suarez’s challenge is met: God’s power to create is absolutely infinite, i.e., it extends to every creatable being.[lx]
The real question is: What are we to say about the possibility of this power being placed “in the hands” of a creature? As suggested earlier, the power to create is a proper power for God, and I think that this is quite telling with respect to whether it is possible for other creatures to possess it. Unlike all other powers of production, the power to create cannot properly be considered a relational or relative power. That is to say, it is not to be proportioned to, or cashed out in terms of, what can be done given some substantial nature or other. For example, knowledge may admit of degrees and kinds, given the varying substantial natures of different beings, but not omniscience. The same goes for power, but not omnipotence. By analogy, although ordinary production admits of degrees and fairly defined limits, the power to create does not: The power to create is an absolute power, one which by itself indicates something about the kind of being to which it can belong––that is, something about the sort of nature a being must have in order for that being to possess it. What I am suggesting is that for any being to have this power at all, at least at the moment of its employment, requires that it exercise that power without intrinsic limitations, which is to be able to bring about anything, the creation of which is metaphysically possible. So if some being has any intrinsic limitations during the moment of its acting, then it cannot possess or employ the power to create (at least, at that time). If it does possess such power, then that power must be absolutely, and not relatively, infinite.[lxi]
B.5. Only God Can Create
In light of the above discussion, we can infer that God could create something without aid or contribution from another entity, i.e., CEN-power is at least sufficient for its effect. For either God has sufficient power to produce the in toto substance of any particular thing or other, or He does not. If God does not, then by definition He does not have CEN-power. If God does, then He does not require the assistance of another agent in the obtaining of His particular effect, for the power of the other agent would at best be superfluous and ineffectual in the creative act.
Moreover, not only is it the case that it is unnecessary for another creature to cooperate with God in the act of creation––in a creative cause––but it turns out to be impossible for God to communicate CEN-power to any creature such that it could truly assist in a creative cause. To see this, we need to remember first that given its mode, CEN-power is incommensurate with the proper and natural mode of acting for a creature, since natural production always presupposes a material cause, and includes both extrinsic and intrinsic limitations. Another way of saying this, according to Suarez, is that CEN-power is not connatural to creatures:
For each created form, according to its proper and connatural mode of acting, is incommensurate with the action [of effecting something] ex nihilo, and so it cannot, according to anything proper to itself, be a determinant of such an action [even] by concurring with it. (DM XX.3.3; my emphasis)
It is simply not proper to the nature of creatures to possess the ability to bring something into existence ex nihilo. That connatural status is reserved for God alone; only God has the power to create naturally and properly. This is why I claimed earlier that CEN-power is a principal (or proper) power for God. So were it possible for a creature to possess CEN-power, it would only be through God’s miraculous bestowal and assistance. The creature might then be said to play some ministerial or instrumental role in a creative cause, in concurrence with God’s proper activity.[lxii]
Yet if some creaturely action were to count as a real contribution to a creative cause––instrumentally or otherwise––and is not to be considered merely a sine qua non cause, then that contributory action would have to proceed in some immediate way from the creature’s very own power––either as a connatural or superadded power––which is delimited, minimally, by the nature of the creature itself.[lxiii] The creature needs to at least be a proximate principal cause of the effect in question. Yet because all creatures are finite simply in virtue of the fact that they are creatures, then so is their natural power. But absolutely infinite power is necessary for any creative cause, as argued earlier. Thus, if God were to communicate CEN-power to a creature in order that it might truly assist Him in a creative cause, He would have to make it the case that a creature––which is by its very nature finite––is infinite. That is to say, God would have to make it the case that some power which is incommensurable with a given creature’s nature should be connatural to it. Yet such a feat is impossible, as even Suarez admits:
[There is a] connatural commensurability between acting and being, a commensurability that cannot be altered. For even though God is able to produce in a creature, or through a creature, something other than what is connatural to it, nonetheless, he cannot make it the case that something which is incommensurable with a given creature’s nature should be connatural to it. (DM XX.2.17)
So even in the case of an instrumental cause, how would one sensibly attribute the power to create in any way to a creature? If CEN-power is truly incommensurable with creaturely power according to its mode, and absolutely infinite according to its adequate object, then CEN-power is simply incommensurable––indeed, metaphysically incompatible––with any creature’s nature.[lxiv] God simply cannot naturally or miraculously superadd CEN-power to the nature of a creature so that it may instrumentally assist in a creative cause, no matter how limited the scope of that act is intended to be. If so, it follows that (vii) CEN-power is unique to God, and hence incommunicable to creatures, even in a very limited sense.[lxv] My final argument is thus:
1. The power to create does not involve a material cause or pre-existing patient.
2. The power to create has no per se limitations.
3. If the power to create does not involve a material cause or pre-existing patient, then with regard to the mode or manner of acting, the power to create is incommensurable with natural creaturely power (i.e., the proper and natural mode of acting for a creature).
4. If the power to create has no per se limitations, then with regard to the possible objects of creation, the power to create is infinite on a scale commensurable with creaturely power––that is, absolutely infinite.
5. Were God to miraculously grant a creature the power to create, He would have to make it the case that this power should be natural to the creature.
6. But no finite creature’s nature is metaphysically compatible with the infinite and/or incommensurable character of the power to create.
( 7. The power to create is unique to God, and hence incommunicable to creatures.
Notes
CHAPTER 3: THE STRONG VIEW OF PROVIDENCE (PART II)
In this chapter, I will conclude my analysis of the SP by showing:
A. How CEN is related to the doctrine of divine conservation, and
B. How creation and conservation imply God’s immediate causal involvement with nature, thus yielding the SP.
By explicating the features and implications of CEN in the last chapter, we have provided the groundwork for the Strong View of Providence that I have characterized––what Aquinas terms God’s “perfect dominion:”
He is the Lord of the things made by Him: since we have dominion over those things that are subject to our will. And this is a perfect dominion that He exercises over things made by Him, forasmuch as in their making He needs neither the help of an extrinsic agent, nor matter as the foundation of His work. (SCG III.1; my emphasis)
Included within God’s perfect dominion is everything which is subject to His will. As Aquinas suggests, God’s dominion or providence is perfect not only because of the scope of His domination (“He needs neither the help of an extrinsic agent”) but also because of its depth, i.e., because of the unique manner in which God made things: ex nihilo (“nor matter as the foundation of His work”). With regard to the act of creation, the providential power of God reaches “all the way down,” into every aspect of the creature. For this reason God’s providential power is also believed to account in some way for the persistence of the creature after its initial moment of creation.[lxvi] The continued being or conservation of God’s creatures is no less subject to His will, at least insofar as He can annihilate what He has created.
A. CEN and the Doctrine of Conservation
This brings us to the second thesis of the Strong View of Providence (SP). Thesis (b) of the SP claims that God is responsible for sustaining or conserving His creatures in the strongest possible sense: At every moment of their existence, creatures are causally, immediately dependent upon God for His continual, in toto conferral of their being or esse.[lxvii] Thesis (b) contends that creatures are––indeed, they must be––conserved in esse by God if they are to persist, and in the same manner that they were brought into existence. This manner or type of conservation is called immediate per se conservation, and is to be contrasted with conservation per accidens.[lxviii] Per accidens conservation is merely a type of change or alteration in a creature, whereby the creature is intrinsically or extrinsically protected from degeneration or corruption in nature. Though God can, and does at certain times, conserve His creatures per accidens, a defender of the SP will claim that this type of conservation is not sufficient to account for the continued existence of the creatures themselves.
I argue that if understood properly, thesis (a) of the SP––that God creates ex nihilo––is enough by itself to establish thesis (b): that God must continually sustain or conserve the objects of creation in the strongest possible sense.[lxix] The argument from creation to conservation is as follows:
8. If God creates something, then the effect of the creative act cannot remain in the creature without God’s immediate, continuous action.
9. If the effect of the creative act cannot remain in the creature without God’s continuous action, then for each thing that God creates, if it is to persist from one moment to the next, God must also sustain or conserve it.
( 10. If God creates something, then if it is to persist, God must also sustain or conserve it.
Premise 8 is derived from the primary characteristics of CEN, and as such can be defended by examining the nature of creatures given their causal origin.[lxx] Simply put, since absolutely nothing is presupposed on the part of the effect in CEN, the contention is that whatever God creates has no per se tendency to retain anything of which it is composed, particularly its existence. Why? Simply because creatures are contingent and not necessary beings. The remainder of section A (§§A1-A6) will focus on defending premise 8, which is clearly the only controversial premise in this argument.
A.1. No Creaturely Self-Preservation
We can begin to explicate premise 8 further by reflecting on the following Thomistic observation: “what a thing has in itself and not from something else is naturally prior in it to that which it has from something else.”[lxxi] Given this, what are we to say about something that was created ex nihilo? As argued earlier, if the thing is truly ex nihilo, then absolutely nothing can be presupposed “in” the thing prior to its creation. Prior to its creation, a creature literally has no being in itself, that is, it can only be said to naturally or intrinsically “have” non-being. There is no room even to speak of a passive potentiality to exist “in the creature” prior to its creation. We might speak of a potency for the creature’s nature to exist (its universal form), but such a potency would not, strictly speaking, be a feature or component of the creature itself. At best, we would really be saying something about God’s power, and not the creature.[lxxii] A creature, being ex nihilo, simply has no potentiality in itself to exist. Thus, when God creates something He must do it in toto, or thoroughly and completely. In one single act of creation God produces both the individual nature and the esse of the creature. That is, He creates an ens.[lxxiii]
Now the in toto causal origin of creatures is what fundamentally explains their inability to persist: Since creatures cannot initially cause their own existence––i.e., they are wholly dependent upon God for the esse they receive and participate in––then creatures cannot preserve their own existence post creatum either. Aquinas has the following to say on the issue:
If the divine action were to cease, the creature also would cease to exist, not through the presence of a contrary in its matter, since that would cease to exist at the same time as the matter, but because the creature is made from nothing: and yet not in the sense that nothingness conduces actually to the corruption of the creatures, but that it does not act for its preservation. (DP 5,1,ad8; my emphasis)
Quite a bit is going on in this quotation. According to Aquinas, the first thing to recognize is that once the divine action is withdrawn, the demise of the creature does not occur “through the presence of a contrary in its matter,” that is, through some sort of substantial or accidental degeneration or corruption in the matter itself, which could be said to be “fighting against” the causal activity of God. Rather, we are told that when God ceases to act, the creature ceases to exist because it is “made from nothing,” referring to its lack of a material cause, and its lack of a per se tendency or disposition to exist. Second, Aquinas suggests that the “nothingness” from which the creature is made is not itself a corrupting agent, that draws the creature “back to the nothingness” or anything like that. Whatever is taking place when God withdraws His immediate action from the creature cannot sufficiently be accounted for by claiming that God is just refraining to conserve the creature per accidens.
Given this, we can now begin to understand the final, cryptic part of the passage, which is that the nothingness the creature is made from “does not act for its preservation.” One straightforward interpretation is that since nothingness has no potentiality whatsoever, it is utterly devoid of the possibility of the admixture of form, so can be characterized by no act(s) at all. Thus nothingness is to be differentiated from prime matter, in that prime matter is pure potentiality, so per se can admit of form(s) and is thus a constituent of real things. Whereas nothingness, well, is no thing at all––a bare, empty placeholder or limiting concept.
However, we are more interested in the progression Aquinas makes from creatures as being made from nothing, to nothingness as not acting for its preservation. What Aquinas is suggesting here is that the contingent or dependent nature of creaturehood is so pervasive, that a creature cannot possibly escape the preconditions of its coming to be, which are that it is ex nihilo, and per aliunde. That is, on the condition that something is brought into existence ex nihilo, it follows that it exists through the action of another, and hence has no disposition or tendency to exist independently of the action of another, viz., the Creator. And given the conclusion above that only God can create (premise 7), it is not possible for one creature to conserve another immediately and per se. So only God can, and must, conserve what He has created.[lxxiv] In short:
8a. If something is created ex nihilo, then it has no per se disposition to exist.
8b. If a creature has no per se disposition to exist, then the existence of the creature cannot remain in it without the immediate, continuous action of the creating agent.
( 8. If God creates something, then the effect of the creative act––which is the existence of the creature––cannot remain in the creature without God’s immediate, continuous action.
A.2. The Standard Objection to Divine Conservation (SOC)
Now one might be inclined to agree with premise 8a, which claims that prior to its creation a creature does not have a per se tendency or disposition to exist. However, an objector might be quick to point out that premise 8b appears too strong, and contend that once created a creature simply retains the esse that God gives it. More specifically, once something is in fact created it does have a disposition to exist––an accidental or per accidens disposition––and this disposition or tendency can remain as long as God does not actively take the esse of the creature away, i.e., so long as God does not annihilate it. Were this the case, there would appear to be no reason in principle why creatures must depend upon God via an immediate per se conservation. So there would be nothing contradictory in supposing that post creatum a creature could act for its own preservation, meaning that it can retain its own esse without God’s continuous activity.
This response should give the defender of the SP reason to pause. The underlying observation here is that one need not offer a deep-level explanation for the supposed persistence of any creature. Maybe the act of existing is just a brute fact; or maybe it’s just a metaphysical law of the universe (or of God) that there is no further explanation required for the persistence of a creature from t1 to t1+n other than that,
i. God creates x at t1, and
ii. God is not willing (is failing to will) to annihilate x at t1+n,
where i and ii do not imply that,
iii. God is actively willing that x exist at t1+n.
I will call this the Standard Objection to Divine Conservation (SOC). The SOC captures the basic pre-reflective sentiment that many theists have with regard to the nature of existence, whether it be of a divine or creaturely nature. What I intend to do first is respond to the objection by showing that iii does follow from premises i & ii. I will then continue with my previous analysis and offer another positive explanation for why creatures cannot retain their own esse without God’s immediate and continuous activity.
A.3. The Negative Response
The SOC is quite instructive for our purposes and helps us get at the heart of the nature of divine conservation and its relation to the doctrine of creation.[lxxv] Packed into the objection are three assumptions which the defender of the SP has good reasons to reject. The first is that there is a real distinction between what we may call God’s permissive will and God’s positive (or active) will with regard to the act of conservation.[lxxvi] The second is that annihilation requires a positive act of efficient causality. And the third is that the creation of a self-sustaining creature is not impossible, i.e., not outside the scope of what the divine omnipotence can accomplish. I will explain each in turn.
The first two assumptions can be jointly dealt with by appeal to an independent argument from Suarez for the necessity of divine conservation. The proponent of the SOC may argue that there are two ways in which we can understand the claim that all entities immediately depend on God for their continued existence, or are conserved: Either permissively, whereby a creature retains its existence or esse for as long as God permits it, i.e., for as long as God does not actively deprive the creature of its esse “even while [it] can be deprived of it by him,”[lxxvii] which would be for God to annihilate it; or positively, whereby a creature retains its esse through the immediate and actual influence of God.[lxxviii]
In the SOC it is clear that God’s permissive will to conserve creatures is being assumed in order to justify thesis ii, thereby preventing the implication of iii from i & ii. On the basis of this, the defender of SOC appears committed to the following premise:
8c. All created things depend upon God––that is, are conserved––at least permissively.
That is, God at least permits all things to continue existing. Premise 8c is the positive characterization of thesis ii, for it clarifies the implicit possibility of God’s being able to annihilate––if He were to so will––the creatures He has created. So what is required by thesis ii, and specified by premise 8d, is that God at least permissively wills to conserve His creatures, and this implies that He is not (actively) willing to annihilate them, even while He is able to do so.
Now for the sake of argument, let us suppose that God annihilates one of His creatures. Here, we see the second assumption of the SOC come into play. Since it is assumed that God is at least conserving His creatures permissively, which consists of His not willing to annihilate them, then the notion of annihilation employed in the SOC must imply a positive action, that is, a positive act of efficient causality. Annihilation is thus supposed by the proponent of SOC to be an active “taking away” of esse or being from a creature.
Yet given a traditional account of efficient causality, the SOC runs afoul here. Every act of efficient causality, and in particular every transeunt act of God’s, necessarily consists in the giving of some esse––some being or perfection to the patient acted upon.[lxxix] In other words, such acts of efficient causality “necessarily [tend] toward a real terminus,” or bring about effects that have or receive some real being through the action.[lxxx] Further, if such efficient causal acts in fact reduce their subjects from potentiality to act in some way or other, then there has to be something in existence––namely a subject––which remains after the causal act. Whence a positive causal action cannot aptly count as annihilation, since the “product” of annihilation is supposed to be no subject at all.
So were God required to employ a positive action in order to annihilate a creature, then (1) with regard to material creatures, at best God would only be able to overwhelmingly corrupt them. That is, God would only be able to introduce particular positive forms or accidents (which have their own esse, mind you) to the substance (creature) that are so contrary to its nature that it physically would be disassembled. Although well within God’s power, this activity simply will not do as a explanation of annihilation, whereby God is supposed to be taking the esse of the creature away––leaving nothing!––not just disassembling it. The remaining parts, indeed all the physical parts of the creature, will still exist and have their own esse, and we will just have pushed the problem back a step. Further, (2) on this account there would be other creatures that God would be unable to annihilate like angels (and other immaterial entities, if any), into whose substance no materially corruptive form could possibly be introduced.[lxxxi]
Assuming that material and immaterial creatures exhaust the ontology of creation, it appears to follow that if God must employ a positive action in order to annihilate something, then God cannot truly annihilate anything He has created! This consequence is simply untenable as far as God’s power and providence are concerned, especially given the assumptions of the SOC itself. Barring considerations of God’s goodness, I believe that the theist is committed to the following metaphysical principle:
CA: God has created something if and only if God can annihilate it.[lxxxii]
If the prior observations are correct, then in order for annihilation to be possible, it must be fundamentally and metaphysically related to the act of creation. If creation is the positive or active willing that a thing be brought about at a certain time, then annihilation only makes sense as God’s withholding His positive action or influence on a creature. What this means, however, is that creatures, insofar as they are not annihilated, do depend positively upon God. That is to say, when God is not willing to annihilate a creature, He is thereby positively willing that the creature exist at that time:
8d. A created thing depends on God permissively if and only if it depends upon God positively,
from which it follows, given 1c, that,
8e. All created things depend upon God positively.
So with regard to the act of conservation, there appears to be no real distinction between God’s permissive and positive willing. What makes it possible for a creature to persist is the same principle whereby it exists, which is the active willing of God to per se and immediately give the creature its being or esse. Hence the act of conservation is inexorably bound up with the act of creation. As noted earlier, creation and conservation are identical on the order of essential dependence between creature and God; conservation, it seems, is nothing over and above the esse of the ens itself “qua continuing in the same way.”[lxxxiii]
Once creation is understood, one must appeal to its mode or manner in order to explain how a creature is to persist from one moment to the next. Therefore the defender of the SOC, in bringing the first two assumptions to the table, demonstrates that they have a preliminary misunderstanding of the nature of divine creation, as well as conservation.
At this point we have sufficiently dismantled SOC. Yet there is one last assumption to deal with. The defender of the SOC may continue to argue that it is simply repugnant to the divine omnipotence to not be able to produce effects that endure or persist in their own esse, independently of God’s active influence. For it is apparent that human craftsmen can build things that endure independently, even after their action has ceased. If so, then God (being omnipotent no less!) should be able to do the same, for God can produce anything that a creature can produce, and in a higher, more sublime way.[lxxxiv]
The first thing to note is that this response is also susceptible to the prior rejoinder to the SOC. For even this supposed “independent” creature must depend permissively upon God for its continued existence. Therefore, etc.
But suppose we are more charitable. With the third assumption, the objector is claiming explicitly that it is possible for God to create a creature that depends on Him permissively but not positively. Any theory of divine omnipotence worth its salt, s/he might say, should be the trump card against premise 8d, and simply to re-assert it appears to beg the question against this response.
Well, if it is agreed that the divine omnipotence does not extend to what is metaphysically (or even logically) impossible, then the third assumption appears false. Suppose that,
8f. God can create a creature that does not depend upon Him positively.
On analysis, 8f really means,
8f’. God can create a creature that does not depend upon Him insofar as He gives it its initial existence.
This seems a fair interpretation, since 8f supposes that although God creates a creature, the creature does not thereby depend upon God for its continued existence insofar as, or in the same manner as, it depended on God for its creation. So where might the problem arise with this claim? The difficulty becomes more apparent when we consider the following traditional principle of causality:
EC: Every effect depends on its cause (at least) insofar as it is its cause.
Aquinas explains that EC is “part of the very nature of cause and effect,” with divine causality being no exception to the rule.[lxxxv] Insofar as efficient causes––whether natural or divine––produce effects, those effects can be said to depend on their causes for being the way that they are post causa. So the manner or degree to which an effect depends upon its cause is simply an expression of the kind of causality under consideration.
When EC is applied to the doctrine of creation we get the following:
8g. Every creature depends upon God insofar as God gives it its initial existence,
which I take to be a necessary truth for theism. Insofar as God brings something about ex nihilo, that thing is dependent upon Him for its complete, in toto being. And therein lies the main problem for the objector: 8g and 8f’ cannot both be true. If 8g is indeed a necessary truth, then 8f’ is not only false but necessarily false. Furthermore, when we analyze 8f’ in light of EC (and 8g) it appears that 8f actually means,
8f’’. God can create a thing which is not created by Him,
which is clearly a contradiction.[lxxxvi]
What the third assumption fails to take into account is that there is a metaphysical disparity between the acts of creatures and the creative acts of God. Only the divine creative power can give a thing its proper esse––its being simply. In natural acts of efficient causality, creatures are only able to effect something “with respect to a given form and shape that arises from the position and ordering of certain entities.” (DM XXI.1.17)[lxxxvii] Creatures are at best “creative makers”––they creatively rearrange already existing substances, educe forms from pre-existing matter, etc. Thus, insofar as creatures are efficient or productive causes, they are only responsible for the becoming of their effects, and not the being or esse. So creatures cannot be proper immediate per se conserving causes. Yet God, being directly responsible for the existence of things, cannot cause something to exist without thereby being necessary for its conservation.[lxxxviii] Thus the comparison between the craftsman and God fails.[lxxxix]
As I claimed earlier, the SOC is quite instructive with regard to the nature of divine conservation. It is simply not possible for God to do anything that is ‘prejudicial’ to His authority or power. Yet that is precisely the opposite of what the defender of the SOC is committed to. Suarez affirms that,
It pertains to the breadth of the divine power that nothing should exist or be able to exist for even a moment without its influence. Likewise it pertains to that same power that it should have full dominion over all created entities, along with the intrinsic capacity to annihilate those entities through a suspension of its influence. (DM XXI.1.17)
Given that the causal providence of God is grounded in His creation of substances ex nihilo, and that this power is unique to Him, a more detailed understanding of divine creation is required by those who insist that the divine influence––particularly the power exemplified in God’s providence––can be actively divorced from creatures without causing detrimental effects to the traditional philosophical concept of theism itself.
A.4. The Bottom Line: No Disposition or Tendency
Even in light of the negative response to the SOC, one still might be inclined to ask: is it possible for a creature to act for its preservation, i.e., to retain its esse independently of God’s active causal influence? The difference between this inquiry and the foundation of the SOC is that the latter claims that no disposition or tendency to exist is required at all by creatures in order to persist, whereas the present worry acknowledges the necessity for such a disposition/tendency, but is asking whether God could simply [miraculously] grant creatures the relevant disposition or tendency.
Supposing that a creature could act for its preservation, it would have to accomplish this act completely on its own (which is what premise 8 explicitly denies). So why can’t God simply bestow creatures with the relevant disposition, tendency, or property required for persistence?
In order for that to work, either of two necessary conditions must be met: The existence of the creature ultimately must be derived either (1) from itself, that is, from an intrinsic formal principle––one that is part of the very nature of the creature––such that its continued existence would follow from its nature; or (2) from something else, meaning that its existence must be able to become part of its nature from some extrinsic principle or external influence. There is possibly a third option, which is that the existence of the creature is derived from some extrinsic principle, but does not become part of its nature. If this option is to be significantly different from the SOC “existence is a brute fact” response, then the disposition would have to be some contingent (accidental) and external (relational?) characteristic of the creature. If that were the case, then (i) nothing about the creature itself would actually account for its continued existence, since the principle of existence is extrinsic to the nature of the creature. And further, (ii) the continued persistence of the disposition or principle itself would have to be explained. So either we get an infinite regress of self-sustaining principles or dispositions, or we should just cut out the “middle-man” and acknowledge that this “option” amounts to nothing other than the fact that the creature’s existence is really per aliunde, with God being the most likely candidate for the immediate conservation of the creature.[xc]
Once framed in this way, it seems obvious that neither of these conditions can be met for anything that qualifies as a creature. With regard to (1), since every creature initially receives its existence through the act of creation, the existence or esse of the creature cannot be derived simpliciter from its own nature. Any disposition for self-preservation in a creature must be added to its nature by the direct, gratuitous action of God. Yet it should be clear that it is simply not possible for a creature to receive or possess the impression of its cause––its being simply or esse––according to the likeness of its cause. That is, a creature cannot receive its being in the same way or manner as being is possessed by God, for that would outright make the creature necessary and not contingent, i.e., as existing per se and not per aliunde. So to say that God can create a being whose nature is such that its existential preservation is derivable from it, means that the nature of the creature would imply its own continued existence, which is to say that God can create something that is both contingent and necessary, which is, of course, logically impossible.
Furthermore, no creature can be its own efficient cause. Yet if the nature of the creature were somehow able to preserve itself, then it would follow that the productive power of the creature would have include itself within its own adequate object, i.e., it would include within it everything necessary and sufficient for its requiring no creation in the first place, which is impossible. Thus it is impossible for any creature to be able to preserve itself by some intrinsic principle.
If (1) is logically impossible, then so is (2). What would it mean to say that God could create a creature whose nature did not imply its continued existence, but whose existence (which is conferred by God) could nonetheless become part of its nature or essence? It would mean, clearly, that God could superadd something to the nature of the creature that is clearly incommensurable––and thus inconsistent––with its nature. This is the same thing as creating a contingent thing that could become necessary, which is just as impossible as (a).
The bottom line, then, is that only a necessary being can have a disposition to exist; contingent (created) things cannot. Premise 8 thus highlights the fundamental differences between creation and ordinary production. On this account, Aquinas gives us an analogy to work with:
The impression of the agent does not remain in the effect, after the act of the agent has ceased, unless it merge into the nature of the effect. Because the forms of things generated, and their properties, remain in them to the end after generation, because they become natural to them. (SCG III.65; my emphasis)[xci]
With respect to ordinary production, we can understand how the effect(s) of the agent can remain in the patient, because those effects become part of, or merge with, the nature of the patient affected. The effect of any natural cause is either a substantial change or an accidental one, where the substance effected receives from the agent some new property or accident which is not incommensurable with it. This is unproblematic as long as we keep in mind that generation or alteration presupposes a patient to be acted upon––a patient that is in potentiality with respect to the act under consideration. However, since the effect or impression of the creative act is the being of the thing––its being in toto, no less––then the impression cannot naturally remain in a creature. The being of a creature is not a property or accident that is somehow introduced or contracted to the nature or essence of a creature. A creature does not and cannot have the tendency, aptitude, or disposition for self-preservation, simply because it is a creature.[xcii] Hence we have a second argument for premise 8:
8h. The only properties or dispositions that can remain in a creature are the ones that either follow from its nature, or can become part of it through some external causal influence.
8i. The esse or being simply of a creature neither follows from its nature, nor can it become part of the nature of the creature by any kind of cause.
( 8j. The esse or being of the creature cannot naturally remain in it after it has been created.
So the effect of the creative act cannot remain in the creature by virtue of the creature’s own nature, but only by virtue of the continuous activity of its original cause. Thus, in the same manner as a creature comes into existence, it must thereby be conserved or sustained, which is just premise 9:
9. If the effect of the creative act cannot remain in the creature without God’s continuous action, then for each thing that God creates, if it is to persist from one moment to the next, God must also sustain or conserve it.
Premise 9 is simply a clarification of what the conservation thesis (b) amounts to, given the innocuous supposition that many of the things that God creates persist through time. Aquinas gives us an analogy to help us understand this relationship between creation and conservation. He says that God preserves the being of things, “as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated.” (ST I.8.1.corpus) Assuming for a moment that the presence of the sun is the only source of illumination of the air, we might agree with Aquinas that there is a necessary dependence that obtains between light and the activity of the sun: Light is preserved in the air by the sun as long as the sun is present. Whenever the sun is not present the air is not illuminated, and so light is not caused. Analogously, being is caused by God, and the being of a creature is preserved as long as God continues to will that creature to be: “Therefore as long as a thing has being, so long must God be present to it, according to its mode of being.” (ST I.8.1.corpus) The mode of being for a creature is per aliunde, with God as its cause. And so, for as long as a creature has being, God must be its cause. We can thus conclude:
( 10. If God creates something, then if it is to persist, God must also sustain or conserve it.
In other words, the creation thesis (a) of SP implies the conservation thesis (b). Indeed, given this more thorough analysis of the primary characteristics of CEN, we can now see why (b) almost trivially follows. God must continually sustain or conserve the objects of His creation––if they are to continue in existence––simply because each contingent being has no intrinsic tendency or disposition to exist, nor can it be granted such a tendency. The conservation spoken of in (b) is thus a per se, in toto conservation of the same order and depth as creation itself.[xciii] It is also then a strong conservation, because it implies a radical dependence of the creature upon the Creator, such that “if the ruling power of God were withdrawn from his creatures, their form would at once cease and all nature would collapse.” (DP 5,1,corpus; Cp. Augustine, Gen. ad lit. iv, 12) Thus, as Aquinas and others like to say, conservation is nothing other than the continued being (continuatio esse) of the creature, which is no less owed to God than its creation.
A.5. No Real Distinction
Since creation and conservation have the same effect for the entire duration of the creature––which is the giving of being (esse)––there appears to be no real distinction between any particular act of creation and its corresponding act of conservation.[xciv] Aquinas himself explains that, “The preservation [i.e., conservation] of things by God is not through any new action but through a continuation of that action by which He gives being, which action is without either motion or time.” (ST I.104.1.ad4)[xcv] Lest there be any ambiguity, Aquinas clarifies the meaning of this passage in the very next question: “God creates and preserves things by the same action.” (ST I.104.2; my emphasis) In this, divine conservation, as the medievals understood it, is to be sharply differentiated from the early modern doctrine of continuous creation, which held that God continually re-created each thing at each moment that it existed.[xcvi]
This claim about creation and conservation was of central importance to philosophical theology, so much so that it was employed during the medieval period through most of the early modern era. For example, Rene Descartes argues in a similar fashion (and attributes it to Aquinas):
The same power and action are needed to preserve anything at each individual moment of its duration as would be required to create that thing anew if it were not yet in existence. Hence the distinction between preservation and creation is only a conceptual one. (AT 49; CSM 33)
Both Aquinas and Descartes use the terms “preserve” and “preservation” to mean what I have been calling “conservation.” Though philosophers claim that there is no real distinction between creation and conservation, they do talk, however, of there being a conceptual distinction between the two. For example, when discussing whether creation is anything in the creature, Aquinas considers the following objection:
If creation is anything beside the created substance, it must be an accident belonging to it. But every accident is in a subject. Therefore a thing created would be the subject of creation, and so the same thing would be the subject and also the term of creation. This is impossible…(ST I.45.3.obj3)
In response to this, Aquinas argues that,
The creature is the term of creation as signifying a change, but is the subject of creation, taken as a real relation, and is prior to it in being, as the subject is to the accident. Nevertheless creation has a certain aspect of priority on the part of the object of which it is said, which is the beginning of the creature. Nor is it necessary to say that as long as the creature is it is being created, because creation implies a relation of the creature to the Creator, with a certain newness or beginning. (ST I.45.3.ad3)
Aquinas’ point is that creation places something “in” the thing created, but according to relation only. Since a created thing is brought into existence ex nihilo, no motion is implied, so only relation (in the creature) can account for the initial “change” that has taken place with respect to the creature and the Creator––“either a relation of the creature to the Creator or a relation of the Creator to the creature”––which is the creature’s “newness or beginning.”[xcvii] So although Aquinas agrees that strictly speaking there is no real distinction between creation and conservation––that indeed they are the same action and so their referents are the same––it does not thereby follow that the terms have the same sense. Duns Scotus clarifies this notion in a slightly different manner:
Properly speaking, then, it is only true to say that a creature is created at the first moment (of its existence) and only after that moment is it conserved, for only then does its being have this order to itself as something that was, as it were, there before. Because of these different conceptual relationships implied by “create” and “conserve”, it follows that one [term] does not apply to a thing when the other does. (Scotus, Quodlibet XII.2; my emphasis)
As Scotus explains, the terms “creation” and “conservation” are thought to imply different conceptual relationships or temporal orders, such that “conservation” implies a prior existence––“as something that was…there before”––whereas “creation” brings to mind a prior non-existence, a “first moment,” or conferral of being. These conceptual differences, however, do not amount to a real difference, or imply that creation and conservation are distinct principles of being.[xcviii]
Lastly, although he disagrees with Aquinas’ assessment above concerning what creation consists of in the creature,[xcix] Suarez does affirm that there is merely a conceptual distinction between creation and conservation:
When the conservation is from exactly the same agent and with the same concurrence on the part of the material cause (or, as the case may be, with the same independence from a material cause), then the conservation is not an action different from the production (or creation), except merely conceptually or because of some connotation and relation. It follows that, speaking formally and per se, the conservation and the [initial] action are not in reality two actions. (DM XXI.2.3; my emphasis)[c]
A.6. A Final Note on Conservation
In order to complete the argument presented for the entailment between thesis (a) and (b), someone might insist that one further premise is needed in order to justify the conclusion, namely,
11. God cannot give a creature the power to conserve––immediately and per se––some other creature.
But by now it should be clear that this premise is a consequence of several of the claims argued for above:
11a. CEN-power is incommunicable to creatures (characteristic (vii)).
11b. There is no real distinction between the power to conserve and CEN-power.
( 11. The power to conserve is incommunicable to creatures.
That is to say, just as God cannot give a creature the power to conserve itself (immediately and per se), so too, God cannot give a creature the power to conserve something else, as the powers are coextensive and identical with each other, and incommensurate with the natures of creatures.
Another way to approach the solution might be to argue in a fashion similar to that for premise 8:
11c. If something created is also conserved, then it is caused to continue to exist.
11d. If something is caused to continue to exist, then its conservation is caused either by (i) the intrinsic, essential principles of the thing itself, or (ii) by something external to it.
11e. Nothing created can be the cause of its initial existence.
( 11f. No created thing can continue to exist by virtue of its intrinsic, essential principles [~i].
( 11g. Every created thing is conserved by something external to it.
Of course, the contention is that this external principle is God. Again, since there is no real distinction between creation and conservation, either in the Creator or the creature, we can continue:
11h. For everything that God creates, if it is conserved, then God is the cause of its conservation, and
11i. If God is not the cause of a thing’s conservation, then God is not its Creator.
( 11j. Therefore, it’s not possible for God to create something and allow that thing to be conserved without Himself also being the cause of its conservation.
11k. Only God can create.
( 11. Only God can conserve.
It should be obvious why God cannot give a creature the power to conserve itself or another thing. The power to sustain one’s own being––one’s being-as-such––can amount to nothing more than having the ability to (continue to) bring about one’s own being, which just is the power to create. And if a creature cannot do the latter, then surely it cannot do the former. Further, if my analysis of CEN is correct, then CEN-power is simply beyond the reach of finite creatures. I think it is quite fair to say at this point that an analysis of CEN yields a strong commitment to thesis (b).[ci]
B. Weak Providence and God’s Causal Involvement in Nature
The analysis given for theses (a) and (b) establishes two very important, and metaphysically related principles to which the traditional theist appears committed. The first we can call the
Principle of Radical Contingency (PRC): Each thing that God creates is such that it has no per se tendency to exist, only a potentiality to exist per Deo.
The PRC encapsulates what we have discerned from the primary characteristics of CEN. To repeat, since CEN requires no pre-existing patient whatsoever, what makes a creature contingent has nothing to do with the nature or essence of the creature itself. Prior to its creation, a creature is not such that it both has the potentiality to-be and potentiality not-to-be, for a non-existent thing does not possess any characteristics whatsoever, potentialities included. If a non-existent thing could be said to have any potentialities at all, then at most it would have the potentiality to exist per aliunde, that is, through another, where that “another” is the Creator Himself (per Deo). Hence the contingency of the creature is said to be a radical contingency, not pertaining at all to the nature of the creature itself. The second principle is the
Principle of Radical Dependence (PRD): Each thing that God creates is such that it cannot exist at any moment without God’s immediate and per se causal influx.
Which follows from the strong conservation thesis (b).
On the basis of theses (a) and (b), the existence of any creature is wholly and essentially dependent upon God, whether in its inception or its persistence over time. Since there is no real distinction between creation and conservation, either from the divine perspective or from the perspective of the creature, creation and conservation are co-extensive with and logically equivalent to the same sort of causal dependence of a creature on the creator.[cii]
Further, since in creation a thing is brought into existence in toto, its conservation must be of the same depth and essential dependence such that even the properties or powers of the creature––no less than its existence––must be sustained at each moment it exists, as Aquinas affirms: “As long as the essential principles of a thing remain, so long does that thing continue to exist; but those very principles would cease to be, were the divine action to cease.” (DP 5,1,ad3)
Up to this point, what I have offered is a more detailed interpretation of what I earlier characterized as the Weak-view of Providence (WP).[ciii] Minimally, proponents of WP all appear to agree that God is immediately and thoroughly involved in every aspect of a creature’s existence, and so assent in some way to the PRC and the PRD. The question at hand is now this: Does the non-miraculous causal aspect of God’s providence involve anything more that His creation and conservation of the existence of contingent things?[civ] That is, is thesis (c) of SP true?
(c) God’s non-miraculous activity in nature is not exhausted by creation and conservation, i.e., God also acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and/or in the production of their effects.
Proponents of WP will answer ‘no,’ and may argue in one of two ways. In the first way, it might be argued that theses (a) and (b) do not explicitly entail (c), and whether one adopts (c) or not will involve reasons independent of WP itself. Aquinas considers a similar type of objection in De Potentia:
It might be replied that natural forces like other beings cannot last unless they be upheld by the divine power.––On the contrary, to operate on a thing is not the same as to operate in it. Now the operation whereby God either produces or preserves the forces of nature, has its effect on those forces by producing or preserving them. Therefore this does not prove that God works in the operations of nature. (DP 3,7,obj6; my emphasis)
The relevant distinction here is between God’s working on something vs. His working in something. The bottom line, a defender of WP might contend, is that although God creates and conserves everything, that’s sufficient to account for His non-miraculous activity in nature. God maintains the forces of nature just by “producing or preserving them,” i.e., He works on nature, but does not need to work in nature––at least, apart from some non-regular miraculous intervention. So the fact that God creates and conserves things does not require, entail or “prove” that He contributes anything more to its effects. I will call this position Conservationism.
In the second way, one might try to go further and argue that God’s creative and conservative power “is the entire extent of God’s causal relations with the created world,”[cv] so that WP actually includes the denial of thesis (c). This position resembles what is typically called Mere Conservationism (CON). Mere conservationists explain that the claim “God operates in nature” can mean no more than that God is mediately involved in the acts of creatures by: (a’) giving creatures their proper powers to act, and (b’) by conserving the powers of creatures at each moment they exist––where (a’) and (b’) are taken to be specifications of theses (a) and (b).
William Durandus, an early 14th century Dominican bishop, theologian, and infamous defender of CON, affirms the points made above:
There is a difference between being and acting. For the being of a secondary cause…is an immediate effect of the First Cause, which is an immediate cause not only in bringing it into being but also conserving it in being. And thus the secondary cause would not exist if the First Cause did not immediately coexist with it. But the secondary cause’s acting is not an immediate effect of the First Cause. And therefore, it is not necessary that God should immediately cooperate in such an action. All that is necessary is that He should act mediately by conserving the nature and the power of the secondary cause.[cvi]
In a more contemporary article, Peter van Inwagen also appears to advocate the mere conservationist’s position. In line with traditional theism and the WP, van Inwagen agrees that God is the Creator of the world, must conserve everything in it, and at each moment must preserve the causal powers of everything He conserves. However, van Inwagen claims that
This is the entire extent of God’s causal relations with the created world. He does not, for example, move particles––or not in any very straightforward sense. Rather, the particles move one another, albeit their capacity to do so is continuously supplied by God.[cvii]
In a more descriptive footnote in the text, van Inwagen clarifies the overall position that he propounds, which is that “alterations in the created world are not directly caused by God.”[cviii] This affirmation, along with his explicit acceptance of the tenets of WP, puts van Inwagen squarely in the mere conservationist’s camp.
As we can see, mere conservationist’s go on to argue that once created and conserved, the powers of creatures are causally sufficient for the obtaining of their effects (creatures “move one another”). If so, then God does not thereby act immediately in the acts of creatures, as Durandus notes: “Now a creature’s action is immediately and completely from a creature, since it does not exceed the power of its species; therefore that same action is not immediately from God.” (Durandus, §12)
Further, were God to act immediately in creaturely acts, mere conservationist’s contend that God’s act would be rendered imperfect. First, Durandus:
It is impossible for two agents to concur immediately with respect to the same action unless each of them is an imperfect and merely partial agent; but this must not be said of God; therefore, he does not concur immediately with the creature in its action…we are often wont to say that God operates through secondary causes or by the mediation of secondary causes. The best interpretation of this way of speaking is that God has given secondary causes the power to act, and that he conserves them and has, as it were, appointed them to act in his stead.[cix]
Van Inwagen makes much the same objection. Speaking of the view that God acts immediately in secondary causes, he says: “I find this doctrine hard to understand. Does it credit created things with the power to produce effects or does it not? In the former case, why is God’s cooperation needed to produce that effect? In the latter case, Creation is devalued.”[cx]
Against both of these positions––Conservationism and CON––Aquinas responds that despite appearances to the contrary, “God is the cause of nature’s operation not only as upholding the forces of nature in their being, but in other ways also.” (DP 3,7,ad6) These “other ways” that Aquinas refers to involve both mediate and immediate causal contributions. In effect, Aquinas is contending that the WP is not enough to account for God’s non-miraculous activity in nature. In chapters 5 & 6, I give a more specific treatment of some of the ways that God is said to be “the cause of nature’s operation.”[cxi] What I would like to do at this point is focus on the general reasons for agreeing with Aquinas and others that the WP actually entails thesis (c), contrary to conservationism and CON.
First, remember that it is generally agreed upon by defenders of the WP that God is for all created things (extensive) the in toto cause of their being (intensive), and that the persistence of creatures requires God’s immediate per se conservative activity––which, as we have argued, has implications a bit deeper than defenders of the WP are typically aware (e.g., that conservation occurs through the same action and power as creation). Now, on the supposition that creatures are efficient causes and hence produce things that have esse, it follows that it is necessary that God be the source of being of those effects or objects of production, i.e., God Himself must contribute to the effects of His creatures insofar as those effects have being simply, since creatures cannot bring that aspect of the effect about. So any effect that a creature produces must at the same time be produced by God in an immediate way, because the effects of creatures are creatures themselves.
The first point, then, is that a general commitment to strong conservation itself––thesis (b) of the SP––implies a commitment to thesis (c); and to reject thesis (c) is tantamount to rejecting thesis (b). They stand or fall together.[cxii] Suarez presents an argument for this conclusion early on in DM XXII:
If the cause depends on God for its esse, then the effect will, too, since both are beings-through-participation. Therefore, just as the cause is dependent at the instant at which it acts, so too the effect is dependent at the instant at which it comes to be, since they are both beings-through-participation at that instant as well. Therefore, every effect of a secondary cause depends on God for its being-made, and as a result a secondary cause can do nothing without God’s concurrence. (DM XXII.1.7)
To clarify, to be a being-through-participation is to be a being that receives its esse immediately from God––who is being in itself––and so bears a relation of absolute, essential dependence to God for its existence and persistence, and thus in its acting.[cxiii] Further, for the purposes of this section, I will interpret God’s “concurrence” here in a very broad manner to imply merely God’s immediate cooperation or involvement with creatures, over and above His act(s) of creation and conservation.
Now if the defender of CON (or the WP) tries to resist this argument, they will face a more specific dilemma. On analysis, a defender of the WP cannot consistently hold that creatures are immediately and per se created and conserved by God, but that God does not contribute immediately to the effects and/or acts of creatures. Specifically, one cannot affirm the PRD but deny thesis (c). Here’s why. The PRD maintains that creatures, insofar as they are creatures, are altogether dependent upon God for their existence. In drawing upon the previous analysis of CEN, we can recall why this dependence has to be an intrinsic and essential dependence, for creatures (1) have been brought into existence in toto, and (2) can in no way naturally retain the impression of the effect of creation, so are sustained in toto as well.
Van Inwagen describes God’s conservative activity in a similarly strong manner:
God created the world by bringing certain elementary particles into existence at some particular moment…Now these particles were (and are) not capable of maintaining themselves in existence or of conserving their own causal powers. For one of them to continue to exist, it is necessary for God continuously to hold it in existence. For it to have the same set of causal powers…it is necessary for God at each instant to supply it with that set of causal powers.[cxiv]
So does Durandus, as we have seen earlier:
For the being of a secondary cause…is an immediate effect of the First Cause, which is an immediate cause not only in bringing it into being but also conserving it in being. And thus the secondary cause would not exist if the First Cause did not immediately coexist with it. (Durandus, §17)
So in every way that a creature is, it is dependent upon God for being that way via an immediate––not mediate––causal influx. This, I contend, is the first clue towards drawing out the primary mistake of the proponent of CON. For if (a’) and (b’) above are specifications of theses (a) and (b), then the claim that “God operates in nature” must mean that God acts immediately in nature, and not just on it.
Now, given commitment to the PRD, it follows that creatures must be said to be no less dependent upon God insofar as they are agents, since the power to act is conferred upon them by God. So in the very process of acting itself––at each moment that they act––creatures require God’s further immediate and per se influence, over and above His creation and conservation of their being. Here’s how Suarez puts the matter:
Created beings depend on God no less as agents than as beings, since (i) they are no less subordinated to God for the one reason than for the other, and (ii) just as they are beings-through-participation, so too they are agents-through-participation; but insofar as they are beings, they are altogether dependent on God intrinsically and essentially; therefore, they depend on God in a similar way insofar as they are agents; therefore, while they are acting, they are dependent not only because they are being conserved in esse by God, but also because in their very acting they require God’s influence per se and immediately. (DM XXII.1.10)
Hence, to deny thesis (c) really amounts to claiming that creatures are in some way either not intrinsically or not essentially dependent upon God––either with regard to their being, or with regard to their acting––which is contrary to the PRD. So contrary to Durandus’s observation, the “difference between being and acting” is misapplied with respect to the relation of dependence that creatures bear to God: creatures essentially depend on God for both.
On the basis of the particular arguments presented, we can summarize the general argument for thesis (c) as follows:
12. The effects and/or acts of creatures involve the production of being simply (esse).
13. Only God can produce being simply (esse), for only God can create.
( 14. God Himself must contribute to the effects and/or acts of creatures, i.e.,
Thesis (c): God’s non-miraculous activity in nature is not exhausted by creation and conservation, i.e., God also acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and/or in the production of their effects.
The only contentious proposition appears to be 12––but it does not beg the question for the traditional defender of CON/WP. Defenders of the WP ought to believe, then, that to effect the being of a creature is in some way to affect the effects and/or the acts of that creature.[cxv] The implications of theses (a) and (b) confirm that nature itself or creatures cannot provide a sufficient explanation for the being simply of natural things, but can only account for the particular mode of its being––as a this or such being (hoc ens). And so, since natural causes always presuppose something prior to their particular effect, they are aptly called secondary causes, meaning their operation depends on a prior and more universal cause, which is God.[cxvi]
To put things differently, the WP entails that there is only one universal cause––God—and His transcendental causality must be immediately presupposed by and involved in all other examples of natural, categorical causality, since His universal causality is responsible for the being simply of all those other examples of causality. Hence there is transcendence in the immanence of nature. Thus, thesis (a) implies thesis (c), yielding our characterization of the Strong View of Providence (SP). Analogous to the observations made above concerning divine conservation, the objector to thesis (c) is really demonstrating a lack of understanding with regard to the immensity of divine creation, of the deep metaphysical intimacy which holds between the creature and the Creator. In the chapters that follow, I will explore the ways in which this metaphysical intimacy has been interpreted, particularly in the doctrines of occasionalism (OCC) and concurrentism (CUR).
Notes
CHAPTER 4: PURE OCCASIONALISM
“It is rediculous to philosophize against experience.”
—N. Malebranche (LO 342)
In chapters 2 & 3 it was shown that simply in virtue of being an orthodox theist—particularly with respect to a commitment to creation ex nihilo—the theist finds herself pushed towards endorsing what I call the Strong View of Providence (SP), which consists of the following three theses of God’s primary causal activity:
(a) God is Creator in the strongest possible sense, i.e., God creates things ex nihilo.
(b) God is responsible for sustaining or conserving His creatures in the strongest possible sense, such that if He withdrew His conservative activity, everything “would at once cease and all nature would collapse.” (DP 5,1)
(c) God’s non-miraculous activity in nature is not exhausted by creation and conservation, i.e., God also acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and in the production of their effects.
On the surface, the SP highlights some necessary causal conditions that must obtain if God is truly provident in the orthodox sense.[cxvii] Further, and more importantly, the SP provides a convenient model by which to assess the connection between God’s primary causal activity—specifically, His immediate involvement in nature—and the various theories of secondary causation that have been promulgated throughout the history of philosophy. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly outline the general conditions or principles for those theories of secondary causation that are compatible with the SP. I will then focus in on the benefits and disadvantages of one particular theory: Occasionalism (OCC). What I intend to show is that OCC is simply not a tenable position for the theist, and that it generates more problems than it initially appears to solve. That will leave the theist with only one option on the table: Concurrentism (CUR).
A. SP-Theories of Secondary Causation
To see what is at issue, we need to back up just a bit. In Ch. 1, it was suggested that the traditional theist is committed to two metaphysically robust and non-negotiable claims:
I. God is strongly provident in the workings of nature (the SP).
II. Human creatures are genuine, causal agents possessing freedom of will (GCA).
In chapters 2 & 3 the SP was introduced, and proved to be more than sufficient as a defense of claim I. However, with regard to thesis (c) of the SP, one might object to it—and by implication to the SP itself—on the grounds that it just goes too far, and proves the powers of nature to be superfluous, or altogether inert in light of God’s immediate causal contributions. If thesis (c) is true then creatures appear to have no active causal powers at all. For, if the claim is that for every act that God performs, His activity is universally necessary and sufficient for the obtaining of His intended effect, then to say that He “acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and in the production of their effects” implies that He does everything that needs to be done. God’s providence appears to be so strong that it “blankets over” the very possibility of true creaturely causation and renders it otiose. If so, then creatures either do not have or do not need any causal powers. God is, and can be, the only true cause of any effect that might obtain in the natural (and supernatural) world. Further, one might suggest that even if the prior concern is adequately dealt with, there still appears to be difficulties reconciling the SP with a robust, i.e., libertarian, view of human freedom. Both of these independent worries are sometimes given as reasons for thinking that claim II is inconsistent with claim I.
Although these are real worries that must eventually be dealt with by the defender of the SP, I think such attempts are premature when presented as objections to the SP itself. If one examines thesis (c) carefully, it is clear that independent arguments are required to establish the claims that: [i] creatures do not have causal powers, i.e., that they causally contribute nothing to the determination of their effects; and [ii] creatures are not free in the libertarian or incompatibilist sense. One very convenient feature of thesis (c), and subsequently the SP, is that it neither excludes nor implies [i] or [ii].[cxviii] Strictly speaking, the SP is only a theory about God’s primary causal activity: It outlines the minimal extent of His creation, conservation, and contributions to natural events. It is still an open question as to what theory of secondary causation and/or theory of creaturely freedom is implied by or compatible with it.
This is not to say, of course, that a commitment to the SP has no implications at all for the role of creatures in the natural world. There are deep and substantive issues that arise for theistic philosophers about the nature and extent of creaturely causality on the SP-model. What I am suggesting, however, is that the development of any such theory of creaturely causality should be posterior to a solid grounding in God’s primary causal providence. This is why creaturely causation is aptly called secondary causation. For under the traditional theistic picture, the operation of a creature always presupposes something prior to its particular effect, namely a prior and more universal cause, which is God. So secondary (creaturely) causation—whatever it may amount to—properly is explained only against the backdrop of God’s primary causation, especially in light of the theist’s commitment to the SP.
That having been said, the true causal question for the traditional theist is just this: how far does the causality and efficacy that God can (and/or does) concede to creatures extend? My contention is that the answer to this question will come packaged via an interpretation of thesis (c) of the SP. As mentioned early on, there has been sharp disagreement throughout the history of philosophy about the extent to which thesis (c) ought to be interpreted, or accepted at all for that matter. It is this general disagreement which is the theoretical dividing line among the three major “competing” theories about secondary causation in nature: Mere Conservationism (CON), Occasionalism (OCC) and Concurrentism (CUR).
So one effective and enlightening way to carve up these differing theories philosophically is to analyze the ways in which they go about defending or rejecting the SP in virtue of the independent arguments they offer for or against thesis (c). Although the SP does not appear to commit the theist straightaway to any affirmative or negative view about secondary causation or freedom, what the SP does imply with regard to the issue of primary causation is the following theologically-modest claim: God is a necessary and immediate cause of every natural effect. In turn, this yields the following condition for creaturely or secondary causation:
(NCS) Creaturely activity is not causally sufficient for its effect(s).
NCS is, I think, an implication of thesis (c).[cxix] It is theologically-modest, since it boasts nothing more controversial than God’s deep, intimate relation with His creatures, even in causation. NCS seems to leave open the possibilities that creatures can be true causal contributors to the effects that are traditionally attributed to them, and that some story can be told about how God’s causal contribution is compatible with a robust, libertarian account of freedom on the part of creatures. Thus, we can see how neither [i] nor [ii] is implied or denied by NCS either.
What is interesting, however, is that this simple formulation (or implication, rather) of thesis (c) makes more explicit our earlier rejection of CON. As we saw in the last chapter, mere conservationists are content to argue that creation and conservation alone are enough to secure God’s strong providence. God is said to be provident in the sense that He contributes to the ordinary course of nature by creating and continually conserving every natural (contingent) substance with its accidents (including their active and passive causal powers) throughout its existence. So God’s power is necessary and sufficient for the existence and character of everything in the natural universe. God does not, however, act immediately in the activities of His creatures or in the production of their effects. Created substances are claimed to be genuine, transeunt (i.e., inter-substantial), and independent secondary causes, whose powers are causally necessary and sufficient for the obtaining of their own natural effects.
If that is the case, then CON turns out to be the prime example of a theory that unwittingly weakens the causal providence of God in favor of a stronger view about creaturely freedom and secondary causation. As we saw in chapter 3, however, the weak view of providence held by CON is simply insufficient to account for God’s ordinary activity in nature, since it outright denies what the theist has very good reasons to believe with regard to the metaphysical depth of divine conservation: It undermines its own commitment to what I called the Principle of Radical Dependence.[cxx] With that, CON should be outright rejected as a possible theory of secondary causation for the orthodox theist.[cxxi]
If one has good reasons for maintaining the SP, however, then there are at least two broad conditions available for the theist to consider with regard to developing an SP-compatible theory of secondary causation. The first involves an exclusive interpretation of thesis (c), which implies that
(NCSo) Creaturely activity is neither causally necessary nor sufficient for its effect(s).
This condition is captured by the view of the occasionalists, who claim that not only is God an immediate cause of every natural effect, but in fact He is the only true cause, whereas creatures are to be considered occasional or sine qua non causes—causes that do not produce their own effects, but are rather conditions or occasions that “determine” or “direct” the immediate causal activity of God.
The second alternative is that
(NCSc) Creaturely activity, though not causally sufficient, is indeed necessary for its effect(s).
This broad condition is defended in various ways by the concurrentists, and involves an inclusive interpretation of thesis (c). Concurrentists maintain that creatures are true causes in nature, but given their dependence on God, they can bring about effects only if God immediately cooperates or concurs with them in their acting.
If NCS is true, then NCSo or NCSc appear to be the only options available for the theist to consider with regard to developing a view about secondary causation. Further, it should be clear, as stressed earlier, that independent arguments are required to establish either option. What I intend to do first is assess the essential thesis of OCC, and fill out the metaphysical role of an occasional cause. I will then evaluate the two most influential arguments that occasionalists offer to establish OCC. Lastly, I will offer objections to OCC, and show how it undermines its own metaphysical commitments to the SP.
B. The Doctrine of Occasionalism
The doctrine of occasionalism has had an illustrious and infamous history. Although many historians of philosophy are familiar only with the post-Cartesian version of the theory, as most evinced in the work of Nicolas Malebranche, the theory actually has deeper medieval, neo-Platonic roots.[cxxii] This should come as no surprise, theoretically speaking, given the earlier discussion of thesis (c) of the SP. For example, when discussing God’s causal involvement in nature, the scholastic defenders of concurrentism clearly believed that the push towards OCC was more of a threat to divine providence than CON, and each attempted to vigorously rebut OCC with a variety of arguments.[cxxiii] To the scholastics, OCC and CUR seemed to be the only alternatives worth taking seriously, with CON being an extreme “minority” view of late scholasticism.[cxxiv]
In general, defenders of OCC are inspired by a very strong view about God’s omnipotence and sovereignty, as contrasted with the utter dependence of creatures on God. This contrast between God and creature allows for both a positive and a negative characterization. Concerning the positive characterization, occasionalists offer arguments to show that since God’s providence is so intimate and ubiquitous with His creation, and creatures are so radically contingent, then only God’s omnipotent activity can ensure the relationship between what we normally call “causes” and “effects” in nature. This positive characterization of OCC maps quite conveniently onto the SP, where—given the immediate focus on God’s primary causation and sovereignty—the SP is claimed to support the view that God is the only real cause of natural events.
The negative characterization of OCC is captured by what I have called the exclusive interpretation of thesis (c), or causal condition (NCSo): Creaturely activity is neither causally necessary nor sufficient for its effect(s). Under the strongest or most pure version of occasionalism, natural substances simply have no causal powers at all, and hence do not produce effects. So not only must God immediately act in every operation of nature, but, as many occasionalists argue, nothing else can operate in nature besides God.[cxxv] What seems to follow from this view is that there are no logically necessary connections between what we ordinarily call natural “causes” and natural “effects.” God alone can provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the obtaining of any genuine causal event whatsoever. But even under weaker or partial versions of OCC, all real causation involves only transcendental causal chains, usually between God’s executive power and the event that obtains. There appear to be no immanent causal connections between substances in nature at all.[cxxvi] Hence there is literally no such thing as creaturely or secondary causation.
What makes OCC particularly interesting, as we will see, is that the arguments used to establish it rely (either explicitly or implicitly) on premises that privilege the will and power of God over creatures.[cxxvii] Most occasionalists contend that God is metaphysically unable to grant creatures any causal efficacy, because to do so would require God to relinquish His providential control in some way, and as hinted at in Ch. 2, God simply cannot fail to be absolutely sovereign in creation. If God is metaphysically unable to give a creature the power to be a true cause, then a creature can neither possess active causal powers, nor can it possibly be employed as an instrument which could minimally contribute to the bringing about of a natural transeunt effect.
B.1. The Essence of Occasionalism
I realize that the loose description of occasionalism given above is not quite sufficient to support NCSo. I will now begin to carve out the theory a bit more carefully by examining the essential thesis of OCC, which will aid my later discussion of the arguments employed to defend the theory itself.
I will first begin with what I take to be a moderate formulation of the OCC thesis. In his article, “Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary Causation in Nature,” Alfred J. Freddoso has claimed that the essential thesis of occasionalism consists of the following:
(OCC) For any state of affairs p and time t, if (i) there is any substance that causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t and (ii) no created substance is a free cause of p at t, then God is a strong active cause of p at t.[cxxviii]
This thesis requires a bit of unpacking. First, Freddoso stipulates that (i) is a primitive causal locution which, if true, minimally implies that p in fact obtains at t. But taken by itself, (i) implies nothing particular about either the kinds of substances that can be causal contributors, the time at which the substance makes the causal contribution, or the nature of the contribution itself. Second, Freddoso defines the notion of a strong active cause in the following manner:
(D1) S is an active [or: efficient] cause of p at t = df
(i) S causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t, and
(ii) S’s causal contribution to p’s obtaining at t is at least in part active.
(D2) S is a strong active cause of p at t = df
(i) S is an active cause of p at t, and
(ii) no substance distinct from S is an active cause of p at t.[cxxix]
Lastly, Freddoso provides us with an explanation of what it means to be a free cause:
A substance S is a free cause of p at t only if (i) S has a rational nature, i.e., is endowed with higher intellective and volitional capacities; (ii) S is an active cause of p at t; and (iii) S’s causally contributing to p’s obtaining at t does not itself obtain by a necessity of nature.[cxxx]
On the basis of these notions, Freddoso rightly points out two non-negotiable tenets of orthodox western theism: 1. that no substance other than God can be a strong active cause of any state of affairs; and 2. that God is in fact a strong active cause of at least some states of affairs. Both tenets are supported by the SP, namely, by the strong doctrines of creation and conservation, which confirm that creatures are radically dependent upon God for their being and causal efficacy, and that only God can create.[cxxxi]
The problem I find with Freddoso’s characterization of (OCC) is that condition (ii) of (OCC) leaves open the possibility that some creatures can be true active causes, i.e., some creatures can truly have, and under the right circumstances can employ, active causal powers of some sort. In fact, if we look carefully at Freddoso’s definition of a free cause, free causes can be shown to be active, and hence efficient causes:
Take S to be any substance distinct from God. For any state of affairs p and time t:
1. If S is a free cause of p at t, then S is an active cause of p at t [def. of free cause, ii].
2. If S is an active cause of p at t, then S causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t [D1.i].
3. If S causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t, then God is not a strong active cause of p at t [D2.ii].
4. If God is not a strong active cause of p at t, then occasionalism does not obtain for that cause or in that causal domain [OCC thesis].
( 5. If S is a free cause of p at t, then occasionalism does not obtain for that cause or in that causal domain.
The reason Freddoso allows this is because as far as he is able to tell,
No important occasionalist has ever in fact intended to deny that [A] there is such a thing as creaturely free choice or that [B] such free choice involves a genuine active causal power to produce effects (Just which effects is a matter I will take up in a moment.)…So in all fairness we should, it seems, define occasionalism in a way that prescinds from questions concerning God’s causal influence on creaturely free choice.[cxxxii]
So on the basis of another non-negotiable tenet of theism—3. that at least some rational creatures (notably humans), possess free choice—Freddoso seems to be arguing that the essence of occasionalism is not only compatible with but also includes a particular species of true secondary causation: “So, according to occasionalism, God is the sole efficient cause of every state of affairs that is brought about in “pure” nature, i.e., in that segment of the universe not subject to the causal influence of creatures when acting freely.”[cxxxiii]
For a few reasons, I think that Freddoso’s assessment of the essence of occasionalism is a bit flawed. First, although Freddoso is correct in pointing out that all “important” occasionalists accept and even defend the existence of creaturely free choice––primarily for reasons of moral responsibility––most of those same occasionalists argue, in opposition to Freddoso, that free choice is not an active causal power. This is an important observation for the occasionalist. Even in segments of the universe where free-willing creatures appear to have some kind of influence, such influence will be extremely limited if occasionalism obtains. That is, occasionalism might turn out to be compatible with the claim that there are free creatures, but only if the volitions of free creatures do not amount to anything causal. It seems clear to me (and many others) that most of the Cartesian occasionalists rejected [B], and for good reasons (which will be examined later).[cxxxiv]
Second, given Freddoso’s characterization of a free cause, the essential thesis of occasionalism turns out to be weak and misleading. On Freddoso’s analysis, the essential thesis of occasionalism is not that God is the sole efficient cause of every state of affairs, but of those that occur in “pure” nature. Free creatures––if there are any––are by definition “at least in part active” in the world, such that they causally contribute to p’s obtaining at t, albeit in certain sharply defined causal domains. Were this true, the entire worry over whether there is true secondary causation in nature under OCC simply fades away.[cxxxv] Yet this aspect of a causal contribution (as opposed to some other kind, which the occasionalists tend to vacillate on) by creatures—free or otherwise—is precisely what every important occasionalist denies! To be fair, we can recall that Freddoso does try to qualify his assessment of occasionalism by explaining that there are limitations on the kinds of effects that free creatures can bring about. Yet those limitations turn out to be extensive, and ultimately rely on the dubious assumption noted above, namely, that occasionalists believe that an act of will is causally efficacious.[cxxxvi]
Given these observations I think it’s fair to say that Freddoso’s characterization of OCC requires some modification. To do that, we need to differentiate between the essential thesis of occasionalism—i.e., what makes occasionalism occasionalism and not some other theory of secondary causation––and the varying theories of causation that occasionalists have defended throughout history. It is one thing to try and identify what is essential to OCC, and quite another to develop a thesis that is compatible with everything that occasionalists have said about the extent (or lack thereof) of creaturely causation.
Historically, occasionalists have disagreed about a wide variety of issues pertaining to secondary causation, e.g., with regard to the nature of the human will and its possible causal efficacy, the will’s relation to the body with regard to bringing about physical effects, etc. Even full-blown occasionalists contend that God’s being the sole cause of every event or state of affairs does not shut out the possibility of there being creaturely free choice.[cxxxvii] Nevertheless, I want to claim that these issues are not essential to the OCC thesis itself. Following Freddoso’s initial suggestion, we should define occasionalism in a way that fully “prescinds from questions concerning God’s causal influence on creaturely free choice.” As I interpret that qualification, not only should God’s causal influence on free choice be excluded from the definition of OCC, but we should even exclude the very concept of creaturely free choice itself. Regardless of what particular occasionalists have had to say about the issue of free will, those views should not enter into our definition of the essential thesis of occasionalism.
My reason for the previous qualification is simple: The central principle which uniquely differentiates occasionalism from other theories of causation is that, whatever the causal domain under consideration, the causation in that domain must intensively belong to God instead of creatures if it is to be occasionalistic. The essence of OCC is thus precisely the positive characterization given earlier in the chapter: If God is causally involved in an immediate way in some state of affairs, then there is no room left for a creaturely causal contribution in that state of affairs.[cxxxviii] God simply does not share causal efficacy with His creatures, given His absolute sovereignty. All occasionalists agree on this point. What individual occasionalists actually disagree about pertains to the extensive aspect of God’s causal involvement: Is God causally involved in every domain of causal activity, or not? Those who think not can be called partial or impure occasionalists. They claim that God is immediately, causally efficacious only in some domains but not others (e.g., body-body causation, but not mind-body causation). Those who answer affirmatively are called complete or pure occasionalists. They claim that God is the cause of everything whatsoever that counts as a true cause, hence must be involved in every causal domain.
This belief about God’s “all or nothing” causal activity––regardless of its extension to some or all causal domains––suggests the following modification of the OCC thesis:
(OCC2) For any state of affairs p and time t, if God causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t, then God is a strong active cause of p at t.
This modification focuses on God as the primary, all-provident agent, which is indeed essential to any version of occasionalism, yet leaves open the possibility that some other substance or creature might be an active cause of p at t in some (unique) causal domain. (OCC2) initially appears to be metaphysically compatible with any version of occasionalism, whether partial or complete.
But is (OCC2) strong enough, however? Since (OCC2) allows for the possibility that, for some state of affairs p and time t, a substance other than God might be an active cause of p at t, then it follows that God would not be a strong active cause of p at t. Were that the case, then God would not be a causal contributor at all to p’s obtaining at t:[cxxxix]
6. If S is an active cause of p at t, then God is not a strong active cause of p at t [D2.ii (Cp. premise 3)].
( 7. If God is not a strong active cause of p at t, then God does not causally contribute to p’s obtaining at t [OCC2 thesis].
So in order for some form of partial occasionalism (hereafter POCC) to work, there has to be some natural domain of causal activity where God is, at the very least, not directly or immediately causally active.
But if the occasionalist is committed to the SP––and I believe that she is––then how might it be possible for any version of POCC to be true? Consider the following argument for Pure Occasionalism:
8. If God is strongly provident––i.e., if the SP is true––then God is immediately, causally involved in every creaturely action.
9. If God is immediately, causally involved in every creaturely action, then there are no natural domains of causal activity where God is not immediately causally active.[cxl]
10. But if any version of POCC is to be tenable, then there has to be some natural domain of causal activity where God is not immediately causally active.
( 11. If God is strongly provident, then no version of POCC is tenable.
A commitment to the SP should force the partial occasionalist to rethink her position with respect to whether God really does not operate in those “non-occasionalistic” causal domains. For either God is an immediate, causal contributor in all causal domains, or He is not. But according to thesis (c) of the SP, God must be an immediate causal contributor in every state of affairs, i.e., all causal domains. And with regard to God’s causal contribution under the occasionalistic picture, God is either the sole cause of everything, or He is not. If God is the sole cause of everything, then what we have is complete or pure OCC, and an even stronger modification of the OCC thesis is in order:
(OCC3) For any state of affairs p and time t, if there is any substance at all that causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t, then God is a strong active cause of p at t.[cxli]
(OCC3) implies that God is the sole efficient or active cause of every effect produced in the created world. For occasionalists, to be an efficient cause is to be a proper or real cause, which is a cause such that the effect is either derived from or made to occur by the active exercise of power or direct (immediate) influence of the cause. So if God is the sole efficient cause of every effect, then God is the sole real cause of every effect. Alternatively, the negative characterization of (OCC3) sufficiently captures or satisfies what I earlier identified as condition (NCSo): Creaturely activity is neither causally necessary nor sufficient for its effect(s). That is, if God is the sole real cause of every effect, then:
i. No creature is an efficient or real cause of any effect.
( ii. No creature exercises real causal power.
( iii. No creature really changes or affects another substance.
And assuming that an inter-substantial change is either a real change, an effect, or both, it appears to follow further that,
iv. No creature really changes or affects its own substance.
The real quandary that remains is this: What plausible story about secondary causation can the partial occasionalist tell? How might God not be the sole cause of everything?
At this point, it seems that the partial occasionalist has only three options to consider: (1) She may take a step back and reject thesis (c) of SP, arguing that there are certain causal domains where God does everything, and others where He is not immediately causally active at all, viz., the domain of free creaturely action; or (2) she digs her heels in and argues that although God is immediately causally involved in every state of affairs, that does not imply that God is the sole cause of every state of affairs in every causal domain. For example, in some causal domains, specifically those that involve rational creatures with free choice, God is said to be an immediate, but only partial or contributing cause. Or lastly, (3) she abandons POCC for pure OCC, letting the chips fall where they may.
I do not think that much needs to be said for options (1) & (2), especially in light of the argument for Pure Occasionalism. For with regard to the contentious and interesting causal domains in question, these versions of POCC are better characterized as partial versions of CON or CUR. Take option (1): in rejecting thesis (c) as applicable to certain causal domains, this version of POCC is really committed to abandoning the SP altogether, and is simply re-introducing the position of the mere conservationist. If that is the case, then the arguments posed against CON in chapter 3 are applicable to this version of POCC, showing it to be no improvement over “pure” CON itself. Option (2), on the other hand, can be made to dovetail nicely with the concurrentist position, but at a price: a further account is required for why God would cooperate with or causally contribute to the actions of free creatures, but not those of the non-rational variety. Yet supposing some account could be given, what we would have is an interesting and partial version of CUR, not OCC.
Aside from the quibble about labels, the important point here is that with either version of POCC, there no longer remains any real objection to CUR (or CON for that matter) on the part of the defender of OCC. Though I have by no means offered an exhaustive assessment of POCC, I take the above observations to be decisive with respect to carving up the territory.[cxlii] So the rest of this chapter will be devoted to assessing pure OCC.
B.2. The Occasional Cause
As I see it, pure OCC, as characterized by thesis (OCC3), is the strongest SP-theory of secondary causation that is available to the orthodox theist. It clearly emphasizes God’s strong causal providence, the utter dependence of creatures upon God, and thus fully defines and delimits the range of creaturely activity. In the case of pure OCC, God’s primary causation is thought to be so overwhelming that creatures have no causal role to play in nature.[cxliii]
Yet although there are no causal domains where creaturely activity––if any, and whatever it may amount to––counts as “real causation,” we can still call occasionalism a theory of secondary causation, namely, the theory that there is none. For the intent of the theory of occasionalism is not only to explain God’s strong causal providence, but by implication, the kinds of causal relations that hold among natural entities or creatures. At the end of the day, OCC provides a theoretical, non-natural explanation for why there can be no causal relations between creatures, and that in turn opens the door for some story to be told about what is going on in nature.
So what is going on in nature? If God is the sole, real cause of every event in the natural, created world, then how are we to explain the appearance of ordinary, natural, “causal” phenomena? What the occasionalist must say is that all the occurrences that we normally or habitually attribute to natural or created substances––what we have been calling secondary causes––are really mere “occasions” for the immediate causal activity of God, so are appropriately referred to as occasional causes.
Under pure OCC, all creatures are, and can only be, occasional causes. Now, there are many things that an occasional cause is not, and if we keep in mind what is implied by (OCC3), viz.,
i. No creature is an efficient or real cause of any effect.
ii. No creature exercises real causal power.
iii. No creature really changes or affects another substance.
iv. No creature really changes or affects its own substance.
then we should be able to more carefully explain what occasionalists mean—on a metaphysical level—by the term “occasional cause.” In what follows, I will be concerned primarily with describing the metaphysical role of occasional causes, as differentiated from their role as (partial) explanans of the phenomena they are coordinated with.[cxliv]
First, an occasional cause is to be sharply contrasted with what was earlier described as a real or proper cause. Occasionalists are careful to specify that the “agent” to which an occasional cause is attributed really brings about nothing at all. Secondary agents have absolutely no causal influence on the effects that obtain in––or even simply given––their presence. To quote the most famous occasionalist, Nicholas Malebranche:
There is no relation of causality between body and mind. What am I saying? No more is there such a relation between mind and body. I say furthermore that there is no such relation between body and body, nor between one mind and another mind. No created being can in short act on any other by an efficacy which it has of itself. (DMR IV.11)[cxlv]
All causal power, influence, production, modification, etc., properly belongs to God, and so is executed solely according to His divine ordination. So for example, “fire does not produce heat and the sun does not give light, but instead it is God who produces these effects in them and in their presence.”[cxlvi] The causal operation and involvement of God in nature is believed to occur in place of secondary, natural causality.
Second, it is important to recognize that an occasional cause is not an instrumental cause.[cxlvii] Strictly speaking, instrumental causes are real or proper efficient causes, the effects of which obtain in virtue of a power that issues immediately from the nature of the cause itself. Of course, in order for instruments to cause anything, they have to be employed by a principal agent; they do not have the power to act on their own. Nonetheless an instrument,
Does have active causal powers that are exercised under the right sort of conditions to produce an effect whose specific characteristics derive in part from the nature of those powers…By contrast, a merely occasional cause is such that there is just no direct natural connection between its causal powers (if any) and the specific character of the effect.[cxlviii]
So take the following state of affairs: the bench pressing of 315 lbs by a weightlifter. If God is the only real cause of the upward motion of the barbell, and properly speaking there is no exercise of causal power on the part of the weightlifter to bring about the effect, then in no way can God be “using” the weightlifter as an instrument to produce the upward motion of the weight. Occasionalists are adamant in claiming that God could just as easily have caused the barbell to melt, or even change into a pigeon under the same initial circumstances. In those (and all other) cases the weightlifter would still be called an occasional cause of the barbell’s melting or becoming a pigeon, and “in exactly the same sense” as he is considered to be an occasional cause of the upward motion of the barbell.[cxlix]
Third, occasional causes are not to be thought of as either advising causes or disposing causes. An advising cause of effect E is, roughly, “a rational agent who––by means of counsel, inducement, provocation, request, persuasion, threat, command, prohibition, etc.––influences another agent to contribute freely to E.”[cl] Advising causes, then, are also instances of real efficient causality, insofar as they bring about changes of belief or psychological states in the “advised” agent.[cli] In most cases it is obvious that occasional causes are not advising causes, particularly when the “agent” under consideration is not a rational creature. Yet it should be acknowledged that even with regard to the free choices of creatures, no complete occasionalist can regard a free creature as an advising cause to what God really (efficiently) causes. This is true simply in virtue of the fact that creatures cannot bring about changes of belief or psychological states in any other substance, much less God, for to do that would require free creatures to be immediately, causally efficacious in some sense, which is contrary to what is implied by complete OCC.[clii]
The same analysis holds true for a disposing cause. A substance is a disposing cause with respect to an effect E “when it produces in some patient a condition required in order for E to be brought about in the way that it is in fact brought about.”[cliii] Disposing causes are also types of real efficient causality, insofar as the condition required for E is an “intrinsic or natural connection between the disposing cause’s preparatory activity and E’s being brought about in the way that it is.”[cliv] Most disposing causes are transeunt efficient causes, where the patient is some substance or substances other than the disposing agent. For example, a gardener can be a disposing cause of the growth of his tomatoes. By fertilizing, watering, weeding, etc., the gardener performs the preparatory activity which produces many of the conditions required for tomatoes to grow (more or less) well. But there are also non-transeunt types of disposing causes. A weightlifter can be considered an intra-substantial disposing cause of the health and strength of his body, insofar as he exercises regularly, performs the relevant and proper exercises, takes good nutritional supplements, etc. It is easy to see how this kind of preparatory activity contributes to, though is not sufficient for, the effect’s being brought about in the way that it is. Were the weightlifter to perform different exercises, use lighter or heavier weights, eat more or less, etc., his body would be disposed, though not necessitated, to exemplify a different degree of health and strength. But whatever the example might be, since occasional causes have no causal efficacy, they in no way can perform the kind of preparatory activity required for the disposing-type conditions to be met. So they can do nothing which is naturally or intrinsically required for the bringing about of any effect E, even on an intra-substantial level.
Lastly, given what has been said above, occasional causes should not even be thought of as what can be called “weak determining” causes. A substance is a weak determining cause with respect to effect E when it has the capacity to determine God to produce “precisely what effects [viz., E] it would produce were it a real cause.”[clv] In order for this to be true, it must be the case that the creature is not wholly causally impotent, but rather has some capacity, mode, disposition, or nature that affects the activity of the divine will in some way to produce E, depending upon the conditions or states of affairs that are obtaining in the natural world at the time, i.e., “solely in virtue of their presence in the world.”[clvi]
For the reasons already given, no pure occasionalist would assent to creatures being weak determining causes in the manner described above. If complete OCC is true, then at best, the deep-level explanation for why things work the way they do will be non-naturalistic, i.e., will boil down to God’s regular ordination of events, with that ordination being directed by nothing else than the divine will itself. I do not see how anything about the nature of the creature itself can even superficially play a part in determining God to execute His designs.
One can try to deflect this observation by explaining that the “true and general cause” and “the occasional or natural cause” of some particular phenomenon are jointly necessary in order to give a complete explanation of that phenomenon. This in turn would bolster the motivation for thinking that occasional causes actually weakly determine their effects, insofar as they cannot be excluded as explanans of the phenomena that they participate in. For example, Daisie Radner suggests that in order to explain a particular phenomenon both types of causes are required, for the following reason: If one answers the question ‘Why does a piece of linen dry when it is placed near the fire?’ simply by saying that ‘God wills it,’ then
One will have explained what produces the drying of the linen, but one will not have explained why the linen dries rather than undergoing some other sort of change. For it is true of anything that happens that it happens because God wills it. One has not explained why something happens as it does if the alleged explanans applies equally to anything else which might have happened instead. Granted that God wills that the linen should become dry, the question remains: Why does he will this and not something else? In order to answer this question one must indicate what it is that determines the efficacy of God’s will in the particular case at issue; that is to say, one must give the occasional or natural cause.[clvii]
I do not think it is helpful at this stage of the game to make such a distinction, since it offers very little by way of metaphysical clarity. Pointing out that an occasional cause is required in order to explain “why something happens as it does” with regard to a particular phenomenon, does not thereby demonstrate that the occasional cause weakly determines the effect in any robust, ontological sense. Further, I suspect that on analysis, the occasional cause cannot even offer an explanation for “what it is that determines the efficacy of God’s will in the particular case at issue,” as Radner contends. All the occasional cause does, at this level, is partially describe the phenomenon. For, given the way that a weak determining cause is characterized, some odd metaphysical implications arise. Since pure occasionalists believe that it is metaphysically impossible for God to grant a creature any causal efficacy, then metaphysically speaking, there is no “way” creatures would act were they real causes, for they simply cannot be real causes.[clviii] If so, then (a) there is no possible world where it is true that creatures are real causes, and (b) we are, at the very least, (epistemically) unwarranted in supposing what creaturely causality would be like at all in order to perform our counterfactual analysis.[clix] Lastly, (c) all weak-determining-type counterfactuals would turn out to be trivially true, since all the antecedents would be necessarily false. Thus everything whatsoever (other than God) is a weak determining cause of everything else! For example, my watching the morning news on December 25, 2002, can be considered a weak determining cause of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, simply in virtue of the form of the counterfactual:
“Were my watching the morning news on December 25, 2002, a real cause, then it would cause the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.”
Such an implication completely undermines the original intention of describing an occasional cause as a weak determining cause, which was to explain the regularity of phenomena by means of a law-like, causal-type locution. On the view under consideration, there is simply no natural reason why God wills this and not something else, because there is seemingly nothing about the nature of the creature which enters into the divine deliberation process.
Rather than viewing a weak determining cause “from the bottom up,” so to speak, if one wished to continue employing this concept, it might be better to reverse the order of determination. For example, in his Philosophical Commentary, Thomas M. Lennon offers a less metaphysically troublesome way of explaining the notion of a determining-type cause:
Now, Malebranche does often say that occasional causes determine (déterminent) God to act in a certain way; yet this might well be a way of saying in a simpler though misleading way that finite substances were, or rather, are being created in such a way that their changes are regularly correlated, i.e., not that God is determined by creatures, but that He acts in determinate ways with respect to them. (LO 820)
In summary, the pure occasionalist is committed to saying that creatures have no causal power to affect anything, especially the divine will, nor do they believe that God’s providential causality leaves any room whatsoever for the slightest contribution on the part of creatures. So with respect to the nature of causality, even in light of the possibility of free human action, pure OCC is very clear about where the causal buck stops. Freddoso is thus correct, I believe, when he observes that:
If [pure] occasionalism is true, then there is no [preparatory, advising, instrumental, etc.] connection between any human action and any effect brought about in nature. Whenever God brings about E, His action in bringing about E, i.e., His causal contribution to E, is exactly the same whether or not there has been any antecedent activity on the part of finite free agents, and regardless of the nature of any such activity. Even if God has decided to act in such a way that He ordinarily brings about E only when finite free agents have first acted in certain ways, this implies only that finite free agents are serving as an occasion for God’s producing E, not that they are disposing [or advising, instrumental, etc.] causes of E.[clx]
Does all of this mean that occasional causes, i.e., created substances, are wholly impotent? Causally speaking, yes. The occasional cause is not really a cause at all, not in any metaphysically robust sense anyway. Hence, we see more clearly why it is initially contrasted with a real cause. To call it a cause, yet not a real cause, can be only a matter of convention. At best, the term “occasional cause” is meant to pick out a state of affairs where causal efficacy appears to occur between natural substances, but in fact does not.
The only relation that appears to hold between the occasional (or secondary) cause and the effect that obtains—if there is one at all—is some type of counterfactual dependence, which is significantly weaker than that of the weak determining cause. We can say that x is an occasional cause of y just in case,
(i) x is posited;
(ii) If x is posited, then y is posited;
(iii) If x were not posited, then y would not be posited in the same way; and
(iv) It is not the case that y’s being posited results from the exercise of any causal power on the part of x.[clxi]
On this account, we can see why occasional causes are called sine qua non causes, or causes without which no effect would be produced by God. This kind of causal reduction can be seen in the medieval occasionalist Gabriel Biel, for example:
A cause is “that whose being is followed by another,” i.e., a cause is the thing which is such that when it is posited in being, some other thing is posited in being. It should be added: “…and such that when it is not posited, the other thing is not posited in the way in which it is in fact posited.”[clxii]
Given my earlier observations, however, we should be careful not to regard the occasional cause as playing any causally active role in the divine plan. As suggested by condition (iv), qua secondary cause, there is nothing about x and y which causally influences, recommends or disposes God to produce them together. Further, the nature or essence of x under a given set of circumstances in no way necessitates or determines the causing of y by God. What we can say, minimally, is that God has ordained x to be an occasional cause of y for some reason or other, but one would be hard-pressed actually to find that reason in nature. Further, were there any logical or causal connections between x and y, they would obtain in, and in virtue of, the divine will alone.
Might the occasional cause be something like a logical (but non-causal) condition for God’s acting in a certain way? In light of the above observations, I’m not so sure. First, it is difficult to see how this type of condition would be significantly different from either an advising, disposing, or weak determining cause. Under this description one might say that, in surveying the universe, God’s volition would be (very simplistically) something like the following:
12. If x obtains, then God wills to produce y.
Superficially, this allows x—the occasional cause—to be the antecedent “catalyst” for God’s immediate volition that y. But if this is correct, then the independent presence and capacity (possibly the nature) of x itself must in some way influence or affect the course or activity of the divine will. But as we have seen, this simply cannot be the case. To examine x from this angle is to misconstrue the structure of God’s volitions under the OCC thesis. If pure OCC is true, then the following is (slightly) more appropriate:
13. If God wills to produce x, then God wills to produce y.
The mere obtaining of x is not exactly what influences God’s subsequent will to produce y. Rather, the producing of y is entirely subject to God’s hidden ordination. For whatever reason, God decides to produce y whenever He produces x. From the perspective of creatures, the presence of x is something like a contingent sign of what effect God might execute—viz., y—given what has observably occurred in the past. But x is also something God has willed, for whatever reason. Whatever x is, as an occasional cause, is also an effect of a previous volition of God’s, and so does not stand independently as a logical condition, but rather is itself a part of the more complex volitional structure of God. Nothing extrinsic to God ever gets included in the formulation. So to analyze the situation properly in terms of logical conditions thus appears to require an immanent story about God’s volitions—a literal probing of the mind of God—and since the obtaining of x in nature in no way necessitates the obtaining of y, no further analysis of this kind or demonstration propter quid appears forthcoming.
As we can discern, the real difficulty in describing occasionalism and the occasional cause lies in the radical distinction between primary and secondary causation, assumed by all defenders of the SP.[clxiii] For the occasionalist, real causation comes in only on the side of the primary cause, so is purely transcendental. Secondary causation is, at best, simply descriptive of that primary causation. At worse, the phenomena we experience are not even “true” indicators of God’s real causal activity, since in reality we never perceive the necessary connection between any two events. All that observation gives us is the occurrence or concomitance of two events or states of affairs, and not the occurrence of the latter by means of the former. As the occasionalist is fond of saying: Existence with a thing does not prove existence by a thing. So at the end of the day, for the pure occasionalist, secondary causality can at best consist of explanatory stories of the phenomena we “experience,” but not the metaphysical facts of the matter.
C. Arguments for Occasionalism
With that in mind, how do occasionalists argue for (OCC3)? I will consider the two most influential arguments posed by occasionalists which appear to establish pure OCC. They are: the Necessary Connection Argument (NCA), and the Divine Concursus Argument (DCA).
C.1. The Necessary Connection Argument (NCA)
Although traces of this argument can be found in al-Ghazâlî and Nicholas of Autrecourt,[clxiv] the most famous version shows up in Malebranche’s Search After Truth:
A true cause as I understand it is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect. Now the mind perceives a necessary connection only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects. Therefore, it is only God who is the true cause and who truly has the power to move bodies. (LO 450)
Here I take Malebranche to be making a metaphysical claim about the necessary and sufficient conditions for genuine causation, despite the epistemic talk of “perceiving.”[clxv] The basic point is that God can fulfill those conditions, whereas creatures cannot. Given this, we can begin to formulate the central premises of the argument roughly as:
14. x is a true cause of an effect e iff there is a necessary connection between x and e.
15. There is a necessary connection only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects.
( 16. Only the will of an infinitely perfect being, i.e., God, is a true cause.
Premises 14 & 15, however, seem to entitle Malebranche only to the more modest conclusion that:
( 17. Only the will of an infinitely perfect being, i.e., God, can be a true cause.
As Kenneth Clatterbaugh recognizes, in order to move from premise 17 to the conclusion of the text—that God is the only true cause—Malebranche simply needs to add a few more steps:[clxvi]
18. Every change must have a cause. [DMR 173]
19. There are effects, i.e., changes in nature. [LO 448ff]
( 20. There are causes.
( 21. God is the only true cause.
Which then yields the further negative conclusion that,
( 22. No creature is a true cause.
Rather than stopping at this point, Malebranche strengthens the conclusion by arguing for two more claims. First, the text:
I say further (a) that it is inconceivable that God could communicate His power to move bodies to men or angels, and (b) that those who claim that our power to move our arms is a true power should admit that God can also give to minds the power to create, annihilate, and to do all possible things; in short, that He can render them omnipotent. (LO 450)
Now although (a) and (b) appear to be different claims—and in fact, Malebranche has two separate arguments for them—they actually imply the same conclusion. That is to say, if we were to take these claims at face value, what we would get is:
23. (a) It is not possible for God to communicate His causal power to creatures.
24. (b) Were creatures true causes, then God would be able to make creatures omnipotent.
Yet Malebranche clarifies what he means by claim (b) later on in the text, by explaining that the reason that a creature could be supposed to be a true cause in this instance—to have the power to move bodies, as he puts it—has to do with the fact that God had actually communicated this power to the creature:
But if after all these arguments someone still wishes to maintain that the will of an angel who moved a body would be a true and not an occasional cause, it is clear that this same angel could be the true cause of the creation and annihilation of all things. For God could communicate to him His power to create and annihilate bodies, as the power to move them… (LO 451, italics my emphasis)
So premise 24 amounts to,
24’. Were it possible for God to communicate His causal power to creatures, then God would be able to make creatures omnipotent.
And if we add in the implicit premise that,
25. It is not possible for God to make creatures omnipotent.
Then Malebranche could first conclude that,
( 26. It is not possible for God to communicate His causal power to creatures.
Which is the same as premise 23 or claim (a), but then go on to modally strengthen his earlier conclusions:
( 27. It is not possible for a creature to be a true cause.
( 28. Necessarily, God is the only true cause.
Thus giving Malebranche independent reasons for thinking that the occasionalist interpretation of thesis (c) of the SP is true, i.e.,
( 29. (NCSo) Creaturely activity is neither causally necessary nor sufficient for its effect(s).
At this point, Malebranche gives his final assessment of the previous arguments:
There is therefore only one single true God and one single cause that is truly a cause, and one should not imagine that what precedes an effect [in nature] is its true cause. God cannot even communicate His power to creatures, if we follow the lights of reason; He cannot make true causes of them, He cannot make them gods. But even if He could, we cannot conceive why He would. Bodies, minds, pure intelligences, all these can do nothing. It is He who made minds, who enlightens and activates them. It is He who created the sky and the earth, and who regulates their motions. In short, it is the Author of our being who executes our wills: semel jussit, semper paret. (LO 451)
I find this argument to be extremely powerful.[clxvii] Nonetheless, I believe that objections can be raised against it which not only weaken it significantly, but call into question the very foundation of its commitment to the SP. In what follows I develop a twofold response to this argument: In § C.2, I will give reasons for thinking that its central premise is false; next in § C.3, I will reconstruct part of the argument from the aspect of existence, and show that if God cannot communicate the power to be a true cause to a creature, then in turn, God really cannot communicate something as complex as existence or being (esse) to a thing either. So rather than running through a battery of objections to the thesis of occasionalism itself, my goal is to turn the tables on the occasionalist and his or her commitment to the SP.
C.2. Necessary Connections Are Not Necessary
As I have formulated it, the central premises of the NCA are 14, 15, 23 and 24. I will leave premise 15 uncontested here.[clxviii] Further, the argument that Malebranche offers for premise 23 involves an implicit appeal to premise 14, though I will discuss it briefly in this section and the next. Lastly, even if we take premise 24 as an independent argument for the conclusion, the notion of a true cause that it employs is the one Malebranche stipulates in premise 14. Thus, when all is said and done, the argument appears to stand or fall with premise 14.
So why does the occasionalist think that there must be a necessary connection between a cause and its effect? On Malebranche’s behalf, let’s perform the following thought experiment.[clxix] Under traditional causal circumstances, when a creature x wills that e, then e occurs, but not necessarily. This is what we usually mean when we say that creatures are contingent causes, for surely it is possible that x wills that e, and e does not obtain. Malebranche argues that one situation where this would happen is when “God wills to produce the opposite of what some minds will, as might be thought in the case of demons or some other minds that deserve this punishment.” (LO 450) So suppose that creature x is deserving of punishment under this condition, so when x wills that e, God wills that not-e. Were this to happen, x would not be responsible for causing not-e, since x’s alleged causal efficacy for that event consists in its power to bring about e. Hence God would be solely responsible for the obtaining of not-e, despite x’s alleged causal power.
Now re-consider the case where x wills that e and e occurs. The obtaining of e at least implies that God did not will that not-e. But is God a complete bystander in the causal event? Malebranche—and your traditional theist committed to the SP—thinks not. For were this the case, then Malebranche would be conceding to the doctrine of mere conservationism, which he explicitly considers and rightly rejects in the Elucidations.[clxx] So as a good defender of the SP, Malebranche agrees that God must be immediately, causally involved in some way, in every causal state of affairs. But as an occasionalist, Malebranche’s strategy is to compare the “ordinary” case of causality to the case of punishment in the following way:
One could not say in this case [of punishment] that God would communicate His power to them, since they could do nothing that they willed to do. Nevertheless, the wills of these minds would be the natural causes of the effects produced. Such bodies would be moved to the right only because these minds willed them moved to the left; and the volitions of these minds would determine the will of God to act, as our willing to move the parts of our bodies determines the first cause to move them. Thus, all the volitions of minds are only occasional causes. (LO 450)
Malebranche’s point is that just as it is God who brings about not-e by willing it in the punishment case—with x playing no causal part in the obtaining of the effect—so too, it is God who actually brings about e in the “traditional” case, with x being causally impotent here as well. For what else could it mean to say that God is immediately, causally involved in every causal event in nature? So it appears that what justifies premise 14 is actually some implicit modification of premise 15: God is the only cause, because He is the Cause par excellence:[clxxi]
15. There is a necessary connection only between the will of God and His effects.
( 30. It is necessary that if God wills that e, then e obtains.
31. God is immediately, causally involved in every effect e. [Thesis (c) of the SP]
( 32. For every effect e, if it is necessary that if God wills that e, then e obtains, then God is a true cause of e.
But at best, I think this way of looking at the problem only allows the occasionalist to generalize to the following:
( 14*. If there is a necessary connection between x and e, then x is a true cause of an effect e.
Which is, of course, quite modest as far as causal conditions go, and does not allow Malebranche sufficiently to establish the causal impotency of creatures.
Even if the prior analysis is taken to be suspect, there are still independent reasons for thinking that premise 14 is not true, i.e., that a necessary connection between a cause and its effect is only sufficient but not necessary for something to be a true cause. First, consider a case of causal overdetermination, where creature x wills that e, and God also wills that e. Sukjae Lee contends that,
Malebranche might bring in considerations related to the simplicity of divine ways to rule out overdetermination, but ruling out overdetermination with simplicity seems rather weak as a response to the possibility of genuine creaturely causation. For one thing, the idea behind overdetermination is fertile enough to suggest that even in the divine intervention case it is not that the creature’s efficacy is nonexistent but rather that the creature’s power is overpowered by God.[clxxii]
That is to say, in going back to the thought experiment, we have no non-question begging reason to suspect that causal overdetermination is not possible, especially in the punishment case (as an overpowering), and so by analogy, in the traditional case as well.
But even if we throw out this scenario, consider a second case: concurrence. What if, under the traditional causal circumstances, both God and creature x are immediately and jointly involved in bringing about effect e? For the sake of argument, the concurrentist can concede to the strength of premise 15, avoid the charge of overdetermination, and posit that insofar as creature x has causal powers, creature x is also a true cause of effect e, even though there may be no necessary connection involved on the part of the creature.[clxxiii]
What the concurrentist can gently point out, then, is that the occasionalist fails to make a distinction between [i] divine acts like creation, where God directly produces the effect—hence His causal contribution is necessary and sufficient for the effect to obtain—and [ii] divine acts like concurrence, where God wills to act if and only if a creature wills to act, contributing only what is necessary to aid the creature in its acting.[clxxiv]
Moreover, it is not unreasonable to ask the occasionalist, especially Malebranche, to make this kind of distinction. For the moment let us direct our attention to the fact that Malebranche has a separate argument for premise 23, which contends that any power a creature is purported to have is actually reduced to the efficacious will of God as its proper source. Thus Malebranche concludes that creatures cannot be true causes, since they never get included in the causal story:
God needs no instruments to act; it suffices that He wills in order that a thing be, because it is a contradiction that He should will and that what He wills should not happen. Therefore, His power is His will, and to communicate His power is to communicate the efficacy of His will. But to communicate this efficacy to a man or an angel signifies nothing other than to will that when a man or an angel shall will this or that body to be moved it will actually be moved. Now in this case, I see two wills concurring when an angel moves a body; that of God and that of the angel; and in order to know which of the two is the true cause of the movement of this body, it is necessary to know which one is efficacious. There is a necessary connection between the will of God and the thing He wills. God wills in this case that, when an angel wills this or that body to be moved, it will be moved. Therefore, there is a necessary connection between the will of God and the movement of the body; and consequently it is God who is the true cause of its movement, whereas the will of the angel is only the occasional cause. (LO 450)
This is, I think, the extent of what Malebranche means when he says that God cannot give creatures the power to be true causes. At bottom, premise 23 simply denies the fact that creatures can be causes instrumental to the divine causality.
Now let’s look at Malebranche’s key description in the text: “But to communicate this efficacy to a man or an angel signifies nothing other than to will that when a man or an angel shall will this or that body to be moved it will actually be moved.” There is nothing about this description or way of talking that precludes its compatibility with concurrentism, or prevents one from applying distinction [ii] above. For concurrentism claims that it is possible for God to perform a particular role in the causal activity of creatures which is not complete; which requires the causal contribution of a creature. God does this not because He cannot perform the action without the help of the creature, but for other reasons (which will be discussed in chapter 5). So in line with Malebranche’s description, God could will the following, “Let it be the case that if x wills that e, then e will obtain.” Here, God appears to be responsible for the entire action, though in a general way, for it is God’s will, and His will alone, which ensures that the action will take place. However, the creature is also completely responsible for the effect, for the creature supplies the particular sufficient condition to the conditional which God has decreed, thus participating in the general causal activity of God. Further, only one action ensues, with both God and creature contributing what is conjointly sufficient for the effect to obtain. And finally, the relation of radical dependence of creature on God is maintained, for the creaturely contribution is completely dependent upon the immediate and efficacious volition of God. In essence, this kind of description does not necessarily shut out—i.e., is compatible with—true creaturely power.[clxxv]
This, I admit, is not a knock-down objection to premise 14. In order for it to be stronger, one would have to supply the following:
• Arguments for divine concurrence; and,
• Arguments for instrumental causation, particularly in light of Malebranche’s objections.
To this, I simply beg the reader’s indulgence, and offer a promissory note to do both in chapter 5, where the doctrine of concurrentism will be discussed.
C.3. Deus Non Potest Creare
As a last stab at the NCA, let’s take a look at premises 23 and 24 again:
23. (a) It is not possible for God to communicate His causal power to creatures.
24. (b) Were creatures true causes, then God would be able to make creatures omnipotent.
Recall that in the argument for premise 23, Malebranche make an interesting identity claim with respect to the divine nature, and tries to capitalize on it:
It suffices that He wills in order that a thing be, because it is a contradiction that He should will and that what He wills should not happen. Therefore, His power is His will, and to communicate His power is to communicate the efficacy of His will. (LO 450, italics my emphasis)
As I understand Malebranche, he is making a familiar claim about the character of God’s power: That it is an absolute power, one that does not come in degrees. Note that Malebranche is not willing to admit that God could communicate some other kind of power to creatures, some weaker or different kind of power to cause, for example. That would spoil the conclusion of the argument. What it means to say that “God cannot communicate His power to creatures,” is that God cannot communicate His power, i.e., His omnipotence, to them. For Malebranche, it is an all or nothing affair: You either have His power, or you have none. This then explains what Malebranche is up to with premise 24.[clxxvi] To be a true cause is to be an omnipotent cause; it is to be divine.
Well, if this is the case, then it looks as if Malebranche is going to have a problem upholding the doctrine of creation. Consider the following analogous argument:
32. God necessarily exists.
33. For God to communicate His existence is for Him to communicate the fundamental character of His existence, i.e., its necessity.
( 34. If God were to communicate His existence to something, then God would be able to create a necessary being (i.e., another divine being).
35. It is impossible for God to create a necessary being.
( 36. It is impossible for God to communicate His existence to something, i.e., it is impossible for God to create anything.
Following Malebranche’s formula and peculiar interpretive move in the text, I do not see which premise he could honestly deny, while still upholding his argument for premise 23. To be sure, Malebranche assents to the doctrine of divine simplicity, so not only does he think that God exists necessarily, but he believes that God’s necessity expresses something intrinsic to His nature: God is His existence.[clxxvii] Premises 33 and 34 follow Malebranche’s move in the text, and premise 35 is, on a standard interpretation, a necessary truth.[clxxviii]
Could the Cartesian distinction between existence and necessary existence help Malebranche here? I don’t think so. What would it mean to say that God could not communicate His own existence to a creature, but could communicate another kind of existence to it? In comparison with necessary existence, ordinary, run-of-the-mill existence is definitely not a relative or partial existence (as power could be in the former argument); it does not come in degrees (whereas perfections do). Further, unlike necessary existence, ordinary existence is itself not a perfection: It is that which makes it the case that perfections are exemplified in the first place. But most importantly, by analogy, we are simply not allowed in premise 33 to make a distinction between God’s existence, and existence of some other sort. As Beatrice Rome explains, Malebranche accepted the notion that creatures are participations of God’s Being.[clxxix] In her analysis of Malebranche’s doctrine of existence, she says:
Now if creation is self-diffusion, self-communication, a self-giving or outpouring, does it not necessarily follow that the resultant being is itself an activity? Creation is self-communication; but what can God communicate other than what He Himself is, His very being, which is also causality? In Descartes’ system, God could will, conceive, create anything whatever in any manner whatever.[clxxx] But in Malebranche’s system, creation is, so to speak, a responsible activity. God need not create, but if He does, His conduct must reflect or bear the character of His attributes…We may then accept Malebranche’s statements that beings are participants, analogues, resemblances of God as Being.[clxxxi]
Now Rome does not see this as a problem for Malebranche—since most of this was standard fare for the Scholastics—but I do, especially in light of her comments about creation as self-communication, the identification of God’s being with His causality (which is more explicit in Malebranche), and the fact that what God creates must bear the character of His attributes. So as noted above, I think it is quite fair to claim that for Malebranche, the communication of existence or being is an all or nothing affair: Either you have His absolute existence, or you have nothing, i.e., you do not exist. So if God cannot give something as ontologically “common” as causal power, then He definitely cannot give something as metaphysically foundational as existence.
Now if there is anything noteworthy at all about this argument, then the whole Malebranchean occasionalistic edifice crumbles from within. For we have an independent approach to exposing the metaphysical difficulty that opponents of occasionalism have always seen as following from the thesis of OCC: the no-nature theory of substances (NNT).
Freddoso explains that the NNT (he calls it a brand of OCC) consists of three theses: (i) OCC; (ii) an antiessentialist thesis (no material substance has any of its causal powers essentially); and (iii) the claim that no material substance has any active or passive causal power at all.[clxxxii] It is not difficult to see how the NNT fits with pure occasionalism (OCC3) quite well, for not only does it maintain that God is the only cause, but collapses theses (ii) and (iii) together in its explanation of the occasional cause. No creature has any causal powers essentially, because no creature has any causal powers whatsoever. Thus, God need not work against creatures in order to bring about His effects as the only true cause.[clxxxiii]
So how is the pure occasionalist able to maintain God’s strong causal providence, particularly the doctrine of creation, while admitting that creatures are only occasional causes? Divest them of any active causal powers whatsoever. Anything less would simply be idolatrous, as Malebranche contends:
If we next consider attentively our idea of cause or of power to act, we cannot doubt that this idea represents something divine…We therefore admit something divine in all the bodies around us when we posit forms, faculties, qualities, virtues, or real beings capable of producing certain effects through the force of their nature; and thus we insensibly adopt the opinion of the pagans because of our respect for their philosophy. It is true that faith corrects us; but perhaps it can be said in this connection that if the heart is Christian, the mind is basically pagan. (LO 446, italics my emphasis)
The highlighted phrase in the quotation is a bit foreboding, I think. Were we to think that creatures have true powers, we would, in effect, be rendering “sovereign honor to leeks and onions.” (LO 447) Yet this passage also gives us further reason to think that the communication of existence for Malebranche is an all or nothing affair. As Malebranche repeatedly claims, there is only one true cause because there is only one true God. From this, we can take Malebranche to be asserting that true causality is inseparable from true being, which is divine. God’s being able to communicate real or true being to a creature seems to involve giving them some real distinguishing characteristic or other, some perfection, which would then have a force or effect on other substances.[clxxxiv] But that, according to Malebranche, would be blasphemous:
All these insignificant pagan divinities and all these particular causes of the philosophers are merely chimeras that the wicked mind tries to establish to undermine worship of the true God in order to occupy the minds and hearts that the Creator has made only for Himself. It is not the philosophy received from Adam that teaches these things; it is that received from the serpent. (LO 451, italics my emphasis)
Be that as it may, what option is God left with under these circumstances, concerning His creative power? If, with regard to causality, creatures can only be occasional causes, then with regard to being, creatures can only be something like ‘occasional existents.’ Metaphysically speaking, this position is tantamount to claiming that what you have in nature are not substances at all. As Leibniz explains,
The very substance of things consists in a force for acting and being acted upon. From this it follows that persisting things cannot be produced if no force lasting through time can be imprinted on them by the divine power. Were that so, it would follow that no created substance, no soul would remain numerically the same, and thus, nothing would be conserved by God, and consequently everything would merely be certain vanishing or unstable modifications and phantasm, so to speak, of one permanent divine substance. Or, what comes to the same thing, God would be the very nature or substance of all things. (De Ipsa Natura, 8; AG 159-160)
That is to say, pure occasionalism leads straight to pantheism or Spinozism, and traditional theism is completely unraveled.[clxxxv] Thus, by hook or by crook, the NCA proves too much, and undermines the occasionalist’s commitment to the SP, specifically, any thick or thin interpretation of the doctrine of creation. So I think that we should read Malebranche a bit more warily when he concludes that
If religion teaches us that we must not genuflect before false gods, this philosophy [OCC] also teaches us that our imaginations and minds must not bow before the imaginary greatness and power of causes that are not causes at all; that we must neither love nor fear them; that we must not be concerned with them; that we must think only of God alone, see God in all things, fear and love God in all things. (LO 452)
C.4. The Divine Concursus Argument (DCA)
Although Malebranche never really abandoned the Necessary Connection Argument, I think he realized its weaknesses, particularly how his argument against instrumentalism would be unconvincing to your average concurrentist.[clxxxvi] So in the Dialogues, Malebranche takes a new approach to defending OCC.[clxxxvii] The first thing Malebranche does is explain what he understand to be the depth of a divine act of creation:
No power, however great we imagine it, can surpass or even equal the power of God. Now, it is a contradiction that God should will the existence of a chair yet not will that it exist somewhere and, by the efficacy of His volition, not put it there, not conserve it there, not create it there. (DMR VII.10)
What it means for God to create something is for Him to bring it into existence with all its modifications or determinate states at once. It is, in essence, for God to bring something into existence in toto. On the supposition that only God can create, which Malebranche clearly accepts, we can start the argument this way:
37. If God creates substance x, then God creates x in toto. That is to say,
37’. If God creates substance x, then for every property f that x has at its initial moment of existence t1, God is the cause of x’s having f at t1.
38. (Theistic Assumption) Only God can create.
( 39. If God creates substance x, then for every property f that x has at its initial moment of existence t1, God is the sole cause of x’s having f at t1.
Add to this, now, the traditional thesis of divine conservation—thesis (b) of the SP—which is that God must continually sustain or conserve the objects of creation in the strongest possible sense: At every moment of their existence, creatures are causally, immediately dependent upon God for His continual, in toto conferral of their being or esse. Here is how Malebranche describes that thesis:
God wills that there be a world. His will is all-powerful, and so the world is made. Let God no longer will that there be a world, and it is thereby annihilated. For the world certainly depends on the volitions of the Creator. If the world subsists, it is because God continues to will that the world exist. On the part of God, the conservation of creatures is simply their continued creation. I say, on the part of God who acts. For, on the part of creatures, there appears to be a difference since, in creation, they pass from nothing to being whereas, in conservation, they continue to be. But, in reality, creation does not pass away because, in God, conservation and creation are one and the same volition which consequently is necessarily followed by the same effects. (DMR VII.6, italics my emphasis)
Just as in the initial act of creation, God alone completely brings the world and everything in it into existence in toto, so in every subsequent moment, Malebranche contends, God is said to do the same thing, which is to fully specify all the individual attributes and modes of the world, and in the same manner as He did before. Thus divine conservation is continued creation, and God turns out to be the only true cause of anything that occurs:
40. If God creates substance x, then God must conserve x.
41. But divine conservation is just continued creation.
( 42. If God conserves substance x, then for every property f that x has at each subsequent moment of existence t1+y, God is the sole cause of x’s having f at t1+y.
43. (Theistic Assumption) God creates every substance other than Himself.
( 44. God is the sole cause of every state of affairs, that is to say,
44’. For every substance x, and for every property f that x has at each moment of its existence t, God is the sole cause of x’s having f at t.
( 45. No substance other than God (i.e., no creature) is a cause.
What makes the DCA so interesting is that it relies on the traditional theistic premise that conservation is just continued creation. This principle was accepted in some form or other by the Scholastics (as seen in chapter 3, § A.5) and the Islamic Mutakallimún, as well as by Descartes, Leibniz and Berkeley.[clxxxviii] Insofar as the DCA relies on a premise that his general audience is plainly committed to, Malebranche can shift the burden of proof to his objectors by presenting them with the following dilemma: Either deny premise 41, or show how premise 41 does not lead to occasionalism.
I do not think that the concurrentist—or even the mere conservationist for that matter—needs to say much in order to object to this argument. They will opt, I think, for the second horn of the dilemma. For even though all of the figures above subscribed to premise 41, only the Mutakallimún interpreted it with an occasionalist slant, that is, to mean that divine conservation is just continued re-creation:
The substance, like its indwelling accidents, perishes forthwith upon its creation and is re-created by God so long as He wishes. But every such act of re-creation implies a fresh start in the life-history of substance, so that duration is no more and no less than a process of successive phases of being (hûduth).[clxxxix]
To the best of my knowledge, all traditional theists (other than the occasionalists) reject the notion that conservation is continued re-creation. It has even been suggested that not even Malebranche is entitled to interpret the doctrine this way, at least, not in the way he presents it in the text: “But, in reality, creation does not pass away because, in God, conservation and creation are one and the same volition which consequently is necessarily followed by the same effects.”[cxc] A few sections later in the Dialogues, Malebranche makes the following clarification: “From all eternity God has willed, and to all eternity He will continue to will—or, to speak more accurately, God wills unceasingly though without variation, without succession, without necessity—everything He will do in the course of time.” (DMR VII.9; my emphasis). By itself, this leaves no room to interpret conservation as continuous re-creation. Compare this to Scotus’s explanation of creation and conservation:
The relationship of one simple thing to another simple thing is one and the same real relation. Now it is the same volition by which a creating and conserving God formally creates and conserves, and the existence itself of the created subject is identical with that of the conserved subject. Therefore the relation of the created and conserved to the creating and conserving God is one and the same. (Scotus, Quodlibet XII.intro; my emphasis)
What we can confirm for both Scotus and Malebranche (given the text) is clearly one (the same) volition—and indeed as Descartes would say, the same power—that establishes, in Scholastic talk, “the continual inpouring of esse to the creature,” and not a series of successive acts of creation. So although there may be no real distinction between creation and conservation, we do not yet get the implication that the existence of the creature is being re-created. Rather, all that has been established is that the relationship of existential dependence that the creature has on God in virtue of its being created—as Scotus puts it, “the relation of the created and conserved to the creating and conserving God”—is the same throughout its existential career. If this is the case, premise 42 does not follow from premise 41, for the traditional interpretation leaves open the possibility that creatures can be causally responsible for the changes that occur in later states.
As I explained in Ch. 3, the doctrine of strong conservation, properly interpreted, does not entail that God continually re-creates each thing at each successive moment. An additional argument for that inference is required, and it is just not there in Malebranche. In general, the Scholastics all held that there was a difference between existence as permanent and as successive, with divine conservation establishing permanent existence in a creature. If a creature has permanent existence, then its existence is the same, numerical existence at each moment that it exists: it “remains to the end” (though it does not follow that it exists without fail). Successive existence, on the other hand, consists of a new, different esse conferred at each successive moment of “its” existence.[cxci] I say, “its,” for it is unclear on a continuous re-creation view as to whether you would have the same substance from one moment to the next. Suppose someone held the following (very plausible) thesis to be true:
46. If God creates x at t, then God brings it about that x exists at t, and there is no t’ such that t’ is before t and x exists at t’.
This thesis expresses the claim that an individual creature can be brought into existence at most once, and entails the claim that nothing can be repeatedly or continuously re-created.[cxcii] Were we to couple this with premise 41, it would turn out to be the case that on the Malebranchean/occasionalist interpretation God cannot conserve anything that He creates. So you would not only lose all creaturely causal action, but any notion of an enduring creaturely substance as well.[cxciii]
The DCA, then, really offers no advantage over the weaknesses of the NCA, for it relies on a dubious interpretation of the traditional doctrine of divine conservation. As it stands, then, we have no strong reasons for thinking that thesis (c) of the SP ought to be interpreted in the exclusive sense, and OCC turns out to be a white-washed sepulcher.
D. Freedom Without A Cause
Some final observations on the doctrine of occasionalism: Most philosophers would claim that creaturely freedom (CF) is simply a species of genuine creaturely action (GCA). Since occasionalists argue against the existence of GCA, they usually find themselves in a particularly interesting dilemma: either they denounce CF completely, or must argue that CF is not a species of GCA. Most occasionalists, particularly Malebranche, opt to defend the second horn of the dilemma.
Malebranche contends that not only are creatures unable to bring about ordinary acts of transeunt efficient causality, but they are not even responsible for their own intra-substantial mental operations. Mental operations or ideas are considered properties or modes of minds, and if we recall the main conclusion of the DCA, then we can see how God is solely responsible for all of those in the creature as well: “God also produces and preserves in us whatever is real and positive in the particular determinations of our soul’s impulse, viz., our ideas and sensations.” (LO 550) So under pure OCC, creatures can cause absolutely nothing, not even minor changes in their own substance.[cxciv] When a mind wills to think something, this willing is only an occasional cause of the occurrence of the thought, and it is God and God alone who is the appropriate cause of the idea’s “presence” in the mind/soul.[cxcv]
Despite all this, Malebranche attempts to reconcile the notion of creaturely freedom with his occasionalist metaphysic by explaining what he means by ‘will’ and ‘freedom’:
I propose to designate by the word WILL, or capacity the soul has of loving different goods, the impression or natural impulse that carries us toward general and indeterminate good; and by FREEDOM, I mean nothing else but the power that the mind has of turning this impression toward objects that please us so that our natural inclinations are made to settle upon some particular object, which inclinations were hitherto vaguely and indeterminately directed toward universal or general good, that is, toward God. (LO 5)
One interesting aspect of Malebranche’s discussion here pertains to the way Malebranche has specified the nature of the will. Whereas most philosophers speak of the will as a faculty or power, Malebranche claims that it is a capacity or impression. Spoken of most precisely, then, the will is not the faculty employed for deciding among various impressions, but rather is the decision itself—it is the decision or choice for some thing or other. Considered in abstraction, the will can be said to serve the role of a function that is naturally directed toward the good in general (indeterminate), which takes specific impressions as arguments. As Malebranche further explains, “freedom” is the power or faculty which actually does the work. It directs certain impressions or inclinations to the will (LO 4). When one directs or determines a particular impression or inclination to the will, one is said to consent to that inclination.
Now human freedom is, for Malebranche, simply freedom of the will, and he claims that the will is indifferent with respect to the particular goods that it consents to: it has the “potential of willing or not willing, or even of willing the contrary of what our natural inclinations carry us toward.” (LO 5) So in the soul, we can see that there are actually two “powers” or “activities” taking place:
The first is properly only the action of God…[who] continually creates the soul with the invincible desire to be happy, or continually moves it toward the good in general. But the second…which is the essence of freedom, is…very different from the first. It consists in a true power, not to produce, by its own efficacy, new modifications in itself, that is, new interesting perceptions or new movements in the will, but…a true power of the soul to suspend or to give its consent to the movements that follow naturally upon interesting perceptions. (Prémotion, 16:46-7)[cxcvi]
So the first power, the will, is the abstract, indeterminate impression that the creature continuously receives from God which awaits specific determination. The second power is freedom, which actually directs those specific impressions or inclinations to the will for consent (or suspension). But therein we have a problem: if the initial motion of the will toward any particular good comes from God prior to any human consent, then it follows that when we “employ” our freedom, we do not do so with a “pure indifference.”[cxcvii]
Further, if the creature is neither responsible for the fact that it is directed towards the good in general, nor is it responsible for the “perceptions” or impressions it receives from God, how do we get any robust theistic notion of moral responsibility? To the extent that certain movements “follow naturally” upon the consent of the creature to a particular impression or other, that intentional stance or willing is merely an occasional cause for those movements—the true cause of which is the active power of God. If so, then how is the creature even truly responsible for the minimal activity of giving or withholding consent?
To reemphasize the predicament, Malebranche contends that when we go about “resisting” our desire for some particular thing by “thinking” of some other good thing, we cannot be actively forming the idea of the alternative. On this picture, Charles McCracken explains that:
We only desire that some other good be represented to us; it is God who actually represents that other good to us. Our desire here is the occasional cause of God’s presenting the thought of another good to our minds, but not the true cause thereof, for desires are not themselves efficacious (cf. The paralytic’s desire to move his legs). Rather, it is God, who represents the alternate good to our mind and inclines us to it, who is the true cause of the change in the ‘direction’ of our will’s ‘movement’.[cxcviii]
It seems to follow from this that there is nothing that the creature can really take responsibility for in a purported act of freedom. Indeed, to follow up on McCracken’s prior observation, the entire groundwork for attributing anything, even a desire, to the creature rests on a probable regress of occasional causes:
Further, if God is the true efficient cause of our desire to have the idea of another good come into our minds and divert our attention from what we are at the moment attracted to, then what is the occasional cause of this desire? The only plausible answer is some antecedent desire in us—namely, a desire that we desire to think of an alternative good. But clearly this leads to infinite regress.[cxcix]
I confess that I do not understand how Malebranche defends the view that consent or suspension in the will is a change in the soul—thus has moral ramifications—and yet is not a real change. To be sure, a great deal more can be said with regard to Malebranche’s theory of the soul, and others have tried to provide a coherent solution this problem.[cc] Indeed, Malebranche himself was aware of the difficulty.[cci] Yet under the weight of Malebranche’s metaphysic, none of these solutions are satisfying or appear to be viable. Under OCC, in the same sense that one has to reduce all natural causal categories from metaphysical explanations to merely describing phenomena, by analogy, all our traditional moral categories seem to disappear, and only provide a surface description of what we can call “moral phenomena.” If we wish, we can still keep those moral categories as part of the fuller description of the causal phenomena we perceive—as a sub species, if you will—but strictly speaking, I think the occasionalist is hard-pressed to defend the view that those categories tell us anything of real moral substance.
With that, I will move on to describe and defend the doctrine of concurrentism.
Notes
CHAPTER 5: CONCURRENTISM (PART I)
“In his mind a man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps.”
––Psalms 16:9
I have argued that the traditional interpretation of God’s causal providence––His “perfect dominion” over all things––requires God’s power to be not only transcendent over but also immanent in creation. God creates all things, conserves all things, and acts in the causal operations of creatures. Thus God’s providence implies a deep and intimate involvement of a metaphysical sort in the affairs of His creatures: there is nothing that goes on in the universe which God does not, in some way, directly and immediately provide for. This much is clear. What has not been so easy to determine is the precise relationship that obtains between God’s providence and secondary, creaturely causation.
In analyzing the SP, we have seen two theories of secondary causation fail to meet its demands. On the one hand, mere conservationism was simply too weak to account for God’s causal activity in nature. For in its rejection of thesis (c)––that God acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and in the production of their effects––a tension thereby arose for its acceptance of thesis (b), or the doctrine of divine conservation. On the other end of the spectrum, the doctrine of occasionalism appears equally troublesome for the traditional theist to defend. Pure occasionalism poses difficulties not only for assigning moral responsibility to creatures, but appears seriously to undermine its own commitment to the SP with regard to thesis (a), or the doctrine of creation, primarily because of the extremely thin (or no-nature) view of substance that is implied by it. So as an interpretation of thesis (c), OCC also falls quite short. Ultimately, both doctrines, CON and OCC, run into trouble because they conceive of God and creature as “univocal causes:” The mere conservationist believes that to be a principal or true cause implies an independence in acting[ccii]—thus God cannot be causally involved in creaturely activity—whereas the occasionalist thinks that to be a true cause requires infinite power—thus creatures cannot be true causes at all.[cciii]
There is a middle ground, of course. The final theory of secondary causation to consider is what generally follows from an inclusive interpretation thesis (c):
(NCSc) Creaturely activity, though not causally sufficient, is indeed necessary for its effect(s).
This brings us to the theory of Concurrentism. Concurrentism (CUR) claims, contrary to CON, that God is immediately, causally involved in every event in the ordinary course of nature, and contrary to OCC, that creatures are causally involved in natural events as well. That is to say, in order for any natural effect to obtain, both God and creature must make a genuine causal contribution to the effect. This cooperative activity does not consist of a division of labor, however. Unlike God, creatures are metaphysically unable to act on their own, i.e., creatures, although true causes in nature, would not be able produce any kind of effect were God to withhold His general concurrence. Thus, contrary to CON, creatures can in no way be independent in acting. Further, neither God’s nor the creature’s particular contribution in a concurrent cause is sufficient by itself for the effect to obtain.[cciv] For any particular natural event that takes place, concurrentists claim that the causal contributions of God and creature are both necessary, and jointly sufficient for the effect. So contrary to the occasionalist picture, concurrentists argue that creatures do have causal powers—powers that are indeed different from the causal power of God—and that,
Such powers, are not, they insist, supplanted or rendered otiose by God’s causal activity in the world. Instead, God contributes to the ordinary course of nature only as a universal or general cause who cooperates with or concurs with secondary causes.[ccv]
These points may not seem very striking unless one is left to consider what some of the remaining options are for “cooperative” activity: (A) Suppose I am attempting to move my non-functioning car out of traffic, and am having a difficult time pushing it past a slight upgrade. The car may cease to move forward, but at least I am producing some effect on my own (which may be nothing more than just preventing the car from rolling backward). By analogy, this situation does not quite fit the concurrentist picture of nature, for creatures are not said to be merely ineffectual without God’s aid; rather, they are completely impotent. (B) Now suppose another person stops to assist me, and together we are able to push the car to a safe location. We may both be said to contribute to the effect through a cooperative action by a division of labor. Again, this example is contrary to the concurrentist model, for God is not said to work side by side with creatures (or at cross purposes with them) in this manner.[ccvi] Further, God and creature properly are not claimed to be partial causes of the effect. (C) Lastly, instead of being assisted directly by another person, suppose I borrow a friend’s truck to push my car past the upgrade. The effect is thus produced by what I will call an extrinsic-type instrumental causality or mediation: I am the mediate cause of the moving of the car, whereas the truck is the proximate, immediate cause of the effect. This picture will not suffice either, for concurrentists claim that God does not instrumentally employ (that is, act on) creatures––nor do creatures employ Him––in the producing of an effect. In contrast with all three of these pictures, concurrentists maintain that each participant in a concurrent cause––God and creature––is said to be an immediate and total cause both of the action involved, and the effect produced.[ccvii]
The purpose of the next two chapters is to offer a minimal defense and positive characterization of the doctrine of concurrentism. What I intend to do in this chapter is present some general arguments for why it is necessary that God concur with creatures. I will then attend to three key objections to the view. Chapter 6 will then be devoted to explaining the nature and model of a concurrent act.
A. The SP and Minimal Concurrentism
In my initial defense and explication of the SP, I argued that the theist is committed to the broad claim that when God immediately and continually effects the being of a creature, He must also effect its products and acts as well, yielding thesis (c) of the SP. The general argument that I offered for this position was:
1. The effects and/or acts of creatures involve the production of being simply (esse).
2. Only God can produce being simply (esse).
( God Himself must contribute to the effects and/or acts of creatures, that is:
Thesis (c): God’s non-miraculous activity in nature is not exhausted by creation and conservation, i.e., God also acts immediately in the operations of His creatures and/or in the production of creaturely effects.
Premise 1 is defensible given a traditional view of efficient causation, and premise 2 was defended in the section on creation ex nihilo. Concerning efficient causation, we can simply reflect on Francisco Suarez’s main definition of an efficient cause, which is “A per se extrinsic principle from which an action first exists,” where an action is “the effect’s emanation from and dependence on that extrinsic cause from which it is receiving esse.” Further, note that a transeunt efficient cause “does not give its own proper and formal esse to the effect, but instead gives another esse” by means of the action, that is, “a different esse, which really flows forth and emanates from such a cause.” (DM XVII.15-6)
So contrary to the Cartesian notion of cause, causing is sorta giving, but not really. More appropriately, I think, causing is a kind of creating––a producing of something with ‘a different esse’ than the cause. (Though in a concurrent cause, the causing is not an act of creation simpliciter, which would then render the creaturely contribution useless.) Now with the doctrine of occasionalism, we saw that the notion of ‘causing as a kind of creating’ was pushed as far as it could be taken, yielding the conclusion that creatures are not causally efficacious at all. To their credit, the Scholastics were keenly aware that this push towards occasionalism was always looming in the background, given their commitment to thesis (c) of the SP. As Aquinas observed,
Some have understood God to work in every agent in such a way that no created power has any effect in things, but that God alone is the immediate cause of everything wrought; for instance, that it is not fire that gives heat, but God in the fire, and so forth. But this is impossible. (ST I.105.5.corpus)
Molina and Suarez also saw the connection. Molina, in commenting on Biel’s occasionalism, had this to say:
Everyone rejects this position, and St. Thomas (in Sentences 2 and Contra Gentes 3, in the places cited above) justifiably calls it stupid. For what can be more stupid than to deny that which is obviously from experience and sensation? Yet it is obvious to the senses that secondary causes elicit and exercise their own operations. (Concordia, d25.5)
Suarez, on the other hand, was a bit more charitable in his recognition of the occasionalist’s concerns:
I do not see a foundation for this position that carries any weight. Yet its principal foundation seems to have been that to whatever extent efficient causality is attributed to the creature, to that extent the divine power of the creator is diminished. For either God does everything, or he does not do everything. The latter detracts from the divine efficacy, and for this reason we will show below that it is altogether false and erroneous, since it implies that something exists without depending on God. But if God does everything, then I ask again whether he does it immediately and by means of a sufficient power or only mediately and by means of a power that is not sufficient. The latter detracts from the divine perfection. But if the former is true, then any other efficient causality is superfluous, since one sufficient and efficacious cause is enough to produce the effect. Thus, since “nature does nothing in vain,”[ccviii] it has not conferred on created things any power to operate. (DM XVIII.1.2)
At bottom, the push towards occasionalism is inevitable for the SP-theorist unless several key distinctions can be made between the activity of God and the activity of creatures.[ccix] In a pseudo-Cartesian (Platonic) ontology, those distinctions are simply unavailable or ignored, even though in theory both occasionalists and concurrentists agree about the central theistic principles that explain God’s primary causality.
Given the Scholastic belief that the notion of an efficient cause is supposed to involve the production of something with a ‘different esse’ than that of the cause,[ccx] and further, if the power to create (CEN-power) is metaphysically incompatible with the nature of a creature, then it should be no real surprise why––in conjunction with defending true creaturely causation––the Scholastics espoused the doctrine of concurrentism, involving God in every natural act of causality. In accepting the SP and rejecting occasionalism, a door is opened for the concurrentist to show how creatures can be genuine causes––i.e., can have true and efficacious active causal powers––while at the same time maintain that there is an essential aspect or species of causal activity that creatures cannot aspire to, such that they must employ those powers in cooperation, conjunction, or union with God’s strong providential, primary activity. To put things another way, if the SP is true, and OCC is indefensible, then CUR is the only game in town.
B. Why Must God Concur With Creatures?
"He who lives in me and I in him, will produce abundantly,
for apart from me you can do nothing."––John 15:5
There are two basic arguments given by the late Scholastics to demonstrate why it is necessary for God to concur with creatures, both of which were discussed in briefly in Ch. 3. The first and most common proposed by the three major defenders of CUR––Aquinas, Molina, and Suarez––concludes that God’s causal input is necessary for the production and conservation of the effects brought about by secondary causes. Why? Because only God can cause the existence or esse of any particular thing. Aquinas proceeds in this way:
That which is such by its essence, is the proper cause of that which is such by participation: thus fire is the cause of all things that are afire. Now God alone is being by His essence, while all others are beings by participation: for in God alone existence is His essence. Therefore the existence of every existing thing is His proper effect, so that whatever brings a thing into existence, does so in so far as it acts by God’s power. (SCG III.66)
In order to avoid giving the impression that to act “by God’s power” means that God’s role in secondary causation is only mediate, such that God merely upholds the being and the power of the secondary agent in its act of production, Aquinas reminds his readers that being or existence is the proper effect of God alone. This claim is intended to cover the full range of secondary causes as well as their effects. In our defense of the SP we have seen why this must be the case. The causal role of secondary agents is to bring about “determinations” of being. Creatures, whether material or immaterial, particularize and determine the action of God––the First Agent––and produce particular kinds of being, or things with a ‘different esse,’ as their proper effects. So what it means to act “by God’s power” is to in some way act in unison or in cooperation with God’s power.[ccxi]
Aquinas clarifies his position further in the next chapter of the SCG, by relating the order of being to the order of causal operation:
Hence it is clear that in all things that operate God is the cause of their operating. For everyone that operates is in some way a cause of being, either of essential or of accidental being. But nothing is a cause of being except in so far as it acts by God’s power. Therefore everyone that operates acts by God’s power. (SCG III.67)
As Aquinas understands it, to act, or to be an efficient cause, is to be involved in the production of being in some way or other. Since creatures or secondary causes are incapable of producing esse themselves, God must be causally involved in the producing of any effect, whether that effect brings about a substantial (essential) change, or an accidental one.
Molina agrees with Aquinas on this issue, and argues a bit more directly for the conclusion:
No effect at all can exist in nature unless God by His influence in the genus of efficient causation immediately conserves it…Thus, it should be said that all created things are entirely dependent on the immediate influence of the Source from which they emanate. But since that which is necessary for the conservation of a thing is all the more necessary for the first production of the thing, it surely follows that nothing at all can be produced by secondary causes unless at the same time the immediate and actual influence of the First Cause intervenes. So it is proper to the First Cause alone to depend on the influence of no other cause in the production and conservation of its effects, whereas other causes depend upon the assistance and general influence of the First Cause in both producing and conserving their effects. (Concordia, d25.14)
By the doctrine of divine conservation, it is necessary for God immediately to conserve the existence of everything, including the effects of natural acts of efficient causation. But if that is so, Molina contends, then God is also required to provide an immediate causal contribution to the initial production of those effects. For one cannot be a per se immediate agent of conservation––to conserve the substantial esse of a thing––without thereby being its productive agent also.[ccxii]
This relationship between conservation and creation, suggests Molina, grounds the dependence that “other causes” have on the First Cause, which I have characterized as the PRD: Each thing that God creates is such that it cannot exist at any moment without God’s immediate and per se causal influx. As many of the scholastics affirmed, in any particular creature that persists over time, conservation and creation are co-extensive or express the same sort of essential dependence of that creature on God. It simply made no sense to the medievals to try and argue that God might immediately conserve something that He did not create.
Finally, the most succinct version of the argument is found in Suarez, which was presented in Ch. 3:
If the cause depends on God for its esse, then the effect will, too, since both are beings-through-participation. Therefore, just as the cause is dependent at the instant at which it acts, so too the effect is dependent at the instant at which it comes to be, since they are both beings-through-participation at that instant as well. Therefore, every effect of a secondary cause depends on God for its being-made, and as a result a secondary cause can do nothing without God’s concurrence. (DM XXII.1.7)
In union with Aquinas and Molina, Suarez contends that there is an essential relationship first between something’s “being-made” and its conservation, and in turn between the conservation of that thing and God’s concurrence with the secondary agent responsible for producing it. If God were not immediately involved in the production of effects by creatures, then they would not be immediately conserved by Him either: “an entity is related to its esse in the same way that it is related to its being-made…[and] an entity’s esse cannot depend more on an adequate cause after it has come to be than it did while it was coming to be.” (DM XXII.1.7) Thus God’s general concurrence with nature, according to the scholastics, stands or falls with divine conservation.
Whereas the argument from effects just presented demonstrates CUR from a position outside the secondary agent, so to speak, the second argument to which I now turn pertains to the acts or operations of the creatures themselves, thus highlighting the intimacy of the cooperative act. One of Aquinas’ versions of the argument can be found in the Summa Contra Gentiles:
Whatever applies an active power to action, is said to be the cause of that action: for the craftsman, when he applies the forces of nature to an action, is said to be the cause of that action; as the cook is the cause of cooking which is done by fire. Now every application of power to action is chiefly and primarily from God. For active forces are applied to their proper operations by some movement of the body or soul. Now the first principle of either movement is God. For he is the first mover, wholly immovable, as we have proved above. Likewise every movement of the will whereby certain powers are applied to action, is reducible to God as the first object of appetite, and the first willer. Therefore every operation should be ascribed to God as the first and principle agent. (SCG III.67)
Aquinas describes God’s concurrent act as the first principle––that is, as a necessary condition for the secondary agent’s acting––which then applies or orders the active forces of the secondary agent to its proper operations. As such, God is said to be the cause of the secondary agent’s operation.
The example Aquinas initially gives us is a bit misleading, however. He tells us that whatever applies an active power to action is the cause of that action, “as the cook is the cause of cooking which is done by fire.” Well, causally speaking, the fire is clearly the proximate efficient cause of the heating or cooking of the food, and not the cook. Furthermore, the cook does not actually apply the active power of the fire to action since the fire, in being hot by its very nature, is in act independently of the influence of the cook. The real issue is whether in its acting the fire is warming, or cooking, or burning, etc., and that has more to do with the kind of relation it bears to the patient involved in the causal state of affairs (in this case, the food). Although we speak in such a way as to attribute the “action” to the cook, s/he actually contributes nothing to the actual heating of the food, save for placing the food in spatial proximity to the fire. Surely Aquinas does not intend for us to think that all actions are attributable to God merely by this kind of association, does he?
I will elaborate on the matter of association in a bit more detail when I discuss Thomistic instrumentalism in Ch. 6, but the simple answer here is “not quite.” Given the SP, we know that God is more intimately related to the secondary agent than the cook is to the fire, such that the application of the active power in the creature to action takes place in a manner other than by some extrinsic relation. In an act of concurrence, God does not just place things in the secondary agent’s causal path, so to speak. What God does do, according to Aquinas, is move secondary agents from potentiality to act in each instance of causality.[ccxiii] In order to do that, the secondary agent must have some active causal powers that are in potentia to some given activity.
This is what Aquinas is suggesting with his reference to God as the “first mover” and the “first object of appetite, and the first willer.” Recall the central premise of Aquinas’ First Way, or the Argument From Motion––whatever is moved is moved by another––where the argument for this premise is something like the following:
(1) A thing moves insofar as it is reduced from potentiality to act.
(2) Nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality except by something in a state of actuality.
(3) It is not possible to be actual and potential in the same respect.
(4) Thus it is not possible to be mover and moved in the same respect.
( (5) Whatever is moved is moved by another.[ccxiv]
Aquinas explains that this understanding of motion pertains not only to physical motion––“some movement of the body,” as described above––but to internal principles of movement like the will––“some movement…[of the] soul”––which is potentially directed towards the achieving of certain ends. Nothing which is in potentiality to a state S1 can be in actuality to S1 at the same time. For example, something which is potentially hot cannot be actually hot at the same time. It can be actually cold, however, and that is to exemplify a different state or sense of potentiality S2.
Given this, it should be clear why a thing cannot be its own first principle or mover, either by a transeunt action or an immanent one. A thing cannot move itself from potentiality to actuality in the same respect, for if it could it really wasn’t in potentiality to that movement or act in the first place. God, being the first mover, wholly immovable––i.e., being pure act itself––is required to get the operation of the secondary agent going, and hence to sustain it throughout the causal event. So, akin to the fire in Aquinas’ example, the secondary agent is the proximate efficient cause of the effect since its causal powers are the ones being applied to action, yet the secondary agent bears a relation of dependence to God in a more fundamental way than the fire does to the cook, such that God is really the first principle of the movement.
In addressing creaturely action, Molina takes a slightly different approach. He argues that the ability to act without assistance or cooperation from another agent is proper to God alone. Thus when creatures act or operate, they do so only with God’s immediate causal assistance:
For to act with nothing else assisting is proper to God and exceeds every created power; for every created power, insofar as it depends on another for its nature, depends on that other for its operation as well––especially since, as has been shown, all effects depend upon God in such a way that even after they have been produced, they are not able to exist at all unless God conserves them by His influence. (Concordia, d25.18)
Along with Aquinas, the central concept Molina appeals to is that of dependence, and here he also invokes the common scholastic principle that dependency in the order of operation is related to dependency in the order of being. As we have seen, this concept is the driving force of the concurrentist position. It is in light of this concept that we can compare Aquinas’ and Molina’s arguments to Suarez’s:
Created beings depend on God no less as agents than as beings, since (i) they are no less subordinated to God for the one reason than for the other, and (ii) just as they are beings-through-participation, so too they are agents-through-participation; but insofar as they are beings, they are altogether dependent on God intrinsically and essentially; therefore, they depend on God in a similar way insofar as they are agents; therefore, while they are acting, they are dependent not only because they are being conserved in esse by God, but also because in their very acting they require God’s influence per se and immediately. (DM XXII.1.10)
To deny that God cooperates with creatures in their acting really amounts to the claim that creatures are in some way either not intrinsically or not essentially dependent upon God––either with regard to their being, or with regard to their acting. In effect, Aquinas, Molina, and even Suarez are contending that a rejection of God’s general concurrence with nature is infected by a deep-level misunderstanding of the doctrine of conservation, just as a rejection of strong conservation demonstrates a confusion about the tenets of creation ex nihilo.
C. Objections to Divine Concurrence
Throughout the centuries, various objections have been made against the thesis that God must concur with creatures. We are now in a slightly better position to evaluate these objections and fill out a positive explanation for why creatures and God must act together. There are three basic camps of objections to consider: (§C.1) The ‘Little Lords’ Objection, (§C.2) The “Not-One-Act” Mantra; and (§C.3) The Problem of Subordination.
C.1. The ‘Little Lords’ Objection (LLO)
The LLO comes in two flavors, the first of which can be dispelled quickly. Proponents of LLO1 contend that premise 1 of the general argument for thesis (c) is true:
1. The effects and/or acts of creatures involve the production of being simply (esse),
and yet they further claim that premise 2 is false, and hence that creatures can actually create. We are in fact ‘Little Lords,’ having causal powers akin to God, though to a significantly lesser degree, and with a more narrow scope. Hence, God’s immediate involvement in creaturely causation is unnecessary, and CON becomes the default position.
I do not think there is much more to say against LLO1 than what has already been argued for in chapter 2 concerning the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. CEN-power is simply beyond the reach of creatures, whether by nature or miracle. Further, on this view the problem of divine conservation crops up again, as Suarez and the other medievals have warned us about: “if it is not the case that all things are effected immediately by God, then neither is it the case that they are conserved immediately, given that an entity is related to its esse in the same way that it is related to its being-made.” (DM XXII.1.7) Given the arguments already considered, I think there are good reasons to believe that if you lose concurrence, then you lose divine conservation, and traditional theism in turn.
The second version of the objection, which I will call LLO2, has a slightly different point to make––both from the aspect of God and the creature––concerning the sufficiency of creaturely power to act. Aquinas considers the following in De Potentia:
A creature, considered as such, is like God inasmuch as it actually exists and acts: and in this respect it participates of the divine goodness. But this would not be so if its own forces were not sufficient for it to act. Therefore a creature is sufficiently equipped for action without God’s operation therein. (DP 3,7,obj.10)
Creatures are claimed to be like God inasmuch as they exist and act. They are ‘Little Lords,’ not in virtue of the fact that they can create, but because in acting they are considered to be principal, proximate causes of the effects that they produce.[ccxv] Hence their powers are sufficient for acting. Otherwise, what would it mean to say that they actually “produce” anything? And if creaturely powers are not sufficient for acting and God does have to step in, then OCC rears its ugly head again.[ccxvi]
William Durandus, focusing more on the powers of the creature, summarizes his view this way: “Now a creature’s action is immediately and completely from the creature, since it does not exceed the power of its species; therefore, that same action is not immediately from God.” (Durandus, §12) In considering Durandus’ position, Suarez presents a fuller explanation of what is at stake:
The ground for this position [of Durandus] is that there is no sufficient argument by which the necessity for the relevant sort of cooperation can be established, and so such cooperation should not be affirmed, since God does not provide a superfluous and wholly unnecessary concurrence.
The antecedent is proved, first, by the fact that secondary causes are not instruments, but are instead principal causes, since they operate by their own power and not through any extrinsic motion. Sometimes they are univocal causes and produce effects similar to themselves; on the other hand, when they are equivocal causes, they are more perfect and noble [than their effects]. Therefore, they operate by a sufficient power; therefore, they do not need the assistance of a higher cause.
The consequence is obvious, since in order to produce an effect, a power equal to that effect––or, to be sure, more noble than it––is sufficient. (DM XXII.1.2)
In response to LLO2, I think that the concurrentist merely needs to point out that to be a principal cause (or to operate by a sufficient power) does not imply an independence in acting. There are several ways that concurrentists defend this thesis, each of which focus on the reality of creaturely dependence on God. Thomists generally contend that the problem arises because the objector conceives of the relationship between God and nature in univocal terms, i.e., God and creature are considered to be univocal causes. With regard to its substantial nature, it is true that a creature is like God and shares in His goodness insofar as it exists and acts, but it does not follow that it exists or acts in the same manner that God does, “so that it [the creature] can become equal to him [God] through that likeness being perfected.” (DP 3,7,ad.10) Just as a creature derives its being from God’s being by participation, so too a creature is established in its own operation or acting by a participation in God’s operation, and so cannot be an absolutely independent agent. For a creature, both being and operation are analogous (and not univocal) to the being and operation of God.[ccxvii]
Given this, we can see that concerning its acting, a creature can and must act in cooperation with God, yet the “two” contributions are not said to conflict in any way, nor can either be rendered superfluous, for they occur according to different modes or orders. Thomists generally cash out this co-occurrence in terms of instrumental causality (or the application of powers to action), as explained above in the argument for the necessity of concurrence in agency. To consider another example: Suppose a workman cuts a piece of wood with an axe. Assuredly, the axe is the proximate cause of the effect produced, which is the cutting of the wood, and its causal powers are clearly sufficient for producing this effect. However, we reasonably can (and should) say that the workman also caused the effect. To divide the effect, or even the action, into two separate contributions or partial contributions of the same species of efficient causality would be a mistake, I think. The axe produces the whole effect, and yet so does the workman. The difference between the two, Thomists claim, is that the workman and the axe produce the effect according to different modes, orders, or species of efficient causality: “The axe only cuts the wood by virtue of the efficacy which the workman imparts to it. He is the first and principal cause, while the axe is the second and instrumental cause of the effect produced.”[ccxviii]
Of course, the example does not come close to exemplifying the dependency relationship that creatures have on God, since God’s providential influence penetrates far more deeply than that of the workman on the axe––for God is responsible not only for applying the power of the creature to action, but is the creator and sustainer of the creature with all its causal powers as well. Nor does it provide a satisfying picture for understanding precisely the different modes or species of causality at work. And yet, I think the example does provide a clear model by which you can have one action which involves two agents, both of which are the total cause of the effect, with only one of those agents being independent in acting. Hence, to be a principal, proximate cause does not imply an independence in acting. Much more perfection is required for the latter than for the former.
Lastly, as Aquinas emphasizes in several places, it does not denigrate the nature or goodness of God to “require Him” to act with secondary causes. Rather, we should look at God’s causal involvement with nature in the opposite manner: As an immanent reflection of His goodness, given the aforesaid dependency––what Aquinas will call the “beauty of order”––that creatures have on Him:
Nor is it superfluous, if God can produce all natural effects by Himself, that they should be produced by certain other causes: because this is not owing to insufficiency of His power, but to the immensity of His goodness, wherefore it was His will to communicate His likeness to things not only in the point of their being but also in the point of their being causes of other things: for it is in these two ways that all creatures have the divine likeness bestowed upon them, as we proved above [SCG III.20-21].––In this way too the beauty of order is made evident in creatures. (SCG III.70)
Suarez, on the other hand, attacks the objection more directly. He first observes that the objection doesn’t have much bite to it, since the arguments already adduced above offer sufficient reasons for thinking that God’s concurrence with creatures is necessary. To this, I again will add that given the SP and its more robust notion of conservation, the objector now bears the burden of proof as to how one can reject concurrence without unraveling the doctrine of conservation as well.
Nonetheless, just to set the record straight, Suarez goes on to point out that concurrentists do not deny that secondary agents are principal causes: “it is not only the First Cause but also secondary causes, both univocal and equivocal, that are included under the name and notion of a principal cause.” (DM XVII.2.18) He qualifies this observation, as Aquinas does, by noting that secondary agents are principal causes within their own order. For Suarez, this division of orders is cashed out in terms of participation:
Further, a principal cause in this sense is correctly said to operate by its own power, not only because it has an intrinsic and innate power to act but also because it has a power that is per se proportionate to the effect and does not stand in need of any elevation. And even though a cause of this sort sometimes requires the concurrence of a superior cause, this is because of the general nature of a participated being and not because of any special lack of proportionateness vis-à-vis the effect. Hence such a cause needs only the concurrence that is owed to it by reason of its own perfection. (DM XVII.2.18)
Or lack thereof, I might add. The causes “of this sort” that require concurrence from a superior cause are creaturely or secondary causes. So the need for concurrence has nothing to do with the fact that the creature does not have sufficient power, or that there is some “special lack of proportionateness vis-à-vis the effect.” Rather creatures, as having participated being, are dependent on God in such a way that––even as principal causes––they cannot operate independently: “For there is one sort of cause that operates altogether independently, and this is called a first cause, and there is another sort of cause that is dependent, even if it operates by means of a power that is principal and proportionate, and this is called a secondary cause.” (DM XVII.2.20)
Given this, Suarez can complete the rejoinder by agreeing that (i) the secondary agent is a principal cause of its effect, while also affirming that (ii) the power of the secondary agent is sufficient to produce its effects within the order of proximate causes, but not sufficient absolutely; and (iii) as not being sufficient absolutely, the power of the secondary agent is only sufficient in due proportion, that is, it is sufficient but not independently sufficient for the action, requiring an immediate influence on the part of the First Cause, “on whom all things depend essentially.”[ccxix]
Central to LLO2, then, is a misunderstanding of what it means to be an independent cause, for to have sufficient power to act only explains what the secondary agent is able (in potentia) to bring about. Its powers must be further applied to act––i.e., reduced from potentiality to act––in some way by a higher or superior cause, in virtue of its complete dependence on that higher cause.[ccxx] Note that the relationship of dependence here employed by both the Thomists and Suarez should not be called mediation (as if God were acting on the creature from outside), but rather subordination or subjection (a working through or with).
As it stands, then, the response relies on some theory of cooperative/instrumental causality or other which is rooted in the dependence of creatures on God. Since the concept of creaturely dependence is non-negotiable for the traditional theist, the objector is left to scoff at this “assumed theory” and simply contend that there is no good explanation for how this theory works. At this point, we can move on to the next camp of objections.
C.2. The “Not-One-Act” Mantra
The basic strategy of the Mantra is to argue that if problems can be raised for some particular account of cooperative or instrumental causality, then divine concurrence itself is indefensible.[ccxxi] The most comprehensive version to consider focuses in on the difficulty of cooperative agency itself, particularly with respect to the claim that God and creature both immediately participate in one act to produce one effect.
Durandus’ version of the Mantra is probably the most detailed.[ccxxii] He begins by noting his opposition to the concurrentist position: “We must respond otherwise, viz., by claiming that the things which are done by God through the mediation of secondary causes are not done by Him immediately, just as the very concepts expressed by the terms seem to imply.” (Durandus, §11) He the offers the following reductio-style argument:
(6) If God acted immediately in the production of the effects of a secondary cause (2C), then He would act either by the same action as the 2C, or by a different action.
(7) The power of the 2C is sufficient to produce the action in question, so would render God’s contribution superfluous.[ccxxiii]
(8) Further, if the same action were immediately and completely from God and the 2C, then numerically the same power would be in them.
(9) It is impossible for numerically the same power to exist in both God and the 2C. Therefore,
( (10) God does not act by the same action as the 2C.
(11) If God acted by a different action than the 2C, then either one of the actions would be prior, or both would produce the action simultaneously.
(12) Neither of the actions could be prior, for then the posterior action would be unnecessary and “bring nothing about.”[ccxxiv]
(13) Neither of the actions could occur simultaneously, for then one of the two actions would be superfluous. Therefore,
( (14) God does not act by a different action as the 2C.
( (15) God does not act immediately in the production of the effects of a 2C.
The major assumption that appears to drive Durandus’ objection can be seen in premise (7), and implicitly in (12) and (13), which is that the power of the 2C is sufficient to produce the action in question. Durandus takes sufficiency in acting as implying sufficiency to produce the whole effect simpliciter, which is just another way of saying that sufficiency in acting––to be a principal cause––implies independence in acting. We have seen above why this assumption is rejected by the concurrentist. Particularly, in the manner that Durandus employs it, it is clear that he understands divine and creaturely activity as univocal, instead of being of different modes or orders. Were this the case, then clearly we would have a causal conflict between God and the 2C, as even Aquinas admits: “One action does not proceed from two agents of the same order. But nothing hinders the same action from proceeding from a primary and secondary agent.” (ST I.105.5.ad2) But if the arguments earlier were effective, then we can stop Durandus’ objection at the first argument for the first horn of the dilemma, and the second horn of the dilemma altogether.
What remains is the second argument of the first horn, specifically, premise (8). Durandus’ full justification for this premise is as follows:
[A] It is possible that numerically the same action should be from two agents and from each completely, but from one immediately and from the other mediately; for the same action that a proximate cause brings about immediately a universal and more remote cause brings about completely (since it gives the proximate cause its power and conserves the power once given) and yet only mediately. In another way [B] it is possible for numerically the same action to be immediately from two agents but from neither perfectly [perfecte], as when two people are dragging a boat or when two candles are causing one light; for the movement of the boat is not completely from either one, and the illumination of the air is not from either candle by itself and completely. For in such cases two imperfect agents [agentia imperfecta] take the place of one perfect agent. But [C] there appears to be no possible way for the action to be immediately and completely from each without its being the case that numerically the same principle or numerically the same power is in both of them. (Durandus, §12)[ccxxv]
According to Durandus, we can only make sense of models [A] and [B]. Yet neither model is, on Durandus’ interpretation, suitable for concurrentism. Take model [A] first: This model characterizes God’s action as being mediate––as the “universal and remote cause”––and the creature’s action as being the proximate, immediate cause. This is the model that Durandus ultimately favors, of course, given his mere conservationist stance. To recap, on this view God is said to create the 2C, give the 2C its causal powers, and conserve them at each moment that it exists. But when the 2C acts, it is said to be the immediate and proximate cause, while God is simply the mediate cause––and this is all one can be said to mean when one says that God acts through the 2C.
At least, this is the best way to interpret model [A] for the sake of the objection. First, on Durandus’ own terms, the model does not seem to work when two creatures are involved, for strictly speaking creatures do not give each other causal powers, nor could one properly conserve the powers of the other. At best, we would have an example of an extrinsic-type instrumental causation––as when I use a truck to push my non-functioning car past an upgrade––that does not quite meet the metaphysical demands of Durandus’ model.
Second, were we to switch the roles of God and creature, we would get something much weaker than Durandus would be willing to accept: God would be the immediate and proximate cause of the effect in question, while the creature, in order to fulfill the role of being a mediate and remote cause, would have to be something like a sine qua non cause. For example, suppose God wills that, under the proper circumstances and with the appropriate materials, every time a priest utters the phrase, “This is my body…this is my blood, etc.,” God effects a substantial change in the materials in question. On this account, the priest is clearly not the proximate cause of the substantial change in question. In fact, the priest actually does nothing but perform a speech act which is only remotely associated with the effect, such that had the priest said nothing, or did not use ‘valid’ materials, etc., God would not have acted at all.[ccxxvi] Any stronger interpretation of the model, whereby the creature would act mediately through God in some kind of instrumental relationship, would be seen as theologically and metaphysically deviant: For secondary causes can in no way be said to give God His power and “conserve that power once given,” as Durandus emphasizes.
As it stands, mainly for the arguments given earlier, it is reasonable to say that by itself model [A] simply cannot explain the whole story. First, what is being assumed for this model is that in giving the creature its causal powers, creatures become causally sufficient for acting simpliciter, thereby resurfacing the LLO2. But on the traditional understanding of divine conservation, model [A] really cannot be made sense of––even though on first glance it appears metaphysically possible for God to act in this way (just as some think it is possible for God to create a creature that can conserve itself). Further, as will be made clear in what follows, even if model [A] were a metaphysical possibility, to re-consider model [A] as a description of how God and creature act together is question-begging at this point, unless one can demonstrate that it is the only model available. I will continue by showing that it is not.
Now let’s examine model [B]. This model characterizes God and creature as two partial, and hence incomplete causes. Like his example, what you really have in [B] is a cooperative effect by a division of labor. This kind of model is clearly possible, especially when both agents are creatures. But [B] cannot capture what the concurrentist requires, Durandus thinks, for then God turns out to be an imperfect cause since He is not a complete cause of the effect, which then calls into question the sufficiency of His power.
In a general sense Durandus is correct, in that any concession to a mediating, or division-of-labor-type model renders neither agent the total cause of the effect, which is what CUR requires. Further, concurrentists will agree with Durandus that “we must not attribute any insufficiency to God.”[ccxxvii] And yet, why should we think that to act as a partial cause implies that God is an imperfect cause? To understand further, we should re-examine Durandus’ objection, which is nicely summarized by Suarez as follows:
It is impossible for two agents to concur immediately with respect to the same action unless each of them is an imperfect [imperfectum] and merely partial agent; but this must not be said of God; therefore he does not concur immediately with the creature in its action. (DM XXII.1.4)
As Suarez understands Durandus, the argument turns on an ambiguity in the Latin term perfectum. While commenting on Durandus’ objection, Freddoso also recognizes this, and explains the problem in more detail:
The term perfectum can mean ‘complete’ as well as ‘perfect,’ and we have already noted that the concurrentist holds that when God acts in the mode of general concurrence [i.e., by a concurrent cause], His own contribution to the effect complements that of the secondary cause and is not of itself sufficient to bring about the effect. So it is only together that God and the secondary agent constitute a complete or ‘perfect’ cause of the effect. It follows that each is, in its own right, only a partial or incomplete––and in that sense ‘imperfect’––cause of the effect. However, it seems obvious that to call God an imperfect agent in this sense hardly derogates the divine nature.[ccxxviii]
Now, I think Freddoso ultimately concedes too much here. His point is that Durandus’ objection is a mere terminological ploy, so should be dismissed outright. Instead of simply dismissing it, however, we can make a slight bit of philosophical headway from Freddoso’s observation by claiming that even if God is a partial, hence ‘incomplete’ cause when acting in concurrence with creatures, i.e., in a concurrent cause, it does not follow that He is thereby an imperfect cause––that His power itself is somehow insufficient in se with regard to the production of the effect. In fact, God’s power can be said to be perfectly sufficient for bringing about a concurrent cause. Suarez explains it this way, and cites the Angelic Doctor in turn:
The first general problem was that such agents would be imperfect. But one may deny the inference; rather, the only imperfect agent will be the one that by its intrinsic condition and nature needs the other’s assistance and thus properly depends on the other in its acting. By contrast, that other agent will not be imperfect. For as St. Thomas correctly claimed in Contra Gentes 3, chap. 70, it was not because of the insufficiency of his power, but rather because of the immensity of his goodness, that God communicated to the creature the power to act, and he accordingly willed to produce the relevant effects in conjunction with the creature and not by himself alone. (DM XXII.1.21)
Strictly speaking, there is only one imperfect agent, the creature, who is properly dependent on God in virtue of its “intrinsic condition” as a created thing. At this point, we have come up with an alternative to model [A] for God and creature that appears to avoid one of the major difficulties that Durandus has observed. The first direct response against premise (8) is to argue that with regard to model [B], there is a way for God and creature to be immediate and ‘incomplete’ causes, yet not by a division of labor, and not in such a way that God turns out to be an imperfect agent. So model [B] could work for the concurrentist, with some minor clarifications.
The last model to consider is model [C]. Durandus observes that model [C]––which is what CUR is ultimately after––is impossible between God and creatures, for the only examples where it can make sense pertain to the relations that hold among the divine persons, and not between God and creature.[ccxxix] If this is so, then CUR is simply out of luck.
The first thing to recognize is that both sides agree that there is only one effect under consideration, and each tries to use this observation to his or her advantage. Even Durandus confirms the scholastic principle that “actions seem to be really the same as their termini and thus take their denominations from them. Therefore, it is impossible that there should be diverse actions with respect to the acquisition of numerically the same form.” (Durandus, §14) Were there actually two effects under consideration, then we would have a clear example of God’s immediate causal involvement in nature, contrary to the mere conservationist’s stance, but with the result that concurrentists have it completely wrong about the way God and creature cooperate, if at all.
So as Durandus suspects, a concurrentist is really going to accept and argue for the first horn of the dilemma he poses. To set the scene, we can recall that concurrentists claim that
(16) Both God and creature immediately contribute to the production of a natural effect.
And as observed, both concurrentists and mere conservationists agree that
(17) There is only one effect under consideration; and that
(18) “It is impossible that there should be diverse actions with respect to the acquisition of numerically the same form,” i.e., one effect implies one action.
Given this, the concurrentist can conclude that,
(19) If both God and creature immediately contribute to the production of a natural effect, then the action of God is not distinct from the action of the secondary cause.
The question is, does the concurrentist have an objection to premise (8)?
It appears that they do. To turn things up a notch from the rejoinder to model [B], we can go on to claim that in fact God and creature are both immediate and complete causes of the action, and thus the one effect in question. This would give us a direct counterexample to premise (8), as well as a defense of premise (16). Consider another example akin to the ones suggested above: A woman using a pen to write. This example cannot be properly be classified as a version of model [A], for as argued earlier, to classify the woman as a mediate cause of the writing would be a serious mistake: the woman clearly is the immediate cause of the writing, and yet so is the pen, but in different ways or modes, “without its being the case that numerically the same principle or numerically the same power is in both of them,” as Durandus requires.[ccxxx] Also, the metaphysical requirements for model [A] cannot be satisfied by either agent in this example. To say that the woman is the sustaining cause of the powers of the pen would simply be false, and vice versa. Further, the example does not fit model [B] either, for neither agent is an incomplete or partial cause of the effect in question. The woman does not do part of the writing, nor does the pen: They both immediately do all of the writing, yet in different ways.[ccxxxi] So premise (8) is false.
If we can make sense of this example on a purely natural level, then there should be no problem applying it to a case between God and creature, where God is, then, also the sustaining cause of the creature along with its causal powers. Maybe the difficulty in wholesale accepting this picture lies in the fact that for the really interesting examples the 2C is a rational agent––either a human or an angel––created in imagio dei and supposedly capable of willing its own ends, while God is the perfect being, capable of producing the relevant effect without the need of the 2C. However, I fail to see the metaphysical significance of this retort, since there still remains the aspect of radical dependence this creature has on God, with all its aforesaid implications. In this, the claim to different orders or species of causes is not ad hoc: “Each [God and creature] is a complete cause within its own order. This way of speaking is more commendable, both because it is more common and also because it is better able to convey the inequality and subordination between these causes.” (DM XXII.1.22)
The inequality and subordination that obtains between God and creature implies that under no circumstances can a creature be metaphysically independent of God in either its being or acting. This takes nothing significant away from creatures, rather, it explains all the more the intimacy which God and creatures share in nature.[ccxxxii] Divine providence is indeed “all the way down:”
The operation of nature is also the operation of the divine power, just as the operation of an instrument is effected by the power of the principal agent. Nor does this prevent nature and God from operating to the same effect, on account of the order between God and nature. (DP 3,7,ad3)
Once this inequality and subordination is taken seriously and is understood to have metaphysical implications (as opposed to merely dispositional or religious ones), many of the objections that mere conservationists bring up can be solved, as we will see with the next camp of objections.
C.3. The Problem of Subordination
The third camp of objections indirectly attacks the concurrentist’s explanation of hierarchy or subordination by trying to show that it produces unwanted consequences for what God is responsible for in the concurrent act. If, as adduced above, God and creature are involved in this hierarchical or subordinate relationship, then surely God is responsible for the defects (e.g., sin) that occur in those actions:
A first cause enters more into the effect than does a second cause. If, then, God operates in will and nature as a first in a second cause, it follows that the defects that occur in voluntary and natural actions are to be ascribed to God rather than nature or will: and this is absurd. (DP 3,7, obj15)
In the examples above, although both agents are the cause of the action and the effect, in a very real and proper sense it is more correct to say that the workman directs the axe to cutting, or that the woman directs the pen to write, and that the primary cause is the one ultimately responsible for the effect produced. But we cannot attribute the defects of nature––whether acts of imperfection or moral depravity––to God. Thus the kind of subordination the concurrentist appeals to is problematic.
As with the others, this objection can be dealt with by clarifying the implications of the kind of subordination at work between God and creature. The first thing to note is that in the creature-creature examples employed earlier, a subordination of mutual dependence obtains, as Suarez explains:
In certain cases it is normal for there to be subordination along with some sort of mutual dependence. For instance, an instrument––especially a conjoined instrument––depends in its acting on the principal agent, in the way that a pen depends on the writer; yet the writer himself likewise depends in a certain way on the pen, since he cannot write without it. The former sort of dependence can be called a priori, since it is a dependence on the principle of motion, whereas the latter sort can be called a posteriori, for the opposite reason. But it is always the case that the one which depends on the other a priori is subordinated to it. (DM XXII.1.23)
Where mutual dependence occurs in the subordination, it seems initially correct to say that the primary agent is “more responsible” for the particular character of the effect than the secondary agent is, particularly when the secondary agent is being applied to motion by an intention which is solely attributable to the primary agent. Thus the character of the effect can be completely traced back to the primary cause. However, the kind of subordination that obtains between God and creature does not imply a mutual dependence:
The secondary cause depends on the First Cause a priori and essentially, since it is of itself insufficient to do anything without the First Cause’s assistance. By contrast, the First Cause does not, properly speaking, depend on the secondary cause either a priori or a posteriori. For even though the First Cause cannot produce the effect by himself alone in the mode of acting by which he accommodates himself to concurring with the secondary cause, nonetheless, absolutely speaking, he is altogether independent and capable of effecting by himself alone any entity that he effects by means of a secondary cause. Between these two causes, then, there is not only subordination, but also the most essential and perfect type of subordination. (DM XXII.1.23; my emphasis)
So although it is true that the First Cause has more “influence” in the effect than the secondary cause, when specifically acting in a concurrent cause, the particular character of the effect stops with the proximate agent, which is the creature.[ccxxxiii] Any imperfection in the effect cannot be completely traced back, since the relation of dependence is not a two-way street.
More interestingly, even in examples of mutual dependence, it is not always proper to pin the defect in the effect completely (or at all!) on the primary agent. Suppose that, unbeknownst to the woman attempting to write, the pen she is using has a broken tip. On her first attempt to write she finds that the ink runs, obscuring the letters and eventually ruining the piece of stationary she is trying to write on. Which agent is properly responsible for the “defect” in question? To say that the woman was responsible for the defect is simply absurd, I think. For even though she is the primary agent, and is responsible for applying the powers of the pen to action, the pen––the proximate cause––is itself defective, and cannot be employed to bring about the desired or intended effect. In this instance, I think it is correct to say that the pen is completely responsible for the defect or determinate character that occurs in the effect.
Take this analysis one step further. In an example of God and creature in a concurrent cause, not only is it the case that we have an essential subordination without mutual dependence, but it seems clear that God cannot be said to take responsibility for any defects in the character of the effect, precisely for the reason given above. Out of the immensity of His goodness, God chooses to cooperate with creatures––which are imperfect in many ways––in acting. Being completely perfect, God can be said to contribute only what is good and whatever there is of perfection to the effect, namely its esse. However, “all defects must be referred to the second cause which does not act as efficaciously as the first cause.” (DP 3,7, ad15) The fact that God is omniscient—that God knows the defects of creatures—does not thereby render Him responsible for how they choose to use their causal powers; for what determinations they contribute to the character of the effect. Out of benevolence for His creation, God simply wills to concur in general with all secondary causes in their particular intentions, unless some particular circumstance requires Him to withhold that concurrence.[ccxxxiv]
This response is not intended to make the problem of evil go away, of course. The point is simply that the problem of evil is no worse under concurrentism than for any other theistic model. An appeal to some version of the free will response can accommodate any rejoinder to the effect that God should have decided not to concur with creatures that have deviant intentions or wish to employ their powers for sinful actions.[ccxxxv]
Concerning the notion of freedom, we can spin another variation of the Problem of Subordination. Suppose one were inclined toward the following necessary condition for libertarian freedom: A free action cannot be caused by anything or anyone other than its agent. One can then argue:
(20) When God concurs with creatures, God and creature act by the same action.
(21) Thus when God concurs with a creature, God causes the action of the creature.
(22) If an action of agent A is in some way caused by another agent B, then A’s action cannot be a free action.
( (23) The action of a creature cannot be a free action.[ccxxxvi]
The conclusion, I take it, is unacceptable for traditional theism. What is interesting about this objection is that with a small bit of manipulation, it can be made to threaten genuine causal agency for creatures as well:
(24) If an action of agent A is in some way caused by another agent B, then agent A cannot be the true cause of its action.
( (25) The creature cannot be the true cause of its action.
( (26) God is the only true cause.
With regard to this version of the objection, Suarez explains how it relates specifically to the doctrine of subordination:
If these actions [i.e., free actions] were immediately from the First Cause, then they could not be free on the part of the secondary cause itself. For given that the First Cause is more powerful, he would carry the secondary cause along with him in whatever way he wanted to, and the secondary cause would not have the First Cause’s influence within its own control and power in such a way that it could operate when it wanted to. (DM XXII.1.5)
The worry here is that the subordination between God and creature seems so pervasive— possibly because there is no mutual dependence?––that the contribution of the creature could in no way influence the intentional direction of God’s concurrence. So either creaturely freedom is lost, or worse, occasionalism looms to the fore again.
In general, I think what drives these variants of the objection is a confusion about how the essential subordination between God and creature works, particularly in a concurrent cause. Simply because the 2C cannot be its own first principle or mover—and so the First Cause has, as Aquinas says, “more influence” in the effect than the secondary cause, and is responsible for reducing the 2C from potentiality to act—it does not follow that God’s concurrence excludes the real exercise of the 2C’s causal powers, with one of those powers being its freedom. For God offers His concurrence—or cooperation, as it is sometimes understood—to the creature in virtue of its acting, not in spite of it. Recall Suarez’s careful distinction:
The First Cause cannot produce the effect by himself alone in the mode of acting by which he accommodates himself to concurring with the secondary cause, nonetheless, absolutely speaking, he is altogether independent and capable of effecting by himself alone any entity that he effects by means of a secondary cause. (DM XXII.1.23; my emphasis)
God accommodates Himself to the 2C in its acting by a mode of acting which is different from the mode He would employ were He to bring about the effect entirely on His own, say, as in a creative cause. Suppose God were to bring about a particular effect E. If God were to do this via a creative cause, using a very rough formulation, we could describe it this way:
(27) God brings it about that E.
What is happening in a concurrent cause, however, is something more like
(28) God brings it about that (if creature C wills so as to cause E, then E).
In order to dimly see the differences in the modes or orders of causes, we can use a t for “transcendental” and an n for “natural,” such that (28) actually becomes
(28’) God t-brings-it-about that (if creature C wills so as to n-cause E, then E).
In this, the true causal powers of the creature, including its freedom, are absolutely necessary for the effect to obtain: For [i] God’s concurrent act does not alone result in any particular effect or state of affairs, rather, E obtains only if a particular agent C and n-cause occur. Further, [ii] God and creature C do not produce only parts of the single unified effect E; rather, both agents produce E in its entirety. [iii] Since there is only one unified effect E, only one action obtains between God and C (how that is explained will be the focus of a later section). On this characterization, [iv] God’s volitions can be considered general in content, while C can be considered responsible for the particular features of effect E. Also, [v] neither God’s nor C’s contribution obtains anything in the absence of the other. Hence, [vi] God’s mode of acting when He concurs is understandably different from how He might act without cooperation. Lastly, [vii] on this model, the subordination of God and creature are clearly seen: With God’s action as primary and independent, and C’s as secondary and essentially dependent. So there is simply no initial conflict between t-causes and n-causes. God’s contribution is received by the creature in such a way as to complete its acting, insofar as the creature is essentially subordinated to Him.[ccxxxvii]
So premises (22) and (24) are false, in that they assume an improper ordering between the contribution of God and the contribution of the 2C in a concurrent cause. If we draw a conceptual distinction between the external action that terminates in the effect qua God and qua creature, what we see is that, since God’s action is the creature’s action, God’s action is not prior in causality to the creature’s action.[ccxxxviii] So God’s concurrence does not overwhelm the creature, or carry it along in its own independent direction. When the concurrentist says that God causes the action of the creature, s/he means simply that in a concurrent cause, God causes what the creature also causes, which is the action that terminates in the effect. But in this sense God does not do it “for the creature,” or “on the creature’s behalf,” or “contrary to the will of the creature.” Rather, He does it as the creature does it.
What makes each camp of objections interesting is that they attack very minimal conditions for concurrent activity, at the expense of taking seriously the fact that such concurrence is necessary, given creaturely dependence. For our purposes, however, assessing these objections is instructive and fruitful in that they provide an opportunity to fill in specific detail with regard to a positive model for concurrentism.
Notes
CHAPTER 6: CONCURRENTISM (PART II)
“He is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have
our being.’”—Acts 17:27-28
In this final chapter, I outline two competing explanations for what God’s general concurrence with creatures amounts to on a metaphysical level (§A). This will be important for the section to follow (§B), where I will then give a simple model for how––i.e., the mode by which––God actually concurs with creatures.
A. What Is God General Concurrence?
As a theory of primary causation, God’s general concurrence with nature is said to come from Him insofar as He is an efficient cause. Further, insofar as we have demonstrated that God creates and conserves things in a manner or mode completely incommensurable with natural efficient causality, it stands to reason that God’s concurrence with nature will follow suit. In many respects, then, the objections considered in Ch. 5 gain ground only by attempting to level the playing field between divine (primary) and creaturely (secondary) causation. The defender of CUR, in rejecting this tactic, is thus not proposing an ad hoc solution to the “mystery” of concurrence, but is simply upholding what is clearly true about the nature of God and His causal activity: Whatever God does qua God is going to be brought about in a manner completely unlike that of creaturely activity.[ccxxxix]
Is there any way, then, to make positive headway towards describing what God’s concurrence is? Let’s first eliminate the obvious: The concurrence is neither God Himself as agent (which the scholastics call the “acting suppositum”) nor the effect that is brought about. Generally speaking, God’s concurrence is something that proceeds from God to the terminus, so signifies something external to God and His nature.[ccxl] But what precisely does the concurrence of God amount to? What I intend to do in the next few sections is describe and evaluate two competing views of what God’s general concurrence with creatures is actually supposed to be.[ccxli] The two views for consideration are that God’s concurrence is either (§A.3-A.4) an accidental principle of acting, usually referred to as the doctrine of Premotion; or (§A.5) something in the manner of an action. Before getting there, I will take the opportunity to describe what I call Thomistic instrumentalism proper (§A.1), and attend to an objection posed by occasionalists against instrumentalism (§A.2). This philosophical detour will be helpful for understanding the differences and similarities between Premotion and the action view.[ccxlii]
A.1. Thomistic Instrumentalism
I have generally outlined and described the basic framework of the Thomistic position in Ch. 5, which is a theory of essential subordination that gets filled out in terms of some kind of instrumental model. The grounds for this kind of subordination arise from the Principle of Radical Dependence, which is directly related to the doctrine of divine conservation.[ccxliii] The instrumental model explains how two agents in an essential subordination can act so as to both immediately produce one effect. On this view, God and creature operate on two different levels or orders of causality: the transcendental (universal) and the natural.
What I want to do now is briefly outline one particular approach that Aquinas takes to explain the essential subordination of creatures to God, and how that relates to his doctrine of instrumentalism. This will help us understand later why the doctrine of Premotion is often attributed to him by his followers.
In agreement with many of his contemporaries, Aquinas appeals to a particular Neo-platonic principle which claims that there is a Hierarchical Relationship (HR) that exists among causes of different orders:
HR: Every primary cause infuses its effect more powerfully than does a secondary cause. (De Causis, Prop. 1)
Given the HR and God’s position in the hierarchy of causes, God’s power as primary cause is thus more powerfully––i.e., immediately––manifest in the effect of the 2C than the power of the 2C itself. Aquinas carefully employs this principle to explain how the divine power is required for each instance of natural causality, while still in some sense upholding the individual active power of the creature:
If, then, we consider the subsistent agent, every particular agent is immediate to its effect: but if we consider the power whereby the action is done, then the power of the higher cause is more immediate to the effect than the power of the lower cause; since the power of the lower cause is not coupled with its effect save by the power of the higher cause. (De Causis, P1.corpus; my emphasis)
In every instance of causality, indeed in every agent, there are two things to be considered: the thing itself that acts, and the power by which it acts. Only in God––the universal primary cause––can it be said that the power by which the agent acts is equivalent to the agent itself. In all other agents (i.e., secondary agents), the power by which they act is a participated power given their origin ex nihilo, and is wholly dependent upon the power of the first agent. Aquinas goes on to conclude that,
Wherefore it is said in De Causis (prop. i) that the power of the first cause takes the first place in the production of the effect and enters more deeply therein. Accordingly the divine power must needs be present to every acting thing…Yet there is a difference in that wherever the power of God is there is his essence: whereas the essence of the heavenly body [or creature] is not wherever its power is: and again God is his own power, whereas the heavenly body [or creature] is not its own power. (De Causis, P1.corpus)
Just as the power of the secondary agent is immediate in the production of the particular effect, so too is God by His power. An effect is produced by both God and creature then, not by a division of labor, or as partial contributions, so to speak, but as the whole effect proceeds from each in different modes. So God does not contribute to creaturely action just by way of His creation and conservation, as if He were only remotely, mediately, or transitively influential on the activity of creatures. God Himself actively contributes to the effects in nature, because God acts through agents to assist them in bringing about their effects. Molina talks this way also, and confirms Aquinas’ earlier description of creatures as acting by God’s power:
It should be said that the effects of secondary causes are said to be from God by means of secondary causes, not because God acts through a universal concurrence, but rather because He brings about effects through those very causes as through ministers or instruments which receive the power to act from Him. (Concordia, d25.16)
As Aquinas and the other concurrentists are fond of emphasizing, God brings about effects by means of secondary causes, that is, in a manner analogous to the way that instruments are used. So God can be said to act through secondary causes, and secondary causes act by means of God’s power. So far so good. Aquinas’ next move is to specify the manner in which God is said to work in the operations of creatures. In De Potentia, Aquinas claims that God works in every thing initially,
(a) By giving each thing its power to act, which is a result of His creating it; and
(b) By preserving the power to act in each thing, at each moment that it exists.
From the aspect of the creature’s nature, these two can be seen as per se immediate causal contributions by God. However, with respect to the creature’s action, these two ways only express God’s mediate involvement in creaturely action: “And thus God may be said to be the cause of an action by both causing and upholding the natural power of the being.” (DP 3,7,corpus) By themselves, these two conditions at least get you Conservationism (i.e., theses (a) and (b) of the SP). Yet Aquinas contends that with respect to the action of the creature, God also operates immediately,
(c) By moving the thing to act, that is, by applying the power of the creature to an action, “as a man causes the knife’s cutting by the very fact that he applies the sharpness of the knife to cutting by moving it to cut.” (DP 3,7,corpus)
As observed earlier, the 2C or lower nature cannot act except through being moved in some way from potentiality to act, i.e., its own natural powers must be applied to act by God. Also, it is clear that the 2C does not bring about the proper effect of the First Cause—the being qua being of the effect—through its own natural power, but rather in one sense is taken to be the instrument of the First Cause with regard to the being of the effect, and in another sense is the proximate cause with regard to the particular character or essence of that effect. So the man cuts by causing the knife to cut. To summarize, according to Thomists finite agents can be said to exercise a twofold causality via divine concurrence:
1) An instrumental causality, in that, attaining to the new being of the effect, they are acting as instruments of God; and
2) A proper (proximate) causality, in that this new being of the effect (as a hoc ens) is in some way determined or particularized by the exercise of their proper powers, as applied by God (determinans illud esse). (SCG III.66)[ccxliv]
I will call this view—the acceptance of theses (a)-(c)—Thomistic instrumentalism proper.
A.2. Malebranche’s Instrumentalism
When we compare Aquinas’ description about the extent of God’s primary causation to that of most occasionalists, the comparison is striking and for good reason. Despite the problems that arose for OCC, the occasionalist at least starts out with a firm commitment to the SP, which brings along with it a robust belief in creation and divine conservation. The problem that occasionalists have, of course, is allowing any secondary cause to have or exemplify active causal powers, which includes accepting anything like the application thesis (c), which specifically characterizes Thomistic instrumentalism. It is generally known that occasionalists, particularly Malebranche, explicitly identify concurrentism—what they sometime call “divine concourse”—with instrumentalism, and reject it as unintelligible. As we saw in Ch. 4 when discussing the arguments for OCC, it appears that Malebranche is required to reject instrumentalism, otherwise it would turn out that God could in some way communicate causal power to creatures, thus spoiling the general thesis of OCC itself.
At least, this is how Malebranche is interpreted by contemporary historians of philosophy. For example, Steven Nadler has observed that for Malebranche the term ‘concourse,’
“Rouses not a single distinct idea in an attentive mind” (Search III.2.vi, OC I:440, LO 231). The partisans of the theory lack an understanding both of the true nature of divine conservation and of the essence of causality. God’s sustenance of creatures rules out their having real causal powers (even with God’s concurrent support), and God certainly cannot communicate or lend his own causal powers to finite beings.[ccxlv]
These are strong words (coming mostly from Nadler). Kenneth Clatterbaugh makes the same observation concerning Malebranche’s view of concurrentism:
Malebranche holds that concurrentism is “not even conceivable to me” (LO, 658). One reason for concurrentism’s inconceivability is the one we have already noted, namely, if God were to give causal efficacy to created substances, God would make his creations independent of him, which is a logical impossibility. But in presenting his divine concursus argument Malebranche hints at another ground for denying that God acts by means of created things or natural causes. For God to utilize any created thing would mean that God’s will is neither sufficient nor efficacious in the production of change.[ccxlvi]
I think enough has been said above and in previous chapters which attends directly to the kinds of attacks made in these quotations, specifically concerning [a] the depth of divine conservation, [b] what conservation implies about the independence of creatures, [c] whether creatures are able to have causal powers, and lastly [d] the difference between God’s causal role in a concurrent cause, and a causal act directly performed by Him, e.g., creation. Both Nadler and Clatterbaugh highlight several passages that attempt to clarify and make palatable Malebranche’s position against divine concourse/concurrentism. I will now show, however, that what these passages actually reveal is that Malebranche’s attack cannot be directed specifically against Thomistic instrumentalism. In fact, in explicating Malebranche’s position, it will become apparent that Malebranche actually sides with Aquinas more than Nadler and Clatterbaugh realize.[ccxlvii]
The first thing to point out is that Malebranche affirms something like Aquinas’ explanation concerning the mode of divine operation in creatures:
Almost all theologians speak as follows: that the action of secondary causes is not different from the action by which God cooperates with them. For although they understand it in different ways, they hold that God acts in creatures through the same action as do creatures. And they are obliged to speak this way, it seems to me; for if creatures acted through an action God did not produce in them, their actions qua efficacious action would be, it seems to me, independent; now they believe, as they must, that creatures depend immediately on God, not only for their being, but for their operation as well. (LO 678-679; my emphasis)
That is to say, the theologians are right insofar as they hold that God must be immediately, causally involved in every causal event; mere conservationism simply is not enough.[ccxlviii] Now note the curious language of “cooperation” employed above. Malebranche explains that he is not above using this kind of language, as long as we are careful about what we mean by it: that God’s “cooperation” with creatures does not imply an instrumental relationship. So on the surface Nadler and Clatterbaugh are correct: Malebranche does reject some form of instrumentalism as impossible, for he claims that for God to utilize any creature would mean that His will is neither sufficient nor efficacious in the production of change. To return to a passage we analyzed in Ch. 4:
God needs no instruments to act; it suffices that He wills in order that a thing be, because it is a contradiction that He should will and that what He wills should not happen. Therefore, His power is His will, and to communicate His power is to communicate the efficacy of His will. But to communicate this efficacy to a man or an angel signifies nothing other than to will that when a man or an angel shall will this or that body to be moved it will actually be moved.” (LO 450; my emphasis)
Recall that this passage comes straight on the heels of the Necessary Connection Argument in the Search. Malebranche explains that it is impossible for God to communicate efficacious power to creatures, for to do so would make them gods. But even if God could, Malebranche postulates, we cannot conceive why He would (LO 451).[ccxlix] At first glance this appears to thwart any comparison of Malebranche’s theory of Providence with Aquinas’. However a third quotation reveals something important:
Since God’s volitions are efficacious by themselves, it is enough that He should will in order to produce, and it is useless to multiply beings without necessity. In addition, everything real in the natural determinations of our impulses also comes solely from God’s action in us…Thus, we act only through God’s cooperation, and our action viewed as efficacious and capable of producing some effect is not different from God’s; as most theologians say, they are the same action: Eadem numero actio. (LO 679; my emphasis)
Again, we see the curious language of “cooperation,” but with a slightly fuller explanation. We also have some additional clues about what Malebranche thinks is objectionable about instrumental causality, and how it differs from what he calls “God’s cooperation.” Malebranche’s understanding of instrumental causality amounts to the following: (i) If y is an instrument of x, then x exerts a power over y which is extrinsic to y in the production of the effect. Further, (ii) there are at least two actions involved in a Malebranchean case of instrumentalism: The act of the principal cause x, which consists in x’s exerting a power over y to perform effect E1, and the act of the lower cause y, which consists in y’s moving to perform effect E2. For example, in order to move a load of firewood from one place to the other, a principal agent (some person) might employ a lower agent (a wheelbarrow) in order to produce the total desired effect. The immediate principal effect (E1) would then be the person’s moving of the wheelbarrow, and the proximate lower effect (E2) would be the wheelbarrow’s moving of the wood. On this account, a case of Malebranchean instrumentalism is repugnant to the divine omnipotence and His providence, for it requires God not only to (i) work against His creation by forcing Him to exert power on a creature from the outside in order to bring about His desired effect, but (ii) would involve two acts, thus “multiplying beings without necessity” in the production of the effect, rendering God’s will either unnecessary or insufficient in bringing that effect about.[ccl]
Fair enough. However, we should now recognize that this characterization makes explicit the fact that Malebranche is objecting to something quite unlike Thomistic instrumentalism. As we have seen, Aquinas himself believes that God cannot communicate His power to create, conserve, or move (even themselves!) to creatures. Further, he agrees that God cannot grant creatures the opportunity to act independently of Him—i.e., God acts essentially in every operation of nature and will. Lastly, Aquinas would also agree that God needs no instruments to act, if what we mean is something akin to (i) and (ii). Aquinas understands quite well the worry that someone like Malebranche would have concerning instrumentalism:[ccli]
If a thing can be done sufficiently by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several: for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices. Since, then, the divine power suffices to produce natural effects, it is superfluous to employ for the production of the same effects, the power of nature also. (SCG III.70)
Yet Aquinas also explains in another place that, “to operate on a thing is not the same as to operate in it.” (DP 3,7,obj6; my emphasis) For God to operation on a thing in the production of an effect would require us to conceive of the effect as a conjunction of two effects, where both agents—principal and secondary—are making genuine causal contributions, by a conjunction of two different actions. Since the divine power is the principal agent under consideration in this example, as Aquinas and Malebranche both accept, we now have a case of causal overdetermination, for we know that divine power worth its salt is indeed sufficient for the production of the desired effect.
Now obviously Aquinas is not objecting to his own final position, but in this respect neither is Malebranche. As it stands, Aquinas and Malebranche are on the same page with respect to instrumentalism. Further, Aquinas gives us a model that captures precisely what Malebranche is after with his talk of cooperation. Under the Thomistic model, you can save what Malebranche considers as central to theism and the divine nature, without the detrimental effects of the kind of instrumentalism he objects to in the Elucidations. As we have briefly seen, Thomistic instrumentalism highlights the utter dependence of the creature on God for all things, with an emphasis on God’s activity as working within or through the creature in all instances of causality, particularly via the application thesis (c)—contra (i)—such that one and the same action is attributed to both God and creature—contra (ii):
The same effect is ascribed to a natural cause and to God, not as though part were effected by God and part by the natural agent: but the whole effect proceeds from each, yet in different ways: just as the whole of the one same effect is ascribed to the instrument, and again the whole is ascribed to the principal agent. (SCG III.70)
I contend that something like the Thomistic characterization of instrumentalism is precisely the “cooperative effect” that Malebranche himself is speaking about in LO 678-679. The effective power of God penetrates deeply into the nature of the creature, such that God works within creatures, but not over them or on them. The kind of cooperation described by Malebranche is thus not a working side-by-side or an analysis of partial causes—which would be repugnant to the divine omnipotence and superfluous—but a kind of activity intrinsic[cclii] to the nature of the creature, such that only one action ensues from God and creature, as Malebranche asserts: Eadem numero actio. It is, as described earlier, a subordination of essential dependence. To be sure, the initial operation and power is all God’s for by themselves,
Bodies, minds, pure intelligences, all these can do nothing. It is He who made minds, who enlightens and activates them. It is He who created the sky and the earth, and who regulates their motions. In short, it is the Author of our being who executes our wills: semel jussit, semper paret. (LO 451)
So if we are to take Malebranche seriously in the Elucidations, it turns out that the view he holds is that the relationship of God to creature is hierarchical—one where the creature is utterly dependent on God. Further, he tells us a similar story about how it is the case that God works through creatures—i.e., cooperates or concurs with them—in order to produce effects which are principally His, without the apparent threat of causal overdetermination. So Malebranche and Aquinas philosophically agree on this issue, contrary to how they are sometimes interpreted. Hence, the conclusion to Malebranche’s Elucidation XV should come as no surprise:
Thus, since it has been shown that God executes through His cooperation, or rather through His efficacious will, everything the motion of bodies and the volitions of minds do as natural or occasional causes, there is nothing God does not do by the same action as His creature’s—not because creatures have any efficacious action by themselves but because God’s power is, as it were, communicated to them by the natural laws God has established in their favor.
This is all I can do to reconcile what I think with the view of theologians who maintain (a) the necessity of immediate cooperation and (b) that God does everything in all things through the same action as that of creatures (LO 680; my emphasis).
This reconciliation would be a welcome response to someone like Aquinas, who incidentally is one of those “theologians.” Rather than taking Malebranche’s analysis in the Elucidations as a futile attempt to reduce CUR to OCC,[ccliii] we can take a more positive tack and say that Malebranche has got it right: God does not use instruments in that other way. But then the Thomist can also elicit agreement from someone who was once thought to be a foe.[ccliv]
If I am right, then (along with Ch. 5, §B) I can finally make good on my promissory note from Ch. 4 (see §C.2), for we now have strong reasons to suspect that Malebranche could not shut out the possibility of God’s communicating His causal power—indeed, a lesser power and not His omnipotence—to creatures in some way or other.
A.3. The Doctrine of Premotion
The first position to consider with regard to what God’s concurrence amounts to is called the doctrine of Premotion. Suarez comments that, “This seems to be the position of all those who claim that God’s concurrence occupies itself within the secondary cause prior to the latter’s action, by applying or determining it to that action.” (DM XXII.2.7) Premotionists argue that God’s concurrence is an accidental principle of acting.[cclv] In brief, this position holds that from the perspective of God, God’s concurrence is a principle brought about by Him within the creature itself, prior to its acting or second act.[cclvi] From the perspective of the creature, this principle or power is said to be incomplete, insofar as it is merely a necessary condition for the creature’s acting. Further, this power is said to be accidental, insofar as it should be differentiated from the creature’s proper or natural powers. It is a transitory power, that nonetheless is received intrinsically by the creature from God, and only belongs to it while it is being employed instrumentally. So through this power—called a “premotion”—God applies the 2C to action, in the same way that a craftsman applies his instruments to act.
Having described Thomistic instrumentalism, the similarity between it and Premotion will soon become clear. What differentiates Premotion and Thomistic instrumentalism is one simple thesis that several of Aquinas’ followers, according to Suarez, have misinterpreted. After outlining theses (a)-(c) in De Potentia, Aquinas himself explains that God also is said to immediately concur with the 2C,
(d) As a principal agent causes the action of its instrument.
At first glance, thesis (d) appears to be no more than a clarification of the application thesis (c). For given these four theses in De Potentia, Aquinas simply re-emphasizes his previous conclusion about how God operates in creatures, which is that every secondary agent is indeed immediate to its effect, but when considering the power whereby the action is done, God’s power is more immediate to the effect than the 2C. Thus God is said to be the cause of every action, inasmuch as,
He gives everything the power to act, and preserves it in being and applies it to action, and inasmuch as by his power every other power acts. And if we add to this that God is his own power, and that he is in all things not as part of their essence but as upholding them in their being, we shall conclude that he acts in every agent immediately, without prejudice to the action of the will and of nature. (DP 3,7,corpus)
Clearly, the two significant features of God’s concurrence are theses (c) and (d), both of which refer to certain aspects of instrumentality, or God’s “use or employment” of creatures to bring certain effects about. In order to make sense of Aquinas’ differentiation between (c) and (d) however—of how God actually causes the action of the 2C as an instrument—some of Aquinas’ followers contend that one must posit a “premotion” in the creature, a transitory power that comes from God at the time that the creature is applied to act. This premotion is claimed to be the power that Aquinas is talking about when he refers to the power by which the creature acts, as Suarez elaborates:
God immediately effects within all lower causes a certain participation in himself by means of which he immediately attains to their effects as well. For the very power that exists in God and the intention of that power produced in the lower causes are taken to be a single power—just as ([Ferrariensis] says) the craft that exists in the mind of the craftsman and the intention of that craft received in the instrument are taken to be a single power. And he claims that through this power God applies secondary causes to their action in the way that a craftsman applies his instruments. (DM XXII.2.7)
Thomists base their view on a curious passage which can be found in the replies of the same article of De Potentia:
That which God does in a natural thing to make it operate actually, is a mere intention, incomplete in being, as colours in the air and the power of the craftsman in his instrument. Hence even as art can give the axe its sharpness as a permanent form, but not the power of the art as a permanent form, unless it were endowed with intelligence, so it is possible for a natural thing to be given its own proper power as a permanent form within it, but not the power to act so as to cause being as the instrument of the first cause, unless it were given to be the universal principle of being. Nor could it be given to a natural power to cause its own movement, or to preserve its own being. (DP 3,7,ad7; my emphasis)
This intention, “incomplete in being,” is taken by some of Aquinas’ followers to be the premotion required for causing the instrumental causality, as suggested in thesis (d). Again, this premotion or instrumental power is not a permanent quality a creature has, i.e., the power a creature receives as an instrument is not something native and proper to it, nor is it an accident which may be found in it after the influence of the principal cause (as heat is found in boiled water). Rather, this operative-type power is only actualized in the creature during the presence and exertion of the divine power through its use; the power does not remain in the creature except during its application. Just as the instrument itself does nothing unless moved by the craftsman, so too creatures literally do nothing unless moved by the Creator. So even though God, in creating, brings into existence substances with particular natures and powers, He cannot make it such that “a natural power [can] cause its own movement,” or “act so as to cause being as the instrument of the first cause,” presumably for the same reason that He cannot create things that can create or preserve their own being, i.e., “unless it [the creature] were given to be the universal principle of being.” Hence the essential subordination of 2Cs to God occurs in the same manner in which instruments are literally subordinated to a craftsman. I will call this stronger view, the acceptance of theses (a)-(d), the doctrine of Premotion.
In order to see why premotionists believe it is necessary to posit an additional power, it might be helpful to talk a bit about the notion of an instrument. It is commonly understood that an instrument is something that is used to perform an action by an agent. To be used properly, the instrument must be suitable for its purpose, and the principal agent must have sufficient power to employ the instrument to achieve the desired effect.[cclvii] In considering these two aspects, the instrument’s ‘suitability for use’ is ascertained by the principal agent, which is called the agent’s intention (to use the instrument, that is). More specifically, the intention of the principal agent takes into consideration the two powers necessary in order for an instrument to be employed: The power of the instrument itself, which is just a consideration of the instrument’s particular capacities; and its own power. In order to have a case of true instrumental causality, the instrument itself must have certain natural capacities which render it plausible for employment, given the specific effect to be obtained. For example, flowers and a chipmunk cannot be proper instruments for a carpenter if the effect to be desired is the building of a table (whereas nails and a hammer are). Further, if the carpenter has some physical ailment or debilitating condition in his dominant arm, he may be unable to employ the hammer and nails to achieve the desired effect, despite the suitability of the instruments.
Central to the notion of instrumental causality, therefore, is that the intention to employ the instrument is superior to anything which the instrument possesses of itself––otherwise the instrument would be able to direct its own power in some way to perform the action (if only minimally) intended by the principal agent. Hence a proper understanding of instrumentality implies that the instrument qua instrument is being used to perform a function which is directed by the principal agent, one which of itself the instrument could not perform. Following our example above, hammers do not of themselves drive nails, but must be employed by agents to do so. The hammer is indeed an agent, a “secondary agent,” which is raised by the power of the principal agent to produce an effect of a higher order than itself––the effect of which is actually more proportionate to the power of the principal agent, not the hammer. Thus, in order for something to be used as an instrument, at least two conditions must be met:
(i) The instrument must be used to produce an effect which it could not produce in virtue of its own natural power, and
(ii) the instrument must receive some power, which renders it capable of producing such an effect, from the principal cause.
So it appears that premotionists take Aquinas quite literally when he employs his instrument analogy. They contend that conditions (i) and (ii) above map nicely onto theses (c) and (d). With regard to the application thesis (c), the lower (secondary) nature cannot act except through being moved from potentiality to act, i.e., the internal movement of the creature to produce an action must be initially attributed to God, and the creature can in no way initiate this movement on its own. Further, regarding (d), since the creature really is likened to an instrument, the movement from potentiality to act requires that an additional power be given to the creature from God, one that is not included within its natural causal powers. This additional, transitory power is what actually causes the 2C to act as an instrument.
Of course, even according to the Premotion view, the specific character of the action is really attributable to the secondary cause since it is immediately, i.e., directly and physically, connected with the effect. For example, if I were to strike the head of a snake with my heel, I would be responsible for the action (indeed, the whole action) employed in bringing about the effect by exerting a certain amount of force with my foot in the direction of the snake. Whereas my shoe, being the instrument of my (leg’s) activity, would be the “agent” that is immediately connected with the effect—so it can be said that the shoe is what immediately strikes the head of the snake. In Thomistic language, I caused the shoe’s striking (of the snake) by the very fact that I applied the hardness of the shoe to striking by moving it to strike.[cclviii]
So there is a sense in which the shoe itself “does something,” but only insofar as I do something. The effect to be produced is such that the instrument could not bring it about by its own natural power. Of course, the fact that the heel of my shoe has a particular hardness is extremely relevant, and in some sense “dictates” how it ought to be used, if it is going to be used effectively. Yet with respect to me, as instrument, it seems that my shoe has no choice in the matter about how its nature is to be applied.
A.4. Thomistic Instrumentalism is Not Premotion
Having said all of this, I think it should come as no surprise to note that Suarez attempts to separate Aquinas from his premotionist followers. Suarez contends that only certain Thomists like Ferrariensis held this ultra-deep view about God’s involvement in nature, whereas Aquinas himself seems to have abandoned the premotion thesis (d) after writing De Potentia:
It is true that in De Potentia, q. 3, a. 7 St Thomas adds a third element,[cclix] namely, a transient instrumental power that the secondary cause receives from the First Cause in order to act as an instrument. For he explicitly counts this power as distinct from the application and from production and conservation of the secondary cause itself and of its power.
My own belief, however, is that St. Thomas implicitly retracted this doctrine in Summa Theologiae 1, [q. 105, a. 5], where, in carefully laying out all the ways in which the First Cause operates with the second cause, he omitted the power in question—something he could not have done in this pertinent and crucial context if he had believed this power to be necessary per se for the First Cause’s concurrence; similarly, he makes no mention of such a power in Contra Gentes 3, chap. 70. (DM XXII.2.52)
Suarez does have a point here: For although Aquinas uses the craftsman analogy in both ST I.105.5 and SCG III.70, in neither text does he explicitly say that the craftsman gives any type of transient, premotion-type power to the instrument which is over and above the natural powers that it already possesses. Rather, Aquinas focuses explicitly on the application thesis (c), where the craftsman merely “applies the instrument to its proper effect,” (SCG III.70) e.g., he “applies to action the axe which cuts through its being sharp.” (ST I.105.5.corpus; my emphasis)[cclx] So it appears that the instrument analogy is simply that, an analogy, a way of helping us weakly understand how the power of the secondary agent can depend on the First by means of an application, such that the same effect can be produced by both, but in different ways.[cclxi]
Besides the fact that there is a lack of textual evidence to attribute Premotion to Aquinas, Suarez has two philosophical worries about the Premotion view. The first is that Premotion is susceptible to the argument against mere conservationism. For if God’s concurrence essentially consists in His effecting in the 2C an antecedent necessary condition for acting, then God’s concurrence would terminate merely in the will or power of the creature. It then follows that God is not immediately involved in the production of the secondary cause’s effect or action itself. And so, “given this account, God would concur in the secondary cause’s action not per se, but only remotely and per accidens—namely, by conserving the secondary cause and by effecting within it a certain necessary condition for acting.” (DM XXII.2.13) Thus, contrary to the intention of the premotionist, such a view would be implicitly rejecting thesis (c) of the SP.
The second problem is a bit more troublesome, Suarez thinks. He argues that, since the premotion that the 2C receives is necessary for its acting, then the Premotion view is incompatible with the notion of a free cause, with respect to both its exercise and its specification. As Freddoso explicates them:
A cause is free with respect to exercise in a complete set of circumstances C just in case in C it is both able to act and able not to act. A cause is free with respect to specification in a complete set of circumstances C just in case in C it is both able to elicit an act A and also able to elicit some contrary act A*. (A complete set of circumstances is one in which all the prerequisites for the agent’s acting are present.)[cclxii]
On the basis of these definitions, Suarez argues in the following way:
(29) If the First Cause alone effects the premotion, then the will of the 2C is merely in passive potency with respect to the premotion.
(30) If the will of the 2C is in passive potency with respect to the premotion, then the will of the 2C is passively (or negatively) indifferent with regard to the act or effect to be produced.
(31) If the will of the 2C is negatively indifferent with regard to the act or effect to be produced, then it is not free with regard to specification (i.e., it is not within the will’s active and free power to receive this or that premotion, but rather, it is determined to only one act by God.)
( (32) If the First Cause alone effects the premotion, then the 2C is not free with respect to specification of the act.
(33) If the will of the 2C is negatively indifferent with regard to the act or effect to be produced, then in its absence the will of the 2C is not yet a proximate principle of acting, one that is complete and accompanied by all the prerequisites for acting.
( (34) If the First Cause effects the premotion, then before it is received in the 2C, the 2C does not have within its active and free power the ability to exercise the relevant act.[cclxiii]
Under the Premotion view, since the premotion is a necessary condition for acting, then in its absence the will of the 2C is incomplete, and cannot act as a principle to effect an action one way or another. Further, Suarez claims, without the premotion, the will of the 2C is not even a remote active power, since it cannot do anything itself to acquire the premotion it needs on its own. So under these conditions, the 2C is not free to either act or not act, nor it is able to specify the act that it in fact performs.
What a strange predicament: If Suarez is right, then the doctrine of Premotion seems to commit one to abandoning thesis (c) of the SP, only to lose any significant creaturely freedom in the process. In this, it reflects the worst of both CON and OCC.
A.5. Concurrence as an Action
So how are we to understand God’s concurrence if not in the manner of an accidental principle, i.e., via the premotionist picture? Suarez’s approach is not to abandon Aquinas’ explanation of concurrentism altogether, but rather to re-cast Aquinas’ analysis in terms of his own, which is that “the First Cause’s concurrence begins (as I will put it) with the motion or application of the secondary cause, but is consummated in the immediate and per se causing of the very effect or action of the secondary cause itself.” (DM XXII.2.14; my emphasis) That is to say, God’s concurrence is per se and essentially something in the manner of an action, and not a principle of acting.
Central to Suarez’s view are two assertions (as he calls them), which I understand as capturing both the positive and the negative aspects of God’s concurrence:
(Positive) God’s concurrence, [a] insofar as it is directed towards effects outside himself, is per se and essentially something in the manner of an action, or [b] at least something in the manner of a being-made, [c] that emanates immediately from God. (DM XXII.2.15)
(Negative) The First Cause’s concurrence [d] does not by intrinsic necessity include anything which is introduced de novo into the secondary cause itself and which is either a principle of its action or a necessary condition for that action. (DM XXII.2.19)
Consistent with his intention to vindicate St. Thomas of the Premotion view, Suarez tells us that he takes both assertions straight from St. Thomas’ texts.[cclxiv] In simple terms, the positive assertion is intended to explain what God’s concurrence is, and the negative assertion is supposed to differentiate it from any other view—in this case, the doctrine of Premotion.
Suarez then explains how we are to understand the key individual phrases of each assertion. Concerning [a] & [b], Suarez explains that these qualifications are here in order to forestall any questions or unnecessary distinctions that may arise with regard to concurrence and its relation to God, as opposed to its relation to the creature or role in nature. Specifically, [a] is intended to differentiate the ontological status of God’s general concurrence as a transeunt act from God’s immanent or internal concurrence, which is a principle of His will that exists solely within Himself. Whereas [b] specifies that the concurrence received in the creature is an action that will terminate in the natural effect itself, as opposed to terminating in the creature (as a premotion or principle of acting is often understood).
Condition [c] then gets to the heart of concurrence as an action. On the basis of the arguments for concurrentism (see Ch. 5, §B), we know that God has a per se and immediate influence not only on the 2C’s effect but also on its action, for both are said to have participated being from God. On the basis of this principle, Suarez argues that God’s concurrence must be something in the manner of an action:
(35) The action of the creature has participated being from God.
(36) If the action of the creature has participated being from God, then God has a per se and immediate influence on the action of the creature (i.e., [c] that influence emanates immediately from Him). We call this influence God’s concurrence.
(37) If God has a per se and immediate influence on the action of the creature, then God’s concurrence is somehow included intimately and per se in the creature’s own action.
(38) If God’s concurrence is somehow included intimately and per se in the creature’s own action, then it tends toward the same terminus that the creature’s action tends toward.
(39) If God’s concurrence tends toward the same terminus that the creature’s action tends toward, then it is per se and immediately something in the manner of an action.
( (40) God’s concurrence is per se and immediately something in the manner of an action, either as the being-made of the creature’s action, or the being-made of the creature’s effect.
If we recall Aquinas’ instrumental model, we can see how Suarez is implicitly following it, and is working to give a fuller explanation of how God works through or in the creature in its acting, while upholding a subordination of essential dependence between them (which is ultimately what premise (35) is founded on, as we have seen earlier). Yet he does this without directly employing the instrument analogy, in order to avoid association with the premotionists and the particular locutions they use to defend their view.[cclxv]
So God’s concurrence is something in the manner of an action, and it tends toward the same terminus that the creature’s action tends toward. Though not yet complete, what Suarez gives us above is the majority of an argument for the identity between God’s concurrence and the creature’s action. To see this, we need to recall that according to Scholastic metaphysics,
The entity or reality signified by the term ‘action’ is a determination that (leaving aside creation [and conservation]) has the patient [or terminus] as its ultimate ontological subject. To be sure, this reality is called an action precisely because it emanates from the agent and constitutes (or on some accounts, ‘results in’) the effect’s causal dependence on the agent at the very time at which the agent is producing it.[cclxvi]
This understanding of an action as constituting the effect’s causal dependence on the agent should bring to mind thesis (b) of the SP, or the doctrine of strong conservation. As we saw in Ch. 5, §B, concurrentists maintain that CUR stands or falls with God’s conservation, i.e., insofar as every creature is existentially, causally dependent upon God in this way, God must causally contribute to the production of their effects and/or their operations. Well, it should be clear that insofar as the effect in question exists or has esse, it is causally dependent on God and not the secondary cause. Whereas the effect in question is dependent upon the secondary cause for its particular character or determination of being, as this or such a being. How then are both God and creature able to co-contribute these “distinct” aspects of the effect?[cclxvii] Well, since both God’s concurrence and the creature’s action tend toward the same, single terminus or effect, which is the ens or patient, it has to be the case that God’s concurrence is really not distinct from the creature’s action. So, as a first attempt to complete the argument, we could proceed in the following way (taking some premises from our earlier argument against Durandus in Ch. 5, §C.2):
(41) God’s concurrence tends toward the same terminus that the creature’s action tends toward. [from (35)-(38)]
(17) There is only one effect [or terminus] under consideration.
(18) “It is impossible that there should be diverse actions with respect to the acquisition of numerically the same form,” i.e., one effect implies one action.
( (42) God’s concurrence is not distinct from the action of the creature.
Premise (41) is Suarez’s version of Durandus’ premise (16) from Ch. 5, §C.2. Here again, Suarez makes the effort to give credit to Aquinas for teaching the truth of this conclusion:
St. Thomas teaches it explicitly in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 105, a. 5, ad 2, where he replies to the first consideration we adduced above [that there are two actions] by saying, “A single action does not proceed from two (read: total) agents of a single order; but nothing prevents one and the same action’s proceeding from the First Agent and a secondary agent.” (DM XXII.3.2)
The qualification ‘total’ is necessary, Suarez maintains, in order to clarify Aquinas’ statement and avoid backsliding to Durandus’ model [B], where two (or more) agents of the same order are taken to be partial and imperfect causes of the same effect.
So given that God’s concurrence, as an action, is either the being-made of the creature’s very action[cclxviii] or the being-made of the effect, Suarez makes this observation:
It is evident and generally agreed upon that once an actual concurrence with respect to outside things is posited, it is inseparable from the secondary cause’s action. For there is some terminus and effect of the First Cause’s from which that concurrence is inseparable, and if it is a concurrence with respect to outside things, then something outside of God is effected; but the thing in question must be effected by the secondary cause, since otherwise the concurrence would be the action of God alone and not a concurrence with the secondary cause. Hence the very term ‘concurrence’ makes sufficiently clear the concurrence’s inseparability from the secondary cause’s action. (DM XXII.2.18)
At this, Suarez points us toward another argument for the identity between God’s concurrence and the creature’s action:
(43) If within the effect there are two actions (God’s and the creature’s) which terminate in one and the same effect, then the 2C’s action must be per se and immediately from it alone.
(44) If the 2C’s action is per se and immediately from it alone, then only the 2C’s effect is effected by God.
But if the arguments for concurrentism have established anything at all, it is that
(35) The action of the creature has participated being from God (also).
( (45) The 2C’s action is effected by God also.
( (46) The 2C’s action cannot be per se and immediately from it alone.
( (47) It is not the case that within the effect there are two actions which terminate in one and the same effect.
Rather, within the effect, there is but one action that both God and creature produce. On this matter, Suarez again nods his head to Aquinas, “This is why St. Thomas and the other theologians teach that within his own order, God is a per se and immediate cause not only of all the effects of creatures, but also of all their actions.” (DM XXII.3.4) Yet Suarez also emphasizes that we should not take St. Thomas’ manner of speaking transitively, in such a way as to split the actions of God and creature, or to really attribute a priority of causality to one agent over the other.[cclxix] Because there is only one action and one terminus, neither agent properly can be said to be the cause of the other’s contribution, at least with respect to the external action that takes place. So strictly speaking, no genuine causality exists between God and creature in a concurrent cause, for one and the same action cannot be said to cause itself.[cclxx]
Finally, we come to condition [d] of Suarez’s negative assertion. Suarez explains that, given the positive assertion, we know that concurrence with the secondary cause presupposes some active power that has been given and conserved by the First Cause. With the negative assertion, then, he is noting that what is at stake is whether the First Cause must add anything over and above that power—namely, a principle or necessary condition for acting—as the premotionists require.
Now, we have already seen two of Suarez’s arguments against the doctrine of Premotion (§A.4), and by implication, any other possible contender for the position. At this point, I think it is fair to contend that it is simply unnecessary to conjure up anything else as an explanation of God’s concurrence in nature. For taken in the way already explained, God’s concurrence as an action is sufficient to explain and preserve every aspect of the subordination of essential dependence that creatures have on God in acting, of which there are three:[cclxxi]
(i) The 2C’s dependence on the First Cause in its causing/operating,
(ii) The 2C’s action’s dependence on the First Cause for its being-made, and
(iii) The effect’s dependence on the First Cause for all of its esse.
All of these, as noted, are consequences of God’s strong conservation, and were explained above and in earlier chapters. Therefore, the better of the two views on the table is that God’s general concurrence with nature is really an action, and has no other terminus than the effect of the 2C’s action.
B. A Preliminary Model for Concurrent Activity
“My Father is at work even until now.”—John 5:17
In “God’s General Concurrence With Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects,” Freddoso describes two pitfalls that a proper account of concurrentism should avoid:[cclxxii]
P1: Conceiving of the effect produced as itself a conjunction of two effects.
P2: Conceiving of the agency by which the effect is produced as itself a conjunction of two actions.
In evaluating the objections to concurrentism, especially Durandus’ “Not-One-Act” Mantra, it was shown how the concurrentist does not succumb to either of these pitfalls. The objections simply fail to convince that the pitfalls even arise. Further, the discussion above of God’s concurrence as an action can thus be taken to offer a positive account of the relationship between terminus and agent(s) in a concurrent cause, thereby explaining how P1 is avoided by offering a plausible alternative to P2.
What remains to be given is some preliminary model for divine concurrence, i.e., the mode by which God and creature act in a concurrent cause. So how does God do it? How does God give His concurrence to creatures, especially free, rational agents? As a first attempt, I propose the following Freddoso-style definition:
Take S to be any substance distinct from God. For every state of affairs p and time t, God is a concurrent cause of p at t = df
(i) God wills that “If S is an active cause of p at t, then p.”
Where S is an active cause of p at t only if,
(ii) S causally contributes to p’s obtaining at t, and
(iii) S’s causal contribution to p’s obtaining at t is at least in part active.
This is a slightly more nuanced version of claim (28’) above (Ch. 5, §C.3), and from the formula used to object to the Necessary Connection argument (Ch. 4, §C.2). Up to this point what I have done is simply confirmed that it is a coherent model and that it fits with the concurrentist worldview. I have formulated it this way in order to draw out several key elements. First, the conditional nature of God’s volition in a concurrent cause differentiates God’s activity in a concurrent cause from His activity as a strong active cause, whereby no substance S distinct from God would be an active cause of p’s obtaining at t, e.g., in acts of creation and conservation. Second, the conditional used is non-descriptive with respect to any relations or properties that S may bear to other creatures, leaving open the possibility that God can concur with a creature S even in its immanent acts. Third, this model is compatible with Suarez’s contention that there is no priority of causality between God and S with regard to the external action that terminates in state of affairs or effect p. Strictly speaking, the obtaining of p by means of God’s will does not happen either before or after S makes its causal contribution to p. Since there is only one p obtaining, it can only be said that God and creature act at the same time, and given the structure of God’s volition, they do so by means of only one action. Fourth, the formula is generic with regard to the kinds of creatures that God can concur with, and is compatible with both natural and free causes.
Although unsatisfactory in some respects, this general model appears to give the concurrentist almost everything they need with regard to a positive characterization of concurrentism, which requires that,
[i] A unitary effect is produced by two agents, where
[ii] Neither of the agents would effect anything in the absence of the other’s causal contribution, and
[iii] In their cooperative actions, the two agents constitute a single total cause that produces the effect by means of a single, undivided, action.[cclxxiii]
Further, this model highlights how, as noted above,
[iv] God’s mode of acting in a concurrent cause is clearly distinct from any mode of acting in which He produces an effect by Himself, and
[v] That there is a subordination of essential dependence (i.e., non-symmetric) between God and creature S, with God’s action being primary, and creature S’s action being secondary.
What remains is to give a bit more detail as to how God’s concurrence is compatible with the operations of free creatures. For that, I turn again to Suarez. First, as a general principle, we can say that,
(48) God gives His concurrence to each thing in a way accommodated to its nature.
So although the model above is quite general, it is open to the fact that different types of 2Cs, with various kinds of active causal powers, can contribute to the production of p in the manner that their nature dictates or allows, and that God’s concurrence will vary accordingly. When it comes to free creatures,[cclxxiv] whose natures are not determined to the exercise of one particular act or other, even when all the prerequisites for the creature’s acting are present, including the laws of nature, various sine qua non conditions, etc., God’s concurrence follow suit. Another way to put this is that God not only wills the action, but the mode of the action as well.[cclxxv] That is,
(49) Free creatures are not determined by their own natures to the exercise of their actions.
( (50) God correspondingly offers concurrence to free creatures without an absolute determination to the exercise of their actions.
Taken as an efficacious willing, God’s concurrence has the flavor of a hypothetical necessity. As Suarez explains:
God does not, through the act of will by which he decides to give his concurrence to a free cause, decide altogether absolutely that the free cause will exercise the act in question; nor does he will absolutely that the act exist. Instead, with a sort of implicit condition he wills the existence of the act to the extent that the act proceeds from him and from that concurrence of his which he has decided to offer. And by virtue of that volition he applies his power to the act in question, but on the condition that the secondary cause—that is, the created will—should likewise determine itself to that action and issue forth into it. For by its freedom the will is always able not to issue forth into the act. (DM XXII.4.14; my emphasis)
So as repeatedly noted, God’s concurrence is necessary for the obtaining of p, but the creature’s action is also. Thus, God’s concurrence does not necessitate the action absolutely, given that both He and the creature have freely willed to act, though in different ways with respect to each other, and by different modes of acting. Again, this way of concurring with creatures preserves the hierarchy of dependence between God and creature, for although out of the goodness of His nature God freely wills to concur with creatures, God could, for whatever reason, withhold that concurrence. So the free creature is quite dependent upon God in its free acting as well as being.
Furthermore and quite importantly, Suarez contends that the problem of evil necessitates this conditional explanation of God’s general concurrence with free creatures. For if God were to “decide altogether absolutely that the free cause will exercise the act in question; [or were He to] will absolutely that the act exist,” then God would be responsible for both the material element (the act of willing) and the formal element (its moral character) of the act. Insofar as God does not do this when He concurs,
He merely offers [the created will] the concurrence by which he influences the act of the created will when it itself elicits that act. This is an extremely important difference, a difference in light of which God justly wills to permit a sinful act insofar as it proceeds from the created will, even though he is unable to will that act as such. (DM XXII.4.19)
As a final observation, Suarez contends that were it the case that God willed the effect or the act of the created will by means of an absolute will, then His concurrence would be determinative to only one effect, also violating the creature’s freedom of specification. As it stands, however, the hypothetical character of God’s volition to concur is open to a certain bit of “resistance,” as it were, and is sufficient for more than one act, insofar as the natures of free creatures are indifferent with respect to more than one act. Thus, we can run the argument above for freedom of specification, mutatis mutandis:
(48) God gives His concurrence to each thing in a way accommodated to its nature.
(51) Free creatures not determined by their natures to only one act, i.e., they are indifferent with respect to more than one act.
( (52) God correspondingly offers concurrence to free creatures without an absolute determination to the specification of their acts.
That is to say, the creature receives God’s concurrence (in 1st act)[cclxxvi] in an indifferent mode, which is open to more than one possible act.
Described in this way, the concurrentist can avoid the problems of freedom that seem to plague the Premotionist and the occasionalist, as well as preserve the fact that creatures truly have active causal powers and contribute to the production of their effects. In the end, only with concurrentism can the theist uphold the traditional account of God’s strong causal providence while at the same time rendering creatures their due.
Notes
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______. “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 99-122 (Winter 1998).
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Stump, Eleonore. “Aquinas’s Account of Freedom: Intellect and Will.” The Monist 80 (4): 576-597 (1997).
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Wippel, John F. “Thomas Aquinas on the Distinction and Derivation of the Many from the One: A Dialectic Between Being and Nonbeing.” Review of Metaphysics 38: 563-590 (March 1985).
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IV. Secondary Sources: Early Modern & Contemporary
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Fleming, Noel. “On Leibniz on Subject and Substance.” The Philosophical Review 46 (1): 69-95 (January 1987).
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Frankfurt, Harry G. “Two Motivations for Rationalism: Descartes and Spinoza,” In Human Nature and Natural Knowledge: Essays Presented to Marjorie Grene on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday, edited by Alan Donagan, A.N. Perovich, Jr., & M.V. Wedin. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1986.
Fritz, A. “Malebranche and the Immaterialism of Berkeley.” The Review of Metaphysics 3: 59-80 (1949).
______. “Berkeley’s Self—It’s Origin in Malebranche.” Journal of the History of Ideas 15 (4): 554-572 (October 1954).
Garber, Daniel. “Science and Certainty in Descartes.” In Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, edited by M. Hooker. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
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______. “Mind, Body and the Laws of Nature in Descartes and Leibniz.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8: 105-133 (1983).
______. “How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance, and Occasionalism.” The Journal of Philosophy 84 (10): 567-580 (October 1987).
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______. Descartes Metaphysical Physics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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Gilbertson, Mark O. “Descartes on God’s Creative Activity.” Southwest Philosophical Review 5: 15-22 (January 1989).
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Grene, Marjorie. “Causes.” Philosophy 38 (144): 149-159 (April 1963).
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Harré, R. and Madden, E.H. Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975.
Hobart, Michael E. Science and Religion in the Thought of Nicholas Malebranche. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Jolley, Nicholas. “Descartes and the Action of Body on Mind.” Studia Leibnitiana 19 (1): 41-53 (1987).
______. “Berkeley and Malebranche on Causality and Volition.” In Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Jan A. Cover & Mark Kulstad. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1990.
______. The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
______. “Intellect and Illumination in Malebranche.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (2): 209-224 (April 1994).
______. “Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (4): 535-548 (October 1996).
Kremer, Elmar J. “Malebranche on Human Freedom.” In The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, edited by Steven Nadler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Klopke, John R. “Malebranche Revisited.” The New Scholasticism 39 (2): 189-208 (April 1965).
Laywine, Alison. “Malebranche, Jansenism and the Sixth Meditation.” Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 81 (2): 148-173 (1999).
Lee, Sukjae. “Necessary Connections and Continuous Creation: Malebranche’s Two Arguments for Occasionalism.” Unpublished paper. Delivered at the Pacific Division APA, March 2003.
Lennon, Thomas M. “Occasionalism and the Cartesian Metaphysics of Motion.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (Supp): 29-40 (1974).
______. “Veritas Filia Temporis: Hume on Time and Causation.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (3): 275-290 (July 1985).
______. “Mechanism as a Silly Mouse: Bayle’s Defense of Occasionalism against the Preestablished Harmony.” In Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Pre-Established Harmony, edited by Steven Nadler. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
______. “Pandora; or, Essence and Reference: Gassendi’s Nominalist Objection and Descartes’ Realist Reply.” In Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies, edited by R. Ariew & Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
______. “The Cartesian Dialectic of Creation.” In The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Vol. I, edited by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Loeb, Louis E. From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.
______. “Replies to Daisie Radner’s ‘Is There A Problem of Cartesian Interaction?’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 227-231 (April 1985).
Luce, A.A. Berkeley and Malebranche: A Study in the Origins of Berkeley’s Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934.
Mattern, Ruth. “Descartes’s Correspondence with Elizabeth: Concerning the Union and Distinction of Mind and Body,” In Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, edited by Michael Hooker. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
McCracken, Charles. Malebranche and British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
______. “Stages on a Cartesian Road to Immaterialism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1): 19-40 (January 1986).
Menn, Stephen. “The Greatest Stumbling Block: Descartes’ Denial of Real Qualities.” In Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies, edited by R. Ariew & Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
______. “On Dennis Des Chene’s Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought.” Unpublished paper. Delivered at the Central Division APA, March 1999.
Nadler, Steven. Malebranche and Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
______. Occasionalism and General Will in Malebranche.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1): 31-47 (January 1993).
______. “The Occasionalism of Louis de la Forge,” In Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Pre-Established Harmony, edited by Steven Nadler. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
______. “Descartes and Occasional Causation.” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 2 (1): 35-54 (1994).
______. “Choosing a Theodicy: The Leibniz-Malebranche-Arnauld Connection.” Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (4): 573-589 (October 1994).
______. “Dualism and Occasionalism.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 48 (190): 421-439 (November 1994).
______. “Occasionalism and the Question of Arnauld’s Cartesianism,” In Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies, edited by Roger Ariew & Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
______. “Malebranche’s Occasionalism: A Reply to Clarke.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 33 (3): 505-508 (July 1995).
______. “‘No Necessary Connection:’ The Medieval Roots of the Occasionalist Roots of Hume.” The Monist 79 (3): 448-466 (1996).
______. “Occasionalism and the Mind-Body Problem.” In Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, edited by M.A. Stewart. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
______. “Louis de la Forge and the Development of Occasionalism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 36 (2): 215-232 (April 1998).
______. “Malebranche on Causation.” In The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, edited by Steven Nadler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Okrent, Nicholas. “A Note on Leibniz’s Supposed Flirtation with Occasionalism in the 1669 Letter to Thomasius.” Auslegung 23 (2): 143-152 (2000).
Osler, Margaret J. “Divine Will and Mathematical Truth: Gassendi and Descartes on the Status of the Eternal Truths.” In Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies, edited by Roger Ariew & Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
______. “From Immanent Natures to Nature as an Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final Causes in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy.” The Monist 79 (3): 388-407 (1996).
Peiper, Josef. Faith, Hope, Love. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.
Pessin, Andrew. “Does Continuous Creation Entail Occasionalism? Malebranche (and Descartes).” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 413-440 (September 2000).
______. “Malebranche’s Doctrine of Freedom/Consent and the Incompleteness of God’s Volitions.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (1): 21-53 (2000).
______. “Malebranche’s Natural Theodicy and the Incompleteness of God’s Volitions.” Religious Studies 36: 47-63 (2000).
______. “Malebranche’s Distinction Between General and Particular Volitions.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (1): 77-100 (January 2001).
______. “Descartes’s Nomic Concurrentism: Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (1): 25-50 (January 2003).
Quinn, Philip L. “Existence Throughout an Interval of Time and Existence at an Interval of Time.” Ratio 21 (1): 1-12 (June 1979).
Radner, Daisie. “Descartes’ Notion of the Union of Mind and Body.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 9: 159-170 (1971).
______. Malebranche. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978.
______. “Is There a Problem of Cartesian Interaction?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1): 35-49 (1985).
______. “Rejoinder to Professors Richardson and Loeb.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 232-236 (April 1985).
______. “Occasionalism.” In The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, edited by G.H.R. Parkinson. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Richardson, Robert C. “The ‘Scandal’ of Cartesian Interactionism.” Mind 91 (361): 20-37 (1982).
______. “Replies to Daisie Radner’s ‘Is There A Problem of Cartesian Interaction?’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 221-226 (April 1985).
Remnant, P. “Descartes: Body and Soul.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9: 377-386 (1979).
Rome, Beatrice K. The Philosophy of Malebranche: A Study of His Integration of Faith, Reason, and Experimental Observation. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1963.
Rutherford, D.P. “Natures, Laws, and Miracles: The Roots of Leibniz’s Critique of Occasionalism.” In Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Pre-Established Harmony, edited by Steven Nadler. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).
Schmaltz, Tad M. “Descartes and Malebranche on Mind and Mind-Body Union.” The Philosophical Review 101 (2): 281-325 (April 1992).
______. “Sensation, Occasionalism, and Descartes’ Causal Principles.” In Minds, Ideas, and Objects: Essays on the Theory of Representation in Modern Philosophy, edited by Phillip D. Cummins & Guenter Zoeller. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1992.
______. “Human Freedom and Divine Creation in Malebranche, Descartes and the Cartesians.” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 2 (2): 3-50 (1994).
______. “Malebranche on Descartes on Mind-Body Distinctness.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (4): 573-603 (October 1994).
______. Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
______. Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Scott, David. “Leibniz and the Two Clocks.” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (3): 445-463 (July 1997).
______. “Occasionalism and Occasional Causation in Descartes’ Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (4): 503-528 (October 2000).
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______. “Leibniz on Malebranche on Causality.” In Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Jan A. Cover & Mark Kulstad. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1990.
______. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
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______. “Malebranche’s Ontology.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (2): 143-161 (April 1969).
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______. “The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 1 (2): 177-197 (December 1963).
______. “Cartesianism Compounded: Louis de la Forge.” In Essays on Early Modern Philosophers: Cartesian Philosophers, Vol. 3, edited by Vere Chappell. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992.
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______. “De Ipsa Natura: Sources of Leibniz’s Doctrines of Force, Activity and Natural Law.” Studia Leibnitiana 19 (2): 148-172 (1987).
Woolhouse, R.S. “Leibniz’s Reaction to Cartesian Interaction.” Aristotelian Society Proceedings 86: 69-82 (1985-86).
______. “Leibniz and Occasionalism.” In Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by R.S. Woolhouse. The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1988.
VITA
Louis A. Mancha, Jr.
Department of Philosophy 435 Samaritan Ave.
A&H Building – Ashland University Ashland, OH 44805
401 College Ave. Cell: (765) 490-0336
Ashland, OH 44805 E-mail: manchala@purdue.edu
Education
Ph.D. Purdue University, August 2003
Dissertation: Concurrentism: A Philosophical Explanation
Director: J.A. Cover
M.A. Purdue University, Spring 1998
B.A. Rice University, Spring 1994
Areas of Specialization Medieval & Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of
Religion
Areas of Competence Metaphysics, Ancient Philosophy, Ethics
Academic Appointments
2003- Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Ashland University, OH
Professional Activities
Paper Commissioned and in Progress
“Hume on the Ontological Argument,” in In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Reassessment, edited by Douglas Groothuis and James Sennett.
Papers Presented
“Defending God’s Strong Conservation,” American Catholic Philosophical Association Annual Meeting, Houston, TX, October 31-November 2, 2003
“Creation Ex Nihilo and Infinite Power,” The Society of Christian Philosophers Midwest Regional Meeting, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, September 12-14, 2002
“Divine Creation and Incommensurability,” The Society of Christian Philosophers Mountain-Plains Conference, Boulder, CO, October 4-6, 2001
“Frege and Spinoza on the Number of God,” Indiana Philosophical Association, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, November 7, 1998
“Fischer and Frankfurt-type Examples,” Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, October 8-10, 1998
Academic Honors
2001-2003 Purdue Research Foundation Grant, Purdue University
1994-1997 Doctoral Graduate Opportunities (minority) Fellowship, Purdue University
1991-1993 Emma S. McGree Scholarship, Rice University
1992 Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of Houston Scholarship, Rice University
1989-1991 Rice University Leadership Award (full scholarship), Rice University
Teaching Experience
Instructor at Purdue University (full responsibility for course)
Phil 302: Medieval Philosophy Fall 1999
Phil 293: The Concept of God Fall 1998
Phil 206: Philosophy of Religion Summer 1998
Phil 206: Philosophy of Religion Summer 1997
Phil 110: Introduction to Philosophy Spring 1999
Teaching Assistant at Purdue University (directed weekly recitations, exam reviews,
grading)
Phil 206: Philosophy of Religion Spring 1998 (M. Bergmann)
Phil 206: Philosophy of Religion Fall 1997 (W. Rowe)
Professional Societies
American Philosophical Association
American Catholic Philosophical Association
Society of Christian Philosophers
References
Prof. Jan A. Cover, Purdue University
Prof. William L. Rowe, Purdue University
Prof. Jeffrey E. Brower, Purdue University
Prof. Patricia K. Curd, Purdue University (Teaching Letter)
Graduate Courses Taken or Audited(*)
Studies in Medieval Philosophy Kermit Scott Purdue University
Seminar in Modern Philosophy Mark Kulstad Rice University
Continental Rationalism J.A. Cover Purdue University
Studies in Modern Philosophy: Causation J.A. Cover Purdue University
Studies in Modern Philosophy: Substance* J.A. Cover Purdue University
Seminar in Kant H. Tristram Engelhardt Rice University
Seminar in Hegel H. Tristram Engelhardt Rice University
The Philosophy of Kant Manfred Kuehn Purdue University
Metaphysics* J.A. Cover Purdue University
Studies in Metaphysics:
Moral Responsibility William Rowe Purdue University
Metaphysics of Freedom William Rowe Purdue University
Creation and Divine Freedom* William Rowe Purdue University
Philosophy of Language Rod Bertolet Purdue University
20th-Century Analytical Philosophy I William Gustason Purdue University
Studies in Philosophy of Mind Lilly-Marlene Russow Purdue University
Symbolic Logic (Metalogic) Ted Ulrich Purdue University
Contemporary Ethical Theory Michael Gill Purdue University
Problems in Aesthetics Jacqueline Marina Purdue University
Languages
Latin
Complete dossier available upon request from:
Purdue University
Department of Philosophy
100 North University Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067
-----------------------
[i]Judaic, Christian and Moslem scriptures all attest to the providential activity of God with respect to the inanimate objects of creation, as well as intelligent, free creatures. In general, absolutely nothing is thought to escape the ubiquitous causal influence of the Creator. For a few examples see Job 38:25-29; Job 38: 39-41; Psalm 148: 3-10; Is 26:12; 1 Cor 12:6; 2 Cor 3:5; Acts 17:27-28; Koran 13:2-5. Further, Majid Fakhry has carefully outlined many passages of the Koran that are used by traditional philosophical adherents of this position. See his Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by Averroës and Aquinas. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958).
[ii]For example, see Thomas P. Flint’s “Two Accounts of Providence,” in Divine and Human Action, edited by Thomas V. Morris. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); Cp. his more recent book Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
[iii]Flint clearly approaches the issue in this manner, which in turn leads to a discussion of the topics of human freedom, divine middle knowledge, and the problem of evil. In general, this seems to be the standard approach with regard to the topic of providence. Cp. Hugh J. McCann’s “Divine Providence,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[iv]Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, III, prosa 11, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, DV 5.1, sed contra 1 (2nd series). It should be noted that although this argument shows up in the second series of sed contras, Aquinas actually concedes to the argument in the replies.
[v]Thomas F. Tracy, “Divine Action, Created Causes, and Human Freedom.” In The God Who Acts, edited by Thomas F. Tracy. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 77.
[vi]Tracy, Ibid, p. 77.
[vii]Rudolph Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology. (New York: Scribner’s, 1958), p. 65, as quoted from Tracy, Ibid., pp. 77-78 (my emphasis).
[viii]Rowan D. Williams, “’Good for Nothing’? Augustine on Creation.” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994), pp. 9-24. p. 10. To his credit, Williams goes on to explain that such an interpretation of the traditional notion of creation (with special emphasis on Augustine’s doctrine) is a “complete misreading.” I think he understates the matter.
[ix]Kathryn E. Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 3.
[x]Tanner, God and Creation, p. 1-2. As Thomas Tracy observes, Tanner argues both for the logical consistency of these claims and their mutual implication. Following Tracy, I have interpreted Tanner as espousing three separate claims, although Tanner herself collapses claims 2 & 3 in the following way: She says that creatures operate “on their own,” i.e., they are “free and therefore responsible for the character of their lives.” Ibid., p. 2. In theory however, the issue of “independent” creaturely operation should be distinct from the notion of creaturely freedom, particularly given the possibility of (i) the compatibility of genuine creaturely action with causal determinism, and (ii) the curious occasionalistic (viz., Malebranchean) denial of genuine creaturely action, but insistence on the reality of creaturely freedom.
[xi]Tanner, God and Creation, p. 86 (my emphasis).
[xii]Tanner, God and Creation, p. 2. As we will see below, Tanner’s characterization captures the notions of mere conservationism and occasionalism, respectively.
[xiii]Tanner, God and Creation, p. 5.
[xiv]Tanner, God and Creation, p. 12. With regard to a more specific issue (namely, the focus of this very dissertation), Tanner says that “one cannot pretend, for instance, to reconcile God’s agency with the creature’s active powers through any material explanation of the actual mechanism found in some ‘causal joint’ between the two…the compatibility of divine and created agencies cannot be specified in any positive fashion that specifies the ‘how’ of their interaction.” p. 26. I suppose she could be right, once we get clear about what we might philosophically mean by the terms ‘material’ or ‘positive fashion.’ Surely the explanation will not be a thoroughgoing account, nor will it be material in the sense that it will be ‘mechanistic.’ But I think something positive can be said, given the metaphysical fact that secondary causation is a participation in and thus a by-product of primary causation: Insofar as we can claim to understand the former, we have an analogous model for the latter. Part of the goal of this dissertation is to confirm that story.
[xv]See Flint’s “Two Accounts”.
[xvi]Hugh J. McCann & Jonathan L. Kvanvig, “The Occasionalist Proselytizer: A Modified Catechism.” In Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), pp. 590-591 (my emphasis). As their title suggests, McCann & Kvanvig claim that this doctrine of providence leads one on the path toward some version of occasionalism.
[xvii]Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), pp. 233-234.
[xviii]Which then, e.g., grounds God’s omniscience quoad nos, especially with respect to contingent events, etc. So my discussion of SP will prescind from questions about God’s knowledge of events in nature.
[xix]Kvanvig and McCann note that what I am calling deism is considered “the most popular conception among believers.” See “The Occasionalist Proselytizer,” p. 587. Though I agree that deism is probably the view that your average theist tacitly holds, deism is treated as a minority (if not completely mistaken) view by philosophical theists of the medieval and early modern period. Although the central principles of deism are difficult to pin down, it is fairly clear that the philosophical tradition of the three great monotheisms is to distance themselves from any charge of deism as I have characterized it. For even though all deists, I think, agree that the deity is responsible for the existence of the discrete universe, not all deists will agree that the deity created the things in it, as opposed to generating or altering them. Further, not all deists will accept (1) and/or (3), for varying reasons. So the next sentence in the corpus should be read in this historically qualified sense. Interestingly enough, philosophical theists (at least of the Christian sort) will likely view deism as simply a rejection of the religious obligation necessarily implied by the existence of a Creator God, as Dietrich von Hildebrand explains, “In trying to shake off the religio––i.e., man’s fundamental dependence upon God, the obligation toward God in which we are embedded, our ordination toward God––we necessarily become victims of falsehood and corrode our basic relation to truth.” Dietrich von Hildebrand. The New Tower of Babel. (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 1994), p. 79.
[xx]Alfred J. Freddoso, “God’s General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68:2 (Spring 1994), p. 131.
[xxi]Where a concurrent cause is being contrasted here with any other cause in which God’s contribution is necessary and sufficient for the effect’s obtaining, e.g., an act of creation.
[xxii]As if He were watching––albeit very closely––from some vantage point outside nature. Surely God’s providence does have this teleological aspect, and it is the angle most favored by those who discuss issues of divine providence. For example, Flint explains that the traditional notion of providence is a view about God’s active control of what will happen, and this active control is qualified in some sense by God’s foresight of the events in nature (It also involves some assumptions about God’s omnipotence and goodness). Flint then launches into an extended treatment of God’s knowledge from the Thomistic and Molinist points of view. See his “Two Accounts of Providence.” For a more detailed account of Flint’s position, see his more recent Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). As noted in chapter 1, what I want to suggest in this chapter is that approaching the concept of divine providence from the teleological angle of foresight is slightly misleading, because I believe it unwittingly gives the impression that God’s control or dominion arises because of His omniscience of the events in creation, and not the other way around. Hence the ultimate need for reconciling God’s providence (i.e., His knowledge) with future contingents. I should add, however, that Flint is careful in his later work in attempting to avoid this “impression,” especially with regard to the foreknowledge/ freedom issue. At one point he suggests that “Indeed, [God’s] foreknowledge is virtually epiphenomenal, in the sense that it is the causally impotent byproduct of a causally cornucopian act of divine will. As Molina saw it, recognizing this causal impotence of foreknowledge helps free us from the fear that such knowledge compromises our freedom.” Divine Providence, p. 45 (my emphasis)
The approach I take in analyzing providence is more direct, I think. The defender of the SP claims that God’s providence is first and foremost grounded in His role as Creator––that God is responsible for the being of everything else. This view can then be taken in various directions, one of which is that it grounds His omniscience quoad nos, especially with respect to contingent events. Whatever the application, my discussion of the SP will prescind from questions about God’s (fore)knowledge of events in nature. Questions of God’s (fore)knowledge, I contend, will become relevant upon analyzing His actual involvement with creatures.
[xxiii]This point about God’s immediate activity in nature should not be seen as a challenge to the traditional doctrine of divine immutability. At first glance, it is no more troublesome than the view that God could immutably decide to create the universe and everything in it in the first place.
[xxiv]This is the traditional reference to the scope of God’s power as professed in the Nicene Creed.
[xxv]Taking into consideration, of course, the rest of the business about divine foreknowledge and God’s goodness that people like Thomas Flint are more apt to emphasize. See fn. 22.
[xxvi]These three theses are related to the three claims discussed in Ch. 1.
[xxvii]Aquinas, DP 5,1. Aquinas is quoting from St. Augustine, Gen. ad. lit. iv, 12.
[xxviii]It should be noted that WP need not also imply a denial of (c). I will discuss this distinction in more detail in Ch. 3, §B below. So unless qualified, SP entails WP.
[xxix]Or accepted at all, for that matter. This will be discussed both in Ch. 3, §B, and Ch. 4, §A.
[xxx]Further, all three of them agree that the SP is just the sort of view that concurrentism requires in order to explain God’s causal activity in nature, and so of course they all go on to defend CUR on the basis of the SP. See Aquinas, SCG III, 66-67; also DP Q3-5 and ST I.105. Molina, Concordia, Part II, d25-32. Suarez, DM XX-XXII.
[xxxi]For a general overview and analysis of this historical transition see Kenneth Clatterbaugh’s The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1637-1739. (New York: Routledge, 1999). I would like to make clear that I have no intention to directly argue for the priority of metaphysics over science, or even claim that causation is not nomological. The goal of this chapter is simply to draw attention to the conclusions that obtain given certain theological assumptions about God’s in principio causal role in the universe.
[xxxii]This in not without good reason, of course, since the central or literal meaning of the word is taken from the roots “pro” and “videre,” which mean to see before. Yet if Aquinas and the tradition is right, then God quite literally sees everything in Himself, and so governs what He creates from within––from within Himself and from within the creature––and not via a naive Berkelean type of external perception.
[xxxiii]Though on analysis it may turn out that we come to understand in the intellect God’s causal providence only after experiencing His teleological “guiding hand.” See Aquinas for a fuller explanation of being as the primary and natural object of the intellect (in contrast with knowing that being is prior) De Ente et Essentia, Ch 1, prologue; ST I.5.2; I.85.3; I.87.3.ad1; I-II.94.2; SCG II.83,31; DV 1.1.corpus. Aquinas explains elsewhere that God’s sovereignty is a consequence of His being the universal Creator: “the reason for this universal governance: because it is necessary that the things that have been established by God be also governed by him. And that is why the psalmist says, ‘For the sea is his, etc.’” SCG III.1. Though his work is ultimately focused on other issues, Flint recognizes the distinction I have been making: “Consider again the first two elements we noted as essential to providence––foreknowledge and sovereignty. Clearly, the first of these must in some sense follow from the second. That is, God’s knowledge of what will happen must be dependent upon his decision as to what he himself will do…it is only subsequent to his performing his creative act of will that God has foreknowledge as to how things actually will be.” Divine Providence, pp. 36-37 (my emphasis). Of course, Flint uses this distinction to bolster his pre-analysis of the theory of middle knowledge, and leaves the deep issue of sovereignty to the side.
[xxxiv]For an interesting analysis of the origins of this philosophical doctrine see Steven Baldner’s and William Carroll’s introduction to Aquinas on Creation, translated by Steven E. Baldner & William E. Carroll (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997). For those interested in the historical/theological story behind the development of this doctrine, a good source is Leo Scheffczyk’s Creation and Providence, translated by Richard Strachan (London: Burns & Oates, 1970).
[xxxv]Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediæval Philosophy (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), p. 44. For those who would contend against this––particularly in light of references to the “universal being” found in Plato’s Sophist––Gilson continues: “Plato does not say that his ‘universal being’ is God, and even supposing that it is identified with God, in spite of Plato’s silence on the point, all that one can draw from this formula is that the Platonic god gathers up in himself the totality of the divine, just as he gathers up in himself the totality of being. Set the two thoughts side by side and see how profound is the divergence of meaning underlying the common formulæ. According to Plato ‘the degree of divinity is proportionate to the degree of being’; but for the Christian there are no degrees of divinity; God alone is divine. Again for Plato, ‘what is most of all being is most of all divine,’ but for a Christian it is only by way of analogy or metaphor that beings can be more or less divine; properly speaking there is but one God Who is Being, and beings, which are not God.” Spirit, p. 48.
[xxxvi]This is why the ontological argument––despite some of its problems––is an extremely powerful argument for the traditional theist. No Hellenist would ever have thought to deduce the existence of God from the Idea of God itself, because they could not see how God could be identical to Being! Unless otherwise qualified, then, whenever I use the terms “creation” or “create” I will mean CEN.
[xxxvii]“Nihil enim est aliud creare quam absque materia praeiacenti aliquid in esse producere.”
[xxxviii]To clarify further, I want to say that even the formal and final cause of the particular creature do not exist prior to its creation. The formal cause of some particular substance S is the form F that S will have once S is brought about by God. F exists both as universal and as particular: F as universal does preexist in the mind of God––but is not a component of S––whereas the individuated substantial form F (as particular) which is a metaphysical component of S comes into being with S itself. Similarly, the final cause of S is an archetype, logically determined by the universal form F, of individuals that fall under a certain kind. S’s final cause does preexist S in one sense, then, since it is an implication of S’s universal form, but only in abstraction (as an intentional object) and not as a metaphysical component of the particular substance S. See Aquinas, DV 5.1.ad1.
[xxxix]Nothing significant rides on creation’s being de novo, and the argument can be altered to reflect the possibility of an eternal creation. However, in defense of my present stance, I claim that the creation of a substance de novo does not necessarily imply that a temporal newness of being, i.e., an order of duration, belongs to the nature of the act of creation. For even though it is possible for God to create something from all eternity (which would make it sempiternal, in opposition to God’s creating a substance that is co-eternal, i.e., atemporal, with Him, which is impossible), a newness of being belongs at least dispositionally to the nature of creation, such that it implies a newness on the order of nature. On the order of nature, a creature is such that it has no being or esse unless it is communicated to it by another. This is what it means to say that creatures participate in being, that is, that no creatures have being of themselves (or in virtue of their own natures). Since the participated being of a creature is granted ex nihilo, there will always be a causal and conceptual newness of being implied, although not necessarily a real or actual (temporal) duration between being and nothingness. Cf. Suarez, DM XX.5.5-18.
[xl]Aquinas puts it this way: “Now to produce a being absolutely, not as this or that being, belongs to creation.” ST I.45.5, corpus.
[xli]David B. Burrell, “Divine Action and Human Freedom in the Context of Creation,” in The God Who Acts, edited by Thomas F. Tracy (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 104. Burrell cites Aquinas, ST I.45.5, as the source of this clarification. Burrell goes on to explain, quite appropriately, that “Our attempts to understand such a cause will require our assenting to an action that is not a change because it presupposes nothing and takes no time. So it will not be an action with which we are familiar, and if it can be said to be ‘the perfection of agency’ (Tracy), it will be so in a way that not only involves ‘stripping away the limitations that attach to finite agents,’ but acknowledging that we are putting it to a use whose rules are quite unknown to us.” Ibid, p. 104. In addition to this, W. Norris Clarke observes that the term “universe” comes from the Latin universum, which means “turned toward unity.” See The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), p. 6. Applying that concept to God as Creator, then, God is also thereby afforded the title of Universal Cause, or the cause that effects all things in their transcendental unity. Further, the concept of universal cause can be employed also to convey the idea that God is the all-pervasive, in toto cause of everything––implying both the intensive and extensive aspects of God’s creative act. God is the cause that unites all things. What is most important to note about either of these descriptions is that God contributes everything to the creature, and not just some divine “push” over the brink of “nothingness,” or even the “property” of existence, which would possibly make it coextensive with a general cause.
[xlii]Although I do not argue for it anywhere in this dissertation, it is interesting to note that many scholastics thought that the act of creation implied no change at all, not even in the Creator. Such a stance was often taken in order to preserve the doctrines of divine simplicity and/or immutability.
[xliii]So properly understood, an extrinsic limitation doesn’t really take power away from a creature. Rather, it delimits or demarcates the natural power the creature (the agent) actually has. This condition of ordinary production or efficient causality also applies to non-transeunt activity, where the creature is said to be acting upon itself, for example (which is to be differentiated from an immanent act like thinking). The passive powers of the agent, then, in some way delimit the range of effects that might be intra-substantially generated or altered. Yet this limitation would still be considered an extrinsic limitation, since the creature is not per se responsible for the passive powers it has.
[xliv]That is, something that implies an aspect of both being and non-being at the same time and in the same respect. Those familiar with the Thomistic argument for God’s omnipotence should rightly begin to see a similarity between omnipotence and the power to create. Some may claim that the possibility of another god, for example, or the constraints of space and time may also qualify as extrinsic limitations on the power to create. If the theological and philosophical tradition is correct, however, then we have good reasons to dispel such objections. The Scholastics offered detailed arguments to demonstrate that it not possible for there to be more than one God, and that God is freely responsible for any conditions––spatial, temporal or otherwise––that appear to limit the kinds of things that He creates.
[xlv]We can also get to this point by an argument from analogy, I think. For were we to say that God had the power to create only some particular kind of thing, for example the natural substance iron, it would be silly to deny that God could create any particular thing that could be made from iron––as if in the very creation of a mass of iron God didn’t have the wherewithal to determine it to some particular form or other. Similarly, if we believe that in creation God can cause being simply, then on what grounds might we argue that God is limited by any particular way or other that being itself could be exemplified or determined?
[xlvi]See A.J. Freddoso’s “God’s General Concurrence With Secondary Causes: Why Conservation is Not Enough,” in Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), fn. 18, p. 582. Freddoso also waves his hand at these limitations by pointing out that Aquinas and other scholastics did their best to avoid the problems of neo-Platonist emanationist cosmogonies by arguing that “God has perfect knowledge and acts freely in creating.”
[xlvii]This position should be contrasted with the view held by Kretzmann and others, that God [was] might not have been free to create something or other. Although I think this position is flawed, one can opt to qualify that even though God––for whatever reason––might have created something or other by a necessity of His nature, it does not follow that God was limited by His nature to create any particular world or range of effects––the latter being the more significant aspect of His freedom with regard to creation and the limitations of His power.
[xlviii]So long, that is, as the creation of such a being does not involve a contradiction. Of course, it should be noted that for God to create another divine being like Himself is impossible, for God would have to bring into existence a being that already possesses its own existence, which implies that such a being would in some sense have to both exist and not exist prior to its creation. Admittedly, this argument might not satisfy those who find the concept of eternal creation possible, so here’s another. If we stipulate, along with the tradition, that God is esse ipsum subsistens––subsistent being itself––then God cannot create anything else on the same order of existence as Himself, for God is not a substance or a being. Specifically God cannot create something (bring something into existence that participates in being), that is being itself (i.e., that doesn’t participate in being). This response curtails the kind of objection that Suarez (among others) poses in DM XX.2.31-32 with regard to Aquinas’ view that God causes being simply or being per se “without exception.”
[xlix]Some may contend that it would be better to refer to the power to create as an essential power or attribute, given that it is a power that God cannot––it seems––fail to have. Though I might agree with that assessment, reference to the power to create as an essential power may be ambiguous and open up the possibility that creatures can have such a power accidentally. Proper powers flow from the natures of the substances that have them, and so if it follows that the power to create is commensurate with the divine nature alone, then the power to create is both essential to God’s nature and, as we will see, metaphysically incompatible with the creaturely nature.
[l]A bit more can be said on the matter by way of analogy. The power to create can be called infinite–– incommensurably infinite (what Suarez will call “infinite, relatively speaking”)––in the same analogous way that the substance of God is rightly called infinite. According to the Scholastics, things that are composed of matter and form have been determined to something particular, with finite quantity. Matter is made finite by form, that is, once contracted to a particular form it is “terminated” by that form. Conversely, form too is made finite through matter, for once received in matter the form is determined to one particular thing. So matter, being completely indeterminate, is made perfect by form. Form is not made perfect by matter, however, and can exist independently from matter. In this way the substance of God and the other simple (immaterial) substances are more perfect. If this is the case, a form which is not determined by or contracted to matter has the nature of something perfect and infinite, that is, not finite at all. This is Aquinas’ key observation with regard to infinite substance, and should be expected given his Via Negativa. In this respect, the infinite nature of a form not contracted to matter is not a quantitative infinity. Since God is subsistent existence itself––a being not received in anything, hence pure being––God Himself is not only perfect but infinite, that is, not wanting of any perfection, not possessing any potentiality, and not being limited or finite in any way. So analogously, the power to create is incommensurably infinite because it is not terminated ab quoquam.
[li]Cf. his reply to ST I.45.5.obj3.
[lii]For this reason, Aquinas argues in other places that any being that can create must be its own action, i.e., must be pure act itself, since if CEN-power requires no presupposed potentiality, then at least at the moment of its employment, there can be no potentiality in the agent either: “In the making of a thing the manner of the making depends on the action of the maker. Now the agent acts forasmuch as it is in act: wherefore that alone acts by its whole self, which is wholly in act, and this belongs to none but the infinite act who is the first act: and consequently none but an infinite power can make a thing as to its whole substance.” DP 3,4,corpus.
[liii]Also see Aquinas, ST I.45.5.ad2: “A thing is made from its contrary indirectly (Phys i, text 43), but directly from the subject which is in potentiality. And so the contrary resists the agent, inasmuch as it impedes the potentiality from the act which the agent intends to induce, as fire intends to reduce the matter of water to an act like itself, but is impeded by the form and contrary dispositions, whereby the potentiality (of the water) is restrained from being reduced to act; and the more the potentiality is restrained, the more power is required in the agent to reduce the matter to act. Hence a much greater power is required in an agent when no potentiality pre-exists. Thus therefore it appears that it is an act of much greater power to make a thing from nothing, than from its contrary.”
[liv]We need only remember Aquinas clarification of this point in the reply: “The power of the maker is reckoned not only from the substance of the thing made, but also from the mode of its being made.” ST I.45.5.ad3 (my emphasis).
[lv]Given the radical circumstances of creation, the counterfactual analysis here only sheds a faint light on the kind of dependence creatures have on the Creator. And at best the potentiality to exist per aliunde seems to be some kind of a relation, neither existing in God (since in God there is no potentiality) nor the non-existent creature. This terminology has been gleaned from Anselm of Canterbury. See his Philosophical Fragments, F, and Monologion Ch. 8. On Anselm’s picture of creation, the world did not possess some possibility-to-be per se prior to its creation, for literally there were no things to possess any kinds of characteristics whatsoever. Indeed, before things were created, if “they” had any capacities whatsoever per se, they only possessed the modal specification of being not-possible-to-be, since “they” did not exist, and had no possibility per se to come into existence. Anselm concludes that the only possibility non-existent things have to exist is per aliunde (through the Supreme Nature). So strictly speaking, he thinks that prior to the creation of the things in the world, they per se possessed neither the possibility-to-be nor the possibility-not-to-be. Prior to their creation, all things are of the state of being not-possible-to-be per se, given their creation ex nihilo. At the moment of creation each thing is then given a potentia to exist, or a possibility-to-be. And after their initial moment of creation each contingent thing has a potentia per se, which is toward non-being, or a possibility-to-not-be, which then necessitates God’s further divine conservation of the creature if it is to persist.
[lvi]Notice again that the Thomistic premise under consideration is not that there is an infinite distance between being and non-being (hence the power to create from no presupposed potentiality is infinite), but rather, that there is no distance or proportion at all between being and non-being. Suarez is quick to point out that “some authors ground this argument [for the infinitude of the power to create] in the claim that there is an infinite distance between being and nothingness…However, it is wrong to do so.” DM XX.2.37. Suarez then goes on to affirm that Aquinas himself did not make this mistake.
[lvii]William Ockham, Quodlibet III.1, in Quodlibetal Questions, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 169 (my emphasis).
[lviii]Recall that Suarez has observed earlier that, “commensurability is present only between things that are of the same type or quantitative order.” Suarez, DM XX.2.39.
[lix]Suarez, DM XX.2.4. “A power is ‘adequate to’ (adaequata) a given object or concept just in case it extends to all and only the things included under that object or concept.” See Freddoso, in On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence, DM XX.2.4, fn. 4.
[lx]And I venture to say further that if this doesn’t count as a sufficient condition for the absolute infinity of the power to create, then I don’t see what else would.
[lxi]This is why God sets the standard as the Creator, since the power to create clearly highlights something about His nature: that He is a perfect being––the being that is pure act––bearing no intrinsic limitations. Both Aquinas and Suarez will agree that no creature can naturally possess the ability to create ex nihilo. The real issue, then, turns out to be whether God can miraculously bestow the power to create on a creature, if only for a short time, and with a limited scope.
[lxii]Suarez himself actually distinguishes three types of principal powers that might count as the power to create: (a) a power that has “creatable being” as its adequate object, i.e., one which can produce anything that can be created; (b) a power that can produce a limited range of creatable beings independently of any other principal power; and (c) a power to create that is (1) dependent in its acting on God’s concurrence, and (2) is restricted to creating a set order of species (or particulars). Suarez argues that both (a) and (b) cannot be conferred to creatures, since they imply a power to act which is independent in acting, yet “no created power can be independent of the First Cause in its acting, and the sort of independence in question requires an infinite perfection.” DM XX.2.6. However, Suarez claims that “there does not seem to be a sufficient argument for why it [i.e., (c)] should require an absolutely infinite perfection, or for why it could not be communicated to a creature.” DM XX.2.7. He then admits that no created substance can be a connatural instrument of creation, that is, one that by its nature is designed to serve as such an instrument. DM XX.3.1. Yet he leaves open the possibility that God might freely use a creature as an instrument in creation, but not by the mediation of any superadded power or accident. If so, such a use would be wholly extrinsic to the demands of its nature.
I take this position to be extremely problematic. For if the use of such a creature is wholly extrinsic to the demands of its nature, how else are we to seriously claim that the creature is really a (proximate) principal cause, as Suarez himself deems it must be, and not an occasional (sine qua non) one? That is to say, does the instrument under consideration have any true causal power to “create,” or not? Suarez contends that we have no good reason to think it doesn’t, given that such a power “does not involve an infinity either (i) on the part of the object, since it is posited as restricted to an object of finite perfection, or, again, (ii) in its mode of acting, since it is posited as dependent on the concurrence of another [i.e., God].” DM XX.2.7. But given my earlier argument for the qualitative infinity of the power to create, which takes into account a distinction unaccounted for by either of Suarez’s conditions (i) or (ii) above, I can only suspect that the power noted in (c) is either just as metaphysically incompatible with the nature of creatures as (a) and (b), or that the creature, in its instrumental use, really has no power to create at all.
[lxiii]As Aquinas explains, “the secondary instrumental cause does not participate the action of the superior cause, except inasmuch as by something proper to itself it acts dispositively to the effect of the principle agent. If therefore it effects nothing, according to what is proper to itself, it is used to no purpose; nor would there be any need of certain instruments for certain actions.” ST I.45.5.corpus. Interestingly enough, the same holds true for a natural or concurrent cause. This latter point is precisely what Nicolas Malebranche contests in the Dialogues and in the Elucidations, for he claims that God cannot give creatures the power to cause anything at all, for that would require God to create other “gods,” which would detract in some way from His providence/omnipotence. Further, Malebranche argues that instrumental causality is fundamentally incoherent, so there could be no possible way for God to cooperate with His creatures in a natural cause. On this front, it appears then that if a case can be made for instrumental causality, then Malebranche’s objections lose all their force, and we can tip the scales further toward concurrentism. I make this case in Chs. 4 & 6 (see §A.2).
[lxiv]When looked at from this angle, we have good reason to suspect that all of the divine attributes are this way: incommensurable with the natures of created beings.
[lxv]If I am right, then on analysis we have a very unique way of justifying the omnipotence of God, on the basis of an assumption about His creative power alone.
[lxvi]Suarez expresses a similar view at the beginning of DM XXI, where he claims that “Now that the first emanation of all entities from the First Cause has been explained [i.e., creation], we must next talk about the sort of continuous or perpetual dependence these entities have on that same First Cause for their esse and operation—or, conversely, about the influence or governance that the same First Cause exercises over the effects he has created in order that they might be able to subsist and to act. For all of God’s governance, which is an effect of divine providence, is traced back to the two headings of conservation and cooperation (or concurrence).” (my emphasis) Here, Suarez is affirming the general Scholastic consensus of conservation and concurrence as falling under the scope of God’s providential power.
[lxvii]Which effectively shuts out the doctrines of “minimal theism” or deism. Concerning deism, Jonathan L. Kvanvig and Hugh McCann suggest that it is “the most popular conception among believers, [that] God created the world ‘in the beginning,’ and it has existed on its own ever since. No direct activity on God’s part is needed to explain the world’s persistence.” From “The Occasionalist Proselytizer: A Modified Catechism,” in Philosophical Perspectives 5, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1991), 587. Cp. “Divine Conservation and the Persistence of the World,” in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), for Kvanvig’s and McCann’s rejection of this deistic position. Though I agree that this general characterization of deism is probably the one that your average theist tacitly holds, it is treated as a minority––if not completely mistaken––view by philosophical theists of the medieval and early modern period. Although the central principles of deism and other less traditional views of theism are difficult to pin down, it is fairly clear that the philosophical tradition of the three great monotheisms has been to distance themselves from any charge of deism. For even though all deists, I think, agree that the deity is responsible for the existence of the discrete universe, not all deists will agree that the deity created (ex nihilo) the things in it, as opposed to simply forming them from some eternal matter or other. Further, not all deists will accept the traditional theological assumptions that the deity should be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and/or that there is only one deity.
[lxviii]Per se conservation is actually subdivided into (a) direct & immediate, which consists of the persistent “inpouring” of the being of creation; and (b) remote & mediate, which consists of the inpouring of certain dispositions or forms required in order for the entity to be conserved in being. On the basis of this distinction, (a) is claimed to apply across the board to all creatures and is like creation ex nihilo, in that it is an action without a patient or subject, whereas (b) applies only to corruptible (material) creatures, so involves actions on subjects. See Suarez, DM XXI.3.1. Suarez attributes this distinction to Aquinas, who refers to subdivision (a) as principal conservation and subdivision (b) as secondary conservation. Cf. Aquinas, ST I.104.1-2.
[lxix]Of course, as a piece of philosophical history, it should be understood that almost all (meaning: I don’t know of any who don’t) traditional Christian theists assent to both (a) and (b), and so minimally to the WP. So this argument doesn’t really need to be offered as proof that the WP is the minimal view of providence that the Christian ought to hold if they simply assent to (a).
[lxx]Other arguments pertaining to the divine omnipotence take the issue head-on, but are outside the scope of the primary characteristics of CEN. However, I will have opportunity to employ one later in order to clarify and defend premise 8 against a familiar objection.
[lxxi]Aquinas, In II Sententia, 1,1,2,corpus, in Aquinas on Creation, translated by Steven E. Baldner & William E. Carroll. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997), p. 75.
[lxxii]Aquinas, ST I.9.2.corpus: “For all creatures, before they existed, were possible, not by any created power, since no creature is eternal, but by the divine power alone [per solam potentiam divinam] inasmuch as God could produce them into existence.” (my emphasis) So in saying something about God’s power, we really are describing something about the divine essence, which is the cause of being for the creature. And what we are describing about the divine essence seems to be (1) generally: its ability to bring about anything that is metaphysically possible, which is just omnipotence, and (2) specifically: its ability to employ archetypes––which are ultimately identical with the divine essence, and not some individual, Platonic entity––in the creative process.
[lxxiii]So when we say that God gives being to a thing––specifically, when being is “contracted to” the determined nature or essence of a creature––we cannot mean thereby that a change has taken place in the nature of the creature, or even that some ontologically prior or independent essence is implied which is at one time non-exemplified and later exemplified, or anything like that. Rather, as explained in Ch. 2, when God creates something, He actually creates the whole (in toto) being of the thing. See Aquinas, DP 3,1 ad17: “God at the same time gives being and produces that which receives being [the essence], so that it does not follow that his action requires something already in existence.” The act of being, then, is simply what makes the substance different from being nothing, and not something the substance has in addition to its essence; it is the creature itself, and the fact that it is is solely in virtue of the divine power.
[lxxiv]So in the same fashion, just as it is impossible for God to communicate the power to create, so it is impossible for God to confer the power to conserve, even post creatum, since that also would be metaphysically impossible, and absolutely contradictory to the nature of what it means to be a creature (The contradiction being that a creature would be such that it both could and could not exist “without the action of another.”). So creatures have no per se tendency to exist, only a per accidens disposition post creatum.
[lxxv]This kind of objection was standard fare for the Scholastics. Suarez gives it (and what I have identified as its three assumptions) fair treatment in §1 of DM XXI (especially 1.1), and Aquinas treats it in several places, most notably in DP 5,1.
[lxxvi]I would like to stress the fact that I am not attempting to wholesale undermine the general distinction between God’s permissive and active will. The argument below is meant to apply only to the case of divine conservation.
[lxxvii]Suarez, DM XXI.1.14.
[lxxviii]Suarez, DM XXI.1.14. From this point on I will be following Suarez closely with regard to his treatment of what I am calling the SOC, particularly his assessment of the relation between God’s permissive and positive willing.
[lxxix]Where “a transeunt action is an action whose effect exists outside of the power or faculty that proximately effects that action.” See Freddoso’s On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence, fn. 50. Also see Suarez, DM XVIII.10-11. It has been brought to my attention that given this characterization of efficient causality, God cannot annihilate anything, not even by withholding His giving of esse. The argument goes something like this: “If “willed that P” and “did not will that P” can hold even of God, and the second implies a change relative to the first, then since change implies causation, God’s causing this change should imply a [positive] giving of esse. But in this case it can’t, since no giving of esse can account for the second, i.e., in an act of annihilation. Therefore, God cannot annihilate, even by withholding His power [i.e., by a negative act].” However, as I understand efficient causality of the creative sort (see Ch. 2, §B.2) the objection fails to convince: Just as an act of creation implies no change or movement—for quite literally there is no patient or subject prior to the act to be moved or changed—so too, an act of annihilation under the traditional picture implies no change either, for quite literally there is nothing posterior to the act to acknowledge a change in. If there is any “change” to be pointed to—and I say this very loosely—it’s more appropriate to say that it’s in God, and not the now non-existent creature. God simply ceases to act, and when He does, the effect of that act ceases to exist.
[lxxx]And in the case of creation, such effects are ontologically independent (though not existentially) of the Creator. See Suarez, DM XVIII.11.3.
[lxxxi]See Suarez, DM XVIII.11.3-7 for more on the claim that annihilation is really the absence of efficient causality. Suarez is of course affirming the general view of the Scholastics on this issue. Also see Aquinas, DP 5,3.
[lxxxii]Of course, it does not follow that God in fact annihilates anything He creates. It only needs to be stipulated as a metaphysical possibility, given the scope of the divine omnipotence. For an interesting analysis and stronger interpretation of the Thomistic doctrine that “the created universe will never be annihilated,” see James F. Ross “Aquinas on Annihilation.” In Studies in Medieval Philosophy, edited by John F. Wippel (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1987). Unfortunately, Ross glosses the issue from a scientific point of view rather than approaching the topic from a strictly metaphysical vantage.
[lxxxiii]Suarez, DM XXI.1.12. Another way of putting this is that the existence of something that is permanent or endures is the same in creation and conservation. The “permanent” is to be differentiated from “successive” where “what is successive as long as it continues always has a new or different being [esse] for each successive part. The permanent on the contrary always has the same being. Neither does it [the being] change partially, for otherwise it would be successive. Neither does it change totally, for otherwise for each different moment it would have a totally different being, which is absurd.” Duns Scotus, Quodlibet 12.1.7, in God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, translated by F. Alluntis and A.B. Wolter (Princeton, 1975).
[lxxxiv]Again, this seems to be a standard objection that the Scholastics were quite familiar with. Both Aquinas and Suarez consider it, and also use the example of the builder or craftsman. See Aquinas, DP 5,1,obj4 (also DP 5,2,obj4), and Suarez, DM XXI.1.2.
[lxxxv]See Aquinas, DP 5,1,corpus. This is the principle that undergirds the scholastic distinction between a causa secundum fieri (cause of becoming) and a causa secundum esse (cause of being).
[lxxxvi]To clarify, premise 8f’’ should be interpreted as the claim that God can bring a creature into existence that bears the following feature: not having been created by God. The effect, then, would be a creature that God both created and did not create. This interpretation is to be contrasted with another view, which is that God can create a creature which He has not yet (up to this point) created, which of course is not a contradiction.
[lxxxvii]So creatures can only make things; they cannot create. Some theologians attempt to refer to the act of making as a kind of creation, analogically related to God’s acts of production. However, I think that the kind of analogy employed here is at best metaphorical, and not an analogy of proper proportionality. However, even if the analogy does hold, it is clear that divine creation is wholly incommensurable with creaturely causality according to its mode.
[lxxxviii]That is, as long as the creature persists in being. Here, I am again making tacit reference to the traditional distinction between a causa secundum esse and a causa secundum fieri, which the proponent of the SOC, in holding the third assumption, fails to make.
[lxxxix]See Aquinas, DP 5,1,ad4; Cp. Suarez, DM XXI.1.17.
[xc]For an independent solution to the problem of creaturely persistence, especially with regard to the notion of a possible “self-sustaining” disposition, see Kvanvig’s & McCann’s “Divine Conservation and the Persistence of the World,” pp. 13-49.
[xci]The distinction between the impression and the effect is the distinction between esse and essence in the subject, which for Aquinas is a real distinction, but does not imply metaphysical separability. So the effect remains if and only if the impression remains, and were God to withdraw His conservative power (impression), the effect would also cease to be.
[xcii]Otherwise, as previously explained, the creature would be able to exist by its very nature or by virtue of its essence, which is a quality reserved for the Creator. Aquinas repeats this point elsewhere: “God cannot grant to a creature to be preserved in being after the cessation of the Divine influence: as neither can He make it not to have received its being from Himself. For the creature needs to be preserved by God in so far as the being of an effect depends on the cause of its being.” ST I.104.1.ad2. So creaturely self-preservation is just as impossible as creaturely existence without creation.
[xciii]See Aquinas, ST I.104.1.corpus: “Therefore as the becoming of a thing cannot continue when that action of the agent ceases which causes the becoming of the effect: so neither can the being of a thing continue after that action of the agent has ceased, which is the cause of the effect not only in becoming but also in being.”
[xciv]Which should be differentiated from the converse, epistemic claim that it is impossible for God to create something that He does not sustain. Most philosophers of the western monotheistic tradition seem to agree that God can create something that He does not afterwards sustain. To this affirmation, Aquinas himself adds that, in fact, God does not do such a thing (i.e., there are no creatures that God creates and then annihilates, where annihilation is simply the ceasing of divine conservation). See DP 5,4. Scotus also has an interesting analysis of this circumstance. Cf. Quodlibet XII.3. Note that this claim involves a distinction between what is available simpliciter to the divine power vs. what God will actually do given the conditions of His nature (i.e., His wisdom, goodness, etc.).
[xcv]Also see DP 5,1,ad2: “God does not create things by one action and preserve them by another. The existence of permanent things is not divisible except accidentally in so far as it is subject to some kind of movement: and in itself is in an instant. Hence God’s action which is the direct cause of a thing’s existence is not distinct as the principle of its being and as the principle of its continuance in being.”
[xcvi]Thus threatening the substantial permanence and diachronic identity of the creature. This is the position that is commonly attributed to Malebranche in the VII Dialogue: “Now observe. God wills that there be a world. His will is all-powerful, and so the world is made. Let God no longer will that there be a world, and it is thereby annihilated. For the world certainly depends on the volitions of the Creator. If the world subsists, it is because God continues to will that the world exist. On the part of God, the conservation of creatures is simply their continued creation.” (DMR 153) I will have more to say about the doctrine of continuous creation as re-creation in chapter 3 when assessing the theory of occasionalism. The idea is that since God conserves the world by continuously re-creating it, in the conserving the world God not only sustains the existence of substances but also fully determines their states and properties.
[xcvii]See Suarez’s characterization of this argument: DM XX.4.2. Again, I would like to clarify that the “newness or beginning” referred to by creation is a dispositive or conceptual one, and does not necessarily imply a real duration or beginning in time, leaving open the possibility that God could have created something from all eternity. This position is consonant with both the Thomistic and Suarezian pictures of creation. See Ch. 2, fn. 18.
[xcviii]Scotus says the following: “the relationship of one simple thing to another simple thing is one and the same real relation. Now it is the same volition by which a creating and conserving God formally creates and conserves, and the existence itself of the created subject is identical with that of the conserved subject. Therefore the relation of the created and conserved to the creating and conserving God is one and the same.” Quodlibet XII.intro (my emphasis) This relation, Scotus goes on to defend, is the relation of essential dependence. Also see fn. 37 below.
[xcix]That is, that creation is “either a relation of the creature to the creator or a relation of the creator to the creature.” DM XX.4.2. Suarez’s position is that “the act of creation is something within the created entity—not, to be sure, something really distinct from it as a possessor of its own proper being, but rather something distinct in reality from it as a mode of it.” DM XX.4.10. I defer to Freddoso’s footnote for a brief explanation of Suarez’s claim: “That is, the act of creation does not have its own proper and independent existence, and so there is no real distinction between it and the created entity. Nonetheless, it has being as a mode of that entity and hence there is a modal distinction between them.” See DM XX.4.11-23.
[c]In a footnote, Freddoso explains the text in the following way: “That is, in cases of the sort described, (i) there is just one real action, even though that action satisfies different concepts (most pertinently, production and conservation) at different times, and (ii) there is some formal concept (say, communication of this esse) that the action satisfies at all times and that captures its substance.”
[ci]Others have attempted to argue for premises 10 & 11 independently of the nature of the creative act, by discussing the necessary features for some possible characteristic––call it self-sustenance––and attempting to demonstrate that, “any claim that a contingently existing being could be self-sustaining is metaphysically misconceived: no created substance…could have such a characteristic.” See Kvanvig and McCann’s “Divine Conservation and the Persistence of the World,” especially pp. 37-48.
[cii]This causal relation expresses “the very dependence of created being on the principle whereby it is produced,” Aquinas, SCG II.18. Scotus puts it this way: “the relation of a creature to God as creator and conserver can be said to be the same…and the relationship not only to the creator but also to the conserver is the same sort of essential dependence.” Quodlibet XII, A1.
[ciii]See Ch. 2, §A.
[civ]Or does God only intervene ever so often in a miraculous way, but contributes nothing immediate to the natural actions or effects of his creatures?
[cv]See Peter van Inwagen’s “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God,” in Divine and Human Action, edited by T.V. Morris (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 213 (my emphasis).
[cvi]William Durandus de Saint-Pourçain. In Sententias Theologicas Petri Lombardi II, d1, q5, § 17 (Venice, 1571; reprinted at Ridgewood, N.J., 1964). Unpublished translation by Alfred J. Freddoso (my emphasis). See Freddoso’s website: Hereafter referred to in the text as .
[cvii]van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance,” p. 213.
[cviii]van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance,” p. 215, fn. 4. Interestingly enough, van Inwagen is responding to comments from A.J. Freddoso, who goes so far as to characterize van Inwagen’s position as a form of deism.
[cix]This Suarez’s summary of Durandus in DM XXII.1.4. As a promissory note, Suarez contends that the dilemma here posed can be resolved on several levels; primarily, that there is a distinction the mere conservationist fails to make with regard to the subordination between primary and secondary cause as either foundational (aptitudinal) subordination, or actual subordination (subordination in second act). DM XXII.2.42-43.
[cx]van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance,” p. 215, fn. 4. It should be clear that although both Durandus and van Inwagen are responding specifically to the doctrine of concurrentism, their objections and observations can be taken to apply generally to thesis (c) of the SP, insofar as they are both objecting to the thesis that God must act immediately in the acts of creatures. As will be seen in Ch. 4, thesis (c) has an exclusive and an inclusive interpretation, so can apply broadly to both concurrentism and occasionalism.
[cxi]As well as treat the various objections posed against this position. At this juncture such a treatment would lead us too far afield, since it deals specifically with the theory of concurrentism and the causal mechanisms necessary to explicate and defend it.
[cxii]Freddoso expresses this essential dependence of creatures on God by the following general thesis: “Necessarily, for any finite entity x and time t such that x exists at t, God gives esse-as-such to x at t.” See On Creation, Conservation, & Concurrence, p. ci.
[cxiii]Joseph Owens emphasizes that the doctrine of participation––at least for the medievals––has to be purged of any aspect of formal causality. He then points out that, “Participation of being merely means that some other nature [some nature other than God, that is] is brought out of non-existence, is made to exist. No part of the shared nature, being, is received when something is brought into existence. Being is communicated, through efficient causality, in an act that is not at all a nature. The existential act of a creature is not part of the nature of being, even though it is still less the totality of being.” From An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Reprint. Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985), pp. 106-107.
[cxiv]van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance,” pp. 212-213. van Inwagen offers a even stronger characterization of this point in a footnote: “I hold, moreover, that no created thing could possibly exist at a given moment unless it were at that moment held in existence by God; and no created thing could possibly have causal powers at a given moment unless it were at that moment supplied with those powers by God.” See fn. 4, pp. 215-216.
[cxv]More striking, of course, is the deep-level implication this position has on the nature of efficient causality itself: All real transeunt efficient causality––whether divine or creaturely––appears to be a form of creation. No wonder why we see the medievals being so careful to pre-empt charges of “occasionalism” when putting forth arguments for God’s causal involvement in nature. Aquinas, Molina, Suarez and even Durandus all resist this push towards OCC. More will be said about this medieval worry when I treat the doctrine of OCC in Ch. 4.
[cxvi]See Rudi te Velde’s Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), esp. Ch. 9.
[cxvii]It also neatly demonstrates how the contemporary theological distinction between general and special divine activity is based on a misunderstanding. (As if it even makes sense to talk about the “general” as opposed to universal activity of God in the first place; see fn. 41.) Paul Gwynne invokes this terminology, and suggests that it has a large following. According to Gwynne and others, “traditional” theological instances of general divine action are (1) creation ex nihilo and (2) “the traditional notion of general providence which already moves beyond the activity of creating and maintaining into the domain of purpose and guidance.” See Gwynne’s Special Divine Action: Key Issues In The Contemporary Debate (1965-1995). (Roma: Editrice Pontifica Universita Gregoriana, 1996), p. 23. Gwynne goes on to explain that the factor which contemporary theologians use to differentiate special divine action from general divine action is “the particularity of the divine activity at some point in time and space rather than another.” p. 24. In other words, God’s special divine action picks out events where God acts with particular interest in some cases, but not others. But surely the defender of SP can point out that any activity that God performs is done with particular interest and intent (how can it not be?), and the only relevant distinction at work is between God’s ordinary activity and His miraculous activity. For, rightly understood, whatever counts as general divine activity must imply special divine activity in this sense. Not surprisingly, some theologians see this response as problematic for the traditional distinction itself: “The consequences of such a position for a theory of SDA [special divine action] are seriously detrimental. It is one thing to say that every event is an act of God in the broad sense [i.e., general], that all created causes are contingent and, therefore, nothing would occur in the world without the creator’s ontological support. However, it is quite another thing to claim that every event is the result of God’s express will and special causal activity. If this is true then the entire category of SDA appears superfluous.” p. 27 (my emphasis). Well, yes indeed. The defender of SP shouldn’t see the elimination of the “category” of SDA as much of a problem at all. At best, this type of objection can be taken to reflect two serious mistakes: (a) that a genuine—though not quite traditional—theory of divine action will have to be of the CON flavor [Gwynne’s “broad sense”], and (b) that a rejection of (a) leads one straight to OCC, leaving no middle ground. Unfortunately, this kind of analysis is standard fare outside medieval circles.
[cxviii]To put it another way, the SP it implies no prescinding from questions about the causal powers of creatures, about true secondary causation, or about the nature and/or extent of creaturely freedom.
[cxix]It has been brought to my attention that NCS is not the only possible implication of thesis (c), however. What seems to be directly implied by thesis (c) with respect to secondary causation is something like this: Either creaturely activity is not causally sufficient for its effect(s), or it is, e.g., the effects of creatures could be causally over-determined by both God and creatures. I suppose that it is possible that the world could be brimming over with causal over-determination, but that view seems to completely devalue Creation altogether. Historically, I can find no one who even moderately endorses this view, so I will pass over it in silence.
[cxx]The PRD claims that “each thing that God creates is such that it cannot exist at any moment without God’s immediate and per se causal influx.” So as it stands, I have purposely and conveniently avoided having to give an extensive treatment of CON. Others have attempted to object to CON directly, and show the internal inconsistencies of the position. This was the preferred method of the Scholastics, particularly Luis de Molina and Francisco Suarez. In his article “God’s General Concurrence With Secondary Causes: Why Conservation Is Not Enough,” in Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), A.J. Freddoso summarizes the Scholastic debate, and argues that given some traditionally accepted Aristotelian-Thomistic principles, concurrentists can level a serious attack against mere conservationists, particularly on issues of transeunt action and miraculous activity.
[cxxi]To be a bit more thorough, however, we will have occasion to assess the objections that mere conservationists level against CUR in Ch. 5.
[cxxii]I make this point with reservation, however, because many contemporary early modern philosophers simply make no mention of the doctrine as existing prior to the 17th century. For example, the opening line of Daisie Radner’s (quite recent) article on occasionalism is as follows: “The seventeenth-century doctrine known as occasionalism arose in response to a perceived problem.” She then goes on to explain that the problem in question was the Cartesian mind-body problem. There is, however, no explicit qualification present in her essay to suggest that the doctrine of which she speaks is simply the 17th century version or formulation of the theory. See “Occasionalism,” in The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, edited by G.H.R. Parkinson. (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 349. T.M. Lennon also tacitly suggests that this historical understanding of occasionalism is the more prevalent one: “Occasionalism is often taken by historians of philosophy to have been an ad hoc hypothesis to establish the mind-body causal connections which on Cartesian principles are thought otherwise impossible.” Lennon rightly challenges this view, but not with respect to its historical pinning: “I shall show that occasionalism was but a consequence of the metaphysics adopted by Cartesians in their general account of change.” (my emphasis) See his “Occasionalism and the Cartesian Metaphysic of Motion.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1974), p. 29-30; also LO 810. Other accounts of this flavor include Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. 4, Descartes to Leibniz. (London: Burns Oates & Washburn, 1958), p. 176ff.; G. Boas, Dominant Themes of Modern Philosophy. (New York: Ronald Press, 1957), p. 103; and Albert G.A. Balz, Cartesian Studies. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), p. 213. For a more critical examination of the neo-Platonic influences on the doctrine of occasionalism, as well as an assessment of the medieval Islamic debate, see Majid Fahkry’s Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by Averroës and Aquinas (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958).
[cxxiii]To give a few citations: Aquinas DP 3,7; SCG III.69; ST I.105.5; Molina, Concordia, 25.3-8; Suarez DM XVIII.1. For a careful assessment of the medieval objections to occasionalism in these and other passages, see A.J. Freddoso’s “Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary Causation in Nature.” In Divine and Human Action, edited by Thomas V. Morris (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
[cxxiv]To the best of my knowledge, Aquinas doesn’t even address CON. According to Molina and Suarez, Durandus seems to be the principal defender of CON, “even though the position itself is older. For it is alluded to by Albert [the Great], Henry [of Ghent], and others. Even St. Augustine refers to it with these words from De Genesi ad Literam 5, chap. 20: ‘There are those who think that only the world itself was made by God, and that everything else is now being made by that very world in the way that God has ordained and commanded, though God himself is doing nothing.’” DM XXII.1.2.
[cxxv]Unless otherwise qualified, the terms “produce,” “operate,” “act,” and their various cognates will be used here and in the following sections to imply causal import.
[cxxvi] Even, it seems, within the creature itself. Certain variations of OCC (e.g., Louis de La Forge’s account) may allow for the possibility of intra-substantial causation (e.g. with angels or human souls), which accounts for the change in the internal states or inclinations of the creature, but at best such activity is extremely limited. I will later suggest that these types of partial OCC are very difficult, if not impossible to defend. As it stands, all occasionalists do agree that secondary transeunt action is impossible. Further, it is not clear that all occasionalists would accept the view that there are no immanent causal chains in nature. Under one “traditional” reading of Nicholas Malebranche’s version of OCC, there is an immanent causal connection between event A as “cause” and event B as “effect,” but the connection obtains solely in virtue of the divine will, not in virtue of any power or force found in the nature of A or B. However, Charles McCracken subtly suggests that this is not the proper reading of Malebranche on the nature of causation, and I agree with him on this point. See McCracken’s Malebranche and British Philosophy. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), especially chapter 3.
[cxxvii]And in a very fundamental respect, occasionalists are right in doing so. In essence, the occasionalist is simply upholding traditional theistic tenets concerning the relation between God and creatures. What I hope to point out, however, is that certain distinctions can be made which render untenable the narrow interpretation occasionalists offer for those traditional tenets of theism.
[cxxviii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 83.
[cxxix]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 80.
[cxxx]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 82.
[cxxxi]Freddoso uses the theory of conservation as an example of the second tenet, and explains in a footnote that “Conservation must be taken as involving the conferral of existence on the thing in question and on every part of it. Only then, I believe, can one argue persuasively that conservation is God’s prerogative.” Ibid, p. 81, fn. 9.
[cxxxii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” pp. 81-82 (the letters in brackets are my own).
[cxxxiii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 83 (my emphasis).
[cxxxiv]The Cartesian occasionalists of which I speak are Géraud de Cordemoy, Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche. One notable exception to this position would be Louis de La Forge, who appears to grant that the mind has true causal efficacy with respect to its own ideas, viz., through the exercise of the will: “Thus we must not doubt that there exists in the mind an active power that produces and forms ideas which it perceives voluntarily, and we must be certain that this power is the will,” where “produces” and “forms” have a uniquely causal flavor. Traitté de l’espirit de l’homme [10.12], ch. 10; Oeuvres philosophiques [10.13] (my emphasis). As quoted in Radner’s “Occasionalism,” pp. 353-354.
[cxxxv]That is to say, the clarion call of historical and philosophical OCC is “No secondary causation!”—with the issue of freedom having a relatively unimportant role to play in its description or definition (as opposed to being an implication of OCC or lack thereof). Well, if by definition free creatures can be real causes, then OCC loses its bite altogether.
[cxxxvi]See Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” pp. 83-91. In the end, Freddoso’s analysis seems to be hindered by his assessment that George Berkeley was an occasionalist. For that reason, Freddoso’s analysis of occasionalism is centered around accommodating a Berkelyan view of creaturely causality, where free creatures are claimed to be true active causes, especially with regard to their volitions. So at best, Freddoso has really offered us a definition for a broad version of what I call partial occasionalism, and not the essence of occasionalism itself. Cp. Nicholas Jolley’s assessment of Berkeley’s system as it relates to Malebranchean occasionalism in “Berkeley and Malebranche on Causality and Volition.” In Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by J.A. Cover and Mark Kulstad. (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1990).
[cxxxvii]What free choice amounts to, or how one might actually defend the compatibility of free will with God’s complete causal involvement in nature, are separate problems, however.
[cxxxviii]And so, to state my case another way, the essence of occasionalism should exclude any implication that might follow from some particular interpretation of the negative characterization.
[cxxxix]We can even go so far as to further stipulate that God would not be an immediate causal contributor to p’s obtaining at t. This restriction would allow for God’s mediate causal influence via the creation and subsequent conservation of the creature and its powers at each time it exists. This restriction, if posed, would make the following objection even more damaging, I think.
[cxl]This premise assumes, of course, that if there are any causal domains where no creatures exist, then the only possible causal agent in those domains would be God.
[cxli]This is an awkward formulation, I realize, but it is constructed this way in order to remain faithful to Freddoso’s definitions of an active and strong active cause. Freddoso actually considers this formulation, but quickly dismisses it. See Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 81. I briefly discuss this below in footnote 28. Compare this thesis to Clatterbaugh’s formulation in The Causation Debate, which he calls the Malebranche/La Forge/Le Grand thesis: “(O) For any finite individual substance x at a time t, and for any property f of x at t, God is the immediate cause of x existing at t and x being f at t.” p. 40.
[cxlii]As a final side observation, it seems that the defender of POCC runs into trouble simply on the basis of her own philosophical intuitions. For if OCC of some form is true, then Hume’s worry about causation appears justified: That is to say, there are no necessary connections at all in nature. Yet if the defender of POCC claims that there are no necessary connections in some causal domains but not others, on what kind of metaphysic is she to stand? It’s simply implausible to think that there exist some causal domains where causality requires necessary connections and others that don’t—since we never observe any, nor can we. If a necessary connection is indeed a condition for causation, as most occasionalists will uphold, then pure OCC seems to be the only real option.
[cxliii]Some philosophers have been concerned over whether anyone actually held a view as strong as (OCC3). For example, Freddoso himself observes that (OCC3), “would make God the sole efficient cause of every effect produced in the created world, including all those involving rational creatures.” Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 81. Exactly, I say. But the worry, according to Freddoso, is that (OCC3) is “alarmingly strong,” given that it shuts out human free choice. Right again, I say. Yet, Freddoso continues, all the occasionalists under consideration are “libertarians,” so how can this really be the proper interpretation of the OCC thesis? I hope to attend more carefully, although indirectly, to this issue when dealing specifically with the arguments offered for pure OCC. But as a passing observation, I’d like to point out that even Freddoso acknowledges that the medieval Aristotelians interpreted the occasionalists to be arguing for something as strong as (OCC3): “In the history of the debate over secondary causation, Aristotelians [e.g., Aquinas, Molina and Suarez] have sometimes tried to saddle occasionalists with this alarmingly strong thesis [i.e., (OCC3)] and then to discredit them in the eyes of religious believers by pointing out that what follows is a manifestly unorthodox denial of human free choice.” Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 81. If Freddoso’s point is about whether the scholastics have a precise philosophical interpretation of the occasionalist thesis, then my money is on the scholastics. To put the matter rhetorically: why would the medievals so consistently wage such a strong attack against a straw-man? There were real historical figures that the scholastics had in mind when they posed their objections against OCC (e.g., Avicebron, al-Ghazâlî (as filtered through Moses Maimonides), and Gabriel Biel) who appeared to hold the “alarmingly strong thesis” that Freddoso contends against.
[cxliv]So I will be less concerned with giving a full account of regularity, scientific anti-realism, or the other empirical analyses that are prevalent in the literature on occasionalism. In part I will be following Freddoso’s observations concerning the negative characteristics of occasional causes. See Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” pp. 83-91.
[cxlv]Malebranche actually goes on to strengthen his claim in the next paragraph: “It is clear that, in the union of body and soul, there is no linkage other than the efficacy of the divine decrees, decrees which are immutable and efficacious and never without their effects. God has so willed, and He wills unceasingly, that various movements in the brain are uniformly followed by various thoughts in the mind which is united to it. And it is this constant and efficacious will of the Creator that properly constitutes the union of the two substances. For there is no other nature, that is, no natural laws other than the efficacious volitions of the Almighty.” Also see, Search (LO 448): “We must therefore also conclude, if we wish to reason according to our lights, that there is absolutely no mind created that can move a body as a true principle or cause, just as it has been said that no body could move itself.” (my emphasis).
[cxlvi]Luis de Molina, Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestiatione et reprobatione concordia, ed. Johann Rabeneck (Oña and Madrid: Soc. Edit. Sapientia, 1953), p. 159. Cited in Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 83.
[cxlvii]At least, not under the traditional notion of efficient causality that has been supposed and employed throughout this dissertation.
[cxlviii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 85.
[cxlix]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 85. We can find a bit of primary support for this position in Malebranche: “Let us suppose that God wills to produce the opposite of what some minds will, as might be thought in the case of demons or some other minds that deserve this punishment. One could not say in this case that God would communicate His power to them, since they could do nothing they willed to do. Nevertheless, the wills of these minds would be the natural [i.e., occasional] causes of the effects produced.” (LO 450; my emphasis)
[cl]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 85-86.
[cli]This occurs even if the advised agent persists in his or her original intentions and acts against the advice or counsel of the advising agent. For the advising agent is still an advising cause with regard to certain psychological states brought about in the advised agent, e.g., that the advising agent disapproves of the advised agent’s course of action.
[clii]Of course, with respect to God there are even more serious issues to consider, namely the doctrines of divine simplicity, immutability, and impassibility, which contend that even a fully causally active creature cannot affect the divine nature in any way whatsoever.
[cliii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 86 (my emphasis).
[cliv]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 88.
[clv]R.W. Church. A Study in the Philosophy of Malebranche (London: Kennikat Press, 1970), p. 74 (my emphasis). Cf. Norman Kemp Smith, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy (New York: Russell & Russell, 1902), pp. 73-74. Daisie Radner also characterizes an occasional cause in this manner: “In making creatures occasional causes God communicates his power to them in the sense that on their occasion God accomplishes precisely what they themselves would accomplish if they were true causes.” See Radner’s Malebranche: A Study of A Cartesian System (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978), pp. 34-35 (my emphasis). Church introduces the notion of what I am calling a “weak determining” cause in order to try and give metaphysical richness to the concept of an occasional cause, and thereby differentiate between what he sees to be the implications of Descartes’ theory of divine concourse—ala Kemp Smith’s interpretation—and Malebranche’s occasionalism. According to Smith and Church, Descartes is committed to the view that creatures are wholly impotent, given the doctrine of divine concourse. Whereas under occasionalism, creatures are called occasional causes, which are causes that have the capacity to “determine God to produce precisely the effects which those things are wrongly supposed to produce themselves.” Church, p. 73.
Unfortunately, I cannot see how this difference can turn out to be anything more than semantic. On the supposition that Church and Smith are right about Descartes and the implications of his theory of divine concourse, surely a Cartesian universe is still phenomenologically indistinguishable from a Malebranchean one. Further, the two worlds appear to be metaphysically indiscernible, insofar as the deep level explanation for why things work the way they do is that God uniquely willed them so, in a regular, law-like manner at that. What the occasionalist lends to the metaphysic is simply a fuller description of God’s ordination, and a plausible reason for its regularity, but not a more robust theory of secondary causality in itself. However, Church and Smith are simply wrong, I think, in their interpretation of Descartes. Though it is true that, given the theory of divine concourse, God creates and conserves every thing at every moment of its career, Descartes believes that created substances are not thereby impotent, but are themselves causally responsible, minimally, for their internal states and/or modes. On behalf of Descartes, Daniel Garber describes certain created substances as modal causes: “Descartes wants to distinguish causes that change the modes or properties of a thing (modal causes, as I shall call them) from causes that create or sustain the very being of a substance (substantial causes, perhaps). God, sustaining the world, is clearly a substantial cause. But minds are clearly not; insofar as they can cause changes in the motion of bodies, they at best can count as modal causes.” See “How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance, and Occasionalism.” The Journal of Philosophy 84: 10 (Oct 1987), p. 577.
Of course, it is another question about whether Descartes is metaphysically entitled to a distinction like that, given that he does not acknowledge a distinction between either essence and existence, or even substance and mode/accident. (See Descartes, Principles I.60-61). Cf. Connell’s assessment in The Vision in God: Malebranche’s Scholastic Sources. (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1967), p. 21. Garber takes up an objection from Etienne Gilson on this matter: “The being of the things Descartes’s God conserves is so different from that which St. Thomas’s God conserves, that there is a profound difference between their two notions of continual creation. The Thomist God conserves the being of a world of substantial forms and essences…But, on the contrary, in Cartesianism, there are no substantial forms any more.” p. 573. This observation seems to doom Descartes to a “cinematic,” continuous re-creation view of conservation. Garber attempts to reconcile part of this problem by appropriating the notion of substantial forms to Descartes, particularly with regard to mental substances (intentional entities). I don’t think that Garber’s solution fares well, however, because Descartes simply does not have the kind of ontology available to avoid the push towards a “cinematic” view of conservation: At the end of the day, Descartes cannot separate the existence of a substance from its essence, which is what is required in order for Descartes to be entitled to the distinction between a causa secundum esse and a causa secundum fieri—which he employs in the reply to Gassendi’s Fifth Objections—especially as Garber himself explains them. How, under Cartesianism, can God preserve the substantial being of a thing without also preserving the becoming (modes) of it, that is, its form per se, along with its coming to inhere in this matter, if there is no real distinction between them? Though Garber has a much more extensive treatment of these issues in chapter 9 of his Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), he makes the same interpretive moves in the larger work as he does in his essay.
[clvi]Radner, Malebranche, p. 34.
[clvii]Radner, Malebranche, p. 35 (my emphasis).
[clviii]Concerning this issue, one familiar passage from Malebranche comes to mind: “God cannot even communicate his power to creatures, if we follow the lights of reason; He cannot make true causes of them, he cannot make Gods of them.” (LO 451)
[clix]It seems plausible to think that if it is impossible for God to make true causes of creatures, then not even God can know what true creaturely causality would be like, were it to be in any way different from His causality. If so, then how would God possibly know how to employ creatures as weak determining causes?
[clx]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 88 (the remarks in brackets are my own). Given the strength of Freddoso’s observations here, one should again wonder why he initially defined the OCC thesis so moderately.
[clxi]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 84.
[clxii]Gabriel Biel, Collectorum circa quattuor libros sententiarum 4, pt. 1, edited by Wilfridus Urbeck and Udo Hoffman (Tuebingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1975), q.1, Notabile 3, translated by A.J. Freddoso (unpublished manuscript): . Biel goes on to argue that among creatures, the distinction between a cause properly and a sine qua non cause breaks down, such that every natural cause turns out to be a sine qua non cause, according to his definition: “If God were to decide that from this day forward He is going to will to send rain at the utterance of some word pronounced by someone, then that word, once uttered, would be just as properly a cause of the rain brought about by God at its utterance as heat is the cause of heat…This picture celebrates the active power in God, since it holds that God alone, through the proper act of His free will, principally and properly causes every positive effect, in itself and in everything belonging to it. On the other hand, it holds that a creature only concurs, because of the determination of the divine will, as a cause sine qua non in the way explained above.” (my emphasis).
[clxiii]Beatrice K. Rome seems to suggest that the occasionalism of Malebranche has this theoretical framework in mind: “Occasionalism is first of all a metaphysical account of finite being or existence; that by affirming it, Malebranche seeks to explain whence things originate and why things are or the purpose of creation…My final conclusions are that however Malebranche may have influenced Hume, Malebranche’s Occasionalism has been misunderstood by everyone except Church in one respect and Gouhier in another, because most of the critics have read him prospectively rather than retrospectively. What I mean is, that they have failed to comprehend his vision of God as Being or Celui qui est.” The Philosophy of Malebranche. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1963), pp. 161-162. So according to Rome, Malebranche is no proto-Humean.
[clxiv]Steven Nadler discusses these figures along with Malebranche and Hume, and contends that although they all were not engaged in the same philosophical project, (1) they all rejected the reality of necessary causal connections in nature, (2) on the basis of logical considerations alone (and not, for example, due to theological concerns). See his, “’No Necessary Connection’: The Medieval Roots of the Occasionalist Roots of Hume.” The Monist 79:3 (1996). I think he is wrong about both of those points, at least with respect to Malebranche. But at any rate, Nadler seems to take back both claims with respect to Malebranche in a later work, by noting that Malebranche thinks, contra (1), that there are necessary connections between causes and effects, just that creatures cannot obtain them; and contra (2), that an infinitely perfect, omnipotent being is required to guarantee such a necessary connection. See his “Occasionalism and the Mind-Body Problem.” In Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, edited by M.A. Stewart. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), especially pp. 81-82.
[clxv]There is an extensive debate in the literature about how to interpret Malebranche here. As it stands, most contemporaries take either the metaphysical and/or the logical tact—the epistemic route being pushed by only a few, e.g., Church, A Study in the Philosophy of Malebranche, pp. 111-115. To see what’s at stake in the debate (and to note who the main players are) I refer the reader to Clatterbaugh’s brief discussion in The Causation Debate, pp. 115-116.
[clxvi]Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate, p. 116. The citations to Malebranche in premises 18 and 19 are Clatterbaugh’s.
[clxvii]And much more troublesome for the concurrentist to deal with than the Divine Concursus Argument, contrary to the estimation of most contemporary interpreters. Even Leibniz thinks that the NCA is Malebranche’s strongest argument: “Malebranche’s strongest argument for why God alone acts reduces to this in the end—a true cause is that which the effect follows from necessarily, but an effect follows necessarily from the will of God alone [therefore, etc.].” This quotation is taken from Robert C. Sleigh, Jr’s “Leibniz on Malebranche on Causality.” In Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by J.A. Cover and Mark Kulstad (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1990), p. 171. Sleigh explains that the passage is a private reading note, not intended for publication.
[clxviii]Though this is the premise that most causal power theorists like the scholastics would certainly object to. For it seems that Malebranche and others (even Hume) who deny the existence of necessary connections in nature cannot do so without begging the question in some way or other. According to the Aristo-Scholastic tradition, “there are ‘necessary,’ but more than merely conceptual, constraints (of the sort that occasionalists and empiricists are willing to admit) on what sorts of effects might be produced by given agents acting on given patients in given circumstances.” Those constraints, moreover, are built into the natures of things, and the given circumstances include various sine qua non conditions (e.g., laws of nature, proximity, etc.). So, given the basic causal powers of a creature, along with those various sine qua non conditions, if creature x wills to produce effect e, barring some external influence or other, e must occur. See A.J. Freddoso’s “Aristotelianism and the Thesis that There is a Necessary Connection Between Cause and Effect.” (unpublished notes; available on his website). For two contemporary accounts of natural necessity, see R. Harré and E.H. Madden. Causal Powers: A theory of Natural Necessity. (New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975); and Freddoso’s “The Necessity of Nature,” In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XI: Studies in Essentialism, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., & Howard K. Wettstein. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
[clxix]I owe the basic form of this thought experiment to Sukjae Lee, from “Necessary Causal Connections and Continuous Creation: Malebranche’s Two Arguments for Occasionalism.” (Unpublished paper, delivered at the Pacific APA, March 2003), pp. 4-5.
[clxx]Point of fact, Durandus just happens to be the target of his rebuttal: “For as to the other theologians, I believe that their views are untenable in every way, especially Durand’s, and that of certain ancients refuted by Saint Augustine, who absolutely deny the necessity of cooperation, and would have secondary causes do all things through a power God gave them in creating them without further concerning Himself with them. For although this opinion might involve fewer difficulties than that of other theologians, it appears to me so contrary to Scripture, and so consonant with prejudice, to say no more of it, that I do not think it can be maintained.” (LO 680)
[clxxi]This partially explains Malebranche’s repeated inference that if there is only one true God, then there is only one true cause. For Malebranche, to be a true cause is to be a creative cause. This is obvious in his argument for premise 24. Cf. Rome, The Philosophy of Malebranche, pp. 209-223. And since it is impossible for creatures to be able to create, they cannot possibly be true causes.
[clxxii]Lee, “Necessary Causal Connections,” p. 5. Lee explains in a footnote that “It would be analogous to a situation in which I push a door to shut it while my son pushes against me to open it and I prevail. Here my son clearly has some causal power, which is actively being exercised despite the fact that the activity bears no fruit. Thus, one could question the claim that creatures are totally without any causal powers in the intervention case, which provided the initial grounds for claiming that in the normal case, analogously, it is not the creature but God that brings about the effect in question.” Fn. 5.
[clxxiii]Though as noted, the scholastics will not actually take that route, but will argue that there really is a necessary connection between the natural cause and the natural effect.
[clxxiv]With this distinction being slightly different from the standard Malebranchean distinction between God’s acting by general volitions (where He “employs” occasional causes) and particular volitions (where He acts miraculously). For a discussion of this distinction and how it relates to Malebranche’s occasionalism, see Sleigh’s “Leibniz on Malebranche on Causality,” pp. 164-166; for a much fuller discussion, see Sleigh’s Leibniz & Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 151-161.
[clxxv]Incidentally, this is, in part, the way that Andrew Pessin attempts to characterize Descartes as a nomic concurrentist. Pessin argues that God’s nomic volitions for Descartes have roughly the following logical form: God wills that “For all created substances x and y and for every time t1, if x is G at t1 and x bears relation R to y then there is a time t2 such that t2 bears relation T to t1 and y is F at t2.” PP. 32-33. On the basis of this form, Pessin explains that [a] God’s willing this way does not alone result in any particular state of affairs, but only when God wills this in the context of a particular x; [b] God and x do not produce part of the single unified effect y; both produce it in its entirety; [c] on this characterization, God’s volitions are general in content, while x is responsible for the particular features of effect y; [d] neither God’s nor x’s volition obtains anything in the absence of the other; [e] hence, God’s mode of acting when He concurs is different from how He might act without cooperation; [f] on this model, the subordination of God and creature are clearly seen; God’s action is primary and independent, while x’s is secondary and dependent. See Pessin, “Descartes’s Nomic Concurrentism: Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (1): 25-49 (January 2003).
[clxxvi]This is how Leibniz himself interprets François Lamy (who defends Malebranche’s argument), and offers the following rebuttal, “Must the Creator, because he is the sovereign power, be the only powerful and active being? Can there be no perfections in creatures, just because God is infinitely perfect? The same reasoning would show that because he is a sovereign being, he is the only being, or at least the only substance.” (G IV, 586-87) From “L3. Remarks on Lamy (Nov. 1702).” In Leibniz’s ‘New System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts, translated and edited by R.S. Woolhouse and Richard Francks. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 161.
[clxxvii]So I could have written premise 32 as “God’s essence is His existence,” making the argument a bit stronger. Note the following text where Malebranche lumps together the doctrines of eternity, simplicity and immutability: “From all eternity God has willed, and to all eternity He will continue to will—or, to speak more accurately, God wills unceasingly though without variation, without succession, without necessity—everything He will do in the course of time. The enactment of His eternal decree, though simple and immutable, is necessary only because it is. It cannot not be only because it is. But it is only because God wills it.” (DMR VII.9; my emphasis)
[clxxviii]And at any rate, Malebranche accepts it as true: “God does not will, and indeed He cannot make, a creature independent of His volitions.” (DMR VII.8) I liken this to the claim that God cannot create a being that can conserve its own existence, for to do so would be for God to create a necessary being. See my Ch. 3, §§ A.1-A.4.
[clxxix]Rome footnotes Malebranche, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, edited by Désiré Roustan (Paris, 1922), pp. 75-76.
[clxxx]I presume Rome claims this because of Descartes’ voluntarism. Notably, Malebranche is well known for not subscribing to this aspect of Cartesianism.
[clxxxi]Rome, The Philosophy of Malebranche, p. 192 (my emphasis). As a side note, although Rome is one of the few English-writing scholars who has attempted to explain these hoary issues in Malebranche’s philosophy, I think that Rome tries too hard, and with not much success, to appropriate for Malebranche the scholastic doctrines of analogy, the essence/existence composition of creatures, and the doctrine of participation, particularly in light of the blistering rejection and critique of scholasticism that is prevalent in most of Malebranche’s works. For an enlightening discussion of this critique, see Connell, The Vision in God, Ch. 1.
[clxxxii]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 97. Freddoso dubs this the full-fledged no-nature theory, whereas the modified no-nature theory—which better captures Malebranche’s conception of OCC—allows creatures to have (only) passive causal powers.
[clxxxiii]For if creatures had any causal powers essentially, there would be constraints on how God could exercise His causal power in nature. E.g., God would have to act in opposition to His creatures at times, and overwhelm their causal activity. Yet for many reasons, occasionalists are unwilling to accept this kind of situation in the natural world (recall Malebranche’s punishment case).
[clxxxiv]As Freddoso (and Leibniz) points out, for Malebranche to take the modified no-nature route will not help him here: “Notice, by the way, that the same arguments…will dictate that the passive powers in question be nonessential…My suspicion is that the very notion of a substance endowed with passive but not active causal powers is incoherent. At the very least, as I noted above, the fundamental passive powers associated with material substances in particular (e.g., impenetrability) seem clearly to render the things that have them apt to be used (at least by God) as instrumental efficient causes. But if this is so, then no occasionalist can consistently accept the modified no-nature theory.” “Medieval Aristotelianism,” pp. 110-111. Furthermore, W. Norris Clarke explains, in Thomistic fashion, that the fundamental criterion between what is real and what is mental is action, “What is real is what can act on its own, express itself in action, is the center and source of its own action.” The One and the Many (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), p. 31. What cannot act, then, is simply not real: agere sequitur esse.
[clxxxv]Leibniz reiterates this position—in sharp contrast with Malebranche’s premise 24—in his 1702 reply to Bayle: “It does not seem necessary to me to deny action or force to creatures on the pretext that they would be creators if they produced their modifications. For it is God who conserves and continuously creates their forces, that is, who establishes a source of changing modifications in the creatures, or a state by which we can conclude that there will be a change of their modifications. Otherwise I find…that God would produce nothing and that there would be no substances beyond His own—a view which would lead us back into all the absurdities of Spinoza’s God.” (G., IV, 554-71; L 583; my emphasis)
What I find interesting is that Malebranche was charged with Spinozism on more than one topic. In his recent book, Tad Schmaltz explains that Antoine Arnauld and Pierre-Sylvan Regis, another Cartesian contemporary of Malebranche, had both charged Malebranche with Spinozism with regard to his doctrines of intelligible extension (which tended toward identifying God with the material world), and his view that God was identical with “universal being,” making all beings appear to be integral parts of God. See Schmaltz’s Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 121-127. For Schmaltz’s take on the quasi-Spinozistic connections to the creation doctrine, see pp. 150-156; Cp. Thomas M. Lennon’s “The Cartesian Dialectic of Creation,” In The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Vol. I, edited by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially § VI.
I have little to say about Malebranche’s doctrine of intelligible extension. As for his view that God is “universal being” or “being in general,” [for one specific citation, see LO 624-626, 2nd objection] I can say that the Scholastics were keenly aware of the difficulties this view posed. For example, in De Ente, Ch. 5, Aquinas is careful to differentiate between pure being itself, and universal being (that by which each and every thing formally exists). God is identified with pure being, so is such that no addition can be made to Him, and is thus distinct from every (other) existence. Whereas universal existence neither includes nor excludes any addition. It per se implies no intelligible content, but does not exclude any either. So God as pure being or existence itself possesses all perfections, whereas universal existence is merely in potentia to some perfection or other. If one does not make this careful distinction, as Joseph Bobik explains, pantheism or Spinozism comes to the fore: “If one does not distinguish these two senses of the word “existence,”* and considers only that something common or universal is restricted to a species or even to an individual by reason of an addition to it, it is not difficult to want to conclude that the divine existence, to which no addition is made, is something common to all things.” Aquinas in Being and Essence, A Translation and Interpretation. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), pp. 219-220. *The two senses of existence that Bobik speaks of are: Existenceu: universally said of all things other than God; grasped and expressed by the intellect as without any addition, but it is not found extramentally without addition; Existencep: said of God; grasped and expressed by the intellect as without any addition, AND is found in reality (extramentally) without any addition.
[clxxxvi]I will have more to say about Malebranche’s denial of instrumental causation in chapter 5, in § D.2, by way of comparing it directly to Aquinas’ model.
[clxxxvii]In the Search, however, Malebranche does present a very similar version of this argument: “It even seems to me that it is a contradiction and that therefore God cannot give to his creatures any real power or make them the cause of some material reality. For I believe it certain that conservation is but continued creation, for it is but the same will of God, who continues to will what He has willed, and this is the general view among theologians. A body, for example, exists because God wills that it exist, and He wills it to exist either here or there, for He cannot create it nowhere. And if He creates it here, is it conceivable that a creature should displace it and move it elsewhere unless God at the same time wills to create it elsewhere in order to share His power with His creature as far as it is capable of it? But if this be assumed possible or not to contain a metaphysical contradiction, for only that is impossible for God, by what principle of reason and religion can the dependence of creatures be diminished?” (LO 551-552; my emphasis).
[clxxxviii]For a nice selection of quotations attesting to the acceptance of this doctrine by each of these figures, see Philip Quinn’s “Divine Conservation, Continuous Creation, and Human Action,” in The Existence and Nature of God, edited by A.J. Freddoso. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 55-57.
[clxxxix]From Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism, p. 42.
[cxc]See Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 210-214. In line with the spirit of Loeb’s analysis, many commentators have attempted to argue that even if Malebranche believed conservation was continuous re-creation, this is not the only interpretation available (So for example, Descartes was not himself committed to premise 42). A few examples are Daniel Garber, Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics, Ch. 9; Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate, pp. 117-126; Philip L. Quinn, “Divine Conservation, Secondary Causes, and Occasionalism.” In Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, edited by Thomas V. Morris. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); and Andrew Pessin,. “Does Continuous Creation Entail Occasionalism? Malebranche (and Descartes).” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 413-440 (September 2000).
[cxci]See Scotus, Quodlibet XII.1.
[cxcii]Quinn claims that this thesis is too restrictive. I suppose that one could argue for the possibility of “gappy” existence, but personally I don’t see the point of doing something like that. See Quinn’s “Divine Conservation,” pp. 59-63. Premise 46 is equivalent to Quinn’s D5.
[cxciii]As Quinn explains, Jonathan Edwards would actually welcome such a strong theory of non-persisting human existence. Quinn explains, “For Edwards, contingent things which begin to exist by being created by God out of nothing cannot literally persist through time. They exist only instantaneously. At each instant God creates again anew and weaves for us the illusion of persistence by endowing his new creations with properties and relations similar to those possessed by the old.” “Divine Conservation,” p. 64
[cxciv]Which makes a view like Louis de La Forge’s difficult to maintain indeed. It seems that La Forge is better characterized as a partial occasionalist of the mere conservationist flavor; to which I then say, all the worse for La Forge.
[cxcv]Fred Ablondi, “Causality and Human Freedom in Malebranche,” Philosophy & Theology 9 (3-4): (1996), pp. 324-325.
[cxcvi]My emphasis. Quoted from Elmar J. Kremer’s “Malebranche on Human Freedom,” In The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, edited by Steven Nadler. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 199.
[cxcvii]Cp. Malebranche, LO 347, and LO 553. Schmaltz argues that this shows that Malebranche’s attempt at reconciliation between OCC and human freedom changes from the Search to Elucidation I. See Schmaltz’s “Human Freedom and Divine Creation in Malebranche, Descartes and the Cartesians.” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 2 (2): (1994), pp. 35-37.
[cxcviii]McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy, p. 108.
[cxcix]McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy, p. 109.
[cc]For just a few examples, see Radner, Malebranche, Ch. VII; Schmaltz, “Human Freedom and Divine Creation,” and his book, Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), especially Ch. 6; Ablondi, “Causality and Human Freedom in Malebranche;” and Kremer, “Malebranche on Human Freedom.”
[cci]Malebranche’s own discussion of the apparent incompatibility of the DCA and human freedom shows up in Elucidation I (LO 554).
[ccii]This point will be discussed in more detail in the sections to follow, particularly in § C.1.
[cciii]R. teVelde makes this point, but cashes it out a bit differently. He claims that OCC emphasizes the transcendence of God at the expense of His immanence in nature, so every action has the flavor of a miracle, whereas CON emphasizes God’s immanence at the expense of His transcendence, so God is no longer the exclusive author of nature. See his Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas, p. 163.
[cciv]This condition is necessary to avoid the standard charge leveled against CUR by some free will incompatibilists (libertarians). Those incompatibilists claim that no matter how mysterious the nature of God’s activity might be, and however inadequate our analogies for it, the real problem for the SP––what they sometimes call divine “omnicausality”––is that if God’s activity is sufficient for bringing about its effect, then “we logically cannot affirm that creatures are free in the full incompatibilist sense. For no agent can be the sufficient cause of another agent’s free act.” See Thomas F. Tracy’s “Divine Action, Created Causes, and Human Freedom,” In The God Who Acts, edited by Thomas F. Tracy. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 96, fn. 20. Compare this position to Flint’s analysis of the metaphysical foundation of the dispute between Thomists and Molinists, i.e., as “a core philosophical difference regarding the necessary conditions of free human action,” in “Two Accounts of Providence,” pp. 170-179. I contend that this kind of “libertarian” response prima facie confuses CUR with OCC. The concurrentist will have three basic responses to such a charge: (a) One should differentiate between a divine cause (like creation) and a concurrent cause, such that God’s contribution in a concurrent cause is not universally sufficient for the obtaining of the natural effect, unlike a divine cause; (b) Argue that the concept of ‘agent’ does not apply univocally to God and creature, thus allowing that God can act directly and universally in every natural event without compromising incompatibilist notions of freedom; and lastly (c) given the truth of the SP, it is quite possible that there may simply be nothing in nature capable of having strong incompatibilist (libertarian) freedom of the sort usually described. I will have more to say about (a) and (b) in this and the next chapter. Although I think (c) is true, I will beg off discussing it since it is slightly outside the scope of the present project.
[ccv]Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism,” p. 78.
[ccvi]Although Luis de Molina’s view of concurrent activity seems to rely on the division of labor model of instrumental causation.
[ccvii]Albeit, the total cause within its own species or order of causes. And since actions terminate in their effects, one effect implies one action as obtaining between God and creature. This notion will be discussed later in the chapter, and in Ch. 6, §A.5.
[ccviii]See Aristotle, Physics 2.8.
[ccix]Some of those issues being: the real distinction between essence and existence; the distinction between a creative cause and a concurrent cause; how to cash out a subordination of essential dependence, or the hierarchical relationship between God and creature, etc.
[ccx]In DP 3,8, Aquinas actually argues against the notion that God works in nature by creating, i.e., that God does not concur with nature via a creative act of some sort. He acknowledges, in agreement with the occasionalists, that the question naturally arises from the fact that creatures cannot create. Specifically, creatures cannot create the forms present in the effects they purportedly generate, for forms have no matter as a constituent part, and cannot be made of matter. Yet Aquinas points out that the solution lies in a proper understanding of the nature of form. For being is not predicated univocally of the form and the thing generated. The generated thing (the composite) is what has being properly and per se, not the form. If so, then even though nature cannot create, it is still true that the substantial forms can acquire being through the action of nature, namely, by educing the forms (not making them) from the potentiality of matter. “And from this principle that the composite and not the form is made the Philosopher (Metaph. vii, 8) proves that forms result from natural agents.”
[ccxi]Keep in mind, however, that Aquinas is not implying that the effect produced jointly by God and creature is a conjunction of two independently produced per se effects, as normally occurs in cooperative action that involves a division of labor: “the same effect is ascribed to a natural cause and to God, not as though part were effected by God and part by the natural agent: but the whole effect proceeds from each, yet in different ways [Latin?]: just as the whole of the one same effect is ascribed to the instrument, and again the whole is ascribed to the principal agent.” Aquinas, SCG III.70. So Aquinas is careful to avoid the first “pitfall” for concurrentism that Freddoso describes in his paper, “God’s General Concurrence With Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68:2 (Spring 1994), especially pp. 142-147.
[ccxii]That is to say, one cannot be the immediate per se causa secundum fieri of something without also having been its causa secundum esse.
[ccxiii]Once that is done, however, then the creature is off and running, so to speak. Once in act, the creature itself is then able to influence patients by determining the particular relations that it bears to them. So Aquinas’ example in the text does, in a sense, explain the causal story at the level of nature, but only analogously at the level of concurrence. This relational story is one way that some Thomists explain the metaphysics of substance and secondary causation: “To be real is to be a dyadic synthesis of substance and relation; it is to be substance-in-relation,” explains W. Norris Clarke, in Explorations in Metaphysics: Being-God-Person. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 104. So if you’ve got a substance, then (1) it has the aptitude of existing in se, and not as a part; (2) it is the unifying center of all the various attributes that belong to it at any one moment; (3) if it persists, it is the unifying center of its being across time; and (4) it has an intrinsic dynamic orientation towards self-expressive action or self-communication with others. This is, in part, what it means to say that the creature’s esse is its act of existence. See Clarke, pp. 105-108. I say in part, because this characterization more properly explains the creature as it is in 1st act. But to the degree in which a being is in 1st act, so too will the degree of action or 2nd act be manifest or revealed. As I understand it, creaturely causality boils down to what happens (the activity, or 2nd act) when you take a substance in 1st act and then “place it” in particular relations to other substances. See Clarke, pp. 45-52.
[ccxiv]See Aquinas, ST I.2.2.
[ccxv]Suarez explains that a principal cause is a cause “which through a principal power––that is, a power that is more noble than, or at least as noble as, the effect––influences the action whereby such an effect is produced. And it is not only the First Cause but also secondary causes, both univocal and equivocal, that are included under the name and notion of a principal cause in this sense.” DM XVII.2.18. Compare this to Descartes’ causal likeness principle from the Meditations: “There must be at least as much (reality) in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause.” (CSM II, 28) In other places, Descartes differentiates between formal and eminent containment (CSM II, 97 & 116), which can be made to slightly overlap with the Scholastic understanding of a univocal (at least as noble as) and equivocal (more noble than) principal power, respectively.
[ccxvi]This objection sounds curiously like the rhetorical question offered by Peter van Inwagen, which was presented in Ch. 3: “I find this doctrine [i.e., concurrentism] hard to understand. Does it credit created things with the power to produce effects or does it not? In the former case, why is God’s cooperation needed to produce that effect? In the latter case, Creation is devalued.” van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance,” p. 215, fn. 4. Not surprisingly, Aquinas considers another objection that appears to clarify the dilemma that van Inwagen is alluding to: “It would seem that God does not work in every agent. For we must not attribute any insufficiency to God. If therefore God works in every agent, He works sufficiently in each one. Hence it would be superfluous for the created agent to work at all.” ST I.105.5.obj1.
[ccxvii]See teVelde, Participation, ch. 9 (especially pp. 160-164). This notion of participation, both in existence and acting, cannot simply be a matter of degree, since in God being (and so acting) transcends the special modes of being (i.e., the categories). See Aquinas, ST I.3.5, corpus: “It is plain that God is not in a genus as if He were a species. From this it is also plain that He has no genus nor difference, nor can there be any definition of Him; nor, save through His effects, a demonstration of Him: for a definition is from genus and difference; and the mean of a demonstration is a definition.”
[ccxviii]Etienne Gilson. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 5th ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 182.
[ccxix]Suarez, DM XXII.1.14. Later in the disputation, Suarez makes a strongly Thomistic-like claim concerning the extent of God’s power: “Just as it does not belong to God’s power to produce a being that is not dependent on him in its esse, so neither does it belong to his power to produce an agent that is independent of him in its acting; indeed, as has been made sufficiently clear, both these things are equally compatible with God’s perfection and the creature’s imperfection.” DM XXII.1.15.
[ccxx]To note: at this point I have not fully distinguished Aquinas’ explanation of instrumental “application” from Suarez’s view. I hope to fill in the rest of the details in the next chapter.
[ccxxi]I will pass over in silence the obvious response that this strategy itself involves a fallacious form of reasoning—which is why I call it a “mantra”—and will attempt simply to make sense of the objection on its own grounds.
[ccxxii]But it is also the most unclear. Suarez does a better job highlighting the philosophical relevance of Durandus’ objection in DM XXII.1.4.
[ccxxiii]“A creature can have that action without God’s special influence (assuming the conservation of its nature and active power) since an action that does not exceed the power of the agent’s species is sufficiently elicited by just the power of the species; therefore, it would be superfluous to posit another immediate principle eliciting such an action.” Durandus, §11 (my emphasis). As I take it, Durandus is not making a metaphysical point about what God cannot do, but rather a point about the causal economy.
[ccxxiv]“It is not the case that the one effects it before the other, say, the action of God before the action of the creature; for if God by His action produced the whole thing first, then the creature would bring about nothing by its subsequent action––and vice versa, if the creature’s action were to precede God’s.” Durandus, §13.
[ccxxv]Cp. Freddoso’s translation of this passage in “Pitfalls and Prospects,” p. 155. Freddoso alters his translation of the Latin term perfectum from “complete” to “perfect,” which drives his objection below. I have employed Freddoso’s alteration above to keep matters consistent. The letters in brackets are my own.
[ccxxvi]I am not intending to suggest here that this is the proper philosophical/theological explanation for transubstantiation (although it does, curiously, resemble the manner in which Suarez describes the sacramental effects).
[ccxxvii]See Aquinas, ST I.105.5.obj1.
[ccxxviii]Freddoso, “Pitfalls and Prospects,” p. 155.
[ccxxix]“But there appears to be no possible way for the action to be immediately and completely from each without its being the case that numerically the same principle or numerically the same power is in both of them. This is why we say that among the divine persons the Father and the Son spirate the Holy Spirit by numerically the same spiration and each completely, since there is in them numerically one spirative power.” Durandus, §12.
[ccxxx]Of course, one may try to contend that the reason woman and pen are both immediate causes of the writing is that in some sense, numerically the same principle or power really is in both of them, say, the active principle or power of the primary agent, or that by which the pen writes, making premise (9) false. This would not lead one directly to OCC unless the particular active powers of the creature were somehow overwhelmed by the active principle/power of the primary agent, as opposed to being moved or applied by it.
[ccxxxi]I suppose that someone could claim that neither agent brings about the effect in question: there is the woman, and there is the pen, but there is no “them” or single “thing” that brings about the effect. Since only things can be causes, and actions are individuated by their effects, then surely there is no one effect that “they” bring about together: there is what the woman does, and there is what the pen does, which really yields two effects and not one (or no effect, rather). I cannot help but think that, to use a medievalism, the objection relies more “on a manner of speaking” than an honest evaluation of the state of affairs itself. The only observation that I could offer on that matter would be to say that such an objector confuses instrumental causality with cooperation by a division of labor. Although I would agree that––in abstraction––one could say that there are two actions (in fact, possibly infinitely many) or even two effects if you like, at best this gives you a conceptual distinction between the action(s) of each agent. From this it does not follow that there are really two actions, or two effects. But even under the division of labor model, to deny that you have two agents contributing to one effect is simply question-begging, I think, without a further explanation about how to split the terminus of the state of affairs. To quote from Freddoso: “Suppose that neither you nor your friend can lift the rear end of the car at all, but that the two of you together can lift it ten inches off the ground. If your actions were distinct in this case, then each of those actions would terminate in an effect that neither of them is capable of producing. Once again, then, the effect would be wholly disproportionate to the allegedly distinct actions, and so it is more reasonable to hold that when you act together to lift the car, the two of you act by the same action,” even in a possible case of cooperation by a division of labor! See “Pitfalls and Prospects,” p. 153.
[ccxxxii]Indeed, it seems to follow that if God cannot create a creature that is independent of Him either in being or acting, then it is not possible for God to create a world where there are creatures with active causal powers that He does not generally concur with. Add to that our observation that OCC is metaphysically vacant, and we get the conclusion that the only possible worlds that God can create are worlds where CUR obtains. This is a bit strong, perhaps, but well worth appreciating.
[ccxxxiii]Elsewhere, Suarez calls this kind of subordination foundational, or aptitudinal, or subordination in first act. This foundational subordination consists solely in the fact that the secondary cause is unable to act except with dependence on the First Cause. DM XXII.2.42.
[ccxxxiv]Both Molina and Suarez cite the miracle of the Babylonian fire in Daniel, Ch. 3 as an example of God’s withholding His concurrence. Molina, Concordia, d25.15; Suarez, DM XXII.1.11. In the same place Suarez also cites Wisdom 11 (modern versions, Wisdom 16:23): “This is what is meant in Wisdom 11, when it is said that the fire was forgetful of its power––namely, because it was unable to exercise its power without God.”
[ccxxxv]I will have a bit more to say about this in Ch. 6, however.
[ccxxxvi]Cp. Aquinas, DP 3,7,obj14: “To be free is to be the cause of one’s own action (Metaph. i, 2). Consequently that which cannot act without receiving the action of another cause is not free to act: now man’s will is free to act. Therefore it can act without any other cause operating in it: and the same conclusion follows [that God does not operate in the operation of the will].”
[ccxxxvii]Recall that this general explanation was used in objecting to the NCA (Ch. 4, § C.2) by drawing out the implications of the Malebranchean formulation, “Let it be the case that if x wills that e, then e will obtain.” As such, we will return to this characterization when filling out our model for a concurrent cause. Note further: given that Thomists accept the distinction between essence and existence, they usually explain that God contributes the being qua being of the effect, whereas the determination or character of the effect remains in the power of the reason and will of the creature. God is thus the principal cause of the being of the effect. The creature is then the proximate (principal) cause of the effect from the viewpoint of essence, but the instrumental cause as to its being. See Aquinas, DP 3,7,ad13-14; Cp. Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, p. 201-202.
[ccxxxviii]With regard to God’s internal action, it is prior to the creature’s both in causality (since it is required by the creature given its proper and essential dependence on Him) and dignity (it is a higher cause, and influences the effect in a more noble, independent way). See Suarez, DM XXII.4.9-10.
[ccxxxix]This gives us all the more reason to believe that His ways are really not our ways. My qualification at the beginning of this sentence is meant to preclude any mention of “incarnational difficulties.”
[ccxl]Hence God’s general concurrence with creatures––as a transeunt act––is to be differentiated from God’s “internal concurrence,” which signifies the immanent act of God’s will to concur with creatures. This internal concurrence is a per se principle that exists solely within God Himself.
[ccxli]As Suarez carves up the territory, what God’s concurrence is is to be differentiated from how God concurs with secondary causes, especially free creatures. In DM XXII.2, Suarez himself considers three views, with the third being that God’s concurrence is a per se principle of acting. He rules it out quickly by reducing it either to mere conservationism—which of course would not then be an explanation of God’s concurrence—or by showing that it is actually a combination of the other two versions, which would then make it redundant. See DM XXII.2.2-6.
[ccxlii]It will also allow me to make good on my promissory note from Ch. 4, §C.2, rounding out my discussion of the objections to OCC.
[ccxliii]To recall again, the PRD states that “Each thing that God creates is such that it cannot exist at any moment without God’s immediate and per se causal influx.” See Ch. 3, §B.
[ccxliv]Charles A. Hart. Thomistic Metaphysics: An Inquiry Into the Act of Existing. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), pp. 283-288.
[ccxlv]Steven Nadler. “Malebranche on Causation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche. ed. Nadler, Steven. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 129.
[ccxlvi]Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate, p. 118.
[ccxlvii]And, I should note, this reveals more about Nadler and Clatterbaugh than about Malebranche. On the whole, it looks as if neither of them really understand the scholastic distinctions to be made between Thomistic (intrinsic) instrumentalism, and something akin to the Molinist sort of which Malebranche speaks, which cashes out God’s concourse in terms of an extrinsic influence on the effect or action—what I have earlier called a mediation (in contrast with subordination). Further, at least on one other occasion, Clatterbaugh implicitly reveals that he doesn’t even recognize the difference between CON and CUR, especially with regard to Descartes, which then significantly weakens any objection he may present against CUR. See The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637-1739, esp. pp. 58-61.
[ccxlviii]Recall that Malebranche himself rejects the theory of Durandus [Durand] as “untenable in every way.” (LO 680).
[ccxlix]This is a comment which the Thomist should find amusing, since it seems perfectly clear that there are no sufficient reasons to be given for why God would do anything, even create, save for exemplifying His goodness. Here, we can simply recognize the curious confusion made in the early modern period between God’s intentions and God’s reasons. What God intends or is after—which is the diffusion of His goodness—is not God’s reason for creating the world, for example. Although it belongs to imperfect agents (namely, creatures), “to intend, by acting, the acquisition of something [because of some reason]…[this] does not befit the First Agent, who seeks only to communicate His perfection, which is His goodness.” Aquinas, ST I.44.4. And that, one could contend, is enough to explain why God gives creatures causal powers and concurs with them. For an extended argument on this matter, see Michael Liccione’s “Mystery and Explanation in Aquinas’ Account of Creation.” The Thomist 59 (2): 223-245 (April 1995). Interestingly enough, even Clatterbaugh recognizes that Malebranche’s claim is a bit weak: “Malebranche insists against Descartes that God needs no instruments, so that God’s will is the direct and single cause of everything (LO, 451). Of course, Descartes’s God is all-powerful, and Descartes could agree that God needs no instruments without agreeing that God does not use instruments.” Ibid., p. 119.
[ccl]This is a worry that some Thomists have about the Molinist picture of concurrentism. For example, see R.P. Phillips observations in Modern Thomistic Philosophy, Vol. II: Metaphysics. (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1950), pp. 240-244. Of course, as suggested earlier, it is still not clear as to whether or not splitting the actions and the effects is always warranted, or really captures the metaphysics of every case of cooperative action.
[ccli]This worry, I take it, is generated not only by a misunderstanding of the causal mode of God’s concurrence, but also from a certain teleological stance: why would God want (or need) to produce certain ends by means of creatures? Instrumentalism of any flavor ultimately has to take this teleological factor into consideration. I choose not to attend to it here because (i) the answer (that God concurs with creatures not out of need or reason, but rather from the immensity of His goodness) is quite beyond the scope of this dissertation, as noted in Ch. 1, and (ii) the philosophical focus of Malebranche’s and Aquinas’ discussion has more to do with the mode of God’s concurrence or instrumental activity in nature. An adequate analysis of (ii), I believe, will open the door for an acceptable response to (i).
[cclii]By which I mean working within or through, and not, as some may employ this term, essential.
[ccliii]This is the reading that Lee gives to Malebranche’s discussion in the Elucidations. See his, “Necessary Causal Connections,” pp. 7-9.
[ccliv]Aquinas actually has an interesting objection in SCG III.69 pertaining to the kind of instrumentalism that he and Malebranche are rejecting: “It is contrary to the notion of wisdom that any thing should be done in vain in the works of a wise man. But if creatures did nothing at all towards the production of effects, and God alone wrought everything immediately, other things would be employed by him in vain for the production of effects. Therefore the above position is incompatible with divine wisdom.” (my emphasis) What Aquinas is saying is that if God were to use instruments in the way Malebranche describes, then OCC would result!
Strangely enough, in her analysis of Malebranche’s attack on “concurrence,” B.K. Rome seems to endorse something akin to my position, but with a twist: “Herein, then, lies the secret of Malebranche’s opposition to efficacy in the creature. He does not deny that the creature can and does act. What he does deny is that this action is ever anything that the creature possesses in its own right or nature, or that it can exercise independently or apart from the divine presence that immediately, directly and continually sustains it.” The Philosophy of Malebranche, p. 217. The twist, of course, is that Rome believes that “the occasional cause does act, but its power to act is derivative from God’s will and requires the continuous sustaining presence of God’s will.” p. 210. If Rome is correct, then how shall we describe Malebranche? I will put it this way: As a failed concurrentist!
[cclv]Though this position seems to be standard fare among early Thomists like Ferrariensis, Suarez contends that it was not exactly Aquinas’ own view: “This position is commonly attributed to St. Thomas in the passages to be discussed below; but, as I will show, the attribution is unjustifiable.” DM XXII.2.7. Throughout DM XXII, § 2, Suarez is at pains to reconcile Aquinas’ texts with his own interpretation, and I find his observations persuasive. My project here will thus be an attempt to differentiate Thomistic instrumentalism from Premotion, in order to bolster Suarez’s position.
[cclvi]Ferrariensis calls it “An intention of the divine power having incomplete esse.” See Suarez, DM XXII.2.7.
[cclvii]If not also sufficient knowledge, means, lack of external or internal impediments, etc.
[cclviii]Cp. the quotation cited above in (c): “as a man causes the knife’s cutting by the very fact that he applies the sharpness of the knife to cutting by moving it to cut.”
[cclix]Suarez refers to the premotion condition (d) as the third element, since he considers (a) and (b) together as one element, as is clear from the next sentence in the text: “as distinct from the application [c] and from production and conservation of the secondary cause itself and of its power [a & b].”
[cclx]Even in De Potentia, to the exclusion of the “premotion” passage in the replies, Aquinas focuses his explanation of instrumentalism on the application thesis itself: “as a man causes the knife’s cutting by the very fact that he applies the sharpness of the knife to cutting by moving it to cut.” (DP 3,7,corpus)
[cclxi]This is not to say that nobody at all held the Premotion view. Suarez singles out Ferarriensis (and mentions Giles of Rome), and refers to several other important ‘Thomists,’ who hold this position. See DM XXII.2.7-12. What is even more interesting is that many contemporary Thomists seem to espouse the Premotion view of concurrentism, and appeal to St. Thomas (particularly the DP) for affirmation. TeVelde talks this way. See his Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas, pp. 164-175; Also, see Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, pp. 198-203 (esp. fn. 20); Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics, Ch. XI; and Phillips, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, Vol. II: Metaphysics, Ch. IX.
[cclxii]Freddoso, On Creation, Conservation, & Concurrence, p. 193, fn. 50.
[cclxiii]See Suarez, DM XXII.2.35-37.
[cclxiv]The positive he finds in ST.I.105.5 and SCG III.70. (See Suarez’s own explanation in DM XXII.2.15) Whereas the negative is derived from ST.I-II.109.1-3. (See Suarez, DM XXII.2.20)
[cclxv]For Suarez’s explanation of the ‘proper’ meaning of these locutions, see DM XXII.2.47-60, especially §54 (which explains what it means to say that secondary causes are called ‘instruments’ of the First Cause).
[cclxvi]Freddoso, “Pitfalls and Prospects,” p. 138 (my emphasis).
[cclxvii]Though really distinct, for the Thomist they are not separable in reality, but are rather co-principles of the being of the creature. Furthermore, for the Jesuit (like Suarez) there is no real distinction between the essence and existence of the creature, pushing God’s concurrence and the creature’s action even more forcefully towards identity.
[cclxviii]Note: one cannot try to split the actions at this point, since one action cannot be the terminus of another action. See Suarez, DM XXII.2.24 & XXII.3.7-8.
[cclxix]At best, only a conceptual distinction can be drawn.
[cclxx]“If we are speaking of the external action of both God and the creature, then on such an interpretation the one cannot be said to be prior in nature to the other with a priority of causality. For, as has been shown, since they are one and the same action, no genuine causality can exist between them.” DM XXII.3.10. For a more complete assessment of this issue, see Suarez, DM XXII.3.6-11.
[cclxxi]See Suarez, DM XXII.2.21.
[cclxxii]Freddoso, “Pitfalls and Prospects,” pp. 144 & 151.
[cclxxiii]See Freddoso, “Pitfalls and Prospects,” pp. 153-154. Before getting to this point, Freddoso evaluates four models of cooperative action that he claims are unsuitable for the concurrentist in order to explain how God and creature act together in a concurrent cause, for all of those models combine sameness of per se effect with a plurality of actions. (pp. 151-153)
[cclxxiv]Suarez contrasts natural causes with free causes, in that natural causes act by a necessity of nature, i.e., once all the conditions required for their acting are present, they act in the manner dictated by their natures and are unable not to act in that way. See DM XXII.4.3-9, and Freddoso’s fn. 3, p. 217.
[cclxxv]Suarez finds the basis for this claim in Aquinas, ST I.19.8.corpus: “Since then the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are done, which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that He wills. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contingently, to the right ordering of things, for the building up of the universe. Therefore to some effects He has attached necessary causes, that cannot fail: but to others defectible and contingent causes, from which arise contingent effects. Hence it is not because the proximate causes are contingent that the effects willed by God happen contingently, but because God has prepared contingent causes for them, it being His will that they should happen contingently.” (my emphasis) So for the Thomist, it is perfectly coherent and correct to claim that God causes creatures to act freely. Suarez, however, being a Molinist (i.e., about God’s middle knowledge), will not take such a strong route.
[cclxxvi]Among the many points that Suarez emphasizes, an important (but antecedent) one is that given that God’s concurrence is the action itself of the creature, and so is required for acting, God’s concurrence can be distinguished in the following way: (a) in itself and in second act, and in this way it is not required for the possibility of action, but only the action itself; and (b) in first act and in its proximate application, and in this sense it is absolutely required for the possibility of acting, insofar as it reflects the utter dependence the creature has on God. In sense (b), the concurrence consists of God’s power or will, “insofar as the latter is proximately applied and, as it were, conjoined at the given time with the secondary cause by virtue of God’s eternal decision to concur with that cause [at that time].” DM XXII.4.7
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