Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action 9781032002767, 9781032002781, 9781003173465

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Providence and Science in a World of Contingency

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency offers a novel assessment of the contemporary debate over divine providential action and the natural sciences, suggesting a re-consideration of Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysical doctrine of providence coupled with his account of natural contingency. By looking at the history of debates over providence and nature, the volume provides a set of criteria to evaluate providential divine action models, challenging the underlying, theologically contentious assumptions of current discussions on divine providential action. Such assumptions include that God needs causally open spaces in the created world in order to act in it providentially, and the unfitting conclusion that, if this is the case, then God is assumed to act as another cause among causes. In response to these shortcomings, the book presents a comprehensive account of Aquinas’ metaphysics of natural causation, contingency, and their relation to divine providence. It offers a fresh and bold metaphysical narrative, based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, which appreciates the relation between divine providence and natural contingency. Ignacio Silva is Associate Professor of Theology and Science at the Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad Austral, Argentina, and Associate Member of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, UK.

Routledge Science and Religion Series Series editors: Michael S. Burdett, University of Nottingham, UK Mark Harris, University of Edinburgh, UK

Science and religion have often been thought to be at loggerheads but much contemporary work in this flourishing interdisciplinary field suggests this is far from the case. The Science and Religion Series presents exciting new work to advance interdisciplinary study, research and debate across key themes in science and religion. Contemporary issues in philosophy and theology are debated, as are prevailing cultural assumptions. The series enables leading international authors from a range of different disciplinary perspectives to apply the insights of the various sciences, theology, philosophy and history in order to look at the relations between the different disciplines and the connections that can be made between them. These accessible, stimulating new contributions to key topics across science and religion will appeal particularly to individual academics and researchers, graduates, postgraduates and upper-undergraduate students. Intersections of Religion and Astronomy Edited by Aaron Ricker, Chris J. Corbally, and Darry Dinnell Divine and Human Providence Philosophical, Psychological and Theological Approaches Edited by Ignacio Silva and Simon Kopf Islam and Evolution Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm Shoaib Ahmed Malik Toward a Theology of Scientific Endeavour The Descent of Science Christopher B. Kaiser Providence and Science in a World of Contingency Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action Ignacio Silva For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: https:// www.routledge.com/religion/series/ASCIREL

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

Ignacio Silva

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Ignacio Silva The right of Ignacio Silva to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-00276-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-00278-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-17346-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

For Agustina, Felicitas, and Joaquín

Contents

List of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinas’ works Introduction

ix 1

1

Digging for criteria: A metaphysical history of divine providence

12

2

Science and providence today

32

3

A metaphysics of natural contingency

58

4

A metaphysics of God’s providence

83

5

Thomas Aquinas today

Final thoughts on Aquinas, contingency, and providence Bibliography Index

117 139 150 158

List of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinas’ works1

Summa Theologiae (1266–73) Summa Contra Gentiles (1259–64) De Ente et Essentia (1252/56) De Substantiis Separatis (1271) De Principiis Naturae (1252/56) Compendium Theologiae (1269–73) Quaestiones Disputatae De Malo (1266–67) Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia Dei (1265–66)2 Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate (1256–59) Quaestio Disputata De Spiritualibus Creaturis (1267–68) Quaestio Disputata De Anima (1265–66) Quaestio Disputata De Virtutibus (1271–72)3 Quaestio De Quodlibet 1 (1269) Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (1251–56)4 Expositio in librum Boethii De Hebdomadibus (1256–59) Super Boetium De Trinitate (1257–58) Expositio super librum De Causis (1271–72) Expositio super Dionysium De Divinis Nominibus (1265–67)5 In Psalmos Davidis Expositio (c. 1273)6 Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura (1270–72) Sententia libri Metaphysicae (1269–72)7 Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum (1269–70) Expositio libri Peri Hermeneias (1270–71) In libros Aristotelis De caelo et mundo expositio (1272–73) In librum Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione expositio (1272–73) Sententia libri De Anima (1269–70) Sententia libri Ethicorum (1271) Sententia super Meteora (1269–73)

S.Th. SCG De Ente De Subs. Sep. De Prin. Nat. Comp. Theo. De Malo De Pot. De Ver. De Spirit. Creat. De An. De Virt. Quod. 1 In Sent. In De Heb. In De Trin. In De Causis In In In In In In

De Div. Nom. Psalm. Io. Met. Phys. Peri Her.

De Cae. Et Mun. In Gen. et Corr. In De An. Sent. Eth. In Meteor.

x

List of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinas’ works

Notes 1 Aquinas’ works, unless otherwise expressed in this list, are taken from the Leonine edition: Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita, Rome, 1882–. 2 Ed. PM Pession, Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1965. 3 In Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2, Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1965. 4 Ed. P. Mandonnet, Lethielleux, Parisiis, 1929. 5 Ed. C. Pera, P. Caramello, C. Mazzantini; Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1950. 6 Ed. R. Busa, Frommann-Hoolzbog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt, 1980. 7 Ed. MR Cathala, RM Spiazzi; Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1971.

Introduction

A The big question The challenges that a world full of contingent events brings to the doctrine of divine providence cannot be overstated. My goal in this volume is to address these challenges, considering the relation between natural contingency and divine providence from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century Christian philosopher, while actively engaging with recent philosophical and theological literature on divine providential action. That is, instead of considering those who deny the possibility of divine providence given the contingency of natural events, I will study proposals that offer the opposite approach, making use of this natural contingency to offer models for understanding divine providential action. In particular, I will consider what has been termed as the Divine Action Project, which started at some point in the 1980s and lasted for about 25 years, the offspring of which continues to spur today in numerous works on divine providence and action. Arguably, the main insight of this project was that contingency and indeterminism in nature are of great value to the created order and that they are of significant value to theological discourses as well. Consider, for example, what George Ellis has to say about the existence of contingency and randomness in the universe: It turns out that they [biological systems] take advantage of the storm of randomness encountered at the molecular level – there is much evidence that molecular machinery in biology is designed to use that randomness to attain desired results. This is true also in terms of macro-levels of behavior, and in particular, as regards how the brain functions. Randomness is harnessed through the process of adaptive selection, which allows higher levels of order and meaning to emerge. It is then a virtue, not a vice.1 There is an advantage, a benefit, for the existence of randomness and chance in the universe, a benefit that, as I hope to explain in the following pages of this volume, God puts to good use. Contingency and indeterminism, thus, do not rule out the ever-intimate presence of the divine in creation; they rather point to it, and to a certain extent require and demand God’s providence. DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-1

2

Introduction

There are at least two strong convictions guiding the debate on divine providence today: first, the three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) affirm that God is present in the universe and providentially active in it, guiding it to its fulfilment. That is, God guides and directs the world caringly, and does not stay away from it. God does not withdraw from the history of the world; neither does God leave people without his help. Second, the natural world in which we live, as described by modern science, is an orderly world, in which each event appears to have a natural cause to it: everything in the created universe appears to be caused, in one way or another, by something else in that same created universe. These two assertions, even if they serve as guiding principles to the debate, appear to exclude each other. Either God is able to act directly in the universe, or the scientific description of the world seems to leave no room for God to act. The scientific picture seems to present boundaries that God cannot cross. These boundaries, though, are the creation of that very same God. The idea of God sustaining nature and its regularities while miraculously intervening, suspending, or ignoring those regularities looks, thus, close to a contradiction.2 As a first step to tackle this dilemma, most actors in the contemporary debate accept a distinction between special and general divine providence, the latter referring to God’s creating and sustaining of the universe in its being, while the former referring to God’s direct interventions in nature that would help history develop in the ways God wants. Special divine providence is a notion aiming at explaining the claim according to which God not only guides history through the autonomous activity of nature, but also introduces novelty in nature, according to His plans. The second step usually taken in the providential divine action debate is to find within contemporary science places in which to locate God’s action. Following the emergence of an indeterministic account of nature given by the development of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century, theologians explored the possibility of an understanding of divine providential action through indeterministic events. Many argue that such a possibility would rule out any divine intrusion within the laws of nature, because the very laws of nature show that there are natural events that are open to several distinct outcomes. In such an image of nature, God could choose which outcome to bring about, without disrupting any law. This proposal, however, brings new difficulties in the understanding of providential divine action. A more technical analysis of how God could act in, for example, quantum events (were they to be undetermined, or without a sufficient cause) shows that God should act as any natural cause, endangering God’s transcendental status, putting a question mark on the purposefulness of God’s actions. The root of these problems is, I will argue, the notion of causality used in the debate, which, although many attempts have been made to re-consider it, remains unexplained. The argument I put forth in this volume, then, is simple in essence: the basic idea is that there are some unexamined assumptions about causality, which lead to embracing an ultimately inadequate solution and representation of God. The

Introduction 3 concepts of causality, and of cause, used in the debate are, so I argue, deterministic. Hence, my argument continues, God depends on the natural order to act, leading to the conclusion that God acts as natural causes do. To counter these problems, I propose revisiting Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of primary and secondary causation and its relation to contingency and indeterminism in the natural world. There are, of course, many scholars who remark on Aquinas’ significance to philosophical and theological discussions today, and many would argue that the study of theology or philosophy in Western culture cannot entirely avoid his work. Arguably, Aquinas represents the summit of medieval thought and has profoundly influenced thinkers of the modern and contemporary periods. Contemporary scholars of the stature of Alister McGrath3 and Keith Ward4 count him among the thinkers who must be consulted in any discussion about God. There is also great awareness within the context of today’s debate on providential divine action that Aquinas’ thought could lead to a solution of the big question. Robert Russell, one of the leading scholars in the discussions, points to this fact several times when considering alternative proposals to his own. For example, in the third volume of the Divine Action Project, published in 1995, Russell enumerates several current approaches to divine action, mentioning Neo-Thomism among them, together with process theology, uniform action, and personal agent models.5 By 2008, Russell affirms that as a result of the conversations two broad metaphysical systems were adopted by scholars participating in the debates: process metaphysics and Neo-Thomistic metaphysics,6 recommending further research on a detailed assessment of the relative merits of the different proposals on divine action, mentioning, among others, the distinction between primary and secondary causality, two essential notions of Thomas’ account of causation. Finally, in his latest production in 2018, Russell dedicates several pages to analysing Aquinas-inspired approaches hoping to find bridges and connections between his proposal and those of Thomist philosopher Michael Dodds, OP. In fact, Michael Dodds is perhaps the better-known Thomist in the debate, having published extensively, offering Thomistic perspectives on providence and divine action in relation to the current debate, most prominently in his 2012 volume, Unlocking Divine Action.7 Aquinas’ influence can be easily perceived in William Stoeger’s writings; Philip Clayton explicitly uses the classical formulation of causes, affirming the necessity of talking about the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of God’s action in the universe;8 and Robert Russell openly states that God’s creative action supplies the material and formal causes in nature.9 Sarah Lane Ritchie also spends much time in studying Aquinas thought in the approaches of numerous contemporary Thomists;10 and finally, David Fergusson11 as well as David S. Robinson and Jennifer Wotochek12 have recently remarked on the regained momentum in recent literature of Thomist approaches and the resurgence of classical accounts of ‘non-competitive’ agencies.

4

Introduction

It is not rushed, then, to say that Aquinas is already installed in the contemporary debate. Robert Russell suggests that it is necessary to give more focused attention to making Aquinas’ metaphysics explicit, given that it is not clear to what extent the metaphysical diversity in the debate has enhanced or hindered the conversations from making further progress.13 Stressing this idea, Stoeger warned, back in 2008, that the concept of creatio ex nihilo had not been carefully and adequately engaged in this debate, and that it should be addressed in later research.14 His main reason was that this notion, essential for Aquinas, provides the fundamental basis for properly understanding both God’s universal creative action and God’s special providential action, a point that I make in the fourth chapter of this volume. Michael Dodds is so far one of the very few scholars to embark on the project with an explicit Thomistic perspective, offering a thorough analysis on how Aquinas’ thought can be helpful for the debate, with the recent addition of Mariusz Tabaczek’s work on emergence and divine action and Simon Maria Kopf’s work on teleology and contingency in nature.15 Contemporary scholarship on divine providence dealing with these matters is currently booming within the current field of science and religion, and I hope my project will open new ground for debate. Recent works include David Fergusson’s The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach; Alexander Jensen’s Divine Providence and Human Agency; Karl Giberson’s edited volume Abraham’s Dice: Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions; and Robert Russell and Joshua Moritz’s edited volume God’s Providence and Randomness in Nature: Scientific and Theological Perspectives.16 Fergusson’s volume offers a historical account of different approaches to the doctrine of providence, presenting in his final chapter a theological discourse that sets his own dogmatics and practical theology of providence. Jensen’s book argues for a theologically Thomistic account of providence in an open discussion with process theology on the theme of human freedom in relation to divine providence. Giberson’s volume offers an orderly collection of essays on the different historical approaches to providence and chance that emerged in the monotheistic traditions. Russell and Moritz’s edited volume offers scientific and theological approaches to the issues of natural randomness and divine providence working through that randomness. In addition to these treatises on providence, there are several volumes framed under the terms of ‘divine action’. For example, William J. Abraham’s fourvolume work Divine Agency and Divine Action; Michael Dodds’ Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas; Robert Russell and Nancey Murphy’s edited volume Philosophy, Science and Divine Action; Sarah Lane Ritchie’s Divine Action and the Human Mind; and Jeffrey Koperski’s Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature.17 Abraham’s work is an impressive four-volume project that explores the theological twentieth-century debate on divine agency (Vol. I, 2017), its historical roots (Vol. II, 2018), offering his own systematic theological account of divine action (Vol. III, 2019); and presents his views on God as an agent in nature (Vol. IV, 2021, is perhaps the most relevant to my study, but was yet to be published while I was finishing writing these pages). Dodds’ volume is probably the most similar to mine, since it

Introduction 5 explicitly engages with the current proposals for explaining divine action in light of contemporary science, offering a Thomistic perspective on the matter. I take Dodds’ volume to be a most accomplished kick-off for the regained momentum in recent literature of Thomistic studies on divine providential action.18 Russell and Murphy’s edited volume includes chapters of several renowned scholars in the science and religion field. Ritchie’s volume offers a wonderful panoramic analysis of different approaches to divine action in the world especially through the human mind, hoping to disengage herself from some other models that locate God’s involvement in the world through the indeterminacies that creation offers. Finally, Koperski’s work offers a neo-classical model of divine action, the basic argument for which being that determinism is an add-on to the laws of nature, and that these do not restrict the actions of personal agents in the world. Sarah Lane Ritchie has seen a turn towards what she calls ‘theistic naturalisms’ in much of the latest literature on divine providential action, which in essence seeks to ‘affirm a full commitment to the natural sciences’ while emphasising ‘the role of theology in defining the ontology of nature itself’.19 She describes this theological turn happening through Thomism, pneumatology, and panentheism. My work fits, thus, within this ‘turn’, since I try, as I will explain in the following pages, to move away from contemporary models of divine providential action that place this action in the ‘causal gaps’ of nature, suggesting a model in which nature and God relate at every moment, for which every moment of creation is the causal joint, to use Austin Farrer’s foundational expression. My aims in this work are, perhaps, modest in comparison to many of these volumes, though they are still ambitious in attempting to offer a sound model for divine providential action following the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Analysing the ‘theological turn’ in divine action models, Ritchie has valued Thomistic approaches to providential divine action as ‘something of a gold standard’, because these approaches emphasise the fact that ‘nature [is] always in intimate connection to, and dependence on, God’ and hence, ‘both God and natural processes are fully responsible for all natural events’.20 Aquinas is adamant in this respect: ‘natural things do not produce their effects unless for the divine power’.21 This simple statement encloses all his metaphysics of providence: God is present with his power within every natural happening and every natural process. Still, this simple statement also brings about rightful questions: what does it mean to say that natural things produce their effects because of divine power? How do we understand that natural things cause their effects because they are created causes and as such receive their powers from God? Or is it that God produces each natural effect without any input from natural causes? Or is it both, God and the natural causes that produce, together, the effect? Does God have to act so natural things can cause? Can God, in the end, act in nature at all if natural things are acting? I will attempt to answer these questions expanding on the following ideas. For Aquinas, God causes creatures to exist in such a way that they are the real causes of their own operations. Still, God is at work in every operation of nature. Divine causality and creaturely causality, for Aquinas, function at fundamentally

6

Introduction

different levels. God’s causality is that of creation, while creature’s causation is that of natural change. Thus, Aquinas understands that these two different causes (God and creatures) differ radically: God is the complete cause of the whole reality of whatever is and yet in the created world there is a rich array of real secondary causes. Indeed, following his understanding of creation out of nothing, Aquinas affirms the integrity and relative autonomy of the physical world and the adequacy of the natural sciences to describe this world. Especially in his exposition of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, Aquinas sought to affirm the radical and continuous dependence of all things upon God as their cause and that this dependence is fully compatible with the discovery of causes in nature. God’s omnipotence, Aquinas explains, does not challenge the possibility of real causality for creatures, thus rejecting any notion of divine withdrawal from the world so as to leave room for the actions of creatures. In fact, Aquinas does not think that God merely allows or permits creatures to behave the way they do. Moreover, creation out of nothing does not mean only that God creates being and allows secondary causes to provide the particular determinations of individual beings. Creatures are what they are, precisely because God is constantly present to them as the cause of their being and their actions. Thus, Aquinas affirms that the same effect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural efficient cause; rather, it is wholly done by both, according to a different way, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the instrument and also wholly to the principal agent.22 Were God to withdraw, all that exists would cease to be. Hence, the autonomy of nature is guaranteed by God’s creative continuous causality.

B Volume structure A word on my use of words in the title might be required, in particular of the term ‘metaphysics’. Readers acquainted with Aquinas’ philosophy and in particular with how Thomism has framed Aquinas’ thought in the centuries between him and us, might be puzzled by my saying that I should use the term ‘metaphysics’ for referring to Aquinas’ considerations on natural causes: these doctrines are traditionally termed under the label of ‘philosophy of nature’. Something similar might happen with readers expecting a theological discourse on the doctrine of providence, which is not usually termed as a metaphysical doctrine. In a nutshell, today’s treatises and discourses about causality tend to be labelled as metaphysical discourses, and as such I simply adopt this trend. I find no need to attach myself to a language that is no longer in use in wider academic circles, such as that of ‘philosophy of nature’, when even Aquinas made little use of it.23 In fact, the notion of cause as such is for Aquinas a notion that lies at the boundaries between his philosophy of nature and his metaphysics, and in this sense, I am being faithful to Aquinas’ thought. Regarding the notion of ‘providence’, I see it as a notion that

Introduction 7 lies between metaphysics as Aquinas understood it, i.e., as the discipline seeking the knowledge of the first cause – namely, God – and theology, i.e., the discipline that attempts to gain knowledge of the God following divine Revelation. Hence, I am only considering providence in the first sense, as a metaphysical notion. I thus present in the pages to come a metaphysics of providence that is grounded in a metaphysics of natural causation. I begin my argument by seeking for criteria to assess providential divine action models in what I like to call a historical dig or excavation. Thus, in the first chapter, ‘Digging for criteria’, I present a brief metaphysical history of divine providence, considering four different episodes in the history of Western intellectual thought that offer models of divine providence. The episodes start in medieval Islam and Christianity, passing through early modern Europe and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arriving to the current debate. This historical preliminary study reaches four different criteria, or better desiderata, that inform the debates and that, I argue, can serve to assess the contemporary (and future) models of providential divine action and natural contingency. My point is that these historical episodes, even if distant in time from each other, are shaped by these metaphysical options or principles: 1) God’s omnipotence; 2) God’s involvement in the workings of nature; 3) the autonomy of nature; and 4) the success of natural reason and science. I show in this metaphysical history that thinkers through these episodes struggled to put together these four desiderata in their respective models of divine providence, having to juggle with them in their respective models of divine providence, suggesting that Aquinas’ model manages to hold the four of them. In the second chapter, ‘Science and providence today’, I present the fundamental notions of the debate surrounding providence and science, such as general divine action, special divine action, and explore the basic features of contingency, indeterminism, chance, and randomness. I address how these concepts are used to argue for divine providence through the workings of the created indeterminate order. To show why I think the debate is ill-formulated, I exemplify the main ideas guiding it by focusing on Robert Russell’s model of quantum divine action, but also referring to John Polkinghorne’s ideas on chaos theory and divine action and Jeffrey Koperski’s considerations of the laws of nature in relation to God’s providential action in the world. I will, thus, examine the philosophical and theological assumptions on causality and God that inform current discussions on divine providence, the major assumption being that the notion of causality is identified with that of determinism, a move that ultimately implies understanding divine causality as natural causality, locating God’s causation among created causes, a wholly undesirable conclusion. In the third chapter, ‘A metaphysics of natural contingency’, I start my main argument bringing in Aquinas’ metaphysical thought on nature in full display, investigating how natural causality works for Aquinas and providing a new and fresh assessment of his account of the classical four causes of the natural world: material, formal, efficient, and final. This analysis will show that the essential notion in the definition of cause is that of dependence. This definition allows

8

Introduction

Aquinas to speak of contingent causes (which can be scientifically described in indeterministic or random terms) in the causing of their effects, a feature that is tightly tied with the fact that natural efficient causes fail at times in their producing of their effects. I suggest, then, understanding divine providence using this broader notion of causality as that upon which something depends. I continue with my deep dive into Aquinas’ metaphysics in the fourth chapter, ‘A metaphysics of God’s providence’, in which I present how Aquinas sought to affirm the radical and continuous dependence of all things upon God as their cause. The chapter first focuses on Aquinas’ doctrine of God as pure being, in order to pave the way for his exposition of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, from which his metaphysical doctrine of providence springs. Following Aquinas, I argue that complete dependence of creatures upon God is fully compatible with the discovery of real causes in nature. Thus, one can argue for a God who, without disrupting the order of natural causes, governs providentially the development of the universe acting in and through these created causes. The reader will find that the explanations in these two chapters are heavily based on a widespread reading of Aquinas’ whole work, and not only on the loci classici of both his summae. The benefit of this method will be a return to Aquinas, rather than an exposition of an Aquinas-inspired Thomism, which is, as I argue by the end of the volume, the root of many misconceptions regarding his thought. In the final chapter, ‘Thomas Aquinas today’, I argue that Aquinas offers the metaphysical principles for a solution to the questions raised by the current debate on divine providential action. On the one hand, Aquinas’ account of nature is not totally and absolutely deterministic, allowing, for instance, for a re-interpretation of Heisenberg’s understanding of quantum mechanics, which lies at the heart of many models of divine providential action today. On the other hand, given Aquinas’ account of God’s causality of every event in nature, God can be said personally to be the cause of the particular and individual ways in which creatures cause. My concluding remarks will be dedicated to addressing some objections to Aquinas’ ideas today and to how recent work in science and religion has engaged creatively with his thought. I hope to arrive at the conclusion that, given Aquinas’ understanding of natural and divine causality, a plausible description of divine providential action in nature is possible, without it being against natural causality.

Acknowledgements Much of what is included in this volume has been in my mind for over a decade, starting with a doctorate at the University of Oxford, for which I owe my first token of gratitude to my two supervisors Peter Harrison and William Carroll, both of whom encouraged me from the very early stages of my research. A special thank you must also go to Andrew Pinsent and Alister McGrath, who welcomed me at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion after my doctorate for over seven years. Their continuous encouragement and support cannot be overstated.

Introduction 9 The pages that follow draw much on some of my previous published work: ‘Divine Action and Thomism: Why Thomas Aquinas’s Thought is Attractive Today’ Acta Philosophica 25:1 (2016), 65–83; ‘A Cause Among Causes. God Acting in the Natural World’ European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 99–114; ‘Providence, Contingency, and the Perfection of the Universe’ Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 2:2 (2015), 137–157; ‘Revisiting Aquinas on Providence and Rising to the Challenge of Divine Action in Nature’ The Journal of Religion 94:3 (2014), 277–291; ‘Great Minds Think (Almost) Alike. Thomas Aquinas and Alvin Plantinga on Divine Action in Nature’ Philosophia Reformata 79 (2014), 8–20; ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’ New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 635–653; ‘John Polkinghorne on Divine Action: A Coherent Theological Evolution’, Science and Christian Belief 24:1 (2012), 19–30; and ‘Thomas Aquinas Holds Fast: Objections to Aquinas within Today’s Debate on Divine Action’ The Heythrop Journal 54:4 (2011), 658–667. The final write-up of this book was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (ID 61030) at the Philosophy Institute of Universidad Austral (Argentina), where I worked along with skilled philosophers who supported me and endured along the process: Juan Francisco Franck, Claudia Vanney, and Mariano Asla. Several scholars have throughout the years helped me clarify and better my thoughts. An unjust and incomplete list must include, in no particular order, John H. Brooke, Alex Arnold, Michael Dodds, Robert Russell, Julia and Andrew Meszaros, Simon Kopf, Tim Pawl, Michael and Emily Burdett, Gonzalo Recio, Thomas Oord, Agustín Echavarría, Craig Boyd, Jeroen de Ridder, Mark Harris, and Andrea Sangiacomo. Those who first introduced me to the study of Aquinas’ metaphysics in Argentina should also receive my gratitude: Oscar Beltrán, Olga Larre, Héctor Delbosco, Juan Pablo Roldán, and the late Juan Roberto Courrèges. Needless to say, the shortcomings in my arguments are only due to my lack of skill, while most of the successes come from their advice. Perhaps the most important expression of gratitude should go to Thomas Aquinas himself, who reached the heights of divine metaphysics and continues to illuminate us today, driving at least my thoughts to God. Finally, my most particular thank you goes to my loving wife, Agustina, and our joyful and ever hopping children, Felicitas and Joaquín, through whom I daily discover in my life the tender care of God’s providence.

Notes 1 Ellis, George, ‘Necessity, Purpose and Chance’, in Robert Russell and Joshua M. Moritz (eds), God’s Providence and Randomness in Nature (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2018), 21–67, 23. 2 Wildman, Wesley J., ‘The Divine Action Project, 1988–2003’, Theology and Science 2:1 (2004), 31–75, 38. 3 McGrath, Alister (ed.), Theology: The Basic Readings (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 31: ‘[The Summa Theologica, Thomas’ work] is widely regarded as the landmark in Christian Theology, and is one of the most widely used and widely cited theological sources’.

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Introduction

4 Ward, Keith, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2008), discusses his views on God, creation, divine causality, the soul, etc, in contrast with those of Aquinas. 5 Russell, Robert, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 1995), 7. 6 Russell, Robert, ‘Challenges and Progress in “Theology and Science”: An Overview of the VO/CTNS Series’, in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2008), 3–56, 20 and 36. 7 Most prominently, Michael Dodds has published Unlocking Divine Action. Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2012). 8 Clayton, Philip, ‘Natural Law and Divine Action: The Search for an Expanded Theory of Causation’, Zygon 39:3 (2004), 615–636, 631. 9 Russell, Robert, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action’, in Philip Clayton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 579–595, 586. 10 Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: CUP, 2019), Chapter 7 in particular. 11 Fergusson, David, The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge: CUP, 2018), 255. 12 Robinson, David and Jennifer Wotochek, ‘Kenotic Theologies and the Challenge of the “Anthropocene”: From Deep Incarnation to Interspecies Encounter’, Studies in Christian Ethics (2020), 1–14, 5. 13 Russell, ‘Challenges and Progress’, 23. 14 Stoeger, William, SJ, ‘Conceiving Divine Action in a Dynamic Universe’, in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2008), 225–247, 226. 15 See Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action; Tabaczek, Mariusz, Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2021); Kopf, Simon Maria, Divine Providence and Natural Contingency: New Perspectives from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2019. Michael Heller also comments on how important it is to look at Aquinas. He does it, however, in a rather condensed way compared with the amount of time he offers to contemporary science. See his ‘Generalizations: from Quantum Mechanics to God’, in Robert J. Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (eds), Quantum Mechanics. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2001), 191–210. 16 Fergusson, The Providence of God; Jensen, Alexander, Divine Providence and Human Agency (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014); Giberson, Karl, Abraham’s Dice: Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions (Oxford: OUP, 2016); and Russell and Moritz, God’s Providence. 17 Abraham, William J., Divine Agency and Divine Action (Oxford: OUP, 2017–21, in four volumes); Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action; Russell, Robert and Nancey Murphy, Philosophy, Science and Divine Action (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Divine Action and the Human Mind; and Koperski, Jeffrey, Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). 18 See Fergusson, The Providence of God, 225. 19 Ritchie, Sarah Lane, ‘Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging the Theological Turn in Divine Action Theories’, Zygon 52:2 (2017), 361–379, 367. 20 Ritchie, Divine Action, 344. 21 SCG III, c. 70. 22 SCG III, c. 70.

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23 Aquinas did make use of the term ‘natural philosophy’. Still, a simple search in the Corpus Thomisticum for the terms ‘philosoph* naturae’ gives no relevant result. Only when one searches for ‘philosoph* natural*’ one gets results referring to something similar to what contemporary Thomists term ‘philosophy of nature’. Aquinas uses this term about 40 times, less than half the times he uses the term ‘metaphysics’ in all his works.

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Digging for criteria A metaphysical history of divine providence

It seems that were God to intervene in nature, to act within nature following his divine intentions, God would be breaking, suspending, or simply not following the apparent lawful order of the created universe, which, for many, would imply an inconsistency in God’s nature. Moreover, the idea of God acting directly in nature seems to bring challenges to the autonomy of nature, and, thus, to the foundation of the natural sciences. Still, it seems necessary for Christian thinkers today to offer models and accounts of how it is possible to understand that nature has its own order and regular actions together with the claim that God can participate actively in the development of the natural and human world. Ultimately, the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is not a God of the sidelines. Before considering the different models available today, however, it will prove beneficial to find some criteria with which to assess such models. I suggest ‘digging in history’ for these criteria, by which I mean analysing models that were offered in past controversies and debates over providential divine action, seeking those ideals that guided the conversations. These ideals will turn out to be what I call criteria or desiderata. Thus, before fully delving into the contemporary debate and Aquinas’ metaphysical thought, this chapter will present a short metaphysical history of divine providential action, starting from Islamic medieval discussions, through Christian medieval and early modern approaches to the issue, and arriving at nineteenth- and twentieth-century presentations that have shaped our debate today. In essence, Aquinas dealt with very similar problems during his time, and discussions sharing similar assumptions appeared also in the seventeenth and the late nineteenth centuries. So, even if the debate in the thirteenth century was framed in different philosophical terms (not including, for instance, any mention of quantum, chaos, or Big Bang theories), there were similar philosophical and theological positions on how to explain divine providential action in the universe, and many looked interestingly similar to those present in early modernity and today. My hope is that this brief historical sketch will, thus, allow me to dig out four criteria for assessing the debate together with its unexamined assumptions, and to show why I believe it is still worth seriously considering the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas about natural and divine causation. As I mentioned in the Introduction to this volume, these four DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-2

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criteria will turn out to be: 1) God’s omnipotence; 2) God’s involvement in the workings of nature; 3) the autonomy of nature; and 4) the success of natural reason and science. I prefer not to expand on how to understand these criteria at this point, since they will reveal themselves during my archaeological expedition through this brief metaphysical history. Still, it might be worth noting that it would be unwise to attempt a definition of these four desiderata, since, while they have all played a major role in discussions on providence and divine action, even if they keep a shared core, they have also changed. In the end, my argument will hold that regardless of how thinkers have understood these tenets, they have always had to deal with them in their models of providential divine action. I will, thus, start with an analysis of the medieval Islamic and Christian debates, presenting the thought of scholars such as al-Ghaza-lı-, Ibn-Rushd, Aquinas, and Avicebron. This debate was framed under the philosophical insights of Aristotle and whether they were sufficient to explain the nature of the relationship between the divine and the world. I will move later to early modernity and the thought of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and René Descartes. Models of providential divine action in this episode are derived from the new ways of conceiving how God interacted with the created universe by means of the laws of nature – a notion alien to medieval thinkers. Finally, I will look into how early twentieth-century discussions over whether the universe behaves deterministically or indeterministically have shaped theological conceptions on how God would act (or not) providentially in the world.

A The Middle Ages My brief historical sketch of the metaphysics of providence starts in the twelfth century, when Persian scholar al-Ghaza-lı- (d. 1111) attempted to show, in his famous book The Incoherence of the Philosophers, that philosophers who adopted Greek thought (in the form of the Aristotelian philosophy), and in particular his Persian predecessor Ibn-Sı-na- (980–1037), were unsuccessful in achieving a coherent theory of divine action. Before al-Ghaza-lı-, from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, there was a strong defence of the Islamic religious ideas held by Mutakallimu-n theologians (of which al-Ghaza-lı- was the greatest proponent), within which Kalam theology was the main stream of thought.1 The basic idea of Kalam theology was that the unchangeable nature of God’s omnipotence and providence meant that there could be no active power in nature, and that, instead, God acted in every apparently natural event, a doctrine that would in later centuries would be known as occasionalism.2 On the contrary, philosophers inspired by the thought of Aristotle argued for the existence of real natural powers and causes. According to Islam, the universe was created out of nothing and had a beginning in time. Kalam theologians considered that God re-creates the universe at every instant, hence regarding creation as an atomic event, by which God puts the universe into existence at every single moment of time, allowing it to be rational and

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intelligible by keeping the regularities that are today expressed in what we call the laws of nature (a notion that came to existence during early modernity, as I will show below). Kalam theologians assumed that the properties of an existent being in the natural universe changed constantly, in a continual process of re-creation, understood as a continuous creation of matter and powers within the universe, as if in every moment the universe is in the process of becoming. In fact, for Kalam theologians, the universe is restless and is continuously developing; nothing in the universe would stay two moments in a stationary state. Together with this idea, following their atomistic perspective on nature and creation, Kalam theologians believed that ‘no being, in and of itself, by virtue of the inherent principles of its being, is oriented towards a becoming other than it is’, and that ‘all things are no more than they are and their being is complete and fulfilled at any given moment of their existence’. Hence, ‘no being has in itself any intrinsic “potentiality” to change’; and ‘its becoming other is entirely dependent upon and resides in the potentiality of an exterior agent who is capable of effecting the change’, i.e., God.3 In addition, they considered that the efficient cause, the effect of which is the real material existence of the thing, must be the cause of the totality of its being, in terms of being something existent and having the reality that it has. Hence, the act of causality at the moment of the realisation of the act is itself grounded in God’s creative causality: the single act that produces the existence of the thing is the cause of the totality of its reality.4 This view, adding to the atomistic and constantly evolving universe framework, revealed to Kalam theologians that all change involves a creation, since whatever change is effected represents the realisation of a new being entirely.5 Ultimately, Kalam theologians proposed this [the theory of constant re-creation] in order to preserve the involvement of God in the world and to perform his essential role, which they saw as necessary (but not always sufficient) to sustain the existence of the world.6 Hence, in order to accept the religious premises of the constant involvement of God in the universe, they felt the need to diminish the activities of nature to the point of denying them.7 Kalam theologians, then, admitted that there was no deterministic causality in nature; in fact, there was no natural causality at all, which left a completely indeterminate world, though ordered by the will of God, which was immutable. As Oxford-based philosopher William Carroll suggests, divine sovereignty over worldly events was clearly at stake.8 Were nature to act by itself, there would be no place at all for God to act. Given the theological premises that stated that God is omnipotent and that He governed and guided the universe, Kalam theologians needed to admit that nature had no causal powers at all. Hence, it was God who acted, creating, constantly and directly, every event without any intermediary agents.9 It was only God and God alone, by his own command and power, who was the direct cause of all events in the world.10

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On the other side of the Islamic philosophical–theological discussion on divine action in nature, there are those whom Kalam theologians called the ‘philosophers’. Amongst these, one of the most important was Andalusian polymath Ibn-Rushd (1126–1198), usually called Averroes in Latin medieval universities. Averroes’ main idea on this matter was, following Aristotle, that nature acted autonomously, an assertion in direct opposition to Kalam theology, for whom an autonomous nature meant a diminishing of God’s omnipotence. In fact, Averroes’ position begins by rejecting the very idea of creatio ex nihilo, for the reason that if this doctrine were true, then anything could, he thought, come from anything, and there would be no congruity between effects and causes.11 For Averroes, the doctrine of creation out of nothing contradicted the existence of a true natural causality in the universe, so if it were true, then no knowledge of the natural world would be possible at all.12 Averroes rejected the denial of natural causes with several arguments.13 First, for example, he said that if there were no natural causes, there would be no natural knowledge, given that there would be no knowledge of natural causes. Second, if the existence of worldly causes is denied, it is impossible to prove the existence of the cause that caused the existence of the universe, given that it would be impossible to know the very fact of causality at all. If there is no causality in the world, he argued, there is no possible way to reach the invisible agent who causes it, i.e., God. This debate on God’s involvement in worldly affairs against the causality of natural powers came to Aquinas’ attention in thirteenth-century Europe through the works of Sephardic Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1138–1204) and the Latin translations of Averroes’ Commentaries on Aristotle. Aquinas summarises these debates explaining that for Kalam theologians, of whom he heard through Maimonides, natural forms (that is, in good Aristotelian fashion, formal causes that make things to be what they are) are considered to be accidental forms, i.e., forms that make things to have attributes that do not pertain to their own by nature, rather than substantial forms, i.e., forms that make things to be what they are by nature. Now, given that accidents cannot pass into other things, it is impossible for a natural thing to introduce a new form into another thing, i.e., natural things cannot be the cause of other things, concluding that God creates forms each time. In arguing against this position, Aquinas holds that Kalam theologians misunderstood the difference between primary and secondary causality (discussed in length in the fourth chapter). Aquinas offers three arguments to support his view. He affirms that holding God to be the only one who acts in nature goes against the senses, reason, and the goodness of God.14 First, it goes against the nature of sensation because, for Aquinas, the senses do not perceive unless the sensible object acts upon them. If the sensible object would not act, but were God to act, then it would follow that a man does not feel the fire’s heat, given that the fire does not cause anything upon the sensorial organ. In fact, if the heat is produced in the organ by another efficient cause (and not the fire), although the touch would sense the heat, it would not sense the heat of the fire

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but of God’s, nor would it perceive that the fire is hot, and yet the sense judges this to be the case. Second, this position goes against reason because natural things and their causal powers would seem to be purposeless; thus, if fire does not actually heat, but it is God doing the heating, then the fire’s heat would be pointless. Third, this position is opposed to our recognition of God’s goodness, i.e., the very power to act, communicated to creatures, is an indication of God’s goodness, which we would not be able to recognise in nature if causality was not present in it. Thus, for Aquinas, God does not only communicate existence to things when creating, but also the power to act, making things to His likeness in their being real causes. Finally, Aquinas explains that natural forms are not to be considered accidental, since if this was the case, there would be no things at all, simply because from substantial forms things obtain their substantiality, their being something.15 Aquinas also engaged with Iberian Peninsula-based Jewish Neo-Platonic philosopher Solomon Ibn-Gabirol (1021/2–1057/8), usually called Avicebron in the Latin West. Important to our purposes is his doctrine of the passivity of bodies, which leads to the affirmation of their inactivity and the subsequent affirmation of ubiquitous divine action.16 Analysing Avicebron’s arguments has the complication that contemporary scholarship has shown that Aquinas was perhaps a bit too severe against him on this particular matter.17 Still, since my goal is to show how the debate developed in the Middle Ages, I will present Aquinas’ understanding of Avicebron and his argument against him. For Avicebron, Aquinas understands, material substances do not act, but a spiritual force penetrates through all material substances acting in and through them. The argument adds that the purer and subtler a substance is, the more it becomes penetrable by a spiritual force, and so the more active it appears. There are three arguments that Aquinas recognises in Avicebron for holding this position.18 First, since every natural cause, apart from the first creative cause, requires a subject that is inferior to it, and since there is no substance inferior to the body, the body is not active at all. Second, since every form in the body is added to quantity, but quantity prevents action and movement – the cause being that the increase of the quantity of a body causes the increase of the weight of the body and the slowing down of its movement – the body is not active, but passive only. Third, the bodily substance is furthest away from the first agent, so active virtue does not reach the bodily substance. Just as God is the only agent, the bodily substance, which is the lowest in the genus of beings, is passive only. So, it only follows according to Avicebron that the bodily substance is not active, and that the virtue of the spiritual substance, passing through the bodies, causes their actions. Aquinas presents three counterarguments.19 He begins explaining that Avicebron is wrong in considering the bodily substance as numerically one and the same, differing only accidentally and not substantially. Had he seen that bodies were multiple, he would have noticed that one is superior to the other and closer to the first agent, and so there would be bodies that are not the least body, i.e., the furthest from the first agent, and so one could act on the other. In addition, Aquinas suggests that even at the lower extremity of beings, bodies do act causally,

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since they are still compounds of matter and form (as I will explain in Chapter 3), and from their form they act. Finally, Aquinas suggests that Avicebron confuses the relative limitation imposed on the action of form by quantity, with the pure and simple suppression of this action. He does not perceive that if individualising matter limits the form, the latter does not, however, lose its causal power absolutely. Aquinas concludes his analysis of Avicebron and Kalam theologians affirming that God is active in every natural action without suppressing the action of created things, thus opening the path to showing how he understands this divine action in nature (described in Chapter 4). The debate was certainly much broader during the Middle Ages than what has been sketched out here. There are several other authors in the Latin Middle Ages who took part in it such as those called the Latin-Averroists, who are recorded to have said that ‘God cannot produce the effect of a secondary cause without that secondary cause’,20 or those closer to the Kalam position such as Nicholas of Autrecourt, who in trying to preserve God’s power admitted that God never acts through secondary causes.21 My outline is simply a brief route through the arguments that start to show the desiderata involved in all debates: God’s causal power versus natural causal powers and the success of human investigation of nature. Aquinas attempts to solve the conundrum with a middle way between the two extremes affirming both natural causation and divine action in the universe through secondary causes, founding the argument on a very precise analysis of the notion of creation out of nothing, which I will present in detail in Chapter 4. The main points in the arguments so far explained, I believe, are similar to those of today. Given the fact that we appear to discover causes in nature, it seems that there are two possible paths to follow: either we accept that nature has its own rules, that these are not possibly broken, and that any action from outside nature is rejected; or we find that natural things have no actions allowing for only God to act directly within the created universe. As I said before, today’s debate relies on similar arguments, but with one final twist: there are some instances where the natural order is, somehow, more flexible, seemingly offering a solution for the dilemma of providential divine action.

B Early modern laws of nature The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the rise of what is commonly called the scientific method, devised at the hands of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), and René Descartes (1596–1650). They were responsible for the development of the beginnings of the experimental and mathematical methods in science and the introduction of mechanical models to explain natural phenomena, rejecting the Aristotelian worldview of their predecessors. These developments created the environment for a new way of conceiving God’s providential involvement in the created order, making it important to revise them by some length to understand this new theological conception.

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In an extremely brief oversimplification, Bacon helped by introducing experimentation into early modern natural philosophy with his method of induction. Descartes strongly appealed to mathematical models of deductive organisation and proof for his natural philosophy. Common to them all, but most conspicuous in Descartes, was a corpuscular matter theory. Since the material world is nothing but extension, shape and motion, matter, divided in corpuscles, is intrinsically inert, pushed about by collisions. Thus, everything in nature is explained mechanically. Finally, Galileo’s great methodological achievement was to combine mathematics with experiment, which he justified by taking matter to be unchangeable. Some decades later, Isaac Newton (1643–1727) introduced far greater rigour and sophistication into the Galilean mathematical and experimental method. To give way for these developments in natural philosophy, the conception of the four Aristotelian causes (material, formal, efficient, and final, to be explained in Chapter 3), omnipresent for almost every philosophy of nature during the Middle Ages, was swiftly left aside, to be eventually abandoned. Consistent with his mechanical philosophy, Descartes initiated the programme of reducing formal and final causes to efficient causes. For Leibniz and Kant, the term ‘cause’ was practically equated with force. The causal explanations of physical astronomy were all reducible to force concepts, and thus to efficient causality. The use of mechanical causes to replace the ‘occult qualities’ of medieval thinking emerged gradually through the successive contributions of the founders of classical physics. Thus, the modern history of the natural sciences results in a mechanistic rejection of the Aristotelian way of knowing nature. In particular, the Aristotelian notion of form was considered absurd. This notion was regarded as a too complex and obscure technical term of the old language of the medieval philosophical schools. Thus, Descartes dismissively remarked that forms are ‘a philosophical being unknown to me’. Along the same line, Henry Oldenburg expressed his joy to Robert Boyle for having ‘driven out that drivel of forms’ which ‘has stopped the progress of true philosophy, and made the best of scholars not more knowing as to the nature of particular bodies than the meanest ploughmen’.22 Rapidly, the term ‘form’ or ‘substantial form’ became a synonym of the obscurity and obsoleteness of scholastic medieval philosophy. Thus, Locke, for example, spoke of ‘fruitless enquiries after substantial forms, wholly unintelligible, and whereof we have scarce so much as any obscure, or confused conception in general’.23 By the end of the nineteenth century Aristotelian causal categories had fallen into disuse among scholars. This was a time as Margenau puts it when natural science was in a state of presumed finality and effective stagnancy, when physicists believed they knew the laws of nature in their essential form and were left only with the tedious task of determining the constants of nature with greater accuracy, when scientific philosophers of Häckel’s camp proclaimed the doctrine of materialism as the last unalterable gospel.24

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Philosopher and historian Robert Pasnau explains this open dismissal of Aristotelian philosophy by noting a historical shift in the notion of form, or formal cause, in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which produced a change in the theory of form. According to Pasnau, there are two interpretations of what an Aristotelian form is: 1) a concrete notion, which expresses a form as being something very much like an internal efficient cause, sustaining and regulating the existence of that which the efficient cause originally produced;25 and 2) an abstract or more metaphysical notion, which expresses the unifying principle of a substance.26 Pasnau suggests that authors of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as English philosopher William of Ockham (1285–1347) and Spanish philosopher Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), understood forms as causal agents that would figure centrally in any complete philosophical account of the natural world. Hence, by the time of the Renaissance, forms had come to be conceived in wholly concrete terms as internal efficient causes. This is the notion of formal cause that made its way into seventeenth-century discussions on philosophy of nature and providential divine action. As a few examples, Pasnau mentions Descartes, Boyle, and Hume. Descartes affirms that forms ‘were introduced by philosophers solely so that through them an account could be given of the proper actions of natural things, of which this form was the principle and base’. Boyle attacks the view that there is ‘in every natural body such a thing as a substantial form, from which all its properties and qualities immediately flow’. And Hume would report that the Peripatetic philosophy assigns to each of these species of objects a distinct substantial form, which it supposes to be the source of all those different qualities they possess, and to be a new foundation of simplicity and identity to each particular species.27 Hence, once the doctrine of form lost its proper place as an alternative to material and efficient modes of causality, it became easy to ignore the metaphysical features of the Aristotelian scheme. Pasnau argues that forms as such were never refuted because the most prominent early modern critics ‘never took the theory seriously enough to mount a vigorous refutation against it’.28 Thus, two criticisms were floating in the air during early modern philosophy of nature against Aristotelian forms (and also of final causality): 1) the obscurity of the terms referring to the forms, such as animalitas or humanitas; and 2) forms were treated as substances in themselves, having a quasi-efficient power of causality. Pasnau remarks that neither of these were fair criticisms. First, many scholastic authors stressed that they had no grasp of what the forms actually were, and that the use of these terms is not to give a detailed physical account of the natural world, because basically we do not know to what they refer. Clearly this comes together with the response to the second criticism. Forms do not take the place of efficient causes in the physical description of the world, because they are not substances, which work as efficient causes.29 Some of Descartes’ and Boyle’s statements exemplify this misunderstanding. Descartes notes that

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Boyle criticises forms on the grounds that they are ‘imagined to be a very substance’.30 This was, as Pasnau states, the widespread misconception of Aristotelian forms among non-academic philosophers in the seventeenth century. Not being aware of this misunderstanding, early modern natural philosophers embarked on the enterprise of giving an account of natural effects in purely mechanistic terms, without appealing to formal or final (Aristotelian) causes.31 Thus, early modern authors renounced Aristotle’s metaphysics, abandoning in particular the Aristotelian notion of forms. The problem started with the twofold understanding in the late Middle Ages of this notion, and it spread through early modern thought until the twentieth century. Any reference to formal causes became a sort of material-efficient type of causality that, because of the new corpuscular materialistic conception of nature of the seventeenth century, was simply dismissed from the scientific and philosophical discussions, to be replaced by mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena. Some phenomena, such as gravity, were difficult to explain in mechanical terms, and indeed Newton eventually gave up on his attempt. Nonetheless, mechanical explanation remained the ideal, together with the corpuscular conception of nature. Typically, the corpuscular conception of nature entailed that there are insensibly small portions of matter that are indivisible as far as natural processes are concerned: atoms. Each atom has an unchanging shape and size and a changeable degree of motion or rest. All properties of the material world are reducible to and arise as a consequence of the arrangements and motions of the underlying atoms.32 In particular, properties possessed by macroscopic objects, both those detectable directly by the senses, such as colour and taste, and those involved in the interaction of bodies with each other, such as elasticity and degree of heat, are to be explained in terms of the properties of atoms. These properties (shape, size, and motion), together with their impenetrability, are the primary properties in terms of which the properties of the complex bodies that they compose, the secondary ones, are to be explained. This new perspective of nature allowed seventeenth-century natural philosophers to explain the works of nature in the language of mathematics, not used in Aristotelian philosophy but for describing movements without any expectation of explanation. In particular, the new atomic mechanical philosophy was useful, in the thought of many of these early modern authors, to bring God back to nature in the way that God deserved, that is, in a way in which God was really in charge of the natural world. To their eyes, Aristotle’s world (adopted by most medieval scholars), regarded nature to be just too powerful: so powerful that, even if it was strongly argued by many medieval scholars (Aquinas among them) that God was undoubtedly involved in the works of nature through the works of

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secondary causes, on second thought it seemed that this account did not leave much space for God: a powerful nature, i.e., a natural world filled with causal powers of its own, would prevent not only God’s involvement but most importantly God’s dominion over nature. For seventeenth-century philosophers, the more causal powers nature had, the less causal power and dominion God had over nature. An atomic and mechanical philosophy, on the contrary, built on the grounds of Greek atomism, provided the perfect situation to put God back in the rightful place where He belonged. Atoms, lacking formal causes – source of the causal powers of nature in an Aristotelian world – had no powers of their own. They only had movement in the void. These atoms, however, behaved regularly: their movements were describable with precise mathematical formulations, which Descartes called laws of nature, laws that were imposed on nature by the most perfect of lawgivers: God. There are plenty of accounts of how the notion of laws of nature arose and developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but what all seem to have in common is their reference to the divine. If there were laws of nature, then there was a divine lawgiver in charge of the created order.33 In an Aristotelian world, on the contrary, full of natural powers and causes, the very meaning of ‘laws of nature’ ruling the behaviour of things was simply meaningless, and, hence, this notion was not part of the philosophical system. Consider how Aquinas uses the term ‘laws of nature’ when discussing the Eucharist in one of the last things he wrote in his Summa Theologiae (which is, as it happens, one of the few times he used the term applied to the behaviour of nature and not of human beings): ‘every change made according to the laws of nature is a formal change’,34 he said, implying an identification with formal causation. For Aquinas, the notion of laws of nature, if at all useful in his metaphysical system, was nothing but a metaphor useful to refer to formal causality; a metaphor brought from the realm of human behaviour, which is ruled by the natural law.35 Thus, in the early modern lawful atomistic world, God was in charge. So much so, that many exalted the power and will of God in, perhaps, excessive ways. Samuel Clarke, an English theologian who adopted Newton’s views on nature, claimed in his Boyle Lecture of 1705, titled The Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, that ‘the course of nature cannot possibly be anything else, but the arbitrary will and pleasure of God exerting itself and acting upon matter continually’.36 Descartes was so confident of this new mechanical natural philosophy, which essentially included the notion of the ‘laws of nature’ as God-given, mathematically expressed laws which ruled and explained the behaviour of natural things,37 that he allowed himself to proclaim in a letter to a priest in La Flèche from 22 February 1638: I do not fear that anything against the faith would be found in [my physics and metaphysics]; for on the contrary I dare boast that faith has never been so strongly supported by human reasons as it may be if one follows my principles….38

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In another letter to his friend Marin Mersenne from 31 March 1641 he reaffirmed this idea: I think that the traditional [Aristotelian] philosophy would have been rejected as repugnant to faith had mine been known first… I am confident that I can show that there is no opinion in their philosophy that accords as well with faith as mine.39 This natural philosophy was widely adopted across Europe and only a few decades later French Jesuit philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) famously supported what is known today as the doctrine of occasionalism, highlighting the active role of God in every natural event. Italian philosopher Andrea Sangiacomo stresses the significance of this doctrine for the seventeenth century: The occasionalist position was discussed and rejected by all the main scholastic authors, from Aquinas to Suárez, and only a few medieval thinkers explicitly embraced it. Things suddenly changed in the second half of the seventeenth century. Not only did several of Descartes’s disciples (Geulincx, La Forge, Cordemoy, Malebranche) explicitly brand occasionalism as the true output of Cartesianism, but all the most influential authors of the period (Locke, Boyle, Leibniz, Clarke, Bayle, Hume) considered occasionalism an option deserving serious consideration.40 It was, then, through the assumption of this new lawful, atomic, mechanical, and mathematical view of nature, that God was back in control of his creation. The result was, as the Kalam theologians had believed more than 500 years earlier, a natural world devoid of powers and an emphasis of the divine power to rule over worldly events. Once again, in an echo of the debates during the Middle Ages, we find a contraposition of God’s causal power against natural created causal powers. For early modern thinkers, if God is to rule providentially over creation, the natural world should be devoid of causal powers, a situation that happens with the adoption of an atomic and mechanical natural philosophy. Still, against what Averroes would have argued, this view of the relationship between God’s and creation’s causal powers allowed for the discovery not only of the workings of nature, but most importantly, of the Will and Power of the Divine Creator. The third episode I will present happens during the twentieth century and revolves around discussions on whether the universe behaves deterministically or indeterministically. As I will show, similar oppositions will be apparent between natural and divine causation.

C Determinism and indeterminism The twentieth century tied the debate over God’s providence and action in the world to the scientific worldview coming from the nineteenth century. Contrary

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to what happened back in the seventeenth century, nature had come to be seen as a clockwork machine, subject to all sorts of mathematical explanations, deductions, and predictions, that called for no divine ruler or intervener. Instead, nature was its own ruler, and the divine causal power was left, if at any point in space and time, for the first moment of creation. Thus, some argued that given that the universe behaved deterministically, God was not able to act in it after his act of creation out of nothing. As Rudolf Bultmann put it in the 1960s: ‘When worldly happenings are viewed as a closed series… there is certainly no room for any act of God’.41 Bultmann is ultimately affirming that divine action cannot be considered as a causal link between natural causes, because there is no space for such link. Following in Bultmann’s steps, Frank Dilley affirms that one might simply accept the existence of miracles as told in the Scriptures in face of modern science (as orthodox theologians would) or one could reduce the activity of God to a universal creative action (as liberal theologians would).42 Alister McGrath explains the importance of current questions on divine action in the face of the inadequacy of the theology of the 1960s to engage with this theme, referring to Ian T. Ramsey (1915–1972) who claimed that this inadequacy would ‘drift into a theological atheism’.43 It is, thus, of great importance to understand the rise of this deterministic worldview associated with science, to see how God was left at the sidelines of the universe, and why theologians of the late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries attempted to find ways to re-introduce God into the development of natural and human history. Even though the growth of experimental sciences in the seventeenth century was remarkable, the experimental basis for atomism remained extremely weak and none of its various versions can be said to have productively informed experiments or to have been confirmed by them.44 Thus, to a certain extent, the divine rule over atoms via the laws of nature was what gave weight to this particular view of nature. This situation, however, changed through the eighteenth century and, especially, in the nineteenth century with the arrival of Daltonian chemical atomism, which provided a strong link between a theory of atomism and scientific experimentations. The key assumption of this chemical atomism is that chemical elements are composed of ultimate particles or atoms. The least part of a chemical compound is assumed to be made up of characteristic combinations of atoms of the component elements. According to Dalton, all atoms of a given substance, whether simple or compound, are alike in shape, weight, and any other particular. This conception of matter, fully developed in the nineteenth century, coupled with the mechanistic view of nature, led philosophers and scientists to regard causality in purely deterministic terms. It is simple to find examples of this determinism in the writings of several modern nineteenth-century scientists and thinkers, such as Claude Bernard (1813–1878), Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), or Edmond Goblot (1858–1935). Bernard believed that there is an absolute determinism in all the sciences… [and that] it is necessary to admit as an experimental axiom that among living beings and the brute bodies the conditions of existence of every phenomena are absolutely determined… Denying this proposition is nothing less than the denial of science itself.45

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Similarly, Poincaré claimed that ‘science is deterministic, she is so a priori; she postulates determinism because without it she could not exist… science, with its mistakes and successes, is deterministic; everywhere she penetrates, she introduces determinism’;46 and in a strong Laplacean statement he affirms that we are absolute determinists… every phenomena, however small it is, has a cause, and an infinitely powerful mind, infinitely well informed about the laws of nature, would be able to have seen them since the beginning of time. If such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him, we would always loose.47 It is probably Goblot who, in the early years of the twentieth century, closed all paths to contingent and undetermined events claiming that science does not allow us to believe in the possibility of contingency. Without determinism there is no science. It is true that determinism is not more than a postulate, but the existence of science confirms it…. Faith on determinism is for the scientist a kind of professional duty.48 This deterministic view of nature is, however, best exemplified in the writings of the eighteenth-century mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), who wrote in his Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités we should conceive the current state of the universe as the effect of its previous state, and as the cause of the one to follow. An intelligence that for a given instant would know all the forces of nature and the respective situation of the things that compose it, if in fact she was sufficiently vast as to subject this data to analysis, she would embrace in one formula the movements of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the swiftest of atoms: nothing would be uncertain for her, and the future as the past would present to her eyes.49 About twenty years before, Laplace explicitly affirms that this deterministic idea is self-evident, and hence he finds no necessity in proving it: ‘The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment’.50 For Laplace this universal determinism is based on the principle of sufficient reason. Anything that comes to be needs to have a cause before it; hence, the present state of the universe is an effect of the preceding one and it is the cause of the following one. This view of nature is that which guided scientists in their research through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and a good part of the twentieth centuries, and what informed the debates about divine providential action in the world. As Goblot expresses it, without determinism there would be no science. And, as William Thompson Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) would hold, this deterministic worldview implied a mechanical perspective on the world. In his Baltimore Lectures on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light of 1904, he claimed that I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through, I cannot understand.

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This mechanical determinism pictured the universe in geometric representations, where the invariability of laws, consistency, and necessity ruled. The qualitative variety and the intrinsic contingency of the world of experience were left aside, and the factual cases of irreducible accidental causes were interpreted as a mere epistemological indeterminism, which could be reduced to a rigorous and absolute underlying determinism.51 In the midst of this worldview, so strong by the early twentieth century, one must place Bultmann’s statements. As Simon Kopf has recently put it, ‘the natural world is for Bultmann a self-subsistent unity immune from the interference of supernatural powers’, in which ‘there remains no room for God’s working in worldly events’.52 Frank Dilley somewhat set the challenge for today’s theologians claiming that ‘if one is to speak of a God who acts he must be prepared to offer some description of the mechanics of Divine action’,53 concluding some pages later that it is necessary to show ‘in science itself how it is that God acts’.54 Robert Russell today seems to take on this same view, assuming that any special divine action, within a Newtonian worldview, was almost completely banned, because if the physical world is a causally closed, deterministic system, any action of a divine free agent must entail a violation of natural processes.55 Still, as Russell also points out, theoretical problems appeared almost unexpectedly in the heart of this deterministic science, when Max Planck suggested the foundations of quantum physics, a theory that would later be considered as one the most important developments in human thought. Planck’s introduction of the quantum of action opened the path to interpreting physical reality in indeterministic terms, since quantum systems did not develop deterministically at all times: as the collapse of the wave-function – an essential feature of quantum theory – shows, there are quantum events that cannot be accounted for with the strict determinism that was at the base of nineteenth-century science and which prevented theologians through the twentieth century from speaking of God’s involvement in worldly affairs. This new openness in the natural world now offered theologians and philosophers of religion the place they were looking for to re-instate God’s providential action in the created universe. I will not go into explaining the basics of quantum theory here.56 Still, I want to stress the importance it had for reconsidering the view of nature by briefly commenting on Werner Heisenberg’s take on it. Almost in despair, Heisenberg expressed in 1975 that ‘good science is being unconsciously discarded because of bad philosophy’.57 These two final words referred to the mechanical deterministic philosophy at the foundations of nineteenth-century science from which he was attempting to distinguish his own view. For Heisenberg, classical physics works within a framework of what he calls a ‘metaphysical realism’, which he identified with the materialistic ontology of the Cartesian distinction between the res cogitans and the res extensa.58 For this ontology, only what is actual is real. Reality is itself objectively and fully determinate, independently of any kind of observation or measure of its space

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and time magnitudes. Thus, absolutely determinate matter is the only kind of reality: the Cartesian res extensa. Standing on the developments of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg rejected this ontology, arguing that it only helped restrict the notion of causality until it was completely identified with that of determinism: the concept of causality became narrowed down, finally, to refer to our belief that events in nature are uniquely determined, or, in other words, that an exact knowledge of nature or some part of it would suffice, at least in principle, to determine the future.59 Opposing this ontology, Heisenberg suggested returning to the Aristotelian notions of act and potency to understand fully what was going on in quantum events. He described this new ontology in terms of act and potency, of prime matter and form, and of the internal tendencies of matter itself.60 The end of the deterministic era of science was the opportunity that theologians were expecting to explain God’s providential activity in nature. Still, this opportunity came about simply because God’s causality is seen as opposing natural causality: the determining of an event must be caused either by the power of God or by the power of nature. This is the view to which, ultimately, Bultmann, Dilley, and Russell hold on, presenting again, in this episode, the necessity to choose between one or the other. What is more, in line with Dilley’s words, science is at stake if we are to hold on to a view of God’s involvement in the world.

D Metaphysical constants as desiderata As I stated in the introductory section to this chapter, I have presented this brief historical narrative to dig out some metaphysical constants or principles that I see guide the three episodes revisited in relation to divine providential action. These constants work as metaphysical options that theologians and philosophers across time have had to deal with and choose over one another, in order to make sense of what they thought about the matter. Most discussions surrounding the issues of divine providential action within the created order have attempted to embrace most of at least four metaphysical constants, which are always at stake in these debates. Ultimately, each position throughout history, in each of the episodes I describe in this chapter, opted for one or more of these principles, which basically are the following: 1) God’s omnipotence, roughly understood as God having the power to bring about any non-contradictory state of affairs in the universe; 2) God’s providential action in the created universe, meaning that God not only creates and sustains the universe, but that God also acts in objective and direct ways in nature to guide it to its fulfilment; 3) the autonomy of nature in its activity, in the sense that, for what we can know empirically, there is no reason to admit that nature needs anything extra-nature to act in an orderly and regular manner; and 4) the success of natural reason and science, meaning that reason and science (broadly

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understood as an empirical study of nature) have a rightful access to nature and its activities, and can describe these in some rational and naturalistic way, without deferring to anything extra-nature. God’s omnipotence was held against natural powers for some medieval Islamic thinkers as well as in fourteenth- and seventeenth-century occasionalism. They saw that affirming nature’s causal powers diminished God’s potency, an untenable theological claim. On the contrary, nature’s autonomous agency was emphasised in opposition to God’s power in Averroes’ ideas and the twentieth-century debate: God cannot act where there are natural causes acting; or to put it in other terms, if God is to act, there can be no other causes acting. The denial of natural causal powers intrinsic to natural things during the seventeenth century due to the adoption of atomism and the rejection of Aristotelian forms, led to the acceptance of God’s direct and continuous action in the universe, enforcing, ironically perhaps, the success of the mechanical natural philosophy of the fathers of what was to be known as natural science. The theological situation of the twentieth century conforms to the opposite side of the story, assuming the success of the natural sciences to mean that God’s providential action in nature needed to be denied. For the most part of these discussions, the key question was whether to affirm God’s omnipotence and providence together with denying the causal powers of nature, or vice-versa, i.e., to affirm natural causal powers, diminishing the power of God, and holding the success of reason in studying nature. William Carroll explains this situation thus: ‘the fear is that any causality one attributes to God must, accordingly, be denied to creatures’.61 The key question in this perspective is, then, to which constant one is willing to hold and which constant one is prepared to let go. As I have tried to show, there are no ‘essential couples’: one may hold to the principles of God’s omnipotence and providence together with that of the success of the natural sciences, as it happened during the early modern mechanical natural philosophy; or one may assume the success of the natural sciences while rejecting the divine providential activity in the created world (putting, thus, into question God’s omnipotence), as it happened for theologians during the twentieth century. Similarly, I find that Aquinas’ perspective presents a plausible way of holding these four principles together, by affirming God’s radical omnipotence – implied by his doctrine of creation out of nothing – which results in holding, through his doctrine of primary and secondary causation, that natural causes are indeed causes in their own right, which one can know by the light of human reason (be it by the methods of Aquinas’ philosophy of nature, those of the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, or those of contemporary natural science). I shall stop at this point and move my attention to an in-depth analysis of contemporary models of providential divine action. As mentioned earlier, I will look in particular at Robert J. Russell’s quantum divine action model, with continuous references to John Polkinghorne’s and Jeffrey Koperski’s models. My analysis will show that while dealing with the four criteria set in this chapter, even if contemporary models hope to hold to them all, they ultimately fail to do so. The stress on the need to find an opening in the causal nexus of

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the natural world as to allow for God to act in that space, betrays their goals. These models, I will argue in detail, end up opposing God’s causal powers to nature’s, seriously questioning God’s omnipotence and providence. I shall later on present in two extensive chapters my take on Aquinas’ metaphysics of natural and divine causation, in order to move by the end into how I think Aquinas’ metaphysics of causation can help us understand God’s continuous involvement in the development of the universe and everything in it.

Notes 1 For a more detailed and nuanced analysis of Kalam theology, see Frank, Richard, ‘Remarks on the Early Development of the Kalam’, in Dimitri Gutas (ed.), Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 315–329; and Alusi, Husam Muhyi al-Din, The Problem of Creation in Islamic thought, Qur’an, Hadîth, Commentaries, and Kalâm (Cambridge: CUP, 1965). Questions on divine action and providence in relation to modern science have gained new momentum in contemporary Islamic philosophy. See, for instance, some recently published work engaging with the Western contemporary debate: Ansarian, Tahameh and Narges Nazarnejad, ‘An Investigation into Nancy Murphy’s View on Divine Action in the World’, Jostarha-Ye Falsafe-Ye Din (Philosophy of Religion Studies) 6:1 (2017), 65–88; Zare, Roozbeh, ‘Divine Action in Nature; Describing and Analyzing John Polkinghorne’s View Point’, Jostarha-Ye Falsafe-Ye Din (Philosophy of Religion Studies) 6:2 (2018), 25–47; Ejtehadian, Hossein and Rasool Rasoolipoor, ‘Divine Action and Bohmian Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’, Jostarha-Ye Falsafe-Ye Din (Philosophy of Religion Studies) 7:2 (2018), 55–80; Ejtehadian, Hossein, ‘Integrating Bohmian and Sadra’s Metaphysic to Explain Divine Action’, Jostarha-Ye Falsafe-Ye Din (Philosophy of Religion Studies) 8:1 (2019), 63–81; and Darvish Aghajani, Javad and Seyed Hassan Hosseini, ‘Facing the Problem of the Divine Action in Nature: The Superiority of Emergentism over the Thomistic and Quantum Perspectives’, Journal of Philosophy of Religion Research (Nameh-I- Hikmat) (2020), 1–26. Unfortunately, my lack of training in Farsi prevents me from engaging with this new literature, a task that will remain open for future intellectual adventures. 2 See Sangiacomo, Andrea, ‘Divine Action and God’s Immutability: A Historical Case Study on How to Resist Occasionalism’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 115–135. 3 Frank, Richard, ‘The Structure of Created Causality According to al-Ash’ari’, in Dimitri Gutas (ed.), Early Islamic Theology: The Mu’tazilites and al-Ash’ari (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 13–75, 20. 4 Frank, ‘Remarks’, 328. 5 Frank, ‘The Structure’, 22. 6 Altaie, Basil, ‘The Understanding of Creation in Islamic Thought’, in Neil Spurway (ed.), Creation and the Abrahamic Faiths (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 81–90, 87. 7 See Walzer, R., ‘Early Islamic Philosophers’, in A.H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 1970), 648: ‘Mutakallimu-n followed a methodology taking the truth of Islam as their starting point’. 8 Carroll, William, La Creación y las Ciencias Naturales. Actualidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino (Santiago de Chile: Universidad Católica de Chile, 2003), 53. 9 Wolfson, H., The Philosophy of the Kala-m (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 518. 10 Wolfson, The Philosophy, 519.

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11 Carroll, La Creación, 54. 12 Baldner, Steven and William Carroll, ‘Introduction’, in Baldner and Carroll (trans.), Aquinas on Creation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997), 18. 13 For a full list of these arguments see Wolfson, The Philosophy, 553ss. For a thorough account of the debate between Kalam theologians and Averroes, see Davidson, Herbert, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 1987). 14 See te Velde, Rudi, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 162. 15 In S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5, Aquinas offers further reasons for rejecting this position, on which I will expand in Chapter 4: 1) it would deprive creation of its order in causes and effects, which, in the end, would go against God’s power, and 2) if creatures did not have any power, their own existence would be meaningless. 16 See Avicebron, Fons Vitae II, 10. 17 See Brunner, Fernand, Platonisme et Aristotélisme: La Critique d’Ibn Gabirol par Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1965), 81. 18 Aquinas also deals with this matter in SCG III, 69, and S.Th. I, q. 115, q. 1, co. and ad 2. 19 See Brunner, Platonisme, 78–84. 20 See the 1270 Condemnation by Bishop Tempier of Paris. 21 Wolfson, The Philosophy, 593ss. 22 For all these expressions, see Pasnau, Robert, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, The Philosophical Review 13:1 (2004), 31–88, 31. 23 Quoted in Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 46. 24 Margenau, Henry, Thomas and the Physics of 1958: A Confrontation (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1958), 4. 25 Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 35. On page 39 Pasnau says, ‘that looked at from what I am calling their concrete side, forms play the role of a cause in our modern sense of them’. 26 Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 40. 27 All quotations are taken from Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 44. 28 Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 46. 29 Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 47. 30 Both Descartes’ and Boyle’s texts are quoted in Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, 48. 31 Pasnau, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, offers, in the last section of his paper, a few examples (Boyle and Locke) of how a mechanistic account of nature could also include some aspects of the scholastic notion of form. However, this will still be the concrete side of the notion of form, which conceives them as quasi-efficient causes. 32 Not all mechanistic philosophers were atomistic. A clear example is Descartes, who can be better located within a corpuscular conception of matter. The main division between these two was about the existence of the void, and the divisibility or indivisibility ad infinitum of matter. 33 For different assessments of the origin and early modern development of the notion of laws of nature, see Zilsel, Edgar, ‘The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law’, The Philosophical Review 51:3 (1942), 245–279; Needham, Joseph, ‘Human Laws and Laws of Nature in China and the West’, Journal of the History of Ideas 12:1 and 2 (1951), 3–30 and 194–230; Crombie, Alistair, ‘The Significance of Medieval Discussions of Scientific Method for the Scientific Revolution’, in Marshall Clagget (ed.), Critical Problems in the History of Science (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), 79–101; Oakley, Francis, ‘Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of Law of Nature’, Church History 30 (1961), 433–457; Milton, John R., ‘The Origin and Development of the Concept of the “Laws of Nature”’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie 22 (1981), 173–195; Ruby, Jane E., ‘The Origins of

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34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46

Digging for criteria Scientific “Law”’, Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986), 341–359; Milton, John R., ‘Laws of Nature’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), 680–701; Roux, Sophie, ‘Les Lois de la Nature au XVIIe Siècle: Le Problème Terminologique’, Revue de Synthèse 2:4 (2001), 531–576; Henry, John, ‘Metaphysics and the Origins of Modern Science’, Early Science and Medicine 9:2 (2004), 73–114; Padget, Alan G., ‘The Roots of the Western Concept of the “Laws of Nature”: From the Greeks to Newton’, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55:4 (2003), 212–221; Harrison, Peter, ‘The Development of the Concept of Law of Nature’, in Fraser Watts (ed.), Creation: Law and Probability (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008), 13–35; Silva, Ignacio, ‘El Advenimiento de la Noción de “Leyes de la Naturaleza” a Principios del Siglo XVII. Análisis de Algunas Narrativas Históricas’, in Agustín Echavarría and Juan F. Franck (eds), La Causalidad en la Filosofía Moderna. De Suárez and Kant Precrítico (Pamplona: Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico, 2012), 29–40; Hattab, Helen, ‘Early Modern Roots of the Philosophical Concept of a Law of Nature’, in Walter Ott and Lydia Patton (eds), Laws of Nature (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 18–41. S.Th. III, q. 75, a. 4. To the best of my knowledge, Aquinas is the first theologian to use the terminology of ‘laws of nature’ in relation to the Eucharist, and he was probably one the few who did so during the Middle Ages, only to be followed by Calvin in the first half of the sixteenth century. Interestingly, late-sixteenth-century Catholic and Protestant controversies over the Eucharist saw a rise of the use of the term ‘laws of nature’. These uses progressively moved away from Aquinas’ use of the term as formal causation, towards a more modern way of understanding the term, sharing some of the features that Cartesian laws were to have later on in the seventeenth century. These sixteenth-century uses of the notion made the laws of nature to be neither mathematical nor mechanical, though they did imply some externality to the things they ruled, as well as divine imposition of the laws, and, to some extent, a codification of these laws of nature. See my ‘El Advenimiento’ for further details. Clarke, Samuel, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation (London: W. Botham St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1705), 86–87. See Henry, ‘Metaphysics and the Origins of Modern Science’. Descartes, René, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1897), Vol. 1, 564. Descartes, René, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1899), Vol. 3, 349. Sangiacomo, ‘Divine Action’, 116. Bultmann, Rudolf, ‘Bultmann Replies to his Critics’, in Hans Werner Bartsch (ed.) and Reginald H. Fuller (trans.), Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate (London: SPCK, 1960), 191–211, 199. Dilley, Frank, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, Anglican Theological Review 47:1 (1965), 66–80, 77–80. For a rich discussion about the different positions on the matter, see Kopf, Simon Maria, Divine Providence and Natural Contingency: New Perspectives from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2019, 46. McGrath, Alister, ‘Hesitations about Special Divine Action: Reflections on Some Scientific, Cultural and Theological Concerns’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 3–22, 4. Meinel, C., ‘Seventeenth-Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology and the Insufficiency of Experiment’, Isis, 79 (1988), 68–103. Bernard, Claude, Introduction à l’Etude de la Médicine Expérimentable (Paris: J.B. Baillière et Fils, 1865), 95. My translation. Poincaré, Henri, Dernières Pensées (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1913), 244–245. My translation.

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47 Poincaré, Henri, Science et Méthode (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1909), 65. My translation. 48 Goblot, Edmond, ‘La Finalité en Biologie’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 56 (1903), 366–381, 370. My translation. 49 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités (Paris: MME VE Courcier, 1814), 2–3. My translation. 50 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, ‘Recherches sur l’Intégration des Equations Différentielles aux Différences Finies et sur leur Application à l’Analyse des Hasards’, 1776. In this text he expresses a similar idea to that of his Essai: The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general affects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Quoted and translated in Gillispie, Ch. C., Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749–1827. A Life in Exact Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 26 51 Selvaggi, Filippo, Causalità e Indeterminismo, La Problematica Moderna alla Luce della Filosofia Aristotelico-Tomista (Rome: Editrice Università Gregoriana, 1964), 218–219. This is precisely what Laplace was trying to pursue with the development of his theory of probability: to get as close as possible to the absolute certainty of the ontological determinism which governed the events of nature. We have seen this in the last sentence of his statement quoted above, in Laplace (1819). 52 Kopf, Divine Providence, 39. 53 Dilley, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, 70. 54 Dilley, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, 76. 55 See Russell, Robert John, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action’, in Philip Clayton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 584. 56 For a more comprehensive exposition of the theory and the mathematical formulation I refer the reader to Dirac’s classic text The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958) and, for a more reader-friendly piece, to Penrose’s book The Road to Reality (London: Jonathan Cape), Chapters 21–30 in particular. 57 Heisenberg, Werner, ‘Was ist ein Elementarteilchen?’, lecture presented at the Tagung der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft, 5 March 1975. Reproduced in Die Naturwissenschaften 63 (1976), 1–7, 5. My translation. 58 Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Prometheus Books, 1999), 81. 59 Heisenberg, Werner, The Physicist’s Conception of Nature (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 34. 60 For an extended explanation, see my ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’, New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 638–641. 61 Carroll, William, ‘Creation and the Foundations of Evolution’, Angelicum 87 (2010), 45–60, 51.

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I established in Chapter 1 four different criteria, or desiderata, with which three major debates over divine providential action struggled in the history of Western thought. In brief, these criteria are God’s omnipotence, God’s involvement in the world, the autonomy of the natural world in its workings, and the success of human reason to know these workings. My argument was, simply put, that these four desiderata are at play in any debate over divine providential action and that they can serve as criteria for deciding over competing models of divine action and providence: the more criteria a model can affirm, the better model it is. Hence, for instance, medieval Islamic scholars debated whether God’s causality opposed created causality, with Ibn-Rushd on the one side holding for natural causes, and the Kalam theologians on the other side of the spectrum offering a model of an occasionalist God always operative in the created world. My goal in this chapter is to analyse the contemporary debate over divine providential action and contingency in the world as described by modern science to assess how the new models of quantum divine action or chaos divine action, to mention but two examples, measure up to these criteria. Most contemporary models of divine providential action acknowledge these four desiderata, either accepting them as part of their description of God’s involvement in the world or rejecting one or more, as I will show in the subsequent pages. Even if the most popular models attempt to keep the four of them, they do not manage to do so. I will show how they fail to measure up by analysing some unexamined assumptions in the debate as a whole, in particular, the identification of causality with determinism, and the opposition between divine and natural causation. This analysis will show that the debate lowers God’s transcendent status to the status of a cause among causes in the contemporary debate: diminishing God’s omnipotence to acting within a certain set of particular places and times. The main motivation for the contemporary discussion on divine action springs from the willingness to explain away the famous problem that holds that were God to intervene within nature, God would be breaking, suspending, or simply not following the apparent lawful order of the created universe, which, for many, would imply an inconsistency in God’s nature. In fact, the idea of God acting directly in nature seems to bring challenges to the autonomy DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-3

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of nature, and thus to the foundation of the natural sciences. Theological discourse has not been blind to these matters, with many attempting to formulate accounts of how to understand that nature has its laws and regular actions together with the claim that God can participate actively in the development of the natural and human world.

A The contemporary debate The final decades of the past century saw the revival of discussions surrounding the matter of divine providential action with a multi-year (and multi-million) research project co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley, led by American theologian (and physicist) Robert John Russell. This project advanced many innovative proposals to solve the problem of divine providence and action in nature.1 Some of the authors who will appear in the following pages are Russell himself, Thomas Tracy, Nancey Murphy, Nicholas Saunders, John Polkinghorne, William Stoeger, Michael Dodds, William Carroll, among many others. They belong to a group of scholars that includes philosophers, theologians, physicists, cosmologists, biologists, neuroscientists, etc., dedicated to the debate of the problem of providential divine action in nature. The original group of scholars has been joined by a new generation of academics who engaged with their ideas and continue to keep the debate alive, always offering insights and advances in our understanding of divine providence. Some of these include Sarah Lane Ritchie in Scotland, Jeffrey Koperski in the US, Mariusz Tabaczek in Poland, and Simon Maria Kopf in Austria, to name but a few. The original goal of the Divine Action Project was to explain how God can act providentially within nature in ways that would help the development of the history of the world and human affairs in the directions that God wants, but without disrupting the created order, or, said in terms used in this project, without intervening or breaking the laws of nature. This project has set a whole new debate on the issue, in which notions such as special divine action – or special providence – are used to find ways to think and talk about divine action in a world that is described by the natural sciences without reference to particular divine interventions within the course of natural events (as it would be in miraculous interventions). Simply put, scholars wanted to explain how God not only creates and sustains the universe (both actions included under the notion of ‘general divine action’), but also how God guides natural and human history by the introduction of novelty in nature. General divine action does not seem to be sufficient to explain this introduction of novelty in nature because it does not appear to offer ways in which God acts here and now directly in nature.2 The notions of general and special divine action have been clearly defined in the context of this project, and most scholars agree that what is important for them is to address the issue of special divine providential actions. ‘General divine action’ (GDA) refers to those actions of God that pertain to the whole of creation universally and simultaneously. These include actions such as the

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initial creation and the maintenance of scientific regularity and the laws of nature by God. This type of action is divided into 1) cosmological: the divine action of the creation of the universe (the initiation of the laws of physics and the universe, and setting the boundary conditions for the universe to exist) and the action of sustaining the universe through maintaining its sheer existence as well as its regularity; and 2) functional: the actions of a) sustaining functioning of general living systems (sustaining their development, enabling their physiological functioning as organisms, and enabling community functioning), b) shaping the natures of things as they appear to us through evolutionary processes, and c) enabling the functioning of the brain and mind, which are the foundations of consciousness and free will.3 ‘Special divine action’ (SDA), on the contrary, refers to those actions of God which pertain to particular times and places in the world. This is a broad category and includes the traditional understanding of miracles, the notion of particular providence, responses to intercessory prayer, etc.4 These would be actions encompassing 1) the expression of some revelatory insight (spiritual or moral) about the nature and meaning of reality, and 2) miracles, which are special actions of an exceptional kind, so that a physical outcome is altered from what it would otherwise have been. These could be either a) actions not based on ordinary laws of physics, involving thus the suspension of laws, or b) actions affecting physical conditions directly, based on a steering of what happens that is consistent with known laws.5 Special divine action is thus understood as including any kind of particular action that would have any local effect in the world, independent of any categorisation as a violation of the order of nature which science discovers.6 The basic leading principle that guided the project and subsequent debate was the search for scientific theories that were amenable to discourses on divine providence and action by offering some kind of ontological indeterminism: it asks whether there are one or several areas in the natural sciences where science itself leads to a view of nature as including events for which the natural causes that contribute to them are insufficient to bring them about.7 If Christian theology is right in asserting that God guides the universe in ways that go beyond creation and conservation, then, this principle suggests, God should do so in a non-intrusive way, for which the universe needs to offer some kind of ontological causal gaps within which God could perform these types of actions, interacting with creation without intruding or intervening the laws of nature. The search was, thus, for what Austin Farrer termed the causal joint,8 what Sarah Lane Ritchie has called ‘one of the most significant problems in science and religion’.9 American theologians Robert Russell and Thomas Tracy, for instance, explored the possibility of finding this joint at which God’s causality would interact with natural causes in the indeterminism of quantum mechanics, suggesting that divine providential action could be performed through quantum

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events. John Polkinghorne argued for divine action through the input of information in chaotic systems;10 Arthur Peacocke suggested models of top-down divine causation;11 Philip Clayton held that theories of emergence could be regarded as viable paths to think new models of divine action;12 and Nancey Murphy, together with George Ellis, proposed a model for divine action in the human brain through the openness that quantum mechanics offers.13 The basic idea of all these proposals is that nature offers, at least at some level of reality (the level will vary according to each author), indeterminacy, openness, potentiality, contingency, that is available for God. This natural character means that nature offers events that are insufficient to cause future events, or in reverse, events that are not sufficiently caused by previous events. In these models, then, God would act directly to determine what is left underdetermined within the order of nature, choosing which outcome offered by the under-determination of nature to bring about without disrupting any law of nature (because the very laws of nature present this indetermination, openness, or potentiality). God, in Thomas Tracy’s words, ‘may act to ensure the occurrence of an event for which created causes (operating under the conditions established by the world’s actual history to date) are insufficient’.14 Jeffrey Koperski has, of late, offered an alternative model that he calls a nonviolationist neoclassical model of divine action, for which ‘determinism and causal closure are not metaphysical or scientific absolutes’.15 Koperski argues that ‘once the laws of nature are distinguished from behaviour that is the result of those laws and nonnomic conditions, we find a vast space of contingency in which God can act’.16 In this model, divine action would either be directed at changing the states of quantum fields if reductionism is preferred or, if strong emergence is adopted, God would interact with higher-level phenomena in ways appropriate to them.17 Both these options map fairly closely to the quantum and chaos theory models for divine action, as I will explain below. I will, thus, primarily engage with the so-called quantum divine action with numerous references to divine action through chaos theory, that is, that God makes use of quantum indeterminacy and the openness found in chaotic systems to work his providence in the created universe. Similar critiques to those I will offer could also be posed for other strategies involving God making use of causal gaps that scientific theories find in nature, so I will not use them as case studies.18 The deterministic view of the world, a legacy of the Newtonian-Laplacean worldview, which is challenged by quantum theory, appeared to have blocked God out of acting within the universe. Quantum theory, however, studying the smallest subatomic particles out of which natural things are made, seems to provide an indeterministic account of nature, account that many theologians found attractive. If nature is not deterministic, if events are not pre-determined in their causes, if it is plausible to think that there are causal ontological gaps in nature, then God could act in those gaps without breaking the natural order. Thanks to quantum mechanics, a new possibility of explaining divine action within the world appears promising: quantum divine action.19 John Polkinghorne expresses this idea in more general terms claiming that the ‘physical

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closure of the causal nexus of the world has not been established, so that claims that science has disproved the possibility of providential agency can be seen to be false’,20 bringing him to explain how chaos theory can provide an avenue to explore the possibility of this providential divine action. Other theologians, assuming the problem of determinism versus divine action, have gone a longer route claiming that there must be gaps in physical causality if God is ever to do anything in nature.21 Jeffrey Koperski puts this idea thus: ‘Without some sort of openness or plasticity within the natural realm, there is nothing God can do that would not thereby count as a violation’.22 The science of the twentieth century seemed to offer theologians the ‘causal joint’ that they were looking for,23 that is, the place where ‘God’s action directly impacts on the world’.24 Because one of the main arguments with which I will deal is divine providence and quantum mechanics, it would be useful to revise some of the basic ideas and major tenets that are involved in this theory. The principles of quantum mechanics describe physical reality and its behaviour at the atomic and sub-atomic level. It is among the greatest achievements of the twentieth century, and even if it is one of the most successful theories, it is also one of the most mysterious. Its mathematical formalism appears to bring about features of reality that are most implausible, like the wave-particle duality,25 the superposition principle,26 or the entanglement property of pairs of particles.27 To take the first, a photon, the fundamental unit of light, can behave like either a particle or a wave, and it can exist in an ambiguous state until a measurement is made. If a particle-like property is measured, the photon behaves like a particle, and if a wave-like property is measured, the photon behaves like a wave. Whether the photon is wave-like or particle-like is indefinite and the outcome is probabilistically informed by the equations until the experimental arrangement is specified. Do these features of quantum theory tell us something about reality? Or is it just its mathematical formalism that creates these implausible situations? The formalism seems to render any attempt to interpret the most fundamental levels of reality a difficult philosophical task and opens up the path for the theological consideration of divine action at the quantum level given the considerably mysterious indeterministic feature the theory also puts forth. Even if its probabilistic character – and hence the indeterministic interpretations – is one of the most important features of quantum mechanics, the time evolution of the system until it is measured is described with a deterministic equation, meaning that the system’s evolution is completely fixed once the state is known at any one time.28 Still, the most we can do to describe the state of any given system at any one time is to provide a probability for the outcome of the measurement.29 Classical mechanics has at its basis the contention that all states of all systems considered can always be measured and known exactly. In quantum mechanics, by contrast, we must accept that we do not know the value of a parameter without first measuring it, given the explained superposition of states of the system before the measurement. This puzzling feature of quantum physics is complemented by one further perplexing characteristic equally at odds with classical mechanics. During measurement, the system jumps into one of many probable states, without any apparent cause. That

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jump is usually known as ‘the collapse of the wave-function’. Any measurement, however, will result in a specific value for the parameter measured. Quantum theory simply cannot predict the result of the measurement before measuring. The leading interpretation of this puzzling feature is that known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, that Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg formulated, and is the interpretation usually adopted to discuss divine providence today, given its indeterministic outlook on the theory. This interpretation employs three different principles: 1) the physical state of a system is entirely captured by the wave-function; 2) the wave-function develops deterministically until it collapses during measurement; and 3) the complete dynamics is stochastic rather than deterministic: isolated systems that begin in identical states may end up in different states. This stochastic feature appears in the collapse of the wave-function. The idea key to this interpretation is that the probability statements made by quantum mechanics are irreducible to an epistemological claim, that is, they do not exclusively reflect our limited knowledge of the system. Thus, the Copenhagen interpretation holds that, in quantum mechanics, measurement outcomes are fundamentally indeterministic. The unpredictability of the outcome of the measurement reflects a fundamental causal indeterminism, which ultimately points towards a fundamental ontological indeterminism at the quantum level.30 This idea means that the measurement process randomly picks out exactly one of the many possibilities allowed for by the wave-function describing the quantum system, because the properties of the quantum system are only real as potentialities until the measurement when they become actual. After the measurement, the wave-function instantaneously changes to reflect the one potential parameter actualised. When reflecting upon this indeterministic quantum world, Werner Heisenberg spoke of a new ontology for quantum physics.31 For Heisenberg, in addition to the actual, the potential is also real in quantum physics, i.e., what is in potency is real. Heisenberg explicitly referred to Aristotle’s concepts of act and potency to explain the indeterminism found at sub-atomic levels in the following terms: One might perhaps call it an objective tendency or possibility, a potentia in the sense of Aristotelian philosophy. In fact, I believe that the language actually used by physicists when they speak about atomic events produces in their minds similar notions as the concept potentia. The language has already adjusted itself, to this true situation.32 Thus, the potential reality becomes actual in the same instant that it is observed, and it is not actual, but in potency, when it is not observed. In these unobserved moments, reality is still potential or indeterminate, open to different actualisations, but no less real. Thus, the quantum system will be ontologically indeterminate before observation. In this way, observation gives some causal determination but also some causal indetermination to the system being observed. Hence, Heisenberg adds, the transition from the ‘possible’ to the

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‘actual’ takes place during the act of observation. That is, as soon as the interaction of the object with the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world, occurs.33 The indeterminism is expressed in the superposition of probabilities where the particle is to be found, for instance, which is really wherever it can be found. So, it is in every place in potency of that superposition of probabilities. And it will be actualised in this or that place by the observation. The wavefunction, then, contains statements about possibilities, or better, tendencies (potentiae in Aristotelian philosophy), and these statements are completely objective.34 The wave-function, then, implies a tendency, a real objective potentiality, of nature to act in some way. One of the referents of the contemporary debate over providential divine action is Robert Russell, founder and director of CTNS and Ian Barbour Professor of Theology and Science at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, who assumes this interpretation of quantum mechanics. He has actively contributed to this debate over the years, introducing at very early stages the acronym NIODA to express the notion of a non-interventionist, objective, divine action. This is to say, NIODA refers to divine actions that do not go against the order in the universe (non-interventionist), but which are not reduced to a subjective perception of the believer (objective): ‘It is more than the subjective interpretation of an ordinary event and it is less than an objective interpretation of a special event requiring divine, miraculous intervention to bring it about’.35 Typically, then, NIODA involves a search for scientific theories that could be given an ontologically indeterministic interpretation explaining the universe in terms of possible events in some domains, levels, or kinds of processes in nature that lack a sufficient efficient natural cause, suggesting that God can act in those processes.36 Ultimately, to make a case for a non-interventionist objective divine action, the processes leading up to the emergence of new phenomena would themselves have to be indeterministic.37 Russell finds these processes in the probabilistic character of quantum physics, which suggest that no underlying causal explanation can account for the data with its particular form of randomness.38 If quantum mechanics shows that nature is open in its causal chain, then there is a case for God’s providential action in a non-interventionist way. John Polkinghorne agrees with the NIODA approach, though he suggests that chaos theory appears as a better alternative to find suitable places for God to act providentially in nature. Even if he has developed his views considerably over the years,39 his main thesis is that one may model God’s providential action in the world as the input of active information in chaotic systems, to make them develop in ways that fulfil God’s plans for creation. The key issue for chaotic systems is that their evolution depends so much upon the initial conditions that the slightest change would cause the system to develop in completely different ways. Making use of the principle of sufficient reason, which requires some causes to explain why a system developed one way or another, Polkinghorne suggests that there must be new top-down organising causal principles at work to bring about the future of these systems.40 These principles

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do not act through energetic causation, but only through input of active information,41 where the term ‘active information’ represents the influence that brings about the formation of a structured pattern of future dynamic behaviour.42 Polkinghorne understands the term ‘active’ to describe the causal efficacy of the information and ‘information’ to describe its pattern-forming behaviour.43 The notion of information-input is, thus, necessary to resolve what actually occurs, becoming the vehicle for top-down operating causality and a contender for the accommodation of divine providential action in terms of a flow of information from God to the universe.44 Both Russell and Polkinghorne suggest that a deterministic conception of nature would render any act of God within nature and history an intervention, something that is not theologically desirable because it would reflect a lack of autonomy of nature in its operations. Thus, since the Enlightenment, the idea of objective special providence has seemed to entail belief in divine intervention: for God to act in particular events, God must intervene in nature, violating or at least suspending the laws of nature. Hence, within a Newtonian worldview, divine providential action was almost completely banned, because any divine action must entail a violation of natural processes. The problems with this kind of interventionism are plenty, but perhaps the two most important that concern us here are that it first suggests that God is normally absent from the web of natural processes, and second, that puts God’s power against the regularities of nature.45 On the contrary, if, in the light of contemporary science, nature can be philosophically interpreted as ontologically indeterministic, non-interventionist objective special providence is a live option.46 This interpretation would mean that nature, in account of science, is not an entirely closed causal system; in fact, as Russell puts it, ‘the world of natural processes… is causally incomplete’.47 Instead, the laws that science discovers, at least at the quantum level, would suggest that nature is open for novelty: there might be what could be called ‘natural gaps’ in the causal regularities of nature, which might occur everywhere, and they might be simply part of the way nature is constituted.48 Of course, these causal gaps must not be simply epistemological, but rather ontological gaps. Thomas Tracy affirms that ‘it now appears’ that these gaps actually occur in quantum mechanics, suggesting that the explanatory gaps in quantum mechanics are due to the fact that there are no real sufficient causes of the event.49 The fact that there are real causal gaps explains that there are explanatory gaps in the theory. The claim is that the total set of natural conditions affecting a process, that is, the total set of conditions that science can discover and describe through its equations, is necessary but insufficient in principle to determine the precise outcome of the process. The future is ontologically open, influenced, of course, but underdetermined by the factors of nature acting in the present. The statistics found in the equations indicate that there is not an exhaustive set of underlying natural causes. Both Russell and Polkinghorne think that quantum mechanics and chaos theory respectively can be philosophically interpreted in these indeterministic

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terms. Russell follows Heisenberg’s path explained on p. 37 to assume an indeterministic interpretation of quantum physics, while Polkinghorne explains that, given his famous principle that states that ‘epistemology models ontology’, he is allowed to interpret chaos theory indeterministically: ‘a realist interpretation of the epistemological unpredictabilities of chaotic systems leads to the hypothesis of an ontological openness within which new causal principles may be held to be operating which determine the pattern of future behaviour’.50 Ultimately, for Polkinghorne, chaos theory gives a picture of natural behaviour that depicts a structured randomness, an ordered-disorder, portraying the universe to present an open grain towards the future: ‘The world is made up of systems that are so exquisitely sensitive to circumstance that the smallest disturbance will produce large and ever-growing changes in their behaviour’.51 Russell has similar statements with regards to quantum mechanics. For him, the use of statistics in quantum mechanics is not a mere convenience to avoid a more detailed causal description. Instead, quantum statistics is all we can have, for there is ‘no underlying, fully deterministic natural process’.52 Assuming, then, that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, nature can be seen theologically as genuinely open to God’s participation in the bringing to actuality each state of nature in time.53 In fact, Russell strongly believes ‘that quantum mechanics provides one such area in the natural sciences where a NIODA version of divine action can be sustained’.54 The indeterministic processes found in nature are the open spaces that theology needs to explain non-interventionist special providence. Russell’s argument is clear and goes like this: God acts together with nature to bring about a quantum event. Nature provides the necessary causes, but God’s action together with nature constitutes the sufficient cause for the occurrence of the event.55 God can be understood theologically as acting purposefully within the ongoing natural processes without disrupting them or violating nature’s laws. God’s special action results in specific, objective consequences in nature, consequences which would not have resulted without God’s special action. Yet, because of the irreducibly statistical character of quantum physics, these results would be entirely consistent with the laws of science, and because of the indeterminism of these processes, God’s special action would not entail their disruption. Yet, it would not be possible to describe that action with those laws.56 Essentially what science describes without reference to God is precisely what God, working invisibly in, with, and through the processes of nature, is accomplishing. Science would not be expected to include anything about God’s action in nature as part of its scientific explanation of the world. Ultimately, where science employs quantum mechanics and philosophy points to ontological indeterminism, Russell’s theology (as well as Polkinghorne’s) sees God acting with nature to create the future: the results of God’s action at the quantum level can be seen as bringing about, in a non-interventionist mode, both many of the general features of the world we describe theologically in terms of general providence (or

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continuous creation) and at least some of those specific events in the world to which a theology of special providence refers.57 God, in this perspective, fulfils what nature offers, providentially bringing into being the future, acting specifically in all events, moment by moment.58 Hence, for Russell and Polkinghorne, God acts objectively and directly in and through quantum events and chaotic systems, to actualise one of several potential outcomes,59 or via the input of active information to guide chaotic systems. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory, thus, provide theology with a space in which God can act, without disrupting the order of nature. This providential divine action would be hidden within the statistical and probabilistic laws of quantum mechanics and deterministic equations of chaos theory. As long as God’s providential actions remain within the probabilistic regularities that science observes, they would neither contradict any law of nature nor displace any finite cause. As anyone could have expected, these proposals for models of divine providential action rapidly raised several objections among scientists, philosophers, and theologians.60 For instance, scientific objections raise doubts about the actual understanding of the science; epistemological objections question the choice of interpretation of the science; theological objections question both the notion of God used in the debate and the usefulness of deferring to the natural sciences for theology; while metaphysical objections question the assumptions on the account of causality used in the debate, an objection that I will consider in length in this monograph. Russell rehearses a lengthy reply to this objection in his latest essay on the matter, attempting to build a bridge between his and Thomistic perspectives through the notion of miracle that Aquinas defends. I will come back to this discussion later on in the following section of this chapter. Nicholas Saunders argues lengthily that due to the many different interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is not valid to choose one and use it theologically.61 This critique, which physicist Robert Brecha also shares,62 is usually responded to in the same tone, asserting that it is simply a matter of contested interpretation whether quantum mechanics shows the radical and ontological indeterminacy of the universe that NIODA is seeking. Thomas Tracy makes some useful comments when he recognises the fact that, although it is fair to say that the dominant interpretations of quantum mechanics are indeterministic, the question is not resolved at all.63 This interpretative pluralism in quantum physics creates both an opportunity and a hazard for theologians attempting to engage with it. On the one hand, it is legitimate to prefer one interpretation over another on theological grounds. On the other hand, if the theologian decides for one of them, he takes the risk that new developments in physics or the philosophy of physics will significantly undercut the theological constructions.64 This ambivalence, however, does not mean that theological work should not be pursued. Similarly, Russell holds that multiple interpretability is a problem for any

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theology seeking to engage with scientific theories because every scientific theory can be interpreted in multiple ways. John Polkinghorne follows this same strategy. The best response to this objection is, for Russell, to take a ‘what if’ stance: be clear in acknowledging the multiple interpretability of any given theory in choosing one particular interpretation, and in stressing that this approach to NIODA is hypothetical and tentative.65 Wesley Wildman, reflecting on Nicholas Saunders’ lengthy critique, offers a tetralemma as a criterion for a sound model of divine action, requiring any description of providential divine action to give an account of 1) objectivity, 2) incompatibilism, 3) non-interventionism, and 4) a strong ontological view of the laws of nature. Russell, Tracy, and Clayton,66 however, find this conjunction of propositions to be hardly such a criterion of success for any account of providential divine action. Wildman’s tetralemma is, for Russell, simply self-contradictory: if the strong ontological interpretation of the laws of nature were correct, no account for special divine action would ever be possible. Furthermore, an incompatibilist account of non-interventionist objective special divine action requires that nature is causally indeterministic; but a strong ontological interpretation of the laws of nature (if such an interpretation is even possible) means that nature is deterministic, hence excluding the possibility of providential divine action.67 Finally, Bill Stoeger, together with Michael Dodds and Taede Smedes among others, finds the divine action debate, and particularly models assuming quantum theory or chaos theory to allow for God’s providential action, to render God’s activity as another natural cause.68 It is true that none of the participants intends to do so (with the exception, perhaps, of John Polkinghorne, who, after considering the notion of divine kenosis, was happy to accept that God acts as a cause among causes).69 Still, concerns remain over whether they have succeeded in giving an account of God’s action as different from a created cause. Russell assertively responds that God’s action is not reduced to a natural cause in his proposal. His argument goes like this: according to the philosophical interpretation for an ontological indeterminism of quantum theory, there are no efficient natural causes for the specific events in question; thus, God is not a natural cause.70 If this were the case, God’s action could be discovered by science. Nevertheless, precisely for the same reason, God’s action remains hidden from science. In fact, Russell’s proposal is not meant to describe God’s action as equivalent to any other natural agent acting in nature, since by hypothesis, the set of natural causes is insufficient to bring the event to realisation. God’s action will remain hidden within nature’s structure, and it will take the form of realising one of several potentials in the quantum system, not of manipulating subatomic particles as a quasi-physical force.71 God’s direct action is hidden in principle from science, because, according to ontological indeterminism, there is no natural cause for each event in question for science to discover.72 Thus, if God acts together with nature to produce the event in which a radioactive nucleus decays, God is not acting as a natural, efficient cause; the collapse of the wave-function occurs because of divine and natural causality working together, even while God’s action remains ontologically different from natural

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agency. I will deal in detail with this theme in the next section of this chapter, as I find it to be the crux of the whole debate. The question about the multiple interpretations of scientific theories is, then, solved with a ‘what if’ clause, before the whole body of theological work, a solution that is, at best, provisional and unconvincing. Questions regarding the indeterminism of quantum mechanics or chaotic systems are epistemological questions, which should be left to philosophers of science to respond. The questions I find most pressing, those that would help us to develop an account of God’s providential acting in the world, are metaphysical questions on the distinction between natural and divine causation. I am inclined to think that Stoeger’s doubt remains unsolved: is it possible to consider God to be a radically different cause from natural causes if it is argued that God is needed to complete nature’s work and within nature’s laws? Were this question to be answered in the negative, God would simply stop being God the transcendent and omnipotent creator of Christian theology. I will argue in the following section that the basic problem for the debate is the identification of causation with determination. I will analyse some of the philosophical assumptions and conclusions that can be drawn from these models of quantum and chaos theory divine action. In particular, I will focus first on the relation between a cause and its effect, which is assumed to be deterministic. Hence, everything that is indeterministic is without a cause. In addition, I will discuss the matter of the autonomy of the natural causes: it seems that from what has been said about the debate, were God able to act whenever and wherever He wanted in the universe, the autonomy of nature in its processes would be endangered and with it the foundations of science. Finally, I will analyse my central thesis that it would seem that God’s causality causes as natural causality, which leads us to consider God acting in nature as another natural cause.

B Some unexamined assumptions The debate on divine providential action in and through the natural world as described by contemporary scientific theories appears to have reached a deadlock. Consider the example of those who argue in favour of quantum divine action: they continue to hold to their position regardless of objections (John Polkinghorne, on the contrary, has of late softened his claims on providential divine action through the input of active information into chaotic systems), and those who argue against it continue to object. Despite the apparent dialogue,74 no one seems to find the other’s arguments conclusive. Eventually, proponents of the quantum providential divine action model (or any other non-interventionist model of divine action) keep holding that where science points to ontological indeterminism and contingency, faith sees God caringly acting with nature to bring about the future. I, thus, find it appropriate to take a look from a distance and consider two philosophical assumptions and one theological conclusion that have not yet been thoroughly analysed. The first philosophical assumption is that the

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relation between a cause and its effect is (and cannot not be) deterministic. That is, causation is identified with determination in a strong sense of the term.75 The second is that were God able to act in the universe whenever and wherever God wanted, the autonomy of nature in its actions would be endangered and with it the foundations of science.76 That is, God cannot intervene in nature because his intervention would mean that nature is not fully autonomous in its operations. From these two assumptions, the theological conclusion that follows is that God has to act in nature as other causes in nature, or as the saying goes, a cause among causes. I will argue that the two philosophical assumptions are held in the debate mainly because a modern conception of causality is presupposed and accepted as a given, without adequate examination. I contend that if these assumptions are accepted, contemporary models of providential divine action in the world can only conclude that God must be conceived as another cause among causes, leading to an impoverished conception of God, who is ultimately bound by the so-called laws of nature.77 This conclusion will lead to seeing that most models conceived as finding natural spaces for God to act cannot hold to the four criteria or desiderata described in the previous chapter: all of them are presented as a choice between God’s omnipotence and the autonomy of nature, solving this perceived tension by placing God where nature has no causal power. The first philosophical assumption has to do with the relation between a cause and its effect. As I understand the debate, this relation is understood to be deterministic (and cannot be otherwise). Thus, the effect cannot be something different from what it is, given that the cause is required to cause what it is meant to cause. Plantinga extends this notion to a universal determinism, describing it thusly: ‘the natural laws together with the state of the universe at any one time entail the state of the universe at any other time’.78 If one looks at how NIODA proponents understand causes to relate to their effects, one finds that a cause is that which determines the outcome of the development of a physical system. In this scenario, there can be no effect without a determining cause, since the effect cannot be something different from what it is. The cause deterministically causes what it is meant to cause. Thus, an effect that happens indeterministically, such as a quantum collapse or a genetic mutation, is simply not caused, or at least not fully caused, because it is not determined by its precedent cause. Consider the example of how the collapse of the wave-function is understood in terms of an a-causal event, simply because it is non-deterministic. See how Russell puts it: Certain parts of science, and QM in particular, argue for a new interpretation of efficient causality in nature, one that suggests that efficient causality may not operate entirely in all events at the subatomic level, and that this opens up the possibility of noninterventionistic divine causality in relation to specific events in nature.79

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The key here is that in these events there are not indeterministic causes at play: there is, rather, a lack of natural causality that allows the quantum system to be indeterministic. Let’s read Russell again: ‘NIODA, ex hypothesis, is attending to events where nature does not have sufficient causality to produce the outcomes that actually do occur’.80 Explaining quantum events as indeterministic events, in this stance, means introducing a break in the ontological causal chain in nature: there is no cause in these indeterminist processes at the subatomic level of nature; thus, future events are not caused, and hence not determined, by their natural (deterministic) causes. One may welcome this picture of the natural world since it seems to allow for novelty in its historical developments. This novelty, however, remains unexplained in terms of natural causes due to the lack of natural causality in the process of its appearance: there are no natural causes to explain it; in our case, there are no natural causes that explain the result of the collapse of the wave-function. In a more benevolent interpretation, one may say that there are no sufficient natural causes to explain it. Even in this formulation, however, there is a lack of natural causation, reaffirming my argument that causality is understood in terms of determination: causation is deterministic causation. John Polkinghorne and Jeffrey Koperski hold similar views in their models. Polkinghorne sees in the development of the chaotic systems a requirement to postulate some causal principle external to it, while Koperski sees in the nondeterministic character of the laws of nature the place for other causal determining principles to act. In both, there is a lack of natural causation that allows for other causal principles to enter into play. For many today, quantum mechanics brings a break in the ontological causal chain at the subatomic level of nature, as for Polkinghorne chaos theory shows the incompleteness of the natural causal chain. Future events, in these views, are not fully caused, and hence not determined, by previous natural events. The fact that contemporary science offers a view of nature in which there can be novelty in its development is explained by a non-causal view of the natural causal chain. This view is not to be confused with an indeterministic view of natural causation, or if one wishes, it can be acknowledged as indeterministic in the sense that there is no natural causation at all. My point here is that even if Russell, Plantinga, Koperski and the rest affirm that the dilemma of providential divine action within a deterministic universe is broken given the indeterministic character of the universe posed by science in the twentieth century, the notion of causality assumed in these discussions remains a deterministic notion: causality is identified with determinism. Most authors agree that in a deterministic universe, acting as a causally closed system within which only one outcome is consistent with previous states of it according to the laws of classical mechanics, there is no possibility of any kind of special providential action, or as Taede Smedes puts it: ‘determinism entails the defeat of any model of personal divine action’.81 Thus, scholars find it necessary to look for some openness in this rigid determinism to allow for God to act providentially in it; and they find this openness in the indeterministic

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character of the quantum realm, though understanding this indeterminism of quantum mechanics in terms of a lack of natural causality because causation is understood to be deterministic. Again, the dilemma with divine action in nature occurs within a deterministic perspective,82 and even if the indeterminism of quantum mechanics seems to offer these scholars a solution to the dilemma, the notions of cause and effect used in the debate remain deterministic, being an essential part in their discourses. This is clear, again, when Russell and Murphy want to explain why it is necessary to admit that God acts in quantum events, calling on the principle of sufficient reason, or when Polkinghorne, for the same reason, requires new causal principles to determine the development of a chaotic system.83 Thus, causation is assumed to be identical with determination, implying that causes are only to be thought of as deterministic causes. The second unexamined assumption I find in this debate affirms that if God is able to act providentially whenever and wherever God wants, then the autonomy of nature in its actions is endangered, and with it the foundations of science. In an argument that seems to be the reverse of that which was held in the Middle Ages by Kalam theologians (presented in the first chapter),84 contemporary theologians appear to argue that any appeal to divine providential involvement in the world would go against the powers of nature: there is a fundamental incompatibility between the view of God’s providential acting in the universe, as the on-going cause of all that is (universally or in the particular, although in the contemporary debate it is expressly stated that the incompatibility is only particular),85 and the view that there are autonomous natural processes occurring in the world. Given the deterministic notion of causality, these authors accept that to defend the autonomy of the natural order and the existence of real causal connections in that order, it is necessary to restrict God’s causal power. Since it must be admitted that science is grounded in the regularity of nature, and hence in its laws, these authors are led to think that it is necessary to deny or to reduce God’s power to act in the world. Still, it seems urgent for them to find adequate ways to account for God’s providential activity in the world. The only way in which God could do something within the natural realm is if there could be a situation within the universe that has no cause, i.e., a place where nature does nothing. In such a situation, hence, there would be no autonomous natural causation, because there would be no natural causes at all. Therefore, were God to act within these confines, there would be no incompatibility between nature’s autonomy and God’s power. Russell puts this idea in terms of ‘compatibilists’ and ‘incompatibilists’: A compatibilist will label God’s special objective action ‘interventionist’, because God’s special objective action goes beyond what the laws of nature describe, whether or not God’s actions contradict God’s ordinary action in and with nature. For an incompatibilist, objective divine action is inconsistent with a deterministic world. An incompatibilist will view God’s special objective action as ‘interventionist’ only if the world is deterministic. If

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the world is indeterministic, then God’s special objective action is noninterventionist when it brings about events which go beyond those described by the laws of nature without contravening or disproving them, because natural efficient causality, as described by these laws, is created by God ex nihilo, to be insufficient to bring these particular events about.86 Of course, all those who subscribe to different non-interventionist objective divine action models take an incompatibilist view regarding God’s actions and natural causality: where there is natural causality, there cannot be special divine causality. In this sense, the necessity of explaining the autonomy of nature appears as an indication of some reduction in God’s power or activity. The root of this claim is, certainly, the remarkable success of modern and contemporary science in explaining and describing how nature works, particularly its causal pattern. Thus, it seems that God is competing against science (as many new atheists like to put it). Were God allowed to act within the realm of natural causes, the effects of God’s actions could be taken as the effects of natural causality. Hence, it would appear to be impossible to distinguish between God’s action and nature’s action. If this were the case, the scientist would be in the position of not knowing whether it was nature who acted or God who caused this or that event. This situation would lead to a complete disbelief of the enterprise of science, since it would be impossible, in principle, to admit that science is truly describing and explaining nature’s behaviour, instead of being misled by God’s special activity in the world. Even if God acted regularly, science would not be describing nature’s causal powers, but God’s causality. Hence, to save science from losing its empirical foundations, these authors decide to make strong theological claims, preventing God from interfering within the natural causal processes. It is then the deterministic notion of causality used in the debate that makes participants assume that God’s causality in special providence should not be such as to diminish what was conceived to be nature’s autonomy and integrity as to save the foundations of modern and contemporary science.87 These two unexamined assumptions, namely that causation is deterministic and that God’s power to act in nature is opposed to the autonomy of natural causes, lead to what I believe is an unavoidable conclusion: that God has to be conceived as acting as another natural cause. This, however, is a position that none of the participants in the Divine Action Project wants to admit. In fact, some expressly deny it: Robert Russell, for example, says that ‘God’s causality is radically different from any of the kinds of causality we know’,88 and Jeffrey Koperski has rejected this accusation as being that for which he has ‘the least sympathy’.89 However, many have claimed that at least the question of whether God ends up being considered as a cause among causes is a question that should be raised again and challenged, since it does not appear to have a simple answer.90 Stoeger is explicit when claiming that he is not sure that the debate has completely avoided locating God in the realm of created causes when modelling quantum divine action. Smedes’ and Dodds’ positions are, in their

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terms, somewhat more radical: neither of them accepts that the debate manages to treat God as different from created natural causes. Dodds affirms that [the] efforts of some theologians to locate divine action within the spaces that have become available in quantum theory suggest that they are still operating out of a univocal understanding of causality in which divine action always seems in danger of blundering into and interfering with the causality of other agents.91 Smedes is even more severe. He claims that looking for indeterminacy at the quantum level suggests that God’s action ‘competes with the laws of nature and is on the same ontological level as the workings of the natural order’.92 On the other side of the debate, Russell finds that God cannot be thought of as another natural cause because, given the ontologically indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the theory itself does not allow any natural cause to cause the collapse of the wave-function.93 My question now is the following: is it possible to consider God to be radically different from natural causes if God is seen as acting to complete nature’s work and within nature’s laws? My answer will go as far as to argue that it would seem that God would simply stop being God if God is seen as acting as a natural cause. The first issue to tackle now is the meaning of this expression. After all, everyone involved in these debates would agree that God is a cause, in at least a similar way in which created things are also causes. One should consider here that the objection that God is taken to act as a ‘cause-among-causes’ does not want to deny the fact that God is a cause or to affirm that God should not be said to cause. On the contrary, this objection means that it is not a good theological move to consider God to be acting as secondary/created causes. The objection emphasises God’s utmost transcendence, stressing that when God acts, God is always causing as a primary cause, and never as a secondary, created cause. The basic idea behind this objection, then, is that God should not be placed at the level of created causes, because doing so would mean denying or diminishing God’s transcendence. Certainly, this objection is not meant to deny the possibility of God acting within the created order of nature as a cause (for example in performing miracles), but to defend God’s non-worldliness. Still, I will attempt to present my argument in a non-Thomistic fashion (I have referred to primary and secondary causation in this paragraph, quintessential Thomistic terms). In the paragraphs that follow I will present an argument that I hope avoids Robert Russell’s latest objection to Michael Dodds’ presentation of this issue: that he (Dodds) puts his objections within a New-Thomist framework.94 If I can avoid this reply, then much work would have been done into understanding the meaning of the phrase ‘a cause among causes’.95 So, Russell offers a response in Thomistic terms, as I advanced above, deferring to the notion of miracles that Aquinas teaches (on which I will expand in the fourth chapter). For now, it will be enough to say that Aquinas holds that God could

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miraculously perform something that does not oppose nature but that goes beyond the power of nature. Russell sees here a link between Thomistic and his perspectives since God’s action in the NIODA model can be described precisely in these terms. Still, Russell returns to the idea that God needs nature to have an insufficient type of causation for Him to perform this kind of action: Now if all these actions are ‘not contrary to nature’, then why would it necessarily be contrary to nature for God to act in events where ex hypothesi nature does not have sufficient causality to produce the outcomes that actually do occur, namely events at the quantum level as interpreted by the Copenhagen school?96 As I am attempting to explain in this whole section, the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes. I return now to my non-Thomist argument. To try to solve this query, it is necessary to make some distinctions: first, it is not the same to say that 1) God is conceived as being a cause as a natural cause, and 2) God acts as a created cause, remaining divine. It would seem that Smedes’ critique fits with the first option. He seems to be arguing that the quantum Divine Action Project conceives God’s causality as being at the same level as created natural causality. Russell, however, does not want to admit this possibility. Instead, it seems to me that he would not be able to deny the second assertion. If this were not the case, the whole debate would have no reason to exist. In a sense, within the borders of debate, God is bound by the laws of nature which, in the end, construe God as acting accordingly. Hence, God is conceived as acting according to the laws of nature, which rule the causation of natural causes, and hence, somehow, rule how God acts within nature. Actually, Russell and all the others admit that God interacts with nature at the quantum level by means of a ‘measurement event’, particularly in reference to the outcome of the measurement event.97 This, as Russell explains, can be understood as any kind of interaction of a quantum system with any other microscopic or macroscopic system. Therefore, God would not be limited to act only when a scientist performs a measurement in a laboratory. God, however, is limited to act within these kinds of events, and within the laws that govern them. Of course, Russell will argue that, since the interpreted theory tells us that there is no natural cause that causes the wave-function to collapse in this particular way, God cannot be conceived as a natural cause, even if God is causing the collapse of the wave-function within the parameters given by the theory. For Russell, the theory says that there is no natural cause; therefore, God is not a natural cause. This argument leads me to a second distinction, which concerns how natural causes are conceived in this part of the debate. On the one hand, according to Russell, natural causes are defined by the scientific theory. Hence, since the

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theory says there is no natural cause, even though the theologian finds that God is the cause of the collapse of the wave-function, God is not a natural cause. Let me call this the epistemological criterion for deciding on natural causes. On the other hand, following Dodds’ and Smedes’ arguments, a natural cause has its own kind of causality, which is ordered by the laws of nature, which in the end are expressed by the theory. Hence, natural causes come before the theory. Let me call this the ontological criterion for deciding on natural causes. The epistemological approach derives from the Copenhagen tradition, especially from Heisenberg’s epistemological ideas, who admits that the theory determines what is to be observed. To get a full understanding of what was going on in the quantum phenomena, Heisenberg made use of Einstein’s method of interpreting any physical phenomenon: only what the theory considers observable is actually observed. Hence, Heisenberg thought, it is necessary to put aside those concepts that cannot be observed in the theoretical description of the phenomena. Clearly, Russell is taking this method and going even beyond it, by affirming that only those ‘natural causes’ that the theory finds, actually exist. Heisenberg and Einstein were simply doing science by applying this method to avoid the use of concepts such as the orbit of an electron or its temperature in their scientific theories. Russell, however, uses this method in a strong philosophical manner by affirming the existence or non-existence of natural causes by accepting what the scientific theory says.98 The theory, however, says nothing about what cannot be observed. It does not say that there is nothing else, or that there is something else. In this sense, the quantum theory says nothing about the causes of the collapse of the wavefunction. The interpretation of the theory, on its part, works differently. It makes ontological descriptions of what happens for the collapse of the wavefunction to take place. Thus, the indeterministic interpretation of the quantum theory says that there is no natural cause for it (remember what I said about causation being identified with determination). Furthermore, in this strong epistemological approach, God is not a natural cause when causing the collapse, simply because the interpretation says He is not. On the contrary, in the ontological approach, natural causes do not depend on a theory to be natural causes (or to be identified as such). They simply are what they are and are discovered by scientists working with scientific theories. The question here is what defines a natural cause to be such, if not the theory that describes them. A natural cause could be defined as that which, belonging to the natural world, acts according to its own powers (as I will explain in the following chapter), remaining within the limits of the natural order, which could be assumed to be described by the laws of nature, as Smedes suggests. Hence, if God requires acting within the limits of the natural order, God would be considered as acting as a natural cause, although not belonging to the natural realm. Now, were we to use the epistemological criterion on created natural causes, there would be no way to evaluate the argument as a whole, given that it would be self-contained. The ontologically indeterministic interpretation of quantum

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mechanics tells us simply everything: what a cause is, which causes are there, the kinds of causes we can find, and how they work. It, thus, leaves no other parameter of decision over it. Therefore, we are only left with the ontological criterion for evaluating natural causes. Thus, I find it more convenient to use the ontological criterion to assess what created natural causes are. In addition, if we only allow a scientific theory to decide over what a natural cause is, we would risk not seeing outside that theory and finding different natural causes. This will inhibit the development of new scientific theories to explain the natural world. Hence, the ontological perspective appears to be the appropriate one to use. The epistemological criterion for distinguishing God and the created natural causes, then, appears not to be good enough, and, in the end, following the ontological criterion, God appears to be conceived as causing as natural causes do.99 Consider the argument, but this time flowing from the second unexamined assumption I analysed earlier: it seems that if one wants to hold that God could act within the created universe, the autonomy of nature in its causal powers would be put into question. One must accept this reduced natural causal autonomy in this case because one would be assuming a fundamental incompatibility between God acting in the created universe and the universe having autonomous natural causal processes. Thus, in order to defend the autonomy of nature, God’s causal power is restricted to where there is no natural cause. The urgency to find adequate ways to account for God’s activity in the world forced theologians to identify God’s causality with natural created causality. Thus, divine causality is at the same ontological level as natural created causality, implying that God causes as natural causes do. God, then, within the NIODA project, is forced to cause as a cause among causes, that is, as a created cause, accepting that, ultimately, God is bound by the laws of nature to act within nature. It seems evident, then, that the NIODA project considers both the insufficient (created) cause and the complementing (divine) cause to be of the same kind. It is true that for NIODA proponents there is no doubt about God’s power, with which God could cause anything a natural cause can cause: assuming that God is an all-powerful being, there would not be any difficulty in arguing that God can produce anything any natural cause could produce. Nevertheless, a natural effect in a natural world requires a natural cause, and whether it is a natural or a divine agent which produces the effect, it would be producing it on the level of natural causes. That is, God is considered to be causing as natural causes cause. The question then is, ‘what is the problem with God acting as a cause among causes?’ After all, John Polkinghorne famously claimed that by thinking in kenotic terms,100 one can say that God could certainly act energetically (pace Halvorson),101 affirming that there was no difficulty at all with this situation. I consider this a problematic position to hold, however, as it involves issues concerning the very nature of God. Given the two unexamined assumptions just analysed together with the conclusion that God acts as another cause among

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causes, it seems to me that the traditional notion of God of classical theism, which was to a certain extent that with which the debate started, is completely changed into a rather different notion of God. In this state of affairs, I see two paths to follow: 1) we accept that the notion of God has to be changed to give a full account of reality, including the concepts and notions of contemporary science in the theological discourse, by giving a new theological account of the universe; or 2) we revise our assumptions and examine whether there is some misunderstanding in them that could have led us to this crossroads. The second option allows us either to a) revise the scientific data, or b) look at the philosophical notions involved in our discourse. It is not the aim of this work to be a scientific investigation, hence I have analysed the philosophical unexamined assumptions of the debate regarding causality and determinism, and will, in the following chapters offer the elements for a classical theist understanding of divine providential action in the created order. Of course, many authors have confidently chosen to follow the first of the paths stated above, i.e., to change the notion of God in light of the new scientific theories describing the world. A paradigmatic example is Arthur Peacocke, who suggests a panentheistic theology to give an account of the relation between the world and God. Another excellent example is John Polkinghorne, who revises the philosophical interpretations of scientific theories offering a different account of divine action through the indetermination found in chaotic systems, but also admitting the need for change in the traditional notion of God.102 Finally, there are those, like myself, who think that there are some unexamined philosophical assumptions that bring several problems to the table.103 The whole debate arises because of the preoccupation with maintaining God’s guidance and government over worldly events, as described by our current scientific theories. This worry led participants in the debate to find a way in which God could providentially guide the universe through direct actions in the world. This search, however, involves assuming that God needs to be considered as acting as a cause among causes, a statement that is a major theological shortcoming for many. Ultimately, the willingness to hold to the autonomy of nature in its workings pushed scholars to reject at least the first of the four desiderata I considered in the previous chapter, namely, God’s omnipotence. In the following chapters, I will offer a possible solution to this limitation in the form of a proposal guided by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, a path that many have investigated with varying results. I contend that a model of providential divine action inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas can be capable of holding to the four metaphysical desiderata described in the first chapter.

Notes 1 This project consisted of five conferences over ten years, in which overlaps between science (chaos and complexity theories, quantum physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience) and theology of divine action were considered, with six published volumes, edited principally by Robert Russell, including all the

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3 4 5 6

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contributions to the conferences. For a full review of the project see Russell, Robert, ‘Challenges and Progress in “Theology and Science”: An Overview of the VO/CTNS Series’ in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2008), 3–56. Russell’s latest addition to the discussion is, to the best of my knowledge, Robert John Russell and Joshua M. Moritz (eds), God’s Providence and Randomness in Nature (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2019). Most authors accept that general divine action is non-problematic with respect to science. Thomas Tracy affirms that God acts first and foremost as the creator and sustainer of all finite things, with all their intricate lawful order and unfolding potentiality, and that God is always the absolute source of the being of all finite things, acting continuously and universally as the primary cause; George Ellis admits that God’s action is continuous and immanent, holding and maintaining the laws of physics, and that the immanent God is present everywhere and yet, as transcendent, God maintains the nature of physical entities, ensuring their regular, law-like behaviour according to the description of local physical laws; while Robert Russell states that God creates, being the cause of the existence of all that is, and guides and directs the universe towards the fulfilling of God’s purposes. See Tracy, Thomas, ‘Divine Action and Quantum Theory’, Zygon 35:4 (2000), 891–900, 899, and ‘Creation, Providence, and Quantum Chance’, in Robert J. Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (eds), Quantum Mechanics. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2001), 235–258, 258; Ellis, George F.R., ‘Quantum Theory and the Macroscopic World’, in Robert J. Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (eds), Quantum Mechanics. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 259–291, and ‘Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action: The Nexus of Interaction’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 1995), 359–395, 390; and Russell, Robert, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’ Theology Today 54:1 (1997), 43–65, 48. Ellis, ‘Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action’, 371–374. Saunders, Nicholas, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 21. Ellis, ‘Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action’, 379–383. For different perspectives on the problem of conceptualising divine action within the natural order, see Torrance, Thomas, Space, Time and Incarnation (London: OUP, 1969); and Wiles, Maurice F., God’s Action in the World (London: SCM Press, 1986). Alister McGrath has raised some cultural, scientific, and theological concerns over the notion of special divine action. See his ‘Hesitations about Special Divine Action: Reflections on some Scientific, Cultural and Theological Concerns’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 3–22. Benedikt Göcke, on the contrary, presents a defence of this notion arguing that ‘special divine action’ is central to Christian theology, and that it neither contradicts science nor metaphysics. See his ‘The Many Problems of Special Divine Action’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 23–36. Russell, Robert, ‘What We’ve Learned from Quantum Mechanics about Non-interventionist Objective Divine Action in Nature – And What are its Remaining Challenges?’, in Robert Russell and Joshua M. Moritz (eds), God’s Providence, 133–171, 140. See Farrer, Austin, Faith and Speculation. An Essay in Philosophical Theology (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1967). Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: CUP, 2019), 349. See, for example, Polkinghorne, John, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1998).

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11 See, for instance, Peacocke, Arthur, Theology for a Scientific Age (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993). 12 For example, in Clayton, Philip, ‘Emergence from Physics to Theology: Toward a Panoramic View’, Zygon 41:3 (2006), 675–688. 13 Murphy, Nancey and Ellis, George F.R., On the Moral Nature of the Universe. Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996). 14 Tracy, Thomas, ‘Scientific Vetoes and the Hands-Off God: Can We Say that God Acts in History?’, Theology and Science 10:1 (2012), 55–80, 59. 15 Koperski, Jeffrey, Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 143. 16 Koperski, Divine Action, 135 (my italics). 17 See Koperski, Divine Action, 136. 18 For critiques on other strategies, see my ‘John Polkinghorne on Divine Action: A Coherent Theological Evolution’, Science and Christian Belief 24:1 (2012), 19–30; Tabaczek, Mariusz, Divine Action and Emergence. An Alternative to Panentheism (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2021), and Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Divine Action. Even Jeffrey Koperski, although he intends to distance himself from noninterventionist accounts of divine action, must also face my critique. See his Divine Action, 149–150. 19 This possibility looked so promising that Wildman stated that he ‘is persuaded that this project [NIODA] has succeeded in demonstrating the coherence and technical feasibility of several theories of intentional divine action’. Wildman, Wesley, ‘The Divine Action Project, 1988–2003’, Theology and Science 2:1 (2004), 31–75, 32. 20 Polkinghorne, John, ‘Christianity and Science’, in Philip Clayton and Zachary R. Simpson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 57–70, 67. 21 Ward, Keith, Divine Action (London: Collins, 1990), 77. For Thomas Tracy, there is no possible way to explain how God could act in nature if nature is a closed, deterministic, and fixed structure, unless we accept that God acts in nature against the laws of the created nature, which does not appear to happen. If we want to affirm God’s action in nature, gaps in the natural order are required in ways which would permit God to act without disrupting the same natural order. See Tracy, Thomas, ‘Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity, 289–324, 290ss. 22 Koperski, Divine Action, 2. 23 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 62–63 and 78–81. 24 Clayton, Philip, God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 192. 25 See Penrose, Roger, The Road to Reality (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), 505ss. 26 See Penrose, The Road to Reality, 541ss. 27 See Penrose, The Road to Reality, Chapter 23. 28 Penrose, The Road to Reality, 530. 29 Dirac, Paul, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 73. 30 See my ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’, New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 635–653. 31 Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Prometheus Books, 1958), 185. 32 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 180–181. 33 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 54. 34 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 53. 35 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 139.

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36 See Russell, Robert, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action’, in Philip Clayton and Zachary R. Simpson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, 579–595, 579 and 581; Cosmology. From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 152; ‘Five Key Topics on the Frontier of Theology and Science Today’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 46:3 (2007), 199–207, 202; and ‘What We’ve Learned’, 139. 37 Russell, Robert, ‘An Appreciative Response to Niels Henrik Gregersen’s JKR Research Conference Lecture’, Theology and Science 4:2 (2006), 129–135, 131. 38 Russell, Robert, ‘Quantum Physics in Philosophical and Theological Perspective’, in R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and G. V. Coyne (eds), Physics, Philosophy and Theology. A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1988), 343–374, 346. 39 See my ‘Polkinghorne on Divine Action’. 40 Polkinghorne, John, Science and Christian Belief (London: SPCK, 1997), 77; Faith, Science, and Understanding (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 121. 41 Polkinghorne, Belief in God, 62. 42 Polkinghorne, Belief in God, 72. 43 Polkinghorne, John, Serious Talk (London: SCM Press, 1995), 83; Science and Theology, an Introduction (London: SPCK, 1998), 42. 44 Polkinghorne, Belief in God, 63; Faith, Science, and Understanding, 114. Polkinghorne has developed these views assuming the theological notion of kenosis to allow for God to act as another cause among causes. See his ‘Kenotic Creation and Divine Action’, in John Polkinghorne (ed.), The Work of Love (London: SPCK, 2001). For a detailed discussion of his ideas see my ‘Polkinghorne on Divine Action’. 45 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 584. 46 See Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 140: ‘I use the term… “ontological indeterminism” to refer to a philosophical interpretation of the various areas in the natural sciences in which these sciences allow for such a possibility in nature’. 47 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 139. 48 Russell, Robert, ‘Special Providence and Genetic Mutation: A New Defense of Theistic Evolution’, in Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and Francisco José Ayala (eds), Evolutionary and Molecular Biology. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 1998), 191–223, 193. 49 Tracy, ‘Particular Providence’, 291. 50 Polkinghorne, John, The Polkinghorne Reader: Science, Faith and the Search for Meaning, edited by Thomas Oord (London: SPCK, 2010), 119. 51 Polkinghorne, Serious Talk, 79. 52 Russell, ‘Special Providence’, 202, and Russell, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, 55. 53 Russell, ‘Special Providence’, 203. 54 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 141. 55 Russell, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, 58 and Russell, Robert, ‘Divine Action and Quantum Mechanics: A Fresh Assessment’, in Robert J. Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (eds), Quantum Mechanics, 293–328, 293. 56 Russell, ‘Special Providence’, 193. 57 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 145. 58 Russell, ‘Special Providence’, 203. 59 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 586. 60 Russell addresses many of these objections in at least two of his many essays on the matter, namely ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 583–585; and ‘What We’ve Learned’, 150–153. 61 Saunders, Divine Action, where he expands the critiques made before in Saunders, Nicholas, ‘Does God Cheat at Dice? Divine Action and Quantum Possibilities’, Zygon 35:3 (2000), 517–544.

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62 Brecha, Robert J., ‘Schrödinger’s Cat and Divine Action: Some Comments on the Use of Quantum Uncertainty to Allow for God’s Action in the World’, Zygon 37:4 (2002), 909–924. 63 Tracy, ‘Divine Action’, 895. 64 Tracy, ‘Divine Action’, 896. Russell also concludes similarly: A change in science or in its philosophical interpretation would at most challenge the constructive proposal at hand, but not the overall viability of a theology of divine action in nature, whose warrant and sources lie elsewhere in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. See Russell, ‘Special Providence’, 218. 65 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 584–585. Russell, ‘Five Key Topics’, 203. A similar objection is raised against Polkinghorne’s choice of interpretation of chaos theory, which he simply rejects stating that the theory allows for such an interpretation. 66 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 589; Tracy, Thomas, ‘Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action? Mapping the Options’, Theology and Science 2:2 (2004), 196–201, 199: ‘these four assertions are logically incompatible’; Clayton, Philip, ‘Wildman’s Kantian Skepticism: A Rubicon for the Divine Action Debate’, Theology and Science 2:2 (2004), 186–189, 188: it is not obvious that a theory of divine action with an ontological but not ‘strong’ ontological understanding of natural law could not meet the traction requirement. […] Wildman believes one can know in advance that no theory of SDA could satisfy the four criteria. 67 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 589. 68 I have also raised this critique on numerous occasions. See, for example, my ‘A Cause Among Causes? God Acting in the Natural World’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:4 (2015), 99–114. 69 See Polkinghorne, ‘Kenotic Creation and Divine Action’, and my ‘Polkinghorne on Divine Action’. Bethany Sollereder has also argued in similar terms, suggesting that after the Incarnation, accepting that God acts as a cause among causes is not a problematic position to take. See her ‘A Modest Objection: Neo-Thomism and God as a Cause Among Causes’, Theology and Science 13:3 (2015), 345–353. 70 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 585. 71 Russell, ‘Does “The God Who Acts” Really Act?’, 64. 72 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 585. 73 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 586. 74 See, for example, Russell’s latest paper, in which he engages with Thomistic objections to his proposal; even if he tries to consider these objections fairly and seriously, he first dismisses them because they argue from a Thomistic perspective, and he does ‘not see any compelling reason why it necessarily should be taken for granted’. See Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 154. 75 Or at least a Laplacean manner of looking at the world. For the distinction between determinism and the Laplacean picture see Plantinga, Alvin, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, Theology and Science 6:4 (2008), 369–401, 376–383. Wallace, William A., The Modelling of Nature, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Washington DC: CUA Press, 1996), 20, argues that ‘there is a tendency in the present day to equate causality with determinism, to think of a cause as operating mechanically and as being rigidly connected with its effects, making it indefectible in its causing’. 76 Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, 385 (note 42). 77 Hodgson, Peter E., ‘God’s Action in the World: The Relevance of Quantum Mechanics’, Zygon 35:3 (2000), 505–516, 514. 78 Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, 378. 79 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 149.

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80 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 155. 81 Smedes, Taede A., Chaos, Complexity, and God: Divine Action and Scientism (Leuven, Paris, and Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004), 38. 82 See Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, 380 and 387. There he says that ‘what actually guides their thought is not classical science as such, but classical science plus a metaphysical add-on’, that of determinism. 83 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 591. Murphy, Nancey, ‘Divine Action in the Natural Order’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity, 325–357, 338. Plantinga seems to have joined Russell and Murphy arguing that God could act in every quantum event (given that they are a-caused events) by causing them, sometimes with a preferred outcome, sometimes without any. He calls this action Divine Collapse Causation. See Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, 393–395. 84 See Carroll, William, La Creación y las Ciencias Naturales (Santiago de Chile: Universidad Católica de Chile, 2003), 54–55. 85 See Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 582: ‘Laws of nature ultimately describe God’s regular action working in, with, and through natural processes’. 86 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 583. 87 In addition to this, they want to save contemporary science from being interpreted merely in an instrumentalist way. It is clear that, were science a mere instrument to dominate nature, without being a realist account of nature, there would be no problem at all between science and religion, or at least the debates would be of a completely different tone. See Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, note 28. 88 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 582. 89 Koperski, Divine Action, 150. 90 Dodds, Michael, Unlocking Divine Action (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2012), 143. 91 Dodds, Michael, ‘Science, Causality and Divine Action: Classical Principles for Contemporary Challenges’, CTNS Bulletin 21:1 (2001), 3–12, 8. 92 Smedes, Chaos, Complexity, and God, 198. 93 Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 585. 94 Jeffrey Koperski rehearses a similar critique to this objection, saying that ‘perhaps it has greater force within an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics that I do not share… without that prior commitment, however, this sort of criticism loses its force’. See his Divine Action, 150. 95 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 154. 96 Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 155. 97 See Russell, ‘What We’ve Learned’, 143, where he describes the precise place where he sees God acting at the quantum level: ‘God’s action relates to the specific outcome but it may or may not be related to the collapse. Instead the collapse might be due to natural causes’. 98 For Heisenberg’s testimony on these matters see Heisenberg, Werner, Tradition in der Wissenschaft, Reden und Aufsätze (Munich: R. Piper, 1977). 99 This does not mean that God’s actions would not remain hidden from science. Thus, Russell’s argument holds: ‘God’s direct action will be hidden in principle from science, because, according to ontological indeterminism, there is no natural cause for each event in question for science to discover’. Russell, ‘Quantum Physics and the Theology’, 585. 100 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science, and Understanding, 105. 101 See Halvorson, Hans, ‘Plantinga on Providence and Physics’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5:3 (2013), 19–30, where he explicitly rejects this possibility. 102 See my ‘Polkinghorne on Divine Action’. 103 Michael Dodds is another good example on this position. See his Unlocking Divine Action.

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A metaphysics of natural contingency

After considering the contemporary debate on divine providence and contingency in nature, its shortcomings and successes, and why I think it does not measure up to the criteria set in the first chapter for models on divine providential action, it is about time to move straight into Thomas Aquinas’ thought. The following two chapters will be fairly technical on Aquinas’ metaphysics, first on natural contingency and then on the nature of God and God’s providence. This move will prove necessary to show why I hold that a model of divine action inspired by Aquinas’ philosophy is not only plausible, but it could actually be a model that holds up to all four desiderata. This chapter, in particular, will explore the metaphysics of contingency, heavily drawing from Aquinas’ understanding of causality. I will first present a comprehensive account of his doctrine of causality, including his treatment of the four Aristotelian causes, to end with an explanation of the metaphysical root of contingency in nature. This thorough examination will pave the way to delving into the metaphysics of Aquinas’ doctrine of divine providence.

A A definition of causality The core to Aquinas’1 understanding of causality is the notion of dependence, a notion that Aquinas applies both to natural and to divine providential causality. In this chapter, I will analyse in some detail Aquinas’ views on natural causality from the perspective of the notion of dependence, which will lead the way to a comprehensive metaphysical doctrine of natural contingency. Natural things are, for Aquinas, those that ‘appear to have some principle of motion and rest in them’.2 This principle of which Aquinas speaks is called the nature of a thing, which is, ultimately, the cause of natural movements, both in animate and inanimate things. Since each thing is only a determined particular kind of being, the causality of natural beings does not extend to all beings, but only to the spheres of their own actions. Thus, fire heats, water wets, electrons attract (and are attracted to) protons, and so on. The proper causality of natural things, thus, follows from the particular kind of being each thing is. In this sense, then, natural things act according to a certain necessity that follows from their own nature, and cannot do what is not included in their nature: fire cannot wet, electrons cannot attract electrons and water cannot dry (water DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-4

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might heat, though only if it previously received heat from another source, so it is not its own heat). Thus, natural things are somewhat determined to act according to what they can do. It is in this sense that one must understand Aquinas’ motto: ‘nature is determined to one action’.3 Following this idea, Aquinas explains that effects necessarily follow their cause, but only in the sense that without that cause the effect could not have happened. He states, commenting on Aristotle, that ‘the cause is that from which something follows of necessity’.4 This preliminary indication implies a natural tendency of natural things to a certain determinate effect, which, as Aquinas will later explain, also implies that the effect is produced regularly, as long as there are favourable circumstances for its production. This characterisation, however, does not require that, given the causes for a particular effect, this effect would always follow, since it is possible to think of a thing that is determinate to produce a particular effect, which does so in most cases, but that it could, on some occasions, not produce the effect. As I will show later in this chapter, this failure in the production of the effect might not only be because of some interactions with some external causes, but also because of an intrinsic defectiveness in the cause itself, what I will suggest is the metaphysical root of contingency in nature.5 Aquinas uses to the notions of act and potency to explain this metaphysical doctrine, arguing that natural things act as they are in act, but since they are a mix of act and potency, they are imperfect acts. This imperfection in their beings is the ultimate metaphysical source of the imperfection of their actions. Aquinas affirms, then, that in things that have the possibility of being and not being, there is also the possibility of becoming and not becoming. Such things neither are nor come to be of necessity, but there is in them the kind of possibility that disposes them to becoming and not becoming, to being and not being.6 Even though particular natural things come into being and tend to develop in consistent ways, there is always a latent possibility of the contingent and chanceful event that frustrates such tendencies and renders them ultimately fruitless.7 As I mentioned above, the core of Aquinas’ doctrine of causality is the notion of dependence, which ultimately implies that causality is not a univocal notion, but that it is rather analogical: given that there are several ways in which something can depend upon something else, there will be different kinds of causes. All kinds of causes will, thus, share something in common: the fact that there is a relation of dependence with their effects; but all kinds of causes will also be different in other respects, namely, the way in which they cause. This is the meaning of Aquinas’ Aristotelian statement that ‘causes are said in many different ways’.8 Understanding the notion of causality as a relation of dependence also advances the idea that it does not imply the necessity of the effect from its cause. Although it is necessary to pose a cause once the effect is produced, Aquinas’ notion of causality as dependence does not mean that a natural

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thing will cause something by simply having the capacity of causing it, as if implying that the effect will always follow of necessity from it. In this respect, as a relation, causality is not some third entity between two terms, as an intermediate between cause and effect, pace Hume. Causality, on the contrary, is the very production, so to speak, of the effect by the cause. If this were not the case, the very notion of causality would imply an infinitude of intermediates, which, each in its turn, would cause the following intermediate cause that would cause the following one. As the terms of a relation of dependence, Aquinas continues, cause and effect refer to each other according to their own beings. In this way, he explains the cause ‘implies some influx on the being of the thing caused’,9 meaning that the cause acts towards the being of the effect. Aquinas further explains that a cause acts in the effect according to its own mode of being a cause, while the effect receives the action of the cause according to its own being; thus, a cause is in the effect according to the being of the effect, and the effect is in the cause according to the being of the cause.10 These notions will be of great importance when considering God’s creative action since they will serve to show how natural things depend upon God for everything they are, and how things would cease to be instantaneously, were God not continuously creating the natural world, as will become clear in the next chapter. As I said above, the notion of causality as a relation of dependence opens the path for understanding it as an analogical notion. A cause is always that upon which something depends for its being or becoming, but the modes of causality and dependency vary greatly depending on the kinds of causes involved. Thus, as an analogous notion, causality can be employed in a number of ways. Aquinas utilises this idea of causality as dependence throughout his writings, in which he describes the four classical causes of the Aristotelian tradition. Aquinas, as most of Aristotle’s followers, refers to these causes to explain both why something is what it is, and why it can change and become something else. These four different causes, of course, will not cause all in the same way. On the contrary, each of them will cause in a particular way, being, each of them, that upon which something depends, with respect to different features of the thing caused.

B The causes in nature The four Aristotelian causes are well known: final, efficient, formal, and material. Two of them determine the existence of a new being as extrinsic to the being, without constituting the effect in its own being. The first of these is the final cause, which receives the name of final because it is the last to be accomplished and it is the aim that starts (and this is why it is also the first cause) and guides the action of the efficient cause or agent. The efficient cause is that whose influx or action determines the existence of a new being: the effect. This

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efficient cause causes by giving a new determination or form in an already existing matter. These two, the new form and the already existing matter, are the remaining causes that constitute and cause the existence of the effect with their own being. Matter is the subject that receives the determination or form from the efficient cause. It is called first because it exists prior to the influx of formal determination by the efficient cause. The form is that which is received in the matter and disposes the matter to be this or that different kind of being. In this perspective, the formal cause explains why something exists as this particular kind of thing, and the material cause explains why it can cease to be what it is and become something else. Even if it might seem today that only the efficient cause, and perhaps the material cause, can still be considered relevant to our understanding of nature, I will try to show below that fully understanding the workings of nature requires the consideration of these four causes. As I will show, Aquinas strongly argues for an order in these causes, explaining that it is only by the final cause that the efficient cause is moved to produce the form in a pre-existent matter: ‘matter is completed by form; form by the efficient cause; and the efficient by the final cause’.11 a The material cause In his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Aquinas defines the material cause as ‘that from which a thing comes to be and is something intrinsic, i.e., something that exists within the thing’.12 The first particular character of ‘that from which something is made’ is that it exists within the thing, that is, the material cause is inherent to the very same effect that it is causing. This means that it is not something different from the effect, but it is a principle of its being. William Wallace explains that the material cause is ‘a type of conservation principle that persists through all natural changes in the universe’.13 Aquinas sees in this relation between the matter and its effect a relation of dependence of the effect upon the cause. See what he has to say in his Questions on the Power of God: an effect necessarily depends on its cause. This is a feature of the very nature of cause and effect; and it is evidenced in formal and material causes, seeing that on the removal of its material or formal principles, a thing at once ceases to exist, because such principles enter into its essence.14 If the material principle of a being is taken away, the thing would instantaneously cease to be. A second feature of this material cause is that the way in which matter causes its effect is not through an action that matter performs to cause its effect. Instead, the way in which a thing depends upon matter is that, for any material being, not having matter means its non-existence. Therefore, the way in which matter causes is simply by being, and not with an action which follows its being material. As I shall show in the following pages, matter is potency for receiving forms; hence,

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matter cannot cause by an act different from its own being. Instead, it causes by receiving the act from the form and communicating its own material being to the form. In fact, matter is ultimately pure potency, which cannot exist by itself, and which needs a form that actualises it to exist. In Aquinas’ words, matter cannot exist by itself without a form by means of which it is an actual being since of itself it is only potential. And it is a particular thing only by means of a form through which it becomes in act.15 Finally, since ‘every effect participates of the virtue of its cause’,16 because of the materiality of the material cause, its effect is material. A third feature of the material cause is its potential character. Matter refers to something that ‘can’ or ‘could’ acquire diverse forms at different times. Nevertheless, it cannot be devoid of any form, because, as I will discuss in the following section, through the form something is this or that particular thing. Through the form, something is a determined thing, and what is not something determined is not at all. Thus, the capacity for acquiring and having one or another form is a defining character of matter, by which it makes the thing it causes able to change, that is, to acquire new forms, simply because the material cause is not the form that it has. Matter as such does not require a particular form, because it can acquire any form. This pure capacity for receiving forms is called pure potency. Hence, the material cause is a purely potential principle; it is a principle of being able to be something now and another thing at a different time. Michael Dodds expresses this idea saying that ‘far from being the most fundamental actuality in the universe, this principle, in itself, will have no actuality at all… It is not a being, but the mere “possibility-of-being”’.17 Matter is the root of being capable of becoming something different from what a thing is. In a somewhat exclamatory statement, Wallace reflects on this character of matter saying that it ‘is a powerful and potential principle that lies at the base of the most cataclysmic upheavals taking place on our planet, to say nothing of those in the remote depths of space’.18 The material cause is, therefore, further defined as that by which something can be another thing. This defining character of matter shows the material cause both as potentiality and as a co-principle of natural beings. Thus, matter is the principle through which any material being is capable of being changed into another material being because it can undergo a change in its form. Aquinas teaches this idea with the following statement: the fact that matter, inasmuch as what respects to its essence, is in potency to every form, while it is not able to exist under many at the same time, requires that that which is under one [form] is in potency to others.19 The essence, one may say, of the material cause is to be in potency (‘matter is its own potency’,20 Aquinas claims) to receiving or acquiring different forms at different times. Hence, matter lacks every form it can take on to become various natural things.

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Aquinas finds the reason to affirm this feature of matter in the fact that ‘potency, considered in itself, is indeterminate, because it can be many things’.21 Potency, thus, can be actualised according to the action that is performed upon it, or according to the act that acts upon it. Potency, in itself, depends upon the act that actualises it to be in this or that manner. Matter, as it is in potency, can be actualised towards different forms, or, as Dodds puts it, matter is ‘the ultimate principle of possibility, that aspect of each thing which explains why it can cease to be what it is and become a different kind of thing’.22 In this respect, matter is ‘a radical indeterminacy at the root of all natural changes;’23 matter is ‘unqualified potentiality and unlimited potentiality’.24 Therefore, Aquinas concludes, describing the essence of matter somewhat differently, that ‘matter is that which is not as such a particular thing, but is in potency to becoming a particular thing’.25 Thus, when having one form, matter is in potency to receiving another different form and losing the one that it had: ‘matter, while it underlies one form, is in potentiality to another form, and to the privation of the form which it has already’.26 In his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Aquinas explains that these features can be discovered in the philosophical analysis of change. Any change occurs between contraries (as in generation and destruction, which is a change in substance; increase and decrease, which is a change in quantity; alteration, which is a change in affections; or local motion, which is a change of place). Besides these contraries, there is a third that is what changes, and this is called matter. Since that which changes, matter, can be either of the contraries, then that which changes is, in itself, in potency to contraries.27 If this were not the case, it would not be capable of having received the form that it is losing to be able to receive the new one.28 This change is what the agent or efficient cause produces: it brings a new form into the matter. Given that matter is in potency to any particular form, it is, in a way, all the forms, but it is all the forms only in potency: it can receive any form. It is impossible for Aquinas, however, for any potency to move into act without an efficient cause to actualise it.29 For this reason, it is necessary that there be an efficient cause to produce this passage from the potency of the matter to the actual receiving of the new form. Still, Aquinas remarks that ‘matter is prior to form from the point of view of generation and time because that to which something comes is prior to that which comes to it’.30 In order for an efficient cause to act it needs the material with which to perform that action, because were that material not there, there would be no possible substrate in which to perform the action, or no recipient that would receive the new form from the efficient cause. Thus, what ‘was formerly in the potency in matter, is brought to be in act’.31 b The formal cause It is time now to turn the attention to the formal cause, briefly defined as that which gives being to a thing. Following Aristotle,32 Aquinas offers three reasons for talking about forms in the natural world. First of all, given the differences

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perceived among natural things, to give an account of what they are, one should admit a formal principle in their beings. For example, if one only includes the stones and the wood in the definition of a house, it is not the house that is being defined, but the matter of the house. The matter by itself does not give a proper account of the being of the house. To offer a proper definition of the house one needs the disposition and the joining together of all its material parts. Thus, Aquinas holds, ‘the differences in sensible things indicate a formal principle’.33 This argument initiates the other two reasons for talking about forms. As I have explained before, matter is pure potentiality, pure capability of, pure being able to be. Therefore, matter requires a second principle that would actualise this potentiality, a principle that would make that ‘being able to be something’ into actually ‘being something’. This principle is what Aquinas, among many other philosophers, called the form of a thing. Thus, the form is the principle through which a thing actually is, and by which it is what it is. Finally, the third reason to give an account of the existence of forms is by looking at the unity in things. There are individual things (like animals) that are a unity, i.e., they are one whole thing, or better, they are not the mere juxtaposition of their parts; that is, things are a unity not only because of their parts staying together for a period of time. Things that are one in this sense need a source or a principle that gives them their unity. In Aquinas’ words, ‘all things that have several parts – and of which the whole is not merely a heap of parts but is something constituted of parts and is over and above the parts themselves – have something that makes them one’.34 Hence, since it is through the form that the thing is actually something determined, the form is the principle through which this determined something comes to being, and not through matter,35 just because ‘matter does not make a thing to be in act but through the form’.36 An important feature of matter and form is that they are not two different actually existing ‘things’ in the natural world. If matter and form were things, natural things, then it would still be necessary to find an explanation for them, which would bring us to the beginning of our quest. Matter and form are, on the contrary, co-principles by which natural things are. Michael Dodds compellingly explains this idea affirming that the form is not something added to a complete substance, as a vitalist ‘life force’ might be added to a conglomeration of inanimate substances. Nor is it a complete substance in itself. It is an incomplete substantial principle, corresponding to the complementary principle of primary matter. Only together do they comprise the one unified actual substance, whether it be the one electron, the one sodium atom, the one chemical compound, or the one living organism.37 This idea implies the very essence of the relation between matter and form: they refer to each other as potency to act. The form, then, by virtue of its actuality gives being to things, actualising the potentiality of matter. In Aquinas’ words, ‘the form is the principle in being,

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38

according to which things are in being’. Through its form, thus, a thing is somehow rendered a habens esse, i.e., possessor of being.39 As with matter, form is a cause by uniting immediately to the matter, and not through an intermediate action. Thus both, form and matter, bring into existence the individual thing.40 Natural things, then, depend on their form, thus having a causal relation to it: were the form not causing them to be what they are, they would simply not be.41 This composition of form and matter in natural things allows them to undergo different kinds of changes: change of place, alterations, changes in quantity, and also generation and destruction. Indeed, the very intelligibility of change, as I explained in the previous section, requires an analysis in terms of form and matter. Aristotle argues dialectically to this conclusion in his Physics: in any of the first three kinds of change (movement, alteration, and growth), natural things change according to some feature of their being, remaining as they are in their own being; in substantial change, however, natural things stop being what they are, and a new thing is produced. All these changes are the effect of a form leaving the thing and a new form appearing from the potency of matter by the action of an efficient cause. Aquinas expresses this idea as follows: the corruption of a thing happens when it gets separated from its formal cause by which that thing has being in act; similar to generation, which is the way into being, is by the acquisition of a form, corruption, which is the way into non-being, is by the loss of a form.42 As noted above, matter cannot exist without form in the natural world, but form can neither exist without matter. Aquinas explains this peculiar relation saying that form and matter are causes of each other in terms of their being. The form is the cause of matter inasmuch as it gives actual being to matter, and matter is the cause of form inasmuch as it supports form in being.43 Matter would not have actual being if it was not through the form, and form would not be at all if it were not in matter. Anthony Kenny explains this doctrine in the following way: The best way we can say of their causal relationship is this: the matter makes the form to be the form of this individual; and the form makes the matter to be matter of this particular kind. In neither case does ‘makes’ indicate efficient causation.44 Hence, ‘matter and form are said to be in relation to each other’,45 and this relation is one of dependence. In natural things, matter is prior to form in terms of temporality and generation, because ‘in generable things the imperfect is prior to the perfect, and potency to act’.46 On the other hand, form, since it is actuality, and since the material potency needs actuality to move into act, is prior in terms of substance and completeness,47 or in respect to the nature of being a complement,48

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because matter has full existence only through the form. Since the form is necessary in order to actualise the potentiality of matter, and by doing so it gives being to it so that a natural thing is composed of both of them, and given the way matter and form cause each other, a thing is what it is and not something different only through the form. Then, a thing is this kind of being, and not another, through its own form, because the form brings to actuality the potentiality of matter. Still, as is evident by the differences in things, they can change and will most probably do so. Thus, not all potentiality of matter is actualised, but only some, which means that this thing has some determined actuality, and not another one, always with a mixture of potentiality or indetermination. In consequence, a thing receives from its form all of what it is to be that particular thing, including the way in which it acts and operates. Thus, ‘each thing acts according to its form, which is the principle of action’.49 In other words, forms, by intrinsically causing natural things together with matter to be what they are, provide things with their powers to act. Behaviours, actions, and reactions are natural for any given thing, precisely to the extent that they proceed from within it, and thus from its matter and form as its basic constituents. Natural forms are, then, the inner source of activity and reaction in natural things. It is the efficient cause, to which I will now turn my attention, which causes by acting according to its own form. c The efficient cause According to Aquinas, matter and form are not enough to explain the change or coming to be of things, since by themselves they cannot do or perform any action. Thus, he puts forth the efficient cause that produces the change or the coming to be of things. As with the previous causes, the efficient cause is a cause because the effect depends on its action for its own coming to be or its own change. If the efficient cause were not there, there would be no change or no coming to be of a new thing. The idea being that there is a real dependence for something that came to be or was changed upon something that made it change or come to be. Nevertheless, in this case, the efficient cause is an extrinsic cause of the effect, i.e., it is not immanent to the effect like matter and form are. Thus, it does not cause with its very being, as the material and formal causes do, but it causes with an action, which springs from its own being but is, nevertheless, different from it.50 Hence, every efficient cause acts and causes according to its own being this or that by its own form. Thus, no efficient cause can produce an effect beyond its actual capacity by its own causal power. When an efficient cause acts on another thing, it does not perform its action upon the formality of the other thing, but on its potency, i.e., its matter, which is the recipient of that action.51 Finally, since the action comes from the form of the efficient cause, what is received in the matter is the form that the action produces, according to its own potency. In this sense, ‘the effect follows from the efficient cause naturally according to the mode of its form’.52 Thus, to cause as an efficient cause is to make something go, in any respect, from its potency to its act.

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An efficient cause, then, is that which gives an act (a form) to another thing that can receive it because it has the potency (matter) to receive it.53 Clearly, natural things cannot be transformed into anything: a thing must have the potency of the being that is about to receive. Thus, a certain preparation or predisposition is required in the natural thing in order to receive the action of the efficient cause. This predisposition implies that there is a proportion to the form that it is about to receive, to the action of the efficient cause.54 Technically speaking, the form comes to be in the subject and from the subject; it is not produced outside the material and then attached to it. The form comes to be in the potentiality of the matter and depends upon the disposition of properties existent in the matter upon which the efficient cause acts.55 This means that any natural thing can act only upon another natural thing, which is by its own right composed by matter and form. A natural efficient cause cannot act on nothing. In this respect, ‘efficient causes, which are among us, do not produce matter but forms’.56 To explain the fact that efficient causes do not always produce new beings with their own forms – in fact most of the times natural efficient causes produce things that do not have the same form of the efficient cause, Aquinas introduces the distinction between two modes in which efficient causes produce their effects.57 As Connell explains, the efficient cause and its effect ‘need not bear a resemblance to one another according to the same species’.58 Still, every efficient cause acts due to the fact that it has this or that form,59 and thus it does something that is similar to that form, i.e., its effect has some kind of likeness to it.60 So, the first manner is when the effect has the same form of its efficient cause, as when fire produces fire, or a horse another horse, and both, cause and effect, can be said to have the same form. Aquinas calls this mode univocal causation. Aquinas speaks of equivocal causation when the effect has a different form, as when a man builds a house, in which there is still some likeness in the effect to its efficient cause.61 Aquinas argues that equivocal causation is possible because the power of the efficient cause sometimes exceeds the potentiality of the matter receiving the action.62 Since the form is received in the matter according to its potency, there could be a diversity of effects according to the diversity of potencies, as well as the diversity of efficient cause. This is why some effects do not reflect completely the form of their efficient causes, but rather are but a similarity to them.63 In distinguishing the kinds of efficient causes, Aquinas believes that there are four of them in nature: principal, preparing, instrumental, and advising,64 i.e., in reverse order, that which counsels or commands, that which helps, that which disposes or prepares, and that which brings something to perfection. Each can be considered an efficient cause, though each of them in different respects. Still, the principal is that which in all respects can be called efficient, for it is that from which the effect follows. Advising causes, i.e., efficient causes that counsel or command, only operate in intellectual agents, who act following something that was proposed or suggested to them. An advising cause, then, is that which gives the agent the form

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through which it acts. This type of efficient cause differs from the principal or perficiens efficient cause inasmuch as it specifies the form and end of the activity. For instance, when a father gives some advice to his daughter on how to hit a tennis ball properly as to win the point, the father does not hit the tennis ball but gives his daughter the knowledge to do it properly. Aquinas suggests that this is one way in which the first cause relates to secondary causes, i.e., how God relates with natural things by specifying their ends and actions.65 The assisting, auxiliary, or instrumental cause is that which contributes to achieving the principal effect, and it is particularly important to understand Aquinas’ account of the nature of God’s providential actions in the created world. The instrumental efficient cause, thus, differs from the principal efficient cause in that the principal efficient cause acts to produce this particular form in the matter, i.e., the principal cause produces its effect in virtue of its form, to which that effect is assimilated, as fire warms in virtue of its own heat. The instrumental cause, however, does not act to produce the effect through a form that inheres in it, but only insofar as it is moved by the principal efficient cause. Thus, an instrumental cause acts not according to its own form, but solely in virtue of the movement imparted to it by the principal cause. Hence, the likeness of the effect is to the principal agent, as a bed does not resemble the axe which carves it, but rather the design in the mind of the carpenter. An instrumental power comes to inhere in an instrument by the very fact that the instrument is being moved by the principal cause. The power of the principal efficient cause is to some extent permanent and complete, while the instrumental power is transient and incomplete. Thus, assuming some Neo-Platonic language, Aquinas explains that the instrument participates in the power of the principal efficient cause. Consider the following simple example: an axe does something to produce a bench. For although the axe has an action that pertains to it through its own form, i.e., to chop and divide, there is another effect that pertains to it only insofar as it is moved by the artisan, i.e., to make a straight cut that corresponds to the form in the artisan’s plan.66 Therefore, the instrument can be said to have two effects: one that pertains to it according to its own form; another that pertains to it insofar as it is moved by the primary efficient cause and that transcends its own form. The first effect is proper to itself, according to its own form or nature. For instance, cutting a piece of wood is proper to an axe in virtue of the sharpness intrinsic to it. The second effect, that the instrument produces according to the action of the principal efficient cause, always goes beyond the instrument’s nature, i.e., the instrumental cause could not perform it unless the principal efficient cause would cause it to act in that manner. The instrument, thus, modifies the action of the principal efficient cause so that it could act in a way in which it could not if it did not use this particular instrumental cause, as when a man uses a knife to cut his steak in a precise manner, which he would not be able to do without the knife. It is, however, through the first effect (that which pertains to the instrument by its own nature) that the second effect (that which is according to the principal agent) is performed, which is the reason this and not another

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instrument is to be used to accomplish this particular effect: ‘it does not accomplish the instrumental action save by exercising its proper action’.67 The preparing efficient cause is the one that renders matter suitable for the perfection that it is going to receive. In fact, it does not induce the final form that perfects a thing, but only prepares the matter for that form. As Connell explains, a preparing or disposing cause is an agent that does not introduce the specifying form or property into the entity produced, but acts on the materials in a preliminary way to proportion them to the activities of a subsequent, principal agent.68 This cause, thus, is not properly said to be the principal efficient cause, because what it produces remains in potency to the final form. As a preparing efficient cause acts upon the potentiality of the matter, it gradually introduces that proportion required in order to produce the form from the potency of matter, and thus, ultimately, allows for less resistance in the matter for the principal efficient cause to act on it.69 For example, when someone gets wounded, it is first necessary to clean the wound in order to cure it afterwards. The agent cleaning the wound would be acting as a preparing efficient cause, and when curing it, the agent would be acting as the perfecting efficient cause. Teaching offers another good example: when a logic teacher, for instance, shows the way syllogisms work to her student, the teaching is preparing the student’s intellect to understand how these arguments work: the student is the principal efficient cause of her own knowledge, while the teacher simply prepares her.70 And even nature gives good examples of these causes, for instance, when a bird first eats the food in order to prepare it for feeding its offspring. Finally, the perfecting efficient cause is that which gives fulfilment inasmuch as it causes the final perfection of a thing.71 Thus, in the production of forms, the efficient cause is that from whose action the form directly results.72 Aquinas reduces all actions in natural efficient causes to these four types: ‘to this genus of cause is reduced everything that makes anything to be in any manner whatsoever, not only as regards substantial being, but also as regards accidental being, which occurs in every kind of motion’.73 Aquinas is quick to affirm that it is possible for every efficient cause not to cause what it was ordered to cause according to its form. That is, it is possible to find events that were not expected from their causes, or in other words, it is possible to find indeterminism in natural events. An efficient cause of any kind can fail in producing a form in the matter in which it acts. I will explain this possibility in the following section, where I will discuss the possibility of failure of the causality of the efficient cause. d The final cause The final cause is the second of extrinsic causes, together with the efficient cause.74 It is called ‘final’ for two reasons: 1) because it is the last thing to come into being,75 and 2) because it is what the efficient cause tends to do as it starts

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the process of causation. Thus, the definition of the final cause for Aquinas is that cause that moves the efficient cause to produce its effect by attracting it to cause the effect. The Latin is certainly much shorter: id propter quod efficiens operatur (i.e., that for which the efficient cause causes).76 This section aims to flesh out this definition and to see to what extent that propter quod efficiens operatur can be a cause. In the natural world, and even more, if we limit our analysis to inanimate beings, it does not seem evident that things (be it an atom, a planet, the wind, or a rock) act towards an end;77 in fact, it appears as if things simply act, and do so without pursuing anything. Indeed, the major problem for affirming final causes is that they do not yet exist when efficient causes start their causing of their effects, and thus they cannot tend towards something that does not yet exist. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas offers an extensive account of why one should affirm that efficient causes always act towards an end: Every agent acts towards an end… if agents were not determined towards an effect, they would not produce this or that; thus, so that it produces some determined effect, it is necessary that it be determined towards something certain, which has the nature of an end. This determination, which in rational beings is given by the rational appetite that is called the will, in other things is given by a natural tendency, which is called the natural appetite.78 Aquinas is arguing that if there is no final cause (a natural tendency in things to act in this or that manner), then the efficient cause would not have anything to do, because it would have lost its natural inclination to act.79 Or better, we would have no explanation why the efficient cause acts in this or that manner.80 The final cause triggers actions and in that respect they are causal, by initiating the activities in natural things. Now, every tendency towards an operation or movement is an inclination of some kind towards what we might call a goal, aim, or purpose. Hence, a purposeful natural behaviour is described as an act that is directed towards a goal or an end, which is what the term ‘final cause’ has meant since Aristotle first discussed it. The origin of this aim, goal, or purpose is a rather different question that needs addressing. As I said before, the formal cause is the principle of action in natural things. Natural things are of this or that kind due to their particular formal causes. Then, given that each natural thing acts in a particular manner, it is due to the formal cause that natural things act in this or that manner. Thus, it is the form that determines the end of the action of the efficient cause.81 Aquinas frequently affirms this stance when claiming, for example, that ‘the very form and nature of a thing is the end and the cause for it doing something’.82 The formal cause is, thus, also a final cause when it is considered not in relation to an existing entity, but in relation to the process of production. That is, the formal cause and the end are one reality in the thing, but their causal roles are different. Thus, every efficient cause, when it is causing, is antecedently determined to a goal or an end.83

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As I mentioned in passing, for Aquinas beings that are rational (human beings, for instance) determine their own ends with their wills, whereas those things that act without knowledge, i.e., non-rational beings, the determination that comes from their form is called a natural inclination or tendency towards that end.84 This fact does not mean, however, that natural final causes are easily discoverable. In fact the final cause is that which is especially difficult to find for Aquinas. The final and most pressing question in regard to the final cause is how does it actually cause? What is the character of its causality? How are such causes related to the other causes? The final cause is, as I said, the end that the efficient cause pursues. In this perspective, the final cause is that which starts the whole process of causation, that is, it is the cause of the causality of the other causes, and hence ‘the end is prior in causing than any other cause’.85 Aquinas explains this idea pointing to the sequence of causing: matter is acted upon by the efficient cause, so the efficient cause is prior to the material cause; the form is the effect of the mover, that renders the matter from potency to act. But the end is prior to the efficient cause, since it moves it.86 The efficient cause acts upon something else, producing the form. This efficient cause, however, acts because of an end. Hence, the final cause is prior to the other causes in regard to their causal character. Therefore, it is ‘the cause of the causality of every other cause’,87 ‘because the efficient cause does not cause unless for an end, and out of the action of the efficient cause the form is produced in matter, and matter sustains the form’.88 The final cause is, then, the cause of the causality of the efficient cause because it acts due to the influence of the end, and by being the cause of the causality of the efficient cause, the final cause is the cause of the causality of the formal and material causes, because due to the action of the efficient cause, the form informs the matter and the matter sustains the form. Nevertheless, the final cause is not prior to the other causes in terms of being, because it does not exist before it is reached by the action of the efficient cause as the end of a movement or change. Thus, the final cause is the first in terms of causality, but the last in terms of being.89 Hence, Aquinas affirms that the final cause is the cause of the causality of the other causes, not the cause of their being.90 Thus, the efficient cause is the cause of the final cause in terms of being, because the efficient cause brings the final cause into act; but the final is considered the cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality: The efficient cause is called cause with respect to the end because the end is not in act unless by the action of the efficient cause; but the end is called cause with respect to the efficient cause, because the efficient cause would not act unless by its tendency to the end.91 This idea implies that the efficient cause does not cause the causality of the final cause.92

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Therefore, the way in which the final cause causes is by starting the efficient cause’s action by attracting it to act. As the efficient cause depends on the final cause to act, the effect of the efficient cause depends on the final cause as well. Hence the final cause is also said to be a cause in terms of dependence. The term ‘attraction’ here signifies that a thing has something that another thing might need to reach its own perfection in action or being. Therefore, from the form of an efficient cause flows the natural inclination to reach the end, purpose, or goal of its action, and thus its own perfection. These considerations on the four Aristotelian causes should be sufficient for my purposes in this volume. These four different kinds of causes all cause together what is being caused: the efficient cause, by means of the final cause, causes the form in such particular portion of matter. And thus, the effect depends upon all of them.93 This notion of dependence is, as I pointed out in each case, the basic notion to understand the particular way Aquinas thinks of causation. A cause is that upon which something depends. In all the four causes, then, there is a relation of dependence of the effect upon the cause. This is the notion that will help us understand the way in which God can be considered to be a cause of the natural realm as well as a cause in the natural realm. I shall now move to consider the way in which nature can be said to act of necessity, but in such a way that chance, contingency, and indetermination are also included in its action. The main idea that will guide the next section is that, although natural things have a particular kind of form that makes them operate in a particular (determined) way, given that natural things are and could not be, i.e., they are contingent, it follows that their activity is also contingent.

C Natural contingency Natural things, for Aquinas, tend to act in a particular way, as I explained in the previous section, according to their particular kind of being. In some sense, they are determined to behave in that particular way. Nevertheless, Aquinas also acknowledges that natural things may not accomplish the effect to which their nature tends: ‘in natural bodies, there are sometimes defects with respect to the course of nature’.94 Natural things do not exist by themselves, alone, separated from other natural things. There is a cycle, the course of nature, in which natural things are involved. It is precisely because of being involved in this cycle that the possibility of the non-accomplishment of the effect determined by nature of each thing exists.95 Furthermore, natural things are contingent in their being, i.e., they can or can not be. Hence, their actions are also contingent, given that anything acts according to its own being: they can act or not, but on top of that, they can act according to their nature or they can fail in their natural actions. A recognition of the fundamental metaphysical facts – explained in the previous sections – that natural actions flow from forms, that forms are the principles of actuality in things, and that all things have a certain mixture of imperfection due to their material cause, shows how there can be, and there actually is, contingency in

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nature. Stated another way, every natural active cause can be impeded. Or, as William Wallace puts it, ‘nature’s necessity is far from absolute, and one may even wonder whether it is more capricious than determinate in its mode of operation’.97 Aquinas distinguishes between events that almost always happen and those that happen rarely but do happen sometimes: ‘things that are of natural origin are always or almost always the same way, though they might sometimes fail due to some corruption’.98 Things that occur almost always (ut in pluribus), are almost determined in their causes, and there is usually no impediment in the process of causing them. These occurrences refer to the actions of natural things. Now, events that occur rarely or in few instances (ut in paucioribus) are those that are not determined in their causes, but they happen per accidens (i.e., by accident), or due to some corruption. Aquinas explains that one thing can be the cause per accidens of something else in two ways:99 1) from the point of view of the cause, as anything that happens to a cause is said to be an accidental cause of the effect of the original cause, as the whiteness in the walls is an accidental cause of a house because to be white is accidental to the wall; nevertheless, the wall is the material cause of the house, and hence the whiteness can be said to be an accidental cause of the house. 2) From the point of view of the effect, as in when something occurs besides the proper effect of the efficient cause, i.e., besides the intention of the cause. I am only going to deal with the second way. Aquinas’ argument in favour of contingency and indeterminism in the act of natural causes is in the terms of the hylomorphic composition of natural things, i.e., in terms of matter and form, and, hence, the question will be resolved in terms of the intrinsic causes of things, i.e., the material and the formal cause. That is, the possibility of an impediment as an extrinsic feature claims its foundation in the intrinsic order of things.100 So, although natural causes act necessarily insofar as they are determined to one alternative, they are nonetheless the source of the possibility of contingency in their actions, contingency that follows from their (limited) necessity.101 Thus, the argument will hold that events that happen ut in paucioribus have their ultimate root in the material cause, which, as I have explained, is one of the two intrinsic co-principles of natural things. It is worth investigating in some depth Aquinas’ account of these events, so as to be able to offer at a later stage a Thomistic interpretation of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Aquinas explains that the failure of the causal relation between efficient cause and its effect, and thus the source of contingency, can occur due to three reasons: 1) pertaining to the cause in itself; 2) the material thing in which the efficient cause acts; 3) or the encounter of many efficient causes.102 As Aquinas affirms in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics: If, then, we attribute all contingent events here to particular causes only, many things will be found to occur accidentally. This will be so for a number of reasons. (1) First, because of the conjunction of two causes one of which does not come under the causality of the other, as when robbers

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(1) Because of the conjunction of two causes The first reason for the occurrence of things not expected in their causes is the conjunction of a series (of two or more) of causes. When Aquinas discusses events that occur casually or by chance, he identifies the fortuitous conjunction of many independent causes that originates the casual event with the ens per accidens (an accidental being),104 which is not a thing in itself (an ens per se) because it lacks formal unity:105 ‘what is accidental, has not a cause, because it is not truly a being, since it is not truly one’.106 Thus, the conjunction of different series of independent causes in a time and place cannot be reduced to a cause per se. For Aquinas a cause that hinders the action of a cause so ordered to its effect as to produce it in the majority of cases, clashes sometimes with this cause by accident: and the conjunction of these two causes, inasmuch as it is accidental, has no cause. Consequently what results from this conjunction of causes is not to be reduced to a further pre-existing cause, from which it follows of necessity.107 In natural things, then, due to the fact that there are many things all acting at the same time, it can happen that two or more of them act at the same time and place, a fact that is actually accidental, i.e., there is no reason for that conjunction to happen: the concourse of many causes cannot be explained by other natural causes because ‘what is accidental, is properly speaking neither a being, nor a unity. Wherefore it is impossible for that which is accidental to be the proper effect of an active natural principle’,108 i.e., another efficient cause. That is, given that what is per accidens is not properly speaking something with internal unity, it is not possible for this ens per accidens to be the effect of a per se natural efficient cause, which has internal unity. Thus, the event so produced can be considered to be caused in a purely accidental way and, hence, it does not have a per se cause, properly speaking. We may speak, then, of an accidental cause. The cause per accidens, which is the cause of a chance event, lacks formal unity, and therefore it is not properly speaking a thing per se. Furthermore, by lacking formal unity, it is impossible to foresee every single cause that makes up the conjunction of causes that causes the event. Everything that is per se has an efficient cause that is in itself a thing per se. Then, out of an accidental

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conjunction of per se efficient causes, the effect that is obtained under those circumstances would not be a thing per se; it would rather be thing per accidens, due to its lack of a proper per se cause. Now, since the causal conjunction is in itself accidental it does not have a natural determinate efficient cause, and hence it is impossible to know the entire causal concourse and impossible to predict the effect that will be produced.109 In the conjunction of different series of causes, the very plurality of causes is indefinite, and this plurality behaves as the possibilitas materiae (i.e., the potency of the material cause). From the very moment that a determination is introduced (a specific orientation of the conjunction), there is no more plurality and thus no more indetermination; i.e., the fact that there is a causal series is itself by chance or per accidens. This series does not cause chance. It is an effect of chance or, as Stephen Brock says, ‘the concursus will be a mere coincidence’.110 The different causal lines that coincide in a time and place are not determined to coincide with each other. So, the causal conjunction is accidental, because it has no determinate cause.111 It is chance that brings about the material conjunction of causes. (2) Because of some defect in the efficient cause As I have already suggested, a metaphysical analysis of the contingency and the continuous coming to be of natural things shows that in these natural things there is an intrinsic composition of two co-principles, which are really distinct and different: first, a principle of being and actuality, of perfection, of determination, that constitutes the thing in its own specific essence, and, therefore, determines its nature and its ways of acting; this principle receives the name of formal cause; and second, a principle of potentiality, of a purely passive capacity of being, which by itself is just indeterminate, indifferent to being or not being, indifferent to being this or that, and, therefore, of acting in this way or another; this second intrinsic principle of things receives the name of material cause. This composition means that natural efficient causes are not completely act and pure determination, but rather a mixture of actuality and potentiality, of determination and indetermination. This intrinsic mixture points to the origin and principle of defectiveness in the action of natural efficient causes, it presents the very reason of their not accomplishing that to which their causal power tends: the fundamental potentiality and indetermination of matter. Commenting on Aristotle, Aquinas explains that ‘the possibility and contingency in things [is] the fact that matter is in potency to either of two opposites’.112 Aquinas, thus, finds the weakness of the efficient cause (impedimentum ex parte agentis) to be one of the roots of indetermination and contingency in the action of material beings. This weakness is expressed in terms of the passive principle out of which the material being is composed. Hence, due to this passive principle, the active potency of natural efficient causes could sometimes fail to produce their determined effect because of a lack of ‘internal energy’.113 The material cause, which in natural things is the passive potency, generates in the

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things the possibility of ‘escaping’ from the active potency that determines them to act in this or that way.114 (3) Because of the indisposition of the matter The matter about which I refer here is not the material co-principle of the efficient cause. Rather, it refers to that which is intrinsic to the being that receives the action of the efficient cause, which is usually called the patient. Even if the efficient cause acts in its determinate way to be the cause of the expected effect, without any impediment either from any extrinsic causal concourse or its own deficiency, it is still possible that the effect would not be produced because of the hylomorphic composition of the thing that receives the action. This possibility to fail in the production of the effect comes, similarly to what happened in the previous case, from the material cause, though in this case the material cause of the thing that receives the action, which, as a material being, is also a compound of an active principle, its form, and a passive principle of indetermination, its matter. Given the potentiality towards opposites of the material cause, the form of the patient does not completely and perfectly inform the matter to which it is co-joined. That is, the form does not complete the total potentiality of the matter, which explains the fact that natural things can change into something else. Thus, this potentiality, as long as it is free from the information of form, can be, partially, an independent cause, though not a truly effective cause. The idea being that the material cause, given its potentiality to opposites, could allow for some indeterminacy in the way that the effect is produced. To summarise, although Aquinas affirms that natural efficient causes act of necessity given their determination to one kind of effect, he also holds that they are nonetheless the root of contingency of their own actions, allowing for a kind of imperfect determinism in nature. Given that the material cause is always present in the actions of all efficient causes, there is a possibility that the effect to which this efficient cause was ordered by its form, cannot be perfectly effected. Instead, there can be chanceful effects.115 In the material compound, independently of the perfection of the form, there is always a place for indeterminism and contingency. The source of this indeterminism is the material co-principle, which can allow for bringing about an effect that was not necessarily determinate in its cause, happening thus per accidens.

D A conclusion on natural causes If one takes the safe assumption that there is no consensus on what constitutes a good causal explanation today, we are therefore free to ask whether Aquinas’ account of causation can still stand.116 In fact, even if science explains events in nature with an account of causality that only involves predictability and regularity, a philosophical account of causality would still be necessary, because one needs to account for the productive power of a cause.

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Aquinas, I contend, offers a powerful set of notions with which to understand the ways in which natural things behave autonomously. Re-interpreting Aristotle’s account of causality, Aquinas teaches that to understand fully the particularities of the operations of things in nature it is necessary to use a broad, precise, analogical notion of cause: that which is paired with the notion of dependence. A cause, thus, is not only understood as that which produces something to happen, i.e., as the efficient cause. The notion of causality as dependence shows that things depend upon several causes on several levels or layers in addition to the efficient cause: 1) that out of which the thing is made and upon which the efficient cause acts, i.e., the matter, which is in potency and requires the efficient cause for it to come into act; 2) that which makes it be what it is, i.e., the form, which also requires the operation of the efficient cause to be in some matter; and ultimately 3) that towards which the efficient cause tends, i.e., the final cause or end of the operation of the efficient cause.117 Furthermore, although there is necessity and determinism in the natural order, these are subject to the ways in which things are caused. In this perspective, ‘the efficient cause’s necessity has reference both to the action itself and the resulting effect’.118 The action of an efficient cause results from the necessity of its form since it acts in so far as it is actual. This necessity of action, however, which results from the form, as regards the power to act may not be necessary from the perspective of the effect: for if fire is hot, it is necessary that it have the power to heat, although it is not necessary that it heat, since it may be hindered by something extrinsic. The reason for this peculiar mixture of necessity and contingency in the action of natural things is the fact that all of them are composed of an active principle and a potential principle, without which actions in the natural world could not reach their ends: the necessity in the effect or thing moved, resulting from the efficient or moving cause, depends not only on the efficient cause, but also on the condition of the thing moved and of the recipient of the action of the efficient cause; for the recipient is either in no way receptive of the effect of such action, or else its receptivity is impeded by contrary efficient causes or by contrary dispositions in the movable or by contrary forms, to such an extent that the power of the efficient cause is ineffective.119 I have, thus, reached the end of my account of Aquinas’ understanding of natural causes and the way they act. The central notion of this account was, as I said, that of dependence. It is the effect that depends on the cause for its being or its changing, and this dependence could be seen in different features of natural happenings. Hence, with this central notion in mind, it is time to move towards Aquinas’ understanding of God as a cause in nature. This study will take two steps. I will first present Aquinas’ account of God’s nature and power, later to explain Aquinas’ account of how this power is applied, i.e., how God is said to act providentially in the natural world.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5

All of Aquinas’ texts in English are my own translation, unless stated otherwise. In II Phys., l. 1. SCG III, c. 85. Cfr. S.Th. I, q. 42, a. 2; I–II, q. 1, a. 5; De Ver., q. 25, a. 1. In V Met., l. 1. William Wallace offers some examples in his The Modelling of Nature (Washington DC: CUA Press, 1996), 19: runts turn up in many animal species, a zebra without stripes, malformed limbs or organs are possible in every kind of living organisms; chemical reactions sometimes do not go, crystals are not formed with the regularity one might expect; etc.

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38

In I Peri Her., l. 14. See Wallace, The Modelling, 19. In V Met., l. 3. In V Met., l. 1. In De Causis, l. 12. In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1A, co. In V Met., l. 2. Also, in In I Met., l. 8; and In I Gen. et Corr., l. 12; In I Phys., l. 14. Wallace, The Modelling, 8. De Pot., q. 5, a. 1, co. In VII Met., l. 2. In De Causis, l. 3. Dodds, Michael, ‘Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside Out? Retrieving Aristotelian Causality in Contemporary Science’, lecture given at the Summer Thomistic Institute, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 25 July 1997. Wallace, The Modelling, 9. In II Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 1, co. In I Sent., d. 3, q. 4, a. 3, ad 4; In VII Met., l. 2. Sent. IX Eth., l. 11. Dodds, ‘Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside Out?’ Wallace, The Modelling, 56. Connell, Richard J., Substance and Modern Science (Saint Paul, MN: Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1988), 208. In II De An., l. 1. SCG III, c. 4. And, In IV Met., l. 12. See Jeffrey E. Brower’s analysis in his Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World (Oxford: OUP, 2014). In XII Met., l. 2. In III De An., l. 9. De Prin. Nat., c. 4. And In II Phys., l. 5. In IV Phys., l. 14. In his Metaphysics book VIII, c. 2 (1042b 9–1043a 28). In VIII Met., l. 2. In VIII Met., l. 2. In VIII Met., l. 5. On a more historical account, Pasnau explains that ‘for scholastic philosophers of all persuasions, the substantial form is the explanatory basis of the entire substance, serving as the internal cause of and supplying the identity conditions for the whole substance and its parts’. See Pasnau, Robert, ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, The Philosophical Review 13:1 (2004), 31–88, 34. SCG II, c. 43. In VII Met., l. 2. Dodds, ‘Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside Out?’ In V Met., l. 1.

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39 Brock, Stephen, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse: Thomas Aquinas and the De hebdomadibus’, Nova et Vetera 5:3 (2007), 465–493, 489. 40 In II De An., l. 1; In II Sent., d. 26, a. 1, ad 5. 41 De Pot., q. 5, a. 1, co. 42 In De Causis, l. 26. 43 In V Met., l. 2. 44 See Kenny, Anthony, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: OUP, 2002), 31. 45 De Prin. Nat., c. 4. 46 De Prin. Nat., c. 4. 47 De Prin. Nat., c. 4. 48 In II Phys., l. 5. 49 In De Causis, l. 8. See also In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, co; In III Sent., d. 18, a. 1, co. Also, In III Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 1, ad 5; De Malo, q. 3, a. 3, co. 50 De Spirit. Creat., pro., a. 11, co.: ‘in no creature is its own activity its own actual being’. 51 SCG I, c. 28: action follows the mode of act in the agent. It is therefore impossible that an effect brought forth by an action be of a more excellent act than is the act of the agent. On the other hand, it is possible that the act of the effect be less perfect than the act of the efficient cause, since an action can become weakened through the effect in which it terminates. 52 S.Th. I, q. 46, a. 1, ad 9. 53 In I Meteor., l. 4: ‘The form, too, is an effect of the mover, which educes matter from potency to act’. 54 In IV Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 2B, co.: the required preparation in the matter to receive the form is twofold, since it should have a proper proportion to the form and to the efficient cause that has to produce the form, since nothing produces itself from potency to act. 55 De Ver., q. 12, a. 4, co.: ‘matter and the disposition of the matter are required for the activity of a creature’. 56 In De Causis, l. 1. 57 In In I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 2, co., Aquinas argues that there are three different modes of agency. This different division of modes of agency, however, is to take into account God’s mode of agency. 58 Connell, Richard, Nature’s Causes (New York: P. Lang, 1995), 135. 59 As I said before, natural forms are the inner source of activity. Such forms equip things with powers that can be activated and so enable them to act on, and interact with, things external to them. 60 De Pot., q. 7, a. 5, co. 61 For these definitions see in In IV Sent., d. 44, q. 3, a. 1C, ad 2: the image of the efficient cause is twofold in the patient. First, in the same way it is in the efficient cause, as it happens in all univocal efficient causes. Second in a different way as it is in the efficient cause, as it happens in equivocal efficient causes; De Ver., q. 11, a. 3, ad 4: ‘As in physical things there is an univocal agent, which imprints a form in the same way it has it, and an equivocal agent, which has it in a way different from that in which it imprints it’; also in De Malo, q. 1, a. 3, co.: ‘every effect by itself has some similitude to its cause, either according to the same proportion, like in univocal efficient causes, or according to a different proportion, as it happens in equivocal efficient causes’; and many other places.

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62 See In IV Sent., d. 46, q. 2, a. 2A, co.; De Pot., q. 7, a. 5, co.; S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 2, co. 63 S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 5, co. Also, S.Th. I, q. 45, a. 7, co.: ‘Every effect in some degree represents its cause, but diversely. For some effects represent only the causality of the cause, but not its form’. 64 In II Phys., l. 5; In V Met., l. 2; In IV Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4A, co. For a slightly different distinction see also De Malo, q. 3, a. 3, co.: ‘Sometimes that which prepares something, or that which offers advice or commands is called a cause; sometimes, however, that which produces is called properly and truly a cause’. 65 In V Met., l. 2: ‘This is the way in which the first agent acting by intellect is related to every secondary agent, whether it be natural or intellectual’. It is quite interesting to note that Philip Clayton affirms in the concluding remarks to his ‘Natural Law and Divine Action: The Search for an Expanded Theory of Causation’, Zygon 39:3 (2004), 615–636, that ‘divine causality is better understood as a form of causal influence that prepares and persuades’. 66 S.Th. III, q. 62 and De Ver. q. 27, a. 4. 67 S.Th. III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2. 68 Connell, Nature’s Causes, 138. 69 Quod. 1, q. 4, a. 1, ad 2: that which works beforehand on the form by gradually and in a certain order bringing matter to a closer form or disposition makes the body to be by preparing it. The nearer a form or disposition is, the less the resistance to the introduction of the form and complete disposition. 70 For Aquinas, the student is the actual agent of his new knowledge. See De Ver. q. 11 and S.Th. I, q. 117, aa. 1–2. 71 In V Met., l. 2, and In II Phys., l. 5. 72 De Malo, q. 3, a. 3, co. 73 In V Met., l. 2. 74 In his Nature’s Causes (pp. 183–189), Connell offers a very good description on how final causes are understood in contemporary discussion in biology and philosophy of nature. In those pages we can find descriptions of what Barrow and Tipler, Sommerhof, Mayr, Nagel, Woodfield, and others think about the subject. I will not enter that discussion, but, following the purpose of this chapter, I will focus my exposition on Thomas’ understanding of the final cause. 75 William Wallace offers some examples of this: natural objects which fall, a growing plant, or elephant, hydrogen and oxygen combining, etc. See his The Modelling, 16. 76 In V Met., l. 2. 77 See Wallace, The Modelling, pt. 1, s. 2: Modelling the Inorganic. 78 S.Th. I–II, q. 1, a. 2, co. 79 Connell makes a slight change in this expressing that if there were no final causes, ‘agents would be underdetermined, which means that they would produce a variety of different effects, acting randomly’. See his Nature’s Causes, 203. 80 See Brock, Stephen L., ‘Causality and Necessity in Thomas Aquinas’, Quaestio 2 (2002), 217–240, 221. 81 In his ‘Form, Substance, and Mechanism’, Robert Pasnau argues that Aquinas puts substantial forms to metaphysical work when he connects them with functional, teleological considerations (p. 41). See In III Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 1, ad 5: ‘every form is ordered per se at producing’. 82 S.Th. I–II, q. 49, a. 2, co. See also De Ver., q. 21, a. 3, ad 3: ‘the form is the final cause’. In this sense it can be understood why Aquinas says, in his De Pot., q. 5, a. 1. co., that ‘where there is no action there is no final cause’. 83 See Connell, Nature’s Causes, 203. 84 See also S.Th. I, q. 80, a. 1, co.: ‘the natural form follows a natural tendency, which is called the natural appetite’. To explain this idea, Richard Connell affirms

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in his Nature’s Causes (p. 183) that the final cause is ‘more obscure than the others because it is further removed from external observation and because ends do not have physical existence before they function as causes’. De Ver., q. 21, a. 3, ad 3. In I Meteor., l. 2. In V Met., l. 3. See also S.Th. I–II, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1: ‘the end, even if last in its production, is nonetheless first in the intention of the efficient cause’. De Ver., q. 28, a. 7, co. See also In V Met., l. 3: the efficient cause is the cause of the causality of both the matter and the form: by its motion matter is receptive of form, and the form exists in matter. Therefore, the final cause is also the cause of the causality of both the material and formal causes.

89 In V Met., l. 3: ‘the end is last in being in some cases, it is always prior in terms of causality’. 90 In V Met., l. 2: ‘the final cause is the cause of the efficient cause, not in the sense that it makes it be, but inasmuch as it is the reason for the causality of the efficient cause’. 91 De Prin. Nat., c. 4. This ‘tendency towards the end’ has to be understood in terms of an efficient cause’s stretching out towards its own action, which comes from its own form. 92 De Prin. Nat., c. 4. To complete this idea of priority in one respect and posteriority in another, see what Aquinas has to say in In II Phys., l. 5: nothing prevents a thing from being prior and posterior to another according to different respects. The end is prior according to reason, but posterior in being; the converse is true of the efficient cause. And in like manner, the form is prior to matter in respect to the nature of being a complement, but the matter is prior to form in respect to generation and time in everything that is moved from potency to act. 93 See Wallace, The Modelling, 24: ‘The agent acts on the matter bringing forth from the matter a form, which is itself the end of the process’. 94 SCG III, c. 64. 95 See Connell, Nature’s Causes, 241: Though determined to one effect, no natural agent is able to bring about its effect under every set of circumstances, and so none is an absolutely necessary cause; that is, no natural agent can fully guarantee that nothing will interfere with the coming to be of its effect. 96 See Connell, Nature’s Causes, 241. 97 See Wallace, The Modelling, 19. 98 SCG III, c. 39. See also, S.Th. I, q. 63, a. 9, co.; In I Peri Her., l. 14; De Ver., q. 3, a. 1, co.; De Malo, q. 1, a. 3, ad 17; In II De Cae. Et Mun., l. 9; In VI Met., l. 2; In VI Met., l. 3; SCG III, c. 99. 99 See In V Met., l. 3: one thing can be said to be the accidental cause of something else in two ways: in one way, from the perspective of the cause; because whatever is accidental to a cause is itself called an accidental cause, for example, when we say that something white is the cause of a house. In another way, from the perspective of the effect, i.e., inasmuch as one thing is said to be an accidental cause of something else because it is accidental to the proper effect.

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100 Beltrán, Oscar H., ‘La Doctrina de la Contingencia en la Naturaleza según los Comentarios del Card. Cayetano y S. Ferrara’, Studium 11 (2003), 41–75, 51. See also, SCG III, c. 86: impressions of universal causes are received in their effects according to the mode of the recipients. Now, these lower things are fluctuating and do not always maintain the same condition: because of matter which is in potency to many forms and because of the contrariety of forms and powers. 101 See Connell, Nature’s Causes, 242. 102 See Connell, Nature’s Causes, 242: ‘The actions of natural agents can be sometimes defective because of extrinsic active causes or because of inadequately prepared materials or because of an indisposition resulting from a stray, incidental active cause’. 103 In VI Met., l. 3. See also, SCG III, c. 99. It is interesting to note the change in the mentioning of the case of the encounter of many causes. In the Commentary Thomas refers to it as ‘the conjunction of two causes’, while in the SCG he uses the expression ‘because of some other stronger agent’. 104 SCG III, c. 74. See also Brock, ‘Causality and Necessity’, 224. 105 S.Th. I, q. 116, a. 1, co. 106 S.Th. I, q. 115, a. 6, co. 107 S.Th. I, q. 115, a. 6, co. 108 S.Th. I, q. 116, a. 1, co. 109 D’Arenzano, Innocenzo, ‘Necessità e Contingenza nell’Aggire della Natura Secondo San Tommaso’, Divus Thomas 64 (1961), 28–69, 41–42. 110 Brock, ‘Causality and Necessity’, 228. 111 de Koninck, Charles, ‘Réflexions sur le problème de l’indéterminisme’, Revue Thomiste 43:2 and 3 (1937), 227–252, 248, and 393–409. See also, Connell, Nature’s Causes, 245: ‘Chance is a contingent, incidental union of effects coming from two or more determinate agents, none of which is antecedently ordained to the union’. 112 In I Peri Her., l. 14. 113 In his ‘Causality and Necessity in Thomas Aquinas’, Stephen Brock offers a rather different reading of Aquinas’ thought, affirming that all impediments need to be extrinsic (235), i.e., in terms of conflicting causes. 114 D’Arenzano, ‘Necessità e Contingenza’, 46. 115 In I Peri Her., l. 14. 116 See, for example, Derek Jeffreys’ analysis of this idea in his ‘The Soul is Alive and Well: Non-Reductive Physicalism and Emergent Mental Properties’, Theology and Science 2:2 (2004), 205–225, 213. 117 See De Prin. Nat., c. III: What is in potency cannot reduce itself to act; for example, the bronze that is in potency to being a statue cannot cause itself to be a statue, it rather needs an efficient cause so that the form of the statue might go from potency to act. Neither can the form draw itself from potency to act (speaking here as the form of a thing generated that we say is the term of generation), because the form only exists in that which has been made to be. Nevertheless, what is made is in the state of becoming as long as the thing is coming to be. Therefore, it is necessary that besides the matter and form there be some principle that acts. This is called the efficient, moving or agent cause, or that whence the principle of motion is. Also, because, as Aristotle says in the second book of the Metaphysics, everything that acts, acts only by tending towards something, it is necessary that there be some fourth thing, namely, that which is intended by the agent; and this is called the end. 118 SCG II, c. 30. 119 SCG II, c. 30.

4

A metaphysics of God’s providence

The path towards a full metaphysics of divine providence and its relation to natural contingency within the framework of the thought of Thomas Aquinas involves presenting how he understood God to be active in the created universe. Aquinas’ understanding of providential divine action is embedded first in his broader account of God as ‘pure act’ and as the ‘creative’ source of being; second in his analysis of cause; and third in his examination of what it means to predicate anything (including causal agency) of God. I will, thus, present with some depth in this chapter Aquinas’ accounts of the first and third topics, using in the process his understanding of cause described in the previous chapter. Aquinas’ ideas on divine providential action in nature can be found throughout his writings, from the very first question in his Commentary on the ‘Sentences’ of Peter Lombard (1252–56),1 until the very last commentaries on Aristotle’s works (1269–1273), and in both his Summa Contra Gentiles (1259–64)2 and Summa Theologiae (1266–73),3 passing through many of his texts on different topics, such as the disputed questions De Potentia Dei (1265–66),4 and De Veritate (1256–59),5 his commentary to the Liber de Causis (1272), and the opuscule De Aeternitate Mundi (1270). A complete description of his thought on this topic is not an easy task. To tackle this difficulty, I will address Aquinas’ explanation of providential divine action in his Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia Dei. I will use this text as a basis, while drawing insights from his other works. This work is, as well, where Aquinas presents a mature doctrine, analysing all crucial matters involved in the problematic of God’s providential action, with an appreciable depth and scope. The disputations from which these Quaestiones derive had taken place after Aquinas had written the Summa Contra Gentiles, and right before he began the Summa Theologiae. What is first said in the SCG is developed in depth in the De Potentia, and the brief arguments that are found later in the S.Th. are explained in more length here as well.6 De Potentia deals exactly with the problem discussed in this chapter, i.e., God’s power, and hence is the most suitable source for my purposes. The De Potentia first discusses the power of God in itself, and His generative power (qq. 1–2). It then considers the way in which God generates things by creation, including questions on how things are preserved in their being and whether God can act within nature, i.e., whether God can perform miracles and an DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-5

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examination of what they are (qq. 3–6). Finally, the work goes back to examine God in Himself, first looking at the simplicity and oneness of God, to proceed afterwards to a discussion of the relations, persons, and procession in the Trinity (qq. 7–10). I will focus mostly on the second part of these disputed questions. As I mentioned on the previous page, I will first study the notion of God’s power, which will require a definition of ‘power’ and some preliminary considerations on what God is or is not. After these preliminaries, I will examine Aquinas’ account of divine action. The arguments that Aquinas follows flow from his Aristotelian notions of act and potency, as were the arguments for his understanding of causality. Still, Aquinas also uses concepts brought from Neo-Platonic philosophy, notably the notion of participation, which he develops in such a way that enables him to provide a coherent doctrine using Aristotelian principles.7 Aquinas conceives of God as pure act, lacking any kind of passive potency. This is the conclusion of his analysis of the contingent existence of natural things, which requires, as I will show below, the existence of a necessary being to give them their own being. This very giving of being is precisely the definition of creation, and as such, it is not an event that happened in the past, but something that happens in the present, being a real and present relation of natural things to God. Thus, creation can never be considered to be a change between two states, a previous one of non-existence and a posterior one of existence. Creation is, for Aquinas, an action that God produces ex nihilo (out of nothing), i.e., not using any pre-existing material. This notion of creation includes not only the very giving of existence to created things, but also the giving of the nature (or essence) of created things, and thus the way in which these things act. That is, God communicates not only His being to natural things, but God also communicates (or, in a more Neo-Platonic way of speaking, participates) His power to creatures. Thus, since natural things act according to the power that God gives them, Aquinas will argue that God is able to act in nature by participating this power to natural things, or simply by acting within the natural world doing things that natural things cannot accomplish, as in the case of miracles. Thus, as I will explain later in this chapter, Aquinas argues for a threefold way in which God acts in nature: the way of creation, the way of acting with His power given to creatures within the natural world, and the way of acting directly in nature without created things, i.e., via miracles.

A What God is: esse purus To understand what Aquinas thinks of God as a cause, and thus solve the problem of providential divine action in nature, it is required, as I said, that we be aware of what he means by God as pure esse, or being as such. I will address this task, however, briefly and not definitively, simply following Aquinas’ arguments in his own texts, not dealing, then, with contemporary intra-school debates on how to interpret esse, or his doctrines of analogy, participation, and the like.8

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God is, certainly, not directly evident to our senses. In good Aristotelian fashion, however, Aquinas argues that even if our knowledge starts from our senses, it can go beyond those senses. Still, to say something about something that is not directly known by our senses, it is necessary to start from the knowledge that they provide. Thus, to say something about God, human discourse must start from those things that are accessible to the senses. These things are the natural causes that were discussed in the previous chapter. As Aquinas explains in his De Ente et Essentia, in these natural things, their nature or essence differs from the actual existing thing – which instantiates that essence – because the essence or nature connotes only what is included in the definition of what that thing is.9 For example, ‘humanity’ (or ‘humanness’) connotes what is included in the definition of a human being, for it is by this ‘humanity’ that this human being is a human being, and it is precisely this that ‘humanity’ signifies, namely, that whereby a human being is a human being. An individual thing, that is individual by its matter, is not included in the definition of what it is to be this particular thing: this particular flesh, bones, length and colour of hair, etc., are not included in the definition of a human being. Therefore, this flesh, these bones, and any other accidental quality that distinguishes this particular matter, are not included in the definition of ‘humanity’ (or ‘humanness’); and yet they are included in the thing that is this human being. Hence, this particular human being has something more in it than ‘humanity’ does. Consequently, ‘humanity’ and ‘this human being’ are not wholly identical; but ‘humanity’ is taken to mean the formal part of a human being, because the principle whereby a thing is defined is regarded as the formal constituent with respect to the individualising matter.10 Still, besides having these and those particular accidents added to its essence or nature, for a thing to have all these particular accidents it needs to have, if I may express it like this in English following Aquinas’ own ‘esse’, ‘to be’, ‘existence’, or ‘act of being’: it needs to exist.11 That is, this particular thing, with these particular accidents or properties, actually exists. For Aquinas, being (esse) is the act of existing, the ‘to be’ that explains the fact that a thing is.12 Anthony Kenny expresses this doctrine explaining that one ‘can grasp a concept without knowing whether the concept is instantiated’.13 It is in this sense that esse is not another act among acts, but it is the act of all acts,14 and therefore the perfection of all perfections.15 This existence of something is not included in the definition of that thing.16 Thus, ‘humanity’ explains what a human being is, but it does not say that a human being actually exists. Existence, then, is that which makes every essence or nature actual; for ‘humanity’ is spoken of as actual, only because it is spoken of as existing.17 Therefore existence must be compared to essence as actuality to potentiality,18 since, according to Aquinas, the essence of a thing is that through which a thing has its existence.19 The esse, or existence of a being, is nothing other than its act of being itself:20 its esse is nothing else than its actus essentiae (the act of the essence).21

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Swimming deeper into Aquinas’ metaphysics of being and existence, whatever a thing has that is not included in its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence, like a property that necessarily accompanies the essence and is caused by the constituent principles of that thing, or by some exterior efficient cause, like the qualities that do not come as properties of a nature or essence, as for a someone to have blonde or brown hair. Therefore, since the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now, it is impossible for the existence of a thing to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence: if a thing is the cause of its own existence, it would exist before having existence, which is impossible.22 Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another.23 This is to say that everything in nature has its existence contingently, i.e., the existence of things does not belong to their essence, and thus, everything in nature has its existence caused. From a Neo-Platonic perspective on this relation essentia participates in esse.24 Since existence must have a cause, it seems necessary to arrive at something that has its existence by its own essence, something to which the existence belongs properly to its essence.25 Better said, one must arrive at a being for which its existence is its own essence, and thus can cause the existence of another being.26 To understand this idea better, let me use the classical example of heat. Esse is taken to be here like heat, which, in those beings to which heat does not belong by essence, for example water, if we remove the cause of their heat (for instance, the fire that heats the kettle), then water loses its heat. Thus, if we remove the cause of esse, the being that has its own existence caused loses this actual existence. ‘In the case of esse, what the cause must be is clear: it must be the very first cause, the divinity’.27 This thing for which essence is to exist is what we call God: ‘There is a thing, God, whose essence is his existence itself… because his essence is not other than his existence’.28 Thus, God would be the being whose existence is necessary, in the sense that it is its own essence to exist. Again, if God’s essence would not be ‘to exist’, and so God’s essence would be different from God’s existence, it would be required that God’s existence would have been caused by some other thing that would need to have existence by its own right, and not be caused.29 Thus, Aquinas insists that it is necessary to affirm the existence of a first cause of being or existence, which is called God.30 Since God’s essence is to be or to exist, this essence cannot be something in particular, that is, it cannot be characterised as being this or that, since if it were this or that particular kind of being, then it would not be simply existent, but it would have a kind of existence, that is, it would be a particular being. The nature or essence of the divine esse, then, is beyond the esse that God creates, which is a partial likeness of it. Hence, God does not belong to the natural order,31 since in the natural order we find things the essences of which are not their existence, but whose essences are a kind of existence, that is, their essences are to be this or that particular kind of being, which actually exists due to its

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esse. Furthermore, if God is His own existence, there is no potency in him, He is pure actuality, since, if there were some kind of potency in God, it could be said that God can become something that God is not yet, and thus, God would not be pure existence or being, but would be this kind of being which could become something other. Nevertheless, God cannot be a particular kind of being, and hence God cannot have any potentiality; He is pure actuality. This is what Aquinas understands when he says, all throughout his works, that God is pure act, i.e., pure act of being.33 As a final corollary of this quick immersion into Aquinas’ metaphysics of being, he teaches that the relation described between natural beings and God is what he understands in a Neo-Platonic fashion by the participation of existence:34 what has existence by its own essence, and thus is its own existence, can give it to other beings, can participate it to other beings. Since, as I have explained above, essence and existence are different in natural beings, their existence is caused: no natural being exists by its essence, but receives its existence from that being that is existence in itself.35 A few words on Aquinas’ doctrine of participation will be useful to understand these ideas better.36 Participation helps Aquinas to explain the common possession of a given attribute in many subjects by reference to a higher source from which all receive or participate in some way in the perfection they possess in common.37 To speak of participation, thus, one needs three elements: 1) a source that possesses the perfection in question; 2) a participant subject that possesses the same perfection in some partial or restricted way; and 3) that this participant has received this perfection in some way from, or in dependence on, the higher source.38 Because of the third element, the notion of participation is Aquinas’ preferred metaphysical tool for expressing the fundamental relation of dependence of creatures on God, both for their origin and their likeness to the divine essence. Now, to speak about God as a cause of existence of things leads us to question what it means to predicate something to God. Though there are many places in Aquinas’ works where this issue is analysed, I will turn to his thoughts as expressed in his Commentary to the Book of Causes,39 where Aquinas examines the different kinds of causes of things in order to reach their first cause, which he identifies with God. In his commentary, Aquinas affirms that God is beyond any possible affirmation of the human mind,40 and thus really nothing that one would predicate of God would be entirely adequate.41 To explain the notion of God’s being completely beyond human understanding, Aquinas argues that there are three different ways to know something: first, as an effect by its cause; second in itself; and third as the cause of an effect. Now, God cannot be known in the first sense, because God does not have a cause of His being.42 Neither can God be known in the second way, i.e., in Himself. The reason for this is that God is beyond the realm of natural things, which fall under the reach of our intellect. Since God is pure existence, God is not any kind of being; any natural being, for example, belongs to a particular kind of being. Now, given that God is beyond the reach of our intellect, our intellect cannot know Him in Himself.43 In fact, given that our intellect can

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only directly know things that are composed of essence and existence related as potency to act, and that God does not have this composition, as discussed on the previous page, we cannot know God, and thus we cannot predicate properly anything of God. Finally, Aquinas explains that God cannot be sufficiently known by His effects. Although it is true that, looking at effects, something about the cause can be known, and thus in this case something about God could be known and affirmed, it is also true that God as a cause infinitely exceeds His own effects, as I will present below when speaking about creation. In fact, although His effects have existence by participation, God is, properly speaking, existence, that is to say that things are existent whereas God is existence. Thus, a cause that exceeds its effects so much cannot be sufficiently known by its effect to be able to make a proper predication of it. Therefore, God is beyond any human affirmation.44 It is important to say, however, that for Aquinas God is beyond any human affirmation in terms of the way God is, but not about whether God is at all. In fact, what I have done in this section so far is to show Aquinas’ arguments in favour of affirming that there is something that should be considered to be God. Analysing the non-necessary existence of natural beings, Aquinas arrives at a necessary being, whose essence is simply existence.45 Thus, from the effects one reaches the cause of those effects, because since every effect depends upon its cause, if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist. Hence the existence of God, in so far as it is not self-evident to us, can be demonstrated from those of His effects which are known to us.46 Thus, there must be ways in which we can speak about God, which for Aquinas are the way of negation47 and the way of analogy.48 Since human beings cannot know what God is, Aquinas suggests saying what God is by adopting the strategy of saying what God is not, thus removing from God what it would be inappropriate to predicate of God, such as being a material being, being temporal, being imperfect, and similar predicates or properties.49 Therefore, if one says that God is not an accident, then God is distinguished from all accidents, and if one claims that God is not a body, God is distinguished from all bodily things. Then, when God is known as distinct from all things, one arrives at a proper consideration of God, though not a perfect one, because we know what God is not, but we do not know what God actually is.50 Following on his strategy, Aquinas suggests naming God from natural things. Since natural things are God’s effects, as I shall discuss in the section about creation; these reveal something of their cause, even if God as a cause infinitely exceeds these effects. Thus, something can be said of God from natural things (always bearing in mind that this knowledge would be mostly incomplete and imperfect).51 Thus, Aquinas holds that God cannot be known as such through His effects, but He can be signified through them, even if God entirely surpasses our mode of signifying him.52

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To understand this doctrine better, it would be useful to return to the notion of God as pure act. If God is pure act, then He is absolutely perfect, without needing any other perfection.53 In this sense, all perfections found in natural things are in God,54 since God is the cause of natural things, and what is found of perfection in the effect somehow pre-exists in its cause.55 Since God is pure being, pure existence, all perfections of being are in him perfectly, completely, and simply, in the perfection, completeness, and simplicity of His being or existence.56 If all perfections of natural things exist perfectly in God, then, from the perfections of natural things one can say some things about God. Nevertheless, since these perfections represent God’s being imperfectly, because they are not all of God’s perfection, the manner in which we know and predicate things of God would not be perfect if we only consider what is being signified by what we predicate of God. Nevertheless, these perfections, in a perfect way are mostly attributable to God, since God is the perfect being.57 Hence, the way in which things are said of God is not the same as the way in which things are said of natural beings.58 As I have explained above, God is pure existence, whereas natural things are existent, i.e., things that exist in a particular way or mode of being, given by their own essences. For this reason, natural things do not represent God in a perfect way, but imperfectly. Thus, all perfections that are said of natural things are said of God in an imperfect way. In Aquinas’ words, these leave ‘the thing signified as incomprehended, and as exceeding the signification of the name’,59 where the thing signified is God’s being.60 This idea leads Aquinas to affirm that there is a likeness in natural things of God’s being,61 though not an identification or a specific imitation.62 Thus, Aquinas suggests that the way in which something should be said of God from natural things is through analogy or proportion.63 This way of proportion admits that there is some kind of order from natural things to God as to their principle and cause, in which all of them pre-exist perfectly and eminently.64 Therefore, perfections are in natural things in a different way or in a different proportion to the way they are in God.65 In God, all these perfections are found united in His simple being, in God’s pure existence: God is not good or intelligent in the same way in which natural beings are good or intelligent.66 Thus, this analogical predication is more like saying how God is not, than saying how God is. And so, ‘no one can truly speak about or know God’.67 Aquinas, greatly influenced by the Neo-Platonic philosophy of the Liber De Causis and his readings of Pseudo-Dionysius’ De Divinis Nominibus, emphasises the beyondness or excessiveness of God’s perfections, using expressions such as super-active or super-goodness, and the like.68 The ‘excessiveness’ in God is found in such a way that it is beyond the genus that is being expressed by the name given to God, and this ‘beyondness’ is expressed by the use of the prefix ‘super’: ‘the excess, thus, is twofold: one in genus, which is signified with the comparative or superlative; and the other beyond the genus, which is signified by the addition of the preposition “super”’.69 The reason for using this kind of phrasing is because God is above and beyond any kind of existence, and thus above and beyond any natural potency of knowledge: ‘God is incomprehensible to any created intellect, because He is over every mind and reason’.70

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To round up the main ideas expressed in this section, I have discussed how from the real distinction in natural things of their essence and their esse, being or act of existence, Aquinas can arrive at the existence of a being that possesses existence by its own nature: a being that is its own existence. This being is that from which other beings participate their existence, that from which they receive their existence. This being is what people call God. I have also discussed the ways in which something could be predicated of God. Aquinas’ conclusion is that only analogical predication could be used in the case of God, given the fact that, since God is pure being, and hence pure act, God is beyond any particular kind of being, and thus God is beyond human understanding. Natural things, however, since they receive their being from God, have a certain similarity and likeness to God. Therefore, it is possible to have some sort of positive analogical knowledge of God. Wippel explains that While he [Aquinas] has defended the possibility of our arriving at some kind of knowledge of God which is not purely negative, but which may be described as proper, substantial and analogical, Thomas would have us never forget the considerable limitations to which such knowledge is subject. It will of course never be comprehensive or, in this life, quidditative. It will always be subject to the need to deny of God the creaturely modus significandi we employ in predicating names of him. It will never enable us to apply names univocally to God and creatures but only analogically, at best. These limitations ultimately follow from the ontological situation, the fact that in the order of reality effects are not like God either specifically or generically but only according to some kind of analogy in the way the act of being itself is common to all beings.71 After analysing God’s being and its relation to natural things, I will now move to the matter of God’s power, which will lead us closer to our discussion of God’s providential activity in the created world, our theme of interest.

B God’s power The question that motivated this study, namely how God providentially acts in the created world, has now been transformed into the question of how a God whose essence is pure being providentially acts in nature. Hence, I will move my discussion to the particular theme of how Aquinas predicates power to God, and which kind of power he means. The subsequent sections will, thus, study what God does with this power. Following Aquinas’ De Potentia, I will divide the sections into God’s action of creation, God’s action in every natural action, and God’s action in miracles. In the first article of the first question of the De Potentia, Aquinas defines power in relation to act. This relation is expressed in the text with the preposition ab, with which Aquinas wants to show that any power originates in the actual thing in which it resides. In this perspective, ‘a power must be defined

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by its act, and powers in turn distinguish from one another inasmuch as their acts are different’.72 Now, ‘act’ can be understood in two different ways. Act can be a first act, which refers to the form of a natural thing, or it can be a second act, referring to the operations of natural things, operation that originates in the form of the thing as its principle.73 Thus, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, what a thing can or cannot do originates in its own form, i.e., the power of a thing comes from what that thing is. In a similar way, the power or potency of a thing can be understood in two different ways. First as an active power, which corresponds to the way in which a thing operates. Thus, ‘the active power is the principle of agency in something else’,74 a power that is rooted in the act of the thing, since anything that does something, does so because it is in act.75 Second, power can be taken to be the passive power or potency of a thing, which corresponds to the possibility of acquiring a new form: ‘the passive power enables anything to attain its perfection either in being, or in attaining to its end’,76 i.e., the passive power allows things to achieve the goal towards which their forms tend. Hence, if the passive potency is that through which a thing is ordered to receive its perfection (which is nothing else than fulfilling the end towards which the form tends), and the order to the perfection of a thing comes from what that thing is, which is what the form of that thing determines, the passive potency corresponds to the form as first act. The possibility of the thing to change and reach that perfection comes from the potential principle of that thing, which is the material cause. The passive power is distinguished from act, because anything that can be changed is so because it is in potency of receiving an act.77 Since the active power corresponds to act, and passive power corresponds to potency, the passive power will be actualised or reduced into act due to the action or operation of an active power. Nevertheless, it is not the case that any act can actualise any potency: to every passive power corresponds an active power that would or could actualise it.78 Hence, when something has many passive powers, there would be as many different active powers to actualise each of those passive powers, since, according to Aquinas, there exists an order between the active power and the passive power, order from which the existence of a passive power would have no purpose if there is no active power to actualise it.79 With these considerations in mind, in addition to those discussed in the previous section about the nature of God,80 since God is act both pure and primary, it is most befitting to him to act and communicate his likeness to other things: and consequently active power is most becoming to him: since power is called active forasmuch as it is a principle of action.81 To understand what we signify when speaking about God’s power, Aquinas picks up his considerations about our way of knowing and naming God. His main line of argumentation favours the conclusion that our mind is unable to approach God unless by likening him to his effects.82 For example, when we say

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that God has ‘being’ (esse), this word ‘esse’ denotes something complete and simple, yet non-subsistent, that is esse expresses some kind of inherence in a thing making it to exist. God is also said to be substantia, a word that denotes something subsistent, yet the subject of something. So, Aquinas argues that when esse and substantia are predicated of God, substantia is done so by reason of subsistence and not of substrate, and esse by reason of simplicity and completeness, not of inherence. So, when God is said to have operations, it is done so by reason of His being the ultimate perfection, and not by reason of that into which operation passes in natural things, which are a mixture of act and (passive) potency. Power is, then, attributed to God by reason of that which is permanent and is the principle of power, i.e., what has been defined as active power and the principle of active potency, and not by reason of that which is made complete by operation, which is what passive potency is.83 Nevertheless, Aquinas qualifies this statement that active power is predicated to God. In fact, in his In Sent., Aquinas argues not only that in God there is no passive potency, but also that no real active power can be found in God. Instead, he argues, following the Neo-Platonic model I briefly mentioned above, that is better to predicate to God a super-active power. His main argument to elucidate this notion runs like this. Since there is no motion in God, his active power cannot be related to motion. Still, Aquinas affirms some kind of active power in God following God’s operation. Now, Aquinas explains the difference between operation and motion by referring to the difference between the perfect and the imperfect. So, though every operation in nature is some kind of motion, in God the operation is his own perfect being, which is, in a way, already perfected. Therefore, given that one may predicate an operation to God that is not related to motion as in natural operations, Aquinas finds that it is better to speak of God as possessing a super-active power.84 Now, since this super-active power belongs to the being that is itself existence, this super-active power has no limit, or, in other words, this being is omnipotent. Aquinas offers the following line of reasoning: since God’s being is not received (as is the case of natural things, in which their being is received in their essences), simply because God’s being is His own essence, God’s being is pure being, without any kind of limitation (as it is the case in natural things); so, God’s being is universal and infinite. And, given that every active power has act or being as its principle, if a principle is infinite the power would also be infinite, as in the case of God.85 Still, although God always acts according to His entire infinite power, the effects are not infinite because they are limited to the determination of God’s will.86 As a follow-up to these discussions, Aquinas considers to what extent God can be said to be omnipotent, asking whether God can do things that are impossible for natural things. Aquinas argues that there are three different ways in which ‘impossible’ can be understood. First, as when something is impossible in itself by reason of the mutual exclusion of terms and not in respect to an active power.87 Something can be said to be impossible with respect to an active power twofold. First, on account of an inherent defect in the active power, in

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that the effect is beyond its reach, as when a natural efficient cause cannot transform a certain matter into something else because of its lack of power. Second, when the impossibility arises not from the active power itself but from an extrinsic cause, as in the case of a power that is hindered. Considering the last two cases, both in respect to a certain active power, Aquinas argues that God can do them, because, as His power is infinite, it is neither subject to any defect, nor does there exist any matter which it cannot transform.88 In order to understand fully this divine active power by which God is able to do what is impossible for natural things, it is important to see that, for Aquinas, whatever God does in creatures is quasi-natural to them, since creatures not only have a natural potentiality towards their proper operations, but also an ‘obediential’ potentiality, which answers to the things that God does in them,89 a notion that I will explain below. As I shall show, this topic speaks directly to concerns about God’s actions interfering with the order of nature. The first kind of impossibility, however, as it implies things that in principle cannot be or exist, God cannot make them. This way of impossibility expresses things to which being or existence cannot be predicated. Ultimately, no active power can do things to which being cannot be predicated, because it would be doing something, which, in a sense, ‘is’ and ‘is not’ simultaneously. In this sense, God is not said not to be able to do these because of a lack of power, but because of a lack of a logic possibility.90 The real possibility in this case cannot be prior to the actuality. As I will explain below, the possibility of the finite essences is created together with the finite essences. This means that the logical possibility is not to be taken as the real possibility for God. The logical possibility does not limit the real potency. If, as I briefly commented, the logically impossible, i.e., the contradictory, is that which cannot be, then it cannot limit anything, since what is not cannot do or limit anything. The expression ‘God cannot do the contradictory’ is made under our human way of expressing things, which is under the idea of being, i.e., giving the same treatment to that which does not exist as that which does exist. Thus, the expression ‘God cannot do the contradictory’ is the reverse of a positive expression, because it is made out of a double negation. This is why it does not imply any restriction or limitation in the super-active divine power. To say ‘God cannot do the contradictory’ is the same as to say ‘there is nothing which God cannot do’, or, expressed in a full affirmation, ‘God can do everything’. Thus, the power of God is expressed and defined with its own object, which is everything.91 Ultimately, Aquinas says that God is properly called omnipotent. God’s active power, considered in itself, extends to all objects that do not imply any contradiction, that is, to all which can be. It is in this sense that it is possible to say that God is omnipotent, because God can do all things that are possible in themselves.92 It is time now to move onto the main concern of this investigation: how we can conceive of God as a cause. I have explained following Aquinas that God has active power (super-active power, in fact) and that God can with it perform everything that can be done. Aquinas speaks of two different types of actions

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that God performs: those which are immanent (the actions of God’s will and God’s intellect), and those actions which are transient (the actions that can be understood as ad extra Dei). Given that the debate I am analysing in this work is concerned with providential divine agency in nature, I will only discuss the latter kind of divine action. The first of these transient actions is called ‘creation’, while the second refers to God’s acting in every action in nature and the third to the actions that God performs in nature without nature. Creation is the communication or giving of being to everything that exists by making it to exist; the second action is God’s acting within every action of any natural agent, required to provide a full account of the actions of natural beings; and the third action is what is known as miracles.

C Creation Aquinas is adamant in his affirmation that God can create and that we, human beings, can know the fact of creation using our natural reason. In the question of whether something can come from God by creation in his In II Sent., Aquinas makes the strongest philosophical proposition that can be made in this matter: ‘that there is creation, is not only held by faith, but it is also demonstrable by reason’.93 Aquinas holds this position throughout all his work, whenever he discusses creation.94 In his De Pot., q. 3, Aquinas asks a rather different, though closely related, question, namely, whether God can create something out of nothing.95 He begins the question by stating that one must admit that God can make something out of nothing, and that God actually does it.96 He affirms that every efficient cause acts as it is in act, and any action is attributed to an efficient cause according to the measure of its own act. Now, a natural thing is in act in a particular manner, which can be understood in two ways: 1) by comparison to itself, because not all its substance is in act; and therefore it is necessary to say that natural things do not act in respect to their totality, but only according to their form, through which they are in act; and 2) by comparison with things that are in act, because no natural thing comprises all natural perfections, and therefore each natural thing acts according to its being this or that particular natural kind of thing. In this sense, as I explained in the previous chapter, natural things act by moving other things, an action that requires matter. Therefore, natural things cannot make things out of nothing.97 God, however, is absolutely and totally act in both ways: in comparison to Himself, because God does not have any potency; and in comparison to other things that are in act, because God is esse itself, having all perfections, and thus the source of all perfection in things. Therefore, by His action God produces the whole subsistent being of everything. For this reason, Aquinas concludes that God can make things from nothing, an action that is called ‘to create’.98 Therefore, the being (esse) of things that are not God is by creation.99 In his S.Th., Aquinas uses somewhat more Neo-Platonic terminology to address this definition saying that ‘this emanation [of things] we designate by the name of creation’.100

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Aquinas utilises this idea of creation to make a first approach to the difference between primary and secondary causation. Causation of being absolutely is reduced to the first universal cause, God in His creative action;101 whereas causation of all that is in addition to being, i.e., specific being, belongs to secondary causes that act by information, i.e., by giving the form and actuality to the effect, on the presupposition of the effect’s coming to be from the first cause.102 It would be useful to elucidate somewhat this concept of creation and make it make more precise. Something is said to be made ex nihilo in a twofold sense. The negation included in the term nihil can either negate the preposition ex or it could be included in that preposition. If it only negates the preposition, there are, again, two senses: first, it could negate the whole, negating also the verb, as if something is made out of nothing because it is not made (a silent man’s not speaking); and second, it could negate only the preposition while the verb would remain affirmed, as though there were no pre-existing thing out of which something is made (when someone grieves for nothing). This second sense is the way in which something is said to be made ex nihilo by creation. Now, if the preposition includes the negation, there are also two possible senses, a true one and a false one. The false one is if the preposition denotes the cause of something, which is false because ‘nothing’, absolutely speaking, cannot be the cause of anything; while the true sense is if the preposition denotes simply an order, so that to make a thing out of nothing is to make a thing before which there was nothing,103 and this is true of creation.104 Aquinas adds that a thing that is made out of nothing is said to be completely made instantaneously,105 because, by giving being (esse) to things, God also creates simultaneously that which receives that being (esse), that is, the essence.106 Hence, Aquinas insists that the entire nature of the creature, its essence and its esse, is from God, i.e., is created by God.107 It is not possible, then, to consider creation a change, because in a change there must be something that is common to both terms of the change.108 In creation, however, there is nothing before the thing is created; nothing is in act or in potency.109 One may argue that before the creature was created, it was in the potency of the maker, and when created it actually is.110 Therefore, since everything that passes from potency to act is changed, that which is created is changed, a conclusion that would prove that creation is a change. Still, Aquinas argues, only that which goes from passive potency to act is changed, not that which passes from an active potency to act. And creation is the passage from the active potency of God to the created act. Consequently, creation is not a change or a movement whatsoever.111 After having explained how creation is out of nothing and what creation is not (a change or movement),112 Aquinas continues discussing the ontological status of creation. Thus, he asks whether creation is something real in the creature, and, if so, what it is. Aquinas is strong in his affirmation that the act of creation is not a kind of medium between God and creatures by which God brings creatures into existence.113 This notion means that the creature directly depends for its very existence on the creator, whereas the creator does not

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depend at all on the creature.114 Aquinas insists that this creaturely dependence is the very same giving of being. Thus, this dependence is the very act of creation itself, because the giving of being is not in an instant of time in the past, but it is in every instant of time.115 If this were not the case, given that the creature depends on the creator to exist at every moment, the creature would cease to exist if the giving of being would stop.116 In this perspective, creation is the real relation of dependence of the creature upon its creator.117 Now, creation can be taken actively or passively. On the one hand, taken actively it designates God’s action, which is His own essence (denoting God’s active power with which God produces things into being) in relation to the creature.118 This relation should not be taken as a real relation, but a logical one.119 On the other hand, if creation is taken passively, it denotes the relation from the creature to the creator. In this sense, creation should be considered nothing else than a relation for the following reasons. Since creation is not a change, because it is not the passage of the creature from one state to another, i.e., creation does not signify the passive reception of something, creation denotes the accomplished thing itself. Thus, creation does not denote an approaching to being, nor a change effected by the creator, but it is the beginning of the existence (of a particular existent), which is esse being given by the creator.120 This esse being given by the creator, which is creation, is the relation of dependence that exists between creature and creator. When treating the same issue in his S.Th., Aquinas makes a few steps further into his understanding of creation, considering a different twofold aspect: first, creation can be seen as being created, which expresses that relation of dependence upon the Creator; and second, creation considered in itself, which signifies the creature itself: creation is the creature, or in the more definite tone of Latin, creatio est creatura.121 Aquinas’ argument is constant: he starts from the necessity of affirming a being that gives existence to all other things because all other things have being (esse) and are not being (esse) in themselves. This giver of being or existence is its own being or existence (esse), and is called God. Aquinas moves on to analyse the way in which being (esse) is given, namely creation, which occurs ex nihilo, because the total existence of things is given, affirming that creation is not a movement or a change, for movements or changes need to have something that moves or changes from one situation to another, whereas in creation there is nothing pre-existing to what is created. Thus, Aquinas states the difference between the way in which God causes, as primary cause, and the way in which natural things cause, as secondary causes. Finally, discussing the ontological status of creation, Aquinas explains that taken actively, creation signifies the very same essence of the creator in relation to the creature, whereas taken passively it implies a real relation of dependence in being (esse) from the creature to the creator. Ultimately, Aquinas will affirm that creation, in addition to being relation of dependence of the creature on the Creator, is the creature itself being created. If this metaphysical analysis holds, then creation, understood as God’s constant giving of being or existence to natural things,122 is a fact at which philosophy, understood as the investigation

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of the principles of the world by the use of human reason alone, can arrive, although it is also a theological truth of the Christian religion, which can be accepted by faith: ‘reason demonstrates and faith holds that everything is created by God’.123 As I briefly pointed out on the previous page, in this analysis of creation Aquinas speaks of the difference between primary and secondary causality: God is the primary cause of things because what God causes is the very existence of all created things, without which things simply would not be. Ultimately, the first thing, so to speak, that is required to do anything is to be.124 Because of this, the secondary cause cannot do anything if it is not by way of the primary cause causing it to be, to exist. Thus, that which causes what is first required is the primary cause.125 Now, the way in which these names – ‘cause’ in particular – are predicated of the primary cause, God, is not the same as the way they are predicated of natural things. The use of the word ‘cause’ for God requires a somewhat extensive qualification (probably more extensive than what I will offer in the following lines).126 First, Aquinas affirms that the primary cause is more influential in the effect of the secondary cause than the secondary cause itself.127 Given that the very being of the secondary cause is caused by the primary cause, all that the secondary cause is, is caused by the primary cause. Thus, its power to be a cause at all and to be able to produce something else is given by the primary cause: because a secondary cause has its own substance from the first cause, it likewise has its own power to act from the first cause. So, even if the secondary cause is the real cause of its effect, properly speaking, the primary cause is primarily the cause of the effect of the secondary cause, and it is only for this reason that the secondary cause can be said to be a cause at all. Second, since the secondary cause does not act upon the effect except with the power that the primary cause causes in it, the effect does not proceed from the power of the secondary cause except because of the power of the primary cause. Hence, the power of the primary cause, rather than that of the secondary cause, attains firstly the effect. These considerations will open the path in the following section to understanding the ways in which God can be said to be providentially active in the created universe. Still, before moving into this matter, Aquinas’ arguments require the consideration of two more ideas to continue the qualification of our understanding of God as a cause. If we recall the four different kinds of efficient causes that I have presented in the previous chapter (principal, preparing, instrumental, and advising), Aquinas says that the way in which God can be called an efficient cause is primarily according to the principal or perficiens.128 The perficiens cause is the one that can be properly called the cause of something, because it is that from which the effect follows directly.129 Still, he also acknowledges that God as primary cause can be also called a consilians efficient cause, because it is the one that gives the end towards which natural things tend as well as their form.130 By giving being, the primary cause also gives the mode of being, meaning that God gives the nature or form of created natural things.

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Finally, Aquinas argues that God acts neither as a univocal cause nor as an equivocal one. God, he affirms, causes in an analogical way.131 God could not cause univocally, because nothing can be predicated of God univocally. Neither can God cause equivocally, because His effects do resemble Him somehow, though in an imperfect way, as I briefly mentioned on the previous page.132 The effect of an analogical efficient cause falls short with respect to the perfection of the cause: it receives a diminished and remote likeness of its cause, and hence we say that analogies are used to designate the intelligible connection between this kind of cause and its effects.133 In the realm of causality, however, only God is said to be an analogical agent.134

D God’s action in every natural action The second way in which Aquinas thinks that God is active in nature is through secondary causes. When considering the question on whether God acts in nature at all besides creation, Aquinas first rejects the views of those who say that nature does not have any proper powers and operations, and that, hence, it is only God who acts in every apparent natural operation. Aquinas thinks that this position is based on an incorrect understanding of the difference between primary and secondary causality, arguing that it goes against the senses, natural reason, and the goodness of God, as I explained in the first chapter.135 Aquinas offers further reasons in S.Th.,136 affirming that the opinion that there are no created powers, but that it is God who acts in every apparent natural operation is impossible for two reasons: first, it would deprive creation of its order in causes and effects, which, in the end, would go against God’s power itself. God would not be able to create something that would act with its own power but would need to create something that would not act at all. In the end, given that Aquinas accepts that from natural things human reason can reach the existence of God and His attributes, and that these natural things would not have any power, it would not be possible to admit that God has any power at all. In fact, the perfection of the effects indicates the perfection of its cause. Now, Aquinas acknowledges that God is the most perfect efficient cause. Therefore, things that God creates receive a likeness of His perfection. Consequently, to detract from the creature’s perfection is to detract from the perfection of the divine power. Thus, if no creature exercises an action for the production of an effect, much is detracted from the perfection of the creature; because it is due to the abundance of its perfection that a thing is able to communicate to another the perfection that it has. Hence, affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power.137 Second, if creatures did not have any power, their own existence would be meaningless, since creatures are perfected by acting. Since they would not be acting, they would not be perfected. Besides, if the effects were produced not by the act of creatures but only by the act of God, the power of a created cause cannot possibly be indicated by its effect: since the effect is no indication of the cause’s power, except by reason of the action that proceeds from the power and

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terminates in the effect. Now, the nature of a cause is not known from its effect except in so far as this is an indication of its power that results from its nature. Consequently, if creatures exercise no action in producing effects, it will follow that the nature of a creature can never be known from its effect: not only creatures would be meaningless, but also all knowledge of physical science would be impossible.138 Therefore, created causes must possess a principle of operation for created effects so as to be the executors of the created causal order.139 After rejecting this position, Aquinas explains his own understanding of God’s operation in nature. He argues that to be the cause of the action of something else can be understood in four different ways, in which Aquinas progressively shows how God’s causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things.140 First, something can be understood as giving something else the power to act: every operation consequent to a certain power is ascribed to the giver of that power as an effect to its cause.141 Since all power of any created efficient cause whatsoever is from God, then God is said to cause every action of created things, because he gives natural things the powers by which they are able to act, as from the first principle of all perfection. Second, God may be said to be the cause of an action by upholding the created natural power in its being (esse). Every action that cannot continue after the influence of a certain efficient cause has ceased, belongs properly to that efficient cause,142 since the preserver of a power is said to cause the action – as a remedy that preserves the sight is said to make a man see. God not only gave existence (esse) to things when they first begin to exist, but also causes existence (esse) in them as long as they actually are, by preserving them in existence, as I have shown above. Thus, God is always preserving those powers in them and hence causing them to be, together with their existence (esse). Consequently, if the divine causality were to cease, all operations would come to an end. Therefore, every operation of a thing is reduced to God as its cause in this second sense as well. I have called these two ways of giving the power to act and preserving that power the ‘foundational moments’ of God acting in and through natural efficient causes. The next two ways will be the ‘dynamic moments’ of God acting in and through natural efficient causes. The third and fourth ways depend on Aquinas’ understanding of an instrumental cause. A thing is said to cause another’s action by moving it to act, as when someone applies the causal power of an instrument to action, for example when a man uses the knife’s cutting power by applying its sharpness to cutting a loaf of bread or a saw to a piece of timber. For Aquinas, an instrument, when acting as an instrument, has two different effects: one that pertains to it according to its own nature, and another that pertains to it insofar as it is moved by the primary efficient cause and that transcends its own nature. Each of these effects refers to each of the two dynamic moments of God acting in and through created causes. On the one hand, the first of these two ways of causing refers to the first action of an instrumental cause. Every created efficient cause performs its operation according to its own nature and powers, moved by God to act, and to achieve its proper effect, in my example the cutting of the loaf of

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bread or the timber. On the other hand, the second way of causing the action of the instrument refers to the causing of an effect that goes beyond the power of any created cause, in my example, cutting the loaf of bread the shape of a star, for the joy of children (an effect that the knife cannot perform by its own power). The effect that transcends the power of the natural being when being applied by God, but which could be attained by participation in God’s power, is instantiated being.143 Aquinas holds that in every natural thing we find that it is a being, and everything that acts in a certain way causes being.144 Being, however, is the most common first effect and more intimate than all other effects, wherefore it is an effect that belongs to God alone to produce by His own power.145 Therefore, in every action of natural things, since they somehow cause being, God is the cause of that action, inasmuch as every natural efficient cause is an instrument of the divine power causing being.146 Now, this can only happen by the immanence of the universal power of God, the primary cause. Therefore, if the natural efficient cause in itself is considered, it is immediate to its effect. The cause of an action, however, is the thing by whose power it is performed, more even than that which does it: even as the principal efficient cause, in comparison to the instrument, is more the cause. Thus, 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. Therefore, God is more the cause of every action than secondary active causes. Thus, in the effect of natural causes, being is said to be the result of God’s action in so far as when every secondary cause causes being (i.e., specifies the mode of being) it does so acting by the power of the first creating cause: this is because being is the first effect and presupposes nothing else.147 Aquinas offers a similar conclusion in his S.Th.,148 though with a different perspective in the argumentation. He brings up his notion of the four natural causes explained in the previous chapter, arguing that of the four causes, matter is the only one that is not a principle of action, but only of passion or of receiving an action. Hence, God cannot act through this kind of causality. The other three, however, are principles of action, and indeed with a certain order: the final cause makes the efficient cause move and produce the form. Accordingly, God acts in every single natural action in terms of these three sources of action. God acts as the end of every natural action, as the efficient cause,149 and formal cause, although not as an inherent formal cause, but as an exemplar formal cause.150 First, Aquinas argues that God causes as the final cause of every action of natural agents in the following sense. Following what I said in the previous chapter, every natural operation of a natural efficient cause pursues an end, which Aquinas identifies with the good (real or apparent) for that natural thing. Now, nothing can be called a good except due to its likeness to the supreme goodness, which is God. This likeness is caused by the supreme good, and thus God causes as the end of the actions of every natural agent. Second, God causes

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as an efficient cause thus: as in a sequence of many efficient causes, the second efficient cause depends on the action of the first efficient cause; natural efficient causes thus depend on God’s action to be caused to act. Hence, God is the cause of every action of natural efficient cause, as causing them to act in the way in which a craftsman applies his axe to cutting the wood. Finally, God also gives things their forms and keeps them in existence. And since the form of anything is intrinsic to it and God is properly intimate to things, given that he is the giver of being and existence, then God acts intimately in all things by giving them their forms and upholding them in existence. Consequently, God is at work in every operation of every created natural thing inasmuch as everything needs His power to act. Therefore, God is the cause of everything’s action inasmuch as He gives everything the power to act, and preserves that power in being (the foundational moments), applying it to action, and inasmuch as by His power every other power acts (the dynamic moments). Nevertheless, this should be understood in the sense that the active and passive powers of natural things suffice for operating in their own order, yet requiring the divine power to perform that action.151 God and natural efficient causes act on two different levels.152 The same effect is ascribed to a natural cause and to God, not as though a part of the effect were performed by God and another part by the natural efficient cause: the whole effect proceeds from each, yet in different ways, as the whole of the one same effect is ascribed to the instrument, and again the whole is ascribed to the principal efficient cause. It is in this respect, in the acting together of the two orders of primary and secondary causes, that the powers of nature do not suffice to produce their own proper effects. That which is made by God in natural things, which makes them operate, is a mere capacity or inclination to act, and as such is a kind of incomplete being.153 Therefore, it is necessary for them to receive that power from the first cause, which is God, to cause actually,154 in the same way that an axe, although it has the form to do it, could not chop a piece of wood unless it is moved by the craftsman. The craftsman gives the axe the power with which the axe actually chops the wood according to its form. In a similar manner, God gives natural things the power to perform their operations according to their own forms. These ideas would seem to imply that it is not necessary to admit that nature works, because if a sufficient cause is acting, then there is no longer the necessity of another cause, and God acts as a sufficient cause. Nevertheless, Aquinas argues that God acts perfectly as first cause, but that the operation of natural things as secondary causes is, in a sense, also necessary, because, even though God can produce the natural effect without the natural efficient cause, He wishes to act by means of nature in order to preserve the order of things.155 It is not that God does not have the sufficient power to cause what He causes through natural causes.156 Were He willing to do so, He could, as I will show in the next section. God, however, acts through natural causes because of the immensity of His goodness, by which He decides to communicate His similitude to things, not only in their existence, but also in their being causes of other things.157

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Acknowledging that this is a difficult question,158 Aquinas finds himself in a position between two extremes:159 first, he wants to reject the view that holds that God does everything in nature, leaves natural efficient causes without powers; second, he wants to deny as well that position that regards God as not being involved at all in the actual workings of the universe. In this endeavour, Aquinas makes use of his full metaphysical arsenal: from his doctrine of being, through his notions of act and potency, to his doctrine of instrumental efficient causation. By doing so, Aquinas presents a quite plausible, though complex, metaphysical account of God’s activity in nature, an account in which the effect is produced by both the first and the secondary cause, but due primarily to the first cause that is the source of the substance and activity of the secondary. This account of God’s activity in nature helps to explain not only how God is profoundly involved in the course of nature, but also to understand the reason nature works at all.160

E Miracles The final way in which Aquinas thinks God acts in nature, after creation itself and acting in and through secondary causes, is miracles, that is, acting besides or beyond natural created causes (praeter causas naturales). It is important to address this question, despite its difficulty, because it will shed more light on the debate we are dealing with, particularly in terms of Aquinas’ own understanding of the intimate and ultimate dependence of creatures upon God, not only for their being and operations, but also for the regularities in their actions. These regularities, which natural science (contemporary and old) finds in nature, are possible due to the action of God in nature. Hence, considering that Aquinas has already argued for the infinity of God’s power, in the terms discussed previously in this chapter, he finds no problem in accepting that God can do things in nature that appear to be contrary to the order He has established in it by creation.161 To show that God can actually do things in nature besides the natural order, Aquinas argues that, if one accepts that 1) God is the author of being (esse) in all created natural things; 2) God has proper knowledge and providence with respect to each individual; and 3) He does not act out of natural necessity (that is, that God is free in His actions); it follows that God can act independently of the course of nature in the production of particular effects. From the analysis of creation and of God’s action in nature I presented in the previous sections, one can accept these three propositions. The first one refers to what I have argued for in the section on creation. From the section on God’s activity in and through every natural action, it follows that God’s causal agency extends to the very particularity of each individual, since each individual thing and its powers is created, sustained in existence, and moved towards its particular operation. Finally, from what has been said in the section on God’s being and power, it can be argued, as Aquinas does, that God does not act according to necessity, but according to His free will. God could, then, act beyond the natural causes

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either regarding being, by producing in natural things a new form that nature is unable to produce or by producing a form in a particular matter, as sight in a blind man; or regarding operation, by restraining the action of nature from doing what it would naturally do.162 For Aquinas, when God does anything besides the course or order of nature, order that refers to the relations that creatures have among themselves, He does not put aside the entire order of the universe, but the order of some particular cause to its particular effect,163 only if this action procures a good that is in direct order to achieve the salvation of some particular human beings.164 Aquinas offers some quite laconic, though impressive arguments for holding this position. For example, he considers the counter argument that God’s producing things outside the natural order is not possible since God cannot make anything that is not ordered, and nature is the cause of order. Aquinas answers saying that nature is the cause of the order in natural things, but it is not the cause of the order of all things absolutely speaking.165 In fact, the cause of the order of all things absolutely speaking is God. Therefore, there is nothing that prevents God from being able to do what is impossible to natural efficient causes, as long as these actions are not impossible in themselves.166 When treating this same topic in his S.Th.167 Aquinas asks a slightly different question that goes directly to this point. In this case, he does not address whether God can do something beyond the natural causes (praeter causas naturales), but whether God can act beyond the order intrinsic to natural things (praeter ordinem rebus inditum). Aquinas affirms that any particular kind of order proceeds from a particular kind of cause, and thus, there would be as many orders as kinds of causes can be found, a distinction by which he refers to the difference between primary and secondary causes. Since secondary causes depend upon the primary cause, their order is dependent upon the order that proceeds from the primary cause. Thus, if one considers the order that proceeds from the primary cause, then God cannot act against it, because He would be acting against His own nature.168 If, however, one considers the order that proceeds from secondary causes, then God could act against it, because this order depends upon God as a cause. Ultimately, God is not subject to this secondary natural order, but on the contrary this order is subject to God, from which the first order proceeds. Thus, were God to want to establish a new order, there would be no contradiction whatsoever.169 The order of secondary causes besides which God could do something exists from one cause to its particular effect.170 Aquinas further argues that God does not create or make everything that He can create or make. Thus, God could do some things by His power that are not done yet in what He had already done.171 Finally, Aquinas concludes, nothing appears to prohibit the existence of a passive potency that could be actualised by different efficient causes, i.e., a natural cause or the divine cause, or even the existence of a created passive potency that can only be actualised by the power of God. This kind of potency is what he has previously called obediential potency, by which every creature would obey its creator.172 Thus, although

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there is an order from a natural cause to its natural effect, there is also a prior order through which the creature depends upon its creator. Hence, given that God has the power to do everything, and that there is a particular potency towards act in creatures, God can make this potency to be actualised without any natural created means. If this is true, the notion of God’s interfering with nature would have to be re-thought. This intervention or interference can no longer be conceived as breaking some unbreakable laws of nature, even if they are as some early modern thinkers thought about them, or suspending an order that cannot be suspended. God’s so-called intervention in nature is in this perspective something completely intelligible and, Aquinas would argue, almost necessary. It is intelligible because it is the order of nature that depends upon God, and not God who depends upon the created order. And it is almost necessary since, speaking eschatologically, the goal of these miraculous interventions is human salvation, which, for Aquinas cannot be attained only by human means. After having shown that God can do things besides, and in a sense beyond, the natural order of causes, Aquinas assesses the definition of a miracle to see how it is that God can perform them. The first step is elucidating the meaning of the term miracula.173 Etymologically miracula comes from the verb miror, which means to be surprised, in awe, or to admire.174 Now, admiration, awe, and surprise usually happen because of two different reasons: first, because the cause of what is admired is hidden; and second, because in that which is admired, something appears to be contrary to what it should be. This second possibility occurs, again, due to two different reasons: first, for itself; and second, due to our knowledge of that event. This final possibility is an epistemological deficiency in our knowledge, and could be solved by further exploration of the causes of the event.175 Now, the previous reason, according to itself, something is to be admired if its cause is unknown simpliciter, that is, the cause of that event cannot be known by any further investigation or exploration in the natural realm of causes, because in the very event a contrary disposition to the actual effect can be found. Thus, it is not due to an epistemological deficiency that we cannot know the hidden cause, but due to an ontological hiding of the causes. The most hidden and secret of all causes to our senses is God, who acts immanently in all created natural things, as I discussed in the previous section. Thus, those things that are brought about only by the power of God are to be called miracles, because they surprise us and are to be admired. Finally, Aquinas offers a threefold division of kinds of miracles: 1) those miracles that are done above nature (supra naturam); 2) those miracles that are done against nature (contra naturam); and 3) those miracles that are done besides or beyond nature (praeter naturam). First, a miracle is above nature when God produces an effect that nature is wholly incapable of producing. This situation could happen in two ways: first, when what God does cannot possibly be done by nature in any way (for example, salvation or Incarnation); second, when what God does can be done by nature in a particular thing, but not in the

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one in which God does it (as the form of life in a dead body). In addition, a miracle is contrary to nature when nature retains a disposition contrary to the effect produced by God (as when fire does not burn). Finally, a miracle is besides or beyond nature when God produces an effect that nature can produce, but in a manner of which nature is incapable. This may be either through lack of the instruments that nature is meant to employ, or, because the effect is produced by God more copiously than when produced by nature (as if were God to feed 5,000 with three fish and five loaves of bread).176

F A brief conclusion on God as a cause It would be helpful to read Aquinas’ conclusions of his teachings in his SCG: The giver of some principal part to a thing gives the thing all the items that result from that part… But the ability to make an actual thing results from being actually existent, as is evident in the case of God, for He is pure act and is also the first cause of being for all things, as we showed above. Therefore, if He has communicated His likeness, as far as actual being is concerned, to other things, by virtue of the fact that He has brought things into being, it follows that He has communicated to them His likeness, as far as acting is concerned, so that created things may also have their own actions.177 From that whose nature is to exist, namely God, everything in nature proceeds. Not only the existence of things and their modes or kinds of beings, but also their powers and their ways of operating with those powers, simply because if the principle of action – nature – is given, then everything that comes from that principle is also given. With his description of creation, Aquinas offers a complete account of how and why things are, and why they work as they do. Following this account, however, Aquinas also concludes that God’s power is the power of every being, as created things find their source in God’s being. In the same way that it can be said that, although every created thing participates in God’s being, it owns, so to speak, its own being, the powers of every created thing belong to these created things because they participate in God’s power. Given that such divine power is an infinite power, and it is not dependent upon any order, there is no reason to think that God cannot act inside and besides the realm of natural things, producing any sort of effect according to His wisdom and goodness in order to procure human salvation. Thus, I think that, guided by Aquinas’ metaphysical analysis of God’s nature and power, it is possible to think of God as a free creator, and a continuous giver of being and power. God’s creative action does not change God; God is still God with or without creation. Hence, God is completely distinct from creation, and creation is utterly dependent upon God, God being deeply immanent within creation – closer and more intimately present to creation than creation is to itself. That is, God has a transcendent-immanent character towards creation: God is radically distinct from creation and God is profoundly

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present and active within it.178 There is no contradiction between God’s immanent involvement in the world and his transcendent unity. God’s influence extends to all things, and God is most intimately present in each thing since the cause is in the effect and conversely, insofar as the cause acts on the effect and the effect receives the action of the cause.179 Furthermore, God can be thought of as continuously active within the universe in two different ways: first and pre-eminently, acting in every action of every natural agent. God acts through secondary causes, but His action is always in some sense immediate in that He does not act through any disposition or relationship added to His nature, for the first cause acts through its being without any disposition through which an efficient cause is adapted or rendered proportionate to a patient.180 Hence, there is no need for a connection or a link standing between the creature and God. The first cause does not interfere with the causality of a secondary cause but is rather the very source of that causality.181 Following this idea, and though God’s activity is universally present in all things, it is not merely generic. Instead, it is fundamentally a particular activity through each secondary acting cause. Second, but not less important, God could also act beyond the order of nature bringing about natural or non-natural effects, in the order of nature or outside of it. Together with this conception of God and His power, it can also be argued that natural beings are autonomous in their works and operations, given that they are actual beings, from which action proceeds. And since they are some particular kind of act, they will act in some particular way. In order to act in their respective ways, however, these natural beings require the participation of the power of God to achieve those activities. After having spent enough pages on Aquinas’ views on causality and God’s actions, it is now time to put Aquinas into dialogue with the contemporary debate on God’s providential action in the created universe. Thus, in the following chapter I will use all the metaphysical material gathered in the last two chapters to find the solutions to the difficulties previously presented in the second chapter, namely, the identification of causality with determinism, the rejection of God’s acting in nature to hold the autonomy of nature, and, mainly, the conclusion that God is required to act as a natural cause. In doing so I will show how Aquinas’ model of providential divine action holds to all four desiderata I presented in the first chapter, namely, God’s omnipotence, God’s involvement in worldly affairs, the autonomy of nature, and the success of human reason in knowing the workings of nature.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4. SCG, III, cc. 65 and 69. S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5. De Pot., q. 3, a. 7. De Ver., q. 5, a. 2, ad 6.

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6 See Weisheipl, James, Friar Thomas D’Aquino. His Life, Thought, and Works (Washington DC: CUA Press, 1983), 200–201: Many of the points discussed here [De Pot.] were already discussed in the SCG. But in De Pot. there is a directness and simplicity of metaphysical thinking that indicate a development of thought. This development stands midway between the SCG and the first part of the S.Th. In fact, De Pot. is chronologically and speculatively the immediate predecessor of the first part of the theological Summa. No metaphysician or speculative theologian can neglect the disputed questions De Pot. without detriment to his own understanding of Thomas’s S.Th. 7 Brock, Stephen, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse: Thomas Aquinas and the De hebdomadibus’, Nova et Vetera 5:3 (2007), 465–493, 475. See also, Clarke, W. Norris, The Philosophical Approach to God, 2nd edn (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 48: [Aquinas’ Neo-Platonically inspired metaphysics of participation] is a personal synthesis which he constructed by (1) taking over the general formal structure of Neoplatonic participation theory, (2) emptying it of its excessive Platonic realism of ideas, (3) filling it with the new wine of his own quite original insight into the act of existence as the ultimate positive core of all real perfections – an act which is multiplied and diversified by reception into various limiting modes of essence, and (4) expressing the whole structure in a transformed Aristotelian terminology of act and potency. 8 For such discussions see, for example, the work of te Velde, Rudi, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), or Fabro, Cornelio, Participation et Causalité Selon S. Thomas D’Aquin (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1961). 9 De Ente et Essentia, c. 4. I should note that, even if De Ente is one of Aquinas’ earliest works (1252–56), the greater part of his fundamental metaphysical choice is already present here as it is in the first book of In Sent. See Wippel, John, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2000), 595. For an extensive analysis of this passage see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 137–150. I will use the English term ‘existence’ in most of the cases when I refer to the Latin term esse following Kenny’s own suggestion that in this passage esse means ‘existence’. See Kenny, Anthony, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: OUP, 2002), 34. 10 See S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 4, co.: ‘individual matter, with all the individualising accidents, is not included in the definition of the species… the thing which is a man has something more in it than has humanity’. 11 De Ente, c. 3: ‘Whatever is not of the understood content of an essence or quality is something which comes from without and makes a composition with the essence… It is clear, therefore, that existence is other than essence or quiddity’. 12 Dodds, Michael, ‘The Doctrine of Causality in Aquinas and The Book of Causes: One Key to Understanding the Nature of Divine Action’, lecture given at the Summer Thomistic Institute, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, July 14–21, 2000, 11. 13 Kenny, Aquinas on Being, 35. 14 Or as Fabro will put it in his Participation et Causalité, 370: ‘The supreme act by which all other acts are in act is being’. My translation. 15 De Pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad 9. 16 Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 492. 17 For different arguments on the real distinction between essence and esse see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 150–176. On a different note, Kenny’s thesis in his Aquinas on Being that Aquinas’ understanding of esse is not satisfactory is

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A metaphysics of God’s providence well known. Kenny’s analysis aims to show 12 different notions of esse in Aquinas’ writings, and argues that he never accomplished a well-defined theory of esse. Against this thesis, see Berti, Enrico, ‘El “Tomismo Analítico” y el Debate Sobre el Esse ipsum’, lecture given at the Philosophy Faculty of the Universidad Católica Argentina, Buneos Aires, 7 October, 2008. In this lecture Berti, who shares many of Kenny’s ideas, mentions Brock, Stephen L., ‘On Whether Aquinas’ Ipsum Esse is Platonism’, The Review of Metaphysics, 60:2 (2006), 269–303 as the best response. Brock states that for Aquinas esse is the actuality of a particular essence, and God’s esse and God’s essence are identical, which means that God is His own esse not receiving it from another source, which in the end means that it is not pure and empty esse, but it is the sum of all the perfections found in creation. te Velde, Rudi, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 68, explains that ‘as potency, the essence is unthinkable outside its relation to the act of being’. Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 370, says that ‘being is the act of every essence’. My translation. De Ente, c. 1: ‘it is called essence from the fact that through it and in it a real being has existence’. It is important to remark here that for Aquinas esse is not something that happens accidentally to an essentia (pace Avicenna). See In IV Met., l. 2, 556, 558. Brock offers in his ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 472ss a good account of the different interpretations that the Thomistic doctrine of the distinction between esse and essentia had in the twentieth century. Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 491. Kenny, Aquinas on Being, 37 states that this ‘doctrine, whether or not its formulation is confusing, seems to be true and important’. De Pot., q. 5, a. 4, ad 3. See also In I Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1; d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1; d. 37, q. 1, ad 2; De Ver., q. 10, a. 1, ad 3; De Spir. Creat., a. 11; S.Th. I, q. 54, a. 1; In I Peri Her., l. 5. See also, De Pot., q. 9, a. 5, ad 19. te Velde, Aquinas on God, 86, affirms this by saying that ‘Thomas assigns to being the distinct ontological role of principle of actuality’. For an analysis of what esse means for Aquinas, see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 99–102, where he establishes three points: 1) that esse itself does not participate in anything else; 2) that esse does not admit of the addition of anything extrinsic to its formal content; and 3) that esse itself is not composed, for a composite or composed entity cannot be identified with its esse. See SCG I, c. 22. See also Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 405. See S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 4, co.: ‘it is impossible for a thing’s existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore, that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another’. See also Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 407. Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 475. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 107, says that ‘the importance of this conjoining of the potency-act relationship between essence and esse with the metaphysics of participation can hardly be overstated’. See In De Heb., l. 2. See also Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 479–480. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 409, expresses this idea saying that ‘unless we grant the existence of an uncaused source of esse, the esse of every caused being remains unexplained’. Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 13. Aquinas is using here the distinction between something that belongs to something by essence, and something that belongs to something because it is caused. In this case, existence is said to belong to beings not by their essences but by a cause. The source of existence should possess it, thus, by its essence, because if it had its existence not by its essence, it would be necessary to have to be caused by something else instead of being the source of it. See Clarke, Norris,

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Explorations in Metaphysics (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1994), 94, and Clarke The Philosophical Approach to God, 51–53. See also, Tanner, Kathryn, God and Creation in Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 58: ‘In Thomistic metaphysics it would make sense to say that God is what creatures only have because of a real distinction between their essences and existence’. See also Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 105. Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 482. De Ente, c. 4. See also In De Causis, l. 3: ‘God is not a kind of existent but is existence simpliciter and uncircumscribed all in itself’. The divine essence must not be conceived as identical with esse itself. It is identical with its own divine esse. In this, it is unique, since no other being has an essence that is identical with its own esse. Other things only have their esse. But the esse that they have is truly their own, inhering in them; and it is not the divine esse. See Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 483. See De Ver., q. 21, a. 4, ad 7: ‘only God is His existence, although others have existence, which is, indeed, distinct from the divine existence’. This idea will be an important point for created things being real causes, as it will be explained in the next chapter. See SCG I, c. 22. For this is what it means that God transcends creation. The divinity certainly contains the whole perfection falling under esse. But it also transcends this perfection. Although utterly simple, the divinity contains all the perfections found in things, and esse is not the only perfection. See S.Th. I, q. 12, a. 2. See also Brock, ‘Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse’, 482. De Ente, c. 3. For instance, in In De Causis, l. 6: ‘The primary cause is pure act, not having any potentiality in it’. One of the key features of the notion of participation is that the participant receives, in a limited way, the perfection that in its source exists in a state of unlimitedness or infinity. In De Causis, l. 4. See Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 90. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 122, explains that ‘God must be thought of as something which is being in strict identity with itself, which in no way depends for its being on something else. Thus, God must be thought as ‘being itself’’. See SCG I, c. 22. For important studies on Aquinas’ notion of participation I refer the reader, first, to Fabro’s classic volume, Participation et Causalité, and also to Geiger, L. B., La Participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1942) and Rudi te Velde, Participation and Substantiality. Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 92. The best explanation of this doctrine appears in Aquinas’ In De Heb., l. 2. Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 93. Aquinas also treated this issue extensively in his In De Div. Nom. In De Causis, l. 6: ‘the primary cause is higher than any discourse’. te Velde, Aquinas on God, 73: ‘[For Aquinas] God is greater than all we can say, greater than all we can know; He is beyond the comprehension of every (created) mind’. See also Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 511. As Tanner puts it in her God and Creation, 61: ‘God is identified by rules for discourse that announce the general inadequacy of the language we use for talk about the world’. In De Causis, l. 6: ‘Only the primary cause cannot be spoken of, because there is no superior cause by which it can be spoke of’. In De Causis, l. 6: ‘The primary cause is over being inasmuch as it is infinite being itself, whereas things participate finitely in being, and this is proportionate to our

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A metaphysics of God’s providence intellect… but the essence of God is being itself, which is over our intellect’. See Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 12. In De Causis, l. 6: ‘the cause that exceeds the effect cannot be sufficiently known through its effect’. Aquinas adopts what is usually known as negative theology to speak about what God is. This negative theology is, according to te Velde, ‘grounded in causality. The via negationis presupposes the prior affirmation of God as the cause on which all things depend for their being’. See te Velde, Aquinas on God, 75. S.Th. I, q. 2, a. 2, co. te Velde, Aquinas on God, 73, explains that ‘the negative approach to God is a striking and important feature of Thomas’ theology. We cannot know what God is; only what he is not’. He adds, a page later, that by showing how God is not, by denying of him the fundamental structures of human thinking and talking about reality, Thomas intends to safeguard our speech and our thought against lapsing into idolatry: for when we speak about God, we do not speak about one of the things there are, but about the Creator of all of these things. According to te Velde, Aquinas on God, 109, ‘although [analogy] does not stand in itself as a metaphysical theory, its use is clearly embedded in a metaphysical account of the causal relationship between creatures and God’. For an extensive exposition of Aquinas on naming God analogically throughout his writings, see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 543–572. A discussion on different interpretations of Thomistic analogy, and a different interpretation on its own, namely that ‘Aquinas offers no theory of analogy’ (p. 170), can be found in Burrell, David, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 119–170. For the analysis of all these attributes, see S.Th. I, qq. 3–11, where considerations about God’s simplicity, perfection, goodness, infiniteness, immutability, eternity, and unity can be found. SCG I, c. 14: ‘For we know each thing more perfectly the more fully we see its differences from other things’. S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 1, co.: ‘In this way, therefore, He can be named by us from creatures, yet not so that the name which signifies Him expresses the divine essence in itself’. Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 12. te Velde, Aquinas on God, 76, explains that ‘the move from negation to eminence is crucial’. S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 1, co. Burrell, David, Knowing the Unknowable God (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1986), 44: ‘Identifying essence with esse in God would indicate a perfection rather than an impoverishment only if esse represented the sum total of perfections’. See te Velde, Aquinas on God, 89: ‘If a reality is completely determined in identity with its being, then being must be present in it according to its full range of perfection, including perfections such as life and intelligence and so on’. See also te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 124. S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 2, co. For a longer argument on how natural things can be like God, see S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 3, co. See also In De Causis, l. 3: ‘good itself, being itself, life itself and wisdom itself are no other than one and the same that is God’. S.Th. I, q. 13, aa. 2–3. See te Velde, Aquinas on God, 110: A term is said analogously if it is predicated of different things neither in exactly the same sense, nor in a wholly different sense, but in a partly different and partly the same sense, namely, according to different relationships to one and the same thing.

59 S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 5, co.

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60 In this same line of argumentation Aquinas says in his In De Div. Nom., proo.: ‘every likeness of the creature of God is deficient and what God is in itself exceeds everything which is found in creatures’. 61 Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 517–518. On different types of likeness see the same work, 574. 62 As te Velde would put it in his Aquinas on God, 112: ‘The relation of the causal dependency of creatures on God implies that creatures have some likeness to God. However, it is merely a likeness according to a certain analogy’. 63 S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 5, co. Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 523, explains that ‘analogy is thus dominated by the convergence of the principle of similitude and that of participation’. 64 S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 5, co.: ‘there is relation of a creature to God as its principle and cause, wherein all perfections of things pre-exist excellently’. 65 See also, SCG I, c. 34, where Aquinas explains this notion of analogical predication. 66 For a well-defined and basic structure of Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy see Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 528–537. 67 In De Div. Nom., c. 1, l. 1. 68 There are many examples of these all throughout Aquinas’ work, some of which can be found in his In De Div. Nom., proo.: ‘Dionysius sometimes names God as good itself or the super-good or the principal good or the goodness of every good. And similarly, he names God as the super-life, super-substance’; c. 2, l. 1: ‘that which is said of God that is removed from God due to his excellence, like supergood, super-substantial, super-living, super-wise and the like are said of God because He exceeds them’. 69 In De Div. Nom., c. 4, l. 5. 70 In De Div. Nom., c. 1, l. 1. 71 Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 574–575. 72 De An., a. 13, co. 73 De Pot., q. 1, a. 1, co. 74 S.Th. I, q. 25, a. 1, co. 75 S.Th. I, q. 25, a. 1, ad 1: ‘Active power is not contrary to act, but is founded upon it, for everything acts according as it is actual’. 76 S.Th. I, q. 9, a. 2, co. 77 S.Th. I, q. 25, a. 1, ad 1: ‘passive power is contrary to act; for a thing is passive according as it is in potency’. 78 S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 1, co. 79 De Virt., q. 1, a. 10, ad 13: ‘passive power responds to active power’. 80 In De Pot., q. 1, a. 1, Aquinas offers a brief account of these conclusions saying that ‘our mind strives to describe God as a most perfect being’. The question treated here is not what God is, but rather whether there is power in God, for what he presupposes the notion of God I examined in the previous section. 81 De Pot., q. 1, a. 1, co. 82 Dodds, in his ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 14, explains this idea thus: ‘Since the effect of an agent is in some way like the agent, something of the Creator can be known through the creature. We can therefore speak of God and his action using the analogy of creatures’. 83 For this whole argument see De Pot., q. 1, a. 1, co. 84 In I Sent., d. 7, a. 1, ad 3: the divine power is in no way passive, but neither truly active; instead, it is super-active: its action is not by way of movement, but by way of operation, which is different from movement, according to the philosopher, as the perfect to the imperfect.

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85 De Pot., q. 1, a. 2, co. In In De Div. Nom., c. 8, l. 1, Aquinas enumerates five different modes in which God’s power can be considered infinite: The divine power is said to be infinite in five ways: first, because it is not determined to any effect, but instead it produces all powers; second, not only for this, but also because it does not commensurate to any other power, but instead it is over every particular power…; third, because it does not end in the powers that exist, but instead it can produce infinite modes and infinite other powers, without weakening this super-infinite action, which is productive of every power…; fifth, we call infinite that what does not fit in the intellect, and what cannot be known is ineffable and unknown, and the divine power exceeds everything. 86 87 88 89

De Pot., q. 1, a. 2, ad 13. De Pot., q. 1, a. 3, co. See SCG II, c. 22. De Pot., q. 1, a. 3, ad 3. This idea should be coupled with the affirmation stated in SCG II, c. 22: ‘Therefore, by His active power God is able to do everything whatsoever that lies within the potency of the created being… Therefore, God can do all things’. This idea implies a quite interesting conclusion about the meaning of divine intervention in nature: God’s interventions will not be as interfering with nature, but nature would still be doing what nature is supposed to be doing: following God’s command. 90 De Pot., q. 1, a. 3, co. Also see SCG II, c. 22: ‘God is perfect act, possessing in Himself the perfections of all things. His active power, therefore, is perfect, extending to everything not repugnant to the notion of that which is being in act’. And SCG II, c. 25. 91 SCG II, c. 22: God’s power is through itself the cause of being, and the act of being is His proper effect… Hence, His power reaches out to all things with which the notion of being is not incompatible… Hence, God can do all things which do not essentially include the notion of non-being, and such are those which involve a contradiction. It follows that God can do whatever does not imply a contradiction.

92 De Pot., q. 1, a. 7, co. 93 In II Sent, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, co. 94 See Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 364: ‘Creation is for Saint Thomas a truth that can be demonstrated apodictically’. My translation. See also Baldner, Steven (ed.), and Carroll, William (trans.), Aquinas on Creation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997), Introduction. 95 The first question is about the power of God, the second question is about the generative power of God (ad intra) or the procession of the persons in the Trinity, and the third question is how natural things proceed from God. 96 De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, co.: ‘we must hold firmly that God can and does make things from nothing’. A similar statement is made in S.Th. I, q. 44. a. 1, co.: ‘every being in any way existing is from God’. 97 De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, co.: ‘Wherefore the natural agent acts by moving something, and consequently requires matter as a subject of change or movement, and thus it cannot make a thing out of nothing’. 98 In Psalm. L, 6: ‘Something is created… when it is brought forth to being from nothing’.

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99 Aquinas adds a remarkable note: although being is through creation ‘life and others of the like are by information’ (De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, co.). This could be an interesting path of research in the debate on theories of evolution and Christian theology. 100 S.Th. I, q. 45, a. 1, co. For an account on creation as emanation, see te Velde Participation and Substantiality, 102ss, and Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable, 94. Burrell, David, Aquinas. God and Action (Scranton, PA and London: University of Scranton Press, 2008), 159, when examining this passage, claims that ‘we cannot conceive how such a derivation might occur. Nor do we need to’. 101 De Pot., q. 3, a. 4, co.: ‘to give being as such must be the effect of the first cause alone by its own power’. 102 See Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 370. 103 This order is a sequence or an order in being and not in time, although, given our way of thinking, this sequence comes as an imaginary time. See S.Th. I, qq. 44–45. 104 De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 7. This analysis is much simpler in the In II Sent., and only refers to the ways in which this phrase ex nihil could be understood of creation. 105 De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 11. Also see Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 374. 106 De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 17. 107 Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 12. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 115: ‘God is the cause of existence for all other things and their principle of being’. 108 te Velde, Aquinas on God, 139. 109 De Pot., q. 3, a. 2, co.: ‘In creation… there is no common subject either actually or potentially existent’. The only way in which creation is in potency is in that it is not contradictory in terms. See De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 2. 110 Aquinas admits in S.Th. I, q. 45, a. 2, ad 2 that ‘creation is not a change unless in the way of understanding it’. Given that creation is not an evident fact, it is necessary to understand it from those that are evident to us like motion and change. 111 De Pot., q. 3, a. 2, ad 5. 112 For both these arguments see Baldner and Carroll, Aquinas on Creation, 41–46. 113 Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 9. 114 De Pot., q. 3, a. 3, co.: ‘The creature depends on the Creator who does not depend on it’. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 98, expresses this in the terms of ‘likeness’: By his act of creation God establishes a positive relation of something else to himself. Because the creature has that which is of God, it is rightly said to be similar to God. But the reverse is not true: because God does not have anything which is of the creature, God cannot be said to be similar to the creature. 115 Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 374 explains this idea saying that we have to avoid easy conclusions such as thinking that God gives esse to then leave it to be. Still, he adds that ‘it is evident that only the being by essence is the only real subsistent by definition’. 116 De Pot., q. 3, a. 14, ad 10: ‘God’s work whereby he brings things into being must not be taken as the work of a craftsman who makes a box and then leaves it: because God continues to give being’. See also De Pot., q. 5, a. 1. 117 De Pot., q. 3, a. 4, co. Stoeger, William, in his ‘Conceiving Divine Action in a Dynamic Universe’, in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2008), 225–247, strongly suspects that the category of relationship is more fundamental than that of act or cause. See also Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable, 34. 118 De Pot., q. 3, a. 3, co.: ‘Taken actively it denotes the act of God, which is his essence, together with a relation to the creature’.

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119 Aquinas’ theory of relations is complex. Briefly explained, however, it says that a relation is between two terms. This relation can be real or logical, depending on the nature of the terms. There are certain relations that can be real towards one term and logical towards the other term. Thus, something can be said to be relative to another, not because it refers to the second, but because the second term refers to it. In this case the relation from the first term to the second is not a real relation, like the relation a man has with his image in a mirror. On the other hand, the relation that the second term has towards the first one is a real relation, because it depends on the first one: the image depends on the man to be there. See In I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3; S.Th. I, q. 13, a. 7, co.; De Pot., q. 7, a. 1, ad 9; In V Phys., l. 3, n. 8. 120 De Pot., q. 3, a. 3, co.: ‘creation does not denote an approach to being, nor a change effected by the Creator, but merely a beginning of existence, and a relation to the Creator from whom the creature receives its being’. 121 S.Th. q. 45, a. 3, ad 2. See also Burrell, Aquinas, 155, where he explains that Aquinas’ notion of creation adds an ‘existential note’. 122 S.Th. I, q. 104, a. 1. 123 De Pot., q. 3, a. 3, co. 124 In De Causis, l. 3: ‘the effects of the primary cause pre-exist the effects of the secondary cause and are diffused universally: being which is common to everything is diffused to everything from the primary cause’. And In De Causis, l. 18: understanding presupposes living, and living presupposes being, being, however, does no presuppose anything prior. 125 In De Causis, l. 9: ‘the first cause… in no way has being by participation, since it is itself pure being; thus, everything that is participated is derived from that who subsists purely by its own essence’. 126 te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 166ss uses the same strategy I use to analyse Aquinas’ argument, looking at his In De Causis. 127 In De Causis, l. 1: ‘the first cause influences more than the secondary cause’. It is interesting to note that in the same argument Aquinas says that ‘the first cause helps the secondary cause making it to perform’, due to the fact that the operation of the secondary cause is caused by the primary cause, and thus the operation of the secondary cause is an effect of the primary cause. 128 SCG III, c. 92. 129 De Malo, q. 3, a. 3, co.: ‘this one [the principal cause] properly and truly is called a cause, because it is the cause from which the effect flows’. 130 In V Met., l. 2. 131 See Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 117. 132 See also, In I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 2, co. And also, te Velde, Aquinas on God, 114: ‘The creature is the same as God but differently. While God is his being, the creature only participates in being, and thus possesses being in a particular manner according to a specific nature’. See also te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 96. 133 te Velde, Aquinas on God, 110. 134 Stoeger, ‘Conceiving Divine Action’, 230, argues that it is precisely for this reason that the primary-secondary causal model was developed – to emphasize that when we speak of God as a cause, it is in a way which is unlike any other cause or act, transcending what we can describe or articulate. 135 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, co. A similar argument can be found in te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 162. 136 S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5. 137 SCG III, c. 69.

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138 SCG III, c. 69. Assuming here a realistic position towards science, which is the general position adopted in the debate we are studying. 139 Tanner, God and Creation, 92. 140 These ways are also explained in te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 165– 166. See Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 399, the development of these four ways in which God works within the natural world ‘progressively show the immanence of the divine causality within created causality up-to the totality of the interiority of the action of the creature’. 141 SCG III, c. 67. 142 SCG III, c. 67. 143 See Wippel, John, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2007), Chapter VII, and my ‘Revisiting Aquinas on Providence and Rising to the Challenge of Divine Action in Nature’, The Journal of Religion 94:3 (2014), 277–291. 144 SCG III, c. 67. 145 See also SCG III, c. 66. 146 See also SCG III, c. 67. 147 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 19. 148 S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5. 149 SCG III, c. 68: ‘[God] is in everything by way of the efficient cause’. 150 In assigning a kind of causality to God, Aquinas usually affirms that God is formal exemplar cause. The formal cause can be referred to things in a twofold manner: first, as the intrinsic formal cause (and this is what we have analysed in the previous chapter). Second, a formal cause can be referred to as extrinsic to the thing, as that according to which things are made, and thus this is also called a formal cause. See In V Met., l. 2. 151 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 1. 152 S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5, ad 2: ‘One action does not proceed from two agents of the same order, but nothing hinders one and the same action from proceeding from a primary and a secondary efficient cause’. 153 See te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 173–175. Tanner, God and Creation, 93: ‘In a sense the created cause is not a sufficient cause: every aspect of its efficacy depends upon God’s creative agency for it. But nothing prohibits a created cause from being genuinely sufficient within the created order’. 154 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 7. 155 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 16. 156 See Fabro, Participation et Causalité, 490. 157 See te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 175: ‘God does not want to produce the effects of nature without nature, but that he causes nature to operate and to make its own effect by mediating the natural power of each thing with the being of that effect’. 158 SCG III, c. 70: ‘it seems difficult for some to understand how natural effects are attributed to God and to a natural cause’. 159 See objections in S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 5. The first two refer to an occasionalistic perspective, while the third one points to a deistic perspective. See also, SCG III, c. 70. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 161–162, expresses this same idea. 160 te Velde calls this metaphysical position with the term ‘transcendence in the immanence’. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 164. Tanner, God and Creation, 64: The transcendence of God is also suggested by such talk. Metaphysical categories which, in their ontological and causal primacy, extend over the range of kinds of cause and distinction within the order of essence are used in talk of God to suggest the way in which God transcends in a non-contrastive fashion all distinctions that hold within the created order.

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161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169

De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, co., in ppio. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, co., in fine. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 7 et 21. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 21. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 10. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 11. S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 6. Also, in De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 3. S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 6, co.: ‘Wherefore God can do something outside this order created by Him, when He chooses, for instance by producing the effects of secondary causes without them, or by producing certain effects to which secondary causes do not extend’. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 3. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 12. De Pot., q. 6, a. 1, ad 18. De Pot., q. 6, a. 2. A very similar but shorter version of the argument can be found in S.Th. I, q. 105, a. 7. Oxford Latin Dictionary, entry miror. De Pot., q. 6, a. 2, co.:

170 171 172 173 174 175

when the cause of that which astonishes us is hidden, not simply, but to this or that individual, and when the thing at which we marvel has in reality no disposition inconsistent with the marvellous effect, but only in the opinion of the person who marvels. 176 177 178 179

De Pot., q. 6, a. 2, ad 3. SCG III, c. 69. Stoeger, ‘Conceiving Divine Action’, 233. Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 13 and 14: ‘Perhaps the most fundamental thing we should take from Aquinas’ discussion is the teaching on divine transcendence’. 180 Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 13. 181 Dodds, ‘The Doctrine of Causality’, 15.

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Since introducing the problem of providential divine action in nature in Chapter 1, our path has gone through different stages of the argument: from digging for assessing criteria in a brief metaphysical history of providential divine action debates, to presenting the problems I have found in the contemporary debate, finishing in a presentation of Aquinas’ metaphysics of natural causation and divine providence. It is now time to apply these metaphysical principles on causality and God’s providential action to the contemporary debate. I will follow two basic steps: first, I will offer solutions to the issues raised in Chapter 2. I will, thus, address the notion of causality and determinism, and show how Aquinas’ philosophy on natural causes and indeterminism is open to an interpretation attuned to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which there is a radical indeterminism at the quantum level of reality. After, I will focus on the notion of God and the main problem that arose in the debate: God being treated as a natural cause. Finally, I will argue that given Aquinas’ account of God’s causality of every event in nature, God can be said personally to cause the particular and individual ways in which creatures act. As I explained in Chapter 2, there are some unqualified and unexamined philosophical assumptions held in the contemporary debate on providential divine action in nature. These assumptions are broadly: 1) that causality is to be understood in a deterministic way; 2) that, were God to act in the universe whenever and wherever He wished, the autonomy of nature would be endangered. From these two, I argued that the implicit conclusion was 3) that God was understood in the debate as acting as another natural cause within the ontological causal gaps of nature (as Tracy puts it). I will address the first one on its own in the first section of this chapter, and cover the other two in the second section.

A An indeterministic nature I have argued in the second chapter that causality is today understood in deterministic terms, at least within the debate of providential divine action, the main reason for which being that if the universe were a closed system there would be no place for God to act. Hence, theologians attempt to find an DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-6

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openness within the causal chain of the universe to allow God’s providential acting. A closed universe is a causally closed system within which only one outcome is consistent with previous states, according to the laws of classical mechanics. Quantum mechanics, however, provides, for the proponents of NIODA, the necessary openness for God’s actions. This deterministic view of classical physics is a philosophical interpretation of classical physics and it is by no means necessary. Historically, at the beginning of the twentieth century, due to the advances in quantum mechanics, this position was reconsidered, and scientists and philosophers proposed a different account of what happened in nature. Thus, nature was regarded as indeterministic, especially within the circles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, and particularly in Werner Heisenberg’s own take. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics affirms the random collapse of the wave-function to a certain eigenstate, which is described in probabilistic terms with Schrödinger’s equation. Heisenberg made use of the Aristotelian terms of act and potency to assert that the quantum system was in potency before the measurement, becoming actual when the collapse occurs.1 Moreover, Heisenberg rejected what he called the materialistic ontology of classical physics which involved a mechanistic and deterministic view of the universe.2 It is not the place here to offer a defence of Heisenberg’s account of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Instead, I will offer a way of understanding these considerations in the light of Aquinas’ philosophy outlined in the previous chapters. First, I will revise how Aquinas’ account of causality does not involve a deterministic universe. Second, I will offer a Thomistic interpretation of Heisenberg’s account of quantum mechanics in order to show that Heisenberg’s position can be interpreted as an indeterministic account of causality within the framework of Aristotelian causality. Aquinas did not have to deal with the problem of empirical science and determinism, since there was no empirical science as we know it today (which, has been argued, began in the seventeenth century).3 There were, however, philosophical arguments tending towards a rigid and strong causal determinism in the universe, with which Aquinas engaged.4 In the end, as I have argued, determinism is in fact a philosophical position, which in modern times was about scientific practice. Plantinga clearly explains this point when suggesting that classical science entails neither determinism nor that the universe is in fact causally closed.5 He characterises this idea as an add-on to classical science; determinism or the causal closure of the universe cannot possibly be verified experimentally by science.6 Scientists of the stature of Claude Bernard, Edmond Goblot, and Henri Poincaré, working at the turn of the twentieth century, would certainly agree, as I have shown in the first chapter. I have shown in Chapter 3 how Aquinas understands nature as principle of action of a thing, and how that principle tends towards a determined effect. Thus, he accepts that ‘natural things tend towards one effect’.7 Considering this statement by itself, it would seem that Aquinas held a rigid and solid causal

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determinism. He, however, explicitly holds that 1) it is false to consider that ‘given the cause, even if it is by itself sufficient, the effect will occur necessarily’, 2) ‘it is not true that everything that occurs has a cause’, and 3) ‘there are things that occur per accidens; and what is per accidens does not have a cause, because it is not properly speaking a being’.8 Thus, Aquinas rejects a rigid natural causal determinism and accepts – as a fact of experience and rational explication – that there are events that occur without a determinate cause, and those are considered accidental events. Instead of a rigid causal determinism, Aquinas held a somewhat moderate determinism by introducing the notions of events that can occur ut in paucioribus (i.e., almost never) in comparison to those that occur ut in pluribus (i.e., almost always). He finds that among natural causes, most of them act according to their natures, that is, most of the expected effects actually happen. At the same time, however, he also finds that there exists the possibility for this not to happen for different reasons. He considers, given the hylomorphic constitution of natural things, that the effect that the efficient cause intended may not be reached. As I showed in the third chapter, there are three reasons for the possibility of these kinds of events: 1) a concourse of two or more causes, 2) the weakness of the efficient cause, and 3) the indisposition of the patient that receives the action of the efficient cause. I have also explained that the root of all these reasons was to be found in the material cause, a co-principle that constitutes every natural being: ‘the reason for the possibility and contingency is matter that is in potency to either of two opposites’.9 Therefore, Aquinas’ account of natural events is explained within a moderate determinism, which includes the possibility of causes that do not cause their expected effects. This moderate determinism serves as a foundational explanation for some events which do not have a cause per se. There is, however, another side of Aquinas’ arguments that would be useful to mention in order to comprehend fully the richness of his account. For Aquinas God is pure act while matter, as a constitutive co-principle of natural beings, is pure potency, pure capacity of receiving any formal determination. Thus, Aquinas finds a hierarchy of beings in between these two poles of pure act and pure potency, which is implied by the very doctrine of creation as explained above. In this hierarchy, act and potency are mixed in a higher or lower proportion according to each being’s relation to either pole. The distinct character of each creature, according to its specific nature, follows from the difference in its relationship to God, who is the source of the hierarchy of created being. Thus, conceiving the world as divine creation means seeing each creature according to its own degree of perfection.10 This gradual distinction is given by the ‘degree of potency and act’.11 Hence, the higher intelligence has more act and less potency, and this mixture of act and potency goes downwards gradually. When Aquinas reaches the material world, he argues that there are different forms that have more potency (plus de potentia)12 and hence, are closer to prime matter. In these beings we also find this gradual order of mixture of act and potency, positioning beings along the spectrum between pure act and pure potency.13

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Thus, in this hierarchy of beings, from pure act to prime matter, which is pure potency, all created things are composed of act and potency. Those closest to pure act would have a greater actuality and those closest to pure potency would have the least actuality. As we descend in the degrees of being, the corresponding reduction in actuality correlates with an increase in potentiality, down to the forms of the elements, which are the closest to prime matter, pure potency. Greater or lesser actuality comes from the participated esse, received by the essence. Essences that are closer to matter would be those that would have lesser actuality, thus, greater potentiality. The farther the substance is from pure actuality, the greater its potentiality. Because action follows being, substances closer to prime matter have a greater possibility for ineffective action. That is why Aquinas says that there are three main spheres of action within reality: 1) the being that is only act, which operates always without defect; 2) that which is only potency, pure matter, which needs an act to actualise it; and 3) that which is a mixture of act and potency, every natural being, which acts perfectly most of the time.14 Therefore, with greater actuality, there is more determination in being, and hence in action; whereas with lesser actuality, there is a greater indetermination in being and hence in action. Then, every natural being has a passive indetermination, which is essentially an imperfection or, more accurately speaking, a lack of perfection in relation to the whole of being. According to this hierarchy of being, natural things, as they are farther from pure act, participate less in act: they are less determinate. Hence, they are more potential, and with this their passive indetermination increases. Their material cause is the ultimate source of this indetermination,15 and because it is potentiality, this passive indetermination cannot be measured. Since forms are the source of different grades of being, beings are also graduated in the determination of their actions according to their forms. Natural efficient causes will determine their effects to the degree to which they are determinate by their forms.16 Considering this passive indetermination, every effect would be uncertain. Every single future event, as an effect, has something uncertain, contingent, and indeterminate because of its material co-principle. To deny this would be to forget matter as a potential principle, from which passive indetermination comes. This indetermination is the cause of the uncertainty of the future. Thus, this passive indetermination will become increasingly greater towards the bottom of the hierarchy of being or at the level of the elements of matter. It is at this level in which what occurs can only be disclosed experientially, because the passive indetermination is the reason for a fundamental unpredictability in events.17 Therefore, natural things are more or less determinate according to their place in the hierarchy of being, and, as causes, more or less determinate of their effects. There is a kind of internal tension in the very nature of finite things.18 This internal tension means that nature cannot be completely determinate ad unum. The absence of necessity in the form brings with it the absence of necessity in the effects. Thus, necessity and physical determination are founded on the act as act, whereas the potentiality and uncertainty are founded on the act as limited by the potency in which it is received.19

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These notions open the path to considering the relevance they have towards an understanding of quantum mechanics. Can we say that the particles with which quantum physics works are the lowest grades of the hierarchy of being, and hence those with the least actuality and greatest potentiality among created beings? It is clear that quantum physics is not working with the constitutive elements of reality, given that there are always new discoveries of new subatomic particles, and it would be imprudent to identify subatomic particles with the Aristotelian elements. Nevertheless, it does not sound implausible to affirm that quantum mechanics is working with and describing natural things that are great in potency and low in act, possibly reaching those forms of natural beings which are closest to what in the Aristotelian ontology has been called prime matter.20 I think this was Heisenberg’s intuition when he said that sub-atomic particles were in potency before being observed. Evidently, they cannot be pure potency, as Heisenberg claimed, because they would be prime matter itself, which to exist needs to be with some form. The indetermination of matter is not enough to explain contingency because by itself indeterminate matter would be pure potency. For sub-atomic particles to be considered in potency, they need to be under a formal determination, and thus some degree of actuality.21 It is precisely because of a being’s form that quantum physics can show the existence of a fundamental determinism in every being, even in the smallest subatomic particle. This determinism is found in the specification – at least generic and qualitative – of the operation of the diverse particles and forces. And this determination is quantitatively exact and rigorously identical for all individual cases.22 Thus, quantum physics recognises a fundamental moderate determinism or ontological determination in nature that leads to a determinate action, and denies an absolute and exclusive ontological and causal indeterminism.23 On the other hand, quantum physics is open to experience, by which it cannot deny the existence of a certain causal indeterminism, which, as Heisenberg saw, is not reducible to the epistemological order, but is rooted in the ontological order of things, given primarily by the potentiality of matter.24 As I suggested above, it is here where we can find the most direct experimental observation of those events which occur ut in paucioribus. According to the principles of quantum mechanics, we can only have a certain probability of predicting an event, but not an absolute certainty. This uncertainty is caused by those three reasons for which, according to Aquinas, events ut in paucioribus occur: 1) because of the ontological passive indetermination of the natural being before its observation, i.e., the indispositionem materiae or the imperfection of the substantial form of the sub-atomic particles; 2) because of the interaction between the observer and the system (or even one sub-atomic particle with another sub-atomic particle), i.e., the concourse of two or more causes; and 3) because of the interaction between the two necessary particles for the observation: the observed particle and the light particle or photon, i.e., the debilitas agentis. This is exactly what Heisenberg suggested in denying the possibility of fully knowing the state of a system at a given time in order to predict the future states of that system. Given the perturbation caused by the observation, the

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potentiality of the system is actualised. And this means, in a Thomistic perspective, that the system receives new forms, given that through their forms things are in act. This new form was in the potentiality of matter and is brought to actuality by the interaction with the measurement device in the observation. Now every potency is potency to contraries.25 In particular, matter in these micro-systems can take unpredictable forms, which are only predicted probabilistically by the wavefunction included in the Schrödinger equation. Although matter is open to the reception of new forms, it cannot receive any form. The system described by the Schrödinger equation could only receive those forms included probabilistically in that equation. In conclusion, there is real potentiality at the quantum level, which is not pure potency, but is constituted with a certain degree of actuality and determination. It is, then, this potentiality partially actualised that is the real ontological fundament of the probability that rules the quantum phenomena.26 Finally, the indetermination in the action is founded in the ontological passive indetermination, given by a form located in the lower levels of the hierarchy of being. And it is this ontological indetermination by which our epistemological indetermination, presented in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, is sustained.

B God’s providential action in nature The second assumption I explained in the first chapter within the contemporary debate on divine providential action was that, were God able to act in nature, natural things would lose their autonomy. That is, if there was a possibility for God to act in nature, by getting involved with natural events, and hence intervening within the causal chain of the natural world, it would seem that natural things would not have the autonomy that they appear to have in their actions. This is based on the presupposition that God’s action in nature is opposed to natural efficient causes acting regularly. In order to stress the regularity of these natural actions, God’s actions are to be banished from the natural realm. If one is not to abandon the traditional notions of the monotheistic faiths, however, the necessity to find a way in which God could guide providentially the universe remains. Thus, it is suggested that God is to act within the openness found in the different levels of nature, for instance at the quantum level or within chaotic systems. Aquinas, on the contrary, finds no difficulty in admitting an omnipotent God together with an appropriately autonomous creation. In fact, it is because of God’s omnipotence that natural efficient causes are able to cause. As William Carroll explains, Thomas thinks that to defend the fact that creatures are real causes, far from challenging divine omnipotence, is a powerful argument for divine omnipotence. As he says, to deny the power of creatures to be the causes of things is to detract from the perfection of creatures and, thus, to detract from the perfection of divine power.27

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Were we not to predicate every power to God, it would be impossible to find any power in nature, because all that exists needs a creative cause and a creative cause cannot give that which it does not have. God is then omnipotent in the sense that He has all the powers nature has (and more). For Aquinas, however, this does not mean a diminishing of nature’s powers. On the contrary, it is their very foundation. As I have explained in the previous chapter, it is the natural efficient cause that is the true cause of its natural effects. It would be irrational to think differently: it would deprive creation of its order; it would go against God’s own power; creatures would be meaningless; natures could not be known. In addition, there would be no natural science, understood as the study of the natural causes. Thus, for Aquinas, maintaining the value of science in reaching and understanding nature does not mean that God’s power has to be diminished at all. In fact, it is an indication of God’s omnipotence. To comprehend fully this doctrine, it would be useful to take a look at the last proposition I presented in Chapter 2, namely, the implicit conclusion that God acts as another natural cause or that God acts in the way natural causes cause. I have shown how God’s action is conceived by some theologians as an action performed in the fashion of any natural agent. Although this is a conclusion that none of the proponents of non-interventionist objective divine action, for instance, would want to admit, even some explicitly rejecting it, there does not seem to be a way to avoid it. Russell himself affirmed that a natural cause is that which acts according to the scientific theories. Moreover, he wants to find a way in which to understand God’s action as compatible with current scientific theories.28 The only alternative is to accept that God should act according to the theory. But the theory is, following Russell, what tells us what a natural action is. I do not think we can avoid the conclusion that, if God is required to act according to a scientific theory, and if that theory is what describes natural causes, then God’s action should be considered an action as any natural cause’s action. This is to say that God acts as any natural cause acts, in this case, at the quantum level of reality. Nevertheless, for Aquinas, this is not a problem. I have presented the notions of primary and secondary causation in the previous chapter. Aquinas affirms that the primary cause of all being acts always as a primary cause, and hence, he is able to show how God acts continuously in the created universe, without mixing with the actions of created natural agents, and without confusing God’s action with the action of created natural agents. As I have explained, this can be said to happen in three different ways: 1) creation, 2) acting through secondary causes, and 3) miracles. The notion of creatio ex nihilo implies an account of God’s action in the universe that would not go against any scientific or natural law, because this ‘doctrine of creation out of nothing is fully compatible with the discovery of causes in nature’.29 In fact, Aquinas would argue that, in order to have real natural causes in the universe, it would be necessary to have a solid account of what creatio ex nihilo means. Given the strength of the Thomistic account of creation, a plausible solution emerges in which God acts in the universe,

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providentially guiding its development, touching both human and non-human spheres. This is the key to untangling the whole debate on providential divine action: to find a plausible way in which to explain the actions of God, who is both the creator of a universe which presents itself as autonomous in its actions, and providential guide of that autonomous universe. Aquinas’ notion of creatio ex nihilo should be understood in terms of God’s causing the complete existence of the beings that constitute the universe. The key notion here is that of dependence. God’s creating the universe means that the universe completely depends upon God. This means that there is nothing in the universe that does not have its source in God. Aquinas understands this causal dependence in terms of God’s being the efficient cause of the whole universe. If we remember the notions explained in Chapter 3, Aquinas refers to the causa perficiens, which has two main features: 1) it is that cause that realises the perfection of a thing, and 2) it is that from which the effect follows directly. Clearly, God can be conceived as the causa perficiens of the universe in terms of the second feature: the universe is caused directly and immediately by God. The universe exists because of God’s direct action of creation. Now, in what way can we say that God accomplishes the perfection of something that does not yet exist? By His very act of creation God does not perfect something that was lacking some perfection, because creation is not a change. That is why creation is said to be ex nihilo. Therefore, God does not perfect something, but rather creates perfection by his act of creation. Clearly, created beings are not perfect in an absolute way: absolute perfection can only be predicated to God. It is not the perfection of created beings that is put into existence, since, as I explained in the third chapter when talking about final causes, each being has an inclination or tendency to act in such a manner, and it is in acting in this or that way (according to their essences) that makes them accomplish their perfection. Were God to create natural beings perfect in themselves, the universe would be nothing but a static, motionless, and stationary universe, which is not what we perceive. Instead, when we speak of God’s creating perfection out of nothing, we refer to the perfection of simply existing. To say that God creates perfection in the universe means that God puts the universe, i.e., every particular being, into existence. Understood thus, the act of creatio ex nihilo points towards the complete dependence upon its creator of all the created beings in all their being and actions. This perspective opens up the path to understanding how God could be constantly active within the universe without intervening with the operations of natural causes, while simultaneously being involved in the development of the history of the universe. Recalling my presentation of God’s acting through natural causes, I would argue that, in order for created beings to have their own powers to act, that same power is also a created power and thus also depends upon God for its existence. Then, as creatures are said to exist as long as God gives them their being (esse), creatures are also said to act as long as God gives them their powers to act.

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This discourse about God’s act of creation is easily accepted by most members of the debate on providential divine action in nature. Almost all of them explicitly, and all of them implicitly, accept the doctrine that God creates and sustains the universe by putting it into existence continuously. This is what is – in the debate – called general divine action. From this general kind of divine action, they usually distinguish special divine action. This second kind refers to those actions in the world that can be located in a particular time and space and are redolent with meaningfulness and purpose. This kind of divine action is that which directly refers to God’s providence in the world, i.e., God’s special care for the universe’s history and particularly of human history. It is this second kind of divine activity in the world – which seeks some kind of causal ontological gap within the activity of nature to provide a place for God to act in nature – that is seen to be problematic given the continuous advance of contemporary science. I argue that if we understand the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo as Aquinas explains it, not only do we have the basis for giving an account of natural agency, but also for giving an account of God’s providential involvement in the development of the universe and human history. Aquinas points out, using the four different types of natural causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), that God can be understood as causing in three ways according to those causes. Because the material cause is the principle of potentiality in natural beings, according to Aquinas, God cannot cause in such a way. The universe, or those things which constitute the universe, are not made of God. The other three causes, for Aquinas, are principles of act, and hence their way of causing can be predicated, somehow, of God. Thus, God can be said to cause as a final cause. Every being, as I explained in the third chapter, acts following an end, which means that it acts according to a tendency or inclination given by its own nature to act in this or that way. That which the natural agent pursues by that inclination is its own good or perfection. Given that God is the source of all good and perfection, it is God towards which each natural agent acts. Although this way of causing is a way of being active within the universe, it is not what the participants of the divine action debate are looking for, and it seems to me that they would remain unsatisfied by this partial answer. The second cause Aquinas puts forward is that of formal causality. God does not only give the form to natural beings but also sustains that form in things over time. This manner of causing, however true and active, does not seem to satisfy the requirements of the contemporary debate of divine action either. And finally, efficient causality. I have said a few paragraphs above that God acts as the causa perficiens in his act of creation. The question here is in what way can God be said to act as an efficient cause within creation itself. I have suggested that, given Aquinas’ understanding of creatio ex nihilo, we can argue for a plausible notion of God’s acting providentially in the universe. In order to understand this, it would be important to consider Aquinas’ account of divine providence to see how God acts providentially within nature. Aquinas discusses the topic of divine providence within different arguments in his work.30 In all of them, however, the basic claim is the same: God’s

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providence reaches all created being. God governs all creation. That this is the most important claim for the contemporary debate on providential divine action demands detailed examination of providence. Aquinas says that the way God governs the world providentially is to order things to their proper ends. This is, for Aquinas, the proper feature of the definition of a provident act: ordinare in finem.31 This end is, for Aquinas, God himself, and creatures reach this end by perfecting themselves in their actions. Is this notion of providence different from what a providential act is considered to be in the contemporary debate on divine action? Robert Russell, for instance, tells us that the doctrine of ‘providence stresses that God is the cause of the meaning and purpose of all that is. God not only creates but guides and directs the universe towards the fulfilling of God’s purposes’.32 Right after this he points out the distinction between general divine providence, which refers to God’s universal action, and special divine providence, which refers to God’s particular acts in specific moments. Saunders shows how all the authors participating in the debate accept these definitions.33 Nevertheless, there is one difference between that notion of divine providence held by the contemporary debaters and that held by Aquinas: according to Russell (and many others), we do not know what the goal or end towards which God directs the universe is, whereas according to Aquinas that end is God Himself. The essential feature for our discussion, however, is maintained in both: divine providence is the government of the universe towards its end. It is important to remark that this feature is predicated in the contemporary debate of both kinds of providential action: general divine providence and special divine providence. Hence, when God acts providentially, both for Aquinas and the authors in the contemporary debate, God is directing the world towards its end. There is, however, another important difference between these two notions of providence, which will prove to be essential for our understanding of God’s action in the universe. Although general divine action refers to all events in nature, it is a universal action which is not involved in particular events. It is understood as the creation and sustaining of the universe, and hence of all events in the universe.34 Clearly, they are not thinking of this general providence of all events in a way which would imply God’s involvement in particular events. Otherwise, it would be unnecessary to distinguish special providence, which refers to those events in which God acts directly and immediately in the universe. Aquinas, on the other hand, suggests that there is no necessity to duplicate God’s action in this manner. His understanding of providence follows directly from his understanding of creation. According to this doctrine, creation means the complete dependence in being and acting of those beings which are not the creator. This is certainly a similar position to that which the authors of the contemporary debate hold. In explaining this doctrine, however, Aquinas goes a step further and asserts that when creating, God does not do it only universally, but rather puts each being into existence particularly and individually: ‘singular things are God’s effects. God causes things in so far as He makes them to be in act’.35 Thus, Aquinas explains that God’s providence not only guides the

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totality of the universe as such, but also rules each singular event in its own individuality: ‘that all things are subject to divine providence, not only in general, but even in their own individual selves’.36 Hence, God’s causality extends not only to the ways in which nature works,37 but also to the singular beings in particular. Each singular being, then, is directed by that causality, which is exactly what to be providential means. Thus, everything which is created is providentially directed by God.38 The question, then, is how God acts providentially for every singular being, given that it is neither evident nor apparent that this is so. Aquinas’ answer involves those metaphysical notions and ideas discussed in Chapter 4 when talking about God’s action in nature through secondary causes. I explained that natural efficient causes are real causes of their effects by means of the divine power being given to them, using the distinction between primary and secondary causality, in which God is taken to be the primary (or first) cause of the effect, while natural efficient causes (creatures) were referred to as secondary causes of the effect. The main idea was that God, as primary cause of the existence of every created thing, is also the cause of the power of that thing, and hence has more influence into the effect of the secondary cause than the secondary cause itself. Following Aquinas’ exposition in his De Potentia, I showed that there are four different ways in which an efficient cause can be attributed with an effect of another efficient cause. Starting with the founding moments of God’s acting in nature, first, God can be said to cause the natural cause’s effect because the cause of the natural cause’s power to cause that effect is God, given that God is the source of everything that exists (powers included). Second, similar to how creatio and conservatio are distinguished, God too upholds the created power in existence. Hence, God can also be said to be the cause of what is caused by that power. These two ways, although they pertain, doubtless, to the realm of efficient causality, refer to that which is explained in the contemporary debate as general providence or general divine action. Therefore, the problem of particular providential actions of God hic et nunc, here and now, from which the whole debate stems, still remains unsolved. So, I turn my attention to the two final ways, what I have called the dynamic moments of God’s acting in nature, in which the analogy of instrumental causality is involved. First, I said that God applies the power of the natural created thing to act. Then, that God uses the natural efficient causes in its action to produce an effect that goes beyond the natural efficient cause’s power. In both of these ways, Aquinas introduces the analogy of instrumental causality, and how both the action of the secondary cause and the effect can be attributed completely both to God and to the natural efficient cause. Thus, the issue of instrumental causality turns out to be key in the whole debate of providential divine action. I will try to shed as much light as possible on this important analogy, with which Aquinas explains his doctrine of God’s acting in nature: ‘God is the cause of every action, inasmuch as every agent is an instrument of the divine power operating’.39

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It would be useful, then, to recall briefly what I have explained in the previous chapter on instrumental causality. Instruments can be said to have two effects:40 one that pertains to it according to its own form; another that pertains to it insofar as it is moved by the primary agent and that transcends its own form. The first effect is proper to itself, according to its own form or nature. For instance, cutting is proper to an axe in virtue of its own sharpness. The second effect, which it performs according to the action of the principal agent, always goes beyond its own nature, i.e., the instrumental cause could not perform it unless the principal agent causes it to act in that manner, as a man uses a knife to cut his steak in a precise manner, something the knife by itself could not do, and the man could not do either without the knife. It is, however, through the first effect (that which pertains to the instrument by its own nature) that the second effect (that which is according to the principal agent) is performed, which is the reason this and not another instrument is to be used to accomplish this particular effect. Nevertheless, neither the first effect nor the second could be performed by the instrument were it not moved by the principal agent. Therefore, both the first and second effect (cutting, and cutting in such a manner) can be attributed to the instrument, and both effects can also be attributed to the principal agent. When Aquinas explains how God acts in nature through natural efficient causes using them as instrumental causes (and goes as far as to say that every agent in every action is an instrumental cause of God’s causation), he uses the analogy of instrumental causality according to both ways of causing by the instrument. I have said that there are two ways in which God uses natural efficient causes as instrumental causes: in applying their powers to act and in achieving an effect which goes beyond the natural efficient cause’s power. In the first one God applies the natural efficient cause to achieve its own natural effect (hence that which follows from the form of the instrument). Properly speaking, this communication of power from God to the secondary cause would not be instrumental causality, since in producing its own natural effect (as such), the creature would not be doing something beyond its own nature – here the creature (precisely as producing something in accordance with its nature, as a dog producing a dog) would be properly understood simply as a secondary cause, not as an instrumental secondary cause. There is a virtus in the natural efficient cause because of its own created nature to achieve its determinate effect, and that virtus or power needs to be applied by God to work. Similarly, there is a power in the knife to cut, though the actual cutting happens when the man applies that power to cut. Properly speaking the natural efficient cause is not an instrument because, in this aspect of the action, it is not being used to achieve something that it cannot achieve. Yet even its secondary causality has an aspect of instrumentality if we consider that it is causing an effect that goes beyond its virtus in addition to causing the proportionate effect to its nature. To understand this puzzling image that Aquinas presents, it would be helpful to take a look at the other half of the image. In the second way in which Aquinas argues for God’s using natural efficient causes as instruments, God uses the natural efficient cause in order to produce something that goes beyond

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the natural efficient cause’s own power. What goes beyond the power of the natural efficient cause is the instantiation of being, which is only attributable to God, because only God can cause being.41 Yet, I have said that the instrumental cause causes the second effect, that which goes beyond its own power, by causing its natural effect, which is done by receiving the power from the principal cause.42 What is done by receiving the power from the principal cause? Is it the second effect or the first effect of the instrumental cause? The answer is simple: both! The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man’s power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife the man could not cut in this manner. In this same way, God moves the natural efficient cause to cause its own natural effect and achieves an effect that goes beyond the power of that natural efficient cause. This is, in the end, what Aquinas means when he says that ‘an effect does not follow from a first cause unless the second cause has already been placed’,43 and, theologically speaking, it is what he understands Jesus was saying in John 15, 5: ‘without me you can do nothing’.44 Furthermore, to avoid the temptation of falling into a form of occasionalism,45 Aquinas strongly argues that, although the primary cause (or principal agent in the instrumental causality analogy) is more intimate and influences more than the second in the production of the effect,46 the effect is more similar to the secondary cause, because the mode of causality of the secondary cause determines the production of this particular effect. In a way, the secondary (or instrumental) cause determines the act of the primary cause towards this particular effect.47 This doctrine should be understood in terms of what Aquinas calls analogical causation, that is, the way in which God is said to cause, as I discussed in the previous chapter. If this divine mode of causing is not considered, objectors usually argue that God’s moving the secondary cause in order to cause or applying the powers of the secondary cause in order to cause, or using them as instruments, implies a prior movement to the actual causing of the natural agent, and hence a different causal relation.48 Thus, the same effect is not attributed to both God and the natural agent. Besides misunderstanding the Thomistic doctrine of instrumental causality, however, these objections neglect the idea that it is an analogy, and it should be understood as such, without asking of it more than it can give: the idea that the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent, as a man using a knife produces two pieces of meat out of one. Aquinas, thus, shows that by an analysis of the notion of creatio ex nihilo one can argue for a God who participates in every action of nature, as the source and origin of it. In his words: ‘the action of a particular efficient cause takes its origin from the universal cause’.49 Thus, God acts through secondary causes, in the manner explained above, to achieve effects that go beyond the powers of the natural agents. God acts, as I have shown, in every natural action, and God’s actions are always actions that come from his intelligence and will, rendering these divine actions providential actions. Still, as I have

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emphasised, this doctrine does not deny, neglect, or stop the natural actions of created natural efficient causes, but rather founds their own autonomy. For Aquinas, God’s providential action has two features, namely the planning and the execution of that plan. The planning, ordering, or disposition corresponds to God’s intelligence, while the execution corresponds to God’s will.50 This execution is performed through the created secondary causes as I have explained so far. Nevertheless, given that every action of every natural agent can be attributed to God as its primary and principal cause, and that God’s action is always a provident action, God’s providential action extends to all being, universally and individually. Thus, Aquinas argues that ‘the operations of secondary causes are within the scope of divine providence, since God orders all singulars by Himself. Therefore, secondary causes are the executors of divine providence’,51 or that ‘the operation of providence, whereby God works in things, does not exclude secondary causes, but, rather, is fulfilled by them, in so far as they act by God’s power’.52 Hence, God is continuously active in the universe, and that action is a providential action, given that ‘God does not act in regard to created things by a necessity of His nature, but through His will and intellect’.53 Finally, I argue that this providential action is to be understood in the terms of the contemporary debate’s special providential action, since it is an action that God does willingly hic et nunc, when each natural efficient cause acts, at any given time and place.54 It seems that when special divine action is discussed in the contemporary debate, the term ‘special’ means that action to be a sporadic action. The word ‘special’ is interpreted to mean that the divine providential action is not at all times and places. In this sense, ‘special’ is opposed to ‘every’. It seems to me, however, that what authors in the contemporary debate intend to seek when studying God’s providential action is how to explain that God willingly and providentially acts, guiding the world and its creatures to the goals and ends He wisely desires. This is precisely what Aquinas explains when saying that God acts in every natural action of every natural agent providentially. Thus, there is no need to look for another kind of divine providential action in the world that does not go against the contemporary scientific theories, to explain how God guides, governs, or directs the universe towards its end. To say that we need another kind of divine action, and hence to look for a special objective noninterventionist divine action is, in the end, to diminish the place of God’s ways, God’s intelligence, God’s will, and God’s power. It is here that we find Aquinas’ solution to what I have called the second assumption of the debate, namely, that God’s acting within the universe would diminish the natural powers of created beings. From Aquinas’ perspective, natural efficient causes cause with their own powers or virtus because of God’s power in them. This doctrine means that God does not require the order of nature to be broken or suspended to act providentially within nature. On the contrary the order of nature is maintained because of God’s constant providential action within it. Basically, what Aquinas is arguing is something very similar to what the authors in the contemporary debate understand God does

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with general divine providence. These authors argue that by God’s universal action in the world the laws of nature are maintained. This, however, is not enough for them to judge that God acts providentially considering particular beings and events. And they might be right in this. Aquinas’ account, however, insists that God does it, but that God also acts to keep each individual efficient cause in its action. Hence, God’s action is regarded in both accounts as the cause of the regularities of nature or the action of the particular natural agent. In addition, we reach the solution to the unwanted conclusion of the assumptions explained in the second chapter: that God has to act as another cause among causes. God causes in a completely different way from natural created causes: it is, as I have shown, an analogical way, which means that God’s effect is not like the effect of any natural efficient cause, which is a cause in a univocal or an equivocal sense (as I explained in the previous chapter). God’s effect is on a different level, which natural causes cannot reach. One might argue, however, that I have called God an efficient cause, and that I have also attributed to God effects of a final or formal kind of causality. It would seem, then, that not only would I be assuming that God acts as a natural cause (as I suggested the proponents of quantum divine action do), but that I would be assuming that God is a cause as any other natural cause! It is true that I have said that God causes as a final cause and as an efficient cause. Still, I believe that my own Aquinas-inspired approach is different, particularly in the way in which the conjunction ‘as’ is taken. On the one hand, if my conclusion is sound, and the proponents of quantum divine action assume that God acts as a natural cause (while remaining divine), I argue that in this case the conjunction ‘as’ is taken univocally, and hence God acts in every way as a natural cause acts, without any difference between God’s action and a natural agent’s action. On the other hand, in Aquinas’ account of providential divine action in nature, as I explained above, all that he claims to say about God is said analogically. Thus, the conjunction ‘as’ in this approach is taken as introducing an analogy which explains, with the language human beings have to refer to human experience, things that go beyond that language and experience, namely the divine. Hence, Aquinas used the analogy of an instrument to explain how God acts, though understanding that there is a difference between a man’s using an axe or a knife and God’s causing through natural agents. There is one more feature that Aquinas gives in his account of divine providence that I have not yet explored. Surprisingly, according to Aquinas, the notion of providence here explained requires the natural world to include some kind of indeterminism and contingency regarding the effects of the natural efficient causes. As can be expected from the explanation above, however, Aquinas’ reasons are rather different than the reasons given by contemporary authors. As I presented earlier in this chapter, Aquinas looks at the universe as consisting of a gradual hierarchy of beings. He believes that a universe that includes all modes of being, and hence all modes of acting, is more perfect than a universe that lacks some of these modes: ‘it would be against the perfection of the universe if there was nothing corruptible, or if no power would fail [in producing its effect]’, and he is quick

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to relate this doctrine to his ideas on providence: ‘it is against the notion of divine providence that there is nothing casual or random in things’.55 Aquinas is referring with this doctrine to the idea of a universe being complete: a perfect universe, as per the definition of something perfect, is that which is complete. Hence, a universe that includes all different modes of acting, a complete universe in this respect, is a more perfect universe. In fact, Aquinas repeatedly affirms not only that such a universe is more perfect, but that it is against the very notion of divine providence to affirm that there are no contingent, chanceful, or random events in it.56 Secondary causes, thus, are contingent in their activity and in their causal capacities, being able, potentially, to fail in the realisation of the determined effect of their natures. These considerations bring me to the greatly controversial problem of evil: a strong position such as the one that I am setting forth in these pages must somehow confront the question on how we can say that God providentially acts in every causal action of created beings while at the same time not being responsible for evil in the world, particularly that resulting from human free will.57 When discussing the possibility of human free will choosing evil over good, Aquinas usually refers to his doctrine of the possibility of the failure of natural causes in their causing their natural effects, which I explained in Chapter 3. Hence, a brief consideration of how Aquinas conceives the relation between human free will and its relation to evil and God’s goals might also be helpful to understanding how God can achieve his divine intention through contingent natural events.58 Non-human natural causes and human free will are both contingent in their being and, thus, in their causing, implying that they can both be ‘deficient’ causes failing in their causing. As usual, it is worth quoting Aquinas himself here. In one of the many places where he discusses evil, contingent causes, and the perfection of the universe, he states: The perfection of the universe requires that there should be inequality in things, so that every grade of goodness may be realised. Now, one grade of goodness is that of the good which cannot fail. Another grade of goodness is that of the good which can fail in goodness… so the perfection of the universe requires that there should be some which can fail in goodness, and thence it follows that sometimes they do fail. Now it is in this that evil consists, namely, in the fact that a thing fails in goodness.59 Aquinas is here using the broadest sense in which ‘evil’ can be understood, i.e., the failing of a natural cause in causing its intended effect (which in Aquinas’ framework can be taken to refer both to natural beings causing as well as to human free will choosing). Today we might not want to use the term ‘evil’ to refer events which are per se contingent, random or chanceful, but Aquinas’ intuitions regarding this matter will, I hope, shed some light into the metaphysics of the mechanism by which God can be said to act through these events. Working within the Augustinian tradition, Aquinas understands evil in terms of privation, i.e., evil is that which is unrightfully lacking from something or, in other words, the absence

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of something proper to a thing, be this thing an actual material thing or an event or action. Aquinas explains that when a free agent chooses evil rather than good, that agent is failing in his proper action so that the action lacks some good that is proper to it, hence becoming a deficient cause. This deficient cause implies a lack of goodness in the action, which in Aquinas’ metaphysics also implies a lack of being in them. In Aquinas’ thought God allows this type of event, for instance free agents choosing evil rather than good, because God, acting as the primary cause, can bring good out of them, i.e., can bring new being out of them. There are at least two questions that need addressing here: first, how can we say that God brings about goods out of evil events; and second, whether this doctrine can shed some light on our understanding of God bringing about divine intentions through contingent natural causes. In a not so explored though attractive strategy, some scholars dealing with the problem of evil in Aquinas refer to the metaphysical distinction of the line of being or goodness and the line of non-being or evil. As the first cause of all actions of created beings, God operates as the first cause on the line of being, causing all there is of being and goodness caused by the secondary cause in the effect, in the ways I explained above. The metaphysical line of non-being, on the contrary, appears when secondary free causes fail in their attaining goodness by choosing evil. In doing this, these causes, human beings making use of their free will, become deficient causes operating in the line of non-being, causing, so to speak, nonbeing, and hence extracting goodness from creation. The argument continues, affirming that God makes use of these situations to add new goodness into the natural world.60 I want to argue that something similar happens when non-human natural causes cause in a deficient way. The deficient action of a natural contingent cause, in all it causes in the line of being, i.e., in all that the effect does not lack, is used by God to achieve a goal for nature, by using it to create new instantiations of being. This divine providential action would not determine the outcome of the deficient natural activity (as in determining the outcome of the collapse of the wave-function or how a gene mutates), but by reaching effects that natural causes cannot reach by themselves, as I explained in the second dynamic moment of God acting in and through natural agents. Complementing this doctrine, Aquinas further explains that the actions of natural efficient causes should be understood as being guided by divine providence in two different ways: 1) as ordered to themselves, and 2) as ordered to something else.61 The events that happen according to the regular action of the natural efficient cause itself, what Aquinas would call ‘according to its own intention’ in terms of final causation, fall under both ways of understanding the relation between divine providence and natural causes, since they happen according to what was expected and in doing so are guided by the divine will and wisdom. Conversely, those events that happen due to the failure of the action of the natural efficient cause fall under the second way of understanding the relation between them and providence. In this case, an event that was not determined in its cause but nevertheless happened, i.e., a contingent or random

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event, is also guided by the divine providence, because it is caused by God as its first cause, who causes everything that is of being in that event. By means of contingent natural causes (deficient causes), God causes what there is of being in this kind of event, in order to achieve His goals and intentions. As in the analogy of instrumental causality, in which the principal agent has goals that are not included in the causal power of the instrument, but which are nevertheless achieved, God reaches His goals, even when acting through contingent causes. In fact, Aquinas explains elsewhere62 that although the intentio of the secondary cause does not extend to the indeterminate effect, God’s intention does extend to the effect by ordering these new indeterminate effects to new good things in the universe.63 Aquinas responds with this doctrine to the concerns of finding a way in which God, without going against contemporary scientific theories, can accomplish results that could not be accomplished were nature completely deterministic. Robert Russell, for instance, finds it necessary to call on a special divine action to cause the collapse of the wave-function for a particular event, and thence reach a particular effect expected by God, though not necessarily expected by the scientific theory. John Polkinghorne needs to call on God as a determining cause for the development of chaotic systems. And Jeffrey Koperski, finding an openness in the philosophical interpretation of the laws of nature, allows God to act through them. There is no need for this with Aquinas. Through the indeterminacies of nature, given that God acts in every single action of every single efficient cause as the primary cause of that action, and given that the actions of natural efficient causes can fail in the production of their effects, God can reach providentially new instantiations of being that would be better for the entire universe or a part of it. Thus, God guides the universe towards the end He determined by being the principal efficient cause using an instrument. The importance of the special divine action approach of the current debate lies in the fact that those special divine actions are meaningful. Although the wave-function could collapse where God chooses it to collapse, or chaotic systems could develop the way that God wants them to develop, in the way Russell and Polkinghorne explain these processes, the fact that the quantum system collapses in this particular eigenstate instead of another or that the chaotic system develops in this way or another – thus creating the path for new events to happen in nature – have an inherent purpose that God provides for the event. Proponents of this approach could say that Aquinas’ account leaves no place for God to introduce new purposefulness in the universe because, according to Aquinas, natural efficient causes simply produce their effects as they always do. This kind of objection, I argue, assumes that God’s action through secondary (instrumental) causes (in the way I explained above) is meaningless and purposeless. Nevertheless, if one accepts the arguments as I have put them forward throughout this work, one must conclude that God acts providentially through secondary causes, even those that are contingent, deficient causes.

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Notes 1 Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Prometheus Books, 1958), 54, 180–181. 2 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 129. I refer the reader to Chapter 1 for a description of Heisenberg’s thought of these terms. See my ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’, New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 635–653. 3 See Harrison, Peter, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015). 4 The Megarics, in the early fourth century BC, held that every natural potency was eventually reduced to act. Hence, any thing that is possible turns out to be necessary, losing its potential character (Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 3, 1046b 29–33); or natural efficient causes, though contingent in being (because of the radical dependence of the universe upon the creator), nevertheless act with necessity, as Avicenna held. 5 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, Theology and Science 6:4 (2008), 369–401, 380. Jeffrey Koperski also makes use of this idea for his divine action model. See his Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). 6 Plantinga, ‘What is “Intervention”?’, 375. 7 SCG III, c. 85. See S.Th. I, q. 42, a. 2; I–II, q. 1, a. 5; De Ver., q. 25, a. 1. 8 De Malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 14. 9 In I Peri Her., l. 14. 10 te Velde, Aquinas on God, 132. 11 De Ente, c. 3. 12 De Ente, c. 3. Also, SCG III, c. 69; De Spirit. Creat., pro., a. 1, ad 25; Comp. Theo., I, c. 74. 13 De Ente, c. 4. 14 In I Sent., d. 39, q. 2, a. 2, ra. 4: There are three degrees in things: there is something that has being only in act, and this does not possess any defect; there is something that is only in potency, i.e. prime matter, and this always possesses a defect, unless it is removed by some efficient cause that makes it in act; and there is something that has act mixed with privation, and this through its act tends towards acting properly in the majority of cases, though it can fail in the fewer.

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See also De Ver., q. 8, a. 6, co.: ‘in beings there are grades of act and potency. One being, prime matter, is in potency only. Another, God, exists only actually. All other intermediate beings exist both actually and potentially’. See also In III De Trin., q. 5, a. 4, co. 2. S.Th. I, q. 86, a. 3, co.: ‘contingency arises from matter, for contingency is a potentiality to be or not to be, and potentiality belongs to matter; whereas necessity results from form, because whatever is consequent on form is of necessity in the subject’. See de Koninck, Charles, ‘Réflexions sur le problème de l’indéterminisme’, Revue Thomiste 43:2 and 3 (1937), 227–252, 237, and 393–409. See Selvaggi, Filippo, Causalità e Indeterminismo, La Problematica Moderna alla Luce della Filosofia Aristotelico-Tomista (Rome: Editrice Università Gregoriana, 1964), 153. I am not considering here the case of human free will. For an interesting new argument on Aquinas on free will, see Hoffmann, Tobias and Cyrille Michon, ‘Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism’, Philosophers’ Imprint 17:10 (2017), 1–36. Among the vast literature on this issue, see, for instance, Stump, Eleonore, ‘Aquinas’s Account of Freedom: Intellect and Will’, The Monist 80:4 (1997), 576–597. See Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, 390. De Ente, c. 4.

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21 See Beltrán, Oscar, ‘La Doctrina de la Contingencia en la Naturaleza según los Comentarios del Card. Cayetano y S. Ferrara’, Studium 11:6 (2003), 41–75, 69. 22 See Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, 381–382. 23 See Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, 386. 24 See Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, 386–388. 25 See De Pot., q. 3, a. 4, ad 14: ‘In the eduction of things from potentiality to act many degrees may be observed, inasmuch as a thing may be educed from more or less remote potentiality to act, and again more or less easily’. 26 See Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, 389. 27 Carroll, William, ‘Creation and the Foundations of Evolution’, Angelicum 87 (2010), 45–60, 54. 28 Russell, Robert, Cosmology. From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 169, writes that [a] QM-based NIODA does not reduce God to a natural cause because, according to the philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics deployed here, there are no efficient natural causes for a specific quantum event. If God acts together with nature to produce the event in which a radioactive nucleus decays, God is not acting as a natural cause.

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31 32 33 34

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Again, the only criterion he proposes to recognise a natural cause is the interpreted theory. Thus, my argument still holds. Carroll, William, ‘Divine Agency, Contemporary Physics, and the Autonomy of Nature’, The Heythrop Journal 49:4 (2008), 582–602, 587. In S.Th. I, q. 22 he is treating the divine virtues; in SCG III, cc. 71–76 he discusses divine providence within the context of God’s action in the world; in De Ver. a full question (q. 5) is dedicated to this topic, right after the consideration of the divine Word; and in his In I Sent., d. 39, q. 2, he discusses divine providence within the frame of divine science. SCG III, c. 73. See also S.Th. I, q. 22, a. 1, co.: ‘This type of order in things towards an end is therefore in God called providence’. Russell, Cosmology, 113. Saunders, Nicholas, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 19ss. This is clear in Thomas Tracy, ‘Divine Action and Quantum Theory’, Zygon 35:4 (2000), 891–900, 893, when he says that ‘God acts most fundamentally by establishing and sustaining the structures of nature’, and Nancey Murphy, ‘Divine Action in the Natural Order’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 1995), 325–357, 339, when she says that ‘in addition to creation and sustenance God has particular modes of action within the created order’. SCG I, c. 65. See also Burrell, David, Knowing the Unknowable God (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1986), 92ss. S.Th. I, q. 22, a. 2, co. Also, in De Pot. q. 6., a. 6, co.: ‘God exercises not only a universal providence over corporeal beings, but also a particular providence over individuals’. Aquinas is thinking on the natural species. He argues that God is not only the cause of the species as such, but also of the particular being of that species. In fact, God causes the existence of the species because He causes the particular to exist. Were there no individual of a particular species, God would no longer be causing the species to exist. I paraphrase him saying ‘how nature works’ because the nature of a being is that from which the ways that being’s actions proceed.

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38 In S.Th. I, q. 22, a. 2. co., Aquinas uses the notion of participation to say this same thing: ‘all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence’. 39 De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, co. 40 Aquinas is trying to explain how from an action made by an agent (the principal agent) by using an instrument, the instrumental cause achieves something which goes beyond its own capacity. Hence, he distinguishes these two effects. However, there is only one action that the principal agent performs through the instrument. In the instrument, given the natural effect ordered to it and the effect that goes beyond the instrument’s nature, it is said that it performs two effects. 41 For this idea of God using secondary causes as instruments for the instantiation of being, see Fabro, Cornelio, Participation et Causalité selon S. Thomas D’Aquin (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1961), 376–377. 42 Aquinas also explains this by using the language of participation. Hence, he would argue that by participating in the power of the principal agent to produce the second effect, the instrument needs to participate in the power of the principal agent to produce its own effect, and this will be what is meant by the principal agent applying the powers of the instrument to its own (the instrument’s) effect. Thus, he says in De Ver., q. 5, a. 9, ad 7: it is not necessary that the divine power be the only one to move all things without any intermediary. The lower causes can also move through their own powers in so far as they participate in the power of superior causes. 43 De Ver., q. 5, a. 9, ad 12. 44 SCG III, c. 67. In this passage Aquinas also adds Isaiah 26:12: ‘Lord, Thou hast wrought all our works in us’; and Philip. 2:13: ‘It is God Who works in us both to will and to accomplish according to His good will’. 45 I refer the reader to the discussion on this topic in Chapter 1. Freddoso, Alfred, ‘God’s General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1994), 131–156, 145 understands that the only way of avoiding occasionalism while maintaining the ‘primary-secondary’ account of causality is to admit that certain features of the effect are caused by God and certain other features are caused by the natural agent. My opinion, however, is that Aquinas’ position is a different solution to occasionalism while holding that God acts in every action of the natural agents. 46 As Aquinas explains in De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, co.: Therefore God is the cause of every action, inasmuch as every agent is an instrument of the divine power operating. 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: 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. 47 De Ver., q. 5, a. 9, ad 10: A first cause is said to have more influence than a second cause in so far as its effect is deeper and more permanent in what is caused than the effect of the second cause is. Nevertheless, the effect has more resemblance to the second cause, since the action of the first cause is in some way determined to this particular effect by means of the second cause.

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48 See, for instance, Freddoso, ‘God’s General Concurrence’, 134 (note 8). 49 SCG III, c. 149. 50 SCG III, c. 71; De Subs. Sep., c. 15: ‘Two things, however, must be considered in providence: These are disposition and the execution of what has been disposed’. 51 SCG III, c. 71. 52 SCG III, c. 72. 53 SCG III, c. 75. 54 SCG III, c. 75: ‘God works through all secondary causes, and that all their products may be traced back to God as their cause; so, it must be that the things that are done among singulars are His works’. 55 SCG III, c. 74: ‘it would be against the perfection of the universe if no corruptible thing existed, and no power could fail’. 56 Aquinas argues that ‘if divine providence excluded all contingency, not all grades of beings would be preserved’ (SCG III, c. 72), and that ‘it would also be contrary to the character of divine providence if nothing were to be fortuitous and a matter of chance in things’ (SCG III, c. 74). See my ‘Providence, Contingency and the Perfection of the Cosmos’, Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 2:2 (2015), 137–157. 57 I am not advancing here Aquinas’ doctrine of evil, free will, and God in full. Many more able and skilled scholars have done so. See for example Davies, Brian, Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil (Oxford: OUP, 2011), Maritain, Jacques, God and the Permission of Evil (Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1966), and Echavarría, Agustín, ‘Aquinas on Divine Impeccability, Omnipotence, and free Will’, Religious Studies 56 (2020), 256–273. I will only elaborate on certain features that will assist in my suggestion of how God may be seen as acting through failing and deficient secondary causes. 58 Aquinas uses similar technical terminology in both of these discussions, indicating that there is an internal dependence between these two parts of his thought. 59 S.Th. I, 48, 2, co. 60 For a comprehensive explanation of this doctrine see, for example, Maritain, God and the Permission of Evil and, more recently, Echavarría, Agustín, ‘Thomas Aquinas and the Modern and Contemporary Debate on Evil’, New Blackfriars 95 (2013), 733–754. 61 De Ver., q. 5, a. 4. 62 SCG III, c. 74. 63 Brock, Stephen, ‘Causality and Necessity in Thomas Aquinas’, Quaestio 2 (2002), 217–240, 228, expresses this idea saying that ‘there are coincidences in the world because God wants there to be’.

Final thoughts on Aquinas, contingency, and providence

The importance of the question about divine providential action in nature is such that it has often been addressed throughout Western intellectual history. Between the eighth and twelfth centuries, within Muslim academic discussions, Kalam theologians argued that, in order to affirm God’s omnipotence and power over nature, it was necessary to restrict natural powers even to their very denial. On the other side of the Islamic philosophical–theological discussion on divine providential action in nature was Averroes, who stressed the causal powers of natural things highlighting their autonomy. In Europe, during the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas argued for a clear rejection of Kalam occasionalism and Averroes’ position, by arguing both for the autonomy of nature in its actions and for God’s involvement in every action as the primary cause. In the following century, however, positions closer to Kalam appeared, for example, in the atomism of Nicholas of Autrecourt. His atomistic view of motion and matter, together with the impossibility of knowledge of an intrinsic connection between cause and effect, led him to a position close to occasionalism. With the rise of the new mechanical natural philosophy during the seventeenth century and the development of the notion of laws of nature, these laws were regarded as an extrinsic divine imposition of order onto the world: God was in direct control over what happened in His creation. Finally, debates in the twentieth century were informed by discussions surrounding determinism and indeterminism in nature, a framework which is still today the main lens through which this debate continues: many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act. In Chapter 1, I suggested that four guiding principles lead these discussions: 1) God’s omnipotence; 2) God’s action in the universe; 3) natural autonomous agency, and 4) the success of natural reason and science. One or more of these principles are held in each of the abovementioned historical episodes. God’s omnipotence was maintained against natural powers for some in medieval Islam and fourteenth-century Europe; nature’s autonomy was emphasised in opposition to God’s power in Averroes’ and in today’s debate, although in today’s perspective some authors will affirm a divine self-restriction of God’s own power; the denial of natural powers, that is, powers intrinsic to natural things, during the seventeenth century led to the acceptance of God’s direct and DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-7

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continuous action in the universe, enforcing, perhaps ironically, the success of natural science; finally, Aquinas’ perspective shows, I think, a plausible way of holding these four principles together. Using a vast arsenal of metaphysical notions, Aquinas is able to respond to the problems that characterise the debates on divine providential action. Aquinas offers, thus, a different way of understanding how God acts in the world, which, considering his works in full, allows the objections against his doctrine within the contemporary debate to be overcome, as I will explain below. The main difficulties concerning the different models of divine providential action today are, first, that causality is understood in deterministic terms; second, that if God is able to act in the universe, then natural causes would lose their autonomy in their actions; and third, that God is thought to be acting as any other natural cause. I described how I find that Aquinas solves these issues by explaining that causality should be conceived in terms of dependence. This allows him to describe nature not as a machine dominated by rigid deterministic laws, but as an orderly world, in which not everything is determined by its causes. This notion of causality also provides him with a path to understanding God as constantly providentially active within His creation through secondary causes, by causing them to exist, sustaining, and applying their powers to cause, a doctrine that does not mean that natural things do not cause. These ideas imply that God is not another cause among causes, or does not cause as a secondary cause, but that God causes every action of secondary causes by being the primary cause of their causality. Finally, taking his argument further, Aquinas affirms that contingency and indeterminate effects are required in such a providential account of God’s action.

A Objections to Aquinas Objections to Aquinas’ model of providence through the works of secondary causes are common among the many scholars dealing with divine providential action today and can be put together in two groups.1 The first one is best represented by the ideas of John Polkinghorne, who argues that the distinction between primary and secondary causation is not enough to explain God’s action in the world because it requires admitting that it is either God or nature that produces the effect. Philip Clayton joins Polkinghorne affirming that emphasising God’s action as primary cause runs the risk of falling into a form of occasionalism, where it is only God who causes events in nature, whereas emphasising nature’s action would deny any kind of divine activity in the universe.2 Keith Ward is of similar ideas.3 The second kind of objection derives from ideas brought forward by Thomas Tracy. Simply put, he argues that Aquinas’ perspective is not enough to give a solid theological account of a God who is objectively and personally (i.e., providentially) involved in the lives of human beings. The main problem I find with these objections is that Aquinas’ account of primary and secondary causation is usually conflated with Austin Farrer’s, a mid-twentieth-century Oxford theologian; and second, that Aquinas’ account is

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usually not presented in full. Using similar terminology, Farrer tries, and according to Polkinghorne fails, to explain God’s action in the universe. This failure, however, is unfairly attributed to Aquinas, as I will show below. The objections, I think, hold against Farrer’s views, but they do not hold against Aquinas’ position. John Polkinghorne understands Thomas Aquinas’ and Austin Farrer’s accounts of the notions of primary and secondary causation to be essentially the same.4 Polkinghorne objects that this way of understanding God’s action in the world rests solely on faith, remaining ineffable and veiled from the eyes of human reason. Thus, Polkinghorne complains that there is no explanation offered on how primary causality works,5 which remains unintelligible, hence becoming a fideistic solution to the problem of divine providential action, resulting in more of an evasion than a solution. Clayton agrees with Polkinghorne, explaining that the doctrine could be understood in two ways: God’s being the sustainer of existence or God’s being one of the efficient causes affecting every event. The first does not solve the problem of divine providential action (an argument that Keith Ward also supports).6 The second comes close to occasionalism or to denying God’s divinity. Thus, Clayton claims, it is ‘unclear how appeals to double agency can help to resolve the tensions raised by claims to divine action’,7 simply because an action belongs to one or the other agent, namely God or the natural efficient cause. In this perspective, then, the doctrine of primary and secondary causality leaves the whole problem of divine action in the world shrouded in mist, does not solve the issue of particular divine actions, and it promotes occasionalism. I have said that one failure of these objections is identifying Aquinas’ doctrine with that of Austin Farrer. Farrer’s doctrine of double agency explains how God and a natural agent act to cause a single event, affirming that God acts in and through the actions of finite agents without destroying their individual integrity and relative independence. For Farrer, God’s causality must actually be such, so as to work omnipotently on, in, or through creaturely causality without either forcing them or competing with them. Thus, argues Farrer, both God’s and the creature’s causalities are completely real in causing the effect. So far, Farrer’s account seems similar to Aquinas’. The problem arises when Farrer affirms that it is impossible to conceive the ‘causal joint’ between omnipotent creativity and the creature’s causality. In fact, how God works in creation is a mystery that cannot be understood.8 Farrer, thus, fails to provide an explanation of the way in which divine and creaturely causalities are related, as Polkinghorne and Clayton claimed. By placing himself behind the shield of religious experience, Farrer becomes accountable for Polkinghorne’s main critique: it is a fideistic position that, ultimately, renounces to an exploration of the reality of God’s action in the world in the name of faith, failing, then, to provide a technical explanation of the articulation between created and God’s causation. Thomas Tracy objects that the doctrine of primary and secondary causes fails to provide a proper understanding of a personal, and hence providential, divine action. Tracy first explains Aquinas’ doctrine, affirming that God as

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creator gives being to creatures, and does so at every moment throughout the creature’s history, and that this divine creative action does not cause a change in the creature, but rather brings it about that that creature exists at all. He continues to explain that created natural things cause changes in other created things, concluding his exposition stating that, for Aquinas, both God and creatures act in every change that takes place in nature. In fact, he claims in good Thomistic fashion, God must act in order for creatures to act.9 When presenting his objection, Tracy explains it thus: ‘if God acts exclusively as the absolute ontological ground of all events, and never acts directly to affect the course of history, can we say that God responds to the dramas of human history…?’10 His answer is no. This objection is quite popular today. See what Jeffrey Koperski comments by 2020: ‘The [Thomist] critic allows for only two kinds of divine action. God caused all creatures to exist and continues to sustain that existence, including their causal powers’.11 If God only gives and sustains things in being, God is not acting directly to affect the course of the history of the universe and humanity. Surprisingly, some proponents of Aquinas’ account take a similar view, weakening Aquinas’ position against Tracy’s objection.12 The difficulty, however, comes from Tracy’s (and some Thomists’) incomplete portrayal of Aquinas’ doctrine. Unfortunately for these scholars, none of these objections addresses Aquinas’ full doctrine of God’s providential action in nature, which I explained at length in Chapters 4 and 5. Aquinas’ complete explanation of God’s acting in and through secondary causes implies not only that God creates and sustains secondary causes (what I have called the founding moments), but also that God applies the secondary causes to be real causes and that God reaches effects that go beyond the secondary causes’ powers (what I have called the dynamic moments). Thus, in terms of the first kind of objections, Aquinas’ position is not Farrer’s. For Aquinas the interplay between primary and secondary causes is a problem that has a metaphysically complex solution; a solution that offers a strongly nonfideistic understanding of how God providentially acts through secondary causes with this four-fold view of God’s action: God gives the power, sustains the power, applies the power to cause, and achieves effects that go beyond that natural power He applies. These last two features are technically explained in Aquinas’ work, and with them, Aquinas shows how every action of every natural agent is to be referred to God. Thus, Aquinas’ explanation is intelligible through the analogy of instrumental causality. At the same time, divine action remains ineffable, since God is absolutely beyond human reason. Aquinas also rejects occasionalism by explaining that natural agents need God’s influence for them to work. It is a view of nature working with God’s power, which also rejects the position that it is only nature at work in the production of natural effects. Finally, this four-fold way of understanding God’s action in nature expresses that God’s actions are objective and special, as scholars today claim they should be. Since each of these actions is done through the divine intellect and will, Aquinas’ doctrine gives an account of special providence. Thus, Tracy’s question about God’s providence and guidance of the

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universe and human history can be given a positive answer. God acts providentially, i.e., knowing and willing what happens, in and through every natural agent. In fact, when Aquinas addresses the question of divine providence, he uses all these metaphysical technicalities to provide an answer.

B Applications of Aquinas today As there are objectors to Aquinas, there is also a plethora of authors who, studying his thought, rehearse a creative dialogue with today’s philosophy of religion and science, in particular with the discussions surrounding God’s action in the created universe. Many of these dialogues develop from questions raised by the natural sciences, in particular by developments in cosmology, evolutionary biology, and quantum mechanics (there are other issues, for example, those related to free will and providence, which I will omit here). Questions arising from cosmology are usually tackled referring to Aquinas’ doctrine of creation out of nothing. The challenges that the theory of evolution poses to the doctrine of providence in particular are discussed within the doctrines presented in this volume, especially that of primary and secondary causation, which is also useful, as I attempted to show throughout these pages, for engaging with issues coming from the opportunities that quantum mechanics seem to offer to our understanding of divine providential action. William Stoeger, Nicanor Austriaco, Sarah Coakley, William Carroll, Simon Kopf, and Michael Dodds, among many, all work on these questions referring to Aquinas’ thought. William Stoeger (1943–2014) recurred to the notion of creation out of nothing and its radical difference with explanations coming from the natural sciences to discuss Big Bang cosmology. He explains that the basic reason why creation ex nihilo is complementary to any scientific explanation, including whatever quantum cosmology theoretically and observationally reveals about the ‘earliest’ stages of our universe – or multiverse – and not an alternative, is that it does not and cannot substitute for whatever the sciences discover about origins. It simply provides an explanation or ground for the existence and basic order of whatever the sciences reveal.13 For Stoeger, affirming with Aquinas that everything depends completely upon God, means that the natural sciences do not compete with metaphysical approaches to origins. On the contrary, these two are complementary features of our understanding of such origins. Stoeger further emphasises that quantum cosmological scenarios or theories – which describe the Plank era, and the Big Bang, or which describe the primordial regularities, processes and transitions connected with these extreme very early stages of the universe – are in principle incapable of being alternatives to divine creation conceived as creatio ex nihilo. They simply do not account for what creatio ex nihilo provides – the ultimate ground of existence and order.

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Final thoughts Reciprocally, creatio ex nihilo is not an alternative to the processes and transitions quantum cosmology proposes and provides – these are models of the physical processes which generated our universe and everything emerging from it… Thus, quantum cosmology and creatio ex nihilo contribute deeply complementary and consonant levels of understanding of the reality in which we are immersed.14

Stoeger, as most other Thomists, strongly advocates for the idea that the natural sciences can be successful in their discoveries of natural processes and causes, while still affirming the utter dependence of these processes upon God’s creative action. American microbiologist Nicanor Austriaco, OP, addresses the challenges brought by the theory of evolution through natural selection with a stronger emphasis on the distinction between God’s primary and creative causality and creaturely secondary causality. It is worth quoting him in length when discussing the chanceful and unpredictable appearance of human language as an essential element of human nature – through a mutation in the FOXP2 gene that occurred sometime during the last 200,000 years of human history – as an example of how both God and nature are at work in random mutations: the mutation which gave rise to language use occurred when a particular DNA polymerase was repairing a DNA strand damaged by high energy radiation. According to the classical account of double agency, God acts in this event as efficient cause because he gives the DNA strand and the DNA polymerase their existence. Furthermore, he gives them their natures. The DNA strand can be repaired by the DNA polymerase because God made them what they are. Indeed, the DNA polymerase was able to introduce a random mutation into the FOXP2 gene precisely because God knew it and thus created it as error-prone and capable of randomly making mistakes. In introducing the genetic mutation into the DNA strand, the polymerase was functioning according to its nature. It was striving for its end that was established by God as Final Cause. Finally, the mutagenic event can be said to be ordained from all eternity, and in this sense be providential, because in knowing the DNA polymerase as error prone, God knows it as errorprone and existing at a particular time and place. The random event which gave rise to human FOXP2 occurred at the time and place that it did because God knew it and allowed it to exist precisely as happening in our past rather than in our present or in our future.15 Reflecting on the idea that creaturely and divine activity do not mix up, Austriaco argues that classical double agency allows one to accomplish the task of explaining noninterventionist objective special divine action without denying either the mystery of divine providence where God knows all events in past, present, and future, or the radical distinction between the Creator and his creatures.16

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As with Stoeger, Aquinas’ doctrine of primary and secondary causation allows Austriaco to maintain the distinction between the work of the natural sciences in the discovering the autonomous activity of nature – even if that activity is random or chanceful – and the discourse about God, while holding high the principles of divine providential guidance of the universe and transcendence. Oxford-based philosopher William Carroll clearly expresses the reasons for his adoption of Aquinas’ doctrines, when, while analysing evolutionary biology, he defends ‘a Thomistic analysis of creation and the relative self-sufficiency of nature’ because ‘this analysis helps us to see that the very processes which evolutionary biology explains depend upon God’s creative act’.17 For Carroll, the very intelligibility of nature ‘depends upon a source which transcends the processes of nature’, because, he continues, ‘without the very fact that all that is is completely dependent upon God as cause, there would be no evolution at all’.18 Carroll is more adamant in expressing the radical dependence of the natural world upon God both in its being and its acting. The very reason for nature to be causally powerful is because it intrinsically depends upon God’s creative power. Following Aquinas, Carroll holds that no matter how random one thinks evolutionary change is, for example; no matter how much one thinks that natural selection is the master mechanism of change in the world of living things; the role of God as Creator, as continuing cause of the whole reality of all that is, is not challenged.19 Carroll similarly ends his analysis of the physical sciences in relation to divine action stating that ‘the complete dependence of all that is on God does not challenge an appropriate autonomy of natural causation; God is not a competing cause in a world of other causes. In fact, God’s causality is such that He causes creatures to be the kind of causal agents which they are. In an important sense, there would be no autonomy to the natural order were God not causing it to be so’.20 Besides discussing Aquinas’ thought in relation to evolutionary biology, William Carroll also engages with Robert Russell’s idea that God needs indeterminate events in nature, such as quantum events, to act in nature. Carroll counter argues that God is so powerful that His causal agency also produces the modality of its effect: the effect is assimilated to God’s will in every way so that not only what happens occurs because God wills it to happen, but it happens in that way which God wills it to happen. God’s will transcends and constitutes the whole hierarchy of created causes, both causes which always and necessarily produce their effects and causes which at times fail to produce their effects. We can say that God causes chance events to be chance events.21 With these ideas Carroll attempts to emphasise that God, by being constantly active in nature through secondary causes, does not need indeterminate events allowing Him to intervene, so to speak. For Carroll, this would imply a

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diminishing of God’s power and the denial of God’s transcendence. Thus, Carroll concludes that the source of most of the difficulties in grasping an adequate understanding of the relationship between the created order and God is the failure to understand divine transcendence. It is God’s very transcendence, a transcendence beyond any contrast with immanence, which enables God to be intimately present in the world as cause. God is not transcendent in such a way that He is ‘outside’ or ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ the world. God is not different from creatures in the way in which creatures differ from one another. We might say that God ‘differs differently’ from the created order.22 Ultimately, the fact that God’s transcendent will produces causes that at times fail means that nature is in no position to allow God to act, but that, on the contrary, it requires God’s constant creative action to be able to act by itself. Simon Kopf has recently engaged with the matter of providence and contingency in the natural world arguing that Aquinas offers a different model of providential divine action to those available today. He terms the currently available models as ‘actionistic’ models, that is, models based on discussing divine action. His proposal, however, seeks to turn the attention to discussing the virtues of wisdom and prudence, offering thus a ‘sapiential’ model for divine providence. This model incorporates ‘not only the intentionality of God but also the immanent teleology of created beings’.23 To conceptualise this model, Kopf makes use of Aquinas’ ideas on teleology in relation to the human virtues, in particular that of prudence, concluding that God’s providence will be better understood in these terms, rather than in the ‘actionistic’ terms in which the current debate is framed. Elsewhere I have also attempted at some understanding of divine providence in light of human providence.24 In particular, I have offered analogies from military strategy development engaging with contingency in the battlefield. For some contemporary military strategists, contingent events during warfare are ordered to other new goals; I have argued that this works in similarly to the way in which God orders contingent happenings to new better things in creation. Strategists today reject versions of strategy in which contingency is to be expected but not desired. Human providence, at least in the realm of contemporary military strategy, establishes a relation with contingency in which contingency is embraced rather than rejected, allowing for new meaningful happenings to occur in the course of events. Scholars not typically associated with Aquinas have also found his thought attractive when discussing evolutionary biology. In her interesting and thoughtprovoking work with Harvard biologist Martin Nowak on the evolution of cooperation, Cambridge theologian Sarah Coakley explicitly recurs to Aquinas’ notions of primary and secondary causation, arguing that ‘classic Thomism fares particularly well as an accompaniment to evolutionary dynamics’.25 After a quick but careful presentation of the evolutionary phenomenon of

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cooperation, Coakley addresses three challenges that evolutionary biology poses to classical theism, stating that it is vital to avoid… the presumption that ‘God’ competes with the evolutionary process as a (very big) bit player in the temporal unfolding of ‘natural selection’… Rather, God is that-without-which-there-would-beno-evolution-at-all.26 In fact, she continues, ‘the “no-contest” position is to be affirmed for its right insistence that God and the evolutionary process are not on the same “level”, whether temporally or in “substance”’,27 making clear that Aquinas’ emphasis on God’s transcendence is key for understanding God’s relation to any evolutionary process. Dominican friar Michael Dodds has also extensively argued for a Thomistic understanding of divine action. After a long investigation of the current debates on divine action, its assumptions and difficulties, and after presenting his solution based on the very notion of God causing efficiently, formally and finally, Dodds concludes that the creator of the universe is not in competition with his creatures, but that it is rather the source of their proper actions. Aquinas sees no competition but compassion as the font of all God’s works. God is not distant, but intimately present in the being and action of each creature. His acting is not called ‘intervention’ since that term fails to represent the intimacy of his presence.28 This intimate divine presence allows Dodds to refer to God’s causing in terms of Aristotelian causes. Thus, Dodds argues that the God who is the efficient and exemplar cause of all things, creating them in his likeness and present in all their actions, is also the final cause drawing all creation to its fulfilment in him. Each creature, through its action, seeks to share God’s goodness according to the capacity of its particular nature.29 The key feature that Dodds wants to stress throughout his work is that, while there is an infinite difference between creative and created causes, ‘by acting, the creature attains its proper perfection, which is a participation in the perfection of the creator. Each creature, by acting according to its nature, imitates the perfection of God’.30 Dodds, then, finds in Aquinas the elements to hold God’s transcendent provident action in relation to a dependent though autonomous creation. Finally, Dominican friar Mariusz Tabaczek has lately engaged with theories of emergence to offer a profound analysis of what has come to be known as a middle way between classical theism and pantheism, namely, panentheism.31 His main argument is that emergentist panentheism presents a rather

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unfortunate view of the divine mixed with creation, offering a Thomist reinterpretation of emergence theories together with Aquinas’ doctrine of providential divine action through secondary causes. Many scholars today dealing with the problem of providential divine action call for a study of Aquinas’ thought on this matter. This is precisely what I have tried to do in this volume: presenting in length, depth, and with clarity Aquinas’ arguments concerning natural and divine causality. I have attempted to show how Aquinas’ account of providential divine action in nature is a viable option in today’s debate, affirming with him that God is constantly providentially active in the contingency of the created universe, guiding the development of the history of the universe to its fulfilment. It is, ultimately, in this natural contingency where the intention of divine providence lies hidden for the glory of God.32

Notes 1 For a more nuanced exposition of these objections and my replies, see my ‘Thomas Aquinas Holds Fast: Objections to Aquinas within Today’s Debate on Divine Action’, The Heythrop Journal 54:4 (2013), 658–667. 2 Nancey Murphy, in her ‘Divine Action in the Natural Order’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 1995), 325–357, 333, also agrees with this objection. For her, any double agency approach suffers from two defects: it leaves no room for special divine acts, and it leads directly to occasionalism. 3 See his Divine Action (West Conshohocken, PA.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2007), 51. 4 Polkinghorne, John, Science and Theology. An Introduction (London and Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 86. 5 See, for example, Polkinghorne, John, ‘The Metaphysics of Divine Action’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity, 147– 156, 150. 6 Ward, Divine Action, 51. 7 Clayton, Philip, God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 177. 8 Farrer, Austin, Faith and Speculation. An Essay in Philosophical Theology (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1967), 110. 9 Tracy, Thomas, ‘Special Divine Action and the Laws of Nature’, in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory – CTNS, 2008), 249–283, 255. 10 Tracy, ‘Special Divine Action’, 257. 11 Koperski, Jeffrey, Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 150. 12 William Stoeger is a clear example of someone being directly involved in these debates and reducing Aquinas’ account of providential divine action. He says, for example, that ‘God operates on a secondary cause… by maintaining it in existence and continuing to endow it with the nature or properties it has’, in his ‘Describing God’s Action in the World in Light of Scientific Knowledge of Reality’, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity, 239– 261, 253.

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13 Stoeger, William, ‘The Big Bang, Quantum Cosmology and Creatio ex Nihilo’, in David Burrell, B.C. Cogliati, J.M. Soskice, and W.R. Stoeger (eds), Creation and the God of Abraham (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), 152–175, 169. 14 Stoeger, ‘The Big Bang’, 175. 15 Austriaco, Nicanor, ‘In Defense of Double Agency in Evolution: A Response to Five Modern Critics’, Angelicum 80:4 (2003), 947–966, 956. 16 Austriaco, ‘In Defense’, 950. 17 Carroll, William, ‘Creation and the Foundations of Evolution’, Angelicum 87 (2010), 45–60, 51. 18 Carroll, ‘Creation’, 51 (my emphasis). 19 Carroll, William, ‘Divine Agency, Contemporary Physics, and the Autonomy of Nature’, The Heytrop Journal 49 (2008), 582–602, 591. 20 Carroll, ‘Divine Agency’, 595. 21 Carroll, ‘Creation’, 53. 22 Carroll, ‘Divine Agency’, 590. 23 Kopf, Simon Maria, Divine Providence and Natural Contingency: New Perspectives from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2019, iii. 24 For this argument see my ‘Divine Providence and Natural Contingency’, in Ignacio Silva and Simon Kopf (eds), Divine and Human Providence: Philosophical, Psychological and Theological Approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 59–74, 66. 25 Coakley, Sarah, ‘Providence and the Evolutionary Phenomenon of “Cooperation”: A Systematic Proposal’, in Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (eds), The Providence of God: Deus Habet Consilium (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009), 181–195, 182. 26 Coakley, ‘Providence’, 186. 27 Coakley, ‘Providence’, 190. 28 Dodds, Michael, Unlocking Divine Action (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2012), 260. 29 Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action, 261. 30 Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action, 260. 31 Tabaczek, Mariusz, Divine Action and Emergence. An Alternative to Panentheism (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2021). 32 In Io., c. 11, l. 1.

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Index

a-causality 23, 25, 44–45, 65, 75, 118 act passim active power 13, 91–93, 96, 111n79, 112nn89–90 al-Ghaza-lı- 13 analogical causation 129 analogy 84, 88–90, 110n48, 111nn62–63, 111n82, 127–129, 131, 134, 142 Aquinas, Thomas passim Aristotle 13, 15, 20, 37, 59–61, 63, 65, 70, 75, 77, 82n117, 83 atomism 14, 21, 23, 27, 29n32, 139 Austriaco, Nicanor 143–145 autonomy of nature 6–7, 12–13, 26, 39, 43–44, 46–47, 51–52, 106, 117, 139 Bacon, Francis 13, 17–18 Bernard, Claude 23, 118 Boyle, Robert 13, 18, 19, 20, 22 Bultmann, Rudolf 23, 25–26 Carroll, William 8, 14, 28, 33, 122, 143, 145–146 causal gaps 5, 34–35, 39, 117 causal joint 5, 34, 36, 141 causal power 14, 16–17, 21–3, 27–28, 44, 46–47, 51, 66, 75, 99, 134, 139, 142 causality/causation passim causally closed system 45, 118 cause among causes 32, 42, 44, 47–49, 51–52, 55n44, 56n69, 131, 140 chaos theory 7, 35–36, 38–43, 45, 56n65 chaotic systems 35, 38, 40–41, 43, 45–46, 52, 122, 134 Clarke, Samuel 21–22 Clayton, Philip 3, 35, 42, 80n65, 140–141 co-principle 62, 64, 73, 75–76, 119–120

collapse of wave-function 25, 37, 42, 44, 45, 48–50, 57n97, 118, 133–134 contingent causes 8, 132–134 contradictory 26, 42, 93, 113n109 Copenhagen interpretation 37, 40, 49–50, 73, 117–118 corpuscular 18, 20, 29n32 creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing 4, 6, 8, 15, 17, 23, 27, 123–125, 129, 143–144 dependence 5–8, 58–61, 65–66, 72, 77, 87, 96, 102, 124, 126, 135n4, 138n58, 140, 144–145 Descartes, René 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 determinism, deterministic 3, 5, 7–8, 14, 23–26, 31n51, 32, 35–37, 39–47, 49, 52, 54n21, 56n75, 57n82, 76–77, 106, 117–119, 121, 134, 139, 140 Dilley, Frank 23, 25–26 divine intervention 33, 39, 112n89 divine power 5–6, 22, 93, 98, 100–101, 105, 111n84, 112n85, 122, 127, 137n42, 137n46 divine providence, divine providential action passim DNA 144 dynamic moments (of divine action) 99, 101, 127, 142 efficient cause (principal, preparing, instrumental, advising) 6, 8, 14–15, 18–19, 29n31, 42, 60–61, 63, 65–77, 79n51, 79n54, 79n61, 81nn87–88, 81nn90–92, 82n117, 86, 93–94, 97–103, 106, 115n149, 115n152, 119–120, 122–125, 127–131, 133–134, 135n4, 135n14, 141, 144

Index end 68, 70–72, 77, 81n87, 81n89, 81n91, 81n93, 82n117, 91, 97, 99–100, 125–126, 130, 134, 136n31, 144 ens per accidens 74 ens per se 74 equivocal causation 67 esse (existence) 65, 84–87, 90, 92, 94–96, 99, 102, 107n17, 108n21, 108nn24–25, 109n29, 109n31, 110n54, 113n115, 120, 124 essence 61–63, 75, 84–90, 92–93, 95–96, 107n7, 107n11, 107n17, 108nn18–19, 108nn23–24, 108n26, 109n29, 109n43, 110n51, 110n54, 113n115, 113n118, 115n160, 120, 124 Eucharist 21, 30n35 experiments 18, 23 Farrer, Austin 5, 34, 140–142 final cause 3, 18, 60–61, 69–72, 77, 80n74, 80n79, 80n82, 80n84, 81n88, 81n90, 100, 124–125, 131, 144, 147 first cause 7, 60, 68, 86–87, 95, 97, 101–102, 105–106, 113n101, 114n125, 114n127, 127, 129, 133–134, 137nn–7 form 15–20, 26–27, 61–74, 76–77, 78n34, 79nn53–54, 79n59, 79n61, 80n63, 80n65, 80n69, 80nn81–82, 80n84, 81n88, 81nn91–93, 82n100, 82n117, 91, 94–95, 97, 100–101, 103, 105, 119, 120–122, 125, 128, 135n15 formal cause 3, 15, 19–21, 61, 63, 65–66, 70, 73, 75, 81n88, 100, 115n150 foundational moments (of divine action) 99, 101 Galilei, Galileo 17–18 general divine action/providence 2, 7, 33, 53n2, 125–127, 131 Goblot, Edmond 23–24, 118 Heisenberg, Werner 25–26, 37, 50, 118, 121 hierarchy of being 119–122, 131 human free will 34, 132–133, 135n18, 143 Ibn-Gabirol (Avicebron) 16 Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) 13, 15, 32 Ibn-Sı-na- (Avicena) 13 impediment 73, 75–76, 82n113 indeterminism, indeterministic 1–3, 7–8, 25, 34–38, 39–48, 50, 57n99, 69, 73, 76, 117–118, 121, 131, 139 information input 39

159

instrument 6, 67, 68–69, 97, 99, 100–102, 105, 127–129, 131, 134, 137n40, 137n42, 137n46, 142 instrumental power 68 insufficient cause/causation 34–35, 39, 42, 47, 49, 51 intrinsic defectiveness 59 Kalam theology (theologians) 13–15, 17, 22, 32, 46, 139 Koperski, Jeffrey 4–5, 7, 27, 33, 35–36, 45, 47, 54n18, 57n94, 134, 135n5, 142 Kopf, Simon Maria 4, 9, 25, 33, 143, 146 lack of natural causality 45–46, 139 Laplace, Pierre-Simon 24, 31n51, 35 laws of nature 2, 4, 5, 7, 13–14, 18, 21, 23–24, 30n35, 33–35, 39, 42, 44–51, 104, 131, 134, 139 logically impossible 93 Maimonides 15 Malebranche, Nicolas 22 material cause 61–62, 71–73, 75–76, 91, 119–120, 125 materialistic ontology 25, 118 matter passim McGrath, Alister 3, 8, 23, 53n6 measurement 36–37, 49, 118, 122 mechanical philosophy 18, 20–21 miracles 23, 34, 41, 48, 83–84, 90, 94, 102, 104–105, 123 natural causality 7, 8, 14–15, 26, 42–43, 45–47, 49, 58 natural cause 2–3, 5–6, 8, 15–16, 23, 27, 32, 34, 38–39, 42–43, 45–51, 57n97, 57n99, 73–74, 77, 85, 100–104, 106, 115n158, 117, 119, 123–125, 127, 131–134, 136n28, 140 natural contingency 1, 7, 58, 83, 148 natural order 3, 17, 35, 46, 48, 50, 53n6, 54n21, 77, 86, 102–104, 145 nature passim necessity 25, 58–60, 72–74, 76–7, 102, 120, 130, 135n15 Neo-Platonism 16, 68, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 94 non-deterministic 44 non-interventionist objective divine action (NIODA) 38–45, 47, 49, 51, 54n19, 118, 123, 136n28 Newton, Isaac 18, 20–21

160

Index

occasionalism 13, 22, 27, 129, 137n45, 139, 140–142, 148n2 omnipotence, omnipotent 6–7, 13–15, 26–28, 32, 43–44, 52, 92–93, 105, 122–123, 139, 141 participation 40, 84, 87–88, 100, 106, 107n7, 108n24, 109n34, 111n63, 114n125, 137n38, 137n42, 147 passive power 91, 101, 111n77, 111n79 Peacocke, Arthur 35, 52 perfection 67, 69, 72, 75–76, 85, 87, 89, 91–92, 94, 98–99, 107n7, 108n17, 109n31, 109n34, 110n49, 110nn54–55, 111n64, 112n90, 119–120, 122, 124–125, 131–132, 138n55, 147 Poincaré, Henri 23–24, 118 Polkinghorne, John 7, 27, 33, 35, 38–43, 45–46, 51–52, 134, 140–141 potency 26–27, 37–38, 59, 61–67, 69, 71, 75–77, 79nn53–54, 81n92, 82n100, 82n117, 84, 87–89, 91–95, 102–104, 107n7, 108n18, 108n24, 111n77, 112n89, 113n109, 118–122, 135n14 potentiality of matter 64, 66, 121–122 primary and secondary causation 3, 27, 48, 95, 123, 140–141, 143, 145–146 primary cause 48, 53n2, 96–97, 100, 103, 109n33, 109n40, 109nn42–43, 114n124, 114n127, 123, 127, 129, 133–134, 139–140 principal agent 6, 68–69, 128–129, 134, 137n40, 136n42 problem of evil 132–133 pure act 83–84, 87, 89–90, 105, 109n33, 119–120 quantum divine action 7, 27, 32, 35, 43, 47, 131 quantum events 2, 25–26, 41, 45–46, 145 quantum theory/mechanics 2, 8, 25–26, 34–43, 45–46, 48, 50, 73, 117, 118, 121, 136n28, 143

random mutation 144 res cogitans vs res extensa 25 Ritchie, Sarah Lane 3–5, 33–34 Russell, Robert 3–5, 7, 9, 25–27, 33–34, 38–42, 44–50, 53n2, 55n60, 56n64, 56n74, 123, 126, 134, 145 Saunders, Nicholas 33, 41–42, 126 science 2, 4–8, 12–13, 17–18, 23–27, 32–34, 36, 39–47, 50, 52, 52n1, 53n2, 57n87, 57n99, 76, 99, 102, 118, 123, 125, 139, 140, 143–145 scientific theory 42, 49–51, 123, 134 secondary cause 6, 17, 21, 68, 95–98, 100–103, 106, 114n124, 114n127, 116n169, 123, 127–130, 132–134, 137n41, 138n54, 138n57, 140–142, 145, 147, 148n12 special divine action/providence 2, 7, 25, 33–34, 42, 47, 53n6, 125–126, 130, 134, 144, 148n2 sufficient cause 2, 39, 40, 86, 101, 108n23, 115n153 tendency 26, 37–38, 56n75, 59, 70–71, 80n84, 81n91, 124–125 Tracy, Thomas 33, 34, 35, 39, 41, 42, 53n2, 54n21, 117, 140–143 transcendence 48, 115n160, 116n179, 145–147 undetermined 2, 24 univocal causation 67 ut in paucioribus 73, 119, 121 ut in pluribus 73, 119 virtus 128, 130 Ward, Keith 3, 140–141 Wildman, Wesley 42, 54n19, 56n66