28. Preservation, Providence, and Government
Creation has its own goodness and perfection, yet it did not appear fully developed from the hands of the Creator; it was created “in the state of wayfarer” (in statu viatoris) and progresses toward an ultimate state of perfection yet to be reached.
Strictly speaking, divine providence is God’s plan for all creatures by which each one of them is led to the end or perfection assigned to them by God. Divine government is the implementation of his plan: the divine action by which the whole universe and every creature therein are led in a supremely wise and almighty manner to the attainment of the final end. The effects of divine government on the universe are the continuous preservation of creatures in their being and the divine causality in the activity of creatures. This divine causality is also called the divine concurrence.1
6. Preservation of Creatures in Being
Consider a sculptor commissioned to make an equestrian statue of a famous person. Once he has finished his work, he can forget it. Even after he dies, the statue will continue presiding in the city square from its bronze horse and pedestal. This is so because the material used to make the statue—bronze—can maintain the shape it has received.
This is not the case with creation. If God were to abandon the universe, its existence would depend on that from which it was made—nothing. Therefore, it would be instantly annihilated.
6a) Preservation
God keeps all creatures in existence (de fide).
The being of each creature depends immediately on God, so that if God were to cease causing it, the creature would revert to nothing.
The Magisterium of the Church taught this truth in the First Vatican Council: “By his providence God preserves [tuetur in the original Latin] and governs all things that he made.”2
We read in Sacred Scripture, “How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved?” (Wis 11:25). St. Paul also teaches this truth in his discourse in the Areopagus of Athens, saying, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Many Fathers of the Church declared that things continue in existence only because God maintains them in their being. St. Jerome is quite explicit: “We know that we would be nothing, if the one who gave us the gift would not conserve it in us.”3
For a better understanding of the meaning of this truth of faith, we can go back to our previous analogy. The statue depends on the sculptor for its existence while it is being made. The sculptor is forming the bronze. The sculptor does not give it its being, but merely transforms it. Once the statue is finished, the only relationship it retains with its maker is that of having been sculpted by him.
On the other hand, the creature does not merely have a relationship of origin with God (i.e., to have been created by him) but also, and primarily, their relationship has a definite metaphysical structure. Creatures are characterized by the fact that their “act of being” (esse) is received in an essence. The “being” of a creature is not self-subsistent; what subsists is the composite of esse and essence. Neither can we say that the being subsists in the substance, nor that the substance gives the being its reality. It is the other way around: The substance is through its “being.” Therefore, the “act of being” of the creature is the radical principle of its subsistence. Now, since the creature is not self-subsistent, it is in continual need of the action of the subsistent Being, who is God. This means that the being of the creature, and therefore the whole of it, totally depends on divine action. Thus, if the preserving action were to be interrupted, the creature would be deprived of its “act of being,” and would be reduced to nothing.
A comparison taken from human experience aids in understanding this: “If I stand in front of a mirror, my image is in the mirror, but only while I stand there. If I go, it goes. Only my continuing presence keeps the image in being. The reason is that the image is not made of the mirror but only in the mirror.”4 The mirror is completely passive. That is also what “nothing” is. “Nothing” is not some kind of subtle matter out of which God creates. It is completely passive. God creates the things in it. Just as one’s image remains in the mirror only as long as one stays in front of it, so the whole universe is maintained in being by the continuous presence of the divine action.
6b) Preservation and Creation
Preservation is the continuation of creation (sent. comm.).
St. Thomas explained, “The preservation of things by God is a continuation of that action whereby He gives existence, which action is without either motion or time.”5 Preservation is not a reiteration of the creative action, as if it had to be continuously repeated. Rather, it is the very same uninterrupted act.
On God’s part, there is no distinction between creation and preservation. However, from the point of view of the effect of each action, creation is distinct from preservation, since in the former case, the creature has no precedent to its being, while in the latter, the creature is maintained in its being.
6c) Freedom of Annihilation
God can annihilate. If he would just cease his influence, the created beings would revert to nothing (sent. comm.).
This would not require a new operation. All that it requires is the termination of the divine action. Nevertheless, Sacred Scripture does not mention any case of annihilation. Rather, it stresses the stability of being in created things. “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Eccl 1:4). “I know that whatever God does endures for ever” (Eccl 3:14). Although God can annihilate, it seems more fitting to the divine wisdom not to annihilate anything created.
7. Divine Causality in the Activity of Creatures
God governs the entire world. He sometimes uses the cooperation of his creatures to accomplish this task of government. This is not a sign of weakness on God’s part, but of his greatness and goodness. Besides their existence, God gives his creatures the capacity and dignity to act by themselves, to be causes and principles of other creatures; thus, all cooperate with God’s designs.6
7a) The Divine Causality
God cooperates immediately in every act of his creatures (sent. comm.).
The Roman Catechism of St. Pius V teaches that God does not just preserve whatever exists or merely rule creation with his providence. He also moves creatures in their own movements and actions with an interior force.7
This doctrine about the divine intervention in the operations of the creatures appears in Sacred Scripture: “O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us, thou hast wrought for us all our works” (Is 26:12); “There are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one” (1 Cor 12:6).
The Fathers of the Church frequently explained how God is the cause of the operations both of irrational and free creatures.8 The heretic Pelagius falsely maintained that Christians could perform salvific works without grace. To explain this, he claimed that God creates the operative potencies, but their exercise depends exclusively on man. To refute his thesis, the Fathers of the Church had to explain how divine causality acts on created causality in detail. They maintained that without divine concurrence, we would be unable to do anything at all. Thus speaking, the Fathers of the Church were referring to salvific actions in general. Nevertheless, they also taught that without the divine cooperation, no creature could perform even its natural operations.9
All creatures that are made and preserved in being by God have some operative potentialities—real abilities to act according to the nature the Creator has given them. The nightingale has the capacity to sing and to fly. People can know, love, laugh, and do many other things. Each of these operative potentialities given to creatures by God is ordained to a proper act, which is its operation—the song of the nightingale, the thought of a person. That act, as something more perfect, has a certain entity (i.e., more “being”) added to the potential. Therefore, it must be caused by God. Only he can supply that “being” added to the potential, since creatures cannot create (produce being), but only modify or transform things that already exist.
The divine intervention in the operation of the creatures (cooperation) is so profound that it directly and immediately reaches the operations of all created beings.10
Nevertheless, the immediate causal presence of God does not obliterate the proper causality of the creature. The effect is at once totally God’s and totally the creature’s, though in different planes. Creatures cause their own operations as secondary and particular causes; the very same operations come from God as first and universal cause. But how is this possible?
7b) The Creatures’ Causality
When a creature acts, the effect is produced completely by God and completely by the creature, but on different planes.
In spite of its limitations, an example may help us. Let us think of a pocket calculator. It has been designed by an engineer and has been programmed to perform a number of arithmetical operations. Nevertheless, in order to perform an operation, it is not enough for the machine to be programmed to perform it. It must be moved to operate by someone pressing the right keys. Something analogous takes place in the case of the creature, differing in that God not only gives it a nature with certain capabilities and operative potencies, but he also gives it its being and preserves it. Still, God has to move these capacities to operate so that they are actualized; otherwise, they would remain inactive.
Created causes act with their own causality. This means they act by means of their being, their nature, and their potentialities. Nevertheless, they receive all those capacities that allow them to act from God. God not only gives them the capacities, he also preserves in being their nature and the potentialities of their nature, which enable them to act. Besides, they receive from God both the motion by which the subject can begin to operate and the application of the potentialities to their objects.
That is why, although the creature acts with its own causality, God is also the total cause of this operation of the creature and the total cause of the effect that follows.
Going back to the calculator analogy, we cannot say that it has done part of the calculation and the operator has done the other part. The calculator did the whole operation, since the operator just keyed in the data and waited for the results. But we can also say that the operator has done the whole thing, since microchips cannot really think. The maker had to build all the indications of how to carry out such an operation into the calculator, and the operator had to give the command to do the calculation.
Therefore, both the calculator and the operator are the cause of the operation, though in different orders.
Divine and created causality should not be thought of as two figures that are added up to reach a total effect. God is not the cause of a part of the effect and the creature of the other part. God is the cause of everything, and the creature is the cause of its whole effect, but in different orders.
8. Divine Providence and Government
Divine providence is the plan that God has for his creatures by which he ordains each one of them to the end he has chosen for it. Divine government is the execution of this plan; it is the actual guiding of each creature to the end of its own nature.
8a) The Universal Government of God
God governs all that he has created (de fide).
Every creature made by God is also led toward the end for which it was created, that is, it falls under the divine government.
The Magisterium of the Church, in the First Vatican Council, has defined this truth: “By his providence God protects and governs all the things that he made, reaching from end to end with might and disposing all things with gentleness (cf. Wis 8:1). For ‘all things are naked and open to his eyes’ (Heb 4:13), even those things that are going to occur by the free action of creatures.”11
As for the teachings of Sacred Scripture, Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount that the providence of our heavenly Father reaches even to the most insignificant creatures like the birds of the air, the lilies, and the grass of the field. But he takes special care of the rational creatures (cf. Mt 6:26ff). In his first epistle, St. Peter exhorted us to have trust in divine providence: “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (1 Pt 5:7).
The Fathers of the Church defended the reality of divine providence against the fatalism of the pagans and the practice of astrology. St. John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and others wrote entire books about divine providence. In his Confessions and in The City of God, St. Augustine considered in great depth the providential action of God in individual lives and in the history of peoples.
A glance at the sky on a clear night will show an almost infinite number of celestial bodies. Each one moves in the universe according to a precise law. In spite of their great number, they are all ordered in perfect harmony. If we study the life of the animals and plants in a forest, we would not find less order. Each one of those beings has its own way of life, different from the others, yet they complement one another in such harmony that there is a perfect ecological balance. It would not be reasonable to think that the perfect order of the universe is due to an extraordinary coincidence. From these simple experiences, we can draw a logical conclusion: God did not just create a multitude of beings, without order or harmony. He wants each one of them to fulfill its proper end (to give glory to God) in an orderly way. He has subjected each one of them to most wise laws so that they may achieve the end fitting their nature. This ordaining plan of God is divine providence.
Divine providence embraces all things. Since all things have received their being from God, they must be subject to the order that he has imposed on all beings.
8b) Providence and Freedom
Divine providence embraces all things and is infallible, but it directs all things according to their proper nature—the necessary as necessary and the free as free (sent. comm.).
Throughout the ages, there have been people who believe in “blind destiny,” “karma,” or fate. These old pagan ideas are opposed to the faith. No power can direct the events and the creatures’ actions contrary to divine government. God has foreseen a plan to bring all things to perfection, and this plan is fulfilled with an infallible certitude, without error.
Modern scientism often uses the word chance to refer to the ultimate cause of any event. Strictly speaking, however, chance does not exist, because every effect has a cause. Nothing is uncaused except God. On the other hand, we can speak of chance in relative terms, from the point of view of the inferior causes. However, we cannot really speak of chance with regard to the superior cause, which had already foreseen that a particular event would take place.
We could compare it to a manager who sends his secretary to the bank on some business. A little later, he sends a clerk to the same place to pay some bills. If the secretary and the clerk meet each other at the counter of the bank, they might think that it has been a coincidence. However, the manager would not think so because he sent them both to the same place.
Something similar happens with regard to all the events that occur in the universe. One can speak of fortuitous events from the point of view of the particular cause, but not from God’s point of view. Everything is foreseen by God who, through his providence, ordains everything to the good of his creatures.
We should also note that divine providence and government are not opposed to the freedom enjoyed by creatures endowed with will. When God governs, he does not impose his will on creatures; he moves each one to act according to its natural way of being. He has imposed a law on the quartz crystal, another one on the cypress, and another one on man, each according to its own nature. Therefore, God will never move a quartz crystal to sing or a cypress to fly. Neither will he move man to act against his freedom. Crystal, cypress, and man will fulfill the plan of providence. Minerals, animals, and plants will fulfill it in a necessary manner. Angels and men will fulfill it without being deprived of their freedom, that is, without violence to their natural manner of action. God moves each creature according to its nature. He has given some the gift of freedom, and he moves them to use it. The exercise of freedom does not escape the plan of God.
8c) Second Causes
On the part of God, providence is immediate with respect to each creature. But in its execution—the government of the world—God ordinarily makes use of other creatures (sent. comm.).
In divine providence, we can distinguish between the order intended and its execution. The order intended in the development of events depends immediately on God without any mediation. On the other hand, God makes use of created causes for the fulfillment of his plans. These causes act according to the divine plans and by virtue of their own causality. Theirs is a participated causality, created and dependent on God as First Cause.
St. Thomas explains God’s way of acting with an argument of fittingness: The purpose of God’s government over the creatures is to lead them to perfection. The more perfection God communicates to the governed creatures, the more perfect his government will be. A being is more perfect if, aside from being good, it is also the cause of another being’s goodness. In the same way, the government of the universe is more perfect if God makes some creatures govern the others as second causes (causae secundae).12
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 301–314.
2. DS 3003.
3. St. Jerome, Letter 133.6.
4. F.J. Sheed, Theology and Sanity (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973), p. 87.
5. ST, I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4.
6. Cf. Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1:2:22.
7. Cf. CCC, 306.
8. Cf. Origen, In Num. hom. 23.4; St. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 35.2ff.
9. Cf. St. Jerome, Contra Pelagium 1.3; St. Augustine, Letter 205.17; De Civitate Dei 7.30; De gen. ad litt. 4.12.23; 5.20.40; 8.26.48.
10. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Sent. d. 37, c. 1, a. 1, ad 4.
11. DS 3003.
12. Cf. ST, I, q. 103, a. 6; CCC, 306–308.
Strictly speaking, divine providence is God’s plan for all creatures by which each one of them is led to the end or perfection assigned to them by God. Divine government is the implementation of his plan: the divine action by which the whole universe and every creature therein are led in a supremely wise and almighty manner to the attainment of the final end. The effects of divine government on the universe are the continuous preservation of creatures in their being and the divine causality in the activity of creatures. This divine causality is also called the divine concurrence.1
6. Preservation of Creatures in Being
Consider a sculptor commissioned to make an equestrian statue of a famous person. Once he has finished his work, he can forget it. Even after he dies, the statue will continue presiding in the city square from its bronze horse and pedestal. This is so because the material used to make the statue—bronze—can maintain the shape it has received.
This is not the case with creation. If God were to abandon the universe, its existence would depend on that from which it was made—nothing. Therefore, it would be instantly annihilated.
6a) Preservation
God keeps all creatures in existence (de fide).
The being of each creature depends immediately on God, so that if God were to cease causing it, the creature would revert to nothing.
The Magisterium of the Church taught this truth in the First Vatican Council: “By his providence God preserves [tuetur in the original Latin] and governs all things that he made.”2
We read in Sacred Scripture, “How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved?” (Wis 11:25). St. Paul also teaches this truth in his discourse in the Areopagus of Athens, saying, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Many Fathers of the Church declared that things continue in existence only because God maintains them in their being. St. Jerome is quite explicit: “We know that we would be nothing, if the one who gave us the gift would not conserve it in us.”3
For a better understanding of the meaning of this truth of faith, we can go back to our previous analogy. The statue depends on the sculptor for its existence while it is being made. The sculptor is forming the bronze. The sculptor does not give it its being, but merely transforms it. Once the statue is finished, the only relationship it retains with its maker is that of having been sculpted by him.
On the other hand, the creature does not merely have a relationship of origin with God (i.e., to have been created by him) but also, and primarily, their relationship has a definite metaphysical structure. Creatures are characterized by the fact that their “act of being” (esse) is received in an essence. The “being” of a creature is not self-subsistent; what subsists is the composite of esse and essence. Neither can we say that the being subsists in the substance, nor that the substance gives the being its reality. It is the other way around: The substance is through its “being.” Therefore, the “act of being” of the creature is the radical principle of its subsistence. Now, since the creature is not self-subsistent, it is in continual need of the action of the subsistent Being, who is God. This means that the being of the creature, and therefore the whole of it, totally depends on divine action. Thus, if the preserving action were to be interrupted, the creature would be deprived of its “act of being,” and would be reduced to nothing.
A comparison taken from human experience aids in understanding this: “If I stand in front of a mirror, my image is in the mirror, but only while I stand there. If I go, it goes. Only my continuing presence keeps the image in being. The reason is that the image is not made of the mirror but only in the mirror.”4 The mirror is completely passive. That is also what “nothing” is. “Nothing” is not some kind of subtle matter out of which God creates. It is completely passive. God creates the things in it. Just as one’s image remains in the mirror only as long as one stays in front of it, so the whole universe is maintained in being by the continuous presence of the divine action.
6b) Preservation and Creation
Preservation is the continuation of creation (sent. comm.).
St. Thomas explained, “The preservation of things by God is a continuation of that action whereby He gives existence, which action is without either motion or time.”5 Preservation is not a reiteration of the creative action, as if it had to be continuously repeated. Rather, it is the very same uninterrupted act.
On God’s part, there is no distinction between creation and preservation. However, from the point of view of the effect of each action, creation is distinct from preservation, since in the former case, the creature has no precedent to its being, while in the latter, the creature is maintained in its being.
6c) Freedom of Annihilation
God can annihilate. If he would just cease his influence, the created beings would revert to nothing (sent. comm.).
This would not require a new operation. All that it requires is the termination of the divine action. Nevertheless, Sacred Scripture does not mention any case of annihilation. Rather, it stresses the stability of being in created things. “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Eccl 1:4). “I know that whatever God does endures for ever” (Eccl 3:14). Although God can annihilate, it seems more fitting to the divine wisdom not to annihilate anything created.
7. Divine Causality in the Activity of Creatures
God governs the entire world. He sometimes uses the cooperation of his creatures to accomplish this task of government. This is not a sign of weakness on God’s part, but of his greatness and goodness. Besides their existence, God gives his creatures the capacity and dignity to act by themselves, to be causes and principles of other creatures; thus, all cooperate with God’s designs.6
7a) The Divine Causality
God cooperates immediately in every act of his creatures (sent. comm.).
The Roman Catechism of St. Pius V teaches that God does not just preserve whatever exists or merely rule creation with his providence. He also moves creatures in their own movements and actions with an interior force.7
This doctrine about the divine intervention in the operations of the creatures appears in Sacred Scripture: “O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us, thou hast wrought for us all our works” (Is 26:12); “There are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one” (1 Cor 12:6).
The Fathers of the Church frequently explained how God is the cause of the operations both of irrational and free creatures.8 The heretic Pelagius falsely maintained that Christians could perform salvific works without grace. To explain this, he claimed that God creates the operative potencies, but their exercise depends exclusively on man. To refute his thesis, the Fathers of the Church had to explain how divine causality acts on created causality in detail. They maintained that without divine concurrence, we would be unable to do anything at all. Thus speaking, the Fathers of the Church were referring to salvific actions in general. Nevertheless, they also taught that without the divine cooperation, no creature could perform even its natural operations.9
All creatures that are made and preserved in being by God have some operative potentialities—real abilities to act according to the nature the Creator has given them. The nightingale has the capacity to sing and to fly. People can know, love, laugh, and do many other things. Each of these operative potentialities given to creatures by God is ordained to a proper act, which is its operation—the song of the nightingale, the thought of a person. That act, as something more perfect, has a certain entity (i.e., more “being”) added to the potential. Therefore, it must be caused by God. Only he can supply that “being” added to the potential, since creatures cannot create (produce being), but only modify or transform things that already exist.
The divine intervention in the operation of the creatures (cooperation) is so profound that it directly and immediately reaches the operations of all created beings.10
Nevertheless, the immediate causal presence of God does not obliterate the proper causality of the creature. The effect is at once totally God’s and totally the creature’s, though in different planes. Creatures cause their own operations as secondary and particular causes; the very same operations come from God as first and universal cause. But how is this possible?
7b) The Creatures’ Causality
When a creature acts, the effect is produced completely by God and completely by the creature, but on different planes.
In spite of its limitations, an example may help us. Let us think of a pocket calculator. It has been designed by an engineer and has been programmed to perform a number of arithmetical operations. Nevertheless, in order to perform an operation, it is not enough for the machine to be programmed to perform it. It must be moved to operate by someone pressing the right keys. Something analogous takes place in the case of the creature, differing in that God not only gives it a nature with certain capabilities and operative potencies, but he also gives it its being and preserves it. Still, God has to move these capacities to operate so that they are actualized; otherwise, they would remain inactive.
Created causes act with their own causality. This means they act by means of their being, their nature, and their potentialities. Nevertheless, they receive all those capacities that allow them to act from God. God not only gives them the capacities, he also preserves in being their nature and the potentialities of their nature, which enable them to act. Besides, they receive from God both the motion by which the subject can begin to operate and the application of the potentialities to their objects.
That is why, although the creature acts with its own causality, God is also the total cause of this operation of the creature and the total cause of the effect that follows.
Going back to the calculator analogy, we cannot say that it has done part of the calculation and the operator has done the other part. The calculator did the whole operation, since the operator just keyed in the data and waited for the results. But we can also say that the operator has done the whole thing, since microchips cannot really think. The maker had to build all the indications of how to carry out such an operation into the calculator, and the operator had to give the command to do the calculation.
Therefore, both the calculator and the operator are the cause of the operation, though in different orders.
Divine and created causality should not be thought of as two figures that are added up to reach a total effect. God is not the cause of a part of the effect and the creature of the other part. God is the cause of everything, and the creature is the cause of its whole effect, but in different orders.
8. Divine Providence and Government
Divine providence is the plan that God has for his creatures by which he ordains each one of them to the end he has chosen for it. Divine government is the execution of this plan; it is the actual guiding of each creature to the end of its own nature.
8a) The Universal Government of God
God governs all that he has created (de fide).
Every creature made by God is also led toward the end for which it was created, that is, it falls under the divine government.
The Magisterium of the Church, in the First Vatican Council, has defined this truth: “By his providence God protects and governs all the things that he made, reaching from end to end with might and disposing all things with gentleness (cf. Wis 8:1). For ‘all things are naked and open to his eyes’ (Heb 4:13), even those things that are going to occur by the free action of creatures.”11
As for the teachings of Sacred Scripture, Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount that the providence of our heavenly Father reaches even to the most insignificant creatures like the birds of the air, the lilies, and the grass of the field. But he takes special care of the rational creatures (cf. Mt 6:26ff). In his first epistle, St. Peter exhorted us to have trust in divine providence: “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (1 Pt 5:7).
The Fathers of the Church defended the reality of divine providence against the fatalism of the pagans and the practice of astrology. St. John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and others wrote entire books about divine providence. In his Confessions and in The City of God, St. Augustine considered in great depth the providential action of God in individual lives and in the history of peoples.
A glance at the sky on a clear night will show an almost infinite number of celestial bodies. Each one moves in the universe according to a precise law. In spite of their great number, they are all ordered in perfect harmony. If we study the life of the animals and plants in a forest, we would not find less order. Each one of those beings has its own way of life, different from the others, yet they complement one another in such harmony that there is a perfect ecological balance. It would not be reasonable to think that the perfect order of the universe is due to an extraordinary coincidence. From these simple experiences, we can draw a logical conclusion: God did not just create a multitude of beings, without order or harmony. He wants each one of them to fulfill its proper end (to give glory to God) in an orderly way. He has subjected each one of them to most wise laws so that they may achieve the end fitting their nature. This ordaining plan of God is divine providence.
Divine providence embraces all things. Since all things have received their being from God, they must be subject to the order that he has imposed on all beings.
8b) Providence and Freedom
Divine providence embraces all things and is infallible, but it directs all things according to their proper nature—the necessary as necessary and the free as free (sent. comm.).
Throughout the ages, there have been people who believe in “blind destiny,” “karma,” or fate. These old pagan ideas are opposed to the faith. No power can direct the events and the creatures’ actions contrary to divine government. God has foreseen a plan to bring all things to perfection, and this plan is fulfilled with an infallible certitude, without error.
Modern scientism often uses the word chance to refer to the ultimate cause of any event. Strictly speaking, however, chance does not exist, because every effect has a cause. Nothing is uncaused except God. On the other hand, we can speak of chance in relative terms, from the point of view of the inferior causes. However, we cannot really speak of chance with regard to the superior cause, which had already foreseen that a particular event would take place.
We could compare it to a manager who sends his secretary to the bank on some business. A little later, he sends a clerk to the same place to pay some bills. If the secretary and the clerk meet each other at the counter of the bank, they might think that it has been a coincidence. However, the manager would not think so because he sent them both to the same place.
Something similar happens with regard to all the events that occur in the universe. One can speak of fortuitous events from the point of view of the particular cause, but not from God’s point of view. Everything is foreseen by God who, through his providence, ordains everything to the good of his creatures.
We should also note that divine providence and government are not opposed to the freedom enjoyed by creatures endowed with will. When God governs, he does not impose his will on creatures; he moves each one to act according to its natural way of being. He has imposed a law on the quartz crystal, another one on the cypress, and another one on man, each according to its own nature. Therefore, God will never move a quartz crystal to sing or a cypress to fly. Neither will he move man to act against his freedom. Crystal, cypress, and man will fulfill the plan of providence. Minerals, animals, and plants will fulfill it in a necessary manner. Angels and men will fulfill it without being deprived of their freedom, that is, without violence to their natural manner of action. God moves each creature according to its nature. He has given some the gift of freedom, and he moves them to use it. The exercise of freedom does not escape the plan of God.
8c) Second Causes
On the part of God, providence is immediate with respect to each creature. But in its execution—the government of the world—God ordinarily makes use of other creatures (sent. comm.).
In divine providence, we can distinguish between the order intended and its execution. The order intended in the development of events depends immediately on God without any mediation. On the other hand, God makes use of created causes for the fulfillment of his plans. These causes act according to the divine plans and by virtue of their own causality. Theirs is a participated causality, created and dependent on God as First Cause.
St. Thomas explains God’s way of acting with an argument of fittingness: The purpose of God’s government over the creatures is to lead them to perfection. The more perfection God communicates to the governed creatures, the more perfect his government will be. A being is more perfect if, aside from being good, it is also the cause of another being’s goodness. In the same way, the government of the universe is more perfect if God makes some creatures govern the others as second causes (causae secundae).12
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 301–314.
2. DS 3003.
3. St. Jerome, Letter 133.6.
4. F.J. Sheed, Theology and Sanity (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973), p. 87.
5. ST, I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4.
6. Cf. Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1:2:22.
7. Cf. CCC, 306.
8. Cf. Origen, In Num. hom. 23.4; St. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 35.2ff.
9. Cf. St. Jerome, Contra Pelagium 1.3; St. Augustine, Letter 205.17; De Civitate Dei 7.30; De gen. ad litt. 4.12.23; 5.20.40; 8.26.48.
10. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Sent. d. 37, c. 1, a. 1, ad 4.
11. DS 3003.
12. Cf. ST, I, q. 103, a. 6; CCC, 306–308.