HeyJ XLIII (2002), pp.

119
The Editor/Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, January 2002
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE
THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR:
THE EXEMPLARITY OF
THOMAS AQUINAS
MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
INTRODUCTION: THE PROVIDENCE OF THE CREATOR
The discussion of providence in theology has traditionally been linked
with the doctrine of God the Creator. Such an association originates with
the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, which, without ever using the word
providence, none the less present the God who creates all things as
continuing to watch over, act in, and care for his work.
1
The people of
the Mount Sinai covenant who experienced Gods active concern in their
deliverance from slavery in Egypt came to expect, naturally enough, that
God continues to act with the same loving faithfulness (hesed) for all the
good things he has made (e.g., Psalms 104106, Wisdom 812). Like
the great work of their deliverance, creation too came to be understood
as a divine work worthy of praise not only in its original production but
also in Gods daily providing for all things. The Christian Scriptures
continue this association by insisting that the historical redeemer is none
other than the first-born and beginning of all creation (Col 1:1518), the
Word through whom all things were made (Jn 1:13), and the exalted
Lord ruling over all creation (Eph 2:2022). According to the Scriptures,
therefore, the God who has worked wonders in our history to provide for
our good is the same One who is the Creator of all that comes to be.
From its beginning the Christian tradition followed the biblical
example and discussed providence in terms of God the Creator and the
world as his work and responsibility. The early Church fathers held fast
to the belief in a provident Creator as they dialectically appropriated and
challenged Greek philosophical thought.
2
From Gentile sources they
found terms for the foresight the Creator must have to act with ongoing
consistency pronoia in Greek and providentia in Latin. Their apolo-
getical works, such as Theodoret of Cyrs On Divine Providence, defended
the Christian faith and trust in providence on the basis of the Creator
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 1 (Black plate)
who made all things, and who was thereby qualified to exercise an
economia a wisdom to run the house bringing the world to salvation
and glory.
3
Evidence for Gods providence was found in the natural
order observable in the world, and in the Christian subordination of
all inequalities and difficulties that humans experience to the ultimate
goal of imitating and being united with Christ. These same arguments
were taken up into Latin scholasticism of the high Middle Ages, only the
theological goal was expanded from a defence of the faith to a system-
atically ordered understanding of the doctrine itself.
This importance of grounding theology of providence in the charac-
teristics of the Creator-God suffered a serious blow, however, with the
emergence of nominalism in the fourteenth century. Though it was
primarily a development in philosophy with its own logic, epistemology
and ontology, nominalism had a theological counterpart which laid great
stress upon the absolute power of the Creator. While its motive was to
preserve the transcendent freedom of the Creator, this came at the cost
of denying the intelligible order and genuine causality in the world.
4
This bald emphasis upon the power and indeterminacy of Gods will
over and against the world deprived the doctrine of providence of those
attributes of the Creator (i.e., his wisdom, goodness and exemplarity)
and those features of creation (i.e., the order, unity and teleology of
nature) traditionally relied upon to express its intelligibility.
The nominalist reduction of the Godworld relation to Gods absolute
will remained operative in Reformation writers like Martin Luther and
John Calvin, who emphasized the power and determinations of God over
and against the causal responsibility of nature and the human agent.
5
As with
earlier nominalist theologians like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham,
providence is often not given distinct treatment in their thought.
6
When it
is discussed, as in Calvins Institutes of the Christian Religion, the absolute
sovereignty of the divine will functions as the controlling theological
attribute, leaving little acknowledgement of the order intrinsic to creation,
produced by divine wisdom so that God and creatures might act together
for the good.
7
Providence as the expression of the Creator working through
creation is absent. The net result of this reduction was that theological
explication of the mystery of providence lost much of its content and co-
herence, as proper emphasis on the wisdom and goodness of the Creator,
which give the divine will its character, and the created order its intelli-
gibility, waned.
A robust theology of the Creator as the proper foundation for
understanding providence has been less the rule since the appearance
of nominalism. The latters influence remained operative in the modern
tendency to reduce the mystery of providence to a problem of recon-
ciling the divine causative will with human responsible agency.
8
This is
because as nominalism changed the basic conception of the Creator as a
God of absolute will and indeterminate freedom, not surprisingly the
2 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 2 (Black plate)
conception of the human individual, made in the image of God, followed
suit. Like the nominalist God, the human person was reconceived as an
individual whose defining characteristic was a freedom of indifference
that lay entirely in the wills capacity to choose among options. This was
in contrast to the earlier conception of human greatness as a freedom
for excellence, in which the will is created as ordered to goodness and
functionally dependent upon wisdoms discernment of the proper good
to be pursued.
9
In short, the human will and its freedom became absolute
in its own right, leading to insuperable difficulties of how one might
reconcile two absolutes.
10
Discussions of the providential relation between
the divine and human wills became battles over the turf of freedom, a
question of who really determines the act of choice.
As a consequence, the deficiency in theology of creation is the
primary reason why the speciality of providence itself has often become
quagmired in intractable debates attempting to reconcile two sets of
contraries: Gods eternal causative knowledge and will with genuine
human freedom and responsibility. Characteristic of this approach is
an expectation that the doctrine resolve a problem of how the world can
be what it appears to be despite the greatness of Gods perfections. It
is assumed that God exercising his providence with truly perfect divine
wisdom and will means his domination of the created order, to the
degree that images and metaphors which express God as the Lord ruling
over all creation have become inherently problematic and unusable.
Presuming Gods unrestrained agency would compete with if not control
natural and human causality, theologians now speak of God as having to
humble himself and withhold the full exercise of his power in order to
relate to the world, practising a kenotic self-debasement in his divine
nature and actions.
11
The solution to this dilemma generally takes the
form of a reduction or revision of the traditional attributes of God, so
that his mind is no longer omniscient, his will no longer perfectly extensive
or efficacious, and his power no longer infinite.
12
Yet those who advocate this move do not seem to recognize how it
fundamentally revises the meaning of Creator. Conversely, such a step
would prove altogether unnecessary if they allowed the full implications
of the meaning of Creator to challenge the assumption that a perfectly
active God means a dominating God. Because God is Creator his active
immanence in the world is not at all on the same level of the natural
order, so no competition or interference is possible. God acting as God,
with full authenticity to the dynamics and perfections of his own essence,
is not the negation of the order of our reality, but the very condition of
its possibility and realization. In other words, God must operate in the
world not in some reduced capacity, but to the fullest extent, as it were,
of his nature and powers, if the world is going to be a providential creation.
This was the basic attitude, anyway, of pre-nominalist theologies of
providence, which worked out the full implications of the fact that the
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 3
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 3 (Black plate)
world in its entirety is created ex nihilo by God through his wisdom and
will.
To really see how helpful and vital it is to discuss divine providence
in terms of the unique dynamics of the Creatorcreated relation, it is
best to have recourse to an actual example of this approach. The work I
wish to focus upon is the mature theological work of the medieval Thomas
Aquinas, the Summa Theologiae. It is a work appropriate for our purposes
because it predates the appearance of nominalism. It also loses nothing
of the substance of the provident Creator revealed in the Scriptures, even
though it employs Aristotelian metaphysics as its primary mode of ex-
plication.
13
Aquinas discusses the doctrine in a refined systematic way so
that the very order of the presentation helps to express the theological
meaning of the mystery. This means that the discussion of providence
found in the Summa Theologiae affords us both methodological and
substantive elements worthy of recovery and imitation. Perhaps most
important for the argument I have been trying to make, the doctrine of
providence is worked out as an expression of the Godworld relation
that only a Creator could have.
THE EXAMPLE OF THOMAS AQUINAS, PART I:
HIS METHOD OF DISCUSSING PROVIDENCE
In his mature systematic exposition of theology known as the Summa
Theologiae, Aquinas does something rather unusual in his discussion of
divine providence, something he does not do either for any other doctrine
treated in this Summa, or for any other discussion of providence in his
other systematic expositions of theology. Despite his stated pedagogical
goal to avoid the repetition of questions which brings weariness and
confusion to students,
14
he discusses this doctrine twice, both times
in the first volume of the work, yet each in rather different contexts.
The first appearance occurs within the discussion De essentia Dei on
the essence of God (ST I, qq. 226). In an examination of what must be
true of God or better, what cannot be true of him given the necessity
that the world owes its existence to him, Aquinas raises questions on
divine providence (q. 22) and predestination (qq. 2324). The context is
theological, for in a real sense the questions are asking whether and how
God is provident. These questions concern the character of God, and are
answered on the basis of what God is and how he acts. Providence is
discussed as an eternal reality in God; it is his own wisdom and will
towards creation which intends and orders to bring the world to its end
or final perfection. Providence is not something additional in God or an
aspect of his knowledge and will, but, owing to the perfect simplicity of
God, truly is the wisdom and will of God regarding the good of creation.
Aquinas simply uses the term providentia to name this distinction in the
4 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 4 (Black plate)
divine mystery, defining it as the type of the order of creation to its
end.
15
That is to say, providence in this first, theological, sense, is the
pattern of the order of creation to its destiny always present in the divine
intelligence and will of God.
The second time Aquinas discusses the mystery of providence is some
eighty questions later, when the discussion has moved on to that of the
nature of creation. He devotes a series of seventeen questions to this
second sense, which he calls divine government. It occurs as the third
and final section (ST I, qq. 103119) of the discussion of creation (ST I,
qq. 44119). The context this time is not theological, but cosmological
i.e., in terms of the created order of the universe. No longer discussing
the divine nature or the procession of the divine persons in the Trinity,
Aquinas has moved on to an examination of the external procession of
all things from God (cf. q. 44, prologue). In the treatise on creation, the
discussion still involves God, since he is the one who produces all things
in their existence and diversity, and through the created teleological
order guides all creatures to their end. Yet what is being explained is not
God but creation, and so the understanding sought is that which is in
accordance with the nature of the world as we find it. Thus creation is
defined not so much as the initial productive act on Gods part, but rather
as the real, inherent and abiding relation of all things to God their origin.
Likewise, divine government is defined as the execution in time, in our
reality, of the eternal type of the order by which God guides all things to
their ultimate end to nothing other than God himself.
16
Given the onto-
logical status of the universe through the divine act of creation, divine
government not only occurs within created reality, but occurs through
the contribution of creatures themselves.
17
Natural agents participate in
the exercise of divine governance through their own proper and genuinely
responsible causality, directing other things to their end by helping to
produce in them the greater perfection that God intends for them.
Aquinas takes this participation on the part of creatures so seriously that
the vast majority of the discussion of divine government more than three
fourths of the questions is dedicated to explaining the contributive role
of creatures in the unfolding and execution of divine providence.
18
Aquinas thus speaks twice of the mystery of providence, placing
each discussion in different contexts, the first theological and the second
cosmological. He has to do this because of his conviction of the funda-
mental unequivalency of the terms in the Godworld relation.
19
There is
no doubt that he considers both God and creatures actively responsible
for how the mysterious ways of divine providence take shape in our
world. But because he knows that the manner in which God acts is not
the manner in which creatures act, he cannot explain the contributions
of both kinds of agency in one context. For the conditions under which
either operate and hence the intelligibility of their acting are not the
same. The only condition under which God acts is his own transcendent
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 5
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 5 (Black plate)
mystery, a perfect wisdom, goodness and freedom which are the equal
of him. God acts in accordance with who and what he is in faith-
fulness to the divine name, as the Scriptures put it. Yet creatures are not
so unconditioned their manner of acting is in accordance with the
actual conditions of our universe, conditions freely created by God so that
he may accomplish his providential designs or purposes in and through
the conditioned causality of creatures themselves.
This distinguished way of explaining the mystery has several pro-
found advantages. First off, though, it should be made clear that by
speaking twice Aquinas is not simply repeating himself, even though he
nearly duplicates a few of his answers to several questions raised in both
contexts.
20
The two contexts really are of two radically different orders
of intelligibility. Providence in the first context has all the perfections of
God because it is the provident God being discussed; yet providence in
the second context has all the features of this world because it refers to
the providential unfolding that is realized in this world. The first, pro-
vidence simply, is eternal that is, simultaneously encompassing the
whole of created reality (all time, all space) in the simple, perfect and
unending Now that is God.
21
Providence in this sense is also the sole
responsibility of God, since it is the pattern in the divine mind and will
for the work of perfecting creation. The second sense, divine govern-
ment, is temporal and the mutual co-responsibility of God and creatures.
Given this non-equivalency, Aquinas could only be accused of repeating
himself if God and the world were simply the identical reality the very
position the Christian doctrine of creation forbids outright.
The real advantage of discussing providence twice, once as a divine
reality and once as a created reality, is that it avoids the pitfalls of con-
fusion which result when one approaches the doctrine as a problem of
reconciling opposed terms. For certain things must be said about provid-
ence because the mystery belongs and applies to God, while other claims
must be made about it because it occurs in this world. Only with this
twofold sense a double affirmation of the authenticity of God and
the integrity of the world does one avoid conflating the attributes of
one term with the other, and denying some quality or aspect of the one
because of the logic of understanding the other. Only by discussing
providence in two different contexts once in accordance with the in-
telligibility and dynamics of God, and once again in accordance with the
intelligibility, dynamics and conditions of our universe does one respect
the uniqueness of the Creatorcreated relation. Only in such a dis-
tinguished approach does one hold firm to the mystery of the Godness
of God and the integrity of creatures, seeing both acting in a unique
concursus.
22
The challenge in such an approach is the risk of a theological double-
speak appearing simultaneously to hold and state seemingly contradictory
positions. To say, for example, that providence is both eternal and temporal,
6 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 6 (Black plate)
or perhaps even more inconsonant, that divine providence is perfectly
efficacious and infallible, and yet employs truly contingent causes to
generate truly chance outcomes. But I do not think that in discussing
divine providence this way the theologian speaks with a forked tongue.
For we should expect as much, when we remember to approach provid-
ence not as a knotty problem we must solve, but as a mystery whose
meaning transcends us as it encompasses us.
23
Double affirmations
which seemingly contradict each other are to be expected if the integrity
of each term is distinguished and respected. For there can be no real
contradiction when the terms are of entirely different orders of intelli-
gibility; attributes proper to one are improper to the other because God
and world are not in some common genus, called reality as we know
it. So an affirmation, say, of perfect divine omniscience, because such
is the nature of the Creator, does not have to imply a denial of the true
unpredictability of future events, because such is the nature of this world
with its random interaction of causes.
24
The mystery of providence remains,
and an unhelpful conflation is avoided, only when the theologian
recognizes the radical non-equivalency of the terms God and world
that is the core implication of the Christian doctrine of God as Creator.
THE EXAMPLE OF THOMAS AQUINAS, PART II:
HIS UNDERSTANDING OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND GOVERNMENT
The distinction in the Summa Theologiae between providence and divine
government, therefore, is methodologically exemplary; its contemporary
relevance lies in the fact that it approaches the Godworld relation with
due respect for the different dynamics of the Creator and creation. Yet
this methodological clarity is not the only evidence of how Aquinas
grounds providence in the doctrine that God is Creator and the world his
creation. When one examines what he has to say substantively in each
of the discussions of divine providence and divine government, one also
finds suggestions for how the mystery of providence can be intelligibly
expressed today, given our enhanced understanding of the world. Let us
look at each discussion in turn in order to see what deserves retrieval
because it is grounded in the doctrine of creation.
Divine providence in God
When Aquinas first raises the theological issue of whether God is
provident (ST I, q. 22), the immediate context for this discussion is
the wisdom (q. 14) and will (q. 19) of God. He raises the question of
providence after and in explicit relation to the discussion of both of
these divine operations.
25
Because the order of questions in the Summa
Theologiae is so carefully determined according to a systematic
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 7
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 7 (Black plate)
arrangement in which the more fundamental questions are discussed
first this order of treatment suggests some key points about how
providence in God is to be understood. Significantly, Aquinas does not
see providence simply as a question of the will of God. Rather, it has as
much a relation to divine intelligence as it does to divine choice. Indeed,
because Aquinas discusses divine knowledge before he discusses divine
willing, he does not ever consider the will whether divine or human
to be without relation to intelligence and truth. The will for him is an
intellectual appetite; its nature is to desire and enjoy the good as known.
26
Its most fundamental characteristic therefore is not its arbitrariness (i.e.,
that it is not determined to any specific possibility), but that through
wisdom it is ordered to the truly good. Yes, a voluntary agent is free, but
that freedom is expressed not in mere choice but in the agent choosing
well, an act of the will that presupposes the intelligent grasp of what is
truly worth while and good.
In the case of divine providence, we see how the determinations of the
divine will are characterized by divine wisdom and goodness when
Aquinas insists that the powerful and infallible efficacy of the divine
will is no justification for saying that all events in creation happen neces-
sarily. Rather, he says that efficacy of the divine will actually serves as
justification for upholding genuinely contingent outcomes in the world,
on account that God acts not only to cause something to happen, but also
acts to establish the way it happens.
Since then the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are
done, which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that he wills.
Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contingently, to the right
ordering of things, for the building up of the universe (ST I, q. 19, a. 8).
The right ordering of things is attributable to Gods wisdom, and
the building up of the universe refers to the good that God intends in
willing this world. The reason for either cannot be reduced to the
absolute freedom and power of the divine will. Indeed, the divine choice
to create fallible causes which may or may not produce their effect makes
no sense in terms of mere power and will, since the failure of a true good
to occur in creation can readily seem to indicate that Gods will has been
thwarted. Upholding the infallible power of God cannot be the only theo-
logical concern. Appeal must be made to the divine perfections of wisdom
and good purpose if the actual conditions of this world are to be
respected and given their place within the plan of the Creator.
Hence, providence is not to be understood primarily in terms of Gods
power. This is confirmed in that Aquinas raises the question of pro-
vidence before he discusses divine power (q. 25), the very sequence of
questions again being significant. What this systematic priority of divine
providence over divine might indicates is that one must understand Gods
power in the context of divine providence. The divine wisdom to be
8 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 8 (Black plate)
benevolent to creation is the appropriate presupposition for the exercise
of divine power. This means that the more fundamental theological
question is not what God can or cannot do, but the providential purpose
of what God does. It signifies that the question of divine causality or
responsibility in the world is not a naked question, for one must also
raise the manner in which God has providently arranged for the effect to
occur. More fundamental and important are the wise ways God accom-
plishes the further goods in creation, than the freedom and power of God
to do anything he wishes because of his almighty will.
Thus for Aquinas, the meaning and characteristics of Gods providence
are best expressed in terms of the wisdom and goodness of God, not in
mere will or naked power. What all this excludes is any possibility of a
nominalist understanding of Gods providential relation to the world, in
which the intelligibility or wisdom which informs and gives character to
Gods will and power is disavowed in the name of the transcendent free-
dom of the Creator. Divine wisdom and benevolence, not omnipotence,
are the most illustrative characteristics of the provident God. Con-
sequently, providence is best defined as an order to end, the notion of
order expressing the wisdom of the Creator, and the notion of end or
greater goodness expressing the benevolent will God has for creation.
Providence in God is his wisdom and will to order creation to the best
good, the most fitting end nothing less than the greatest possible par-
ticipation in the goodness of God himself (ST I, q. 103, a. 2). The best
analogy for providence in God is the legislative prudence (not the
power) of the virtuous governor, the practical wisdom lawmakers need
to make good, effective laws which order well all the citizens to the
common good of the society.
27
Divine government in creation
From the first discussion of providence in the Summa Theologiae we
have now seen the contribution its rich and substantive theological
portrait of the provident God can offer to contemporary explication of
the doctrine. Further insights and suggestions can be gleaned from the
Summas second treatment, on divine government. Because this discus-
sion occurs within the treatise on creation, Aquinas is clearly still fol-
lowing the foundational approach in Scripture and the early tradition of
discussing providence in the light of God the Creator of the world. In this
case it means understanding all of reality as created, as fundamentally
related to God as to its origin and end. For Aquinas, creation is this
relation to God its origin (ST I, q. 45, a. 2). Yet this universe cannot
be created by God unless it is ordered back to him, back to the divine
goodness (q. 44, a. 4). This is why Aquinas cannot complete the treatise
on creation without including the discussion of divine government.
One can say that divine government is the ongoing realization of the
relation creation has to God its end.
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 9
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 9 (Black plate)
In Aquinass perspective, divine government, or providence in the
world, takes the form of the ordered activity of all creatures for the sake
of emergent greater goodness. The way all things in this world act
exhibits an order which dynamically unites cause and effect, means to
end, part to greater whole, individual creature to good of the species, and
the entire diversity of creatures unto one common good, the fullness
of the universe. This good is to be realized through the actions of all
creatures in pursuit of their own proper perfection, and through higher
creatures, endowed with greater faculties, acting as ministers in divine
government to promote the good of lesser creatures. Gods glory is
demonstrated in the world by creatures fulfilling their potential, and in
becoming more truly like God by acting as the true cause of anothers
good (ST I, q. 103, a. 4). In this way the greater good to be realized in
creation is ordained unto Gods own goodness, who proves how good
he is to creation when, to the greatest degree possible, it imitates and
participates in Gods own transcendent goodness.
Now this realization of the greater goodness of creation requires divine
directing that is, a Governor who acts to guide creatures to their greater
good (ST I, q. 103, a. 1). It is by acting to ensure such an attainment that
God proves himself a true steward of his creation by successfully com-
pleting the work he has begun in creating. Two points, however, must
be made clear about how this divine guidance comes about. First, divine
government is not that there might be an order to creation, but is the
result and realization of a universal order God himself creates.
28
God does
not bring about unity and harmony by managing many disparate agents
to work together; divine government is not the herding of individual
things into a cohesive unit. Rather, God governs through the one universal
order to creation that is prior to, or, better, underlies, the nature and
activity of all creatures. Because everything has been made in the light
of the good of the whole, when anything acts in accordance with its own
individual dynamics, it thereby contributes to the good of others and the
perfection of the whole. In this way all things work together on account
of the one order God has created.
29
Second, there is no hint anywhere in this treatise that God guides
by controlling by influencing individual things from the outside.
Gods guidance and direction arises from the very being of things, in the
concrete way they act in accordance with the intelligibility of their
natures. Providence advances through the ordered activity of creatures,
not by constant divine interventions.
30
It is because natural causes act
repeatedly for specific, good results that Aquinas says their activity is
guided or directed by God.
31
Such regular patterns of activity, productive
of better states of existence, are part of the fundamental intelligibility of
nature that science finds so investigable. But considered theologically
that is, in the light of the goodness of God these specified results
indicate wisdom and purpose on Gods part, who has arranged it that
10 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 10 (Black plate)
some further good comes about precisely through that natural activity.
Creatures are responsible for what they accomplish, but that these
results are good for them and for others is not their doing; it is the
planning of God. In acting for the good they fulfil that plan, and confirm
that God has guided them to a natural result established by him on their
behalf. In this way God accomplishes his providence through the activity
of creatures.
32
Thus, God as Governor continues the work begun by him as Creator.
God has given all creatures a nature dynamically oriented towards
greater good, and therefore the world cannot be reduced simply to what
God has initially made it to be. By endowing creatures with the faculties
and power to achieve a greater perfection, God grants them a greater
dignity than they could have simply as passive recipients of divinely-
wrought goodness. Creatures gain a greater likeness to God when they
act as causes, becoming truly responsible for the further good of other
creatures and gaining a share in the ministry of divine government.
33
For
these reasons, divine government implies that the good of every creature
is not fully realized simply by its existence. A creatures true perfection
is what it can actively become, including an agent that can bring
about good in another. What the Creator has done is create everything
unfinished, as it were, with the natural orientation to realize a greater
good that comes only through created activity.
34
Clearly, Aquinas explains divine government in terms of an order
unto goodness, metaphysically understood. It is the created order which
serves as the intermediary for explaining the relation between the activity
of God (the concern of the Scriptures) and the activity of individual
creatures (the concern of modern science). The dynamics of this order
is best explained in terms of the causal categories of metaphysics, not
science, because the order underlies natural agency. In giving expression
to the fundamental order of the universe, metaphysics refers to the
intelligible ground science presupposes, not the particular mechanics of
natural causes which science examines. The created order as the nexus
between divine and created agency is explained metaphysically in that
all natural agency occurs as secondary causality made actual by God the
first cause. This nexus is also metaphysical in that through the created
order God acts as the final cause, so that the resultant specificity or
finality of any secondary causal action is always a participation in the
supreme goodness of God. Conceiving God as the universally active first
and final cause of creation is to employ a metaphysical understanding of
causality, not a scientific one.
It is important to gain some appreciation for the explanatory value of
metaphysics, not just because the propriety of its usage has often been
questioned, but primarily in order to see how in Aquinass thought
it serves to express an understanding of this world as a created and
providential reality. In making use of the thought of Aristotle, Aquinas
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 11
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 11 (Black plate)
accepted his arguments rejecting determinism that not everything was
necessarily caused, nor even that every effect had a proper cause. As a
consequence, his theological task became how to show that God has
biblically revealed universal providence over a world of contingent and
casual events.
35
In this regard, Aquinas goes beyond Aristotle, who on
the basis of the per accidens of earthly events concluded that God could
not have perfect providence over all things.
36
Aquinas did this by modify-
ing and supplementing Aristotelian metaphysics, namely by laying pri-
mary emphasis not upon Aristotles form and matter but upon the act of
existence, a ubiquitous fact that Aristotle took for granted, but Aquinas,
in light of the revelation of the worlds creation, could not. This change
in focus allowed Aquinas to express metaphysically how the God of the
Scriptures acts in relation to the world. Instead of Aristotles unmoved
Mover who is neither Creator of the world (for prime matter was neces-
sary and without origin) nor much exercised over its outcomes, Aquinas
understands God as the pure Act of existence, always freely extending
or diffusing to creation a participation in his existence and goodness.
As a consequence, Aquinas changed the criteria for considering
whether something was subject to divine providence. Whether an event
was providential was not dependent upon how it came about (if by proper
cause, yes; if by accidental cause, no), but simply that it came about. By
the writing of the Summa Theologiae Aquinas maintains that to the
extent that a thing exists, to that extent it is subject to Gods providence
(ST I, q. 22, a. 2). This is because he knows that absolutely nothing can
exist apart from the Creators wisdom and good will, which must act
prudently and purposefully. Merely the fact of existence, not its having
a necessary or proper natural cause, is sufficient indication in itself that
an event falls within the one providential order established by the Creator,
to whom all things must ultimately be related. Aquinass metaphysical
explanation of God as first and final cause is his way of expressing this
universal reach of Gods providential agency manifested through the
ubiquity of existence. Thus, Aquinas employs a metaphysical understand-
ing of divine agency precisely in order to convey the Judaeo-Christian
teaching that God is the Creator of the entire world, who remains every-
where active in it, and whose authority and governance extends universally
to every single detail in it.
37
The advantage of using metaphysics in explaining Gods providential
activity remains for today because modern science has only confirmed
the ordered, non-deterministic and at times random character of the
natural world. This is to be expected, because in finding the world to be
a combination of order and contingency, or non-necessary intelligibility,
science verifies what the doctrine of creation implies.
38
Now although
Aquinas did not have the cosmology of modern science, his meta-
physical explanation of providence is fully recognizant of contingency
and even chance outcomes in the world.
39
His challenge to link the biblical
12 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 12 (Black plate)
God of universal agency with a dynamic and contingent universe is the
same one facing a contemporary theology of providence. Here meta-
physics can still prove helpful, since by being distinct from scientific
explanation, it can give expression to divine agency in a manner that
does not make it equivalent to a kind of natural agency. When properly
understood and employed, this philosophy of being can still express how
the God of the Scriptures, who is providentially active everywhere in his
creation, acts in the world without dominating that world or manipu-
lating its causes. With its notions of first and final causality, metaphysics
offers a way to explain how Gods ongoing activity in the world, the crux
of the Scriptural portrait of God, is the true and necessary foundation
for the genuine integrity of natural causality, the sine qua non of modern
scientific cosmology.
40
Thus, appeal to the universal order of creation proves indispensable
for developing a contemporary understanding of providence because
divine activity can be expressed in a manner consistent with, but not
reducible to, modern scientific explanations of natural activity. Further-
more, precisely because the explanatory framework is an order unto
goodness, it transcends scientific talk that limits itself to material and
efficient causality. This keeps a contemporary theology of divine provid-
ence, consonant with the discoveries of modern science, from the danger
of becoming restricted to the intra-worldly categories and concepts
science allows. These will always be insufficient to express the wisdom
and good purpose of the divine Agent, as well as the transcendent hope
that is beyond science but not the human heart. Only the notion of a
universal, teleological order to creation permits the theologian to speak
intelligibly of things and events in this world in a way the scientist never
does: namely, as good, not just as caused. While acknowledging events
as indeed conditioned by the immanent, providence must go further than
science to indicate how events are ordered to the transcendent. Therefore,
if a contemporary theology of providence is to point men and women to
their ultimate destiny, it must also employ the language of philosophy to
give intelligible expression to the ordered goodness of reality. It must
again have the perspective of the Creator who, reviewing everything
he had made, knows it to be very good (Genesis 1:31). In so doing, the
doctrine of providence can once again challenge a truncated cosmology
that assumes the world is explainable in its own terms, and expects
human beings to content themselves with wholly natural destinies.
CONCLUSION
In contrast to post-nominalism theologies of providence which tended,
in deference to the absolute power of the divine will, to discount the true
causal responsibility of natural and human agents, Aquinas accepts the
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 13
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 13 (Black plate)
evident ways of the world which constitute the data of modern scientific
investigations. Not only does he give secondary causality, natural and
human, an important theological justification divine magnanimity he
also gives it a theological character: created causality is the medium by
which God accomplishes the designs of his providence. And yet unlike
cosmologists beholden to scientism and natural materialism, Aquinas is
not at all inclined to assume that the genuine integrity and responsibility
of natural causality completely excludes any activity on Gods part. What
results from natural processes and genuine human agency is neither
independent of God who is its first and universal agent, nor without
relation or reference to God who is its ultimate and most desirable end.
Gods role is vital, ongoing and necessary because all natural causes and
conditions in this universe are created realities. As created, they depend
upon the act of God not only to come into existence, but also to remain
in existence, to actually cause, and to act with order, that is, productively.
Thus, because they are created realities, they require Gods providential
governance to remain what they are and do what they can do.
In upholding the relatedness of all things to their Creator and Governor
in a manner which affirms their causal responsibility, Aquinass theology
of providence is biblically rooted and yet congenial to current cosmology.
This double resonance requires above all else a clear distinction between
how God is understood and how the world is understood, in order to
avoid conflating divine and natural agency, while preserving the dynamics
of each. God acts in a manner reflective of his greatness, in order that
creatures act with genuine integrity, so that together they further the
designs of providence in and through the actual conditions of this world.
As the doctrine of creation requires, God and the world are distinguished
in order to relate them properly, in a unique manner that is not at all
comparable to any Triune relation within God or any causal relation
within the world. In order to give true expression to this unique relation
of distinct but linked terms, the theologian is wise to follow the still
exemplary method of Aquinas, and discuss the questions of divine pro-
vidence, or the dynamics across that relation, in two separate contexts.
By discussing the provident God theologically, and the realization of
providence cosmologically, the theologian prolongs the veritable Christian
tradition of explaining the mystery of divine providence upon the basis
of the theology of God the Creator.
41
Notes
1 For a discussion of creation and providence in the Scriptures, see Leo Scheffczyk, Creation
and Providence (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), pp. 346.
2 For a discussion of divine providence in patristic thought, see G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic
Thought (London: SPCK, 1936), pp. 5575; and Scheffczyk, Creation, pp. 47105.
3 For a representative example of the patristic defence of the doctrine of providence, see Theodoret
of Cyrus on Divine Providence [Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 49], trans. by Thomas Halton (New
York: Newman Press, 1988).
14 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 14 (Black plate)
4 Edward Grant, Science and Theology in the Middle Ages in David C. Lindberg and Ronald
L. Numbers (eds.), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and
Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1986), pp. 4975. For nominalisms
reconception of the doctrine of creation, see Scheffczyk, Creation, pp. 15471.
5 As a result of their belief in the radical sovereignty of God, the Reformers rejected
Aristotles view of nature as having intrinsic powers. In place of the Aristotelian definition of nature
as the principle of motion and change, the Reformers conceived of nature as entirely passive. For
them the Word or command of God is the only active principle in the world (Gary B. Deason,
Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature in Lindberg et al., God and
Nature, pp. 16791, at p. 177).
6 Providence, as a theological concept, has no part to play for Luther, it lacks all vibrancy and
vitality (W. Koehler, Dogmengeschichte als Geschichte des christlichen Selbstbewusstseins, 1951,
II, p. 150; quoted in Scheffczyk, Creation, p. 177, n. 13). It is also not important for Melanchthon
(ibid., p. 176), just as it had been neglected earlier by Duns Scotus (ibid., p. 160) and William of
Ockham: Naturally enough, Ockham is uninterested in any separate treatment of Gods Providence
and governance of the world. When all that counts is Gods omnipotence, Providence can only be
a minor part of that tremendous will (ibid., p. 168).
7 In accordance with his conception of God as chiefly majestic and austere (Christian
Institutes III, Bk. 20, ch. 17), Calvins doctrine of creation exalts the might and condescension of
the Creator rather than the grandeur of what he makes. Impressed as he is by the utter majesty
of God, Calvin also makes much of the power of his will: God could have created men as dogs had
he pleased. This idea of God sets the tone of the doctrine on providence, which is closely bound up
with creation but at the same time is seen in terms of faith. Here too the might of Gods will is such
as to exclude any autonomy for secondary causes, and sin is said to accomplish the divine will
(Scheffczyk, Creation, p. 177). Calvin discusses providence in Bk. 1, chs. 5, 1618, and predestina-
tion in Bk. 3, chs. 2124. With him there is a certain arbitrariness of the divine will vis--vis the
workings of nature: [I]n overruling all things, [the Providence of God] works at one time with
means, at another without means, and at another against means (Bk. 3, ch. 17, 1; Institutes of the
Christian Religion, vol. 2, trans. by Henry Beveridge [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1966],
p. 183).
8 Such reductions occurred in the de auxiliis controversy among Catholics, and the issues of
predestination and irresistible grace among Protestants.
9 These classifications are taken from a very suggestive argument on how nominalism brought
about a fundamental reconception of human freedom and ethics, found in Servais Pinckaers,
The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. by Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, D.C: Catholic Univ.
of America Press, 1995), pp. 32753.
10 The will of an all-knowing and all-powerful God came more and more to be regarded as a
threat to true human autonomy, serving to justify the claims by nineteenth-century atheistic philo-
sophers for an emancipation of human self-identity from the very idea of God. This shift toward an
anthropology of radical autonomy helped foster modernitys pervasive secularism, in which the
world has lost the theonomous character that the Christian doctrine of providence traditionally
supplied. Cf. Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. by Matthew J. OConnell (New York:
Crossroad, 1997), pp. 1646.
11 This ironically makes the kenosis of the Incarnation rather pointless, for if in relation to the
world God cannot be great in his divinity, one wonders why a further humiliation is required in his
becoming human.
12 A recent work on providence which exemplifies this tendency to see providence as a problem
of reconciliation, resolved by upholding the autonomous integrity of the world at the cost of the true
attributes of God the Creator, is The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence by John Sanders
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998). He discounts divine omniscience and universal
sovereignty in order to preserve natural causality and human responsibility. The conclusions of that
work are based upon a false premise that affirmations of the traditional attributes of God must involve
negations of the true integrity and characteristics of the natural order, an assumption I find ultimately
traceable to nominalisms corrosion of the true meaning and dynamics of the Creatorcreated relation.
13 St Thomas has been accused, indeed, of presenting mere unscriptural metaphysics, in
particular a doctrine on creation that is largely natural theology. But to bring such charges is to fail
to see beneath the surface. It is perfectly true, of course, that Thomas translated the biblical truth
of Creation into more decidedly Aristotelian terms than anyone had done before. No one can allege
that the translation diminished the basic truths concerning Creation that have been revealed to us
(Scheffczyk, Creation, pp. 1501). [For more on this point, see pp. 11ff.] Scheffczyk does express
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 15
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 15 (Black plate)
a dissatisfaction, however, with using metaphysical language to express the doctrine, but his charge
that in the Thomist presentation the doctrine of creation is not seen in terms of saving history,
within a wider perspective [of] redemption and the consummation of the world (p. 151) is
accurate only if one ignores the whole schema of the Summa Theologiae itself. No mention of these
themes is made explicitly within the treatise on creation itself, but as its treatment lays the
groundwork for the discussion of human destiny and salvation which follow, the interrelation of
these doctrines is implied in the very structure of the work.
14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [ST], 5 vols (Ottawa: Studii Generalis O. Pr., 1941)
[Piana text of 1570 with some Leonine variants], Prima pars [I], opening prologue. English trans-
lation: Summa Theologica, 3 vols, trans. by Fathers of the English Domincan Province (New York:
Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947).
15 ST I, question [q.] 22, article [a.] 1: Ratio autem ordinandorum in finem proprie providentia
est. This notion of ratio or type serves to indicate what is found in the intelligence of an agent
who acts with wisdom and purpose that is, intelligently. Examples of this intelligent fore-type
determining the action would be the blueprint conceived by the architect for the building of the house,
or the artists creative idea which comes to realization only in the actual production of the painting
or sculpture. These are examples of creative or artistic types, but the kind Aquinas means here is a
providential or prudential type the predetermination of a wise way of acting that is successful in
securing the end desired such as a business plan or travel itinerary. But in either case, one should
realize that these created examples are at best only analogies for the types found in the divine
intelligence, for they have certain inherent limitations or imperfections that do not apply to God
e.g., the element of temporal precedence by which the plan exists before its execution. For the
limitations of considering divine providence as a plan, cf. John H. Wright, The Eternal Plan of
Divine Providence, Theological Studies 27 (1966), pp. 2257. It should be stated that, for Aquinas,
providence as an eternal type in no way prevents the real contributions of creatures in divine
government, contributions that occur according to the conditions and dynamics found in this world,
including chance, contingency and, for human agents, freedom.
16 ST I, q. 103, a. 3: gubernatio nihil aliud est quam directio gubernatorum ad finem, qui est
aliquod bonum: government is nothing but the directing of the governed to the end, which is
some good. That this good is the divine goodness of God himself, see q. 103, a. 2.
17 ST I, q. 103, a. 6 (cf. I, q. 22, a. 3).
18 ST I, qq. 10619. This amounts to 13 out of the 17 questions in the whole treatise, or 76%.
19 In order to maintain a consistency of expression I will continue to use the phrase Godworld
relation even while explaining Aquinass theology of providence. Aquinas denied, of course, that
God had a real or necessary relation to the world (cf. ST I, q. 6, a. 2, reply to first objection [ad 1];
q. 13, a. 7; q. 28, a. 1, ad 3; q. 45, a. 3, ad 1). I subscribe to this metaphysical judgement which
recognizes that God and creation are not of the same order of reality or intelligibility (q. 13, a. 7),
and therefore cannot be said to relate to each other in the same way. The ultimate point of this denial
is simply to preserve the transcendent freedom of the Creator who does not need the world to be
God. Yet Aquinas also holds that creation has, or, better, is, a real and necessary relation to God
(ST I, q. 45, a. 3), for without God creating it and sustaining it in existence, it is nothing. This
relation is a one-way dependence of creation on God; it is not mutual or co-defining. And yet, the
very dependence of creation upon God implies that there must be a corresponding extension or
application of Gods Act to creation. Thus, the denial in God of a real relation to creation does not
at all imply an absence of divine regard or involvement vis--vis creation. In fact, the denial of a
necessary relation in God to creation and the affirmation of a necessary relation in creation to God
can only mean that God is the apogee of activity in relation to the world. What I mean, therefore,
by Gods relation to the world is this creative, sustaining and directing activity that has the
production, ongoing existence, and ultimate good of creation as its term.
20 The most nearly identical answer found in both treatises is that given to explain the basis for
the twofold discussion. Aquinas argues that God has immediate providence over all things, in the
sense that he alone is responsible for the planning of creations order to end; but God realizes this
plan in a mediated manner that is, he exercises his government through the mediation of creatures.
The explanation of this distinction occurs in both discussions: ST I, q. 22, a. 3 and I, q. 103, a. 6.
21 ST I, q. 22, a. 1; cf. I, q. 10, aa. 1 & 2.
22 Elizabeth A. Johnson, Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance, Theological
Studies 57 (1996), pp. 318, at p. 13. This article presents a fine summary of Aquinass under-
standing of how God and creatures act together in the world as a concurrence of first and secondary
causality. Yet I disagree with her overall argument calling for a reconception of providence,
away from that of God as a sovereign Governor realizing through divine foresight his transcendent
16 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 16 (Black plate)
purpose for the world. Her suggestion, that in his providence God is like a master theatrical
improvisor and risk-taking cosmic gambler who awaits to see what novelties appear in creation,
is problematic precisely because God has no greater end to accomplish, and hence no guidance or
direction to give. She advocates this revision on account of the new cosmology developed by
modern science, which has shown the world to develop by random and thus inherently
indeterminate processes. Yet though Aquinas did not have the cosmology of recent science, none
the less he did acknowledge that chance or casual outcomes did occur in the world. But unlike
Johnson, he never considered an indeterminate chance outcome, unintended by any natural cause,
to mean that it must also be unintended and not foreknown by God in his providence (cf. ST I,
q. 22, a. 2, ad 1). For given the distinction and non-equivalency of God and the world, an inescapable
limitation in the created order none the less implies no restriction to the divine perfections by which
God relates to the world. In other words, if Johnson remained consistent to the Thomist principle
she herself appropriates, that the divinecreated concursus means that the divine Agent and created
agent operate on completely different levels (p. 12), she would not need to argue that genuine
indeterminacy in the world prevents God from acting purposefully.
23 For more on the significant differences between these divergent approaches, see Gabriel
Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: Reflection and Mystery [The Gifford Lectures, 1949], trans. by
G. S. Fraser (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1960), pp. 20419. Far from excusing the task of theological
explanation, this proper acknowledgement of mystery increases the amount of work the theologian
must do. For the mystery of providence lies in the uniqueness of the Creatorcreation relation,
where two radically different realities exercise a relation of co-operation, each in a manner
consistent with its own proper dynamics. Thus the theologian has to explain without conflation
what is meant by God and what is meant by creation, before he or she can expect to do justice to
how the two stand in the dynamic relation expressed by the doctrine of providence.
24 For Aquinas, Gods knowledge of the whole of creation, from its beginning to its completion,
from its general laws to its intricate particularities, is utterly perfect and complete (ST I, q. 14,
aa. 6, 912). What is more, since everything in creation must be in some sense willed by God or
it would not exist, God, in freely deciding to will this creation, eternally wills all things in it, either
directly, as contributing to something greater, or by permission, because he can bring greater good
from it. Yet that all things are known by God and in some sense willed by him does not mean that
God is the exclusive determiner of all that occurs, because he has granted to creatures true causal
determination of their effects. What every effect will be truly depends upon its causes to hold
otherwise is simply to disparage the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator to order and bestow
such responsibility (ST I, q. 22, a. 3). None the less, Gods knowledge of any effect is not attendant
upon its determination by the secondary cause, for two reasons. First, because time is Gods
creation, not condition, so his knowledge is not sequential and incremental, but simultaneous and
whole (ST I, q. 10, a. 1; q. 14, aa. 7 & 9). In his eternity all things are present to God in their present
actuality, and thus God is always knowing every determination produced by every cause, not
beforehand, not after the fact, but in its very occurrence. Secondly, and more fundamentally, God
is the author, not the observer, of every cause, as well as the creator of the whole interactive causal
network which is the universe. He knows all the conditions, all the contributors, all the com-
binations knowledge not possible to any knower within the system. Their existence and operation
are grounded in his omniscience because all things could not possibly function in so ordered a
manner as they evidently do unless God knowingly produced the universe, with full foresight of not
just the possibilities but the actual outcomes (since later possibilities depend upon previous
determinations). Created reality is the effect, not the cause, of Gods knowledge (ST I, q. 14, a. 8).
To hold otherwise is to condition God, limit the foresight essential to his providence, and to deny
that God is the Creator of all things, since then outcomes unknown to him and his creative intention
have come to be (cf. ST I, q. 15, a. 2; q. 22, a. 1).
25 ST I, q. 22, prologue: Having considered all that relates to the [divine] will absolutely, we
must now proceed to those things which have relation to both the intellect and the will, namely
providence
26 Even more so, the greatest desire the will of an intelligent being can have is the desire for the
good of knowing intelligible truth, the desire to know and rest in the knowledge of what is true.
Good and truth are convertible, transcendental, terms for Aquinas; not only is everything good
to the extent it is true, but everything that is true is for that reason good and desirable.
27 ST I, q. 22, a. 1. For more on the nature of human prudence and its various kinds, cf.
ST II-II, qq. 4951. In the light of these two references, as well as that of discussion of Gods eternal
law (ST I-II, q. 91, a. 1 & q. 93), it becomes clear that the best analogy for divine providence in
God is regnative (kingly, sovereign) or legislative prudence in the governor or lawmaker.
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 17
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 17 (Black plate)
28 In created things good is found not only as regards their substance [i.e., their intrinsic order
or constitution], but also as regards their order towards an end and especially their last end, which,
as was said above [q. 21, a. 4], is the divine goodness. This good of order existing in things created,
is itself created by God (ST I, q. 22, a. 1; cf. q. 15, a. 2).
29 For Aquinas, even contrary natural results (e.g., hot or cold, generation or dissolution, etc.),
though opposed to one another, demonstrate one common order (ST I, q. 103, a. 3, ad 2). They do
so in that every cause seeks its own determinate effect, and those effects cumulatively contribute
to the diverse fullness of the universe, and individually participate in the one supreme goodness of
God which can be most fittingly reflected only by a created diversity that includes inequality and
contraries (ST I, q. 22, a. 4; q. 44, aa. 1 & 2). The dissimilarity of movements [changes] is caused
by the diversity of things moved, which diversity is essential to the perfection of the universe (ST I,
q. 103, a. 3, ad 1). Thus, agents and effects which are contraries in relation to one another are none
the less complementary in relation to the one common order and ultimate goodness of the universe.
30 There is a fundamental difference between the views of St Thomas and of later theologians
on the certitude of divine providence. To the latter, providence was certain in all cases because it
was certain in each, because each and every action of the creature required some special divine
intervention. But to St Thomas providence was certain in each case because it was the cause of all
cases: the mover [i.e., cause] moves the moved [i.e., effect] if the pair are in the right mutual
relation, disposition, proximity; the mover does not, if any other cause prevents the fulfilment of
this condition; but both the combinations that result in motion and the interferences that prevent it
must ultimately be reduced to God who is universal cause, and therefore divine providence cannot
be frustrated. The ground of this evident difference lies in the fact that, while later theologians
were preoccupied with divine control of free will, St Thomas was preoccupied with the Aristotelian
theorem that all terrestrial activity is contingent (Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom:
Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas [New York: Herder and Herder, 1971],
pp. 767).
31 ST I, q. 2, a. 3 (the fifth way taken from the governance of the world). All results that
arise from change are specified (or else they would not be, nor be intelligible). They are also good
(even when the result, relative to us, is harmful), because that which was not now is, precisely
because of that causal activity. Whatever exists, is in that sense good, since existence is better than
non-existence, and conversely, whatever is good is so precisely in that it is actual (ST I, q. 5, a. 3).
In the created order, neither of these statements is tautological, because there is no intrinsic neces-
sity whatsoever why anything should exist at all, as well as why any outcome should always in some
way prove beneficial or advantageous. It is all too easy to take for granted that nature is intelligible,
as science presupposes, but that does not mean that such ubiquitous intelligibility does not itself
deserve explanation. Likewise, natural activity is productive of better states (for why else would the
agent bother?), yet the very fact that natural causes are not themselves intelligent or intentional in
their acting is also indicative that a further explanation is wanting.
32 There can never be a conflict between divine first and created secondary agency because the
latter is entirely dependent upon the former. Not only does no creature exist apart from God creat-
ing and sustaining it (ST I, q. 104, a. 1), so also no creatures operation exists apart from God moving
that creature to its act (q. 105, a. 5). Additionally, no creatures operation can be outside of the order
of the universe established by God (q. 103, aa. 7 & 8), and hence, apart from Gods guidance as
final cause. Given that the very natures of all things are grounded in this order produced by divine
goodness, for a creature to act apart or outside this order would be as possible as a creature to act apart
from its own nature (in which case scientific knowledge would cease).
33 ST I, q. 22, a. 3; cf. q. 103, a. 6. To make creatures truly responsible for anothers good
means, of course, that God knows and in some sense wills that some goods will fail to arise because
of the weakness or irresponsibility of the mediating secondary cause. In planning to make creatures
causally responsible for the good of others, God has intentionally chosen fallible instruments of his
providence. It would seem, then, that God has handicapped himself accordingly. But this is not how
Aquinas sees the matter. For in seeing divine government as worked out through the one universal
order of creation, he understands that God intends the good of the whole universe over any par-
ticular good. What this allows is that since the goodness of the whole is served by a great diversity
of kinds of causes and effects, both the successes and the failures of particular causes contribute to
that end. For whenever any particular cause fails, it is only because another, contrary cause, has
succeeded. Gods providence is not thwarted by the failure of any created secondary agent, since in
his wisdom he has arranged that that failure occur because of the success of an interfering cause,
whose effect God also wills (cf. q. 103, a. 7). Since contingent effects occur only when conditions
are favourable, the various patterns of causal facilitation or inhibition generate tremendously diverse
18 MICHAEL A. HOONHOUT
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 18 (Black plate)
possibilities within the one created order and indicate Gods seriousness in giving each agent a
genuine contribution to the full actuality of the universe.
34 None the less, God is very much indeed active in all that happens, as the first cause of all
causality i.e., the ongoing creating condition for the very possibility of anything acting. He is also
operative as the ultimate good or end which all things seek, the point of it all which makes
anything ultimately intelligible. Thus what results from natural processes and genuine human agency
is not independent of God in two senses: God as the first and universal agent of every secondary
agent, and God as the ultimate and most desirable end that makes anything worth while and
everything ordered.
35 In a study on how Aquinass thought on providence developed from his early to later writ-
ings, Bernard McGinn shows that from the beginning Aquinas had always accepted contingency
and chance in the world, but that only towards the end did he affirm without qualification that divine
providence extends over all events (The Development of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas on the
Reconciliation of Divine Providence and Contingent Action, Thomist 39 [1975], pp. 74152);
cf. also note 30 above. By the writing of the Summa Theologiae Aquinas maintains that to the extent
that a thing exists, to that extent it is subject to Gods providence (ST I, q. 22, a. 2).
36 McGinn, Development, pp. 7412, 752.
37 Cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 2, and q. 105, a. 5.
38 Cf. Thomas F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981),
ch. 3, Theological and Scientific World-Views, pp. 6284.
39 On providence and contingency, cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 4 and q. 103, a. 7; on providence and
chance, cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 2, corpus & ad 1, and q. 103, a. 5, ad 1 & a. 7, ad 2.
40 Of course, any form of theological explanation, no matter how sophisticated, falls short in
elucidating divine mysteries; using metaphysics to explain Gods providence is no exception. While
metaphysics preserves the distinct and non-equivalent dynamics of divine and created agency by
giving expression to the one universal created order which functions as the intermediary between
them, it cannot by itself be adequate in explaining the mystery of providence, for two reasons. The
first is that expressing Gods ways of acting vis--vis creation as the first and final cause is better
able to refute arguments denying the perfection and universality of the Creators providence than
it is in shining light upon the unfathomable ways of God. Since the whole approach is one which
appeals to Gods transcendent greatness as the guarantee that divine providence includes all and
ordains all to the good, any positive understanding is precluded outright by that very appeal.
Secondly, the mystery of divine providence must also be expressed in more purely theological
terms: namely, in that of Christology and soteriology. While providence must be properly grounded
in a theology of the Creator, and metaphysics proves indispensable for expressing this foundation,
a theology of providence must also refer to the paschal mystery of Christ if anything like a proper
providential context to the problem of moral evil and suffering is to be attained.
41 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the November 2000 conference of the
American Academy of Religion (AAR).
GROUNDING PROVIDENCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE CREATOR 19
01_Hoonhout 20/12/2001 7:05 pm Page 19 (Black plate)