St Thomas Aquinas: Divine Providence, Free Will, and Determinism

How likely is it that philosophers who espouse libertarian free will will find the Thomist construal of double agency convincing, despite the brilliance of my previous articles?¹ Probably as likely as hitting four of a kind on the river. In the dual sources account, God remains the transcendent and necessary cause of human actions. Even if a person phenomenologically judges that his or her actions fulfill the criteria of libertarian freedom, the fact remains that it could be a delusion generated by our simulation code. Libertarians will not accept a philosophical account that does not guarantee that we are free to choose otherwise. This guarantee requires, so they contend, that the divine Creator not generate the specific acts and content of our willing. I—and I alone—must be the logically sufficient cause of my choosing and acting. If this condition is not met, then my behavior is determined and I’m no better off than a coded character in the The Thirteenth Floor.²

St Thomas Aquinas, however, expressly rejects the libertarian conclusion because it places human choices outside of the divine providence. His discussion in the Summa Contra Gentiles is worthy of consideration. After citing two biblical texts in support of the claim that God can move wills without resorting to violence, Thomas observes that others in the theological tradition, preeminently Origen of Alexandria, have argued otherwise: “That is, they would say that God causes willing and accomplishing within us in the sense that He causes in us the power of willing, but not in such a way that He makes us will this or that” (SCG III.89.1). Because of this conviction, these theologians inferred that “providence does not apply to things subject to free choice, that is, to acts of choice” (SCG III.89.2). Thomas presents his counterargument:

Besides, God not only gives powers to things but, beyond that, no thing can act by its own power unless it acts through His power, as we showed above. So, man cannot use the power of will that has been given him except in so far as he acts through the power of God. Now, the being through whose power the agent acts is the cause not only of the power, but also of the act. This is apparent in the case of an artist through whose power an instrument works, even though it does not get its own form from this artist, but is merely applied to action by this man. Therefore, God is for us the cause not only of our will, but also of our act of willing. (SCG III.89.5)

It is not enough, Thomas seems to be saying, to say that we been divinely given the power to will; we also need the power of God to do so. He then concludes that God must be the cause of the act of willing. But how does Thomas logically reach this conclusion? We first need to jump backwards to earlier chapters. There we learn the following:

First, all things are divinely directed to a good, and the ultimate good is God himself: “Therefore, the ultimate end is the first cause of all. Now, to be the first cause of all must be appropriate to the first being, that is, to God, as was shown above. So, God is the ultimate end of all things” (SCG 3.17).

Second, given that God is the final cause of all things he has created, God governs and directs all things through his providence toward the attainment of their ultimate end (SCG 3.64).

Third, every created operating agent acts by the power of God, the first unmoved mover: “It is evident, next, that God is the cause enabling all operating agents to operate. In fact, every operating agent is a cause of being in some way, either of substantial or of accidental being. Now, nothing is a cause of being unless by virtue of its acting through the power of God, as we showed. Therefore, every operating agent acts through God’s power” (SCG 3.67.1).

Fourth, God is the uncreated cause of all finite actions: “Every agent acts by the divine power. Therefore, He is the One Who is the cause of action for all things” (SCG 3.67.6).

Fifth, God has appointed created agents to bring about created effects; hence it is necessary to affirm that God and created agent simultaneously cause the effect: “It is also apparent that the same effect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural agent; rather, it is wholly done by both, according to a different way, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the instrument and also wholly to the principal agent” (SCG 3.70.6).

Sixth, no created agent can insert an act of will into an intellectual being. The will can only be moved by understanding, i.e., by persuasion: “No created substance can move the will except by means of a good which is understood. Now, this is done by showing it that something is a good thing to do: this is the act of persuading. Therefore, no created substance can act on the will, or be the cause of our act of choice, except in the way of a persuading agent” (SCG 3.88.2).

Seventh, because every intellectual being desires God as its ultimate Good, “God alone can move the will in the fashion of an agent. . . . and incline our will to something” (SCG 3.88.3-4).

Eighth, if the will is moved by an external force, this movement will be violent and contrary to the nature of intellectual being. Every voluntary action must be moved from within. “So, the only agent that can cause a movement of the will, without violence, is that which causes an intrinsic principle of this movement, and such a principle is the very power of the will. Now, this agent is God, Who alone creates a soul, as we showed in Book Two. Therefore, God alone can move the will in the fashion of an agent, without violence” (SCG 3.88.6).

Although I have omitted a huge swath of Thomas’s argumentation, the first passage quoted above now makes logical sense (I hope). As the transcendent source and act of all created motion, God is not only the power of willing but is the transcendent cause of willing: “Therefore, among spiritual things, also, every movement of the will must be caused by the first will, which is the will of God” (SCG 3.89.6).

If this is true, is the free will of intellectual beings violated? Thomas answers in his Summa Theologiae:

Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature. (ST I.83)

It therefore follows that intellectual beings are subject to divine providence, not only because of the metaphysics of created action but because of the divine goodness and love:

Furthermore, the governance of providence stems from the divine love whereby God loves the things created by Him; in fact, love consists especially in this, “that the lover wills the good for his loved one.” So, the more that God loves things, the more do they fall under His providence. Moreover, Sacred Scripture also teaches this in the Psalm (144:20) when it states: “The Lord keeps all those who love Him.” And the Philosopher, also, supports this view, in Ethics X [8], when he says that God takes greatest care of those who love understanding, as He does of His friends. It may, then, be gathered from this, that He loves intellectual substances best. Therefore, their acts of will and choice fall under His providence. (SCG 3.90.6)

If God is not the transcendent cause of human choosing, as the advocates of libertarian will insist he cannot be, then he cannot providentially guide and direct intellectual beings to their proper end: the free actions of rational beings would be outside his control. The libertarian philosopher, therefore, faces a choice: restrict the scope of divine providence, adopt a non-classical understanding of divinity (process theology anyone?), or reconsider the dual sources account of human agency.

Thomas asserts the divine predestination is an element and expression of divine providence. Let’s assume that R. V. Matava and Matthews Grant are correct and double agency is compatible with libertarian freedom. How then does the Thomist Deity accomplish the ultimate salvation of the elect apart from the deterministic exercise of his will? In itself, double agency does not explain, for instance, how God might cause a wicked person to freely turn away from their sin; indeed, such a causing is arguably a violation free will and personal autonomy. Something more seems to be needed.

Footnotes

[1] See “How Does God Cause Free Human Actions?” and “Divine Universal Causality, Determinism, and the Mystery of Double Agency.”

[2] For a libertarian critique of the view of double agency that I have presented in my previous articles, see Mark Spencer, “Divine Causality and Created Freedom,” Nova et Vetera, 14 (2016): 949-950: “In its second sense, ‘is able to will otherwise than one wills’ is rightly said of a created person if and only if that person alone can, even given all other causes or conditions, move him or herself to some exercise of act of will and specify the content of that act. . . . As we have seen, some versions of [the universal causality model] contend that, since God is a transcendent cause, he can cause any creature of any sort, even free acts, without competition with that creature with respect to freedom. But I contend that this is so only in the sense that God causes a free act qua being (and qua including a primary act of the will), not in the sense of God causing a free act qua having the content of a secondary act of the will. If God causes the latter, then the creature is not free in the second sense of the phrase.”

(Go to “The Extrinsic Model of Divine Causality“)