Chapter XXV. The divine motion in general

For a proper understanding of what the Thomists mean by the expression “physical premotion,” we must recall what led them to adopt it.

They understand this to be the answer to the question clearly put by St. Thomas, when he asks whether God moves all secondary causes to act.1 They answer first that the Scripture does not leave room for any doubt about this, since it says that “God worketh all in all. For in Him we live and move and are.” ? Even if it is a question of our free acts, the Scripture is no less positive in affirming that He is the prime Mover, for we read: “Lord . . . Thou hast wrought all our works for us. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will.’’* These scriptural texts are so clear, they state so plainly that the action of the creature depends upon God's influx or upon the divine causality, that even Suarez, although opposed to the theory of physical premotion, wrote that it would be an error against the faith to deny the dependence of the creature in its actions upon the first Cause.‘

Equally clear stands the case from the philosophical point of view; for just as the participated and limited being of creatures depends upon the causality of the first Being, who is the self-subsisting Being, so also does their action: for there is no reality that can be excluded from His controlling

THE DIVINE MOTION IN GENERAL 241 influence. It is not a question, therefore, in this case of the necessity or existence of the divine influx, without which no creature would act, but rather of the nature of this influx and of the way in which it operates.

In the first place we shall see, in pointing out the manifest errors to be avoided, what physical premotion is not, so as to enable us to state more precisely afterward what it is. We say then: (1) It is not a motion such as to render the action of the secondary cause superfluous. This is directed against occasionalism. (2) It is not a motion that would interiorly compel our will to choose this particular thing rather than a certain other. This is directed against determinism. (3) Neither is it, at the opposite extreme of both occasionalism and determinism, simply a simultaneous concurrence. ¹ Nor is it an indifferent and indeterminate motion. (5) It is not a purely extrinsic assistance given by God.

We shall see more clearly further on that physical premotion is: (1) A motion and not an ex nihilo creation, without which our acts, created in us ex nihilo, would not be the result of the vital action of our faculties and would no longer be ours. It is a passive motion that is received in the creature and that is consequently something distinct either from the divine action which it presupposes, or from our action which follows it. It is (2) a physical and not a moral motion or one that is the result of an object proposed to it that attracts it. (3) It is, as regards our freedom of action, not necessitating but predetermining, or it is not a formal but a causal predetermination, in the sense that it guarantees the intrinsic infallibility of the divine decrees and moves our will to determine itself to a certain determinate good act (the determination to a bad act, since it is itself bad and defective, comes on these grounds from a defective cause and not from God). Finally, we shall see that the predetermination, since it is both formal and causal, is prior to the motion. It is identical, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, with the divine predetermining decrees that have reference to our salutary acts; whereas the formal and no longer causal determination is the very one of our already determined free act, which still remains free even after its determination, just as God's act is free. The careful study of these different aspects of the problem is necessary so as to avoid any confusion of thought, and it is expedient for us to begin with the negative phase of this problem, for the expression “‘predetermining physical premotion” is used precisely to exclude a simultaneous concurrence and an indifferent premotion.

Footnotes

1. Disp. met., disp. 22, sect. I, par. 7. 240 ↩