Chapter XXVI. What does not constitute physical premotion

1. THE divine motion must not be understood in the sense held by the occasionalists in that God alone would act in all things, so that it is not the fire that gives heat, but God in the fire, the latter being the occasion of this. If such were the case, remarks St. Thomas,’ secondary causes would not be causes, and, not being able to act, their presence would be to no purpose. Moreover, their impotence would prove that God was incapable of communicating to them the dignity of causality, action, and life, being like an artist who can produce only lifeless works (and this would imply lack of power in the Creator), Moreover, occasionalism leads to pantheism. This is clear, because action follows being, and the mode of action the mode of being. If there is but one action, which is God’s action, then there is but one being; creatures are absorbed in God; universal being is identical with the divine being, as ontologist realism postulates, a fond theory of Malebranche and one that is closely associated, according to his notion, with occasionalism.

St. Thomas, having thus refuted the occasionalism of his time, adds that God, who created and maintains secondary causes in being, applies them to act. He says: “God not only gives things their form, but He also preserves them in existence, and applies them to act, and is moreover the end of every action.” ?

2. The divine motion, since it does not render the action of

1Summa theol., Ia, q.105, a.5. 2 Ibid., q.105, a.5 ad gum; cf. Contra Gentes, III, 67; De potentia, q.3, a.7.

244 PREDESTINAFION secondary causes superfluous but gives rise to it, cannot be necessitating, in the sense that it would suppress all contingency and liberty. But, under the divine influx, secondary causes act as befitting their nature, either necessarily, as the sun gives light and heat, or contingently, as fruits become more or less ripe in time; or else freely, as in the case of man who chooses. St. Thomas connects even this property of divine motion with the sovereign efficacy of God's causality, who does not only what He wills but as He wills it; who brings it about not only that we will but that we freely will. On this point he writes: “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.” *

The divine motion does not therefore suppress freedom of action, but actualizes it. It eliminates only potential indifference, and in return gives it the actual dominating indifference of the free act, an indifference that persists after it is already determined. This is the only indifference there is in God, and it persists in the unchangeable free act by which He preserves the world in existence. It is of this actual indifference that St. Thomas speaks when he says: “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 according to its own nature,” ¢

3. In opposition to occasionalism and determinism, would the divine motion be merely a simultaneous concurrence as Molina will have it to be? Molina considers the primary and secondary causes as two partial and co-ordinated causes pro-

ducing one and the same effect, similar, he says, to two men pulling a boat: “The total effect, indeed, comes both from God and from the secondary causes; but it comes neither from God nor from secondary causes as total but as partial causes, each at the same time requiring the concurrence and influx of the other cause, just as when two men are pulling a boat.” > From this point of view, even if the total effect is produced by each of the two causes, in this sense that one without the other would produce no effect, in such a case the secondary cause is not premoved by the first. The concurrence of this latter is merely simultaneous, as when two men are pulling a boat, the first exerting no influence upon the second to cause it to act. “God’s universal concurrence.” says Molina, “does not immediately exert an influence on the secondary cause, so as to premove it to act and produce its effect, but it immediately exerts an influence on the action and the effect, along with the secondary cause.” $

Apart from this simultaneous concurrence, which is necessary for every act, Molina admits, indeed, a particular grace for salutary acts; but this latter is not a physical motion, attracting the will by reason of the object proposed to it.

The author of the Concordia acknowledges, moreover, that this conception of the simultaneous concurrence, which is necessarily connected, in his opinion, with his definition of liberty and his theory of the scientia media, is not the view held by St. Thomas. After setting forth what the Angelic Doctor said * on the subject of the divine motion, he writes: “I am confronted by two difficulties: (1) I do not see what is this application in secondary causes, by which God moves and applies these causes to act. I think rather that the fire heats without any need of its being moved to act. And I candidly confess that I have difficulty in understanding this¹ motion and application which St. Thomas requires in secondary causes. . . . (2) There is another difficulty: according to this doctrine, God does not concur immediately (immediatione suppositi) in the action and effect of secondary causes, but only through the intervention of these causes.” °

Molina could have found the solution of these two difficulties in a well-known passage of St. Thomas,” in which it is stated that God's immediate influence is also exercised on the being of the action or effect of the secondary cause, for this latter cannot be the proper cause of its act in so far as it is being, but only in so far as it is this individual act, its own. In this effect, what is more universal, as being, depends upon the more universal cause, and the more particular depends upon the particular cause. St. Thomas remarks: ‘The more universal effects must be reduced to the more universal and prior causes. Now among all effects the most universal is being itself.” *° Being, in so far as the being of things is concerned, is an effect that belongs properly to God, by way of creation ex nihilo and of conservation in being, or by way of motion, which is the case of the being itself of our acts, for these were at first in our faculties as potential acts.

But what is of greatest interest for us now in Molina’s objection, is the way in which he avows that St. Thomas admitted that the divine motion applies secondary causes to act, which means that St. Thomas admitted not merely a simultaneous concurrence, but a premotion, This word “premotion” may seem to be a pleonasm, because every true motion has a priority, if not of time at least of causality over its effect, and in this particular case it has, for St. Thomas, a priority over the action of the secondary cause thus applied to act. The Thomists use the word “premotion” solely for the purpose of showing that the motion of which they speak is truly

8 Concordia, p. 152, 1876 ed. ® De potentia, q.3, a.7 ad Jum, 10 Loc. cit, Ta, 9.45, a5 a motion that applies the secondary cause to act, and that it is not merely a simultaneous concurrence.

Is not this latter absolutely the very opposite of occasionalism and determinism or fatalism? If, in truth, the divine concurrence is merely simultaneous, it is no longer true to say that God moves secondary causes to act, since He does not apply them to their operations. We have in this case merely two partial and co-ordinated causes, not two total causes which, in their very causality, are subordinated the one to the other, as St. Thomas had said.** Moreover, Molina expressly stated: “For us, the divine concurrence does not determine the will to give its consent. On the contrary, it is the particular influx of the free will that determines the divine concurrence to act, according as the will is inclined to will rather than not to will, and to will this particular thing rather than a certain other.” 1? The secondary causes, far from being determined by God to act, by their action determine the very functioning of the divine causality which, of itself, is indifferent.

But, if this is so, then there is something that is beyond the scope of the universal causality of the first agent; for, in fine, the influence exerted by the secondary cause is truly something; it is a perfection for it to pass into act, even a perfection so precious that Molinism is totally concerned in safeguarding it, and it is so delicate that even God, they say, cannot contact it.

The great difficulty is this: How could the will, which was only in the state of potency, give itself this perfection which it did not possess? This means that the greater comes from the less, and this is contrary to the principles of causality and of the universal causality of the first agent. St. Thomas was of the opinion that to refute determinism, instead of attacking the principle of causality, we must insist on the tran-

11 Ibid., Ia, q.105, 2.5 ad 2um; q.23, a.5, Corp. 12 Concordia, q.23, 2.4.5, disp.1, m.7 ad 6um.

scendent efficacy of the first Cause, the only one capable of causing in us and with us that our acts be performed freely, since it is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, and since this free mode of our acts is still being and for this reason depends upon Him who is the cause of all reality and good.

Furthermore, the Thomists say that if the divine concurrence, far from inclining the will infallibly to determine itself to perform this particular act rather than a certain other, is itself determined by the particular influx of the free will to function in this particular way rather than in a certain other, then the tables are turned: God by reason of His foreknowledge and causality, instead of determining is determined. This means that by His scientia media He foresees what choice a certain person would make, if placed in certain circumstances. Instead of being the cause of this foreseen determination, He is determined and therefore perfected by this determination which, as such, in no way comes from Him. Now there is nothing more inadmissible than to posit a passivity or dependence in the pure Act, who is sovereignly independent and incapable of receiving any perfection whatsoever.

This stands out as the great objection against the Molinist theories of the scientia media and simultaneous concurrence, as we have elsewhere shqwn.™

4. May we say that the divine motion is an indifferent motion by which God would determine us only to an indeliberate act, so that the free will alone would determine itself and the divine motion, to perform this or that particular act? Some theologians thought so, especially Father Pignataro.*4

18 Cf. Revue Thomiste, “The dilemma, God determining or determined,” June, 1928, pp. 193-211; see also “God, His existence and His Nature,” II, 529-62.

14 Cf De Deo Creatore. On page 519 of this work the author wrote: “This motion constitutes the will as directly and proximately ready to choose”; and

The Thomists reply,"* that this theory and the scientia media mutually support each other, and that it has to contend with several of the difficulties pointed out against the preceding. Something real would still be excluded from God’s universal causality. There would be a determination that is independent of the sovereign determination of pure Act, a finite good independent of the supreme Good, a second liberty that would be acting independently of the first Liberty. That which is better in the work of salvation, the determination of our salutary act, would not come from the Author of salvation. Contrary to this, St. Paul said: “It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will. For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?” ** St. Thomas said the same in formulating the principle of predilection: “Since God's love is the cause of goodness in things, no one thing would be better than another, if God did not will greater good for one than for another.” **

This doctrine of indifferent premotion, like that of simultaneous concurrence, cannot solve the dilemma: ‘‘God determining or determined: there is no other alternative.” Willingly or unwillingly, it leads to the positing of a passivity or dependence in Him who is pure Act, especially in His foreknowledge (scientia media) as regards our free determinations, even the noblest which, as free determinations, would not come from Him. Concerning these God would not be the cause of them, but merely a passive onlooker.

he adds: “That the divine motion is determined to move in one particular way those things which by nature are so determined, this I concede; that it is so determined in contingent things, this I deny.” The Ami du Clergé (February 21, 1935, pp- 392-94) assures us that when this work was published (1899), even Father Billot did not hesitate to declare this opinion to be absolutely unintelligible. On this point consult the second appendix at the end of this book.

16 Cf, Father del Prado, O.P., De gratia et libero arbitrio, 111, 162.

For these reasons, the Thomists admit that since God is the first Cause of all existing things, with the exception of sin, even as regards our salutary free acts, the divine decrees are of themselves infallibly efficacious or predetermining, and the divine motion that gives infallible assurance of their execution is not indifferent and undetermined, but brings us infallibly to perform a certain salutary act that is efficaciously willed by God, by causing in us and with us even that this act is performed freely. Later on we shall see that this teaching is completely in agreement with what St. Thomas says.7*

Therefore the Thomists use the expression “‘predetermining physical premotion” only for the purpose of excluding the theories of simultaneous concurrence and indifferent premotion. If these theories had not been proposed, as Thomas de Lemos remarked on several occasions, the Thomists would have been satisfied to speak about divine motion as St. Thomas did, for every motion as such is a premotion, and every divine motion, as divine, cannot receive a determination or perfection that is not virtually included in the divine causality. We always come back to the same inevitable dilemma: “God determining or determined.”

5. Is the divine motion purely an extrinsic help given by God, or is His action identical with His essence, without which nothing created is received in the operative potency of the creature, so as to make it pass into act, for instance, so as to cause our will to perform a vital and free act?

Some theologians thought so, as cardinals Pecci and Satolli in the time of Leo XIII; as also did bishops Paquet and Janssens, O.S.B., in more recent times. These theologians teach, of course, against the Molinists and Suarezians, that the scientia media is inconceivable and that the divine influx necessary for the free act is an intrinsically efficacious motion.

18 Ibid., Ta, q.14, a.5,8: q.19, a.4; a.6 ad 1um; q.19, a.8; q.83, a.2 ad gum; Ia Iae, q.10, a.4 ad gum; q.79, a.2; De veritate, q.22, a.8,9.

But they add—and in this they think that they have Cajetan’s authority on their side—that the divine decree and concurrence are not predetermining and that there is no created motion received in the operative potency of the creature so as to cause it to pass into act. As far as they can see, God’s help is merely extrinsic.

Father del Prado shows ° that there is no via media between the doctrine of the predetermining decrees and the theory of the scientia media; for the divine knowledge of conditionally free acts of the future presupposes indeed a divine decree or it does not. If we reject the scientia media and say that it does, then the decree is predetermining, for otherwise it could not infallibly make known the conditionally free act of the future or the conditionate future. Undoubtedly, this decree does not precede our acts by a priority of time but of nature and causality, and it is measured by the sole instant of motionless eternity. Does it follow, as Cardinal Satolli says, that by the determination of this divine decree there is no longer any mystery? Not at all, say the Thomists, for the mystery remains in this sense, that this predetermining divine decree reaches even to what is more obscure for us, even to the free mode of our acts, and to the physical act of sin without it being at all the cause, however, of the disorder that is in this act. The same must be said for the divine motion, for it, too, has a priority not of time but of causality over our acts, and this kind of priority was admitted by Cajetan,” as well as by the other Thomists.

Is there no created motion that is received in the secondary cause? Some thought that by the words “physical premotion” the Thomists meant to qualify God’s uncreated

19 Cf. Satolli, De operat. div., disp. Il, lect. 3; Paquet, De Deo uno, disp. VI, q.1, a.5.

22 Com. in Iam, q.19, a.8. Cajetan here excludes priority of time, but not of nature. Cf. N. del Prado, loc. cit.

action, conceiving it as being in relation to ours. In that case there would be no created motion.

The doctrine of St. Thomas and his disciples is very clear on this point. They teach in common that even God's action ad extra is formally immanent and virtually transitive,** and that there is no real relation on God’s part toward us; there is only a relation of dependence of the creature on God, and this is not reciprocated.** Thus the creative action is formally immanent and eternal, although it produces, at the time willed in advance by God, an effect in time.’ Whereas the formally transitive action, such as the heating of water by the coal fire, is an accident that proceeds from the agent and terminates in the patient, the divine action ad extra cannot be an accident; it is really identical with God's very essence. It is therefore formally immanent, and, though not having the imperfections of the formally transitive action, it resembles this latter in so far as it produces either a spiritual or corporeal effect that is really distinct from it. It is in this sense that it is said to be virtually transitive, for it contains eminently within itself all the perfection of a formally transitive action, without any of the imperfections that essentially belong to this latter.

From this we see that God’s uncreated motion bears only an analogical resemblance to the motion of a created agent that is incapable of interiorly and infallibly moving our will to choose this or that.” The greater number of the objections against the divine premotion are due to the fact that the divine action is conceived as being univocal with created action, which latter does not go so far as to cause our acts to be performed freely.?’ x ronan le. ad gum; Cont. Gent., II, 2g, par. 4; chap. 21, par. 3.

26 Loc. cit, Ia, q.19, a.8: q.105, a.4: Ia Tae, q.9, a.4. 27 CÉ. Zigliara, O.P., Summa phil., Theol. nat., Bk. III, chap. 4, a. 4, par. 5.

But from the fact that the secondary cause cannot be independent of the divine action, does it follow that there is no created motion received in the secondary cause, and one that is prior to the operation of this latter according to a priority not of time but of causality? Does it follow that actual grace, whether it is operating or co-operating, is identical either with God's uncreated action or with the salutary act of which it is said to be the cause?

St. Thomas replies in an article in which he has treated this question ex professo and at very great length. He writes as follows: “What God effects in the natural thing by which it actually acts, is solely of the intentional order, since it has a certain incomplete being, just as colors are in the air and artistic power in the artificer’s instrument. ... A power peculiarly its own could have been conferred on the natural thing, as a form permanently inhering in it; but power could not have been given for it to act in the production of being as the instrument of the first Cause, unless it were given ‘the power to be the universal principle of being. Neither could it be given the natural power to move itself, or to preserve itself in being. Hence just as it is evidently unreasonable to expect that the instrument be given the power to act apart from the artificer’s artistic movement, so also the natural thing could not have the power conferred upon it to act apart from the divine action.” 8

In like manner, when speaking of actual grace, St. Thomas distinguishes the divine motion received in us both from God and from our acts of knowing and loving, saying of actual grace that “it is an effect of God's gratuitous will . . . inasmuch as man’s soul is moved by God to know or will or do something.” *° In another of his works he expresses himself still more clearly: “The motion of the mover precedes the

motion of the mobile object, both intellectually and causally.” *° And again he says: “The secondary agent receives the complement of its power from the primary Agent.” *

The objection has been raised * that this received divine motion would limit the scope of the divine causality, which would stand in need of this determined disposition so as to bring about the action of the secondary cause. And, moreover, it is a contradiction to maintain that the secondary cause is determined to act by an ultimate formality and that, notwithstanding, it determines itself,

Father del Prado * replies to this by remarking that it is not the first Cause that stands in need of this determination received in the secondary cause, but it is this latter that needs to be moved or applied to its act by the first Cause. The scope of the divine causality is in no way limited by this, for God needs only to will efficaciously so as to realize what He wills.

To the second difficulty the Thomists reply that there would certainly be a contradiction in maintaining that the secondary free cause is determined to act by an ultimate formality that is peculiarly its own act, and that it determines itself to this act. But we must not confound the motion that causes the secondary cause to act, with the action of this ‘latter. Motion, for instance, efficacious grace, is given for the purpose of action, and is not identical with it. Likewise, the heating of water by the fire is not identical with the warmth of this water upon surrounding objects. Moreover, as we shall see more clearly in the following chapters, the expression “predeterminating premotion” does not mean a formal, but a causal, predetermination.

We have just seen what, according to classic Thomism, is meant by divine motion. By it we see, as the Thomists say,

how removed is the true doctrine of St. Thomas from these two extremes, in that it rises above and beyond them.

On the one hand, the divine motion does not render the activity of the secondary cause superfluous, as occasionalism concluded, nor does it suppress freedom of action but actualizes it. On the other hand, the divine motion is not merely a simultaneous concurrence, or an indifferent and undetermined premotion that would be under the necessity of receiving from us a perfection and a new determination not contained in its causality. Nor is it a purely extrinsic help given by God.

Footnotes

1. Concordia, q.14, a.13, disp. 26 (end). + Ibid. 7 Loc. cit., la, q.105, a.5. ↩