St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

From his Catechetical Instruction on the Apostles’ Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

We must, therefore, firmly believe that God governs and regulates not only all nature, but also the actions of men. “And they said: The Lord shall not see; neither shall the God of Jacob understand. Understand, ye senseless among the people, and, you fools, be wise at last. He that planted the ear, shall He not hear, He that formed the eye, doth He not consider? . . . The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men” (Psalm 93.7-11). God sees all things, both our thoughts and the hidden desires of our will. Thus, the necessity of doing good is especially imposed on man since all his thoughts, words and actions are known in the sight of God: “All things are naked and open to His eyes” (Heb 4.13).

This is the final paragraph in which St. Thomas treats the relationship between human freedom and divine providence. You can read the previous two posts here and here. He sums up his thought nicely in the first sentence: “We must, therefore, firmly believe that God governs and regulates not only all nature, but also the actions of men.”

Since we’re at the end of this long and challenging discussion, I’ll leave you to go back and reread earlier posts and encourage you to reflect on what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about divine providence in nos. 302-314.

From his Catechetical Instruction on the Apostles’ Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

There are those, however, who believe that God rules and sustains all things of nature, and nevertheless do not believe God is the overseer of the acts of man; hence they believe that human acts do not come under God’s providence. They reason thus because they see in this world how the good are afflicted and how the evil enjoy good things, so that Divine Providence seems to disregard human affairs. Hence the words of Job are offered to apply to this view: “He doth not consider our things; and He walketh about the poles of heaven” (Job 22.14). But this is indeed absurd. It is just as though a person who is ignorant of medicine should see a doctor give water to one patient and wine to another. He would believe that this is mere chance, since he does not understand the science of medicine which for good reasons prescribes for one wine and for another water. So is it with God. For God in His just and wise Providence knows what is good and necessary for men; and hence He afflicts some who are good and allows certain wicked men to prosper. But he is foolish indeed who believes this is due to chance, because he does not know the causes and method of God’s dealing with men. “I wish that God might speak with thee, and would open His lips to thee, that He might show thee the secrets of wisdom, and that His law is manifold: and thou mightest understand that He exacteth much less of thee than thy iniquity deserveth” (Job 11.5-6).

Without a doubt, this passage touches upon one of the most difficult areas in all of theology and Catholic doctrine — the relationship between God’s divine providence and human actions. There are two errors we must avoid: first, we must avoid the error that denies human freedom, and second, we must avoid the error that denies that human actions fall outside of God’s governance of the world. The way of truth and sanity is the middle way — the way that says that humans have free will and that these free human acts fall within the domain of divine providence.

There are various ways we can try to make sense of this mystery of mysteries. I’ve found a couple of ideas very helpful. The first idea is that we do not have as much freedom as we think we do. Consider the following: I did not choose my parents, the economical and social situation in which I was raise, the year of my birth, my genetic code, the people I met and befriended, my gifts and talents, etc. A hard look at my life tells me that many of the key factors that went into shaping me were out of my control. My own freedom exists within these determined factors. Once I saw this, the relationship between God’s providence and my own freedom was a bit easier to grasp. God has put me on a path that I did not choose, but I am completely free how I am going to walk down this path.

Another idea that helped me was the Church’s idea of freedom. When we speak of freedom, we often mean the natural freedom all humans have to choose this or that, A or not-A; or we mean the political freedoms granted us by the state. But for the Church, true human freedom is the freedom to choose the good and avoid the evil; it is the freedom to serve God and not deny God; the freedom to engage in holy acts and not sinful ones. Vatican II called this kind of freedom authentic freedom. Therefore, God can never deny us of our freedom because God will never deny us the ability to choose good and avoid evil. It is his perfect will that we all become holy, and we become holy by doing good and avoiding evil In other words, if God does not allow us to sin, he only takes away the natural freedom we have to choose this or that, A or not-A. But he hasn’t taken away our authentic freedom to do a holy act rather than a sinful one. In fact, could we not say that he’s given us the ability to act more freely by giving us more power to choose good and avoid evil?

I am not saying that God denies us what I’ve called our natural freedom. But I am saying that the Church’s teaching of authentic freedom — the freedom to choose good and avoid evil — has helped me understand how we can make sense of the relationship between human freedom and God’s providence. And of course, in the end, we must cooperate with the grace God has given us if it is to bear any fruit.

Finally, I want to note that St. Thomas himself does not attempt to answer in this passage how human freedom and God’s providence works together. He simply asserts it. After asserting it, he moves on to how God gives what is necessary to all men. What is necessary to all men is the grace we need to be saved. Therefore, nothing happens to us by chance. Whatever I may experience — sickness or health, good times or bad, joy and sorrow — I experience because God knows it is necessary for my salvation.

From his Catechetical Instruction on the Apostles’ Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

Among all the truths which the faithful must believe, this is the first — that there is one God. We must see that God means the ruler and provider of all things. He, therefore, believes in God who believes that everything in this world is governed and provided for by Him. He who would believe that all things come into being by chance does not believe that there is a God. No one is so foolish as to deny that all nature, which operates with a certain definite time and order, is subject to the rule and foresight and an orderly arrangement of someone. We see how the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all natural things follow a determined course, which would be impossible if they were merely products of chance. Hence, as is spoken of in the Psalm, he is indeed foolish who does not believe in God: “The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God”(Psalm 14.1).

It is tempting to read this passage as St. Thomas’ “endorsement” of Intelligent Design. We must remember that St. Thomas was a proponent that academic disciplines should be divided because each has a methodology that is proper to them. He was also a proponent of the hierarchy of the sciences; that is to say, he believed that some academic disciplines held an elevated position by their very nature and therefore could and should use the finding of the lower subject to advance themselves. The highest of all academic subjects is theology, and a close second is philosophy. So Aquinas would say that whereas the biologist should teach only biology in his classroom, the philosopher and theologian could use the findings of biology for to clarify and make arguments for their own positions.

Now we do see that St. Thomas believes that studying the world leads one to the conclusion that God not only created the world, but also governs the world. Of course, 13-century science is rather primitive when compared to modern science, but it was more advanced than many people think. From my limited reading on the subject, it seems to me that we can say that the seeds of modern science were planted in the 13th century by two men — St. Albert the Great and his student, St. Thomas Aquinas. Both of these men believed in a relative autonomy of the world; that is, they believed that God governs the universe by placing laws in the fabric of nature, and that these laws can be studied apart for any direct appeal to God’s power.

That being said, it is interesting how St. Thomas defines a believer in God: “He . . . believes in God who believes that everything in this world is governed and provided for by Him.” This statement is a flat rejection of the notion of God as the Great Clockmaker — the one who sets things in motion but is no longer active in the universe. Even though St. Thomas believed in the relative autonomy of the world — that God indeed gave laws to the world — he still maintains that to believe in God one must also believe that God actively governs the world.

How is this possible? How can one believe that God actively governs the world while simultaneously believing that God placed laws into the fabric of nature?

The answer lies in St. Thomas’ understanding of God’s creative power. Thomas taught — and the Church herself teaches — that all things are continually held in existence by God’s creative power. To state negatively, if God were to pull back from any piece of existence, that piece would cease to exist. Therefore, everything that happens — from the rotation of the planets to the death of a deer, from a monk kneeling in prayer to a man committing adultery against his wife — is possible only because God’s creative presence holds those things in existence, thereby making their actions possible. This is the basis of St. Thomas’ teaching that to believe in God means to believe not only that God created all things, but that God also governs all things.

But we must ask another question: How does God’s creative power in all things translate into God’s governance of all things?

To answer this question fully would take a considerable amount of time. But the heart of the answer is this: God governs all things by his will. God’s will is that all men be saved. That’s what is called his perfect will. In order to achieve this end, God either directly wills something to happen or permits it to happen because he knows that more people will be saved than if it did not happen.As the authors of Radio Replies says:

We must distinguish between God’s positive will, and His permissive will. He positively wills all the good that happens. Suffering He permits to occur, and this only when he foresees that good can result from it. He positively wills that I should be holy. If He foresees that I will make use of good health to sin and to lose my soul, He may mercifully permit my health to be ruined, and thus lead me to Him where He would otherwise lose me. ¹

So at the heart of God’s governance of the world is our salvation. This is why St. Thomas teaches that to believe in God means to believe “that everything in this world is governed and provided for by Him.” God provides for our salvation by governing the world.