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Divine Providence from Alexander of Hales to Thomas Aquinas

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Divine Providence from Alexander of Hales to Thomas Aquinas chapter 2 Divine Providence from Alexander of Hales to Thomas Aquinas 1 Accidental Causality, Free Choice and Evil Divine causality was discussed by the medieval theologians under the rub- ric of several independent doctrines. All the authors studied in this work held that providence worked through an order of secondary natural causes. This sets the theology of providence apart from the theology of salvation, for example. The salvation or damnation of any given individual was based solely on divine causality.The realization of the providential order, on the other hand, was founded on the co-operation between divine and created causality. While this order was certainly based on divine disposition, its practical implementa- tion was carried out by the total order of causes (connexio causarum). In this sense, divine providence was conceptualized in a natural philosophical frame- work. One of the foundational themes of Aristotelian natural philosophy, the notion of causality was crucial to the medieval discussions concerning divine providence. According to Aristotle, causes come in four distinct types: mater- ial, formal, efficient and final.1 From the perspective of this study, efficient and final causality are of greater importance than material and formal caus- ality. As shown in the previous chapter, Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae was of crucial importance for the medieval theories of divine providence. Boethius’s understanding of providence contained elements of both efficient and final causality.2 Meanwhile in Averroes’s influential interpretation of Aris- totle, divine providence was seen exclusively as a final cause, whereas the effi- cient causality of God was not considered to be of direct relevance for the topic. Averroes claimed explicitly that what he set forth was simply Aristotle’s own doctrine of divine providence.3 Thus, the Latin authors, being educated in universities permeated by Aristotelian philosophy, were drawn to consider the exegetical question of whether Averroes’s interpretation of the so-called Aris- 1 See, e.g., Falcon 2015. 2 Marenbon 2016, c. 5. 3 Taylor 2008, 189. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004429727_004 54 chapter 2 totelian doctrine of providence was trustworthy, in addition to determining the theological question concerning the nature of this doctrine in accordance with the faith of the church. Aristotle’s discussions of chance events and the final causality of nature were considered important by the medieval Latin commentators.4 The two Aristotelian texts that came to be particularly important for the medieval dis- cussions on divine providence are Physics II, 4–6 and Metaphysics VI, 3. Accord- ing to Aristotle, there are genuinely chance events that are not completely reducible to preceding per se causes. A position like this seems difficult to reconcile with all-embracing divine providence, if divine providence was to be understood as a per se cause of all existing things. To overcome such prob- lems, a common interpretation since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias had come to be that, according to Aristotle, divine providence is not concerned with individual beings but rather with the species of beings.5 Such a view of providence helps solve the philosophical problems in reconciling chance events and divine providence. According to Aristotle, chance and fortune come about only in singular events. Therefore, if the sphere of providence is lim- ited to the level of species, events on the level of individual beings have no bearing whatsoever on the infallibility of divine providence. This Alexandrian interpretation of providence was known to the Latin writers mainly through Averroes. In Aristotle’s causal theory, proper causes cause their effects always or in most cases. When a proper cause fails to produce its effect, chance or for- tune is named as the accidental cause of this unusual outcome. This general framework of causality and the existence of chance events understood in Aris- totle’s sense went unquestioned in 13th-century scholasticism. Yet the rela- tionship between chance events and divine providence had been raised by an authority of no less importance than Augustine. This problem will resur- face in most of the medieval authors discussed in this study. As I noted in the first chapter of this work, the problem itself dates back to ancient philosophy. Augustine was, however, the immediate source of it for the medieval Chris- tian writers. Augustine had claimed in the 24th question of his 83 Questions that: 4 Jan Aertsen has stressed that the medieval Christian view of nature was marked by its emphasis on the rational determination of nature. With regard to the First Cause, most Chris- tian writers denied the reality of chance events. At the same time with regard to particular causes, chance events were considered real. Aertsen 1988, 134–135. 5 Genequand 2011, 60–61; Sharples 1983, 25–27..
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