Commentaria in Summam contra Gentiles, Liber III

The third point that St. Thomas infers from the foregoing is what ought to be held concerning fate ¹. Concerning this, moreover, he does two things: first, he removes false opinions about fate; second, he sets down the true opinion ².

I. As to the first, he touches upon two opinions. The first is that of those who said that fate is nothing at all, because they thought that things which happen per accidens from particular causes are not ordered by any higher cause.

Note that Augustine, in De Civitate Dei V ³, attributes this opinion to Tully, who, as was shown above, seemed in the books De Divinatione to deny providence and fate, especially regarding human affairs.

2. The second is that of those who posited that fate is something, saying that those things which seem to happen by chance are preordained by some higher cause so that they might be; and they attempted to reduce all these things, even human choices, to the heavenly bodies as to causes; and they called fate the very disposition of the stars, to which they posited that all things are subjected with a kind of necessity.

But that this position is impossible is clear from the foregoing: namely, where it was shown that those things which pertain to the intellect and will are not directly subjected to the heavenly bodies; and that not all things, even corporeal ones, proceed of necessity from the heavenly bodies; likewise, that those things which are per accidens and fortuitous cannot be reduced to one natural cause, such as is the power of a heavenly body.

II. As to the second, he sets down the true opinion ⁴. And he says that those who reduced things that happen here by chance to the disposition of divine providence said that the ordering which is in things from divine providence is fate. Moreover, he shows this through the definition of fate laid down by Boethius in IV De Consolatione, who says that fate is an inherent disposition in mutable things, by which providence binds each thing to its proper orders. Furthermore, St. Thomas, expounding this definition, says that disposition is used for ordering; it is said to be inherent in things so that it may be distinguished from providence, which is the ordering existing in the divine mind, not yet imprinted on things; it is also said to be in mutable things so that it may be shown that the order of providence does not take away contingency and mutability from things, as certain people have posited. In this way, therefore, says St. Thomas, to deny fate is to deny divine providence. Nevertheless, because we ought not to have even names in common with unbelievers, the name of fate is not to be taken into use by the faithful, lest we seem to agree with those who subjected all things to the necessity of the stars.

It is confirmed by the authority of Augustine, V De Civitate; and of Gregory, in his homily on the Epiphany.

III. Regarding the exposition of the definition of fate given by Boethius, it must be considered first that, since disposition signifies two things—namely, a certain quality, according as habit and disposition are posited as the first species of quality; and order, which is a relation—fate is called a disposition not according as the name of disposition signifies quality, but according as it signifies order; for Augustine ⁵ calls fate a series of causes, that is, an order. On account of this, St. Thomas says that in this definition disposition is used for ordering.

It must be considered second that by divine ordering unfolded in things we can understand two things: namely, either the order of the effects of divine providence to providence itself, according as that which divine providence has ordered is effected in things; or the order of secondary causes ordered toward producing certain effects of divine providence. When, therefore, St. Thomas says that the divine ordering according as it is imprinted on things is fate, he intends the ordering imprinted not indeed on the lower effects themselves, but on the mediate causes by which, in a certain order, the disposition of divine providence descends to lower things, as is clear in the Prima Pars, q. cxvi, a. 2. For fate has in some way the character of a cause with respect to lower effects, by reason, namely, of the ordered higher causes themselves; although it is compared to divine providence as its effect. On account of which, as St. Thomas says in I Sent., d. xxxix, q. ii, a. 1, ad 5, fate is said to be as it were a certain utterance (effatum) of divine ordering, just as a spoken word is a certain utterance of an interior concept.

It must be considered third that fate itself, or the series and order of mediate causes for the production of foreseen lower effects, is according to itself indeed mutable and variable and impedible, since corporeal effects in lower things are produced by heavenly bodies variably and contingently, and much more so human choices. On account of this, St. Thomas says that Boethius stated that it inheres in mutable things: so that he might show that the order of divine providence, which reaches down from it through mediate causes to lower things, does not take away contingency and mutability from things. But according as it is subject to divine providence, it obtains immutability and necessity, as St. Thomas says in the Prima Pars, the question cited, art. 3, not indeed absolute necessity, but on a supposition, and according to the manner in which it is subject to divine providence, namely so as to cause contingently and defectibly; according to which it was said in the foregoing ⁶ that this conditional is true: If God foreknew that this would be, this will be. But concerning these things enough has been said in the preceding, and will be said in the following chapter.

IV. It must be noted, lastly, that St. Thomas touches upon three ways of taking fate in this place. One is according as the ordering of effects existing in the divine mind, which is called providence, is named fate. But this, as is said in the Prima Pars, where cited above ⁷, is said causally, not essentially. — Another is according as the very ordering of secondary causes to producing the foreseen effects is called fate. — The third indeed is according as fate is called the disposition of the stars, producing all things with a kind of necessity. Furthermore, this way encompasses those two ways which Giovanni Pico posits in the fourth book Adversus Astrologos ⁸. The one of which is that fate is called the series and order of causes producing all things by a necessary connection. The other indeed is that the very constitution of the stars when anything is either born or conceived or begun is named fate. For it is clear that the second of these ways is contained under the first, just as a particular is contained under a universal and a part in a whole: for that there is a constitution of the stars when something is either born or conceived is manifestly comprehended in this, which is to be a series of causes necessarily producing all things.

Besides the stated ways, Pico himself adduces another way of fate ⁹, from the opinion of Alexander of Aphrodisias in the book De Fato to the emperors Severus and Antoninus ¹⁰: namely, that nature itself, which is a principle distinct from choice, is called fate. In which signification it can be said that fire heats by fate; and the sun illuminates; and when someone dies, the temperament of his body being dissolved, that he dies by fate. But when he is cast down from a horse, or killed by swords, he does not die by fate: in which manner Virgil says of Dido, 'but because she perished neither by fate nor by a death she had deserved' ¹¹.

But although there is a fivefold signification of this name fate, the signification customary among those who use the name of fate, as the Stoics chiefly are, nevertheless is: The disposition of the stars under which each one is born or conceived, producing necessarily and inevitably all things that happen to a man, whether per se, or per accidens and fortuitously! And therefore, although a Catholic may understand by the name of fate divine providence itself, or the disposition of secondary causes established by divine providence; nevertheless, lest he seem to take up the very name of fate according to its customary signification, he ought to abstain even from the name itself, according to the counsel of Augustine ¹²; and, when discourse arises concerning human events, he ought rather to say that all things are ruled by divine providence than by fate.