Disputationes metaphysicae

1. I said in the title per se and immediately, because, from what was said in the preceding disputation, it is constant and certain that, at least remotely and per accidens, the divine influx is necessary for the action of any created cause, because it is at least necessary that God conserve in being the creature which operates something; but he who gives being gives also operation, at least remotely and per accidens.

The first, negative opinion is proposed and persuaded

2. Reasons for the aforesaid opinion.—The first.—There were not lacking, then, theologians who denied that God concurs per se and immediately to the actions of secondary causes. The chief defender of which error is thought to be Durandus, In II, dist. 1, q. 5, and dist. 37, q. 1, although that opinion was older; for Albert, Henry and others report it. Indeed St. Augustine, V Genes. ad litter., c. 20, in these words: There are those who think that only the world itself was made by God, but that the other things are now made by the world itself as He ordained and commanded, while God Himself works nothing. The foundation is that the necessity of this cooperation cannot be founded on any sufficient reason, and therefore it is not to be asserted, because God does not apply a superfluous and in no way necessary concurrence. The antecedent is proved, first, because secondary causes are not instruments, but principal causes; for they operate by their own power, and not through some extrinsic motion, whence sometimes they are univocal and make effects like themselves; but when they are equivocal, they are more perfect and nobler causes; therefore they operate by sufficient power; therefore they do not need the help of a superior cause. The consequence is evident, because for producing an effect a power equal to it, or certainly nobler, suffices.

3. The second.—Secondly, God could make a creature operating an effect proportioned to itself without the help of another; for why is this repugnant? No repugnance or contradiction certainly appears; nor is it against the divine perfection or power, but rather indicates the power of God more. For, just as it belonged to the divine power not only to make creatures but also to communicate to them a similar power of effecting, so the same power of God will be shown more if He can communicate to His creatures this power of acting complete and wholly integral; but such will it be if it does not need the help of another for acting. But if God can do this, whence is it established that He has not already done it? Or, if He did it, in what other way would He do it than by giving the creature a power equal to or greater than is necessary for the effect? But this He has already done.

4. The third.—Thirdly, it cannot happen that two agents concur immediately to the same action unless each of them is imperfect and only partial, which is not to be said of God; therefore He does not concur with the creature immediately to its action. The major is evident, because either one of those causes acts through the other, or neither. If the first, it follows that that which acts through the other does not act immediately, but only by means of the other; and since the creature cannot be said to act through God, God will act through the creature; and so we often are wont to speak, namely, that God operates through secondary causes or by means of secondary causes. The best sense of which expression is that God gave secondary causes the power of operating, and conserves them, and as it were constituted them to operate in His stead. But if the second is said, namely, that neither of these causes, that is, neither the first nor the second, operates through the other, it plainly follows that each is imperfect, both because each would act only as a partial cause, and also because they would come together for acting without subordination and as it were fortuitously.

5. The fourth.—Fourthly, because of some created things it must be confessed that they are not immediately from God; therefore by parity of reasoning the same would have to be said of all which proceed from secondary causes operating by principal power. The consequence holds by parity of reasoning, and the antecedent is proved, first, in every action of a creature, inasmuch as it is action, as is, for example, the heating of fire; for although we grant that heat, as heat, is immediately from God, yet of the heating of fire as such this cannot be said, because it involves open repugnance. For action, or such action as such, namely the heating of fire, says an essential relation to this agent, namely fire; therefore it is impossible that that action, inasmuch as it is such, be from God immediately; and yet that action is something in the nature of things distinct from heat; therefore. Secondly, this seems to be said by special reason of free actions, because, if they were immediately from the first cause, they could not be free to the secondary cause itself, because both the first cause, since it is more powerful, would carry the second with itself wherever it willed, and the second would not have in its hand and power the influx of the first cause so that it could operate when it willed. Thirdly, there is a most special reason of free sinful actions; for it is unbecoming to attribute them to the first cause as operating per se and immediately. A fourth example we can bring of the effects or causalities of the other causes; for these are not immediately from God as from a first cause, as is established, because the modes of causing, especially the formal and material, cannot be exercised by the first cause; if, then, matter and form are sufficient in their genus for their own proper causality, why will not any efficient cause be so in its genus?

The true opinion

6. The second opinion is that God acts per se and immediately in every action of a creature, and that this influx of His is simply necessary in order that a creature effect anything. And this is the true opinion, which is to be explained and confirmed by us more fully. First, then, we say that it is so certain that God inflows immediately and per se into every action of a creature that to deny it is erroneous in faith. It is proved, first, from the common consent of the scholastics, who so think of this truth as of a Catholic dogma, as is evident from St. Thomas, I, q. 105, a. 5, and I-II, q. 109, and III Cont. Gent., c. 70; Cajetan and Ferrariensis there; Capreolus, In II, dist. 1, q. 2, a. 3, to the arguments against the second conclusion; Alexander, I p., q. 9, memb. 2, ad 2; Albert, In II, dist. 35, a. 7, where he speaks thus: The other opinion has almost departed from the hall, and is reputed heretical by many of the moderns. Likewise Gregory, in the same place, q. 1, a. 3; Scotus, In II, dist. 1 and 37, q. unica; Bonaventure, dist. 37, a. 1, q. 1, where he says that this opinion is to be held without any ambiguity; the same, In I, dist. 45, a. 2, q. 2; Hervaeus, treatise On the Eternity of the World, q. 1. Secondly, the same can be proved from the common consent of the saints, who teach this truth as contained in the divine Scriptures, whom, because this is not our task, I shall indicate briefly. Augustine, then, when he had reported those holding the contrary in the place cited above, adds: Against whom that saying of the Lord is brought forward: My Father worketh until now.¹ And below: Next, because He works not only the great and chief things, but also these earthly and lowest ones, so says the Apostle: Thou sowest bare grain, but God giveth it a body as He will, and to every seed its proper body. The same Augustine proves the same at length in Ep. 146 to Consentius, where he adduces other testimonies of Scripture, as that: Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee, Jerem. 1; and that: If God so clothe the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, Luke 13. The same Augustine, bk. IV Genes. ad litter., c. 12, where he adduces that of Acts 17: In Him we live, and move; and bk. IX, c. 15, he adduces that of I Cor.: Neither he that planteth is any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Prosper, Sentence 281. Likewise Gregory, XVI Moral., c. 18: All things (he says) which have been created are able neither to subsist nor to be moved of themselves; but they subsist in so far as they have received that they should be, they are moved in so far as they are disposed by a hidden impulse. And the remaining Fathers, wherever they treat of divine providence, suppose this truth as most certain.

7. Secondly, it must be said that this truth can be sufficiently proved by natural reason. And first it seems to be evidently inferred from what has been said about conservation, so that for this reason too it is held almost as certain in faith that God immediately makes all things as that He conserves them. The first inference is proved, first, because, if not all things are made immediately by God, then neither are they conserved immediately, because a thing is related to being as to becoming. For neither can the being of a thing depend more on an adequate cause after it has been made than when it was being made. Likewise, because, if the cause depends on God in being, then also the effect, because each is being by participation; therefore, just as the cause depends in the instant in which it acts, so the effect in the instant in which it is made, because also in that instant each is being by participation; therefore every effect of a secondary cause depends on God in becoming, and consequently the secondary cause can do nothing without the concurrence of God. Finally, because otherwise it follows that sometimes a thing does not depend on God in being conserved even mediately; for if heat produced by fire depends on God only by means of the producing fire, when the action of the fire ceases it will no longer depend in any way. Durandus will perhaps answer that the effects of secondary causes, as long as they are made or conserved by them, are made or conserved only mediately by God, but when the action of the secondary cause ceases, then God alone immediately conserves the effect, even if it was immediately produced by the secondary cause alone, because no created thing can either have or retain being without some efficient cause; and therefore, as long as the secondary cause immediately effects, it suffices; but when it ceases, in order that the thing remain in being it is necessary that God effect it by conserving, as we too say that, when the secondary cause ceases, the first applies greater force and efficacy.

8. But in the first place, according to this reply, the truth demonstrated above about the conservation of God is limited to immediate or to mediate conservation, which is foreign to all sound doctrine. Otherwise, when God is called creator of all things, it could be limited as to whether He is so mediately or immediately. Next, that opinion being supposed, it is not consistently said that, when the action of fire ceases, God begins to conserve the heat, both because, if heat does not depend on God in operating, why should it depend in being?, and also because the produced heat does not depend in its being on the producing heat by reason of the being itself, but by reason of such becoming, as was declared and proved above; therefore, although the action of the heating fire ceases, there is no reason why the action of a superior cause should be necessary in order that that being be conserved. Especially because, according to that opinion, heat, in order to be absolutely and simply, does not depend essentially on God, but at most remotely and per accidens; but the necessity of conservative action arises from the intrinsic and absolute dependence which a thing has on such cause in order to have being, as was explained above.

9. And hence the first inference is proved secondly, because, if God does not inflow immediately into every action of a creature, then the created action itself, in order to be, does not per se essentially demand the influx of God, although it too is some participation of being; therefore there is no reason why the form which is made through such action should demand for its conservation the actual influx of the first cause, because neither does it demand this by reason of its becoming, according to that opinion, since the becoming itself is not immediately from God; nor by reason of its being, most of all from the fact that it is participated being; but this reason is not thought sufficient in the action itself, according to that opinion; therefore neither will it be sufficient in the form or terminus of the action.

10. Thirdly, the same deduction can be made thus, because created beings depend on God no less inasmuch as they are agents than inasmuch as they are beings, because they are no less subordinated to God by one notion than by the other, and, just as they are beings by participation, so also they are agents; but inasmuch as they are beings, they are wholly dependent on God intrinsically and essentially; therefore similarly they depend inasmuch as they are agents; therefore, while they act, they depend not only because they are conserved in being by God, but also because in their very acting they require per se and immediately the influx of God. And this is what Aristotle sometimes says, that in agents per se subordinated the inferior cannot act without the influx of the superior, bk. II Metaph., c. 2, VII Phys., c. 1, and bk. VIII, c. 5.

11. Fourthly, the same argumentation from conservation to cooperation can be confirmed by proportional reason; for, just as God can deprive a created thing of its being through the sole negation of action, so He can deprive a created thing of its natural action through the sole negation of concurrence; therefore, just as from the former power immediate dependence in being is evidently gathered, so from the latter immediate dependence in the action itself is gathered. The antecedent (to confess the truth) is not evident by any natural experiment; but from supernatural effects it is sufficiently evident; for God deprived the Babylonian fire of its action, no impediment being placed from without; therefore He did this through the withdrawal of concurrence; for in what other way could it have been done? And this is signified in Wisdom 11, when it is said that the fire forgot its power, because namely it could not exercise it without God. And this is per se very consonant with the divine power, that it have in its hand the actions of all things, as it has the being of all.

12. A fifth reason, very probable, is that the secondary cause cannot determine itself to the effect in the individual and in particular, because its faculty is always indifferent to several individuals, and is not sufficiently determined by the subject and circumstances; therefore the cooperation of the first cause is necessary, which by its will can determine it to the singular effect. Of the foundation of which reason what was said above, disp. V, while the principle of individuation was treated, may be seen.

13. Finally, there is an excellent reason, that this mode of acting in all and with all agents pertains to the amplitude of the divine power, and on the part of God supposes perfection without imperfection; but on the part of the creature, whether we consider the secondary cause, or the action, or its effect, although it says imperfection, yet that is imbibed in the very concept of the creature or of participated being as such, as the reasons made declare. And besides, in this way there intervenes perfect and essential subordination between the first and the second cause, and there is nothing which is repugnant, as will easily be evident from the solutions of the arguments; therefore this general influence is not to be denied to God. Hence neither does it seem to have been wholly unknown to the philosophers, as we touched upon about the mind of Aristotle in the third reason; and in the book On Causes, which is thought to be either Aristotle's or Proclus's, there are various propositions by which this truth is signified, which we shall treat in what follows. Plato too for this reason called secondary causes instruments of the first, because they depend on its concurrence in acting, as is taken from Damascene, in his Philosophy, c. 9; and Simplicius, II Phys., text 29, and others. Trismegistus too is reported, in the Dialogue Crater, saying that God, present everywhere, always acts all things; and other similar things. And Philo of Alexandria, in the book That the World Is Incorruptible, saying that God assists all the parts of the world by cooperating.

The foundations of the first opinion are solved

14. To the first argument the antecedent is denied; for the reasons made sufficiently declare the necessity of this concurrence. Nor on that account do we deny that created agents are principal in their order, as was declared above in the divisions of the efficient cause. But it does not follow that, if they are principal causes, they are also independent in acting, because much greater perfection is required for this latter than for the former, as is established per se. When, therefore, it is said that for acting a power equal to the effect suffices, we can first answer that it suffices in the notion of proximate cause,² but not simply. Next we say that it suffices with due proportion; for, just as the power itself is dependent, so it suffices for such action, yet not independently; and therefore besides it it is necessary that the first cause inflow, on which all things essentially depend. But someone will infer: then, whenever some form depends on its cause in being conserved, it depends also in operating. It is answered that this is to be spoken of in the last section of this disputation; now the consequence is denied, because on a created cause there is not dependence so essential and as it were transcendental as on the uncreated.

15. To the second it is answered that it involves repugnance that a creature be able to act independently of the creator, both on the part of the created cause itself, which necessarily has power of acting commensurate and proportioned to its being, and on the part of the effect or action flowing from it; for, since these are beings by participation, they essentially depend on the first being. Wherefore, just as it does not pertain to the divine power to produce a being independent of itself in being, so neither to produce an agent independent of itself in acting; indeed both are equally repugnant to the divine perfection and to the imperfection of the creature, as has been sufficiently declared.

How God concurs immediately

16. The third argument is wholly about the mode of speaking rather than about the thing. And in the first place it is inquired in it whether God is to be said to act immediately towards the action of the secondary cause. And indeed from what has been said it is plainly established that it must necessarily be confessed that God in some way inflows immediately, and also mediately in some way. For He acts mediately inasmuch as He gives and conserves to the proximately acting secondary cause the power of acting. And in this way it is true that He acts through it, and created it for this, that He might communicate the office of acting with it; but He acts immediately because the first cause itself too through itself and by its power inflows into such action or effect. But because mediate and immediate influx seem to involve a certain repugnance between them, therefore some theologians distinguish of action immediate by immediacy of power or by immediacy of supposit, and affirm that God acts by immediacy of power in all the actions of creatures, but not by immediacy of supposit. So thinks Ferrariensis, III Cont. Gent., c. 70, which mode of speaking some modern Thomists imitate. And St. Thomas seems to favour it in that c. 70; for, answering the first reason to the contrary, he says: It is not unfitting that one action proceed from an inferior agent and from God, and from both immediately, because this is in one and another way. But the reason is that it is repugnant that two operate immediately by immediacy of supposit; but the secondary cause acts immediately by immediacy of supposit; therefore the first in that action does not act immediately. The major is evident, because to act immediately by immediacy of supposit is that between the acting supposit and the effect another supposit does not intervene.

17. Nevertheless this distinction is not necessary in the present matter, and that mode of speaking is not to be approved, because it does not declare the matter, and is so equivocal that it can induce an erroneous sense. For in created things those are said to act by immediacy of power, and not of supposit, which touch the patient or effect through power diffused from them, yet not through their supposit, which it is wicked to attribute to God. Simply, then, it must be said that God acts with all created agents by immediacy of power and of supposit. And since in the former part we agree, about the latter it must be noted that a supposit can be called immediate either in acting or in existing,³ or in local distance. As, for example, if the opinion of Scotus were true, that the sun generates gold in the earth immediately through its substantial form, it would indeed act by immediacy of supposit, or immediacy of action, so to speak, because from that supposit immediately the action would proceed, yet it would not act by immediacy of supposit in being or in place, because it would be far distant from its effect.

18. God, then, necessarily acts, wherever He acts, by local immediacy of supposit, or in being, both because through His immensity He is necessarily present everywhere, and also because the action proceeds per se and immediately not only from the created power, which can be called as it were a power diffused from God, but also from the uncreated power, which is in God Himself; but an agent which so operates through its power is necessarily present there where it operates. Hence for this reason God is said to be in all things by essence and by power; and therefore also from the action of God suppositive presence is very well gathered, as was said above.

19. Again, if the discourse is of immediacy of supposit in acting, God too is a supposit acting immediately in the action of the creature. Which I prove, first, from the reason now made; for that action does not proceed immediately only from the power diffused from God, which is created, for this would be to fall into the opinion of Durandus; it proceeds, therefore, immediately from the uncreated power existing in God Himself; therefore He also acts by immediacy of supposit. The consequence is evident, both because then a supposit is said to act immediately as principle quod when it so acts through a power inhering in it that from that power immediately the action proceeds as from a principle quo; and also because the divine supposit is its own power; the action, therefore, cannot proceed immediately from the power without proceeding immediately from the supposit, as St. Thomas gathers, In I, dist. 37, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4. Secondly, between God and the action, as it is from Him, another supposit does not mediate; therefore that action is from God by immediacy of supposit. You will say that between the first cause and the effect the second mediates. It is answered that, formally and properly speaking, the antecedent is false, because it is one thing for the secondary cause to cooperate with the first, another to mediate between the first and the effect. The first is true, but the second false, considering the first cause according to this relation according to which it per se inflows into the effect, because as such that action says relation or dependence to the first cause as immediately and per se as to the second.

20. Wherefore, to act immediately by immediacy of supposit does not exclude the partnership of another acting supposit; otherwise, if two lamps produce the same light, neither will act by immediacy of supposit; indeed neither does the secondary cause so act, because it does not act without the partnership of the divine supposit. But if you say that God acts as a superior and universal cause, but the creature as an inferior and particular one, and that by that immediacy of supposit the partnership not of any supposit whatever is excluded, but of that which is inferior and subordinated in acting, which Ferrariensis seems to intend, this is strictly false (although perhaps we labour in an equivocation), because to be an immediate supposit in acting does not exclude the subordination and subjection of another, but only mediation in acting. Indeed this immediacy of supposit in acting under one notion does not exclude that under another it can act mediately, concurring to the action in two ways, as St. Thomas declared of this very concurrence, I, q. 105, a. 1. Nor does anything stand against this in the words cited from III Cont. Gent.; for when St. Thomas says in one and another way, he does not understand immediacy of supposit or of power, but the action as made by the secondary cause and dependently, or by the first and independently.

21. Hence it is also established that, although God, inasmuch as He gives the power of acting to the secondary cause and conserves it and institutes it for acting, can be said to act through it, yet, inasmuch as He cooperates immediately with the creature, He does not properly act through it, but through Himself and through His own power and might. Nor does there thence follow any of the imperfections which are inferred in that argument from the fact that both causes, the first and the second, concur through themselves immediately to the effect. For the first general drawback was that such agents would be imperfect. The sequel, however, is denied; but only that will be imperfect which from its intrinsic condition and nature needs the help of another, which therefore properly depends on another in acting; but the other will not be imperfect; for, as St. Thomas rightly said, III Cont. Gent., c. 70, it comes not from insufficiency of power, but from the immensity of His goodness, that He communicated to the creature the power of acting, and therefore wills to produce such effects not by Himself alone, but with it.

22. The other drawback was that such agents would be partial. But if it is understood on the part of the effect, it does not follow, because part of the effect is not made by one cause and part by the other, but the whole effect by each in its genus, as St. Thomas notes above. But if it is understood on the part of the cause, there can be a certain diversity in the mode of speaking; for some grant the sequel, because, considering absolutely the integral effective causality necessary for that effect, neither of those causes applies all of it, but from the concurrence of both the integral causality arises; and therefore they are said to concur partially on the part of the cause; which is not an imperfection in God, because, as we said, this is not from insufficiency, but from His goodness. Others, however, think the sequel is to be denied, because, since those two causes are of diverse orders, they are not properly said to compose one total cause, but each is an integral cause in its order. Which mode of speaking, because it is both more common and more apt for indicating the inequality and subordination of these causes, seems more to be approved.

23. The third drawback was that such causes would come together for acting without subordination and as it were fortuitously. This, however, does not follow, for, since one depends on the other, subordination is not lacking. Indeed sometimes there is wont to be subordination with some mutual dependence; for the instrument, especially a conjoined one, depends in acting on the principal agent, as the pen on the writer; yet the writer too in some way depends on the pen, inasmuch as without it he cannot write. And that dependence can be called a priori, because it is on the moving principle, but this a posteriori, for the contrary reason; but always that which depends on another a priori is subordinated to it. In the present case, then, the secondary cause depends on the first a priori and essentially, because it is per se insufficient to act anything without its help; but the first cause properly does not depend on the second, either a priori or a posteriori, because, although according to that mode of acting by which it accommodates itself to concurring with the secondary cause it cannot alone effect such effect, yet simply it is wholly independent and able to effect by itself alone every entity which it effects through the secondary cause. There is, therefore, between these causes not only subordination, but the most essential and most perfect. But since the first cause always acts from certain knowledge and its will, and according to the order instituted by itself, it cannot be said to come together fortuitously with the secondary cause for acting, but by the highest providence.

How God concurs with the material, formal and final cause

24. The opinion of Fonseca.—To the fourth reason, it is denied that there is anything in things which is true and real being which is not immediately from God. But to the first three examples, it must be denied that any action, whether natural or free, good or evil, inasmuch as it is real action, is without the first cause immediately concurring; of which we must speak at length in what follows. But about the fourth example Fonseca weaves a prolix disputation, V Metaph., q. 12, contending that God is the first cause in every genus, immediately concurring with the secondary cause to its effect or causality. But one thing in this matter seems to me most clear and needing almost no discussion; but the other I do not at all grasp, which Fonseca seems to have intended in that whole question.

25. That first thing is that God, by effecting, immediately concurs with all causes to their causalities. In which sense not only efficient secondary causes, but also the material and formal, are subordinated to God and depend on Him not only in being but also in causing. Which is nothing else than that, when matter causes, God concurs not only by conserving matter, but also by effecting the very causality of matter, whatever it be, and by effecting also the effect of matter, giving effectively that being which matter gives materially; and the same holds proportionally of the form, and indeed of the end, inasmuch as its causality can be something real, as we shall see below. And the reason is established per se from what has been said, because whatever is real must be immediately from the efficiency of God; therefore also the causalities and effects of all causes are necessarily immediately from the efficiency of God. In which sense there can rightly be understood of every secondary cause what is said in the book On Causes, at the beginning: The first cause helps the second over its operation.

26. But the other is that God not only as first efficient cause, but also as first material cause and as first formal cause, concurs with matter and form to all their causalities, so that those causalities, even as they are from God, are formally diverse from the effective. I omit formal and exemplar causality;⁴ for in them this is probable, as I shall expound below in their places. In the said sense, then, the said author speaks, who expounds this of matter and form, not inasmuch as they compose the composite—for in this way the imperfection which they include is so clear that it is evident that that mode of causing cannot be formally attributed to God—but of the causalities which matter and form exercise mutually on each other, while matter sustains in being the form dependent on it, or the subject the accidents, and conversely the form contains matter in being; for these causalities, taken per se and absolutely, do not include imperfection on account of which they could not formally belong to God.

27. Which he confirms by other reasons, but all, except the last, prove only our first assertion. But the last is that God supplies by Himself alone these causalities of matter and form, as is evident in the quantity of the Eucharist; and we said that God can conserve matter without form; but He cannot through effective causality alone supply the causalities of such causes; therefore, while He supplies the causality of matter in the conservation of quantity, He retains the same genus of causality; therefore He can also within that genus concur with matter to such causality. The minor, in which is the force of the argument, he proves because the causality of one genus is contained neither formally nor virtually in another genus. And God Himself, although He contains eminently all causalities, cannot yet, inasmuch as He has the notion of one cause, exercise the genus or notion of another. Likewise, because one cause cannot supply the place of another except by exercising the office which that exercised. Further, because, if God sustained accidents without matter and did not supply its office, there would be in the nature of things an effect in act without a cause in act. Next, because, if God conserved, for example, the form of the heaven without matter by efficient concurrence alone, either that would be the same as the prior one, and this cannot be, both because by the same concurrence only the same thing can be made, and also because now the causality of matter about that form would be supplied by no causality; or it is by a new effective concurrence, and this cannot be, because about the same effect new efficiency cannot be added to the old, or creative concurrence to creative.

28. The premised opinion is disproved.—If someone, however, considers what we said above about the causality of matter and form, he will at once understand the difficulty of this opinion and dissent from it, not only because it is new and beside the received dogmas about God, but also because it is false and relies on weak foundations. For in the first place none of the theologians or philosophers attributes to God, according to propriety, any other genus of causality than the efficient, final or exemplar, as is evident from what St. Thomas hands down, I, q. 44, and what is treated there. I say, however, according to propriety, for according to metaphor it is sometimes attributed to God that He is as it were the form of all things, and that He vivifies all things, or also that He sustains and is the foundation of all things, in which way Dionysius sometimes seems to speak,⁵ who is vainly twisted to another sense. Which is so true that the theologians for this cause deny that the divine Word exercises any proper causality by terminating the humanity, because, since it cannot be effective, because it is not common to all the persons, they evidently thought it followed that it is none; for that it is neither final nor exemplar was known per se. A similar argument is that, besides the goodness by which God has the power of causing finally, and the ideas by which He has the power of causing exemplarily, we do not recognize in God another power of causing ad extra except omnipotence, which is only effective power, whether it be executive power distinct in reason from will and intellect, or one of these, or all together. To add, then, to God another power of causing ad extra, by sustaining, for example, a form besides efficiency, is unheard of. Which, however, in that opinion, speaking consistently, is necessarily admitted.

29. Moreover I argue by reason, because every causality of matter (and the same holds of the causality of form) formally includes imperfection. And the reason is that neither in the composite nor in the form does matter cause anything except by means of intrinsic and formal union of one to the other, not as through a condition only required, but as through the formal causality itself, as was proved above; but God cannot so cause through formal union, as is known per se; therefore neither can He concur through proper and formal causality of that genus; but by the very fact that the causality does not take place through union, it is not material nor formal, and therefore in no way can it happen, as we also said above, that matter cause a form not united to it. Finally, that mode of causing of God ad extra without efficiency can scarcely be conceived, because neither in the effect is there anything with respect to God besides its entity and action, nor does it depend on God except by means of action, nor does action as action say relation except to the efficient, although, as ordered to such terminus or such form, it can regard a final or exemplar cause; what, then, is that other causality which is called sustentation? Plainly it is something feigned and not at all necessary. For the divine causality is most amply contained in those three modes. Nor because every cause gives being is it necessary to attribute to God formally the mode of every cause; otherwise, because matter and form too give being to the composite, it would be necessary that God give being within the same genus of material and formal cause, which is most absurd. From the fact, then, that every cause gives being it can only be inferred that God immediately gives that being, either in that or in a higher mode. Likewise, from the fact that every secondary cause depends on God not only in being but also in causing, it does not follow that it depends in the same genus of cause, but either in that or in a nobler one, or the effective.

30. The foundation of the aforesaid opinion is overthrown.—To the last reason to the contrary, then, the minor is denied; for God can by effecting supply, about the form, the sustentation of matter or of the subject. To the first proof it is answered that God through the power of acting contains eminently the effects of the other causes, and can cause in His perfect way that which the others cause in their imperfect ways, without them, where wholly essential dependence does not intervene, as is between the composite and matter or form. Nor on that account do we say that God through eminential containment of matter exercises the causality of matter, but supplies something by effecting which matter would cause by subjecting itself. Hence to the second proof it is answered that, although one created cause cannot supply the office of another except within the same genus, yet God can in another, where special repugnance does not intervene. Nor on that account is there an effect in act without a cause in act, but with the genus of cause changed. To the last proof it is answered that, when an accident is conserved without a subject, this takes place through new efficiency, not by adding it to the old, but by changing one into the other. Hence, if the form of the heaven were conserved without matter, this would indeed take place through an influx of its genus creative; but the prior would not remain, because it was not properly creative, but concreative of the form and having some agreement with the eductive. But whether one must philosophize in the same way about matter conserved without form has been treated at length in the foregoing.