The Divine Operation of Concurrence

All actuality rests fundamentally upon God. Creatures cannot bring themselves into existence, nor can they conserve themselves in existence once the Divine Power has brought them there. In other words, creatures need God the Creator, and God the Conserver. This fact we have already seen to be inevitable. But we must go further and express a third need of creatures. Creatures are created and conserved not only as essences but as natures; not only as things of a certain type or kind, but as things with certain connatural powers and functions; not only as things existible, but as things operable; not only as things static, but as things dynamic. In a word, creatures have activities and operations, and these (in the radical equipment or power whence they flow, and in their actual exercise) require the action and cooperation of God to explain their existence. Here then is the third need of creatures: the cooperation or concurrence of God in their powers of action and in the exercise of these powers. Creatures therefore require God the Creator, God the Conserver, and God the Cooperator or Concurrer. Now, the word concurrence is, in its literal force, a weak word in the present use. For to concur means “to run alongside,” “to go along with,” and it suggests the working together of partial causes which conspire to produce an effect. But it is a demonstrable truth that in creatural actions, the creature is the total cause of the effect, and, in another way, God is the total cause of the effect. God and creature do not conspire together to produce the effect, each giving out a part of the efficacy which produces the effect. No, God the Primary Cause, and the creature which is a secondary cause (since God alone is Primary Cause) produce the effect, each wholly, in respectively different ways. When,—to employ a very crude example, —two horses pull one wagon, each horse contributes part of the power that is required to move the wagon; the horses are partial causes of the effect which is the moving of the wagon. But when a man uses a pen to write a letter, both the man and the pen, each in its own way, is a total cause of the letter; the whole letter comes from the man, and the whole letter is written with the pen. Man and pen are not partial causes which stand on a plane, so to speak, and work together, each contributing a part of the effect. The man writes the whole letter; so does the pen. But the man writes as the principal cause, the pen as the instrumental cause, and from the principal cause through the instrumental cause the finished effect emerges. In an analogous manner, the effects produced by creatures in action are wholly ascribed to creatures, and wholly ascribed to God; to the creatures as secondary causes, and to God as Primary Cause. For creatures are contingent beings; contingency extends to everything in fact or function in the realm of creatures; creatures have nothing of their own which can stand independent of the First Cause as the basis of their existence or of the existence of their smallest operation. Hence, creatures require the active influence,—the inpouring of power, force, direction, support,—of God in all that they do as well as in all that they are; they require the Divine Cooperation as well as the Divine Conservation. And, as we have said, the word concurrence (or even the word cooperation) is a weak word in this connection. St. Thomas Aquinas used the expressions, “the influence or inpouring of God,” “the action of God,” “the Divine Motion,” “the operation of God” (r’-rfluxus Dei, actio Dei, motio divina, Dei operatic) to express the activity of God which we consider here. These terms are accurate, but usage seems to have established the term concurrence (or the Latin concursus} as the acceptable one. We may well use this word if we keep clear minds about its meaning and are not led by its etymological structure into misunderstanding its true force. Divine Concurrence means the Divine Power actively exercised upon the creature (that is, secondary cause) to elicit operations, to determine and direct them, and to support them in being, in such wise that these operations are wholly ascribable to the creature as their secondary cause, and wholly ascribable to God as the sole Primary Cause. b) THE FACT OF DIVINE CONCURRENCE z. It is a truth established in Ontology that nothing can act except in so far as itself is actual. A thing cannot operate unless it be there to operate, unless it be equipped to operate, unless it be determined in operation, unless it be stirred or moved to operate. Now, creatures depend entirely upon the First and Necessary Being (that is, upon God) and they have no actuality whatever independently of that Being. This does not mean that creatures are identified with God (for to say so would be to profess pantheism which is a debased and an absurd doctrine) but that creatures have an entire dependence upon God for their being and operation; it means that creatures in themselves and in their operations are entirely contingent upon God. In other words, creatures can act only in so far as the Divine Power concurs in their action, that is, only in so far as they are made, are made capable of action, are determined in action, are moved to action, are supported in action, by the exercise of the Divine Power. For all these points (existence, equipment or nature, determination, movement, support) are points of actuality, and no actuality is wholly independent of the Pure and First Actuality which is God. Therefore, creatures cannot exist and function unless Divine Concurrence is a fact. But it is manifest that creatures do exist and do function. Therefore Divine Concurrence is a fact. 2. The order of effects manifests the order of causes whence these effects come. Now, in any effect which comes from a creature-cause (or secondary cause, to use the technical term) we discern an effect that is proper to the Creator-cause or God. For it is God’s own proper Being to exist of Himself, and it is God’s own proper operation to give existence where it is not to be found of itself. And in every effect that comes from a secondary cause we have something that really exists; every such effect is a real existence, and one that does not account for itself; it is an existence but not a self-existence; it is an existence that can be explained only as an existence given, and only God can give existence. The creature-cause, or secondary cause, truly produces the effect as this or that sort of thing; but that it is an existing thing at all, and not self-existent, indicates the action of creative power, the power of God alone. The creaturecause produces the effect in such a way that it is the creature’s work; it is wholly his operation and production ; yet radically it is a thing, an existence, which is also wholly the production of God. Therefore, every effect produced by a creature-cause is also an effect produced by the Creator-cause. Every creatural effect has both God and creature as total cause, from respectively distinct viewpoints; it has God as total Primary Cause, and it has the creature as total secondary cause. Now, the effects produced by the operations of creatures actually do exist in the world. These effects manifest an order or alignment or a presence of causes, the Primary, and the secondary. And the manifestation of Primary Causality in the effects of secondary causes is neither more nor less than the manifestation of Divine Concurrence in the operations of creatures. Hence, as the existence and operation of secondary causes is a fact, so also is the existence and operation of Divine Concurrence a fact. 5. Nothing has being or perfection except in so far as it has reference to, and dependence on, Being and Perfection, that is, except in so far as it fundamentally rests in God. Now the capacity or equipment of a nature for operation is being and perfection; so also is the actual exercise of operation. Therefore, the capacity of a creature for action, and the actual exercise of action, rests in God. In other words, such capacity and such action requires the Divine Concurrence. Therefore, Divine Concurrence is a fact. c) THE MODE OR MANNER OF DIVINE CONCURRENCE

God acts or concurs in all the operations of creatures as First Efficient Cause, as Ultimate Final Cause, and as Radical Formal Cause, (a) God is the First Efficient (or “actively producing”) Cause of creatural action because God alone gives to creatures their being, their existence, their power to act, and God alone applies the operating power of creatures to its connatural function. Nothing is moved, says the adage, except it be moved by something other than itself, and ultimately by the First Mover Himself Unmoved, that is, by God. Hence all movement, all operation, has its radical origin in God; God is truly the First Efficient Cause of all. (b) God is the Ultimate Final Cause (or “Last End”) of all creatural action. For God is the Creator, the Framer of every nature; He sets all creatures in being and directs to Himself as to the ultimate Goal all the acts and operations of creatures. Hence God is the Ultimate Final Cause of creatural operation, (c) God is the Radical Formal Cause of all creatural action. A formal cause gives specific character to anything which proceeds from it as an effect; it makes the effect the precise kind of thing that it is. Now God is the Creator and

Determiner of creatures in their specific structure and powers, and hence He is the Determiner of what proceeds from such structures and powers. Therefore God is truly the fundamental Formal Cause of all creatural operation. “God,” says St. Thomas, “is the cause of every action inasmuch as He gives the power to act, conserves it, applies it to function; and inasmuch as by His power every other power operates.” There is no difficulty in understanding the mode of Divine Concurrence, that is, the causal activity of God in the actions and operations of creatures, until the special question is raised about those operations which proceed from the free-will of man. On this score there is a notable controversy among philosophers. All agree, of course, on the fact of Divine Concurrence in man’s free activity, but there is no general agreement about the precise manner in which the Divine Concurrence is here exercised. The question is one that calls for clear minds and clean distinctions, for, if the doctrine be stated inadequately (and it can hardly be stated with full adequacy for it is not without deeps of mystery) it may easily lead the unwary to false conclusions. If the Divine Concurrence in free-will acts be too lightly taken, it may seem to endow man with creative power and to make human freedom an independence of God, the sole Author of all actual being. On the other hand, if too rigidly conceived, Divine Concurrence may seem to make man but an inert instrument of God, and to ascribe all man’s acts and operations (including his sins!) to God as their true Author. We shall presently list the more notable opinions on this difficult point, but before coming to that we ask the student to keep steadily in mind the following inevitable truths about which there is not, nor can be, any controversy whatever: (a) God is the sole Creator; He is the only Author of being or perfection; nothing has positive actuality except from God the Pure Actuality; God is a true and total Cause in every actual operation of every creature, (b) Man is truly endowed with free-will, and by its exercise he is the responsible author of his moral acts, (c) God is in no sense the cause of sin, which is not being or perfection but the lack of perfection, the defection from being; man alone is responsible for that lack and defection which we call moral evil or sin. Keeping these truths clearly and fixedly in mind, we may indicate the doctrines offered by philosophers about God’s concurrence in man’s free acts. As a preliminary to that statement we offer a brief description of various possible types of concurrence : (a) Mediate concurrence is that whereby God conserves creatures in existence as beings endowed with the power to act or operate. Immediate concurrence is that whereby God actually operates with the creature in exercising an action. (K) Physical concurrence is the active and effective physical influence of the Primary Cause upon the secondary. By this concurrence the creature (or secondary cause) is moved to action, applied to function, actually set in operation. Moral concurrence is a persuasion, exhortation, allurement, whereby the Primary Cause draws the secondary free cause to determinate action. (c) Previous concurrence is the influence of the Primary Cause upon the secondary antecedently to the creatural operation. Simultaneous concurrence is the influence of the Primary Cause concomitantly producing the effect together with the secondary cause. The force of previous concurrence falls directly on the secondary cause; the force of simultaneous concurrence falls directly upon the effect, that is, on the operation exercised. (d) Efficacious concurrence is that which, of its very nature, infallibly has its effect. Indifferent concurrence has its effect dependently on the cooperation of the secondary cause. (e) General (or indeterminate) concurrence is a supporting causal influence which is not directed to one definite effect to be produced. Special (or determinate) concurrence is directed to one definite and determined effect. (/) Intrinsic concurrence (or concurrence ab intrinseco ) is entwined, so to speak, in the very being of the action of the secondary cause. Extrinsic concurrence (or concurrence ab extrinseco} is an influence which is, so to say, applied from without, or exter- nally, and so supports, moves, and directs the secondary cause in operation.

The more notable philosophies of concurrence may be reduced to two, namely, that of the Molinists, and that of the Physical-Premotionists. Proponents of each of these theories claim harmony with the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, but the name Thomists is generally applied to the Premotionists only. We shall merely outline the theories here. J. The Molinist Theory (cf. Book Third, Chap. I, Art 1, a and b) holds that God gives to man’s freewill a concurrence that is immediate, moral, indifferent in itself, simultaneous, extrinsic. God, by His scientia media, clearly foresees how man will choose to act in given circumstances, and accordingly makes His concurrence (which is in itself indifferent and indeterminate) an efficacious and determinate concurrence which comes into actuality simultaneously with man’s free-action, to support it and give it being. The Molinists admit that God “pre-moves” all creatures to their connatural operations by creating them with definite natures and conserving them in the exercise of their natural powers. In the realm of man’s free-action, God’s “premotion’’ consists in the fact that He has created the will of man for good in general, has impelled it infallibly in the direction of such good, and, in every exercise of human choice, He allures it by moral influence towards the actual good. For the rest, man’s individual will-acts (which are ever choices of means towards the general and predetermined end or universal good) are determined by man alone, God simultaneously concurring in man’s choice. God is a true cause, and a total cause, of the human act of free-willing, for He is not only the Creator and Conserver of free-will, but actualizes, by His simultaneous concurrence (eternally decreed in accordance with His perfect knowledge through scientia media of what man will freely choose) the action of His human creature, and is the support and guarantee of true freedom in the action itself. Thus God’s simultaneous concurrence in human free-acts is a true cause of such acts without making them, by the very force and nature of Divine Concurrence, imperative upon man as inevitably to be performed.—The opponents of this theory object that, while the doctrine is a manifestly agreeable explanation of human freedom, it slights the absolutely supreme and necessary operation of God in every creatural action. It even seems to suggest, say the objectors, that man, in the moment of free-choice, is either independent of God or is the actual determiner of God’s own action, thus reversing the true order of things and putting man in God’s place.

2. The Physical-Premo tionist Theory holds that God moves every secondary cause (including human free-wills) to connatural action by a concurrence aptly called physical premotion or even physical predetermination. This concurrence is physical, previous, immediate, special, intrinsic. In the actual exercise of free-will acts, there is also a simultaneous concurrence of God which rounds out and brings to completeness the previous concurrence or premotion whereby God physically moves and applies the freewill to determinate action. Now, while the free-will in infallibly and inevitably moved (or pre-moved) to determinate action, its choice remains truly free, because God moves every being in a manner consistent with its nature, and therefore moves free-beings in such a way that they act freely. This doctrine, say the Premotionists, is so far from destroying human freedom that it is its only safeguard and sane explanation. For the human will is in itself a potentiality or power, and, like all creatural powers, it is incapable of absolute self-determination; all creatural movement must have its absolute source in the First Mover Himself Unmoved. God moves the free-will by an infallibly effective and immediate predetermination which does not take away the freedom of the will, but moves the will to determine itself freely, and thus renders free-choice both possible and actual. Nor is God thereby the Author of man’s sinful acts; sin, like all evil, is a defection and a lack, and is ascribable to the bad dispositions of the will which is moved by God to good. The matter of evil, the material element of action which is itself good, is indeed ascribable to the premotion of God; the form, or formal element of evil action (i. e., that which makes evil such) is ascribable solely to the bad will of man, so that God is not even its accidental cause (cf. Book Third, Chap. I, Art. 2, ci). The same sunlight which makes damp earth hard, makes wax soft. The same object is reflected in a clear mirror as beautiful, and in a faulty mirror as distorted and ugly. In a somewhat analogous manner, the same Divine Movement, and the one action to which it infallibly moves the free-will, are morally good or evil according as the free-will is well or badly disposed, that is, according as the free-will which is moved to the action measures up or falls short. Inasmuch as the freewill measures up to the possibilities of reflecting and expressing the force of the Divine premotion, the result is good, and finds its true and total cause in God, even as it finds its true and total secondary cause in the will itself; inasmuch as the free-will freely falls short of reflecting and expressing the true force of Divine premotion, the result is moral evil, and its only cause is the bad disposition of the free will itself. —The opponents of Premotionism declare that this doctrine makes the explanation of human freedom needlessly mysterious, while they admit that it admirably vindicates the necessary place of the First Mover Himself Unmoved in every creatural activity.

With this brief outline of the two chief theories on Divine Concurrence we are disposed to leave the matter. The point controverted is one for the specialist. Students who have the capacity for a penetrating study of the arguments offered by the proponents of the respective theories will find instructors glad to direct their further reading. For others, great elaboration of argument, a setting up of points and rebuttals, of claims and objections, would be but tedious and profitless labor. The thing to be remembered is this: all controversialists agree perfectly upon the fact and the necessity of Divine Concurrence in human free-acts; all admit the absolute sovereignty and requisite efficacy of God in every creatural operation; all unreservedly teach the true freedom of choice with which the human will is endowed. The question is not whether God concurs in the free operations of man, but how God concurs in these activities. We have here a question, not of fact, but of manner or mode. For the rest, if we dare to express an opinion in the face of most deep and learned argument on both sides of this controversy, we must say that reason seems strongly to favor the Premotionist position. For, despite its depths of difficulty and of mystery, this doctrine rests squarely on the metaphysical principle that only the movement, the premotion, of the Creator and First Mover can be assigned as the absolute beginning and the absolute continuing support and the absolute determining direction of any creatural movement whatsoever, even that of a will that is truly free. Quidquid movetur ab alio movetur: anything that is moved is moved by something other than itself, and ultimately by the First Mover Himself Unmoved.

Summary Of The Article

In the Article we have learned the meaning of concurrence in general, and of Divine Concurrence in particular. We have noticed the etymological inadequacy of the term concurrence in this connection, and we have therefore learned to use it with caution lest its surface-meaning lead us astray. We have proved that Divine Concurrence is a fact in the world, basing our arguments upon the contingency of creatures, the order of causes reflected in creatural effects, and the reference of being to the All-Perfect. We have discussed the manner in which God and creatures are, each in respective order, total causes of creatural operations, and we have found that God operates in every activity of creatures as First Efficient Cause, as Ultimate Final Cause, and as Radical Formal Cause. We have briefly explained the controversy which exists among philosophers on the manner in which God concurs with human freewill activities, and we have outlined the doctrine of the most important of the controversialists, the Molinists and the Premotionists.