14.3 Providence and Singulars (SCG 3,75–76)
14.3 Providence and Singulars (SCG 3,75–76)
Continuing with somewhat the same theme, in SCG 3,75–76 Aquinas maintains that God’s providence extends to individual things that are able to be or not to be (quod providentia dei sit singularium contingentium) and that it extends to them immediately (quod providentia dei sit omnium singularium immediate). His point is that God does not just govern things that are not generated or corruptible, and that God governs what is generated and corruptible without having to rely on intermediaries. As I have noted, Aquinas distinguishes between created things that are contingent and created things that are necessary; and, as we saw in chapter 8, he holds that things of these two kinds can exist in a world willed by God. In SCG 3,75 he is basically just repeating himself when it comes to there being created contingent things, while adding in SCG 3,76 that God governs contingent created things directly by making them to exist with the powers that they have. It cannot, Aquinas reasons, be that God lacks direct and perfect knowledge of contingent things. Nor can it be that God does not will them to be as the individuals they are with the powers that they have. So, he says, just as God knows contingent created individuals by virtue of his omniscience, he “must also establish order for them immediately.”31 Aquinas agrees that God can use secondary causes to bring about what he wills. He remains clear, however, that secondary causes operate as willed to exist and act by God. He notes that human governors employ people to carry out their plans and that this might lead one to think that God governs created contingent causes by, so to speak, handing on the work to assistants. Yet, so he argues, human governors “pass the buck” because they lack knowledge and power, as God does not. In Aquinas’s view, God’s creating and governing of creatures is not the activity of one who needs any help from another. As we read in a particularly clear section of SCG 3,76:
In the case of things regulated by human providence we find that a certain higher overseer thinks out the way in which some of the big and universal matters are to be ordered, but this overseer does not personally think out the ordering of the smallest details; rather, that business is left to be planned by agents at a lower level. But, as a matter of fact, this is so because of the overseer’s deficiency; either because he or she does not know the circumstances for the individual details, or because he or she is not able to think out the order for all, by virtue of the effort and length of time that might be needed. Now, deficiencies of this kind are far removed from God, because he knows all singular things, and he does not make an effort to understand, or require any time for it; since, by understanding himself he knows all other things [see SCG 1,46]. Therefore, God plans even the order for all singular things.32