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Goodness, Knowledge, and Indeterminacy in the Philosophy of Thomas AquinasAuthor(s): Norman KretzmannSource: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 80, No. 10, Part 2: Eightieth Annual Meeting of theAmerican Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1983), pp. 631-649Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026516Accessed: 22/11/2010 08:14

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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME LXXX, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1983

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GOODNESS, KNOWLEDGE, AND INDETERMINACY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS* A system as comprehensive as the philosophy of Thomas Aqui-

nas is bound to appear to contain inconsistencies. I am going to examine four such apparent inconsistencies, con-

cluding that at least three of them are real, with varying prospects for being repaired in ways that would preserve the more important elements of Aquinas's system. But because the vast scope and intri- cate internal relationships of the system make it difficult to assess those prospects accurately, I will present all four apparent incon- sistencies merely as problems I would like to see resolved.

All four problems have to do with indeterminacy, which I (and Aquinas too, I think) take to be the genus of natural contingency and free choice, and-each of them has at least one of its sources in Aquinas's conception of God, the basis of his philosophical sys- tem. In terms of their connections with his account of God's na- ture, the four problems sort themselves out into two pairs. The first pair of problems is associated with God's goodness as manifested in his freely chosen act of creation, the second with God's knowl- edge of contingencies in the created universe.'

*To be presented in APA symposium of the same title, December 29, 1983. Calvin G. Normore will comment; see this JOURNAI., this issue, 650-652.

I am very grateful to Christopher Hughes and Scott MacDonald for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. My discussions of this material with Eleonole Stump were invaluable.

'This paper grew out of my seminar on Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles at Cor- nell in spring 1983. All the members of the seminar contributed to my understand- ing of these and other topics in SCG, and I am grateful to them as a group. Some of them are thanked in the notes for contributions I am able to identify with individuals.

Naturally, most of my references are to SCG. Other abbreviations used in refer- ences are ST (Summa theologiae), DV (Quaestiones disputatae de veritate), SENT (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum), and IPH (In Aristotelis Perihermenias). All the translations are mine, but when I refer to specific passages in SCG, I use the sec- tion numbers supplied in the translation by A. C. Pegis, J. F. Anderson, V. J. Bourke, and C. J. O'Neill (first published 1957; University of Notre Dame Press edi- tion, 1975).

0022-362X/83/8010/0631$01.90 ?9 1983 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

631

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It is part of Aquinas's concept of God that God has freedom of choice.2 The action of God's will does not consist entirely in free choice, however, for "God necessarily wills his own being and his own goodness, and he cannot will the contrary" (SCG 1.80.1). God's goodness, like everything else properly ascribable to God himself, is God's essence, or simply God himself.3 Conceived of as goodness, God himself is the final cause, or end, of all things: "the ultimate end is God himself, since he is the highest good" (SCG I.74.5). In willing his own goodness, therefore, God is willing the one univer- sal natural end, regarding which no choice is possible. Although the necessity of God's willing what is essential to himself precludes choice, it is not, according to Aquinas, incompatible with every sort of freedom: "in respect of its principal object, which is its own goodness, the divine will does have necessity-not, indeed, the ne- cessity of constraint, but the necessity of natural order, which is not incompatible with freedom" (DV q. 23, a. 4).4 This freedom com- patible with the necessity of natural order is not to be confused with freedom of choice, however, as Aquinas shows when clarify- ing the scope of God's freedom of choice within the action of his will: "since God wills himself as the end but other things as things that are for the end, it follows that in respect of himself he has only will, but in respect of other things he has election. Election, how- ever, is always accomplished by means of free choice. Therefore free choice is suited to God" (SCG 1.88.4). And the term 'free choice', he makes clear, "is said in respect of things one wills not necessarily, but of one's own accord" (SCG I.88.2).s Since God's willing of things other than himself is accomplished primarily in his act of creation, God's freedom of choice is primarily associated with creation.

The two problems I want to consider regarding God's freedom in creating can be introduced in connection with two questions:

(1) Is God free to choose whether or not to create? (2) Is God free to choose what to create?

'See, e.g., SCG 1.88, "'That There Is Free Choice in God." 'The combination of divine simplicity with divine freedom of choice gives rise to

a further apparent inconsistency regarding indeterminacy which will not be dis- cussed here but is the subject of a forthcoming article by Eleonore Stump and me.

I am grateful to Scott MacDonald for calling my attention to the importance of this and other passages in DV.

5 Passages of this sort strike me as expressing Aquinas's authentic incompati- bilism. Ihe appearance of compatibilism regarding freedom of choice in passages such as ST Ia, q. 23, a. 3, ad 3 is, I think, always deceiving.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 633

Aquinas argues in support of the affirmative reply to both those questions,6 but it seems to me that his concept of God entails a negative reply at least to one, perhaps to both.

Ascribing free choice to God as Aquinas conceives of him-as eternal, for instance, or as pure actuality-is obviously not easy; and in the course of his several considerations of God's will, Aqui- nas takes up and rejects many putative reasons for denying that God has any free choice, for asserting that whatever God wills he wills necessarily.7 But there is an obstacle in the way of Aquinas's affirmative reply to question (1) which he evidently never considers directly as a difficulty for his claim that God's creating is not ne- cessitated. This obstacle is located in the essence of goodness, which is the essence of God, who is, Aquinas says, "goodness itself, not merely good" (SCG 1.38.2). The particular locus of the obstacle is a principle Aquinas often appeals to, sometimes attributing it to Dionysius-the principle that goodness is by its very nature diffu- sive of itself and of being.8 I think this Dionysian principle ex- presses an important truth about goodness, one that distinguishes it from other divine attributes, such as knowledge, which are not essentially diffusive of themselves. (There is no obvious inconsis- tency in the notion of knowledge that is never expressed, even though united with omnipotence, as there is in the notion of goodness that is never shared although united with omnipotence.) The use Aquinas makes of the Dionysian principle on more than twenty occasions,9 some of them crucial to his system, suggests that he has that view of it himself. Moreover, when he is discussing not creation itself but God's goodness, he sometimes writes in a way that indicates that he sees God's creating as an instance of goodness diffusing itself and being: "The communication of being and goodness proceeds from goodness. This is indeed evident both from the nature of the good and from its definition (ratione).... But that diffusion is suited to God, for he is the cause of being for other things" (SCG 1.37.5). If the diffusion of being and goodness is no more than "suited to God" (competit Deo), it poses no obstacle to

6See, e.g., ST Ia, q. 19, a. 3 & a. 10; also SCG I.23, 26, 27, & 28. 'See, e.g., DV q. 23, a. 4; q. 24, a. 3. 8 On the history of this principle see esp. Julien Peghaire, "L'axiome 'Bonum est

diffusivum sui' dans le neo-platonisme et le thomisme," Revue de l'Universite d'Ot- tawa, Section Sp&iale, Volume Premier (1932), pp. 5*-30*. I am grateful to John Wippel for calling my attention to ani important article which should also be con- sulted in this connection: Klaus Kremer, "Das 'WaruLm' der Schopfung ...," in Kurt Flasch, ed., Parusia (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1965).

9See the list in Peghaire, p. 19*, nn. 45 & 46, and scattered references in subse- quent notes in his article.

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God's free choice regarding anything; but it seems that Aquinas has no right to the saving weakness of that expression. God is goodness itself, and goodness is essentially (ex ipsa natura boni, et ex eius ratione) diffusive of itself and being. Doesn't it follow that creating is essential to God?

Perhaps not, if the diffusion essential to goodness is accomp- lished within God's essence; and in at least one place Aquinas presents an argument for the plurality of persons in God which seems to fill that bill: "As Dionysius says, . . . the good is commu- nicative of itself. But God is good in the highest degree; therefore God will communicate himself in the highest degree. But he does not communicate himself in the highest degree in creatures, be- cause they do not receive all his goodness; therefore there must be a perfect communication, so that he communicates all his goodness [with] another. But that cannot be in a diversity of essence; there- fore there must be more than one distinct [person] in the unity of the divine essence" (SENT I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 4).*1 But even if the Son's being begotten and the Holy Spirit's proceeding can be considered an essential intrinsic diffusion of goodness and being, in Aquinas's system it is the triune God whose essence is goodness itself. Unless there is some further intrinsic diffusion, beyond the pluralizing of persons, the essential self-diffusiveness of goodness remains intact and calls for extrinsic diffusion. And in that case creating some- thing or other besides himself is essential to God's diffusion of his goodness. God's will is the agency or the efficient cause of creation, but in bringing it about that something besides God exists his will does not freely choose but acts in a way necessitated by the necessity of natural order, the order in this case being the diffusiveness of goodness and being that is essential to goodness itself, God's own essence.

How does Aquinas try to avoid that conclusion? Principally, I think, by proposing a counterintuitive interpretation of the Diony- sian principle, one that may have originated with him. For all his use of and evident respect for the principle, he is also wary of it, sometimes introducing it only as a respected opinion." The appar- ent explanation for his wariness regarding a principle otherwise so well suited to his views on the nature of being and goodness is his understandable concern that it might be read as entailing emana- tionism, one obvious threat to his affirmative answer to question

'?Admittedly, this argument occurs in the sed contra and not in the solutio, and in SENT rather than in SCG or ST, where Aquinas does not use it again. Still, it presents an apparent way out of the problem I am developing here, one worth con- sidering, whether or not it recommended itself to Aquinas.

" See, e.g., SCG III.24.8.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 635

(1). He seems to think that that threat can be dispelled if the diffu- siveness essential to goodness is interpreted not as "the operation of efficient causation" but as having solely "the status of final causa- tion" (DV q. 21, a. 1, ad 4).12 On the natural, efficient-causation interpretation of the principle, God's being goodness itself is a suf- ficient condition for the existence of things besides God, requiring no act of God's will; and so if Aquinas's rejection of that interpre- tation is indeed intended to block emanationism as a consequence of the Dionysian principle, it is effective. His final-causation-only interpretation, supposing it to be acceptable,'3 does leave room for an act of will and thus for creation rather than emanation, but not, I think, for a free choice regarding whether or not to bring about the existence of other things.

For suppose that the essential diffusiveness of goodness has effi- cacy only as final causation in a world consisting only of Aquinas's God. In that world God's will has no object other than its princi- pal object, goodness itself, or the divine essence; and so the final causation inherent in God's goodness must draw only God's will, and only in the direction of God himself. The diffusiveness of goodness conceived of as final causation cannot be extended to the drawing of anything other than God himself toward it unless there are other things; a final cause cannot be "the mNsure and perfec- tion of a thing" other than God unless that thing begins to exist.'4 But in those circumstances why should God's will cause anything to begin to exist? Aquinas rejects "the error of certain people who

12 Here is the entire passage, which may be Aquinas's only explicit discussion of the Dionysian principle: "Although the expression 'to be diffusive' (diffundere) in its proper use appears to imply the operation of an efficient cause, nevertheless in a broad sense it can imply the status of any cause whatever, just as 'to influence', 'to make', and others of the sort can do. But when it is said that the good is diffusive in accord with its definition (rationem), the effusion is not to be understood in the way that implies the operation of an efficient cause, but in a way that implies the status of a final cause. (And such diffusion does not take place by means of any supple- mentary power.) Now the reason why 'good' indicates the diffusion belonging to a final cause and not to an agent cause is, first, that what is efficient is, insofar as it is efficient, not the measure and perfection of a thing but rather its beginning; and, sec- ond, that the effect participates in the eff-icient cause only as regards the assimilation of the form of it, while a thing follows after its end as regards the entire being of it. And that is what the definition (ratio) of the good consisted in." According to Peg- haire, pp. 6*, 9*, 12*, 15*, and 17*, Aquinas's predecessors, both pagan and Chris- tian, all interpreted the essential diffusiveness of goodness in terms of efficient causation.

3 Besides historical and philological considerations against such an interpreta- tion, there is Aquinas's own use of the principle in explaining the Trinity (pre- sented above) and the Incarnation (ST IIIa, q. 1, a. 1) in ways that seem not to con- form to the final-causation-only interpretation.

14 See the first distinction between efficient and final causes in DV q. 21, a. 1, ad 4, quoted in fn 12 above.

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said that all things depend on the simple divine will, without any reason" (SCG 11.24.7). Granting that God's will is the efficient cause of the existence of something besides God, we are left with the need for an explanation of God's willing it.

Aquinas is aware of the difficulty of accounting for God's will- ing the existence of other things in view of the evidently closed sys- tem constituted by perfect willing drawn to perfect goodness, and the heart of his explanation is the claims that "in willing himself God also wills other things" (SCG 1.75.1) and that "God wills himself and other things in one act of will" (SCG 1.76.1). He rec- ognizes that someone might infer that God therefore wills all other things necessarily, too, but he rejects that inference on the grounds that "since the divine goodness can be without other things and, indeed, nothing is added to it by means of other things, there is in him no necessity to will other things in virtue of the fact that he wills his own goodness" (SCG 1.81.2). But the presence of the Dionysian principle within his system blocks this move in a way that is altogether unaffected by his observation that nothing is added to perfect goodness by means of other things. Adding the Dionysian principle to the two claims at the heart of his explana- tion produces the different explanation I think he is committed to accepting: in willing himself God wills goodness itself, the essence of which involves the diffusion of goodness and being, and thus in one act of will God wills himself and other things under the neces- sity of natural order. Despite his explicit rejection of such an ex- planation, Aquinas comes close to presenting it in arguing for God's willing other things in willing himself: "To the extent to which something has the perfection of a power, its causality is ex- tended to more things and over a wider range ... But the causality of an end consists in the fact that other things are desired because of it. Therefore the more perfect and the more willed an end is, the more the will of the one willing the end is extended to more things by reason of that end. But the divine essence is most perfect in the essential nature (ratione) of goodness and of end. Therefore it will diffuse its causality as much as possible to many things, so that many things will be willed because of it-and especially by God, who wills it [the divine essence] perfectly in respect of all its power" (SCG 1.75.6). I conclude that Aquinas's conceptions of God, goodness, creation, and choice entail a negative reply to ques- tion (1).

That conclusion has no logical effect on the reply to question (2), however. For all that has been said so far, God may be free to choose anything at all to create, even if his essence necessitates his

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 637

creating something or other. As I will try to show, Aquinas's affirm- ative reply to question (2) is justifiable in a way that might be tol- erable within his system. But it sometimes looks as if he thinks that his affirmative reply to question (2) entails an affirmative reply to question (1), even though the fallacy in such reasoning is too ob- vious to be imputed to Aquinas with any confidence.'5 In at least one passage where he appears to be thinking along that line he again comes very close to saying what I think he should say about God's need to create something or other: "Speaking absolutely, he [God] does not indeed will them [things other than himself] neces- sarily . .. because his goodness has no need of things that are or- dered to it except as a manifestation of it, which can be approp- riately accomplished in various ways. And so there remains for him a free judgment for willing this one or that one, just as in our own case" (DV q. 24, a. 3). As I read this passage, it implies that good- ness does require things other than itself as a manifestation of it- self, that God therefore necessarily wills the creation of something or other, and that the free choice involved in creation is confined to the selection of which possibility (or possibilities) to actualize. But Aquinas seems not to draw such an inference himself. What he says instead, expressly and often, is to this effect: "the divine goodness is complete in itself, even if no creature were to exist" (DV q. 23, a. 4).16

If this apparent inconsistency in Aquinas's system is indeed real, it seems easy to repair, at least on the surface. Why could Aquinas not simply extend "the necessity of natural order, which is not in- compatible with freedom," to cover God's willing the existence of something or other besides himself? We could then agree that "God cannot will that he not be good and, consequently, that he not be understanding or powerful or any of those things which the essen- tial nature (ratio) of his goodness includes" (DV q. 23, a. 4), grant- ing as well (and, I think, more generously) that the necessity of will-

15 I.e., reasoning that since neither p nor q is necessary, the disjunction of them is not necessary.

'6Cf., e.g., SCG II.28.10: "It is not necessary, if God wills that his own goodness be, that he will that other things be produced by him"; and SENT I, d. 38, q. 1, a. 1: "Therefore if we accept differing definitions (rationes) of the attributes, some are found to have a relationship not only to the one who has them but also to some- thing as an object-e.g., power, will, and knowledge-others, however, only to the one who has them-e.g., life, goodness, and the like." In taking this line Aquinas strikes me as suppressing the essential diffusiveness of goodness in favor of its only equally essential desirability, to assimilate it so closely to beauty that its association with charity is lost sight of. Cf. SCG I.91.14: "Certain philosophers have even put forward God's love as the source of things, a view with which Dionysius's words agree when he says that 'the divine love did not permit him [God] to be without offspring'."

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ing is not incompatible with freedom of some sort. But we would then go on to urge that, in accordance with the Dionysian princi- ple, God's bringing into existence something L-usides himself is among "those things which the essential nature of his goodness in- cludes." Although it could not be said on the basis of this revision that God is free to choose whether or not to create, it could consis- tently be said that God freely although necessarily wills the exist- ence of something or other besides himself.

Would such a patching of the surface open a rift elsewhere in Aquinas's system? I am certainly not in a position to offer a defini- tive answer to that question now, but I think that at least two natu- ral worries can be quickly dispelled. One consequence of the posi- tion I am proposing for Aquinas on creation is that it is impossible that God exist alone, a proposition that appears to threaten the sys- tem at two points at least. But the way in which that proposition has been arrived at shows that despite its appearance it cannot be legitimately construed as a denial of God's independence. And al- though the impossibility of God's existing alone might also look incompatible with Aquinas's thesis that creation has a temporal beginning, since the Boethian account of God's eternality (to which Aquinas subscribes) entails the atemporal simultaneity of all temporally existing things with all of God's atemporal existence, there is no basis for inferring that the temporal beginning of crea- tion leaves eternally existing God alone at all.'7

II Although I find that question (1) raises the more recalcitrant prob- lem about God's freedom of choice, question (2) is certainly better known as a locus for difficulty of that sort. Since God is omnis- cient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, he must create the best of all possible worlds; he is, therefore, not free to choose what to create. That familiar line of thought does indeed look pertinent to Aqui- nas's position on question (2) in some of its partial presentations, as in these discussions of the reason for distinctions and gradations among creatures: "Every agent tends to introduce its own likeness into its effect in the respect in which the effect can receive it, [and] an agent does this the more perfectly to the extent to which it is a more perfect agent, . . . but God is the most perfect agent. It be- longed to God, therefore, to introduce his own likeness in created

17 More will be said about God's eternality in part iii below, but see esp. Eleonore Stump and Normnan Kretzmann, "Eternity," this JOURNAI, 1.XXVII, 8 (August 1981): 429-458.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 639

things most perfectly, to the extent to which it is suited to a created nature. But . . . since the cause transcends the effect, that which is in the cause simply and as one is found in the effect as composite and multiple. . . . Therefore there had to be multiplicity and va- riety in created things so that there would be found in them God's perfect likeness in accordance with their mode [of being]" (SCG II.45.2). Again, "there had to be various gradations among crea- tures in order for there to be in creatures a perfect representation of God" (SCG II.45.4). So the degree of perfection in the world consid- ered as the sole creature is, not surprisingly, its degree of similarity to goodness itself. Because of the radical difference between the un- created nature of God, who is being itself, and the modes of being belonging to created nature, the similarity between them must be inexact. In passages such as those just quoted, however, it does look as if the similarity must also, because of God's status as the most perfect agent, be as nearly exact as possible-as if Aquinas's God must create the best of all possible worlds.

But passages such as those present only a piece of Aquinas's pic- ture of God's choice of what to create; in the full picture there is no room for a concept as simple as the familiar concept of the best of all possible worlds, as can be seen here: "Because of the most ap- propriate order bestowed on these actual things by God, an order in which the good of the universe consists, the universe-suppos- ing [it to be] these actual things-cannot be better. If any one of these things were better, the proportion of the order would be de- stroyed-just as the melodiousness of a harp would be destroyed if one string were stretched more than it should be. Nevertheless, God could make other actual things, or add others to these actual things that have been made, and thus that universe would be better (ST Ia, q. 25, a. 6, ad 3).18

Aquinas is claiming that although the components of the actual world could not be better in themselves or better composed, fuller, richer sets of components are possible and would if optimally composed constitute better worlds. The fact that the two compo- nents of 'Socrates runs' are perfectly all right themselves and could not be better composed misleads no one into thinking that there could not be a better literary production. The actual world as Aquinas sees it is, we might say, like 'Socrates runs' in being an optimally composed set of components good of their kinds, but a set less rich in components than other sets. Its being the best of all

"I am grateful to Christopher Hughes for calling my attention to this passage.

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possible worlds of a certain type should not mislead anyone into thinking of it as the best of all possible worlds.'9 So omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God chooses to create a world less good than another he could choose.

One way Aquinas can make such a claim coherent is to maintain that for God to choose to create this world is not for him to choose less than the best; and the only way he can maintain that is to deny that there is a best of all possible worlds. That denial does seem to be available to him, however. In Aquinas's system, since God exists necessarily, no possible world is empty. In the revision of his sys- tem I proposed in dealing with question (1), it is also the case that no possible world contains God alone. All possible worlds contain God and something or other besides God which God creates as a manifestation of his goodness. Since nothing besides God is abso- lutely perfect, no possible world is absolutely perfect. But it does not follow that emptier is better where worlds are concerned, for the degree of goodness in a world depends on the degree to which God's goodness is diffused in it, the degree to which it represents God. The optimal composition of its components, whatever they may be, is one respect in which a world can represent God to the highest degree possible (for those components), but since "between even the highest creature and God there is an infinite distance" (SENT I, d. 44, q. 1, a. 2),2o there is no optimal set of components. I think Aquinas would agree that the nature of the creator entails that whatever world he chooses to actualize is optimally composed, but the series of possible worlds is ordered with respect to richness of component-sets in a closed infinite series,2' and omniscient, om- nipotent God can no more create the optimal component-set than he can pick out the largest fraction between zero and one. Aquinas does not say these things; but on the basis of what he does say about God's choice of what to create taken togther with my sugges- tion of what he might better have said about God's willing to create, I see no reason why he could not say these things. And if he

'9The distinction between components and compositions is clear enough in the case of words and literary productions. I realize that it is not clear where worlds are concerned, but I am offering it not as a technical distinction but only as a way of bringing out the distinction Aquinas clearly has in mind, one which surely is legit- imate to some extent. Think, for instance, of the actual chemical elements as this world's components.

20The rest of this passage also contains material supportive of my explanation. 21 The degree of similarity between the creator and possible creations approaches

exactness asymptotically. I think the possibility of two or more equally good worlds should be left open, and so I am not conceiving of this as a strict ordering. This ex- planation in terms of an infinite progress of possible worlds owes a good deal to Alan Sidelle's suggestions.

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could say these things, then for all we have seen so far he could jus- tify his saying that God does freely choose what to create.

But if God could do better, how can he be perfectly good? Ac- cording to my suggestion regarding question (1), it is impossible that a perfectly good God do nothing at all; and according to my attempted explanation of Aquinas's claim that God could create a better world, it is also impossible that God create something than which he could not create something better. That a perfectly good (omnipotent, omniscient) God creates a world less good in respect of the richness of its component-set than one he could create is en- tailed by my suggestion and my explanation taken together.

Still, it might occur to someone to think that if the best of all possible beings cannot avoid choosing something less good than he could choose, then no being is or can be perfectly good; perhaps 'perfectly good' is just the expression of a confusion, like 'perfectly long'. But in a consideration of creation power has to be taken into account as well as goodness. Like Aquinas, I think that the logical truth that God's actions conform to the principle of non-contradic- tion entails no limitation on omnipotence.22 And if, as I am sug- gesting, it is impossible in Aquinas's system that God avoid creat- ing a world less good than another he could create, that logical truth regarding his power leaves his goodness undiminished along with his power, even if it makes the creator's free choice much more a predicament than it might otherwise seem to be.

So although God's perfect goodness as I see it precludes his not creating anything, I see no incompatibility between his perfect goodness and his freely choosing what to create even though the choice of the best of all possible worlds is not open to him. As Aquinas observes, "it is suited to the highest good to make what is better" (SCG II.45.5),23 but, in view of the infinite progress of component-sets, to make what is best cannot even be suitable, much less necessitated. In actualizing one possible world God's will is, I think, necessitated as regards optimal composition, but his choice of a component-set is free. On that basis an affirmative reply to question (2) is justified, at least for all that we have seen so far.

III

Problems of my second sort-problems associated with God's knowledge of contingencies-raise difficulties for the preservation

22See, e.g., SCG II.25.11 ff. 23 It is worth noting that in the Anderson translation of Book II this sentence-

"Summo autem bono competit facere quod melius est--is translated as "Now, it befits the supreme good to make what is best" (emphasis added).

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of indeterminacy in the world freely chosen by the creator. As de- picted in Aquinas's system, the world is characterized by natural contingency as well as by natural necessity, and the human beings inhabiting it make free choices. Aquinas must maintain, therefore, and he does expressly and repeatedly argue, that nothing in the na- ture or activity of God is incompatible with natural contingency or human free choice.24 Of these two sorts of indeterminacy in the world, human free choice is of course the more important to Aqui- nas's system because, for one thing, he considers it to be a necessary condition of human morality.25 For my present purpose, however, nothing will be lost if human free choice and natural contingency are lumped together as the indeterminacy, contingency, or evitabil- ity26 of some particulars (things, events, or states of affairs) in the world created by Aquinas's God. The problems of this second sort can then be raised in connection with these two questions:

(3) Are the beginninglessness and immutability of God's knowledge of all particulars compatible with the fact that some of them are contingent?

(4) Is the purely active character of God's knowledge of all particulars compatible with the fact that some of them are contingent?

These two questions raise problems having to do primarily with (3) the temporality and (4) the causality of God's knowledge.

Aquinas does hold that God's knowledge is beginningless, im- mutable, and purely active. Considerations of such characteristics of God's knowledge led some of Aquinas's predecessors, especially

24 See, e.g., SCG I.67, I.85, II.48, III.72, 73, ii 74. The last three chapters cited con- tain attempts to show that natural contingency, human free choice, fortune, and chance are compatible with divine providence-a problem at least as threatening to Aquinas's philosophical system as any considered in this paper and one that I hope to address on another occasion.

25 See, e.g., SCG III.73.5. In IPH, at least, Aquinas enhances the importance of human free choice by treating it as one necessary condition for natural contingency, the other being matter's inherent potentiality for opposites (IPH XIV, esp. 8). For a discussion of the development of this line of thought in Boethius's commentaries on De interpretatione 9, see my "Nos Ipsi Principia Sumus: Boethius and the Basis of Contingency," in Tamar Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy (Boston: Reidel, forthcoming).

26As Christopher Hughes has pointed out to me, part of the difficulty in dealing with Aquinas's views regarding contingency is that he uses the term to cover both the modal notion (a particular is contingent iff it occurs at some possible worlds and not at others) and the temporal-modal notion (a particular is contingent in the actual world iff it occurs in some possible futures passing through the present and not in others). 'Evitability' seems to be a more perspicuous designation for the latter notion, which is the one that concerns me most in this part of the paper. But be- cause of Aquinas's own terminology and the long tradition of the problem of future contingents, I will ordinarily retain 'contingency' in this discussion.

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Jewish and Muslim philosophers, to deny that God knows any par- ticulars. Aquinas vigorously opposes them on that point, however, arguing that "knowledge of individual things cannot be absent from God" (SCG I.65.1), and including among objects of God's knowledge of individuals all non-existent particulars, future con- tingent events, and acts of human wills.27 Since Aquinas subscribes to the presuppositions of questions (3) and (4), he is bound to answer each of them affirmatively, and he does so. It seems to me, however, that neither of those affirmative replies is clearly and completely justifiable within his system.

The temporality problem raised in question (3) is well known as the problem of divine foreknowledge, which is often treated as if it were the only difficulty regarding the compatibility of omniscience and contingency. Even Aquinas, who, as we shall see, explicitly recognizes at least one other problem of that sort, sometimes writes as if a solution to the foreknowledge problem is all that is needed in order to dispel the impression that omniscience entails determi- nism.28 But whether he treats this problem alone or together with other sources of apparent incompatibility between contingency and God's knowledge, his solution to the temporality problem is, I be- lieve, always the same; a version of the solution offered by Boethius in terms of eternal God's knowledge of all temporal events as atemporally present to him. God's knowledge, like everything else properly ascribed to God himself, is indeed beginningless and im- mutable, but that does not mean that God has always known and knows today where you will be twenty-four hours from now; for "God is entirely outside the order of time, located, so to speak, at the summit of eternity, which is all at once. For him the whole course of time lies beneath his one, simple observation (intuitum)" (IPH XIV, 20). When the beginninglessness and immutability of God's knowledge are understood as essential aspects of his atem- poral mode of existence rather than as special features of his om- niscience, they do not entail foreknowledge, they rule it out. It is impossible that any event occur later than an eternal being's atemporally present state of awareness, since every temporal event is atemporally simultaneous with that state; and so an eternal being cannot foreknow anything. Instead, an eternal omniscient being atemporally observes all temporal events at once, including those which are future relative to our current temporal viewpoint. But, because the times at which those future events will be tempor-

27 See, e.g., SCG I.66, 67, ii 68. 28See, e.g., IPH XIV, 17 & 19-21.

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ally present are, like all other times, atemporally simultaneous with the whole of eternity, an omniscient eternal being observes those events only as they are actually occurring-a cognitive rela- tionship that does not compromise the contingency of the events.29

An essential feature of the Boethian-Thomistic basis for an af- firmative reply to question (3) is its treatment of God's eternal ob- servation of your whereabouts twenty-four hours from now, atem- porally present to him, as analogous to your observation of the words temporally present to you on this page. For, like the rest of us, Boethius and Aquinas are aware that from the fact that it is nec- essary that if you know these words to be here then they are here it does not follow that your knowing these words to be here necessi- tates their being here. The analogy is expressly drawn by Aquinas in this passage, for instance: God "sees, altogether eternally, each of the things that exist at any time whatever, just as a human eye sees Socrates sitting down-in itself, not in its cause" (IPH XIV, 20). It is on the basis of that analogy that the distinction between neces- sitas consequentiae and necessitas consequentis, essential to estab- lishing the compatibility at issue in question (3), is extended from our knowledge to God's: "Thus it remains that God most certainly and infallibly knows all the things that come to be in time, and yet the things that happen in time neither are nor come to be necessar- ily, but contingently" (IPH XIV, 21).30

I cannot on this occasion expound more fully the Boethian- Thomistic solution to the temporality problem, but in view of my collaboration in a recently published effort of that sort, I will as- sume that I have said enough more here to indicate why I think that the solution in terms of eternity does, for all its considerable difficulties, justify Aquinas's affirmative reply to question (3)-or, rather, why it would do so if it were not rendered useless by another feature of Aquinas's system, which is now to be considered.

IV As we have just seen, it is essential to Aquinas's solution of the temporality problem that God's knowledge be taken to be like human knowledge in certain respects. When Aquinas is discussing God's knowledge apart from the temporality problem, however, he makes it clear that in his view God's knowledge is the very oppo-

29 The three sentences immediately preceding are a close paraphrase of material on pp. 453/4 of "Eternity", cited in fn 17 above. For a fuller account of the nature of eternity and of philosophical or theological issues connected with it, together with an attempt to explain such notions as atemporal simultaneity (there called 'ET- simultaneity'), see that article.

30 For a more complete version of Aquinas's account of God's atemporal knowl- edge of temporal particulars, see, e.g., SCG I.67.10.

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site of ours in one fundamental respect: "the thing known is re- lated to human knowledge in one way and to divine knowledge in another way; for human knowledge is caused by the things known, but divine knowledge is the cause of the things known" (ST IaIIae, q. 2, a. 3). I think it is clear that this mirror-image theory of God's knowledge is a consequence of Aquinas's view of God as pure ac- tuality (actus purus), admitting of no passive potentiality: "Just as it is natural for anything to act insofar as it is in actuality, so is it natural for it to be acted upon insofar as it is in potentiality; ... but God is entirely incapable of being acted upon (impassibilis) and immutable, . . . and so he has no potentiality-that is, no pas- sive potentiality" (SCG I.16.6). Passive potentiality of the sort that gets actualized in ordinary human observation is, however, a fea- ture essential to both sides of the analogy that forms part of Aqui- nas's solution to the temporality problem. Your agreement that God's atemporal knowledge of your whereabouts tomorrow at this time does not necessitate your movements between now and then depends on your understanding his knowledge to be in all relevant respects like your observation of these words now, and on your as- sumption that one of those relevant respects is that your observing these words in no way causes them to exist or to be where, when, or what they are. If God's knowledge in all instances causes rather than is caused by its objects, then the analogy crucial to Aquinas's affirmative answer to question (3) is fundamentally misleading, and the Boethian account of God's knowledge of temporal events is useless as the basis for a solution to the temporality problem that will be compatible with Aquinas's system.

The germ of what I am calling the causality problem is al- ready apparent in the way the mirror-image theory of God's knowledge spoils the Boethian-Thomistic solution to the tempo- rality problem. Your reading these words now would ordinarily be considered, and by Aquinas as well, to be contingent, to have been evitable. But God's eternal knowledge that you are reading these words at this time is not something he has because you are reading these words; on the contrary, you are, it seems, reading these words because he knows that that is what you are doing at this time. So how can your doing it count as contingent, or as up to you?

As far as I know, Aquinas does not acknowledge this causality problem or, for that matter, see his mirror-image theory as giving rise to any difficulty for indeterminacy. On the contrary, as we shall see, he relies on the causality of God's knowledge when at- tempting to keep a safe distance between its necessity and the con- tingency of some of its objects. It seems to me that he might think

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he has avoided any such causality problem when he explains that the causative character of God's knowledge is not efficient but for- mal, and that that fact entails that God's knowledge cannot be the only cause operative on its objects:3' "knowledge qua knowledge does not indicate an active cause any more than does a form qua form.... And so a form is not the source of action except through the mediation of a power.... And so an effect never proceeds from knowledge except through the mediation of a will.... Thus be- tween God's knowledge, which is a cause of a thing, and the caused thing itself two sorts of intermediaries are found: one on God's side-viz., the divine will-the other on the side of the things themselves considered as certain sorts of effects-viz., the secondary causes by means of which the things proceed from God's knowl- edge" (DV q. 2, a. 4). Before considering the roles of these two sorts of intermediaries, I want to point out that identifying the causation in the mirror-image theory as formal does not by itself obliterate the causality problem. Part of what it means to say that your knowledge of the words you are reading is formally caused by the words is that the content of your knowledge is assimilated to its ob- ject, that the form of these words is somehow imposed on your mental state. And so, in the mirror-image theory, part of what it means to say that God's knowledge of your reading these words is the formal cause of it is that your action is assimilated to his knowledge of it, that the form of his knowledge is somehow im- posed on your action. It is hard to see how considerations of the agency or mechanism of that imposition can alleviate the impres- sion of determinism.

It might occur to someone to think that one need not look so far as to the nature or operation of the two sorts of intermediaries- God's will and created secondary causes-in order to alleviate the impression of determinism, that the mere fact that there are inter- mediaries in Aquinas's account of the causality of God's knowl- edge is enough; for their presence confirms what is already clear in the claim that the causality is formal only-namely, that the mirror- image theory presents God's knowing that you are reading as only a necessary, not also a sufficient, condition of your reading.

For two reasons, that line of thought cannot succeed. In the first

31 Aquinas ordinarily leaves the causal character of God's knowledge unspecified, but since human knowledge is formally rather than efficiently caused by its objects, it is only to be expected that the causation in the mirror-image theory of God's knowledge should likewise be formal. I am grateful to Scott MacDonald for bring- ing out the importance of this formal-causality claim in Aquinas's system.

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place, the status of God's knowing as a sufficient condition of your reading is guaranteed simply by its being an instance of knowing. Still, it must be admitted that the combining of necessary and sufficient conditions does not in itself warrant describing your read- ing as determined. One standard account of God's knowledge- straightforward omniscience-presents it as a necessary and suffi- cient condition of what is known without thereby entailing determinism; if God knows that you are reading, then you are read- ing; and if you are reading, then God knows that you are reading; and your reading is the formal cause of God's knowing that you are reading. In any ordinary presentation of straightforward omnis- cience the formal-cause clause would be omitted, taken for granted. But-and this is the second reason why that line of thought cannot succeed- in contrasting straightforward with mirror-image omnis- cience the formal-cause clause is crucial; for in mirror-image om- niscience the biconditional is just the same, but the formal-cause clause is this: and God's knowing that you are reading is the for- mal cause of your reading. The combination of the familiar bicon- ditional with that clause does present an unmistakable impression of determinism. The only apparent escape route yet to be explored runs through a consideration of the two intermediaries.

Although Aquinas does not recognize the causality problem, he relies on the mirror-image theory and its account of the two inter- mediaries in an attempt to insulate the contingency of particulars from the necessity of God's knowledge of them, a necessity entailed by the theses that "God's knowledge or understanding is his very essence" (SCG I.45.4), "God knows himself first, so to speak, and as known per se, but other things as seen in his essence" (SCG I.49.5), and "nothing can come to God over and above his essence, nor can anything be in him accidentally" (SCG I.23.1). Aquinas tries to deal with this difficulty on a broad scale simply by invok- ing the fundamental thesis of the mirror-image theory: "An effect cannot exceed the perfection of its cause, but it does sometimes fall short of it.... Now just as in our case things are the cause of knowledge, so divine knowledge is the cause of the things known. Therefore nothing prevents things of which God has necessary knowledge from being contingent in themselves" (SCG I.67.5). The first thing to notice about this attempt is that all non-necessity among the objects of God's knowledge, which include all human free choices (SCG I.68), appears to result from the fact that certain particulars fall short of the necessity that characterizes their formal cause. The fact that in this light our freedom of choice shows up as

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a shortcoming (despite being a presupposition of our morality) ought to count as an embarrassment for Aquinas's system, but per- haps not as any more than that.

The embarrassing consequence of that attempt to insulate con- tingency is less important than its sketchiness. How, exactly, does a particular manage to fall short of the necessity of God's knowl- edge of it? Only, it seems, in virtue of the operation of one or both of the two sorts of intermediaries: God's will and created secondary causes. In fact it is the latter that serve as Aquinas's main, perhaps only, mechanism for preserving the contingency of particulars under the necessity of their formal cause: "things known by God are contingent because of their proximate causes even though God's knowledge, which is the first cause, is necessary" (ST Ia, q. 14, a. 13, ad 1); in more detail, "An effect whose cause is contin- gent cannot be necessary.... But there are both a remote and a proximate cause of the last effect [in a series of causes and effects]. Therefore if the proximate cause is contingent, its effect must be contingent, even if the remote cause is necessary.... Now God's knowledge, although it is a cause of the things known through it, is a remote cause. Therefore the contingency of things known is not incompatible with the necessity of God's knowledge, since the intermediate causes can be contingent" (SCG I.67.6). One may well wonder how contingent intermediate causes manage to occur as ef- fects in a series whose first cause is necessary, but perhaps that dif- ficulty is not insuperable-e.g., on the hypothesis that some neces-

32 sary effects are exclusive, exhaustive dichotomies. But even if some such device is available to Aquinas, another fea-

ture of his account of God's knowledge-one that could hardly have been omitted from an account of omniscience-seems to render it ineffective: "God knows himself and all the intermediate causes that are between himself and any thing whatever.... Now in knowing himself, God knows that which proceeds immediately from himself; and in knowing that, he again knows that which proceeds immediately from it; and so on as regards all the interme- diate causes, down to the last effect" (SCG I.50.2). So God's knowl- edge of each link in the causal chain is proper and direct, not me- diated. And when one adds to that account the theses that his knowledge is necessary and that it is the formal cause of its objects, Aquinas's attempt to use the intermediate secondary causes of the

32 I am grateful to Susan Sauve for putting forward and developing such a hy- pothesis. There is a more fundamental difficulty in the concept of this series of causes and effects, one I am ignoring here: it seems to involve an unacknowledged mixture of formal and efficient causes.

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mirror-image theory as insulation for contingent particulars is evi- dently unsuccessful.

God's will, the other intermediary, seems not to have recom- mended itself to Aquinas as the device with which to block this variety of determinism, and obviously it does not offer the causal distance he thinks he can take advantage of in the chain of second- ary causes. But in at least one place, where he is not directly con- cerned with saving contingency, he introduces God's will in a way that clarifies the causality problem without alleviating it: "God's knowledge with his will adjoined is the cause of things. Hence it need not be the case that whatever things God knows are or have been or will be, but only those he wills to be, or permits to be" (ST Ia, q.14, a. 9, ad 3). His thought here runs along this line, I think: God knows grey horses and green horses, but that knowledge of his, although it is necessary and the formal cause of both grey horses and green horses, does not necessitate the existence of horses of either color; the fact that there are grey horses but not green ones is contingent, dependent on God's free choice among the infinitely many possible worlds. Suppose we grant what is by no means ob- vious-that God's free choice of a world to actualize is compatible with the mirror-image theory of his knowledge. Even so, the most in the way of contingency that can be got for the actual world by way of this intermediary is the contingency of its being this world that is actual rather than any of infinitely many others. For on every feature of this freely chosen world-such as its containing grey horses and no green ones-mirror-image omniscience imposes its determinism.

The apparent result of this investigation, then, is several serious, unresolved problems for Aquinas's philosophy. My respect for his undertaking and admiration for his accomplishment lead me to hope that I will not be the only one who tries to resolve them.

NORMAN KRETZMANN Cornell University