Thomas Aquinas on how God acts in the world | Ignacio Silva

In this lecture I will present Aquinas’ metaphysics of providential divine action and show its relevance to the contemporary debate. This debate arises because of the preoccupation with holding to God’s guidance and government over worldly events, as described by our current scientific theories. This worry led scholars to find ways in which God could providentially guide the universe through direct actions in the world. This search, however, involved assuming that God needs to be considered as acting as a cause among causes, a statement that is a major theological shortcoming for many. In fact, I want to argue that are at least two unqualified and unexamined philosophical assumptions in the contemporary debate on providence: 1) that causality is to be understood in a deterministic way; and 2) that, were God to act in the universe whenever and wherever He wished, the autonomy of nature would be endangered. From these, I argued that the implicit conclusion is 3) that God is to be understood as acting as another cause within the ontological causal gaps of nature. Analysing Aquinas’ own account of providential divine action, I will hope to show that one needs not hold to any of these three thesis.