On the Divine Freedom and Immutability
Solving the MOST DIFFICULT Problem in Theology
The contemplation of the Divine Mysteries provides a path full of obscurities that even the most astute intellect can hardly penetrate. It is in facing these obscurities that the faithful Catholic exercises faith most intimately and makes that sacrifice of his noblest faculty to God by faith. Here, we are not acting as those following “blind guides,” which will only lead us to fall into the ditch, an image of that inescapable hellfire. Rather, we are acting as true children of Jesus Christ, who came to reveal the Father to us, not to remove all obscurities from our minds, but to provide us a safe path amidst these obscurities.
Hence, when we adhere to Jesus Christ by faith and accept that Church who is His legate, our acceptable of divine things becomes a truly religious act, a sacrifice of our intellect unto God.
Yet, this sacrifice is not irrational or unfounded. We tremble at our own poverty of mind and blindness even toward the most evident things. If we cannot even understand the essence of a Bee, St. Thomas asks, how can we be so prideful as to expect to penetrate with full clarity the very mysteries of God? Yet, this darkness and our weakness becomes even more profound when we consider our current condition. We have added sin upon our natural weakness, which brings about the blindness of ignorance and that passion which hardens our hearts to the truth. Further, we have been upended by the business of the world around us as to be drawn from the task of contemplation, weakening us further.
Yet, Jesus Christ did not leave us without help and the rational foundation for accepting this help. He came to reveal the Father to us and provide the only means of the salvation of our souls and the correction of our intellects from our darkness, the Holy Catholic Church. In her judgements and in her judgements alone do I find that safe refuge of my soul. The truth of her message has been confirmed by those many miracles of her great saints who have covered the face of the entire world and the prophecies evidently fulfilled in her. My God, even your most sacred lips have witnessed to this truth, when you spoke those immortal words “those who hear you, hear me,” which have become that great foundation of my soul among her perplexities and doubts.
Hence, even in the greatness darkness and obscurity, my soul still professes what the Catholic Church professes and damns what the Catholic Church damns. Yet, by his sweet providence, Jesus Christ has illuminated for us great Saints and Doctors to guide me through these obscurities, especially Divine Thomas whose doctrine has always upheld me in faith. Most Blessed Thomas, prophesied to be the great light of the Church, illuminate me by your intercession that I may explain and defend the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
Yet, in this time of faith, we do not proceed to sight. These great Saints and Doctors have refuted all of the objections leveled against the Catholic Faith, but they have not given us that profound and intimate reconciliation of the mysteries that only comes by sight, reserved for the Blessed. Therefore, in this essay, I will proceed to defend the doctrine of the Divine Freedom, yet without penetrating unto the intimate reconciliation of this mystery with others, but only insofar as the doctrine is established as true, explained by analogy with created things, and is defended by the refutation of all objections against it.
First, we must make a distinction between the will of God toward Himself and toward creatures. It is necessary that God will His own goodness as the proper object of His will. God is the summit of goodness, hence, in knowing Himself, God necessarily wills Himself by the love whereby He loves Himself. God cannot but love Himself and His own goodness.
Hence, St. Thomas writes:
The divine will has a necessary relation to the divine goodness, since that is its proper object. Hence God wills His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has necessary relation to its proper and principal object, for instance the sight to color, since it tends to it by its own nature. (ST.I.Q19.A3)
Yet, it is true that at certain times the Fathers and Doctors will state that God loves Himself “freely.” By this, they merely intend to indicate that God loves Himself without any sort of extrinsic force or compulsion (libertate a coactione), not that there is not necessity of any sort (in this case, an internal necessity flowing from the nature of His will).
Now, toward creatures, it is clear that God is free in one sense and not free in another sense. For, we can consider something necessary either absolutely or by supposition. Something is necessary absolutely when the terms mutually imply one another. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that if Socrates is a man, then he is rational, since what is signified by man implies what is signified by rational. Yet, that Socrates is sitting is only necessary by supposition, i.e., if he is sitting. Creatures are not necessary in the first sense since what is signified by “creature” is not, by its very nature, necessary, but is contingent. Yet, from supposition, it is necessary since we add a condition to their existence, i.e., “if God has willed.”
This is evident through the text of Sacred Scripture, “the God of revenge hath acted freely” (Ps. 93:1), “He hath mercy on whom he will; and whom he will, he hardeneth” (Rom. 9:18), “Who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11), “Dividing to every one according as he will” (1 Cor. 12:11), etc.
This is evident from reason as well. First, the freedom of the will is a pure perfection, hence it would be impious to deny such freedom to Him. Second, creatures do not exist for their own sake, but for the sake of God as an end. Yet, such things are only willed necessarily if the end can only be reached by means of them. But, such is not the case since God’s goodness exists perfectly without dependence on creatures. Therefore, he wills them freely and not necessarily.
It is this argument that St. Thomas appeals to in Prima Pars, Q. 19, A. 3:
God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end. Now in willing an end we do not necessarily will things that conduce to it, unless they are such that the end cannot be attained without them; as, we will to take food to preserve life, or to take a ship in order to cross the sea. But we do not necessarily will things without which the end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can take on foot, for we can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence, since the goodness of God is perfect, and can exist without other things inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary. Yet it can be necessary by supposition, for supposing that He wills a thing, then He is unable not to will it, as His will cannot change.
While it is quite easy to demonstrate this thesis from scripture, tradition, and reason from the most luminous and universal principles of truth, various difficulties arise which obscure our understanding of this truth.
The chief of these problems is the question of what constitutes the freedom of God. How can we hold that the simple and immutable God has freedom without contradiction? Billuart states the problem thus,
It is difficult to conceive how the freedom of God stands with His immutability, while preserving the rights of both. For either the free act could have been absent from God, or not. If the first, how is God immutable? If the second, how is He free? For it is of the very nature (ratione) of a free act that it could have been otherwise. This, then, is the height of the difficulty that torments the minds of theologians. (Summa Summae, De Deo Uno, Dis. VII, Art. 2)
Cajetanus, the great Patriarch of the Thomists, states that this entire problem is most succinctly and essentially stated in the replies to the fourth and fifth objections,
Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect; owing to a deficiency in the effect, and not in the cause. Even so, the sun’s power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause. In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.
A naturally contingent cause must be determined to act by some external power. The divine will, which by its nature is necessary, determines itself to will things to which it has no necessary relation.
From this passage, the Thomists state that God’s freedom is constituted by the necessary act of His will insofar as it has a non-necessary relation or termination in creatures.
In order to understand this answer, we have to more clearly post what is meant by “freedom” and rigorously apply this insight to the problem at hand in an abstracted state. For, the solution to this problem will not come without the abstraction of a mind willing to strip from all our notions the dross of earthly things. It is only in this way that we can purify our notions from the imperfections of creatures and make them worthy of God.
Our freedom is the indifference of a power toward various acts of willing or not willing. It is an exercise of freedom for my will to either be actualized towards having a sandwich for lunch or not having such a meal. I go from the potential to such to the act of such. If we were to admit such freedom in God, it would obviously be inappropriate and imply some sort of imperfection since the potentiality of faculties implies a diminution in the actuality of God.
The freedom of God, on the other hand, is the indifference of one most simple and most pure act towards various objects, NOT the indifference of potency to act or not to act. By his freedom, God is choosing whether to specify the act of his will in bringing about the being of X creature (volition) or in not bringing about the being of X creature (nolition).
In creatures: Potency -> Act
In God: Act -> Object
It is for this reason that Cajetanus calls out the unfortunate wording of Bl. Scotus in referring to God as the “first contingent cause” (1 Sent., d. 43, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4), calling such a reference “crude and novel.” It is completely inappropriate to speak of the “contingency” of the Divine Will. Rather, we ought to distinguish (as St. Thomas does) between the “necessary connexion” of the necessary act of the Divine Will toward its primary and proper object and the “non-necessary connexion” of the necessary act of the Divine Will toward its secondary objects, which can simply be called a “free act” as distinguished from both a necessary act and a contingent act. For a better understanding of this, it is important to understand the three-fold distinction of the Thomists,
Necessity: The impossibility to be otherwise.
Contingency: Possibility to be otherwise SUCCESSIVELY, i.e., by way of being changed.
Freedom: Possibility to be otherwise without any implication of succession or change in the subject either way.
When we speak of the free act of God terminating in creatures as secondary objects and the necessary act of God terminating in its primary object, we speak of one and the same simple and necessary act, yet according to different aspects. For, the single and simple act of the Divine Will is entitatively necessary in all of its acts, yet can also be named terminatively according to its various virtualities, either terminating in secondary objects or in the proper object of the will.
There is even a faint analogy to this in us and among creatures. All of our free acts have this entitative unity with dual termination. For, when we make any free choice, there is BOTH a termination in the will’s proper object (which is necessary) AND a termination in the freely chosen secondary object willed for the sake of the proper object of the will.
The demonstration that this is sufficient for the notion of freedom of God stated above is clear if we consider the two aspects necessary for such a notion to be verified. First, it most be something in God, i.e., intrinsic to God. Second, it must be something capable in some sense (although, not in every sense) of not-being. Clearly, both of these are verified in God of the freedom spoken of above.
The act spoken of is the simple and entitatively necessary act of the Divine Will, which is truly and properly in God.
The termination of the act can either be or not-be depending on whether it terminates in the secondary object or not.
Hence, it verifies both the notion of “freedom” (by the second) and “being-in-God” (by the first).
Yet, as soon as this solution is put forward, an obvious difficulty arises. Is this liberty something intrinsic in God? If so, it seems that it places something defective in God, i.e., the termination in creatures. If not, it seems that it cannot truly be said to be in God as would be implied by this doctrine.
Yet, this objection can be simply resolved. To say that the defectability of the act is on the part of its termination to creatures rather than in anything intrinsic in God is NOT to say that the freedom of God is wholly extrinsic since the act itself (i.e., the one, simple, eternal, entitatively simple act of the Divine Will) is intrinsic to God. While the freedom is intrinsic insofar as the act is intrinsic, it is defectible in connexion to its terminus. As Billuart describes, “the same act, remaining unmoved in itself with no intrinsic change or defect in its own reality, could have produced or not produced creatures, and could have ordered and arranged them in various ways.” (ibid.)
Hence, the fundamental element of Divine Liberty is something intrinsic to God (i.e., the act of the Divine Will), yet there is also an additional connotation of something extrinsic and defectible, i.e., creatures, who have a non-necessary connexion with God.
If we loop back to our original principle that the Divine Freedom is quite distinct from Human Freedom insofar as it denotes the relation of non-necessary objects to an act rather than the relation of non-necessary acts to a power, then this makes complete sense. For, the entity of the liberty is derived from the act, whereas its specification is derived from the relation of the object to the power. Hence, liberty BOTH retains its intrinsicness insofar as the act remains in God AND it retains its freedom insofar as it retains a non-necessary termination in creatures.
This is similar to other titles given to God where a Divine Name is founded upon an intrinsic form, yet receives its proper nature by positing some sort of extrinsic connotation. For example, the foundation for God to be said to be ‘Creator’ or ‘Lord’ is the intrinsic form of his omnipotence, yet the proper nature is received by positing some sort of extrinsic connotation. How is it any different to have the foundation of the freedom of God in his necessary act and the reception of the proper nature by some sort of extrinsic connotation? As Billuart writes, “for the act of God to be free, and to have been able to relate differently to creatures, it was not necessary that He be changed in Himself by losing or receiving anything, but only that, while remaining unchanged in Himself, He could have changed creatures differently.” (ibid.)
It is here that we can truly experience the eminent genius of St. Thomas. In resolving this problem of the formal constituency of the Divine Freedom, he was able to simply and succinctly state the fundamental reason for it, i.e., in the “non-necessary relation to the effect.”
This is the first part of a series on the freedom of God according to the Thomistic solution. In part 2, I will be going into more detail concerning this “non-necessary relation” in the other texts where St. Thomas considers this problem.
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