A causal series or chain is an ordered collection of members, where earlier members cause or explain later members. Every member other than the first is preceded by one other member, and every member other than the last is succeeded by one other member. We can distinguish between accidentally ordered series and essentially order series. These don’t exhaust all the casual series there could be, but they do pick out important groups.

The difference between these two types of causal series can be illustrated with paradigm examples. A paradigm case of accidentally ordered series is that of parents begetting children: x begets y, y begets z, and so on. On the other hand, a paradigm case of essentially ordered series is that of someone moving a stone in a shape on the ground using a stick.

In both of these cases the later members depend on earlier members, but they do so in different ways. In the stick-and-stone case the stick moves the stone only insofar as it is moved by the person, whereas in the begetting case it is not true that y begets z only insofar as x begets y. Put another way, in the begetting case there is a measure of independence between members that is absent in the stick-and-stone case. Or to put it yet another way, in the stick-and-stone case we have an example of caused causing — the person causes the stick’s causing the stone to move — whereas this is not so in the begetting case.

Contrary to the impression we might get from these examples, the difference is not simply about whether the causes are simultaneous or not. Consider the example of Bob holding Charlie up while Charlie reaches for and picks up something off a high shelf. In this case, Charlie’s reaching is simultaneous with Bob’s lifting, but the latter does not cause the former and so this is an example of an accidentally ordered series.

In my opinion, the best description of the difference between the two types is the third difference we mentioned above: essentially ordered series involve caused causations while accidentally ordered series do not. To put it a bit more generally, we could say that in an accidentally ordered series each member causes the next without causing the members after it, whereas in an essentially ordered series each member causes the next and all subsequent members at once, by causing the later ones through the earlier ones.

Among other things, this description is best because it explains the other two descriptions we gave. The independence that obtains in accidentally ordered series has to do with the fact that members are not caused by members not directly preceding them. And what we mean by “only insofar as” is captured by the fact that intermediate members cause later members because they are caused to do so, like the movement of the stone is caused through the movement of the stick.

Given this difference between these two types of series, we can argue that every essentially ordered series must have a first member as follows:

1. The entirety of any essentially ordered series forms an act.
2. This act must arise from one of the members within the series.
3. The member from which this act arises must be the first member of the series.
4. Therefore, every essentially ordered series has a first member.

Regarding premise (1), every causal relation belongs to some act but it is possible for multiple causal relations to belong to a single act. When x causes y’s causing z, there are three causal relations (x causing y, y causing z, x causing y’s causing z), but only one act: x causes y and z at once, by causing z through y. We might think about y causing z in isolation from anything x does, but properly speaking it is part of the act arising from x. On the other hand, it is of course possible for multiple causes to work together while belonging to separate acts. Every member in every accidentally ordered series acts separately from the other, since we have said that it causes the next member of the series without causing any of the subsequent members.

With this in mind, premise (1) says that for any essentially ordered series, there is some act to which the entire series belongs. If this weren’t the case, then there would need to be two or more acts such that any part of the series is contained in at least one of them, but the entire series is not contained in any of them. To see why this cannot be the case, assume to the contrary that x and y are two members of the series, such that x is part of some act X but not part of some act Y and y is part of Y but not X. We can assume, without loss of generality, that y is subsequent to x in the series. Now, because we’re in an essentially ordered series, x causes the next member as well as all subsequent members at once, by causing the later ones through the earlier ones. Among these, therefore, x will cause y and y’s causing whatever it does. Therefore, y will be part of the act to which x belongs, namely X, which is a contradiction. Since every member must be part of some act (otherwise it would not be doing anything), it follows that all members must belong to the same act. Therefore, the entire series forms an act.

Regarding premise (2), we note that whatever a causal series does is reducible to what its members do, and therefore we have three options for whence the act of the series arises: (a) from nothing, (b) from one member, or (c) from a multitude of members. It can’t arise from nothing, since nothing comes from nothing. It also can’t arise from a multitude of members, since any multitude will contain at least one member from which it cannot arise, even in part. After all, any multitude will have at least two members with one being subsequent to the other, and therefore one caused to do what it does by the other. In this case, the act will in no way arise from this later member, not even partially. Thus, the act does not arise from that particular multitude, but some proper part of it. Since the same could be said of any multitude, it follows that the act arises from no multitude. This leaves us with option (b), that the act arises from one member within the essentially ordered series.

Regarding premise (3), if the act arises from a single member then that member is not caused to act by members prior to it. Since every member other than the first is caused to act by members prior to it, this member from which the act arises cannot have any members prior to it. Thus, it is the first member in the series.

The conclusion in (4) is sufficient for many of the uses of essentially ordered series, such as some arguments for God’s existence or Aristotle’s argument that there must be some chief good (see the last section here). But we could also use it to say something about the finitude of essentially ordered series. Since every member has one predecessor and one successor, and since there must always be a first member, it follows that the only way for the series to be infinite is if it has no last member. Conversely, then, any essentially ordered series with a last member must be finite.

In my second post on omni-instrumentality I said the following with respect to God’s essential cooperation with the natural powers of his creatures:

… the influences of both God and creature on the final product are direct (or immediate), complete, and total, but according to different modes. That is, they both extend to the final product (direct/immediate), to all of the final product (complete), and to every detail of the final product (total), but not in the same way (different modes). It’s because they contribute according to different modes that both God and creature can influence the effect without rendering the other superfluous.

The difference, I claimed, lies in the fact that the creature causes the effect whereas God causes the causing of the effect. God is the divine agent whereas the creature is the divine instrument. Given the breadth of topics covered in that post, it’s understandable that I didn’t spend too much time dwelling on this point. Nevertheless, it is a puzzling claim to make and reader Mashsha’i has drawn attention to this in comments on the post. After some back and forth with Mashsha’i in the comments, I’ve decided it’s worth to put my thoughts together in a short follow-up post.

Starting with an imperfect but intuitive example, imagine Alice and Bob are hanging up a big painting. This can work in at least three ways, which correspond to the three modes of cooperation. First, it could be that the two of them are holding the painting together at the right height while trying to hook it against the wall, which would be coordinate cooperation. Second, it could be that Alice gave Bob the painting as a gift which he is hanging it up himself, which would be accidental cooperation. And third, it could be that Bob is busy holding up the painting while Alice instructs him how to move so as to get the painting in the correct position, which would be essential cooperation — by guiding him Alice causes Bob to cause the painting to hang properly.

With these three cases in hand, we may ask: in which of them is Alice directly involved in the hanging of the painting? At least in the first two scenarios the answer is clear: Alice is directly involved in the case of coordinate cooperation, and only indirectly involved in the case of accidental cooperation. But what about the essential cooperation? It seems to me that there is a sense in which Alice is directly involved in the hanging — since the hanging of the painting occurs by virtue of her and Bob working together — but it is equally clear that this cannot be the same sense which applies in the coordinate cooperation.¹

Reflecting on the painting example, I think we can distinguish between two senses of what it means to be “directly involved”. Something is directly involved in the production of an effect if (1) it directly contributes to the effect, or (2) is contributes to an act which directly brings about the effect. These two senses are not incompatible but neither are they coextensive: whenever we have (1) we also have (2), but not vice versa. In the coordinate cooperation, both Alice and Bob directly influence the motion of the painting, and so both (1) and (2) are true of both Alice and Bob. In the accidental cooperation, both (1) and (2) are true of Bob, and neither are true of Alice. And in the essential cooperation, both Alice and Bob contribute to the act of hanging the painting but only Bob directly influences the motion of the painting, meaning that (1) and (2) are true of Bob but only (2) is true of Alice.

Using the categories of my post on cooperation, what’s common between these two senses of direct involvement is that there is combination between Alice and Bob in the production of the final product. Within this commonality, the difference between the two lies in the fact that coordinate cooperation is combination without dependence while essential cooperation is combination with dependence. The introduction of dependence in essential cooperation means that of the two things cooperating in the act, the second cause will directly contribute to the effect while the first cause will merely contribute to the act that directly brings about the effect.

In the case of God’s essential cooperation with nature, we can say two things. First, the sort of direct involvement he has in the final product of the cooperation will be the second one outlined above, but with an important qualification: apart from the particular way in which Bob depends on Alice in our essential cooperation example, he is largely independent of her; on the other hand, a creature is entirely dependent upon God for all of its being. Thus, the “distance” between Alice and Bob is far greater than that between God and the creature.

Second, while I was right (in my post on concurrence) to say that God is directly involved in the production of final products, I was wrong to equate “direct” with “immediate”. In the cooperation, God is directly involved in the production of the effect precisely by virtue of mediating his causal power through the creature in the act which directly brings about the effect.² Thus, while God is directly involved in the production of the effect, his involvement is mediated rather than immediate. In fact, this might well another way of characterizing the difference between the two senses of direct involvement: the first sense involves direct and immediate involvement, while the latter direct and mediated involvement.

1. In my post on cooperation I defined “direct” as “having no intermediate product” (“This occurs between two things when a product arises directly from the influence of both of them, which is to say that there are no intermediate products between the causes and their mutual product”), but we still need to explain the difference between coordinate and essential cooperation in this respect.↩
2. The qualification “in the cooperation” is important, for there are many cases in which God does immediately cause the effect. For instance, parents mediate the becoming of a child, but God immediately causes its continued being.↩

This is part two of my follow-up to my original post on potentiality and inertia, where I respond to comments made by defenders of existential inertia. In the previous post we delved deeper into the nature of potentials, and saw that not everything we call a potential is equally deserving of the name. This helped us clarify the indifference of potentials, and how they relate to their actualizations. In my estimation, the indifference of potentials is the core reason for thinking that potentials depend on some other actuality for their continued actualization. In the course of this post, we will have an opportunity to further unpack these two ideas and the connection between them.

The objection of interest for this post is raised both by Joe Schmid and Graham Oppy in different contexts. Oppy, in responding to a paper by Feser, says the following:

Yesterday, throughout the entire day, there was a red chair in my room. Pick some time t around noon yesterday. At t, the chair existed, and the chair was red. Moreover, at t, the chair had the potential to exist, and to be red, at t + ε, where ε is some relatively short time interval (say, a millionth of second). Do we need to postulate the existence of some distinct thing that exists through (t, t + ε) that actualizes at t + ε the potential that the chair had at t to both exist and be red at t + ε? I do not think so. Given that, at t, the chair has the potential to exist and to be red at t + ε, all that is required for the realization of this potential is that nothing intervenes to bring it about, either that the chair does not exist, or that the chair is not red, at t + ε. Potentials to remain unchanged do not require distinct actualizers; all they require is the absence of any preventers of the actualization of those potentials. In particular, things that have the potential to go on existing go on existing unless there are preventers — internal or external — that cause those things to cease to exist.¹

In private correspondence, Schmid has raised a similar objection: even if we grant the continued indifference of potentials, all we need is some kind of explanation, not necessarily an explanation in terms of a concurrent sustaining efficient cause. The persistence in actuality could be explained by a whole host of explanatory factors that don’t invoke sustaining causes — for example, the prior state and existence of the object combined with no sufficiently destructive causal factors, or in terms of an existential inertia tendency, or something else.

It may come as a surprise, but for the most part I am in agreement with Oppy and Schmid: it is often the case that something with an actualized potential P does not require some external sustaining cause to sustain the actualization of P. As I mentioned in my original post, Newtonian inertia is a great example of this: physical objects remain maintain their rectilinear motion until some other thing causes them to stop. And the example of the chair’s “inertial color” given by Oppy is another good example: the chair maintains its color until something causes it to be another color. The trouble is that these examples don’t undermine a more nuanced rejection of existential inertia.

In my original post, we saw that the indifference of potentials is consistent with inertial behavior because of what we termed “inertial actualities”. There we arrived at these in a fairly roundabout way, but we can get to them more directly as follows. Say we have some S with potential P and its actualization A at time t, and we want an account of how A persists until some later time t+ε. Given that potentials are indifferent to their actualizations, it can’t be that P keeps A around. Of course, the continued existence of P is necessary for the continued existence of A, but its indifference to A makes it insufficient for the task. There must be something else in the picture, that isn’t indifferent to the continued actualization of P. At this point, a proponent of existential inertia might note that this could be an intrinsic aspect of S to maintain A in the absence of contrary causes. And it certainly could be, but we can know more about it. Since it’s not indifferent to A, it cannot be another potential. And since being is divided into potentiality and actuality, it must therefore be an actuality. Moreover, this actuality must be closely connected to P in a way that other actualities in S are not. This is what I call an “inertial actuality” since it’s an actuality that explains the inertial behavior of the actualization of P.

Going further, I have suggested that we understand an inertial actuality as an incomplete determination to some behavior, in such a way that it allows for variation in the details of how that behavior plays out.² This incomplete determination gives us potentials for the actuality to express itself in concrete ways. The example of interest in my original post was Newtonian inertia: by virtue of something existing as a physical thing it is determined to continue its rectilinear motion (behavior) but does not fix the vector of that motion (incomplete). Let’s say we’re considering the potential some S has to be moving along some vector V. This potential arises from the incomplete determination of S to continued rectilinear motion, but is (as all real potentials are) indifferent as to whether S is actually moving along the relevant vector. However, when the potential is actualized in S, by virtue of the underlying inertial actuality S will continue along V until stopped by something else. This isn’t because P has somehow stopped being indifferent to its actualization, but because P exists in virtue of an underlying inertial actuality that was never indifferent to S’s motion. Similarly, the material constitution of a typical chair entails that it will have some color, but is consistent with this color being one among a wide range of options. Again, this incomplete determination gives rise to a variety of potentials, each of which is indifferent to whether it is actualized. But when one is actualized, the material constitution of the chair (not the potential) ensures that it will remain actualized in the absence of contrary causes.

Thus, the inertial behavior we observe in the world points us to the lower-level inertial actuality that gives some potentials existence and maintains their actualizations in the absence of contrary causes. The relationship between the two isn’t ad hoc, either, for it is the incomplete determination to the relevant behavior that gives rise to the potentials in the first place. Furthermore, such incomplete determinations have long been recognized when thinking about change, apart from questions of existential inertia.³

All of this helps us see that Oppy’s “potential to remain unchanged” is just another example of a pseudo-potential, this time made up of the potential and the inertial actuality from whence it arises. And it also helps us see the truth of the point made by both Schmid and Oppy, that the indifference of potentials doesn’t necessitate some external sustaining cause outside of the thing with the potential, for the inertial actuality is neither external nor an efficient cause.

Where does this leave us on the question of existential inertia? I think there are two things we can say here.

First, we are still left in need of external causes for actualized potentials that can’t be sustained by some lower-level inertial actuality. Aristotelians have traditionally recognized the distinction between prime matter and substantial form, and Thomists have recognized the real distinction between essence and existence.⁴ Now, both prime matter and essence are potentials that have no lower-level actualities, and therefore there can be no inertial actuality to maintain their actualizations. In these cases, then, we would need some external cause to sustain the actualizations of these potentials.

Second, we can shift the question of existential inertia from substances to their potentials and actualities, and thereby render moot the question of external efficient causes. The question of existential inertia typically arises in the context certain arguments for God’s existence, such as Aquinas’s argument in On Being and Essence⁵ and his second way.⁶ These formulations frame the argument in terms of efficient causes of existence, but strictly speaking all we need is the actualization of potentials by other actualities. That is, we can start with some actuality and build an essentially ordered series of actualizers leading back to a pure actuality. The question of whether this requires a separate substance from the one we started with can be settled as a corollary of what it means to be pure actuality. Despite sounding similar to Aquinas’s first way — which is also construed in terms of actuality and potentiality — this is in fact a different argument. The first way proceeds from the reduction of potentiality to actuality, whereas this argument proceeds from the continued actualization of potentials.

The upshot of all of this, I think, is a more nuanced understanding of existential inertia and its rejection. When we discuss the continued existence of some aspect of reality, we need to get clear on whether it can be explained by some inertial actuality within a substance or not. And if we wish to establish a separate sustaining cause of something, then we need to be clear on which potentials we’re considering within that thing, for not all require such an explanation.

1. Graham Oppy, “On stage one of Feser’s ‘Aristotelian proof’”.↩︎
2. There we spoke about this in terms of form and matter, but for this post we will try to restrict ourselves simply to language of actuality and potential.↩︎
3. For example, they arise in the distinction between substantial and accidental forms in the course of making sense of the difference between substantial and accidental change.↩︎
4. For my previous discussions on these, see my posts on God, matter, and necessary existence and the real distinction.↩︎
5. See the bottom of page 240 here.↩︎
6. See the corpus of ST I Q2 A3.↩︎

Recent comments by defenders of existential inertia have motivated me to return to the topic of my earlier post on potentiality and inertia. In that post I proposed that a key feature of potentials is that they are indifferent to what is actually the case. This, I explained, is the core reason for thinking that the continued actualization of a potential must depend on some other actuality. In this post we will clarify this further, and in the next post we will say more about the relation of all of this to inertia.

Joe Schmid, of Majesty of Reason, has put forward the following objection to my earlier post, which we will use as a departure point:

A potential is indifferent when merely potential, but when actualized it is no longer indifferent because it has become actual. We can’t assume that it doesn’t remain in that state of actuality absent a sustaining cause. When actualized, it is determinate with respect to its actuality, and we can’t assume that that determinacy does not persist.¹

In another statement of this objection, he asks us to imagine a fence in regard to the color it is painted:

Suppose I have a fence, and the fence has the potential to receive contrary paint colors. Take its potency to be red. Now, prior to being red (the consideration applies in both temporal and ontological senses of ‘priority’), the potency to be red is certainly indifferent to what is actual… But once the actualization occurs — say, by painting the fence red — the potency no longer is indifferent to what’s actual, since it has been made actual. And we cannot just assume that, once actualized, the ‘potency’ (previously a potency) does not or cannot remain in a state of actuality (as that is the very question at issue).²

In responding to this objection, it would help to return to a distinction I mentioned in my earlier post: in everyday language we speak about both the potential for becoming F and the potential for being F, but I noted that these are two different sorts of potentials. Indeed, not only are they different but the latter is more fundamental and more truly a potential than the former.

You see, when we move from our imprecise everyday speech to the more precise notions employed in the Aristotelian account of change, we see that the “potential” for becoming F isn’t a real potential at all. Rather it is an aggregate feature, wholly reducible to (1) the real potential for being F and (2) the actuality of being not-F — or, more accurately, the actuality of being G where G is some feature incompatible with F. This second part is needed because something can’t become F if it’s already F. Since the potential for becoming F is really this aggregate feature made up of both a potential and an actuality, it would be better to call it a “pseudo-potential” for becoming F in contrast to the “pure” or “real” potential for being F. Schmid’s fence has the real potential for being red by virtue of its structure and material constitution, and this real potential together with the fact that the fence is not actually red is what constitutes the pseudo-potential to become red. When the fences’s potential for being red is actualized, it retains the real potential (because it still has the capacity for being red) but loses the pseudo-potential (because it can no longer become red).

Unfortunately, our language is even more misleading than it may first appear, since we don’t often need to make a distinction between real potentials and pseudo-potentials. For example, Schmid’s usage of “merely potential” is in keeping with typical usage, but it isn’t the same thing as a potential simpliciter. The latter is a potential considered in itself. The former indicates that there is a potential and that this potential is unactualized. In other words, despite what we might think a mere potential is the same sort of aggregate feature as the pseudo-potential we considered above. This is why, when the potential is actualized the mere potential ceases to exist and is replaced by an “actualized potential” — a pseudo-potential referring to the same potential but this time with a fact about its actualization instead. Another common way of speaking is not in terms of potentials, but in terms of the things that have the potentials, as when we say something is “potentially F” or “in potentiality with respect to F”. To the best of my knowledge, these are typically understood as meaning that the thing has the mere potential for F.³

Unlike real potentials, pseudo-potentials aren’t indifferent to what is actually the case precisely because they have facts about actualities built into them. I gestured to all of this in my first post with the example of the one-liter bottle. This has the capacity (potential) for containing one liter of water by virtue of its design. When empty this is a mere potential (potential + unactualization) because this capacity is not actually fulfilled, and the bottle has the pseudo-potential for holding a liter more than it does. When filled, the mere potential is replaced with an actualized potential (potential + actualization), and the pseudo-potential to be filled is replaced with the pseudo-potential to be emptied. However, throughout this process the bottle retains the potential for containing a liter of water, for a bottle can’t hold a liter of water if it doesn’t at that moment have the capacity for doing so.

So, real potentials are always indifferent to what is actually the case and pseudo-potentials are never indifferent to what is actually the case. Contrary to Schmid’s suggestion, I don’t think it’s possible to have a potential only sometimes be indifferent. After all, if we supposed that a potential for being F were not indifferent to being F when actualized and indifferent when unactualized, then it’s very indifference would entail that it is actually not F!

It may help if we clarify what we mean when we say a potential is indifferent to “what is actually the case”, since this is an overly-general way of phrasing it. Specifically, a potential is indifferent in regard to its actualization. It’s entirely possible for there to be other “lower level” actualities that a potential is not indifferent to. For example, a human leg is structured in a way that permits a certain freedom of movement, ranging from a straight leg to a fully bent knee. This structure is an actuality which grounds the potential to be in any of a range of different positions. Of itself, the structure of the knee does not fix the position of the knee to any particular position — it is indifferent to the position within this range. In terms of potentials, we would say that it has the potentials to be in any of these positions. Now, each of these potentials is indifferent to the actual position of the knee (ie. whether it itself is actualized or not), but none of them is indifferent to the underlying structure of the knee, since this structure is what sustains each potential in existence. So, to nuance what we’ve been saying, a potential is indifferent to its actualization, but if it arises from a lower level actuality then it is not indifferent to that actuality.

But, we may wonder, isn’t change the actualization of a potential? For sure, but not in such a way that the potential somehow becomes an actuality and ceases being a potential. If that were the case, then we would not be able to account for the permanence across change, and every instance of “change” would amount to simple replacement. When the mere potential becomes an actualized potential, what ties these two pseudo-potentials together is the underlying real potential that remains indifferent across its actualization. Without this we would have a potential one moment and an actuality another moment, but nothing to account for their unity.⁴

What, then, do we mean when we speak of the actualization of a potential? We mean that a thing’s constitution gives it the capacity for being actual in a particular way (potential), and that this capacity has been realized in that thing (actualization). It’s not as though the capacity has become its realization, but simply that the thing now exists in a way that is within the range permitted by its constitution. This, I think, is why Thomists say that a potential “composes” with its actualization rather than “becomes” it. We could perhaps put this in terms of grounding: the potential is a partial ground for its actualization, in need of additional factors that are not indifferent to the actualization, such as an efficient cause or inertial actuality. Of all the factors that ground the actualization, the potential is what provides the capacity for being actual in the relevant way — it’s the “slot” that’s “filled in” by the other factors. It’s because of this that we associate the actuality with the potential, saying that it is the actualization of that potential.

Consider two examples. First, the materials and shape of the one-liter bottle give it the capacity (potential) for containing water, which is realized when the bottle actually contains one liter of water (actualization). The capacity doesn’t “become” the containment, but grounds it along with the factors that explain why the water is actually there. And second, the way the parts of the knee are connected allows for a certain range of movement corresponding to a collection of potentials for being in various positions. One of these potential together with the actual orientation of these parts relative to one another ground the knee’s actually being in one position rather than another.

To sum up, the analysis of change requires, and concrete examples confirm, that real potentials are indifferent to their actualizations. Schmid’s objection misses the mark because, if anything, it concerns itself with pseudo-potentials rather than real potentials. And this is an understandable consequence of our language failing to distinguish between real potentials and aggregate features made up of both potentials and actualities. While it may not always be necessary to keep such a distinction in mind, it is crucial in the debate over existential inertia.

This is the last of four posts on omni-instrumentality, a Thomistic model for divine providence. In the first three posts (here, here, and here) we outlined this model, the core of which is an account of divine concurrence as essential cooperation with nature. In this post we will be comparing our proposal with other views commonly held today — one of which is also from the Thomistic tradition — in the hopes that doing so will further clarify what we may have left unsaid thus far. As before, it is highly recommended that you read the previous posts before continuing here. Unless otherwise specified we will use divine concurrence to refer to God’s general concurrence, rather than the special concurrence we introduced at the end of the previous post.

Conservationism and occasionalism

While all the views we will be discussing below recognize some form of concurrence as playing a role in divine providence, others have rejected it outright. Concurrence is actually something of a middle-ground between the two extremes of conservationism and occasionalism.

Conservationism holds that God simply holds everything in existence without cooperating with their actions, even though he might still specially cooperate with them in particular circumstances. God’s activity of upholding everything in existence could be likened to the ultimate form of accidental cooperation, and any action he takes in ordering history would have to be by means of special accidental or coordinate cooperation on creatures. Conservationist models can differ from one another in how much control they propose God exerts over history, and at what cost this comes. The simple foreknowledge view, for instance, holds that God does not exert any control, but simply knows what will happen throughout history. Other views might say that he works within the confines of special concurrence, or even go so far as to say that he does violence to some of his creation in order to achieve his plans.

On the other side of the spectrum is occasionalism, which holds that creatures do not really act at all, but simply provide the occasion for God to act. The appearance of creatures acting is really an illusion, and there is no cooperation between God and creature at all, since the creature is not really involved in the act.

Concurrence is somewhere in the middle: it holds that God cooperates with creatures (contra occasionalism), but in such a way that he cooperates with the exercise of their powers (contra conservatism). But there are many forms of concurrence, corresponding to the different models of divine providence. Our aim here is not to defend concurrentism against conservationism or occasionalism — aside from the clarifications we’ve been making throughout the last three posts — but rather to delimit the extremes of the spectrum along which concurrentism exists.

Compatibilism

In the broadest possible sense, compatibilism is the view that God’s control is compatible with human freedom. In this sense, most views of divine providence would be considered compatibilist, even they not usually so called. Compatibilism is therefore typically used in a narrower sense, referring to the view that human freedom is compatible with some form of natural or causal determinism that precludes the possibility of alternative choice. We can see how this might work by looking at three examples of compatibilist models. Compatibilism comes in many shapes and sizes, so these are meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

First, there is Terrance Tiessen’s proposal, which posits a form of natural determinism based on what he calls the “principles of [creaturely] agent causation.”¹ On this view, the very nature of creaturely agency — whereby we deliberate and choose as rational creatures — is governed by fundamental principles that are necessarily true, and which fix how agents of various kinds would choose in any given circumstance. Given that God (1) knows these principles of agency and (2) is able to ensure that agents are of the appropriate kind and in the relevant circumstances, he is able to govern history knowing that these determine how we will act.² For Tiessen, an agent is free insofar as they are not externally coerced, and this is true when they are allowed to act in accordance with the principles of the kind of creaturely agent that they are.³

A second, and more radical, form of compatibilism is one that reduces human volition to deterministic laws of physics or chemistry. In this case, God could govern human choices simply by upholding these laws and knowing how they would impact the actions of humans. I don’t know of anyone who defends this sort of compatibilism today, and mention it more as a contrast to Tiessen’s proposal. The latter recognizes creaturely agency as an irreducible feature of reality, but posits that it follows its own kind of deterministic laws. In fact, Tiessen’s proposal is consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry being indeterministic, so long as the laws of creaturely agency are not.

Third, there is Paul Helseth’s proposal of omnicausality, which holds that God freely determines all that occurs in such a way that the real activity of second causes is upheld, so that he is not the sole cause of what happens and is not the source of evil.⁴ God determining all the occurs is understood as preventing agents from choosing other than they do, but upholds the “real activity of second causes” insofar as it works through the deliberating processes of agents rather than coercing them.⁵ This is a form of causal determinism rather than natural determinism, since it does not arise from the nature of agency or material existence (as in the first two versions), but from the causal action of God on his creatures. God’s act of directing history is understood quite differently on this view of compatibilism, since it is not based on his knowledge of how agents will act, but on his determining those agents to act in accordance with his will.

Perhaps the most notable difference between these views and our own is in how we understand voluntary freedom. While they differ in the details, each of these compatibilist models agree that a determinism that precludes the possibility of alternative choice is compatible with free choice. This is in stark contrast to the picture we outlined in the second post. Despite rejecting alternative possibilities as a universal condition of free choice, we nevertheless did admit that in the vast majority of cases it would be required. This follows from the nature of choice, which we said is the determination of an option for the achievement of an end that our will has determined to be worthy of pursuit. Since life often presents us with multiple options that equally good or incommensurable with one another, and since our ability to choose between options arises from our rational apprehension of them as options, it follows that we should be able to choose any of them in the absence of some overriding factors.⁶ From this perspective, then, these compatibilist models get the nature of free choice wrong.

Beyond this, Helseth’s omnicausality proposal has some striking similarities with our own. But there are differences, the most notable being that on our proposal divine concurrence does not remove alternative possibilities when it comes to choice. After all, we’ve been saying that God’s concurrence with us is what constitutes our natural powers and their exercise. Since some of our natural powers are volitional powers, and since these involve alternative possibilities, it follows that God’s concurrence constitutes the exercise of powers that allow for alternative possibilities. But at the same time, we’ve seen that his influence over the final product is direct, complete, and total, meaning that at the end of the day, the free choice of an agent will always be in accordance with God’s will. Now, of course, this is a very foreign notion, difficult to get one’s head around, for we have no experience of it in our everyday cooperation with artifice. (The closest we get to it is when playing with action figures or writing novels, in which case the freedom of the artificial characters piggybacks on our freedom as their authors.) This is why we need the analogy of cooperation, so that we can discuss these topics despite not having direct intuitive access to the subject matter.

What shall we say of our view, then? Is it compatibilist? Well, we hold that God determines the choice of agents, but without precluding alternative possibilities. So, yes and no. Some have labeled such a view hard compatibilism in contrast to the soft compatibilism we’ve been discussing up until now. As we saw at the beginning of this section, compatibilism admits of multiple senses, and we must be careful to clarify what exactly we claim is compatible and what we do not.

Molinism and Bañezianism

We move now to another important pair of views, Molinism and Bañezianism. These have their origin in a sixteenth-century debate between Jesuits and Dominicans, about how best to resolve certain problems surrounding God’s cooperation with creatures. Both the Jesuit Luis de Molina and the Dominican Domingo Bañez used Thomas Aquinas as something of a starting point in their discussions, although the former was happier to move beyond Aquinas where he saw fit. Thus, Bañezianism is classified as a Thomistic position, whereas Molinism is typically not.

Both Molina and Bañez start with certain model of concurrence, which leads to a problem that they each resolve in a different way. We discussed the core of this model, as explained by Freddoso, at the end of our second post. There we saw that it relied on an inadequate account of the difference between agent and instrument: the agent gives merely indeterminate (or non-specific) being to the final product, ensuring that it exists without specifying any details about this existence; and the instrument then gives determination (or specification) to this, filling in the details left out by the agent. Again, to quote Freddoso:

… one and the same effect — say, our newly conceived armadillo — is from God insofar as it exists at all, i.e., insofar as it is something rather than nothing, and from its parents insofar as its being is determinate, i.e., insofar as it is an animal of the species armadillo. In short, the effect is undivided and yet such that both its universal or general cause (God) and its particular causes (the parents) contribute to its production in distinctive and non-redundant modes.⁷ (emphasis added)

In the case of a choice, God ensures that a choice is made rather than not, but the creature determines the content of this choice. This leads us to the following problem: if God only gives indeterminate being when concurring with his creatures, then how can he guarantee the outcome of their actions, particularly the free choices of humans? Molina and Bañez took different approaches in answering this, which in some ways resemble the different approaches of Tiessen and Helseth we saw above. But whereas Tiessen and Helseth are both compatibilists, Molina and Bañez both sought to uphold the possibility of alternative choice.

Molina posited that God has a special kind of knowledge, called “middle knowledge”, which he uses to ensure that humans choose in accordance with his plans.⁸ By means of this knowledge God knows the so-called “counterfactuals of creaturely freedom”, which specify how each human would freely act were they put in each hypothetical circumstance. While most agree that God knows these counterfactuals, Molina’s proposal posits that this knowledge is both contingent and not decided by God. Thus, it is logically in the middle between God’s natural knowledge (which is necessary and not decided by God) and God’s free knowledge (which is contingent and decided by God). Because the truth of these counterfactuals is contingent, we can distinguish the ways an agent could choose from the ways they would choose given the current set of counterfactuals. And because God does not decide which counterfactuals are true, we are not in danger of falling into causal determinism.⁹ Using this middle knowledge, then, God is able to ensure that humans freely choose in accordance with his plan by ensuring that they find themselves in the appropriate circumstances.

Bañez took a causal approach rather than a knowledge-based one. In addition to giving indeterminate being to the choice, he posited that prior to this God pre-moves the agent from potentially choosing to actually choosing something.¹⁰ This so-called “physical premotion” is not like the Aristotelian premotion we discussed in the previous post, since it is an action performed on the agent’s will directly rather than externally through the circumstances of the choice. By means of this act God exercises control over the particulars of the choice that the agent is pre-moved to make, despite only indeterminately upholding the choice while it occurs. On the face of it, such premotion would seem to exclude the possibility of alternative choice, but Bañez assures us that this is not the case, which he explains by means of a distinction. The will is capable of choosing contrary to the premotion when considered simply and in a divided sense, but considered in a composite sense it cannot. What he seems to mean by this is that when the will is considered in isolation (divided) from the premotion, then it has within itself the capability to choose between alternatives. (This is presumably why God can pre-move it to choose any of these alternatives without doing violence to it.) But when the will is considered together (composed) with the premotion, then it can only choose in accordance with that premotion. For Bañez, only the former sense is important when considering the possibility of alternative choice, but I must admit that I struggle to see how this does not in the end amount to a case of causal determinism.

We have already explained why we find the model of concurrence shared by Molina and Bañez to be problematic, but it would be informative to compare the two resulting views to our own. When it comes to relationship between God and evil, Molinism and Bañezianism seem to fall into two opposite extremes. In excluding the details of the choice from God’s influence, Molinism successfully manages to avoid making him the author of evil, but also avoids making him the sole source of goodness, since these details will include both of these elements. And in making all the details of the choice arise from the same premotion, Bañezianism cannot distinguish the evil elements from the good, and so if forced to say that God is equally the source of both, or that the premotion makes him the source of neither. Our proposal allows us to decompose the components of the contribution, and we’ve seen how God is the source of all goodness, while we are the sole authors of evil by virtue of our privative limitation of his influence.

The Bañezian view is similar to our own insofar as it seeks to place concurrence at the center of an account of providence, but the differences between the two are important. The introduction of physical premotion into the picture seems to make two acts where we have one. And insofar physical premotion is an act on the human will, it amounts to a rejection of the first corollary we drew in our second post. These two points suggest that Bañezian concurrence should be understood not in terms of essential cooperation, but rather in terms of coordinate cooperation coinciding with accidental cooperation. God coordinately cooperates with the agent by moving their will to choose, and accidentally cooperates with them by indeterminately sustaining the choice in existence. It’s the coordinate cooperation, wherein God acts on the will, that restricts the will from choosing otherwise. In holding instead that God acts through the will, as part of his essential cooperation with it, we avoid the need for this restriction.

Conclusion

This brings an end to our posts on divine providence. In the course of these, we have discussed cooperation, nature and artifice, and will and choice. We have introduced the analogy of cooperation, and with it been able to study some of the consequences of God’s essential cooperation with nature. We have considered how divine providence must incorporate creaturely limitations, including those limitations from whence evil arises, and briefly mentioned how special concurrence can be used to overcome some of these. Altogether, this makes up our view, which we have called omni-instrumentality because of the relationship between essential cooperation and instrumentation. Finally, in this post, we have compared our view with others commonly held today.

Reflecting on all of this, it strikes me that any view on divine providence must ultimately recognize some form of mystery. Compatibilism asks us to reject our commonsense notion of freedom; Molinism asks us to accept this special class of contingent facts that God doesn’t decide; Bañezianism asks us to qualify the principle of alternative possibilities to the capacity of the will rather than its exercise; and our own omni-instrumentality asks us to accept that the exact nature of God’s concurrence is beyond our intuitive grasp.

The presence of mystery should not be considered a failure, for divine providence is a very unique and alien feature of reality. The inevitability of mystery should not dissuade us from studying divine providence, for much can be gained within the bounds it sets for us. And the way each view deals with mystery should not be the sole factor we consider when evaluating it, but it is an interesting one.

How we deal with this mystery is up to us: we may downplay it, punt to it when questions get tough, bite the bullet, or something else. Our own approach has been to work with it in as systematic a way as we can manage, by building an analogical bridge between our cooperation with artifice and God’s cooperation with nature. This affords us a mechanism for reasoning about divine providence without needing to be able to peer behind the curtain and see all the details.

This is the third of four posts on omni-instrumentality, a Thomistic model for divine providence. So far we’ve discussed cooperation (here), the distinction between nature and artifice, the analogy of cooperation, and our proposal that divine concurrence is God’s essential cooperation with nature (here). Although concurrence is the central component to our view on providence, it is not the whole picture. So, in this post we will discuss some of the other components the view, using what we have said so far as a basis. As before, it is highly recommended that you read the previous posts before continuing here.

Inherent and privative limitations

We’ve seen that God’s essential cooperation with nature is a consequence of our absolute dependence upon him as the Creator. We’ve also seen that as divine instruments we act by virtue of God applying us as instruments to our ends. All of this might suggest that we can make no original contribution of our own in our cooperation with him, but in fact we do. In our first post we delineated four ways something can impose upon another when cooperating with it, and you’ll recall that two of these were active (elevation and violence) while the other two were passive (facilitation and limitation). What we’ve said up until now should make it clear that we cannot actively impose upon God’s acting through us, since all our being originates from him; but there is still room for us to passively impose upon it, since this occurs merely through our reception of his causal influence rather than by our adding something to it.

Of the two passive impositions, the more interesting one when it comes to the topic of divine providence is limitation, wherein we hinder God’s causal influence. This hinderance is not a result of us overpowering God in any way (which would be an active imposition), but is the result of our own limitedness. Now, we can distinguish between two kinds of limitation. There are what we can call “inherent” limitations, which instruments impose simply in virtue of having the capacities that they do. For instance, humans are physical creatures, and therefore our scope of influence is limited to where we are at any given moment and the speed at which we can travel: if I’m sitting at home then I can’t influence things at work, and nor can I get to work in the next two minutes. In divine concurrence, then, God’s influence will always be limited to what I am able to achieve through my nature. This also applies to essential cooperation with artifice: an abacus can only calculate with numbers up to a certain point, governed by the number of beads it has; and when Alice moves the stone with the prodder she must work within the constraints of its strength, lest it buckle and break under the pressure of her influence.

In addition to inherent limitations there are what we can call “privative” limitations, which instruments impose by failing to fulfill their ends. In the case of the abacus, if it has lost some beads then it will not be able to calculate to the full extent of its design. In the case of the prodder, if Alice intends to use it to push a stone that is too heavy, and it breaks under her influence, then it has failed to fulfill the end Alice had given it. Of course, for this to happen Alice would need to be ignorant or indignant of the inherent limitations of the underlying stick, but the prodder exists and has its ends because of Alice’s intentions, and to this extent fails to live up to these ends.

Divine concurrence is similar to both of these cases, and God’s design and intention result in our nature and its fulfillment. While we may conceptually distinguish between God giving something a nature and disposing it to its fulfillment, in reality these are the same act.¹ Intuitively, this amounts to the fact that when we intend to do something we also intend to do it well. So, when God concurs with an animal, this single act both establishes the animal’s natural life and disposes it to the fulfillment of this nature, which fulfillment is called “health” or “flourishing”. The animal will have inherent limitations based on its nature (a horse will be four-legged, and bird will be able to fly), and when the animal acts contrary to its health, by damaging itself, say, or by not eating properly, then it fails to fulfill its nature, which is a privative limitation.

The remaining notions we will discuss in this post all have something to do with how God incorporates our limitations into his direction of history.

Evil as privative limitation

Privative limitation helps us to explain why divine concurrence does not make God the source of evil. Avoiding this untoward conclusion is perhaps the most compelling reason for restricting God’s influence on our actions, and thereby rejecting the second corollary we mentioned in the previous post. The reasoning goes roughly as follows: if God’s influence on a human’s action were not direct, complete, and total, then we could say that any evil arose when that human added to God’s contribution in order to make the action occur. But while this move may be tempting, it is in fact unnecessary.

The better way to proceed is to build upon the distinction between agent and instrument, and recognize that God’s influence as agent is limited by the human instrument through which he acts. What’s more, this limitation comes in both inherent and privative versions. To see the significance of this, recall that some of our natural powers are volitional powers, whereby we pursue the good. In creating and concurring with our nature, then, God disposes us to the fulfillment of these powers, namely the conscious pursuit of what is truly good. We fall short of this only to the extent that we privatively limit his influence, and to the extent that we fall short of what is truly good, we and our actions are evil. God ordering us toward the good can be likened to Alice disposing the prodder to move the stone, and our limitation of this can be likened to the stick buckling under the pressure. But there is an important difference: the privative limitation of the prodder is the result of an inherent limitation of the underlying stick, but there is no pre-existent underlying thing in God’s concurrence with us. So, our privative limitations cannot be reduced to inherent limitations of something at a lower level.

Now, we must underscore that this privative limitation of God’s influence is not something we add to God’s contribution, but has to do with how we passively receive his influence as he works through us. We are also not saying that God makes us will an end and leaves us to choose the means, for this is just to repeat in different words the mistake we’re trying to avoid. We are saying that both willing and choosing arise from the essential cooperation between God and us, and that the goodness in each originates with God while the evil in each results from our privative limitation. In other words, both we and God cause the action but God doesn’t cause the evil of the action and we don’t originate the good of the action.

In this we see the superiority of our proposal over the alternative. If we restrict the scope of God’s influence (as the alternative does) we may avoid making him the source of evil, but we also avoid making him the source of all goodness. After all, if we need to add to God’s contribution in order for our action to occur, then this addition that can bring evil could also bring good. By contrast, on our proposal God is the sole source of goodness, which we do not add to, but which we can limit in our reception and propagation. We are responsible for the things we do, including the good and evil in them, but God is the source of the good and we are uniquely responsible for the evil.

Divine permission of evil

Once we recognize the possibilities of our original contribution and of privative limitation, we are led to various distinctions within God’s intentions. In particular, there are multiple senses in which he wills something, and an objective difference between what he wills and what he permits.

God’s will extends to what he causes, but this occurs in different ways. When essentially cooperating with a creature, his own contribution reflects his will more directly than the final product, since the latter is mediated through a creature whereas the former is not. Accordingly, while both his own contribution and the final product express his will in the particular action, the former does so more truly than the latter. Furthermore, since the nature of the creature is caused by God, its inherent limitations will also to some extent be part of his will.

Now, since the final product is also impacted by the privative limitations of the creature, what shall we say of the connection between God and these limitations? Like any artist he is cognizant of the limitations of his instruments, and so they must factor into his intentions somehow. But since they arise solely from the creature, and since it is privative of what he most truly wills, it cannot be a product of his will in the same way as the other components we’ve just mentioned. We are led to introduce a new category, namely what God permits. The objective difference between what God wills and what he permits, therefore, lies in whether something arises from God’s actions or not, with volition being further divided by how directly it does so. God most truly wills for goodness to be expressed, permits the evil of his creatures, and incorporates both into the plan he wills for all of history.

Premotion

So far we’ve been focusing on privative limitations, but inherent limitations play an important role in divine providence and are connected to another important notion, namely “premotion”. This term that comes up occasionally in discussions of divine providence, perhaps most often in connection to the Bañezian notion of physical premotion. We will discuss this in the next post, but here we will focus on the form of premotion that applies to our proposal.

The most apt name for this premotion is Aristotelian premotion, but we could also call it accidental premotion. In his Physics, Aristotle notes that every change (or motion) presupposes an earlier change (or motion). For instance, a fire may be able to heat a pan, but it only does so when these two are moved into the appropriate positions relative to one another. Similarly, an agent may make a choice, but this only happens when they find themselves in the appropriate circumstance, impressed by various reasons for choosing among the different options. This earlier change is what we call a premotion.

Some reflection makes it clear that the need for such a premotion is a result of our limitations, both privative as well as inherent. A flame is limited in space and time, and so needs to be brought near something in order to start heating it. And human cognition requires that we be appropriately situated, both in terms of our senses and in terms of our intellects if we are to deliberate and choose. Thus, the need for such premotion does not arise merely from our failures, but also simply from us having the natures that we do.²

God’s direction of history, then, requires that he take into account the limitations of his creatures if he is to avoid doing violence to their nature and freedom. He needs to ensure that the relevant premotion has occurred for a creature to be in the circumstance to act, and once there that the creature’s inherent and privative limitations do not preclude the action he has planned. When the circumstantial, inherent, and privative limitations have been taken into account, then God can concur with the creature through the exercise of its natural powers in accordance with his plan. As we saw last time, this concurrence does not constrain the powers of the creature, but rather constitutes them. And since God concurs with all of creation, he is uniquely capable orchestrating all of history in accordance with his plan.

Grace and special concurrence

Up until now, the kind of divine concurrence that we’ve been discussing is what can be called God’s general concurrence, owing to the fact that it applies to all existing things, in accordance with their natures. There is another kind of concurrence, however, called God’s special concurrence, which applies only when God specially wills to act in this or that creature. Much can be said about special concurrence, but we include a few brief notes simply as a way of recognizing that though general concurrence is the foundation for divine providence, it is not the only component of it.

Now, since general concurrence is God’s essential cooperation with nature, it follows that special concurrence must involve either coordinate or accidental cooperation with nature.³ Since general concurrence is needed for a creature to do anything, special concurrence will be in addition to this rather than instead of it.

Accidental cooperation with nature occurs when God supernaturally enables a creature to act, as when he gave Samson the superhuman strength that he used to kill himself along with the lords of the Philistines by pulling down the supporting pillars of the building they were in (Judges 16:23–31).

Coordinate cooperation with nature occurs when God actively imposes upon a creature’s actions, moving them to act in a particular way that may not otherwise be open to them given their limitations. Eleonore Stump discusses two interesting cases of coordinate cooperation in this sense.⁴ What makes them interesting is that despite this kind of cooperation involving God acting on a human’s will, neither case amounts to violence against their will.

In the first, imagine Alice is a recovering alcoholic. In this case she still has the dependence upon alcohol and therefore also the first-order desire to drink it. But because she is trying to recover she also has a second-order desire to be free of this dependence, which is to say she desires to no longer desire alcohol in such a dependent way. She is thus divided against herself, and will be so as long as she is on the road to recovery. Now, let’s say that Alice prays to God one day, and asks him to help her fight the temptation to drink alcohol. If God obliges, then he overpower her first-order desire to drink alcohol, thereby supporting her second-order desire for recovery. In this case, though he frustrates her (first-order) will he nevertheless upholds her freedom.

In the second, we are to consider the process of someone coming to faith in God. Traditional Christian doctrine holds that this transition occurs by a supernatural act from God, but that failure to make this transition occurs by obstinance of the unbeliever. In proposing a model to reconcile the tension between these two claims, Stump provides another example of God’s coordinate cooperation with the human will. As background, she notes that the will can be in one of three dispositions: assent, where the will is attracted to something; dissent, where the will is repulsed from something; and quiescence, where the will is in some sense “off”, neither assenting nor dissenting. Given this tripartite division, she continues as follows:

…suppose the following theology story to be the case. (1) God is constantly offering grace to every human being in such a way that if a person doesn’t refuse that grace, she receives it and it produces in her the will of faith. (2) Normal adult human beings in a post-Fall condition who are not converted or in the process of being converted refuse grace continually, even if they are not aware of doing so. (3) Ceasing to refuse grace is accompanied by an understanding that grace will follow and that grace would not follow if the refusal of grace were continued. (4) It is solely up to a human person whether or not she refuses grace. A person who ceases to refuse grace in these circumstances is thus in some respects analogous to a person suffering an allergic reaction who actively refuses an injection of an antidote to the allergen, perhaps out of a hysterical fear of needles. Such a person might not be able to bring himself to will that the doctor give him the injection. If the doctor were asking him whether he would accept the injection, he might not be able to bring himself to say “yes,” for example. But he might nonetheless be able to stop actively refusing the injection, knowing that if he ceases to refuse it, the doctor will press it on him. In this case, whether or not he receives the injection is in his control, even if it is also true that he cannot bring himself to answer “yes” to the doctor’s request to give him the injection.

Now, on this story, the means by which the person is brought to faith is by God working in them to produce the “will of faith”. This occurs by a coordinate cooperation with God and the human, where the human will is supernaturally moved by God from a state of quiescence to a state of assenting. But, because of the setup of the situation — and particularly point (3) — this supernatural movement does not do violence to the will of the person.

Stump uses the word “grace” in the above quote, which in our present context refers to a supernatural gift from God.⁵ It is used primarily in regard to the process whereby someone comes to faith, but can be used for any supernatural gift from God. Now, anything that comes from his general concurrence with us would be a natural gift, since this concurrence is what constitutes our natures. Thus, grace, in this sense, is any gift from God that is given through his special concurrence with us, whether it be through accidental or coordinate cooperation.

Conclusion

While divine concurrence is the linchpin of our proposal for divine providence, it is not the whole story. In this post we have fleshed out that story, by exploring how God concurs with creatures that are limited in all sorts of ways. We have also seen that to some extent God can work beyond these limitations by means of special concurrence, although doing so without frustrating our natures brings its own set of constraints. While much more would need to be said about grace to get a complete picture of divine providence, what we have so far should be sufficient for what lies ahead, namely comparing our proposal to other views commonly held today.

This is the second of four posts on omni-instrumentality, a Thomistic model for divine providence. The central piece of this model is an account of divine concurrence in terms of “essential cooperation with nature”. In the first post we discussed cooperation in general and essential cooperation in particular. In this post we will complete our discussion of concurrence, unpacking what it means for essential cooperation to be with nature. In the next post we will flesh this out into a fuller picture of divine providence as a whole, before we compare our model to others in the fourth post. It is highly recommended that you read the first post before continuing here, since space does not allow us to retread any ground.

Nature, artifice, and coincidence

Loosely speaking, a nature is the specification of what something is, such that we can speak of the nature of a cat, an abacus, and a pile of rocks. Strictly speaking, however, the nature of a thing is an intrinsic source of change and stability, whereby it acts and behaves in the course of its existence. A living thing, for instance, will grow and exercise its various powers in the course of the activity of its life. A thing’s nature is what gives it the foundational powers it has, all other powers being made up of a combination of these in some way.

Of the three examples we listed, only the cat has a nature in this strict sense, and it is on account this that we say that a cat is a “natural” thing. Because a nature is intrinsic to a natural thing, and because it is the source of that thing’s powers, an indicator that something is natural is that it has powers that do not arise entirely from its parts or are imposed upon it from outside. In the case of the cat, this is evident from the fact that a cat is capable of doing things that its corpse is not, which means that the powers the cat has are not reducible to the sum of the powers of its parts. Rather, the cat’s powers must be a consequence of the organization of its parts brought about by the intrinsic activity whereby it lives and acts.

The abacus and the pile of rocks represent two ways a thing might be non-natural, and in each case this is indicated by its powers arising from something extrinsic. Any power that the pile of rocks has is just the sum of powers of the individual rocks in the pile. Such powers are extrinsic to the pile because they do not arise at the level of the pile itself, but at a lower level of its parts. Because the pile is the result of its parts coinciding, we say that it is a “coincidental” thing. By contrast, the powers of the abacus that enable it to calculate are neither intrinsic to the whole nor to its parts, but arise from the meaning and functions we collectively imbue into them by convention. Since these arise from outside, such powers are extrinsic to the abacus, but this time because they are added over and above it. Because these powers ultimately arise from us, we say that it is an “artificial” thing, or simply an “artifact”.

Now, two factors make it difficult to talk about artifacts precisely. First, we do not typically distinguish the underlying thing from the meaning or functions we add to it. In the case of the abacus, there is the artificial calculating machine as well as the underlying coincidental thing made up of pieces of wood. This coincidental thing is what is left of the abacus when we remove our conventions from the picture, but because we interact with artifacts through the lens of our conventions, we rarely (if ever) have the underlying thing in mind. Similarly with a sword (artifact) and the coincidental thing made up of steel and wood (underlying thing). Conversely, we sometimes refer to the artifact using the name of the underlying thing, as when we call our “writing implement” a “piece of chalk”, or when we call a “drinking cup” a “glass”.

Second, there are two senses in which something can be artificial. On the one hand there is artifice in fieri, which has to do with us causing a thing to come into existence for a particular purpose. On the other hand there is artifice in esse, which has to do with us causing the continual being of a thing by means of our intentions, conventions, and usages. This distinction is important, because something can be artificial in fieri but natural in esse, as when we synthesize water from hydrogen and oxygen in a laboratory. Something can also be natural in fieri but artificial in esse, as when we use a rock as a chair. And of course, something can be artificial in both senses, as when we build a wooden chair. In our discussion here, we are only concerned with artifice in esse, and will put artifice in fieri to one side.

Voluntary and free

Some natural powers are voluntary, which means that they are exercised in making decisions by means of a will informed by an intellect. All the natural powers arise from the thing itself, but voluntary powers do so in the fullest sense, since their exercise involves someone making a conscious decision to act in a way that they understand and desire. Sometimes the term “natural” is used in contrast to “voluntary”, but in the sense we’re using the term every voluntary power is a natural power.¹

Voluntary powers feature prominently in discussions on divine providence, since it’s difficult to see how God could direct all of history without undermining our free will. Now, freedom is what something has when it is not constrained, where the meaning of “constrained” is determined by that thing’s nature.² A horse is less free if it cannot gallop or eat, but it is no less free if it cannot fly. Unlike flying, galloping and eating are part of the horse’s nature, and so it is to the extent that these are impeded that the horse’s freedom is infringed.

In order to understand what it is for a will to be free, then, we must first say what a will is. Fundamentally, our will is the voluntary power that enables us to consciously pursue the good, and is therefore sometimes referred to as our “rational appetite”. Here, “the good” is meant in the broad sense of that which is worthy of pursuit, rather than the more restrictive moral sense. Ice-creams and movies can be good, as well as humans.³ Given that this is what a will is, our will is free to the extent that it properly orders us to that which is most truly good, which is to say most worthy of pursuit. Our free will is infringed, then, to the extent that we are prevented from this, either by ignorance of what is truly worth pursuing or by weakness of our desire for it.

We sometimes treat free will and free choice interchangeably, but strictly speaking they are distinct. Choice is our voluntary power to deliberate between alternatives and decide which of them to pursue. This occurs when our will determines that some end is desirable, and our intellect determines that there are multiple options for achieving it. In this case, we must make a choice between the alternatives in order to proceed. Now, the particulars of the end and the means will constrain which options are available for us to choose between, but more often than not there will still be multiple options to choose between. For example, the modes of transport available to me and the structure of the road networks constrain the options I have for traveling to church every Sunday, but even this leaves me with a number of options for routes, some of which are more scenic and others of which are more efficient. Because these constraints arise from the nature of the choice being made, they are better thought of as the parameters of the choice than as infringements upon my freedom. What would infringe upon my freedom would be any constraints imposed upon me beyond the parameters of the choice, such as roadworks that preclude one of my options, or someone else forcing me to choose one of the options. Freedom of choice can also be infringed by ignorance of what is truly a good means to achieving a particular end, which may result in an incorrect evaluation of the alternatives.

Freedom is sometimes thought to depend on the so-called “principle of alternate possibilities”, which says that our will is only free if we could have chosen otherwise. Given the distinction between will and choice, we can nuance this and determine the extent to which this principle is true. We said that the will is what orders us to some end worthy of pursuit. Thus, if there were only one end worthy of pursuit, then our will would be no less free if it were the only thing we desired. In fact, in this case it would infringe our freedom of we desired anything else. If this sounds strange, that’s probably because in the vast majority of cases there are multiple ends worthy of our pursuit, which are all equally good or incommensurable with one another. But it’s precisely this that differs in the edge case we mentioned.⁴ Thus, in the case of free will we should treat the principle of alternative possibilities as a good rule of thumb, but not a universally true principle. On the other hand, we said that free choice is about ability to deliberate between options for achieving an end we desire by our will. In this case, we might not be able to choose otherwise because (1) there is only one valid option for achieving the end or (2) there are multiple options but we are prevented from choosing some of them. In the first case we don’t have free choice because we don’t have choice at all, and so it would be better to say that in such case choice is precluded rather than say that the freedom of choice is infringed. In the second case, we do have a choice but our freedom is infringed. Thus, even with choice, applying the principle of alternative possibilities needs to be done with care.

Now, it is tempting to think that voluntary powers are uniquely problematic for divine providence, and much of the discussion on the topic focuses on how God could direct history without frustrating our voluntary freedom. But once we appreciate the distinction between nature and non-nature, it becomes clear that the real problem lies with natural powers in general. After all, natural powers are supposed to be intrinsic to things, but God is something extrinsic. How, then, can God’s cooperation with creaturely actions be anything other than something distant? And if he must “step in” to achieve his plans, then how does he avoid frustrating our natures by constraining the exercise of our intrinsic powers?

Analogy of cooperation

We must frankly admit that we cannot eliminate all mystery when it comes to divine providence, since it is unlike anything we experience in daily life. This notwithstanding, we can get at it indirectly by constructing an analogy between what happens in divine providence and things we understand more intuitively.⁵ This “analogy of cooperation” allows us to draw principled conclusions amidst unavoidable mystery.

In everyday experience, we are familiar with the causation of the continual being of artificial things. A musical performance is a good example of this, as well as a sports match or dance routine. There are also simpler cases where we use an object, as in the Alice-and-stick example we discussed in the previous post. In fact, when we discussed levels of cooperation we stumbled upon something resembling what we’ve said about artifacts: while Alice uses the stick to prod the stone, she produces something artificial (the prodder) out of something that is natural (the underlying stick) by imbuing it with a particular purpose and function. Alice’s continued usage sustains the artifact in existence, and when she stops using it like this it ceases to exist, leaving only the underlying stick behind.⁶

The doctrine of creation is our departure point when it comes to fleshing out God’s side of the analogy. We can arrive at this doctrine through scripture and philosophical argumentation, and our aim here is not to defend it but to draw out its consequences. In particular, it encodes a fundamental difference between us and God: we cause the being of artificial things, but as creator God causes the being of all natural things.

Now, causing the being of something is not simply about causing it to come into existence. The doctrine of creation is not only concerned with the beginning of creation, but also about our continual dependence upon God for our moment-to-moment being. We do not magically become independent of God once we come into existence, but continue depending on him as a musical piece depends for its continued existence on the musician playing it, or the prodder depends on Alice to continually direct the stone. Thus Paul, when reflecting on God being the creator of everything, approvingly quotes the statement that, “in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)⁷

In order to connect this with cooperation, we need to realize that a thing’s being is both (1) that by which it exists and (2) that in which it acts.⁸ To see this in action, consider a sports team. It exists by virtue of a group of people engaging in the characteristic activity of such a team, which will include training, gathering equipment, and playing matches. This one activity, which includes all the various sub-activities, constitutes the team in existence, and any action the team engages in will be part of it. Thus, this activity is the being of the team. The same sort of thing occurs with living things: all their actions are part of the activity of their life, which is also what sustains them in existence. The same also goes for natural non-living things as well, although it can be a bit more difficult to identify what exactly this activity involves.

The tendency to treat a thing’s existence as disconnected from its actions might be a consequence of our ability to conceptualize them as distinct. But we must bear in mind that we can conceptualize things as distinct even when they are not, as when we distinguish Superman from Clark Kent, or a downhill from an uphill. In the present case, we can abstract away the details of a thing’s being, leaving only an indeterminate (or non-specific) concept behind, corresponding merely to the fact of its existence.⁹ Alternatively, we can focus on just this or that part or time-slice of a thing’s being, which would correspond to a particular action or sub-activity involved in that being. But this conceptual distinction should not be confused for a real distinction in the thing itself. Really, there is one activity of being that is grounding the thing’s existence and involving the thing’s actions, and we are merely pulling it apart conceptually by considering it from different perspectives. In similar fashion, we can conceptualize something being red separately from it being a particular kind of red (like scarlet or crimson), even though nothing is ever red without also being a particular kind of red. And we can focus on a sports team’s sub-activity of training, or a particular match, without thinking about their overarching activity of being a team, even though the former are parts of the latter.

Now, if a thing’s being is that in which it acts, and something else continually causes its being, then that cause will necessarily also cooperate with its actions. When Alice sustains the prodder’s being, for instance, this occurs by means of the same activity by which the prodder acts to move the stone. And this just is the activity wherein she moves the prodder to move the stone, considered from a different perspective. Likewise, when God sustains the being of natural things, he cooperates with the actions that flow from the use of their natural powers. The exercise of their powers is, from another perspective, God’s working through them to act for the ends that they do. Stated as a proportion: we are to our cooperation with artifacts, as God is to his cooperation with nature. This is the analogy of cooperation, which bridges our typical experience of cooperation and the unique kind of cooperation that God engages in as the Creator of everything. In it, the mystery of divine concurrence is reduced to the mystery of creation, and we are enabled to reason about it using the kinds of cooperation we grasp more intuitively.

Essential cooperation with nature

But which mode of cooperation is at play in the analogy of cooperation? For two reasons we can see that it must be essential cooperation.

First, both coordinate and accidental cooperation would admit some measure of independence on the side of the creature, which is at odds with the absolute dependence all creation has upon the Creator. It is usual for these modes of cooperation to obtain between things within creation, since individual creatures are independent from one another at a fundamental level. But apart from the continual work of the Creator God nothing would exist at all, meaning that any activity arising from a creature must be a propagation of what first originated with the Creator.

Second, since a thing’s being is that in which it acts, the source of its continual being must cooperate directly with those actions, which implies that the cooperation must involve combination. And since a thing’s being also grounds the fact of its existence, it is also dependent upon this source for everything, which implies that the cooperation must involve dependency. And since a thing’s being arises from a single act from its source, we have a case of combination with dependence, which is essential cooperation.

So, divine concurrence is essential cooperation with nature. By causing the continual being of natural things, God causes our causing the things that we do in the course of our natural existence. This applies to all natural things and the actions that flow from their natural powers, including the voluntary powers by which we will the good and choose between alternatives. But in arriving at the statement of our proposal we are only half way through the journey, for we are prone to misunderstand what it does and does not imply. For the remainder of this post we will clarify it, drawing out two important corollaries and considering an interesting case study.

The first corollary is that when God essentially cooperates with us he does not act on us, but through us. Acting on something requires that it exist in some sense prior to the acting, but there is nothing of us prior to God’s cooperation with us, since it is by this cooperation that we are constituted. The analogy of cooperation helps us connect this with more familiar examples. In essential cooperation with artifice, there are three things to consider: the agent (Alice), the artifact (prodder), and the underlying thing (stick); the agent acts on the underlying thing in order to establish and sustain the artifact through which they are acting. Put solely in terms of cooperation, the agent cooperates with the artifact at the higher level by means of a separate and lower-level cooperation with the underlying thing. Now, the notion that God acts on us can be seen as an incorrect assignment of analogues when transposing from artifice to nature: we think the creature is analogous the underlying thing, but really it analogous to the artifact. If anything, God acts “on” the constitutive principles of our natures — such as prime matter and essence — and it is these principles that are the proper analogue to the stick. Nor does he act on our material parts, for these must also be constituted by his cooperation.¹⁰

A consequence of this is that divine concurrence does not impose violence against our natural powers, but rather that their exercise consists in God’s acting through us. This is true for all natural powers, and in particular voluntary powers. We mentioned in the previous post that essential cooperation can sometimes occur by means of violence at a lower level, and so if we were analogous to the underlying thing then God might have to impose violence against us in order to get his way. This would certainly go contrary to freedom. But since we are actually analogous to the artifact, divine concurrence constitutes rather than constrains our actions. God does not need to constrain creatures in order to ensure that we will act in accordance with this will, but acts through the exercise of our natural powers.

The second corollary is that the influences of both God and creature on the final product are direct (or immediate), complete, and total, but according to different modes. That is, they both extend to the final product (direct/immediate), to all of the final product (complete), and to every detail of the final product (total), but not in the same way (different modes). It’s because they contribute according to different modes that both God and creature can influence the effect without rendering the other superfluous. We can see this at work by returning again to essential cooperation with artifice. When Alice moves the stone with the prodder, both Alice and the prodder cause the motion of the stone. The prodder causes the stone to move by means of propagating the motion given to it by Alice, while Alice moves the stone through the prodder by causing its causing the stone to move. This caused causing directly involves Alice in the production the stone’s movement as an agent who applies an instrument to its end. It’s this difference between agent and instrument that enables both to contribute without superfluity. If this were accidental cooperation, Alice would cause the stick’s motion without applying it to the stone, and her influence would not extend all the way to the final product. But in essential cooperation both the prodder and Alice cause one and the same effect in different ways, as instrument and agent, the difference arising from the difference between causing and causing causing.

Of course, we know that this essential cooperation with Alice and the stick occurs by means of a coordinate cooperation at a lower level. Because of this there will always be some distance between Alice and the stone, requiring us to qualify the sense in which she directly influences it: she is directly involved in regard to her application of the prodder as an instrument to the stone (higher-level cooperation), but is indirectly involved in regard to her physical distance from it (lower-level cooperation). This lower-level distance is lost when we transpose all of this over to God’s essential cooperation with nature, since he is not limited in his power as we are, and so never works through an independent thing in his cooperation with us. This is perhaps the most notable difference between human instruments (artificial things) and divine instruments (natural things).

Now, some might feel uneasy about the application of these corollaries to divine concurrence, saying that the power of choice is fundamentally different to what we have in the prodder case. It is absolutely right that the cases differ, but not in a way that undermines what we’ve said. The prodder differs from free choice in that the former is an artificial thing whereas the latter is a natural power; but in both case we are drawing on a feature of essential cooperation as such, rather than something peculiar to essential cooperation with artifice. Thus, the difference is not salient. Free choice occurs by means of us exercising our natural powers, and just like the exercise of any natural power it consists in God working through us to bring about a final product directly, completely, and totally, as the divine agent of his natural instruments. Both corollaries are important, and ignoring either will prevent us from fully appreciating the other.

Case study: Freddoso’s indeterminate being

Alfred Freddoso has discussed a model of concurrence that is shared between two popular views on divine providence today, namely Molinism and Bañezianism.¹¹ This model illustrates the importance of the agent-instrument distinction to both of these views, but is also problematic in that it relies on an inadequate account of this distinction. We have said that this difference lies in the difference between causing and causing causing, but the common position discussed by Freddoso seeks it elsewhere. On the latter position, the agent gives merely indeterminate (or non-specific) being to the final product, ensuring only that it exists, without specifying any details about this existence; and the instrument then gives determination (or further specification) to this, filling in the details left out by the agent. Freddoso illustrates the this as follows:

… one and the same effect — say, our newly conceived armadillo — is from God insofar as it exists at all, i.e., insofar as it is something rather than nothing, and from its parents insofar as its being is determinate, i.e., insofar as it is an animal of the species armadillo. In short, the effect is undivided and yet such that both its universal or general cause (God) and its particular causes (the parents) contribute to its production in distinctive and non-redundant modes.¹² (emphasis added)

It is clear from the context of this quote that these two contributions are intended to be immediate to the effect. Thus, God influences the armadillo directly and completely, but not totally. Given this, the proposal seems to be a variation of the mistake we discussed earlier, namely confusing a distinction in our conceptions for a distinction in reality. A living thing doesn’t have being apart from the activity of its specific kind of life any more than something is red apart from being a specific kind of red. The armadillo exists by living as a specific kind of animal, and any distinction between these is merely a result of us conceptualizing its life at different levels of generality.

It is true that God creates all being while the parents of the armadillo are only able to beget a child of the same nature.¹³ And since God cooperates with nature in everything that it does, if we abstract away the details of each instance of divine concurrence, then the contribution from God that is common across all of them will be indeterminate being. But it would be wrong to infer from this that God actually gives indeterminate being in each case. This would be like abstracting the details of each instance of Bob using one of his tools (screwdriver, saw, hammer, etc.), leaving us with an indeterminate motion as his common contribution, and inferring from this that what he actually gives in each case is merely indeterminate motion. Really, in each case he gives specific and directed motion, and the indeterminacy is just a feature of our thinking about his activity.

Now, Freddoso is not unaware of this objection, and it is worth considering one of the examples he gives in his response:¹⁴

Suppose… I use a piece of blue chalk to draw a square on the blackboard. It seems clear that both the chalk and I count as joint immediate causes of a single effect, viz., the blue square-shaped line that appears on the surface of the blackboard. Yet the fact that the line is blue, rather than some other color, is traced back primarily to the causal properties of the chalk as an immediate instrumental cause of the blue square rather than to any of my properties as an immediate principal cause of the blue square. By the same token, the fact that there is a square-shaped effect — rather than, say, a circular effect or no effect at all — is traced back primarily to my influence as an immediate principal cause and not to the chalk’s as an instrumental cause.

Key aspects of this picture are correct: the shape and color of the effect are indeed primarily traced back to the different causes in the cooperation, and both the agent and the chalk are indeed immediate causes of the effect. However, it is not the case that each cause is only the immediate cause of the feature that is primarily traced back to it. The directed chalk is the immediately responsible for the shape just as it is for the color, as the implement in direct contact with the board that produces the colored shape by its motion. And the agent is immediately responsible for the color just as they are the shape, as someone who intentionally applies the blue chalk as an instrument to drawing the square.¹⁵ The real difference between agent and instrument is not to be found in the difference between indeterminate being and its determination, but in the difference between causing causing and causing. The chalk, of itself, is incapable of realizing its capacity for producing the square shape, so the agent applies it as an instrument to this end, causing its causing of the shape on the board. The result is two causes, both immediate, complete, and total, but in different ways, one as agent and the other as instrument.

In fact, there is an important sense in which Freddoso’s picture is incomplete, for it makes no distinction between the artificial instrument and the underlying thing. The piece of chalk is better thought of as the underlying thing, and the resulting writing implement as the artificial thing. The agent acts on the chalk, but through the writing implement, to produce the square shape. The cooperation with the writing implement is essential, resulting from the directed motion from the agent through the implement to produce the colored shape. It is at this higher-level that both instrument and agent are responsible for the colored shape, but in different ways.

At a lower-level, various cooperations with the chalk will be coordinate or accidental depending on which final product we consider. If it’s a particular motion of the chalk that overrides its inertia, or if it’s the pressure in the chalk upon pushing it into the board, then the cooperation will be coordinate. On the other hand, if the final product is the impression of the chalk on the board so as to leave chalk residue, then the cooperation is accidental; and in this case we have something like the indeterminacy that Freddoso mentions in the above quote. In this cooperation the agent merely provides the pressure to the chalk, which the chalk in turn uses the make an impression on the board of a particular color. But this is not the relevant cooperation when considering divine concurrence.

Conclusion

In this post we built upon the foundation of the first. The distinction between nature and artifice allowed us to see the fundamental difference between the kinds of cooperation we’re familiar with and the kind of cooperation involved in divine concurrence. With the analogy of cooperation we were able to bridge the gap between these two, and we used it to outline our proposal for divine concurrence as well as draw out important corollaries of this proposal. But our task is not done, for there are other notions within the vicinity that need to be discussed before we can fully appreciate our proposal that divine concurrence is essential cooperation with nature. We will discuss these in the next post.

Divine providence is about God’s direction of all history in accordance with his plans, without thereby frustrating human freedom or undermining nature. Long-time readers will know that I was once a Molinist, but I have not said much on the topic since changing my views. I would describe the view I now hold as the Thomistic view, but others views go by that description and I have little interest in an exegetical defense. For the sake of clarity, then, we will use the name “omni-instrumentality”, since this view is built around the notion that all of nature is a divine instrument.¹ My aim in this series of posts is to outline omni-instrumentality in as accessible a way as I can manage, without requiring the reader have a significant familiarity with Thomistic metaphysics. Nevertheless, if you happen to be familiar with Thomistic metaphysics you should recognize many of the things we cover.

Divine concurrence is about God’s cooperation with the actions of creatures. Views on divine providence differ in the role they assign to divine concurrence, but at the heart of omni-instrumentality is an account of divine concurrence as essential cooperation with nature. Our approach to unpacking the view, then, will start with this and gradually work our way outwards. In this first post, we will give an analysis of cooperation, its modes and its characteristics. In the second post, we will expand this into an account of divine concurrence by introducing nature and the relevant conceptual tools to bridge our everyday experience of cooperation with God’s special cooperation with us. Thus, by the end of the second post we will have a robust understanding of essential cooperation with nature. In the third, we will flesh out the details surrounding divine concurrence, and thereby fill in the rest of the picture of divine providence. In the fourth and final post, we will compare omni-instrumentality to other views commonly held or discussed today.

Components of cooperation

Two things cooperate when they work together to bring about some final product. Here, we use the term “thing” very broadly, such that it could be a substance, aggregate, property, state of affairs, or process. Insofar as one thing brings about some other thing we call it a “cause”, and any distinct thing that is brought about by one or more causes we call a “product”. The final product is the thing caused by the cooperation as a whole. When we call a product “distinct” we mean that it is something beyond the causes and their influences, although not necessarily distinct from the cooperation as a whole. For instance, when the cooperation involves making a chair then the final product (the chair itself) is distinct from the cooperation (the making), but when the cooperation is a musical performance the final product is the same as the cooperation. Finally, insofar as something depends in a particular way on a cause we speak of a cause “causing”, or “influencing”, or “contributing to the cooperation”.

We could depict all of this as a directed graph made up of nodes and edges: things are nodes, causes are nodes with edges coming out of them, products are nodes with edges coming into them, and causal influences are the edges themselves. The final product would be the product that has no edges coming out of it at all, that is the product that is not also a cause.

None of this so far is meant to be controversial. We’ve simply given names to the various moving parts involved in any cooperation so that our discussion can proceed with slightly more precision. Our primary goal in this post is to discuss, at the broadest level, the different ways two things can cooperate with one another.

The most distinctive aspect of cooperation is that the causes work together, and so any analysis of cooperation should help us break this down into more basic components. One component of working together is combination. This occurs between two things when a product arises directly from the influence of both of them, which is to say that there are no intermediate products between the causes and their mutual product. Another component of working together is dependence. This occurs when one cause is enabled to exert its causal influence by virtue of another cause first exerting causal influence on it. In this case, the product of the independent cause will be something in the dependent cause.

Using these two components we can enumerate the different modes of cooperation that arise from how they can be logically composed: (1) combination without dependence, (2) dependence without combination, and (3) combination with dependence. If two things have neither combination nor dependence it is difficult to see that as cooperation in any sense, and so we will leave that option to one side.

Modes of cooperation

A straightforward example of combination without dependence would be that of two people pulling a car or lifting a box. Neither of the two people depends on the other in order to be able to pull, but when they pull together their combined force is enough to pull the car. We call this “coordinate cooperation”², and it has the structure of two influences and one product.

Once we recognize this category and its structure, we can see that it applies to other cases that we might not have instinctively described as cooperation. For example, when two teams engage in tug-of-war this is also coordinate cooperation, since they do not depend on one another to exert their influence on the rope, but the resultant tension in the rope is a product of the combination of each of their influences. Of course, at another level this cooperation is a competition, which we’ll discuss more below. Other examples of coordinate cooperation include two sticks standing upright against one another, two sports teams playing a match against each other, and an orchestra performing a piece of music.

Next we turn to dependence without combination, an example of which is when a person throws a brick through a window. In this case the brick depends on the person to impart to it a certain velocity by which it can go through the window, but the breaking of the window is only directly caused by the brick. We can call this “accidental cooperation”³, and it has the structure of two influences and two products. In the person-and-brick example, the first influence is of the person on the brick, the first product is the brick’s velocity, the second influence is of the brick on the window, and the second (final) product is the window’s breaking.

Again, there are cases of accidental cooperation which fit the definition and go beyond our motivating example. For instance, a grandparent and a parent accidentally cooperate to beget a grandchild, since the parent depends on the grandparent for their existence (and therefore their ability to procreate) but the grandparent does not directly contribute to the begetting of the grandchild. Indeed, cases of accidental cooperation needn’t even involve temporally separate events. For example, imagine Alice holds Bob up because he is too short to grab an item off the shelf by himself. In this case Alice accidentally cooperates with Bob, because her activity enables him to do his activity (dependence) but they do not both directly grab the item off the shelf (without combination). Another example of simultaneous accidental cooperation is when the sun shines on the moon, which in turn reflects this onto the earth. This case is noteworthy, because though the moon is radically dependent upon the sun, this dependence does not occur in such a way that the rays of the sun must combine with the reflected rays of the moon in order for the moon to illuminate the earth.⁴

The last mode of cooperation, combination with dependence, is by far the trickiest to grasp. An example of this is when Alice uses a stick to push a stone by means of directed motion. Similarly, it occurs between Bob and a piece of chalk as he uses it to write on a blackboard. We can call this “essential cooperation”, and its trickiness becomes clear when we attempt to describe its structure. The key thing to realize is that in essential cooperation the combination and the dependence are not two distinct acts, but rather two aspects of one and the same act. Thus, we could equally describe it as “dependent combination” or “combinatory dependence”. If this weren’t the case, then instead of essential cooperation we would really only have coordinate cooperation (combination without dependence) coinciding with accidental cooperation (dependence without combination).

To underscore this irreducibility, we can consider variations of the Alice-and-stick scenario which do not amount to essential cooperation. If Alice merely threw the stick at the stone, then we would have accidental cooperation rather than essential cooperation. If she merely pushed the stone with her hand at the same time as the stick hit the stone, then we would have coordinate cooperation rather essential cooperation. Even if she threw the stick and managed to then push the stone with her hand at the same time, we still would not have essential cooperation, but rather a coincidence of accidental and coordinate cooperations. Furthermore, if Alice were to let go of the stick after using it to move the stone, it might continue moving without her, in virtue of the velocity it had when she let go, but the essential cooperation between Alice and the stick ceases upon her letting go. This manifests itself in the fact that the motion the stick is no longer directed in the way it was before. Once she’s let go, the cooperation between the two is only accidental.

When Alice essentially cooperates with the stick, she not only moves the stick (dependence) but also moves the stick to move the stone by means of directing it (combination). It’s because the stick is not capable of directed motion in itself that Alice needs to keep acting through it to move the stone. And with this we see the structure of essential cooperation emerging: Alice not only influences the stick (by moving it), but also influences the stick’s influencing the stone (by moving the stone with the stick). Thus, in total we have three influences and two products, because Alice influencing the stick’s influence does not produce some distinct thing.

We can summarize everything we’ve said here with the following table:

Having outlined these three modes of cooperation, the rest of this post will discuss what we might call the “characteristics” of cooperation. These apply in some sense to every mode of cooperation, even if the specific details differ in each case.

Through-causing and instrumentation

When one cause acts through another we call it “through-causing”. In any case of through-causing there are three components to consider: the cause, the passage, and the effect. In terms of the vocabulary we introduced above, these would correspond to the first cause, the second cause, and the final product respectively. Using these components we can unpack the differences in how through-causing applies to each of the modes of cooperation as outlined above.

Of the three modes, essential cooperation involves through-causing in the truest sense, since the first cause acts through the second by causing it to cause the final product. In this case the second cause acts only insofar as the first cause acts through it, which is to say that the second cause propagates the causal influence that originates with the first. When Alice pushes the stone with the stick, the stick propagates Alice’s causal influence to the stone.

The Alice-and-stick example also shows us something that we might be tempted to forget: propagation doesn’t mean that the second cause does nothing, as if things would be the same without it. The stick modifies Alice’s causal influence according to its nature, and thereby enables her to push a stone that otherwise might be out of reach due to distance or obstacles. We’ll return to this point in the next section. For now, the upshot is that the origination-propagation language gives us another perspective on how dependence and combination work together in essential cooperation: there is dependence because the second cause does not originate the causal influence, and there is combination because the second cause propagates this influence rather than the first cause bringing about the product by itself. If the second cause weren’t making some kind of contribution, then the final product wouldn’t occur in the same way or even at all.

The two other modes of cooperation can make sense of through-causing, but only by considering it in a looser sense. In a case of accidental cooperation the order of first and second cause is given by the dependence of the second cause on the first, but because the first cause doesn’t directly influence the final product it can only be said to “cause” it in a loose sense. In other words, accidental cooperation gives a natural sense of through-causing, but requires a looser sense of through-causing.⁵

In a case of coordinate cooperation both causes directly influence the final product, but there is no dependence to give an objective ordering between them. So, any ordering between the causes must be supplied by us, in terms of how we consider them. For instance, if Alice and Bob are pulling a rope from either end, then we could take either to be the first cause, the other to be the second cause, and the final product to be the tension in the rope. Alice acts “through” Bob not because Bob propagates Alice’s influence or because Bob depends on Alice for his acting, but simply because Bob modifies the result of Alice’s contribution in some way. Thus, we might say that coordinate cooperation gives us a natural sense of through-causing, but requires a looser sense of through-causing.

The notion of through-causing is closely linked to the notion of instrumentation. An agent works through an instrument by applying it to an end. In the strictest sense, an instrument is something that has the capacity for producing its effect within itself, but which is incapable of realizing this capacity by itself. Thus, the instrument produces the effect only so long as the agent applies it to this end. To give an example, the stick is capable of moving in any number of directions (capacity), but cannot direct itself to move the stone (incapable of realization), and therefore requires Alice to continually apply it to this end. Connecting this with what we’ve been saying, an instrument in the strictest sense is what an agent causes through in the truest sense. And just as accidental and coordinate cooperation involve looser sense of through-causing, so too do they involve looser senses of instrumentation. Thus, we can say, in a looser sense, that the sun uses the moon as an instrument to illuminate the earth, and the Alice uses Bob as an instrument to produce tension in the rope.

Because essential cooperation captures the truest senses of these notions, unless otherwise specified we will use them exclusively for cases of this mode of cooperation.

Impositions

We’ve touched on the notion of causes “modifying” each other’s influence, and it’s worth spending some time making this more precise. Whenever one cause modifies another’s influence in some way, we’ll say that it “imposes upon” that cause. Accordingly, we will refer to this characteristic of cooperation as “imposition”. There are two components that determine the kind of imposition in view: (1) how it imposes, and (2) what it results in.

Regarding the how, an imposition can be active or passive. Alice actively imposes upon Bob when she pulls the rope in the opposite direction to him in a game of tug-of-war, but the stick passively imposes upon Alice when it enables her to act through it in accordance with its structure and strength. Active impositions arise from how one thing’s casual influence impacts another’s, while passive impositions arise from how one thing receives the causal influence of another. Of the two, active impositions are the ones we more intuitively grasp, so much so that we might be tempted to think that passive impositions are not really impositions at all. But this would be a mistake, as the Alice-and-stick example should make clear. Among other things, the stick could modify Alice’s causal influence by extending it by its length or limiting its force by its fragility.

This brings us to the results of impositions, which involve either helping or hindering. An imposition helps when it supports or amplifies, and it hinders when it frustrates or limits. In the tug-of-war Bob and Alice mutually hinder one another, but when they pick up a box together they help one another. Both of these examples are of active impositions, but passive impositions can also be hindering and helpful. Returning to the Alice-and-stick example, if the stick is fragile or bent then it might hinder the causal influence it receives from Alice, while its weight and shape might help her use it for the purpose of pushing the stone. Similarly, it’s because a brick is a certain size and weight that it can be used to break a window by throwing it, unlike a bunch of feathers or a piece of cloth.

So an imposition can be active or passive, and it can hinder or help. This gives us four options for the nature of a particular imposition, to which we give names in the following table:

We hasten to add that the sense of these names is very broad. In our everyday language we restrict “violence” to situations in which someone actively hinders the safety of another. Our technical sense here includes this, but is not exhausted by it. If I’ve asked you not to play a certain kind of music and you persist in playing it, then you’re imposing violence against my will without necessarily hindering my safety. But it gets broader even than this: if one rock knocks another off-course then this is also violence, since it hinders its movement along its original trajectory. The same point of generality applies to limitation, elevation, and facilitation.

Active impositions can be bi-directional, in the sense that two things can actively impose upon each other in the same act of cooperation. In the tug-of-war, for example, both sides of the war impose violence upon by the other. And when two people pick up a box together they impose elevation upon each other. This is possible, because the nature of active impositions allows for there to be a form of symmetry between the two causes. By contrast, passive impositions are by nature asymmetric, and so there is no comparable bi-directionality.

Levels of cooperation

Sometimes a cooperation occurs by means of a lower-level cooperation. Return once more to the Alice-and-stick example. We’ve said that Alice essentially cooperates with the stick, and this is correct, but this essential cooperation is made possible by various lower-level cooperations governed by the laws of physics. For instance, it is because the stick has a certain structural integrity that it doesn’t simply buckle when pushed by Alice into the stone. So, one of these lower-level cooperations is the coordinate cooperation between Alice and the stick which produces the internal stress within the stick. If such cooperation did not occur, then Alice wouldn’t be able to push anything with the stick, since it would simply crumble or her hand would move through it.

This is actually the second time we’ve seen multiple cooperations coincide with one another. Earlier we saw it when we were introducing essential cooperation, and noting that it is not equivalent to the coincidence of accidental and coordinate cooperations. In that case the two cooperations occurred at the same level, but here they occur at different levels.

Given that cooperations can coincide in various ways, it is necessary that we be able to distinguish between them somehow. Sometimes we can distinguish them by reference to their final products, but this is not always enough: in our earlier example, of Alice throwing the stick and pushing the stone at the same time the stick hits it, the two cooperations have the same final product, namely the motion of the stone. In such cases, if we want to distinguish between the cooperations it is necessary to qualify how we consider each of the causes. When considering the accidental cooperation between Alice and the stick when she throws it, we are considering Alice-as-thrower cooperating with the stick-as-projectile. But when considering the coordinate cooperation between Alice and the stick when they move the stone, we are considering Alice-as-pusher cooperating with stick-as-pusher.

An important thing to notice is that when two cooperations coincide they needn’t involve the same impositions. At one level the tug-of-war game is cooperative and at another level it is competitive. At the lower level, both teams cooperate with each other in playing the game in accordance with the rules. At the higher level, they also cooperate with one another in the technical sense we’ve been discussing, but in this instance they mutually impose violence on the other in an attempt to claim victory. Healthy competition just is this sort of mutually violent cooperation at a higher level built upon a non-violent cooperation at a lower level.

For a particularly interesting example of this, imagine Alice pushing a stone using Bob’s hand against his will. Here we can distinguish at least two different cooperations, each at a different level. First there’s the higher-level essential cooperation between Alice-as-agent and Bob’s-arm-as-instrument, and second there’s the lower-level coordinate cooperation between Alice-as-wanting-to-push-Bob’s-arm and Bob-as-not-wanting-his-arm-pushed. If we ask whether Alice imposes violence upon Bob, then we will get a different answer depending on which of the cooperations we’re considering. In the essential cooperation, Alice’s action is what makes and sustains Bob’s-arm-as-instrument, and therefore cannot be said to be violent against it. In the coordinate cooperation, by contrast, Alice’s actions go against Bob’s will for his arm and are therefore violent against Bob. In fact, this is a general feature of essential cooperation: because the influence of the first cause is what establishes and sustains the influence of the second, the first can never impose violence or elevation upon the second at the level of the cooperation. But this imposition could still exist at a lower level, as this example shows.

Conclusion

With this we have covered the necessary groundwork of cooperation: the modes of cooperation, through-causing and instrumentation, impositions, and levels of cooperation. All of these will serve us in our account of divine concurrence and comparison of different views.