Providence

PROVIDENCE. - I. NOTION AND EXISTENCE. - It indicates in general the divine government of the world insofar as the divine intelligence embraces the entire development of beings, both in its entirety and in its individual parts, and guides it to its own end: providence thus constitutes the concluding moment of divine causality after creation (v.) and conservation. Providence consists properly in an act of intelligence insofar as it sets forth the "plan of development" of a thing that preexists in the mind of the Creator. Both the Latin term providentia and the Greek πρόνοια consider providence as an "anticipation" on the part of the divine intelligence of the course of events, according to the expression of Proclus: πρόνοια... ᾗ τὸ ὄνομα διὰ ὑπὲρ νοῦν ἐνέργειαν (In Tim., 40 Bc, ed. C. Diehl, I, Leipzig 1903, p. 415, 21 ff.). St. Thomas therefore places providence as the principal part of the virtue of prudence and defines it as ratio ordinis rerum in finem (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 22, a. 5), which he brings close to the traditional definition of Boethius: "Providentia est ipsa divina ratio in summo omnium principe constituta, quae omnia disponit" (De consol. philos., l. IV, prosa 6: PL. 63, 814). Once the end to be attained has been established by the will, it belongs to reason through prudence to determine the means suitable for attaining it, and in this sense providence is an attribute of the divine intellect, which however presupposes the will of the end (Sum. Theol., loc. cit., ad 3).

The existence of divine providence can be made evident to all men, according to the degrees of certainty that philosophical reflection and the Christian faith obtain concerning the mystery of the divine operation: this certainty therefore begins with the natural knowledge accessible to all and is completed with faith and theological reflection. Especially the spectacle of the marvelous order of the universe (5th way) demonstrates the existence of a first ordering principle, which guides every being to its own end: therefore the immanent finalism of nature, which without knowing arrives at the end, attests to the direction of a principle superior to this finalism (already recognized since antiquity in the overall harmony of the macrocosm and the microcosm) has become today more evident with the progress of astrophysics concerning the organization of the sidereal world, of microphysics concerning the structures of the subatomic world, and of microbiology which has, in the field of physiology, genetics and embryology, found the ultimate constitutive individualities of the living organism. It is not possible that this imposing complex of elements and forces, which converge toward particular and global ends that are well defined and constant, should be found in matter as such and that they should thus move and arrive at the term without the guidance of a mind that embraces them in their individual parts and as a whole, and this is precisely providence; recourse to "chance" (v.) explains nothing, because natural phenomena are not sporadic but constant and constitutive and tend to the attainment of the optimum, as St. Thomas observes (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 2, a. 3: 5th way), and this shows operating in nature the order of a supreme intellect, as the perspicacity of the post-Socratic philosophers already saw, which "... evidentibus indicis et rationibus ostendit res naturales providentia regi" (Prol. in lib. Iob, ed. Parm., t. XIV, 1 col. a). It is an error therefore to attribute to chance and fate or to blind necessity the becoming of nature, as not a few pre-Socratics did and in particular Democritus and Empedocles (cf. H. Diels, Doxographi graeci, 2nd ed., Berlin 1929, p. 321, a 14, ff.).

The existence of providence seems instead doubtful in the history of human events because in them, St. Thomas again observes, every order seems to be lacking insofar as benefits do not always fall to the good nor misfortunes to the wicked, nor indeed do misfortunes always fall to the good and benefits to the wicked in this life, but goods and evils fall indifferently to the good and to the wicked: "Hoc est quod maxime corda hominum commoveat ad opinandum res humanas providentia divina non regi" (loc. cit.). But nothing is more pernicious than the denial of providence, because once divine providence is removed, the fear and reverence of God come to be lacking in men, and with this all vices are unleashed: "Nihil enim est quod tantum revocet homines a malis et ad bona inducat quantum Dei timor et amor" (Prol. in lib. Iob, ed. cit., XIV, 1 col. b). The only real difficulty therefore against the existence of providence is the existence of evil: but it is not removed either by referring evil to a principle existing in itself (Gnostic and Manichaean dualism) or even by reducing it to a necessary moment of the development of the whole (the "negative" of Hegelian dialectic). The only solution to the problem of evil is that of theology (v. MALE).

The presence of divine providence in human history can also be suggested by what might be called the principle of the incommensurability of the political act with its actual outcome in the relationship that every man has toward society. In fact, whoever holds political power and makes his own decisions does not for this reason dominate the unfolding of events, which can undergo sudden arrests or precipitate flights, breaking every immediate logic of the facts and thwarting the most careful preparation, as the most recent history of Europe confirms. This means that the course of human history is not found in the hands of man but of an absolute Principle, to which must be referred in any case the good that can spring from evil in such crises of humanity, according to the warning of Kierkegaard: "It is true that injustice has often had happy consequences: but we must then be grateful not to this man or to that state but to P." (Diario, Italian trans., I, Brescia 1948, p. 10).

II. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

It expressly affirms the universality of divine p.: « Universa quae condidit Deus providentia sua tuetur atque gubernat, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponens omnia suaviter » (Conc. Vat., sess. III, cap. 1: Denz-U, 1784).

The active presence of God in the world and in the course of history is the subject of the entire teaching of Sacred Scripture, whose theme is God's continual solicitude for man: already in creation God shows an entirely special interest in man; immediately after the fall he decides to save him by promising the Redeemer. Thus the axis of human history is oriented by God in the sense of a « history of salvation » (Heilgeschichte, O. Culmann) that unfolds in successive stages: first the choice of the chosen people with Abraham, the guidance of Moses and the uninterrupted action of the Prophets, the fulfillment of the Incarnation of the Word and of the institution of the Church until the end of the world. Therefore Sacred Scripture sets forth the concrete content of divine p.: the historical books express divine p. in its temporal unfolding; the prophetic books contain its presence or its anticipated announcement; the wisdom books develop the hidden motives of consolation that it brings to man, and among them Wisdom and the book of Job show the value of the suffering of the just. According to Sacred Scripture, divine action is the principal factor of history: « Non concesse il Signore neppure ai Santi di raccontare tutte le sue meraviglie...; perché il Signore sa ogni cosa e osserva i segni dei tempi, annunzia il passato e il futuro e rivela le tracce delle cose occulte » (Eccl. 42, 17-19). « Egli tutte le cose porta con il verbo della sua potenza » (Hebr. 1, 3). « In lui noi viviamo e ci muoviamo e siamo » (Act. 17, 28). The problem of p. is therefore resolved in the active presence of God in nature and in history; it is an ordinary presence in the conservation of the cosmos and an extraordinary one through the prophecies and miracles of the Old and New Testaments, which are the modes and moments of the realization of the single plan of salvation of humanity through the Redemption in Jesus Christ (cf. O. Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit. Die urchristliche Zeit und Geschichtauffassung, 2nd ed., Zurich 1948, p. 59 ff., 107 ff.).

This unity of the divine plan of salvation (Heilsplan) toward fallen humanity is traced back with perfect continuity in the first steps of the apostolic Church and in particular in the discourses of St. Peter, St. Stephen and St. Paul: Judaism and Christianity are the two unique stages in which the divine « dispensation » for the salvation of man was successively realized (cf. Act. 2, 15-36 [discourse of St. Peter at Pentecost]; 7, 2-53 [discourse of St. Stephen to the Pharisees]; 13, 15-41 [discourse of St. Paul at Antioch]). This unfolding of the divine plan of salvation, which constitutes the intimate structure of human history, is called by St. Paul olomegis (Eph. 1, 10; on the use of the term in the sense of divine p. in act, cf. G. Kittel, Theol. Wörterb. z. N. T., V, p. 154 ff.).

The central nucleus therefore of divine p. is indicated by Revelation in a supernatural fact, which St. Paul called the « mystery of Christ » insofar as the « plan of salvation » is nothing other than the historical development in the Old and New Testaments of the « line of salvation as the line of Christ » (Heilslinie als Christuslinne, in O. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 92 ff.).

It is above all the thought of St. Paul: « In him (Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins according to the riches of his Grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of his will which he had purposed in himself to bring it to act in the fullness of times: it is (the mystery) of gathering all things together in Christ, both the things in heaven and the things on earth » (Eph. 1, 9-10; cf. Col. 1, 26 ff.).

But if divine p. is exercised as the gratuitous emanation of divine liberality, it is nevertheless realized by degrees according to the nature of the things to which it is applied. Theology therefore distinguishes a most general or natural p., which extends to all natures, including inanimate and irrational beings, as St. Thomas defends against Moses Maimonides (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 22, a. 2). Then comes special p., which concerns rational creatures and more precisely man, who is the subject of « sacred history » and of divine revelation (ibid., 1a, q. 22, a. 2, ad 5). Finally there is most special p., which is the purpose of divine predestination that concerns first the humanity of the Incarnate Word and then the elect who will triumph with Christ in eternal beatitude with which the history of humanity will close: « Hominum autem iustoum quodam excellentiori modo Deus habet providentiam quam impiorum, in quantum non permittit contra eos evenire aliquid quod finaliter impediat salutem eorum » (ibid., 1a, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4). In these last two senses one also speaks of supernatural p.

It must nevertheless remain firm that divine p. immediately reaches every being in its own individual singularity and concerns each one in an immediate way, since the divine intellect contains the first measure of each thing down to the smallest particulars (ibid., loc. cit., a. 3). But St. Thomas adds that divine p. leaves intact the proper nature of things themselves, both insofar as in the execution of the divine plan, natural and supernatural, God does not remove the order of the ontological subordination of causes, but rather uses them as an instrument of the execution of the divine plan, and especially insofar as the spiritual creature finds in p. no obstacle to the exercise of its freedom; indeed it is the proper task of divine p. to establish not only the reality of events but also the manner of their occurrence, necessary for necessary causes and free for free ones (ibid., loc. cit., a. 4 ad 1). The most arduous point in this matter is to specify the nature of the « concurrence » of divine motion upon free creatures, and this holds both in the sphere of natural freedom and in the supernatural order of Grace and predestination (v.): the solutions advanced by the various schools (the Augustinian deletatio victrix, the Thomist praemotia physica, the Molinist scientia media) depend on the different metaphysical orientation of the respective theologies and cannot affect the revealed nucleus of divine p.

III. HISTORICAL OUTLINE

The notion of divine p. follows the concept that man, with the progress of culture, has formed of God: the Greek terms themselves πρόνοια and θεός relate to the act of seeing. It must nevertheless be said that both Greek philosophy and Arab philosophy arrived only at an imperfect concept of divine p., both because they did not entirely free themselves from the doctrine of "fate," and above all because they did not consider man's existence in the perspective of the "plan of salvation" manifested by divine Revelation. This does not prevent one from admitting that the deuterocanonical books themselves, and in particular Wisdom, may have drawn on Greek thought, as seems proven for the books of Ecclesiastes and Wisdom (cf. F. Heinisch, Die griechische Philosophie im Buche der Weisheit, in Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen, I, IV, Münster 1908, p. 109 ff.); it must be added, however, that the biblical meaning of p. is far deeper than the philosophical one, because it affirms at one and the same time the absolute omnipotence and independence of God's action and the full freedom of man, two elements essential to the concept of p. that Greek thought never succeeded in fully clarifying.

In ancient Greek thought, lacking any notion of the personality of God, p. has no prominence and is identified with necessity (ἐντάγκα) and fate (ἐνταγμένη) and fortune (τῶτα), as Parmenides and Democritus do according to the testimony of Aetius (H. Diels-W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th ed., Berlin 1934, 28 A 32; I, 223, 21 ff.).

Among the tragedians, while Euripides seems to accentuate the ineluctability of fate even for the gods themselves, Sophocles shows himself more liberal in presenting divine intervention in human affairs: it is on this admission that the ancient belief in divine "epiphanies," or interventions of the divinity on behalf of mortals, is founded, as well as the practice of "divination" (μαντική), which presupposed a divine inspiration and therefore the direct influence of the divinity (cf. W. Nestle, Griechische Religiosität vom Zeitalter des Perikles bis auf Aristoteles, Berlin-Leipzig 1933, pp. 56 and 106). But it seems that it was Plato who first affirmed the distinction between "events that occur according to p." (εἰς πρόνοιαν) and those "according to necessity" (H. Diels, Doxographi graeci, 2nd ed., Berlin 1929, p. 321, 10). Plato in fact affirms that the world is, in all probability, truly a living intelligent animal produced by the work of God's p.: the world is truly conceived as an organism that is held together by the soul (ὑπούς ἐν σώματι ξυνίστας τὸ πᾶν συντακτικοί. Tim. 30 A. C.; ed. Stallbaum, Leipzig 1899, p. 509 b). To Plato are linked the developments of the Stoics and the Neoplatonists around the problem of p. The thought of Aristotle seems to have its definitive expression in the principle that God knows only himself; because he is most powerful, thought of thought: αὐτὸν ἄρα νῶσι, εὐπὲ τὸ κράτιστον, νόησις νόησως νόησις (Metaph., XII, 9, 1074 b 34); against the tradition of the early Patristic age (Clement of Alexandria, Protrept., V, 66, 4; Strom., II, 14 and 21; Origen, Contra Celsum, I,

21 and II, 27) and of the Aristotelian school itself, according to which Aristotle would have denied to God the knowledge (and therefore any p.) of things outside himself, and certainly of material things because unworthy of his dignity. St. Thomas in his commentary defended its fittingness instead (In XII Metaph., ed. Cathala, lect. II, nn. 2614-16) and was followed by Giles of Rome (cf. Evrores philosophorum, ed. J. Koch, Milwaukee 1944, p. 12), who attributes to Averroes, to Algazel and to Moses Maimonides the admission of only a universal p. (op. cit., pp. 22-40, 62 ff.). The explicit denial of p. over singulars is certainly found in Epicurus, who, against Plato and the Stoics, expressly attributes "non-p." to the gods (ἀπρονοησία: cf. H. Usener, Epicura, Leipzig 1887, p. 246 ff.). The doctrine of p. was instead a cornerstone of Stoic thought; like Plato, the Stoics too, and Posidonius, conceive the world as an organism vivified by the Anima mundi and wholly pervaded by the λόγος σπερματικώς of the Reason and p. of Jupiter, so that the cosmos is a living, animated and rational being (Ζώων ἐμίωγων καὶ λογικῶν: Diogenes Laertius, VII, 139; ed. Cobet, Paris 1929, p. 189, 8).

Among the Stoics, Chrysippus, Seneca and Cicero, among others, treated expressly of p., and the problem of p. is at the center of the polemic between Stoics and Epicureans, who reproach Plato (Leg., 889 B 892 B), as well as the early Aristotle (in the Protrepticus) and the Stoics, for the principle that makes nature (φῶσις) precede the divine art (τέγνη) and conceives God as the artificer (τεχνίτης) of the world. In the Peripatetic school, Alexander of Aphrodisias takes up the defense of free will against the fatalism of the Stoic conception, in the De fato, where he distinguishes: 1) acts that have their cause in themselves, that is, nature, 2) acts according to reason, 3) acts performed with a view to an end, where fate is relegated solely to the sphere of natural acts; only thus can the freedom of the human act (τὸ ἑρ' ἡμῖν) be saved.

Plutarch (v.), who polemicizes harshly in various writings against the Epicureans, subordinates fate or physical necessity to p. (as already Plato: Tim., 29 D), and this unfolds in three orders: 1) the first is the will of the First God over all things, 2) the second is that of the second gods within the sphere of the celestial bodies that produce the effects of the sensible world, 3) the third is the assistance that the guardian spirits or ἔδιονες lend to man and to his institutions and undertakings, in agreement with Posidonius (cf. H. Diels, Doxographi graeci, ed. cit., p. 324 a 4). Plotinus's treatise on p. (Enn., III, 2-3) comes very close, according to Bréhier, to the Christian dogma (Notice, III, Paris 1924, p. 21); on the problem of p. there are the opuscules of Proclus, De providentia et fato et eo quod est in nobis, and De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, which have been preserved in the 13th-century Latin translation of William of Moerbeke (1st ed. by V. Cousin, Procli platonici opera, I, Paris 1820). A synthesis of Platonic p. and Stoic fate is found in the Commentary on the Timaeus (chaps. 147-25) of Calcidius, which had great fame and influence in the early Middle Ages.

One may therefore conclude that the Greek conception of p. never completely freed itself from dependence on necessity, whether of nature or of reason. The Jew Philo, in a treatise on p., of which Eusebius preserved some fragments, although he insists like the Stoics on universal p., did not however deny particular p., because he admits, in accordance with the Bible, the miraculous interventions of God on behalf of men (cf. H. A. Wolfson, Philo, II, Cambridge, Mass., 1948, p. 292 ff.). The problem of p. attracted in a particular way the attention of the Fathers of the Church, in order to refute the most widespread errors about the nature of God, which in various forms traced back to the common root of Greek dualism (Manichaeism, Gnosticism, mediated p., fatalism...) and, according to their particular doctrinal orientation, some of them accept, transforming them in the Christian climate, vast suggestions of Greek thought (such as St. Augustine, St. Basil, Pseudo-Dionysius from Neoplatonism). The cornerstones of the defense that the Fathers make of divine p. are: the absolute omnipotence of God, which extends even to individual things and persons, and the inviolability of human freedom. St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei is the most extensive and significant work of the Patristic age on the problem of p.: mention should also be made of the six vigorous orations of St. John Chrysostom on p. (PG 50, 749-74) and the treatment by Boethius in De cons. philos. (4-5).

In modern thought the problem of providence had a special outcome in Leibniz, who wrote the Theodicy to defend divine providence against all the various forms of fatalism. In Hegel there is accomplished the resolution, without residue, of theological providence, founded in the "faith" of divine assistance, into the conception of history as the development of Spirit or absolute Reason "which is also itself faith in providence, only in another guise," because only in this way can chance be eliminated and the truth be attained (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Einleitung, ed. I, Hoffmeister, Leipzig 1944, XV a, p. 122). On the contrary, with a far higher intuition of the presence of God in history, Vico (v.) conceived the gradual development of the human race by means of the principle of the "heterogeneity of ends," which affirms the infallible direction of divine providence, which knows how to draw from human passions themselves beneficial effects of human civilization and progress (cf. the conclusion of the Scienza Nuova, especially §§ 1003-1009, ed. F. Niccolini, Bari 1928, p. 161 ff.).

In this way the problem of providence constitutes the conclusive meeting point of the most arduous problems of philosophy and of faith concerning the meaning and the outcome of man's nature and life.

Cornelio Fabro