Physical Premotion

PHYSICAL PREMOTION. - It is the prior and immediate concurrence or influence of God upon the activity of every creature and especially upon human action, even free action, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas.

I. HISTORY

The question of the relationship between God and the activity of created nature had a varied development within Christian thought. In the time of St. Thomas two conflicting currents dominated: one that was linked to St. Augustine and to Jewish philosophy (Avicebron in the book Fons vitae) and maintained theocentrically that
the action of the creature, in its realization and in its
specification, depends exclusively on the will of
God; the other, with a naturalistic tinge, came from
Arab philosophy (Avicenna, Averroes) and claimed to explain every
activity of the creature on the basis of its natural energies,
without divine intervention. Evidently the first opinion deprived nature of its intrinsic operative capacity
and made the natural agent not a true
and proper cause, but an occasion, which God would use
to produce a determinate effect (almost an anticipation of the occasionalism of Malebranche). The second
opinion, on the other hand, exalted nature beyond what was right, to the point of
removing it from God's dominion. St. Thomas perceived the incongruity of the one and the absurdity of the other and, starting from
the concept of creation, which entirely subordinates the
being of the creature in its origin and in its conservation,
established, in the light of reason and of Revelation, that
nature with its faculties is intrinsically ordered
and proportioned to determinate effects, but just as it cannot
exist even for an instant by itself, so it cannot pass
to action by itself, but needs the influence of the First
Cause. In other words, St. Thomas sees in every created agent,
not excluding man, a being "in potency,"
which cannot give itself the act without the intervention of the Pure Act
that is God. By this path he arrives at the theory of physical
premotion as a divine influence determining the passage from potency to act and therefore as a divine action which, in the order
of causality, precedes and physically actualizes every created
agent. In the De potentia (q. 3, a. 7) St. Thomas sets out
lucidly his thought, saying that God is the cause of
every action of the creature both because he gives it being
together with the operative power and conserves it for it, and because he applies
that power to action in such a way that the natural agent
operates as an instrumental cause of God, the principal cause.
In the Dominican Order there was Durandus who combated
this doctrine, limiting God's action to the creation
and conservation of nature and of its faculties, which
would pass to action by themselves (mediate concourse). In the
16th century an ardent controversy broke out between Dominicans
and Jesuits concerning the natural and supernatural action of
God upon creatures and especially upon the free will
of man (v. BAÑEZ; MOLINISM). The Jesuit Ludovico
Molina (in the work Concordia, 1588) proposed the opinion
according to which God would intervene in human activity not
by preceding, but by accompanying with his influence the will,
which would remain arbiter of its action and capable of
using the concourse offered by God both for good and for
evil. In this way God would place himself alongside the
creature without determining it, but ready to help it every
time it moves to action. Molina thus maintains a divine
concourse that is not previous, but "simultaneous." Against
him rose Domenico Bañez of the Order of Preachers,
who, appealing to St. Thomas, demonstrated that the influence
of God upon the creature and upon man in particular is immediate and previous, indeed is efficaciously determinative of every
single act, even a free one, in such a way that the will is
not only moved by God to act, but is physically "predetermined"
to this or that particular act (D.
Bañez, *Scholastica commentaria in 1ʳᵐ partem Angelici
Doctoris*, Salamanca 1584 and 1588; id., in 2ᵐᵐ-2ᵐᵗ, ibid. 1584
and 1594). The controversy, after about 4 centuries, is still
alive in the opposing schools, which reproach each other
for gaps and compromises: the Molinists point to the danger
to human freedom in Bañez's position, and the
Thomists denounce in the Molinist position a derogation from God's dominion over man. In recent times
various paths of conciliation between the opposing
systems have been attempted, giving rise to the so-called "syncretism."

II. THEOLOGY

From the doctrinal point of view, the genuine thought of St. Thomas must be made clear; he gathers the voice of sound tradition and has the support of the magisterium of the Church, which, however, has thus far not wished to settle the controversy and leaves Thomists and Molinists free to discuss it. St. Thomas in his theory follows the strictly metaphysical line: only God is Being by essence, while all creatures receive being from him. If the creature receives being and therefore is not its own being, neither is it its own acting; rather, action, like being, is distinguished in it from its nature or essence (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 61, a. 1; q. 3, a. 4; De ente et essentia, chs. 5-6; as for action, Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 54, a. 1; C. Gent., III, ch. 70 and often elsewhere). God and the creature are not two coordinated causes, but the one (the created) is subordinate to the other (God), as the instrument to the principal cause (C. Gent., I, ch. 44; III, ch. 67 and IV, ch. 41, besides the De potentia, q. 3, a. 7 already cited). The profound reason for God's intervention in the action of the creature is first of all, as has been said, the potential state of every secondary cause; then that intervention is required by the fact that in every action of nature an effect is realized, which is a new mode of being; thus being is touched, and being, since it is an effect of a universal character, demands a universal cause such as only God is. From these principles there necessarily follows the divine physical premotion in all the activity of created nature and therefore also of man. Molinism does not seem to take account of these metaphysical principles when it admits the possibility in the creature of passing to action without being intrinsically moved by God. Nevertheless Molinism is right to oppose the concept of a physical premotion that is also predetermination to this or that concrete act. Everyone sees in such predetermination a danger of compromising human freedom, which is customarily defined as self-determination.

Returning to St. Thomas, it must be recognized that he unquestionably admits physical premotion, but he does not speak of predetermination "ad unum" of the will under divine impulse. Indeed there are texts from which it appears that St. Thomas constantly opposes necessity to freedom and equates the former with determination "ad unum," the latter with indetermination or active indifference in the face of particular goods: "Causa prima non ita agit in voluntate ut eam de necessitate ad unum determinet, sicut determinat naturam; ideo determinatio actus relinquitur in potestate rationis et voluntatis" (De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 13, to be compared with De malo, q. 6, art. unico, ad 3). In the Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵗ, q. 9, a. 6, ad 3, the holy Doctor summarizes his thought in these precise terms: "Deus movet voluntatem hominis sicut universalis motor ad universale obiectum voluntatis, quod est bonum, et sine hac universali motione homo non potest aliquid velle; sed homo per rationem determinat se ad volendum hoc vel illud." Therefore the specific determination of the act, in which freedom is manifested, is entrusted to reason and the will. In reality the free act is due to the will and reason together, under different aspects: as realization (St. Thomas says exercise) it depends on the will, but as specification it depends on the object presented by the intellect. The divine motion operates properly along the line of exercise: to specification God concurs insofar as he moves the intellect to present the appetible object to the will, which is free to adhere to it or to reject it (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵗ, q. 9, a. 1 and q. 10, a. 2). Other theologians suggest other forms of mitigating physical premotion, always out of the concern to safeguard human freedom under the generally admitted divine influence. But it must be confessed that the problem of reconciling freedom with physical premotion and with efficacious Grace touches the realm of mystery, and therefore no theological system will ever succeed in resolving it adequately.

Pietro Parente