Summa contra Gentiles3.70 Chapter LXX. How the same effect is from God and from the natural agent

agents: hence if the action productive of a natural effect Again. If a thing can be done sufficiently by means of observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices. Since, then, the divine power suffices to divine power to work for the same effect.

Besides. If God produces thé whole natural effect, nothing of the effect is left for the natural agent to produce. Therefore, seemingly, it is impossible that God produce the same effects as natural things.

However these arguments offer no difficulty if we that acts, and the power whereby it acts: thus fire by its heat makes a thing hot. Now the power of the lower agent depends on the power of the higher agent, in so far as the higher agent gives the lower agent the power whereby it acts, or preserves that power, or applies it to action: thus the craftsman applies the instrument to its proper effect, although sometimes he does not give the instrument the form whereby it acts, nor preserves that form, but merely puts it into motion. Consequently the action of the lower agent must not only proceed from it through the latter’s proper power, but also through the power of all the higher agents: for it acts by virtue of them all: and just as the lowest agent is found to be immediately active, so the power of the first agent is found to be immediate in the production of the effect: because the power of the lowest agent does not of itself produce this effect, but by the power of the proximate higher agent, and this by the power of a yet higher agent, so that the power of the supreme agent is found to produce the effects of itself, as though it were the immediate cause, as may be seen in the principles of demonstration, the first of whichisimmediate. Accordingly just as it isnot unreasonable that one action be produced by an agent and by the virtue of that agent, so is it not absurd that the same effect be produced by the inferior agent and by God, and by both immediately, though in a different way.

It is also evident that there is nothing superfluous if nature produce its proper effect and God produce it also, since nature does not produce it except by God’s power.

Nor is it superfluous, if God can produce all natural effects by Himself, that they should be produced by certain other causes: because this is not owing to insufficiency of His power, but to the immensity of His goodness, wherefore it was His will to communicate His likeness to things not only in the point of their being but also in the point of their being causes of other things: for it is in these two ways that all creatures in common have the divine likeness bestowed on them, as we proved above.’—In this way too the beauty of order is made evident in creatures.

It is, also, clear that the same effect is ascribed toa natural cause and to God, not as though part were effected by God and part by the natural agent: but the whole effect proceeds from each, yet in different ways: just as the whole of the one same effect is ascribed to the instrument, and again the whole is ascribed to the principal agent.