Summa contra Gentiles3.90 Chapter XC. That human choice and will are subject to divine providence

Hence it follows that human will and choice are subject to divine providence.

For whatsoever God does. He does according to the order of His providence. Wherefore, since He is the cause of our choice and will, these are subject to divine providence.

Moreover. All corporeal things are governed by means of spiritual things, as we have shown above. Now spiritual things act on corporeal things by their will. Consequently if the acts of choice and will in intellectual substances are not the concern of God’s providence, it follows that corporeal things also are withdrawn from His providence: so that there will be no providence at all.

Besides. The higher a thing is placed in the universe, the more must it participate in the order in which the good of the universe consists. Hence Aristotle (2 Phys. iv.) reproaches the ancient philosophers for admitting chance and luck in the scheme of the heavenly bodies, but not in the things of the lower world. Now intellectual substances hold a higher place than corporeal substances. Therefore if corporeal substances, as regards their essence and operation, are included in the order of providence, much more so are intellectual substances.

Again. Those things which are nearest to the end are more subject to the order whereby things are directed to the end, since by their means even other things are ordered to the end. Now the actions of intellectual substances are more intimately ordered to God in their end, than the actions of other things, as we have proved above. Therefore the actions of intellectual substances come under the order of providence, whereby God directs all things to Himself, more than the actions of other things.

Further. The government of providence proceeds from God’s love for the things created by Him: for love consists chiefly in this, that the lover desires the good of the beloved. Consequently the more God loves a thing, the more it comes under His providence. This is the teaching of Holy Writ, Ps. cxliv. 20 where it is said: The Lord keepeth all them that love Him: and the Philosopher also says {10 Ethic, viii.) that God cares most for those who love the intellect, as being His friends: from which we may conclude that He loves intellectual substances most of all. Therefore their acts of will and choice are the object of His providence.

Moreover. Man’s interior goods which depend on his will and action, are more proper to man than external goods, such as acquiring wealth, and the like: wherefore a man is said to be good in respect of the former and not of the latter. Consequently if human choice and the movements of man's will do not come under divine providence, but only external happenings, it will be truer to say that human affairs are not the concern of providence than that they are. But the former saying is put into the mouth of blasphemers (Job xxii. 14): He doth not consider our things, and he walketh about the poles of heaven, and (Ezech. ix. 9): The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not, and (Lament, iii. 37): Who is he that hath commanded a thing to be done, when the Lord commandeth it not?

Some passages in the Holy Doctrine might seem to give utterance to that opinion. Thus it is said (Ecclus. xv. 14): God made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel, and further on (17, 18): He hath set water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him. Also (Deut. xxx. 15): Consider that I have set before thee this day life and good, and on the other hand death and evil.—But these words indicate that man has a free-will, not that his choice is withdrawn from divine providence.

Likewise the statement of Gregory of Nyssa in his book On Mani Providence regards those things that are not in our ■power, and not those that are: and the saying of Damascene, who followed him, in the Second Book, that God knows but does not predetermine the things which are in our power, are to be understood as meaning that the things which are in our power are not subject to the divine predetermination in such a way as to be necessitated thereby.