Indeterminacy as Premotion or Indeterminacy and its Explanation in terms of Premotion
Lonergan Institute for the “Good Under Construction” © 2020
To explain to a greater degree or, in other words, how indeterminacy somehow exists in general within
our world as a good (with a species of intelligibility which somehow allegedly belongs to it), in
Aristotle’s thinking and conceptuality, a point of departure exists in terms of an explanation that is
offered which tries to join indeterminacy with both the possibilities of intelligibility and all actuations
of intelligibility (if we associate intelligibility with act and being and lack of intelligibility with potency
and any lack of being). Within the being and life of our world (our human world and also the other,
external world of physical, material nature), a notion of finality is to be alluded to (where this leads to
that) but in a way which refers to prior or to initial sets of conditions which exist as chance
conjunctions or as chance relations which, in their fortuitousness, their chanciness, or their randomness,
are to be regarded, oddly enough, as a distinct species of being or, in other words, as a distinct species
of influence or cause which exists per accidens (accidentally, haphazardly, or circumstantially to the
degree that, from our cognitive standpoint, an understanding of their intelligibility is something which
does not seem to fall within the reach and the ken of our understanding, evidencing and pointing
instead to limitations which accordingly exist with respect to the completeness or the adequacy of our
human understanding).1 We know that something exists without our fully understanding why it
happens to exist and without our fully knowing why it happens to exist in the way that it happens to
exist. Things exist apart from direct acts of understanding which would understand and know them;
things exist within a context which refers to statistical determinations of one kind or another that are
keyed to probabilities of events and occurrences which belong to the kind of order that is to be
associated with calculations and determinations of statistical law.2 Chance exists within our world and
also within ourselves to condition our understanding and to condition how, through our willing, we
might respond to any given situation that we encounter within our existing world.3
In a commonly cited example which Aristotle provides as a way to talk about the possible intelligibility
of chance: a man goes to a particular place to achieve a given task (he can go, say, to a market to buy
food) but, in going to a particular place, to accomplish a desired, intended task, he comes upon
someone who owes him money and from whom he would like to recover this man’s debt in order to
1See John Dudley, “Chance is a cause,” Aristotle’s Concept of Chance: Accidents, Cause,
Necessity, and Determinism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), pp. 27-31.
2Bernard Lonergan, “Essay in Fundamental Sociology – Philosophy of History,” Archival
Material: Early Papers on History, eds. Robert M. Doran and John D. Dadosky (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2019), p. 26.
3Lonergan, “Pantōn Anakephalaiōsis: A Theory of Human Solidarity,” Archival Material, p.
48; p. 67: “intellectual advance is…conditioned by chance discovery.” As Lonergan states his case
when talking about predeterminations which exist as both limiting and enabling premotions: “…we may
regard mankind as a machine of low efficiency that receives from the objective situation specifications
of intellect and premotions but turns out operations that only in a certain percentage are according to
intellect and the rest as if there was no intellectual control whatever.” Cf. p. 48. With Aristotle, we
could possibly claim that “the world would be better were it not for human liberty.” Cf. p. 67. If we
were to exist as machines, our willing would always follow from our acts of understanding and insight.
Our world would exist as a more orderly place but it would have an order that belongs to a lower or a
lesser degree of quality.
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obtain money for the purpose of doing something else (in Aristotle’s example, host a celebratory feast).4
Hence: as this example shows, if there had been no coincidental, accidental, unplanned meeting of two
or more persons or, more generally, no coincidental, accidental, unplanned meeting of two or more
things, then a given cause would not have been able to produce its proper effect (an agent acting on a
patient, a cause existing in an effect). Some meetings and connections are intended by our acts of
understanding and willing while others are not. As much as we might intend that certain things should
happen in a certain way, we find that some things usually happen in a way that escapes our desire and
intentionality and the kind of individual, conscious control which exists within the purposefulness and
the teleology of our humanly conscious acts.
In other words thus, within an order of things that initially belongs to the study of movement within the
science of physics, two kinds of motion can be distinguished from each other in terms of a real
distinction where the being of one is such however that it allows or, in a way, it points to the being of
the other. If, for instance, we attend to a burning flame, on the basis of a direct act of understanding,
we can speak about how, in its proper movement or motion, it exists in its own right as an oxidizing,
burning flame of wax. We can speak about its intrinsic, formal intelligibility and about how or why it
exists in the condition of being and activity which it properly has. And, in addition too, through
another direct act of understanding, we can speak about combustible material and about the nature or
the intelligibility which intrinsically belongs to it and so, if a burning flame is joined to combustible
material, we have a new instance of oxidization and the manifestation of an intelligibility which
belongs to the nature and the causes of oxidization.
However, if we attend to why in this particular instance, at a given time and not at some other time, a
burning flame is being joined to a mass of combustible material, we will find, at a certain point, that we
cannot find a completely adequate explanation (an explanation which, for us, would point to an
intelligibility that would be entirely sufficient and determinative for the event in question). The motion
and the activity of oxidization exists in its own right or, in itself, it exists as an intelligible thing (we
understand it; we understand its nature; we understand its causes) while, on the other hand however,
incidences, occurrences, or instances of oxidization exist, to some extent, as unintelligible, un
understood things. A given instance or act of burning is not entirely understood if we should only refer
to the meaning and the nature of oxidization. More is needed if we are to have a fuller or an adequate
understanding of things as these things emerge and exist within our contingent, concrete world. In our
current understanding of things: if given instances of data in sense in our experience of things would
seem to be bereft of meaning and intelligibility (again, from our cognitional point of view), then it
seems that we would have to speak here about that which exists as simply the givenness of matter (or,
in other words, that which is known and conceived apart from the principle of form); or, alternatively,
matter (or materiality) is that which is known and conceived apart from its intelligibility; or matter is
that which is conceived in terms which can speak about a kind of remainder or a leftover which would
exist as the givenness or as the materiality of that which exists as a residual “empirical residue.”5
Hence: if similarly bereft of intelligibility and meaning (again, from our cognitional standpoint),
chance conjunctions or chance relations as these exist would seem to exist also as a species of matter
(as a species of potency). Absent all intelligibility of any kind, chance conditions would have to exist
4Aristotle, Physics, 2, 5, 142, 196b29-197a5. See also Dudley, Aristotle’s Concept of Chance,
p. 34.
5Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and
Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 50-56.
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as a specification of pure potency (or, in other words, as an unrestricted kind of potency).
In the kind of understanding which is accordingly given to us as human beings (as we attend to the
range and the scope of our direct acts of understanding), we find that we cannot or we usually do not
understand why, at any given time and place, a given mover is adjacent to something that is then
moved or caused (as in a cause producing an effect). On the one hand, the action or the willing of a
given mover on a moved or a willed exists as one type of motion. It is proper, given the nature of the
mover or the source of the willing and the nature of that which is being moved, or willed, or influenced
in some way. An active cause is joined or mated to a receptive passive cause, positivity to negativity.
The identity or the intelligibility of one immediately points to the identity or the intelligibility of the
other, vice versa (this with regard to that). Complementarity in nature (even amid differences in
nature) explains why a given event occurs as soon as “x” is adjacent to “y” or as soon as “x” is being
applied to “y.”
However, on the other hand, with respect to a second kind of motion, if, temporally and spatially, a
mover is near or adjacent to something that it can then act on or move in some way, then, according to
a conceptuality that is adapted from the kind of conceptuality which is grounded in Aristotelian and
Thomist roots and the kind of analysis that originally comes to us from Aristotle’s physics,6 some other
kind of motion needs to be designated; some other kind of motion needs to be postulated to account for
relations or connections if we are to think about grasping an explanation for things that could be
somehow fuller or more adequate: a motion which, conceptually, within physics, would exist as,
initially, a praemotio or a premotion (for want of a better, technical term)7 if we are then to try and
6Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas
Aquinas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), pp. 73-75; Matava, Divine Causality and
Human Free Choice, p. 220; Stebbins, Divine Initiative, pp. 234-237; Owens, Christian Metaphysics,
p. 198, n. 19.
7As both Lonergan and Matava note but in Matava’s words, “the term ‘praemotio’ never
occurs anywhere in the corpus of Thomas’s writings,” although, in the later history of philosophy, the
insight or the idea that is grasped in the understanding of it is expressed as “preceding concurrence” (as
concursus praevius). Cf. Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice, p. 220; Owens, Christian
Metaphysics, p. 199. A prior cause moves an agent to action in a way, however, that is not limited to
premotions which would exist as material determinations of one kind or another. Motions which exist
within the order of space and time and which exist as the movement of bodies are constituted by
material conjugates which refer to a species of premotion which would exist as some kind of
mechanical or physical premotion (hence, as praemotio physica). Cf. Matava, Divine Causality and
Human Free Choice, pp. 222-223; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_premotion (accessed April
22, 2020). If, however, we should generalize and think not about spatial motions or spatial movements
but about changes in general that would move a something “x” from a condition of potency into a novel
condition of act (whether or not we would be referring to a physical change or to some other type of
change), we would then be thinking in terms of another kind or species of premotion which would exist
as more of a genus than as a species as we try to think about premotions in terms of a larger or a more
comprehensive notion of it. Material premotions exist in conjunction with immaterial premotions since
acts can realize potencies by effecting and changing them in an immaterial way. Hence, for an
adequate explanation of the being of all things with respect to the character of their material and
immaterial being, we must begin to think in general about a larger, more extensive, prior order of
preconditioning acts that are operative and then also about how, ultimately, a single act would have to
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speak about prior conditions or prior acts which exist as indeterminate unknowns because, as simply
given to us in a prior kind of way, they initially escape our understanding and knowledge and the
degree that we can engage in any forms of planning and calculation that would be able to foresee all
possible variables and, at the same time, know the role that each would play. Without prior shifts,
movements, or connections of some kind or other, or without premotions as a distinct species of
motion, cause, and condition, we cannot have proper motions or proper changes in the life and being of
existing things and the intelligibilities that exist within the being of these motions and changes as the
term or as the manifestation (in act) of that which exists in a way which points to the reality of realities
which exist as internal meanings and causes.8 The necessity of premotions (of one kind or another
within physics and outside of physics) points to a kind of primacy which belongs to them in a way
which transcends the other kind of primacy which belongs to proper motions or to the inherent kind of
intelligibility which belongs to the being of existing things (be they living or dead, animate beings or
inanimate objects). If matter or if, in a larger or more abstract sense, potency exists as a species of
cause (if, allegedly in our case, it exists as a premotion) – if, in its potency as initially a given, if
especially in its active potency, it exists in some way as a predetermining, active, causative principle
(to some extent or in some way, as active, it would have to exist with a certain form or type of
determination that we might not grasp or understand, and which we would have yet to grasp and
understand, and which we can possibly understand at some other later point in time),9 on the other hand
however, form or intelligibility, if it is considered in itself as a motion or as a determining, proper
motion – it would exist as an essentially active principle (in the kind of correlation that is to be found
exist in an unrestrictedly way (hence, as lacking in any kind of material form or determination): as an
act or as a premotion which transcends all material determinations of any kind in having a kind of
being (a transcendence) that is uniquely and entirely appropriate to it. Cf. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, p.
357, n. 74.
8Please note, however, that, as an option or possibility, nothing can escape the possibility of
our having an explanation of things that does not directly belong to us in terms of our own acts of
understanding but, instead, to acts of understanding which transcend the kind of understanding that
normally belongs to us as cognizing human subjects. If we discover in ourselves that intelligibility
exists in terms of connections and relations which, in turn, point to determinations which exist within
the form or within the order of an apprehended intelligibility which belongs to us in an immanently
existing direct act of understanding, accidental or chance relations or accidental or chance connections
can possibly also exist for us although, on the other hand, as the proper term of some other direct act of
understanding which would have to belong to another kind of subject where, from the point of view of
this subject and its own act of understanding, absence of intelligibility or chance is absent. It does not
exist. While an initial or an anticipated awareness of intelligibility can be given to us as a potency
(through our experience of wonder and through our asking of questions which exist as acts), if we
should want to refer to the being and the flow of chance variations as these exist within our world, the
awareness that we have in our cognition exists as an incomplete act to the degree that it directs and
points us to a variable which we yet to fully grasp and know. Hence, in our understanding, through our
inferences, we can refer to something which, in some way, exists but which, for us, would exist as a
known unknown. We have the act of a thing’s being through our awareness of it but not the
intelligibility which belongs to a thing’s form or nature. The act which exists in the incompleteness of
our understanding accordingly points to how our act exists as a species of potency.
9If a premotion exists as a physical premotion, it would have a numeric designation of some
kind which would refer to a quantity of some kind (this quantity existing as a species of determination):
whether, for instance, we should refer to a measure of distance or to a size of mass or weight.
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and which is distinguished for us within the context of Aristotle’s analysis).
Simply put, chance conjunctions, in their intelligibility, exist as premotions or, in other words, as
predeterminations which exist as a “statistically predetermined flow” of differing conjunctions and
combinations of many different things that are constitutive of our world and how we live and exist
within our world,10 and so as soon as A in a condition already of act encounters B in a condition
already of act, something invariably happens in terms that lead to the emergence and the being of C as
the being of a new, distinct reality.11 Through a universalization of the notion of premotion, as it can
apply in other fields and dimensions of meaning and being (for instance, when we think about the
causality of premotions with respect to our individual acts of human willing and about how, in turn, our
actions invariably and unexpectedly lead to certain results of one kind or another, now within this
context and now within another context),12 we move toward a larger understanding about how things
10Lonergan, “Philosophy of History,” Archival Material, p. 6; p. 26. See also the illustrative
argumentation which comes to us from Lonergan’s “Pantōn Anakephalaiōsis: A Theory of Human
Solidarity,” Archival Material, p. 49. If, as a general principle, whatever is moved is moved from
something else (quidquid movetur ab alio movetur), we have a situation which falls into the following
order:
Will has to be premoved by intellect; intellect has to be prmoved by
phantasm; phantasm has to be premoved by an objective situation and
environment; finally, the objective situation and environment is partly the
determinate work of nature, partly the accumulated work of mankind
acting now according to its limited knowledge and now against the
knowledge.
11Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, p. 86; p. 74, as cited by Matava, Divine Causality and
Human Free Choice, p. 221.
12Aquinas, as cited by Lonergan, as cited by Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free
Choice, p. 222. When Aristotle speaks about a man going to a nearby market to buy food and about
how he unexpectedly meets someone who owes him money, this type of human interaction as a
premotion exists as an explanatory principle within the human order of things in our world because it
relates and, in its way, it creates a context or it sets a stage for the later making of ethical decisions and
relations which are supposed to exist among us as human beings, determining and influencing how we
are supposed to behave towards in each other in a way which is supposed to be always right and just.
At a higher level or within a larger context, to supply another example, if we should refer to the kind of
order which exists as the communion and the life of Christ’s Catholic Church, if we should refer to the
economy of salvation which exists within it and which joins its many members and participants into a
hierarchal whole, we have a kind of prior context within which persons find that they live and exist, a
context that very many persons are born into and so, in the end, the net result or the net effect is a
mediation, an introduction, and a communication of spiritual goods which exist as determinations of
meaning and being. They, in turn, exert an influence of their own on how we can understand ourselves
as human beings and how we can begin, in a better way, to live and exist within the kind of world that
we find ourselves within (a world that is marred by incidents and happenings that point to a lack of
meaning and being and an unfortunate absence of ready solutions that can be immediately applied in a
way which does not lead to further absences of meaning and being that could be more dire and
irrational for us, leading us into a worsening of our human condition and lot as we should find this
within the circumstances of our existing world). Cf. Lonergan, “Philosophy of History,” Archival
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exist and occur within our world. “Every act has its premotion,”13 albeit, in a way that is to be
explained by a process of analytic resolution which finds that premotion originates as the premotion
and act of an unrestricted, transcendent, active cause and agent which, in its own way, rationally and
intelligently exists, in one act, as the source and as the principle of coordination for the being of all
movements, motions, and connections which subsequently exist within our world as a descending,
subordinate order of many secondary causes, passing from agent to agent and then from agent act to
agent act14 through a chain of lesser causes which points to how, among these causes, a single action
exists.15 Not only do premotions explain why many different causes are brought together in a way
which, relatively speaking, brings order out of chaos (appositely, higher orders of being from lower
orders of being), but, at the same time too, other premotions that are more specific explain why any
given, individual cause (as initially a potency) is being brought from a condition of potency into a
condition of act.16 How do we account for the decisions that we make as we move into actions that
belong to us as free moral agents? What are the premotions that are needed but which we do not
control or put into place in any of the actions that we do or perform?17 No potency can actualize itself
Material, pp. 29-30.
13Lonergan, “Philosophy of History,” Archival Material, p. 30.
14Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice, pp. 221-222; Lonergan, “Philosophy of
History,” Archival Material, p. 36; “Pantōn Anakephalaiōsis: A Theory of Human Solidarity,”
Archival Material, p. 41; p. 68.
15Owens, Christian Metaphysics, p. 199.
16Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, p. 445, p. 147; cf. pp. 116-118, as cited by Matava, Divine
Causality and Human Free Choice, p. 224.
17Please note thus that an inquiry that asks about all the premotions which are needed within
the kind of order which belongs to us as human beings (as we move into the morality of our human
decisions and actions) requires an inquiry which must attend to a much larger number of variables than,
say, an inquiry within physical science which might want to ask about premotions which we would like
to know about if, more fully, we are to explain why, at a given time and place, a given physical
movement occurs when and in the way that it does (having certain effects and results). In our world, in
our human world, immaterial motions and immaterial movements (a change, for instance, in our
understanding and judgment of things) presuppose motions and movements which belong to the kind of
material order which already exists within physics, chemistry, and biology although, in addition,
immaterial motions and movements which immaterially exist (as much as they are joined to many
combinations of many, different, material conditions). An exhaustive account of prior causes or prior
motions, to the degree that we would want to initiate this type of inquiry, moves into a complexity of
detail which points to how, in our world, so very many different kinds of things exist and interact in
ways which escape our conscious grasp and anything which could exist as our deliberate control.
In our objective being and within our subjective being as human subjects, as a net effect of
our thinking and understanding, at some point we discover that we exist more as recipients and as
beneficiaries than as makers, actors, or doers (we live within an undeniable condition of reliance and
dependence); and the more that we know about all the pertinent, different levels of dependence which
belong to us (however imperfectly and partially is our understanding and knowledge of these things),
the more that we should know about how we exist in a condition of potency more than how we exist in
a condition of act. How, as a given, we already exist in our objectivity and subjectivity points to how,
in fact, in some way, we already exist as effects with regard to both the number and the character of our
active and passive potencies and how our causality exists as but a species of conditioned effect that is
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and the free expressiveness of secondary causes, in their actuation and exercise, requires actuations
which suppose the unfettered freedom of God’s transcendent, governing activity as this exists within
the scope and depth of his knowing, willing, and doing.
While premotions or chance conjunctions within the physics of space and time accordingly lead to
intelligible conjunctions which exist as directly intelligible motions (in a proper sense or in its proper
sense, the intelligibility of a motion exists as a kind of inner component, a form, or a species of soul
within the being of an existing, living thing), then, on the basis of this type of presupposition and
context, it follows from this that, from a greater frequency of chance conjunctions and a greater variety
of chance conjunctions, a larger number of intelligible conjunctions can become more likely or more
already geared toward an order of ends and objectives that are proper to us if, truly, we exist as human
beings and not as some other kind of living thing (having ends and objectives which exist before
anyone of us individually exists, before we can begin to think and do anything in the context of our
individual, human lives). The orientation which exists within our desiring and willing itself points to
an order of created, effected premotion which is somehow already operative as an already existing
thing (a premotion which differs from our individual acts of willing and choosing as we consider and
think about how best we are to move toward ends and objectives which already exist within our desire
for experiences of happiness and the good of many good things). As human beings, allegedly,
regulatively, and normatively, we all want to be happy and joyful although, often, we may not know or,
in fact, we often do not know about what we exactly want in order for us to be content and happy in the
context of our individual lives. Hence, as our conclusion: nulla est homini causa philosophandi, nisi ut
beatus sit [Man has no reason to philosophize, except with a view to happiness] in order the better that
we can possibly move toward realizations of happiness that we could be possibly given to us. Cf.
Schumacher, Guide for the Perplexed, p. 6; also, elsewhere, previously quoting St. Augustine. Things
are seen to be good if we should initially believe and sense that they will make us happy; if, often
immediately, they can somehow satisfy our desires in a way which removes the experience of want and
deprivation which perennially exists within us whenever we experience our desires and so feel our
different wants, privations, and needs. In our lives, we exist first as feeling, sensing subjects before we
exist as thinking, reflective subjects. After initially desiring sensible joys and delights of one kind or
another, later, we can begin to desire other goods or other pleasures as we move from bodily kinds of
experience toward experiences which belong to forms and developments of consciousness that are not
delimited or which are not restricted by anything which would exist for us as a datum or as an act of
human sensing. In a teaching that comes to us from the conceptuality of Aquinas’s language: “by the
will’s own essence or natural form – the human will is oriented to happiness or to the good in general.”
Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 1; q. 94, a. 2, as cited by Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free
Choice, p. 225.
An understanding of premotion accordingly begins with how, as our maker and creator, God
exists in his being in terms of premotion; or, more accurately, God exists as premotion (qua
premotion). The premotion exists first in terms of the initial creation of our being before it can then be
said to exist with respect to the further and the additional creations which occur and exist when we then
refer to the preservation and the sustenance of our created being and then, from there, to the cultivation
or the flourishing of our created human existence (most simply and crudely put: “creation,
conservation, and application”). Cf. Matava, p. 250. The premotions exist within an order which exists
among them. In order to move, however, from a notion of premotion which would want think of it as
solely an incident or an accident (as if it were an unintelligible, indeterminate, chancy kind of thing)
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possible in terms of their possible emergence and success with respect to the incidences of their
actuation. From a kind of flux of things within our world (whether or not the flux refers to an assembly
of material or immaterial conditions, or to predeterminations which would exist as material or as
immaterial premotions), from a non-systematic ordering or a non-systematic jumble of many different
things, from an order of things that is not understood by us but which is charged with contingency and
with varying degrees of variety and which, from our viewpoint, is bereft of order, repetition, and
regularity, an order of other things can also possibly begin to emerge that now, to some degree or
relatively, is lacking in degrees of chanciness or in degrees of contingency or, in other words, it would
be lacking in that which has been existing, relatively, within a condition of disorder: displaying degrees
of flux and chaos and, within this chaos, measures of ambiguity.
toward a notion of premotion as if it exists as an intelligible, intelligent kind of thing, the needed
context is a larger scheme of things that can only be understood and known from the perspective of a
higher viewpoint (an elevated, superior vantage point) if we should refer now to the being and the
activity of a transcendentally operative, effective cause which would have to exist as God (God being
God as this transcendentally operative, effective, active, primary cause).
With respect then to the emergence or the creation of our being, if, in terms of act and as pure
act, God is existence itself; or if God per se is itself the act of being or the act of bringing all things that
are other into a condition of existence, then, from this, we can say about God’s effective, creative
premotion that, in general, “everything which in any way is, is from God [God existing as their direct
cause].” Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 44, a. 1, as cited by Matava, p. 249. God is their
responsible cause. If God is identically understanding, being, and causing, “God’s proper effect is
[therefore] the being of things [whether it is the begetting of “a being of the same nature” where for
instance, God, as Father, begets God, as Son; or whether if it is the creating of “others to be” which are
other and which differ from God].” Cf. Matava, p. 248; Aquinas, as quoted by Etienne Gilson, The
Philosopher and Theology, trans. Cécile Gilson (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 148. More
comprehensively and more simply put: “whenever God acts ad extra [‘towards the outside’], he acts
creatively,” whether in firstly effecting a being of things which initially creates an order of dependence
(of creatures relative to their creator); or in then effecting, on the basis of the given prior being of
existing things, the life and the activity of these same things in transitions and changes which would
necessarily differ from the first and the primary kind of creating which exists whenever we speak about
God as the Creator of all existing things. The creativity exists in terms of two modes: (1) creativity as
distinct from effecting any kind of change or transition in another or, in other words, creativity in terms
of how, in its primacy and as a fundamental precondition, it creates a relation of total dependence in the
being of all existing creatures, creating both creatures in their being as dependents, existing in a relation
of total dependence on God as their conditioning and effective Creator; and (2) creativity as effecting a
change or a transition in something which already in fact exists, altering the manner of how it happens
to live and exist. Simply put: our dependence in being points to our dependence in terms of our
activities, operations, and receptions. One follows the other; subjectivity, objectivity; or, in other
words, subjectivity, metaphysics. Cf. Matava, p. 249, citing Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 103, a.
- Adapting and citing Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 18, [2] in order to refer to the primacy of
this distinction (which, in his “Creation as a Relation in St. Thomas Aquinas,” Being and Knowing, p.
136, n. 4, Wilhelmsen quotes in Latin):
For creation [God’s creative action] is not a change [it is not an alteration,
a transition, or a motion], but [instead it is] the very dependency of the
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About a given order of things (to cite a frequently mentioned example that is taken from our current
understanding of physics): in the evaporation of water, a liquid is turned into a gas (a vapor) which
rises into the air but then, with condensation, the same gas or vapor is turned into liquid water which
then falls to the ground. A repetitive cycle points to an intelligible ordering of things which manifests
or which points to the givenness or to the presence of a species of natural, normative, regulative law.
Laws exist within the concyclic order of our physical world of things and also within the concyclic
order of our human world of things wherever repetitive cycles or circuits exist, or to the degree that
cycles become operative in a way which manifests the intelligibility or the form of their being and
reality. If a given concrete good is to be repeatedly produced or given at a certain time at a certain
created act of being upon the principle from which it is produced [in
other words and less technically, God’s action is to be equated with the
being of a created thing, or it is to be equated with the createdness of a
given thing]. And thus, [with respect to the being of any given created
thing] creation exists as a kind of relation [which exists within a thing];
so that nothing prevents its being in the creature as its subject [in other
words: nothing prevents its existing as an accident or as a property which
belongs to the being of a given thing or which inheres in the being of a
given, created thing although with a unique form of determination which
refers to something which is other than the being of a given, created
thing].
See Matava, pp. 270-274, for a fuller, more detailed explanation.
Reiteratively, God exists as pure act or, in other words, God exists as pure, unrestricted,
effective causality since, in God’s oneness and simplicity, as a simple, single, incomprehensible act, no
real distinction can exist between God as causing, effecting, and creating and God as being or God as
understanding. In the unrestricted being, the unrestricted creating, and the unrestricted causing of God,
in the absence of any restrictions or, in other words, in the absence of any contradictions (or in the
absence of any inconsistencies), God can be said to exist as someone who is always totally and
properly wise. Or, in other words, if God is pure act, God is “wise already.” Cf. Socrates, Symposium,
as quoted by Schumacher, Guide for the Perplexed, p. 6. No thinking or deliberation exists. No
deliberation is needed in order for God to effect anything in moving something from a condition of
potency A to a condition of act B. No variation or indeterminacy accordingly exists within God
(hence, nothing in terms of any form of self-determination). At the same time too, in the light of God’s
unrestricted rationality, God cannot create or invent any absurdities (nothing which would violate how
God exists as an unrestricted act of understanding). For instance, God cannot create a world which can
possibly combine the good that can come from possible exercises of human choice and any inability on
our part to engage in any acts or deeds that could be privative in terms of their lack of goodness (hence,
their wrongness or evil). In the freedom which peculiarly belongs to God, God cannot do anything
which could possibly be wrong or evil in lieu of the fullness of the God’s rationality and the infiniteness
of this understanding. Cf. Kolakowski, Religion, p. 21. From the intelligibility of God’s active creation
comes the intelligibility of our passive creation (as a derivative) as the intelligibility or the intelligence
which exists as God is expressed in ways which point to the intelligibility or the intelligence of all the
created effects that are created all together at once in an general order or scheme which is constitutive
of the being and the order of a fully existing, functioning universe.
10
place, some kind of order needs to be created which can repeatedly and reliably produce a given,
desired good (whether we should refer to a given staple of food or to the education of new generations
of young people). The repetitiveness of a circuit points to its durability and stability (to a relative
degree of durability and stability which it, admittedly, now enjoys and possesses) although, at the same
time too, this stability is also relative if we should attend to absences of stability that we also find when
we attend to possible intrusions and disruptions and the possible intervention of chance variations
which continue to exist for us within our world as a larger context of things that we do not entirely
control or govern through anything that we would want to imagine, think, do, or perform. New chance
variations can also emerge in the wake of new patterns or new circuits which can successfully emerge
from within the being of both our physical and human worlds which, in turn, effect changes in terms of
The causing (or whatever could be the kind of causing) exists not within God but within the
caused, created effects or within the changes which are being caused or effected in the wake of the
emergence of caused, created effects; and the effects or the changes which are caused in the effects are
not identical or equivalent to that which could exist as their originating cause (even if it is true to say
and to admit that always, in some way, an effect exists within its originating cause). Cf. Matthew
Lamb, “The Mystery of Divine Predestination: Its Intelligibility According to Lonergan,” Thomism and
Predestination: Principles and Disputations, eds. Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph
White, OP (Ave Maria, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2016), pp. 215-216. The causing or the effecting of
God is real and effective only within that which God has caused or effected. What is caused or what is
created, as caused or created, exists in a manner or with a form of being or an act of being which is
pointed or which is always oriented toward its responsible cause in the context of a real relation. As a
general principle, whether we should speak about creation which exists outside of time (as generative
of space and time), or about motion or change as this exists within the created order of space and time,
the effects always exist in a way which is directed or which is pointed toward their responsible agent or
cause. Cf. Wilhelmsen, Being and Knowing, p. 144. However, in the context of God’s creation or in
the context of God’s creative creating act, this orientation explains why creation exists as a relation
which exists within whatever has been created, giving that which has been created a certain mode or
way of being. In God’s creating, something first exists as a distinct thing before we can then speak
about its mode or its way of being (its dependent, created character) in an order which accordingly
points to two realities which are ordered to each other: (1) the priority in being of an existing thing over
the priority of its created character as a relation, quality, or attribute (the dependency of a given thing is
not created before, in fact, a given thing is created); and (2) the kind of terminus, teology, or end which
is unique to creation where things are created with a dependency (or a createdness) which is ultimately
directed and oriented toward God and the things of God: hence, some kind of union with God. Our
created character, as a modification or determination of being, orders us or it points us toward God who
exists as both our Creator and as our final end or destiny (our ordering toward God as our Creator,
conditioning and facilitating how we can be properly ordered toward God as, subsequently, our Savior
and Redeemer). Our dependency on God evidences or it points us toward an ongoing kind of need
which exists within us for the being of God and the things of God. Cf. Matava, p. 273, citing Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae, 1ae, q. 45, a. 3, ad 3.
To understand why or how this is so, as a point of departure, let us first talk about how God
exists as first act or as first premotion where, here, God understands, loves, and wills goals and aims
without any trouble or difficulty by creating and applying or using causes which can function either in
a necessary way or in a contingent way. Our world exists as a greater, more wondrous thing if it can
11
creating new indeterminate conditions that now belong to us within the being of our currently existing
world. One sits within the other (chance and determinacy, or we can argue that, heuristically, chance
exists as a species of determinacy qua premotion because, currently, we do not know what in fact is its
proper form, content, or intelligibility). From the point of view of any given cycle or circuit which
happens to exist in our world, chance occurrences or chance events (as an unknown form of
determinacy) – these always exist as provocative, external, agent causes (or as external, agent objects)
that, in some way, can upset or perturb the running of an accepted, expected course of functioning
things.
Repetitive cycles and circuits, as they exist or as they are known, accordingly function, in their own
include every grade and species and mode of being which would have to include every kind and
species and mode of effecting cause. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 22, a. 4, as cited by
Matava, p. 257. The preconditioning causes, relative to ourselves, and their proper effects, are all
directly created and caused by God, as is also the order and the scheme of all these causes (working and
functioning together as a species of premotion, as a premotive cause), relative to any given specific
choice or decision that, individually, we could be making in the course of our individual lives, the
freedom or the leeway that belongs us in our individual choices and decisions accordingly also existing
as a divinely intended effect (and so as a means) that is caused by God and which has been created by
God although in a manner which differs from how we experience our own being and making (our own
causation and agency): hence, requiring a discussion and a differentiation that can move toward a
clarification which can indicate how different aspects and parts can all possibly exist together within
the parameters of a larger, unified whole (God’s primary causality and all secondary causes working
and existing together if we should want to continue to believe and to hold that our world exists as an
intelligible thing: as a cosmos and not as a chaos, having an order which properly belongs to it).
Despite resemblances and relations which can, in turn, point to a species of communion, God’s
universal causality or God’s universal instrumentality in creating and effecting differs from the way of
our created, human causality in its piecemeal making and producing of things and how, in turn, we
exist and participate as lesser causes within the universal instrumentality which alone belongs to God if
God’s transcendental, universal causality precludes any kind of discussion or analysis which could
possibly want to place it within a set of parameters that is bound by conjugates of space and time
(space and time existing as a manifold which has been immediately created by God as if, at once, with
respect to all the orderings, relations, principles, and causes that, in toto, are denominative of the
entirety of space and time). Cf. Aquinas, De Potentia Dei, q. 3, a. 3, ad 2, as cited by Wilhelmsen,
Being and Knowing, p. 140, n. 37. Transcending the motions and changes which belong to us in the
kind of making or creating that we engage in as human subjects is the absence of any motions and
changes if we should think about how, in his uniqueness (or God as sui generis), God exists in the kind
of creating which alone properly belongs and applies to God.
How then can we speak about our created human freedom and the reality of God’s uncreated
freedom? One order of freedom derivatively comes from God and the other exists as God. How can
we speak thus about their order and interrelation? How can we speak about the reality of our human
freedom if this freedom also exists as a divinely created effect? From our side, we know that we do not
cause or effect our own freedom (our ability, however limited, to choose either this or that option,
whether to act or not to act). We simply seem to have this ability and facility as a species of
contingently existing thing and so, given our condition of potency (our condition of reliance and
dependency), we are moved to conclude that God directly creates our freedom or that God directly
12
way, as kind of substratum or base. They point to occurrences or events which, relatively, would have
to be regarded as random, fortuitous, other, and external. However, on the other hand also, as we have
been noting, chance occurrences and random events also function as a kind of base or point of
departure (as premotions) since, catalytically, they occasion or they can lead to the emergence of new
orders or new cycles within a given context of meaning and being that can be grasped and understood
by us in a limited way through the limited kind of understanding and knowledge which belongs to us as
inquisitive, active, receptive, human subjects.
The interrelation that exists between chance and
determinacy, in a general scheme of things, points both to a larger notion of order which would be
other than something which is purely or statically concyclic and also to a notion of chance that would
have to differ from the presumptions and the vicissitudes of mere randomness if, indeed truly, it exists
causes the freedom, the indeterminacy, or the kind of self-determination which properly belongs to us
as contingently acting subjects (as contingently acting causes) in order, by these means thus, to achieve
measures and qualities of goodness and reality that are somehow better or more wonderful because of
how they have been effected and caused. To our freedom in terms of how it exists, God has given both
a form or a species and an actuation or an act of being which belongs to the free or to the indeterminate
type of causality which properly belongs to us as consciously deciding, choosing, human subjects. We
have not necessarily to do this or that action or to avoid this other action since, through experiencing
how we move toward our choices and decisions, we find that alternatives open up for us. We find and
discover options of one kind or another when, unexpectedly, we discover that we can possibly think
this or think that do or possibly do this instead of that and so we find that we can develop in a certain
way and not develop in some other kind of way. Our freedom first exists as a created type of potency,
form, and act before it can exist in a way which points to further realizations of it in terms of its
potency, form, and act.
With respect to our freedom (since, as we have been noting, amid concrete conditions, we can
decide either to act or not act and because we can also change our thinking and judgments and so
decide to desist in any actions or motions that we are currently engaged in), the potency of our freedom
(as this is discovered within the data of our preliminary deliberations) points to why it endures and
remains in a way which points to why it endures and has a reality of its own. Our freedom exists, in
fact, as a higher or as a superior kind of thing (as a created transcendent kind of thing) in a way which
resembles the kind of freedom which alone belongs to God if, on our part (as also on God’s part), no
amount of causing and changing in things which are other than ourselves necessarily changes who we
are as human beings. The causes or the changes exist in the produced effects. In effecting anything in
terms of effects, individually for instance, Peter continues to be Peter and, similarly, Michael continues
to be Michael whether or not Peter or Michael are doing this or doing that in actions which would exist
in any subsequent effects. Cf. Lamb, “Mystery of Divine Predestination,” Thomism and
Predestination, p. 216. Within an ontological order of things, something in us or something about us
does not change in any regard or respect (despite changes, however, which could be occurring within
us with respect to fluctuations in the form and content of our human subjectivity); God differing here
from us since, in God, no real distinction exists between the objectivity and the subjectivity of God.
God exists as pure act (in a perfect form of self-unity) and we, as partial, incomplete acts.
We move from more the potency of our human freedom, as a divinely created effect, toward
more the actualization of our human freedom, as also a divinely created effect, if we should now attend
to how our freedom expands and grows through actualizations which begin in us through our initial
acts of inquiry and decision (in a discursive, non-mechanical fashion) as now, participatively, as we
13
as an explanatory variable within this larger notion of order and change.
A fortiori, in a conclusion which follows that we can draw, a notion of chance as chance or as mere
chance needs to be distinguished from a notion of chance as a determination of probability (having at
times a calculable, numeric form of designation). If our point of departure is initially the dominance or
the prevalence of randomness within our currently existing world, in moving from apprehensions of
possibility toward determinations of probability, we should find that a positive relation exists between a
heightening or a multiplication of frequencies with respect to a growing number of chance conjunctions
and the possible or the more likely emergence of a new order of things and events so that, among these
things and events, a larger number of repetitive schemes, cycles, or circuits can begin to exist for
come from God and as we depend on God, we begin to exist more fully in our self-determination as
self-determining causes. As we have been already noting, our form of self-determination cannot exist
apart from two preconditioning variables which exist in their own right as premotions: (1) how we
already exist as created, willing agents or how we already exist as created, willing subjects (our actions
proceeding from us for reasons which would want to allege that, in our actions, we are seeking some
kind of good that would allegedly make us happy); and (2) how, at the same time, our actions cannot
exist apart from how they are being directly caused by God who exists in a condition of pure act. The
potency of our freedom as a would be decider or as a would be decision maker comes to us from God
as specifically our Maker and Creator. But, if we are to move into actualizations of this first potency
which would also belong to us as our divinely created, effected freedom, we must move beyond a
notion of God as our transcendent Creator and Maker toward a notion of God as our transcendent
Keeper and Sustainer, and then, from there, toward a notion of God as our transcendent Governor and
Ruler. Differing orders of premotion are to be distinguished as we move from God as our Creator
toward God as our Sustainer, God as our Benefactor, and, lastly, God as our Savior and Redeemer. In
forming, constructing, and extending our understanding of things (as much as our understanding exists
as always a species of reception), in agreement with Parmenides, we aver that, from that which is
rational, we cannot get anything which is irrational. Ex nihilo nihil [literally: from nothing, nothing].
From a fullness of meaning and intelligibility that can never lessen, fail, or diminish, no absences of
meaning and intelligibility can be alluded to or in any way obtained and derived.
In turning then from a notion of freedom which exists as more of a potency (than as an act)
toward a notion of freedom which would exist as more of an act (than as a potency), as a point of
departure, we can notice how our individual freedom exists in different ways or how partial it is as we
move from person to person. Some persons seem to be more free than others. Beyond our simply
having an ability or a freedom to make either this decision or that decision, as we now turn toward any
choices that we might make in any actions that we would like to do, a second order of freedom is found
to exist as a divinely created effect and yet free human act if we notice that our choices or our actions
can exist in two radically different ways: either as liberating catalysts and so as causes that redound and
add to the extent of our human freedom or, conversely, as truncating actions and maneuvers which
subtract or which, in some way, diminish the extent and the breath of our human freedom. The initial
potency of our freedom or, perhaps more accurately, the active potency of our freedom which exists as
a divinely created effect that belongs to all of us as human beings differs (it is to be distinguished) from
the kind of freedom which exists in us by way of any specific choices that we could be making or any
choices that, in fact, we have already made. The difference points to why or when, at times, it cannot
be said that God is existing or functioning in some way as a direct cause of all of our actions. If, for
instance, a given concrete, human choice is lacking in the meaning or in the intelligibility that it should
14
perhaps the first time within the being of both our physical and human worlds (albeit within parameters
or boundary conditions which pertain to determinate, fixed constants that universally apply within the
dynamics of our currently existing world, given how our world happens to exist).18 The existence of
constants within the physics of our world in the movement of objects points to constants which exist
within other dimensions (within other orders of meaning and being as we move beyond physics into
other sciences and, from there, into recurrent schemes that pertain the life of plants, animals, and
human beings). The larger the number of chance conjunctions or the larger the number of chance
encounters over a longer period of time, the more likely or the more probable will there be the eventual
emergence of a new constellation of chance conjunctions that could be eminently fruitful and
productive. That which is initially unlikely becomes more and more probable. A new thing emerges
have, we know that, in its unintelligibility, it cannot be said to come from God as their reasonable,
probable cause (as their reasonable, probable source), God being God. If, as human agents and
subjects, we should ever do anything that could be lacking in meaning or intelligibility, then, in this
context and only in this context, we would have to admit to ourselves that, here, we are entirely acting
on our own behalf. We alone are being active in our actions and we have only ourselves to blame for
what is not right, for what is not reasonable, or for what is not intelligible in whatever we could be
doing. It is only we who are doing any causing in effecting or in causing anything else which could
possibly arise, exist, or, in some way, happen (the lack of rationality in our causing existing in any
effects which are somehow being caused) and so, in a way, we would be acting in a way that would
subtract or which would diminish the degree of freedom that, currently, we could be having or
enjoying. Cf. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, pp. 117-118, as cited by Lamb, “Mystery of Divine
Predestination,” Thomism and Predestination, p. 221. Instead of a freedom that, in its intelligibility,
would have to come to us from God, we would have a defect or a corruption of freedom which comes
from us as subjects because it exists as our willfulness; or, in other words, it would exist as a negative,
self-denying kind of freedom. Our ability to ponder and to deliberate about different things in order to
think about whether we should do this act or this other act (even as this facility remains or endures)
would then itself lessen in its quality or in its acuteness if our ability to imagine, think, and ponder
about the possibility of different options is, in some way, adversely affected. Lack of wisdom in our
choices and decisions redounds, in its own way, to the kind of understanding (or to the lack of
understanding) that we could be bringing to new situations which need to be understood if new
decisions are needed about how, appropriately, we should respond in a given context.
The necessity of grounding the intelligibility of our human behavior in a way which somehow
directly refers to God as the originator of all meaning and intelligibility accordingly explains why, as
we move from God as our Creator toward God as ultimately our Keeper and Redeemer, we must attend
to an ordering of other premotions which can be identified as we move toward other divinely caused
effects which act on us to effect and to create the kind of freedom which properly belongs to us as
human beings. One order of them facilitates a good maintenance of our human lives while another
makes for the creation of other goods which enrich and add to the quality of our individual human
lives. Intelligibility, being, and freedom – these are all added and joined to each other.
In general terms thus, our moving toward an order of other goals and goods supposes
premotions which exist as: (1) an array of other subjective objective conditions that exist interiorly
within us as these would refer, for instance, to the good of our having acts of inquiry and understanding
that we must have if, on the basis of our cognitive ability as a potency, we are to move through acts
from A to B toward a sound “knowledge of possibilities” that we can then consider and think about
15
either as a new order or as a new individual thing.
Within the being of all this variety and in the preparation and in the gestation which would exist within
this variety, the randomness of every given event, in its randomness, accordingly points to some kind
of useful role which each plays in a way which points to an intelligibility which, in some way, it has
although, as we have been noting, we might not grasp what, for us, would be the form or the content of
this intelligibility (unless, by a change of perspective, we are able to move into another context of
meaning and significance).
The lack of intelligibility aside however (or despite an apparent lack of order), in some way, in their
before, in the end, making any kind of decision; and (2) an array of trans-subjective, objective
conditions which refer to external conditions and variables of one kind or another that touch on how we
live and exist within our currently functioning social order (within a society which exists as the effect
of an operative, functioning, social order). Our particular human context and its constitutive conditions
and circumstances press and weigh upon us, or they have been pressing upon us in ways which have
either increased the good and the value of our individual lives or, perhaps conversely, they have
removed or they have taken us away from the good and the value of our individual, human lives. Cf.
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, p. 378, pp. 101-102; Stebbins, Divine Initiative, pp. 245-248, as cited
by Matava, p. 226. On the surface of things, in terms of appearances, some conditions seem to be more
freeing for us than the influence and the impact of other conditions. Controversies and questions
abound in any judgements that we would want to make. However we should decide any given case,
whatever the means that we should choose to do this or that action – our deliberations and choices,
their implementation, the results, the effects – these are all conditioned by premotions which point to
varying degrees of influence and causation and so, from this, the rationality of coming to a self
understanding which realizes and knows that the expressiveness and the exercise of our human freedom
is not able to exist and function as if it exists as some kind of unassisted, unrestricted thing. To ignore
where restrictions and limitations exist encourages ways of thinking and living which will, in time,
reduce the kind of freedom which, in fact, properly belongs to us as human subjects as abuses or
misuses of our free human willing lead to forms of corruption that, in turn, enervate and then destroy
the freedom of our created human agency.
To move then toward a solution that can reconcile conflicting realities (if we should tend to
assume that God’s freedom wars with the ups and downs of our created, individual human freedom), let
us begin with an Aristotelian understanding of God as an immovable, immobile, first mover (or God as
pure act in lacking any kind of potency) if we are to understand how God directly causes our human
freedom in terms of that which we do in our different human acts (our many acts and actions, our
choices and decisions which all differ from merely our capacity or our ability to make some kind of
choose, whether to do this act or this other act).
An initial determination works from a principle that thinks in terms of act causing act or act
effecting act and not in terms of potency causing or effecting any act (which exists as a contradiction
since that which does not exist cannot cause something else to exist). Hence, along these lines, a direct
line of causation can be found to exist between God as our first mover and pure act and we, as
consequential human beings, since, given the materiality or the givenness of our created being and
existence, as human subjects (in our activity and in our receptivity), we necessarily initially exist within
a condition of incompleteness which is signified in terms of potency. A direct order of causes exists
16
individual concreteness, random events exist as intelligible potencies. Their potential meaningfulness
points to their possible merit, some kind of greater purpose, or some kind of ulterior value if, within the
context of our reflections here, we can recall and invoke the wording of a teaching which comes to us
originally from the conceptuality of Aristotle’s physics which had noted about our world that “nature
abhors a vacuum,”19 nature, in one somewhat obvious case, referring to the dynamics of spatial,
physical, chemical, biological nature; and nature, in another more relevant case, referring to the
givenness of some kind of meaning or intelligibility which in some way exists for us that we can
somehow understand and fathom but which cannot be directly correlated with anything which could
possibly exist for us as a direct act of understanding. If, in the human order of things and possibly in
the physical order of things, we can act or in some way (without our intending it), we can act in a way
between our actions qua actions and God as the first mover or as the first act or first action (although,
as we have been noting and suggesting, in God no change, action, or motion exists that would move
from a condition of potency to a condition of act). “God operates in all things” on the basis of a
principle which notes that, necessarily, “an agent is [present] wherever it operates [whether it is in the
doing of ‘great things’ or in the doing of ‘little things’].” Cf. Matava, p. 254; also citing Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae, 1ae, q. 8, a. 1, sed contra; and p. 255, n. 28, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John,
John 15:5. Hence, if, as first act, God moves all other things that move and act, then, from a divine
point of view (and so from an explanatory point of view), our subsequent motions as acts properly exist
as movements that have all been caused and moved by God. A motion causes a movement in its
agency; and movements, as effects, can then become motions (or they serve as motions) to effect other
movements that, in turn, can also exist as motions.
To illustrate our point with an example, an act of killing exists in itself as an act, as an
action, as a motion and purely as an act, as an action, or as a motion, it can be said to be directly
caused by God through an order of secondary, instrumental causes (God existing as first act and first
cause). That which exists as initially a motion also exists as a movement or as an effect that has been
caused by the motion since the act of the moving or the act of the motion of something else resides in
the effects (in the results that are caused) and not in the actuating cause or in the actuating first mover.
Compare, for instance, God’s causality with the causality of a burning flame. As given, a burning
flame exists in a condition of act or in a condition of perpetual motion without its having to move from
a prior condition of potency to a later condition of act. Movements exist, however, in terms of a
consequential radiation of heat and light and, in addition, further movements if adjacent, combustible
material should then burst into flame in a burning which exists as an effect.
But, on the other hand however, through an application that we can now make, if an act of
killing should also exist as an act of murder, this lack of intelligibility and reasonableness will
immediately explain and point to why, with regard to this aspect, we cannot speak about an act has
been properly caused by God (God being God). Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 18, a. 5, ad
3; De Malo, q. 2, a. 4. As we have been noting as a general principle, lack of intelligibility in an effect
points to an absence of divine causality. An objectively existing situation exists (something which is
other than ourselves, according to the manner which it possesses) but, because in its un-intelligibility or
its irrationality, it cannot be understood through an intelligibility and so known as a rational
intelligibility. If we are to speak about it, we must speak about how it exists as an unknown,
unintelligible “x.” An analogical use of language leads to designations which can refer to this “x” as a
“false fact,” or as an “irrational, objective falsity,” or, in other words, as an irrationality which exists as
a species of “surd.” Cf. Bernard Lonergan, Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on Insight,
17
which increases the number and the variety of accidental, initially unintelligible conjunctions that can
possibly arise and emerge for us within our world, we could be creating conditions that could be
leading us to the emergence of new orders of things and to new patterns of recurrence which can
possibly arise with respect to the being of new things within our currently existing world.
In other words thus, lack of intelligibility which exists within a disorganized mass of initial conditions
exists as an indeterminate type of good. The good, relative to us, exists as an unknown (as an un
understood, known unknown) although, nonetheless, mysteriously from our point of view, it exists as a
favorable, or as a seminal, or as a provocative kind of thing since with respect to that which is lacking
in intelligibility (relative to our own acts of understanding and the kind of generation and reception
eds. Elizabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli, revised and augmented by Frederick E. Crowe with the
collaboration of Elizabeth A. Morelli, Mark D. Morelli, Robert M. Doran, and Thomas V. Daly
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), p. 236; Insight, pp. 45-46; Grace and Freedom, pp. 117
118, as quoted by Lamb, “Mystery of Divine Predestination,” Thomism and Predestination, p. 221.
See also Lamb, p. 222. The greater the lack of intelligibility in something which happens to exist, the
less will be our understanding of it (despite whatever we might do to try to reach some kind of
understanding which could be possibly adequate to something that, in some way, whatever, we are
encountering or finding within the data of our human experience).
However, if an act of killing should exist not as an act of murder but as an act which exists as
a legitimate form of self-defense; or, more poignantly and courageously, if it exists as a sacrifice of
one’s own life that is done to save the lives of other persons who find themselves within a very
difficult, human situation, then we must speak about how a given act of killing exists as some other
kind of act (as some other kind of action). Its moral quality, its moral attributes (as an intelligibility),
points to its possible goodness, to its possible value and appropriateness and so to its possible rightness
and reasonableness; hence, the necessity of our having prior acts of understanding and judgment which
can indicate to us why, in a given situation and context, a prospective act of killing can be regarded or,
more strongly, it should be regarded as an act that it is right for us to do. Its reasonableness, its
goodness, manifests itself to us through another kind of inner urging or inner compulsion (an inner
demand or imperative) which now exists within our consciousness of self and world in a way which
points to how, within and through our moral deliberations, as our moral deliberations require a
completion which would exist in acts of understanding and judgment, God is also acting as a direct
cause, facilitating and assisting us in causing and effecting the good that we can do in our moral actions
in a way which adds to the goodness and the extent of our human freedom if, by our thinking and our
inquiry and by our subsequent actions, we are acting in a reasonable and rational way and so are not
refusing the good which exists through additional experiences of understanding and reasonableness that
can be given to us (even as we know and admit that, through our actions, the goodness and the
reasonableness of things is something which we can always refuse and deny). To know that which we
should do does not force or compel us to do that which we should do. Cf. Aquinas, In 2 Scriptum
super libros sententiarum, d. 25, q. 1, a. 2; De Veritate, q. 22, a. 6; Summa Contra Gentiles, 3, 10, 17;
De Malo, q. 3, a. 3; Peri Hermeneias, 1, 14; and Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 81, a. 3, ad 2; q. 82, a. 2.
Knowing is not willing. To know the good is not to do the good. The created freedom that we have
either to do this or that action always remains as a divinely created effect although, on the other hand
and by way of supplement and addition, as God acts to assist and to effect our understanding in matters
which move from apprehensions of truth toward apprehensions of goodness and rightness (a truth
exists, at times, as a good that can be implemented while a good also exists as a truth that has been put
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which belongs to our acts of understanding) – in some way however, this same lack of intelligibility
serves or, in some way, as a potency or as an incomplete type of being, it exists as an agent of change;
or, in some way (analogously, as a material cause), it conditions things as a point of departure; or, in
other words, it is open to the possible emergence of other things that would be new, relative to
ourselves and to the being of other things which in fact already exist within our world, and so it would
be open to the emergence of a greater or a fuller order of things which joins previously existing things
with the being of newly existing things.
In some way thus, within the created order of things or within the contingent order of things which
exists in our world, nothing is ever truly lost. Nothing is ever without some kind of finality if we
into effect), God directly causes the enhancement and the enlargement which exists for us in our later
exercises of freedom if, in our living, we are formed and guided by an openness that is increasingly
receptive to the kind of good which can begin to belong to us (through our appropriation of it) if the
end term or the final result is the goodness or the rightness of a rational human act. Accordingly, as we
cite and borrow words that come to us from another context, as a general rule and precept and as a
defined point of religious teaching, it has been averred that “in every good action the first impulse
[always] comes from God.” Cf. Second Council of Orange, as cited by J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1978), p. 372. As, in our self-understanding, we
attend to a form of mutual causality or a form of mutual priority which joins our knowing to our willing
(each acting or causing the other in this or that respect), we understand why, in both cases, God exists
as the originating cause of all things that are both wise and good.
In moving from a condition of potency toward a condition of act, all of our acts (whether in
the intelligibility which belongs to apprehensions of truth or in the intelligibility which belongs to
apprehensions of goodness) – these all presuppose God in terms of the unrestrictedness of God’s
understanding and the unrestrictedness of God’s goodness which, in turn, points to an unrestricted kind
of solicitude which alone exists as God and which explains why God always helps us in all of our
actions and deeds whenever we should be doing anything which could be truly right, good, and moral.
Our own actions grow in intelligibility and goodness and also ourselves, in our being, as we grow in
our own goodness in terms of how we live and exist as active and receptive human subjects where, to
the degree that we understand how, together, our acts of understanding and willing exist as created
participations in the joint understanding and willing which alone exists as God, we understand both the
directness and the application of God’s causality and also the directness and the application of our own
causality: how each is manifested. On the one hand, in their origin and genesis, our acts of
understanding (as joined with our acts of willing) come to us directly from God as their ultimate
source, God existing as actus purus (through created, instrumental mediations of one kind or other)
and, on the other hand, the differences in understanding and willing which exist among us as human
subjects point to how we all differently share in the joint understanding and willing which alone
belongs and exists as God. The differences point to variations in our human individuality and to
varying degree of cooperation and acquiescence which exist among us as human subjects as, in all of
our acts of understanding and willing (big or small), what is received by us proceeds from within us as
something which personally belongs to us in our subjectivity as much as it is also received as a gift: as
something that we do not give to ourselves but as something that has been given to us (something that
we have not by our willing of it, not by our earning of it, and not by our meriting of it). Nothing exists
in terms of force or external imposition where, as a general premiss or as a fundamental assumption
that we have been employing in the context of our analysis, if God’s freedom is explained by the
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compare absences of meaning and intelligibility with a kind of deflective role that is played by the kind
of good which belongs to our inverse acts of understanding whenever, within an inverse act of
understanding, we understand (for perhaps the first time) that, in a given line of inquiry, nothing exists
which can be grasped and understood.20 A desired or an anticipated intelligibility that is being desired
should not, in fact, be sought or intended; and if, in fact, some kind of intelligibility is to be understood
by us in some way, it requires that we should ask new questions and so begin to move into a new line
of investigation and inquiry.
In general thus, nothing exists without having some kind of place, role, or purpose even if, admittedly,
in the context of our understanding, we do not understand or know that which could be this place, role,
unrestrictedness of God’s understanding (hence, we can say that “with God all things are possible,”
Matthew 13:15; Acts 28:27), if the greatness of this freedom exists as a consequence or, in other words,
as a reflection of God’s being as unrestricted understanding (God’s intelligibility or God’s intelligence
explaining the depth and the range of God’s freedom), then, in a similar way, our human freedom is to
be understood and explained. Restrictions or limitations in our understanding point to restrictions and
limitations in the extent of our human freedom and yet to the reality or the substance of our human
freedom.
To speak now, however, about how other additions can be made to the extent or to the depth
of our understanding and willing in a way which, in its own way, adds to the extent or the depth of our
human freedom supposes another order of things and another dimension which is given to us in our
human experience if we should notice how, in ways which escape our conscious grasp and control,
abrupt changes can sometimes occur within the interiority of our lives: a new sense or notion emerges
or a new sense or notion is felt about how we ought to live, how we are to understand, how we are to
feel. Apart from any understanding and desiring which we could be doing in any given context, radical
shifts and changes can unpredictably befall us as human beings in a way which points to another
species of created, contingent premotion which, in religious contexts, has been referred to in terms of
“grace” (as something which comes to us apart from any kind of conditioning, understanding, or
desiring which could exist on our part as created, contingent human agents), or which can be referred to
as “operative grace” if we should borrow language which comes to us initially from St. Augustine and
how he had decided to speak about how God exists as an intervening, redeeming, saving cause:
immediately working within our consciousness of self and world to reveal an unknown truth, to change
a long standing attitude or desire, or to heal and forgive a hurt in a way which moves and directs us into
another order of willing and desiring which, in turn, leads us toward changes in our thinking and
understanding of things and consequent changes in the means that we could choose if we are to move
toward new ends and objectives which differ from ends and objectives which, previously, we have
been valuing and desiring in our lives in the hope of perhaps finding a happiness in life which,
allegedly, properly belongs to us as human subjects. “Antecedent” or “prevenient” grace presents itself
as another way of speaking if our point of departure is defined by official Catholic Church teaching as
this comes to us from the Council of Trent in its Decree on Original Sin (dated January 17, 1546). “In
adults the beginning of justification [the beginning of our salvation] must proceed from the [prior]
antecedent grace of God [as this has been] acquired [for us] by Jesus Christ [literally, a Dei per
Christum Jesum praeveniente gracia]. Cf. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, ed. James
Canon Bastible, trans. Patrick Lynch (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 1974), p. 227. As a general
principle, a “supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul…precedes the free act of the
[human] will [to condition it and to act on it in some way].” Cf. Ott, p. 226. “God operates in us and
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or purpose. Augmentations and additions which exist at lower levels make for a contribution of their
own that, in their way, lead to a larger number and to a larger variety of newer things that are better if
they can be said to exist with a greater degree of sophistication through the extent or the greater degree
of intelligibility which now exists within them (inherently belonging to them). Through a kind of
transfer that we can imagine and postulate, within the scheme of religion and theology, another kind of
finality can be said to exist. A finality is allegedly salvific if we should speak about a kind of flawed
material basis, or a kind of uneven material ground, or an apt, connatural relation which refers to a
related kind of finality which is somehow being presupposed and which, to some degree, is somehow
already operative for us within the dynamics of our human history as we refer to how a created,
contingent order of things exists within our world in a way which is somehow prior to us in all its ups
[also] with us [in nobis sine nobis].” Cf. Second Council of Orange (529), as quoted by Sources of
Catholic Dogma, ed. Henry Denzinger, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications,
1954), canon 9, p. 77.
God accordingly creates and effects our freedom by employing, in general, two types of
causes or two types of causal premotions in a manner which is most suited and which more fully
reflects God’s unrestrictedness in terms of how God exists as an unrestricted act of understanding,
willing, and loving: employing premotions as causes, in one order, which exist as needed helps and
aids for us to effect our human living and other premotions as causes which belong to another order
which, in turn, exist as saving, redeeming graces (both exist as different species of gifts) as we move
from God as our Creator and Keeper toward God as our Savior and Redeemer. Moving beyond an
acquired kind of understanding and an acquired kind of willing which belongs to us as created, human
subjects and which exists in its own right as a divinely created effect (the acquired kind of
understanding and willing which we have points to a discursive form of operation and reception and so
to a lack of immediacy which belongs to this species of understanding and willing), an infused kind of
knowing and willing also belongs to us as human subjects when we try to speak about changes in
understanding and willing which appear to have no created condition or cause. “Consolation without
cause” or, more specifically, “consolation without a natural cause” has been one way to speak about
this kind of human experience when an elevating, healing change immediately occurs within us in a
way which brings us into a new horizon of things, revealing a new world to us which transcends the
inherited or the customary kind of world or horizon that, previously, we have known and which we
have been living in and accepting as the real and true order of existing things. Cf. St. Ignatius of
Loyola, “Rules for the Better Discerning of Spirits,” The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius or
Manresa (Tan Books, 1999), 8th rule, p. 212. If, into our ordinary or into our acquired understanding of
things, a novel understanding is introduced and placed within it which, in fact, properly belongs or
which properly exists as the term or the content of higher acts of understanding (these acts existing as
transcendent acts of understanding), then, within us, within the order of our consequent understanding,
knowing, and willing, we become more free as we become more capable of participating in
achievements that are greater, by far, than all the other things that we have been able to achieve and
effect in the course of our human lives. Cf. Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris: On the Restoration of
Christian Philosophy, August 4, 1879 (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1979), p. 4; Gilson, The
Philosopher and Theology, p. 186; First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic
Faith, c. 4, as cited by Leo, Aeterni Patris, p. 10 [“Faith frees and saves reason from error, and endows
it with manifold knowledge”]. As a result and as a divinely created effect, our individual freedom
becomes a larger, greater, more potent, freer kind of thing where, in this context, its exercise points to
how, within our subjectivity, a transcendent form of subjectivity has begun to live and to dwell in
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and downs (prior to our individual and social selves). It exists too as a precondition, relative to the
kind of being which we have as creatures and the kind of knowing which also belongs to us as human
subjects. The complementarity or the overlap in terms of finality (or the mating and joining of one
finality to another) accordingly points to the being and the action of some kind of common law or
principle or, in other words, the law or principle exists as an effecting action (it exists as an operative
common principle); hence, from this, the absence of any kind of separation or mutual exclusion that
can be said to exist with respect to the being of these two distinct orders. Each differs from the other
while each is ordered toward the other.
communion with ourselves. As much as our human subjectivity continues to be and to exist with all of
its limitations and restrictions (and as much as it paradoxically continues to grow and to expand), more
fully does a transcendent form of subjectivity exist within it. Through a more perfect union which
exists between ourselves and God, greater goods emerge – goods that are more wonderful and
wondrous – as they emerge from conditions which had not been though to be very likely or auspicious;
conditions, in fact, which are far from being likely or auspicious.
18Spitzer, New Proofs for the Existence of God, pp. 52-57.
19“Horror vacui (physics),” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics), accessed
October 18, 2019.
20See Lonergan, Insight, pp. 43-50, and how he distinguishes between direct acts of
understanding and inverse acts of understanding. A good exists if a given act of understanding knows
that, for us as human subjects, a desired direct act of understanding cannot be properly enjoyed by us
within the conditions and context of our current life. Other acts of understanding are needed and these
can be given to us: whether as other, new direct acts of understanding, or as analogical acts of
understanding, or as infused acts of understanding. We exist in a condition of potency whatever with
respect to any possible receptions and if we were to expand our notion about what is indeed proper or
natural for us as human subjects, we can argue that our potency in terms of its passive and active
aspects points to a degree of openness and receptiveness that would seem to be lacking in any kind of
restriction. The only possible restriction that we can advert to is the fact that we exist as human beings
and subjects not as a higher type of being and subject.