Archive for July 7th, 2008
Turretin:
FIFTH QUESTION
Does God concur with second causes not only by a particular and simultaneous, but also by a previous concourse? We affirm.
I. Since the question concerning the concourse (concursus) of God is one of the most difficult in theology (in the explanation of which, if anywhere else, great labor must be employed) and error is most dangerous, it demands a peculiar and accurate discussion.
Physical and
Moral concourse.
II. On the state of the question observe: (1) One concourse is physical by which one concurs and acts after the manner of a physical cause, i.e., truly and efficaciously and really flows into the effect by a certain positive influx; another is moral by which he operates after the manner of a moral cause, i.e., by persuading or dissuading or by proposing or removing the objects and occasions. We do not treat here of moral, but of physical concourse.
Mediate and
immediate.
III. (2) One concourse is mediate; another immediate. For a cause can be said to act either mediately or immediately both as to the subsisting substance and as to virtue. That cause acts immediately by the immediation of the subsisting substance between which and the effect no other singular subsisting substance (subsisting of itself) is interposed (which previously receives in itself the action of the agent, as water which washes and cools the hand). The other, on the contrary, acts mediately by the mediation of the subsisting substance between which and the effect another subsisting substance falls (as the chisel between the artist and the statue). A cause acts immediately by the immediation of virtue which acts by a virtue or power proper to itself and not received from any other source (as fire warms by its own heat). A cause acts mediately, however, by the mediation of virtue which operates by a virtue not its own or proper to itself, but received and borrowed from another source (as when the moon by light borrowed from the sun illuminates the earth, she is said to illuminate mediately by a mediation of virtue, i.e., the virtue of the sun mediating). Now God concurs with second causes immediately by an immediation both of virtue (because he acts by his proper power not furnished from another source) and of subsisting substance (because by his own essence he attains the thing). Nor, if he uses second causes as means, does it follow that he does not act immediately also. For he uses them not with respect to the action of the creature and consequently of the effect itself (as if he did not reach it immediately), but inasmuch as he subordinates second causes to himself (by flowing into which he also reaches the effect itself immediately).