We reply that there is a plain distinction between creative activity and the efficient activity we claim for creatures. Creation is the production of new being from nothingness. God alone, the Infinite Being, can create; and, furthermore, according to the common view of Theistic philosophers a creature cannot even be an instrument of the First Cause in this production of new being from nothingness. And the main reason for this appears to be that the efficiency of the creature, acting, of course, with the Divine concursus, necessarily presupposes some pre-existing being as material on which to operate, and is confined to the change or determination of new forms or modes of this pre-existing reality. Such efficiency, subordinate to the Divine concursus and limited to such an order of effects, is plainly distinct from creative activity.
(3) But the creature, acting with the Divine concursus, either contributes something real and positive to the effect or contributes nothing. The former alternative is inadmissible, for God is the cause of everything real and positive: omne novum ens est a Deo. And in the latter alternative, which is the true one, the concursus is superfluous; God does all; and creatures are not really efficient causes.
We reply that the former alternative, not the latter, is the true one. But the former alternative does not imply that the creature produces any new reality independently of the First Cause; nor is it incompatible with the truth that God is the author and cause of all positive reality: omne novum ens est a Deo. No doubt, were we to conceive the co-operation of God and the creature after the manner of the co-operation of two partial causes of the same order, producing by their joint efficiency [pg 402] some one total effect—like the co-operation of two horses drawing a cart,—it would follow that the creature's share of the joint effect would be independent of the Divine concursus and attributable to the creature alone, that the creature would produce some reality independently of the First Cause. But that is not the way in which the First Cause concurs with created causes. They are not partial causes of the same order. Each is a total cause in its own order. They so co-operate that God, besides having created and now conserving the second cause, and moving the latter's power to act, produces Himself the whole effect directly and immediately by the efficiency of His concursus; while at the same time the second cause, thus reduced to act, and acting with the concursus, also directly and immediately produces the whole effect. There is one effect, one change in facto esse, one change in fieri, and therefore one action as considered in the subject changed, since the action takes place in this latter: actio fit in passo. This change, this action considered thus passively, or “in passo,” is the total term of each efficiency, the Divine and the created, not partly of the one and partly of the other. It is one and indivisible; it is wholly due to, and wholly attained by, each efficiency; not, however, under the same formal aspect. We may distinguish in it two formalities: it is a novum ens, a new actuality, something positive and actual superadded to the existing order of real, contingent being; but it is not “being in general” or “actuality in general,” it is some specifically, nay individually, determinate mode of actuality or actual being. We have seen that it is precisely because every real effect has the former aspect that it demands for its adequate explanation, and as its only intelligible source, the presence and influence of a purely actual, unchanging, infinite, inexhaustible productive principle of all actual contingent reality: hence the necessity and efficacy of the Divine concursus. And similarly it is because the new actuality involved in every change is an individually definite mode of actuality that we can detect in it the need for, and the efficacy of, the created cause: the nature of this latter, the character and scope and intensity of its active power is what determines the individuality of the total result, to the total production of which it has by the aid of the Divine concursus attained.
(4) But God can Himself produce the total result under both formalities without any efficiency of the creature. Therefore the [pg 403] difficulty remains that the latter efficiency is superfluous and useless: and entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
We reply that as a matter of fact the effects produced in the ordinary course of nature are produced by God under both formalities; but also by the created cause under both formalities: inasmuch as the formalities are but mentally distinct aspects of one real result which is, as regards its extrinsic causes, individual and indivisible. The distinction of these formal aspects only helps us to realize how de facto such an effect is due to the cooperation of the First Cause and created causes. That God could produce all such effects without any created causes—we must distinguish. Some such effects He could not produce without created causes, for such production would be self-contradictory. He could not produce, for instance, a volition except as the act of a created will, or a thought except as the act of a created intellect, or a vital change except as the act of a living creature. But apart from such cases which would involve an intrinsic impossibility, God could of course produce, without created agents, the effects which He does produce through their created efficiency. It is, however, not a question of what could be, but of what actually is. And we think that the arguments already set forth prove conclusively that creatures are not de facto the inert, inactive, aimless and unmeaning things they would be if Occasionalism were the true interpretation of the universe of our actual experience; but that these creatures are in a true sense efficient causes, and that just as by their very co-existence with God, as contingent beings, they do not derogate from His Infinite Actuality but rather show forth His Infinity, so by their cooperation with Him as subordinate and dependent efficient causes they do not derogate from His supremacy as First Cause, but rather show forth the infinite and inexhaustible riches of His Wisdom and Omnipotence.
Chapter XV. Final Causes; Universal Order.
106. Two Conceptions of Experience, the Mechanical and the Teleological.—We have seen that all change in the universe demands for its explanation certain real principles, viz. passive potentiality, actualization, and active power or efficiency; in other words that it points to material, formal and efficient causes. Do these principles suffice to explain the course of nature to the inquiring mind? Mechanists say, Yes; these principles explain it so far as it is capable of explanation. Teleologists say, No; these principles do not of themselves account for the universe of our experience: this universe reveals itself as a cosmos: hence it demands for its explanation real principles or causes of another sort, final causes, the existence of which implies purpose, plan or design, and therefore also intelligence.
The problem whether or not the universe manifests the existence and influence of final causes has been sometimes formulated in this striking fashion: Is it that birds have wings in order to fly, or is it merely that they fly because they have wings? Such a graphic statement of the problem is misleading, for it suggests that the alternatives are mutually exclusive, that we must vote either for final causes or for efficient causes. As a matter of fact we accept both. Efficient causes account for the course of nature; but they need to be determined by the influence of final causes. Moreover, the question how far this influence of final causes extends—finality (finalitas), as it is technically termed—is a secondary question; nor does the advocate of final causality in the universe undertake to decide its nature and scope in every instance and detail, any more than the physical scientist does to point out all the physical laws embodied in an individual natural event, or the biologist to say whether a doubtful specimen of matter is organic or inorganic, or whether a certain sort of living cell is animal or vegetable. The teleologist's thesis, as against that [pg 405] of mechanism, is simply that there are final causes in the universe, that the universe does really manifest the presence and influence of final causes.[501]