Book III, Chapter 19

Chapter XIX.

He censures the eighth and ninth opinions, which hold that nothing in the lower world is contained under divine providence, and that nothing voluntary or free is disposed by God's providence.

There are many other petty opinions besides these. Because each and every one of them is fully refuted by what has been shown before, I had proposed to pass them over in silence. But so that they may not make themselves wholly untouched 1, and so that it may be seen what phantoms of error the fancies of many people give birth to, I shall touch on them briefly. In this way I may also, at last, deserve to be excused before experts, who might condemn me as superfluous for dealing at length with things already shown, which are almost notorious. The cause is known. The first of these opinions, then, which is the eighth together with the others recounted, affirms that nothing in the lower world is contained under divine providence 2. The ninth opinion, for its part, says that nothing voluntary or free is disposed by divine providence. The reasoning common to both is that divine providence imposes necessity on what it provides for; take providence away, and all necessity is taken away, since, as they say, there is no cause ‖C1 of necessity if not providence 3. Both of these together are refuted by the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth parts of the first; the second [of the two] separately by the thirtieth, thirty-first and thirty-second of the same 4. Again, specially against the latter: at least this position must then concede that all natural things come about by wholly absolute necessity, because it speaks, as it seems, of this alone. For it concedes that all natural things are contained under divine providence. Therefore whatever God provides for or does in this lower world, he does by wholly absolute necessity. Therefore any man whatever, even a manservant or a maidservant, is freer in all his providings and doings than the Lord his God is in his, which the first supposition of the first forbids. Again, God then provides and does by necessity, and not freely, whatever is provided for and made immediately by him. He is therefore less free and more servile than any servant, and by this the earlier opinion is refuted as well. D1 For this reason Stephen, Bishop of Paris, also condemned a certain article asserting that God must do whatever is done immediately by him 5. It is an error, he says, ‖D2 whether it be understood of the necessity of compulsion, because that removes freedom, or of the necessity of immutability, because that posits the impossibility of acting otherwise. He likewise condemned another article in this form: that some things can happen by chance with respect to the first cause, and that it is false that all things are preordained by the first cause, because then they would come about from necessity. And again another in these words: that human acts are not governed by divine providence. This same senseless view had also long before been judged as almost heretical in Job 22. "Do you think," he says, "that God is higher than heaven, and exalted above the summit of the stars? And do you say that God does not know, and judges as if through darkness? The clouds are his hiding place, and he does not consider our affairs, and he walks about the poles of heaven." 6 And in Ezekiel 9: They have said, "The Lord has forsaken the land."