Providence and Causality in the Summa Halensis

: William of Auvergne ’ s treatment of providence in his De universo (1230s) selectively employed Avicenna, Aristotle, and the category of efficient causality to mark a distinction between divine foreknowledge and providence. William ’ s focus on efficiency and affirmation that natural agents work in the mode of servants follows Neoplatonic impulses to instrumentalize nature and thereby risks eviscerating any meaningful secondary causality. Considerations of providence at Paris in the 1230s and 1240s engage with or react to William, with the Summa Halensis providing an interesting example. The Summa Halensis counters this risk by framing providence within the larger scope of divine knowledge and will, using reinterpreted ver-sions of Aristotelian formal and final causality. The Summists avoid the danger of reducing providence to predictive knowledge or to atemporal awareness of temporal events by stressing the causality of the divine intellect and will. Further, the Summists counter the danger of magnifying the causal efficacy of providence until God remains the sole agent of every effect by framing the causality of the divine intellect and will in terms of formal and final causality. By this approach, the Summa Halensis harmonizes providential causality with the integrity of secondary causality. The Summa Halensis begins its consideration of providence with a clear recognition that the observable world is full of confusion and disorder and with a clear affirmation that everything not well ordered in itself ‘ is nevertheless well-ordered with respect to divine providence, which always orders for the good ’ .¹ That this is so appears beyond doubt for the Summists; how it is so requires careful consideration. How does providence order for the good what is disordered in itself? How does divine providence order the disorder of secondary and contingent causes? To answer these and related questions, the Summa Halensis invokes Aristotle ’ s explanatory categories of efficient, formal, and final causality. Without neglecting efficient causality, the Summists place special emphasis on formal and, to a lesser extent, final causality.²