Occasionalism, Omnipotence, and Matthew 23:9

 "Secondary causes are mere occasional causes, occasions of the exercise of the causality of the only true productive cause, God."

And call no man your father upon earth, for One is your Father, who is in Heaven. (Matthew, 23:9)

Posted by: Simon Neale | Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 03:21 PM

Before we can evaluate Mr. Neale's suggestion we need to take a step back. Since occasionalism and divine omnipotence are related topics, consider four combinatorially possible views of the latter.  What is it for God to be all-powerful?

A) God can do anything at all, and anything at all that gets done is done by God. God is all-powerful (omnipotent) in that (i) God has power over everything, including the laws of logic, and (ii) God alone exercises all the power that is exercised.   God is then the only genuine efficient cause, and all so-called 'secondary causes' are not causes stricto sensu, but mere occasions for the exercise of the efficient causality of the one and only 'primary cause.' Accordingly, 'secondary' in 'secondary cause' is an alienans adjective: it 'alienates' or 'others' the sense of  'cause' to such an extent that a secondary cause is not a cause. (Cognate examples: a decoy duck is not a duck; artificial leather is not leather, etc. Leather does not come into kinds, real and artificial, etc. More on this topic in my Adjectives category.)) 

The above understanding of divine omnipotence is occasionalist and makes God out to be absolutely sovereign: he is lord of all orders, the physical, the spiritual, the logical, the moral, and even the modal.  A less extreme version of occasionalism results from the deletion of clause (i). Thus:

B) God cannot do everything, but everything that is doable and gets does is done by God. Thus God cannot do what is logically impossible or command or do what is morally wrong. Nor does his will determine what is merely possible and what is necessary. All the power that is exercisable, which is to say permitted by logic, morality, and modality, is exercised by God alone. This too is occasionalism since it denies that so-called 'secondary causes' are genuine causes.

C) God cannot do everything, and not every exercise of causal power is an exercise of divine power: there are genuine natural or secondary causes. On this non-occasionalist view both God and secondary causes are genuine causes.

D) God can do everything but not everything that gets done is done by God. I don't believe anyone has held this view; I include it only for combinatorial completeness. Having brought it up, I now set it aside.

As for the New Testament verse, I read it as logically consistent with (C) and thus as not logically requiring (entailing) the truth of either (A) or (B). Since the verse does not entail the truth of occasionalism, it is consistent with (A) and with (B).  

Why not say the following? My biological father is a real cause (or rather part-cause, along with my mother and various other causal factors) of my coming to exist.  If I have a Father in heaven, he too is a real cause, of anything's having come to exist and of anything's remaining in existence. The 'horizontal' causality of natural causes presupposes the 'vertical' causality of the divine cause in that without the causa prima, there would be no causae secundae. 

The difference between my two fathers is that the first is natural whereas the second is supernatural. The first is a spiritual animal, whereas the second is a pure spirit. But both are real. The word 'father' is not used univocally in application to both, nor equivocally.  It is used analogically, but literally.  Thus 'father' is being used literally of God and not metaphorically as when I say  that the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.  That use of 'mother' is metaphorical or figurative.

Does this 'hold water'? I fear that my glib explanation hides aporiai.  I am not in the clear when it comes to the analogia entis, and the formidable Erich Pryzwara, brilliant and erudite as he is, is too obscure to be of much help.

Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis

The book has been recently translated.  

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it.   But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing. 

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely.  Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid, and the same goes for many Europeans to the east of France.

The book has been recently translated.  

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it.   But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing. 

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely.  Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid, and the same goes for many Europeans to the east of France.