Lesson 34 –
Divine Providence and Chance

No matter what one says about indeterminacy or randomness, it will always remain the case that there must be a cause for why there is something rather than nothing. Nothing brings itself into being.

And the wider framework of order that we find all around us – within which science identifies indeterminacy – is an even more powerful witness to the reality of a transcendent uncaused cause of all that is. Philosophy can prove that there is one ultimate and first cause of all things, which itself is uncaused – and, as Thomas Aquinas puts it in the Summa Theologiae, this cause is what we call God.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae I q. 22, aa. 1-2 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae I q. 22, aa. 3-4 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from the Summa Theologiae I q. 22, a. 1:

It is necessary to attribute providence to God. For all the good that is in created things has been created by God. In created things good is found not only as regards their substance, but also as regards their order towards an end and especially their last end, which is the divine goodness. This good of order existing in things created, is itself created by God. Since, however, God is the cause of things by His intellect, and thus it behooves that the type of every effect should pre-exist in Him, it is necessary that the type of the order of things towards their end should pre-exist in the divine mind: and the type of things ordered towards an end is, properly speaking, providence.

Course Listening

Chance or Purpose? God's Providence and the Christian Worldview | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Understanding Divine Providence | Fr. James Brent, O.P.