Disputatio XLVI: De Possibilitate ut Medio inter Necessarium et Contingens

On Possibility as the Mean between Necessity and Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum possibilitas sit medium reale et transcendens inter necessitatem et contingentiam, ita ut in ipsa mediantis potentiae ratione contingens ordinetur ad Deum ut ad suum necessarium fundamentum.

Whether possibility constitutes a real and transcendent mean between necessity and contingency, such that in the mediating potency of possibility the contingent is ordered toward God as its necessary foundation.

Thesis

Possibility is not a mere logical form but a real participation in the divine potentiality-to-communicate-being. It stands as the middle term between necessity and contingency: necessity expresses being as complete act, contingency expresses being as dependent act, and possibility expresses being as communicable act. In God, possibility and necessity coincide; in creatures, possibility mediates the gift of participation from the divine necessity to the finite contingency.

Locus Classicus

"Quia apud Deum omnia possibilia sunt." — Matthaeus 19:26
“For with God all things are possible.”

Δύναμις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς ἐν ἄλλῳ ἢ καθ᾽ ἕτερον. — Aristoteles, Metaphysica Θ, 1046a10
“Power (potentiality) is the principle of change in another thing, or in the same thing qua other.”

Omne possibile habet veritatem in Deo sicut in primo possibili. — Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.14, a.9 ad 3
“Every possible has its truth in God as in the first possibility.”

Explicatio

In the metaphysical hierarchy of being, necessity (necessarium) designates that which cannot be otherwise while contingency (contingens) designates that which can be otherwise. Yet between these two lies the order of possibility (possibile), which alone renders either intelligible. For the necessary, without the possible, would be sterile; the contingent, without the possible, unintelligible.

Possibility functions as the ontological bridge between the divine plenitude of act and the creaturely finitude of reception. In modal logic (system S5), if something is possibly necessary, it is necessary. Yet within the created order, possibility precedes realization and grounds contingency. Thus, the creature’s being is possible ex parte Dei—as a divine idea and potency to communicate being—but contingent ex parte sui: as dependent upon actual divine willing.

Theologically, possibility names the divine generosity that renders creation conceivable before it is actual. It is the metaphysical womb in which all contingent beings are pre-contained as possible participations of divine being. Possibility thus mediates between the absolute necessity of God’s being and the fragile contingency of the creature’s existence.

In Christ, the logic of possibility becomes incarnate: the impossible union of divine and human natures becomes the supreme actuality of divine possibility—Deus possibilis in carne.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Kant claims thatt possibility pertains only to the forms of cognition, not to reality itself. For Kant, “possibility” is merely the agreement of a concept with the conditions of experience; it cannot function as a bridge between necessity and contingency, since such mediation exceeds the bounds of reason.

Ob. II. Spinoza holds that necessity swallows all contingency: everything follows from the divine nature with absolute necessity (ex necessitate divinae naturae). Hence possibility is a mere deficiency of human knowledge, not a real mode of being.

Ob. III.  Existentialistarum supposes that Heidegger and Sartre invert the order: possibility is prior to being and defines existence itself. The creature does not receive possibility from God but projects it as its own freedom. The possible is thus grounded in human transcendence, not divine potency.

Ob IV.  In modal realism (à la David Lewis), all possible worlds are equally real; possibility no longer mediates between necessity and contingency but expresses a plurality of self-contained realities, thereby dissolving the very notion of participation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Possibility cannot be reduced to epistemic coherence without undermining the ontological dependence of experience. The conditions of experience themselves presuppose a real order of possibility—an ordo essendi—that makes appearances possible at all. Transcendental possibility depends on ontological possibility.

Ad II. Spinoza confuses the divine necessity of being with the necessity of modes. But divine necessity is communicative, not coercive: God’s necessary being grounds the possibilitas communicandi esse, not the fatality of all things. To deny possibility is to deny creation.

Ad III. Human possibility, though genuine, is derivative. The freedom that projects possibilities presupposes the ontological horizon opened by divine giving. Existential possibility is participatory, not autonomous; it reflects the divine freedom from which it proceeds.

Ad IV. Equating all possibilities with actuality erases the modal structure that distinguishes God from creatures. Theologically, only God actualizes possibilities; their reality is analogical, existing as divine ideas, not as parallel universes. Participation, not plurality, grounds modality.

Nota

Possibility (potentia possibilis) is the metaphysical expression of grace before grace: it is the generosity of being that allows otherness to arise. In classical logic, possibility belongs to the modal square between necessity and impossibility; in theology, it corresponds to the eternal divine willingness that creation should be.

Thus, possibility is the mode of divine patience. It is the eternal “perhaps” of God that waits to say “let there be.” To confess that “with God all things are possible” is not to affirm capricious power but to adore the inexhaustible fecundity of divine act.

Determinatio

1. Possibility is a real and ontological participation in divine potency, mediating necessity and contingency.

2. Necessity in God includes possibility eminently; in creatures, necessity excludes it formally.

3. Contingency presupposes possibility as its condition of intelligibility.

4. Therefore, possibility is the metaphysical medium participationis through which the necessary communicates being to the contingent.

5. Theologically, possibility corresponds to the Logos as mediating ratio: all things were possible in Him before they were made through Him.

6. In Christ, possibility and actuality coincide—the possible becomes the actual without ceasing to be the possible ground of all actuality.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae

Possibility, as the middle term between necessity and contingency, reveals the hidden generosity of being. In it, act and potency meet in a relation neither static nor symmetrical: necessity pours itself forth as communicability, and contingency receives itself as being-given. Thus possibility discloses the openness of being to donation, the interval wherein the divine plenitude bends toward the finite.

Yet every possibility longs for fulfillment. It is the restless potency of love awaiting its act. What metaphysics calls possibilitas essendi, theology recognizes as voluntas donandi. The divine necessity of goodness does not rest in self-identity but overflows into self-communication. In this outpouring, possibility passes into grace: the metaphysical structure of participation becomes the historical drama of salvation.

But here a new tension arises. For if grace flows from the necessary love of God, how can it appear as free, undeserved, and contingent? Does divine necessity compel the gift, or does divine freedom transcend even its own necessity? Between these poles—necessity as the essence of love and contingency as the form of its manifestation—grace unfolds as the living synthesis of both.

Thus what reason discerned in ontology as the mediating power of possibility, faith encounters in the economy as the contingent bestowal of mercy. The possible becomes the gracious; the modal relation of being becomes the personal relation of giver and recipient.

We proceed, then, to Disputationem XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae, in which it will be asked whether grace, though rooted in the necessity of divine love, manifests itself as the contingent gift by which the finite is drawn into the infinite—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.

Disputatio XLV: De Bello inter Necessarium et Contingens in Ratione Finita

On the Conflict Between the Necessary and the Contingent in Finite Reason

Quaeritur

Utrum in ratione finita oriatur verum bellum inter necessarium et contingens, ita ut ipsa mens humana, participans quidem rationem divinam sed limitata in tempore et potentia, neque ordinem necessitatis neque veritatem contingentiae plene conciliare possit; et utrum haec pugna sit defectus cognitionis aut potius signum participationis creaturae in divina sapientia, quae in se unam facit necessitatem et libertatem.

Whether within finite reason there arises a true conflict between the necessary and the contingent—such that the human mind, participating in divine reason yet limited in time and power, can fully reconcile neither the order of necessity nor the truth of contingency—and whether this struggle is a defect of knowledge or rather the sign of the creature’s participation in divine wisdom, in which necessity and freedom are one.

Thesis

Finite reason stands at war within itself. It is drawn upward toward necessity—the demand that all things have sufficient reason—and outward toward contingency: the recognition that the world could have been otherwise. These two poles define reason’s created condition: necessity as the mark of its participation in divine intelligibility, contingency as the sign of its existence within temporal becoming. The conflict between them is not accidental but constitutive; it reveals that reason is a mirror of divine unity seen through the prism of finitude. Only participation in divine reason can reconcile this struggle, for in God necessity and freedom coincide as one act of infinite love.

Locus classicus

Aristoteles, Metaphysica XII.7 (1072b):

Ἔστιν ἄρα τι ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, ἀΐδιον καὶ οὐσία καὶ ἐνέργεια.
"There is therefore something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality." 

Necessity here grounds all motion and explanation, yet Aristotle leaves contingency as the realm of the changeable.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.14, a.13:

Deus cognoscit contingentia ut contingentia, et tamen infallibiliter.
"God knows contingents as contingents, yet infallibly."

Aquinas thus binds the necessity of divine knowledge with the contingency of creaturely events.

G. W. Leibniz, Monadologie §31:

Le présent est gros de l’avenir; le futur peut être lu dans le passé.
"The present is pregnant with the future; the future may be read in the past." 

Leibniz unites necessity and contingency by grounding both in divine reason’s selection among possibles.

Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A536/B564):

Die Antinomie der Freiheit und der Naturnotwendigkeit ist der Schlüssel zur ganzen Dialektik der reinen Vernunft.
"The antinomy of freedom and natural necessity is the key to the entire dialectic of pure reason." 

Finite reason must affirm both necessity and freedom, though it cannot conceptually reconcile them.

Paulus Apostolus, Epistola ad Romanos 11:33:

Ὦ βάθος πλούτου καὶ σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως Θεοῦ· ὡς ἀνεξερεύνητα τὰ κρίματα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνεξιχνίαστοι αἱ ὁδοὶ αὐτοῦ.
"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!" 

Here Scripture gathers the philosophical tension into doxology: the irreconcilable in reason is peace in God.

Explicatio

The Principle of Sufficient Reason demands that nothing exist without ground. Yet our lived and empirical world continually presents us with events that appear ungrounded—acts of freedom, emergence, chance, and history. The human intellect thus finds itself divided: it cannot deny contingency without denying experience, nor affirm it without weakening reason’s own axiom.

This division is not an epistemic defect but a metaphysical condition. The creaturely intellect, as ratio finita, participates in eternal reason while operating within time. Its demand for necessity mirrors the divine order of wisdom; its experience of contingency mirrors the divine act of freedom. Their conflict is the creature’s mode of imaging the divine simplicity.

Philosophically, the battle has appeared as determinism versus freedom, logic versus history, metaphysics versus phenomenology. Spinoza’s monistic necessity, Hume’s skeptical contingency, and Kant’s transcendental antinomy each represent one side of reason turning against the other. Theologically, the conflict mirrors the drama of creation: God’s will is necessary in its goodness but free in its expression; the world, therefore, bears both the mark of rational necessity and the gift of contingent grace.

From a model-theoretic perspective, this conflict corresponds to the difference between syntactic necessity—the closure of reason within its own laws—and semantic openness—the reference of those laws to realities beyond themselves. Finite reason, like a theory without a complete model, cannot guarantee within itself the harmony of necessity and freedom. It points beyond itself to divine intellect as the infinite model that alone reconciles law and event, order and surprise, necessity and grace.

Objectiones

Ob. I. If necessity and contingency conflict in reason, reason ceases to be the image of God, for divine wisdom is pure harmony, not opposition.

Ob. II. The war of reason dissolves the certainty of knowledge. Science depends on necessity; freedom introduces indeterminacy and undermines causality.

Ob. III. In God all things are necessary. To admit contingency as real is to multiply being unnecessarily and to posit irrationality in creation.

Ob. IV. If divine simplicity is reflected analogically in reason, conflict cannot belong to its essence but only to sin or ignorance.

Ob. V. Freedom and necessity are mutually exclusive modes; to unite them is to destroy both. Freedom requires absence of constraint; necessity implies total determination.

Responsiones

Ad I. Reason’s conflict is not an imperfection but a sign of participation. The image of divine unity cannot be mirrored as unity within limitation; it must appear as tension. The created intellect is peace refracted through time.

Ad II. Scientific necessity and existential contingency belong to different orders. Within the order of nature, necessity prevails; within the order of personhood and grace, contingency testifies to divine freedom. Their apparent discord arises only when the orders are confused.

Ad III. Contingency is not absence of reason but expression of rational plenitude. God’s necessity includes contingency as the free manifestation of His wisdom. Creation’s freedom is the outward face of divine necessity, not its negation.

Ad IV. Sin and ignorance distort but do not create the conflict. Even in an unfallen world, reason would still know both the fixed wisdom of God and the open mystery of His will. The cross, not sin, is its deepest image: the union of divine necessity and contingent suffering.

Ad V. Freedom and necessity are contraries only within finite categories. In God they coincide: necessity is freedom fully realized, freedom is necessity made gracious. Their distinction arises when divine simplicity is viewed from within time.

Nota

The human intellect is suspended between necessity and freedom as between heaven and earth. It is drawn to explain all things by law yet confronted daily by the contingency of event, love, and decision. This tension is not to be overcome but understood as the very structure of participation. The Logos grounds necessity; the Spirit breathes contingency; together they make finite reason a theater of divine wisdom.

In Christ, this war reaches its peace: the eternal necessity of divine being enters the most contingent of all moments—the suffering of a particular man. There necessity becomes merciful and contingency redemptive. Thus, the bellum inter necessarium et contingens is resolved only in the cruciform logic of the Word made flesh, where infinite reason inhabits finite circumstance.

Determinatio

1. The conflict between necessity and contingency belongs intrinsically to finite reason and is the mark of its dependence on a higher unity.

2. Necessity reflects participation in divine wisdom; contingency reflects participation in divine freedom. Both are analogical to the single act of God.

3. Human reason cannot reconcile the two dialectically but only through participation in divine reason, where wisdom and will are one.

4. The cross is the metaphysical symbol of this reconciliation: the necessary will of love embracing contingent suffering, revealing that the ultimate law of reason is grace.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVI: De Possibilitate ut Medio inter Necessarium et Contingens

The battle between necessity and contingency cannot end within finite reason, for each side speaks a truth it cannot deny. Necessity grounds intelligibility; contingency preserves freedom. Yet their reconciliation demands a third term, one that holds both without confusion or separation. That term is possibility.

Possibility is the quiet field in which this war becomes intelligible. It is neither necessity itself nor mere contingency, but the horizon within which both arise. For something can be contingent only if it is possible, and it can be necessary only if its possibility is immutable. Possibility thus mediates between the fixity of being and the openness of becoming. It is the form of divine generosity within reason—the locus where wisdom and will meet.

In the divine intellect, all things are possible before they are actual. God wills not arbitrary freedom but the necessary possibility of all that could exist in Him. The world’s contingency, therefore, rests upon the eternal stability of possibility within God’s reason. Finite reason, when it perceives this, finds the first light of reconciliation: the necessity of the possible unites the freedom of the actual.

The next disputation will therefore inquire De Possibilitate ut Medio inter Necessarium et Contingens. It will show that possibility is not a neutral category of modality but a theological reality: the mirror of divine potency and wisdom, and the foundation of all rational hope. For what is possible in God is already real in truth, and what becomes actual in creation is the contingent expression of that necessary possibility.

Disputatio XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino

On the Contingency of Creation and Divine Freedom

Quaeritur

Utrum libertas divina consistat non in arbitrio indifferenti sed in plenitudine rationis, qua Deus necessario vult se ipsum et contingenter manifestat se in creatione; et utrum haec contingentia creationis intellegi possit modalis ratione, ita ut creatio sit necessario possibilis in Deo, licet non necessario actualis.

Whether divine freedom consists not in arbitrary indifference but in the fullness of reason, by which God necessarily wills Himself and contingently manifests Himself in creation; and whether this contingency of creation may be understood modally, such that creation is necessarily possible in God, though not necessarily actual.

Thesis

Divine freedom is the rational plenitude of the necessary Good. God’s will is not arbitrary but coincides with divine wisdom: Deus vult se necessario, alia a se contingenter. Creation is not an irrational possibility but the intelligible unfolding of divine necessity in contingent form.

In modal terms:

• God’s existence: □G.

• Creation’s possibility: □(G → ◊C).

• Creation’s actuality: ◊C ∧ ¬□C.
  Thus, the necessity of possibility in God grounds the possibility of contingency in creation. The Spirit mediates this order, actualizing the possible through love.

Locus Classicus

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.19, a.3:

“Deus necessario vult se, sed non necessario vult alia a se.”
(“God necessarily wills Himself, but not necessarily the things other than Himself.”)

Leibniz, Essais de Théodicée, §173:

“La liberté divine consiste dans le choix du meilleur.”
(“Divine freedom consists in the choice of the best.”)

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952):

“God created the universe freely, not because He needed it, but because He is love.”

Modal Maxim (S5):

□p → ◊p, and ◊□p → □p.

The theological implication: what is necessarily possible in God is immutably intelligible even if contingently realized.

Explicatio

From the perspective of modal metaphysics, divine freedom can only be conceived as the perfect coincidence of necessity and rationality. The act of creation does not introduce irrational novelty into God but manifests eternally possible forms (rationes aeternae) through the free act of love.

In S5 logic, the following distinctions hold:

1. Divine Necessity (□G): God’s existence and essence are necessary. There is no world in which God does not exist: ¬◊¬G.

2. Necessary Possibility of Creation (□◊C): Because God is necessary, creation is necessarily possible: □(G → ◊C). This expresses the eternal availability of creaturely being within divine reason.

3. Contingent Actuality of Creation (◊C ∧ ¬□C): Creation is possible but not necessary. Its existence is not required by divine nature but freely willed: G → ◊C, not G → □C.

4. Modal Principle (MT): □G → □(∀p (◊p → ◊(G → p))). If God exists necessarily, then every possibility is necessarily possible through Him.

Hence, divine freedom may be defined as the actualization of one among necessarily possible worlds according to the order of divine wisdom and goodness. Creation is contingent not because it lacks sufficient reason, but because its reason is of the mode of love, not necessity.

The freedom of God is not voluntas indifferens—a will suspended among options without reason—but voluntas sapientiae: the necessary self-diffusion of goodness. God could have willed otherwise (◊¬C), but what He does will, He wills wisely (□(G → R(C))).

The creature’s contingency thus arises from the necessity of possibility, the divine act that grounds modal being itself. The Spiritus Intelligentiae mediates between the eternal intelligibility of possibility in God and its temporal realization in the world.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Spinoza holds that if God necessarily exists and acts according to His nature, then everything He does is necessary. The very notion of contingency implies imperfection or external limitation, both impossible in God.

Ob. II. van Inwagen claims that to preserve divine freedom, one must deny any determining reason for God’s act of creation. If God has a reason to create this world rather than another, His act is no longer free but necessitated.

Ob. III. For Kant, the idea of divine freedom as “choice among possible worlds” is anthropomorphic. The notion of modality applies only within phenomena; we cannot ascribe modal distinctions to noumenal divinity.

Ob. IV. Existentialism argues that freedom entails the capacity to act without ground. If divine freedom has a sufficient reason, it ceases to be freedom.

Ob. V. Theological voluntarism argues that God’s will precedes His reason. To say that God wills according to wisdom subordinates will to intellect and thus compromises divine omnipotence.

Responsiones

Ad I. Spinoza confuses necessity of essence with necessity of act. God necessarily exists and knows Himself, but His creative act proceeds freely from wisdom, not from causal compulsion. Necessity in God does not exclude contingency in effects; it grounds it as rationally possible.

Ad II. Freedom does not require absence of reason but rational self-determination. The act of creation is free because it proceeds from perfect knowledge, not from external constraint. To remove reason from freedom is to render it arbitrary and unintelligible.

Ad III. Kant’s epistemic modesty cannot constrain ontology. If divine reality grounds all possibility, then modal categories originate in the divine intellect, not in human cognition. God is the ens modalitatis—the cause of the possible as such.

Ad IV. Existential freedom, detached from reason, is negation, not creativity. True freedom is fecund: it gives being. God’s freedom is plenitude of intelligibility, not indeterminate spontaneity.

Ad V. Divine will and intellect are one act in God. The will is rational and the intellect volitional. To will otherwise than wisdom dictates would be impotence, not omnipotence.

Nota

The modal order of creation is rooted in the divine act itself. The necessity of possibility (□◊C) safeguards both divine aseity and creaturely contingency. God is the ground of all modal truth: possibility, actuality, and necessity are modes of participation in His being.

Creation’s contingency is thus not a failure of reason but its richest expression. It reveals that divine necessity is not sterile self-enclosure but communicative plenitude. In the contingent, the necessary becomes gracious.

Hence, contingency is the modality of divine generosity. The Logos grounds it; the Spirit enacts it; and love interprets it.

Determinatio

1. God necessarily exists: □G.

2. Creation is necessarily possible through God: □(G → ◊C).

3. Creation is contingently actual: ◊C ∧ ¬□C.

4. Divine freedom is the rational actualization of a necessarily possible world:
   □G ∧ ◊C → (□(G → R(C)) ∧ ¬□C).

5. Contingency is not absence of reason but finite manifestation of infinite rationality.

6. The Spirit mediates between modal being and actual creation, so that what is eternally possible becomes temporally real.

7. Therefore, contingency is intelligibility-in-gift, with the world being the rational outpouring of necessary love.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLV: De Bello inter Necessarium et Contingens in Ratione Finita

Having seen that divine freedom is the plenitude of rational necessity and that creation’s contingency arises from the necessity of possibility, we must now consider how this relation appears within the finite intellect.

For the human mind experiences a conflict: it perceives necessity as threat to freedom and contingency as threat to reason. This interior bellum within ratio finita mirrors, in fractured form, the divine harmony of wisdom and will. It is here that metaphysical participation becomes phenomenological struggle.

We therefore proceed to Disputationem XLV: De Bello inter Necessarium et Contingens in Ratione Finita, where it will be asked how finite reason, torn between the poles of necessity and freedom, may find reconciliation through the Logos crucified—the Wisdom in whom all opposites are made one.

Disputatio XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

On the Necessary Ground of Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum contingentia creaturarum fundetur non in carentia rationis aut necessitatis, sed in participatione ipsius necessarii; ita ut libertas et contingens non sint privationes intelligibilitatis, sed modi amoris divini in ordine creato.

Whether the contingency of creatures is grounded not in the absence of reason or necessity, but in participation in the necessary itself; such that freedom and contingency are not privations of intelligibility, but modes of divine love in the created order.

Thesis

Contingency does not stand opposed to necessity but proceeds from it as participation. The divine necessity, identical with the fullness of reason and goodness, freely communicates itself in finite forms. Thus, contingency arises not from the lack of sufficient reason, but from the plenitude of it: creation is the contingent manifestation of necessary wisdom. The Spirit of Understanding sustains this relation, making the finite capable of the infinite without collapse so that necessity remains divine, and intelligibly grounded contingency, becomes the mark of love’s generosity.

Locus Classicus

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.19, a.3:

“Deus necessario vult se, sed non necessario vult alia a se.”
(“God necessarily wills Himself, but not necessarily the things other than Himself.”)

Leibniz, Théodicée, §173:

“La liberté divine consiste dans le choix du meilleur, déterminé par la raison même de son excellence.”
(“Divine freedom consists in the choice of the best, determined by the reason of its own excellence.”)

Spinoza, Ethica I, prop. 33:

“Res nulla contingens est.”
(“Nothing is contingent.”)

Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (2009):

“God could have created differently, or not at all; there is no reason why He did one rather than another.”

Explicatio

The metaphysical relation between necessity and contingency defines the very structure of creation.  For Aquinas, God is necessary per essentiam—His existence and goodness are identical—but His creative act is free, for it is not a product of external compulsion, but of the internal sufficiency of love.  For Leibniz, divine freedom is rational: God wills what is best because His intellect and will are one.  For Spinoza, however, necessity consumes contingency: whatever exists follows from the nature of God as a geometrical consequence.

Modernity inherited this trilemma: either determinism without freedom (Spinoza), freedom without reason (voluntarism, van Inwagen), or a reconciliation through participation (Aquinas, Leibniz at his best, and theological realism).

True contingency presupposes a necessary foundation, a will whose necessity is that of wisdom and goodness, not of constraint. To be contingent is to exist from another as from reason and cause, yet without coercion. The creature’s being is thus dependent but not necessitated; it is finite but intelligible.

This insight preserves both divine aseity and created freedom. The world’s contingency expresses not divine arbitrariness but divine generosity; it expresses the self-diffusion of the necessary Good into what might not have been, but which now participates in being and intelligibility through love.

Theologically, the Spiritus Intelligentiae mediates this relation. The Spirit holds together necessity and contingency, preserving intelligibility without determinism, and freedom without absurdity. Thus, what philosophy sought to separate, theology reunites in pneumatological causality: the freedom of God as the overflowing of His necessity.

 Objectiones

Ob. I. Spinoza holds that whatever exists follows necessarily from the divine nature. To posit contingency in God’s act is to posit imperfection. A truly infinite being cannot do otherwise than He does.

Ob. II. We learn from Inwagen that if every act of creation has a sufficient reason, then God could not have refrained from creating that world. The only way to preserve freedom is to allow that God’s creative decision has no determining reason.

Ob. III. Hume argues that contingency and necessity are subjective projections. The claim that the world must have a reason for its structure is a habit of thought, not a feature of being.

Ob. IV. Modern existentialism claims that to ground contingency in necessity is to destroy human freedom. Existence precedes essence. Thus, human contingency is absolute, not participatory.

Ob. V. Theological voluntarism holds that if God must act according to reason, then divine will is not free but constrained by intellect. Freedom must be pure voluntas indifferentiae.

Responsiones

Ad I. Spinoza confuses divine necessity with logical necessity. God’s essence is necessary, but His creative act is free precisely because His necessity is personal and rational, not mechanical. The necessity of the Good overflows without coercion, as light diffuses from its source.

Ad II. Freedom does not require absence of reason but coincidence of reason and will. God’s will is not an arbitrary event but the act of infinite intelligibility. To say God acts without reason is to reduce divine action to caprice.

Ad III. Hume’s empiricism dissolves ontology into psychology. Contingency is not a mere epistemic condition but a mode of being dependent on divine act. The regularity of the world reveals rational foundation, not habitual illusion.

Ad IV. Existentialism mistakes dependence for oppression. To exist contingently from God is not to be determined externally but to be upheld by love. The creature’s freedom is participation in divine rational vitality, not its negation.

Ad V. Voluntarism severs freedom from truth and thereby destroys both. The divine will is not arbitrary because it is identical with divine reason. The highest freedom is not indifference but the unhindered expression of perfect wisdom.

Nota

The paradox of contingency and necessity dissolves only when necessity is conceived not as constraint but as plenitude. The divine will is not forced to create; it creates because it is perfect. Contingency thus becomes the temporal image of divine superabundance: a world that might not have been, yet whose existence reflects eternal reason.

The PSR therefore remains valid within contingency, though in a transposed register. Every contingent effect has its reason, not because it is logically deduced, but because it participates in the intelligibility of divine love. The Spirit holds these together: the necessary as the truth of being, the contingent as its radiance.

Determinatio

1. Necessity and contingency are not opposites but correlative modes: the latter presupposes the former as its ground.

2. Divine necessity is identical with goodness and wisdom; it does not compel but overflows.

3. Created contingency arises from divine necessity as gift, not as exception.

4. Freedom is not irrational spontaneity but participation in rational self-giving.

5. The Spirit mediates necessity and contingency, rendering creation intelligible yet free.

6. Thus, the true ratio sufficientis contingentiae is ordo amoris: the love that necessarily gives and contingently adorns.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino

If contingency rests upon necessary wisdom, then divine freedom must be conceived not as arbitrary choice but as the rational plenitude of love. God’s liberty is neither mechanical nor indifferent but the infinite self-expression of the good.

We must therefore examine how divine necessity and divine freedom coexist without contradiction, how it is that God, who necessarily wills Himself, freely wills creation, and how this act preserves both intelligibility and grace.

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino, in which it will be asked whether divine freedom is grounded in rational plenitude rather than in indeterminate will, and whether creation itself, in all its contingency, is the manifestation of wisdom that cannot but love.

Disputatio XLII: De Principio Sufficientis Rationis et Participatione Intellectus

On the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Participation of Intellect

Quaeritur

Utrum principium sufficientis rationis sit lex logica universalis tantum, an etiam signum participationis intellectus creati in ratione divina; et utrum negatio huius principii, ut apud van Inwagen et metaphysicos analyticos recentiores, tollat ipsam intelligibilitatem creationis.

Whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason is merely a universal logical law, or also a sign of the created intellect’s participation in divine reason; and whether the denial of this principle, as in Van Inwagen and other contemporary analytic metaphysicians, abolishes the intelligibility of creation itself.

Thesis

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is not a mere regulative maxim of thought but a metaphysical expression of the intellect’s participation in divine intelligibility. In its strong sense, it is the formal imprint of the divine Logos within reason itself for it claims that nothing exists without a reason in God’s wisdom. To deny the PSR is not to defend freedom, but to sunder the bond between intellect and being. The Spirit of Understanding (Spiritus Intelligentiae) is the living mediation through which the created mind, in seeking reasons, reflects the inexhaustible rational plenitude of its Creator.

Locus Classicus

G. W. Leibniz, Monadologie, §§31–32 (1714):

“Aucun fait ne saurait être vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu’il y ait une raison suffisante pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement.”
(“No fact can be real or existing, no statement true, unless there is a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise.”)

Spinoza, Ethica, I, prop. 11, schol.:

“Deus sive Natura ex sola necessitate suae naturae existit et agit.”
(“God, or Nature, exists and acts solely from the necessity of His own nature.”)

Peter van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God” (1988):

“Not every truth has an explanation. Some things just are, and that is the end of the matter.”

Explicatio

The principium sufficientis rationis has traversed the entire history of metaphysics as both a law of thought and an ontological postulate.  In its strong form (Leibnizian–Spinozist), it affirms that for every fact or existent, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise, a reason ultimately grounded in divine necessity.  In its weak form (empiricist–Kantian), it is restricted to the domain of possible experience and accordingly becomes a principle of explanation, not of being.  In its moderate form (Aquinas, Wolff, contemporary metaphysical realism), it expresses the participation of created reason in the divine Logos, without collapsing contingency into necessity.

The denial of the PSR, exemplified by van Inwagen’s defense of “brute facts,” aims to preserve freedom and divine sovereignty by positing the inexplicable as metaphysically possible. Yet such denial undermines the very conditions of intelligibility, for if something is without reason, thought itself loses its foundation. A world containing “brute facts” is one in which the Logos is silent.

Theologically, the PSR expresses the Spirit’s inner witness to divine intelligibility in the act of understanding. The finite mind, in seeking sufficient reasons, manifests its participatio in ratione divina. To reason at all is already to echo the divine act of creation, in which being and meaning coincide.

Thus, the PSR is not merely a formal rule of inference but a metaphysical participation in God’s own self-understanding. Its strength is not coercive but luminous because the created intellect cannot but seek the reason of things, being formed as it is in the image of divine understanding.

Objectiones

Ob. I. The modern empiricism of David Hume and the contemporary naturalists argue that the PSR exceeds empirical warrant. Regularities can be observed, but “reason why” is an anthropomorphic projection; causality is habit, not necessity.

Ob. II. Kant held that the PSR is a principle of the Verstand, valid only within the realm of possible experience. Applied beyond phenomena, it yields antinomies. Hence, it is regulative, not constitutive.

Ob. III. Van Inwagen and other analytic metaphysicians contend that not every truth has an explanation. Some facts are “brute,” including free choices and the existence of God. Requiring a reason for everything annihilates freedom and reduces reality to mechanism.

Ob. IV. Sartre and Camus view the absence of sufficient reason as the condition of human freedom. The world is absurd, and meaning is not discovered but created by the self.

Ob. V. Certain theological voluntarists hold that God’s will is ultimate reason. To require a reason for the divine will is to subordinate God to rational necessity. Divine freedom transcends reason.

Responsiones

Ad I. Empiricism confuses the order of discovery with the order of being. That some reasons are hidden does not imply that none exist. The PSR concerns the intelligible ground of reality, not the limits of observation. Hume’s skepticism dissolves not causality but confidence in reason itself.

Ad II. Kant rightly confines the PSR within the phenomenal for critical purposes, but his very act of limitation presupposes its universality. To deny constitutive status to the PSR is already to presuppose that reality conforms to rational form, and this is an implicit metaphysical affirmation.

Ad III. The appeal to “brute facts” is a confession of explanatory despair, not a defense of freedom. Freedom is intelligible only as participation in the divine act of rational self-determination. A choice without reason is not free but arbitrary, and arbitrariness is impotence, not liberty.

Ad IV. Existentialist revolt against reason mistakes alienation for authenticity. The absurd arises not from being but from the will’s refusal to inhabit intelligibility. To assert meaning against the void is still to affirm the PSR implicitly; it is to claim the will to reason in spite of chaos.

Ad V. Divine will is not irrational but supremely rational, identical with divine wisdom. To require no reason beyond God is not to deny the PSR but to fulfill it: Deus est ratio sui. The PSR terminates not in logical deduction but in the subsistent Reason that is God Himself.

Nota

The principium sufficientis rationis stands at the heart of metaphysical realism. In its deepest sense, it is not a law imposed upon being but the trace of divine rationality within it. As the mind seeks sufficient reasons, it participates in the infinite coherence of the Logos. The PSR thus binds ontology and epistemology within the act of the Spirit: it is the metaphysical form of the intellect’s communion with God.

Modern denials of the PSR -- whether they be empiricist, analytic, or existentialist, -- arise from the fragmentation of reason’s participation in the divine. The task of theology is therefore not to reconstruct the PSR as an abstract axiom, but to recognize it as a participation in the eternal Reason by which all things are and are known.

Determinatio

1. The PSR may be distinguished in three senses:

   • Strong (Leibnizian–Spinozist): Every fact has a sufficient reason, grounded in divine necessity.

   • Moderate (Thomistic–Classical Realist): Every contingent being has a reason for its existence in God, but not all reasons are necessitating.

   • Weak (Kantian–Empiricist): The PSR is only a principle of empirical order, regulative for experience.

2. Theology adopts the moderate form: participation without collapse.

   • Contingency is preserved, but reason remains grounded in divine wisdom.

3. The PSR is therefore not merely a rule of logic (ratio cognoscendi), but an ontological participation (ratio essendi) in the divine act of understanding.

4. To deny the PSR is to deny that being is intelligible; and to deny intelligibility is to deny the Logos.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

The preceding disputation has established that the Principium Sufficientis Rationis is not a mere law of inference but a participation of finite reason in the divine Logos. It thus binds the act of thinking to the act of being and reveals in the search for “why” the trace of eternal Wisdom itself.

Yet the moment the PSR is affirmed ontologically, a tension arises:
If every being has a sufficient reason, is there room for contingency? Must all that is be necessary, as Spinoza contended, or can the contingent subsist within the sphere of intelligibility without dissolving into determinism?

The theological task is to interpret contingency not as absence of reason but as mode of reason, as a form of divine intelligibility expressed as finite freedom. For in creation, necessity does not abolish contingency but gives it foundation; and the contingent, rightly understood, is not the irrational remainder of the divine but the radiant overflow of divine plenitude.

We therefore advance to Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae, in which it will be asked whether contingency is grounded not in the negation of necessity but in its participation, so that the freedom of creatures is the temporal and finite reflection of divine rational love.