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
Necessity and contingency are not opposites but correlative modes: the latter presupposes the former as its ground.
Divine necessity is identical with goodness and wisdom; it does not compel but overflows.
Created contingency arises from divine necessity as gift, not as exception.
Freedom is not irrational spontaneity but participation in rational self-giving.
The Spirit mediates necessity and contingency, rendering creation intelligible yet free.
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.
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