On Possibility as the Ontological Mean between Necessity and Contingency
Quaeritur
Utrum possibilitas sit conditio ontologica intelligibilitatis ipsius, qua ens vel sit per se intelligibile et necessarium, vel sit intelligibile per aliud et contingens; et utrum sine tali possibilitate neque necessitas neque contingentia intelligi possint.
Whether possibility is the ontological condition of intelligibility itself, by virtue of which a being is either intelligible in itself and necessary, or intelligible through another and contingent; and whether without such possibility neither necessity nor contingency can be intelligible at all.
Thesis
Possibility is not a logical operator nor a deficient mode of being, but the ontological openness of intelligibility itself. Necessity names being whose intelligible ground is wholly internal to itself.
Contingency names being whose intelligible ground lies in another and is received as gift. Possibility is that by virtue of which intelligibility can be either self-grounding or gift-grounded at all.
In God, necessity and possibility coincide without tension; in creatures, possibility appears as the condition of contingent reception.
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. — Aristotle, Metaphysica Θ, 1046a10
“Power is the principle of change in another, or in the same insofar as it is 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
Intelligibility here names not epistemic accessibility nor semantic coherence, but the ontological ground by virtue of which a being is what it is and is determinately intelligible as such. Necessity and contingency are often introduced as opposed modal statuses: what cannot be otherwise versus what might have been otherwise. Such descriptions are formally correct but ontologically superficial. They describe how propositions behave under modal operators, not what must be true of being itself for such distinctions to be meaningful.
This disputation proceeds at a deeper level. It asks how necessity and contingency are grounded in intelligibility.
A being is necessary insofar as the intelligibility of what it is is wholly internal to itself. Such a being does not depend upon another either for its being or for its being intelligible as what it is. Its act of being is self-identical and self-grounding. Necessity, so understood, is not brute inevitability but ontological sufficiency of intelligibility.
A being is contingent not because it is incomplete or only partially actual, but because the intelligibility of what it is does not reside wholly within itself. A contingent being is fully actual. What it lacks is not being, but self-grounding intelligibility. Its intelligible ground lies in another. Contingency therefore names not deficiency but donation. To be contingent is to be intelligible as gift.
Necessity and contingency thus differ not by degree of actuality but by the location of their intelligible ground. One is intelligible per se; the other per aliud.
Yet this distinction itself presupposes a deeper condition. For intelligibility to be either self-grounded or gift-grounded, intelligibility must not be closed upon itself. There must be something by virtue of which intelligibility is open to grounding without being exhausted by any particular grounding. This condition is what we name possibility.
Possibility here is not unrealized potential, nor a lack awaiting fulfillment, nor a merely logical consistency condition. It is not a shadowy intermediate realm between nothing and being. Nor is it identical with Aristotelian potentiality understood as ordered toward act as its completion. Rather, possibility names the ontological openness of intelligibility itself: the fact that intelligibility, even when fully actual, is not exhausted by self-identity alone.
In necessary being, this openness is not indeterminacy. It is the non-exhaustive character of actuality itself. Necessary being is wholly intelligible in itself, yet its intelligibility does not close upon itself in sterile self-containment. It includes within itself the condition for intelligibility beyond itself without requiring such intelligibility to be realized. In this sense, necessity and possibility coincide in God, not because God is incomplete, but because divine actuality is not consumptive of intelligibility.
In contingent beings, this same ontological openness appears under the form of reception. What in God is self-grounded openness appears in creatures as dependence. The contingent does not generate its own intelligibility; it receives it. Yet such reception would be unintelligible unless intelligibility were already open to donation. Contingency therefore presupposes real possibility.
Possibility is thus not a third ontological category alongside necessity and contingency. It is the condition under which intelligibility can be either self-grounded or gift-grounded at all. It is prior not temporally, but intelligibly. Without it, necessity would collapse into closed self-identity and contingency into brute facticity.
Bridging Clarification
This account must be distinguished from both modal logic and classical potentiality. Modal systems presuppose a domain of intelligibility within which necessity and possibility can be formally tracked. They do not explain the ontological openness that makes such tracking meaningful. Likewise, potentiality conceived as a lack ordered toward completion cannot account for creation, freedom, or grace without collapsing contingency into hidden necessity.
The possibility articulated here is neither a formal operator nor an incomplete state of being. It is intelligibility considered precisely as non-exhaustive and non-algorithmic: real, grounded, and open to otherness without compulsion.
Objectiones
Ob. I. Possibility pertains only to cognition, not to being itself. It names the agreement of concepts with conditions of experience and cannot ground necessity or contingency ontologically.
Ob. II. If God is necessary, then all that proceeds from God proceeds necessarily. Possibility therefore names only ignorance of necessity.
Ob. III. Human existence is defined by projected possibility. Possibility is grounded in freedom, not in divine intelligibility.
Ob. IV. If all possibilities are real, then contingency dissolves into a plurality of equally actual worlds.
Responsiones
Ad I. Epistemic possibility presupposes ontological intelligibility. Conditions of experience are intelligible only because intelligibility is real prior to cognition.
Ad II. Divine necessity is not coercive but communicative. To deny real possibility is to deny creation.
Ad III. Existential projection presupposes an ontological horizon of intelligibility not generated by the subject.
Ad IV. Possibilities are real as intelligible grounds in God, not as parallel actualities.
Nota
The ontology of possibility articulated here is the condition for judgment itself. Rules do not determine their own applicability, and formal systems do not certify their own adequacy. Judgment requires intelligibility that is open without being subjective.
Possibility is therefore the ontological correlate of teleo-space: the real, non-algorithmic openness by which standards can be articulated, rules assessed, and forms evaluated as successful or unsuccessful. Without such possibility, intelligibility would either be mechanized or subjectivized.
Possibility is thus not optional. It is the condition under which intelligibility can ground normativity without coercion and freedom without arbitrariness.
Determinatio
- Possibility is the ontological condition of intelligibility itself.
- Necessity names intelligibility wholly grounded in itself.
- Contingency names intelligibility grounded in another and received as gift.
- Possibility is that by virtue of which intelligibility can be either self-grounding or gift-grounding at all.
- It is non-algorithmic, non-coercive, and real.
- Therefore, possibility is the ontological mean between necessity and contingency, not as a third thing, but as the condition under which both are intelligible.
Theologically, this possibility corresponds to the Logos as the ground of intelligibility in which all things are intelligible before they are actual.
Transitus ad Disputationem XLVII
If intelligibility is open without compulsion, then gift is possible without necessity and freedom without arbitrariness. What metaphysics discerns as ontological possibility, theology encounters as grace.
For if grace proceeds from the necessary goodness of God, yet is received as undeserved and contingent, then grace must be grounded in that openness of intelligibility by which necessity gives without compelling and contingency receives without claim.
Thus we proceed to ask whether grace, though rooted in divine necessity, manifests itself as a contingent gift—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.
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