Disputatio XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae et Donatione Spiritus

On the Contingency of Grace and the Giving of the Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum gratia, quae ex necessitate amoris divini oritur, contingenter tamen conferatur, et quomodo huiusmodi contingens donum in ordine Spiritus collocetur.

Whether grace, though proceeding from the necessity of divine love, is nevertheless bestowed contingently, and how such a contingent gift is ordered within the work of the Spirit.

Thesis

Since God is love, Grace arises necessarily from the divine nature. However, since creatures are finite and free, this grace is received contingently. The contingency of grace does not contradict divine necessity but manifests it in temporal form: necessitas amoris becomes contingentia doni. The Holy Spirit mediates this transition, translating eternal plenitude into temporal gift. Accordingly, divine necessity may appear as freedom and love as grace.

Locus Classicus

Ὁ ἄνεμος πνεῖ ὅπου θέλει, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδας πόθεν ἔρχεται καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγει· οὕτως ἐστὶ πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ Πνεύματος.

— Ἰωάννης 3:8

“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” — John 3:8

Here Christ compares the Spirit’s operation to a wind that moves freely yet lawfully: ubi vult spirat. Grace thus reveals itself as contingent in its temporal bestowal though grounded in divine necessity. The Spirit acts neither by whim nor by determinism, but according to the wise freedom of love.

“Gratia Dei non est secundum debitum, sed secundum libertatem voluntatis eius.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q.112, a.1

“The grace of God is not given according to debt, but according to the freedom of His will.” — ST I–II, q.112, a.1

Aquinas locates grace between necessity and arbitrariness. God necessarily wills the good, yet the particular mode of His giving remains free. Grace manifests divine necessity under the aspect of freedom: necessitas amoris in libertate donationis.

“Ἡ χάρις ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια τοῦ Θεοῦ σωτήριος, ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ ἐν Πνεύματι Ἁγίῳ προϊοῦσα.”

— Γρηγόριος Νύσσης, In Canticum Canticorum Hom. XIII

“Grace is the saving energy of God, proceeding from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” — Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs XIII

Gregory presents grace as the dynamic operation (energeia) of the Triune life itself, as an eternal act proceeding from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Its contingency in time corresponds to its procession in eternity. What is eternal in God appears as temporal gift to creatures.

“Haec est summa et potissima fides Christianorum: credere Deum esse misericordem, non ex debito, non propter merita nostra, sed ex mera voluntate et gratuita bonitate.”

— Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio (WA 18, 719)

“This is the sum and substance of the Christian faith: to believe that God is merciful—not from obligation, nor because of our merits, but from His sheer will and gratuitous goodness.” — The Bondage of the Will

For Luther, the contingency of grace is the revelation of divine freedom, not its limitation. God acts freely because He is bound only to His own goodness. Grace is not a response to human disposition but the overflow of divine voluntas misericordiae. What seems contingent to us is the historical manifestation of a love that is, in God, eternal and necessary.

In these witnesses—the Gospel, Aquinas, Gregory, and Luther—the same paradox of grace is illuminated from differing angles. The Spirit’s freedom (ubi vult spirat), Aquinas’s libertas donationis, Gregory’s ἐνέργεια σωτήριος, and Luther’s mera voluntas et gratuita bonitas all converge upon one truth: that grace is both free and faithful, contingent in appearance yet necessary in source.

The contingency of grace thus safeguards the transcendence of divine love. Were grace necessary in its distribution, God’s will would be bound by external law; were it arbitrary, His goodness would cease to be intelligible. In reality, divine necessity and freedom coincide: Deus necessario et libere amat. The Spirit manifests this coincidence by translating eternal love into temporal acts of mercy, so that what is necessary in God may become contingent for us—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.

Explicatio

In the metaphysical structure developed in the preceding disputation, possibility mediates necessity and contingency. Here, that mediation takes personal and salvific form. Grace is the realization of divine possibility within time—the act whereby God’s eternal necessity expresses itself as temporal mercy.

Divine necessity, rightly understood, is not mechanical determination but the perfect consistency of love with itself. Because God is necessarily good, He necessarily wills to communicate His goodness. Yet the form of this communication is not determined by nature but by freedom. Hence, grace is necessary quoad Deum, contingent quoad creaturam.

This dual aspect explains the paradox of salvation: that it is both divinely willed from eternity and freely bestowed in time. The contingency of grace does not imply arbitrariness but the fittingness (convenientia) of divine wisdom to the diverse conditions of creatures. In the order of the Spirit, grace assumes contingency as its very mode—grace is not an exception to divine order but its most intimate manifestation.

The Spirit, therefore, is the person of contingency in God: not in the sense of mutability, but as the openness of divine love to new relations. As the Father is the source and the Son the expression, the Spirit is the donation—the actuality of possibility, the temporalization of the eternal.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Necessitarianism claims that if grace flows necessarily from the divine nature, then no act of God could fail to bestow it. The contingency of grace would be illusory, for divine will would coincide with natural necessity.

Ob. II.  Libertarianism holds that if grace is contingent, then it is arbitrary; divine freedom becomes indistinguishable from caprice, and God’s constancy of love is undermined.

Ob. III. Pelegianism argues that if grace is contingent in its bestowal, then human cooperation can determine its reception. The gift becomes dependent on creaturely conditions rather than divine initiative.

Ob. IV. Modern Determinism supposes that contingency is merely epistemic, a function of our ignorance. From the standpoint of divine omniscience, grace is neither free nor contingent, but eternally fixed in a necessary decree.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine necessity concerns the actus amoris, not the modus doni. God necessarily loves, but the way in which this love is communicated remains free. The distinction between essence and economy safeguards both necessity and contingency without contradiction.

Ad II. Divine freedom is not indeterminacy but superabundant self-determination. Grace is contingent not because it lacks reason but because its reason lies beyond necessity: ratio doni est bonitas donantis, not the need of the recipient.

Ad III. Human cooperation does not cause grace but manifests it. The contingency of grace includes the contingency of secondary causes; God ordains human response as the created medium through which His free gift becomes visible.

Ad IV. The contingency of grace is ontological, not merely epistemic. From the divine perspective, the act is necessary; from the creaturely perspective, it is free and unforeseen. The one act of God appears under two modalities, necessity and contingency, according to the order of participation.

Nota

Grace is the contingentia caritatis: the form in which divine love enters time. It is the historical mode of that which is metaphysically eternal. The contingency of grace is thus not an imperfection but its splendor—the glory of divine freedom refracted through the prism of created finitude.

The Spirit is the agent of this refracting. As light passing through crystal diversifies without division, so the Spirit distributes grace “as He wills” (1 Cor. 12:11), revealing the inexhaustible creativity of divine necessity. In every contingent act of grace, eternity touches time anew.

Determinatio

1. Grace proceeds necessarily from the divine essence: God, being Love itself (□G → □L), cannot but communicate Himself; the necessity of grace is identical with the necessity of divine self-diffusion.

2. The manifestation of grace is contingent: although grace proceeds necessarily in God, its historical and personal appearance (◊Gr ∧ ¬□Gr) depends upon the receptivity of creatures and the divine will’s fitting adaptation to them.

3. The Holy Spirit mediates between necessity and contingency: in the Spirit, the unchanging love of God becomes freely given gift (□L → ◊Gr), so that divine necessity is expressed as temporal generosity without ceasing to be eternal.

4. Contingency in grace is not defect but plenitude: it signifies not imperfection but the overflow of infinite love into finite form—the mode by which immutability makes the new possible.

5. In Christ the logic of grace is fulfilled: the eternally necessary Son (□F) becomes contingently incarnate (◊F), and through this union the necessity of love and the freedom of gift coincide.

6. Thus, the contingency of grace reveals divine rationality as donation: grace is intelligibility-in-gift, the rational outpouring of necessary love through the Spirit into the ever-new contingencies of creation.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVIII: De Fine Creationis et Ordine Amoris

The mystery of grace leads inevitably to the mystery of order. For every gift implies an orientation, and every donation seeks its end. If grace is the contingent manifestation of divine love, then creation itself must be ordered toward love as its final cause.

The next disputation therefore asks how this ordo amoris—the harmony between divine necessity, created freedom, and ultimate purpose—constitutes the final intelligibility of all things. We turn from the contingency of grace to the teleology of love, from donum to finis.

Let us transition then to Disputationem XLVIII: De Fine Creationis et Ordine Amoris, in which we shall demonstrate that love, which is necessary in God and contingent in grace, also pertains to the universal end through which everything returns in the unity of the Spirit. 

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.  Existentialism 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 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.