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

What was named ontologically as possibility in the preceding disputation here appears personally and economically as the work of the Holy Spirit. 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 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

1. Possibility is the ontological condition of intelligibility itself.
2. Necessity names intelligibility wholly grounded in itself.
3. Contingency names intelligibility grounded in another and received as gift.
4. Possibility is that by virtue of which intelligibility can be either self-grounding or gift-grounding at all.
5. It is non-algorithmic, non-coercive, and real.
6. 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.

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.