Aquinas on Providence, Control, and Divine Simplicity

The Providential Collapse of the Providential Collapse Argument

Abstract

In this article, I address Joe Schmid’s argument of providential collapse against divine simplicity. After presenting my reservations about Daniel Shield’s solution based on Aquinas’s theory of relations, I outline a three-step strategy to defend classical theism against Schmid’s argument: two steps are based on Aquinas’s doctrine of providence, and the third is based on his conception of causal control. The first step is to show that, given God’s goals in creation, fixing all the facts about God doesn’t imply that any world can come about randomly. The second step lies in showing that an indeterministic conception of providence, in which God doesn’t predetermine secondary causes but counts with their real contingency, is compatible with God’s control over His fundamental goals in creation. The third step is to show that, according to Aquinas’s conception of causal control, nothing can prevent God from having downstream control of His effects.