A Summary of The Doctrine of Providence by St. Thomas Aquinas

Here are some of my personal reflections from a class on St. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of Providence by Fr. Serge-Thomas Bonino at the Angelicum (2023-24). For the sake of my own understanding, I’ve summarized it all through 5 identities for God. Please note that Fr. Bonino did not use these titles.

#1: God is a Planner

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

“The plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations” (Psalm 33:11).

Providence “is the plan existing in the intellect directing the ordering of some things towards an end” (STh, I q.23 a.4 resp.).

Providence is the plan (or “ratio” in Latin) conceived by God in His eternity to bring creatures to their end. That is why Aquinas puts the subject of Providence within the framework of God’s operational perfections (STh I q. 22-23).

For Aquinas, everything is considered in relation to God’s providential plan. All of theology, or sacra doctrina, as he puts it in question 1 of the Summa, is either about God Himself (qq.2-43) or about everything else in relation to God as 1st principle and final end (rest of the Summa).

God is NOT just “the Big Banger” – who started the whole process and is watching it all unfold. No. He is still intimately involved in the providential playing out of the whole of salvation history. And He is the perfect planner. Nothing and no one can prevent His perfect plan from being achieved (see Isaiah 14:27).

In the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council: “God, by His providence, preserves and governs all things He has created, stretching from one end to the other with might, and sweetly ordering all things (Wis 8:1).”

In a way, God sees everything unfolding from His eternity in the ever-present NOW. Imagine if you could chart out every event in history – past, present, and future – on a piece of paper. And then it all became alive. It was all “alive” or fully present, as if each moment was happening right now. That is an idea of what it is like for God to be present to everything in His divine providence.

#2: God is an Artist

“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).

“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10).

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:13-14).

Just as an artist has a type of “universal knowledge” of the works he is creating because (1) he has arranged it all in his mind beforehand & (2) is intimately involved in the entire process of his creation of art, God is the real Divine Artist. He has universal knowledge of the works He is creating because (1) He has arranged it all in His mind beforehand & (2) is intimately involved in the entire process of his creation. Everything is within His providential plan. All beings, down to their most minute determinations, are integrated into God’s “artistic plan.”

God is still intimately involved in the artwork of His creation. God’s intimate work of creation is only complete in the “new heavens and the new earth” at the end of time (see Revelation 21). So God is not a watchmaker who just wound up the world & is letting it tick, tick, tick. No. He is an Artist who is intimately involved right now just as much as He was in the first moments of creation.

God’s divine artwork with us humans is a very special project. We are not inanimate material. We are not a block of marble or a lump of lifeless clay. We are living artwork. We have the capacity to cooperate with His artistic strokes.

The saints are God’s best artwork. They are living images that reflect the glory of God most perfectly on this side of Heaven. St. Edit Stein spoke of the relationship between God as the Divine Artist and His living artwork in her own life (click here to learn more).

#3: God is a Miracle Worker

“You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples” (Psalm 77:14).

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27).

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28)

“Something is called a miracle when it is produced outside the device of the entire created nature” (STh I, q. 110, a. 4).

Aquinas treats miracles not in relation to the omnipotence of God but in the context of God’s providence & the divine government. Why? Miracles, for Aquinas, serve a purpose in the divine government of God. They are real, objective events that give us credible signs to make acts of faith in the “objects of faith.”

Since the “objects of faith” – like the Incarnation and the Eucharist – are the most hidden miracles, God, in His wisdom and love, has ordained in His providential design, to give us miracles, that is, the most visible external miracles – to inspire us to make acts of faith.

Therefore, miracles are classified for Aquinas according to their proximity to the key miracle of the Incarnation – the greatest miracle & cause of other miracles.

Miracles also show the true theological vocation of the world – to be a sign of the glory of God. Miracles are an anticipation and the pledge of the “new heaven and the new earth” (Revelation 21:1), when the entire creation will reach its true finality by placing itself at the service of the Kingdom of God, that is, at the service of the union of spiritual creatures with the Holy Trinity. Miracles, therefore, allow us to glimpse the vocation of the cosmos and the material world from now on.

#4: God is a Team Player

“For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:3-6)

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).

God is the leader of His divine government. He has no need for anyone to be on His team. He does not need to delegate any tasks to complete His plans. But, out of His sheer goodness and love, God chooses to allow us to cooperate in His providential plans. God chooses for us to be on His team and plan a secondary but essential role in salvation history.

Out of His supreme goodness, God manifests the law of the generosity of being. His good is supremely diffusive of self. And He gives us the dignity of being a cause – of actively cooperating in causality to bring forth the glory of God. For example, teachers show for their causality when they not only teacher others and transfer information but they help transform their students into teachers for others.

Whenever God allows us to cooperate, it is essential to remember that this is NOT delegation but cooperation. God remains the leader. We fully cooperate as secondary causes. God fully cooperates as primary cause. God is the first cause that operates in the secondary causes and through them. As Augustine puts it, “You were more inward to me than my most inward part and higher than my highest” (Latin: interior intimo meo et superior summo meo ) (Confessions III, 6, 11).

There is no competition here at all. We are operating at different levels. God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens – Subsistent Being Itself. We share in common being.

God works in our operational capacity to act = God gives, preserves & applies our operational capacity in all of our actions. Always. 100%. God operates within every created operation. Intimate.

Prayer is the most noble and effective way we can cooperate with God on His team. We are right to ask God, the source of all goodness, what seems necessary/appropriate for us & those for whom we are responsible (both physically and spiritually – there is no dualism for Aquinas). This is not selfish but rather an act of the moral virtue of religion, in which man recognizes his humble situation as a creature before his Creator.

Prayer is effective in God’s providence because He has ordained specific effects to be granted through our prayers.

EXAMPLE: St. Monica participated in God’s providence. God determined this from all eternity. God did NOT change his mind. Through secondary free cause of Monica’s prayers & tears effective – this action of Monica has always been known and desired by Providence, which inserts it into her device as a proximate cause of Augustine’s conversion. God wants Augustine’s conversion from eternity, as well as the manifestation of the power of Monica’s intercession, that He has arranged that Augustine’s conversion be the moral consequence of the free and meritorious prayer that He himself puts in Monica’s heart.

#5: God is a Father

Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5:17).

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3:1).

“And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children— My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.” Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? ⁸ If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. ⁹ Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?” (Heb 12:5-9).

God, in His absolute power, could stop His ontological influence and allow everything to immediately return to nothingness. There is nothing contradictory for a creature who came out of nothingness by God to return to nothing by God. Just as God could not have created, God could still now freely suspend his own conservative influence.

This hypothesis of the annihilation of creation is a pedagogical way to make people understand, through the mental operation of negation, the radicality, perhaps unobserved, of conservative action. Regarding the verse: “My Father is still working” (John 5:17).

But God’s preservation of creatures is a scriptural truth rooted in the goodness of His being. God, in His ordained power, directs His power perfectly towards His wisdom and love. Sacred Scripture shows that God, out of love & the goodness of His will, freely preserves and maintains in being everything he has created. He is a Father who never ceases to confirm the blessing of the origins, his great “yes” to creation, despite the sins of men who disfigure it and subject it to vanity, as we see at the end of the episode of the flood.

“Christ speaks of the daily providence of God – because God was not satisfied with creating the world, but arranges it after having brought it into existence, even if you speak of the angels, the archangels, the superior powers, even if, in short, you call all things visible and invisible, they equally benefit from his providence; but if they are deprived of this life-giving action, they disappear, dissipate and perish” (St. John Chrysostom, On the equality of nature between the Father and the Son , Homily xii).

If we keep in mind the intrinsic relationship of divine power to other divine perfections, such as wisdom and goodness, God never annihilates his works. This would contradict the plan of love and wisdom that lies at the origin of creation. The communication of being results from the free choice of God. God is consistent and does not change his intentions.

“I have learned that all the works that God has done endure forever” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).

God is a loving Father through and through. In prayer, God knows better than we do what we need: “For all these things the Gentiles are concerned; for your heavenly Father knows that you need it” (Mt 6:32). Rather, it is a matter of expressing for ourselves, in order to be more aware of it, the need we have for God regarding a lack we are experiencing.

Let’s listen to St. Athanasius: “After having made all things through the eternal Word and having given existence to creation, God the Father does not let what he has made go adrift, nor abandons it to a blind natural impulse that causes it to fall back into nothingness. But, good as he is, with his Word, who is also God, he guides and sustains the entire world, so that creation, illuminated by his guidance, his providence and his order, can persist in being. Indeed, the world becomes a participant in the Word of the Father, to be supported by him and not cease to exist. This would certainly happen if it were not preserved by the Word, because he is “the image of the invisible God, begotten before every creature” (Col 1:15)” (Treatise against the pagans , 41).

God is our Father. He cares about us more than we can ever imagine.

In the Old Testament, the theme of God’s fatherhood was present but not clear. He was referred to as a father in the sense of being the Creator of all things and in the sense of “adopting” Israel, giving them an identity, and educating them. There was no sense of biological paternity. God was infinitely distant.

In the New Testament, the theme of God’s fatherhood was radicalized in the person of Jesus Christ. God is now first and foremost the Father of this Son, Jesus. Jesus calls God “Abba” (father!) – very original – Jesus turned to God like a child to his father, with full trust and love, but at the same time with respect and willingness to obey. This can be seen as the 1st clue to the divinity of Christ.

Furthermore, Jesus invites his disciples to participate in His unique filial relationship – “my Father and your Father” [John 20:17], so that we are sons in the Son (filii in Filio).