Knowledge, Power and Providence

The big question

If God knows everything that will happen, can I really choose? If God can do anything, why doesn’t he stop wars, cancer and cruelty? And if he governs the whole world, is he responsible for the evil in it? This is the hardest question in the unit, and for many people the hardest question about God.

What the Church teaches

God knows all things, past, present and future, including what creatures will freely do. “All things are naked and open to his eyes”, as Vatican I put it, even what will come about by the free action of creatures (Dei Filius ch. 1; DH 3003).

God is almighty. He can do whatever is possible (Creed; Lateran IV, DH 800).

God protects and governs by his providence everything he has made (Dei Filius ch. 1; DH 3003).

How sure is this? De fide for all three. See CCC 268–274 and 302–314.

God is not the author of evil. He does not will or cause sin. He permits moral evil, out of respect for the freedom of his creatures, and knows how to bring good out of it (Trent, Session VI, canon 6, DH 1556; CCC 311–312).

How sure is this? De fide that God is not the cause of sin. The explanation of why he permits evil is the Church’s teaching (CCC 309–314), not a defined formula.

Where it comes from

Scripture. God’s knowledge: “before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). His power: “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37). His providence reaches the smallest things: not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father, and “even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:29–30).

Scripture also shows God drawing good out of evil. Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, tells them years later: “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). St Paul writes that “in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Romans 8:28). And Scripture does not hide from suffering: the Book of Job and many Psalms are honest cries of pain, which God answers not with an explanation but with himself (Job 38–42).

The early Church. St Augustine gave the answer that Aquinas and the Catechism both repeat: God, being supremely good, would not allow any evil in his works unless he were so powerful and so good as to bring good even out of evil (Enchiridion 11; Summa I, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; CCC 311).

How theologians explain it

How God knows the future without forcing it. God is eternal (Lesson 2.3): he does not wait for the future to arrive. All of time is present to him at once. Aquinas uses the image of a traveller on a road who sees only those near him, while someone on a hilltop sees the whole road at a glance (Summa I, q. 14, a. 13). God’s seeing what you will choose does not make you choose it, any more than my seeing you sit down makes you sit.

What “almighty” means. God can do anything that is possible. A “square circle” or a “stone too heavy for God to lift” is not a thing God cannot do; it is not a thing at all, just words that contradict each other (Summa I, q. 25, a. 3). God also cannot sin, because sin is a failure, and God cannot fail.

Providence works through creatures. God does not usually act instead of creatures, but through them. He gives creatures the dignity of being real causes themselves (CCC 306–308). When you choose freely, the choice is fully yours and also fully sustained by God, at different levels, like a story that is wholly written by its author and wholly lived by its characters.

What evil is. Evil is not a thing God made. It is a privation: the absence of a good that should be there. Blindness is not a substance; it is the lack of sight in an eye that should see. Sin is not a thing; it is the lack of right order in a free choice. So God, who creates only good things, is not the creator of evil.

Why God permits evil. The Catechism gives no single slogan, but several parts of an answer (CCC 309–314):

1. Physical evil: God created a world still on its way to its final perfection, in which some things come into being as others pass away (CCC 310).
2. Moral evil: God gave angels and humans real freedom, so that they could love him, and freedom includes the power to refuse (CCC 311).
3. Good from evil: God brings good out of evil, sometimes in ways we can see, often in ways we cannot yet (CCC 312).
4. The Cross: the greatest evil ever done, the killing of God’s Son, became the source of the greatest good, our redemption (CCC 312).
5. Only at the end: we will fully understand God’s ways only when we see him face to face (CCC 314).

The Catechism says that every part of the Christian message is, in part, an answer to the question of evil (CCC 309). The answer is the whole faith, not one argument.

An open question. How exactly God’s grace and providence fit with human freedom is debated. Thomists and Molinists, two schools of Catholic theology, give different accounts, and the Church has allowed both. Unit 8 returns to this.

Philosophy bridge

Two ideas from the philosophy course carry this lesson. The first is primary and secondary causation: an effect can come wholly from God, as first cause, and wholly from a creature, as secondary cause, without competition. The second is evil as privation: evil is a lack in something good, not a thing in its own right.

What the Church does not claim

• Not that God wills evil. God permits sin but never wills or causes it.
• Not that every suffering is a punishment. When the disciples asked whether a man was born blind because of his own sin or his parents’, Jesus answered that it was neither (John 9:2–3).
• Not that we can always see the reason. Christians are not asked to explain every tragedy. Sometimes the right response is silence, presence and prayer, as Job’s friends did well for seven days before they spoke (Job 2:13).
• Not fatalism. Providence does not mean “it was going to happen anyway, so nothing I do matters”. God works through our choices, including our prayers.
• Not that prayer is pointless. God has willed to give some things through our asking, so that prayer is one of the causes through which his providence works (Summa II-II, q. 83, a. 2).

Check your understanding

1. Name the three attributes of God this lesson covers, and the document that defined them.

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Omniscience (God knows all things, including future free acts), omnipotence (God can do whatever is possible), and providence (God governs all things). They were defined by Vatican I in Dei Filius, chapter 1.

2. Use Aquinas’s image of the hilltop to explain why God’s foreknowledge does not take away our freedom.

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A traveller on a road sees only those near him; someone on a hilltop sees the whole road at once. God, being eternal, sees all of time at once. Seeing what we choose does not make us choose it, just as seeing someone sit down does not make them sit.

3. Can God make a square circle? Explain your answer.

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No, but this is no limit on his power. A square circle is a contradiction, not a possible thing, so there is nothing there to be made. Omnipotence means the power to do whatever is possible.

4. What does it mean to say evil is a privation? Why does it matter?

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Evil is the absence of a good that should be present, like blindness in an eye. It matters because it means evil is not a thing God created; God creates only what is good.

5. Give two parts of the Church’s answer to why God permits evil.

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Any two of: physical evil belongs to a world still on its way to perfection; moral evil comes from the real freedom God gave creatures so they could love him; God brings good out of evil, above all in the Cross; we will fully understand only when we see God face to face.