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Further along his his treatment of de Lubac, Milbank discusses the change in the meaning of causality and divine causality in the medieval period. Drawing on the work of Jacob Schmutz, he gives this account: Prior to 1250, influentia <\/em> was understood in its etymological sense as a \u201cflowing-in\u201d from God to creatures. As Milbank says, from this viewpoint, \u201cthe \u2018general\u2019 divine activity is indissociable from God\u2019s \u2018special\u2019 activity, his overall from his particular providence.\u201d Bringing in the category of gift, Milbank notes that on this view \u201cthe creative influence of God does not influence creation, but posits creation as influence (it is \u2018a gift of a gift to a gift\u2019). In this sense, it is radically unilateral.\u201d But as a radically unilateral gift, it is a gift of gratitude, and must be \u201csince outside gratitude (the worshiping \u2018return\u2019 of all things to their source, from which they alone have existence) there is no finite esse <\/em> .\u201d <\/p>\n Divine and human causation are thus never in competition; causation is not a \u201czero-sum game\u201d in which creaturely causation can only be affirmed at the expense of divine causation. Everything is wholly the product of God\u2019s action, and yet at the same time it is totally caused by creatures. By the 13th century, however, this view was disrupted and \u201cinfluentia\u201d began to mean \u201csimply an extrinsic conditioning, as when one says \u2018I was too much influenced by that person.\u2019\u201d On the older view, \u201cthe higher and especially the highest cause is always more deeply active at a lower level than any secondary cause\u201d (God is more deeply the cause of my sneezing than the particles in my nose); on the newer view, \u201ca higher cause operating on a lower level is just \u2018one other\u2019 causal factor \u2013 like homework set by a teacher for the evning which is only one factor, alongside the demands of boyfriends and girlfriends, what\u2019s on downtown, etc., determining how the evening will actually be spent.\u201d Divine causality comes to be seen as a \u201cgeneral\u201d influence that is supplemented by the special influence of miracles, and primary and secondary causes join forces, as it were, in a shared concursus. <\/p>\n Aquinas had said that lumber comes to be a table by the causal power of the saw; but \u201cthe form of the bench comes from the skilled mind which uses the tool.\u201d Scotus, by contrast, denied that the heart could write letters without the \u201cadditional\u201d causal power of the hand. Aquinas saw the table coming to reality as the primary cause employed tools to achieve the final cause; Scotus saw a letter coming to reality by the combination of the primary cause and a secondary cause. <\/p>\n Another example: \u201cBonaventure says that man can do good by his own force with only the help of the divine general concursus. Here already there is opened to view the model that will later be represented by metaphors of two men pulling one barge and so forth, and Schmutz notes that Adolf Harnack astutely saw in Bonaventure a beginning of semi-Pelagianism.\u201d In this, Bonaventure was following Alexander of Hales, \u201cwho had spoken of the natural concursus <\/em> as being at work even in the case of gratia superinfusa <\/em> . In the case of both general and specific divine causality, a sphere of independent and partial causality had been reserved for the creature. And this is already the space of natura pura <\/em> .\u201d By rejecting, or at least circumscribing the place of pure nature (at best, a mere limiting concept), Aquinas was \u201d more <\/em> Augustinian than the Augustinians.\u201d <\/p>\n Again, one of the interesting things about this account is the light it sheds on current debates within the Reformed world. Is the Reformed doctrine of concursus a throwback to the older view of influentia that Milbank describes? Or does it assume that the secondary causes are \u201cadded\u201d to divine causality, as some independent second factor on their own? Classically, it seems to me that the WCF revives the older tradition: Divine causality does not destroy or work alongside secondary causes, but establishes secondary causes. Berkof echoes Milbank\u2019s point that in the divine concursus God is always the primary cause. But has Reformed theology worked this notion of causality out in its soteriology? And, has the Reformed tradition always held to this notion of causality? Has the Reformed tradition reckoned with the ontological <\/em> import of its soteriology, of Paul\u2019s question, What do you have that you have not received? <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Further along his his treatment of de Lubac, Milbank discusses the change in the meaning of causality and divine causality in the medieval period. Drawing on the work of Jacob Schmutz, he gives this account: Prior to 1250, influentia was understood in its etymological sense as a \u201cflowing-in\u201d from God to creatures. As Milbank says, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
By this account, God is the \u201csingle unilateral and total cause of everything,\u201d but at the same time since \u201che causes by sharing his own nature, by giving his gifts to-be, the lower levels exert within their own sphere their own secondary and equally total causality. There is a kind of \u2018exchange without reciprocity.\u2019 There is reciprocity in the Trinity, and reciprocity within the Creation, but not between the Creation and God, because even though there is \u2018exchange\u2019 in the sense that creatures receive by returning, God properly receives nothing.\u201d God\u2019s unilateral influence is not \u201cgeneral in the sense of establishing an overall determining parameter,\u201d but rather in specific actions and causations of the creation: \u201cthe determining is here only established (creative cause within the Creation) in and with the determined, the general only as the sum of specific instances, even though it is a dynamis in excess of those instances.\u201d <\/p>\n