Aquinas’ Reception and Modification of Boethius’ Theory on the Relationship between Providence and Free Will

Abstract

Aquinas largely adopts Boethius’s approach to the relationship between providence and free will, yet he remains acutely aware of the inherent difficulties in this framework. In his efforts to address and resolve these challenges, Aquinas continues to draw upon Boethius’s own philosophical resources—a point that has not been sufficiently emphasized by scholars. This paper begins by tracing Boethius’s views on providence as presented in the Consolatio Philosophiae: because God’s mode of knowledge is fundamentally different from that of humans, His providence is non-temporal and necessary. Consequently, future contingent events and human free actions exhibit different modalities and temporal characteristics in themselves and within God’s knowledge. The difficulty with this idea lies in explaining how God can engage in a causal relationship with creatures that exist under different existential modalities. This paper further argues that in addressing this issue, Aquinas, by unifying providence with creation, utilizes Boethius’s distinctions between existence (esse) and essence (essentia), as well as the three different modes of participation, to describe God’s causal influence on creatures as a unique form of causal participation. This is different from intentional participation (where a particular participates in a universal) or ontological participation (where a substance participates in accidents), and is instead based on the idea that existence itself cannot be participated in, thereby describing a causality that grants existence and modes of existence in a creative sense. This form of participation is distinct because it implies a creative causality where the cause (God) is entirely extrinsic to its effect (creatures). Thus, by asserting that God exerts causal influence on creatures while preserving His transcendent nature and distinctly different mode of existence, Aquinas ultimately resolves the mentioned difficulty. This study enhances our understanding of how Aquinas inherited and employed Boethius’s philosophical resources to provide a more robust ontological account of human free will and to resolve the tensions inherent in Boethius’s thought.