Concept

Concurrentism

Intro

Concurrentism is the position that God both sustains creatures in existence and directly cooperates with every causal act they perform. Creatures are real causes, their powers are genuine, but no creaturely causal act takes place without God's concursus, His concurrent cooperation.

On this view, when fire burns cotton, the fire really causes the burning, and God concurrently acts with the fire so that the burning happens. The fire is not just an occasion (occasionalism's view) and not a creature acting on its own (mere conservationism's view); the fire is a real cause whose causing requires and includes God's cooperating action.

Concurrentism is the mainstream Christian position on God's relationship to created causation. It is the Thomist Catholic standard, the dominant Reformed view, and the position of most classical Eastern Orthodox theology. It is also the goldilocks middle position between the two extremes: Occasionalism (God is the only cause; creatures are mere occasions) and Divine Conservationism (God sustains existence but creatures act on their own).

The position is associated above all with Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), whose Summa Theologiae I q. 105 and Summa Contra Gentiles III qq. 65-70 develop it as part of a broader theology of divine action. The position has been developed throughout the Thomist tradition (Suarez, Cajetan, Banez, the post-Tridentine commentators), the Reformed orthodoxy (Calvin in his less-developed but Augustinian form; the post-Reformation Reformed scholastics, especially Turretin, Owen, and the Westminster theologians), and in modern philosophy of religion (notably Alfred Freddoso of Notre Dame).

In full

Concurrentism is the metaphysical-theological doctrine that every creaturely causal act involves both the creature's real power and God's concurrent cooperating action. The position is articulated in the scholastic vocabulary of concursus: God's concursus generalis is His general concurrence with every creaturely act simply qua causal; His concursus specialis (or praevenient, cooperans) names additional forms of concurrence in specific cases (especially grace). The doctrine has a metaphysical dimension (what does God do when a creature acts?) and a theological dimension (how does the doctrine ground providence, grace, and the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom?).

The position is the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis applied to divine action. It takes Aristotle's seriousness about substantial causal powers and combines it with the Augustinian-biblical seriousness about God's continuous activity in creation. Creatures are not mere occasions (against occasionalism); creatures act with real power. But creatures do not act independently (against conservationism); creatures act with God's concurrent cooperation in every act.

The key technical idea: every creaturely act has a dual structure. Considered from the creature's side, it is a real exercise of the creature's natural causal powers (a real burning by the fire, a real willing by the will, a real flowing of the water). Considered from God's side, the same act is God's concurrent action with the creature, such that the creature's power is exercised because God concurrently empowers it to be exercised. The two descriptions are not in competition; they describe the same act under different aspects.

The position is the mainstream across Christian theology. The Catholic Church's standard expositions (the Roman Catechism, the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church §§300-308, the Thomist commentaries) endorse it. The Reformed confessions (Westminster, Belgic, the Helvetic confessions) endorse it. Eastern Orthodox theology endorses it in its own categories (the doctrine of synergeia). It is the position the doctrine of Providence presupposes.

Historical development

Patristic foundations.

• Augustine (354-430), especially in De Civitate Dei V and De Trinitate III, develops the view that God works in every creaturely operation without thereby eliminating the creature's role. Augustine's Deus interior intimo meo ("God more inward to me than my innermost self") points to the concurrentist intuition that God's involvement does not displace the creature but underlies it.

Medieval scholastic articulation.

• Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) gives the doctrine its canonical articulation. Summa Theologiae I q. 105 (on God's operation in creatures) and Summa Contra Gentiles III qq. 65-70 are the standard loci. Aquinas's key formulations: "God operates in every operation of nature and will" (ST I q. 105 a. 5); "the more excellent the cause, the greater is its action and the more universal its effect" (SCG III.67). The Thomist account distinguishes the first cause (God) from secondary causes (creatures); both are real causes; the first cause is the cause of causing, the ground that allows secondary causes to exercise their powers.
• Duns Scotus (1266-1308) develops his own concurrentist account, sometimes more emphatic about the creature's contribution than Aquinas. The Scotist tradition (Franciscan scholastics) gives a slightly different version.
• Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c. 1275-1334) departs from Thomism and articulates Divine Conservationism (the contrary position). The contrast between Thomist concurrentism and Durandian conservationism shapes much subsequent debate.

Tridentine and post-Tridentine Catholicism.

• Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) and the Jesuit-Thomist tradition develop concurrentism in dialogue with Molinist concerns about preserving human freedom. The famous De Auxiliis controversy (1582-1607) over how concurrence relates to grace and free will is a Thomist-Jesuit family dispute within concurrentism.
• Domingo Banez (1528-1604) develops the Dominican-Thomist position (praemotio physica, physical pre-motion) over against Molina's account; both sides are concurrentist; they disagree about the mode of concurrence.
• Luis de Molina (1535-1600), though associated with the Molinist account of middle knowledge, is also a concurrentist; his Molinism is about how God's foreknowledge of free counterfactuals coheres with His concurrent action.

Reformation and Reformed orthodoxy.

• John Calvin (1509-1564) holds an Augustinian-concurrentist view in less developed scholastic form. Institutes I.16-18 on providence presupposes God's concurrent involvement with secondary causes.
• Francis Turretin (1623-1687), Institutes of Elenctic Theology I, develops the full scholastic-Reformed concurrentist account.
• John Owen (1616-1683) and the broader Reformed orthodox tradition endorse concurrentism in connection with the doctrines of providence and concursus.
• The Westminster Confession (1646) ch. 5 on providence presupposes concurrentism: God "doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things... from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence" (5.1).

Modern philosophy of religion.

• Alfred Freddoso (Notre Dame), the major contemporary engagement. "God's General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why Conservationism Is Not Enough" (1991) and "God's General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects" (1994) are the canonical articles. Freddoso's broader project on Aquinas (translations of Suarez and the Thomist tradition) has made the concurrentist position philosophically respectable again in analytic philosophy of religion.
• W. Matthews Grant has developed concurrentist accounts of divine action that engage contemporary analytic concerns.
• Hugh McCann (Texas A&M) has engaged related questions on divine action and human freedom.

Biblical and theological grounding

Concurrentism reads the broader patterns of biblical divine action as concurrentist:

• Acts 17:28, "in him we live, and move, and have our being", read as the continuous concurrent involvement of God in every creaturely act of living, moving, and being.
• Hebrews 1:3, "upholding all things by the word of his power", read as continuous concurrent action rather than mere upstream sustaining.
• Colossians 1:17, "in him all things consist", read as the cosmic-Christological grounding of concurrent divine action throughout creation.
• Proverbs 16:9, "a man's heart deviseth his way; but Jehovah directeth his steps", the Synonymous Parallelism reading both lines as describing the same act under two aspects (human and divine), a paradigm concurrentist text.
• Proverbs 21:1, "the king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; he turneth it whithersoever he will", again the divine-human dual structure.
• Philippians 2:12-13, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure", the apostolic statement of the concurrentist structure on salvation: you work; God works in you; both are real.
• 1 Corinthians 15:10, "I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me", Paul's autobiographical concurrentism.
• Isaiah 10:5-15, the dual-agency in the Assyrian invasion (Assyria acts freely with its own evil intent; God concurrently uses Assyria as His rod of judgment), a classical concurrentist text on providence over evil acts.

The concurrentist reading takes seriously both the creature's real causal role and God's concurrent involvement, refusing to collapse either into the other. Occasionalists tend to collapse the creature's role into God's; conservationists tend to collapse God's role into mere upstream sustaining; concurrentism keeps both real and concurrent.

Strengths

1. Mainstream Christian theology. Concurrentism is the position presupposed by Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, and most Anglican theology of providence and grace. It is not a sectarian view; it is the broader Christian tradition.
2. Preserves both divine sovereignty and creaturely reality. Creatures are real causes (against occasionalism), and God is genuinely involved in every event (against conservationism). The position is the strongest available reading of biblical providence-language without slipping into the problems of either extreme.
3. Gives a rich account of providence. Detailed providence (a sparrow falling, Matthew 10:29; a lot cast in the lap, Proverbs 16:33; the king's heart in God's hand, Proverbs 21:1) is naturally accommodated; every event has a real creaturely dimension and a real divine dimension, concurrently.
4. Gives a rich account of grace. The Thomist account of praevenient and cooperans grace draws directly on concurrentism. Grace is not coercion (against monergist hyper-Calvinism in its more extreme forms) and not mere influence (against semi-Pelagianism); it is God's concurrent operation in the will that enables the will to choose for God.
5. Resolves the divine-sovereignty / human-freedom tension classically. On concurrentism, God's concurrent action does not compete with human freedom; God's action is the ground of human freedom, not its rival. This is the classical resolution Aquinas, Calvin, Turretin, and the broader Christian tradition have endorsed.
6. Tracks biblical dual-agency language. Texts that present the same act as both human and divine (Genesis 50:20 "ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good"; Acts 2:23 "him... ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God") are paradigm concurrentist data.

Problems and standard objections

1. The doctrine of concursus is metaphysically dense. How exactly God's concurrent action and the creature's act combine is not easy to specify. Critics charge that "concurrence" is a technical term that papers over an unclarity.
2. The grace-and-free-will dispute is internal to concurrentism. The De Auxiliis controversy (Dominicans vs Jesuits, 1582-1607) and the Calvinist-Arminian-Molinist disputes are all internal to concurrentism; they are family arguments about how concurrence works on the human will. Concurrentism does not by itself settle whether grace is irresistible (Dominican-Reformed) or freely cooperated with (Jesuit-Arminian).
3. Problem of God's involvement in evil acts. If God concurrently acts in every creaturely act including evil acts, in what sense is God not the cause of evil? The standard concurrentist response distinguishes the physical act (God concurs) from the moral defect (the creature alone is responsible), but the distinction is philosophically subtle. The Reformed-Arminian dispute about reprobation often turns on this point.
4. Tension with libertarian free will. Concurrentism is compatible with both libertarian and compatibilist accounts of human freedom, but the libertarian options are philosophically more strained (the Molinist account is the most-developed attempt). Critics argue that concursus is more naturally read as compatibilist, which puts a question to libertarian-concurrentists.
5. Mediates rather than resolves the underlying disputes. Concurrentism is a framework, not a position on every disputed soteriological question. The disputes between the four positions (Calvinism, Arminianism, Molinism, Open Theism) are all within concurrentism. Concurrentism's strength is also its weakness: it is the shared infrastructure, not the answer to the contested questions.

The Banezian-Molinist family dispute

A specific note on a major dispute within concurrentism. The 16th-17th century De Auxiliis controversy between Dominican-Thomists (especially Domingo Banez and his disciples) and Jesuit-Molinists (especially Luis de Molina and Francisco Suarez) was a major theological debate. Both sides were concurrentists; both affirmed God's concursus with creaturely acts; they disagreed about the mode of concurrence.

• Banezian Thomism: God's concurrence with the creaturely will involves a praemotio physica, a "physical pre-motion" of the will by God; God moves the will to its act, and this moving is metaphysically prior to the will's act. This account preserves God's strong sovereignty but raises sharp questions about libertarian freedom.
• Molinism: God's concurrence is shaped by His middle knowledge of free counterfactuals; God knows what each free creature would do in every possible circumstance and concurrently arranges providence so that the actual world realizes His providential purposes through (not against) free choices. This account preserves libertarian freedom but raises sharp questions about how middle knowledge itself coheres with libertarian freedom.

Pope Paul V suspended the controversy in 1607 without resolving it, allowing both Banezian and Molinist accounts to be taught within Catholic orthodoxy. The dispute continues in modified form in contemporary discussions. (See Molinism and Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism for more.)

Position in the spread

Concurrentism is the middle of three classical positions on God's relationship to created causation. The full spread:

All three positions agree that God sustains creatures in existence at every moment. They differ on whether creatures have their own causal powers (concurrentism and conservationism: yes; occasionalism: no) and whether God's involvement in each causal act is direct (occasionalism), concurrent (concurrentism), or absent beyond conservation (conservationism). Concurrentism is the mainstream Christian view because it preserves both halves of the biblical picture: creatures really cause, and God is really involved in every event.

See also

• Occasionalism, the extreme alternative; God is the only cause and creatures are mere occasions
• Divine Conservationism, the other alternative; God sustains creatures but does not cooperate with each act
• Foreknowledge vs Causation, related metaphysical distinction; concurrentism affirms both robust foreknowledge and robust concurrent causation
• Per Se vs Per Accidens Causation, scholastic causal distinction that concurrentism preserves and uses
• Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism, the four positions are all internal to concurrentism; the family dispute is about how concurrence works
• Molinism, the Jesuit-concurrentist position on God's concurrence and middle knowledge
• Free Will and Determinism, the broader free-will / determinism master hub
• Providence, the doctrine concurrentism most directly grounds
• Hardening Pharaohs Heart, a paradigm concurrentist case in OT providence
• Causal Principle (Everything That Begins to Exist Has a Cause), the apologetic-cosmological causal principle (concurrentism distinguishes first cause from secondary causes in ways relevant to the principle's deployment)
• Major figures: Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Augustine (354-430), Duns Scotus (1266-1308), Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), Domingo Banez (1528-1604), Luis de Molina (1535-1600), John Calvin (1509-1564), Francis Turretin (1623-1687), Alfred Freddoso (b. 1947)
• Passages frequently invoked: Acts 17:28, Heb 1:3, Col 1:17, Prov 16:9, Prov 21:1, Phil 2:12-13, 1 Cor 15:10, Isa 10:5-15, Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23