C. Third Opinion

     A third position says that although some things be necessary with respect to divine knowledge, yet it does not follow that with respect to proximate causes they cannot be 12 contingent.

     And it is confirmed from Boethius Consolation of Philosophy V prose 6, where he speaks thus: “If you say, ‘that which God sees will come to be cannot not happen, - but that which cannot not happen happens of necessity’, and if you constrict me to this term of ‘necessity’, I will reply: the same future thing, when it is referred to divine knowledge, is necessary - but when it is considered in its own nature, it is altogether free, etc.”

     In favor of this view the argument is also made that there can be imperfection in an effect from the proximate cause, although not from a remote or prior cause, - just as there is deformity in an act from a created will but not insofar as it is from the divine will; therefore sin is not reduced to God as to the cause, but it is imputed only to the created will. Although therefore there were, as far as concerns the part of God - who is the remote cause -, a necessity in things, yet there can, from their proximate causes, be contingency in them.

     Against this an argument was given in distinction 2 nn.80, 85-86, where it was proved from the contingency of things that ‘God is understanding and willing’, because there can be no contingency in the causation of any cause with respect to its effect unless the first cause is contingently disposed to the cause next to it or to its own effect. Which proof, briefly, is from the fact that a moving cause - to the extent it is moved - is, if it is necessarily moved, necessarily a mover; therefore any second cause that produces insofar as it is moved by a first cause, if it is necessarily moved by the first cause, necessarily moves what is next to it or it necessarily produces its effect. The whole ordering of causes, then, right up to the ultimate effect, will produce necessarily if the disposition of the first cause to the cause next to it is necessary.

     Further, a prior cause has respect to its effect naturally prior to a later cause [d.8 n.287]; therefore in that prior stage, if it have a necessary disposition to the effect, it will give it necessary existence. But in the second instant of nature the proximate cause cannot give it contingent existence, because it is already pre-understood to have from the first cause an existence repugnant to contingency; nor can you say that in the same instant of nature the two causes give existence to the caused thing, because the cannot be founded on that existence a necessary disposition to a cause perfectly giving existence and a contingent disposition to some other cause.

     In addition, whatever is produced by posterior causes could be produced immediately by the first cause - and then it would have the same entity as it has now, and then it would be contingent as it is contingent now; therefore it has its own contingency even now from the first cause, and not only from the proximate cause.

     Besides, God has produced many things immediately (as he created the world and now creates souls), and he has produced them all contingently.