Efficient cause
| Latin | Causa efficiens; causa agens |
|---|---|
| Treatise | Summa theologiae I, qq. 2, 44, 105 |
| Controlling authority | Dei Filius; Catechism 279–308 |
| Doctrinal standing | God creates and creatures truly act; the four-cause scheme is philosophical |
| School | Thomism |
Efficient cause is the agent that by its action produces an effect distinct from itself, and in Thomism includes both created secondary causes and God as first cause of being.[1]
The agent that produces the effect
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on cause records Aristotle's fourfold division: matter, form, moving or efficient cause, and final cause. The efficient cause is that from which comes the first beginning of change. It is extrinsic to the effect, unlike matter and form, which enter into the composite. A sculptor, a generating animal, and a teacher are efficient causes in different lines. The action educes an actuality from a potentiality.[2]
Scholastic analysis, following Aquinas, holds that the efficient cause acts in virtue of its form. Heat in the heating body does not pass numerically into the heated body; by virtue of that heat another heat comes to be actually which was in it potentially. No one has ever laid bare the essence of that action beyond describing it. The fact of efficient causality is given in every ordinary change and in every demonstration from effects.[2]
First cause and secondary causes
God is not a finite agent stacked beside creatures. He is first efficient cause of being. Summa theologiae I, question 44, article 1, argues that every being other than God is from him as from the first cause of existence. Question 105, article 5, adds that God works in every agent. Divine action founds secondary causes rather than replacing them. That is why prayer, merit, and natural science are possible together.[3][4]
Dei Filius and the Catechism teach creation from nothing, conservation, and providence, and they refuse a world that exists of itself. They also refuse occasionalism that would make creatures idle. The Catechism's insistence on secondary causes is the doctrinal counterpart of the Thomistic efficient-cause analysis. To say that God made the world and that creatures truly act is already to use this order, whether or not Aristotle is named.[1][5]
The second way from ordered agents
The second of the five ways in Summa theologiae I, question 2, article 3, argues from the order of efficient causes. Nothing is efficient cause of itself. In ordered efficient causes the first is cause of the intermediate, and the intermediate of the last. An infinite regress of essentially ordered causes would remove the first, and therefore the rest. There is a first efficient cause, to which all give the name God.[6]
The argument is philosophy in the service of the dogma that God exists and can be known from creatures. It is not itself a conciliar canon. It must not be confused with a search for the earliest event in time. Essentially ordered causes are causes now, in the line of dependence, as the staff moves because the hand moves. Temporal stories of the world's beginning belong to another question, answered by revelation as creation from nothing.[5]
Application, conservation, and the will
Conservation is the continuation of the same creative act, not a second job God takes up after retiring. Application of a secondary cause to its act is the first cause making the agent actually cause. In the theology of grace this becomes the disputed language of premotion. That dispute is school controversy. The common doctrine is that God moves the will without violence and that the will truly acts.
Efficient causality also structures sacramental theology: God is principal agent, Christ's humanity the conjoined instrument, the rite a separated instrument. Those further uses are theological. They must still confess real created agency. Treating God as one cause among others in the universe is a god of the gaps. Treating created causes as idle occasions is occasionalism. Thomism's efficient cause is meant to exclude both.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 279–314 — Authoritative doctrine of creation from nothing, divine conservation, providence, secondary causes, and the permission of evil without making God its author.
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Cause — Public-domain analysis of the four causes, including efficient, final, and exemplar causality in the scholastic tradition.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 44 — Primary account of God as first efficient cause of being, exemplar of essences, and final cause of every appetite, with creatures as participating existence.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 105, articles 4–5 — Primary treatment of God moving the created will and working in every agent as first cause without destroying secondary causality.
- Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 First Vatican Council, Dei Filius — Dogmatic constitution on God the Creator, the natural knowability of God, the distinction of the natural and supernatural orders, and the gratuity of revelation.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 2, article 3 — Primary five ways, including the argument from motion to an unmoved mover and the argument from ordered efficient causes.