CONSERVATION, DIVINE

Divine conservation is the activity whereby God keeps creatures in existence. It is the continuation, so to speak, or the extension of the creative act whereby God originally gave existence to creatures. Conservation is described also as the first effect of God's providential governance of the universe. The divine concurrence is the second effect. Divine conservation is almost universally admitted to be something positive; it is not, therefore, God's mere refusal to destroy creatures, even though He is able to do so. Also, God's conservation is usually admitted to be direct and immediate. This means that God does not merely see to it that harmful forces are kept away from the things He wants conserved and that necessary conditions and helpful adjuncts are present when needed, but that He Himself by His own divine causality directly causes the continuation in existence of creatures (see causality, divine).

Historical Development. That creatures depend upon God not only for their initial creation at the beginning of the world, but also for their present existence and for their every moment, is indicated with greater or lesser clarity in Sacred Scripture when, for example, God's power and freedom are discussed. See: Wisdom 1.7, 13;11.26; 12.1; Ecclesiastes 1.4; 3.14; John 5.17; Acts of the Apostles 17.27, 28; Romans 11.36; Hebrews 1.3.

Church Fathers. In their comments on such scriptural texts, as well as in their other writings, the Fathers of the Church teach that the permanence in existence of all things depends upon God's free will and power. The Neoplatonic philosophy of Alexandria helped the Fathers to appreciate the finitude of creatures and the purely determinable status of elementary matter. The doctrine of the radical contingency in the existence of all nondivine things thus found support in reason as well as in revelation. (see patristic philosophy.)

St. justin martyr points out, in his Dial. Cum Try-phone, ch. 6, that the soul participates in life because God wishes it to live and that it will no longer participate in life when God does not wish it to live. St. irenaeus states (Adv. haereses 2.34.2) that "all things that have been made had a beginning when they were produced, and they last so long as God wills them to have existence and duration." St. john chrysostom says [Cont. Anomoeos, hom. 12, n. 4; Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, 161v. (Paris 1857–66) 48:810–811] that "Not only did God produce creatures, He also preserves them and helps them develop; … should they be deprived of His efficacious action, they would simply flow away, collapse, perish."

St. augustine (Conf. 1.2) speaks thus to God (with a reference to Romans 11.36): "Without Thee there would exist nothing…. I could not exist unless I werein Thee, from whom and through whom and unto whom are all things." Augustine develops the doctrine of conservation in greater detail in his Gen. ad litt. 4.12.22 (also see 5.20.40; 8.12.26). He reconciles the passage "And [God] rested on the seventh day from all the work He had done" (Genesis 2.2), with the passage, "My Father works even until now, and I work" (John 5.17), by telling us that God's rest can be understood as meaning that He has ceased to make new species of creatures, but not that He has ceased to operate by governing the universe. God did not cease even on the "seventh day" to exercise His governing power over the heavens and the earth and over all the creatures that He had made. Should He cease to do this, all things would instantaneously fall into nothingness. The cause that keeps every creature in existence is the creative influence of God, the power of God omnipotent and "omnitenant" (the Pantocrator of the Greek Fathers). St. Augustine also makes a contrast that is frequently utilized by subsequent writers. God is not like a carpenter who, after constructing a house, goes away without any further care, leaving the house to exist by itself. With regard to the universe, if God were to withdraw His governance it could not last for so much as the blinking of an eye.

Similar testimony could be presented from St. greg ory the great (Moralia 16.16.18), from St. john dam ascene (De fide orth. 1.3; 2.29) and from St. bernard of clairvaux (Sermo 6 in dedicat. ecclesiae and De consideratione 5.6).

Medieval Scholasticism. With St. anselm of can terbury in the 12th century the doctrine of divine conservation receives a classic statement (Monologion, ch.13), linking together God's creative presence and His conserving presence.

St. thomas aquinas discusses conservation in several places: C. gent. 3.65 (see the commentary of Sylvester ferrariensis ed., Leonina 14:184–188), De pot. 5.1–4 and Summa Theologiae, 1a, 104.1–4. In this last work Aquinas argues that any effect depends on its cause so far as this is its cause. Now, since all creatures are beings through participation and only God exists by right of essence, all creatures depend on God not merely as on the cause of their coming into being, but also as on the cause of their being, so long as they have this being. Where the cause of a thing is of the same species as the thing (the usual case in the generation of new beings), this cause is not the cause of the effect's form, insofar as this is such and such a form; rather it is the cause merely of the acquisition by matter of this individuated form. The generative cause is the cause of the effect's coming to be, but not of the effect's being. Hence, in addition to causes that bring things into existence through generation out of previously existing things, there is need of a cause transcending generative causality. In other words, there is need of a cause that directly and immediately accounts for the reality of everything that does not exist by right of its own very essence. Hence, as long as created beings exist, so long are they under the conserving influence of God. This does not preclude the existence of subordinated or secondary conserving causes, but God always remains the primary cause directly conserving the being of things. St. Thomas argues also that since creation is an exercise of God's free will, God can, absolutely speaking, annihilate any creature; but he goes on to argue that God will not annihilate anything, even miraculously, for there is no reason for annihilation: annihilation would not pertain to the manifestation of God's glory or grace.

St. bonaventure discusses conservation especially in his In 2 sent. 37.1.2, but he also brings out that God's conservation presupposes that the creature has some substantiality in itself.

Later Scholasticism. Commenting on Summa Theologiae 1a, 104.2, cajetan admits that God utilizes the mediation of material substances in the indirect preservation of other material substances. Salt helps preserve meat. But with regard to direct conservation, Cajetan points out that one must distinguish between the case of spiritual and other incorruptible substances on the one hand, and the case of material or corruptible substances on the other. In the former case, these substances (which can originate only by direct and immediate creation) are directly conserved solely by God, with no intermediating causes of conservation; the action of creating these is identical with the action of preserving them. But in the case of corruptible substances (which can originate by way of generation out of other, previously existing, substances and not merely by direct creation) God is not the sole direct conserver: He uses the intermediation of secondary causes as well. In this case the action of creating is not the same as the action of conserving.

Francisco suÁrez, in concluding the argument for divine conservation (Disp. meta. 21.1.14), stresses the idea that God's omnipotence and supreme dominion over creation require that He be able at any moment to annihilate any and every creature. Since annihilation terminates in nothing, it is not a positive action. Therefore, unless God were conserving all creatures for all their duration by a positive and direct action, He could not annihilate them and thus would not have supreme dominion; creatures would in a very real sense be independent of God. Suárez also holds (ibid. 21.3.4) that no created sub-stance, even though it is material, can be conserved in its substantial existence by a created cause.

Nature of Conservation. Conservation is described by St. Thomas as "the continuation of that action whereby God gives existence, an action which is without either motion or time" (Summa Theologiae 1a, 104.1 ad 4). It cannot be discussed, therefore, in the same terms nor studied according to the same methods that are used by scientists in discussing the conservation of matter or the conservation of energy and by cosmologists in discussing "steady state" theories of the universe.

Conservation is sometimes contrasted with cre ation. Creation is popularly looked upon as the act that brought this universe into its existence at some definite moment of time; and conservation then refers to the act that prolongs the universe through all moments subsequent to the first. Creation and conservation are therefore said to be conceptually distinct. But in themselves, and speaking strictly, the act of creating and the act of conserving are really one and the same act; they both are the a-temporal, direct giving of existence by God to nondivine beings, whenever and for so long as these have existence. It requires the efficacy of the most universal cause, God, to make creatures exist and endure at all, whether they have endured from all eternity or not. God's own activity is outside of time; it has no change or succession. Whatever succession there is, is in the terminus willed by God's eternal free act. This terminus is the sum of the contingent, changeable, dynamic, interrelated beings constituting the universe in its totality, past, present and future. Divine conservation contrasts not with creation and not with concurrence but with annihilation.

The maintenance of creatures in their existence is, like their creation, due simply to God alone; the maintenance of the specific nature of a corporeal being is due, under God, to the secondary causes that embody the physical laws of the universe. The stones in an arch mutually support one another, but it is God who gives existence to them all.

In the late Middle Ages, henry of ghent, Peter Aureoli and gregory of rimini asserted that there is a specific difference between creation and conservation. They thought that less effort is required for sustaining a thing in existence than for initiating its existence. Even among the later scholastics there is some obscurity in the way in which they describe God's use of creatures as intermediaries in the direct preservation of other creatures. Their doctrine is further complicated by reason of the false physical and astronomical ideas that these authors entertained. The planets, stars and other heavenly bodies were considered to be agents essentially superior to all terrestrial causes and had, therefore, special roles to play in God's governance. Contemporary scholastics reduce these roles to the ordinary level of the physical and chemical activities of bodies. They also increasingly purify the language of creation and conservation and insist strongly on the transcendence and uniqueness of God's causality. God is not the first link in a succession of causes; neither is He simply the supreme member of a hierarchy of causes (Donceel, 37–38, 80); He belongs to a different dimension from all finite and created causes. For Him to "act through an intermediary in conservation" means that "He simultaneously creates, a-temporally, beings and their causal interdependences" (Sertillanges, 72, n.1).

Nonscholastic Accounts. René Descartes speaks of conservation as a continuous creation, but his meaning is different from that of the scholastics. Descartes holds that duration and motion are of themselves discontinuous; God's "continual creation" gives them continuity [see F. C. Copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, Md 1946–) 4:134]. Further, Descartes rejects the notion that things have natures and forms; for him, there is no internal stability in creatures and no true interaction. Such doctrine naturally leads to occasionalism.

Pierre bayle, in his Dictionnaire (article "Pyrrhon," end of note B) takes for granted that conservation means that God renews the existence of each creature at every moment, so that conservation is a reiterated creation of things out of the nothingness into which they continually lapse. All creatures thus have a staccato existence. One cannot even be sure of his own identity with the person he used to be a moment before.

Some maintain that deism denies the conservation of things by God; but perhaps what deism denies is all special intervention on the part of God.

Special Difficulties. It is argued that since created causes can produce effects that remain in existence without the continued causality of their cause, then certainly God can do so. To this it should be pointed out that a created cause is cause only of the coming into being of its effects; and this process ceases as soon as the created cause ceases its activity. God's proper effect, the existence of creatures, would similarly cease should His activity cease.

But would it not be a more wonderful manifestation of God's power if He were to make a creature that could last without God's direct conservation? No; for instead of being a more wonderful manifestation of power this would be a contradiction. It would require that God produce an unproduced product; it would be calling for a caused being that is not a being caused.

Still, natural objects tend of their very nature toward being. There is no natural tendency toward nothingness. Creatures are truly substances, existing in themselves and they have an innate drive to continue their existence. All this is true enough, but not a serious difficulty; for the very substantiality of creatures and their drive or innate tendency are caused by God. Created existence is not something that can be conferred "once and for all" in the sense that a created thing, once it has been created, could forthwith dispense with its relation to the Creator. Created existence is rather like the sunlight or like an electric current, which cease when contact with the source is severed.

See Also: causality; providence of god; scholasticism; substance.

Bibliography: a. j. benedetto, Fundamentals in the Philosophy of God (New York 1963). a. g. sertillanges, L'Idée de création et ses retentissements en philosophie (Paris 1945). j. f. anderson, The Cause of Being: The Philosophy of Creation in St. Thomas (St. Louis 1952). r. garrigou-lagrange, The Trinity and God the Creator: A Commentary on St. Thomas' Theological Summa Ia, q. 27–119, tr., f. c. eckhoff (St. Louis 1952). j. f. donceel, Natural Theology (New York 1962). w. j. brosnan, God Infinite, The World and Reason (New York 1943). h. pinard, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., 15 v. (Paris 1903–50) 3.1:1187–97. Cont. Anomoeos, hom. 12, n. 4; Patrologia Graeca, ed. j. p. migne, 161 v. (Paris 1857–66) 48:810–811. f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, Md 1946–) 4:134.

[a. j. benedetto]