On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22 (translation of Francisco Suárez)

Francisco Suárez's metaphysical disputations on creation, conservation, and concurrence represent a pivotal moment in early modern natural theology and philosophical theology. Written in the late 16th century, these three disputations systematically examine divine causality and its relationship to created beings, establishing frameworks that would profoundly influence subsequent debates about God's existence and nature.

In Disputation 20, Suárez analyzes creation as the production of being from nothing, arguing that this concept necessarily points to an infinite cause. He contends that finite beings cannot account for their own existence, as they lack the power to bring themselves from non-being into being. This argument anticipates and strengthens traditional cosmological proofs by grounding them in a sophisticated metaphysics of efficient causality. Suárez distinguishes creation proper from mere change or transformation, insisting that only an absolutely independent being possesses the requisite power for creation ex nihilo.

Disputation 21 addresses divine conservation, arguing that God's creative act must be continuous rather than momentary. Suárez rejects occasionalism while maintaining that creatures possess no independent capacity to persist in being. His position navigates between extreme divine determinism and deistic separation, proposing that God sustains creatures in existence while respecting their genuine causal powers. This nuanced account provides theological foundations for understanding natural laws and scientific regularity without eliminating divine providence.

The final disputation examines divine concurrence, exploring how God cooperates with secondary causes in their operations. Suárez develops a theory of simultaneous concurrence that preserves both divine sovereignty and creaturely agency. Against Protestant reformers who emphasized divine predetermination, and against those who would minimize God's ongoing involvement, Suárez articulates a middle position that became definitive for Catholic philosophical theology.

These disputations matter significantly for the God debate because they provide rigorous philosophical scaffolding for theistic claims about divine action. Suárez's careful distinctions between types of causation, his analysis of the metaphysics of dependence, and his integration of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine established parameters within which modern discussions of divine action, the problem of evil, and the relationship between theology and science continue to operate. His influence extends through Descartes, Leibniz, and into contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.