Concursus

Historical and Linguistic Background

Concursus is a technical term in scholastic philosophy and theology denoting the “running together” or concurrence of different causes in the production of a single effect. Philologically, it derives from the Latin concursus, from con- (“together”) and currere (“to run”), used in classical Latin to mean an assembly, a simultaneous rush, or a convergence toward one point.

In philosophical theology, the term came to designate the way in which divine causality and creaturely causality coincide in every finite action. Rather than viewing God and creatures as competing causes on the same level, concursus theory attempts to articulate how God can be universally active in all events while created agents genuinely operate as particular causes.

Concursus in Scholastic Theology

Within medieval scholasticism, concursus is closely bound to three related notions: creation, conservation, and providence. God not only creates all things but also continually sustains them in being (conservatio) and orders their actions toward ends (gubernatio or governance). Concursus specifies how God cooperates with creatures at the level of their concrete operations.

Scholastics typically distinguished:

• Primary cause (causa prima): God, who gives being and efficacy to all secondary causes.
• Secondary causes (causae secundae): Creatures, whose proper powers and operations are real, finite, and ordered to particular effects.

Thomas Aquinas offers a paradigmatic account. For him, every created action is wholly dependent on God as universal cause, but this dependence does not annihilate created agency. Rather, God causes creatures to be causes: divine action grounds and enables the causal powers of creatures. In this framework, concursus is not a separate “extra” action added to creaturely activity, but the way God is always already present in and through the operations of finite agents.

Later Thomists introduced more detailed distinctions. A common one is between:

• General concursus: God’s universal cooperation with secondary causes, simply in virtue of sustaining them and their powers.
• Special or particular concursus: A more specific divine influence directed toward certain outcomes (e.g., miracles, grace).

Debates also emerged about whether concursus is premotional (God moves the will infallibly toward a particular choice) or merely simultaneous (God concurs with what the creature freely chooses). These internal scholastic discussions set the stage for early modern controversies.

Early Modern Developments

In the early modern period, concursus became central to disputes over grace, free will, and providence, especially between Molinists, Thomists, and various strands of Reformed and Lutheran orthodoxy.

Luis de Molina (1535–1600) developed a theory in which God’s concursus is coordinated with middle knowledge (scientia media), God’s knowledge of what free creatures would do in any hypothetical circumstance. On this view:

• God provides a general concursus that enables action.
• The specific outcomes are known in advance via middle knowledge, yet remain contingent and free.
• Divine concurrence does not determine the will irresistibly but accompanies the free decision that God knows creatures would make.

By contrast, many Thomists (notably Domingo Báñez and later Bañezian thinkers) defended physical premotion. For them, concursus involves an infallible divine premotion that determines the will to a particular act while, they contend, preserving genuine freedom understood in a non‑libertarian sense (often as freedom from external compulsion).

In Reformed orthodoxy, concursus was integrated into doctrines of divine decree and providence. Reformed authors typically affirmed:

• God’s concursus generalis with all events, including human decisions.
• A distinction between God as the first cause and creatures as true secondary causes.
• The compatibility of comprehensive divine sovereignty with real human responsibility, sometimes called a form of theological compatibilism.

Critics across traditions raised worries that strong accounts of concursus (especially with premotion) risk collapsing secondary causes into mere instruments, undermining robust creaturely freedom or making God the ultimate source of evil acts. Proponents responded by emphasizing distinctions between causality of being and moral culpability, and by insisting that divine concurrence can underwrite, rather than negate, the autonomy of created powers.

Contemporary Significance

In modern philosophy of religion and analytic theology, the Latin word concursus appears less often in everyday discourse, but its underlying questions remain central. Contemporary discussions of:

• Divine action in nature
• Providence and foreknowledge
• The problem of evil
• Free will and determinism

often revisit, reframe, or critique classical theories of concurrence.

Some theists inspired by scholasticism continue to defend robust models of divine concurrence, arguing that:

• God is causally active in all events at a different ontological level from creatures.
• This “double agency” model allows one to affirm both meticulous providence and genuine created causality.
• Concursus helps avoid viewing God as a “competing cause” among others within the universe.

Others, especially proponents of open theism or certain process-influenced views, reject or significantly revise concursus. They may hold that strong, infallible concurrence is incompatible with libertarian freedom or with a dynamic, responsive picture of God. Instead, they propose more limited or persuasive forms of divine action, where God influences but does not concur with every choice in a determinative way.

Historically oriented philosophers and theologians use the term concursus to classify and compare medieval and early modern accounts of divine–creaturely cooperation, while systematic thinkers deploy it as a technical label for particular models of double agency or non‑competitive causality.

Thus, concursus names both a family of historical doctrines and an ongoing conceptual problem: how to articulate the joint operation of God and creatures so that divine universality and creaturely integrity are upheld without contradiction or reduction of one to the other. Debates over its precise form continue to shape contemporary reflections on causation, freedom, and the nature of divine involvement in the world.