ARGUMENT: Primary cause God as creator - and secondary causes - what happens within creation - are only based on how it looks to us and are otherwise meaningless. It is correct then to say that God made the pipe burst and when John murdered it was really God that did it.
ALLEGED REFUTATION:
1. Different Orders of Causality (Not the Same Level)
Refutation:
The primary cause (God) and secondary causes (created things) operate on different levels of explanation, not the same one.
God causes things to exist and to act at all (existential or sustaining causality).
Secondary causes explain how things act within creation (efficient causality).
Example:
God causes a statue to exist; the sculptor causes the particular shape of the marble. God doesn’t “compete” with the sculptor— both causes are real, but they belong to different orders.
So, the distinction isn’t “how it looks” — it’s metaphysical: one cause gives being, the other gives form or change.
2. Dependency Doesn’t Eliminate Agency
Refutation:
If secondary causes were “only apparent,” then nothing except God would truly act. But that would make all natural laws, human choices, and moral responsibility illusions.
Classical theists argue:
God gives real, though dependent, causal power to creatures.
Created agents really cause things because God sustains their power.
Thus, the distinction is meaningful because it preserves real creaturely agency within divine dependence.
3. Metaphysical Non-Competition (No Zero-Sum Causation)
Refutation:
The idea that if God is the primary cause, creatures can’t be real causes assumes a zero-sum view of causation — that divine and human agency compete for space.
Aquinas and later thinkers reject that. They say:
“God causes the creature to cause.”
That means: God’s causality enables, rather than replaces, secondary causality. The two causes fully overlap without cancelling each other out — a concept impossible if they were “only how it looks.”
4. Explanatory Coherence in Science and Theology
Refutation:
If primary and secondary causes are only “how things look,” then science becomes meaningless — since it studies what would only seem to be real causes.
But theology explicitly allows science to explain secondary causes (natural processes) while maintaining that God is the primary cause of the whole system’s existence.
So the distinction gives a coherent division of labor:
Science studies natural causes.
Theology studies why those causes exist and continue to operate.
Without the distinction, either science explains everything (atheism) or nothing really explains anything except God (occasionalism). The classical distinction avoids both extremes.
5. The Problem of Evil Requires the Distinction
Refutation:
If there are no real secondary causes, then every evil event must be directly God’s doing.
The doctrine of secondary causes allows moral and natural evil to arise from created freedom or natural processes, not from God’s direct willing.
It preserves God’s goodness while explaining why evil exists.
So the distinction has a theodical function — it’s not linguistic but morally and theologically necessary.
6. Existence vs. Action (Different Modes of Causation)
Refutation:
Primary causation = causing to exist.
Secondary causation = causing a specific change or event within existence.
These are two fundamentally different modes of causation, not different perspectives on the same event.
Example:
God causes fire to exist and to have the nature of heat. The fire, by that nature, causes the wood to burn.
Both are real causes — God existentially, fire physically.
Thus, it’s not a matter of “how it looks,” but of what kind of causation is being discussed.
7. Philosophical Precedent (Aquinas, Leibniz, and Suarez)
Refutation:
Classical metaphysicians from Aquinas to Leibniz explicitly rejected the view that the distinction is mere appearance.
They argued that:
Denying secondary causes leads to occasionalism (only God acts, creatures do nothing).
Occasionalism leads to incoherence in explaining natural regularities and moral responsibility.
They maintained that God’s primary causality and creaturely secondary causality are jointly real — like a writer and her pen: the pen truly writes, but only because the writer moves it.
8. Logical Consequence Argument
Refutation:
If the distinction were meaningless:
Then “God causes everything” and “creatures cause things” would be contradictory statements.
Yet both are affirmed coherently in classical theism.
Therefore, the distinction must represent a real metaphysical relationship, not just a human way of speaking.
In Summary:
The claim (that primary and secondary causes are only appearances) leads logically to:
The denial of real creaturely agency.
The collapse of natural science.
The impossibility of moral responsibility.
The attribution of evil directly to God.
The opposing view preserves:
Real, dependent causality.
The intelligibility of nature.
The moral difference between divine permission and divine action.
So, defenders of the distinction argue it’s not linguistic or psychological — it’s ontological (built into the nature of being and causation itself).
REPLY: Big claims need big support - big evidence.
There is no strong evidence that free will is real.
There is no strong evidence that free will is even possible.
While it is wrong to accuse human beings of grave wrong or harm without strong evidence, it is not the same to do that against God. He has no needs and is self-sufficient. We have the right to slander him if we wish.
Belief in a creator God remains a potential threat to science and risks turning us into pens he the writer holds.
Even if God could be the primary cause and allow for secondary causes that does not mean he does. It could only seem that the frost burst the pipe when it was really all God. There is no way to know either way.
And if he does allow for them, just because secondary is indirect does not mean it is unimportant compared to what is done directly. A malicious God might not do direct harm to anybody but get somebody else to do it.
The logic supporting God as primary cause and secondary being different is not clear. And it seems to often argue, "if x then a bad result therefore x is false" which is not logical at all.
No metaphor helps for the logic is faulty. The best one is this. "The sun is the primary cause of sunlight and the secondary cause is the shadow." It is terrible for the sun does not create the shadow. Only a deceiver would keep such a metaphor alive.
Conclusion
The distinction between primary and secondary causes depends entirely on human interpretation, not on demonstrable evidence. If everything that exists depends completely on God, then nothing can act independently of him in any real sense. The claim that God “causes creatures to cause” only restates the dependence without explaining how independence could genuinely arise. Appealing to metaphysical “levels” or “orders” of causation is a way of naming the mystery, not resolving it.
Without clear evidence for free will or independent agency, it remains arbitrary to affirm real secondary causation. Saying that God gives creatures causal power while sustaining them every instant adds words, not understanding. Whether we call the frost the cause of the burst pipe or God the cause makes no observable or conceptual difference. The outcome is the same, and the distinction serves only to protect a theological framework, not to clarify reality.
Thus, the so-called separation of primary and secondary causes is linguistic and psychological, not ontological. It exists to preserve moral comfort and theological coherence, not because reason or evidence requires it. In the end, to say “God did it” or “God allowed it through secondary causes” amounts to the same claim: that all things are fully grounded in God’s will and power. The difference is one of phrasing, not of fact.
And if the very structure of causation is only a matter of human interpretation, then so too are the claims that God and morality necessarily depend on each other. To say that goodness requires God is no more certain than saying that causation does. Both are human efforts to impose meaning on what is ultimately beyond verification.
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