rise above the order of change ruled over by Fate in virtue of the stability of their
position close to the supreme Godhead. (Ibid., p. 105)
Here, providence and fate appear as two powers that are hierarchically coordi-
nated, in which a sovereign decision determines the general principles of the
organization of the cosmos, and then entrusts its administration and execution
to a subordinated, yet autonomous, power ( gestio is the juridical term that indi-
cates the discretionary character of the acts carried out by one subject on behalf
of another). The fact that there are issues that are directly decided by sovereign
providence, and thus remain alien to destiny’s management, does not refute the
division of power on which the system relies. The magistra explains to her be-
wildered disciple that the government of the world is all the better (“res optime
reguntur”: ibid.) if simplicity, remaining in the divine mind, lets the destinal
connection of the causes take its course, that is, if sovereign providence (the
Kingdom—Boethius speaks explicitly of a “regnum providentiae”: ibid.) lets fate
(the Government) administer and constrain the actions of men (“fate holds sway
over the acts and fortunes of men”: ibid.).
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From this follows the fated and miraculous character that seems to cover the
actions of government. Since the transcendent sovereign knows and decides what
fate later constrains in the immanent connection of the causes, to the one who is
taken by these, fate—that is, government—appears as a majestic and impenetra-
ble miracle (“Hic iam fit illud fatalis ordinis insigne miraculum, cum ab sciente
geritur quod stupeant ignorantes”: ibid.). And although things may appear to
be unjust and confused, and evil people seem to triumph while the good suffer,
everything that happens is nevertheless promptly inscribed in the providential
order. As a matter of fact, even evil people actually desire the good, but they are
perverted in their desire by error: nothing takes place as a consequence of evil,
and the providential government can never change its course (“Nihil est quod
mali causa ne ab ipsis quidem improbis fiat; quos [ . . . ] bonum quaerentes pra-
vus error avertit, nedum ordo de summi boni cardine proficiens a suo quoquam
deflectat exordio”: ibid.).
Let us now try to analyze the curious relation that links providence to fate in
the governmental machine. Although they are clearly different, they are never-
theless merely two aspects of a single divine action, the duplex modus of a single activity of the government of the world that, with a knowing terminological
ambiguity, presents itself now as providence and now as fate, now as intelli-
gence and now as dispositio, now as transcendent and now as immanent, now
as contracted in the divine mind and now as unfolded in time and space. The
activity of government is, at the same time, providence, which thinks and orders
the good of everybody, and destiny, which distributes the good to individuals,
constraining them to the chain of causes and effects. In this way, what on one
level—that of fate and individuals—appears as incomprehensible and unjust,
receives on another level its intelligibility and justification. In other words, the
governmental machine functions like an incessant theodicy, in which the King-
dom of providence legitimates and founds the Government of fate, and the lat-
ter guarantees the order that the former has established and renders it operative.
א Salvian, bishop of Marseille in the fifth century, begins his treatise De gubernatione Dei by evoking in passing the pagan sources of a doctrine of providence. First of all Pythagoras, then Plato “and all the Platonic Schools,” who “acknowledge God as the
governor of all creation,” the Stoics, who “bear witness that He remains, taking the place of the governor [ gubernatoris vice], within that which He directs”; last, Virgil and Cicero, whom he quotes—like the previous authors—from secondary sources (Salvian, 1, 1, p. 27).
In fact, Salvian knows the classical authors only through the citations of the Apologists; the formation of his doctrine of providence is entirely independent of the governmental
paradigm that we have so far reconstructed in late classical philosophy (in particular,
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489
it lacks any reference to the bipartition general/special providence). His examples are
almost exclusively limited to the Bible, where the divine providence expresses itself most especially in the guise of judgment and punishment.
However, it is significant that even in this context the providential paradigm tends
to constitute itself in the guise of government. The metaphor of the gubernator remains closely linked to its naval origin, but is also broadened to include what for Salvian are
the three aspects of every activity of government:
What could they have felt more proper and more reverent regarding the concern
and watchfulness of God than to have likened Him to a helmsman [ gubernatori]?
By this they understood that as the helmsman in charge of a ship never lifts
his hand from the tiller [ gubernaculo], so does God never remove His inmost
attention from the world. Just as the helmsman steers, completely dedicated in
mind and body to his task, taking advantage of the wind, avoiding the rocks
and watching the stars, in like manner our God never puts aside the function
[ munus] of His most loving watch over the universe. Neither does He take away
the guidance [ regimen] of His providence, nor does He remove the tenderness
[ indulgentiam] of His mercy. (Ibid., p. 28)
The second book of the treatise is devoted to the definition, through Biblical examples
( per testimonia sacra), of the three figures of providence, which Salvian defines as praesentia, gubernatio, and iudicium, and which constitute an extraordinary anticipation of the modern tripartition of powers; here, however, these are reunited in a single holder.
Presence, which corresponds to sovereignty, is symbolized by the eye that invigilates and
sees; government is symbolized by a hand that leads and corrects; judgment (judiciary
power) is symbolized by the word that judges and condemns. Yet, the three powers are
strictly entwined and imply one another:
His presence should first be proved, because He who will rule or judge must
doubtless be present in order to rule or judge. The divine Word, speaking through
the Holy Scripture, says: “The eyes of the Lord, in every place, behold good and
evil.” Behold here God is present, looking upon us, watching us through His
vision wherever we are [ . . . ] The good are watched over for the sake of preserving
them; the evil, that they may be destroyed [ . . . ] Let us now see whether He
who watches governs us, although the very reason for His watchfulness [ ratio
aspiciendi] has within itself the cause of His governance [ causam ( . . . ) gubernandi]. He does not watch us with this end in view: that, having beheld, He may neglect us. The very fact that He deigns to watch is to be understood as
non-neglect, especially since, as Scripture has already testified, the wicked are
observed for their destruction, the good for their salvation. By this very fact the
economy of the divine government [ dispensatio divini gubernaculi] is shown, for
it is the function
of just government to govern and deal with men individually,
according to their respective merits. (Ibid., pp. 55–57)
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HOMO SACER II, 4
5.10. The theological paradigm of government is contained in Thomas Aqui-
nas’s treatise De gubernatione mundi ( Summa Theologiae, 1, qq. 103– 113). Here, government is not defined thematically, but through the articulation of a series
of quaestiones, which progressively determine its specific characters. First of all, government is opposed to chance, just as order is opposed to what happens
fortuitously:
Some of the earliest philosophers, in maintaining that everything happens by
chance, excluded any sort of government from the world. But this opinion is
proved impossible on two counts. The first is the evidence present in the world
itself. For we observe among beings of nature that what is best comes to pass
either always or most of the time. This would not be the case were there not
some providence guiding such beings to an end, the good. Such guidance is what
government means. Therefore this regular pattern in things clearly points to the
world’s being governed. An example from Cicero, quoting Aristotle: if you were
to go into a well-laid-out home, from its arrangement you would get a good idea
of the arranger’s plan. (Ibid., 1, q. 103, a. 1)
The second reason seems to come closer to a definition of government and con-
cerns the appropriateness that the things created by God reach their end: “The
highest perfection of any being consists in the attaining of its end. Hence it is
appropriate to God’s goodness that, as he has brought things into being, he
also guides them toward their end. This is what governing them means” (ibid.).
The generic meaning of governing is thus “guiding creatures toward their end.”
Thomas specifies that created things need to be governed since, if they were not
preserved by the manus gubernatoris, they would fall back into the nothingness
from which they originated. But in what way is the divine government of the
world carried out? It is by no means a matter of a force that, following a com-
mon representation, intervenes from the outside and directs the creatures, like
the shepherd’s hand leads his sheep. What defines divine government is (in a
resumption of the Aristotelian identity between archē and physis) the fact that it fully coincides with the very nature of the things that it directs. Following a
paradox that perfectly corresponds to the structure of the order, the divine gov-
ernment of creatures has no other content than the natural necessity inherent
in things:
The natural necessity inherent in things that are fixed on one set course is itself an
imprint, as it were, from God’s guidance of them to their end, even as the trueness
of the arrow’s flight toward the target is an impetus from the archer and not from
the arrow itself. Note this difference, however, that what creatures receive from
God constitutes their nature; what a man imposes artificially on the beings of
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491
nature is a coercion. The comparison then is this: a necessity of propulsion in the
arrow’s flight is a sign of the archer’s aiming it; a necessity of nature in creatures
is a sign of the provident God’s governing them. (Ibid., q. 103, a. 1, ad 3)
Therefore, government defines itself as a very particular form of activity, which is
necessarily not violent (in the sense of “against nature,” which this term assumes
in medieval thought—as opposed to spontaneus, qui sponte fit) and articulates itself by means of the very nature of governed things. Divine government and the
self-government of the creature coincide; governing can only mean— according
to a paradigm that the physiocrats and the theoreticians of the “science de
l’ordre,” from Le Trosne to Mercier de la Rivière, would rediscover five centuries
later—knowing the nature of things and letting it act.
If, however, this identity between natural order and government were both
absolute and undifferentiated, government would then be a worthless activity,
which, given the original imprint of nature at the moment of creation, would
simply coincide with passivity and laissez-faire. But this is not the case. It is in
the answer given to the questions “whether God is active in every agent cause”
and “whether God has the power to do anything outside of the order inherent
in creation” that the concept of government receives its specific determinations.
Thomas was facing (or rhetorically pretended to be facing) two opposed theses:
that of “Islamic fate,” according to which God acts immediately in every natu-
ral action with a continuous miracle (“solus Deus immediate omnia operatur”:
ibid., 1, q. 105, a. 5) and, on the other hand, that according to which the inter-
vention of God is limited to the original gift of nature and of the virtus operandi
at the moment of creation.
Thomas argues that the Islamic thesis is impossible because it amounts to
eliminating the order of causes and effects in creation. As a matter of fact, if fire
did not warm us because of the disposition of its own nature, but because God
intervened to produce heat each time that we light a fire, then all creation, de-
prived of its operative virtue, would become useless: “If all creatures are utterly
devoid of any activity of their own, then they themselves would seem to have a
pointless [ frustra] existence, since everything exists for the sake of its operation”
(ibid.). On the other hand, the opposite thesis that intends to safeguard the
freedom of creatures drastically separates them from God and threatens to make
them fall back into the nothingness from which they originated. How can we
then reconcile divine government with the self-government of creatures? How
can government coincide with the nature of things and yet intervene with it?
As we have seen, the solution of this aporia passes through the strategic dis-
tinction between first and second causes, primum agens and secundi agentes. If we
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HOMO SACER II, 4
consider the world and the order of things as dependent on the first cause, then
God cannot intervene in the world or do anything outside of or against it, “be-
cause then he would be doing something contrary to his foreknowledge, his will
or his goodness” (ibid., 1, q. 105, a. 6). The proper space of an action of govern-
ment of the world is not, therefore, the necessary space of the ordo ad Deum and
of first causes, but the contingent one of the ordo ad invicem and of second causes.
If we take the order in things as it depends on any of the secondary causes, then
God can act apart [ praeter] from it; he is not subject to that order but rather it is subject to him, as issuing from him not out of a necessity of nature, but by
decision of his will. He could in fact have established another sort of pattern in
the world; hence when he so wills, he can act apart from the given order [ praeter
hunc ordinem institutum], producing, for example, the effects of secondary causes
without them or some effects that surpass the powers of these causes. (Ibid.)
In its preeminent form, the sphere of divine action praeter ordinem rerum is
the mira
cle (“Unde illa quae a Deo fiunt prater causas nobis notas, miracula
dicuntur”: ibid., 1, q. 105, a. 7).
This action of government is, however, only possible (as we have already
seen in Augustine) insofar as God, as first cause, gives to creatures their form
and preserves them in being (“dat formam creaturis agentibus, et eas tenet in
esse”: ibid., 1, q. 105, a. 5). He therefore acts intimately within things (“ipse Deus
est proprie causa ipsius esse universalis in rebus omnibus, quod inter omnia est
magis intimum rebus; sequitur quod Deus in omnibus intime operetur”: ibid.).
At this point, the meaning of the structural splitting of the ordo and its
nexus with the bipartite system Kingdom/Government, ontology/ oikonomia,
begins to become evident. The Kingdom concerns the ordo ad deum, the rela-
tion of creatures to the first cause. In this sphere, God is impotent or, rather,
can act only to the extent that his action always already coincides with the
nature of things. On the other hand, the Government concerns the ordo ad
invicem, the contingent relation of things between themselves. In this sphere,
God can intervene, suspending, substituting, or extending the action of the
second causes. Yet, the two orders are functionally linked, in the sense that it
is God’s ontological relation with creatures—in which he is, at the same time,
absolutely intimate with them and absolutely impotent—that founds and legit-
imates the practical relation of government over them; within this relation (that
is, in the field of the second causes) his powers are unlimited. The splitting be-
tween being and praxis that the oikonomia introduces in God actually functions
like a machine of government.
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
493
5.11. From this fundamental bipolar articulation of God’s power over the
world also derives the other essential character of the divine activity of govern-
ment, that is, its being split between a power of rational deliberation and an ex-
ecutive power, which necessarily entails a plurality of mediators and “ministers.”
Answering the question “whether all things are governed by God immediately,”
Thomas begins by stating that “with respect to government two elements are to
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