On action and the problem of occasionalism

If physical objects themselves don’t really do anything, then there is no point in trying to study what they do or how they do it. God, who alone ever really does anything in the natural world, becomes the sole worthwhile object of scientific study, and natural science gives way to theology. But the situation is even stranger than that, at least if we factor in the Thomistic principle that agere sequitur esse (or “action follows being”) – that is to say, that the only way a thing behaves reflects what it is. If physical objects do nothing and only God acts, then it would follow that physical things don’t have any existence distinct from God’s existence. Occasionalism would collapse into pantheism, and the Cartesian philosophy of nature would thereby abolish nature altogether. (Edward Feser, Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundation of Physical and Biological Science, 92)

One argument that Edward Feser has put forward for why it is important for objects to have potentialities of their own, and why it cannot be asserted that God is the one who energizes all things, is that such an assertion collapses everything into theology, and leads to occasionalism. And if the Thomistic principle of "action follows being" is factored in, then this assertion collapses occasionalism into pantheism. That of course would be unpalatable for many people and Christians also. But is such an argument sound?

The first and major thing that must be examined is Feser's assumption that to make God the ultimate energizer of reality leads us to occasionalism. But before I examine this, it must be said that this problem plagues the Aristotelian as well, if he desires to be Christian that is. For even though every object has potentialities, the question can be asked if God decrees the potentialities of an object. If he is to be a Christian, all things must be created so there must be a time when there was no potentialities (i.e. no created thing). Of course, one can hold to eternal nature, but that is explicitly contrary to Scripture. But if there is a point of creation, then, unless one wants to speculate about other eternal entities (which compromises the aseity of God), all potentialities must come from God. So the Christian Aristotelian has the same problem that the supposed "mechanist" does, in that it seems that the Christian Aristotelian faces the same pull towards occasionalism as the "mechanist" worldview supposedly does.

Feser's assumption however is something that I reject. For one thing, in the theistic scientific worldview, apart from miracles, God does all things through intermediaries according to the laws of nature. The laws of nature are set down by God as an expression of who He is, but they are not Him per se. They "proceed" out from God, in the same way as God's decrees (plural, not the singular decree), covenants and actions proceed out of Him. Theologically, we can call them God's "energies." Laws of nature and the constants of the universe (e.g. Planck's constant, Gravitational constant etc.) are decreed by God, immutable in this current universe (as far as we can currently observe). They partake of the immutability of God while Creation stands, but certainly they are not God!

For impersonal things therefore, while God is the ultimate energizer, He acts (in providence) through scientific laws. Rather than thinking of an object as having inherent "potentiality," the object acts according to an external law (the laws of nature discovered and approximated scientifically). Since the laws of nature are not God, therefore the theistic scientific worldview does not lead to occasionalism.

The second proposition that Feser utilizes is the Thomistic principle that "action follows being," arguing that "if physical objects do nothing and only God acts, then it would follow that physical things don't have any existence distinct from God's existence." But this Thomistic principle is merely to restate and apply the Aristotelian idea that a thing has potentiality and therefore a thing must act (potentiality transformed to actuality). However, for anyone not committed to Aristotelianism and Aristotelian ontology, we reject the idea that a thing must necessarily act. Feser here smuggled in his premises to collapse occasionalism into pantheism, but this collapse only takes place if we (1) agree with him that occasionalism is true, and (2) a thing must have potentiality to act. If we deny either or both of these propositions, which I did, then Feser's argument is false.

Once again, Feser argues against the scientific ("mechanistic") worldview, but all the while smuggling in Aristotelian categories. However, if we reject those categories, then Feser's argument is invalid and thus the case against the scientific worldview is unsound.