Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What God does

The final part of Crusius’ natural theology is dedicated to the question of what God does, that is, what effects the divine activities produce. The obvious first answer for Crusius is that God has created the world, that is, the world that earlier was not has become existent. In the strictest sense, Crusius adds, creation refers to the generation of simple substances and their fundamental forces. In addition, God has also ordered these simple substances, but this is not something that only God could do.

God has not just created the world and everything in it, Crusius continues, but they also sustain all these things. Why couldn’t God just have created the things in such a manner that they would keep on existing without the help of God? Crusius’ answer is that this would have been impossible. Because the created things are contingent, their current existence is no reason why they would continue existing and thus they require the help of God for their continuous existence or otherwise they might as well just blink out of existence.

In addition to sustaining the existence of the things in the world, Crusius states, God also sustains the very order of the world. The threat here is not that the world would be completely wiped out of existence, but only that it would collapse into chaos. This threat is real, Crusius adds, because by themselves, material things would quickly move and change any given order.

Crusius adds that in some cases God sustains the actuality of certain things, but when free choices are involved, God can only sustain their possibility, while the actuality is then left for the decision of free beings. Thus, Crusius explains, God is not responsible for evil actions of free creatures, but merely sustains the possibility of such actions, which the action of a free person then makes real.

God does not just sustain the world, Crusius continues, but they direct the world in accordance with certain purposes. Original guidelines of this divine providence, he clarifies, are God’s fundamental desires, while what God attempts to achieve must have something to do with creatures capable of free actions, not with the mechanism of the material world. God is, as it were, building a kingdom, where the divine will morally obligates free creatures to do certain actions.

Crusius divided divine providence into such where God uses the course of nature to make something purposeful happen at appropriate time and such where God uses miracles or personally acts on the worldly things to make something happen. Since free spirits cannot be forced to do anything by natural causes, he points out, miracles must be especially used with them. Thus, particularly if there are plenty of evil free creatures, God has to do miracles, in order to assure the fulfilment of divine purposes. This still doesn’t mean that we should see miracles everywhere, since God can well use less miracles to produce more effects. In addition, Crusius notes, God need not make miracles obviously visible, unless the explicit purpose of the miracle is to be noted by human beings.