It may just be a question of semantics, but probably not. I have no problem with saying that God is the ultimate cause, first cause, whatever word you want. I have no problem with saying that God–ultimately–causes the present existence of the universe and in that sense there is a “continuing influence” which is “part of the creative act”; but then it gets tricky when you try to define that. If you mean that God is “active” in the sense that He actively wills the universe to continue to do whatever it’s doing, great. If you mean God is “active” in the sense that He’s constantly interrupting the action of natural laws (which He created) to do whatever you want to call it (“fix” things, “adjust” things, “answer prayers,” whatever) then that seems to me to be illogical and denigrates God, as I keep saying, by restricting Him to immediate or direct actions. If you assume God’s perfect foreknowledge of creation, there would obviously be no need to intervene–the “intervention” is, in fact, part of the creative act. . Does it take place after
creation? That–since God is outside time and space–doesn’t make sense.
The catechism says “The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes” (#308). Terms such as first cause and secondary causes are from philosophy and more specifically, first philosophy or metaphysics. The Church’s par excellent teacher here is St Thomas Aquinas whose philosophical doctrine the Church has officially endorsed on not a few occasions (he is mentioned by name in official Vatican II documents) to be the philosophy above all other philosophies to be taught to seminarians and in catholic universities. We will not stray from the truth of the catholic faith if we follow his philosophical doctrine and principles.
Accordingly, concerning the above text from the catechism, St Thomas says the actions done by creatures are done both by God immediately and the creature immediately. Not partly done by God and partly done by the creature, but wholly done by God and wholly done by the creature. For example, suppose we take an ax in our hands and cut wood or logs with it. The logs are cut both by us and the ax, we being the principle agent while the ax is an instrumental agent of cutting the logs. Similarly, God is the principle agent in all the actions of His creatures as He is the first cause of these actions, while creatures are secondary agents and instrumental and second causes of these actions. Human beings who have free will are a different kind of “instrument” than an ax of course.
This teaching steers a middle course between occasionalism (I have not strayed into this) and mere conservationism which would be the equivalent of the Newtonian concept you mentioned in a previous post. Secondary causes are true causes of creaturely actions which is opposed to occasionalism which denies that creatures are true causes at all. For example, fire does not cause heat but God in the fire causes heat.
Mere conservationism is not a Newtonian invention. This idea was floating around among the scholastic medieval schools in Aquinas’ time but rejected by Aquinas, St.Bonaventura, St Albert the Great, Blessed Duns Scotus to name a few. It is certainly not the official teaching of the Catholic Church as we find it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Nor can it be reconciled with Divine Revelation and Holy Scripture and still less if we take into consideration the doctrine of grace. Consequently, the CCC#304 says:
“And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a “primitive mode of speech”, but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him. the prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.”
