Intro to Chapter 7: God and Chance.
Two friends run across each other in an airport. Is chance at work, or divine providence? Each is at the airport as the result of a chain of decisions and events, but the presence of both at the same moment cannot be explained by the causes that have determined their independent paths. Chance? If chance refers to something God did not foresee and did not plan for, then Christianity denies the existence of chance. Nothing happens at random in the world.
Augustine said that chance, what he called “fortuitous cause,” refers not to the absence of causes but merely to hidden causes - ultimately, to God’s will. Aquinas asks us to imagine two servants sent by their master to the same place. To them their meeting appears to be by chance, but it has been fully foreseen, even purposed by their master.
To believe, with Aquinas, that “all things must of necessity come under God’s ordering” requires faith, but a belief in blind chance requires a faith of its own.