Treatise on Nature and Grace — Selections
Malebranche was a French Oratorian priest and devoted follower of Descartes who developed occasionalism — the view that God is the sole direct cause of all events in the world, with created things serving merely as occasions for divine action. This position created an unavoidable problem: if God causes everything, what explains suffering? Malebranche argued that God acts through simple, universal laws rather than particular interventions, and that evil reflects not a failure of divine goodness but God’s commitment to order and regularity. The argument anticipates later debates about whether a law-governed universe is compatible with a providential one.