Aquinas

The Via Negativa is the best way to approach religious language. Discuss [40]

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Whether this claim is valid or not very much depends on the concept of God in question.  If God is inside time, everlasting but personal – as the God of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible seems to be – then using religious language in a positive and univocal way seems reasonable.  On the other hand, if God is eternal outside time – as the God of the Philosophers, the Prime Mover, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” seems to be – then using words coined to describe things within time seems more problematic.  Maimonides, the most famous proponent of the Via Negativa, was heavily influenced by the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and so saw God as eternal outside time.  Given this, his claim in the “Guide for the Perplexed” that… “To give a full explanation of the mystic passages of the Bible is contrary to the law and to reason… God cannot be compared to anything…” and his proposal that the most that can be said about God is what God is not i.e. God is not limited, evil, something physical etc… seems persuasive.  Nevertheless, Maimonides’ Via Negativa, his apophatic way of approaching God leaves religion in a difficult position.  Religions make positive claims about God; the Holy Books and doctrines of all religions are full of them!  Maimonides’ approach makes religion die the death of a thousand qualifications.  Believers need to have something positive to fix their faith on, not silence, the empty space left by negations and a lot of small print saying that Holy Texts can’t be understood to mean what they say.  The Via Negativa – for all its logical appeal and for all its possibilities in terms of framing that language of spirituality and personal faith – is far from being the best approach to religious language. 

In a sense, Christianity is defined by the Nicene Creed:

“We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God…”

Approaching the Creed from the Via Negativa is problematic.  Admittedly, it doesn’t start too badly.  One God.  Oneness is a quality being positively ascribed to God.  Is oneness a concept bound by time and space?  Arguably.  Maimonides might replace this line with “We believe in a God who is not many…” but the sense is very much the same.  Nevertheless, things quickly go downhill.  We believe in God “the Father”… clearly “Father” is a word rooted in time and space.  Maimonides – along with Christian proponents of the Via Negativa such as Tertullian, St Cyril of Jerusalem and Pseudo-Dionysus – might have to admit that the word has no positive meaning when applied to God and worse, that it is likely to be positively misleading about His nature.  While St Cyril’s point that believers should “candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him…” (Catechetical Homilies), this approach is unlikely to have found favour at the Council of Nicaea or in Churches today.  The central Christian mission would be a lot more difficult if believers openly confessed that they have little idea what it is they believe in!  As Maimonides wrote “However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.” (Guide for the Perplexed)  This doesn’t offer people much incentive to be baptized, attend Church or read the Gospel; it pushes people towards deism or non-denominational “spirituality”.  In this way, the Via Negativa is not the best approach to religious language as it makes religion dysfunctional.  

Further, there is a better alternative to the Via Negativa in the form of Aquinas’ doctrine of Analogy.  Aquinas read Maimonides and was persuaded both by his concept of God and by his skepticism concerning the positive meaning of terms applied to God.  He strongly disagreed with the univocalism employed by scholars like St Anselm and absolutely rejected the idea that people can know and describe the nature of God sufficiently to analyze it and find necessary existence within it a priori, as proponents of the ontological arguments do.  In Summa Theologica 1:2:2 Aquinas wrote “because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition “God exists” is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are known to us…”  In Summa Theologica 1:2:3 he responded to the question “Is God a body” by making quite clear that the meaning of words applied to God can only be understood in a strictly limited and analogical sense.   Aquinas argues that words applied to God have meaning as analogies of being (1) and sometimes discusses two separate senses in which meaning should be understood; analogies of attribution (2) and analogies of proportion (3).

  1. Most importantly, God’s being is not the same as our being – he is Wholly Simple and timeless and as such has no potential.  The meaning of words applied to God have to be consistent with the mysterious, timeless nature that we know that he must have as a result of reasoning from movement, causation and contingency.  For Aquinas, when believers say that God is good they cannot understand that God is morally good, because that implies freedom and choice which are concepts which only make sense in time.  God is timeless and eternal, so His goodness can only be timeless and eternal – goodness in the sense of perfection and the fulfilment of nature only.  Hence, there is a positive sense in which attributes positively ascribed to God can have meaning; that in which they are compatible with His being or nature.
  2. In addition, the meaning of terms applied to God and to earthly things has an overlap in the way that I might say that I am healthy and my yoghurt is healthy.  Healthy is a property primarily of living creatures like me and only secondarily of foods or activities which contribute to my health.  According to John Milbank, Aquinas suggests that the primary sense of attributes such as “good” relate to God and the meaning of the word in an earthly sense is only secondary.  There IS a positive connection between the meaning of attributes applied to God and earthly things; the connection is not large but it is rationally defined.
  3. In addition, God’s unchangingly perfect and actual nature dictates that he must be 100% everything that can be ascribed to Him.  God cannot fall short, because to do so implies potential which is not compatible with God’s timeless nature.  Given this, God is the scale against which we make judgements about things in this world.  If I say “Jamie Vardy is a great footballer” I have to have an idea of what greatness means.  Vardy can only fulfil a proportion of what that idea is, because he is only one man in one time playing for one team – and he is not a rugby player, rower, artist or opera singer, all of which might be described as reflecting greatness in a different way.  The meaning of attributes ascribed to earthly things has a proportional relationship with the meaning of divine attributes.  Again, the shared meaning (analogy) is not a large one, but it can be rationally described.

Aquinas’ analogical approach to religious language is a much better approach to religious language than the Via Negativa because it enables believers to use and defend the meaning of positive claims about God, while not supporting naïve univocalism or a philosophically unsatisfying and ultimately limited concept of God.  Aquinas’ model of God is deeply appealing in that it is supported by real experience, but it also retains the “otherness” and unlimited idea of God that is so important to believers.  Aquinas’ theory of religious language completes his model of God because it shows how believers are worshipping in an ultimately meaningful way, even though God is beyond ordinary understanding.  The Via Negativa is not the best approach to religious language because Analogy is a much better approach. 

Scholars who employ cataphatic theology and approach religious language through the Via Positiva reject the Via Negativa on the grounds that it ignores the important connection between God – the creator – and the world – the creation.  In the same way that Philosophers reason from movement, causation, contingency, grades of perfection in things, order and purpose to the existence of a necessary being who explains these qualities we experience in the universe, people should be able to apply words based on qualities we experience in the universe to the God who created them.  Anselm and John Duns Scotus both defended the univocal use of religious language on these grounds, arguing that words refer to concepts which depend on God to define them through His creation.  Anselm’s ontological argument depends on this argument, because it analyses the definition of God and finds necessary existence within it.  This could not work if the word “greater” meant anything different when applied to God than it does when applied to things in this world.  The problem with the univocal approach to religious language is that the type of connection between creator and creation does not support a literal approach to the meaning of language.  When a person creates something, their creation does not have to be like them.  The potter is not made of clay and a skilled potter is capable of making a bad pot. We have no reason to believe that words apply to God in exactly or even much the same way as they apply to things in this world.  Aquinas strict limitations on the sense in which meaning should be understood when words are applied to God seems much more realistic in relation to a God whose relationship with the world is understood to be the creator, Prime Mover, uncaused cause, necessary being, supreme perfection and intelligent designer.   Because of this, the Via Negativa is a better way to approach religious language than the Via Positiva, but it is still less good than Analogy.

Certainly, the Via Negativa has its uses, but these are more apparent when it comes to Philosophy or the practice of personal spirituality than they are in the practice of religion.  The word “religion” refers to what binds us as people together; the ties that bind need to be clearly defined and understood if they are to function and endure. In terms of Philosophy, approaching the nature of God through negation is an important check in naïve literalism.  As Maimonides wrote “it is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him.”  For philosophers, it is all too easy to move from saying that there are absolute limits to human knowledge to ignoring what lies beyond those limits to denying that there is anything beyond those limits to denying that there are limits.  As philosophers and as individuals, reflecting on the nature of God as “wholly other” forces us to confront the falsity of the prevalent assumption that “man is the measure of all things” and deepen their spiritual understanding, which includes confronting limitation and embracing humility.  As Tertullian said “our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is…”  and as St Cyril said “in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge…”  Certainly, the Via Negativa is a useful brake on naive literalism and a spiritual tool for individuals, but it cannot be described as the best approach to religious language in general.

In conclusion, the Via Negativa is far from being the best approach to religious language, although it is still useful in some ways. The best approach seems to be Aquinas’ doctrine of Analogy, which treads the line between acknowledging the otherness of God and retaining the ability to say some meaningful things about God successfully.  Ian Ramsey’s suggestion that words being used in an analogical sense should be signposted or qualified in some way seems a sensible way of improving Aquinas’ analogy further, avoiding the probability that believers could miss the careful sense in which words are being applied to God and confuse religious language with ordinary language.  Thomist scholars such as Gerry Hughes SJ use the word “timelessly” as such a qualifier, showing that words such as “good” should not be taken to mean more than can be defended in relation to the being and attributes of God and as proportional to His qualities.

 

“Religious faith requires belief in a separate soul” Discuss (40)

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Assuming that the statement refers to Christian faith, through the history of Christianity there have been Christians who have believed in a separate soul (e.g. Descartes) and others who have not (e.g. St. Matthew) but the crux of the issue is whether such a belief is required.  This begs the question “by who or what standard?”  Obviously, belief in a separate soul is not required by the Creeds; the Apostles’ Creed affirms “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” which suggests that Christian faith requires not a dualist but an avowedly monist position.  Further, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church 1059 affirms that “The holy Roman Church firmly believes and confesses that on the Day of Judgment all men will appear in their own bodies before Christ’s tribunal to render an account of their own deeds”.  It is clear that no belief in a separate soul can be required by orthodox Christian faith, although I will argue that belief in a separable soul might make it easier to sustain faith in the face of life’s challenges and apparent inequities.

Christian faith promises salvation; union with God and restitution for the injustices apparent in this life.  Nevertheless, the New Testament is unclear about how this salvation will come about and whether the afterlife will entail bodily existence or be purely spiritual.  The Synoptic Gospels suggest an immanent eschatology; descriptions of heaven and hell are earth-like and seem to suggest that people will have resurrected bodies to experience reward or punishment much as we experience these in the coming Kingdom of God.  Matthew 25 (the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) suggests that the evangelists expected that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead and supports a physical understanding of hell ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41)  Luke 16:23-24 also supports this view “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ Other references to the final judgement are similar “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) and this vision of the end-times seems consistent with Old Testament references, such as those in Ezekiel and Isaiah.  Christian faith supported by references in the synoptic gospels would require no belief in either a separate or a separable soul, only a belief in physical resurrection. Nevertheless, belief in physical resurrection is difficult to sustain in the modern world.  There is a complete lack of supporting evidence and it is difficult to see how it could deliver the promised reward (or punishment) in a fair and just manner.  Surely, those who died hundreds or thousands of years before the final judgement would be at greater risk of their bodes having disintegrated.  Surely, those who died as infants, after losing limbs, in extreme old-age or whose bodies were destroyed utterly would seem less likely to get their just deserts.  While “all things are possible with God” (Matthew 19:26) and Christian faith requires a belief in God’s omnipotence, it is clear that this cannot extend to God doing the logically impossible, or else most theodicies would collapse and God could not also be all-good. While God resurrecting people out of nothing by reassembling them from dispersed dust into their ideal form may not be logically impossible, it comes close to being so in some cases.

It is obvious why many 21st Century Christians prefer to believe in an eternal life, reward or punishment which begins soon after each person’s death.  A belief in immediate reward and punishment would work either with dualism, belief in a separate soul, or with a belief in re-creation into a parallel dimension.

Immediate reward or punishment through dualism, in a purely spiritual sense, is superficially easier to reconcile with science and reason.  There have been many reports of Near Death Experiences which, if credible, would to support belief in disembodied existence immediately after death.  Pam Reynolds’ experience during standstill surgery in 1991 is often seen as one of the best documented cases. More recent research conducted by Dr Sam Parnia at the University of Southampton might suggest that the soul could continue after death without a body.  In addition, a spiritual interpretation of the afterlife would be more rationally defensible than physical resurrection.  It is easier to see how a soul could survive eternally; a risen body would still be physical and so subject to aging, sickness, disability and other associated limitations.  It is easier to see how a soul could come “face to face” with God, who is not normally seen to have a physical existence as human beings do. Further, parts of John’s gospel, the Johannine letters and Paul’s letters seem to support a more spiritual interpretation of eternal life. Verses such as “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) and “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:8) seem obviously Platonic in their influence and are closest to dualism. However, although faith with a purely spiritual eschatology seems easier to reconcile with science and reason, it comes with significant problems and has been relatively rare through the history of Christianity. Belief in a separate soul – dualism – is difficult to defend in philosophical or scientific terms and suggests other beliefs and practices which are incompatible with Christian theology. Descartes argued for a Christian dualism, but struggled to provide a coherent account of why the soul would be enfleshed, how soul and body interact and how a disembodied soul could experience reward or punishment in the way that would be necessary for Christian promises of eternal life to be meaningful.  The Catholic Church never accepted the idea that eternal life could be purely spiritual and disembodied because this might seem to dilute the punishment of hell – annihilation or distance from God would scarcely seem a disincentive to people who have decided to commit mortal sins after all.  Further, by the Middle Ages the Church realized that dualism supports an utter contempt for the physical body, which can lead people towards extreme and unhealthy asceticism or towards a disregard for the sins of the body and the belief that its sins – sexual sins included – are less significant.

Belief that the body can be re-created in a parallel dimension after death to receive reward or punishment is far preferable.  Seeking a middle-way between the difficulties of basing faith on a future physical resurrection and basing it on dualism and a purely spiritual eternal life, St Thomas Aquinas developed his Theology on the basis of Aristotle’s Philosophy.  Rejecting the dualism proposed by his teacher Plato, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle had set out how all beings have four different types of cause; material causes (physical ingredients), efficient causes (agents), formal cause (what makes something what it is, its definition) and a final cause (the purpose or end to which its existence pertains). Aristotle understood that the soul is the formal cause of the human being, what makes it what it is and defines its existence.  Unlike Plato however, Aristotle did not see the form of a being having any separate metaphysical existence.  The form depends on the materials it specifies, and the end towards which it works.  The soul is, in effect, the function of the body – what Gilbert Ryle later described as “the ghost in the machine” – it gives the impression of being a separate entity but in fact it depends entirely on the physical body for its existence. This is where Aquinas departed from Aristotle; he argued that on death the body is re-created in a parallel heavenly dimension and that the new unity of soul and heavenly body is subject to punishment and reward.  Arguably, this idea of re-creation has a basis in scripture; references such as “They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) can be interpreted as Biblical support for Aquinas’ “modified dualism”.  Further, John Hick developed a defense of re-creation into a parallel dimension through the “replica theory” which he developed in Death and Eternal Life (1976).  As Hick argued, provided that the replica retains the memories of the original, difficulties with spatio-temporal continuity can be overcome.  When Captain Kirk said “beam me up Scotty!” there was no doubt that Kirk remained Kirk although there was a break in his spatio-temporal existence. Aquinas’ theory of re-creation supports Christian faith far better than either monism and physical resurrection or dualism and purely spiritual reward/punishment.  It avoids both the challenges presented by science and reason to belief in physical resurrection and the theological pitfalls of dualism, while straining credulity to a lesser extent because it requires only that the soul could be briefly separable, not that it must be sustained in a separate state.  For this reason, Aquinas’ theory was adopted into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th Century.

In conclusion, it is clear that orthodox Christian faith does not require belief in a separate soul.  Christian faith can be sustained through a belief in physical resurrection, either in the future starting with the final judgement as the Synoptic Gospels, Creeds and Catechism suggest, or through re-creation into a new body in a parallel dimension as St Thomas Aquinas suggested.  Re-creation does not require belief in a separate soul, but does suppose that the soul is separable.

“Boethius proved that God’s omniscience is compatible with human free will.” Discuss (40)

/ vardycharlotte

Boethius’ discussion of Divine omniscience can be found in his Consolations of Philosophy, Book 5.  Facing his own death, Boethius reflects on the human condition and imagines a dialogue with Lady Philosophy, who points out the vast web of Aristotelian causation in which our lives are caught. In Part I Boethius asks…

“in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to our will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our souls?’

pointing to a problem that has always dogged Classical Theism.  If God is Omnipotent, and if Omnipotence entails omniscience, then it is difficult to maintain any meaningful degree of human freedom.  Without freedom there seems to be no convincing way of defending God against charges of creating or at least allowing gratuitous suffering.  A God who is omniscient cannot also be benevolent.  Boethius proceeds to explore this problem and then attempts to resolve it by clarifying the very nature of God and therefore the nature of His foreknowledge, yet his resolution fails to show how Omniscience and human freedom are compatible in the end.

In Book 5 part III, Boethius sets out the paradox of omnipotence in some detail.  Drawing on Platonic philosophy, and the eternal model of God suggested to Christian Neoplatonists by the Timaeus, Boethius saw God’s eternal existence and nature as a necessary conclusion of rational reflection on a contingent world.  However, accepting God’s eternity comes with problems.  Boethius pointed out…

“if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will”

and explained how neither the suggestion that God’s knowledge of them makes future events necessary nor the suggestion that God’s knowledge is contingent on events in time are satisfactory.  J.M.E. McTaggart (1866–1925) differentiated between a God whose knowledge of events is from a perspective in time (A series eternity) and a God whose knowledge of events is from a perspective outside time whereby all events are simultaneous in the mind of God (B series eternity).  Boethius argued that putting God’s perspective in time, giving him A series eternity, makes God’s knowledge depend on time and the things that happen within it.  If I watch a bus arriving at its stop, my knowledge of it happening depends on the bus doing what it is doing and on time passing to facilitate what it is doing.  Clearly, in this scenario my knowledge of the bus does not determine the bus in doing what it does – I could not reasonably be held responsible for the bus being early, late or punctual – and yet it is also true that my knowledge of the future is limited because I cannot know what has not yet happened.  This sort of A series eternity fails to support the supreme knowledge and power that Classical Theists impute to God.  However there are also problems with B series eternity, as Boethius pointed out.  If God has a timeless perspective and knows all things and events simply and singly, then it seems to follow that future events happen necessarily because they are known by God before they happen and because they cannot not happen.  Consequently,

“what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! Vainly are rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other… And therefore neither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are confounded together… Again, no ground is left for hope or prayer, since how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every object of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of causation?”

Boethius sets out how if God knows things that might not come to pass, then His knowledge is limited and if God’s knowledge depends on how things are in time, His power is limited.  He accepts that on the issue of omniscience rests the plausibility of Religion – for without genuine human freedom there can be no morality, no hope for meaningful salvation and no real communication with the Divine. In Part IV Boethius addresses this fundamental problem by attempting to show that God’s foreknowledge of events is not necessary by pointing out that God’s knowledge is not like human knowledge, and suggesting that freedom and foreknowledge could be compatible for God in a way that they do not seem to be to us. God’s knowledge, argues Boethius, is not due to physical senses, nor to imagination, nor to thought, but is instead the knowledge of pure intelligence which understands the very underpinnings of reality

“by surveying all things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash of intuition.” 

For Boethius,

“eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment… since God abides for ever in an eternal present, His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. “ (Book 5, Part VI)

This is persuasive; St Augustine discussed something similar in The Confessions (354–430) and St. Thomas Aquinas extended and developed a very similar position in the Summa Theologica (1264).   However, the price of resolving the conflict between foreknowledge and free-will seems to push God far into timeless abstraction and seeming unknowability.  Arguably, this approach preserves the technical plausibility of Religion by sacrificing the practical plausibility of Religion and so achieves, at most, a pyrrhic victory.  Surely, it is no more meaningful to pray to “pure intelligence” – whose knowledge of individual circumstances is limited to part of a single flash of intuition unsullied by sight, imagination or thought – than it is to pray to a being who has determined the prayer, its cause and its outcome by His very existence?  Further, the meaning of the divine attributes would be severely restricted by pushing God outside the spatio-temporal framework that describes ordinary human language.  What can the words “benevolence” or “power” really mean in a timeless sense?  A timeless God cannot have choice – because choice implies a time before and after a choice is made and the possibility of things being other than they are.  A timeless God cannot act – because action implies a time before and after at the very least.  As Sir Anthony Kenny pointed out that the concept of a timeless God seems “radically incoherent.”  He wrote…

“my typing of this paper is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Again, on this view, the great fire of Rome is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Therefore, while I type these very words, Nero fiddles heartlessly on.” (Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford, Clarendon Press) 1979, 38–9)

The idea that a timeless God can do or be anything that is comprehensible through normal concepts and words is ridiculous.  There is no shared analogical meaning between words applied to God and the world, whatever Aquinas tried to argue.

Boethius was aware of this problem in positing a completely timeless God and tried to reconcile his claim that God exists in a timeless eternity with God having the ability to know events as they happen and a degree of freedom or openness in the future.  In Part VI he argued that while God sees events an eternal present, God’s knowledge cannot be understood to cause them to happen.  God can know an event or action that is genuinely free because his knowledge is of an eternal present rather than a future as we would understand it…  Taking the bus analogy again, God witnesses its journey like a single stack of still photographs.  Every step of the journey is known as if in the present – God’s knowledge is not constrained by time because he sees everything now, but God’s knowledge still depends on the way things are rather than making them the way that they are and removing all freedom. God’s knowledge is neither conditional (as ours usually is) nor simply necessary (as would be the case with a completely timeless God who would be unaware of any present).  God’s knowledge is unlike any form of human knowledge in that it is conditionally necessary.  The very categories “contingent” and “simply necessary” suggest temporal and logical frameworks that do not apply to God who creates these frameworks and exists outside them.  While this is persuasive, God’s conditionally necessary knowledge of events seems little more religiously satisfying than God’s timeless knowledge of events.  God’s experience of an eternal present is almost as different from human experience as a genuinely timeless experience would be.  The preservation of free will, moral responsibility and divine benevolence is by no means clear either.  If God knows future events now and they cannot be other than how they are, then whether God knows them as if in an eternal present or otherwise, it is difficult to see how anything can really change by human agency.

EL Mascall tried to suggest that quantum science could provide a model for understanding how God’s actions could both be timeless and have an appearance of being in time if each action could be conceived to have a timeless and a temporal pole which are interrelated, this does not advance the discussion by much.  Mascall is just restating the assertion that things would look different from God’s point of view in different language.  He doesn’t seem to do more explain how God can both know the future in a way that God ensures that nothing but what God knows can happen and not be responsible for what happens.  Other contemporary writers, such as Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, and Brian Leftow, have also tried to modify the timeless model of God by insisting that God’s timeless eternity has some of the features of temporal duration.  The project that Boethius started retains its interest because arguably, the plausibility of religion depends on its success.  However, the project has yet to yield conclusive results.

In addition, Protestant scholars Nelson Pike and Richard Swinburne have developed related arguments.  For Nelson Pike the idea that God’s knowledge can be that of pure intelligence taking in the whole of reality in a single flash of intuition is incompatible with the God revealed through the Bible.  The God of the Bible – of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to borrow Pascal’s phrase – is active and responsive and seemingly possessed of the ability to see, hear, imagine, think and even feel.  In his essay “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action” (1965) Pike points out that whatever metaphorical interpretations are put on Biblical accounts of God wrestling Jacob or speaking with Moses or acknowledging Jesus at His Baptism, God’s knowledge is inescapably tensed.  If this is true, then it is difficult to see how Boethius model of a God experiencing an eternal present could be acceptable to people of mainstream Christian faith. A timeless model of God – even the modified timeless model proposed by Boethius – conflicts with the Biblical account of His creative action and nature.  Swinburne agreed, pointing out that…

“The God of the Hebrew Bible… is pictured as being in continual interaction with humans – humans sin, then God is angry, then humans repent, then God forgives them…” (The Coherence of Theism 2nd ed. 2016 p233)

Without the idea of God responding to human sin and human repentance, there is no obvious way to preserve what is meaningful about Christianity.  Swinburne adds that…

“The Hebrew Bible shows no knowledge of the doctrine of divine timelessness… God is represented as saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega…”  … but it seems to me to be reading far too much into such phrases to interpret them as implying the doctrine of divine timelessness.”  (Ibid. p230)

Although the ideas of God’s timelessness or eternity are philosophically useful in that they provide possible means of defending God against responsibility for suffering – including inflicting endless fiery punishment arbitrarily – the ideas find no support in Scripture and conflict with essential Christian beliefs and teachings.

There seems to be a contradiction between the Philosophical model of God suggested by Boethius, developed by Aquinas and enshrined in Catholic doctrine and the everlasting God described by the Bible and proposed by Theistic Personalists, many of whom are Protestant.  Further, neither model of God really avoids the problem of Omniscience outlined by Boethius in Book 5 of The Consolations of Philosophy.  The God of Theistic Personalists must either be limited in knowledge or power (and so is Philosophically unsatisfying) and the Timeless God is limited in terms of not being able to witness, experience, respond or act in any recognizable sense (and so is religiously unsatisfying.)  Boethius failed to prove that God’s omniscience is compatible with human free will, but he succeeded in outlining the inescapability of the problem and the importance of addressing and ultimately resolving it.  While Nelson Pike was careful to open his 1965 essay Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action by disassociating himself from the implications of his contribution to the project Boethius started, it is difficult to ignore these implications for long.  Either God is limited (i.e. not Omnipotent, Omniscient or Benevolent) or human beings are determined… but in any case Classical Theism is incoherent.

 

 

Critically evaluate the classical teleological argument (40)

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Teleological arguments move from observations of purposiveness in the universe to the conclusion that God is the best explanation for the existence of the universe as it is. The Greek word TELOS originally referred to the target in archery and Aquinas, in his fifth way to God plays on this imagery by selecting an arrow as his analogy for purposiveness in the universe.  He wrote…

“We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”

The argument has its roots in Aristotle, who wrote of things in the universe and the universe as a whole advancing towards fulfilling a FINAL CAUSE, a telos or purpose, and suggested that there must be some mysterious force guiding this process and supporting the tendency towards fulfilment, goodness, in everything we see. It has been advanced many times and in many different variants since Aquinas, but it is characterised by arguing qua purpose and by the use of analogies to emphasise the improbability of efficient organisms and processes arising by chance. The classical teleological argument fell out of favour in the mid-19th century as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was accepted as offering a natural explanation for the appearance of purposiveness in things.  This essay will argue that while evolution remains the best reason for rejecting teleological arguments, there are other good reasons for rejecting them as well.

In 1779 David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was published.  It contained a complete, and eminently readable, refutation of the classical teleological as well as other arguments for the existence of God.  Hume’s character Cleanthes sets up the argument, using the analogy of a machine and its maker(s)…

“Look round the world, contemplating the whole thing and every part of it; you’ll find that it is nothing but one big machine subdivided into an infinite number of smaller ones… The intricate fitting of means to ends throughout all nature is just like (though more wonderful than) the fitting of means to ends in things that have been produced by us”[2]

He concluded…

“Since the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer by all the rules of analogy that the causes are also alike, and that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though he has much larger faculties to go with the grandeur of the work he has carried out.”[3]

In 1803 Cleanthes’ argument was famously reproduced by William Paley, who used the analogy of a watch and watchmaker, concluding that from the similarity between the watch, natural organisms and even the universe as a whole…

“the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker”

The arguments presented by both Cleanthes and Paley are arguments from analogy and, as such, both can only be as strong as the analogies they employ.  As Hume’s character Philo observed, Cleanthes (and reasonably Paley) relies on a “very weak analogy”.  He reduces the argument to absurdity by suggesting alternative analogies – a house, legs, a ship – and concludes that

“Doesn’t the great disproportion ·between part and whole· bar all comparison and inference? From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything about how men come into being? Would the way a leaf blows—even if we knew this perfectly—teach us anything about how a tree grows?”[5]

As Philo points out, there is a great dissimilarity between any analogy and the universe as a whole, and this is not just one of degree as Paley suggests in Chapter II Part V of Natural Theology.  It is not reasonable, even from the perspective of the 19th Century Newtonian world-view, to suggest that

“Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other animals, is just one of the springs and forces of the universe…”

It follows that the analogies commonly employed to persuade readers by proponents of the classical teleological argument add nothing to the strength of their argument as a whole.

Apart from the analogies, the classical teleological argument can be summarised through this syllogism…

P1.  Natural organisms act towards an end

P2. Natural organisms cannot act towards an end independently

C1. There must be some intelligence causing natural organisms to act towards an end

C2. This intelligence is what everybody calls God.

Clearly, both propositions can be disputed.  There are many examples of inefficiency in nature and even where purposiveness is apparent, this can now be explained by evolution through natural selection.  Yet the most problematic step in the argument is the secondary conclusion, that the “intelligence” is what everybody calls God.  Surely God is usually seen to be whatever caused the universe to be the way that it is, however the qualities of omnipotence and omnibenevolence are usually imputed to God and there can be no doubt that the universe contains many examples of gratuitous innocent suffering.  As Tennyson wrote “nature is red in tooth and claw”[7] – Darwin himself and later John Stuart Mill remarked how implausible it is to suggest that a loving God could create a world in which animals must kill each other to survive.  To many people this world seems more like the project of a sick science-fiction project than of the God of Christianity! Is it not reasonable to suggest that this universe could be the first, “rude effort of an infant deity”[8]?  This would better account for the imperfect characteristics of the universe as we find it than suggesting that it is the perfect product of a perfect God.

Further, there is nothing to suggest that the intelligent designer of the universe would have to be single.  As Philo observed…

”a great number of men join in building a house or a ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth; why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?” 

This would render the secondary conclusion of the classical teleological argument, that the intelligence behind the universe could be called God, redundant.   No Christian – and few members of other faiths – could accept that multiple Gods could have had a hand in creating the universe; to do so would place limits on the power of each, reducing the God’s to the status of spirits or demons. Philo admits that supposing the existence of multiple deities would be to “multiply causes unnecessarily” in a way that is philosophically unsound, and yet he argues that although it would be just as wrong to say that there must be one God as to say there must be multiple Gods.  There is no way that human beings can know one way or the other.  The secondary conclusion is not adequately supported by the premises and so the argument fails in its objective of being a demonstration of the existence of God.

Of course modern Intelligent Design arguments get around this difficulty by eliminating the secondary conclusion and leaving just the inference that God might be the intelligence that the argument has concluded to exist.  Scholars such as Michael Behe and William Dembski point out the inadequacy of Darwin’s Theory of evolution through natural selection as a complete explanation for the universe.

Michael Behe points to irreducible complexity in microbiological organisms, such as the flagellum of certain bacteria, suggesting that linear evolution cannot account for complex organisms in which all parts need to work together for any function to be performed.  Individual parts of irreducibly complex organisms are, Behe claims, without purpose unless all the other parts are present and correctly arranged.  How could things evolve all at once to be this way?  An intelligence is needed to explain these structures, some of which are the very building-blocks of life.  It may be that evolution explains some aspects of nature, but without hypothesising intelligent design scientists cannot explain all of nature[9].  Of course Behe’s argument is rejected by most mainstream scientists, who point out that parts of organisms can evolve out of existence as well as into existence.  It could well be that each part of an irreducibly complex organism had a purpose in relation to the organism as it was in a previous stage of evolution, but as the new purpose evolved the old one became redundant and other parts of the structure with no new purpose did not survive.  Most critics of Behe claim that he has either misunderstood the science and is making invalid claims to irreducible complexity or claim that he is too hasty in his conclusion that an intelligent designer hypothesis is required. If they are right, as I am persuaded that they are – the critics vastly outnumber and outrank his supporters – then Behe’s modern version of the teleological argument fails, even with its scientific examples and lack of secondary conclusion.

Like Behe, William Dembski proposes that an intelligent designer hypothesis is needed to account for the characteristics of natural organisms.  Dembski appeals to what he calls “specified complexity”, instances where incredibly complex structures occur where each part of the whole is finely tuned for its job.  The obvious example is DNA – each “letter” of a strand of DNA, ACGT, has a specific role and there are millions and millions of them in the most basic genome. As a statistician, Dembski calculates the probability of such specified complex structures arising by chance and concludes that where the probability surpasses what he calls the “universal probability bound” (10×1150) then it is incredible to suppose that it happened by chance rather than design[10].  Dembski has as many critics as Behe.  Again they claim that he has either misunderstood the science or jumped to his conclusion of intelligent design too hastily.  Specifically, Dembski starts with specified complex structures as they are today and assumes that they were always meant to be this way when he calculates probability, which ignores the possibility that they genuinely exist by chance and could very well not exist or exist differently.  Scientists are beginning to recognise that DNA contains a huge percentage of redundancy – code that was once relevant but which has been rendered redundant by new code which has been added as species evolve.  Certainly, cutting out a section of DNA will change the efficacy of the whole strand, but that is because redundant elements are woven into the fabric of the whole.  Take Brighton Pavilion as an example – its structure is highly complex and each bit is integral to the whole.  This is not as a result of design but because the building was remodelled through several different designs and the present building incorporates and relies on elements of older buildings.  The guttering runs inside the walls and now holds up the ceilings in some places.  Start taking things away – even things as small as layers of wallpaper or light-fittings – and the whole building starts to crumble.  As Richard Dawkins has observed, it is more reasonable to suggest that specified complex structures did arise naturally, over extended periods of time and as a result of environmental pressures, than to claim that they were created as they are my a mysterious “intelligence”[11].  Such a conclusion multiplies improbabilities and by the scientific and philosophical principle of Occam’s Razor, is illogical.  It follows that Dembski’s argument fails as well.

In conclusion it seems that the classical teleological argument fails to demonstrate the existence of God.  The versions proposed by Aquinas, Cleanthes and William Paley are undermined by their use of weak analogies, their propositions are questionable and the conclusions, both that an intelligence and that God exists, are not adequately supported by those propositions.  Most persuasively, the argument fails to explain how a recognisable God could create an imperfect universe or why the characteristics of the universe should not be imputed to demonstrate the existence of an imperfect God, or even a committee of Gods.  Yet, in the end, Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection remains the best reason for rejecting teleological arguments, whether in their classical or modern forms.  The failure of Intelligent Design arguments such as those proposed by Michael Behe and William Dembski shows that any attempt to argue qua purpose to God lacks credibility when evolution offers an elegant and demonstrable explanation of purposiveness that does not demand recourse to the supernatural.  Certainly, examples of structures which biology does not yet understand exist.  However absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence!  Science is by its nature a process and it is unreasonable for religious critics to demand that it present a complete explanation now or admit failure.  There is ample evidence that evolution continues to offer explanatory power and that it is making progress in explaining even the most irreducibly complex or specifically complex structures.  Nevertheless, the failure of classical arguments qua purpose and modern derivations of them does not obviate the possibility of arguing to God qua regularity.  In particular, the aesthetic argument presented by Richard Swinburne could survive the criticisms outlined here[12].  That a universe should exist and evolve in the way that it does is incredible and this sense of awe and wonder could be the basis for a successful abductive argument for some sort of a God, if not the God of Classical Theism.

Footnotes

[1] Summa Theologica: First Part, Question 2, Article 3

[2] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part II

[3] Ibid.

[4] Natural Theology page 3.

[5] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part II

[6] Ibid.

[7] In Memoriam, Canto 56

[8]   Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part V

[9] See “Darwin’s Black Box” (1994)

[10] In books such as “No Free Lunch” (2002)

[11] See the case he presents in episode 2 of his documentary “Religion: The root of all evil” (2002)

[12] The Existence of God (2004)

Critically evaluate Aquinas’ Fifth Way. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Aquinas’ Fifth Way represents a classic statement of the teleological argument qua purpose.  Like Aquinas’ first four ways (Summa Theologica 1, Question 2, Article 3) the argument is inductive and draws the conclusion that God exists a posteriori, following observations of characteristics of the natural world and specifically that all things seem to act for an end (Greek “telos”).  Also like Aquinas’ other ways, the fifth way cannot claim to prove God’s existence; as an inductive argument it is limited to concluding that God is the most probable explanation of the aspects of the universe named in the propositions.  Apart from that obvious limitation, Aquinas’ argument is beset by significant problems and, as this essay will demonstrate, fails to achieve its aim of being a good argument for God’s existence.

Aquinas’ fifth way can be expressed through the following syllogism

P1: natural bodies, which lack intelligence, act for an end

P2: whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence

C: Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end (and this being we call God)

The first proposition – that natural bodies which lack intelligence act for an end – could easily be disputed.  Might it not be that direction in natural bodies is more about how we see and understand them than about how they actually are?  Arguably, the human brain is hard-wired to see patterns and infer causation in the natural world.  Of course, without proposition one the whole argument will founder.

Even if this objection is dismissed as taking scepticism too far, proposition two – that whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end unless it be directed by some intelligent being – is problematic.  Take a banana.  Creationists often cite it as an example of “intelligent design” in the universe.  The banana is a great size, shape, sweetness and colour for human consumption (even its skin features a reliable indicator of ripeness) it seems well designed for the end of being a tasty snack.  Yet to say that ignores the fact that neither the colour, nor the shape, nor the sweetness nor the size of the banana has anything to do with a divine designer – modern bananas have been selectively bred by farmers to have these attributes from parent plants which evolved to appeal to other animals such as monkeys who would spread the seeds of the plant by consuming its fruit.  While we can infer the existence of an intelligence from the brilliance of the modern banana in suiting the average human palate, to suggest that that intelligence is divine is a big step too far.  Even setting aside the modern banana in favour of the original “wild banana”, the “intelligence” that designed it is more probably evolution by natural selection than any God.  It seems that the second proposition “whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence” is seriously flawed and on this grounds as well could be said to fail in its aim of being a good argument for God’s existence. 

Further, Aquinas proceeds to use the analogy of an arrow and an archer to illustrate his claim that all natural things act for an end and so must have been designed to do so by an intelligent being.  The analogy is far from perfect and suggests a certain circularity in Aquinas’ reasoning.  As Hume’s character Philo observes, the selection of an analogy for the universe is far from neutral.  Scholars (including Aquinas) assume their own world-view in selecting something to compare the universe with and so by saying “the universe is like an arrow” or “the universe is like a watch” commit the fallacy of begging the question. If I compare teleology in the universe with an arrow then the suggestion of a necessary divine archer seems reasonable, yet if I compared the universe with a rock rolling down a mountain, which seems just as sensible an analogy – elements of the universe go through cycles, grow increasingly complex and make progress after all – then the inference that there must be an intelligent designer behind the process seems less obvious.  Rocks can roll down mountains as a result of non-intelligent actions, whereas arrows don’t tend to hit their marks randomly.  The “ends” which Aquinas claims that non-intelligent things act for could well be accounted for by natural processes such as evolution through natural selection, so it seems unnecessary to conclude that an intelligent designer, let alone the Christian God, exists.

Finally, Aquinas’ claim about direction and efficiency in the universe is a general one.  There are many instances of natural things failing to fulfil their apparent end or indeed not having an apparent end.  If God is the “intelligent designer” of the universe then what do the obvious inefficiencies in nature suggest about His competence, and (as Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill both observed) what does the existence of beings whose end is to torment and destroy other beings say about His goodness? As Darwin wrote…

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

And as the Biologist JBS Haldane wrote…

“The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature.” (“What is life?”)

As Hume’s character Philo concluded, the problems attendant on suggesting that God is the necessary designer of this universe, with all of its quirks and inefficiencies, are many.  Further, why one God?  Why not an apprentice God, a senile God… or one working as part of a committee? The final step in Aquinas’ argument, that of saying “this being we call God” is a giant leap and probably a leap too far.

In conclusion it seems that quite apart from the limitation of being an inductive argument, Aquinas’ fifth way fails to achieve its aim of being a good argument for God’s existence.  Aquinas’ first proposition can be questioned, his second seems to have no foundation in a post Darwin world, his analogy of the arrow and the archer is imperfect and so his conclusion that an intelligent designer-God must exist cannot be upheld. Nevertheless and despite its failure Aquinas’ argument retains value as an extremely clear statement of the teleological argument qua purpose, an argument which remains the most persuasive and which is probably the most widely cited reason for belief in God. Although the propositions fail to stand up to scientific scrutiny they seem reasonable, even undeniable to many people on an intuitive level.  On this basis modern scholars such as Alister McGrath and Richard Swinburne appeal to probability asking “which is more probable; that the apparent order and purpose nature is explained by chance and natural selection or that there is an intelligence shaping the process?”  They have more success in this limited endeavour than Aquinas had in seeking to advance a good inductive argument for God’s existence.

Further Reading

Aquinas’ Ways to God (New Advent)

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion