When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so.... He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment.That is strictly the Aristotelian position. The giveaway is when he speaks of human beings having 'internal laws' that govern how they 'reach their fulfilment.' The question is how things come to be, and Aristotle gives his answer in Physics II.
Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes.... [those that exist by nature] present a feature in which they differ from things which are not constituted by nature. Each of them has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, or of growth and decrease, or by way of alteration). On the other hand, a bed and a coat and anything else of that sort, qua receiving these designations i.e. in so far as they are products of art-have no innate impulse to change.So there is a distinction being made between things that exist 'by nature' and those that are products of (human) art. Things that exist by nature have 'within themselves a principle' -- the Pope said an 'internal law' -- that governs how they come to be, how they grow or decline, and how they can change. That's why a bear and a man and a horse are different: they are governed by different natures. The bear and the man can eat more or less the same things, but their bodies will do different things with the food they intake. The bear will grow larger, stronger, faster; the man will develop reason and a form fit for manipulation of his environment to a greater degree. The horse can't eat many of the things that a man or a bear can eat, but on grass alone will grow bigger and stronger than either.
The Medieval Aristotelian position -- not only in the Church, but predating the Church's adoption in Jewish and Islamic Aristotelian philosophers such as Maimonides and Avicenna -- was that God's activity produced the world and its laws. The laws were themselves the mechanisms by which creation was effected. Maimonides goes so far as to give an account of Moses' parting of the Red Sea as a kind of understanding of the laws at work: it happened to be the one night when the wind was going to blow in just the right way, for just the right time, to craft the parted sea. Moses was a prophet, but that meant that he had come through his intellect to understand something about the laws at work.
There are a lot of philosophical and theological issues on this ground that might be hotly debated. But the point, here, is that the position the media is taking to be radical is approximately a thousand years old: and it's based on a position far older still.
21 comments:
Interesting. I've been wondering recently about the rise of deism in the Enlightenment and this idea seems to be a precursor to that.
So, the big debate about the idea as expressed by the Aristotelians is that many people rejected the idea of God as being so remote and disconnected. They wanted, and felt they had reason to believe in, a more personal and related God.
That's one of the big philosophical/theological debates hidden at this root. Some of the Aristotelian thinkers embraced the distant God -- Avicenna does, and Gersonides -- and others tried to work around it. Maimonides tries to use Aristotle's "agent intellect" to bridge the gap, perhaps metaphorically through angels. Aquinas, and therefore Catholic teaching, says that very idea of the gap is a kind of misunderstanding: God's attention is what holds everything in existence, not only the laws but the people. So you do have a direct relationship with God; you must! Otherwise, neither you nor the idea of you would or could exist.
The way you get from this to Deism involves a couple more steps, but they also begin with the reintroduction of Greek science into the West via the reconquest of Spain. Specifically, I'm thinking of the technical works on optics, which enabled improvements in lenses. With refinement and study, those gave rise to the telescope and the microscope, which revolutionized our understanding of the world in several ways.
Some of those ways were problematic for Aristotle's account in the Physics, and also his general epistemelogical account in the De Anima. That really made it difficult to maintain the sense, still plausible in the late 1400s, that the Church had correctly described the scientific structure of God's creation; and it called into question whether our soul ("De Anima" means 'on the soul') was really fitted to understand the universe.
So in Deism we have an alienated echo of that idea: The concept is still that God invented the laws, but God is even more alien to us. He takes no special interest in us; he may not be aware of us; and we are creations, not directly of God, but indirectly of the forces God put in play. There is no real prophecy, then, because there is no real miracle except creation itself.
What Pope Francis is trying to restore sounds like Aquinas' idea. It's a plausible position: that we didn't correctly understand the science doesn't mean that we should reject the relationship between God and science, just that we should reject the idea that we had correctly understood just how the science worked.
I'm not sure the author of that article understands what he's talking about.
For example:
“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.
So, Pope Denies God Is Omnipotent would be an accurate headline? Somehow I think there's some missing context.
Also, Francis's statement that, "He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment," doesn't actually contradict the theory of intelligent design. Likewise, "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve." So, God created living things and gave them internal laws for development. Sounds like an intelligent design to me.
Probably the best phrasing, from what I can see, goes to the philosophy professor: Giulio Giorello, professor of the philosophy of science at Milan’s University degli Studi, told reporters that he believed Francis was “trying to reduce the emotion of dispute or presumed disputes” with science.
Also, Grim, thanks for the explanation. I'll have to think about that.
There's an argument about whether God can do logically impossible things, e.g., can God make a square circle? Likewise, there are questions about the logical limits of omnipotence: can God make a rock so heavy that God himself cannot move it?
One standard answer that you hear sometimes from priests is that God is bound by the laws of logic, although presumably God created the laws of logic as part of the creation of the universe. Having priority in that sense, God could have made the laws different; the reason he doesn't is that his will is eternal.
That's a problematic answer, though, for a lot of reasons. And it conflicts with an earlier (neoplatonic rather than Aristotelian) thread of Christian thought, which was still going strong in Aquinas' day (Master Eckhart, in the generation after Aquinas, was tried for heresy over neoplatonic assertions).
There's a lot to be explored here, if you're interested. Some of the greatest minds of history wrestled with these questions at length.
Sure, but those arguments don't generally include whether or not God could have simply spoken and created the world, do they? In the article, it sounds like Francis is saying God couldn't have done it that way.
There's no magic wand that enables God to do things: indeed, the argument (from Avicenna forward) is that God does these things out of his essential nature. That theory does impose a kind of limit, which is that God is acting as he must: although, the only thing that limits him is himself (i.e., his own essential nature).
So, in other words, God can't not create the world: it is both his eternal will and his essential nature to create, bountifully. (That part is borrowed from the neoplatonists, actually: you find this metaphysical structure first in Plotinus.)
That actually doesn't make sense to me. It seems to strip God of free will.
My naive explanation of God's power to create the world is a quite literal power that He could have chosen to use any number of ways. Sure, it is in His nature to have this unlimited power in the same way that it is in my nature to have sight, but I can choose what I look at. I don't even HAVE to look; I can close my eyes, blindfold myself, even blind myself. Does God not have any similar option with his power?
Also, what exactly would a "magic wand" be in this situation?
My naive explanation of God's power to create the world is a quite literal power that He could have chosen to use any number of ways.
That's not the problem. The problem is that once God has chosen, what would give him sufficient reason to change his mind?
The usual argument is that God's will is eternal, and not in the sense that it goes on and on forever through time. Eternity in the Christian sense is outside time -- time only comes to be with the act of creation. In other words, time is part of creation, part of the created world. (This is also a neoplatonic heritage, but we see it fully formed in St. Augustine.)
So if God is outside time, and has willed in a particular way (e.g., he has willed some physical laws), why would he change his mind and will otherwise now? Being outside of time, there isn't this sense that "now" is a critical moment: rather, now and everything to come are equally present to God, and he can see the whole thing at once (that is how Aquinas explains it, in any case).
All that's problematic too. I'm not sure Aquinas' explanation makes sense, actually, and I have a different idea about all of this. But I'm not trying to explain my ideas, just the Church's medieval philosophy.
...what exactly would a "magic wand" be in this situation?
Anything that isn't God himself. All other things are created, and do not exist by necessity, nor do they exist essentially. The first part of that ("necessity") means that all created things are made to exist by something else that already existed. I can make a bow, but only if I have some already-extant ribbon; and I also have to exist in order to elect to make the bow. So the bow comes to exist only because of this unity of already existing things. My wife and I might make a child, but that power is in us only because we already exist (and in a certain form).
God isn't like that. He exists because he exists. Avicenna gives a very convincing proof of the necessity of one existent whose existence is not given by something else, but is essential. To say that it is essential is to say that, for God only, essence and existence are the same thing. That's what God is, Avicenna says: a kind of purity of existence itself.
Aquinas builds on Avicenna's argument to show that goodness and existence are also the same thing. The good is what all things desire (here they draw on Aristotle explicitly), and what do all living things desire? Well, they try to get things to eat, build shelters to protect themselves, make children like them -- they strive, in all ways, for existence. So the ultimate good, for all things, is to exist. Since God's essence is existence, and only God's is, then God is perfectly good -- at least, if we have a correct understanding of what it is to be good.
Now, why "only one" or "only God's"? That's Avicenna's argument. He says there can't be two such things because either they would be unified by a third thing, or they would be separate. If they were unified by the third thing, that thing and neither of them would be really necessary and prior to their existence, and thus their existence wouldn't satisfy the proof for a necessary existent. If they were not unified by anything, even say a space in which they both existed, there would be no way for them to interact to produce the world. Thus, there can be only one.
So, no magic wand. Just God, and his own activity: which is existence, perfected, and that which has perfect existence has an existence that is overflowing and abundant rather than being in danger of limits. Thus, creation is also necessary, because God is what he is. It flows from him naturally.
I love this discussion so much it hurts.
I found the Vatican news agency's article on this and I don't feel much more enlightened.
He twice says that God is not some kind of magician, but it's not clear to me what the primary distinction is. In fact, while I understand the words and sentences, I'm not sure what the whole point is.
Pope Francis chose not to focus on the complex issue of the evolution of nature, the theme the Academy will consider during this session, emphasising however that “God and Christ walk with us and are also present in nature”. “When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining God as a magus, with a magic wand able to make everything. But it is not so. He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive and their fullness of being. He gave autonomy to the beings of the Universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality. And so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a conjurer, but the Creator who gives being to all things. The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Origin that creates out of love. The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of Creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve”.
The distinction I seem to be seeing is that God could not have simply created the world instantaneously as it is, but rather had to create it in a long process.
The Church has said the Big Bang and evolution are acceptable beliefs for a long time, but here Francis seems to be making them mandatory beliefs; they are the only way God could have done it. I.e., if we really believe God created the world in 144 hours, we are making God into a magician.
I believe the Big Bang & evolution got us here over billions of years, but I also believe God could have done it in six 24-hour days if He had wanted to, and to me that doesn't make God a magician.
This seems opaque enough that I really fear I'm just not getting the point.
Your explanation that God couldn't have not created the world actually makes sense; it's not a matter of free will, but of His nature.
Going back to this:
So if God is outside time, and has willed in a particular way (e.g., he has willed some physical laws), why would he change his mind and will otherwise now?
If God sees the whole thing at once, then wouldn't these apparent violations of the physical laws have been decided on at the same time the laws were decided? That is, God would have known when He created the world that a particular exception to the laws would have been necessary at a certain place & time, and He would have incorporated those exceptions at the same time he made the laws themselves. It wouldn't have required changing His mind, would it?
PS Wow -- the anti-spam codes just got a LOT harder to figure out!
Of course, I've always maintained that miracles don't violate natural laws, they just use ones we don't know about or couldn't access. We have no way to test what happens when divine power operates in the world.
Since God's essence is existence
Thus, to Moses: "I AM Who AM"
Anonymous:
Glad you're enjoying it!
Tom:
...precisely because God is not a demiurge or a conjurer, but the Creator who gives being to all things. The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Origin that creates out of love.
So this is a reference to Plato's Timaeus, one of the few works of Plato's that was available throughout Western history and which was incredibly influential in Western philosophy. It's the core work of the neoplatonic tradition, which Plotinus and his followers worked off of in building that tradition.
Plato imagined the world as composed of form and matter, but in a very different way from Aristotle. For Aristotle, form was the order into which matter was put: a form of organization, if you like. For Plato, the Form was a kind of eternal and separate thing. Matter might take on a form, but the form didn't exist because some matter somewhere was in that form: it existed separately, in a world of Forms, of which the greatest was the Form of the Good.
The demiurge in the Timeaus enters the world of matter, somehow, and finds it all chaotic. But he can see the world of forms, the divine world if you like, and he begins trying to order the world of matter into an imitation of the world of Forms. He can't do this perfectly, because of the chaotic nature of matter, but he does manage to create some similarities and regularities.
So what Pope Francis is saying is that the Church stands by the model in which everything is produced by God: that's another way of saying that everything except God is created (and created by God). The reason for apparent chaos is not that God found some 'stuff' that was chaotic and tried to order it using his magical powers; it is, rather, a function of the working of internal laws ("natures" -- an internal principle of motion or change) with which created things are endowed. Those natures produce natural changes, and they also produce interactions between things of different natures, which can create something that looks chaotic -- the results are not what you'd expect from the thing's own nature -- but which are ordered by the natures of the multiple things. (The nature of certain kinds of light changes the nature of plastic when they interact, so that the plastic breaks down much faster than it would have otherwise, for example.)
So what Francis is trying to urge you to "get" is that God doesn't act on nature like a magician, ordering or changing something that God has found. All of nature, including all of its laws, are a direct product of God.
If God sees the whole thing at once, then wouldn't these apparent violations of the physical laws have been decided on at the same time the laws were decided?
Not for an Aristotelian, but the reason why not is harder to explain than the rest of it. Do you remember when I explained why there couldn't be two gods? Well, there is a similar argument in Avicenna that there can't be competing wills: whatever God wills is completely unified. The technical term is "simple," although since it generates the whole universe, we might ordinarily think of this as a very complex willing!
But on this analysis -- which, I believe I said, I think problematic in ways I'm not trying to explore right now -- God wills in a single action, which is eternal and therefore doesn't change through time.
I find this view of God as completely unaffected by the world as implausible, and I don't like the static view of time that it suggests. But the view I actually hold is rather complicated, and it's merely mine: this view is endorsed by saints and those whose philosophy has proven to be worth studying through many centuries.
I've always maintained that miracles don't violate natural laws, they just use ones we don't know about or couldn't access.
That's coherent with Francis' view, as well as with the "simple" nature of the divine will. What God wouldn't presumably do is will this and later that, e.g., that the laws should hold and then that they should not hold. But to will the laws, including some we don't know about -- do we really know any? -- makes a kind of sense.
So what Pope Francis is saying is that the Church stands by the model in which everything is produced by God: that's another way of saying that everything except God is created (and created by God). The reason for apparent chaos is not that God found some 'stuff' that was chaotic and tried to order it using his magical powers; it is, rather, a function of the working of internal laws ("natures" -- an internal principle of motion or change) with which created things are endowed.
Okay, that makes sense of it. Thank you!
I actually read the Timeaus a long time ago, and apparently have forgotten most of it.
I also have a problem with the idea that God isn't affected by the Creation, but I think most of the Christian theological world is against me. It's sometimes difficult for me to see how Catholic theology could possibly allow any free will, though it is doctrine that God gave us free will.
Similarly, Christians are encouraged to pray for things (healing, etc.), but then we're told that God doesn't change for us (or anything). It's a bit baffling.
These concerns, which are free will concerns, are behind my very different view of the nature of time. I tend to think that the kind of static picture of the whole of time only is plausible if that static picture is the field of potentiality: but the actuality has to be free, so to speak, so that choices can become real.
A God's-eye perspective of that from eternity can be imagined by thinking of one of those plasma globes that used to be so popular. Imagine the electrical arcs as actuality, but the whole field contained within the globe as the whole of potential reality. It's all real, but only some of it is actual: the rest exists as unactualized potentials. (As distinct from impossible things, like square circles, which aren't in the globe at all.)
What this suggests to me is that free will is then real, as we within the globe make choices about what to actualize. But it also suggests, as even some scientists are beginning to speculate, that the past isn't fixed. We experience it that way because of how our minds work: if the acutality of the past changed, our memories 'would have been' differently formed, so we would think of the past as if it had not changed, but 'had always been' the way it is.
What that means metaphysically is that the world is a lot more complex than we think it is. It is almost endlessly more complex. There's a way in which we are all the things we could be, or could have been; and it could be that we will be, or have been, those things. In eternity, the whole of it is present to the divine mind.
So that is a view in which you are really free, but God can still be all-knowing. God knows all the potentials (and a potential, since it is an actual potential, is what Aristotle calls a 'first actuality'). He knows what you have elected to actualize, both in the world you know and in all the other histories of the world that have been or will be. So God knows a lot more about you than you know about yourself; but you are still free.
By the way, do you know what happens if you touch a plasma globe from the outside? It's just a metaphor, of course.
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