pilgrim.not.wanderer

Here’s the first three paragraphs from Reasonable Science, Reasonable Faith by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (April 2007).

Here we find explicit evidence that Newton was no deist (which was a surprise to me). But we also find problems Newton’s own theistic philosophy of nature. It seems to me that most atheists believe that any theistic philosophy of nature will necessarily be just like Newton’s. Actually I think the question, of whether or not there could be theistic philosophy of nature other than Newton’s, doesn’t even cross their minds.

The first two paragraphs contain the explicit evidence that Newton wasn’t a deist. The third paragraph contains a short description of the traditional Aristotelian philosophy of nature.

To the second edition of his Principia Mathematica, published in 1713, Isaac Newton appended what he called a scholium generale. A principal concern of Newton’s had been to refute Descartes’ theory of planetary motions, which he renounced as a materialistic theory. The perfection and the regularity of these motions cannot “have their origin in mechanical causes,” Newton insisted. “This supremely exquisite structure that is visible to us, comprising the sun, the planets, and the comets, could come into being solely through the decision and under the dominion of an intelligent and powerful, truly existing being. . . . He steers everything, not as a world-soul, but as the Lord of all things.”

Indeed, Newton added an energetic remark directed against the deism that was already rampant in the early eighteenth century: “A God lacking in dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing other than mere fate and mere nature. No possibility of change in things may be derived from blind metaphysical necessity, which is after all always and everywhere the same. The entire manifold of things ordered according to place and time could originate solely from the ideas and the will of a truly existent being, one that exists as a matter of necessity.” And this section of the scholium closes: “So much, then, about God; to make assertions about Him on the basis of natural appearances pertains directly to natural philosophy.”

Newton’s scholium contains, in a nutshell, many of the essential questions that still occupy us today when discussing science, reason, and faith. Yet already in Newton’s view of divine action a major shift from the Aristotelian and medieval understanding has taken place. In the traditional view, the Creator endows nature with a kind of quasi-intelligence: Like an agent, nature “acts for an end,” with immanent principles of self-unfolding and self-operation. Newton, by contrast, is already seized by the early modern “mechanical philosophy,” in which nature is seen as a kind of unnatural composite of passive, unintelligent, preexisting matter, on which order has been extrinsically imposed by a Supreme Intelligence.

Under the traditional Aristotelian philosophy nature, theists can study nature without constantly worrying about finding holes into which they can plug God. Instead, nature is thought of as plugged into God. This doesn’t rule out the possibility of God acting in special ways as he sees fit. It also doesn’t rule out God’s providential rule of the unfolding of history. But it does rule out the idea that God constantly needs to intervene and interrupt nature, in a piecemeal fashion, in order to keep the ‘machine’ of nature driving along. In this way Christians can be free to do science - they can study nature in its own right. Under this philosophy of nature, to say something is ‘natural’ is not to say that God has nothing to do with it.

The intelligent design debate drives me crazy.  So much of it is completely irrational.  Consider the following, which I’ve come across again and again in my reading of the semi-popular level literature:

Step #1 - Michael Behe writes a book or an article in which he introduces or defends his concept of irreducible complexity.  

Step #2 - Someone else criticizes the book or article in the following ways:

 Suppose that you’ve been taught standard, run-of-the-mill, evolution theory from early elementary-school on through high-school.  Perhaps you even learned more about it in  university too.  Suppose that, as far as you can tell, all (or at least most) of the people who are best equipped to judge evolutionary theory, find it to be good, or satisfactory, or ‘the best we have’, or ‘the way to go’, or ‘what educated people should believe’, etc.

Suppose that, with all this in view, you find yourself hard pressed to not subscribe to evolutionary theory.  Suppose that, upon reflection, you come to feel it is somehow your duty to either subscribe to it, or at least pay an appropriate level of lip-service to it.

Bracket all the questions you personally have about whether or not you yourself  actually should adopt this attitude towards evolutionary theory.  (Maybe you have have a list of reasons, A, B and C why you, as far as you can tell, have no duty to subscribe to evolutionary theory.)  For the sake of argument set all this aside and suppose all that I’ve asked you to suppose.  Now careful consider the fact that many folks find themselves in just this position.

Should this be an obstacle to your hearing the Gospel and responding with faith?  Or is sorting out all these issues concerning the doctrine of Creation and evolution a secondary matter (even if it is still important)?  Must the goal of Christian proclamation be to hammer away at you concerning Creation and evolution first, and only then proceed to Christ when this is finished?  Can Christ only be preached to you after you’ve first been soundly defeated on the matter of Creation and evolution?  Or can you hear and believe the Gospel, all the while being unsure of exactly what to think about, or how to deal with, the issues surrounding the doctrine of Creation and evolution?

Whatever else you think about all this (and there are a lot of thoughts to be had), I think your answer to this last question ought to be YES.  You can believe the Gospel, be united to Christ by faith, be delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1), the all the while being totally confused and unsure about what to think about the doctrine of Creation and evolution. 

Consider the wooden chair in my kitchen. Why does this chair exist?

The Material Cause: Before the chair existed, something else must have existed which had the potential to become or ‘be turned into’ a chair. This is the material cause of the chair. The material cause of the chair is the ‘material’ out of which the chair was made: wood.

The Moving Cause: If the wood was indeed built into a chair, some principle of movement or change must have acted upon the wood. For wood does not naturally build itself into a chair. Now, there is an internal principle of motion in tree seeds which causes them to mature into trees. In this way the seed is said to grow into a tree ‘naturally’. But this internal principle of motion never results in a chair. Chairs aren’t natural. Another principle of motion or change must have come into play: a carpenter. No carpenter, no chair.

The Formal Cause: If the wood was indeed built into a chair by a carpenter, the carpenter must have arranged the wood into a particular kind of structure. He must have have taken the raw material and formed it into the appropriate kind of ‘chair shape’. This was the formal cause of the chair. If the wood had not been formed into this kind of ‘chair shape’, there would be no chair.

The Final Cause: Not just any form/structure/arrangement will be a ‘chair’. It might be a wooden toy truck, for example. We will know if the wood has indeed been arranged/formed into a ‘chair’ by checking to see if it fulfills the end which a chair needs to fulfill. Basically, ask yourself “Can I sit on it?” And it’ll be an excellent chair if it is excellent for sitting on. The end which a chair needs to fulfill, if it is indeed a chair, is the final cause of the chair.

OK. The weird thing is that Aristotle thinks each of these causes is involved in nature. He thinks there is even a final cause for the oak tree in your backyard. Now, you probably want to yell at Aristotle: “HEY, didn’t you notice that there is no deliberation involved in nature. No one decided that the seed should grow into a mature tree! No one aimed at the mature tree as an end!”

If there is no deliberate selection of the mature tree as an end/goal, how can the natural tree be said to have a final cause? Does this make any sense?

The standard answer is today is “NO… It doesn’t make sense!!! To call something ‘natural ‘ basically means ‘This has no final cause’.”

Or maybe something like “Science doesn’t investigate final causes!!! Before the advent of science people used to be worried about that kind of airy fairy religious/metaphysical stuff. We don’t believe in that stuff anymore!!!”

Or maybe “Darwin proved that nature is devoid of final causes!!!”

I’m not completely sure, but I think there might be more to what Aristotle has to say here.