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Aquinas
and the Providential Order of Nature
Joseph
Milne
For
Thomas Aquinas everything in the creation is ordered toward the
Good as its proper end. This means that each created being has its
own natural perfection which in some way embodies Gods goodness
or perfection. This natural perfection of created beings is governed
by Divine Providence. The perfection of each created being is also
part of the perfection of the universe as a whole which is united
through Divine Providence. Human nature, through practical reason,
has a share in providential intelligence in its capacity to guide
action towards the Good, both for itself and for all other created
beings. Human life in the universe has a part to play in bringing
all beings to their natural perfection in God.
Thomass
vision has deep roots in ancient philosophy and in the Christian
understanding that all things ultimately seek to unite with God.
There is at once a perfection of the created universe within itself,
and a perfection beyond it in mystical union with God. This natural
order is sustained by Divine Providence.
In
this talk we shall try to recover something of Thomass understanding
of Providence and how it might enable human society to live in accord
with the true order of nature.
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I
would like to begin with the suggestion that we have a natural sense
of providence, a sense that there is something that guides the order
of all things. This sense is completely distinct from the notions
of determinism or necessity. It belongs to human nature to have
this sense of providence, just as we have an ethical sense and a
sense of justice. We also have what the philosophers call a narrative
sense, the sense of the lawful unfolding of events. This narrative
sense is also the sense of story, the sense in which
we follow the evolution of actions through time towards a definite
end or conclusion. It is what the ancient Greeks called mythos,
especially myths of the gods and their deeds, or the myths of the
different ages following from the Golden Age.
Whether
we speak of providence, ethics, justice or story, underlying each
of these is a sense of order. But not just an eternal
or fixed order but also an unfolding order. We experience the world
and existence as in one way constant and in another way in motion.
Things move lawfully. Or if they move unlawfully they need to be
returned to their lawful motion.
All
that I have just described belongs to yet another sense: the sense
of the whole. Our fundamental sense of existence is
embraced by a sense of being part of the whole, of all that is.
Human consciousness does not grasp things upwards from the least
particle, but rather from the totality of everything a totality
that includes all that is, that ever was and that ever may be. It
is through this sense of participating in the greater whole that
we experience ourselves as situated or placed
in the universe and in our particular circumstances. We are part
of everything and in some way participate in everything.
It
is easy to overlook these primordial aspects of our experience of
existence. Yet they are the ground of all ancient myths and stories
of how things came into being. We can see it in the myths and legends
of primitive peoples, in the Genesis story of creation, in the cosmology
of the Upanishads of India, or in the Theogony of Hesiod. Every
story must begin with Once upon a time there was
Our sense of the beginning of all things has something divine or
sacred about it, as though a mystery is being made visible through
the manifestation of the universe. And yet, beyond that beginning
of all things there is something wholly transcendent. The transcendental
realm can be spoken of only symbolically. It is the ground of the
religious sense, the sense in which we are aligned in
some way with that which is wholly beyond all manifestation. The
religious sense springs from an intuition that everything begins
and ends in the divine. This beginning and ending of all things
in the divine is the completion of our sense of the whole, though
it always remains a mystery. It is remarkable that the most ancient
cosmological myths include the divine within the cosmic order. For
example, even Zeus in the Greek pantheon dwells within the cosmos.
The divine order is part of the cosmic order. Only later, both in
the East and the West, does a distinction emerge between the temporal
and the transcendental realms. The contemplation of the order of
things brings to light distinctions, and then the insight that there
is that which lies wholly beyond all distinctions but which is the
source of the manifold.
These
are ideas we need to recognise before we explore what Aquinas has
to say about the providential order of nature. Since the fifteenth
century the providential order of nature has been superseded by
a mechanical approach to nature which seeks to explain everything
without recourse to any divine or purposeful order. The material
world is taken to be explicable within itself, so that neither a
metaphysical nor a sacred understanding need be consulted. So there
was a complete break with the medieval vision of the universe as
well as the ancient Greek vision of Plato and Aristotle. The most
decisive feature of this break is that the universe is no longer
conceived as having an intelligent essence. It is no longer seen
as a living being as in Platos Timaeus for example.
It is taken to be without soul. So when we approach the question
of providence we are obliged to consider a cosmology and a vision
of nature wholly at variance with modern materialism.
This
is why I began by saying that we have a natural sense of providence.
Like the ethical sense or the narrative sense, or the sense of the
whole, it is innate to our human intelligence. But it is out of
tune with our modern conception of the universe or nature. Having
broken nature off from any divine or sacred order, we have abandoned
a natural part of human intelligence. To give an obvious example,
the ancient conception of the universe as ruled by justice has become
unintelligible to modern thought. Yet the perception of justice
as key to the order of the cosmos is the beginning of Greek philosophy
in Heraclitus, as it is also of the biblical representation of the
creation. If our age no longer understands that the universe is
ruled by justice, then understanding providence becomes very challenging.
Thomas
Aquinass main work on providence is given in his Summa Contra
Gentiles, his challenge to non-Christian beliefs. As typical for
Aquinas, he begins with what is evident in nature and ascends to
the metaphysical and ultimately to the divine. The first thing to
observe is that everything in nature has a purpose and seeks its
proper end. He is following Aristotle here, who observes that all
things are inclined towards the fullest completion of their particular
being. In an obvious sense, everything grows and matures. But this
inclination towards maturity is not a blind reaching out for mere
survival, but an inherent direction towards a particular form and
function. This inherent direction in things is what Plato and Aristotle
called their telos, meaning the natural end they seek. It is what
Aristotle calls the final cause of anything, the end
or purpose for which it has come into being. But the concept of
final causality was discounted in the rise of early
modern science, which sought to account only for efficient causality.
For example, the seed is the efficient cause of the plant, or the
carpenter is the efficient cause of the table. The purpose of the
plant or the table are not accounted for. We might say that modern
enquiry seeks to understand how things come to exist but not why
they come to exist. The concept of purpose has been
confined to human ends that we decide upon, while nature is regarded
as having no purpose. Descartes says we can never know the purpose
of things while Bacon says the concept of teleology hinders our
understanding of the natural world.
But
to deny purpose to nature is to miss a central principle of its
ordering. Modern ecology, for example, has come to see nature acting
both as a total system and as establishing a specific integrated
order. Or one form of the modern anthropic principle observes that
for the human species to have come into being the whole universe
had to take the form that it has taken. The human species, with
its reflective consciousness, can exist only in the universe that
has come into being. So to argue that nature does not seek specific
ends is no longer really tenable, at least according to the anthropic
principle.
It
is at this point that Aquinas becomes illuminating. If we grant
that each thing seeks its natural end, then the question can be
raised about the completeness or perfection it seeks. This means
we have to regard the being of things. Natural things
are not simply taking shape or form but they strive towards the
fullness of their being. The further we move up the hierarchy of
nature, the more evident this becomes. A stone has a very limited
mode of being, while living creatures have a higher mode of being,
and living rational beings a higher mode still. As we ascend the
natural scale we observe an increase in autonomy or self-direction.
There are stages of increase of being. At this point we move to
the metaphysical. If each of these modes of being move in the direction
of higher and more self-determining modes of being, the question
then arises about the nature of being itself towards which all things
tend in their distinct ways.
It
is at this point that Aquinas makes the most important observation
that every being loves its own being, and that beings of the same
kind love their equal in being. Hence there is mutual attraction
between similar kinds of being throughout nature. Yet, he observes,
that the love of each beings own being and the love of its equal
is founded beyond itself in the love of Being Itself. He goes yet
further, saying that every being loves Being Itself more than its
own particular being, and that each loves its own particular being
because it participates to some degree in Being Itself. It is this
Being Itself that each ultimately strives towards.
There
is another way of saying the same thing. In the Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle says the good is what all desire (SCG 3. 11.
Nicomachean Ethics 1094a 1). Aquinas quotes this passage. We know
from both Plato and Aristotle that the Good is the highest
perfection beyond which there is no higher good to be sought. All
other goods are only means to further goods, while the Good Itself
is the final end of all desiring. This Good, the Good, is both the
original cause of all things and the final end they seek fulfilment
in. Aquinas says that the terms good and being
are interchangeable. Thus the fuller the being, the greater the
goodness. Likewise, evil is the diminishment or negation of being
and therefore of goodness. Once again, we find the same in Plato
and further developed by St Augustine in the doctrine of the privatio
boni. All things resist the negation of being. This is the true
ground of the instinct of self-preservation, which itself is grounded
in the love of Being in itself.
Aquinas
takes all this a step further, going beyond the metaphysical to
the theological. The good or the perfection of being that everything
desires is God. He says, everything loves God more than itself.
God is perfect goodness. It is this love of everything beyond its
own being, and beyond created being, that orients nature towards
perfection. Every created thing desires to be as like God that it
is possible for it to be as a created being. This for Aquinas is
a primary ordering principle of nature, of the entire creation.
But it also means that every created being in some way resembles
or has a likeness of God. In the Summa Theologiae Aquinas describes
how nature is ordered to the likeness of God in two ways. He says:
For
the creature is assimilated to God in two things; first, with regard
to this, that God is good; and so the creature becomes like Him
by being good; and secondly, with regard to this, that God is the
cause of goodness in others; and so the creature becomes like God
by moving others to be good. (ST 1a q. 103 a 4)
Not
only do all things seek to become good like God, they also seek
to act like God by moving others to be good. Thus a
mutual goodness is sought among all creatures in one way or another.
We will return to this principle later when we look at human society.
That
all things have a likeness to God is a key to medieval biblical
interpretation. The created world is regarded as a manifestation
of the wisdom of God. For Hugh of St Victor, in the twelfth century,
this meant that each created thing presented in the Scriptures was
itself a word of God. Human words, Hugh says, may have
several meanings, but the words of God expressed in the creatures
have very many meanings. Nature is a vocabulary of God, and Scripture
reflects that vocabulary. Thus nature, just like the
Scriptures, has a literal sense, an allegorical sense, and a mystical
sense. There is the sacred or theological way of understanding nature
as well as the Scriptures.
So
all created things in some sense manifest something
of God and at the same time seek God as their end. This is the work
of providence. Divine providence, Aquinas says, orders all
things to the divine goodness as their end (SCG 97. 1), so
that they may be as like the divine goodness as possible. But this,
of course, adds nothing to God through created things since God
is the Good Itself. It does show, however, that Gods goodness
is unlimited and infinity communicable, shining out of itself. But
since the substance of created beings must fall short of the perfect
unity of divine goodness, Aquinas says:
[in
or that]
the likeness of divine goodness might be more perfectly
communicated to things, it was necessary for there to be a diversity
of things, so that what could not be perfectly represented by one
thing might be, in a more perfect fashion, represented by a variety
of things in different ways. (SCG 97. 2).
This,
Aquinas says, is because the perfect goodness which is present
in God in a unified and simple manner cannot be in creatures except
in a diversified way and through the plurality of things.
This necessary diversity of things, which together form a unity
in plurality, comes about through the diversity of forms. Each particular
thing has a form that distinguishes its kind of being. It
is through its form that each created being bears a likeness to
God. Also the form of each being determines its particular operation
in the created order, thus establishing a hierarchy or gradation
of different species. The greater the resemblance to God the higher
the species. Nevertheless, every kind of being bears a likeness
to God in some way and has a meaning and purpose within the created
order.
Each
particular created being has an end in itself, an end through its
operation in the natural order, and a final end in God. These ends
are bound together. Each being fulfils its own being through performing
its part within the natural order. Nothing exists in isolation.
Everything subsists through contributing to nature as a whole. The
natural order fulfils its end in the unity of the creation, while
the unity of the creation ultimately fulfils its end in knowing
God. This is another way of seeing how all things seek the good
or the perfection of being. They seek it individually and universally.
The hierarchical created order culminates in rational beings, at
the highest level the angels, and just below them human beings or
mankind. The proper end of each individual person lies in seeking
the goodness, fullness of being, and knowledge of God. Providence
orders the whole of nature so that man may fulfil that end.
Thus
the creation is not merely a multiplicity of forms and beings but
is ordered to manifest a likeness of God. But this likeness also
has an end. It is manifest in order to be known, and through being
known returned to God. It is here that humanity has its special
purpose within the created world. God created man last on the sixth
day of creation in order that his rational consciousness should
be a terminus of created things. In other words, through man the
created universe becomes conscious of itself. As Aquinas says, just
as all things desire the good, so all things also desire to be known.
In the most perfect sense they desire to be known by God. Their
journey towards this is through human rational consciousness. Mans
natural desire for knowledge of things is at the same time a response
to the call of all things to become known. Knowledge of things serves
not only man but also the things known. As a medieval theologian
says, God does not manifest Himself in the creation without intending
to be seen. Our human desire to know things springs from the intention
of God to be known, and in their likeness to God each created being
also desires to be known. Like the divine goodness, knowledge also
seeks to be communicated. To put that in a different way, every
being desires to be received into every other being so that the
universe seeks to bring about a mutual knowing. Modern theories
of knowledge forget that knowing is intended to be reciprocal, for
the good of the things known as well as for the knower. As the early
church father Tertullian says it is nature who gives us our
awareness. Knowing things is meant to serve them. For example,
the physician serves the patient through his knowledge.
That
our rational consciousness may see order in things indicates that
it is reason that orders them, and so human reason and the reason
in things have a natural correspondence. Thus Plato in the Timaeus
portrays the cosmos as living rational being, and this conception
of the cosmos was very influential throughout the Middle Ages. For
example, John of Salisbury sees a city as a living being, with its
various institutions and vocations acting together like a single
body with head, hands and feet.
Aquinass
approach to the providential order of creation shows the proper
purpose of studying the natural world. There had been a period before
his time when any concern for the created world had been dismissed
in the name of seeking spiritual knowledge alone. But that position
sets up a conflict between Gods desire in creating the world
and the call to spiritual knowledge or redemption. Yet it has always
been foundational to Christianity to see the created universe as
itself a divine work, a revelation of the divine wisdom and goodness
and therefore a teacher and guide to the human soul.
Aquinas
says the primary measure of the essence and nature of each
thing is God; just as He is the first being, which is the cause
of being in all things. (SCG 100: 5) In his view the nature
of the created world cannot be understood without reference to God
since it derives its essence and its being from God. Most important
of all, it has come into being from the essence of the providential
goodness. From the providential goodness it has received both its
order and its aim. While coming forth from God into being, it seeks
its way back to God in its completion. As St Paul says in Romans
8:22, the cosmos groans as though in childbirth for God. So, while
it is Gods providence that creates and guides nature, nature
has a motion grounded in its own being that tends upwards towards
God. It is this double aspect of the created order that redeems
it from any conception of blind chance or mere necessity. Creation
and redemption are part of a single act. The proliferation into
multiplicity as at once the journey towards unity.
We
have already seen how man has a special place in nature as the rational
being, as the being who desires to know and understand. Aquinas
says that there is a special providence in man, given from the divine
providence, whereby each individual may govern themselves. While
the other created beings are directed by providence implanted in
their essence, with human nature providence provides for each to
govern their own intentions and actions. Each is a free agent. This
means two things. First that the human species must provide for
itself from the providential gifts of nature. Each must be clothed,
housed, fed. With other creatures providence gives these things
appropriately to each, while the human species has to master certain
skills in order to provide for its needs. Second, it also means
that the human species must learn to act together since no individual
is self-sufficient. Providence has given a natural distribution
of talents whereby what one lacks another provides. Thus community
is natural to the human species. The higher ends of society are
possible only through collective work, knowledge, and exchange.
Aquinas takes this a step further:
Because
they are ordered to their species, they possess a further ordination
to intellectual nature. For [temporal things] are not ordered to
man for the sake of one individual man only, but for the sake of
the whole human species. (SCG 112: 9)
So
there is a remarkable correspondence between individual autonomy
on the one hand, and participation in the work of the entire human
species on the other. Only self-ruling persons can consciously participate
in the work and proper end of the entire species in the created
order. Aquinas insists, however, that this does not mean each individual
exists only for the sake of the species. He says: only rational
creatures receive direction from God in their acts, not only for
the species, but for the individual. (SCG 113: 1) Thus, while
other species act for the self-preservation of their species and
purpose within the natural order, directed by external providence,
the human individual is able to act consciously for their own fulfilment
as well as the fulfilment of the human species. The two fulfilments
are mutual. Since each individual has autonomy they are able to
act responsibly for the good of the whole. Autonomy is a capacity
to act beyond simple self-interest. Thus the human species builds
its own society over which it is called to govern for the common
good. The common good is the end that society by nature seeks, and
this common good is itself an image of the unity of Gods goodness.
Only the person who can act for the common good has real freedom
of action.
Yet
all this remains under providence. Aquinas explains this in the
following way:
the rational creature is subject to divine providence in such a
way that he is not only governed thereby, but is also able to know
the rational plan of providence in some way. Hence, it is appropriate
for him to exercise providence and government over other things.
This is not the case with other creatures, for they participate
in providence only to the extent of being subordinated to it. Through
this possession of the capacity to exercise providence one may also
direct and govern his own acts. So, the rational creature participates
in divine providence, not only by being governed passively, but
also by governing actively, for he governs himself in his personal
acts, and even others. Now, all lower types of providence are subordinated,
as it were, to divine providence. Therefore, the governing of the
acts of a rational creature, in so far as they are personal acts,
pertains to divine providence. (SCG 113:5)
Perhaps
the important point here is that man is able know the rational
plan of providence in some way and so order his actions in
accord with the plan of divine providence. Aquinas calls this ability
to discern providence prudence, which is a capacity
to judge past and future and to have foresight in performing
actions. All the most important human actions are possible through
foresight. There is a further special gift here. Man is the being
who is able to reflect on providence, both in individual actions
and actions in accord with the whole. Providence gives a guide to
the unity of action. It is the ground of human goodness and freedom.
This
applies especially to actions belonging to society. In society reflection
on the order of nature is brought about through speech or discourse,
which is the nature of politics. Society flourishes through agreement
on what is true, good, and just. Justice itself, which belongs to
the essence of things, is a direct manifestation of providential
order. Society flourishes so far as it apprehends and elects to
honour and follow justice. A just society establishes its laws in
accordance with the providential order of nature. What is most significant
here is that justice and making just laws is possible only through
the rational free choice of will. That is to say, justice and just
laws are established only through free assent, and so justice and
freedom belong together. Law and freedom belong together. Freedom
through justice is a natural end human society seeks. But this is
possible only through rational understanding and through the virtue
of prudence. For Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas the human intelligence
is understood as by nature ordered towards truth and goodness. Intelligence
or reason has a telos. Human free will is grounded in an orientation
towards truth and goodness. The reason loves truth, while the will
loves goodness.
According
to Aquinas, the principles of truth and goodness are implanted in
the human soul. The principles of truth guide what is called the
theoretical reason, while the principles of goodness
guide what is called the practical reason. This distinction
of the operations of the mind is taken from Aristotle, but is also
evident in Plato. The human soul by nature loves truth and goodness.
It is this that makes it a soul. According to Aristotle it is the
love of truth that makes us desire to live. The proper end of human
intelligence is truth and goodness. Aquinas takes this principle
further than Aristotle and says that the dignity of the human soul
lies in its resemblance to God, who is Truth and Goodness. And so
it follows that the final end the soul seeks is God, who is truth
and goodness itself. Because it seeks the truth and goodness of
God as its final end, the soul is able to discern truth and goodness
in the order of nature which, as we have seen, also resembles the
divine truth and goodness. The truth and goodness of the order of
nature is simply recognised, just as the eye recognises light. All
this is part of the work of divine providence.
We
began our talk by saying that everyone has an innate sense of providence.
Yet what Aquinas says seems strange to modern thinking. I would
suggest there are two reason for this. First, in the fourteenth
century the understanding of final causes or purpose
in the order of nature suffered with the rise of nominalism
the idea that universals exist only in abstract thought
but not in nature itself. For example, the human species
is only an abstract classification, while in reality only separate
individuals exist. Thus the understanding of nature
as an integrated whole was replaced by the notion that each thing
was created and existed independently. Second, the understanding
that the intellect had principles of truth or goodness implanted
within it, or any kind of pre-knowledge, was gradually rejected.
So, for example, in the seventeenth century John Locke proposed
that the human mind was a tabula rasa, a clean slate, devoid of
any innate ideas or any predetermined inclinations or goals. He
also asserted that words have no inherent meaning but only such
meanings that we attribute to them. Thus the denial of any actual
universals and the conception of the mind as an empty slate upon
which anything might be written, renders the traditional understanding
of providence inconceivable. With the disappearance of providence
from the philosophical enquiry into nature the universe is rendered
purposeless.
But,
as I suggested at the outset, our minds naturally apprehend order
in nature and in life and we have a sense that providence ultimately
guides all things. We have this sense of providence just as we have
a sense of justice or a sense of truth. We may not quite grasp these
things, but we know they are there to be known and acknowledged.
It is the sense of order and providence that situates us within
the great cosmic order, giving us the sense of living in a world
and not floating in mere emptiness. Divine providence shows us that
we are part of the great drama of creation which has a sacred meaning
communicating itself throughout nature and informing all our thoughts
and actions. But also that our true end is mystical union with God,
and that our work within the created order is to bring created things
through knowing them to their fulfilment. Our human consciousness
is meant to receive all it is conscious of in order that things
may be brought back to God. It is this final end of all things that
providence continually seeks to attain. It is really Gods
presence everywhere.
But,
since each thing attains its proper end through its own action,
various proper ends must be distinguished in things, even though
the ultimate end is common to all. (SCG 97: 5)
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"Moral
acts and human acts are one and the same thing." (Thomas
Aquinas, ST 1a2ae, q. 1, a. 3, c.)
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