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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 God’s 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.

Thomas’s 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 Thomas’s 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 Plato’s 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 Aquinas’s 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 God’s 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 it’s 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. Man’s 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.

Aquinas’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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)

"Moral acts and human acts are one and the same thing." (Thomas Aquinas, ST 1a2ae, q. 1, a. 3, c.)

 

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