The Causality Distinction, Kenosis, and a Middle Way: Aquinas and Polkinghorne on Divine Action
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14746700903239544
ISSN1474-6719
Autores Tópico(s)Karl Barth and Christian Theology
ResumoAbstract This article evaluates and considers two important philosophical contributions to the discussion considering divine action in the work of Thomas Aquinas and John Polkinghorne. Aquinas argues that God employs both primary and secondary causality, in that God causes some events directly by divine power and others by means of secondary causes. Polkinghorne argues that this approach makes God the author of evil and opts instead for a “kenotic approach” to divine action, wherein God chooses to “empty” God's self of complete divine control. We think that these views can complement each other and need not represent mutually exclusive alternatives. Key words: AquinasKenosisPolkinghornePrimary causesSecondary causesTheodicy Acknowledgements We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We would also like to thank Sir John Polkinghorne for his comments and the John Templeton Foundation for their generous support. Notes 1 For an excellent survey of this topic see Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 2 For more on the distinction between conservation and concurrentism, see Alfred Freddoso, “God's General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why Conservation is Not Enough,”Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 553–583 and “God's General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects,”American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1994):131–156. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Rome: Leonine edition (hereafter, ST) Ia.25, 5, a1. All translations are the authors' unless otherwise indicated. 4 We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for Theology and Science for suggesting that we clarify the notion that God limits God's self by the act of creation. 5 Francis Oakley, “Omnipotence and Powers: The Legacy of the Scholastic Distinction of Powers,”Etienne Gilson Series 23 (2002). 6 For the purposes of this paper, we focus on John Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation and Divine Action,” in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 90–106. Polkinghorne also discusses kenosis and divine action in other works including: Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001) and Science and Providence: God's Interaction with the World (Philadelphia, PA Templeton Foundation Press, 2005). 7 Ibid., 91. 8 Ibid., 92. 9 Ibid., 92. 10 We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this journal for drawing our attention to this aspect of Polkinghorne's critique. 11 Ibid., 94. 12 Ibid., 97. 13 The language of a “causal joint” is Polkinghorne's and clearly not Aquinas'. For Aquinas, the notion that there exists a causal joint is problematic since it assumes that divine and creaturely causation seem to operate in an univocal manner. Our thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this insight. 14 Ibid., 97. 15 Ibid., 97. 16 Ibid., 97. 17 Ibid., 97. 18 Ibid., 94. 19 Philippians 2:5–11. 20 This is actually a Thomistic phrase that has its origins at ST Ia.14.8 and Ia.14.13; for a contemporary defense of divine simplicity and God's timeless knowledge, see Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,”Journal of Philosophy 78(8) (August 1981), 429–458. 21 John Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation,” 103. 22 Ibid., 103. 23 Polkinghorne, therefore, subscribes to some version of Open Theism in which future free contingent actions cannot be known by anyone, even God. 24 Ibid., 104. 25 The Modern philosopher Nicolas Malebranche is most commonly associated with the extreme version of the view that God alone has genuine causal powers. Malebranche developed and defended this view four centuries after Aquinas; it became known as “occasionalism”, or the idea that various contingent events are merely the “occasions” for divine causal activity. See Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp, eds., Malebranche: The Search After Truth: With Elucidations of the Search After Truth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Thomas was clearly concerned with the occasionalist view, as his discussion in Question 67 of Summa Contra Gentiles (hereafter SCG), Book III, shows. 26 Although we cannot develop this line of criticism here, one should note that Polkinghorne's claim that the Classical model places too much stress on the transcendence of God does not accord with this basic Thomistic commitment. We would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for highlighting this implication of our discussion. 27 Thomas Aquinas, SCG, III, 70, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 235; also see his Commentary on the Book of Causes, trans. Vincent A. Guagliardo, O.P., Charles R. Hess, O.P., and Richard C. Taylor. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 28 Thomas Aquinas, SCG, III, 70, 235. 29 Thomas Aquinas, ST, Ia.18,4, ad1. The analogy of being comes into play here in at least two levels. First, the nature of being itself is an analogous concept and does not apply to God and creatures in the same way, since creatures derive their being from God as their being is a “participated” being. Second, it follows that creaturely causality will be, at best, analogous to divine causality. Cf. ST. I.13,5 where Thomas says, “It is impossible to predicate anything of God and creatures univocally. This is because every effect that is not a proportioned effect of the power of the efficient cause does not receive the likeness of the agent to its fullest but in a way that falls short of it.” See also Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996) and Gregory Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004). 30 Aquinas, SCG, III, 67. 31 Ibid., 70. 32 Aquinas, Commentary, 9. 33 Thomas develops his theodicy at ST Ia, 19–22 and De Malo QQ. 3. 34 ST Ia.19,9. 35 For a more complete consideration of this issue, see Sandra Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan, “Does God Will Evil?”The Monist Vol. 84, No. 4 (1997): 598–610. 36 Roderick M. Chisholm, “The Structure of Intention,”The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 85 (1988): 395–420, levels this charge against Aquinas. 37 Earlier we noted that Thomas, following St. Augustine, takes evil to be a privation. As such, God cannot be the cause of evil per se, since God is the cause of all being and evil lacks being. But the concern we raise above does not concern the ontological status of evil; rather, it concerns the fact that God's concurrent causal power is implicated in the creaturely act that brings about evil. If it weren't for God's cooperative causal activity, the evil would not have occurred. 38 Thomas hints at this possibility at ST Ia.22,2, ad2 when he says, “Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution.” 39 Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation,” 93. 40 W. Norris Clark, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 256. 41 Jacques Maritain, “Vers une idée thomiste de l'evolution,”Approches sans entraves (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 105–162; Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1956); Ernan McMullin, “Natural Science and Belief in a Creator: Historical Notes,” in R.J. Russell, W.R. Stoeger, and G.V. Coyne, eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988): 49–79; Armand Maurer, “Darwin, Thomists, and Secondary Causality,”Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 57, No. 3 (2004): 491–514. Incidentally, Charles Darwin seems to employ a version of the causality distinction in his attempts to explain God's establishment of the “laws” of selection. In The Origin of the Species (New York: Penguin Classics, 1985), Darwin asserts, “To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendents of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to be ennobled” (462). 42 See Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). 43 Clarke, The One and the Many, 318. 44 See Craig A. Boyd, A Shared Morality: A Narrative Defense of Natural Law Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007), especially ch. 3; Craig A. Boyd, “Was Thomas Aquinas a Sociobiologist?”, Zygon 39 (September 2004): 659–680. 45 Clarke, The One and the Many, 285.
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