Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Schöpfung, Vorhersehung, Kontingenz; creatio ex nihilo -> Problem der Möglichkeit der Kontingenz; Aristoteles, Thomas

Kurzinhalt: A consequence of creation ex nihilo is that what God wills necessarily happens ... The problem that then arises is: how can there be room for the contingent (chance) in creation?

Textausschnitt: PROVIDENCE, CREATION, AND CONTINGENCY

10c Christian belief in creation ex nihilo places God apart from the spatio-temporal-material order. God does not create material being in space and time; God creates space, time, and matter. There is no "before" creation, since "before" implies time and time is as much a created reality as space and matter. God exists not in time but in an "eternal now." Consequently, God's creative act is one and simultaneous. In one act God creates the whole of the created order, past, present, and future. All is immediately present to God and willed by God in the single divine act of creation. Nonetheless, although the act is one and timeless, the consequences are many and temporal. (Fs)

11a A consequence of creation ex nihilo is that what God wills necessarily happens. There is no disjunction between God's will and the reality of the event, at least in the divine now, though for us the events created by God are divided among past, present, and future. The problem that then arises is: how can there be room for the contingent (chance) in creation? For example, Aristotle allowed for the contingent by appealing to the existence of preexistent matter, which God did not create. If we remove any notion of preexisting prime matter through belief in creation ex nihilo, do we then remove any possibility of contingency? (Fs) (notabene)

11b In fact, the view that a creator God removes any possibility of contingency has become part of the common mind. This is most evident in thinkers such as biologist Richard Dawkins, who argues that because evolution depends on contingent events such as chance mutations, God can have nothing to do with it.1 The claim is made that real chance is incompatible with divine causation. The clear contention is that a notion of divine creation eliminates chance or contingency and eventually eliminates human freedom itself. (Fs)

11c Though expressed in modern form, the problem was not unknown to Thomas Aquinas. In Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas notes: "You object that providence is necessarily efficacious; I retort that therefore what providence intends to be contingent, will inevitably be contingent" (3, c. 94). (Fs)

In other words, Aquinas would argue that God can use chance/contingency to achieve a desired outcome, and achieve it inevitably, even while the event remains chance. (Fs) (notabene)

11d Transposing this into a modern context, the question can be rephrased thus: Is there any intelligibility in, or science of, chance events? Aristotle denied that there was a science of the contingent, because prime matter lacked intelligibility. Consequently there was no providence for Aristotle, only fate. Aquinas affirms the reality of providence and the complete intelligibility of the created order. Consequently, the logical conclusion is that there must be a "science" of the contingent. In the modern context we would recognize the role of statistics in science, for example, in quantum mechanics. Thus, even what appear to be random events occur within a certain statistical pattern or probability. We can even use statistical means to achieve desired outcomes, which will nonetheless remain chance. And if we can, so can God! For example, we know that smoking causes lung cancer, but we cannot know who will develop cancer and who will not. We know that if we reduce smoking we will reduce the incidence of lung cancer, but we cannot point to one person whose life has been saved by reducing the incidence of smoking. In reducing the incidence of smoking we will the particular individual outcomes because we will the general outcomes (i.e., fewer deaths by cancer). In choosing to adopt a statistical causation, we accept the fact that there will be a spread of outcomes, within our desired outcome. The difference between our acting and God's in such a case is that while our willing of the particular is mediated through the general approach, God's is immediate because God is the creator of all. All creation is immediately present to God as its fundamental cause and origin.2

12a To invoke statistical lawfulness with contingency is to invite comparison between necessity and the classical mechanical laws such as those of Newtonian science.3 These laws seemed to offer the possibility of a completely deterministic universe. For example, mathematician Simon Laplace (1749-1827) boasted that, given the position and velocity of every particle in the universe, the future would be as accessible as the past.4 On such a view, to invoke statistical laws is always a cloak for ignorance. On the other hand, to invoke the reality of contingency is to recognize the irreducible character of statistical lawfulness. Quantum mechanics and evolution have embedded the notion of statistics into the heart of modern science. The realization of the chance nature of events does not exclude the guiding hand of divine providence, but it does indicate the mode of operation of that providence, through both classical and statistical means. Further, Bernard Lonergan has shown how classical and statistical lawfulness combine to lead to what he calls emergent probability, the development of schemes of recurrence that allow evolutionary processes to arise.5 This transposes Aquinas's categories of necessity and contingence into a modern scientific worldview. (Fs)