Autor: Schindler, David C., Jun

Buch: The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: The Catholicity of Reason

Stichwort: Kausalität 6j; Schöpfung - Zeit - Substanz - esse; Sein als Aktualität, begrenzt durch Form; S.: vertikale - horizontale Entfaltung; Möglichkeitsbedingung d. S. nicht vorher in der Zeit, sondern Natur; Evolution fordert Schöpfung

Kurzinhalt: if there is a subsistent being at all, its conditions of possibility were not given merely in the temporal moment prior to its actuality, but rather that its possibility is given simultaneously with its actuality, which transcends time by definition.

Textausschnitt: 159a Now, while we might be able to imagine in some distant way that God created the world together with time in the distant past, it does not seem to be the case that individual beings are created "immediately," in the manner described. If they were, we would expect to see beings "pop up" into existence literally "out of nowhere." Is it not the case that the beings that make up the world have come to be gradually insofar as they evidently did not exist at the beginning of the universe — something that not only modern science, but Aquinas too seems to have held?9 If this is the case, it seems to contradict the claim we have repeatedly made that substances have an absolute character that does not allow them to be reduced back to anything less than they. There are two points to make in response to this difficulty: first, the absoluteness of substance precludes a "coming to be" from below, but does not preclude a coming to be, so to speak, from above. But such a "coming to be" requires a kind of actuality that is distinct from, and indeed superior to, the actuality of form. Aquinas presents this kind of actuality in his notion of esse, the existence that God shares with the beings he makes be, or the act by which all forms themselves are actualized.10 Esse, according to Aquinas, is formal with respect to all form because it is the actuality of all (formal) acts.11 In this respect, it is that to which the actuality of real beings can be reduced. It is not a potentiality out of which forms are generated "from below," but is rather an excess, so to speak, of actuality that is limited "from below" by the forms to be actualized.12 Because esse, moreover, is not itself a subsistent being, but is rather a substantial-izing act, the reducibility of form to esse does not eliminate the absoluteness of individual substances. To the contrary, it is precisely what makes them absolute. (Fs) (notabene)

160a The second point to make is a more speculative development: it is true that no substance can exist merely temporally; the sheer multiplicity of time is incompatible with any sort of subsisting being. A fortiori a subsistent being does not come to be merely in time. Once we recognize this we are able to say that, if there is a subsistent being at all, its conditions of possibility were not given merely in the temporal moment prior to its actuality, but rather that its possibility is given simultaneously with its actuality, which transcends time by definition. What this means is that we cannot think of the coming-to-be of substances merely "horizontally," but must rather think of them "vertically" as unfolding in time from above. We will explore this notion more fully in the following chapter. The condition of possibility, in any event, does not precede in time but rather in nature, and the reference point for understanding the process lies not in the first moment, and then each succeeding moment thereafter, but in the form that lies above the temporal process altogether. At the same time, of course, the form reciprocally depends on the temporal process for its coming to be in reality, but this dependence is asymmetrical: the substance's dependence on its history lies so to speak inside the history's dependence on the substance. The passage we cited above expresses this point quite nicely: God gives time to the effect that he creates, which we may read as generously allowing it to develop gradually into what it has always been meant to be. (Fs)

160b The inclusion of the horizontal dimension of being within the vertical dimension allows the possibility of a kind of evolution in the biological sphere, even though it precludes a purely mechanistic account of that evolution. It should be noted that, despite claims to the contrary, evolution cannot in any event be accounted for in wholly mechanistic terms insofar as mechanism excludes the possibility of natural forms and therefore of genuine substances.13 This means, ironically, that not only are creation and evolution not opposed in principle, but in fact evolution requires creation to be intelligible at all as the gradual coming to be of real beings. Chesterton captures this point quite well:

Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am." The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, "I am not; therefore I cannot think."14

161a The reason that there cannot be evolution without creation is because, as we have seen, there can be no intelligibility of any sort without the absoluteness of substance, which the supra-temporal and indeed the supra-formal act of creation alone — if one does not affirm the eternity of species — makes possible. As we have come to see, this acknowledgment of intelligibility requires an inversion of our normal way of thinking that limits physical being to the flux of time, and demands instead that we see time as belonging to things, as unfolding from above in reference to what transcends things. The physical world does indeed exist in time, but not reductively so: all real beings "stick out" ec-statically into the eternity of the God who made them from nothing and "continues" so to make them. The dis-integration of causes is a natural result of the failure to interpret creation thus metaphysically and the subsequent temporalization of being. A recovery of their integration, a restoration of the wholeness of things and thus the basis of any thinking whatsoever, will therefore require a restoration of a proper sense of being as created. (Fs) (notabene)