The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology 9780199556939

Citation preview

t h e ox f o r d h a n d b o o k o f

NAT U R A L T H EOLOGY

This page intentionally left blank

the oxford handbook of

NATURAL THEOLOGY

Edited by

RUSSELL R E M ANNING Consultant Editors

JOHN H EDLEY BROOKE & F RASER WATTS

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2013 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–955693–9 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

Acknowledgements

Putting together a Handbook such as this is a collaborative enterprise and I am primarily grateful to all those who have contributed chapters to the book. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with such a distinguished set of contributors, all of whom have added more to the volume that simply their respective chapters. I was fortunate to be able to reliable upon the expertise and guidance of my two Consultant Editors, especially in the early stages as the project emerged from a proposal into reality. I have learnt much from both John and Fraser—in the course of this project and more widely—and it has been a privilege to work with them. This project began in Cambridge and bears the marks of my initial engagement with the varieties of natural theology whilst combining teaching in the Philosophy of Religion with being a part of Fraser Watts’ Psychology and Religion Research Group. I am grateful, amongst others, to Douglas Hedley, Liz Gulliford, Vittorio Montemaggi, Léon Turner, and Louise Hickman. To the Master and Fellows of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge I owe a great debt for their warm and generous collegiality—and for allowing me keys to the cellar! What was begun in Cambridge has been brought to fruition in Aberdeen, where I am lucky enough, as Lord Gifford Fellow, to have an official mandate to ‘promote, advance, teach and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of that term’. I am grateful, amongst others to Phil Ziegler, John Webster, Tom Greggs, Chris Brittain, Catherine Wilson, Bob Plant, and Nate Jezzi for the warmth of their welcome to the Silver City. As always, I have learnt much from my students as well as testing their patience with my reluctance to settle on a definition of natural theology! The most patience, however, has been demonstrated by Lizzie Robottom and Tom Perridge at Oxford University Press. I am truly grateful for their support throughout the development of this book. I also want to thank the anonymous readers, whose reports encouraged me to take the book on; I hope the final result lives up to their expectations. Finally, of course, I thank my family, friends, and Francesca. The book is dedicated to Edmund, with love and wonder. 13 March 2012 The Old Brewery Old Aberdeen

This page intentionally left blank

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors

Introduction

xi xiii

1

Russell Re Manning

PA RT I H ISTOR IC A L PE R SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H E OL OGY 1. The Classical Origins of Natural Theology

9

Stephen R. L. Clark

2. Natural Theology and the Christian Bible

23

Christopher Rowland

3. Natural Theology in the Patristic Period

38

Wayne Hankey

4. Natural Theology in the Middle Ages

57

Alexander W. Hall

5. Early Modern Natural Theologies

75

Scott Mandelbrote

6. Nineteenth-century Natural Theology

100

Matthew D. Eddy

7. Natural Theology in the Twentieth Century

118

Rodney D. Holder

PA RT I I T H E OL OGIC A L PE R SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H E OL O GY 8. Jewish Perspectives on Natural Theology Daniel H. Frank

137

viii

contents

9. Islamic Perspectives on Natural Theology

151

Robert G. Morrison

10. Natural Theology in Eastern Religions

166

Jessica Frazier

11. Catholic Perspectives on Natural Theology

182

Denis Edwards

12. Protestant Perspectives on Natural Theology

197

Russell Re Manning

13. Natural Theology and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition

213

Christopher C. Knight

14. Theological Critiques of Natural Theology

227

Andrew Moore

PA RT I I I PH I L OSOPH IC A L PE R SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H E OL O GY 15. Perspectives on Natural Theology from Analytic Philosophy

247

Keith M. Parsons

16. A Perspective on Natural Theology from Continental Philosophy

262

Russell Re Manning

17. Process Thought and Natural Theology

276

David Ray Griffin

18. The Design Argument and Natural Theology

295

Neil A. Manson

19. Morality and Natural Theology

310

William Schweiker

20. Religious Experience and Natural Theology Mark Wynn

325

contents

21. Postmodernism and Natural Theology

ix

340

Clayton Crockett

22. Feminist Perspectives on Natural Theology

354

Pamela Sue Anderson

23. Comparative Natural Theology

370

Wesley J. Wildman

24. Philosophical Critique of Natural Theology

385

Charles Taliaferro

PA RT I V SCI E N T I F IC PE R SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H E OL O GY 25. Natural Theology: The Biological Sciences

397

Michael Ruse

26. The Physical Sciences and Natural Theology

419

Paul Ewart

27. Chemical Sciences and Natural Theology

434

David Knight

28. Mathematics and Natural Theology

449

John Polkinghorne

29. Natural Theology and Ecology

459

Christopher Southgate

30. Natural Theology and the Mind Sciences

475

Fraser Watts

31. A Sociological Perspective on Natural Theology

488

Richard K. Fenn

32. Scientific Critiques of Natural Theology Philip Clayton

505

x

contents

PA RT V PE R SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H E OL O GY F ROM T H E A RT S 33. Aesthetics and the Arts in Relation to Natural Theology

523

Frank Burch Brown

34. Imagination and Natural Theology

539

Douglas Hedley

35. Natural Theology and Literature

551

Guy Bennett-Hunter

36. Natural Theology and Music

566

Jeremy S. Begbie

37. Images in Natural Theology

581

Kristóf Nyíri

38. The Film Viewer and Natural Theology: God’s ‘Presence’ at the Movies

595

Robert K. Johnston

Index

611

List of Illustrations

6.1

Title-page, William Paley, Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (London: Faulder, 1809). Wellcome Library, London.

103

6.2 Title-page, George Wilson, Religio Chemici. Essays (London: MacMillan, 1862). Wellcome Library, London.

107

6.3 Title-page, T. B. Gallaudet, The Youth’s Book on Natural Theology (Hartford, Cooke and Co., 1833). Widener Library, Harvard University.

111

This page intentionally left blank

List of Contributors

Pamela Sue Anderson, Reader in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford. Jeremy S. Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School. Guy Bennett-Hunter, Research Fellow, Emergence: From Biology to Theology, at the University of Aberdeen. John Hedley Brooke, Emeritus Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion and former Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford. Frank Burch Brown, Frederick Doyle Kershner Professor of Religion and the Arts at Christian Theological Seminary and Alexander Campbell Visiting Professor of Religion and the Arts at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Stephen R. L. Clark, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Philip Clayton, Dean and Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology. Clayton Crockett, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Central Arkansas. Matthew D. Eddy, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Culture at the University of Durham. Denis Edwards, Lecturer in Historical and Systematic Theology at Flinders University. Paul Ewart, Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics at the University of Oxford. Richard K. Fenn, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Christianity and Society and Princeton Theological Seminary. Daniel H. Frank, Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. Jessica Frazier, Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent. David Ray Griffin, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology. Alexander W. Hall, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clayton State University.

xiv

list of contributors

Wayne Hankey, Carnegie Professor of Classics at Dalhousie University. Douglas Hedley, Reader in Hermeneutics and Metaphysics at the University of Cambridge. Rodney D. Holder, Course Director of the Faraday Institute, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Robert K. Johnston, Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. Christopher C. Knight, Executive Secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. David Knight, Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Durham. Scott Mandelbrote, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Neil A. Manson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mississippi. Andrew Moore, Fellow of the Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. Robert G. Morrison, Associate Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College. Kristóf Nyíri, Professor of Philosophy at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Keith M. Parsons, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston–Clear Lake. John Polkinghorne, Past President of Queens’ College, Cambridge and former Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. Russell Re Manning, Lord Gifford Fellow in the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford. Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Christopher Southgate, Research Fellow in Theology at the University of Exeter. Charles Taliaferro, Professor of Philosophy at St Olaf College. Fraser Watts, Starbridge Reader in Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge. Wesley J. Wildman, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Boston University. Mark Wynn, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Leeds.

i n troduction russell r e m anning

What is natural theology? There is no easy answer to this question; indeed it is one of the primary aims of this Handbook to highlight the rich diversity of approaches to, and definitions of, natural theology. The lack of a fixed consensus on the definition of natural theology is due, in part, to its inherently interdisciplinary character and the inevitable limitations on definitions that belong firmly within particular disciplines. By opening up various different ‘perspectives’ on natural theology, this Handbook hopes to enrich reflection on the topic and to provoke engagement with the new varieties of natural theology emerging in a range of contexts—from historical and religious studies, constructive theology, philosophy of religion, science-and-religion research, cultural theories, and the arts. Throughout this Handbook individual contributors give their own definitions of natural theology and there has been no editorial attempt to impose consistency; rather the various approaches adopted by the contributors reflect the plurality of contexts within which the study of natural theology must be situated. The result, hopefully, is that the complexity of natural theology is allowed to emerge, in contrast to the dominant tendency within existing accounts of natural theology towards universal ‘one size fits all’ definitions and the temptation to restrict it to one context or another. Beyond testifying to the complex diversity of natural theology, the chapters in this Handbook also bear witness to its ongoing significance for a wide range of contemporary disciplines. The vitality of natural theology centres on several key issues that emerge as leading themes in many of the chapters: • an awareness of the significance of natural theology in the history of ideas, both in terms of the links between philosophical and religious thought and of the importance of natural theology in the development of modern science; • the importance of natural theological themes in contemporary theology, both for religious reflection on the relations between reason and revelation and for the contemporary concerns of inter-religious dialogue, the environment, and secularization;

2

russell re manning • philosophical topics, ranging from the traditional arguments for the existence of God to the impact of recent developments in philosophy (post-modernism and feminism, for example) on the question of ultimate reality; • the extent to which scientific investigation of the natural world relates to the claims of natural theology, both in terms of specific hot-topics, such as evolution and fine-tuning, and in terms of the potential and limitations for natural theology in different scientific disciplines; • aesthetic engagement with the natural world and the complex relations between theology and the arts, both in terms of the apparently theological aspirations of some art and of the role of the imagination.

It is important to stress that throughout the Handbook the aim is to present natural theology as a topic of serious academic and intellectual consideration (from a variety of perspectives: historical, theological, philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic), not to present an apology for natural theology or a case for its revival. What is undeniable, however, is that interest in natural theology—and the issues it is concerned with—is very much at the centre of contemporary thought, be it in the retrieval of the complexity of the relations between science and religion in recent historical scholarship, the increasingly prominent place of the arts in theological teaching and research, the rise of science and religion as a field of study, and the particularly vibrant state of philosophical reflection on the question of God, not to mention the wide popular appeal of recent ‘new atheist’ critiques of natural theology. To assert the contemporary vitality of natural theology is to cut against a widely accepted and deeply ingrained standard narrative of the rise and fall of natural theology, a simplified story of the historical and intellectual trajectory of natural theology that still dominates most assessments of the topic. As the chapters in this Handbook collectively demonstrate, however, this standard story is a myth, and one that deserves nothing so much as a decent burial. According to the accepted narrative, natural theology, which is primarily and definitively contrasted to ‘revealed theology’, had a brief, if significant, flourishing at a kind of interim point of the scientific revolution and culminated in William Paley’s 1802 book, Natural Theology, before being fatally undermined by the combined effects of a three-pronged philosophical, scientific, and theological critique (albeit not before having secured the triumph of Newtonianism and sown the seeds of modern atheism). Between them, so the story goes, Hume, Darwin, and Barth pulled the rug out from underneath the pretentions of natural theology to any philosophical, scientific, or theological legitimacy, such that the enterprise was forced to retreat beyond the pale of intellectual respectability, showing up only in some of the more suspect speculations of so-called Intelligent Design creationism (even if the Intelligent Design theorists themselves reject the label). Richard Dawkins is a prominent exponent of such an account of natural theology, but it is hardly restricted to natural theology’s atheistic opponents, with many of those who are sympathetic to it, in some form or another, similarly repeating more or less wholesale this canonical narrative.

introduction

3

No matter how widely accepted it is, it is now time to put the lie to this myth once and for all, point by point: • As many of the contributions in this Handbook emphasize, the ‘natural’ vs ‘revealed’ characterization of natural theology is frequently hard to sustain and serves only to obscure or distort the real concerns and issues at the heart of natural theological thinking. Likewise, clunky either/or oppositions between Athens and Jerusalem are rarely helpful when considering the subtleties of natural theological thinking, in particular when considered in the light of perspectives from different religions, as well as from different Christian traditions. • This history of natural theology manifestly extends beyond Anselm’s ‘ontological argument’ and Aquinas’ ‘Five Ways’ and the complexities behind the emergence of a distinctive form of modern scientific natural theology are well-illustrated by the variety of types of natural theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries— an insight that helps to put Paley’s particular work in context. • The persistence of natural theology within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries refutes the supposition of its eclipse with the rise of distinctly modern science (as opposed to ‘natural philosophy’); indeed there is a strong case, it seems, that it is the nineteenth century that is the true heyday of natural theology. • Hume’s philosophical criticisms of the arguments of natural theology have been rightly influential and remain the cornerstone of much recent philosophy of religion; an insight that in itself serves to question the finality of Hume’s alleged demolition of natural theological arguments, and the design argument in particular. The vitality of much recent work in the philosophy of religion—both in and beyond the framework of analytic philosophy of religion—is ample testimony to the ongoing philosophical import of such arguments. • The story is often told of Darwin’s love of Paley’s works as a student and the anxiety he felt as it became clear that his theory of evolution by natural selection destroyed the inference to design by providing a natural mechanism for the apparent design of the natural world. The personal story of Darwin’s religious life is a fascinating one; however, it is problematic when taken as representative of the wider scientific discrediting of natural theology, as unavoidably trading on scientific ignorance to invoke the ‘God of the gaps’. Indeed, as recent historical work has convincingly demonstrated, the story of the reception of Darwin’s works is far from the simple either/or of the famous Oxford University debate between Huxley and Wilberforce. Indeed, it has been one of the central features of recent work on the history of the relations between science and religion that the conflict model quite clearly reflects certain ideological assumptions rather than the complexities of the historical record. • Likewise, it is striking that much of the contemporary revival of interest in natural theology is spurred by work in the science-and-religion field that has moved beyond the restrictive typological categorizations of the relations between science and religion, such as those developed by Ian Barbour to suggest new forms of

4

russell re manning scientific natural theology sensitive to the particularities of different scientific disciplines. • The importance of Karl Barth for the theological reception of natural theology in the twentieth century cannot be underestimated. However, it is far less clear that his particular ‘Nein!’ justifies the resistance to all forms of natural theology and indeed it is striking just how much natural theology has, in fact, persevered in the twentieth century, even in those traditions most decisively influenced by Barth. • Finally, as should be clear from the above, the proponents of Intelligent Design Theory are correct in distancing themselves from the enterprise of natural theology (albeit not for the right reasons); however it is that natural theology is to be defined it is as far from Intelligent Design creationism as it is from Dawkin’s ‘new atheism’!

This revisionary account of the character and history of natural theology is long overdue and it is to be hoped that this Handbook will go some way towards renewing engagement with natural theology from a variety of different perspectives—historical, theological, philosophical, scientific, and cultural/aesthetic. Clearly, such a multifaceted topic requires a collaborative approach and a pluralist editorial policy. Even within this context, however, there are some perspectives that it has not been possible to include and hard decisions have had to be made. In each of the Parts, there are additional perspectives that could be engaged with. For instance, in Part I additional work might consider the place of natural theology in the Reformation period and develop perspectives on natural theology within Continental Europe and the United States, as well as the impact of empire on natural theology and the importance of the material contexts of natural theological texts. Part II could further be extended to engage perspectives from Chinese religious traditions and indigenous animist traditions, with their subtle accounts of relations between nature and the divine(s), as well as exploring the place of natural theology in Nonconformist Christianity and the complex (and controversial) situation of natural theology in American evangelical Christian theology. Clearly, Part III only scratches the surface of natural theology within analytic philosophy and there is certainly room for further engagement with, for instance, the critique of natural theology within Reformed Epistemology; likewise the differentiations between natural theology and ‘religious naturalism’ clearly merit further consideration, as well as the questions raised by a comparative approach to natural theology. The range of scientific engagements with natural theology is as wide as the range of the scientific disciplines themselves and further interesting perspectives could be explored by a discussion of the (mainly historical) relations between the earth sciences and natural theology, as well as the new sciences of information and the contemporary debates in the philosophy of science about altruism, emergence, and the laws of nature. Finally, the cultural/aesthetic perspectives of Part V might be expanded to include not only additional art forms, such as sculpture and poetry, but also to explore further the interrelations between natural theology and the development of the modern novel and the intersections between natural and cultural theologies.

introduction

5

The above list of additional perspectives is not meant simply to pre-empt reviewers looking for omissions, but rather to highlight, as if it needed to be stated, that this Handbook hardly represents the final word on natural theology! As the wide variety of perspectives included in this volume and those gestured to above shows, the future for work in this area is bright and might, finally, be able to get beyond the debilitating myths towards multi-perspectival and interdisciplinary engagements with the rich diversity of theological thinking rooted in human nature and the environments that we find ourselves in.

This page intentionally left blank

pa rt i

HISTOR ICA L PER SPEC T I V E S ON NAT U R A L T H EOLOGY

This page intentionally left blank

chapter 1

the cl assica l or igins of natu r a l theology s tephen r. l. c lark

Out of Chaos Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. . . . And Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods. . . . She bare also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love. But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. [Hesiod 1914: 116–38]

So begins the first ‘classical’ account of the deathless ones, the gods, as recounted to Hesiod of Boeotia in the late eighth century bc by the nine daughters of Mnemosyne (which is Memory). The genealogy continues with increasing complexity and darker implications, occasionally dipping into narratives about selected gods, especially the line from Ouranos (Heaven) to Cronos to Zeus. The defining character of ‘gods’ is that they are deathless— and glorious. But their glory is usually not kindly, and their kin are often terrible: Typhoeus, another son of Earth, for example, in whose contest with Zeus for the kingship ‘the whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking’. The message of Hesiod’s Theogony is that there are deathless and unageing powers, both glorious and

10

stephen r. l. clark

terrible, and that mortals had better be content with the peace—such as it is—imposed by Zeus. He is not kind—but the alternative is worse. The volcanic eruption that demolished the island of Thera has, probably, left its mark in folklore as a monstrous rebellion, finally contained (Greene 2000: 46–72). Earth’s survival, and ours, gives reason to think that ‘it is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus’ (Hesiod 1914: 613). Hesiod’s story is both like and unlike those of other Mediterranean nations. In Egyptian thought Atum emerges out of Nothing, and generates Shu and Tefnut, from whom in turn more gods derive, culminating in the story of Isis, Osiris, and Set, their enemy. In Babylon Apsu plots against the younger gods and is destroyed by Ea, who in turn gives way to Marduk who fights with his grandmother Tiamat and her new offspring. In each case complexity and personality gradually emerge from Chaos (which is not confusion, but a void), younger gods inherit power from the older, and peace is established after some catastrophe. Or rather, Law is established: ‘Peace’ is projected back into the rule of Cronos, or of Osiris before his murder. Those stories were told by priests. There seems to have been no priestly caste in Greece, nor any grand revelation—except perhaps in the poems of a greater poet than Hesiod, Homer. In Iliad and Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns, the Olympian gods are on display, all with mature personalities and family histories. Satirists have usually supposed these gods to be simply superhuman, and their histories nothing more than gossip. But the gods were more than this: first, as for Hesiod, they were deathless, and unavoidable. They were more than personalities: they were whole worlds of meaning. Aphrodite, for example, is the mind-beguiling charm of sexual desire, born—mythologically—from Heaven’s severed phallus (and so the last born of the Titans), but also conceived as the child of Zeus and the goddess Dione. Similarly Athena, daughter of Zeus and Metis, is born from Zeus’s head (Zeus having swallowed her mother, on being warned that any male child born to her was bound to surpass his father), and Dionysus, son of Zeus and Semele, is reborn from Zeus’s thigh after his mother has been burnt up by Zeus’s self-revelation. In each case what might have been an independent power is given a place in the order maintained by Zeus: the overarching sky from which lightning strikes down the mighty. Zeus also holds men to their oaths, defends the laws of hospitality, and forbids the eating of people. It is this last offence which brings down the Flood. Though the gods aren’t kind, and owe us nothing, they do demand some minimal morality from mortals. Sometimes some gods have favourites: Athena, for instance, strongly favours the much-tried Odysseus. But she cannot always save him from the malice of another god, and even Zeus’s favourites can’t escape from Fate. Indeed, being Zeus’s favourite guarantees his wife’s hostility! These tales were told in many variants, constantly rewritten to serve some new dramatic or political purpose. What remains throughout—at least until they became entirely the butt of satirists—is a sense that the world has many faces, that our task as mortals can only be to keep our balance among competing powers, that we should not imagine ourselves exempt from justice. ‘Lay up these things within your heart and listen now to right, ceasing altogether to think of violence. For the son of Cronos has ordained this law for men, that fishes and beasts and winged fowls should devour one another, for right is not in them; but to mankind he gave right which proves far the best.’ (Hesiod 2008: 274–6). The Olympians are bound, like

the classical origins of natural theology

11

us, to keep their promises. But they are also glorious, and offer occasional brightness to their devotees. ‘A shadow in a dream is man, but when God sheds a brightness, shining light is on earth and life is as sweet as honey’ (Pindar 1998: 8.95 f.). That brightness is the god.

Parmenidean and Empedoclean Muses Out of emptiness, diversity. Hesiod’s Muses told him that there was only Chaos, Emptiness, at first. Earth, Tartarus under Earth, and Eros (Love) came next, and after them Night and Day. Manifold abstractions followed (Death, Blame, Toil, Strife and Forgetfulness, for example), and at last the world-defining powers under whose whim we live. Hornung summarizes the Egyptian story: ‘from the one emerges the duality of “two things”, and the diversity of the “millions” of created forms. . . . Creation is division.’ (Hornung 1996: 253). The One from which things emerge, he comments, is the non-existent, that to which no single label can apply, and within which there is no division. It is a theme that returns in the later days of the classical imagination—and one relevant to the next Muse-inspired theologian, namely Parmenides, for whom diversity could only be delusion. Parmenides of Elea (early fifth century bc) has a good claim to be the father of Western philosophy, who chose to reason his way to his conclusions. Only what can be thought without contradiction can be true. Neither our senses nor our imagination can show us more than delusion. Nonetheless, the obvious fact about Parmenides’ own writing is that he claimed, like Hesiod, to be Muse-inspired: The Goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand in hers, and addressed me with these words: ‘Young man, you who come to my house in the company of immortal charioteers with the mares which bear you, greetings. No ill fate has sent you to travel this road—far indeed does it lie from the steps of men—but right and justice. It is proper that you should learn all things, both the unshaken heart of wellrounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance’. [Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 242]

This is to cast doubt from the beginning on the easy distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘revealed’ theology. Hesiod, Homer, and Parmenides are witnesses to a revelation, as openly as Isaiah—and Parmenides’ revelation is more shocking, less in line with common sense and practice, than was Hesiod’s. Maybe this introduction to Parmenidean thought was only a literary conceit? But this is to insist that we know better than Parmenides what brought him to his conviction: even if he ‘reasoned’ his way, the experience of this reasoning was alien to ordinary thought. Realizing that the way things seem to us need not be how they are is, emotionally and intellectually, a revelation. And why should we care for that reality unless it is somehow brighter, better, more worth knowing and living by, than the worlds with which we are comfortably familiar? Does ‘Reason’ differ from ‘Revelation’ at least in this, that we all have access directly to the former, if we choose? Hesiod might be a liar, or be deceived, and his audience must

12

stephen r. l. clark

form an impression of his character and wit before they can rely on his ‘revelation’. The force of Parmenides’ argument, perhaps, is independent of his character and intelligence. Hesiod could reasonably reply that his advice to his erring brother is backed both by revelation and by everyday experience: ‘Be careful to avoid the anger of the deathless gods. Do not make a friend equal to a brother; but if you do, do not wrong him first. . . . But if he wrongs you first, offending either in word or in deed, remember to repay him double; but if he ask you to be his friend again and be ready to give you satisfaction, welcome him’ (Hesiod 2008: 706–13). The strategy is now called Tit-for-Tat, and reckoned mathematically the best available. Parmenides, it seems, hoped for an argument that need not rely on any such experience, but rather be—as we later came to say—entirely ‘a priori’, but not therefore obvious. So what was the argument the goddess (or his reason) showed him? I will tell you the only ways of enquiry that are to be thought of. The one, that it is, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for she attends upon Truth); the other, that it is not and that it is needful that it not be, that I declare to you is an altogether indiscernible track; for you could not know what is not. [Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983: 245]

There cannot be anything whose essence is simply not to be. Nothing, Non-being, Absolute Emptiness is, precisely, not. So Hesiod and the Egyptians were mistaken: things do not arise from Emptiness, since there is no such thing. Indeed, there can be no arising or departing: ‘It never was nor will be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous’ (249). Nor can there be any differences, nor any gaps between one thing and another. ‘It all exists alike; nor is it more here and less there, which would prevent it holding together, but it is all full of being’ (250–1). How Parmenides or his goddess went on to describe the world we see is uncertain. Do mortals live and conceive a lie? But there can be no lies, no falsehoods, no thought of what is not. Do they somehow encounter the only truth there is? But they imagine that there are really differences, distances, passings away, and comings into being (falsely). The One Truth is simultaneously diverse and single: a sphere no part of which is further from the centre than any other (252). Both distance and time’s passage are but ways of speaking. Later logicians sought to disentangle the different ways in which ‘not being’ can be said and thought. Falsehood depends on saying what is not: but this is not saying nothing (and so not saying anything at all). Difference is being other than such-and-such, but this is not the same as being nothing at all. The world of common life is vindicated: we can coherently insist that day is something else than night, that phantoms—though they are real phantoms—are not tangible people, that it is possible to tell and believe a lie. But this is not entirely to reject Parmenides’ insight. Absence, falsehood, and negation are functions of our thought. Really, there is only positive reality, and nothing lies outside that reality (which is to say, it includes all things, both tangible and imaginable). Nowhere is distant (which is to say, here/now is everywhere). Nothing, it seems to follow, can be mortal. So the father of philosophy, who put his trust in reason, is also the father of mystical theology, riding his intuition to the same conclusion as Empedocles of Acragas (c.495–435 bc):

the classical origins of natural theology

13

Of all mortal things none has birth, nor any end in accursed death, but only mingling and interchange of what is mingled – birth is the name given to these by men. . . . Fools, since they think that what before did not exist comes into being, or that a thing dies and is completely destroyed. . . . For it is impossible for anything to come to be from what is not, and it cannot be brought about or heard of that what is should be utterly destroyed; for wherever one may ever set it, there indeed it will always be. [291–2]

Empedocles—to our eyes—seems schizophrenic: on the one hand, he avows that he ‘has been a bush, and a bird, and a boy and a girl, and a dumb fish in the sea’ (Diogenes Laertius in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 319), and is an immortal god, confined here for some primordial, cannibalistic sin, ‘an exile from the gods and a wanderer, having put my trust in raving Strife’ (315). On the other, he invents a simple evolutionary theory, that the creatures first emerging from the play of fire, water, earth, and air (under the influence of Love and Strife) were elementary parts and random composites. Only some survived to breed: ‘wherever everything turned out as it would have if it were happening for a purpose, there the creatures survived, being accidentally compounded in a suitable way; but where this did not happen, the creatures perished and are perishing still, as Empedocles says of his “man-faced ox-progeny” ’ (Aristotle in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 304). But there is no contradiction. This whole world is run by Strife, and ‘we’ are embedded in it, by our cannibalistic error, very much as Hesiod’s gods may be condemned to lie frozen by the Styx when they break their oath (Hesiod 1914: 775–806). Zuntz’s aphorism is almost correct: ‘the banished god described by Hesiod is—Man’ (Zuntz 1971: 267). Almost correct, but not exactly: for Empedocles’ point is that the banished god is not human, even if it is born among humans ‘as prophets, bards, doctors and princes’ (Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983: 317)—and among beasts as lions, or laurels amongst trees. Our collective sin is cannibalism: ‘will you not cease from the din of slaughter? Do you not see that you are devouring each other in the heedlessness of your minds?’ (Sextus Empiricus in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 319). Here in the world of our present perception competitive diversity rules: at once the occasion of our sin, and its penalty. But reality is ‘the Sphere’, in which all parts are equal, and none further from the centre than the rest. In affirming our consanguinity, and rejecting common-sense divisions, he seemed to himself to be pursuing ‘Reason’. In realizing our imprisonment he was able to present himself as ‘an immortal god, mortal no more’ (Diogenes Laertius in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 313).

Whether the Gods Are Good Xenophanes of Colophon (c.570–c.475 bc), said Aristotle, was the first of the Eleatic tribe ‘to postulate a unity (for Parmenides is said to have been his pupil), [but] made nothing clear’ (Aristotle in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983: 165). His place in the history of natural theology is assured for another reason: ‘if cattle and horses or lions had hands,

14

stephen r. l. clark

or were able to draw with their hands and do the works that men do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle’ (169). Homer and Hesiod were especially at fault, in saying that the gods stole, slept around, and lied. Really, the gods are nothing like us in bodily form or mind, and could not misbehave in the ways that Hesiod or Homer said, not because they were too good to do so, but because they had neither the opportunity, the impulse, nor the organs. The gods weren’t human, and their ways, their thoughts, weren’t ours (Sextus Empiricus in Long and Sedley 1987: 143). Xenophanes may have missed the point. That Cronos swallowed his children meant, to a later Neoplatonic ear, that the Intellect (Nous) was filled up (koros) with intelligible reality, and that the Soul (Zeus, after zen, to live) emerges from that fullness (see Plotinus Ennead V.1 [10].4, 8 after Plato (1926) Cratylus 396b). Even the literal stories may not have been so shameful: Zeus wasn’t simply sleeping around with goddesses, nymphs, and mortals—but begetting gods and heroes. And why should the gods obey our rules? Their power is such that it is mad to defy them. Their glory is such that defiance is also vulgar. But only the foolish imitate them: their ways aren’t ours, and (pace Empedocles) we are mortal. We had better ourselves be kind to one another, because the gods won’t be. Does that mean it is wrong to worship them? Is it wrong to be impressed, amazed, by a killer whale, a tiger, a lightning storm, or the sun? Why not admire the gods (from a safe distance, and with no wish to be one)? Why might not this admiration motivate us to be kindly, temperate, pious, and courageous, precisely because they have no need to be? Homer, perhaps, showed better sense than Plato: Odysseus can admire the nymph Calypso’s beauty, and her promise of immortality, but still pines for home and Penelope. Precisely because the world is not being run to suit us, we can appreciate virtues that the gods do not need—though even they are bound to keep their oaths, and bound by their natures to defend the world against the jealous anger of an earlier brood. The gods are not to be imitated, but obeyed. Unfortunately, their commands are inconsistent—and that is what demands our aid. So Aeschylus proposed in his Oresteia that Orestes’ misfortune—that he must do wrong (by one command) in order to do right (by another) and so be damned whatever he did or failed to do—can only be resolved in a human court, the Areopagus. Neither the Furies (who seek revenge for a mother’s blood) nor Apollo (who had commanded that Orestes avenge his father) are permitted to be the only law: Athena casts her vote, in the end, ‘for the father’, but accommodates the Furies in Athenian civil order. Voting ‘for the father’ is not merely patriarchalist: it amounts to a vote for Zeus, the overarching sky, who demands that oaths be kept and suppliants pitied. The gods, to us, seem heartless and inconsistent, but it does not follow that the Greeks condemned them for it. It is because the gods are heartless that we must ourselves be kind; because they are in conflict that we must learn to think. Plato’s response is different. He is remembered nowadays for arguing that the gods do not make the ‘moral law’. Either they command it because it is right, or their command might as easily have been a prohibition, obeyed only from fear (and not any moral reason). Surely, we are to suppose, God or the gods can’t make it right to murder or steal or sleep around merely by telling us so? They can only, at best, be witnesses to what is already right or wrong, and we ought to obey that law, not them. The argument is drawn

the classical origins of natural theology

15

from his Euthyphro, with some additional pointers from The Republic, and is still frequently repeated even by those who have read neither text. Actually, if they had read the texts, it might be harder to think that this is what Plato argued (Clark 2010)! He does not deny that our duty is to please God or the gods, and that they have laid down the natural conditions which identify what is best for us. They are what we should imitate: ‘we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away means to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him, means to become holy, just, and wise’ (Plato 1949: 176b). And how are we to do this? God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man, as men commonly say: the words are far more true of Him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like Him and such as He is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like Him; and the intemperate or unjust man is unlike Him. [Plato 2000a: 4.716c ff.]

So ‘God’ and ‘the gods’, for Plato, identify the best: to be imitated, not just respected. So also Aristotle, who declared that our final duty was ton theon theorein kai therapeuein, ‘to love and serve the Lord’ (Aristotle 1992a: 8.1249b20), by seeking to live as far as possible as gods: We must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us. [Aristotle 1999: 10.1177b30 ff.]

What is the life gods live? Certainly not, so Aristotle insisted, a merely ‘moral’ life. The gods aren’t ‘morally’ good: praising them as such is vulgar (10.1178b8 ff.). We must not think that the active moral life is the best life: a truly courageous person (say) would not want to exercise courage—since that depends on there being wrongs to resist or even wars to fight—‘as if a physician were to wish that nobody needed his skill’ (Plotinus 1966–8: VI.8 [39].5, 13–21). The best life is the practice of theoria—and that life is God. Neither Aristotle nor his successors are clear about what theoria involves, but it does at least include a delight in beauty, to kalon. We serve the gods, so Euthyphro concluded, by doing or making kala, fine and noble things. But this making is dependent on our seeing to kalon, in even the smallest and basest creature (Aristotle 1992b: 1.645a15 f.), and chiefly in the ordered passage of the heavens, and in ‘beautiful works, not those which the arts produce, but the works of men who have a name for goodness’ (Plotinus 1966–8: I.6 [1].9, 4 ff.). Aristotle’s gods, and especially his ‘Unmoved Mover’, do not act to defend the innocent or openly rebuke the wicked. Nor does he suggest that we as bodily beings are anything but mortal. But something in us, the immortal Nous, is God or a god, a daimon. Sharing His life is the core of eudaimonia, the life well-lived: the term itself carries the implication, being—etymologically—‘having a good daimon’ (Sextus Empiricus in Long and Sedley 1987: 1:143):

16

stephen r. l. clark Nous is our king. But we too are kings when we are in accord with it; we can be in accord with it in two ways, either by having something like its writing written in us like laws, or by being as if filled with it and able to see it and be aware of it as present. [Plotinus 1966–8: V.3.3, 46 ff.]

Those who live in the consciousness of that divinity will also be righteous, both because any vicious desires they had would get in the way of the practice, and because the godfilled have no desire or need for any of the usual goods to tempt them.

Whether and How God Rules the World The poets suggested that the gods might intervene, for their own purposes, in human and other lives, but not that the world existed ‘because God wished it’, nor that the world was governed by any purpose. And yet Aristotle easily mocked the Empedoclean story that separate limbs and organs once emerged ‘of themselves’ and only later found some viable combinations. All living organisms must have been viable wholes from the beginning, not patched together, by chance, from previously non-viable bits. Living organisms also reproduce themselves, passing ‘the same form’ down generations, modified by the material it influenced, and the environment in which it grew. Aristotle thought that such ‘formal causes’ were immanent in the world, and that we were equipped to see them. We could also see such forms at work in the heavens, in the cycles of the fixed stars and the planets (including sun and moon). Formal and final cause cohere: the ‘final cause’