II. THE MEDIEVAL “SYNTHESIS”
Despite significant support in the scientific writings
of Galen (fl. A.D.
164) and in the philosophy of Boethius
(480?-?524), there is little
evidence of the design argu-
ment playing an
important role in theological thought
before the thirteenth century of our
era. Biblical
writers did not characteristically argue at all, though
the wonders of nature are sometimes urged as illus-
trations of the might and grandeur of God (e.g.,
Psalms
8, 19). Likewise the Church Fathers spent their ener-
gies on other controversies than the existence of
God;
and even when the latter question did arise as a ques-
tion at all, the defense of belief was typically
based
on what was taken as more worthy than the character
of the
natural world. It was in this era, for example,
that Saint Anselm
(1033-1109) created the famous
ontological argument for God (Proslogion), purporting
to depend on nothing beyond
an understanding of what
it means to be God in order to demonstrate his
neces-
sary existence.
With the rediscovery of Aristotle's philosophy, how-
ever, and with the attempt of Saint Thomas Aquinas
to build an
intellectually viable Christian theology on
a fundamentally Aristotelian
framework, the design
argument reappears. This would be odd, since we
have
seen that Aristotle himself dispensed with this argu-
ment for God, if it were not for two pertinent consid-
erations: first, Saint Thomas was by no means slavish
in his
use of Aristotle (as is sometimes falsely alleged),
and, second, Plato's
Timaeus had exerted great influ-
ence over the intervening centuries and had given
philosophical reinforcement to the biblical vision of
God as actively
concerned with the created universe.
Saint Thomas's design argument,
therefore, stands out
as a fundamentally non-Aristotelian correction of
Aris-
totle in a corpus that is usually
considered to be a
synthesis of Christian faith with Aristotelianism.
The argument itself, the fifth of Saint Thomas's Five
Ways (of which the
first three are indeed Aristotelian),
reads as follows:
We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural
bodies, act
for an end, and this is evident from their acting
always, or nearly
always, in the same way, so as to obtain
the best result. Hence it
is plain that they achieve their
end, not fortuitously, but
designedly. Now whatever lacks
knowledge cannot move towards an
end, unless it be di-
rected by some
being endowed with knowledge and intelli-
gence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore
some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things
are
directed to their end; and this being we call God
(Summa Theologica, Q. 2, Art.
3).
There are several interesting features of this argu-
ment. First, it is taken as obvious that there are end-
directed activities within nature. This
claim, on which
the rest of the argument depends, is significantly
different from Plato's appeal to the order of the visible
universe,
especially astronomical order which seems
not to be directed at any
identifiable goal. It may be
that orderly change and end-directed change
may be
intimately related in some way. At the moment, how-
ever, it remains a disputable point and one which
needs
to be argued for.
Second, we see that Saint Thomas has adopted
Aristotle's remarks about the
presence of “purpose”
in nature without accepting his
conclusion that such
observable regularities may be accounted for by
appeal
to an immanent teleology. This view, indeed, is not
ever
considered. In this dismissal by silence we find
an implicit dualism
between bodies and minds that
Aristotle found objectionable in Plato. It is
not self-
evident, of course, which
position is the stronger.
Aristotle argued that such
“separation” is in the end
metaphysically redundant;
Plato, on the other hand,
could have replied that in this respect his great
succes-
sor had not sufficiently advanced
beyond the mytho-
poeic blurring of
distinctions between the animate and
the inanimate. Saint Thomas, in any
event, we find to
have applied to natural changes a very sharp distinc-
tion between the
“ensouled” and the “unsouled,”
as
shown by his choice of illustration of the archer and
the arrow. The model for nature is clearly technologi-
cal as contrasted to Aristotle's mainly organismic
ex-
amples of immanent teleology, such as
the physician
who treats himself.
Third, Saint Thomas concludes with the claim that
his argument has shown
that there must be “some
intelligent being” who is
responsible for the alleged
design in the world. This, too, is a bolder
claim that
Plato permitted himself. Plato, as we saw, admitted
the
possibility of plural souls guiding the orderly phe-
nomena of nature. Saint Thomas gives no argument
here to show
why his evidence points to only one
intelligent being rather than several,
and we shall see
that this remains a persistent problem for the design
argument taken by itself.
Fourth, and boldest of all, Saint Thomas equates the
“intelligent
being” of his argument with God. Perhaps
this equation can be
made good, but it must be recalled
that insofar as Plato argued carefully
in the Laws he
claimed only to have shown the need
for postulating
“the most perfect soul or souls” to
account for specific
astronomical phenomena. Even in the mythological
Timaeus, where a single perfect soul is depicted as
ordering the whole cosmos, Plato does not go beyond
presenting him as a
Demiurge, limited by what he finds
by way of formal possibilities and
material medium
for the always somewhat imperfect realization of these
pure Ideas. Can the design argument support more
than this? It all depends,
assuredly, on what is supposed
to be meant by “God”
whether God's existence can
be supported by this approach. Saint Thomas, at
least,
whose conception of God was shaped by both biblical
and
Aristotelian influences, seems unaware of the pos-
sibility that there may be a wide gap between what,
on the most
generous possible reading, he has shown,
and the God of his theological
concern.
