A NATURAL THEOLOGY OF EMERGENCE

Natural Theology is a type of speculative philosophy. The task of a speculative philosophy is to provide an understanding of some aspect of the world, taking account of known facts. Philosophy cannot discover any new facts, it can only show the significance of the facts that others have discovered, and show how those facts fit into an overall picture.

Aristotle distinguished three types of speculative philosophy, the mathematical, the natural and the theological. Theology, in the Classical Greek world, was natural theology. Natural Philosophy was concerned with things which exist separately, but which were contingent and changeable. We now call it Science. Mathematics dealt with entities that were changeless but which did not have their own separate existence. Natural Theology was concerned with what was self-existent, and changeless. (Met. 1026a) Natural theology, as in this chapter, argues from available facts. It does not rely on any revelation.

In their Natural Theology the classical Greek philosophers were able to argue their way up from the existence of contingent things to the necessity of a self-existent perfect being, or God. They had far greater difficulty in arguing their way back down again. A self-existent, perfect being was necessary for the existence of contingent things, but such a being could be under no compulsion and could want for nothing. Why then was there a world of contingent things? The world, as an unnecessary and imperfect entity, contingent upon a perfect God, should not exist. But the world does exist. This contradiction could not be resolved by the Greeks.

Plotinus, the neo-Platonist of the Third Century AD, sought to resolve the clash between the existence of a perfect God, who had no need to create anything, and the obvious existence of the world. Plotinus postulated the necessity of The One, a God who is prior to all existents. Using the metaphor of the light, which emanates from the sun without diminishing the sun, Plotinus postulated that Mind or Nous, which is most like the One, had first emanated from the One. The Soul of the world emanates from Nous and, in a series of emanations, each lower form emanates from the higher. The human soul emanates from the World Soul, and may eventually rejoin the World Soul. The One, Nous and the World Soul are eternal, but lower entities are not. Matter is the final emanation that, because of the downward momentum of emanation away from rationality, encounters darkness and gives rise to evil. Evil is thus considered a privation, rather than a positive thing, just as darkness is the absence of light. This explanation of evil was considered by Augustine, who held that while it could sometimes be accepted, evil was primarily the result of man’s exercise of his free will.

What was needed to resolve the antinomy between a perfect God and an imperfect world, was some account which recognised the divine perfection which the Greeks had insisted upon - a perfection which included the lack of any external need - and which also provided a motive, or a sufficient reason, for God to make the world. Christian philosophers had maintained that the motive for God to create the world was love of man. But Aristotle had already provided an argument that counted against this proposed solution.

Aristotle had analysed friendship, which is an essential aspect of love. He had found that friendship has to be reciprocal and that friendship could be based either on goodness, pleasure or utility. As John Cowburn has remarked, Aristotle did not have inverted commas or he would have used them in relation to friendship that is based upon pleasure or utility. Aristotle argues that friendship based on pleasure or utility is transient, and real and lasting friendship can only be between those who are good, and who resemble one another in their goodness. (Ethics 1156b)

This resemblance in goodness is the crux of the matter. Because there is no resemblance in goodness between God and man, Aristotle denies the possibility of friendship between God and man. (Ethics 1159b) By necessary implication he also denies the possibility of God’s love for man, or for anything less than man, as the motive for the existence of the world. Christian philosophers have also argued that the motive for God to create the world is love of man in the person of Christ, but there are difficulties with this argument. Those difficulties will not be dealt with in this paper as they go beyond the sphere of natural theology. The present question is whether there can be an explanation of the existence of the world in the terms of a natural theology.

We have at our disposal many facts about the world that Aristotle did not have. These facts include Big Bang cosmology, the phenomenon of Emergent evolution, and the evidence of biological evolution. There is another very important difference between our situation and Aristotle’s. Aristotle lived in a world that was regarded as being complete, or as moving in a repetitive cycle. We live in a world in which we have been made aware of extensive and progressive evolution and change, both on planet Earth and in the universe as a whole. The world we live in is linear and progressive rather than cyclical or static. Modern sciences, such as Geology, Biology and Cosmology, take time, and development over time, into account. These sciences reflect a dynamic perspective, which is a process perspective. Taking time into account can give us a three dimensional, process perspective compared to the earlier two dimensional, static perspective. The static two dimensional world of classical philosophy has been replaced by the perception that the world is in process.

While we know much more about the Universe than Aristotle did, we still have to face the antinomy between a self-existent and perfect entity, which can have no need of any imperfect contingent thing, and the obvious existence of a contingent and imperfect world which has to be contingent upon that perfect, self-existent entity. This antinomy could not be resolved as long as the world was regarded as complete. But the antinomy might be dissolved if the imperfect world we know is merely a stage in an incomplete process. If the world, as we know it, was just one stage in a process which could lead to the production of another self-existent and perfect entity, the world would necessarily be both incomplete and imperfect. There would no longer be an antinomy. The question then becomes one concerning the nature of such a process and the nature of any possible product of that process.

If we consider the possible motive that God could have for initiating a process which could lead to the production of a more perfect entity than the world we know, we can see that love or friendship could provide such a motive. This could be the case if the possible outcome of the process could be an entity that was similar to God. Such an entity would have to be similar to God in goodness and in the mode of its existence.

Logically, God could not simply create such an entity, as the act of creation itself would remove the possibility of there being a sufficient degree of similarity between the mode of existence of God and the mode of existence of the created entity. There could be very little similarity between God, as a self-existent entity, and a mere creature that was totally dependent upon God for its existence. However the potential of love and friendship could provide a sufficient reason for God to initiate a process that could possibly lead to the self-creation of an entity that was similar to God in its mode of existence and its goodness.

Only an entity that is self-created could possibly have an appropriate degree of similarity to a self-existent God to warrant friendship or love. The potential production of a self-created entity, which resembles God in goodness, could therefore provide an appropriate motive for God to act. As the direct creation of an entity which is similar to God is ruled out on logical grounds, perhaps the only way in which an entity which is similar to God, and so worthy of God’s friendship and love, could come into being would be by such a process of self-creation. How could such a process occur?

Clearly, God would have to initiate such a process. Equally clearly, the process would have to be free of direct guidance by God, and any intervention by God in the process would have to be kept to the barest minimum, otherwise the essential objective of self-creation would be frustrated.

One possible way to minimise intervention would be for God to initiate a process involving a series of stages, each of which was free to develop or to evolve. Each of the stages would have to enjoy the greatest possible degree of freedom, appropriate to its development in self-organisation or self-creation. When each successive stage reached its self-creative potential, some intervention may be necessary to initiate another stage, again with the potential of further self-creation.

The penultimate stage in the process, the stage that had the potential to lead to the emergence of the entity similar to God, would have to enjoy total freedom in its sphere of self-creation, particularly if that sphere was the sphere of goodness. This final stage would have to be totally free to realise, or to fail to realise its potential of goodness.

The question is whether the cosmos as it now exists can be understood as being involved in such a process of self-creation. A process can comprises a series of ever more complex stages, leading to a product. The history of the cosmos since the Big Bang has the form of such a process. Each one of these stages is built upon the previous stage and is more complex than its predecessor. This series of ever more complex stages of being, also comprises the phenomenon of Emergence, or Emergent Evolution. Emergence is the name given to the phenomenon of the initiation of new levels of being which cannot be fully explained in terms of the laws of any previous level or stage. The most readily apparent instance is the emergence of life from inert matter.

The first emergent of which we are now aware, is the emergence of physical matter in the Big Bang. Subsequent emergents include the initiation of pre-programmed or instinctive forms of life, the emergence of higher forms of life which exercise some empirical consciousness, or instrumental rationality, and following that, the emergence of a form of life which is self-conscious and which exercises a moral consciousness. We could identify these four significant emergent stages as the physical, the instinctive, the conscious, and the moral.

It appears that these four emergent stages could comprise the stages of a process. Each stage in this apparent process appears to develop or evolve as freely as the nature of the stage will allow. Each of this series of stages also appears to involve processes of self-organisation or self-creation.

Every genuine emergent introduces something completely new and totally unpredictable into the world. The lack of predictability stems from the introduction of a new complex of laws of nature to accompany each stage. It is this newly operative sphere of laws of nature that identifies the new emergent and renders it completely unpredictable in terms of what went before.

I have argued that the only possible sufficient motive for the creation of the cosmos is the production, by self-creation, of an entity that is similar to God. I call this entity Deity. This is the name which Samuel Alexander, the first philosopher of Emergence, proposed for the product of the process of Emergent Evolution. For Alexander, Deity was always the next higher level towards which the cosmic order tends. However Alexander proposed no overall explanation of the process of the cosmos. He set out his philosophy of emergence in his major work, Space, Time & Deity (1920).

Deity, as I use the term, is the possible self-created outcome of the process of the cosmos. As it is a process involving freedom, the product of the process cannot be assured. There can only be a minimum of intervention by God in this process, if Deity is to be self-created. This minimum would have to be restricted primarily to the design of the laws of nature that apply to each particular emergent stage. The further development of each stage, its self-organisation or self-creation, has to be a free process to the greatest possible extent. At some stage it has to be a totally free process. Ideally this totally free stage would be the stage of the possible development of goodness.

Each successive emergent stage in the process of the cosmos to date, does exhibit a greater degree of freedom than the previous stage. The laws of nature applicable to the initial physical stage are deterministic but they permit of contingency. The contingency arises from the interaction of a number of deterministic laws. The laws of nature applicable to the instinctive biological stage are less deterministic, and instinctive life appears to freely evolve. The conscious stage of life appears to evolve with even greater freedom, achieving a greater range of variety than does the instinctive stage. These biological stages utilise the laws of the physical stage in their internal processes. The freedom of the biological stages to evolve, involves both mutations and natural selection.

In contrast to the determinism of the initial physical stage, the moral law of the present human moral-cultural stage allows total freedom. This total freedom relates to the application or non-application by the individual of the moral law, and not to the freedom or lack of freedom of the individual, from other motives or constraints. We know what we ought to do, but nothing makes us do what we ought other than the exercise of our own free-will. We are totally free either to do what we perceive we morally ought to do, or to do what we ought not to do, to do good or to do evil.

The moral law commands but it does not compel. At each previous emergent stage the applicable natural law operates deterministically, even where it permits of contingency or of evolutionary novelty. The moral law, in contrast to the law of the previous stages, is not deterministic, nor is it binding in any way. This total freedom indicates the importance of the human moral-cultural stage of the process of the cosmos.

The human moral-cultural stage is a totally free stage as far as the application or non-application of the moral law is concerned, and it has no pre-determined outcome. Humans are free to apply or to fail to apply the moral law. Human freedom is thus the most significant factor in the process of the cosmos, in relation to the possible self-creation of Deity.

The product of each stage of the process of the cosmos appears not to be pre-determined, although parameters are provided by the potential that the appropriate laws of nature permit. At some stage the operation of the laws of each stage can give rise to a product that can provide the basis of a further stage of the overall process. It is here that an element of design may enter. Taking account of what has freely evolved out of the previous stage, an appropriate new stage may be initiated, with new laws of nature. Each new emergent stage then has the possibility of further self-organisation or self-creation. The number and the nature of the stages towards the production of Deity cannot be predetermined, and each stage has to be as free as the material of the stage permits. The process of the cosmos can therefore be understood as one of freedom and lawfulness, rather than one of chance and necessity.

Each successive stage exhibits a greater degree of freedom in the application of the laws applying to the stage, compared to the previous stage, until total freedom is provided in the moral-cultural or deontological stage. It can be seen that a further emergent stage, with appropriate new laws of nature, would be necessary to complete the process of the cosmos. The final emergent would have to be similar to God in being both self-existent, to a significant degree, and good.

The present human moral-cultural stage allows total freedom in relation to the law of the present stage, the moral law. This human stage therefore appears to have the potential to be the penultimate stage in the process of the cosmos. When and if the moral potential for good of the present human-cultural stage is freely realised, the final emergent, Deity, would become possible.

That reality consisted of a number of different strata or levels was grasped by the emergent evolutionists, among others. Nicolai Hartmann did not consider himself to be an emergentist. He recognised the existence of the phenomenon of emergent evolution, but he regarded the various emergentists as having merely affixed a label to the phenomenon of emergence, rather than providing any explanation of it. (Werkmeister 1990,153) Any explanation of emergence would have to provide a sufficient reason for the phenomenon of emergent evolution. Hartmann does not propose one. David Blitz, in a recent book on Emergent Evolution, notes that the source of the phenomenon of emergence has always been an unresolved problem. It is also a problem that Blitz admits he does not seek to resolve. (1992,180)

What distinguishes the various stages in the process of emergence is the laws of nature which apply at each stage. Each emergent stage is initiated with its own laws.

Each set of laws is appropriate to the nature of the particular stage, or rather it establishes the nature of the stage. The laws provide the potential for the evolution or development of the particular stage. That stage then develops or evolves free from any further constraint, with each new emergent stage exhibiting greater freedom in its development than the previous stage.

First there is the emergence of matter as a result of the Big Bang. Initially only the simplest elements, Hydrogen and Helium, are produced. The Big Bang also initiates the process by which stars are formed, and the heavier elements, which eventually form the basis of life, are produced in those stars. At some time, at an essentially unpredictable location in the universe, a planet, one which we know as Earth, develops into a geophysical form that can support life. The laws of physics and chemistry rule the purely physical or material era from the Big Bang to the development of planet Earth. These laws are deterministic, but their interaction permits contingency.

Life then emerges on earth. All life is complex, but initially life is of the simplest form. Plants evolve, and also forms of life ruled by instinct. Instinctive life then freely evolves more complex and elaborate forms, which are still instinctive or hard wired, by a process involving natural selection. Instinctive life has a greater degree of freedom to evolve than did matter. It can experiment with different forms in different environments.

Then there is the emergence of conscious life, based on the more evolved instinctive forms. Conscious or psychic level life may retain many instinctive activities, but such life is able to apply empirical logic or instrumental rationality to some of its areas of activity. It is able, to varying degrees, to learn from experience. This psychic level life has far greater freedom of action, and greater freedom to develop, than instinctive life has. Psychic level life includes Homo sapiens. Primitive Homo sapiens can be said to initially develop mores or rules of conduct, as distinct from morality, if morality is accepted as being based upon the deontological perception of what morally ought-to-be.

Most recently there is the emergence of moral or spiritual level life in Homo sapiens, in what Jaspers identifies as the Axial period. In this period various cultures express a deontological perception of moral imperatives. This perception is spiritual in that it enables the perception by humans of something which, when it is perceived, has no being in the real, material, world. It is perceived only as an ought-to-be. This moral ought-to-be enters the world of real entities only when and if a person translates it into an ought-to-do. Man thus becomes `the bridge between the ideal and the real world’, in the words of Nicolai Hartmann.

There is evidence of the emergence of a deontological moral value-consciousness in the Greek world as recently as the Sixth Century BC. The evidence comes directly from Xenophanes. Xenophanes was an Ionian, born about 560 BC. He was a philosopher, poet and a rhapsode, that is a professional reciter of the Homeric poems. He eventually settled in Elea, in southern Italy. Aristotle credits him with founding the Eleatic school of philosophy. He is best known for his attacks on the immorality of the Olympian pantheon.

Xenophanes expressed his revulsion at the awe in which Homer’s work was held, declaring that `Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery and mutual deception’. Prior to this time the immoral activities of the Olympian pantheon had been accepted without demur.

Xenophanes appears to have expressed his emergent moral value-consciousness. It could also have been the emergence of this moral value-consciousness that was responsible for the initiation of science and philosophy in Greece in the first millennium BC. If the existing mores of a traditional society could be challenged, so could any aspect of the world. This new attitude in the Greek world could have led to challenges to the status quo in every field, leading to the beginnings of science and philosophy. The newly acquired perception of what ought to be the case in moral matters could have led to a change in attitude towards the world at large.

The emergence of humans with a moral or spiritual capacity is the most recent instance of emergence. The perception of what morally ought-to-be is spiritual in the sense that it is completely independent of matter. What ought-to-be has no material existence until its perception persuades some person to bring it into existence. The ought-to-be can only persuade, it cannot compel. The freedom of spiritual level man from the operation of the deontological moral law is absolute. I identify spiritual level man as Homo sapiens ethicus.

This series of emergents, the physical, instinctive, conscious or psychic, and the moral or spiritual, with each new level being built upon the previous level, and with each new level exercising a greater degree of freedom than the previous level, has the form of a process involving increasing self-creation. Each new emergent level only emerges when the previous level has evolved or developed to a stage where it can provide a base for the new emergent. The direction of overall development is clearly towards greater freedom and consequently, a greater degree of self-creation. The total freedom of the spiritual or deontological level permits of the total self-creation of a moral community or culture or, alternatively, of its total self-destruction.

The natural theologian, seeking to find a motive for the existence of the world, has an abundance of evidence. The findings of modern Cosmology provide evidence of the evolution of the cosmos, of the solar system and of planet Earth. There is also the evidence of the evolution of life on earth, together with the evidence of the phenomenon of emergence. These facts provide sufficient evidence for the thesis that the cosmos is in process. When Hartmann’s ontology is taken into account, together with his phenomenology of man, the direction in which this process is moving becomes clear. Hartmann’s phenomenology provides evidence of the spiritual nature of humans, their perception of the moral ought-to-be and their orientation towards the Good.

With the evidence now available, the natural theologian is in a position to postulate that God has initiated the process of the cosmos with the purpose of enabling the self-creation of an entity that is similar to God. This is the only sufficient reason that justifies the initiation by a self-existent entity of a process that would bring imperfect contingent things into being, as a stage in a process leading to the possible self-creation of an entity whose mode of existence is similar to that of God.

The recognition that the process of the cosmos is as yet incomplete enables the natural theologian to dissolve the antinomy that frustrated his predecessors. He is able to accommodate Aristotle’s argument that God could not love man as such, and to propose that the process of the cosmos can only be the process of theosis - the process of the free self-creation of Deity, a communal entity based on human moral culture, that is similar to God.

This is a speculative hypothesis, but it provides the first explanation of the phenomenon of Emergent Evolution. It is consistent with the findings of modern cosmology and it resolves the ancient antinomy between the nature of the world and the nature of the self-existent entity called God.

Bibliography

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