WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.110 At four in the morning on Quay Street the only lit window belongs to Hollin's Bakery. 00:00:05.110 --> 00:00:12.143 Maren Ashby has walked past it for six years on her way home from the intensive care unit, and she has never gone in. 00:00:12.143 --> 00:00:13.345 Tonight she goes in. 00:00:13.895 --> 00:00:22.315 Teodor Hollin is seventy-one, floured to the elbow, and pressing his knuckles into a tub of dough as if he were checking a sleeping animal for breath. 00:00:22.315 --> 00:00:27.928 Beside the proving cabinet there is a fat blue book, its spine split, a wooden spoon for a bookmark. 00:00:28.478 --> 00:00:31.450 TEODOR: We're not open till six. But the kettle is. 00:00:31.450 --> 00:00:33.870 TEODOR: You look like you've had the night. 00:00:34.420 --> 00:00:37.720 MAREN: Mister Dunmore died at ten past three. Eighty-four. 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:43.930 MAREN: I'd had him three weeks. He kept asking me to open the blind so he could see if the tide was in. 00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:45.355 TEODOR: Was it? 00:00:45.905 --> 00:00:47.995 MAREN: It was out. I told him it was in. 00:00:48.545 --> 00:00:53.772 Teodor fills a mug, puts it in front of her, and says nothing for long enough that she drinks half of it. 00:00:54.322 --> 00:00:55.218 MAREN: What's the book? 00:00:55.768 --> 00:01:03.592 TEODOR: Thomas Aquinas. A Dominican friar left it on that shelf in nineteen seventy-nine and never came back for it. 00:01:03.592 --> 00:01:08.518 TEODOR: I read a page every night while the dough proves. Forty-seven years. 00:01:08.518 --> 00:01:10.692 TEODOR: I'm on my fourth time through. 00:01:11.242 --> 00:01:15.274 MAREN: Does he say why a nice old man has to die looking at a blind? 00:01:15.824 --> 00:01:18.527 TEODOR: He says it better than you would expect. 00:01:18.527 --> 00:01:22.582 TEODOR: And he says the other side first. That's why I kept reading. 00:01:24.732 --> 00:01:30.115 The thing to know about the Summa Theologiae is that Thomas never begins with his own answer. 00:01:30.115 --> 00:01:37.118 Each article opens with the best arguments he can find against what he believes, stated as strongly as he can state them. 00:01:37.118 --> 00:01:40.765 Teodor turns to the page where Thomas asks the oldest question. 00:01:41.315 --> 00:01:52.408 THOMAS AQUINAS: Whether God Exists? Objection 1: It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. 00:01:52.408 --> 00:01:56.323 THOMAS AQUINAS: But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. 00:01:56.323 --> 00:02:03.283 THOMAS AQUINAS: If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. 00:02:03.283 --> 00:02:05.386 THOMAS AQUINAS: Therefore God does not exist. 00:02:05.936 --> 00:02:15.013 MAREN: That's it. That's the whole thing. Mister Dunmore had a daughter in Leeds who didn't come, a lung full of fluid, and a nurse who lied to him about the tide. 00:02:15.013 --> 00:02:18.795 MAREN: If there were infinite goodness, none of that would be left over. 00:02:19.345 --> 00:02:23.722 TEODOR: He wrote that seven hundred and sixty years ago and put it first. 00:02:23.722 --> 00:02:27.425 TEODOR: He didn't hide it in a footnote. Here's the second one. 00:02:27.975 --> 00:02:36.569 THOMAS AQUINAS: Obj. 2: Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. 00:02:36.569 --> 00:02:44.882 THOMAS AQUINAS: But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. 00:02:44.882 --> 00:02:56.060 THOMAS AQUINAS: For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. 00:02:56.060 --> 00:02:59.833 THOMAS AQUINAS: Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence. 00:03:00.383 --> 00:03:03.658 MAREN: My brother says that. He's a physicist in Durham. 00:03:03.658 --> 00:03:07.802 MAREN: Nature does nature, people do people, and God is a spare part. 00:03:08.352 --> 00:03:14.326 TEODOR: Then your brother and a thirteenth-century friar agree on the objection. That's a start. 00:03:16.476 --> 00:03:21.961 After the objections comes a short line that Thomas always heads the same way: On the contrary. 00:03:21.961 --> 00:03:29.697 It is not yet an argument. It is where the tradition stands, the voice Thomas sets against the objections before he does his own work. 00:03:30.247 --> 00:03:36.605 THOMAS AQUINAS: On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Ex. 3:14) 00:03:37.155 --> 00:03:39.608 MAREN: That's not an answer. That's a quotation. 00:03:40.158 --> 00:03:46.057 TEODOR: Quite right. He knows it. The answer comes next, and he says he can do it five ways. 00:03:46.057 --> 00:03:50.692 TEODOR: He starts with the one he calls the most obvious. Watch the dough. 00:03:52.842 --> 00:04:00.202 Teodor lifts the cloth. The dough in the tub has risen into a dome, and he presses one floured finger into it. The dent stays. 00:04:00.752 --> 00:04:05.065 TEODOR: An hour ago this was flat. It could rise, and now it has. 00:04:05.065 --> 00:04:10.210 TEODOR: Thomas would say it was risen in potency, and now it's risen in act. 00:04:10.210 --> 00:04:16.037 TEODOR: Something can only be moved from could-be to is by something that already is. 00:04:16.037 --> 00:04:18.231 TEODOR: The flour didn't lift itself. 00:04:18.781 --> 00:04:22.999 THOMAS AQUINAS: The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. 00:04:22.999 --> 00:04:29.044 THOMAS AQUINAS: It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. 00:04:29.044 --> 00:04:43.032 THOMAS AQUINAS: Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. 00:04:43.032 --> 00:04:49.359 THOMAS AQUINAS: For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. 00:04:49.909 --> 00:04:53.126 MAREN: So the yeast lifted it. And the warmth woke the yeast. 00:04:53.126 --> 00:05:00.096 MAREN: And the cabinet made the warmth, and the power station made the electricity, and the Big Bang made the power station. 00:05:00.096 --> 00:05:02.955 MAREN: You go back and back and you never get anywhere. 00:05:03.505 --> 00:05:10.410 TEODOR: That's what everyone thinks he means. Back in time, like dominoes, to a first domino. He doesn't. 00:05:10.410 --> 00:05:12.119 TEODOR: Listen to the end of it. 00:05:12.669 --> 00:05:31.229 THOMAS AQUINAS: But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. 00:05:31.779 --> 00:05:36.978 TEODOR: The staff and the hand. Not a row of dominoes falling one after another. 00:05:36.978 --> 00:05:42.611 TEODOR: A stick that moves a stone only while a hand is moving the stick, all at once. 00:05:42.611 --> 00:05:47.449 TEODOR: Take the hand away and the stone stops now, not in a billion years. 00:05:47.999 --> 00:05:49.087 MAREN: And the dominoes? 00:05:49.637 --> 00:05:53.835 TEODOR: He says those could go back for ever, as far as reason can tell. 00:05:53.835 --> 00:05:59.083 TEODOR: He says it plainly, further on, where he asks whether the world had a beginning. 00:05:59.633 --> 00:06:07.313 THOMAS AQUINAS: By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist … 00:06:07.863 --> 00:06:19.796 THOMAS AQUINAS: In efficient causes it is impossible to proceed to infinity per se … for instance, that a stone be moved by a stick, the stick by the hand, and so on to infinity. 00:06:19.796 --> 00:06:34.013 THOMAS AQUINAS: But it is not impossible to proceed to infinity accidentally as regards efficient causes … as an artificer acts by means of many hammers accidentally, because one after the other may be broken. 00:06:34.563 --> 00:06:36.654 MAREN: So he wasn't arguing for the Big Bang. 00:06:37.204 --> 00:06:41.883 TEODOR: He thought you couldn't prove from reason that the world ever began. 00:06:41.883 --> 00:06:46.907 TEODOR: He believed it did, because of Genesis. But his argument doesn't need it. 00:06:46.907 --> 00:06:50.072 TEODOR: He's asking what holds the stick up right now. 00:06:50.072 --> 00:07:04.042 TEODOR: The dough is rising this minute because the yeast is alive this minute, and the yeast is alive because the warmth is, and the warmth because the molecules are moving, and so on down. Not backwards. Down. 00:07:04.042 --> 00:07:07.758 TEODOR: And he says the stack can't be hands all the way down. 00:07:07.758 --> 00:07:15.878 TEODOR: Somewhere there has to be something that moves without being moved, that simply is, and doesn't have to be made to be. 00:07:16.428 --> 00:07:17.324 MAREN: And that's God. 00:07:17.874 --> 00:07:25.463 TEODOR: That's what he says everyone calls God. Whether it's the God of Abraham takes him another nine questions. 00:07:25.463 --> 00:07:28.643 TEODOR: He doesn't pretend one page does everything. 00:07:30.793 --> 00:07:33.355 The ovens come up to temperature with a tick. 00:07:33.355 --> 00:07:42.692 Teodor shapes loaves while he talks, and reads the other four ways in short pieces, the way he has read them to himself every few years since nineteen seventy-nine. 00:07:43.242 --> 00:07:47.187 THOMAS AQUINAS: The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. 00:07:47.187 --> 00:07:51.894 THOMAS AQUINAS: In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. 00:07:51.894 --> 00:08:04.075 THOMAS AQUINAS: There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. 00:08:04.625 --> 00:08:09.767 TEODOR: The second is the first again, but about things being made rather than moved. 00:08:10.317 --> 00:08:15.210 THOMAS AQUINAS: The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. 00:08:15.210 --> 00:08:27.549 THOMAS AQUINAS: We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. 00:08:28.099 --> 00:08:32.981 TEODOR: Mister Dunmore was one of those. So are you, so am I, so is this loaf. 00:08:32.981 --> 00:08:38.351 TEODOR: Things that might not have been. Thomas says not everything can be like that. 00:08:38.351 --> 00:08:43.023 TEODOR: Something has to be that cannot not be, or nothing would be at all. 00:08:43.573 --> 00:08:47.925 THOMAS AQUINAS: The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. 00:08:47.925 --> 00:08:53.147 THOMAS AQUINAS: Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. 00:08:53.697 --> 00:08:56.875 MAREN: You lied to him about the tide, I'd say that's less good. 00:08:57.425 --> 00:09:05.630 TEODOR: It was less true and more kind, maybe. Thomas would say you can only rank them because there's a top to rank them by. 00:09:05.630 --> 00:09:12.994 TEODOR: That's the fourth way. It's the one modern people find hardest, because it sounds like a medieval ladder. 00:09:12.994 --> 00:09:15.869 TEODOR: I didn't understand it till my wife died. 00:09:16.419 --> 00:09:20.262 THOMAS AQUINAS: The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. 00:09:20.262 --> 00:09:33.780 THOMAS AQUINAS: We see that things which lack intelligence, 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. 00:09:34.330 --> 00:09:37.399 MAREN: That's the one my brother would tear up. Evolution. 00:09:37.399 --> 00:09:41.792 MAREN: Nobody designed the eye, the eye just happened to the ones that survived. 00:09:42.342 --> 00:09:50.645 TEODOR: Your brother has a point against the people who read this as watchmaker stuff, the eye too clever to be an accident. 00:09:50.645 --> 00:09:54.009 TEODOR: A lot of Thomists say that's not what he meant. 00:09:54.009 --> 00:10:06.035 TEODOR: He's not pointing at the clever bits. He's pointing at the plain fact that an acorn goes towards an oak and not towards a frog, that fire goes towards heat, every time. 00:10:06.035 --> 00:10:12.764 TEODOR: Evolution runs on that. It needs things to keep their tendencies, generation after generation. 00:10:12.764 --> 00:10:16.200 TEODOR: Thomas is asking where the tendency points from. 00:10:16.750 --> 00:10:20.483 MAREN: And if my brother says it doesn't point from anywhere? It just does it? 00:10:21.033 --> 00:10:27.348 TEODOR: Then he and Thomas disagree about the one thing worth disagreeing about, and they should have a drink. 00:10:29.498 --> 00:10:35.023 MAREN: You've done five ways and you haven't touched the first objection. Mister Dunmore. The tide. 00:10:35.573 --> 00:10:38.026 TEODOR: No. Here's all he says. It's short. 00:10:38.576 --> 00:10:55.082 THOMAS AQUINAS: Reply Obj. 1: As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." 00:10:55.082 --> 00:11:03.489 THOMAS AQUINAS: This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good. 00:11:04.039 --> 00:11:07.580 MAREN: That's it? Good out of evil? Tell that to the daughter in Leeds. 00:11:08.130 --> 00:11:12.397 TEODOR: I won't. Neither would he, I think. Look at what he's doing. 00:11:12.397 --> 00:11:15.312 TEODOR: The objection said: if God, then no evil. 00:11:15.312 --> 00:11:19.081 TEODOR: That's a claim about logic, and he answers the logic. 00:11:19.081 --> 00:11:28.964 TEODOR: Infinite goodness doesn't have to mean no evil anywhere; it could mean a goodness strong enough to let evil happen and not be beaten by it. 00:11:28.964 --> 00:11:33.941 TEODOR: That's all the reply has to show, to stop the objection being a proof. 00:11:33.941 --> 00:11:38.634 TEODOR: It doesn't tell you why Mister Dunmore. Nothing on this page does. 00:11:39.184 --> 00:11:40.422 MAREN: Then what's the use of it? 00:11:40.972 --> 00:11:45.918 TEODOR: It means the question you walked in with is still open. That's not nothing. 00:11:45.918 --> 00:11:48.754 TEODOR: At three o'clock you thought it was closed. 00:11:49.304 --> 00:11:51.580 He doesn't say anything about the Cross. 00:11:51.580 --> 00:11:54.653 Later she will notice that he didn't, and be grateful. 00:11:56.803 --> 00:11:59.406 TEODOR: And your brother gets his reply too. 00:11:59.956 --> 00:12:12.804 THOMAS AQUINAS: Reply Obj. 2: Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. 00:12:12.804 --> 00:12:35.813 THOMAS AQUINAS: So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article. 00:12:36.363 --> 00:12:41.051 TEODOR: He's not saying God is an extra part in the engine, next to gravity. 00:12:41.051 --> 00:12:47.462 TEODOR: He's saying the whole engine, gravity included, is the stick, and he's asking about the hand. 00:12:47.462 --> 00:12:52.150 TEODOR: Your brother can explain every gear and still not have answered him. 00:12:52.150 --> 00:12:56.148 TEODOR: And Thomas can't do your brother's physics for him either. 00:12:56.148 --> 00:12:59.319 TEODOR: They're on different floors of the same house. 00:13:01.469 --> 00:13:03.855 The first trays go in at a quarter to five. 00:13:03.855 --> 00:13:07.628 The window over the quay has gone from black to the colour of slate. 00:13:07.628 --> 00:13:11.401 Out on the mudflats the tide is turning, and the water is coming in. 00:13:11.951 --> 00:13:12.933 MAREN: I should sleep. 00:13:13.483 --> 00:13:16.301 TEODOR: Take this. It's yesterday's, but it's good. 00:13:16.301 --> 00:13:25.215 TEODOR: And come back on a night that's not so bad, and I'll read you the article before it, whether you can prove it at all. He thinks you can. 00:13:25.215 --> 00:13:31.180 TEODOR: He also says a person who can't follow the proof can still believe it, and that's no shame. 00:13:31.730 --> 00:13:32.818 MAREN: Is that what you do? 00:13:33.368 --> 00:13:37.229 TEODOR: Some nights one, some nights the other. Forty-seven years. 00:13:37.779 --> 00:13:41.272 Maren walks home along the quay with a warm loaf under her arm. 00:13:41.272 --> 00:13:43.989 She does not know whether she believes any of it. 00:13:43.989 --> 00:13:53.193 But she stops at the sea wall and watches the water come in over the mud, all the way in, and she says out loud, to nobody, that it's in now, Mister Dunmore, it's in. 00:13:55.343 --> 00:14:01.597 This episode was written by an AI. Maren, Teodor, Saltmarsh Staithe and Mister Dunmore are invented. 00:14:01.597 --> 00:14:14.541 Every passage read as Thomas is his own text, in the English Dominican translation of nineteen twenty, from the Summa Theologiae, first part, question two, article three, and question forty-six, article two. 00:14:14.541 --> 00:14:16.667 Cuts are marked in the transcript. 00:14:17.217 --> 00:14:30.420 To be fair to the other side. David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, gave objections to arguments of this kind that many philosophers still find decisive. 00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:44.684 Some physicists and philosophers say that quantum events have no cause at all, which would put pressure on the first way; Thomists answer that the first way is about potency and act, not about predictable triggers, and the argument continues. 00:14:44.684 --> 00:14:49.635 And many readers, believers among them, think the fifth way does not survive Darwin. 00:14:49.635 --> 00:14:52.936 Thomas himself would want you to hear all of this first. 00:14:53.486 --> 00:14:58.014 If you want to read further, the article is two pages long and free online. 00:14:58.014 --> 00:15:04.112 Edward Feser's book Aquinas, a beginner's guide, explains the per se and accidental series at length. 00:15:04.112 --> 00:15:10.693 Sed Contra is free, and you may share or adapt it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence.