The First Mover

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Transcript

1. Four in the morning
2. The case against
3. On the contrary
4. The first way
5. Four more ways
6. The reply about evil
7. The reply about nature
8. First light
9. Notes for listeners

Four in the morning

NarratorAt four in the morning on Quay Street the only lit window belongs to Hollin's Bakery. Maren Ashby has walked past it for six years on her way home from the intensive care unit, and she has never gone in. Tonight she goes in.

NarratorTeodor 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. Beside the proving cabinet there is a fat blue book, its spine split, a wooden spoon for a bookmark.

TeodorWe're not open till six. But the kettle is. You look like you've had the night.

MarenMister Dunmore died at ten past three. Eighty-four. I'd had him three weeks. He kept asking me to open the blind so he could see if the tide was in.

TeodorWas it?

MarenIt was out. I told him it was in.

NarratorTeodor fills a mug, puts it in front of her, and says nothing for long enough that she drinks half of it.

MarenWhat's the book?

TeodorThomas Aquinas. A Dominican friar left it on that shelf in nineteen seventy-nine and never came back for it. I read a page every night while the dough proves. Forty-seven years. I'm on my fourth time through.

MarenDoes he say why a nice old man has to die looking at a blind?

TeodorHe says it better than you would expect. And he says the other side first. That's why I kept reading.

The case against

NarratorThe thing to know about the Summa Theologiae is that Thomas never begins with his own answer. Each article opens with the best arguments he can find against what he believes, stated as strongly as he can state them. Teodor turns to the page where Thomas asks the oldest question.

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. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenThat'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. If there were infinite goodness, none of that would be left over.

TeodorHe wrote that seven hundred and sixty years ago and put it first. He didn't hide it in a footnote. Here's the second one.

Obj. 2: Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. 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. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenMy brother says that. He's a physicist in Durham. Nature does nature, people do people, and God is a spare part.

TeodorThen your brother and a thirteenth-century friar agree on the objection. That's a start.

On the contrary

NarratorAfter the objections comes a short line that Thomas always heads the same way: On the contrary. 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.

On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Ex. 3:14)Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenThat's not an answer. That's a quotation.

TeodorQuite right. He knows it. The answer comes next, and he says he can do it five ways. He starts with the one he calls the most obvious. Watch the dough.

The first way

NarratorTeodor lifts the cloth. The dough in the tub has risen into a dome, and he presses one floured finger into it. The dent stays.

TeodorAn hour ago this was flat. It could rise, and now it has. Thomas would say it was risen in potency, and now it's risen in act. Something can only be moved from could-be to is by something that already is. The flour didn't lift itself.

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. 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. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenSo the yeast lifted it. And the warmth woke the yeast. And the cabinet made the warmth, and the power station made the electricity, and the Big Bang made the power station. You go back and back and you never get anywhere.

TeodorThat's what everyone thinks he means. Back in time, like dominoes, to a first domino. He doesn't. Listen to the end of it.

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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

TeodorThe staff and the hand. Not a row of dominoes falling one after another. A stick that moves a stone only while a hand is moving the stick, all at once. Take the hand away and the stone stops now, not in a billion years.

MarenAnd the dominoes?

TeodorHe says those could go back for ever, as far as reason can tell. He says it plainly, further on, where he asks whether the world had a beginning.

By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist …Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

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. 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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenSo he wasn't arguing for the Big Bang.

TeodorHe thought you couldn't prove from reason that the world ever began. He believed it did, because of Genesis. But his argument doesn't need it. He's asking what holds the stick up right now. 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. And he says the stack can't be hands all the way down. Somewhere there has to be something that moves without being moved, that simply is, and doesn't have to be made to be.

MarenAnd that's God.

TeodorThat's what he says everyone calls God. Whether it's the God of Abraham takes him another nine questions. He doesn't pretend one page does everything.

Four more ways

NarratorThe ovens come up to temperature with a tick. 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.

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. 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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

TeodorThe second is the first again, but about things being made rather than moved.

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. 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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

TeodorMister Dunmore was one of those. So are you, so am I, so is this loaf. Things that might not have been. Thomas says not everything can be like that. Something has to be that cannot not be, or nothing would be at all.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenYou lied to him about the tide, I'd say that's less good.

TeodorIt was less true and more kind, maybe. Thomas would say you can only rank them because there's a top to rank them by. That's the fourth way. It's the one modern people find hardest, because it sounds like a medieval ladder. I didn't understand it till my wife died.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. 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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenThat's the one my brother would tear up. Evolution. Nobody designed the eye, the eye just happened to the ones that survived.

TeodorYour brother has a point against the people who read this as watchmaker stuff, the eye too clever to be an accident. A lot of Thomists say that's not what he meant. 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. Evolution runs on that. It needs things to keep their tendencies, generation after generation. Thomas is asking where the tendency points from.

MarenAnd if my brother says it doesn't point from anywhere? It just does it?

TeodorThen he and Thomas disagree about the one thing worth disagreeing about, and they should have a drink.

The reply about evil

MarenYou've done five ways and you haven't touched the first objection. Mister Dunmore. The tide.

TeodorNo. Here's all he says. It's short.

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." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

MarenThat's it? Good out of evil? Tell that to the daughter in Leeds.

TeodorI won't. Neither would he, I think. Look at what he's doing. The objection said: if God, then no evil. That's a claim about logic, and he answers the logic. 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. That's all the reply has to show, to stop the objection being a proof. It doesn't tell you why Mister Dunmore. Nothing on this page does.

MarenThen what's the use of it?

TeodorIt means the question you walked in with is still open. That's not nothing. At three o'clock you thought it was closed.

NarratorHe doesn't say anything about the Cross. Later she will notice that he didn't, and be grateful.

The reply about nature

TeodorAnd your brother gets his reply too.

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. 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.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

TeodorHe's not saying God is an extra part in the engine, next to gravity. He's saying the whole engine, gravity included, is the stick, and he's asking about the hand. Your brother can explain every gear and still not have answered him. And Thomas can't do your brother's physics for him either. They're on different floors of the same house.

First light

NarratorThe first trays go in at a quarter to five. The window over the quay has gone from black to the colour of slate. Out on the mudflats the tide is turning, and the water is coming in.

MarenI should sleep.

TeodorTake this. It's yesterday's, but it's good. 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. He also says a person who can't follow the proof can still believe it, and that's no shame.

MarenIs that what you do?

TeodorSome nights one, some nights the other. Forty-seven years.

NarratorMaren walks home along the quay with a warm loaf under her arm. She does not know whether she believes any of it. 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.

Notes for listeners

NarratorThis episode was written by an AI. Maren, Teodor, Saltmarsh Staithe and Mister Dunmore are invented. 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. Cuts are marked in the transcript.

NarratorTo 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. 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. And many readers, believers among them, think the fifth way does not survive Darwin. Thomas himself would want you to hear all of this first.

NarratorIf you want to read further, the article is two pages long and free online. Edward Feser's book Aquinas, a beginner's guide, explains the per se and accidental series at length. Sed Contra is free, and you may share or adapt it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence.