Where does life come from? Is it caused by God? Or did it result from a vast and complex
interaction of causes within the world? Could the answer be: both? And if yes,
what distinctions do we need to make?
In previous videos, we have examined the biblical accounts of creation, Thomistic
philosophical principles about creation and divine governance, and also contemporary scientific
accounts of randomness and order, the origins of the cosmos, and the development of life.
In this video, we’ll try to bring things together and give the essential elements of an answer.
In the scientific order, there is much that we still do not know – for example,
precisely how living organisms first came into existence. Did living things arise
simply from the interaction of inanimate elements, and if so,
how? Scientists, philosophers, and theologians have provided varying answers to these questions.
Without entering into all the details, we can at least say that there are good Thomistic reasons
to affirm both that life emerged from non-living things, and that this happened according to God’s
plan, and under the influence of his providential governance of creation.
We’ve already discussed in other videos how St. Thomas Aquinas understands God to be
the first cause of all that is, and how he creates all things ex nihilo, from nothing.
Likewise, in governing his creation, God is able to bring about the results that he intends,
through the action and interaction of created things – God is a first
cause who acts through secondary causes – including even truly chance or random events.
That necessarily means that God is also the first cause of the coming-to-be
of living things. It would be perfectly compatible with Aquinas’s principles
if scientists were to discover that this could occur, or
did occur in the distant past, through the complex interaction of non-living things.
Indeed, St. Thomas himself expressly taught that this could happen – for example, he thought that
plant life could emerge from nonliving things when conditions were just right for this to occur.
On Aquinas’s account, this is because God created the cosmos in the beginning according to his
providential plan, with an overarching order that pervades all things and that provides the
framework within which occur all of the truly chance events that give rise to living beings.
Of course, Aquinas does NOT think that lower causes or random interactions,
considered purely by themselves apart from that wider framework of order,
are a sufficient explanation for how higher perfections or higher forms
come into existence. And a living thing does have a higher form, or a higher principle of
internal organization and activity, than a non-living thing: we call it a soul.
Yes, Aquinas does hold that all living things have souls. Trees have souls, and so do dogs,
elephants, and human beings. Trees and other plants have material vegetative souls which
are the principle of their growth and activity, animals have material animal
souls which are the principle not only of growth but also of their sensation and their movement,
and human beings have spiritual and immortal rational souls, which are the principle of
the higher human acts of understanding and willing, of knowing and loving.
We will discuss the special considerations that apply to the creation of rational
souls in another video – so for now, we will speak only of the emergence of life
broadly speaking, and specifically of that primordial life that scientists theorize
is at the origin of the plant and animal life we encounter in our world today.
Where did this primordial life, this new internal principle of organization and activity,
come from? Seen from within the framework of creaturely causes,
we may only be able to detect the seemingly indeterminate interactions
of lower causes – for example, chemical reactions or even sub-atomic interactions.
The causal power of such things is real and important, and scientists are trying to
determine how, and in what context, such things could give rise to life. Yet, at the same time,
when a higher perfection emerges, displaying a new and powerful principle of internal organization
and activity, we can be sure that there is a wider framework of order somewhere to be found.
This is a development of a point we have discussed in earlier videos:
it is possible for order to emerge from seemingly random events,
but this always presupposes a wider framework of order and intelligibility,
which itself must have a cause – and the ultimate and first cause of that order is God himself.
Does this mean then that God intervenes directly in history, to zap inanimate
elements and turn them into living things? While that would of course be possible for God to do,
Aquinas doesn’t think it is necessary to say that’s how life began.
Another explanation is possible. God, according to his providential plan, could have created the
whole cosmos in such a way that life would eventually emerge from inanimate things.
That is, the higher principle of organization and activity that we call
life could have already been planned and, as it were, instilled in the order of the cosmos by God
from its first beginnings. Classically, this is known as the
“rationes seminales” or “seminal reasons” – higher forms created in the beginning by God, but which
only unfold to manifest their full extent and power over time, as the cosmos develops.
This allows us to say both that life can only arise under the influence of a cause higer
than inanimate things – and also that this higher cause (ultimately, God himself) could instill into
creation at the very beginning of time the order that will eventually blossom into the emergence
of living things at a later stage. Or, to put it more simply, God can carry out the higher workings
of his providential plan through the vastly complex interactions of lower, secondary causes.
So Aquinas would affirm the possibility that, as contemporary scientists suggest, primordial
life may have emerged from non-living things after a long and complex process of development
and the interaction of elements and forces in our cosmos. And at the same time, he also would say
(as can a believing scientist and the whole Christian tradition)
that this life comes from God, has its origin in him, and that it emerges from the order
he has instilled in his creation, according to his providential plan.
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