By DONALD DeMARCO
Can we say that this far-flung, wondrous universe, and all the intricately organized things it contains, including us human beings, came about purely by chance? Or does the universe exhibit the kind of design that implies the existence of an “Intelligent Designer”?
St. Thomas Aquinas answered the second question in the affirmative. In fact, he based each of his famous “Five Proofs for the Existence of God” on the fact that nature reflects the presence of a divine designer. For Aquinas, “The natural thing is set between two intellects.” (Res ergo naturalis inter duos intellectus constituta.)
God impresses His intelligence on nature. He creates us with an intellect that can grasp things that are intelligible. But God and man, although they both see the intelligible imprint in nature, since nature is set between them, do not see nature in the same way, though their differing comprehensions do not contradict each other.
By applying our intelligence to nature, we begin to discover or “read into” nature what God originally put there. Aquinas sees fit to remind his readers that the Latin word intelligence (intelligere) is composed of two parts: intus (into) and legere (to read). Hence, one uses his intelligence to “read into” something that is already there. God’s intellect comprehends the whole of nature that He intelligently created, while man’s intellect, which is a discovering power rather than a creative one, comes to know it, though in a piecemeal fashion.
Mozart, whose musical ingenuity appears to have been limitless, wrote a duet for violins in which the two violinists interpret the same written note (and the succession of notes) differently and yet in harmony. The score is placed on a table. When the musicians, sitting on opposite sides of the table, read the same written note, they play it in harmony. Thus, from one side of the table, the note appearing on the fourth line of the staff is played as a D. To the violinist on the other side of the table, the same note appears to him as being on the second line of the staff and consequently as a G. The D and G played together harmonize as the interval of the fifth.
In this unusual way, Mozart strings together a valid melody in which the two violins are always in harmony with each other.
Mozart provides us with a musical illustration of Aquinas’ notion that nature is a common medium and the focal point of two converging intellects that intellectualize the same reality in different ways that are nonetheless in harmony with one another. God’s comprehension of nature is not the same as ours. The infinite and the finite are radically distinct. Nonetheless, both comprehensions are in some way (“analogically,” as Aquinas would say) married to each other. The wonder of it all lies precisely in the fact that this mysterious marriage of minds (or notes in the Mozart example) occurs. Just as a musical composition implies the work of a composer, the intelligibility of nature implies the activity of an intelligent designer.
Philosophy begins in wonder. We know that the startling things we perceive must have a cause. Although we might not know how to imagine their causes, we know that they must exist. Every child reflects this instinctive realization when he asks, “Where did I come from?”
Empirical scientists, in their quest for clarification on a material level, often overlook the implications inherent in the indisputable fact that the human mind and the intelligible universe are mated to each other. This fact itself is an irrefutable indication that there must be a Planner or Intelligent Designer who initially brought them into harmony with each other.
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(Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth & Charity Forum.)
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