In Xenophanes we can discover the first clear instance of the Ionian speculative approach applied to natural theology. That for which there is little evidence in Anaximander is more explicitly stated in Xenophanes… Accordingly, it seems appropriate to call Xenophanes the first natural theologian. By this I mean that he is the first to attack the theology of the poets and to offer as a substitute a form of theology based upon argument. (p. 17)
What are
probably the most famous passages from Xenophanes illustrate the attack in
question. He writes:
But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves
are), and that they wear man’s clothing and have human voice and body.
Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed, Thracians
red-haired and with blue eyes.
But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their
hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give
them bodies in form like their own –horses like horses, cattle like cattle.
Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all things which are
disreputable and worthy of blame when done by men; and they told of them many
lawless deeds, stealing, adultery, and deception of each other.
The target
here, of course, is a crudely anthropomorphic conception of deity. When ascribing bodily attributes and moral
failings to the gods, Xenophanes says, human beings are merely projecting their
own features onto them. Had he left it
at that, Xenophanes’ position would seem to be a precursor of Ludwig
Feuerbach’s nineteenth-century critique of theism as a mere projection of human
attributes onto reality. But he did not
leave it at that. Xenophanes’ beef with
this anthropomorphism is not that it is too theistic but that it is not
theistic enough. What he wants to
replace it with is not atheism but a purified, philosophical theism. He says:
God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals
in body or in mind.
But without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and
thought.
Let’s note
the several implications of these remarks.
We have, first, a kind of monotheism insofar as Xenophanes speaks of God
as one and supreme. It is true that he
immediately goes on to refer to other “gods” over whom God is supreme. But as Gerson notes, if the affirmation of
multiple personal beings who are higher than human beings by itself made
Xenophanes a “polytheist,” it would also make all those who believe in angels
polytheists.
That
Xenophanes attributes mind and thought to God entails that his conception of
God is not impersonal. That he takes God
to act through thought alone and to be unlike mortals in body indicates that he
conceives of God as immaterial (though one could argue that he may mean only
that even if God is in some sense corporeal, it is not the way in which we are
corporeal). That he takes God to act on
all things, and without effort, indicates that he takes God to be omnipotent.
So far we
have a set of attributes that would be recognized by all present-day
theists. But Xenophanes says more:
The whole [of god] sees, the whole perceives, the whole
hears.
It always abides in the same place, not moved at all, nor is
it fitting that it should move from one place to another.
The first of
these remarks implies that there are no distinct parts in God associated with
his seeing, perceiving, and hearing.
Rather, what he does he does as a whole.
This indicates a commitment to something like divine simplicity. The second remark, which denies motion to
God, indicates a commitment to divine immutability. The attributes of simplicity and immutability
are central to classical
theism, but rejected by contemporary neo-theists or theistic
personalists. Naturally, that Xenophanes
takes God to move all things without himself being moved also makes his
theology a precursor of Aristotle’s notion of God as the prime unmoved mover.
What is the
basis for Xenophanes’ conclusions? It is
not clear from the fragments we have.
Gerson takes him to be engaged in essentially the same sort of project
Anaximander pursued, namely reasoning to the existence of a first principle and
then deducing what that first principle must be like if it going to provide a
satisfactory explanation of the cosmos.
Anaximander had argued that this first principle must be apeiron – “unbounded” or “unlimited,”
radically unlike the things of our experience and without beginning or
end. On Gerson’s interpretation,
Xenophanes is engaged in a similar sort of reasoning, arguing from the world to
God as its first principle and deducing the divine attributes as corollaries of
his being this first principle of all.
For example, if God is to be the ultimate explanation of all motion, he
must not himself be in motion.
By contrast,
Werner Jaeger, in his book The Theology
of the Early Greek Philosophers, argues that Xenophanes is not engaged in
this sort of reasoning. Rather, his
approach is to deduce the divine attributes by way of a reverent consideration of
what it is “seemly” or “appropriate” to ascribe to deity (pp. 49-50). The idea would be, for example, that it would
be unseemly or inappropriate for God to be like us in body, or to engage in
deception, or to be in motion. Hence we
must deny these things of him.
Interestingly,
these competing interpretations of Xenophanes roughly correspond to two main
approaches to deriving the divine attributes in contemporary natural theology,
known as first-cause theology and perfect being theology. First-cause theology begins by reasoning from
the world to God as cause of the world, and then deduces the divine attributes
from considerations about what something would have to be like in order to be
such a first cause. This is the approach
we see in St. Thomas Aquinas, for example.
Perfect being theology begins with the idea that whatever else God is,
he is supremely perfect, the greatest conceivable being. It then proceeds to deduce the divine attributes
from a consideration of what something would have to be like in order to be
supremely perfect. This is the approach
we see in St. Anselm. On Gerson’s
interpretation of Xenophanes, he is essentially applying the method of
first-cause theology, whereas on Jaeger’s interpretation, he is essentially
applying the method of perfect being theology.
There is one
further aspect of Xenophanes’ position that should be noted. In his book Philosophy of Nature, Paul Feyerabend argues that in the process of
transforming the notion of God, Xenophanes also transformed the notion of
nature. For the traditional views
Xenophanes was criticizing not only effectively made the gods out to be part of
the natural world. They also thereby
gave the natural world a quasi-divine status, insofar as the heavens were thought
to be occupied by deities and “both for Thales and for the farmers of Boeotia
all things were in motion and filled with gods” (p. 143). As Feyerabend notes, “archaic thought does
not sharply distinguish between cosmological concepts and theological ones”
(Ibid.). But Xenophanes’ thought implies
such a distinction, taking, as it does, the fact that natural phenomena have
various limitations to make them per se
incompatible with divinity, rightly understood.
Feyerabend is critical of this development, but we needn’t and shouldn’t follow him in that judgment. On the contrary, in transforming the concept of nature in the course of refining the concept of divinity, Xenophanes anticipated Christian classical theism’s crucial distinction between the natural and supernatural orders.
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