From: Ted Davis (TDavis@messiah.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 16:23:51 EDT
George's comments on Aquinas are on target. Thomas is sometimes mis-used
today, when it is claimed that he allowed the eternity of the world. He did
not. He realized that philosophy (by which he mainly meant natural
philosophy, ie Aristotelian natural philosophy) held that the world is
eternal and uncreated, indeed that it *must* be so. (This is highly similar
IMO to those scientists and, ironically, certain theologians also, who hold
today that the world must be eternal, that some type of multiverse theory
has to be true. They hold this of course on a priori grounds, but pretend
that those grounds are scientific, even when we cannot detect those other
worlds.)
Thomas' point is precisely as George presented it: philosophically one
cannot prove that the world was created (ie, that it is not eternal), but
theologically one can b/c the Scripture tells us as much. This is somewhat
akin to the "double truth" notion popular in medieval universities (Thomas
taught theology at Paris), but unlike the adherents of "double truth" Thomas
resolves this conundrum by allowing theology to trump natural philosophy.
His willingness even to consider the idea that God might create the world
from eternity rather than in time stems, IMO, from the intense pressure
placed on him by the fact that natural philosophy claimed to hold this as a
matter of actual fact.
Ironically, it is only in the latter part of the 20th century that there
has arisen *within science itself* (here I disregard those many scientists
who believed in divine creation for religious reasons) the view that the
world is not eternal. I refer of course to the evidence in favor of a
universe with an age not more than 15-20 billion years. (The age of the
earth alone, or the solar system, is another matter. I speak only of "the
whole shebbang.") Christians have always been correct, IMO, to affirm the
non-eternity of the world from revelation and theology, whether or not
evidence supports it. Now that the evidence does support it, that's nice
but not essential.
ted
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