Podcast
Philosophize This!
A 19th and 20th-century neotomist's book summarizing St. Thomas Aquinas's view that reason alone cannot demonstrate the world's beginning because it depended on God's free will; Aquinas believed the world could have always existed in dependence on God, similar to a footprint always existing if the foot creating it always existed.
St. Thomas holds that reason alone can never demonstrate that the world had a beginning. And why does this truth transcend the natural powers of our intellect? Because that beginning depended on the f...
— Episode: Episode #021 ... One God - St. Thomas Aq...
Episode: Episode #021 ... One God - St. Thomas Aquinas
A 19th and 20th-century neotomist's book summarizing St. Thomas Aquinas's view that reason alone cannot demonstrate the world's beginning because it depended on God's free will; Aquinas believed the world could have always existed in dependence on God, similar to a footprint always existing if the foot creating it always existed.
St. Thomas holds that reason alone can never demonstrate that the world had a beginning. And why does this truth transcend the natural powers of our intellect? Because that beginning depended on the free will of God. Had he so willed, he might have created the world ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand years, or millions of years before, or at a time even more remote without there having been a first day for the world, but simply dependence of the world on its creator. Just as a footprint in the sand is due to the foot that makes it, so that, had the foot always been there, the footprint would have had no beginning. Although revelation teaches us that the world did in fact have a beginning, it does not seem impossible, says Thomas, for the world to have always existed in its dependence on God the creator.