What Does "Creation" Really Mean? w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. & Dr. William Carroll

Dec 5, 2024

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. hosts Dr. William Carroll, an expert in intellectual history and the history of science. They unpack St. Thomas Aquinas’s profound insights on creation, discussing how it intertwines with time and cosmology. The conversation reveals the historical tensions between faith and science, particularly through the Galileo-Inquisition episode. They also explore the concept of 'conceptual therapy' to tackle misconceptions in cosmology and clarify the nature of creation ex nihilo, enhancing our understanding of the relationship between existence and creation.

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INSIGHT

Modernity's Narrative on Creation

Modernity's narrative, tied to the 17th-century scientific revolution, often frames traditional views of creation as outdated.
This narrative promotes a perceived conflict between science and religion, where science has supposedly won.

INSIGHT

Creation as Dependence

Creation, as Aquinas defines it, is not about the universe's beginning but a dependence in existence.
Confusing creation with a change is a category mistake leading to misinterpretations of cosmology.

INSIGHT

Philosophical vs. Theological Creation

Aquinas distinguishes philosophical creation (dependence in being) from theological creation (including a beginning).
The universe's temporality is irrelevant to its created status philosophically.

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What does it really mean to say the world is "created," according to St. Thomas Aquinas? Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Dr. William Carroll about what "creation" really means, St. Thomas Aquinas on creation and time, cosmology, understanding science and creation, the harmony of science and faith, and more!

You can watch this interview on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mZIcosauUU.

About the speaker: Professor William E. Carroll has recently retired from research and teaching at the Aquinas Institute of Blackfriars in the University of Oxford. For the past two years he has been a Visiting Professor at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Wuhan, China), and at the Hongyi Honor College of Wuhan University. He is a European intellectual historian and historian of science whose research and teaching concern: 1) the reception of Aristotelian science in mediaeval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and the development of the doctrine of creation, and 2) the encounter between Galileo and the Inquisition. He has also written extensively on the ways in which mediaeval discussions of the relationship among the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology can be useful in contemporary questions arising from developments in biology and cosmology.

He is the author of four books: Aquinas on Creation; La Creación y las Ciencias Naturales: Actualidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino; Galileo: Science and Faith; and Creation and Science (with translations in Slovak, Spanish, and Chinese). His published work has appeared in 12 languages.

Over many years he has written more than 25 op-ed pieces for Public Discourse, the web site of the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton.

This project/publication was made possible through the support of Grant 63391 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.